100% of women have been harassed at least once in their lives. The first time it happens is between 9 and 12 years old. Mine I was 11, in front of my school and scared because I didn’t understand what this adult wanted with me, but I understood that he wanted to hurt me.
1 in 5 women will be raped at least once in their life. In the majority of this fucking planet 70% of it will be against children and teens. It’s a huge motivation for suicide too.
But yeah, we are hysterical and acting out for attention. Right.
Law is not morality. Rape was always wrong. Homosexuality and sex out of wedlock was never wrong. It was illegal and it was taboo. It was never wrong. Rapists are still evil scum even when their rapes were committed in a culture that didn’t hold them accountable. The ability to get away with something has zero bearing on whether and to what extent those who do should be held accountable for it when the culture stops protecting them.
Law is not morality. Rape was always wrong. Homosexuality and sex out of wedlock was never wrong. It was illegal and it was taboo. It was never wrong.
But they were taboo because people thought that they were immoral. To insist that YOUR particular, current, vision of right and wrong are never changing, self-evident, obvious morality while anybody else’s deeply held beliefs are mere taboos is the sort of thinking that leads to the "culture wars, or indeed full on religious wars. Morality is not an empirical science. You can’t do double blind tests to figure out right and wrong. At some level, our shared vision of right and wrong is what enables us to create a working society despite the fact that we do NOT agree on every detail of what is right or wrong.
It is important to distinguish between the morality and the legality of an action, partly because laws are written and enforced by the powerful. But ours is a very plural society, and people have different ideas of what is moral. We should try to NOT have laws that enforce the moral views of one particular group even when they are a majority if those rules don’t actually help and protect people. It was only a few years go that I had to drive into a different county to buy beer on Sunday because of laws intended to enforce the moral stricture to “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” But for people that celebrated the Sabbath on a different day, or had no belief in a Sabbath, it was an irritation, albeit a minor one.
It’s not that we shouldn’t think about what is right or wrong. Or that we don’t need laws to protect people, because there ARE people like Roman Polanski, or Kim Fowley, or indeed Charles Manson out there. And they WILL convince themselves and try to convince others that they are doing nothing wrong. But when we find something offensive and think that it is wrong, we should always question our own reaction first. WHY do I think this is wrong? Is there an underlying logic that is consistent with my other beliefs? Is there any harm to other people? If this were made illegal, what would be the negative effects of that law?
The point is this. The “blue laws” you mention are wrong. I’ll fight against them. Some will fight for them. In the long run someone will prevail for a time. I’ll never relent in the least fighting for and against what I believe is right and wrong. For the sake of your beliefs, you’d better not either. The universe does not and cannot care.
Drugging and raping children is evil. Anyone who tries to defend it is evil. It doesn’t matter if things that weren’t bad were also illegal at the same time. You can try to spin it all you want, but it just drags your good name down into the mud.
Forgive me, it certainly seemed to me that you were dismissing the moral outrage of others as mere “taboo”
It is important to have a sense of right and wrong, but it is also important to question it.
Very true. And that is WHY we must care. And not just care for those who are like us, who believe the same things as we do. Part of caring for others is trying to understand how people can believe different things. And figure out whether we should try to change their beliefs, or just live with our disagreement.
To be clear, I am NOT trying to defend Roman Polanski’s actions. I am however trying to point out that in the 70s, common attitudes on sexual morality were in flux, and that included the age at which people* have the right to consent to sex. Cases like this and others, where adult predators preyed on the vulnerable are probably evidence that the pendulum had swung too far in the direction of permissiveness when it comes to age.
I originally said “women” but choosing between Women, young women, or girls rather pre-assumes the answer. And it is largely females that we are talking about here. It used to be the case that if a 17 year old man and woman slept with each other, he was guilty of rape and she was innocent of any crime.
This is not it. What this bit is, is disturbing in which it equates the idea of a woman getting pregnant in her teen years with lack of morality. Consensual sex while a teen makes people accept other being drugged and raped while unconscious? Are you insane?
Whoopi’s problem is far more simple: we want strangers to burn and die for their violent acts, but we are very protective of friends and family.
DENIAL. “It’s a lie, that can’t be it, they would never do something like that because I know them well. There must be a reason”. Yeah, the reason is that your beloved one sucks.
