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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.
But the reason I keep bringing it up is because those are the logical implications that you don't want to pursue. If we were talking about food security and someone was proposing policies that would, in fact, result in starving children, it would not be cheap or exploitative to ask if the other person has considered this and is really willing to stand by it. You want to talk in abstract terms about the "marital contract" and "implied consent" and you keep insisting that "back in the days of our ancestors they didn't need the state interfering with private marital relationships." If that is really how you feel, fair enough, but to be clear, yes, you're saying you're fine with spouses being beaten and raped, and you don't think the law should intervene. That's not some edge case or hypothetical.
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