The Roll and Flail

720 thoughts on “The Roll and Flail”

1. The sort who push this foolishness of denying the dark side of human nature are unfortunately rarely the ones put at risk by it. They tend to live in good neighborhoods have alarm systems and in extreme cases armed guards. That is why for example I think that all parole boards should only parole people if they are required to help them transition in their own homes for at least the first six months. How many do you think would get out?

   1. I’ve had a similar thought along the lines of every ACLU lawyer needs to live in a crime-ridden neighborhood for two years.

      1. I know one who did, for more than two years at that. When he moved his family into town they were on the outer edge of the ‘cutting edge’ of an area of Philadelphia going about to go through re-gentrification.

         1. And the result? I am curious.

            1. He and his wife divorced about ten years after they moved into Center city. She got the house. (The child had left home by then.)

   2. You saw that “Moms for action” gun-grabber group picture where they’re marching and there are TWO armed guys– one a cop or other uniformed security, one something else– right next to them? (and you can only see one side of the street, too)

      1. Yup. Do as we say, not as we do. And eat your peas.

         1. Ban guns and have whirled peas?

            1. Eat every carrot and pea on your plate.

2. Said it elsewhere (slightly differently): A published author commenting on complicated topics in the Twitter format is committing professional malpractice.

   LC’s post was largely right on, but also left a great deal that could have been addressed with nuance. The lack of assumption of good faith all around, from both primary participants and comment hordes, is very disapointing.

   1. Practically anyone with any fame at all in literary or entertainment circles is dicing with fate in commenting via twitter on anything controversial at all. I am certain that the fact that they WILL go on and do it keeps their publicity people earning nice fat retainers in damage control.

      As for institutions going hard left as part of the death spiral, I wonder how much longer something like NPR can carry on. I used to be devoted to it – long-form radio journalism and doing stuff in depth – but I really, really got put off by their coverage of the Tea Party, and their habit of going to the Golden Rolodex and asking their usual pet intellectuals about the Tea Party instead of … actually contacting Tea Party activists and asking them.

      I used to love Prairie Home Companion, too – but Garrison Keiller got so unrelievedly nasty and partisan after 2008 that I haven’t listened to it since. I believe it is still on – but I’ll bet a lot of other mildly centrist to conservative listeners stopped listening also.

      1. I’d listened to PHC for quite a while, off and on. I finally “got” PHC after living in the sortof-Upper-Midewst for a few years. And then, following the 2004 election, Keillor started talking about the need to disenfranchise “Evangelicals” because “they” had kept the Johns from being elected. Sorry. You start talking about eliminating people from the voter rolls because of their (presumed) religious affiliation and I stop listening and I let your sponsors know why.

         1. The Spouse and I had rather enjoyed PHC up to its suspension when Keillor moved to Denmark. I think we started to give up after it was resurected in 1989.

         2. I wonder whether Keillor has ever commented in public about Johnny Edwards and his “complicated” personal life. Not worth plugging into a search engine, I bet.

            Funny thing, I thought the Leftwads were all against “disenfranchising” voters, which is why they oppose voter ID and support mail-in ballots, early voting and such hazards. I guess like with all such things, it is important that only the “right” people get disenfranchised.

            1. Of course. I had a leftist tell me, in so many words, that the chad stuff was an unspeakable attempt to disenfranchise, as opposed to the memo about how to rules lawyer to throw out military ballots, which was just an ordinary attempt to disenfranchise, and nothing to get worked up about.

            2. It’s only disenfranchising if they think those people will vote with them.

               I think it’s always been safe to say that Evangelicals aren’t likely to vote Democrat in the foreseeable future.

               1. IDK, they do it all the time.

                  1. Individuals, sure, but not necessarily as a group.

            3. Voter ID disenfranchises the deceased, threatening the campaigns of Democrats everywhere.

         3. One of the reasons I can’t stand conservative talk icon Michael Savage, who actually at one point argued that every Muslim should be deported. A Jew advocated rounding up people based on their religion. Amazing.

            1. We can look at Iraq to see that Muslims do not think that they are all the same.

            2. Savage has always struck me as more of an actor in a role than a person with any real beliefs.

               1. Which is why I gave up listening to him years ago. It doesn’t help that he’s not a very good author in a mediocre role.

                  1. “actor” … editediteditedit

               2. Vaguely remember that it became common knowledge he donates Democrat years ago– he’s a shock jock who says what he thinks folks want to hear, and half of his audience shows up just to be outraged. (probably more)

                  1. Yep, never listened to him for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, because that has always proved more than long enough for him to prove himself an idiot with nothing consequential to say; every time I have ever tuned in.

                     1. My understanding had been Savage was what the LibProgs want to think Limbaugh is — somebody playing at being conservative to rile up the rubes. Sorta the way Stephen Colbert is their idea of Bill O’Reilly.

                        They are agents provocateurs with which to mock the masses.

                        1. Well that is certainly what he sounds like. Well sort of, he really isn’t smart enough to be a coherent agent provocateur.

            3. For me, it depends on your point of view. If you truly think that “there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim,” well, then allowing them into your country is suicidal. I’m on the fence on that one. Don’t know if it’s real or not.

               1. Oh, there is such a thing as a moderate Muslim, those are the ones that think all of us unbelievers should just have to pay a jizya tax, rather than holding a convert or die belief.

                  1. I recently read an opinion piece on PJ Media where the author, speaking of the Sunni/Sh’ia conflict that ISIS is prosecuting in Iraq and Syria, said that it was in our best interests to simply let our enemies bleed each other white. There’s a lot of sense in that to me.

               2. I lean towards “better safe than sorry”. We’re not obligated to let *anyone* immigrate. Screening by cultural compatibility strikes me as a no-brainer, and to a first approximation, Muslims generally *aren’t*.

                  It’s not like there’s a dearth of other ideologies and cultures whose members would happily emigrate to the U.S. (or another Western country) AND who would be highly unlikely to support or practice terrorism against their new countries.

                  1. Amen, brother.

         4. I tell people I grew up in Lake Woebegon… and I’m not exaggerating or kidding. People think he made all that stuff up. He didn’t!

            OTOH, that was back when he was funny.

            1. I know – and the Lake Woebegon stuff was really funny, fond and affectionate about being in or from a small town in flyover country. But it all began to go sour – dreadfully so, after 9-11. A real small town like that would have had tens of children who would have been in the military, had residents who were reservists. Most of the residents – being small-town business owners – would have been Tea Party sympathizers, at the very least.
               And GK chose to ignore all that, or p*ss all over them.
               I so wish that he could have restrained his ruling class nastiness. He could have been the Wil Rogers or Mark Twain of this generation. Instead – he chose to be the Ruling Class pet humorist with regard to the flyover country rubes, I have a good few of his books, too. Likely I will take them to the nearest resale book place and take a couple of cents for them.

               1. I’ve always thought Keillor went south in the mid 1990s. and was especially irritating whenever a Republican was President.

                  Apparently his on-show demeanor is an act, and I’ve heard repeated comments that he’s especially vicious to his underlings.

                  Good riddance to bad rubbish, as far as I’m concerned.

      2. A quibble – I don’t mean ‘risking damaging their reputation’ by using Twitter, I mean ‘resorting to snarky quips instead of treating words and the process of communication like they mean something’.

         For a writer to do that, imo, is far worse than, say, an electrician or a gardener or a mathematician.

         Re: NPR – I find nearly all of their political pieces unbalanced. To be fair, they did have an epiphany a few years back, so they do at least know that they are catering to their audience.

      3. NPR will carry on so long as they are attached to the public teat. The Donation drives they conduct would not continue their programming for very long.
         And have you ever noticed that whenever they conduct a donation drive they suspend most regular programming for mostly musical selections?
         After all, if someone in the deep Red Texas Hill Country happens to like listening to classical music during the day, where else are they going to find it, short of Sirius (the radio channels, not the star).
         Then again, every once in a while you get some unruly character who simply BUYS the cd’s of the groups he likes, and to h*ll with NPR.

         1. Progressive thought got short shrift on Sirius. Air America failed miserably there and in the real world.

            Talk about a self-inflicted crash&burn – I listened to a half-hour of it one day and was struck by just how hate-filled it was. But that’s kind of normal, those who loudly accuse others of hate tend to not be exactly nice folks themselves.

            And it wasn’t even ENTERTAINING. Limbaugh, for all the accusations of hate tossed at him, was first and foremost an entertainer. He’d tell people to check what he was saying, he’d give references, he poked fun at anyone or anything.

            The folks on Air America just screamed like an angry toddler.

            1. I’ve always said the political correctness, and by extension a total lack of humor targets is what makes most liberal talk make you want to cut your ears off. They have placed so many targets out of bounds (feminists, gays, immigrants, Muslims etc.) that they are only left with mocking Conservatives and Christians. That’s it. Limbaugh and the like have a much more target rich environment.

               I too, gave Air America a shot back in the day. It literally went like this. Three hours of Jeneane Garafolo.”Bush what a retard!” Yep, Bush is a retard!” Bush is so stupid.” Followed by three hours of Al Franken saying “Bush is a retard………”

               I have to laugh Franken wrote a book trying to mock Limbaugh. Rush himself does a better job of self-deprecating humor than any of his critics.

               1. That was about what I heard. Isn’t it bizarre that there wasn’t a market for that? That the people who put up the money for the network misjudged the market so badly?

                  I’m starting to think these ‘progressive’ types really aren’t all that smart…

                  1. Perfect example of what Sarah’s talking about here. Lean to the left HARDER! WE ALL NEED JOBS AFTER THE SHIP GOES DOWN!” Nobody actually has the sense to say, “How about if we just cater to the audience? THEN THE SHIP WON’T GO DOWN!”

                     1. That would require at least the ability to think they might be in error.

                        When you’ve been carefully taught that your ideology is NEVER wrong, so carefully indoctrinated that the possibility you might be wrong never enters your mind – then the only possible reaction to a failure is to do it again, only harder.

                        They believe the audience really, really wants what they’re selling. And if they’re not buying, it’s because they’re not selling it hard enough… even if the audience is climbing over seats trying to escape your sales pitch.

                        1. As has been observed elsewhere, maybe it’s time to outlaw warning labels and let the problem sort itself out. 😀

         2. I have noticed that NPR and PBS seem to alter their programming during (ever more frequent) fund drives. The amount of general interest programs increase while the “America Sucks” programs disappear almost entirely.

            1. When you’re trying to con a mark (as opposed to Marx) it’s best if you don’t tell the mark just what you’ve got planned.

               This could lead to them not cooperating, and you not getting their money.

            2. Yep that is when they pull the Ken Burns documentaries out such as “Baseball” or “The Civil War”.

               1. Yeah. But watchout, coming to your public stations this fall is the next Ken Burns project — the Roosevelts.

      4. especially dicing if they chose to go up against Larry.

         1. He’s gained nearly 200 Twitter followers *since* the Scalzi throwdown. Meanwhile, Scazli is passive-aggressively blogging on why guns aren’t good for self-defense, while not mentioning Correia or Hines at all.

            1. Scalzi? He’s that fanfic author, isn’t he?

               1. That’s an insult to FanFic authors. [Wink]

               2. Scalzi is the the President of Science-Fiction, apparently.

                  1. He was. Now it’s Jim Hine– er… Jim Hines. I THINK. Maybe. anyway. Now, Scalzi is like Putin when whatshisname was “president”

                     1. SFWA having driven out all but the most indifferent or Hard Left members, anybody wanting to be elected president or “represent” the membership’s views is going to be driven Left no matter how sane they were to begin.

                        Frankly, I don’t know why Correia bothered engaging such a Twit on Twitter (except for the pure bug-stompin’ joy, of course) rather than telling him “Sorry to be such an embarrassment to the field, go ahead and revoke my license to write SF/F. Just tell me where to mail the certific … oh, you don’t have licensing authority? Then kiss my hairy Portuguese-American hiney.”

                        1. Larry does it because it lowers his blood pressure. And so his fans have ready-made arguments to fall back on when dealing with vileprogs. But mostly because it lowers his blood pressure.

                        2. There are actually a few authors I respect left in SFWA, but not enough to change my general opinion of the organization under its recent leadership.

                        3. I have come to the conclusion that Larry gets a lot of pleasure and anger dissipation by stomping the bugs as they deserve. The fact that they keep coming back for more says a lot about them.

            2. I was wondering when reading comments on Twitchy: how much must it gall to see people say “I’ve never heard of this Correia dude, but after that? I’ve gotta go get his books!”

               Admittedly, I don’t follow Scalzi/Hines/Kowal/etc. But in the few times I’ve been in their comment threads I haven’t noticed this happening much. Happens all the time with Larry.

               1. Larry may have lost a few readers, but I suspect he gains many, many more. Can his attackers claim the same?

                  1. I wonder how many he’s really lost? Folks who read and enjoy his work, regardless of political persuasion, can probably understand the plain language on his blog. And realize that what Scalzi/Hines decry has nothing to do with what Larry says.

                     As for them? I’d bet their dropping readers like skin cells: all the time and without realizing it.

                     1. I probably lose more — and I don’t have as big a pool to lose FROM.

                        1. Yeah, but what you got left is *cherse*

                           Bonus sea monsters to anyone who recognizes the source 😉

                           1. Popeye?

                           2. Spencer Tracy, about Katharine Hepburn in …. hmmm, I forget the title; he’s a sports promoter she’s his latest “find” — a lady golfer (can I say that these days???) There is one hilarious sequence when she rescues him from a couple of “debt collectors,” with an early career appearance by Chuck Connors as a cop (possibly state trooper) — I will leave the film title to somebody else.

                           3. Pat and Mike 🙂

                           4. “There’s not much there, but what there is, is cherse.”

                           5. Yes, Pat and Mike (1952), directed by the great George Cukor, written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. The cast includes Aldo Ray and an appearance by one Charles Buchinski (last name later changed to Bronson) as a thug.

                     2. Correia probably hasn’t lost any readers — those who are dismayed by his Twittering aren’t likely to read very far into any of his anti-government, anti-feminist, anti-tolerance books (which exalt gun culture and disparage reasoned discourse as a way to achieve problem resolution.) What he achieves is a brand identity as a bold, fresh voice expressing what used to be recognized as common sense. Correia is different while his opponents are peddling variations on the twaddle you can get anywhere, and often much much better.

                        Face it, Scalzy[Sic] ain’t even the Mickey D of “enlightened thinking” — he better approximates the equivalent of Burger King or Taco Bell.

                        1. More like an off-the-main highway Dairy Queen that hasn’t cleaned their front window since 2009.

                        2. Anti-government I can certainly see. I happen to be anti-government myself. Anti-feminist too; with the proviso that in this context “Feminist” means poor-me whiner. Anti-tolerance? Got a cite? Against reasoned discourse? Where?

                           1. He doesn’t bend the knee to kiss the Liberal boot ring, therefore he is intolerant. Q.E.D. you hater.

                           2. Have you read how his characters treat zombies and other disadvantaged monsters? The intolerance fairly drips off the page.

                              As to reasoned discourse, you show me the passage where any of his characters sit down and discuss how they can meet the needs of ravening fiends, to perhaps forestall their desire to tear and rend. Oh, no, never happens. It’s all shootey-boom-kablam!

                              Dastardly, it is.

                           3. Yes, against reasoned discourse. Remember in MHI when Harbinger confronted Darne in the Antoine-Henri‘s hold? Was that an argument for reasoned discourse? Or howabout Owen’s performance review with his boss at the start of the book? Where, at any point in any of those books do any of Correia’s protagonists make any kind of effort to empathize with an antagonist, to understand, for example, the corrupt social order that fostered Lord Machado? Do Pitt and Franks even consider telling the Great Old Ones that they are welcome to return to our universe if they will respect the rights of others, or do they assume the Great old Ones are hostile and attempt to nuke them?

                              In Correia’s books all interpersonal problems* seem to require violence to resolve them.

                              *Except with dragons.

                           4. Well, Correia does spread nasty lies about elves. Now everybody knows elves are good and noble and beautiful and protect everything that is good, like trees and wild nature and animals. But have you seen what Correia has turned them into? While the orcs, those symbols of industrial desctruction… It’s all symbolic, of course, but… (okay, I ran out. Can anybody continue?)

                        3. Frankly, I’d be thrilled to reach the twaddling heights of Scalzy as a writer.

                           I say this because reaching the heights of Correia is just crazy talk.

                           (I just finished reading Hard Magic… OMG.)

                        4. I don’t know, I thought S&W made excellent reasoning tools, myself.

                           1. Um, yes.

                              Speaker, with a S&W in hand: ‘O.K. now. The best of what you have achieved is to occupy space and consume goods. I have a suggestion. You chose. You can do as I ask, or you can continue to occupy space … without any further consumption.’

               2. A good chunk of Twitchy reader are conservatives who might not be SF/F reader. So while they may agree with Larry’s politics, they’ve literally never heard of him. Now they have, and they’ll try out his books.

                  1. Sure, and I wouldn’t expect Twitchy commenters to be likely to praise Scalzi in that exchange. But I’ve seen the response multiple times in and around Larry’s pieces. Can’t say I’ve seen the same on the other’s side.

                     Could be elective blindness, as I elect not to see their blogs very often.

                     1. Leftists aren’t going to pick up an author’s books when they find out he’s a leftist because they EXPECT THAT.

                        Conservatives will search out a conservative writer because that’s (ahem) novel.

                        1. Well — there it is. Yep.

            3. Typical of him, and typically ignorant.
               And I bet when TSHTF he is the first to either lock himself in with an arsenal or is one of those desperately looking for someone to lend him a gun, (Like Heston’s leftoid buddies did during the L.A. Riots)

         2. Am I weird or does anybody else think “Scabbers” when they hear the name “Scalzi?” (Ron’s pet rat in Harry Potter)

            1. Hmmm, I suspect you are weird. Scabbers was missing a finger/toe — he wasn’t lame.

            2. I didn’t before, but I might now. Bad woman. 🙂

            3. Not me, but recently I’ve been thinking that other guy’s name should be “Jim Whines”.

      5. Took you that long, eh? You have a higher tolerance-of-BS threshold than I.

         M

   2. Scalzi explictly was commenting dishonestly. He knew that the title of Larry’s blog post was not in the least ambiguous nor misleading.

      1. I wasn’t in Scalzi’s head, and if you were, I don’t envy you the experience.

         So I don’t know what he thought. Failing that, I’m going to just go off what he actually said, rather than what I imagine he meant.

         Besides, by emphasizing the headline and not the content, and by calling Corriea an asshole, he scored enough own goals, I think.

         1. I trust we can agree that if Scalzi didn’t know that “the title of Larry’s blog post was not in the least ambiguous nor misleading” then he probably ought not be allowed out of his house without his name sewed into his underwear?

            Dishonest or Stupid? Why can’t he be both?

            1. he probably ought not be allowed out of his house without his name sewed into his underwear

               That’s his wife’s call, and I’m not in her head either.

               Of course he could be both dishonest and stupid, but as I’m attempting to win him over to the correct side, I’m not going to call him names in public.

         2. He exposed his “thinking” quite clearly.

            1. Plus, The Scalzed One used aluminum foil instead of tinfoil, and he had the shiny side in, so of course his thoughts were exposed to Gaius Iulius’ unconfirmed mind reading powers, which may or may not exist.

               1. Barefoot. It means barefoot.

   3. Well, when the Left operates in palpable bad faith, it’s hard to be so ecumenical about matters existential.

      M

      1. Hard, yes. Impossible? Pah. We have the strength of many for our cause is righteous!

3. ah, yes, well, and if we had all thought proper thoughts back on that august 15 harmonic conversion we would have true world peace

   — and unicorns that fart sparkly rainbows

   1. Neverwinter Online /has/ unicorns that spark fartly rainbows. Do you happen to know (I’m popcult deficient) where this meme got started?

      1. I picked it up from the head of Artist Alley at the Anime con where I am on staff.

         Doing a quick google on the etymology of the phrase I find it has appeared in print since (at least) 2007. They, along, with pixie dust will solve all our energy problems…

      2. Oh, I’m going to have to play it just to see the unicorns.

         I’d always heard that unicorns poop Skittles.

         1. I thought that was the Easter Bunny? Or does he poop M&M’s? Conniving little punk. He ALWAYS evades my traps.

            If we cross-bred the Easter Bunny with a Jackalope, would their babies poop Ghiradelli chocolates? That would make my life much easier when it comes to keeping my wife happy. 😉

            1. For no particular reason other than you made me think of it and my daughter exposed me to it… from Shonen Knife an all women J-pop band from Osaka:

               1. As I recall, they did the closing theme to the Powerpuff Girls back in the day.

               2. Now I’m going to have that tune stuck in my head all day! Ha ha haaa!

4. Here’s some nuance for the twits!

   “Swiper no swiping!” works only in the Dora The Explorer cartoon. But perhaps, they think that if they can only but say the same to a rapist, it’ll work.

   1. Wasn’t it established on an earlier thread that a suitable amount of high explosives will make “sniper no sniping!” work pretty well?

      1. I’ve always been a fan of the Abrams countersniper technique: one HE round, big cloud of debris.

         1. I’m much more aggressive. I prefer a BUFF-load of HE delivered on target – and the half-mile around him, just for effect.

            1. I could get behind that, except…

               I’ve found myself standing within a half mile of a sniper, I don’t want to join him as finely dispersed mist and chunky organics.

               1. That’s why g_d gave us field artillery. 😀

                  Oh, and jdams 🙂

                  oh, and anti sniper fire 😐

                  and tanks:?

                  I think G_D may not like snipers

         2. There was that story a couple of months ago where a British sniper apparently set off his target’s suicide vest.

            One shot, six kills.

            1. Free beer. For life. Any bar I’m in.

            2. This is a big enough concern that gate guards aren’t supposed to aim for the body if they think someone may have a suicide vest. (My husband got our ship extra points– right after being chewed out by the officer “in charge” of our ship’s side of the exam– because he “shot one in the head” during an attempted gate rushing simulation. The officer wanted him and the other guys in the gate office to just die. The inspector was NOT amused.)

               1. 2. Address a paradigm shift in firearms
                  training to include precision shooting,
                  headshots and shoulder-mounted weapons.
                  Officers should also be exposed to
                  firearms training that take into account
                  the need to create significant distance between
                  the officer and the possible suicide
                  bomber. This “standoff distance” is often
                  very difficult for officers to put into practice
                  because of their trained desire to pursue
                  and apprehend suspects. The problem
                  with that is that the average suicide vest
                  contains 22 pounds of high explosives,
                  and the need for standoff is paramount.
                  This is where your EOD personnel can help

                  John Rose is an associate professor of criminal justice with Walters State College in Tenn., and the coordinator of specialized training for the college’s Regional Law Enforcement Academy.

                  Used to know an EOD type who used gunfire for duds – he thought a Barrett was as good as it gets.

         3. I’m annoyed that I, a big fan of Schlock Mercenary, didn’t post a link to the strip where our favorite amorph deals with a sniper:
            http://schlockmercenary.com/d/20090106.html

   2. My mom says that saying “Raper no raping!” works on rapists, but only when punctuated by .357 magnum reports. 😀

      1. My husband says, after listening to me describe Meg and this ‘Laura’, that if they can’t figure out the definition of consent, they should recharge their batteries.

         The story ‘Laura’ has in particular pisses me off. There’s no indication whatsoever in it that she said no / communicated refusal in any way, and it’s ‘rape because I say it is.’ She says that they cared for each other, but if I had a friend I cared for deeply and believed he felt the same way I would FIGHT so he would not hurt me. It’s pure emotional manipulation. I note that she has not been back to reply to any of the repudiations or questions raised by her story. She has more condemnation for Larry than her supposed rapist, and I find that very, very suspicious.

         And yes, I know what this makes me look like – ‘someone who doesn’t believe in rape victims’ – I’m sure they’ll spin it that way. I’m a firm believer in ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and if she chose not to press charges, not to fight back, or even say ‘no’, then how in the nine hells is that in any way related to the ‘self defence’ aspect? She didn’t ‘teach’ her rapist anything other than ‘it’s okay to rape then say sorry because you’ll be forgiven! No need for the law!’

         Seriously, AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGH.

         1. I seem to be missing the context of the stories you’re referring to. Meg = University of Wyoming rape-threat hoax, I think, but “Laura”?

            (BTW, keep in mind the definition of the Model S kafkatrap, and use it as necessary: “Skepticism about any particular anecdotal account of {sin,racism,sexism,homophobia,oppression,…}, or any attempt to deny that the particular anecdote implies a systemic problem in which you are one of the guilty parties, is itself sufficient to establish your guilt.”)

            1. This is probably gonna get moderated because I have to post multiple links, but… here goes.

               Meg: http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/10/the-naive-idiocy-of-teaching-rapists-not-to-rape/#comment-66293

               http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/10/the-naive-idiocy-of-teaching-rapists-not-to-rape/#comment-66323

               http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/10/the-naive-idiocy-of-teaching-rapists-not-to-rape/#comment-66389

               Laura: http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/10/the-naive-idiocy-of-teaching-rapists-not-to-rape/#comment-67450

            2. I gave a reply with links but we’ll have to wait for the moderation. Also, thanks to how word press sorted the answers, some of the chronologically earlier replies ended further down the stream than later ones.

               1. In the same vein as these two, the lady Lisa who randomly threw herself into the conversation between Correia and Scalzi claimed she read the original article and then had to take a shower afterwards, and didn’t even dare get to the comments.

                  Taking her at her word I hope she avoids a lot of places in real life, for her own protection.

                  1. They should avoid sexual interaction, for their own safety (well, more that of others) because oi vey they have some very twisty ideas of what’s okay and what is not. Usually based around ‘feels’ and ‘I want’.

                     Insulting as it might sound, the suggestions I have of real dolls and rechargeable batteries is not an invalid one. The women who believe these insane ideas are not capable of having a healthy relationship of any type with the opposite sex. Having a sex doll / sex aid will satisfy their bodily needs, even if not their emotional ones.

   3. Somewhere on Livejournal there is a truly beautiful flashfic/round-robin/weird collaborative fan fiction thing that consists of children’s TV icons jumping universes into Iraq circa 2005. Including commentary on “that crazy Latina chick who rigged the tower to blow, watched it go BOOM, and walked away whispering ‘Sniper, no sniping!'”

      The Doctor and Beaker from the Muppets also made an appearance, but I waited in vain for the cast of Little Einsteins, who I have *always* wanted to die a horrible death…

      1. David Burkhead’s Cold Servings I think. Link goes to the great Cookie Monster thread.

         If you’ve not been, go now, and behold the awesome.

         1. Oh man, I haven’t reread that thread in a while. It is hilarious and disturbing and awesome.

      2. Did Kermit do the on-site war report?

5. I know of two proven techniques for teaching rapists not to rape.
   The first involves minor corrective surgery.
   The second is the topical application of a small high velocity metallic pill, repeat as needed until the problem goes away.
   The second is the preferred solution as while the first does prevent rape it does not prevent the subject from harming women or anyone else by other means.

   1. The technical prescription is is “x grams lead applied intrathecally p.r.n. “

      1. just another great example of why I delight in reading this blog

      2. Ouch! That’ll give a headache!

         1. Not for very long.

      3. This is America. We measure lead in grain, not gram.

         1. Sorry, originally was going to use grains but under JCAOH standards had to switch to grams. Would get a nastygram from the pharmacist if I used grains.

            1. I recommend switching pharmacists, then.

            2. If you have to deal with JCAOH, you have my sympathy.

   2. Surgery short of removing the head from neck does not work (at least I believe you’re referring to chemical castration). A rapist does not need anything other than the will and opportunity to commit their crime. Note, I’m not using gender in my supposition. Both genders are capable of being the perpetrator and victim.

      1. Surgery is not about sex, it is about power, right?

         Corollary #1: rape does not require a penis; it can even be done with a vagina (although not with a glittery hoo-ha.)

         Corollary #2: the feminist project to redistribute power to females from males is likely to provoke more rape as disempowered males seek to compensate their loss.

         1. Gotta nit pick just a smidge.

            MZB may disprove the (although not with a glittery hoo-ha) sub text of your first Corollary.

            1. It is hard difficult but not impossible for a woman to forcibly rape a man. Do not make me have to explain how this might be done, although the advent of viagra and its ilk should point to one way it can be done.

               1. I apologize if I was unclear. I was not trying to say that a person in possession of a vagina could not rape.

                  My assertion was that MZB has been publicly accused of molestation of small children, does posses a vagina, and from the laurels I’ve seen and heard mention of being tossed her way, it seems her vagina may have been a variety of glittery hoo-ha.

                  And to be fair, i might even argue that woman on man rape may be easier than you believe simply due to the way a man’s sexual response system is wired.

                  At the risk of being a tad vulgar, I can remember very clearly that as a teenager it took nothing more than a good breeze and loose shorts to physical arouse me.

                  It was definitely not till much older (mid to late 20’s) that I could in fact mentally control what amounted to a largely autonomous physical response.

                  Before I learned this control, it would have been very possible to rape me physically even though i was 100% mentally against it. No drugs, no alcohol, I just did not posses the facility to shut down the plumping so to speak to prevent it.

                  Of course the assumes incapacitating my ability to fight back, o I agree difficult, but most certainly not impossible.

                  And please infer nothing more than physical response for I am speaking of nothing more than a physical response.

                  1. Thanks for the clarification. I confess to not knowing exactly what a glittery hoo-ha is, as I don’t s’pose it actually involve vajazzling so much as mystical uterine powers that are not necessarily limited to actually having a hoo-ha. Essentially it seems to entail thinking with a part of your essence ill-suited to logical though but well-adapted to engendering ill-conceived ideas and actions.

                     1. From the information I have, you about nailed it, excepting that there is apparently a healthy dose of self entitlement and group think grandstanding that goes with that as well.

                        1. Yup. The magical GHH is an organ so powerful that it can tame the fiercest male, convincing him to give up anti-social behavior/Viking raids/thoughts of bailing out of a relationship/not bringing chocolate and bring about (depending on the author and characters) wedded bliss. Or a job contract as recreational activities supervisor. All this without (depending on the author) coming into physical contact with the male in question.

                           I tried to write a parody of GHH romance, but the characters balked, laughing so hard that I just deleted the file and slunk away.

                           1. You should do it as your characters as ‘actors’ going to be characters in a book, mocking every single line and action with rampant commentary along the way.

                              (I used to do that as after-chapter omake / bonus content / “Offstage Extras” when I did fanfiction. The characters would whimper “…please don’t provoke the author? Please?”)

      2. Actually I believe he was referring to physical, not chemical, castration.

         1. Lack of a penis won’t prevent a rapist from engaging in penetration. Broomstick and strap-ons would serve that function just as well, or better.

            1. Like I said, Will and Opportunity is the only thing Rapist need. Not penis, not vagina.

   3. The first could be highly effective, if you consider an intraocular frontal lobotomy to be a “minor corrective surgery.” 😀

      1. Cranial ventilation’s probably cheaper.

         1. In the long run, you’re absolutely right.

      2. Actually, to borrow the idea from the Chinese, where this is probably one of the few things I’d adopt – the parents pay for the bullet used to execute their criminal offspring. I’d reserve that for the worst crimes, though…

6. Yep, you’ve heard the excuses and elaborations. Crime exists because… oppression. Crime exists because… capitalist societies inherently distort the human nature. Crime exists due to lack of education.

   The Spouse hearing me fume pulled this up on his computer:

   1. Ah, memories of the high school musical where I was the Jet girl way in the back. Because while I could sing, I danced like a beached Beluga whale.

      Certain refrains stick with me. Even without clicking on the vid, I remember
      “Dear Officer Krupke, we’re down on our knees, cuz no one likes a kid who’s got a social disease ”

      At 16, I thought that was the most hilarious line ever.

      1. See, I can dance, but singing is scary… We could have been one actor in the play. You could have sang and I could have lip-synched.

         Robert was one of the guys in the leather jacket with solos. Yes, this is how much has stuck with me. Except when he did his solos, all the girls in the audience woudl shriek. He was 13, so this was a little odd to me.

         1. That would work–I can really bellow. As for the thought processes of pubescent females–I’m going to say this as a former female child and mother of a former female child–they have no thought processes. At least not when they’re clumped together. Then they become a hormonal borg-colony.

            1. Girls paid good money and got all dressed up to go see the Beatles in concert. And see them they did. Hear them? Hell, no. All they could hear is the girls around them shrieking and screaming. But they were shrieking and screaming as well.

            2. they have no thought processes

               The trick when looking for a wife is to find a woman who’s grown out of that, not still stuck in it. 😉

               1. If you’re encountering women who act like 13-year-old girls at a Beatles concert, then I’d start looking around for their caregivers. And backing away slowly.

                  1. Forget the looking for the caregivers – and don’t bother with the ‘slowly’ part.

                     1. Yes, because if you hooked up with their caregiver… you would still have to associate with the Beatles groupies.

                        1. If the care givee is acting like that, i would still card the caregiver before dating… just saying.

               2. I’m a happily married man, and I endorse this message.

      2. There’s a video game released back in the ’90s called “No One Lives Forever”. It was a fun spoof of the ’60s spy genre, but with a female protagonist (and less than enlightened attitudes from her male counterparts and superiors). On many of the missions, if you lurk quietly in the shadows you can hear nearby thugs conversing about various topics. And, well… read the first conversation here –

         http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/No_One_Lives_Forever

         1. I loved that game. Love sneaking around being stealthy in a bright orange patterned minidress!

         2. Wow. I remember that game (though I didn’t play it) and that is a lot deeper and more insightful conversation that I was led to believe it capable of.

            Also, friggin hilarious.

         3. Riding shotgun on a tricycial with an anger, mostly inebriated Scottish dwarf with an explosives fetish shooting mimes in what amounts to a car chase shoot out scene.

            Man they need to reboot this game.

            1. Off the subject, but am I the only one who remembers the Cadillac Catera commercial where it “stops on a mime”?

            2. Unfortunately, a reboot, or even a rerelease, isn’t likely to happen. Shortly after posting the above, I stumbled across an article dated late last year that discussed the fact that no one knows exactly who has the rights for the series.

   2. Yeah, even back then the whole social disease part was being mocked. Or was it venerated? I can’t tell.

      We loved that musical though… Nothing beats listening to a 7 year old say that the main characters were stupid for falling in love when they didn’t even know each other. Youngest brother was a precocious thing who at that age did not have a shred of romance in his body, but would come up with Armor Piercing Questions on a regular basis.

      1. This is where the whole issue of “age-appropriate material” comes in. 7-year-olds think with the brain and have no experience of people thinking with other parts of the body. One reason, I think, that Odds gravitate to SF is that you can find challenging reading material that does not require experience of thinking with the heart, crotch or other body parts.

         It also points out one of the gaps our culture has fallen through by our failure to distinguish between love and infatuation. Oddly enough, Country Music is actually pretty good at this while Pop & Rock is atrocious. “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout …” Both genres sing about Saturday Night, but only one seems to think about the rest of the week.

         1. It resulted in a rather hilarious argument between my dad and my brother though.

            (paraphrased because it’s a convo that switches back and forth between English and Filipino.)
            “How could they fall in love? They don’t KNOW each other!”

            “It starts with being attracted.”

            “They don’t really have much more of a conversation after that and they’re willing to die for reach other over good looks? Really shallow and dumb reason to die, Dad.”

            “…”

            (my mom, second brother and I look at Dad) “Well?” middle brother asks.

            Dad: “… you’ll understand when you’re older.”

            youngest brother: *indignant* That’s not an answer!”

            (rest of us laugh)

            He’s quite a romantic now though…

            1. Shadow: I have heard enough Tagalog/English with a smattering of local Bicol dialect thrown in conversations, to imagine this. Especially the constant interchanging of gender pronouns that obviously must have occurred. 🙂

         2. I first discovered I could actually like country music when I was driving from Dallas to Chicago with nothing but the radio for entertainment. Half the stations were country — and I heard Merle Haggard’s song “Let’s Chase Each Other Around the Room”:

            Let’s chase each other ’round the room tonight,
            Let’s play the games we played on our wedding night.
            To lock and bolt the door is only right;
            Let’s chase each other ’round the room tonight.

            I can’t think of any other musical genre where a celebration of married sex would have hit #1 on the charts. I mean, I try to imagine a rap song featuring that an..*-xs*ddd Divide By Cheese Error *Fdjas8**a Please Reboot Brain *SDFf7s9(n30(*&&***

            1. I can just see it now. Snoop Lion (or whatever name he’s going by this week) gets an award for his latest explosive hit, “[FEMALE DOGS] be awesome when you be fulfillin’ yo marital commitments at 60.”

               Should I have put a racism trigger warning on that? 😉

7. Teaching rapists not to rape could only be a matter of solitary confinement and/or electric shock punishment/reward training. And I don’t think that’s what they mean.

   Convincing rapists not to rape would involve conversion of heart and the building of virtue, which I’m extremely sure they don’t mean. (And unfortunately, rapists tend to be recidivists, as many are rapists because they’re psycho, not because of any rational incentive.)

   1. Convincing rapists not to rape would involve conversion of heart and the building of virtue, which I’m extremely sure they don’t mean.

      That’s what most of them think they mean. But if you actually tried to go about it, they would oppose all the methods that would actually work, so…

8. “even a year ago, traditional publishing would be able to make the book a success on paper by cooking the books …”

   If they can’t hide it, I wonder if we’ll finally see the end of, “This isn’t a contribution, we really do expect progressive politician X to sell that many books. Really. They’re just that important and fascinating.”

   1. Any one recall the name of the Speaker of the House (D-Union) who crashed and burned when it was discovered his “book” was being bought by unions for “gifts” to those attending his rallies? I s’pose the unions got a bulk discount on the purchase …

      1. The “buy the book you just published as campaign spending” tactic is pretty common– supposedly that’s a large part of why Ron Paul ran the last time. Or two.

      2. Fort Worthless Jim Wright.

         1. Who lived down to the old adage that Republicans got caught with their hands in the till, and Democrats got caught with their pants down.

9. This debate has nothing to do with actual rape; it’s about THOUGHTCRIME. And their response to both Miss Nevada and Correia prove it.

   “Rapist” is just the new “racist,” for liberals. It’s just another epithet for people they disagree with or don’t buy into their BS. Or perhaps the new “terrorist;” Hillary Clinton trotted out that old slur the other night on CNN, when she explicitly accused pro-gunners of “terrorizing” America with their pro-gun viewpoint.

10. For arguments such as these I think it best to force the opposing side to express their vacuousness arguments. E.g.: “Teach rapists not to rape? What an interesting proposition. How do you propose to go about doing that?”

    Make them toss up their skeet. It will still end up with them calling you sexist (and gender traitor where they can) but it provides much more amusement (as Socrates found) than trying to explain to them that reality (and rapists) will tend to refuse to abide by their quaint notions of what ought be.

    Regrettably, it will not be just them having to say “Sorry.”

    I used to believe
    in the days I was pure
    and I was pure as you used to be
    My wonderful someone
    would come to me someday
    and then it would all depend on me
    If he’s a good man
    if he’s a rich man
    wears a fine cravat, smokes a cigar
    and if he’s good and treats me like a lady
    then I shall tell him, “Sorry.”
    Chin up high
    keep your powder dry
    don’t be lax or go too far
    oh, the moon is gonna shine ’til dawn
    keep that little rowboat cruising on and on
    you stay perpendicular
    Oh, you can’t just let a man walk over you
    cold and dignified is what you are
    such a whole lot of things can happen
    so firmly say but sweetly, “Sorry.”
    [SNIP]
    One day comes a man
    but what kind of a man
    do you know why he does what he does
    He walked into my room
    and he hung up his hat
    and I just didn’t know where I was
    He was a lean man
    he was a mean man
    didn’t own a cravat, smoked no cigar
    and God knows he never made me feel a lady
    there just wasn’t time for “Sorry.”

    1. Purely for devil’s advocate purposes, and because I think I understand what the other side in this argument is trying to say, I’ll actually take a crack at answering that question.

       The first thing I’ll point out is that to some extent, characterizing this effort as “trying to teach rapists not to rape” is question-begging, because it characterizes the targets of the campaign as those specifically already beyond its help. However, saying “teaching men not to rape” is also problematic for that campaign, both because it is equally question-begging in the other direction (as people here and elsewhere note) and also because it doesn’t get to what the “teaching” advocates really believe is the problem.

       That problem is, if I understand it correctly, not that men have to be “taught not to rape”; it’s that men, in this viewpoint, have to be taught to recognize and admit when they are committing rape, because most men’s standard for evaluating what appears to be consent from their partner is either genuinely inadequate or deliberately disingenuous. The pathological individuals who attack strangers in dark streets with weapons are not who this campaign is targeted at; the targets of this campaign, more than anything else, are the (believed to be) far more numerous “ordinary decent guys” who, in mid-engagement (as ’twere), have gone just far enough, or are just drunk enough, that they choose to ignore — maybe even can deceive themselves into thinking they don’t hear — that moment when an perhaps-equally-drunk partner’s enthusiasm suddenly wanes or shuts off completely, and simply go on with their own gratification without realizing that what they are doing has just become, from the other person’s point of view, an assault. Secondary targets are those who know how to use manipulation and alcohol to manufacture a deceived form of consent, to trick someone into thinking that their “Maybe” really means “Yes” and then ignoring the moment when it slides back to “No” as above. (This kind of situation is part of why self-defense advocates are often accused of missing the point, in the same way that someone who advocates better doors and better-armed security guards to stop theft from a bank is missing the point if the money was stolen by embezzlement.)

       What the “teaching” advocates want to pound into #allmen’s heads, I think, is a reflex response that trains men never to initiate sexual advances or activity unless absolutely certain it will be 100% welcomed, and to pull back from such instantly and completely on the faintest suspicion that it is not so completely welcomed. They want this because they have bought into a thesis of sexual morality that says anything less than 100% enthusiastic, uninfluenced, fully-informed and clear-headed agreement constitutes rape, and think that the only way to prevent this is a complete makeover of our culture’s zeitgeist about how men and women “should” interact. They may even be right, insofar as that is what would be required; what I think they tragically overlook is (a) whether such a culture shift is even possible given humans’ real sexual nature, and (b) whether it could be accomplished without seriously constricting those parts of our sexual mores that they want to keep, namely shameless sexual gratification as desired. (Matt Walsh on themattwalshblog.com pointed out that until college’s hookup culture is shut down, what is being called “rape culture” is never going to get shut down either.) And, of course, the potential for abuse in a system where one partner can unilaterally, retroactively decide her Yes meant No after all is never considered, either, or at best considered an acceptable cost for what it prevents.

       Insofar as I think that there is a grievous sin, even a crime, in that fatal decision to say to oneself, “She can’t really mean ‘no’ at this point!” — a decision which happens more often than we may want to believe, if less often than the “Teachers” fear — this campaign may have a point. But the bad faith involved in assuming that anyone who recommends other tactics meant to forestall that temptation really just wants to keep that door open for themselves is tragically counterproductive.

       1. No. What they want to teach men is to avoid all contact with females. It’s working for my kids’ generation in STARTLING numbers. Because if the woman changing her mind afterwards is rape, then, well…

          1. I think that’s what they’re effectively teaching men. I don’t think it’s what they (except for a very few Shakeresque radicals) want to teach men, but failure to understand how incentives actually work is, as you say, characteristic of Marxist-descended philosophies.

          2. London’s Telegraph this morning had a column [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/10911162/Men-are-terrible-at-flirting-but-its-not-their-fault.html ] about a study determining that:

             a. women are worse than men at correctly identifying when somebody is flirting with them (36% to 18%)

             b. men are worse than women at flirting clearly (18% success rate vs 36%)

             c. both a. and b.

             (I wonder what it says that a significant majority of either success can’t tell when some on’s been flirting with them, as well as what % wrongly think they’ve been flirted up, and what % think it was just a bit of pleasant conversation. But I digress)

             The columnist (a woman) naturally attributed guys’ higher recognition of flirting a consequence of females being superior flirters with men being too timid to clearly express interest. The fact that few men are going to complain about sexual harassment if a gal compliments his trousers does not, apparently, light her radar.

             Frankly, I wouldn’t blame a guy these days for not assuming a gal is flirting even after she’s reached in his pants pocket asking can he spare any change.

          3. Well, it’s a self-correcting (or rather a ‘self-selecting’) problem. The ‘educated’ women who believe like that may well be removing themselves from the gene pool.

             Hundreds of thousands of cats will benefit in the long run.

          4. What they are teaching smart men is to avoid White Western Intellectual Females like the plague. Which you occasionally see when one of said WWIFs writes a screed about how no men will willingly come near her.

             “And why should they, honey, when they know up front that you have next to no interest in sex, expect them to abandon their carreers in favor of yours, and have the personality of a glue-sniffing civit cat?”

       2. Perhaps — but when a gal is photographed on a public sidewalk holding a guy’s ears while riding his tongue, her subsequent remorse does not render her earlier tongue bath “rape.”

          As with almost all things Left, they have taken a dubious proposition and pushed it so hard as to warp it out of all rationality. Their desire to eliminate Type I errors has wholly blinded them to the harm done by Type II errors.

          1. Thanks for the visual RES.

             Yeah, they’re not really good at recognizing type II errors. Either that or they say it is worth it. After all, “It’s for the good of “.

             1. Actually happened. She was on the sill of a storefront window supposedly watching a homecoming parade. When the couple was caught on multiple cell phone camera she claimed she was being raped — no not by the cameras — by the young man.

       3. STOP! STOP! STOP! Dammit, TL;DR.

          Anybody that has to put this much damn thought into what the hell constitutes consent should by force of law be prohibited from having sex at all.
          That’s why I’d never date a woman who thinks and talks like this. There’s so damn many shades of grey, that if I were unconscious in bed and she mounted ME, I’d STILL get accused of rape in the morning.

          Excuse my vulgarity.

          1. “There’s so damn many shades of grey,”

             At least fifty….

       4. “What the “teaching” advocates want to pound into #allmen’s heads, I think, is a reflex response that trains men never to initiate sexual advances or activity unless absolutely certain it will be 100% welcomed, and to pull back from such instantly and completely on the faintest suspicion that it is not so completely welcomed.”

          This way lies a life of near, if not complete, celibacy. And I say this as someone who would feed a rapist into a wood chipper while whistling “It’s a Small World After All”.

       5. Which is why shooting the rapist isn’t a satisfactory response in this mindset. Mostly because even they understand that the guy might not actually be a rapist at all, but only be confused. Or at least, that you can’t call not-rape, rape, if the response is to shoot the fellow.

          Frankly, I don’t buy the notion that a guy who forces you because he paid for dinner (date rape) or the guy who gets you drunk on purpose, or drugs you, is less of a rapist than the violent stranger.

          But some of the stuff we’ve been seeing in the college environment, the “if both people are drunk, he raped her” or “if she regrets it later, he raped her” or “if she’s too tired or weary to object or make her refusal clear he raped her” really is honestly SO obviously not rape that saying she ought to shoot him simply won’t fly.

          In other words… they’ve destroyed the word entirely. A *rapist* can’t be taught not to rape, because he already knows it is wrong. A good guy, a non-rapist, can be taught new rules about consent and not to have sex, ever, while drunk.

          1. “… they’ve destroyed the word entirely.”

             It is not as if that is the only word whose meaning they have entirely destroyed as completely as they’ve destroyed the value of a high school diploma. Look what they did to poor little “investment,” which didn’t use to defend government pork barreling.

11. Keep Tweeting this from an SFWA member during that conversation. Throw it in their faces just to see how many ways they’ll shrug it off and lie.

    “Beth Bernobich @beth_bernobich · 11h @eilatan I want LC and his fucking minions to die in a fire.”

    1. Scalzi thinks I’m a misogynist and Bernobich wants me to die. I might remind them of that if I ever meet them at a convention.

       1. That would be AWESOME.

          “Hello, you have no idea who I am but you have wished death on me. I thought I should show up to tell you that you are a disgusting excuse for a human being who actively dehumanizes those who disagree. Really good at pretending the people you can’t see aren’t real, aren’t you? Go to hell.”

       2. As long as your next stop is Con Ops to remind them that their wonderful new harassment policy requires that Bernobich and possibly Scalzi be thrown out of the con for making you feel uncomfortable — and that your next stop will be to file a hostile environment / unequal treatment / civil rights lawsuit against both the con and them personally.

          When they try to tell you they’re private entities, remind them gently that what they are is a business open to the public, since anyone can walk in off the street and buy a ticket in…. and that they might want to ask a few bakers in New Mexico, Colorado, and Oregon how well being a private entity protected them from the mob.

          Goose, gander, sauce — some assembly required.

    2. Hatey hate McHaters hate Correia because he punctures their bubbles. But it is okay to preach violence against bubble-breakers because racist, sexist, homophobe.

       It does seem odd that they are so willing to blame “society/capitalism(improperly defined/inequality” for actual criminality but advocate death for not indulging their fantasies.

    3. Used to know her. She killfiled me for reasons I still haven’t figured out. I was not at the time saying anything political online.

       Just as well, it apperas.

    4. Mary Robinette Kowal on Twitter, to Larry: “Wow. I have absolutely nothing civil to say to you. You are dangerous and disgusting. Stay away from me.”

       I’ll bet Marion Zimmer Bradley and Samuel Delaney never got treated like this.

       1. Kowal has, as of today, apologized for some of what she said.

          1. Dang it, just when I get over the hump to unsub from “Writing Excuses”…
             Fine. They stay. For now.

    5. You first, Beth. BTW, which one of us do you think is more likely to get their hands on a flamethrower?

12. “Do they read history at all? No. Wait. Of course they don’t.”

    They do read history. Marxist/Feminist/Queer/Ethnic history. The kind where facts are optional.

    1. Or the newer stuff, where every other page has a digression “while this seems to contradict Marxist theory on its face, it really doesn’t because [long-winded flimsy rationalization]”

    2. I doubt most of them do. Their “professors” do, and of course there are a wide variety of bloviators who have, or claim to. But most of the folks repeating this nonsense read it on HuffPo/MSNBC/Etc.

       1. They read Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and anyone who’s willing to argue Chamberlain is a better man than Churchill.

          1. possibly not Chomsky, think I may have confused a name there

             1. Nope, they read Chomsky, because he’s done some quasi-social-justice and environmental stuff along with his (rapidly being disproved despite the shrieks of his acolytes) “linguistics.” Or I should say they get assigned some Chomsky, and a few people invoke him to try and impress members of the group.

                1. Yes, his linguistics sucks. That’s where I first learned to hate him.

                   1. I’ve always found it grimly amusing that the only groups that treat Chomsky’s work with any respect at Marxists and Computer Scientists, and the latter only because his attempts to explain natural language work so well with artificial languages.

             2. Mostly what they know about history they got from (is “bad” redundant here?) movies from Matt Damon or Oliver Stone.

                Geeze, it isn’t as if the industry isn’t bad enough when they make an effort to be accurate.

             3. One of my friends has lived for about a decade and a half with a man who is really hardcore leftist. He worships Chomsky. (And he is a teacher. 😦 Although at least he has never had a permanent position as far as I know, just a string of substitute ones. One of the sad things in my country, most of the teachers I have known whose political leanings I know of are very firm leftists)

13. The first guy who assaulted me in High School cornered me in a very public area and insisted that “you really like it, don’t you. You’re smiling” because I had bared teeth as I was shaking my head and batting at him with a hard-backed library book while saying, “Leave me alone.” He was popular, well-off financially, higher-ranking, and a jock of sorts. Underprivileged and marginalized my @ss. He was a b@stard who wanted a easy prey. Like the serial rapist who opened unlocked doors at night, went in, and did his thing. (That case came up in discussions at Flat State U because someone claimed it was victim-shaming to point out that locked doors deter predators.) Putting ads in the papers and walking around in your almost all-in-all with a hundred of your buddies to “take back the streets” aren’t going to “cure” predators like that. Amuse them, maybe, but not cure. As others said above, a lead injection is the longest lasting solution to that sort of problem.

    1. The things your HS story do to my bloodpressue…

       The fundamental and insurmountable obstacle in their “teaching” philosophy is the assumption that “all” men are rapists, the difference between active and repressed resting solely on their ‘educational program.’

       So long as they insist on this ‘truth’ I’ll reject their philosophy.

       There are bullies and abusers and rapists. But there are also protectors. Hearing stories of bullying and abuse and rape protectors do not think “there but for the grace…” Hearing those stories they think “if I could have been there, if I could have stood before the subjugated and taken those blows, if I could have just one shot at the attacker…” Doesn’t matter if the protector would stand no better chance against the attacker, it’s instinct.

       But, that’s patronizing, isn’t it? Wanting to stand for people demeans those people, right?

       😐

       So long as they insist on ignoring the distinction and whipping us all with their label we can share no ground.

14. Gosh dang it, now I’m picturing #yesallseamonsters tweets, and I don’t have time to make it a thing!

    “Harpoons and cannons hurt. #yesallsemonsters”
    “I’m constantly persecuted for my size and my eating choices. #yesallseamonsters”

    1. “Dietary discrimination must END#yesallseamonsters”

       1. “Unleash the kraken” perpetuates sea monster stereotypes #yesallseamonsters

          1. It’s okay, I’m doing it ironically

             1. I’m afraid I’m a big fan of the ‘I always wanted to say that’ school. Well, more often ‘write that’. I love some cliches. 🙂

                1. Respect cliches. Cliches are old and great and powerful. Nothing ever got to be a cliche without good reason, because to ascend to that level, you gotta appear in a lot of works.

             2. Thanks for the link to Rusty & Co. I’d somehow managed to miss ever finding that comic before, and I’ve just spent several happy hours catching up.

                Which makes me think… Do we have a “Huns’ favorite webcomics” list anywhere? If we don’t, well, this is not the comment thread to start one in since it’s so long, but I may start a webcomic recommendations thread in a more recent post. Maybe once it’s morning in America again.

                Hmmmm. “Morning in America”. That’s a catchy phrase. Someone should make a political ad with that theme. Wonder why nobody thought of it before? 😉

                1. They won’t, you know. Unless they nominate Christie or Jeb Bush, I might very well make one for them…

                   1. Yeah, it really does seem like Reagan was the last Republican candidate who knew how to run a good campaign.

                2. We could start a discussion in goodreads.

                   1. indeed, someone did!

                      https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1876370-webcomic-recommendations

                      1. Yep. That was me. I have a general principle that if you think “someone should do something,” your next thought should be “… and is there any reason why that someone couldn’t be me?” And if there’s no good reason, then I should just go do it, already.

                         1. Been applying the “I’m somebody, can I do something?” theory, and thus far the main result is being falsely accused of being nasty, and raised blood pressure from confrontation; the hopeful final effect is being able to point to something when people say “nobody countered so-and-so when he said—” and making the people who scold those who directly confront people who personally do dumb stuff show that they’re jerks and, frequently, liars.

                            Giving me a solid appreciation for WHY the people who know things are so unlikely to speak up, while those who don’t feel free to say random junk and then abandon it. Words, just words, indeed.

                            1. And if you’re getting accused of being nasty just for confronting people who are doing dumb stuff, imagine the kind of reaction you’ll get when you go to someone and say “What you are doing is evil and you need to stop it now.” Yet those confrontations are also necessary. Sometimes you can confront people gently, sometimes it needs to be harshly, depending on what they’re doing and whether they still retain a conscience or have killed their conscience. Some of the former will respond well to your confronting them — I once confronted a roommate with something he was doing, expecting him to blow up at me, but instead he said “You’re right, I need to quit that, and I’m glad you spoke to me about it. Please keep checking on me to help me stop doing that.” — but others will blow up at you, because nobody likes to be told they’re doing evil, even when it’s the truth. Especially when it’s the truth.

                               Considering the basic message of Christianity is “You are a sinner who has done evil things, but God is willing to forgive you because Jesus took your punishment in your place,” it’s no wonder that Jesus warned his disciples that “if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. […] Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.” (John 15:20, 16:2)

                               We were never told that doing our duty would be easy, merely that it was our duty. However, when we do the right thing despite the (knowable-in-advance) costs, others will see it and some of them may be encouraged to do the right thing too. And sometimes, those who are already choosing to do their own duty will come alongside and offer words of commendation and encouragement.

                               I’m not going to lie to you by telling you that it’ll get easier with time. But I will tell you that you’re doing the right thing. Well done.

                            2. Exactly – duty is hard and harsh, sometimes. The ‘right thing’ usually is hard – and often it is something that you have to nerve yourself to do. But sometimes it comes almost automatically – a visceral reaction, as it were.

                            3. Doing the right thing often earns no thanks, no gratitude, no reward. In many a case it results in mockery, denigration, criminal slandering or false accusations. The SJWs have managed that much.

                               After all, it leaves them with so much prey…

                            4. Doing the right thing often earns no thanks, no gratitude, no reward. In many a case it results in mockery, denigration, criminal slandering or false accusations.

                               Didn’t Jesus tell His followers the world would appreciate their example and love them for it, just as much as it loved Him?
                               John 15:19

                            5. John D. MacDonald called a variant of that Meyer’s Law – The right thing is usually hard – that’s how you know it’s the right thing.

                            6. Sadly, it’s easier to confront the physical bullies. They’re generally not use to anyone standing up to them (or they wouldn’t be trying to intimidate me) and a small woman being willing to fight back tends to make other folks that weren’t willing to “start something” stand up to make sure I don’t get killed…..

                               I’m very vulnerable to emotional manipulation, although outrage can get me far enough along that it’s too late for them to play the nice guy…..

                               I believe it’s needed, but I still reserve the right to whine a little bit.
                               Especially when I get accused of “causing problems” for objecting to things folks did that were wrong..often by the very folks who frequently complain about how horrible it is that so and so does that thing….
                               >.<

                               It seems to help a bit, although I must not go overboard!

    2. “Sea monsters of the world, unite!” #yesallseamonsters

       (Just to keep on topic… 8^)

    3. … *laughing* Sorry, but every time I read seamonster now, I think of the e-slut real women (yes, women, voice and video – real story! Somewhat NSFW or brain. Bleach may be needed in copious amounts) who will do various sex acts on cam for ingame and out of game gear and RL gifts known as c(unt)-monsters / seamonsters (see what they did there?) / whales that when spotted/identified, someone will yell in Vent “Man the harpoons! Thar be whales here!!!!!!!1”

       (There’s story in the description and the comments.)

       1. Oh, my… I was happier not knowing this was a thing. I seem to recall a few months ago seeing a discussion here about taking seriously warnings not to click on a particular link or search for a particular term, and I’m going to take that advice here.
          It makes me wonder – with all of the rampant promiscuity, the popular depiction of extra-marital / pre-marital sex in the media, the pressure that some people feel/are put under to engage in sex outside of marriage, etc., (remember the Olympic athlete in the last summer Olympics who was a virgin, and was mocked for it? People saying she needed to give it up and it would improve her times?), that maybe Western culture has degraded to the point where consent is assumed? I mean, we’re not there yet, no. But I think I can see that particular tipping point from here, and that scares the heck out of me for my teenage daughter.

          1. Venereal diseases kept me from being promiscuous as a teen, or an adult, and it really helped that I found most of the guys around me in high school deathly boring.

             1. Social ineptitude and religion worked for me. That and nearly fanatical devotion to reading.

                1. The reading kept me sane. Someone asked me once why I loved reading when it was ‘such a boring activity’. I didn’t even look up when I said “It’s more interesting than listening to you blither on like the towering ignoramus that you are.”

                   person: …What?

                   me: nothing!

                   Librarian: *trying not to laugh* Leave her (me) alone if you’re not going to sit and read or study!

                   1. Yeah, my reading habit was such that my aunt grounded me from the library until I brought my grades up. I didn’t tell her until years later that I just started bringing books home from the school library. 😀

                      1. My folks tried telling me I couldn’t read as a punishment….. until I extended it to ALL reading including school assignments…

                         Why, yes, I was a little handful…..

                         1. I just live in fear of what my own kids are going to pull with me.

                         2. I had a friend whose mother was a bit smarter. She was an avid reader. One time her punishment was no outside of school reading for a week. As she was the oldest child in the household and was home educated her mother was quite aware of what she could be reading and controlled her access to any and all libraries. I am not sure what it was she had done to have this level of punishment brough upon her, but I gather she never repeated it.

                            1. 😀 My parents decided once to punish us with no TV, largely because we kept watching the . It broke later on, and we didn’t have TV for some months because Dad was away doing the rounds of the other Consulates he was in charge of behind the Iron Curtain.

                               We kinda didn’t notice it. Buried ourselves in reading and were more than happy to raid the local libraries for reading material. I think Mom suffered more because she didn’t have many grownups to talk to at the time, and the TV was usually on so she could hear human voice while we were out at school.

                2. Also, I found if you talk about the physics problems you solve for fun in your spare time, most men break land speed records getting away from you, no matter how cute you are. 😛 Well, till I found one who said “Really? Have you tried THIS method?”

                   1. Lucky B*stard. (Yes, I mean Dan. You didn’t think I meant you, did you?) 😛

                   2. I had a friend who was spectacularly well endowed. She was as brilliant as she was endowed. Men would come up to her and stare. She said that almost every one would flake off the minute she tried to engage them in a conversation.

                3. Ditto.

          2. It seems to be the nature of pervs that they think everybody else shares their perversion peculiar fascination. I gather this particularly applies to child molesters although I hasten to add I have no NO direct knowledge on this topic. One element of the perverse seems to include the concept that “you would enjoy this if you weren’t so repressed.

             American Western culture seems to be moving through a period when perversion is to be accepted and lauded and the only recognized “perversion” is adherence to traditional practices/relationships. It is as if the world has become a Bangkok Sex Show turned inside out, with the goggle-eyed audience on the stage and the bizarre become the audience.

             1. “Vice is a seamonster of so frightful mien…” and all of that.

                As someone who participates (arguably less and less) in a culture that’s become increasingly acidic over time, and being someone who has been trying damn hard over the last couple years to leave some bad habits behind, it’s not just that the world has become Castle Anthrax and no one seems to see the peril (Let me go back in there and face the peril! No, it’s too perilous…), Castle Anthrax seems to have been built around me and my family at a point in time when I’m trying to get the hell OUT of the castle. It’s no longer necessary to go and seek out the peril. Peril is increasingly interested in us, and gently entering all of our various institutions and media. I say entering, what I mean is Has Entered, Disrobed, and Is Now Jumping Up And Down In The Middle Of The Floor Saying ‘Pay Attention To Me! Pay Attention To Me!”
                Look, you want to look at, read, explore, experience, whatever, FINE. Do that! Call me repressed, whatever. You don’t approve of my way of life, I don’t care. I’m not asking anyone to approve. But those building the castle seem insistent that no only does everyone tolerate all this peril, but that we at least tacitly approve of it (which will eventually become less tacit and must become vocal approval followed by enthusiastic participation. Mandatory peril participation).

                Egads. Who put this soapbox here? ‘Scuse me, apparently I have to tell some kids to get off my lawn.

                1. I know whereof you speak. The Daughtorial Unit shops Victoria’s Secret for reasons practical and with my (irrelevant) approval. But the recent “Swimsuit Closeout” catalog has been sitting in the front hall and whenever I pass by I see it out of the corner of my eye and have a moment of “who left porn in our front hall.”

                   Although perhaps the porn industry has pushed further beyond the boundaries … I neither know nor want to know.

                   And leave us not start in on the ubiquitous Cosmo, Women’s Health, Self, etc. displays at the check-out line. I am old enough to recall when you couldn’t see such things in Playboy, much less in the grocery check-out.

                   1. Cosmo has caused me more mental whiplash than 90% of academic stuff I read. “You are strong, empowered WOMAN! And the only way to get and keep a guy is to have sex with him. If you want to keep him. And if he can’t read your mind, he’s trash, so make him read your mind, you mighty woman you! Who really needs to buy these clothes and lose 50 pounds.” I’d rather read Marx in German. It has more internal consistency.

                      1. There have been some studies that demonstrated that Cosmo covers showed more female skin and exposed cleavage than even Playboy. To be fair, Playboy usually had tasteful covers so as to avoid the brown bag treatment at the newsstand.

                      2. I’d rather read Marx in German. It has more internal consistancy.

                         That is a condemning statement if ever I heard one.

                         I will make it a point to never pick up an issue of Cosmo if I see it lying around an office waiting room. I will think twice about a person if I see they have a copy of it in their house. I certainly will not spend a penny to buy one.

                2. “…Has Entered, Disrobed, and Is Now Jumping Up And Down In The Middle Of The Floor Saying ‘Pay Attention To Me! Pay Attention To Me!””

                   Lena Dunham? Is that you?

                   If you need another soapbox, let me know. I think I have a garage full of ’em.

             2. *laughs* Oh, my….

                Somewhat related, got to read THIS first thing this morning, on the “if you weren’t so repressed” route:
                https://forums.station.sony.com/landmark/index.php?threads/eqn-dark-elf-female-body-structure.41110/page-3#post-437928

             3. If you say that it is a perversion and that something’s off with them because of it. You’ll bring down a bucket load of criticism on your head, not to mention many screeching cries of outrage.

             4. ” One element of the perverse seems to include the concept that “you would enjoy this if you weren’t so repressed.””

                Well, duh. How else can they dull their consciences?

                1. Oddly enough, i find myself far less traumatized by sexual repression than by the many other sorts our society (and the pederast supporters and their ilk) endorse.

                   For example, there is the harm I suffer from repressing the urge to shoot the driver who just jumped out into traffic ahead of me under the entirely unwarranted assumption I could (and would) jam my brakes so hard the contents of my trunk arrived in my glove box. Or the desire to beat to death with a can of chicken soup the jackass who has completely blocked a grocery store aisle wide enough for three carts.

                   They also ignore the trauma I experience repressing the desire to throw over-ripe fruit at politicians and their “journalist” stooges who fund “dark money” campaigns to falsely smear politicians such as Scott Walker for “coordinating a dark money campaign” in an effort to counter their dark money campaign to recall him.

                   We won’t even start in on the “holier-than-thou” Twitter jerks who attack Larry Correia for calling John Scalzi a P-word but laugh themselves wet over Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a C-word. The strain of repressing my nigh o’erwhelming compulsion to jam a rolled-up pair of 5-day-old dirty gym socks into their yaps imposes far greater stress than any effort to not fondle the private parts of some 5-year-old. (In fact, the repression of that sort of fondling entails 0 stress & no effort — it is more stress to contemplate wanting to do such a thing.)

             5. Glad you struck out “American” there. If you read “Pink and White Tyranny” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, it makes a great case that all our sexual promiscuity problems came to the US because of high French society. CURSE YOU, FRANCE! 😉

       2. *brain bleach*

          1. I warned! I made sure I put a warning there!

             1. True… true…

                This game you play, does it allow orbital strikes?

                1. Lineage II? There’s a few spells that look like a localized version of that (Starfall, Meteor Storm) but alas they’ve been nerfing mages so much it’s sad…. (fortunately, there are things called subclasses and dual classes…)

15. Because I was in a field where this (then)worked, I had to explain to the people I was talking to that this happens because in fields that are 90% or more left, this works. See, if your magazine/newspaper/tv station goes under because you’re incompetent, no one is going to give you another job. But if your magazine/newspaper/tv station goes under because you’re “too far left” then the left – aka the rest of your field. Aka those who give awards and jobs – perceive you as a hero, suffering for your convictions, and promptly give you another job. So, if you’re an incompetent idiot, and your business is failing, your best way to cover it up and assure your survival in the field, is to run as far left as fast as you can. This has been trained in at the back of the brain of most people in the media and entertainment by DECADES of this strategy working just fine.

    You weren’t the only one to notice it. The always erudite Furious D has also pointed it out repeatedly. Such as this post:
    http://dknowsall.blogspot.com/2010/11/hollywood-babble-on-on-624-curse-of.html
    (section under “Kevin Smith”)

    1. “an sf editor I will not name, having killed three magazines, got given yet another to kill…”

       Are we speaking of Gardner Dozois? I hated what he did to Analog, and to Asimov’s. I don’t know about his subsequent career.

       1. Dozois was a master compared to this one. No.

          1. George Scithers?

             1. Nope.

16. The Spouse and I have long held that no political philosophy that could be stated on a bumper sticker could be thought out in depth. Now we will have to add those that can be fit in a tweet.

    1. “Any philosophy that can fit in a nutshell belongs there.” – Sidney J. Harris

    2. “There’s a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker. ” — Charles M. Schulz

       1. Whenever I think of philosophy…

          Zeek: “Well, Damien, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but, uh, you left your sock in my house when you took my granddaughter’s innocence. [PAUSE] Here’s your sock.”
          Damien: “Sir, I just want to let you know that I consider myself a student of philosophy… live and let live. I mean no harm to anyone.”
          Zeek: “I’m an irrational hard-ass with rage issues. Don’t piss me off.”

          -Craig T. Nelson as Zeek Braverman, Parenthood

    3. I remember my finance professor saying that the answer to every question is ‘it depends’ and that is kind of true in so many political situations that saying anything else has turned into a mindfield.

    4. Oh! Let be try.

       If you devote your life to it, you can learn up to 2% of accumulated human knowledge.
       But that pool of knowledge is always changing, and you won’t remember it all anyway.

       It doesn’t *quite* fit on a bumpersticker.

       1. Perhaps: “Just STFU.”

          1. As it stands (without expansion) I doubt it is a philosophy. An attitude maybe. A life style choice possibly. A command likely.

          2. Speaking of Larry C. Special Task Force Unicorn? OMG! Perfect.

             1. We don’t exist! WE ARE SPECIAL TASK FORCE UNICORN?!

       2. It does if you make the print small enough. . . .

          Jeesh, all those bumperstickers that can be read only by tailgaters — what’s the point?

          1. My favourite are the trucks — typically, gravel haulers — with signs advising you to stay back at least 300 feet … in type too small to be read at a distance greater than 25 feet.

             1. 

                1. If I ever drive through LA traffic again, I might just put one of these on the back of my car.

                   1. My old truck had “Driver carries only $20 worth of ammunition”

                      Obviously obsolete now …

                      1. I have a bumper sticker advising “No Radiation Gun In Car” … but it has been partially scraped off.

                      2. Just add a zero…

                      3. so, one magazine of 9mm premium self defense ammo? 😀

                         1. Small magazine.

          2. IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU’RE TOO CLOSE!

             Heh.

17. With a certain amount of sadness yesterday I sent the circulation department of our local newspaper a termination notice. Been a subscriber for over ten years and a reader for going on thirty. In the e-mail I did remark that it was my opinion that they no longer offered content equal to the subscription price.
    They’ve always been lefties, but appear to be following that death spiral described in this post. About a year ago they went from 7 day delivery to 3 day, and at the same time changed formats to shrink the funnies to fit more on a page and went from a full page of reader letters to half a column. Recently the format went even tighter and I started to notice that the only reader letters they published just happened to be in support of their most radical editorials.
    Although I will miss the paper I once knew, my biggest regret is that I did not fire the vile progs a year ago when I really should have. Unfortunately, give a leftie organization the benefit of the doubt and they will inevitably sink to ever greater depths.

    1. The local fishwrap isn’t leftist so much as just weird at times. For some idiotic reason, they run E. J. Dionne almost every day. I don’t read Dionne — I respect what few brain cells I have left, and don’t subject them to that kind of idiocy. They’re more to the right in local politics, but they still print the fecal matter sent out by AP and a couple of other “news services”. They finally blew it when they changed the cartoon page. I doubt I’ll renew my subscription.

       1. I am a voracious consumer of news, having at one time consumed the local paper, the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and multiple online sources (e.g., the Washington Post & Washington Times) but I long ago let my local paper subscription lapse. Finally decided they provided too much paper, not enough news — especially as much of their “news” wasn’t. Unlike peanut butter and chocolate, combining news and opinion in an article does not improve the end product (in this case the analogy might more properly be mixing fecal matter and drinking water.)

          It is easy enough to ignore editorial codswallop when it is properly segregated (Dionne is a Dem-Lib writing for Dem-Libs and makes no pretense otherwise) but when they let it bleed into the “news” — and not simply by selection of what will be “news” (have you seen reports about the Sandy Recovery* making New Orleans’ Katrina aftermath a Sunday stroll?) which is bad enough — it is enough to make a sane person rant.

          *[S]eventeen months later, the reality has been vastly different, according a new WSJ piece. Of the 15,000 New York residents who have applied for relief, only 352 have received it; of the 11,500 eligible New Jersey residents, only 2,032 have been able to start rebuilding or repairing their homes. More:

          Allison Galdorisi and Claire Watson are trying to hold on. Their bungalow in Staten Island’s Midland Beach neighborhood was inundated. They need $173,000 to repair and elevate the home. They applied for aid in June, but their case was held up until November by paperwork issues. In December, they learned they had been placed in the second tier of New York City’s three-tier distribution system, behind people with lower incomes whose homes might have been less damaged. They don’t know when reconstruction will begin and are paying for both a mortgage and a rental home. “I’m going to be using all of my insurance money to pay rent and expenses,” said Ms. Galdorisi, a 49-year-old real-estate appraiser.

          http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/06/18/the-botched-recovery-from-superstorm-sandy/

          1. I know a guy who got his house on Lon-gisland [typed as pronounced] reassembled in late April. Of this year. Paying everything out of his own pocket. And supervising the contractors and trades himself, because of the risk of scams. You can hear his blood pressure rise as you read his e-mails. His neighbors are still trying to get things put back together, especially those waiting for outside (public) assistance.

       2. I cancelled the local fishwrap when they got sold to the same conglomerate that runs the Denver fishwrap. They asked why and I told them if I wanted leftist twaddle, I’d buy from the NYT which has more class. They insisted they were “right leaning” So I quoted their slant on news at them (in… 2004? 5?) They said that was “objective” — I hung up.

          1. Your wit is outstanding! I’d hate to be on the receiving end thereof.

          2. I cancelled the local fishwrap when they got sold to the same conglomerate that runs the Denver fishwrap.

             (Waves) That’s probably the ones I work for*!

             *Side note: Because of this, I may be changing my moniker soon. Possibly even change accounts, since I currently use the Facebook login option, to avoid a problem with cookies causing me to not be able to be logged in both here and at MGC. My company having instituted a “Social Networking Policy”, I am starting to think I may need to distance my outspoken online presence from them.

18. Yea– that hard left has shaken me– and it happened while I was not noticing it (under heavy chemo). I come out of it with a WTF on my lips.

    1. WTF=Well, Thanks, Father! [COUPLED WITH UPWARD GLANCE AND FOLDED HANDS]
       Is this correct? I always have to keep up-to-date on the latest newspeak on the interwebz. 😉

       1. You only need refer to your handy official FBI Schedule of Twitter Acronyms* for the latest, most up-to-date guide to such understanding phrases.
          http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-discovers-twitter-speak-starts-a-dictionary/

          *CAUTION: FOIA request may be required.

          1. Gives a whole new meaning to their reputation as a leet law enforcement agency.

             1. I’m ahead of the .gov on current Internet slang? *mind boggles*

19. Person A thinks rapists need to be taught, person B thinks rapists need to be shot. One of the two accuses the other of “rapist excusing”; which should you guess is the accused?

    If you answered “person A, because that’s the only interpretation that could make sense”, you get partial credit, but the actual answer is “person B, because stupidity shows high autocorrelation”.

    “I think we should teach men not to rape people. Apparently that makes me weak and stupid, if you’re a fucking moron.” – John Scalzi

    Apparently “We should teach criminals not to do it, so they won’t!” is supposed to be not only smart, but so smart that any disagreement deserves cursing and insult.

    “Almost 50 percent of the [convicted rapists] group had committed some offense by the fifth year out of prison. The recidivism rates for sexual, violent, and any criminal recidivism were 16 percent, 26 percent, and 53 percent, respectively.”
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9664255

    Maybe the judges and prison guards just weren’t teaching hard enough? Dunning-Krueger indeed.

    Here’s hoping he’ll apologize once he’s had a chance to cool off. Getting schooled after falsely accusing someone of being a rapist-enabler must be very stressful, and even autocorrelation often decays with time…

    1. Having observed Scalzi for a few years now I very much doubt he will apologize — he gives every appearance of someone having crawled out on a limb and sawing furiously.

       He broke into the field with what were a good couple novels but has hastily endeavored to ingratiate himself with (what he thought were) the cool kids. Having lashed himself to the mast he must now either defend his claim that this is the mainmast or admit to binding himself to a sinking ship.

       Simple thought experiment:
       What “teachings” have ever been 100% effective?
       In a world population of (approx.) three billion males, if we succeed in teaching only 99.99% of men to not rape, how many rapists will ply their oppressive avocations unhindered?
       (I know, dear, you were under the impression there would be no math; get used to having your impressions confounded.)

       1. It’s very hard to “teach men not to rape” when we have one major “religion” that not only condones it, but encourages it.

          Rape is assault, period — assault on the body, the mind, and the soul. It is horrible, which is why in MOST societies it’s considered a major crime. Criminals are normally anti-social. Trying to teach someone who doesn’t want to learn, doesn’t care what the rules are (I.E., a “criminal”), is just plain lunacy. I taught my youngest daughter — hit him in the nose, kick him where it hurts, then RUN. She’s never admitted she’s done these things, but then, she wouldn’t.

          1. I still remember the romance readers gently explaining that cultural differences do not explain that men do not think rape is wrong, because rape has always been a major crime — even if the culture was so sexist that it was considered property damage, it was considered serious damage to valuable property.

             1. When a woman is valued (only) because her chastity contains the family’s honor, to damage that honor is a major offense, even if done as a way to punish the family. Her thoughts as an individual matter nothing, it is her role as container of honor that is everything. [h/t Dr. Sanity and Ibn Warraq]

                Interestingly, I’m halfway through “The Book of the Courtier,” written by an Italian courtier in the 1400s. The characters have agreed, more or less, that for a courtier to impugn a lady’s honor is an action that goes beyond the pale. Now they are about to discuss what makes for a perfect lady, to go with their perfect courtier.

                1. Still tends to be hard on the rapist.

             2. In my country the maximum jail time for rape is usually about 2 years (our laws would allow up to 6 years, even 10 years for worst cases, but that never seems to happen in practice) more often we are talking about months, and sometimes – often – it seems to be just probation. Recently a man raped a fourteen year old girl. One year. Probably he was actually inside only a few months. Our jails are pretty nice. The inmates also get vacations (are allowed outside under supervision, an ankle monitor etc, to visit their families and so on).

                But then even murders here tend to get ten years or under. Like this one case I think I have mentioned before, a group of young men, late teens, early 20’s, very deliberately murdered a married couple for money, the wife while she was on phone calling the emergency number and can be heard begging for mercy. They cut up the bodies and sank them into a lake in bags, but those bags were found.

                Everybody else but the ring leader got out on probation after well under ten years, and I think he is out now too, after about that decade.

                That is what you get when the idea that criminals can be taught to not do crimes gets accepted in society, combined with the idea that criminals are victims of society. They do something and get taught, or at least they get talked to. When they repeat they are taught some more since people always deserve a second chance. And a third chance. And a fourth chance. And etc.

                1. That is just unbelievable.

                2. Frankly, I don’t have much faith in severe punishments working as a deterrent, not for most. The people who are most inclined to do crimes seem to do them no matter what since they presumably usually assume they can get away with it. And of course they tend to, there aren’t that many who have gotten caught every time they engage in criminal activity, even if they often do get caught eventually getting away with it several times before… well, when somebody gets caught only sometimes it’s presumably easy to fall into thinking that _this_ time is always going to be one of those when you _don’t_ get caught.

                   But jail works for one thing well, as a place to isolate people who are dangerous to other people from society. Add to that the chance for the law abiding to protect themselves efficiently – yep, that probably would work best. Police can’t be everywhere, but if a sufficiently large part of the intended victims are potentially dangerous that might work as a better deterrent than the risk of maybe eventually getting caught.

                   1. Well, yes, punishments do work. That they are inflicted reliably is more important than severity, but for instance, for every death penalty actually inflicted, several murders are deterred.

                      1. I guess my point was mostly this: especially when it comes to violent crimes it doesn’t matter that much whether jail time works as a deterrent or not because what is certain is that it does work quite well by keeping the criminal away from people he might hurt.

                         1. And the latter part is what seems to be ignored in my country. The most often given excuse for light sentences is that harsh sentences don’t work as a scare anyway, so it’s better to try and teach the criminal so he stops doing crimes. Except teaching them doesn’t seem to work all that well in practice.

                            And that is where things have gotten stuck here. Fighting over what would work best, scaring the criminals from doing crimes by giving them harsher sentences, or trying to educate and therapize them away from doing crimes. The latter idea has been winning, so far.

                            So, what the hell, if most people here really do think harsh punishments aren’t civilized, by all means keep thinking that if it makes you feel good, but at least keep those criminals locked up. Make the jails into nice homes with lots of education and meaningful activities for the criminals, BUT KEEP THEM LOCKED UP!

                         2. Making jail time in itself will help to deter the ones who are only beginning their slide off the scale of humanity, but this will prevent many a crime from occurring in the future.

                            What happens now is that (comparatively) petty criminals are put alongside serious, hardcore criminals, and thereby learn to be serious, hardcore criminals themselves.

                            I’m very much not a fan of the entire notion of “general population” in prison. You should go into a cell (no cellmate) and stay there, except for short, heavily supervised, “recreation” time, either inside or outside, without direct physical interaction with any other inmates.

                            There should be reading and training available for those who want to make use of them, but essentially, you want the inmate to want very much to avoid coming back, AND to avoid having the other inmates brutalize them.

                            1. solitary confinement has dire impact on the inmate’s sanity. We would have to have staff that could interact with them every day or we might have to discharge them into a lunatic asylum.

                            2. I’ve heard that before, but I wonder how “solitary” such confinement would have to be to induce mental problems. Certainly being locked in a dark room with no diversions for years on end would do it, but given a television and an e-reader (with a well stocked library) and enough room for calisthenics and maybe a source of natural light? No need to make it sybaritic, but I know I’d be pretty comfortable in a cell that had the above amenities for a good long time (assuming toilet facilities were also available), even without direct human interaction.

                               Of course I’m something of an introvert:-).

                            3. Physical separation, but able to talk to other inmates within speaking (or even yelling) distance.

                               Also, done this way, I would expect sentences to be far shorter.

                            4. I’d say that claims an extraordinary effect – any evidence it works?

                               Compare with the general rule that NO intervention has ever been shown to work including in this context Scared Straight –

                               As a result of the film, many states introduced “scared straight” programs in an attempt to rehabilitate young delinquents.[3] The effectiveness of such programs has been questioned, most significantly by a peer reviewed meta-analysis report of seven such programs by Anthony Petrosine et al. 2002, updated 2012), which indicated that “scared straight” programs not only failed to deter crime, but actually led to more offending behavior.[4]

                            5. Can’t give evidence because I don’t think it’s ever been studied. Scared Straight, however, is generally applied to the kids who are already determined to be on their way to the deep end of criminal behavior. It also doesn’t change the incarceration system, leading to an actual visit there being made more undesirable.

                            6. Depends what the meaning of it is.

                               Recidivism[edit]

                               Shira E. Gordon, a University of Michigan Law Student, argues that solitary confinement leads to an increase in recidivism and violence. To substantiate this conclusion, she cites two quantitative research based studies that support this nexus and counters those who argue that solitary confinement deters recidivism.[38] Daniel Mears and William Bales “compared recidivism rates by matching…prisoners who were incarcerated in solitary confinement with prisoners who had been in the general prison population.”[38] They found that “24.2 percent of the prisoners held in solitary confinement were reconvicted of a violent crime compared to 20.5 percent of prisoners held in general population.”[38] And this behavior may be attributed to the mental illnesses prisoners may develop, as well as the dehumanizing treatment they are subject to.[38]

                               As should be obvious Wikipedia this date.

                               Given the prevalence of mental health issues in the general prison population and the tendency to release prisoners sooner or later – sooner under this scheme – it’s been argued that preparing prisoners for eventual release includes more conventional socialization. Maybe not but I suspect so. See e.g.

                               In the Belly of the Beast is a book written by Jack Abbott and published in 1981.

                               Jack Abbott was an American prisoner and the book consists of his letters to Norman Mailer about his experiences in what Abbott saw as a brutal and unjust prison system. Mailer supported Abbott’s successful bid for parole in 1981, the year that In the Belly of the Beast was published.

                               The book was very successful and on July 19, 1981, the New York Times published a rave review of it. However, the day before, Abbott had killed a waiter during a row at a restaurant called Binibon on 2nd Avenue in the East Village. Abbott was eventually arrested, convicted of manslaughter, and returned to prison for the rest of his life until his suicide in 2002.

                               for an example of what very likely was prison learned behavior carried over to life on the street. Abbott was denied access to a customer’s only restroom when he apparently really had to go.

                            7. Depends what the meaning of it is. Solitary or administrative segregation or… is of course currently a hot topic in Colorado:

                               In an effort to better understand the issue, Maureen O’Keefe, a researcher with the Colorado Department of Corrections, and Kelli Klebe, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, recently conducted a longitudinal study of the psychological effects of administrative segregation in a Colorado prison, with funding from the Department of Justice. The researchers studied 65 male inmates and 24 controls who were being evaluated at institutional hearings to decide whether they would be placed in solitary confinement or the general prison population.
                               …….
                               “I frankly don’t think you can draw any conclusions from [the study],” Haney says. “There’s very little doubt in psychology in general that enforced isolation is psychologically stressful and for some people will be harmful.”

                               Alone, in ‘the hole’
                               Psychologists probe the mental health effects of solitary confinement.
                               By Kirsten Weir
                               May 2012, Vol 43, No. 5
                               APA for those who may remember the APA style manual inflicted on them.

                            8. YES.

                               Bonus, this would be cheaper– ask the Navy about how to build barracks rooms. I bet folks could build a computer right into the wall, and that folks would be willing to donate educational courses.

                               Would also make it so those inclined to visit folks in jail might be able to do more good…..

                   2. Death tends to be a pretty effective deterrent.

                      1. Yes, it is, and in theory I am all for capital punishment. In practice I’m somewhat leery of it because I don’t trust in the justice system of any country that much.

                         But I’m all for allowing people to defend themselves with deadly force if necessary. Yes, that undoubtedly also leads to cases where it’s more murder than self defense, but I guess I trust ordinary people a bit more than courts. At least in those cases they have to do the killing personally, and killing another human being is not easy for anybody half normal.

                      2. Barring necromancy.

                      3. Don’t know if anyone has said this yet but…. I think that there are two categories here:
                         1)Rape
                         2)Seduction

                         To me Rape means force or threat of force.

                         Seduction is some means of getting a woman to sleep with you without force. This covers a spectrum of situations from talking at one end to drugging at the other end. Somewhere in here is the line of permissible/impermissible actions.

                         Were there punishments for seducers on the farther side of seduction? Users of Mickey Finns?

                         This is why the old rules worked (mostly) There rules that had evolved over a long period to deal with various situations.

                         1. Looks sensible to me.

                            The arguments for “slipped something in the target’s drink” (or just got them drunk) being because the target was dumb enough to do it is as strong as the idea that various other means to falsely overcome objections don’t rise to the level of “rape.”

                            1. Been thinking about it, and the concept of sexual fraud is closer to what we’re talking about than rape.

                               Still thinking about it, actually.

                            2. I like “criminal seduction” as a name, kind of like how people call all illegal killing someone murder but it goes from manslaughter to…what… premeditated murder in the first degree with malice aforethought?

                            3. Like, Mr. Whickam seducing Lydia in Pride and Prejudice. The “minor” thing is debatable because people grew up faster in the regency. BUT it was criminal seduction.

                            4. It would have to be very specific, and I think there would have to be provable malice of intent, premeditation. (I link a particular serial rapist/extortioner/blackmailer case, and in some cases, culture/ specific due to the background of the ‘why’.)

                               (really sleepy, not wording myself well. I’m sorry.)

                            5. I don’t much want to engage in this further, so I will jut suggest that you not think about it as something men do to women. Women have been known to seduce men, after all, and while men don’t get preggers they are not emotionally unaffected by the usage.

                               Before you make it a crime to buy a gal as much as she’ll drink in hopes she’ll spend the night expressing her gratitude (a truly foolish strategy as drunks tend to make poor bed mates, but what can you do?) you might think about the gal who leads a guy on, implying that if he keeps her supply of beverages flowing she will be grateful.

                               That, at least, will reduce complaints that you’re asserting special privileges for one side.

                               Keep in mind that there is many a gal (or guy) who places a much higher premium on the pleasure of her (or his) company than an objective marketplace might support. It has been often asserted that American women think far more highly of their bedroom abilities than a comparison shopper might affirm (I even think Heinlein has expressed a view to that effect, at least in the person of one of his characters — due recognition that views expressed by a character are not necessarily those of the proprietor — but am not about to re-read everything of his in search of that tidbit.)

                            6. I don’t much want to engage in this further, so I will jut suggest that you not think about it as something men do to women. Women have been known to seduce men, after all, and while men don’t get preggers they are not emotionally unaffected by the usage.

                               If I may correct; I don’t think of this as just a guy on girl crime only. I never have and never will. I consider the ramifications regardless of gender; and have been very much against the skewing of law to overly favor women.

                               The drink spiking law I mentioned exists in Australia and covers more than just a useage in sexual situations. It is a law applied to men and women.

                               Just wanted to make those two points clear; I’m going to have to drop out of this particular topic as well because something happened RL that is going to have my attention for what will likely be a very long while.

                            7. So that things here are PERFECTLY CLEAR, I believe EVERYBODY commenting on this issue has held that spiking a person’s drink is wrong, bad, not to be done and criminal. If you do it to sexually assault the victim it is unquestionably rape, if you do it to drag him to a strip club and drain his credit cards while posing him for blackmailing pictures (as recently alleged in NY city) it is kidnappnig, theft and whatever else they can convince a jury to charge you with.

                               It is in the grayer area of, say, getting somebody drunk, where we have been arguing. Even there we are agreed that it is wrong to deliberately get somebody drunk in order to use them sexually (it is also, I believe, pretty lousy sex.) Where the disagreement seems to be is whether buying a gal (or guy) drinks constitutes fraudulently obtained consent, and the problem here is that (unless you think those folks are buying those drinks just because they’re generous … or you believe that the Bacardi in the Dolce de Leche is simply a preservative) you retain responsibility for your actions, just as you cannot plead diminished capacity as defense against a charge of drunk driving.

                               Only a cad would take advantage of a girl in such condition, but being a cad is not yet legally actionable.

                            8. uh… is that a reply meant for me? *confused*

                               Drink spiking is a very specific law over here, which is boiled down to ‘including things into the drink which the person did not request’ – such as a double shot of spirits when the person only wanted one, all the way to drugging the drink. This means that the drink itself was tampered with in a way that the person drinking it is not aware of; and if a bartender notices that a drink order for someone has changed, they’re actually supposed to either confirm with the person requesting, or refuse. In some bars, requests for double shots are refused entirely, because they CAN be liable now.

                               I did not say you couldn’t ply a girl or a guy with as much of the same type of drink that the person in question was requesting – as long as the person in question is still requesting more of the same, or the person requesting their own drink. This does actually take into account personal responsibility; ergo, the person (male or female) requesting a particular drink is aware of their own capacity re: the drinks requested; or if not, they are with friends who they trust to look out for them.

                               Buying a guy or gal drinks does not automatically assume fraudulently obtained consent.

                            9. I must confess that the only reason for that prior post was to embed the Dolce de Leche clip, and it seems to have failed to pop up.

                               Sigh.

                            10. Evidence is always the problem, even in things as “simple” as wage fraud.

                            11. It’s a fuzzy line between “puffery” and fraudulently obtained consent, clearly. But I’m a pragmatist. Like I’ve said before, I think it would be an unbearable burden on the legal system to criminalize fraudulently obtained consent, and I also think the potential for abuse is too great. In the end, it’s probably simplest to say, “If you decide to sleep with someone outside of marriage, you’re an adult, and you’re going to suffer the consequences of those actions on your own, so be smart about it.”

                                In the end, isn’t that what most of us are after here? Getting rid of the nanny state? Being adults and being willing to suffer the effects of our actions, even if those effects are to our material detriment?

                                Further, we have to ask, if you’re having sex outside of marriage, and someone obtains consent by fraud, the question has to be asked, what have you lost materially? Remember, in civil law, you have no standing for a lawsuit if you haven’t suffered materially. That even applies to slander and libel lawsuits; it’s not enough to show that someone said or published something false about you, you have to show that you were materially harmed.

                                So before the debate about whether fraudulently attained consent continues, I’d like to know what material harm this person has suffered that gives us a reason to make this a legally punishable crime.

                            12. I see a huge difference between “slipping something in the target’s drink” and simply getting the target drunk. If you’re an adult (and we are talking only adults here, otherwise it is child molesting, regardless of whether it is forced or not) and you don’t realize that alcohol can affect your judgement*, you really shouldn’t be out on your own. That posited, the guy (or gal) feeding you drinks may be an unspeakable cad, but you’re the one that is swilling them down of your own free will. If they slip a mickey in your drink however, that is not your free will.

                                *most people use alcohol as a handy excuse. Your judgement may be impaired, but you still know right and wrong, no matter how drunk you are. I know back when I used to drink I certainly did some stupid things while I was drunk, but it was me doing them, and I never did anything I might not have at least thought about doing sober. And even when so drunk I couldn’t remember the night before, I never woke up to find I had slept with someone I shouldn’t have.

                         2. That would also simplify the statutory rape laws, if “criminal seduction” was added.

                         3. A couple minor points re: seduction

                            This should have gone with out needing to be said, but because of the particular phrasing I wanted to address it openly and (to the extent I can manage) clearly: Seduction is a practice employed by women as well as men. It covers male/female, male/male, female/male and female/female. It probably also covers transgendered/cisnormative and whatever other categories you can come up with but for the sake of convenience let’s stick to the classic two sexes. It also requires ability for consent, which keeps child molestation well within the realm of rape, where it belongs. (N.B., “consent” in this context is a specific legal concept, so look that up before quibbling.)

                            Seduction differs from rape in the fact that the target (for want of a better term; victim is too loaded) gives consent, even if that consent is given under false inducement. Seduction is not, itself, a violation of another person.

                            A Mickey Finn or (as cited) Uther Pendragon’s ploy are not seduction because consent is not given in either situation. Forced consent is not consent — coercion contradicts the basis of consent.

                            Lies and over-statement in pursuit of seduction are not coercion. While she may tell him “Oh, I’ve never felt anything so big!” and he might claim that without her providing “relief” his testicles will fall off these statements should probably be recognized as absurdities and do not meet the standard of coercion.

                            Part of the problem here is that most societies allow, even encourage, a degree of ambiguity in sexually laden exchanges — we call this flirting. Many people abuse, many people confuse this practice. As emily notes, there are reasons to adhere to long-established, well-tested social mores. We ought recognize that there are transgressions on both sides of the game and thus reasons to practice maintaining a respectable distance.

                            A gal dancing with a guy, grinding up against him and dry-humping him on the dance floor is not “asking for it” but she is playing a dangerous game and bears at least some culpability for it getting out of hand. It behooves us to keep in mind that “c*ck-teasing” is at least as inappropriate as lying your way into somebody’s slacks.

                            There be steep cliffs with horrible pitfalls, so it behooves all and sundry to not play too near the edges.

                         4. Drugging her is not seduction.

                            Mutual intoxication might be.

                3. Yep. Same thing in Portugal, which is why every private home has bars on the windows, and tall walls around it. And no one is safe anywhere.

                   1. We are not quite there yet. Finland is still fairly safe, apart from some places mostly in Helsinki, and even in those it’s mostly part time, you can walk there fine at times, but other times it’s not advisable. But if things keep going the way they have been going during the last decades that may not be all that far in our future.

                4. I can’t imagine that’s very stable. At least, some people ought to be thinking, “Ten years isn’t so big a price to pay for vengeance.”

                   1. There have been no big profile cases. Doesn’t of course mean it hasn’t happened.

                      And one question are the human remains which occasionally get found in the forests – we do have quite a lot of forests here, and a countryside which is rather sparsely populated, at least for an European country.

                      And then there are the questions of self-defense and defense of your property: theoretically we have those rights, in practice… we can’t legally carry any weapons in cities and towns, well, any place where you regularly see people not in your own household (you can take a knife if you are going well away from human habitation, but you should not have it when you are walking on a street unless you can prove to have an immediate need for it, like you are coming or going from your job and you need a knife there, or you are taking it to be sharpened), and while theoretically even killing an attacker in self-defense is legal, in practice people who have harmed an attacker (off-hand can’t remember any big profile cases where the attacker did get killed) seem to end up in rather weak positions in court.

                      And the thought of something like paying to somebody for an injury they got when they tried to take your wallet and you resisted is, shall we say, irritating.

                      But lets presume you do get a home invasion somewhere where there is little risk of shots attracting attention and you have a firearm, most likely because you hunt. Shoot to kill, bury and keep your mouth shut might be tempting. Maybe sometimes even if the criminal or criminals showed that they were no risk to your well-being or life, just your possessions, because the way things are here there is precious little you can legally do to protect those possessions besides calling the police, any kind of use of force will very likely turn you from the claimant to the defendant. But letting them just walk away with your stuff when there is no hope that the police would get there in time… and most likely will not do much at all if the criminals already left.

                      Property crimes don’t necessarily get any attention at all, beyond getting written down, unless we are talking about a long series of them and the suspicion it’s the same gang, or the stolen property was way more valuable that it usually is. But most common cases, no. If the property turns up somewhere, like your stolen car is found abandoned, you’ll get notified, but otherwise you can be pretty damn sure the police are not going to be doing anything. They say they do not have the resources.

                      So the temptation to do something yourself, illegal or not, might be there. More so when you do know that if you kill and bury but do get caught the sentence is not going to be that bad.

                      The general feeling here is that more people than not do see our current system as a joke, and not a funny one. So far most people nevertheless also seem willing to tolerate it, we grumble and occasionally try to vote against it and sometimes sign petitions but nothing else happens. But Finland is also currently still relatively safe, and seen as safe. If that last part changes I rather expect that we will start to see some sort of vigilantism. At least in those parts where it’s easier to get away with it. More remains found in the forests.

                      1. Wow, I have to say that that certainly does not match my impression – and great admiration – of Finnish people historically.

                         1. People change as generations do.

                            And the one thing that hasn’t changed – Finns have always had the contradiction of both hating being lorded over and loving having strong masters. If the masters of the moment are seen as more good than bad, and even just a little bit more good than bad can be good enough, we tolerate a lot. I guess we are kind of apathetic when it comes to the big issues, like politics, we just want to be left in peace to manage our own personal lives, and can concentrate on those personal lives at the expense of almost everything else, and only when all that everything else seems to be getting at the point where it will unavoidably totally mess up those personal lives, then will we notice and maybe start doing something about it. But if you can mobilize us…

          2. So, what you’re saying is that “teaching men not to rape” is culturally imperialism? (Nods) Who are we to arrogantly impose our cultural preferences on others? It isn’t as if our culture has all that much to brag about, what with our history of slavery, discrimination against minorities and wymyn and our predilection for naming our sports teams with racist slurs.

             1. But if we take away their patent, so that everybody can use the racial slurs without infringing; well then everything will be all better.

       2. I think Scalzi honestly believes in what he’s saying, or at least did when he started out. I still can’t understand how smart people can do that (and he’s not dumb), but clearly they can, because there are a lot of them on the left.

          Heck, my wife is smart, and she believes a lot of this stuff. She used to be scared to talk to me about politics. I think that’s because she knew that I’d force her to actually examine her assumptions. Slowly we are talking, and she is. It’s not turning out to be as scary as she thought. I wonder how many other knee jerk liberals that would be true for?

          You are certainly right about Scalzi having tied himself to a sinking ship. What I wonder is, has he actually *realized* that yet? I had to laugh when he got attacked over the hugo nom post, because he’d laughed earlier at all the people who told him the femenists would turn on him someday. When they did, I wonder if he started getting a clue. Maybe not, he’s got to have a lot of denial going on just to hold the views he holds, so how hard would one more bit of denial be?

          1. Smart people fall for dumb ideas because those ideas usually feed their ego. “It’s so complex only someone as smart as I am can understand it!” When they’re proven wrong, or even challenged, they often retreat deeper into their beliefs because to admit they were wrong is to demonstrate that they’re not as smart as they like to believe.

             1. “Smart” people seem much better at painting themselves into ideological corners, don’t they?

                I put the scare quotes around “smart” because really smart people learn how to say “Oops, that was a bad idea, wasn’t it?” and leave the corner before the whole area is wet with paint … or blood.

                1. They do. Most of the time it’s just enough intelligence to cause trouble, combined with arrogance to not know their own limitations.

                   Someone once described grad students as like beagles, “cleaver, but not smart”. I have to wonder if that applies to much of humanity.

    2. Rape* is wrong. I’m all for teaching people not to rape other people. While we are at it we need to make it clear that those who do wrong will face the consequences. Then those who fail to learn the lesson will have no excuse, they were warned.

       *When referring to rape I do not mean, ‘He looked at me wrong.’ (Which makes me think of siblings in the back seat…)

       1. *points finger, holds it an inch away*

          “I’m not touching you…. I’m not touching youuuuu”

          1. *rests hand .0001 mm from seam in middle of back seat*
             “But Moooooommmmm, I’m not on her side!”

    3. Well, it’s entirely possible that Scalzi needs to be taught not to rape women, but what makes him think *all* men need such correction?

       The gun control crowd loves projecting their violent fantasies on gun owners. Methinks the “rape culture” crowd is doing the same thing.

20. Sarah, any doubt about your being a “good writer” is removed, with the following paragraph.
    “If your mouth is, by now, hanging open in sheer awe at the craziness, you might realize you’re in the presence of homus academicus, a creature as suited for survival anywhere outside academia as a declawed cat in the middle of a pride of lions.”
    I hope to be as good at description some day. 🙂

    1. My articles are all over the place, in this. I just don’t have time to go de-typo. I MUST learn to have caffeine before writing.

       1. Today I got an email that stated:

          We got an updated yesterday that the issue is been take care.

          I sure would like an updated yesterday. One with more whiskey, less rain and a large box of $100 bills left in my truck.

21. Hillary has two l’s.
    Obviously your misspelling her name is a sign of your cis-gendered hatred of nepotism.
    Carry on.

    1. 😛

    2. However, Hilaria in Portuguese has only one L. Racciiiiis

       1. Is Hilaria a common name in Portugal? I’ve never met anyone with that name from anywhere, come to think of it…
          Btw, since the Oppressives have gone from crying Racist! to crying Rapist!, I figure their next epithet, alphabetically, will be Ravist!
          Those raves are the worst.

          1. I know of a San Hilario, does that count?

          2. You are skipping over Ramist, for those willing to butt heads with them.

             1. No, Ramist refers to all the Dodge lovers.

          3. No. It was common in my grandparents’ day, though.

       2. But she doesn’t come off as hilarious at all.

          1. Quite the opposite, in fact. Ace of Spades has a link in the sidebar about how people are literally running away from her public appearences.

             1. THAT’S IT! Now you’re getting a visit from Captain Literally!

                1. You forget, the word “literally” has recently been redefined to be its own antonym.

                   1. There’s a Captain Literally clip for that too.

                   2. Indeed, and I hate that use. One example from a political news story: “They literally threw him under the bus.” No, no they didn’t.

                      1. Sigh. We can dream, can’t we?

                      2. They did literally abandon our ambassador to die!

                         1. Sadly, that is all too true. I think the Diplomad’s point that the Obama administration isn’t pursuing an American foreign policy is spot on.

                            But that wasn’t the news story in question – I don’t remember what it was exactly, but it was one of those run-of-mill “political underling/associate allowed to take the fall” after something came out or some mis-statement was made.

                         2. depraved indifference if nothing else.

                   3. Didn’t we cover that not long ago? That it has actually been over a hundred years that “literally” as been used to mean, “figuratively”? Or was that something I heard on the radio?

                      1. I think it’s actually being used as an intensifier. This is what happens when you no longer use “indeed.”

                         1. Just one reason English needs an equivalent to the Deutsche doch.

                            That way, we could look forward, in a few decades, to its being horribly misused as well.

22. One of the things that I still find striking about this “conversation” between left and right is the near-total disconnect in language/worldview. They can’t see our POV, and we have to stretch to see theirs. (I wrote an essay on this difference in worldview that I haven’t posted anywhere.)

    In their worldview, only power matters. They don’t understand freedom, or self responsibility, or voluntary exchange. (They talk like they understand voluntary exchange, but they don’t, because in their world “voluntary” exchange isn’t allowed to involve anything so dirty as money.)

    In our world, there are good guys and bad guys (oops, sexist…better people and worse people). The bad ones you don’t do business with; and, if they insist, you resist, by whatever means is necessary.

    *We* treat everyone as individuals.

    Which is what they claim they *want*, but when we do it, we get excoriated. Because *they* only understand power relationships, and power relationships *require* that there be groups (at a minimum, the in group and the out group).

    Many of them want to define any force used against a woman as rape. Some further define any words or glances a woman doesn’t like as rape. Clearly this is an expression of a power conflict between the groups “men” and “women” in the left’s world where only power and groups exist. By reduction, then, “rape culture” is “men have more power than women” (or at least they do for rhetorical purposes in the efforts of the women to acquire more power and reduce that of the men).

    In general, in their rhetoric, I think it is even broader: rape = the exercise of power to which the victim objects.

    Thus, by their own premises, but applying something approaching real logic, rape culture can only exist inside their own leftist culture, because it is only there that *only* power relationships matter, and individuals don’t.

    If they can define “white male” as “racist” in their daily discourse, we should define “the culture of the left” as “rape culture” in *our* daily discourse. Our definition has a lot more basis in reality. If rape is the use of power in place of voluntary exchange, then it is a tautology that “left culture” = “rape culture”.

    1. They first deployed this argument in their assertion that “only white people can be racist.” Failure to counter it merely means it will spread.

       1. There was an article in Slate a few weeks ago that discussed the rape corrolary to the above. Among other tid-bits of information mentioned, the US Department of Justice only started tracking rapes involving males as victims in 2012, and rejected any statistics that included males as victims before that date (and for the curious, prison rapes aren’t included in that number). Additionally, adding “forced to penetrate” to the definition of rape was another recent change at the Federal level.

          It’s the narrative they’re trying to push. Only those hetero males are rapists. Women and gay men never rape! Hopefully the inclusion of the new statistics will provide some useful fire to dispel that narrative.

    2. I wrote an essay on this difference in worldview that I haven’t posted anywhere.

       …think it’d be a good guest post for here? Audience would be interested, at the very least. *grin*

       1. I’d be happy to submit it for consideration if someone contacts me or tells me how to. I just read it over and I mischaracterized it a bit. It’s more about the consequences of the difference in viewpoint than the differences themselves. It’s a reaction to the idea that we should “get the money out of politics”, and talks about the difference between power relationships and market relationships. I think this crowd would appreciate it, but go “well, duh” 🙂

          1. s a hoyt at hotmail dot com

             I’d suggest a title something like “Hoyt Guest Post” or something else searchable.

             And we do pretty good on “Fun, but duh” posts!

    3. It’s not a ‘can’t see our POV’ – it’s that they won’t. They refuse to. There’s no ‘there’ there for them. They’re in one of Larry Niven’s ships in hyperspace, and they’re staring out the port at the Blind Spot – and they’ve intentionally forgotten what it is to SEE.

       “Because *they* only understand power relationships, and power relationships *require* that there be groups (at a minimum, the in group and the out group).”

       Yes. And because they’re on the side of the ‘angels’, they have to force their definitions on everyone else. If they don’t – then they can’t be part of the ‘in group’.

       And they flippin’ can’t STAND that.

23. “Yep, you’ve heard the excuses and elaborations. Crime exists because… oppression. Crime exists because… capitalist societies inherently distort the human nature. Crime exists due to lack of education.”

    In which case, the poor dears can’t help it. Fortunately, we have nice secure institutions for people who can’t help themselves and are a risk to themselves or others. We can even lock ’em before they commit a crime, because it’s their mental state that’s the issue.

    Mind you, those acquitted as not guilty by reason of insanity spend, on average, twice as long in the mental institute as they would have in jail. So what we are facing here is a lot of folks spending a lot of time in cells.

    1. If the poor dears can’t help it, shouldn’t the hatey-hate McHaters be given dispensation for their hating? It isn’t their fault, after all.

       1. Of course they should. They are no more moral agents than rabid dogs are. You don’t blame a rabid dog after all do you?

          1. Oops, I thought that you were referring to the progressives and thugs here, not the good guys. Must have more coffee before posting in future.

       2. Don’t be silly. You are even worse hatey-hate McHater because you ask them to be logical.

24. What annoys me is that the groups where there is something resembling “rape culture” are the ones that the left refuses to ever condemn. Muslim abuse towards women, 14 year old hispanic immigrant girls getting pregnant by 30 year old men, inner-city minorities lured into prostitution; all fo these are examples of actual exploitation and abuse. But no, the real danger is that little Johnny kissed Susie on the playground, or that an 18 year old soldier has a copy of “Girls of Harley-Davidson” up in his barracks room.

    1. There some people who think that prostitution is no more injurious than working at McDonalds and that working in a brothel can be a positive thing. I may be being too harsh, because these were circumstances written about in fanfic.

       1. I don’t think you’re far wrong in that. The concept of prostitution seems to be lionized in some feminist circles – they’re ‘screwing the Man’ while ‘screwing the man’ and getting paid for it.

          It’s… not to my taste, let’s just put it that way. I don’t want to think about the long term physical or psychological effects.

          1. Yup. Virginity and restraint are somehow patriarchal tools to oppress women. Because it’s far better to have sex with numerous partners, pick up an STD and an unwanted pregnancy, and deal with both from your monthly trip to Planned Parenthood.

             Nevermind the mental and physical toll on young women… FORWARD THE REVOLUTION!

             1. *sad* Why do you think so many drink like fish?

                And are willing to believe that it was rape– sex is empowering and “fun,” if you don’t feel good about yourself after randomly sleeping with a guy you’d never seen before, clearly there was something wrong, because you did what you “should.”

             2. Incidentally, I think teaching boys that they MUST have sex and won’t be touched by having dozens of “encounters” damages them, too. They don’t form as strong of chemical bonds, but that’s NOT saying they don’t form bonds.

                1. I agree completely. It’s why I don’t laugh off female teachers sleeping with teenaged boys as harmless. It’s not.

          2. Some seem to handle doing sex work well enough, others less so. As far as I’m concerned adults who have all their faculties intact should have the right to get their money (or be customers) that way if they wish. But as I prefer to leave the sex behind the closed door in fiction I’d also prefer a society which keeps all kinds of sex work legal but tastefully hidden – it’s there, it’s legal for consenting adults, but those people who want it need to seek it out. Not something which gets regularly pushed into your face whether you want to or not.

       2. Au contraire, Miss Emily. Working at the Evil Multinational McCorporation of Evil™ is a far worse thing than being an Enlightened but Oppressed Sex Worker™.

          1. But they’ll swallow their indignation if you give them $15/hr to work there.

             1. I know that I’m missing something here but, why is the popularity in fanfic of prostitution? Why is that considered the only method of generating income? Also why is drug taking considered to easy to stop and with out lasting injury? Cocaine not marijuana.

                1. I don’t read enough fanfic to know, but maybe that’s the only way the fan writers know to get laid? Or maybe they believe in the simplistic adage “Prostitution if the combination of Sex and Capitalism, to which are you opposed?”

                   1. Long-term fanfic reader and occasional writer here. I think it’s tied into the “good girls don’t” trope…good girls CAN if circumstances force them into it, especially if the circumstances both point up their irresistible beauty and force them into !!!ANGST!!! about same. It’s a hard combination for less-experienced writers to resist. 🙂

          2. ha? Can one really believe this? Maybe I’m prim but how can absent truly horrible circumstances can one believe prostitution is anything but injurious to the prostitute.

             1. Because it’s “just sex.” It’s like tennis, but more pleasant.

                And no-strings sex is “empowering.”

                Nonsense to me, too.

    2. Planned Parenthood makes a lot of money off of lonely, fatherless teen girls who are bounced from 30 year old male to 30 year old male looking for “love.”

       We had a former cop talk to a class once, and somehow it came around to what the most common accidents he saw where teens were killed– it wasn’t a teen driver, it was the much older “boyfriend” that was high or drunk with his usually-too-young-to-drive “girlfriend” in the car.

       1. Legalizing abortion arguably made it easier for molesters, rapists, and pimps, since clinics are willing to look the other way when some 14 year old comes in with her 30 year old “boyfriend”.

          1. Willing, heck, they’ve been caught on tape in a large number of places actually coaching victims on what to say, and there is at least one case on-going where a girl begged for help because she was being raped by… stepfather, may have been father… and they ignored her, and did several (forced) abortions.

             1. Yup. “Safe, legal, and rare”… isn’t. Not by a large margin.

                I’ll admit that it’s part of the reason that I don’t buy the libertarian claim about legalization of drugs. The same claims were made about legalizing abortion, and all that happened is what we see now.

                1. But but… We’ll do it right this time!!!! [Sarcastic Grin]

                   1. Yup. The theory is sound, it’s the world that is the problem.

                   2. I gather the Gosnell clinic understood the ” … and rare” to mean “not well-done.”

                2. I see a fundamental difference between drugs and abortion. Most of the harm from drugs stems from their illegality (the War on Some Drugs leading to the same problems as Prohibition). If people want to destroy *themselves*, well, it’s supposed to be a free country. Abortion, on the other hand, requires the death of an innocent human being. Equating the two as “control over one’s own body” is inherently dishonest.

                   If I win the Lottery or the PCH sweepstakes, I’m going to fund research into a safe technology for transferring concepti into a Uterine Replicator. Then women can terminate their pregnancies to their hearts’ content, and their children will survive the experience. Of course the dams will be on the hook for the expenses, plus child support to the sires, but hey, “if it saves just one life”, right?:-).

                   1. Then women can terminate their pregnancies to their hearts’ content, and their children will survive the experience.

                      It’s already been established that “ending the pregnancy” is not the goal; “not having a living child” is.

                      Some of the examples are partial birth abortion, attempts to adopt at birth if the mother didn’t already want it and refusal of early induction. The baby is proof that can’t be denied; it must be removed.

                      **********

                      I don’t agree that most of the harm from drugs is due to it being fought, but do agree that abortion is a heck of a lot more simple and obvious.

                      1. Sure, but the arguments for abortion on demand are a lot harder to sustain if you can still get them without killing the child. Up until now it’s been an either/or proposition, and the courts have sided with the women, as have enough voters to keep abortion legal. Make it possible for women to have their cake and eat it too, and you’ll find a lot of “I don’t like it but I respect the woman’s right to control her body” crowd landing heavily on the “she still gets to control her body, but that’s no excuse to unnecessarily kill an innocent child” side of the debate.

                         And I will laugh and laugh and laugh…

                         1. I’d like to believe you’re right, but the fact that Obama’s “if you were trying to abort the baby and he survives, you can kill him” vote did not utterly destroy any future public appearance– let alone public office– argues that you’re not correct.

                      2. I have read with my own eyes a discussion between a woman who managed to admit that if the baby can be removed alive with no more ado than an abortion, she wouldn’t have a right to one, and a woman who firmly declared that since either one was on her body, she could withhold consent unless they agreed to kill the baby in process. The first one had a really hard time understanding she meant it.

                         1. “Withhold consent”? So “if you don’t agree to kill this child then I’m just going to go through with the pregnancy!”?

                            That doesn’t sound well thought-out…

                            1. they generally think they have a positive right to an abortion. I have read with my own eyes people complaining about a hospital where they tried to make the doctors perform an abortion — telling them they couldn’t work there if they didn’t resulted in their resigning — and declaring that their jobs meant they HAD to perform abortions.

          2. that’s why pro-abortion groups have gotten so much funding from Playboy from their very beginnings.

    3. Purely for purposes of educating myself in order to stop rape culture, could you tell this mid-30’s Soldier where I can get a copy of this “Girls of Harley-Davidson”? 😉

       1. Just do a full health and welfare inspection. I’m sure you’ll find a copy. Plus, you’ll get to flip bunks!

    4. “Muslim abuse towards women, 14 year old hispanic immigrant girls getting pregnant by 30 year old men, inner-city minorities lured into prostitution; all fo these are examples of actual exploitation and abuse. But no, the real danger is that little Johnny kissed Susie on the playground, or that an 18 year old soldier has a copy of “Girls of Harley-Davidson” up in his barracks room.”

       Note also which gun owners they target, in law and rhetoric. It’s not the gang-bangers who spray a funeral, or shoot each other over who “owns” a corner, or murder someone for not showing enough “respect”. It’s not the people who give Chicago a Sandy Hook every month.

       It’s the suburban and rural, law-abiding, middle-class or poorer guy who hunts, shoots recreationally, or just wants the option of having something at hand for defense while the police try to get there. And if you listen to the anti-gun people long enough, you’ll find them bragging about this.

       The Chicago PD announced they’re partnering with the FBI to root out the “real source” of the guns in Chicago. The Three Percenters

25. How does the left explain Sociopaths? I read somewhere that 1 in 24 people are Sociopaths. These are people who have NO conscience and are pretty much capable of anything. From what I gather, not all Sociopaths are a product of environment, so how do you deal with the ones that are honestly born that way? You can’t just give the world a coke and teach them to sing in perfect harmony if 1 in 24 aren’t going to cooperate. Ever.

    So how do they plan on dealing with all Sociopaths, now and forever?

    1. That’s what neuropsychology is for, you see. There’s a chemical or electrical McGuffin somewhere that as soon as it is found, Those Who Know can use to 1) identify anyone who might possible have a brain that looks sociopathic on MRI and 2) give them something to fix/prevent the behavior (aka bad thoughts). That there are a decent number of people who know that they’ve got slightly warped wiring and work around it or otherwise “choose to use their powers for good,” is irrelevant.

       1. That there are a decent number of people who know that they’ve got slightly warped wiring and work around it or otherwise “choose to use their powers for good,” is irrelevant.

          I’m sure it’ll count as othering people in that world but I’ve wondered (and speculated to others in that world) if S&M, especially the formal S&M community that tries to identify predators (although less successfully post internet), isn’t precisely one of those work arounds for warped wiring, especially warped wiring for sexual violence (both wanting to do it and wanting to have it done to you…which are often the same…there is no sadist like a hard core masochist).

          1. I’d suspect it is, at least in the healthier end of the S&M spectrum.

          2. A friend who used to be part of the leather community talks about that. In the old days you started out at the bottom and had to work your way up through various roles. It weeded out a lot of the predators who didn’t like being on the receiving end and ensured that the people in dominant roles understood what their partners were going through.

             1. Good grief! Whatever happened to sex just being fun? 😀

                1. Still is. Some people just need a little… extra.

                   And there’s nothing wrong with a girl who likes to be spanked hard until she’s got a bruise on her bottom the next day. 😀

                   1. Yes, there is.

                2. Hence my conjecture that for some it serves as a self-management for issues that might otherwise express themselves in a more anti-social way.

       2. Myself and several of the people I went to college fall into that “slightly warped” but trying to do good category. Of course we’re all a bunch of greedy capitalists who went to a college where you’d hear things like “Earth First! We’ll mine the other planets later!” so the Left hates our kind.

          I almost said “At some point, the left has to realize that there are some people they’re never going to reach” but that is like saying “At some point the left is going to realize that Marx was wrong.”

          1. Anybody who isn’t a useful idiot already knows that. That’s why they invented gulags.

          2. Hey, what if some catastrophe happens which makes us lose all advanced tech but at least some of humanity survives on Earth? What if our descendants end in that scenario and get stuck in the dark ages permanently because there no longer are easy to get resources you could rebuilt a technological society on left?

             Although, of course, even if we got all the Earth resources in circulation I suppose there might be lots of easy to recycle crap around in that scenario. So maybe it’s a baseless worry. Would still be better to add as much off planet stuff to the crap as possible as soon as possible. Just in case. 🙂

             1. Okay, these are not researched, but just crap off the top of my head that might justify this scenario.

                Could use a space borne bacteria that systemically eats all metal that doesn’t react to oxygen. Not sure on the science, but that should leave us copper and iron, but kill off a lot of our more “rare earth” stuff i think.

                Or, could use an oppressive outside influence that actively destroys any technology more complicated than a pulley and lever. “alien invaders” n such.

                Tech evolved so much it became invisible so because no new technology was needed mankind devolved and no longer knows how to make technology, but the technology is so self sufficient they don’t need to improve.

                Or a voluntary separation from technology because technology is evil because…. umm racist?

                😀

                1. IMO “voluntary separation from technology” isn’t likely to be successful. There’d be people who disagreed with the “group’s decision”. The fun part would be if the majority did discard their high-tech (including weapons), how would they stop the people who secretly kept their high-tech (including weapons). [Very Big Evil Grin]

                   1. Ah yes. The “voluntary abandonment of technology” bit, aka the main reason I HATED the end of the BSG reboot.

                      “Hey, we just found this pristine planet, and our ship is jacked, so we’re going to just head on down to this place with no technology / civilization / etc., and abandon things like… indoor plumbing, antibiotics, and the ability to fly into space, and become dirt farmers! Yaaaaaay!”

                      PFUI!

                      1. Cut their cell service for a day and see how they feel about “voluntary abandonment of technology.”

                      2. As I recall, that’s what the Graysons in the Honorverse set out to do until they realized that “pristine” and “suitable for humans” isn’t the same thing.

                         1. IIRC the Grayson had planned on setting up low-tech farms and so forth even before they left Earth.

                            Apparently, the morons of that “reboot” just walked out of their shuttles without planning on how they’d survive without technology.

                   2. Shockwave Rider, Paid avoidance zones.

                2. Leo Frankowski’s ‘Copernick’s Rebellion’ – a gene-mod wizard decides to impose his idea of a ‘sustainable society’ on the world.

                   Hmm. Not available in paperback on Amazon. Maybe I’ll put my copy up for an insane price, see if anyone bites.

                   1. Oops. Found it. Never mind… 😦

                      1. *evil villain voice*
                         “I’ll have wealth beyond my wildest…!”

                         “Oops. Nevermind.”

                         1. Awesome

                            1. 🙂

       3. My favorite character in Drake’s RCN series (Tovera) is a sociopath, and manages to work around it quite well. Most sociopaths aren’t as far to that end of the spectrum as she is, but… this is what appropriate punishments for crimes are designed for. People that are good and know right and wrong aren’t constantly going around committing crimes*, but many sociopaths are perfectly reasoning individuals, who are perfectly capable of doing a cost/value analysis and acting accordingly. Thus if the punishment is severe enough (and there is a reasonable chance of them getting caught) they won’t commit the crime.

          *For these purposes I am using ‘crimes’ to specifically describe evil acts committed against others, things like exceeding the speed limit, cheating on your taxes, etc. are not sociopathic activities.

          1. Actually, many will. This is because not only lack of empathy but impulsiveness is a trait of psychopaths.

             One scientist did a test where he measured whether the inmates were nervous by sweat and other skin reactions. Wired them up and told them they would get a painful shock — then, that they would get another. Normal inmates were nervous before the first and still more nervous before the second. Sociopaths? Not at all. Either time — so they knew it was coming and still were not nervous.

             Mind you, they were the ones in prison.

             1. Note I said sociopath, not psychopath, big difference. Impulsiveness is a BIG trait of psychopaths, not so much of sociopaths.

                You do have a good point about those being tested being in prison, it would tend to skew the results to show the testees were more likely to commit crimes, wouldn’t it? 🙂

          2. People that are good and know right and wrong aren’t constantly going around committing crimes*, but many sociopaths are perfectly reasoning individuals, who are perfectly capable of doing a cost/value analysis and acting accordingly. Thus if the punishment is severe enough (and there is a reasonable chance of them getting caught) they won’t commit the crime.
             

             *nod*

             Folks are unlikely to deliberately choose to do stuff they think is wrong– that’s why “all men” don’t have to be taught not to rape, and why teaching rapists not to rape won’t work. Unless you can actually change their view on if it’s right or wrong, they’re going to do it if they believe they can get away with it.

             1. What’s the first thing someone does when they’re justifying something?

                “Well, it’s not wrong when I did it, because…..”

             2. If they get that far. In Theodore Dalrymple’s accounts of criminals, they merely talk about the practical side of things without mentioning the moral when it pertains to them.

             3. You’re mixing your “knowing”.

                People with neurotypical brains are wired for right and wrong, they have, as an analogy “hardware” that handles these problems, and some conditions (and training) can break it, but it’s more like “feeling” than “knowing”.

                Psychopaths don’t have this hardware (again analogy) and they handle right and wrong the way most people handle concepts like the big bang–intellectually, if at all.

                If I were to execute the “perfect” murder where there was zero chance of me getting caught I’d still have emotional problems with it, and might even have some physical manifestations. A sociopath would not. We would both “know” it was an act society put in the “immoral” category, but he might not really get why.

                1. Same thing, different saying.

          3. Speaking of sociopaths…
             Shortly after my combat tour in Afghanistan, I was at a Yellow Ribbon event (think of a weekend-long stay with your spouse at a three-star hotel where you are subjected to Death by PowerPoint for the whole weekend telling you that your spouse is potentially suicidal, and here’s how you can tell!). During one session, the moderator gave us a personality test. The test divided you up into one of four color groups:
             Yellow: the partier types.
             Gold: the adventurer/adrenaline junkie types.
             Blue: the social-networker/emotional types.
             Green: the logical/reasoning types.
             The moderator had us take the test and then told us about each type. A couple of tidbits: Greens tend to marry blues because opposites attract. Greens aren’t motivated by rewards, social belonging, etc. They’re simply motivated by being left the hell alone to do their work and being able to organize the world around them. Whereas blues tend to commit crimes of passion, golds tend to commit outrageous over-the-top crimes, yellows tend to do hyper-impulsive, alcohol-influenced crimes, the greens are by far the most dangerous, because they don’t do anything without a reason. Once they feel they have a reason to kill, they’re very methodical and rational and plan everything out, so they tend to get away with it until they’ve become very dangerous serial killers with high body counts. Luckily, the greens only make up about 2% of the population, and the moderator has done this presentation dozens of times and never seen more than two or three greens in a room, ha ha, isn’t that funny?

             At this point the moderator says, OK, everyone, stand up and go to your color groups, blue in this corner, yellow in this one, etc…

             3/4 of my Company stood up and went to the green corner and their wives all went to the blue corner. The moderator’s jaw hit the floor.

             See, us sociopaths are useful, we just have to find the right MOS. 😀

             I just wish I could remember the name of that test. It’s always a fun story to tell.

             1. That’s a surprisingly discriminating test!?

                True though, I am reminded of the tale of a group long ago that engaged in high risk operations in central Europe. Lots of what I suppose were Golds? – somewhat nasty overbearing pick a fight types, bar room brawlers, what some might have called folks with nothing to prove and willing to prove it at the drop of a hat. A smaller proportion of mostly southern, mostly family men who were invariably soft spoken, kind, polite and helpful. The folks I suppose to be Golds would respect lines drawn when the Jacksonian tradition surfaced in the family men.

                On the general issue of lying as inducement in this thread’s context I’d hate to require consideration as proof of a contract (agreement) for sex and absent a showing of consideration (pun?) contract law has tended to avoid he said/she said issues as non judiciable.

                Further I’m pretty sure I wasn’t completely honest with my wife nor she with me but I think we’d join against any outsider who sought to enforce a social penalty for misleading remarks inside the family.

                In a sense I’m on a third side of the discussion here. One side wants to reeducate some or all men Clockwork Orange style (C.S. Lewis got into some of the same ideas in That Hideous Strength and the whole trilogy) another side seemingly wants to reeducate some but not all men and some women not Dirty Harry style but Magnum Force.

                Myself I suppose I’d say there are many things that happen in private that shouldn’t but it has to be pretty egregious before I’d use my own gun to enforce my own ideas of behavior I didn’t witness. And notice the need to see the whole thing. A common training exercise is to open a scenario in medias res and so fool the trainee into doing the wrong thing.

                And for the folks who mentioned having trouble manipulating her own Glocks take a look at fighting like a corneredcat.com on the web – ESR even had some nice things to say about applying the suggestions to his condition.

    2. “From what I gather, not all Sociopaths are a product of environment, so how do you deal with the ones that are honestly born that way?”

       Elect them President, obviously.

    3. I gather that the Leftist brand of ideology is very fond of a technique known as denial for such problems. That, and blaming the viewpoints of conservatives — and they are no longer willing to allow a minority (no matter how large) to hold viewpoints which terrorize the majority (no matter how much smaller than the minority that majority may be.)

       When you look at the range of things that “terrorize” the self-identified majority …

    4. Depends heavily on who is defining “psychopath.”

       There are some psychologists who are mangling it all to heck and they get to decide if someone is able to feel guilt or not. “Shockingly,” if you’re any kind of a businessman, you’re a psychopath.

    5. On the more realistic end of the sociopathy thing, there was an interesting article not too long ago about a guy who suddenly discovered that he was a sociopath. He’d been doing some MRIs for research purposes, and suddenly noticed that one of the MRIs for the control group had all of the telltale indications of a sociopath. Since his control group was made up of family members, he looked up who the MRI belonged to… and found out it was his own. He checked with the people that he regularly associated with, and they confirmed that yes, he probably was a sociopath.

       That didn’t mean that his life didn’t turn out well, though. He apparently has good relations with his siblings (he has at least a brother). He’s apparently happily married. Presumably he’s got a decent working relationship with his co-workers if he can ask them about his own sociopathy. So despite his… unique outlook… he’s been able to form and maintain strong, largely positive, relationships with the people in his life.

       1. If I’m remembering right, his brother basically said “you’re an ass that doesn’t tell people really freaking important stuff, like that time you took me hiking in a place that was having a deadly disease outbreak.”

          1. Yup, that was the one.

             😛

       2. He tells this story a few different ways…

    6. I read somewhere that 1 in 24 people are Sociopaths.

       I have a hard time believing that the number would be that high — over 4% of the worldwide population — unless a pretty broad definition of sociopathy was being used. I could buy 1 in 240, but not 1 in 24 unless I see some pretty good evidence. Any memory of where you read that so I could check on it for myself?

       1. I vaguely remember something similar, but going back through the stuff I was reading at the time all I can find is mentions of a 4% estimate for psychopathy and antisocial disorders. That’s stories about a study that said 24-50% of folks in jail fall in that definition, and I can easily see someone dropping that antisocial disorder part either in their memory (as I seem to) or from reporting.

          It’s the kind of thing that gets put in blurbs, for sure!

          There’s an “as many as 1% of the population” estimate from the same guy who did a book on how surgeons, CEOs and…can’t remember… attract psychopaths, while teacher, nurse and accountant do not. (….pause to think of some of the teachers you’ve known….)

          http://www.news.wisc.edu/12688

          I’m not sure if the link is the same study as at top, but it does say:
          Scientists estimate that 15-25 percent of men and 7-15 percent of women in U.S. prisons display psychopathic behaviors. The condition, however, is hardly restricted to the prison system. Newman estimates that up to 1 percent of the general population could be described as psychopathic. Surprisingly, many who fall into that bracket might lead perfectly conventional lives as doctors, scientists and company CEOs.

          1. For some purposes I could feel comfortable with 1:24 – there’s been at least one totally disruptive type in most every haphazardly selected class room I’ve been in. That’s a loose definition of course and not an operational definition for pre-criminal or thought crime.

             1. I see no reason to give the presumption of bad brain chemistry as a reason for disruptive jerks.

                *grin*

                Seriously, though, a lot of those kind recover– with the right pressure. They just don’t see what they’re doing as any kind of harm to anyone and sometimes get indignant because you are criticizing them “livening things up.”

             2. It’s just that some days it feels like 24:24. Especially when they feed off of each other and start acting like the ping-pong balls and mousetraps I used to use to demonstrate uncontrolled nuclear fission. Not that I have any specific group of students that come to mind, of course.

                1. Not that I have any specific group of students that come to mind, of course.

                   Now you have me wondering about the difference between small children and psychopaths.

                   I can still remember having to explain to the Duchess that (something or other) hurt. She knew what hurt was, it just never occurred to her that what she was doing would cause it in someone else.

       2. Well I thought the number sounded low, so yeah, we’re probably using different definitions of sociopath.

26. teach rapists not to rape, eh?

    Yeah, this just goes back to their central belief that you can impose approved behavior on others, and they’ll automatically comply. You know, the same way they’re so focused on “the narrative”, because if they push the message hard enough, we’ll all somehow believe and respond as they approve. Because when it’s all about “teaching”, it’s all about imposing correct think from above.

    You can’t “teach” a person into doing something they don’t believe in, care about, or see any benefit from – whether it’s “teaching” feminists not to be misandrists, “teaching” politicians not to be corrupt, or “teaching” rapists not to rape…

    Now, if they admitted that the party you’re trying to “teach” has the power to not agree and not comply, and used the word “convince” instead? We’d be on board. I’m all for convincing rapists not to rape. Shoot enough of them, and the survivors will think long and hard about whether or not it’s worth the risk.

27. Sartre said that the Christian doctrine of the Fall was the only one he believed in because it’s so self-evident.

    But those who believe that utopia is just around the corner are always confounded when human fallenness inevitably throws a wrench into their schemes.

    Since the Left’s competing doctrine of human malleability cannot acknowledge, much less address, the real problem, they initiate purges to cull those whom they blame for holding back progress.

    1. But those who believe that utopia is just around the corner are always confounded when human fallenness inevitably throws a wrench into their schemes.

       The grand irony is in Scalzi’s Old Man’s War this precise idea was held against a character’s past and eventually in the time of the novel, the latter with very deadly effect.

       1. I’m reading Old Man’s War right now.

    2. If Utopia is possible, the reason why it is not here must be something that can be changed, which points to free will.

       1. Could you expand on that? I didn’t quite grasp it.

          1. Not positive about what Mary means but her mention of “Free Will” IMO relates to some problems with Utopian Societies.

             IMO Utopian societies depends on everybody “thinking the same”/”having the same beliefs”. Since there are always people thinking the “wrong things” or having the “wrong beliefs”, to build a utopia likely involves mind control thus negating Free Will.

             Also, since humans are “very good” at not living up to our beliefs, for a utopia to exist people have to “be made” to follow the proper actions thus again negating Free Will.

             1. Oh, that makes sense. Thank you for the explanation.

          2. Haters must be stopping it. This is because haters have free will and so could STOP hating it, and stopping it.

             After all, anything else might not be remediable.

28. This could fit anyplace but here is current. For an academic discussion of current publishing might see: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/amazon-vs-hachette-battle-future-publishing/

    On the general subject of the knowledge base chez Scalzi he got at least one simple thing very wrong in one of his early quasi-military SF successes leading to some doubt about the rest of his knowledge base.

    (but then again speaking of getting things wrong I’ve never understood why Tiger by the Tail ever saw the light of day – anybody?).

    I’d think Scalzi to have some appreciation of human evil in that all his villains in books like Little Brother seem to be evil incarnate in their motivation being nasty for the fun of it – at least never shown as say trying desperately to hold a civil society together.

    Notice that assuming rape be defined to include unwanted object penetration castration has not been shown to preclude future rape. Few other things have.

    In my own observation deterrence pretty much does not work – see e.g. the pickpockets working the crowds where pickpockets were hanged or ask Baslim’s career advice. Another of the solutions Mencken was referring to.

    I used to know a child rapist – AFAIK he’s still staying at the cross-bar motel – who really didn’t want to but IMHO really couldn’t help himself – an Eagle Scout and all the rest of it and his Bishop told him in effect that cold showers worked – that’s the level of expertise I see expressed in the community. As someone once said and others have repeated since – pretty to think so

    1. If you are talking about the last Kildar book, IIRC, on the bar it was said that the need for killing or changing the book was discovered too late for anything to be done. Except for trying to warn people that the book had issues.

29. Two thoughts:

    1) That entire Correia vs. Scalzi needed a trigger warning.

    WHOA! Not *that* kind of trigger warning, the kind that warns your blood pressure will go up and you’ll probably see red, or be cold or whatever your rage keyword is by the time you’ve reached the ten minute mark of the conversations.

    Here in the past couple of weeks, the Rape topic has become pandemic on several media fronts. Normally I go read, to see if the idiots in the conversations have anything new that I need to be thinking on counters for.
    Yeah, nope. They’ve not had anything new in almost… decades maybe?

    Here anymore all it does is make me furious, so I’ve had to stay away from the stuff as much as possible. When I get angry, my coping mechanisms start failing and my day goes to dookey. 😦

    2) “Even a man looking at you is rape.”

    Er… huh? I can’t comprehend why a woman…er, GIRL, would think this is even possible. What these idjit females, psychics?

    It almost seems like it’s a backlash.
    Against realizing that men can seduce women, and that there are a lot of women who enjoy it and that there is actually nothing wrong with it
    OR
    that whole sleep with whoever you want stuff that’s been going on as some kind of weird convoluted purity/anti-sex movement…

    1. Regarding your seduction point:

       This is one of the things that worries me, we’re teaching women that they have no need to be definitive in their decisions or have clarity, they can reassess tommorow. And we’re teaching young men that making your case to the coy girl was probably rape (and they can’t know for sure until she decides.)

       Which is why Hines throwing out a BS statistic saying 20% of college men admit to rape infuriates me. Guy answers a question like “have you ever talked a woman into sex” and the survey labels him an admitted rapist, regardless of the woman’s take on the event. Her actions matter.

       I respect women enough to know they can decide what they want and when. I don’t need to redefine their experiences for them.

       1. I respect women enough to know they can decide what they want and when. I don’t need to redefine their experiences for them.

          In theory I agree but I don’t want my nephews to think that way. If they think of women as competent, thinking beings who can make their own choices and own the consequences they’ll risk finding themselves in a world of hurt.

          Men more and more must treat women as aspies with the mental and emotional maturity of a 5 year old and the legal status of the mentally disabled. Men have to do this to protect themselves regardless of what they want to do or how women present themselves.

          The sad thing is a small subset of women (and men) with disproportionate power have created this. In the end it is the majority of women who suffer the most.

          1. As hideously stupid as I think CA’s proposed law about “enthusiastic consent” is, if college kids really do have to have signed consent forms with initials showing that all parties really, really wanted to get to each base, it will save a lot of guys a lot of trouble. Because it is in writing, on a legal document, and no one can say they didn’t understand what they were getting into. (I know, the die-hards will try, but still.) And it may encourage chastity, because the paperwork will be such a pain. Especially since the next thing will be a college office where you have to leave copies of the paperwork, in case there’s ever a question.

             1. Nyahhh — just video the whole thing to document the interaction. That way if she doesn’t actively communicate her refusal he has supporting evidence of consent. He could even put it up on the internet as protection of post-facto condemnation.

                1. That is an *entirely* different set of paperwork here in California.

                   *ducks*

                2. Do that in LA, and you’ll probably be violating quite a few of the city health codes since that “protective health law” for porn workers was passed a couple of years ago.

                   😛

                   1. End result: yet another part of the film industry leaves L.A.

                3. This already happens with professional athletes. Video recordings or a couple members of the entourage quietly sitting in a corner of the room. They learned the lesson of Kobe Bryant…

                   1. Kanye West tried that, and look at how it turned out for him.

             2. Any signed consent would be worthless since they’ll just find a way to claim that she was coerced into signing it. Or she was too drunk to consent. Or she consented but then changed her mind. etc. etc. etc.

                1. Or he forged it.

                   1. That’s why video of the consent form being filled out is the essential part.

                      1. So you just had to forge 2 things, you h8ter…./sarc

       2. I’m probably more an odd in that area then, as I was usually very clear on what my intentions were with a male back before the fiance happened.

          I actually enjoyed the work a guy would put into it. Course…. I could be confusing seduction efforts with courting efforts (and yes I’ll admit to that, along with depending on the guy… it’s hard to tell which is which….. )

          1. I want to say being very clear is not Odd, it’s reasonable and rational. But I fear the Odds may be the bulk of the dwindling minority of reasonable and rational people.

             But I’m cynical today.

    2. Primus: back when the Feminists were earning the Feminazis title there were strong arguments that any male/female intercourse was rape. This has subsided to background noise but remains the chocolate center of their thin candy shell. It has not been that long since we here ridicules discussed a viewpoint holding that all “PIV” relations equaled rape.

       Secondus: Do NOT investigate the phrase “male gaze” — it will cause you to despair for our civilization.

       1. Despair more so than I do already?

          Honestly not up to that challenge.

       2. Does Thousand Yard Stare count as “male gaze”? If so, I’m in trouble. 😀

       3. Oh, that “background noise” has been at a dull roar for quite some time. It hasn’t gone away or grown less, you’ve just gotten more used to it (or don’t wander into the swamps where it dominates).
          Stacy McCain has been making a great deal of hay with proponents of the meme for quite some time.

30. comment to follow

31. A huge part of the problem in this conversation about teaching people not to rape v.s. shooting rapists in the face a few times ’cause boolits are cheap and we’re generous is entirely semantic.

    There are 2 or 3 discernable places on the continuum from “4 strangers dragged me into an alley, beat me and sodomized me” to “Well, we DID hook up, but he wasn’t nearly as cute the next morning, and I feel bad about it, so it’s rape”.

    We, and the glittering hoo-has aren’t drawing the line in the same place.

    Rape, to those of us on the “shoot them in the face” side involves force, the threat of force, or surreptitiously delivered drugs to be considered “Rape”. We might also be willing to concede that a significant difference in capacity (for instance a completely sober person and one at or near the point of being passed out) is rape.

    We’re pretty certain that two college students drinking heavily at a party/bar/whatever and hooking up is either not rape, or is two people raping each other.

    I can teach my son (had I one) to respect women, to not initiate *any* violence against women (as I was taught). I could raise him such that he knew that taking advantage of a woman significantly drunker than he was wrong.

    But the whiners are going even further than that, and putting the line of “rape” so far out that it’s basically “any thing vaguely sexually related that a woman decides AT ANY POINT IN TIME is rape”. This is problematic for lots of reasons, but you *can* teach young men that certain actions will be regarded as, and prosecuted as rape, and that their best bet is to simply avoid all intercourse until they have a ring and a date.

    The other side of hte problem is that there are an increasingly large number of women who are pushing the idea that many/most women WANT to have sex, and that it’s just societal approbation that prevents it. This, and sites like (NSFW) “dare dorm” indicate to young men that many/most women are willing to have promiscuous sex. Add alcohol and you have a LOT of regretted sex.

    Our culture and our genetics program us to look for certain things in sexual partners. When you present those things, you’re going to draw in other people looking for partners. When you dress certain ways, and act certain ways you’re sending signals that other people are going to pick up. You certain can be upset as all get out that someone you’re not interested in will see those signals, but you have only yourself to blame. This does not give the “wrong” people a right or even an excuse to engage in violence, but frankly if someone indicates a willingness to buy what you’re selling it’s not their fault your advertising was misdirected.

    So yeah, it is possible to teach boys not to “rape” for values of “rape” that include seduction, romance, and mixed signals by drunks.

    1. Well said. You brought up what I was trying to get at in a much more straightforward and plainspoken manner.

    2. Rape, to those of us on the “shoot them in the face” side involves force, the threat of force, or surreptitiously delivered drugs to be considered “Rape”.

       I’ve heard a definition that’s something like “knowingly bypassing consent.”
       Covers drugs, brute force and threats to life or loved ones.

       1. And can also cover “deliberate disregard of withdrawal of consent during sexual activity”. Whether it also covers “refusal to treat expression of uncertainty as de facto withdrawal of consent” is another question.

          The problem is that the SJ’ers want to expand it to cover not only “fraudulently obtaining consent via deceptive persuasion, misrepresentation or manipulation” (which is thoroughly reprehensible behaviour but cannot, I think, be called criminal rape) but to “failure to perceive inadequately enthusiastic consent and respect it as non-consent” as well as “failure to predict post-activity regret sufficiently strong as to amount to a desire to retroactively withdraw consent”.

          1. I’d say lying to get someone to sleep with you is, in fact, rape. It requires recognizing that they would not agree to sleep with you if they knew the facts.

             That said, it would have to be EXPLICIT lying, not “your clothes are expensive so I thought I’d be able to milk you for gifts.”

             A traditional example is how King Arthur was conceived by rape– his father misrepresented himself as the lady’s husband.

             1. “I’d say lying to get someone to sleep with you is, in fact, rape. It requires recognizing that they would not agree to sleep with you if they knew the facts.”

                As you say, I think it would have to depend on the nature and scope of the lie. Promising to marry someone and then bailing on them, or pretending you were somebody else who was already sexually intimate with the person, would definitely count. Passing yourself off as much richer than you are, or having a much more interesting job or knowing somebody famous, or promising to take someone to some toney vacation spot or do them professional favours… again, it’s reprehensible, but I find it very hard to call it “rape” when the sexual interest it’s exploiting is by definition responding to material factors and not personal ones. Somebody trying to sleep their way to the top or into the high life shouldn’t get to complain if they pick the wrong person to exploit.

                (You’ve heard the old joke, of course: “Ever hear the one about the [Newfie] movie starlet? [Substitute whichever group you want to malign.] She was so dumb that to get ahead, she slept with the writer.“)

                1. “Waittaminnit! You believed me when I said I’d call you in the morning???”

                   Would wearing a corset and push-up bra sufficiently constitute misrepresentation as to make it rape? Howabout make-up?

                   As with so many things sexual, we face a slippery slope.

                   1. “Would wearing a corset and push-up bra sufficiently constitute misrepresentation…? How about make-up?”

                      Problem is, like the sock down the jeans, that’s the kind of misrepresentation that becomes obvious before the sex.

                      Should there be a crime called “conspiracy to seduce under false pretenses”?

                   2. Would wearing a corset and push-up bra sufficiently constitute misrepresentation as to make it rape? Howabout make-up?

                      Parody only works if it hasn’t already been seriously proposed… in a couple of different areas there have been guys claiming that Spanx (lady’s form wear) is “false advertising.”

                      Ditto guys who apparently did not know that birth control can fail, and object to the reproductive act fulfilling its intended purpose. Apparently the statistical probability of “one in ten chance of failure” doesn’t get through, and they can’t be bothered to take responsibility for prevention themselves. (pill and shot typical use failure rate, CDC’s birth control site)

                      1. So if she’s not actually ON birth control, or says “I’m infertile”, then it’s rape?

                2. Problem being that I’ve seen way too many men justify abuse of others– not specifically sexual, usually– because “they were dumb enough to believe it.” (Those sexual abuse ones were consistently that the female involved believed them when told “I love you.” No, I didn’t kill them, and I kinda regret it.)

                   Stupidity does not excuse abuse.

                   With the “material gain”– short jump from “sleep with me and I’ll help you” to “don’t sleep with me, and I’ll hurt you.” Especially if it’s indirect pressure.

                   1. I have some recollection of laws regarding the material gain factor having a specific form of being coerced for sex. It falls under the ‘abuse of power’ in certain specific circumstances, or in some others, blackmail rape.

                      It’s outlined though in a truly specific way. But my blood pressure meds are kicking in and I’m feeling rather sleepy, so I’m having problems staying awake right now…

                   2. “Stupidity does not excuse abuse.”

                      Sex between consenting adults is not abuse, even if the consent was fraudulently obtained.

                      I had an instructor in a completely different area of life explain that “To the beginner it’s always/never. To the intermediate it’s sometimes/maybe. To the expert it’s always “it depends”.

                      If you’re stupid you adopt the “always/never” approach. You *never* sleep with anyone until *at minimum* you have a ring and a date. The ring is your payment if he backs out.

                      Those notion of “it’s rape if he lied” is more bullshit that women need to be protected from men. You want to go down that road, be careful where it leads. After all, stupid women should have to get authorization from their custodial male before buying or selling a car…

                      1. Sex between consenting adults is not abuse, even if the consent was fraudulently obtained.

                         If it’s fraudulently obtained, it’s not consenting.

                         1. If a woman, suspecting a man wouldn’t go to bed with her if he thought her “loose” understated the number of her prior lovers, does that constitute fraudulently obtained consent?

                            If she gets her mother and sister to prepare a dinner for her beau (or orders in take-out) yet presents it as her own cooking in order to make herself a more attractive partner, is that fraud?

                            If a man tells a woman he earns 10% more than he does, has he perpetrated fraud in order to win her affection?

                            If a man overstates his number of prior lovers in order to convince a potential lover he is a more experienced and better lover, is that fraud?

                            What if a person knowingly conveys by a number of minor shadings of truth, that he or she is a more attractive mate, does that constitute fraud? How many such minor lies are permitted? Is it okay for him to wear lifts in his shoes, add some stage money to his roll, borrow a newer car from a buddy in order to present a more attractive appearance? Do you deem it acceptable for her to wear a girdle, spanx, borrow a dress and jewelry from a friend, wear false nails, get a spray on tan? If she has had plastic surgery to improve her appearance (see recent divorce demand in China) do you see that as fraud?

                            The problem with your “fraudulent consent” stance is that it does not comport with how people act in the real world. When such variances from Truth are called “rape” you assert a level of seriousness punishment that few will consider appropriate to such variances.

                         2. It occurs to me that by the standard you’ve asserted, it is fraudulent consent if a woman wears corset, push-up bra etc in order to attract male interest because by the time he discovers her fraud he has already invested considerable time and money in her, possibly even to the extent of renting a hotel room. Further, he has forsaken pursuit of other potential partners. His choice at the time of discovery is to accept the “inferior goods” and cut his losses or write off the whole evening — possibly his last in port for several months.

                            Undoubtedly there is more than a little misrepresentation of material fact in the courtship cha-cha, but saying they constitute fraud equating to rape is saying a lot.

                         3. Yes, it is.

                            1. Legal dictionary on thefreedictionary.com’s site, entry for consent.

                               3. Consent is never given so as to bind the parties, when it is obtained by fraud.

                            2. Actually, I’d like to retract for now my unequivocal ‘yes’ on fraud/lying to obtain sex = rape; to ‘no it would not be rape except in very specific circumstances’*. It’d be a much lesser charge (fraud with intent to obtain sex / sexual acts, perhaps?), I think, at best a fine, with very narrow, strict definitions in order to be charged, or possibly a separate, supportive charge. (I’m explaining badly, I’m sorry; I’m still thinking about it.)

                               Been talking to hubby about this all day, and learned a few interesting things. Increasing the alcohol content of a drink and serving it to a person who is unaware that the alcohol level is going up as the drinks keep going is a separate charge here in Australia that aids in the burden of proof in a rape charge, if a rape charge occurs. It’s called drink spiking – basically anything that is not ordered by the individual is considered drink spiking; such as giving a person a double shot / standard drink (based on alcohol content) of vodka when they only requested one in their orange juice and vodka, and covers all the way to putting drugs into the drink.

                               It’s a stand-alone charge as well, as sometimes it’s done as a prank and the results don’t always end well; or the victim finds himself more intoxicated than expected and ends up in trouble because he’s drunk driving (more than 0.05 blood alcohol content).

                               However, I CAN think of a few instances where ‘rape by deceit’ could possibly be valid – such as in the case of twins; in the case where a victim initially believes that the person having sex with her is the significant other (mentioned in wikipedia). The one about the Jewish woman was ruled as having been raped by a married Palestinian Muslim is one I could accept as having that ruled as rape by deceit but only in Israel, When the whole thing was going down, I remember reading somewhere that it was actually a … trend? of targeting Jewish women ‘to use for sex’ by pretending to be Jewish / seen as a form of Jihad, with deliberate malice in intent of harm.

                               This would also be valid:
                               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Allen_Minsky

                               As noted though, it’d be very specific circumstances.

                               Gonna think about it some more though. Tired now… ~_~;

                      2. Are you saying the religious are stupid? 😉

                3. “I’m shipping out to Afghanistan tomorrow. Got a bad feeling, like I won’t be coming back.”

                   Despicable, yes. Rape?

                   1. Howzabout we shoot him on general principle?

                      1. Because he found a woman willing to buy the line?

                         The “mislead into consent” scenario is the toughest, and comes way too close to the “changed their mind later” scenario. Short of impersonating someone — and, really, wouldn’t the victim have to be impaired to buy into this? — I can’t think of a way that wouldn’t be, well, a non-criminal learning experience.

                         1. Because he found a woman willing to buy the line?

                            By definition, if you gotta lie, she’s not willing.

                            Misrepresenting what you’re offering in trade is not a “learning experience,” it’s fraud.

                            1. “Misrepresenting what you’re offering in trade is not a ‘learning experience,’ it’s fraud.”

                               I sort of agree. I agree that morally it is fraud. Practically, though, there are important reasons that we distinguish between casual oral promises and formal commitments — “he said, she said” is an bottomless storm of legal suck. Also morally it stinks to promote casual verbal lies by men to a crime only in the sexual context while in the same context demoting much clearer more formal paternity fraud by women into not just a non-crime, but a non-tort, and not just a non-tort, but a vigorously-enforced privilege. (A few years ago, in Texas where I live, the law was finally changed so that a husband who jumps through the right legal hoops can routinely avoid being on the hook for children he discovers were fathered by another man. But the wife is guilty of no crime for the successful fraud before discovery or the attempted fraud after discovery, and the husband doesn’t have any remedy for payments and services given before his discovery of the fraud, and although the hoops are not all that hard to jump through, they could be pretty easy to miss for a husband who hadn’t been specifically taught about the letter of the law, and could be a nontrivial burden in messy situations involving other children that the husband did father — to continue to live with the wife for a year after discovering the fraud is to miss one of the hoops IIRC — and failing to jump through the hoops properly lands the defrauded husband in the usual fail-to-pay-is-fed-felony child support position.)

                            2. You’re missing a really, really big difference between lying to get someone to sleep with you and “paternity fraud.”

                               It’s called kids.

                               Not going to try to hammer that one out– it’s a red herring, anyways, having nothing to do with the idea that it is OK to take things from people– including having sex when you believe they would not do so if you HAD NOT lied– if they are “dumb enough to believe you.”

                            3. This is probably the grouchy old NCO in me talking, but there’s too many shades of gray going on here. Sometimes the best way for people to learn to be careful is to let them take the hit for their own mistakes. I think we’re too careless, sexually speaking, as a society. I think if you lie to her and get her in bed, you’re scum, and she should have dated you long enough to find out that you were being genuine with her. There was a time in this country where a liar would get a reputation among the women in a town and quickly find himself socially ostracized among the respectable classes of both the men AND the women in a town. The law didn’t need to get involved.

                               “He told me he was an astronaut! But he’s not, therefore it’s gone from being consensual to being rape!”
                               “OK, send him to prison.”

                               I don’t think that functions really well in society. It’s better to tell our sons not to be liars, and to not take advantage of women, and if they do, they’ll be social outcasts, and to tell our daughters to exercise prudence and self-restraint with regard to men, otherwise they’ll be taken advantage of. It’s better still to tell both to just wait for marriage.

                            4. So SOME willful bypassing of getting consent is just fine?

                               Interesting.

                               . Sometimes the best way for people to learn to be careful is to let them take the hit for their own mistakes.

                               We agree on this.

                               The part we don’t agree on is if the “dumb” one or the one that willfully chose to do something they knew was wrong should be the one that needs to be smacked so they learn from their mistake.

                            5. Not sure how to phrase this correctly but here goes.

                               Part of it is reflected in the phrase “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”.

                               I have some sympathy for the victim of a con-game (sexual or otherwise) but even there my attitude contains an element of “you were foolish so learn from it”.

                               “Smacking them” for the first mistake sounds too harsh *but* there should be an element of “here’s were you went wrong so don’t make the same mistake”.

                               Mind you, the con-man always is the real villain even when the victim “should have known better”.

                            6. Embrace the healing power of “And”, sister. 😀

                            7. The one that believed a lie already did get punished, though– they kept up their side. That can’t be undone for sex.

                               I like the “and.” It’s just that the “dumb” one gets punished by nature, not by law.

                            8. “So SOME willful bypassing of getting consent is just fine?”
                               No, I don’t think it’s fine at all. But the real question should be, is there a practical way for the state to enforce a law against it? Or is the law even the best way to enforce it? There’s a big difference.

                               First off, how do you prove he lied? Second, a reasonable defense to “He lied” would be “She misunderstood,” or even, “If she was in bed with me because she thought it was fun, then she got the fun, and it doesn’t MATTER if I lied. But if she slept with me because she wanted to get into a relationship with me, it must be for my money, which makes her a hooker.” Either way the guy is scum, but first you have to prove that A) the guy lied, and was not simply exaggerating, and that B) the woman understood the lie and believed it, NOT that she simply misunderstood him, and C) that she slept with him due to the lie, but that she wasn’t sleeping with him for money, prestige, bragging rights, etc. It’s just a very messy situation that is darn near impossible to prove in a courtroom. It’s completely impractical for the state to handle this problem.

                               Then you have to ask what the appropriate punishment would be for sex fraud. Jail time? The scarlet letter S being tattooed on his forehead? Fines? Community service? Reading books to kids at the library? Cleaning out the womens’ room at a roadside rest stop?

                               My opinion is that this is best left to social forces. Like I said, men should be social outcasts for seduction. And cases like these should serve as a warning to women to not be too quick to jump into bed with guys they meet.
                               But like I said earlier, the best situation is if we teach our sons and daughters to just wait until they’re married to have sex.

                            9. All those objections apply just as much to any other “exchange.” It’s still illegal. Applying the law is harder when there’s no written contract, but it’s still illegal.

                               In the case of C, it establishes that the liar didn’t think the other party would sleep with them if they hadn’t lied. (This is actually the one I see most likely to hit guys– in the “Wait, you’re married?!?! You said you were single!” angle. Or, cynically, the other way around…..)

                            10. Yeah, I’m not saying that NOTHING can be proved in court. But the difficulty level makes it insanely hard to do. And EXPENSIVE. Can you imagine the lawyer bills? We’d have people in retirement paying off their attorneys over one-night-stands they’d had in college.

                                On the other hand, what a deterrent!

                            11. Bingo.

                                “She PROBABLY won’t be able to prove anything in court…. probably…..”

                                “I’ll just say I’m a bored housewife looking for a hookup, he’ll go for that, no strings….”

                            12. Yeah, because our courts are suffering from such a lack of caseload.

                                OTOH, I can imagine the comedy skit of the couple’s lawyers negotiating the terms of the contract …

                                Party of the first part hereby attests being of legal age, free of significant relevant disease and able to rock the world of party of the second part. Party also affirms that her hips are not, in fact, double-jointed and agrees to indemnify party of the second part for any failure to complete transaction to other party’s satisfaction.

                                Party of the second part affirms being free of encumbrances and/or significant relevant disease and that, for the purpose of this interaction the phrase “six inches” is a term of art and does not represent any sort of guarantee. Party declines to indemnify other party of any failure to satisfactorily achieve completion of this transaction, holding that there are some things no man can do and that party of the first part bears some degree of responsibility for said attainment.

                                Both parties agree to share equally any proceeds resulting from public exhibition of documentation of this transaction. Said documentation must be withdrawn from public exhibition at the request of either party within five (5) business days of properly registered notification.

                                Both parties also agree to not less than five (5) nor more than ten (10) minutes of oral gratification and party of the second part agrees to not depositing, without a minimum of thirty (30) seconds notification any bodily secretions in the oral cavity of party of the first part.

                                Both parties agree to not hold the other party liable for normal wear and tear of equipment employed in this transaction. Any damages encountered in excess of normal use will be adjudicated through binding arbitration. Party of the first part agrees that, in the event of ordinarily foreseeable consequences of this exchange party of the second part’s obligation will be solely limited to the costs of medical restoration of facilities to conditions ante and any decision to bear such consequences to more significant conclusion are solely the responsibility of the party of the first part. Party of the second part reserves the opportunity, at party’s option, to pay some amount of support in the latter circumstance for such period of time as it pleases party of the second part.

                                Both parties agree to inspection of goods by properly certified medical personnel prior to transaction. Both parties likewise agree to appropriate announcement of impending satisfaction of the terms of this agreement. In deference to religious sensibilities of party of the first part, party of the second part agrees to refrain from any address to any deity during the period is this transaction.

                            13. And yet still less ridiculous than performing the reproductive act with someone you are not absolutely dedicated to….

                            14. As we all know, nobody would ever do anything so ridiculous as that.

                            15. Not seeing the connection between “that is ridiculous” and “people will not do it”… says the werefox to the wallaby….

                            16. Perhaps it just escaped your notice that “that is ridiculous” is not a germane argument, nor an argument of any sort, and thus irrelevant.

                            17. If you do not find it germane, then why did you write a comedy skit?

                            18. For the same reason anybody writes such a thing: it amused me to do so.

                                Why do you think calling it ridiculous to perform the reproductive act with someone you are not absolutely dedicated to constituted an argument against such ridiculousness?

                                Looked at objectively, the whole process of forming the beast with two backs is more ridiculous than anything we’ve discussed. As observed by Evelyn Waugh, “the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.” Yet people not only do it anyway, they will apparently exert vast effort to do it any way.

                            19. Perhaps we can more readily lay this whole line of discussion to rest by directing attention to Michael Z. Williamson’s blog post on the issue of rape. Endorsed (sorta — he linked to it) by Larry Correia, composed by a professional writer who is libertarian and had the leisure to carefully consider a) his points and b) how best to express them. As what we have mostly quibbled over is where, precisely, seduction (I seduced Beloved Spouse, or Beloved Spouse seduced me — opinions differ but we’re agreed to disagree on this topic) turns to rape (I expect I gave Beloved Spouse a more impressive anticipation of my desired life than objective analysis might have warranted, and rather suspect Beloved Spouse was not entirely candid with me, either — but it has worked out, mostly, thus far, so neither of us is inclined to claim rape or even misrepresentation.)

                                http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/rape

                                Rather than quarrel over the pittance where we differ, isn’t it better to focus on the much larger where we agree? While I am sure the world would be a better place of all shared my ethics, I have reason to believe there are some six billion people who are inclined to disagree (some within my own household.) The knowledge that I am right is sufficient unto me and it seems far more productive to invest energy arguing over far more significant matters, such as whether toilet paper ought be put on the holder so that it comes off over the top or from the underside.

                            20. Over the top, clearly.

                            21. That’s only been true since the Marxists got partial control over the court system. I’m advocating we clone Daniel Boone about a million times and put at least one in each appellate court in the US, and at least five in the Supreme Court.

                            22. He was OBVIOUSLY joking! Opposite sides of the back seat, now!

                            23. Judging by the lack of incoming fish, the jest wasn’t all that obvious. Clearly contract humour has limited appeal.

                                My last couple posts went up afore I saw this. I doubt anything I can say in addition would add more information except regarding the degree folks can dig in their heels defending a point. I shall say no more on the topic (she started it!)

                            24. I think you’re both talking past each other.
                                And yep, my … uh… an acquaintance of mine routinely understates the number of her marriages and how they ended. By that definition, she’s a rapist.

                            25. I thought the contract humor was great. And I may or may not be lifting terms for professional use.

                                And I may be pondering what double jointedness at the hips would entail…

                            26. Thank-you — I was trying to channel Groucho Marx and Gracie Allen as the lawyers …

                                As for double-jointed hips, I was vaguely recalling certain music videos I have seen over the years but, for obvious reasons, do not think it prudent to go in search of (nor do I imagine Sarah would welcome such links posted in her blog) … as one who is rhythmically impaired there have been many times when I’ve seen a dance move and wondered how somebody can do that.

                            27. Oh please. As if no girl ever falsely said “Why yes, I am of legal age” or “Don’t worry – I can’t get pregnant” to get a guy into bed.

                                That doesn’t absolve the guy of responsibility even if he was, by your definition, raped.

                                Perhaps we ought simply consider whether all things immoral in sexual negotiation ought also be illegal and actionable, which seems to be the position you advocate.

                                Myself, I am comfortable turning a blind eye to some types of problems, as confident that G-D will sort it out in time as I am lacking confidence in my (or any judicial body’s) ability to so do.

                                Demanding we deplore all things deplorable is a SJW game I disdain. Sometimes you just have to tell Peter “You play in those woods at your own risk” and hope the wolf doesn’t get him.

                            28. In the case of a minor it’s an entirely different situation because they cannot give consent.

                                Perhaps we ought simply consider whether all things immoral in sexual negotiation ought also be illegal and actionable, which seems to be the position you advocate.

                                Hardly. There’s a LOT of immoral things that I haven’t even touched on.

                                As I stated a couple of times, this is a “willfully bypassing consent” definition. You lie, you drug the target, you tie them down– they all have in common that you’re opposing the will of the victim to get what you want.

                                Taking away their choice.

                            29. “In the case of a minor it’s an entirely different situation because they cannot give consent.”

                                I believe I have already clearly stated that elsewhere, but you are missing the point. Because the minor misrepresented the material fact of her age, neither partner has consented to the act. The minor female because she lacks legal ability to consent, the adult male because he was denied notification of this lack.

                                Taken a step further, suppose said minor female slips a combination of Molly and Cialis into his drink, walks him out to his car where he passes out and she climbs astraddle and rides him like a rented mule? At no time has he consented to intercourse, either with an adult or minor.

                                Alternatively, society accepts a degree of false and misleading “fluffing” of a product offered for use. “Whitens your smile,” “better fuel economy,” “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” and myriad other phrases are acceptable as making no legally actionable guarantee no matter the degree of reliance placed upon such promise by customer. When you can draw a hard and fast line between bragging and falsely promising in sexual encounters, please let us know.

                            30. I’m having no trouble telling bragging from lies, although I am a little curious what on earth being raped by a teenager has to do with the rather simple definition I offered and with which you seem disinclined to actually deal.

                                I believe that’s three major times of either utterly missing the point or claiming I said something I did not say; I’m done.

                            31. If we have “three major times of either utterly missing the point or claiming I said something I did not say” then either I am arguing in bad faith (which, I have hopefully established well prior to this is not my habit) or you have not been clear in what you are trying to say. I humbly suggest it is the latter, and that you might want to consider whether there is a better way to communicate.

                                “Willfully bypassing consent” appears to be a term very precise in your mind but open to some degree of ambiguity in the minds of others.

                                I regret that my efforts to employ reductio ad absurdum examples to communicate the problems of that ambiguity have engendered so much confusion for you. Apparently I am not the only one “utterly missing the point” because in the example I gave the illegal minor willfully bypassed the consent of the adult — in two modes — yet the adult would still be culpable of rape because a minor is legally incapable of consent.

                            32. Actually you’re both missing each other’s point and coming up with weird retorts. Better stop it. If I have to stop this blog and come back there…

                            33. “Mind you, the con-man always is the real villain even when the victim “should have known better”.”

                                Eh, if you fall for a Kansas City Shuffle, or a Violin Scam, or several others, you’re both villains, one of you is just more effective at it.

                                You can con a honest man, but it’s a lot harder. Getting cheated because you were trying to cheat doesn’t absolve you of guilt.

                            34. Ah, the Moist theory. 😀

                                The “trolling for guys who are trying to take advantage” tactic of any crime has the added benefit of making them much less likely to report it– example, the underaged girls in bars that slip ’em a mickey and steal everything.
                                “Gee, officer, I was picking up this drunk 16 year old for sex, and the next thing I know….”

                            35. Good Point. I seem to remember that people have purchased “fake items” thinking that they were purchasing stolen (ie real) items.

                            36. The person the husband should go after is the other man, suing for a tort. That would be interesting. . .

                            37. @ RES,
                                “Party of the first part hereby attests being of legal age, free of significant relevant disease and able to rock the world of party of the second part. Party also affirms that her hips are not, in fact, double-jointed and agrees to indemnify party of the second part for any failure to complete transaction to other party’s satisfaction.
                                Party of the second part affirms being free of encumbrances and/or significant relevant disease and that, for the purpose of this interaction the phrase “six inches” is a term of art and does not represent any sort of guarantee…”

                                Yeah,
                                any further use of your wit to this degree without a potential spit-take warning may result in claims for replacement of computer equipment having to be filed! 😉

                         2. Likewise, “I don’t think what she gave me was worth as much as she thought, so I lied about what I was giving her in return” is not an excuse in any other “exchange.”

                            The guy does not have some kind of a right to sex due to finding someone who will believe a lie, any more than any other fraudster/conman has a right to what he takes.

                            “What, you thought I would actually PAY you for house keeping? And that you really would get room and board? Hahaha, you idiot!”

                            …

                            Yeah, not seeing that flying…..

                            1. “I’m a movie director. Sleep with me and I’ll give you a role in my next movie.”

                               Well, if he isn’t and she buys it without even trying to check she is really dumb, if he is but has no intention to actually give her that role she is just somewhat dumb, in both cases she is a gold digger, but I guess both might be called at least sort of rape-ish. Exploitation, at least, especially if she did it specifically to get that promised role rather than to generally get in his good graces and increase her chances to get his recommendations or his help with finding more connections to people who might help her to advance (or start) her career – in which case only the first alternative, he lied about being a director, would really count, the second, he actually is a director but the role was never really in offer, not so much since she had other incentives to sleep with him too.

                               In any case, tough to figure out afterwards since unless she got the offer recorded or got witnesses it’s all he said she said, and either one might be lying.

                            2. Establishing evidence is part of the hard part of any rape investigation; knowing that if they get caught, they will be charged might help, though.

                               Sort of like how knowing you’ll be charged with statutory rape if you’re caught sleeping with a teenager lowers that happening, even among people who claim that it’s morally OK if she has hit puberty.

                         3. The “mislead into consent” scenario is the toughest, and comes way too close to the “changed their mind later” scenario.

                            Thinking on it more– HOW?

                            It applies both ways, just the most common is male to female– a female to male that comes to mind is “my tubes are tied” or “I’m not married”– but it requires actually lying to get someone to have sex with you.

                            Acting to bypass someone’s will in a way that indicates you KNOW they are unlikely to agree if you hadn’t is totally different than waking up, going “Wow, you’re ugly” or “oh, crud, my boyfriend is gonna be pissed” or three weeks later looking at a positive pregnancy test and going “uh– RAPE!”

                4. “Promising to marry someone and then bailing on them, or pretending you were somebody else who was already sexually intimate with the person, would definitely count.”

                   The promise of marriage thing pops up every once in a while on those “Ha ha, look at these silly laws about sex!” lists. A lot of places used to have laws to protect women against just that sort of thing.

                   1. At what point does “promise to marry, then bail” shift from “rape” to “it didn’t work out”? One night? One month? One year?

                      1. Don’t make a promise that you aren’t sure you can pay.

                         1. So, if he discovers that with the promise in hand and the deed done she becomes insanely possessive and manipulative and wasn’t the innocent virgin she claimed to be (Scott Pilgrim, call your analyst) you would call his withdrawal of that promise rape????

                            I would suggest that a promise to marry does not constitute a “committed relationship” — marriage is a committed relationship.

                            Further, this is defining rape down to an absurd level. “I know I said I would still respect you in the morning, but I was mistaken” does not equate to rape as most people have ever understood the term as conveying an element of duress or material misrepresentation. If you are prone to think any fluffing of the truth constitutes rape perhaps you should be more careful in relations involving a friend and less willing to sell your honour cheaply.

                            If you do not value your chastity (male or female) you’ve little cause to expect others to respect it.

                            1. I would suggest that a promise to marry does not constitute a “committed relationship” — marriage is a committed relationship.

                               I didn’t say anything about a committed relationship.

                               The guy made the deal, and accepted his “payment”– no going and deciding that the price is wrong after he already accepted delivery.

                               Lesson: don’t promise to marry someone to get them to sleep with you. Preferably, don’t sleep with someone unless you’re married to them, avoids the whole issue. (Well, other than the cases where chemical brain alteration is involved. Drunk rapes.)

                               I also didn’t say anything about “respect you in the morning.”

                               The definition of “willfully bypasses obtaining valid consent from the other party”– by force, threats, lies or chemical means– isn’t an acceptable definition of rape to you, then go ahead and make a better one. Preferably without attributing things to me that I did not say.

                               If you do not value your chastity (male or female) you’ve little cause to expect others to respect it.

                               If someone has to lie to have sex, then they are indicating they respect that person’s “chastity” to a lesser point than the other person.

                               I think I mentioned earlier that I’ve got trouble having too much sympathy for a guy that’s “trapped” by the side-effects of a one night stand, barring him being drunk or her changing her mind about otherwise agreed on sex, because that’s why you don’t sleep around.

                               We’re basically trying to retro-design the same process that resulted in “no sex outside of marriage” as a baseline.

                            2. It seems you’re making much the same mistake as the SJWs, defining “rape” so broadly as to create an imbalance — and like the SJWs you’re going overboard to advantage the female of the species. Some of your “lying to get what you want” fails to recognise the difficulties of getting a jury to convict, nor of the female’s need to be skeptical about promises made in the heat of passion.

                               Even when a promise is kept both parties might be happier had it not been.

                               There is general agreement that coercion (not persuasion, nor misrepresentation) is extremely wrong. Physical force, drugging a drink are widely acknowledged as “going a step too far.” Buying her (or him, although it can be less effective with a guy) as many drinks as it takes to get them alone is another matter — they could have stopped accepting those drinks. The law readily recognizes the distinction between a robbery and a con game where the mark was taken in part because of his own lack of caution.

                               Creating an environment too ready to charge “rape” has the dangerous effect of creating false confidence about your own safety, in some ways making rape more likely. There is yet a distinction between a rapist and a cad. I think we do best to for allow a little ambiguity in human relations, recognizing that flirtation goes on, and encourage all sides of the equation to be cautious and not push forward into the gray zone too heedlessly.

                               It would do few of us any significant harm to exercise a little more self-restraint and to be aware that not only will many people lie (even benignly) to us but we also lie fairly profligately to ourselves.

                            3. It seems you’re making much the same mistake as the SJWs, defining “rape” so broadly as to create an imbalance — and like the SJWs you’re going overboard to advantage the female of the species.

                               And here I thought their big, obvious mistake was “it’s rape if I decide it was.” Plus the idea that rape can be committed accidentally in a normal situation, and that only men can be rapists for some of them.

                               Seems you’re making the mistake of thinking that I’m proposing a zero-evidence-required situation.

                               ****

                               Robbing drunk people is still robbery, not a con.

                            4. It would do few of us any significant harm to exercise a little more self-restraint and to be aware that not only will many people lie (even benignly) to us but we also lie fairly profligately to ourselves.

                               Applies both ways in this case. I’m still kinda flabbergasted at the number of guys who think that one night stands won’t bite them in the rump, in ways ranging from biology to disease and legality.

                            5. “Applies both ways in this case …”

                               Was there ever any doubt? The number of guys who think they’re making the decision is greater than the marks falling for three-card monte bets any night of the week. Why none of them imagine they might be having a one-night stand with a psycho-bitch who’ll have them robbing a liquor store before the night is over is beyond me, and there is a reason the urban legend about waking in a bathtub full of ice resonates.

                               To quote Annie Savoy, “… a guy’ll listen to anything if he thinks it’s foreplay.”

                            6. It’s funny how often my wife and I will watch a TV show where these kind of sexual hijinks show up, and the hoops Hollywood will jump through trying to show that you can have your cake and eat it too, and that it’s morally OK, and I usually just turn to her and say, “Good grief! And these people think MORMONS are weird!” 😀

                            7. A-blessed-men, man.

                               No wonder so many folks are messed up.

                            8. I believe the technical term is “peculiar”. Mormons are “peculiar”.

                            9. My term is good neighbor. Also well groomed.

                            10. Well, you’ve got us there. 😀

                            11. Promising marriage would have been a valid reason in history. I have seen some articles which claimed that once upon a time premarital ‘testing’ was perhaps a fairly common custom for lower classes here – done rather in secret as the church very much frowned on it, but done anyway. A young man would sleep with a girl but was expected to marry her only if she got pregnant. The reason it was unofficially approved by society presumably was that children were highly valuable – more workers were always needed and for people who had no capital and didn’t earn enough to amass much their children were the main way to get some security for their old age – and that way both could be sure that the other was fertile.

                            12. I’m right there with you on that. Date for at least a year without sex before marriage. Get to know your potential spouse very well. Then get married. It won’t stop all lunatics from taking advantage of the innocent. But it’s the best way to minimize your chances of being a statistic.

             2. Lying… I’m not sure I’d put that in the “shoot you in the face” rape category… it seems more similar to me to the consensual statutory rape of a teenager. What’s missing with fraud (as opposed to threats) is that the person is saying yes to the sex, but while they don’t have a legal ability to consent they still have complete ability to refuse.

                This gets back to not having a criminal seduction concept any longer because we’ve decided that seduction is just dandy.

                “I want to marry you and make you my Duchess, how can you refuse me?”

                “I’m off to Iraq tomorrow and I’m afraid I won’t come back.”

                “Sure, I’ll pay you $400, but after we have sex, ok?”

                Worth a serious beat down… but *maybe* not a bullet in the face.

                1. I was referring specifically to the Deploying Soldier who Expects To Die attempt, not all lies.

                   It’s a cousin to the “religious leader that tells women to sleep with him because God Wills It.”

             3. I agree with this. A modern day example would be the Muslim pretending to be a Jew to sleep with Jewish women (It’s…apparently a thing over in Israel. They get a kick out of having sex with women they know would refuse if they knew the truth.)

                Similarly, a woman having unprotected sex with a man (she wants the unprotected sex), the man refuses because he doesn’t want to get her pregnant, and she lies about being on birth control, so he consents, thinking that she’s taken the precautions. Then she hits him later on with a paternity suit. (Seriously guys? Barebacking it ain’t worth it for that reason alone.)

                1. Part of the problem with the “precautions” is that unless the uterus is removed, you can still get pregnant.

                   Like I said elsewhere on this thread, for chemical treatments it’s a one in ten chance of being a daddy!

                   1. Yeah I know. So it’s stupid anyway.

                      But aren’t the SJWs the ones bleating about “Self defense doesn’t stop all forms of rape / is not 100% effective!”? Don’t they like the 100% effectiveness thing? So they should be not using birth control under their own stringent claims!

                      1. Logic!!!!

                   2. You shouldn’t have sex unless you are prepared to be pregnant.Sex can be fun but it can carry a high price tag.

                      1. Yep.

                         Fully intend to drum that home to my kids… hopefully it’ll work.

                         “Do you want to be tie to them by the blood of your children for the rest of your life? Then don’t sleep with them.”

                2. Even with requiring criminal intent, there are going to be different levels of rape– the planned out gang rape of a minor for an example on one end, with “willful withholding of information that would not cause physical harm in order to get them to have sex with you” on the other. (Long because there HAVE been cases of people not “mentioning” that they are HIV positive.)
                   “Got target drunk” would be somewhere in the middle depending on how drunk and if there was evidence of it being planned/they bragged about how “smart” it was as a tactic. (Yes, have heard of that one.)

                   Obviously, folks would have to recognize women can rape men, too, it’s just harder to do the “physically hold them down” type. Think like the Sherlock Holmes movie, but with horror instead of embarrassment.

                   I remember some of the rapes coming out of Africa did not involve the bodies of the rapists at all, but did involve rape as a means of attempted execution of the (usually female that I heard of– it was in the villages where the UN took the guns) victim.

                   1. It’s worse in places where corruption is rampant. It is not unfeasible to have someone falsify or bury medical data, pay off the judge, or bear false witness. There was a case I remember the grownups talking about once, and they involved the false accusation of the woman against the man – the woman claimed that the man had forced her down and raped her, even providing police documentation, medical testimony and more. The man in question was head and shoulders smaller than the woman, and also physically weaker. It was a blackmail scheme to get the man to pay her an oodleton of money as a revenge for a slight – which she bragged about later on after she was paid off, detailing that she’d bribed everyone involved with sex and money to do what she wanted. She was pale and beautiful, but she was one psychotic bundle of violent sociopathy.

                      1. I think I’ve mentioned the Navy’s insanity where a zero evidence case of “harassment” by an entire shop was only derailed because the crazy bitch accused the boyfriend of the one girl in the shop of raping her– while he was out of state, and at a time he was physically in front of a bunch of very high ranking officers.

                         REALLY need to be serious about false accusations.

                         1. Okay, I need to know… what happened to the barking mental beartrap cunt of a slut? This is a story I haven’t heard of; and probably needs retelling anyway.

                            1. Short version?

                               Absolutely nothing.

                               She was my roommate, common law husband was an utter dishrag that did whatever she wanted, she put broken glass under my bed because she came in drunk and knocked over the garbage can and cut herself on the light that had broken…and really didn’t like it when she came during work hours to try to pull rank and yell at me about it and in formed her it had been clean before her drunk ass dumped it all over the floor.

                               The harassment accusation was because she didn’t like having to actually work.
                               She was not punished and got removed from that, with me having to take up most of the slack because she wouldn’t actually do the job in the new place, either. (I was one of three females that weren’t officers, and all three of us had to pick up the slack because it was obvious she’d accuse any guy to get out of work.)

                               She eventually got pregnant and lied that she didn’t have anyone to take care of the kid, moved back with her parents and married the dish rag. I’d feel sorry for him but he was a solid enabler and rather jerk– imagine an evil Star Trek Wesley without the IQ.

                            2. …. from your description, Wesley had more of a spine.

                            3. I know my impulse is that there had to be more to it than that… but at no point did I ever see ANY evidence of trouble beyond what I just said.

                               The only actual “harassment” she got in that machine shop was that they didn’t talk to her, because she was mean and stupid. (The broken glass thing wasn’t even worth getting mad about, because she was so dumb she put it at the foot of the bed and on the wrong side.)

                               She was a ball of malice that was so inept she usually made HERSELF look bad.

                            4. How’d someone that stupid get through boot camp? And up the ranks? On her knees?

                               (Why yes, I’m a flaming cynic when it comes to people. See the thing I linked regarding c-monsters. Brain bleach warning.)

                            5. Boot camp is really not hard– if you’re a jerk, it sucks, but the biggest problem I had was boredom.

                               She got rank because she was Avionics Paperwork Rate (Can’t remember the actual name) and they have trouble keeping people at the level they keep claiming they need (our shop was supposed to have one….Eeek) so third class is basically “don’t get caught doing something really horrible and spell your name correctly on the test.”

                            6. … I’ve seen a few such tests. Ugh.

                               Oh, and apparently, the proper workplace management thing to do if your employee is having emotional issues so severe it’s interfering with their work isn’t to fire their ass, but to ‘help them work it through.’

                      2. Sounds like a case study for justifiable homicide. 😀

                         1. You could come up with several of those, honestly, of what happens when people get pushed too far.

                            One off the top of my head involves the clashes between the Christians and certain Muslim tribes in Mindanao that resulted in the creation of the Ilaga vigilante/militant group. (I make the distinction because there were Muslim tribes at the time who weren’t hostile to the non-Muslims; and this is probably still the case even today.) This is the story as my mother told me, as she remembered when this became a big issue.

                            A bit of background for it was the migration by the Marcos government of various Christian farmers from north to south, to boost the agricultural industry. They were placed in areas that weren’t owned by anyone, got down to work, and flourished. It was originally hoped that by demonstration and well, neighbourly osmosis, the farming techniques brought in by the Christians would be spread to the Muslims and the region’s prosperity as a whole would increase. To some extent this happened; but some tribes have a culture of … well, being lazy. They only did as much as was needed, more or less, to have enough to eat, and maybe a bit to sell, and were content with that. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but was a bit of the ‘one scratch, one peck’ philosophy that just ‘gets you by.’ Some of the local farmers took to their new neighbours and learned, but a number did not.

                            When they saw the Christian/Catholic farms, these certain tribes started muttering amongst themselves that the Catholics had stolen their land. All the government cared about was that the farms were inhabited and being worked, right? Who was going to check on those remote farms?

                            So certain tribes went in to kill the families living in a number of the most remote of farms, and moved in families of their own after disposing of the dead. But the Christians kept in touch with each other or visited each other, so inevitably when families started falling out of contact, their friends or relatives would check on them, and find another family living in the house, saying they’d found the place abandoned.

                            When the reasons for why the families had vanished were discovered, (because inevitably, whispers and bragging happen) the Christians tried to appeal to the government for protection, but realistically this was not feasible as they were spread out over a very large area.

                            So a group of farmers decided to protect their families. They kidnapped men from the tribes responsible and took them up into the forests, tied up, and told them to select one of the prisoners. The person selected would be stretched out on the ground next to a fire and a deep pan filled with hot oil, and his belly sliced open. Then while the man screamed, his liver and entrails would be put into the hot oil and cooked as he still breathed.

                            Then, when the man’s liver was cooked, one of the Christian farmers would explain who they were; the Ilaga, ‘Rats’, and since the Muslims had seen fit to massacre innocent families to take everything they had, these Christians who had chosen to damn themselves would repay violence in kind. And because Muslims believed that they couldn’t go to heaven if their bodies were not whole, the man’s liver was eaten.

                            Then they released the rest of the men they captured, with the instructions to spread the word: we will kill you and send you to hell. When the story had spread to their satisfaction, they moved on to the next area and repeated this. To this day, the mention of their return terrifies the Muslims in the Mindanao region.

                            This short article by one of my Dad’s friends and contemporaries (and someone who grew up there) corroborates that.

                            http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/metro/view/20080830-157654/Scared-of-the-Ilaga

                            The Wikipedia article has no citation for the supposed massacre, and is inconsistent with the Ilaga of the 70s – they focused on the men, since correctly, the men make the decisions in Muslim families; and the Wikipedia article is slanted to make the Muslims more the victims than the Christian settler families.

                            1. Yup. Black Jack Pershing had a similar, if less gory way of dealing with Muslim terrorists. Take 50 terrorists. Tie them to stakes. Kill pigs; place the pigs’ blood in a trough; soak bullets in the pigs’ blood. Execute 49 terrorists with your new Hell-bullets; then bury the 49 under a pile of pig entrails and carcasses. Tell the 50th he got off easy, and to tell everyone he knows that this is how terror will be handled in all instances.
                               This led to a terror-free region for 50 years afterward.

                            2. This would work too. Instead we’re sensitive and we apologize if we gave Ossama less than full Muslim burial.
                               Effe that.

                            3. If it makes you feel any better, the time they supposedly dumped his body is about the time that the garbage room would’ve been dumping trash.

                               Including the gallons upon gallons of bacon grease.

                            4. Seems like too much work. Can’t we just throw them into a paddock with a couple thousand pigs that haven’t eaten in two days?

                            5. Why ruin perfectly good bacon?

                            6. There was a tale related to me by a journalist who came from the region, a tale that the local journalists decided NOT to publish. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but the entertainment value of the story makes it worth retelling, and the tale is basically used to highlight “Yeah, we know who finances the terrorists.” Went kinda like this:

                               There was an army encampment in the middle of the jungle, headed by a captain or lieutenant (the rank changes depending on who’s telling the tale). They’d spent the last month fighting insurgents who’d laid siege to the camp, and finally wiped them out. A week after burying the bodies, to their surprise, several foreigners – Arabs – come out of the jungle, yelling at the soldiers in heavily accented English. It takes a while before the soldiers understand what they’re yelling: “Give us back our brothers that you are wrongfully holding prisoner!”

                               The soldiers look at each other, muttering “What the hell are these crazy foreigners yammering about?” They fetch the camp commander and explain what’s going on.

                               He goes to the gate and says, “We haven’t seen any Arabs here!”

                               “We’re talking about the Muslim freedom fighters who are working to retake this Muslim land from you unbeliever animals and scum! We know you have them, so we are demanding you give them back to us!” To punctuate the demand, one of the Arabs fire a shot at the feet of the commander, just missing him.

                               Before his men can fire, the commander goes, “Oh, alright! We’ll take you right to them! But you’ll have to surrender your weapons as a sign of goodwill.”

                               The Arabs do so, since they were supremely confident that the mere presence of their…foreigness? was enough to cow the local military. They march into the center of the camp and wait. After several minutes of nothing happening, the leader of the group rounds on the commander. “You said you’d take us to them! Take us to them now!”

                               Right on cue, some soldiers bring over enough spades for them all to use. “Start digging,” the commander says. “Dig nice and deep, because you’ll need to get to Hell.” The order is punctuated by several other soldiers raising their weapons and taking aim.

                               When the Arabs have dug deep enough, they are ordered to give back the spades, and a wild pig’s head is thrown in with them. Then the soldiers fill up the hole.

                               Some versions of the story goes on to relate that several more foreigners do the same thing, and are subsequently dealt with in similar fashion. Since they were not supposed to be there anyway, nobody felt a burning need to report the incidents.

                            7. Agreed, I found it funny how Obama managed to turn a foreign policy success into a total screwup by making sure to show reverence of Osama’s body, thus negating everything that had been won. It basically told the whacko Jihadist world that “The Americans are still afraid of us and will grovel before us, even when they kill us.”
                               If I were Obama, I would have told the Muslim World, “All I have heard from your side is that Osama does not represent “true” Islam, well if that is true, I will not disgrace your religion by offering him a true Muslim burial. After all we did not hand Hitler’s corpse over to the archbishop of Berlin in 45 for a high church funeral, that the Baptized Catholic would have been entitle too. Instead, I am ordering Bin Laden’s body to be dragged through the bilge after ordering hams to be delivered for a celebratory meal by the crew.”

                            8. I think you’ll find the next story I related fairly entertaining.

                            9. Hanging Osama’s body on a cross and displaying it at the twin towers site would have suited me. As was pointed out, they all claim he isn’t a ‘true’ Muslim, (even though he is following the Koran) so what is there for them to complain about?

                            10. I wonder what would have followed if Osama bin Laden had entered this country illegally. He could then have arranged to surrender publically with the full glare of publicity. Demanding a full public trial in NYC would have been interesting.

                            11. Hung upside down, too.

                                On a completely different note; I’m not going to bother responding to ‘Laura’, the ‘second rape victim’ over that the ‘Naive idiocy’ post. I don’t like trying to play nice with people who will march in, make vague claims that ‘support their statement’, refuse to give details, and then bleat about people being mean about their making essentially unassailable victim stances without even anecdotal backup… it’s ‘I’m a victim, you don’t have the right to question me and I’m not obligated to give you anything but you’re supposed to take anything I give and accept it without question.”

                                That’s not someone with the attitude of honest discussion or even innocent ‘trying to correct a mistaken POV’. That’s someone who’s come to lecture, and refuse to take argument.

                            12. They’re now running around blogs you’re not at claiming that you blame rape victims. Honestly, it’s like Chlamydia has siblings.

                            13. BTW — isn’t it time something was said about Michelle Obama and her “fat-shaming” of kids? It is rough enough for a kid who is heavy — often on account of having to subsist on the hi-carb diets fostered by government food subsidies — without the First Lady’s “tubby-thumping.” Apparently Michelle has never had to figure out how to pay for aruglua on a WIC stipend.

                            14. And frankly some kids are fat, because they are. Robert has been working on his weight since two or so. Apparently it’s a result of a pre-eclamptic pregnancy.

                            15. Reminds me of something I noticed– all the folks I know whose mothers dieted while pregnant have weight issues.

                                It’s not all of the effortlessly fat folks I know, but it is all the people whose mothers did weight-loss diets during second and third trimester.

                            16. Yes. Pre-eclampsia starves the baby. Robert was ridiculously skinny at birth — folds of skin hanging off him, all bones showing. It throws the metabolism off.

                            17. He has to be low-carb just to stay moderately healthy. This was a fourth grader who loved salads and always ate healthy and his teachers were telling him to lay off candy (got it once a year on Halloween, and usually only ate about a tenth, then forgot the rest) and chips (ate once a year on the fourth of July because I made them for our party.)

                            18. …He must have the composure of a saint. When I was living on a cup of coffee for breakfast, four carrots for lunch and a small dinner I would’ve ripped the throat out of anybody being snide about how much I ate.

                            19. He does have the composure of a saint. BTW though there are no studies on this, Pre-eclampsia did something to my metabolism too — or perhaps the series of very-early miscarriages before and after did — at one point a skinny friend decided to help me lose weight. For Christmas, she gave me a book of exercises. This was twenty minutes of low intensity aerobic stuff like jumping in place. At the time I was doing weight lifting and clocking 2 hours on an eliptical a day. (This is how I managed to stay under 200 lbs. To the extent I don’t have the time to do it now, I’m way above.) I didn’t rip her head off, but LORD I wanted to.

                            20. I don’t know – Chumbawumba isn’t too bad a group… Oh, this isn’t what you were talking about?

                            21. Well yes. Because the International Lord of Hate said I was right/agreed with me, therefore I’m doing the same thing he is, which is blaming the rape victims for… I’m not sure what, but I’m sure they can make stuff up for their own edification, none of which I will have actually said.

                                Actually, the funny thing is, they’re doing exactly what I expected them to do. I wasn’t surprised when ‘Meg’ went and claimed she was a rape victim (I gave her the benefit of the doubt and took her at her word), nor was I surprised when I backed off for a bit that she eventually hung herself with her own words (Okay, I was surprised at how quickly she dropped the noose over her own head and yanked) and I wasn’t surprised to hear her claim she worked with rape victims. It well followed the pattern of “I’m a victim, I do good things, meanie mcmeaner is defeated, therefore I will blather on unopposed because the rest of the sheep will now listen to me!’

                                Really though, I don’t have to do much of anything. They manage to contradict themselves in the same breath. ‘this post triggered me’ and ‘nobody owes anyone anything’ in the same comment. Yet pointing out that because their claims lack rather substantial cause for belief, as well as ‘… you didn’t file a case or fight off, yet say you weren’t drugged or drunk and you outright said you could have fought… and we can’t tell if you said no, why are we supposed to believe you just on your claim that you were raped?’

                                Seriously, it’s demeaning to the rape victims I do know; and the few I know I could mention this to were displeased. One of them actually said ‘I don’t believe that person was raped and wants attention.’

                                I actually got asked if I pissed someone/s off lately because our poor little Minecraft server’s firewall has been getting probed/pinged/…vaguely attacked? by several thousand computers in/ proxied off Brazil since I got quoted. Asking if there was any risk, I was told “Nah… they keep trying commands that would work… if we ran Windows XP. Which we don’t.” 😀

                            22. Wait, you have a minecraft server? Are you on AIM or FB? Email me. My kids, particularly older kid are minecraft fanatics. If I don’t introduce you they’ll never forgive me.

                            23. *delighted laugh* Yeah. It’s one of the rewards that the son can pick (and the daughter sometimes plays, but less often; we may get her an account of her own for her birthday); and where my friends and I build stuff for fun.

                                I’ll send you an email.

                            24. The anon on Peter Grant’s blog is Chlamydia.

                                Speaking of, we may have a Chlamydia-bypassing-Larry’s Ban incident, all the way down to pretending he doesn’t know who ‘clamps’ is, pretending to only have recently joined, and saying he did this only coz it was funny.

                                http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/06/20/peter-grant-on-educating-rapists/#comment-68824

                            25. Ignore that weird nosense from me.

                                Stupid phone. Stupid email. Stupid fingers.

                            26. *laughs and hugs*

                                I finally got brave enough to hit “send’ on that submission email.

                            27. Almost, almost! I found myself busy this weekend, and didn’t get to it. But I’ve dropped it in the template (thanks, again!) and am just doing the line by line to confirm conversion.

                                It’ll go out tomorrow morn.

                                Then I’ll spend some time wondering how Sarah finds time to do all this on a novel.

                                Because, neophyte.

                            28. Eamon: Dooo Eeet!

                                For one thing, time is short, and for another, there’s really nothing to lose by trying,

                                Although I did have a little trouble with that template, The paper size is A4, the default dictionaries are Australian English, and there’s a page break that you can’t delete (If you do, and save, then re-open, it reappears.)

                                But it was very helpful in formatting my own version.

                                BTW, i’m curious about how many others are trying.

                            29. Re: the Minecraft server thing –

                                That’s one of the games I would get so completely sucked into if I allowed myself to play them, which is why I don’t. But I still watch videos’ like Direwolf20’s excellent Youtube series which teaches people the basics of the various good mods out there.

                                Do you play vanilla Minecraft, or modded? My own opinion is that every parent with kids who play Minecraft should introduce them to some of the available mods, because building stuff with those mods will teach the kid to think like an engineer. “Hmm, if I hook up this pipe from the Buildcraft mod to the beehive from the Forestry mod, and then on the other side I put an Apiarist’s Pipe, I can make the right bee species breed with each other automatically to get the gene combinations I want.” Your kid will then go to his biology class a few years down the road, get introduced to Punnett squares, and say “Oh yeah, I did those in Minecraft when I was doing bee breeding.” There’s also tree breeding and fish breeding. Or, for those with a more mechanical-engineering bent, there’s IndustrialCraft with its electricity (and voltage equivalents — don’t hook up a high-voltage cable to a low-voltage machine unless you like blowing up your workshop), and even in-game nuclear reactors! (Which make the most SPECTACULAR explosions if not managed properly.) And by the time your kid is done building their neat thing they want to show off to you, they’ll have been thinking about how items X and Y can work together, and planning how to achieve their goal by means of small steps… It really is an educational tool disguised as a game, if you use it right.

                            30. I’ll have to ask but at the moment we’re running purely vanilla minecraft.

                            31. I’ll get any of you who want it in touch with the boys. Maybe we can setup a Hun Minecraft Server, after we move?

                            32. XD that sounds awesome. At the moment, our server isn’t capable of more than vanilla minecraft, but there’s a lot of stuff there that looks awesome.

                            33. It’s the ONLY game older son plays more than once. And he has said if he were a millionaire he’d just play minecraft …

                3. If I was inclined to try to live a swinger’s lifestyle, I’d just get a vasectomy. Then there’s no worries about pregnancy.

                   1. Except those fail, too.

                      1. Typical use failure (if you can wait 12 weeks) of less than 1 in 100, though….

                         I’m fully expecting that my sister’s friend’s next kid will be that one in a hundred. Her body has gotten around the pill, the shot and two forms of IUD.

                      2. Condoms fail about 10% of the time. More often if you aren’t using them correctly.

                         1. IIRC, 70% success “when used normally.” (10% is “perfect use” which I vaguely remembers includes proper storage, use before the “best by” date, putting it on before even near-contact and immediate removal after one…uh… male release.)

                            So a bit less than one in three, rather than one in ten.

                            1. I believe the failure rates are calculated as “this percent of couples will have an unwanted pregnancy per year, using this method.” Not per sexual encounter.

                      3. And evolution is selecting for failure.

                   2. American tax money is already funding several billboard drives promoting this.

                      It’s not usually taken up on; even though it involves less damage to the system than constant infusion of hormones, and it is much more effective, guys who sleep around generally don’t want their “junk” messed with.

                      I don’t like sterilization for philosophical reasons, but if I didn’t have that objection… oy.

                   3. Crotchrot, OTOH, remains not only a possibility but a probability.

          2. “fraudulently obtaining consent via deceptive persuasion, misrepresentation or manipulation”

             Which I believe is near the original definition of “seduction”. I don’t believe we’ve replaced it with a word that means the equivalent.

    3. Incidentally, there’s a serious problem in the Navy of women getting MEN drunk, having sex, and later deciding it was rape.

       Yes, the women are really messed up in the head. Duh, they freaking raped someone. Of course they’re messed up in the head!

    4. “Well, we DID hook up, but he wasn’t nearly as cute the next morning, and I feel bad about it, so it’s rape”.

       Soo … turns out the girl doesn’t respect herself in the morning, after all. But since that would lead to feelings of remorse & guilt, which are anti-thetical to “self-esteem”, today’s girl then rids herself of these icky feelings by blaming the guy.

       A fascinating pathology. *adjusts pince-nez*

       1. We see a similar dynamic in the effort to expunge guns from society. Once you have denied self-responsibility as a factor, what remains?

    5. We’re pretty certain that two college students drinking heavily at a party/bar/whatever and hooking up is either not rape, or is two people raping each other.
       ————————-

       This is one of the points being raised in the Occidental College lawsuit involving a male accused of rape (or more specifically, in his lawsuit against the school). It’s been pointed out (by the male student’s attorneys, iirc) that if the college were to apply the “drunk” standard equally instead of exclusively applying it to whether the woman gave consent, then it could arguably be claimed in this particular instance that both students involved raped each other.

       1. The judge in the preliminary hearing about Duke’s expulsion of a man raised that same point: if both are drunk, and being drunk means you cannot consent, then the woman could also be considered a rapist. The dean acting as Duke’s lawyer said no, the male always is responsible. http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2014/05/duke_grossly_unfair_again_is_b/

          1. They can say so, but my money is on *eventually* someone getting the concept of “equal protection” through the courts… probably after a few colleges and universities eat some heavy settlements.

          2. Fun thought.

             How does one go about measuring drunkenness absent equipment?

             It’d be safest to just assume that even a partial glass of wine is intoxicating beyond the level of consent being possible.

             Which could possibly make alcohol rape paraphernalia. Meaning we could drag wet/dry politics of the nineteenth century back into fashion by way of the back door.

             1. Pretty sure even most crazy Teetotalers recognize that there are “legitimate uses” for alcohol besides committing rape. (May think it’s a bad idea, but that’s kind of like how I think sex with someone you’re not married to is a bad idea, but isn’t even largely rape.)

             2. Now, you could make a case that the several cases of beer and couple of bottles of vodka that the college guys use to take to the high school “parties” so they could get teenage girls drunk enough to sleep with them would be rape paraphernalia…but that’s because they were actually planning to break the law to get laid by drunk kids, not because it was alcohol.

32. Sometimes I find myself wondering if Larry and Scalzi plan out these silly twitter wars to drum up interest in their books. After all, the new Monster Hunter book and Scalzi’s new book both came out recently.

    Both guys are building their brand and making bank doing it (Scalzi probably more so with the TV deals and such), and having a rival to argue with in a public forum is great for attention.

    1. Knowing Larry, no, he just loves to argue. He finds it fun, on a level that leaves me commiserating with his wife about “Yeah, they’re having a friendly fight. They’re not even realizing how late it is, and he’s going to be so groggy tomorrow…”

       Scalzi? Could be posed, could be jumping opportunistically on a limelight to show himself off, could just be his personality. Don’t know the man, couldn’t say.

33. the idea that Rapists can be trained not to rape reminds me of Thomas Sowell’s Constrained and Unconstrained views. The liberals believe that mankind is perfectible, and dadgumit, they are the ones who can do the perfecting! You can tell a liberal theory because it always starts with “If we could just make everyone do X, the world would be perfect!”

    The opposite view is that man is flawed, and will always struggle with sinning, and we need a system that can cope with those times when men fail to contain their sin.

    We do teach people not to steal, usually in Kindergarten when we tell them not to take other kid’s toys. But in spite of social conditioning, there are those for whom it doesn’t stick, they will never respect people’s property, which is why we lock our doors, and build prisons.

    So on the one hand, we DO teach rapists not to rape. We teach everyone not to rape, but what makes a rapist a rapist is that teaching him doesn’t do any good. All the Hectoring all men in the world isn’t going to change the mind of someone who thinks consent doesn’t matter and he’s going to take what he wants.

    1. the idea that Rapists can be trained not to rape

       I have an online friend who says this is eminently possible. If the fuzzy bunnies were willing to overlook the drugs, sleep deprivation, electroshock, and other “therapeutic methods” that would be required.

       Not, myself, having researched the mechanics of brainwashing I can’t comment at to the accuracy of his claims. Sounds plausible though.

    2. You can tell a liberal theory because it always starts with “If we could just make everyone do X, the world would be perfect!”

       “The only two places Communism can work are heaven, where they don’t need it, and hell, where they already have it.” – Reagan

34. Just a quibble on carrying in a bad neighborhood –

    If there’s someplace you wouldn’t feel safe going to unless you were armed… go someplace else.

    Don’t carry so that you can feel comfortable engaging in risky behaviors, carry so that you can deal with the risk remains after you give up those risky behaviors.

    1. Well, yes, sure. BUT if you have to go in, carry. (In my case a knife. I suck at guns.)

    2. I’ve heard this advice offered before, but there are times when it is just not possible or advisable. I own property. I don’t control the people in the areas around it. I cannot or will not sell or abandon that property. At other times, I travel THRU areas where risk of a violent encounter is higher. Getting STOPPED in those areas is dangerous, passing thru them, not so much.

       Add to that there are many areas where the border for bad/good changes or moves or is not obvious.

       In any case, some bad areas are not avoidable for perfectly valid reasons, and sometimes, bad areas come to you. So I find the advice trite and not particularly helpful. You would prefer I go thru bad areas with nothing but words to protect myself? (Given that in real life, I WILL have to go thru bad areas.)

       Read the older posts on this guy’s site. http://xavierthoughts.blogspot.com/ He seems to have posted recently after a multiyear hiatus, but the meat of his postings are the personal stories that came earlier. Offer him that advice and see how it flies.

       zuk

35. “If your mouth is, by now, hanging open in sheer awe at the craziness, you might realize you’re in the presence of homus academicus, a creature as suited for survival anywhere outside academia as a declawed cat in the middle of a pride of lions.”
    Oh, this was just beautiful. Bravo! 😀 It does make me want to put the academics in the middle of a pride of lions though.

    1. This triggers the obligatory “What do you have against prides of lions?” question.

       1. You’re right! The lions haven’t done anything to deserve that. Hmmm.

36. I believe it was Robert Anton Wilson who wrote a novel in which he mentioned on every single page that humans were killer apes. By which he meant that any attempt to “reform” us to higher levels of “civilized” behavior had to take that primal fact into account, and any theory of human behavior or civilization which did not take that into account was doomed to be fail.

    Most people didn’t get it.

37. I found this quote through an Instapundit link to Althouse. I really like the quote, and think that the people here can probably make better use of it than I can.

    “I know you feel that you’re a victim,” she said. “If you would be more careful, maybe you wouldn’t be victimized as frequently.”
    – Claire McCaskill (D-MO)

    1. Wow, what was the context of that?

       1. Dr. Oz didn’t like that people were portraying him as having endorsed weight loss products without his permission. The source Althouse cited is

          http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-dr-mehmet-oz-weight-loss-frauds-20140618-column.html

          I just think the quote is wonderfully phrased, and can be used in many circumstances.

       2. My guess is it was said to a TEA Party group testifying about IRS delays and harassment.
          😉

38. A comment about Marxism that I think will amuse many people here, by one yurakm1:

    After I immigrated to the US from Russia 18 years ago, my American colleagues asked me time to time what happened with KGB.

    I explained that KGB was a big umbrella organization with many divisions. The biggest was similar to Coast Guard and Border Guard combined; of course, the people did not lose their job after the dissolution of Soviet Union. Several divisions were, essentially, bodyguards of top government officials, Supreme Justices, and similar. There was a division where spies worked, and divisions with police-like officers specialized in catching “state” criminals, for example foreign spies or counterfeiters making funny money. They also did not lose their jobs.

    There was one division, however, that everybody hated: it fought against so-named “ideological diversions”, i.e. ideas non approved by the government. The officers from the division harassed people who wrote “wrong” articles, books, or songs or distributed them by copying manually (“samizdat”), and arrested some of them. Even people from other KGB divisions despised them, partially because they did an easy job – it is much harder to find a hiding counterfeiter than a poet who wrote a “wrong” text.

    Everybody expected that officers from the division will lose their jobs. However, they moved instead to Tax Police, a government organization that was created in Russia from scratch soon after it switched to a free market.

    I could not understand then why all my American colleagues always started to laugh at that place of the story.

    Nabbed it from here:
    http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-19/fighting-the-irs-just-got-harder#comment-1444463197

    1. “I could not understand then why all my American colleagues always started to laugh at that place of the story.”

       LOL! Oh, that’s perfect.

    2. Ahahahahahahahahaha! That’s hilarious, beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

    3. One of my all-time favorite quotes from Studio C came from a sketch about teenagers playing Dungeons and Dragons:
       “A dragon? They’re like the IRS… with wings.”

39. The key is to realize that this is not and never was intended to be, a real discussion of criminal conduct and policy.

    Its shuttupery. These silly ideas are designed to corral believers in the progressive camp together, and push the non-believers outside of the “tribe”. Its designed to get the adherents all pointing at the enemy and hooting.

    So it does not even matter how ridiculous their line even is. So long as the purpose of division succeeds. Indeed, the ridiculousness of the position, the complete lack of common sense – the detachment from reality, may be part of its operation.

    1. Yes. Like requiring people to commit a crime to belong to the group, if you’re willing to humiliate yourself that far, well, they have you.

       1. Or gang tats, or how communists groups would recruit people by having them murder a random innocent. Make it hard to leave the group, make it hard to go back to your old way of life.

          1. It goes deeper than that. Here are the steps.

             1) Socially (and if possible, physically) isolate the potential initiate.
             2) Bombard them with a message that they’re a lost soul.
             3) Get them to break their greatest taboos from their old moral/ethical systems by giving them moral reasoning as to why what they’re doing is good (usually along the lines of ‘the greater good’ or dehumanizing their victims).
             4) Offer them a redemption path through following your leadership.
             5) When people start getting really OK with what you have them doing, elevate them to leadership status and make them heroes to the base groups, with yourself as ultimate savior.

             Charles Manson did it.
             1) Get middle class White girls to the ranch.
             2) Preach about the Beatles and Revelation and the inevitable race wars, and how the White race (except for the chosen few) would be destroyed for their racism.
             3) When they’re sufficiently mentally exhausted, get them to participate in orgies that include children, breaking nearly all their middle class WASP sexual taboos.
             4) Tell them that once they’re in the group, they’ll commit murder to spark the race wars, then go with the group into the desert to be one of the chosen Aryan leaders who will help elevate the degenerate minorities into “civilized” status after the race wars are over and the non-chosen Whites are dead.
             5) After lots of dry runs burglarizing people, send in the True Believers to murder Sharon Tate et. al.

             Hitler did it too, although since he did it on a national level, he had multiple steps going on at once.
             1) Get total control of the media.
             2) Renounce the insult to Germany’s honor done at the signing of the Versailles treaty. Make scapegoats of the Allies of WWI and the Jews.
             3) Start unilaterally violating the treaty; start absorbing the Sudatenland; unilaterally invade Poland; eventually, start rounding up Jews.
             4) Promise to bring to full fruition the glory of Germany and the Aryan race during the inevitable Third Reich.
             5) Use the Gestapo and other groups to eliminate dissent.

             This is the same method gangs use, too.
             1) Socially isolate the initiate.
             2) Tell him he’s been shafted by fate, life, the man, Whites, Blacks, whoever he’s not.
             3) Start having them act as lookouts, couriers, etc. When they’re mentally too exhausted to debate their victim status and they want social inclusion in the larger group, get them to commit a crime.
             4) Redemption comes by sticking it to the gang’s enemies.
             5) When they’re doing well enough as a member, give them leadership roles.

             The left uses it too.
             1) Use schools, colleges and academia to socially isolate the initiate.
             2) Tell the minorities they’re lost by virtue of the existing power structure. Tell White males they’re lost souls by virtue of being part of the existing power structure.
             3) Get them to do any of the following:
             A) Do drugs
             B) Be sexually promiscuous, then participate in abortion
             C) Commit assault, arson, or any other crime in the name of the union, environmental group, race or sex class, political philosophy group, etc.
             D) Renounce/denounce friends or family for public humiliation, political, legal or physical assault, or in many countries, death for the crimes they committed as part of the existing power structure.
             E) Any permutation of the above.
             4) Promise redemption via social acceptance as a member of “the Cause.”
             5) When they’re drinking enough Kool-Aid, give them a college professorship, political office, or some other leadership role in any group that’s convenient.

             1. So, do you want to do this as a guest post for me?

                1. I’d love to! Shoot me an email and give me instructions on how to set it up. I’ll take a day or two this weekend to write it out and polish it up.

             2. Contrast with, say, the military:
                1) Isolate from former life
                2) Tear down parts of current world view that don’t work with the military
                3) When sufficiently tired, build them up in that service’s form– building on top of the good aspects of what was already there. (My dad got reamed because he wasn’t writing his mom every week, and she spoke up about it.)
                4) Promise ELEVATION by becoming not just the best possible of what you use to be, but also (Sailor/Marine/Soldier/Zoomie… k, I don’t actually now about the Air Force’s boot camp.)
                5) If they stick around long enough, and live out both the Society and Military values, they become leadership. (ideally)

                All of the non-creepy “team building” stuff I can think of have that difference, but that may be just what comes to mind– the group enhances the prior culture, rather than trying to destroy the prior culture.

    2. Though I agree with your point, it occurs to me that things might be much simpler if we *did* propose an actual criminal law revamp, and rather than buying into the blanket “it’s all rape”, suggest the following categories:

       – Sexual assault: Physical assault aimed at accomplishing sexual gratification against the victim’s consent, or any form of the other two crimes where physical harm is a consequence of the fraudulent or coerced consent [this includes not telling your partner about your STDs]. Bump up to Rape if penetration or gratification actually occurs. This also includes the use on the victim, against the victim’s knowledge, of mind-altering substances, as well as any sexual activity performed upon someone physically incapable of resistance via chemical or other incapacitation.
       – Sexual extortion: Use of non-physical coercion like blackmail or a position of authority to obtain consent to sexual activity under duress of non-violent consequences. This includes activity performed upon someone sufficiently intoxicated that informed consent is not deemed possible, if the perpetrator is not himself or herself similarly intoxicated. [Two drunk people having sex because neither’s clear-headed enough to think better of it does not turn into rape just because one person regrets it more on waking up.]
       – Sexual fraud: Obtaining consent to sexual activity via misrepresentation or omission of key facts not causing physical harm, or under false pretenses, or promises of non-monetary compensation [this is to keep prostitution a separate area of the law] which are then not honoured. [The misrepresentation must be objectively provable as false, however; if you actually are shipping out to Afghanistan tomorrow, somebody choosing to indulge your “bad feeling about it” is entirely on her own lookout.]

       All of these could be criminally liable and all could be socially condemned, but by being clear about the differences you can be a great deal more practically effective and controlled about what to do.

40. Starting from the premise that a “right” cannot require another person to actively and affirmatively provide you with a good or service, I would argue that, no, you do not have the right to go around unarmed in Condition White, that you present yourself as what the law calls an Attractive Nuisance.

    M

    1. That’s not really reasonable, but I’m not going to try to argue that here. I will argue a narrower point that is easier: your proposal is screamingly ridiculously unreasonable unless before that you roll back the existing and generally increasing legal obstacles to the things people ordinarily choose to do to create and inhabit subcommunities (paying the price themselves) where it works pretty well to operate in condition white, or at least condition palest peach. We’ve gotten to the point where it’s being made legally difficult to exclude people (from jobs, housing, whatevs) even for prior criminal convictions. Rolling far, far back from that point would be required before your proposal generates a complicated argument (maybe involving subtle notions like “coming to the nuisance” and new notions like Coase’s theorem and game theory). Legally forcing people into seriously dangerous situations — “avoid conspicuously dangerous people” really is a seriously important safety rule — while blaming them for insufficiently protecting themselves is messed up in an unsubtle way.

41. Maybe it’s just because of the time of day and because I’ve been reading about the need to eat more protein and less starches, but does anyone else think “The Roll and Flail” would make a great pub-style sign and name for a bread bakery?

    1. You can have the roll, I’ll have the flailed steak.

42. Moving down from above

    Clark E Myers commented on The Roll and Flail.

    in response to Wayne Blackburn:

    Can’t give evidence because I don’t think it’s ever been studied. Scared Straight, however, is generally applied to the kids who are already determined to be on their way to the deep end of criminal behavior. It also doesn’t change the incarceration system, leading to an actual visit there being made more undesirable.

    Depends what the meaning of it is.

    *SNIP* wikipedia study comparing prisoners who were in solitary vs general population with a 3.7 higher rate of those who were in solitary being re-convicted of a violent crime

    Of course it found a higher rate– the shock is that it wasn’t higher! Right now solitary is used to separate those who are a risk to others or at risk themselves. You have a barking mad guy who tries to chew folks’ face off, you put him in solitary.

    The shock is that it’s such a tiny percent higher!

    1. Good point — the fallacy is in the presumption that there is no significant difference in the experimental subject categories which might affect the results. That is as invalid as claiming that there are more male than female shot putters solely because of sexism.

       [Brief pause while Mary accesses her Theodore Dalrymple quote file.]

       1. Now I’m wondering what the “being driven insane by not living in officer berthing*” rate for Japan is, since they’re a LOT nastier about solitary than we are.

          *We were in the Gulf and some news station was doing a special on how horrible California’s prison crowding was.
          Then they showed it…and it was a heck of a lot nicer than the GOOD enlisted racks. More room, and they had more personal storage….

    2. Yep, like Fox Butterfield couldn’t understand, the crime rate is down but the prisons are even more full.

43. Moved down for clarity.

    Foxfier: “And here I thought their big, obvious mistake was “it’s rape if I decide it was.”

    Problem is, that to the rest of us, that is what it sounds like you are saying. What we are all getting from you is that if the girl claims the guy lied to her (or vice-versa) in order to convince her to sleep with him, and the guy can’t prove he didn’t; then it is rape. We are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, I know that isn’t the way it always works, but that is the ideal.

    Sorry, lying to someone in order to convince them to sleep with you is wrong, it isn’t rape, however. As RES pointed out, there is a difference between a cad and a rapist.

    1. I really can’t help y’all deciding that “all forms of to bypass obtaining consent by force, altered states of mind or deception” means “guilty until proven innocent and the claimed victim gets to make stuff up.”

       I said nothing like that, and I several times even pointed out that things would be really hard to prove.

       I refuse to be guilty for implications that I not only did not make, but actively denied, just because someone decides to lump me with everyone they think casts too broad of a net.

44. On Fish:

    http://www.scottish-wedding-dreams.com/heraldic-symbols.html#F ~ Heraldry Symbols
    Fish [mostly occur in punning arms, very popular among the heraldic symbols] ~ a true and generous mind, virtuous for oneself but not because of heritage, unity with Christ, spiritual nourishment
    *list of fish, including*
    Carp [Mogul] ~ dignity, youth, bravery, perseverance, strength

    And here you just thought it was high velocity dead things!

    1. So Sarah is always throwing carp at me because I’m strong, dignified, and brave?

       1. And a punster…

       2. Or she’s trying to induce it?

       3. I’m reminded of the footnote on this strip. Interpretations of your qualities may vary…

45. I’m a just a poor unfrozen caveman, your modern world frightens and confuses me …

    1. I cannot count the number of times I have invoked Frozen Caveman Lawyer on someone.

       1. ???

46. Sarah you wrote:
    Also, I found if you talk about the physics problems you solve for fun in your spare time, most men break land speed records getting away from you, no matter how cute you are. 😛 Well, till I found one who said “Really? Have you tried THIS method?”

    Is that how you caught Dan?

    1. That and by getting in a huge mathematical argument with him the day we met. (His 18th birthday.)

    2. I hasten to clarify that these days I remember NO math. It’s like languages. use it or lose it.

       1. Yet by what I observed of how he regarded you at Raven Con that (being able to debate mathematical concepts) does not matter anymore.

          1. I know. 🙂

          2. Surely not – any fan of Mr. Heinlein will surely be a knowledgeable about the many works of James Branch Cabell – consider e.g. Jurgen where (from a review by Peter Coates) One of the contentious scenes involved Jurgen and his lover Dolores, alone in her chamber, discussing mathematics (“penetrating examples” and such).

47. Most easily found in Jurgen Proves It by Mathematics by James Branch Cabell reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica an anthology published in 1958 containing stories, humor, poems, etc., all on mathematical topics, compiled by Clifton Fadiman. Includes ——-And He Built a Crooked House by Mr. Heinlein and Superiority by Arthur C. Clarke

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