A couple of intriguing quotes from Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit.
The topic at hand: A Redditor claims an ex falsely accused him of rape and caused him various other problems and basically acted like a shit. No one, of course, can possibly know if the guy is telling the truth, but the r/mr regulars all assume the alleged false accuser is guilty until proven innocent. (And maybe not even then.)
Naturally, some of the regulars use this as an opportunity to discuss how completely understandable it is when guys kill their exes.
Really, in this misandrist world, dudes murdering their exes is totally like slaves murdering their masters. Illegal, sure, but who can blame them? At least that’s how texaswildfires sees it:
Yep, in his mind, dudes today are totally in the exact same situation as slaves in the antebellum south — so when a guy murders his ex, the person you should feel empathy with is the murderer.
Naturally, both of these comments got upvotes, because that’s just how r/mr rolls these days.
Relative Morality is the idea that all moral systems are equally justified, not that people have different moral systems. Even in a divine theocracy, people could have moral systems that disagreed with the deity/ies. They’d just be wrong.
Of course, true Moral Relativism couldn’t possibly be correct, because society couldn’t hold together under some moral systems, and that’s a great argument as to their invalidity. The devil is in the details, though, which is why Moral Absolutism seems wrong as well…
Ah well, nobody said morality was simple. Well… somebody did, but they’re wrong.
I think i just saw a paperclip go sailing by – maybe headed in NWO’s direction?
@KathleenB
I see the manboobz gang of hate continues with the same debating tactics. None.
No doubt I lose all these debates due to preponderance of evidence.
A womans word.
Continue with your hatred.
KathleenB: You are correct, and the battered partner defense has a higher burden of proof than a simple claim of self-defense.
As with any self-defense claim, it’s an affirmative defense (that is one must admit one did the acts accused… one is not saying one is not guilty because one didn’t do it).
It’s also a claim in which the accused has to show that not only were they in fear of their life, but that the situation was such that no other course of action (fleeing, calling the police, etc.) was going to effect a release from the threat.
They have to show that there was, for them, no reason to believe that any other course of action could lead to a removal of the threat they felt they were under; and they have to convince a judge/jury that such a fear was reasonable.
The number of cases in which that happens is quite rare, which is why it makes the news.
@NWO:
“Feminists lobby that only men are abusers. I lose because feminists lie.”
No we don’t.
NWO: See above re: my comment about evidence – I’ll admit that actual argument with you has become a sideline to the mocking (I’m a smartass by inclination and practice), but I do try to engage with you. You just refuse to comprehend anything that doesn’t feed into you feminist-hate dance.
@KathleenB
“NWO: There’s this nifty thing called evidence. I believe (correct me if I’m wrong, as IANAL) that battered woman syndrome is a defense in which actual proof of abuse has to be presented (proven?). You can’t just go into court, tell the jury he beat on you, and get off without so much as a slap on the wrist.”
Recent case in Tennessee. Preachers wife. Never filed a complaint, Never on record as being hurt. No witnesses. Never seen with even a lock of hair out of place. She did however cry ib the courtroom. She walked. State sanctioned, cold-blooded murder. Your system that you support.
Continue with your hatred.
Me:
NWO:
The refusal to engage is not on my side, NWO.
NWO: [citation needed] Give me a link or I’m just going to assume you got that where you get most of your ‘facts:’ your ass.
NWO: No doubt I lose all these debates due to preponderance of evidence.
You lose because you can’t argue your way out of a paper bag with a firehose.
You can’t construct a coherent argument, misunderstand logical fallacies and pretend that having your ass handed to you on a plate is because you are man, rather than your absolute failure to respond to the topic at hand.
You let your feelings get in the way of your reason.
But, as Robert Heinlein said, “Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.”
Oh, need an amendment there: Give me a link to a reputable news organization, or I’m just going to assume you pulled that out of your ass.
@NWO:
“Recent case in Tennessee. Preachers wife. Never filed a complaint, Never on record as being hurt. No witnesses. Never seen with even a lock of hair out of place. She did however cry ib the courtroom. She walked. State sanctioned, cold-blooded murder. Your system that you support.”
Thanks for the link. Oh wait…
Are you talking about this? Or perhaps this? I’m amazed you gleaned so much information from the story… I know I totally missed the part where it was never shown that she was abused, and the only evidence in the court was the woman crying… [/sarcasm]
Do better next time. Let me give you a hint: you won’t get very far with single cases. Sometimes something stupid happens in court, and if that stupid thing actually happened, then someone who generally supports the courts would rightfully say “Yeah, that particular case bad, but it isn’t indicative of the whole system.”
Agreed; I actually fully support someone killing a person who has made entirely realistic and standing death threats to them and their children, and prevented them from leaving, even if said person is only kill-able while sleeping. Were we all supposed to give murderous abusive monsters a sporting chance to kill us, then? Maybe let the abuser beat the crap out of the victim one more time (will the victim die this time like the abuser promised? Lol, the suspense makes it fun!) before finally killing the threat in self-defense? I fully believe at that point that one of the couple will wind up dead, and I’m glad when it’s the abuser. It’s often not.
If a complete stranger confined you and your family to a house and threatened to kill you either if you left or just if they felt like it, would anyone have a problem with you killing that person to save yourself? Hell no. If a terrorist yanked you out of bed, locked you in a room, beat the crap out of you, and threatened to murder your family, people would applaud you killing that person awake or not. A domestic terrorist shouldn’t be accorded any more sympathy than one who is unrelated; if someone has promised to murder you, and shown that they are perfectly willing to do so by repeated and escalating physical violence, I won’t waste time being sad just because said person wore a matching wedding ring.
@ithiliana: I am just trying to clean my mind of any gender bias. So I will treat women exactly the way I treat men. So if I tell a man something, I am not going to turn around and say something different to the woman.
So in this scenario, I would tell the man to pack up his shit and get the fuck out of the house. Go stay with friends or family. If he turned around and killed the wife, I would call him a murderous asshole that decided to use an unnecessary and extreme solution to the problem and he should get a nice long jail sentence.
@Kristinmh:
1) I own gold, but gold isn’t the end-all/be-all solution. Our system (economics and politics) is fucked…and by using “GOOOOOLLLLDDDD” as the magical solution is retarded.
2) Actually, my main point was that most of the “benefits” of marriage are pretty useless and I don’t see how my life would be made worse if I didn’t marry. And out of the very few benefits that I see as useful, most of them could be handled by other means. When I set up my 403(b), it asked me who I wanted to be the beneficiary if I die. So while I am setting up something (which I was intending to do regardless of if I was getting married), I can get the “who gets my money when I die” benefit. But instead of in a marriage, it’s in a financial agreement.
3) I think men should take precautions to avoid a false rape allegation. There needs to be something (anything) besides heresay to determine if consent was actually given. So if a man and a woman go into court and she said “I never gave consent” and he said “Yes, she gave consent and I consented as well”…who do you believe? Without any evidence, the trial just becomes laced with personal and character attacks.
@Joanna:
“Women don’t usually go for physical violence when they intend to commit murder for this reason”
What? So murder doesn’t fall under the category of physical violence? A little clarification if you would..
@Kirby: Oh this crap again. There have been numerous studies done that say men and women are pretty much equal offenders of DV:
http://www.patientedu.org/aspx/HealthELibrary/HealthETopic.aspx?cid=M0907d
I find this interesting since it is the complete opposite to what is portrayed in the media:
“According to both men and women, 50% of this violence was reciprocal, that is, involved both parties, and in those cases the woman was more likely to have been the first to strike.”
How nice…women as instigators.
@Brandon:
I’m confused… what exactly were you responding to? Nothing I said to you relied on statistics about who abuses who…
@Kirby: This:
“Brandon, along with countless MRAs, believe that men are being abused by women in general in the same way that battered spouses are,”
Oh, I wish abused women weren’t too stupid to think of this! It’s so simple!
@Bagelsan: I am sure it wouldn’t be me just saying that to him. He would probably have concerns that can be talked about. But in the end, he needs to make the decision to change his environment. I can’t drag him out of that situation.
@Brandon:
Then I probably got it wrong by saying you agree with MRAs in general. My apologies. 🙂 That statement doesn’t rely on statistics, its a claim many MRAs make by saying women are really oppressing men, and maybe it’s justifiable that men strike back and shoot up something.
Your statement strikes me as odd, though… because of this:
“@Shora: Just because you used gender neutral language doesn’t mean that it applies to each gender equally. Sure in theory written down is a book somewhere…but not in the real world where other variables come into play.
Implying that when we talk about abusive spouses, we really only mean abusive men, because men are more absusive in reality. At complete odds with what you just cited… Which is it?
Anyway, you keep trying to trap us into saying something gender-biased, and keep insisting that we really mean “wives” when we say “battered spouses.” Are you done arguing that then?
@Brandon
I forget. In your scenario, did he have no choice — because of his PTSD, her constant death threats, and his lack of a safety net outside the home — but to either stay and probably be killed or kill her? Because if so, and that’s your response? That’s fucking cold, dude.
Luckily (for rapists) most jurisdictions do not make consent an element of the crime of rape. There needs to be a show of force, or some sort of proof of a situation that would lead to legal consent not being possible, as per the statute. (Whether that’s mental incapacity, force-feeding the victim alcohol or drugs, or lack of consciousness depends on the fact pattern and on the state’s statute.) If the victim said that they never consented, then the question becomes how do we prove it? Is there evidence in the rape kit? Bruising? Eyewitness testimony?
And generally, many personal and character attacks are directed toward the victim. Even with rape shield laws and all that. Defendants try to find a way to get it in, regardless.
@Kirby:
That is not what I said and you are inferring something that isn’t there. The “gender neutral language” issue is similar to law creation. feminists cheer that “well the law is gender neutral” and while that is good, that doesn’t mean that the enforcement and handling of cases is fair and equal.
As a hypothetical: Say a law came out that basically said “if you use your fists to attack your partner, you go to jail for X number of years”
Now men on average typically use their fists and their own bodies to commit DV. Women on the other hand tend to use weapons (pots, pans, knives, etc,,,). to offset the physical strength disadvantage.
So this law is “gender neutral” but it is affecting men at a larger rate than women.
If the law was “use of weapons but had no mention of using fists” it would be affecting more women than men.
So just because a law is “gender neutral” doesn’t mean that it equally protects men and women.
@Bee:
But even a rape kit can’t determine if each party consented. Sure a rape kit is great for women in park by herself, gets jumped and raped. She can go to the cops and use a rape kit to gather evidence. With the “he said she said” of consent. It is already a known fact that they did have sex. So the rape kit finds the DNA to prove they had sex…it doesn’t prove consent.
Bruising can be faked.
Eyewitness testimony? Sure for outside offenses. There isn’t really going to be eyewitnesses around in your bedroom to prove consent was given. Unless your into that sort of thing.
The only solution that I can find is having someone else there. Mandatory threesomes? I like it!
@Brandon:
By your own admittion, the rates of DV are in fact split equally by gender. So unless you assume the law is being misapplied, gender-neutral language in a law about justifying murder in the case of DV is… you guessed it… gender neutral.
Is it that our intention about the law makes it wrong? Or is it that a law is wrong inherently if it is not applied correctly… I’m struggling to make your position make sense.
Also, I’m reasonably sure that assault with a weapon is punished more harshly than assault without, so your example doesn’t work…
Brandon: Seriously? I made my comments gender neutral because abuse happens on both sides, and it should be treated the same if a man is the abuser or the victim. How laws are enforced and how male victims are treated is a HUGE systemic problem. I don’t know how to address it apart from being deliberately neutral in all legal language surrounding abuse. Finding that solution is going to take a lot of work and willpower and political capital and willingness to work with others. All of which, as far as I can tell, the current men’s movement lacks.