… actually, I’m of the opinion that conflating that sort of thing with, y’know, the sort of thing people picture when you say “rape” leads to both overestimation of the harm it causes and devaluing of the suffering caused by violently raping someone. It is, of course, bad, and it should be discouraged with punishments and so on, but I don’t think it shares a Schelling point with “real” rape.
However.
What about this “meaningful consent” that renders it valuable? At what point does consent become “meaningful”? We usually allow parents to consent on behalf of their children, presumably because they will further the child’s own interests; should this apply to sex? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? Let’s pry open this black box!
[Side note: I personally am against legalizing such relationships, but I worry that I’m smart enough to argue convincingly for this position regardless of its truth, so I’m not going to elaborate on my reasoning here.]
the sort of thing people picture when you say “rape”
Which in my experience people picture extremely inaccurately. They picture girls getting grabbed off a park sidewalk by a ravenous stranger. That’s a very atypical case. Outside of prison, rape is typically perpetuated by friends and lovers and dates. This is unsurprising given pure opportunity, just as it’s unsurprising that children are typically victimized by families and trusted friends of their families, not by strangers with candy.
Requiring rape to be “violent” is to require that most extra-penal rape be reclassified as not-rape. There is usually the implicit threat of violence, and the (typically) women in such circumstances are made to understand they have no choice or power. Anyone who looks at this issue will quickly meet people who insist that it isn’t “rape” if the woman did not violently resist and never succumbed, or if there were no beatings involved.
“Rape” is only as meaningful as “meaningful consent.”
At what point does consent become “meaningful”?
Babies cannot give meaningful consent. Children can sometimes give meaningful consent, but it is difficult to determine. We allow parents to make decisions for their children in weighty matters—within strict limits. We do not allow them to give their kids liquor and cigarettes nor restrict them to “alternative medicine” for deadly disease. All of this makes sense: by and large, we do not allow families to stunt and cripple development.
(I give one exception: it is still considered acceptable to give a child a poor diet to the point of severe obesity. I think this should be at least as criminal, if not more, than allowing cigarette-smoking.)
“Meaningful consent” comes in degrees: adults are better at it than young teenagers. Most states have age of consent laws which, while allowing sex with minors, only allows it within a certain age bracket. Differential intellectual capacity matters.
You’ll notice that I haven’t tried to give a definition. With complicated concepts, it is often better to talk about them as if they were meaningful, and notice that they are, that we can recognize their presence or absence from different circumstances. If you are wholly unable to recognize such circumstances, let me know and I’ll try being more precise.
There is a difference between “I said no, but he was more able to overpower me because I was drunk”, “I didn’t say no, but only because I was too drunk to realize I was making a bad decision”, and “I got drunk so I had an excuse for not saying no”.
Which of these count as “meaningful consent” by your definition?
Which in my experience people picture extremely inaccurately. They picture girls getting grabbed off a park sidewalk by a ravenous stranger. That’s a very atypical case. Outside of prison, rape is typically perpetuated by friends and lovers and dates. This is unsurprising given pure opportunity, just as it’s unsurprising that children are typically victimized by families and trusted friends of their families, not by strangers with candy.
Point.
Still, you know what I mean. Forcible rape, not things-that-are-bad-and-sexual-so-we-call-them-rape.
Requiring rape to be “violent” is to require that most extra-penal rape be reclassified as not-rape.
Well … yeah? That’s not the same thing as it being perfectly acceptable, mind.
There is usually the implicit threat of violence, and the (typically) women in such circumstances are made to understand they have no choice or power. Anyone who looks at this issue will quickly meet people who insist that it isn’t “rape” if the woman did not violently resist and never succumbed, or if there were no beatings involved.
Oh, yeah, threats should totally be included AFAICT. But the example under discussion was a sleeping/unconscious victim, wasn’t it?
“Rape” is only as meaningful as “meaningful consent.”
That is to say not meaningful at all, because you’re treating meaningful consent as a fundamental property of things.
Babies cannot give meaningful consent.
Why not, if they can express desire for sweeties or whatever? At what point do they stop being “babies” and become “children”, under this schema? Are we including toddlers here?
Children can sometimes give meaningful consent, but it is difficult to determine.
Aha! He admits it! Pedophilic relationships can be OK!
We allow parents to make decisions for their children in weighty matters—within strict limits. We do not allow them to give their kids liquor and cigarettes nor restrict them to “alternative medicine” for deadly disease. All of this makes sense: by and large, we do not allow families to stunt and cripple development.
There are some issues where we can safely say we know better, just like, say, an adult consenting to an addictive drug. But how could sex be one of those cases, when it’s only harmful if the person doesn’t consent in the first place? (Ignoring for a minute STDs and such, which parents (and many kids) should be able to take into account.)
“Meaningful consent” comes in degrees: adults are better at it than young teenagers. Most states have age of consent laws which, while allowing sex with minors, only allows it within a certain age bracket. Differential intellectual capacity matters.
Why?
You’ll notice that I haven’t tried to give a definition. With complicated concepts, it is often better to talk about them as if they were meaningful, and notice that they are, that we can recognize their presence or absence from different circumstances.
From hence did this meaningful concept come to you? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
I wish we could get past slogans.
Ok, we’re trying to determine whether or not “meaningful consent is meaningful”. A question: could you guess with high reliability what situations I think constitute meaningful consent or not?
A scenario: suppose I slip a girl a roofie, slip her into my car, take her home, and fuck her. Then I sneak her back into the party.
Was my crime “slipping a girl a drug”, or was my crime “that and rape”?
This particular slogan was selected for usefulness. It retains it’s meaning when considered as a question solely in the current context.
Ok, we’re trying to determine whether or not “meaningful consent is meaningful”. A question: could you guess with high reliability what situations I think constitute meaningful consent or not?
Sure. All I have to do is check what the culture you live in condemns.
A scenario: suppose I slip a girl a roofie, slip her into my car, take her home, and fuck her. Then I sneak her back into the party.
Was my crime “slipping a girl a drug”, or was my crime “that and rape”?
As I have indicated before, I consider the term “rape” to include multiple Schelling points in act-space, most of which I condemn and advocate pushing, but to different degrees. As such, I would appreciate if you tabooed “rape” when asking this sort of question.
Taking my own advice, his crimes were slipping the girl a drug and violating her right to bodily integrity, the same as if he had preformed surgery on her, given her a piercing or tattoo etc.
Note that a crime is not the same a harm; technically the girl has not been harmed, we just prefer to enforce this right for game-theoretic reasons. Also, I note you failed to specify if it was “safe” sex.
This particular slogan was selected for usefulness. It retains it’s meaning when considered as a question solely in the current context.
When I try to believe that, I become confused. I’ve found in this and other threads that my being reminded of rationalist truisms correlates with something other than a failure of rationality.
Sure. All I have to do is check what the culture you live in condemns.
Right, which is why you’d be able to guess that I support lowering the age of consent under certain circumstances and relaxing penalties in others. You have a bad discriminant. You are weak at something you shouldn’t be.
As I have indicated before, I consider the term “rape” to include multiple Schelling points in act-space, most of which I condemn and advocate pushing, but to different degrees. As such, I would appreciate if you tabooed “rape” when asking this sort of question.
That’s another thing. My being asked to taboo something here usually—there are exceptions—correlates not with understandable confusion or ambiguity, but with something else.
Taking my own advice, his crimes were slipping the girl a drug and violating her right to bodily integrity, the same as if he had preformed surgery on her, given her a piercing or tattoo etc.
So her “right to bodily integrity” extends to penis-in-vagina? We’re trying really hard to not see the obvious. Go on, use the word.
Note that a crime is not the same a harm; technically the girl has not been harmed, we just prefer to enforce this right for game-theoretic reasons.
She hasn’t? Under what “technically” are we working? Are “we” just preferring to enforce this right for “game-theoretic reasons?” Are you assuming too much on the part of “we”?
Also, I note you failed to specify if it was “safe” sex.
This particular slogan was selected for usefulness. It retains it’s meaning when considered as a question solely in the current context.
When I try to believe that, I become confused. I’ve found in this and other threads that my being reminded of rationalist truisms correlates with something other than a failure of rationality.
Maybe. I was genuinely asking, not censuring you for failing to follow the tenets of our faith.
Are you intending to respond to my question, or just muse about my motives in asking it?
Sure. All I have to do is check what the culture you live in condemns.
Right, which is why you’d be able to guess that I support lowering the age of consent under certain circumstances and relaxing penalties in others. You have a bad discriminant. You are weak at something you shouldn’t be.
Except that doesn’t necessarily reflect anything real besides the details of the culture in question. See also: witchcraft.
As I have indicated before, I consider the term “rape” to include multiple Schelling points in act-space, most of which I condemn and advocate pushing, but to different degrees. As such, I would appreciate if you tabooed “rape” when asking this sort of question.
That’s another thing. My being asked to taboo something here usually—there are exceptions—correlates not with understandable confusion or ambiguity, but with something else.
In this case, while I am not confused by your meaning, you are rendering this discussion too ambiguous for me to make my point. If I insisted on referring to homosexuality as a “fetish”, (or “perversion” or something else that boiled down to “sex thingy that’s not mainstream”,) and replied to arguments about how homosexuality is qualitatively different with discussions of “fetishes”, asking me to taboo “fetish” and talk about the facts of the matter would be reasonable, don’t you think? (This is not a hypothetical example.)
So her “right to bodily integrity” extends to penis-in-vagina? We’re trying really hard to not see the obvious. Go on, use the word.
I submit that giving someone a tattoo while they’re drunk is not the same as raping them.
Note that a crime is not the same a harm; technically the girl has not been harmed, we just prefer to enforce this right for game-theoretic reasons.
She hasn’t? Under what “technically” are we working? Are “we” just preferring to enforce this right for “game-theoretic reasons?” Are you assuming too much on the part of “we”?
OK: I prefer to punish this in order to discourage it in general, even if, in this specific case, it has negative net utility.
And yes, having something happen to you that does not cause physical damage or mental distress (because you don’t know it happened) can reasonably be categorized as not containing “harm”, although obviously there are different possible definitions of the word “harm”.
Also, I note you failed to specify if it was “safe” sex.
That “failure” was deliberate and appropriate.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing I noted it then, isn’t it?
Seriously, though, that failure is not appropriate, because there is a difference in the resulting harm caused by safe and unsafe sex; to whit, possible pregnancy and the risk of STD transfer. Both of these have measurable effects that the victim remembers, and indeed are likely to reveal that the rape occurred (depending on the individual in question.) You are deliberately trying to conflate different things, here. Stop it. Even if it turns out what we care about is identical in both cases, what you are doing amounts to refusing to discuss the question at all.
Except that doesn’t necessarily reflect anything real besides the details of the culture in question.
Except [supporting lowering the age of consent under some circumstances] doesn’t necessarily reflect anything [real] besides [culture], [like witchcraft!] Word salad. What you could have said is, “I was mistaken, as I could not have predicted that,” or, “I was correct, because lowering the age of consent is a really popular right now.”
And yes, having something happen to you that does not cause physical damage or mental distress (because you don’t know it happened) can reasonably be categorized as not containing “harm”, although obviously there are different possible definitions of the word “harm”.
I think people should have a say in what happens to them, be it politically or otherwise. Would it “harm” a child to keep him locked in a giant playground/amusement park, with everything he could ever want provided, but kept from any education? Would it “harm” the human race as a whole to be kept in a state of perpetual orgasm, kept alive, but forgetting everything else? Is a slave being harmed, even if his master does not beat him and feeds him well?
I’m with the old-school utilitarians on this. Utility is not hedonism. Immediate pleasure and pain are not the sum of all harm. I think that women and men should have some say in what happens to their bodies. That’s why I’m not fond of circumcision, especially fgm. (Another cultural prediction?) That’s why I have no problem with almost any type of relationship between consenting adults. Bondage? Sure. Open relationships? I’ve had them and they’re my favorite. Polyamory? Why not? Homosexual? Obviously. Incest? With some exceptions concerning guardian/minor relationships, but otherwise, why not? I would even support tax breaks/rights for polyamorous relationships similar to those now granted for monogamous couples, the scale of which to be determined after research into outcomes for children and other—to my knowledge—unknowns.
But this is obviously “culture”, which you would have predicted. That’s why it wouldn’t have helped you to use “meaningful consent”, right? If I were to give some other LWer a checklist of predictions about my feelings about sexual relationships, and tell him to use “culture”, he—statistically a `he’ - might use polls. If I tell him to use “meaningful consent”, how much more accurate would he have been?
If your answer is “no more accurate”, I’ll propose an experiment. If your answer is, “yes, significantly more accurate,” then we know that other people understand something that you do not, and that the problem is not the phrase but your own comprehension of it.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing I noted it then, isn’t it?
No, it’s not. I’m trying to establish that something is an offense, and I’m not interested in whether or not something else aggravates it. I might have cut off her foot, too. Who cares. That’s not “conflation.” What’s clear is that you don’t think that violating self-determination is “harm”. That’s the difference between us. Keep it to the internet, though, because if you touch a sleeping girl, you might find “Schelling points in act space” won’t help you.
Are you intending to respond to my question, or just muse about my motives in asking it?
Just muse.
Pretty please?
Except [supporting lowering the age of consent under some circumstances] doesn’t necessarily reflect anything [real] besides [culture], [like witchcraft!] Word salad. What you could have said is, “I was mistaken, as I could not have predicted that,” or, “I was correct, because lowering the age of consent is a really popular right now.”
Huh? A minute ago you were complaining I was being contrary because the predictions worked fine. I can predict what you’d disapprove of for reasons of “”informed consent” just fine. I just don’t think it refers to anything in the territory beyond the bit of the map labelled “informed consent”. Or at least, if it does, you seem to be having trouble pointing to it.
I think people should have a say in what happens to them, be it politically or otherwise. Would it “harm” a child to keep him locked in a giant playground/amusement park, with everything he could ever want provided, but kept from any education? Would it “harm” the human race as a whole to be kept in a state of perpetual orgasm, kept alive, but forgetting everything else? Is a slave being harmed, even if his master does not beat him and feeds him well?
I’m with the old-school utilitarians on this. Utility is not hedonism. Immediate pleasure and pain are not the sum of all harm. I think that women and men should have some say in what happens to their bodies. That’s why I’m not fond of circumcision, especially fgm. (Another cultural prediction?)
As I said, I recognize the right to bodily integrity, which is violated in both cases. I also value, y’know, not traumatizing people (which you seem to dismiss as “hedonism”.)
Also, honestly, I think you probably overestimate the value of freedom and choice and so on. They’re nice and all, but they’re massive applause lights in our culture; other cultures don’t seem to have been so impressed by them.
That’s why I have no problem with almost any type of relationship between consenting adults. Bondage? Sure. Open relationships? I’ve had them and they’re my favorite. Polyamory? Why not? Homosexual? Obviously. Incest? With some exceptions concerning guardian/minor relationships, but otherwise, why not? I would even support tax breaks/rights for polyamorous relationships similar to those now granted for monogamous couples, the scale of which to be determined after research into outcomes for children and other—to my knowledge—unknowns.
Thanks for the extra data o pinpoint the precise subculture I should be checking.
But this is obviously “culture”, which you would have predicted. That’s why it wouldn’t have helped you to use “meaningful consent”, right? If I were to give some other LWer a checklist of predictions about my feelings about sexual relationships, and tell him to use “culture”, he—statistically a `he’ - might use polls. If I tell him to use “meaningful consent”, how much more accurate would he have been?
Except you cannot explain “meaningful consent” except by pointing to culture/yourself-as-black-box. Why should I treat them as separate theories to be tested? How should I treat them as separate theories, if I haven’t already grown up in our culture?
Well, I guess it’s a good thing I noted it then, isn’t it?
No, it’s not. I’m trying to establish that something is an offense, and I’m not interested in whether or not something else aggravates it. I might have cut off her foot, too. Who cares. That’s not “conflation.” What’s clear is that you don’t think that violating self-determination is “harm”. That’s the difference between us.
Hey, it could be worse—your point might have simply sailed over my head.
He could have cut off her foot. In fact, lets talk about that scenario. Lets say there’s a well-known crime, stealing someone’s purse. This traditionally involves cutting off their foot, because people chain their purses to their feet. But sometimes, a cunning criminal tricks someone into giving them the key to this chain, or steals it out of their pocket, resulting in a purse-theft without the loss of a foot.
Is it a good idea to talk about how this gut is a foot-thief just because the dictionary says a “foot-thief” is someone who teals the purse someone attached to their foot, and attack anyone suggesting (say) a lighter sentence or something as defending those horrible people who cut off feet? Is it useful to ignore the loss of people’s feet and increase the penalty for all foot-thefts across the board, instead of punishing them separately?
(Of course, the correct punishment may not be fitted to the damage done for game-theoretical reasons, but I hope you appreciate the idea.)
Keep it to the internet, though, because if you touch a sleeping girl, you might find “Schelling points in act space” won’t help you.
Considering my repeated statements that such behavior should, in my opinion, be harshly punished, this particular jab falls a little flat.
(Also, if I were to ignore the fact that I don’t want this happening to me so I want to discourage it, I wouldn’t be sadistic enough to tell the victim, harming them again at significant cost to myself.)
… actually, I’m of the opinion that conflating that sort of thing with, y’know, the sort of thing people picture when you say “rape” leads to both overestimation of the harm it causes and devaluing of the suffering caused by violently raping someone. It is, of course, bad, and it should be discouraged with punishments and so on, but I don’t think it shares a Schelling point with “real” rape.
However.
What about this “meaningful consent” that renders it valuable? At what point does consent become “meaningful”? We usually allow parents to consent on behalf of their children, presumably because they will further the child’s own interests; should this apply to sex? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? Let’s pry open this black box!
[Side note: I personally am against legalizing such relationships, but I worry that I’m smart enough to argue convincingly for this position regardless of its truth, so I’m not going to elaborate on my reasoning here.]
Which in my experience people picture extremely inaccurately. They picture girls getting grabbed off a park sidewalk by a ravenous stranger. That’s a very atypical case. Outside of prison, rape is typically perpetuated by friends and lovers and dates. This is unsurprising given pure opportunity, just as it’s unsurprising that children are typically victimized by families and trusted friends of their families, not by strangers with candy.
Requiring rape to be “violent” is to require that most extra-penal rape be reclassified as not-rape. There is usually the implicit threat of violence, and the (typically) women in such circumstances are made to understand they have no choice or power. Anyone who looks at this issue will quickly meet people who insist that it isn’t “rape” if the woman did not violently resist and never succumbed, or if there were no beatings involved.
“Rape” is only as meaningful as “meaningful consent.”
Babies cannot give meaningful consent. Children can sometimes give meaningful consent, but it is difficult to determine. We allow parents to make decisions for their children in weighty matters—within strict limits. We do not allow them to give their kids liquor and cigarettes nor restrict them to “alternative medicine” for deadly disease. All of this makes sense: by and large, we do not allow families to stunt and cripple development.
(I give one exception: it is still considered acceptable to give a child a poor diet to the point of severe obesity. I think this should be at least as criminal, if not more, than allowing cigarette-smoking.)
“Meaningful consent” comes in degrees: adults are better at it than young teenagers. Most states have age of consent laws which, while allowing sex with minors, only allows it within a certain age bracket. Differential intellectual capacity matters.
You’ll notice that I haven’t tried to give a definition. With complicated concepts, it is often better to talk about them as if they were meaningful, and notice that they are, that we can recognize their presence or absence from different circumstances. If you are wholly unable to recognize such circumstances, let me know and I’ll try being more precise.
Among my friends this sentiment is encapsulated as “You always hurt the ones you love, cuz they’re the ones in range.”
Consider the examples in this comment:
Which of these count as “meaningful consent” by your definition?
Point.
Still, you know what I mean. Forcible rape, not things-that-are-bad-and-sexual-so-we-call-them-rape.
Well … yeah? That’s not the same thing as it being perfectly acceptable, mind.
Oh, yeah, threats should totally be included AFAICT. But the example under discussion was a sleeping/unconscious victim, wasn’t it?
That is to say not meaningful at all, because you’re treating meaningful consent as a fundamental property of things.
Why not, if they can express desire for sweeties or whatever? At what point do they stop being “babies” and become “children”, under this schema? Are we including toddlers here?
Aha! He admits it! Pedophilic relationships can be OK!
There are some issues where we can safely say we know better, just like, say, an adult consenting to an addictive drug. But how could sex be one of those cases, when it’s only harmful if the person doesn’t consent in the first place? (Ignoring for a minute STDs and such, which parents (and many kids) should be able to take into account.)
Why?
From hence did this meaningful concept come to you? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
I wish we could get past slogans.
Ok, we’re trying to determine whether or not “meaningful consent is meaningful”. A question: could you guess with high reliability what situations I think constitute meaningful consent or not?
A scenario: suppose I slip a girl a roofie, slip her into my car, take her home, and fuck her. Then I sneak her back into the party.
Was my crime “slipping a girl a drug”, or was my crime “that and rape”?
This particular slogan was selected for usefulness. It retains it’s meaning when considered as a question solely in the current context.
Sure. All I have to do is check what the culture you live in condemns.
As I have indicated before, I consider the term “rape” to include multiple Schelling points in act-space, most of which I condemn and advocate pushing, but to different degrees. As such, I would appreciate if you tabooed “rape” when asking this sort of question.
Taking my own advice, his crimes were slipping the girl a drug and violating her right to bodily integrity, the same as if he had preformed surgery on her, given her a piercing or tattoo etc.
Note that a crime is not the same a harm; technically the girl has not been harmed, we just prefer to enforce this right for game-theoretic reasons. Also, I note you failed to specify if it was “safe” sex.
When I try to believe that, I become confused. I’ve found in this and other threads that my being reminded of rationalist truisms correlates with something other than a failure of rationality.
Right, which is why you’d be able to guess that I support lowering the age of consent under certain circumstances and relaxing penalties in others. You have a bad discriminant. You are weak at something you shouldn’t be.
That’s another thing. My being asked to taboo something here usually—there are exceptions—correlates not with understandable confusion or ambiguity, but with something else.
So her “right to bodily integrity” extends to penis-in-vagina? We’re trying really hard to not see the obvious. Go on, use the word.
She hasn’t? Under what “technically” are we working? Are “we” just preferring to enforce this right for “game-theoretic reasons?” Are you assuming too much on the part of “we”?
That “failure” was deliberate and appropriate.
Maybe. I was genuinely asking, not censuring you for failing to follow the tenets of our faith.
Are you intending to respond to my question, or just muse about my motives in asking it?
Except that doesn’t necessarily reflect anything real besides the details of the culture in question. See also: witchcraft.
In this case, while I am not confused by your meaning, you are rendering this discussion too ambiguous for me to make my point. If I insisted on referring to homosexuality as a “fetish”, (or “perversion” or something else that boiled down to “sex thingy that’s not mainstream”,) and replied to arguments about how homosexuality is qualitatively different with discussions of “fetishes”, asking me to taboo “fetish” and talk about the facts of the matter would be reasonable, don’t you think? (This is not a hypothetical example.)
I submit that giving someone a tattoo while they’re drunk is not the same as raping them.
OK: I prefer to punish this in order to discourage it in general, even if, in this specific case, it has negative net utility.
And yes, having something happen to you that does not cause physical damage or mental distress (because you don’t know it happened) can reasonably be categorized as not containing “harm”, although obviously there are different possible definitions of the word “harm”.
Well, I guess it’s a good thing I noted it then, isn’t it?
Seriously, though, that failure is not appropriate, because there is a difference in the resulting harm caused by safe and unsafe sex; to whit, possible pregnancy and the risk of STD transfer. Both of these have measurable effects that the victim remembers, and indeed are likely to reveal that the rape occurred (depending on the individual in question.) You are deliberately trying to conflate different things, here. Stop it. Even if it turns out what we care about is identical in both cases, what you are doing amounts to refusing to discuss the question at all.
Just muse.
Except [supporting lowering the age of consent under some circumstances] doesn’t necessarily reflect anything [real] besides [culture], [like witchcraft!] Word salad. What you could have said is, “I was mistaken, as I could not have predicted that,” or, “I was correct, because lowering the age of consent is a really popular right now.”
I think people should have a say in what happens to them, be it politically or otherwise. Would it “harm” a child to keep him locked in a giant playground/amusement park, with everything he could ever want provided, but kept from any education? Would it “harm” the human race as a whole to be kept in a state of perpetual orgasm, kept alive, but forgetting everything else? Is a slave being harmed, even if his master does not beat him and feeds him well?
I’m with the old-school utilitarians on this. Utility is not hedonism. Immediate pleasure and pain are not the sum of all harm. I think that women and men should have some say in what happens to their bodies. That’s why I’m not fond of circumcision, especially fgm. (Another cultural prediction?) That’s why I have no problem with almost any type of relationship between consenting adults. Bondage? Sure. Open relationships? I’ve had them and they’re my favorite. Polyamory? Why not? Homosexual? Obviously. Incest? With some exceptions concerning guardian/minor relationships, but otherwise, why not? I would even support tax breaks/rights for polyamorous relationships similar to those now granted for monogamous couples, the scale of which to be determined after research into outcomes for children and other—to my knowledge—unknowns.
But this is obviously “culture”, which you would have predicted. That’s why it wouldn’t have helped you to use “meaningful consent”, right? If I were to give some other LWer a checklist of predictions about my feelings about sexual relationships, and tell him to use “culture”, he—statistically a `he’ - might use polls. If I tell him to use “meaningful consent”, how much more accurate would he have been?
If your answer is “no more accurate”, I’ll propose an experiment. If your answer is, “yes, significantly more accurate,” then we know that other people understand something that you do not, and that the problem is not the phrase but your own comprehension of it.
No, it’s not. I’m trying to establish that something is an offense, and I’m not interested in whether or not something else aggravates it. I might have cut off her foot, too. Who cares. That’s not “conflation.” What’s clear is that you don’t think that violating self-determination is “harm”. That’s the difference between us. Keep it to the internet, though, because if you touch a sleeping girl, you might find “Schelling points in act space” won’t help you.
Pretty please?
Huh? A minute ago you were complaining I was being contrary because the predictions worked fine. I can predict what you’d disapprove of for reasons of “”informed consent” just fine. I just don’t think it refers to anything in the territory beyond the bit of the map labelled “informed consent”. Or at least, if it does, you seem to be having trouble pointing to it.
As I said, I recognize the right to bodily integrity, which is violated in both cases. I also value, y’know, not traumatizing people (which you seem to dismiss as “hedonism”.)
Also, honestly, I think you probably overestimate the value of freedom and choice and so on. They’re nice and all, but they’re massive applause lights in our culture; other cultures don’t seem to have been so impressed by them.
Thanks for the extra data o pinpoint the precise subculture I should be checking.
Except you cannot explain “meaningful consent” except by pointing to culture/yourself-as-black-box. Why should I treat them as separate theories to be tested? How should I treat them as separate theories, if I haven’t already grown up in our culture?
Hey, it could be worse—your point might have simply sailed over my head.
He could have cut off her foot. In fact, lets talk about that scenario. Lets say there’s a well-known crime, stealing someone’s purse. This traditionally involves cutting off their foot, because people chain their purses to their feet. But sometimes, a cunning criminal tricks someone into giving them the key to this chain, or steals it out of their pocket, resulting in a purse-theft without the loss of a foot.
Is it a good idea to talk about how this gut is a foot-thief just because the dictionary says a “foot-thief” is someone who teals the purse someone attached to their foot, and attack anyone suggesting (say) a lighter sentence or something as defending those horrible people who cut off feet? Is it useful to ignore the loss of people’s feet and increase the penalty for all foot-thefts across the board, instead of punishing them separately?
(Of course, the correct punishment may not be fitted to the damage done for game-theoretical reasons, but I hope you appreciate the idea.)
Considering my repeated statements that such behavior should, in my opinion, be harshly punished, this particular jab falls a little flat.
(Also, if I were to ignore the fact that I don’t want this happening to me so I want to discourage it, I wouldn’t be sadistic enough to tell the victim, harming them again at significant cost to myself.)