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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.
In my scenario, she is also not beaten and raped. Husband is confused by the refusal, she divorces if he persists, everyone lives happily ever after. Unless I guess she wants to continue, in which case, I bow to her will.
The guy who shows up in the food security discussion and accuses his opponents of wanting starving children is a terrible debater, and there's millions of them on reddit.
Your scenario assumes reasonable, non-abusive people. What about the scenario where the husband does not back off, confused, but decides to use force? I don't know why you keep insisting "But you see, your lurid scenario wouldn't happen because in my world, people don't do that."
Yeah, but that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is you're saying "I propose policy X," and I say "Policy X will have a predictable consequence Y, is that really what you're in favor of?" And you respond with "Why do you keep bringing up Y?! That's cheap and exploitative!"
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