The Purple Pill Debate subreddit is a strange little corner of the internet, a place where intrepid Blue Pillers try to logic Red Pillers into giving up their repugnant ideology, and vice versa.
The main problem with this strategy is that Red Pillers don’t really understand logic as you or I do. They’ve got their own version, and it’s pretty … weird, as one recent post in r/PurplePillDebate makes abundantly clear.
The proposition being debated: “If you expect a man to date a rape victim, then you should be willing to date a pedophile.”
Wait, what? The Red Piller advancing this, er, argument tries to explain in more detail what exactly he means:
Rape victims often develop a variety of serious psychological issues, including depression, borderline personality disorder (aka borderline insanity disorder), self-harm, alcohol and/or drug addiction, and PTSD.
People who have these serious psychological issues are at a higher risk of joblessness, homelessness, and divorce. They tend to have unstable and chaotic relationships.
Now, of course it isn’t a rape victim’s fault that they were raped, but that still doesn’t mean that it is a good idea to date a rape victim.
So far, not so good. All of the sources the poster cites as evidence for these claims about rape survivors are behind paywalls, but a quick scan of the abstracts suggest that he didn’t read them very carefully. One of the papers he cites, actually looking at the effects of childhood sexual abuse rather than rape per se, reports that, contrary to the poster’s claims,
there is insufficient evidence to confirm a relation between a history of childhood sexual abuse and a postsexual abuse syndrome and multiple or borderline personality disorder.
That said, there’s no question that rape (or any kind of sexual abuse) can be extremely traumatic, with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. These can certainly cause issues in relationships.
But every relationship has issues, and there is absolutely no evidence that rape survivors — or the survivors of any other serious trauma — are incapable of having healthy relationships.
At this point, our Red Pill poster goes completely off the rails:
Dating someone who has serious psychological issues is risky. To illustrate how risky it is, would you date a pedophile? Pedophilia isn’t a choice. However, pedophiles have unstable lives and wouldn’t make good romantic partners.
So, if you expect a man to be willing to date a rape victim because “it wasn’t her fault,” then you should be willing to date a pedophile because “it isn’t his fault.”
Wow. There are at least two gigantic problems here. First, of course, is the inherent offensiveness of suggesting there’s some sort of moral equivalency between pedophiles (potential if not necessarily actual predators) with rape survivors (people who have themselves been victimized by predators).
Second, there’s insurrectono’s if-then logic, which is utterly inappropriate when it comes to matters of the heart, where “should” shouldn’t go.
No, Red Pillers, no one is telling you that you are obligated to date rape survivors — or, for that matter, cancer patients, or Billy Joel fans, or indeed anyone in any particular category that human beings fall into.
Indeed, if your first thought upon hearing that someone us a rape survivor is to think “ick, she’s probably all messed up,” guess what?
No one really gives two shits whether or not you’re willing to date her. Because she doesn’t want to date you. Because you’re a petulant asshole with no empathy for other people. And that makes you pretty damn “risky” as a romantic partner.
H/T — r/TheBluePill
@freemage
Maybe. But there has to be a better way to phrase that. “I have the right to choose the people I will and won’t date?” perhaps?
I’d think people who are supposedly charming and suave would have a way with words, but what do I know?
@ParadoxicalIntention
Oh, yeah, there’s that too. In which case, I’m all for terpers not dating rape victims. Or anyone else for that matter!
@Alan
YOU MET BJÖRK?!
Get outta here
Aaaaaaand since people talked about Iceland… One of my dreams is to visit Iceland. It sounds like a really nice place. Really chill.
Non-rape victims also often develop serious psychological issues such as depression, BPD, self harm, addiction, and PTSD.
My advice to you then, Red Pillers? Don’t date. I’m sure the rest of the non-Red population would agree with me on that.
I don’t understand these dudes. They’re constantly whining that “Ebil Feminazis” are trying to “force” them to date women they don’t want to date.
What they don’t get is NO ONE WANTS THEM TO DATE ANYONE. Because they’re wholly abusive, narcissistic entitled manbabies who should NEVER go near a woman EVER, NO MATTER WHAT.
Feminists are not trying to force you to date rape victims, or fat women, or women with short hair, or anyone else you fuckers whine about. We’re literally saying you shouldn’t ever date any woman. Because you don’t know the first thing about having a healthy, equal partnership with a woman, since YOU DON’T RESPECT THEM.
There are effective treatments for BPD and PTSD. Plus, there’s a high preponderance of evidence that sufferers aren’t likely child molesters.
If we’re talking about pedophilia the way clinical literature discusses it, someone 16 or older with persistent and intense attraction to prepubescent children, there aren’t any treatments for it that work reliably. Therapists can’t change the desires and when you look at studies of therapy aimed at reducing offending, the therapies become less effective the more rigorous the study methodology is (I know this sentence seems to say that less rigorous study methodologies cause the therapies to be effective, but I’m getting tired today). Libido suppressant drugs can have side effects like depression and most people don’t want to take them.
There’s no way of knowing how many pedophiles are likely to act on their desires. But there are good reasons to believe that it’s not safe to have them around children (children are more trusting than adults, power dynamics, grooming)
The OP is truly disgusting. I can’t even figure out the depths of Red Pillery one must be in to be able to hold such an opinion. 🙁
However, the real reason I wanted to post here is the discussion on Iceland, since I was lucky enough to attend a two week long swim meet for young Nordic sportspeople with disabilities there way back in July 1995. Iceland was a truly amazing place, with surprisingly many golf courses. Seriously, when entering and leaving a settlement of practically any size there seemed to be a golf course. Also, I can also relate a celebrity meeting in Iceland, as I was lucky enough to meet president Vigdis Finnbogadottir whilst there. Again, it was thanks to the sports meeting there. I’m afraid I don’t remember much about meeting her as I was only 13 at the time and meeting sitting presidents didn’t seem very important back then. 🙁
I’ve only been in the Iceland airport when I flew from Minneapolis to Paris. I wish we had stayed over for the night. It’s so gorgeous and I have to imagine there is some delicious fresh fish to be eaten. Especially since cod is one of my favorites.
@ WWTH
Would you believe Britain and Iceland went to ‘war’ over cod as recently as the 70s!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
(Technically it was a ‘militarised dispute’)
ETA: really, if you want to be able to eat cod in the future, we should stop eating it for 20 years or so to let stocks get back to sustainable levels
Iceland is really friendly, like most Nordic countries I’ve seen. People don’t lock their bikes, etc. But it has the added weirdness thing. Lots of people have a job and an artistic pursuit. They are super secular, but yes the troll and pixie thing exists. And it does resemble a lunar landscape, it’s mostly volcanic rock covered with moss. Apollo astronauts trained there because of the geology resemblance. There is also penis museum!
And yes, the seafood is so good and fresh! My favorite thing was lobster bisque out of this hut right at the waterfront. I never came across the fermented shark though.
Their prohibition story is goofy too, beer (just beer) wasn’t legal until the 90s.
You know, Purple Pill sounds like an interesting idea in my head. Red pill types are constantly tilting at windmills, so maybe enough exposure to actual feminist arguments or even just not-red pill people talking could give them real context for feminism and the red pill ideology. Maybe with that context, some amount could break through the imaginary feminism that’s been built up for them to be angry at. It worked on me. That sort of thing would take time, so it’s possible I’m being impatient. Maybe it’s working on someone, somewhere, but…
This jackass did it anyway! Who was making the argument, “Feminism says that we (men) will be required to date (female) rape victims even if we don’t want to!” I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no one. And why did he create it? I’m going with what Buttercup said and assume it’s to create a gotcha. “Ha! You women won’t do this (falsely) equivalent thing, so I don’t have to put in any effort ever!” And that’s me being generous enough to assume this tool extremely twisted someone’s words. I’m equally willing to believe he made this up wholecloth.
How do people live like that?
I don’t think 20 years is enough not-eating of cod to get Atlantic cod back where they should be. Too many fisheries are beyond repair already. The Canadian fishery pretty much hasn’t been fished at all since the early 1990s and is still in collapse.
It’s popular in parts of the manosphere to diagnose women as “borderline” for showing basically any negative emotions. To hear them tell it, just about every ex-girlfriend of an MRA had this weird mental disorder that made them get all mad over nothing, brah.
And thank you forever for introducing me to the Purple Pill. Red Pillers arguing with decent people who mistakenly think there’s some point to talking to Red Pillers…amazing.
Well, given that so-called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) got renamed to Dissociative Identity Disorder (or DID) in fucking 1993 anyone who still calls it MPD is so out of date that they aren’t worth listening to anyway. There’s been a lot of advancement in this area in the past 20 years.
As for Borderline Personality Disorder, there is a whole school of thought that tried to get it changed to complex ptsd or c-ptsd for the DSM-5 that came out last year. It didn’t work, but they didn’t go away.
So yeah. If you call it MPD then no, I don’t want to date you. Because I bet that your dating habits are stuck in the 50s as well and that’s a major turn-off.
@ashley: Heck, half of the Red Pillers are MGTOWs anyway, so they should collectively get the hell over their hangups with women, acquiesce to not dating, and go do something useful like working a job or staying out of the way of progressive efforts in society. Yeesh.
“Now, of course it isn’t a rape victim’s fault that they were raped,”
This makes him the most forward thinking redpiller in the history of their movement.
That is so fucking depressing.
I really doubt that most child molesters are clinical pedophiles anyway. It’s more likely they get off on power and control.
@Alan Robertshaw
That is extremely cool!
And this might be well known in the UK, but it was news to me when I read it: German Chancellor Angela Merkel does her own grocery shopping. And her constituents call her Mutti. She hated it at first, but now she’s down with being called Mom.
Oh, this is one of the massive red flags I have with guys. It’s very common for them to say “my ex was BPD”, to which they expect me to go “Ohhh you poor baby, she must have been a [ableist slur] [sexist slur]”.
More than once they’ve continued bashing their exes under the guise of it being ok because she had a diagnosis that “made her that way”.
It’s my cue to moonwalk out of any friendly ties they might want me in, or depending on the guy’s level of intensity or mouth foam I might tell them about my best friend with the BPD diagnosis and perhaps a little bit about ableism. I usually leave the “you sound like a bitter arsehole” in the notebook of my mind while going to look for my Moon boots.
And brilliant to have Iceland lovers here! My friend lived there for a few years and she met the president a couple of times. He seemed chill. 😀
In Finland our former president Tarja Halonen was pretty casual too. She was sometimes spotted roaming around in her windbreaker and baseball cap.
I don’t think Nordics sans monarchy are good at formal.
My college clinical and abnormal psychology textbook featured Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction as an example of BPD.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/aec30e3ec3512c25a30d8131087d1072/tumblr_n5cd51Uary1rwhddio6_250.gif
I hadn’t heard about the BPD/PTSD thing before. That’s interesting. Borderline personality disorder is one of those conditions that’s totally overwhelmed with cultural ignorance.
The cat’s a reference to this meme:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-should-buy-a-boat-cat
Also, yeah, I studied psychology like almost ten years ago now and they were talking about how bpd was almost certainly just “sexist Freudian psychotherapist disorder”. Then again I went to like the hippiest of hippie colleges (Banana slugs for the win!)
Well, it does make a great MO for getting out of a relationship when these idiots don’t want to be in one. Crazy is hard to prove or disprove, therefore, is the perfect excuse.
This is really just a restatement of the idea that rapists (or hell even just cheaters) can’t help themselves. It’s bullshit, even when kinks, fetishes and perversions are involved.
I’m not sure which interpretation I got of the OP’s message is worse: “Rape victims are undesirable because the effects of their trauma can inconvenience you,” or, “Give [us] pedophiles a chance.”
I realise that what I’m about to say trips Leda Atomica’s red flag, but: having dated someone who had BPD, knowing several other people with it, and having grown up with a mother who exhibited a number of its symptoms, I am entirely in favour of the thesis that it’s a form of PTSD.
(I am going museuming with said ex next week, in fact. It doesn’t mean that she isn’t a decent human being and a fun person to be around.)