This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Things should be legal and not illegal, generally speaking. More laws, more thieves.
It's more neutral than negative, but it imposes a 'marriage light' for everyone, whereas it used to impose the opposite. Ideally people would choose for themselves how heavy their marriage is, with old school marriage on one side, treated like a total stranger on the other, light civil unions in the middle. This bans the heavy kind, and that is prejudicial to people who prefer it, obviously.
You're the one who keeps bringing up beatings and forcing her over her screams, which I wouldn't do. Again with the analogy: if she runs away screaming after you tried to kiss her, being a decent fellow, I assume your response would not be beatings, but confusion, questioning where this marriage is, if she even likes you anymore. And so it is for this past husband in a heavy marriage if she screamed rape at the thought of performing her wifely duties.
The argument that we're unnecessarily criminalizing behavior that shouldn't be criminalized and thus creating more criminals is not one that I think applies here, unless, again, you're actually willing to defend a man's right to rape his wife.
Yes, I assume you wouldn't. I assume we are both decent people who would not abuse our spouses, so no such law is necessary in our cases. But then, I also assume neither of us are rapists or murderers or robbers. If there were no laws against rape, murder, or theft, I still would not be raping, murdering, or robbing anyone. We make laws against things so there is a remedy against those who do commit those acts. You've carefully avoided answering my questions about what remedies you think should be available because some men do do those things.
You're still dodging the issue. Yes, we agree, the appropriate response to your wife screaming when you try to kiss her is to try to talk to her like a human being. And so for us, laws against marital rape are unnecessary. But in times past, there were quite a few husbands who were less reasonable. Who literally would beat their wives, and hold them down and force them over their screaming protests. You keep saying "Well, obviously I wouldn't do that," but you won't say what you think should happen to a husband who does do that.
Here's a thought: maybe rape should be illegal, and marriage shouldn't provide a special exemption. If your marriage is dysfunctional enough that a law against marital rape is an impediment, then the law against marital rape is not the problem.
Through this law, you are banning a certain kind of contract, formerly common, consented to by free citizens, are you not? What they did behind closed doors, and behind a contract saying that they could, was not the state's business, and now they're more meat for the jailhouse.
Fucks her while she says no? Nothing. She, (or he, as the case may be, this is an entirely sex-independent argument) can cancel the contract that says he has sexual access, and then she can treat him like a stranger before the law again. If the new law wasn't on the books, like in the past. In our actual timeline the contract doesn't say that, so jail it is.
If you don't include women in the category of "free citizens." Pretty sure very few women ever liked that the right to physically abuse them was part of the marriage contract, even if they implicitly accepted it (and hoped/assumed in most cases that it wouldn't be invoked). I am genuinely not sure why you insist it's a bad thing that they now have recourse under the law not to be physically abused.
That "formerly common" contract also included the right to literally beat your wife black and blue. Sure, this was considered uncouth, even brutish, but it was also something that stayed, as you say, behind closed doors, "not the state's business." It wasn't illegal. A beaten wife had no legal recourse, because she had, after all, consented by virtue of marriage.
Are you willing to defend the proposition that it should be legal to beat your wife? If not, why is it all right to criminalize beating your wife, but it's an abridgment of the rights of free citizens to make it illegal to rape her?
You're claiming in the past that a woman could instantly divorce a husband and "revoke sexual access"? That is not actually how it worked, modulo some few and probably apocryphal tribal societies. Even if that's how you think it should work, the all-or-nothing proposition that "You can divorce him on the spot, otherwise you must put up with whatever he wants to do to you" sounds like a mountain that only a Vox Day (who, credit to him, made no bones about the fact that he did indeed believe a wife with an abusive husband should take her beatings and remain married and obedient) or someone trying to be edgily contrarian, would really be willing to die on.
Whether they liked every part of it or not, they consented. They could refuse, remain unmarried. The contract contained its share of unpleasant duties and sacrifices for men too.
Actually yes, with the same caveats as before. Just like it should be legal to beat your lover in a BDSM game. As long as it's all consented and they can exit the agreement, closed doors, not my business etc.
The romans had divorce.
just contrarian, the edginess is circumstantial.
Consenting to be "beaten" because you're into BDSM is not remotely the same thing as consenting to a marriage in which your husband has the legal right to punch you in the face, but I guess you've made your position clear enough. We inhabit very different moral universes, is all I can say.
I don't see it. Different conceptions of personal liberty, more like. It’s a very emotional subject. I recognize this position is unlikely to win me any brownie points at parties. I must have picked it up in some MRA or libertarian forum.
I'm not particularly "emotional" about it. I'm just stating things in blunt terms because that leaves less room to waffle. I don't see the right to punch my wife in the face as an inviolable personal liberty, and you apparently think it's an intolerable infringement of state power that a man can be arrested for that.
I mean the constant appeals to the image of a woman being raped and beaten in front of you. It's like bringing up a starving child in a discussion on food security, it's a bit cheap, exploitation movie, less autistic than usual for this place.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link