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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34085 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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If rapists of adult victims can be rehabilitated, then why not rapists of children?

Well this is my point: I think most woke people would categorically state that a cis male rapist of women (or groper, or harasser, or catch-all "creep") cannot be rehabilitated - that one can no more rehabilitate a cis male rapist's preference for penetrating women without their consent than you can convert a gay man to being straight. Remember during #MeToo, when dozens of men had their careers because someone dug up evidence (or "remembered") of them being a little pushy or handsy a decade or more ago, having given every indication of being scrupulously respectful to women ever since, by all accounts? I don't think this is just "this guy may have learned the error of his ways, but he still needs to be brought to justice" - I think the woke stance is explicitly "once a ra(p)(c)ist (broadly defined), always a ra(p)(c)ist (provided you hold the relevant identity characteristics)".

Back from Bizarro World, I believe that rapists and people who rape, molest or statutorily rape children can be reformed and rehabilitated. I just don't think woke people believe that - it's heresy in light of "born this way".

You can argue that because of his past crime and the possibility of recidivism, Van de Velde should not be alone with twelve-year-olds in the future, but what does that have to do with him playing volleyball in a team full of adults?

Nothing, of course. I just think it's a bit rich that commenters here are waving the flag for this dude without even the barest pretence of having any motivation other than owning the libs - but in practice, if they were to interact with this guy in person, if it was their kid at risk of being interfered with ox being gored, their revealed preferences for how they think he should be treated would be functionally indistinguishable from those of the Guardian journalist who wrote this article.

just think it's a bit rich that commenters here are waving the flag for this dude without even the barest pretence of having any motivation other than owning the libs

For the record, I'm not “waving the flag [..] to own the libs”. I just want the discussion about eligibility of Olympic athletes to be more principled than the current “this guy's past behavior was appalling so obviously he shouldn't be allowed to compete now!”.

You can make an argument around how serious criminals should be barred from the Olympics, but then you should flesh it out in an objective way. Part of justice is applying rules equally and fairly, and not in an ad-hoc manner as seems to happen here. Insisting on that is not the same as blanket support for pedophiles to participate in the Olympics.

By the way, I really don't think it's only liberals who are upset about Van de Velde's participation. It's just that the liberals are more vocal now that the perpetrator is a straight white male, rather than if it had been a black or trans person or a drag queen or something.

if they were to interact with this guy in person, if it was their kid at risk of being interfered with [..], their revealed preferences for how they think he should be treated would be functionally indistinguishable from those of the Guardian journalist who wrote this article.

Again, you are conflating two very different things. I wouldn't hire Van de Velde as my baby sitter, and I'm not saying anyone else should, but I might well hire him as my tax accountant, and I wouldn't mind playing volleyball with him. I don't think there is any hypocrisy there.

I mean, wasn't part of the whole idea of MeToo that some of the highest-profile people (no idea about some of the collateral, as it were) effectively had gotten away with sexual abuse over multiple decades? And so the suspicion was, and somewhat still is, that since cover-ups were so common, maybe every case of sexual abuse is actually the tip of the iceberg. People started jumping at shadows... kind of understandably? I think the ideological portion of this was and is overstated, though it's still a conversation worth having. The fundamental [human] problem of "how do we gauge how sincere an apology is" still remains and makes things messy.

On more general moral principles I tend to feel more like "three strikes you're out" but I think for some people rape and its analogues might test that principle (do we really want to accept 1-2 additional, perhaps unnecessary rapes in "exchange" for a moral stand? Honestly probably yes, but we need to be honest that this tradeoff kind of does exist at least in part)

having any motivation other than owning the libs

The commentators waving the flag for this dude are mocking all the trad posters for supporting a standard of consent that is specifically designed to oppress them for no benefit. I don't think anyone's really mocking the progressives, and the [classical] liberals, once they show up, are all going to go "woman seeks sex with man and gets it, where's the crime?".

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