A PUA, living the dream. And by “living the dream” I mean “being a dick.”

Dear Dracula, we hear this argument now the 15.000th time.

“The pictures on the Molly blog are the worst.”

Now I’m curious… was it the oiled up bears, the earrings shaped like cute guys, or my bruises that freaked you out?

Sympathy is not rationally explainable but if I hear jokes like “boo fucking hoo Simon is not allowed to rape”… what sympathy do you expect?

So … excuse me if my memory is off, but from what I remember, the conversation went like this:

Simon: Drunk women shouldn’t expect others to accommodate them.

Everyone else: Really? Even in this specific context, where “accommodate” clearly means “not rape”? How hard is it not to rape drunk women, Simon?

I’m not really sure that people were joking that you weren’t “allowed to rape,” exactly.

I don’t know what’s wrong with them, I think it’s a kind of fetish to imagine that every men desperately wants to f*ck them, but haha! isn’t allowed.

I think they were reacting to your assertion that not raping someone unable to protect themselves is an accommodation.

Also, you’re totally conflating two very different things. (1) People desperately wanting to fuck [whoever]. I mean, yeah … whatever. I don’t remember anyone implying that they think this, but OK. This is thing one. A delusion of universal desirability. Compared with (2) people asserting sexual autonomy. Choosing sexual partners. Being able to consent or not consent. Calling it rape when no consent was given. Indeed, people are allowed to say, “That’s not allowed.” You get that, right?

Yes it’s wrong to rape drunk women and I’m sorry if anybody was offended because I said something else. But why isn’t drinking to the point of not being oneself not also seen as simply wrong, too?

I accept your apology. However, drinking and passing out/falling asleep/sobering up in the meantime isn’t “simply wrong” in the same way that raping someone is, because no one else is hurt. Maybe if it’s a habitual thing, one would have concerns for the drinker’s health and see self-harm as a wrong. If the drinker does things while drunk that harm other people, that would wrong too — but you’d have to look at the situation. And, for what it’s worth, the harms would be wrong; the drinking itself would be … I dunno, morally ambiguous? Perhaps it’s wrong, if you knew that drinking made you do these awful, hurtful things, and still you continued to drink and behave awfully and hurtful. But it’s more of a totality of the circumstances thing.

Rape = always wrong

Drinking = Need more facts

I feel bad or good for other people, sometimes, but I don’t feel things with them.

I most certianly count something like this under caring for the harms done to others and having concern for other’s wellbeing. I never used the term empathy (I don’t like a sympathy/empathy dicotomy, because sympathy is often taken as implying pity, which is often a bad thing, but empathy also includes problematic assumptions). My restriction was that a moral consideration had to include the wellbeing, harm, etc of others. I never once used this term that your entire argument is centered around, so please stop attacking that strawman. Here is what I said about reasoning one’s way into ethical behavior, that it could be done:

Only if you include the wellbeing/interests/harm to others as a central part of the equation. If not, you are just acting in a way that superficially appears to have some shared features to genuine ethical and justice considerations.

People with Aspergers do include those things, sociopaths do not. Sociopaths are not concerned about the suffering or harms done to others. Sociopaths often know perfectly well that their actions cause suffering-that their actions make the other person feel suffering-and play on it in an attempt to manipulate. They are not taking the suffering of others as an important factor into their equations. That is the line of difference I drew about equations being moral equations or merely showing similar results.

Of course there are good policy reasons not to punish sociopaths who haven’t committed any crime, it’s because they haven’t committed any crime.

Yes, I apply this to all groups of people. I do not think I am doing sociopaths a favor by respecting their right to not be jailed or punished pre-emptively, I grant that to everyone, including everyone I despise. Virulent racists, for example, are a category of people who I believe are worse or bad people, but who I would also oppose stripping of freedom barring an actual bad act. In addition, pre-emptive punishment would likely reduce the deterrence affect and could actually increase bad acts from sociopaths rather than achieve the intended goal of decrease. While sociopaths do appear to be fairly deterable, the fact that they lack concern for the wellbeing of others does mean that they warrant, on a personal level, additional suspicions when put in positions of trust, intimacy, power, etc. where they might believe they would be able to get away with acts that harm others. On a political or legal level, allowing such presumptions against any group, including very nasty ones, is a very bad idea.

Also, if all we have to go on is peoples’ actions, their outward behavior, how does it help to call one set of motivations “genuine” and another set of motivations “superficial”?

We consider intent all of the time, both as a personal matter and as a matter of law. A person’s intent does matter ethically and legally. However, what we do not punish is a mere desire without acts, for all of those policy reasons that make it a bad idea.

So, yes, I do think that valuing the wellbeing of others is necessary, by definition, for moral decision making. I think those that are incapable of or constantly refuse to do this (there is dispute on this one with sociopaths as well, which is the case), such as sociopaths, are being immoral. But I do not believe that mere immoral character is grounds for punishment or that punishing it by itself is a good idea. Bad character often leads to bad acts, but it is only a good idea, for a large number of reasons, to punish intent when it goes along with bad acts (or a showing of serious attempt at said acts). I oppose punishing people on the grounds that they are bad people, but that does not mean that I like bad people or that I do not think that an individual suspicion of them is not warranted.

PS, I am an aspie too, hence my original objection at aspergers being conflated with sociopathy.

That 2 to 8 percent is rape claims classified as “unfounded.” What does that mean? According to Wikipedia, a lot of things:

FBI reports consistently put the number of “unfounded” rape accusations around 8%. The average rate of unfounded reports for Index crimes is 2%.[8] However, “unfounded” is not synonymous with false allegation[9] and as Bruce Gross of the Forensic Examiner explains,

This statistic is almost meaningless, as many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, “unfounded.” That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser’s statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false.[10]

In some cities the unfounded rate is suspiciously high:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-06-28/news/bs-ed-baltimore-rape-statistics-20100628_1_number-of-rape-cases-sexual-assaults-victims

Worse, police reports obtained by The Sun and reviewed by Mr. Fenton show a disturbing pattern in which detectives aggressively question those who say they have been sexually assaulted, a process that, intentionally or not, gives victims the impression that the focus of the investigation is to prove that the victim is lying, not to catch and prosecute the attacker. Faced with those circumstances, and the certainty that persisting would only mean more pain, many women simply drop the matter.

The result is that Baltimore has a higher rate of unfounded complaints — by far — than nearly any other city in the nation. Baltimore is one of only a handful of cities in the nation with more homicides than rapes, and the number of rape cases here has, for reasons no one can explain, dropped nearly 80 percent since 1992, a period in which rape cases declined by 8 percent nationally. Meanwhile, the proportion of rape reports deemed unfounded has increased fivefold since the late 1990s.

Didn’t nugganu already tell us this story? I see that he’s since elaborated it, but still, given how unimpressed we were last time I’m not sure why he thinks we’ll be all OMG YOU ARE SO COOL this time.

Brussel Sprouts were clearly created by Satan as a way of making people feel like they’re eating boiled socks, while telling themselves that it’s “healthy”.

Also, Simon, I’m curious as to why “feel sympathy for people because of whatever is making them feel the need to drink themselves into oblivion” isn’t an option. I’m not at all sure why blaming them or being angry with them or generally nurturing unpleasant feelings towards them is necessary.

(Unless they just puked on your shoes, in which case temporary irritation is acceptable, but wanting to “abandon them to their fate” of being raped is really not.)

Brussel sprouts storytime!

A friend of mine at around age 9 skeeved her mom out enough that she never again served her kids brussel sprouts. The one liner that did it?

“Hey look! Fetal cabbage patch kids!”

(that’s all I have, I’ve read the whole thread and everything I’d want to say others have said more often and better…)

Maybe I think the gashes could do with some heartbreak for a change. It might build some character.

Oh, I get it. MRAL skeeved out another woman RL, and he’s trying to take it out on us.

Fat chance, the wimminz can go eat a dildo.

Simon: So did he force feed her with alcohol or what? How can that be a calculated injury?

The fuck?

Hrmn… she’s been drinking, her defenses will be down, I can convince her to do things she would otherwise refuse to do.

I’ll take advantage of that.

You don’t think that’s calculating?

So if I see someone ice skating, and they fall, and I come up and steal their wallet; because they are injured and can’t chase me… that’s not a calculated injury.

I have sex with someone, they fall asleep and I grab their keys and steal their car… that’s not a calculated injury.

What you are advocating is a “might makes right”, argument. A variation on the idea that, “what isn’t nailed down is mine, and if I can pry it up it wasn’t nailed down.”

I pan roast brussel sprouts in a cast iron skillet with olive oil and salt and fresh ground black pepper. I sear them and lower the flame to let them cook through. Sometimes I’ll make a brown butter sauce for them in the winter. Or I’ll hash them and cook them with lemon juice and poppy seeds. Or roast them in the oven. I like them flavored with bacon but, really, they’re just one of my favorite vegetables. They’re also great roasted and then tossed with a little fig balsamic.