The difference between you and I is I won’t ignore one criminal act in light of a graver criminal act carried out against the criminals.
Nobody here has said that anyone who breaks the law shouldn’t face the consequences of doing so. What we have a problem with is you either implying or outright saying they deserved what they got from the cops—a violent response to a non-violent crime—only because they were breaking the law. And you’ve been doing exactly that with that “well, the cops didn’t need to do that, but…” bullshit you’re pulling.
The cops didn’t need to be (and shouldn’t have been) violent towards people who weren’t being violent—full motherfucking stop. For what reason do you keep going out of your way to prove how callous and cruel and heartless you are with your “they deserved what they got for breaking the law” bullshit?
No, now you’re outright stating it by saying a woman who “sets up” a situation where there is a possibility that she could be raped deserved to be raped for being in that situation. Change the details and the wording all you want to say you’re not blaming the victim, but you’re doing exactly that until and unless you explicitly say “absolutely nothing can justify or defend rape” without any further qualifications (e.g., “nothing can justify or defend rape, but…”).
Acting sexual (e.g., dancing naked) is not consent. Dressing provocatively (e.g., wearing a miniskirt) is not consent. Getting drunk/high is not consent. Leveraging socioeconomic power (including peer pressure and blackmail) to induce sex from someone is not consent. Giving drugs to someone is not consent. Giving consent to one person is not giving consent to all people, nor is it giving permanent and continual consent to that one person. Implied consent to one kind of sexual act (e.g., groping) does not grant blanket consent to all other kinds of sexual acts (e.g., penetrative sex). No non-consensual sexual act is defensible or justifiable under any circumstance, and the victim of a non-consensual sex act is not to blame for the actions of their rapist—even if (and it’s more “when” than “if” at this point) you think a slut is “asking for it” by acting like a slut. And all of that applies to everyone regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Oh, and once more, with feeling: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.
When you walk into a free-for-all kink club and get raped… you got raped. You are a victim. But you are not without fault.
Being in a free-for-all kink club does not—and I repeat with extra emphasis for your sake, abso-fucking-lutely does not—mean someone automatically and continually consents to being touched/fondled/fucked by anyone and everyone in that club without limit. You keep equating the idea of being in a sexual situation with continual consent; that isn’t the case at all. Stealthing, for example, is considered rape even if the removal of the condom happens during the actual sex act.
Consent for sex should be knowing, enthusiastic, and continual right up to the end of the act itself. (How you feel about the act after you’re done is your own fucking business.) The burden of mutual consent initially lies on all involved parties, but once someone involved in that act says “no” (or an agreed-upon safe word), the other person(s) involved must stop what they’re doing without question or hesitation. Otherwise, it’s a non-consensual sex act—better known as either sexual assault or rape.
Acting sexual (e.g., dancing naked) is not consent. Dressing provocatively (e.g., wearing a miniskirt) is not consent. Getting drunk is not consent. Leveraging socioeconomic power (including peer pressure and blackmail) to induce sex from someone is not consent. The victim of a non-consensual sex act is not to blame for the actions of those who assaulted the victim. I honestly can’t believe I have to explain all of that to you again. If you make me do it a third time, I’ll have no choice but to write you off as someone who thinks rape can be justified under “the right circumstances”. And yes, that is exactly what you’re doing when you’re out here trying to blame the survivors of rape and sexual assault for the actions of their attackers in even the smallest possible way. I mean, fuck, even Jesus basically said “if you can’t stop looking at women, gouge out your own eyes, you goddamned pervert”.
(Once again: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.)
They didn’t deserve to be beaten into the ground. They deserved to be arrested and fined.
What bothers me in such cases, beyond the actual final result, is how often the preceding illegal act is ignored or forgotten.
Gee, maybe it’s because an illegal act that didn’t require an overly violent response—which you yourself admit is the case!—received one and people are focused on why that is~. But that really couldn’t be it, could it~?
Once again: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.
she’s not without fault.
No, she is without fault. No matter what a woman says or does before (or even during!) a sex act, if she says “no” or otherwise refuses to consent to a sex act, someone going through with said act is raping her. She can’t and doesn’t control what other people do in reaction to her actions; while the act you describe might be best defined as “provocative”, the burden for the reaction still lies on her rapist(s). To say otherwise is to heavily imply—if not outright declare—that she deserved to be raped because she provoked her rapist(s).
When a pillow case head walks into a new panther rally with a MAGA sign and gets the shite beat out of them their a victim, but not without fault.
They shouldn’t be getting beaten at all. They should be getting kicked out at best, arrested by the cops at worst. I understand the desire to act on such provocation—and yes, I’m more than happy to repeatedly watch Richard Spencer get his stupid face punched—but even so, it’s still assault unless the racist shithead (and it’s okay to call them racist shitheads, I promise I won’t tell your orange Jesus that you called some white people “racist”) provoked the violence against them with some kind of violence or physical contact on their part.
(That said: I hope the person who punched Dick Spencer is never found and never reveals their identity. They should take that bit of personal satisfaction to the grave.)
When a group of armed men gather on a parking lot in violation of a curfew to ambush a vehicle and get the crap kicked out of them: they are victims but not without fault.
If they’re committing an act of violence against the vehicle, yes, they have provoked a violent response in kind. If all they’re doing is standing around and/or talking shit, no, they don’t deserve a violent response—regardless of whether they were violating a curfew.
I have not changed my comment that these cops need to be hit with every charge available and strung out.
But you are giving them a free defense by saying their victims deserved what they got from those cops. And you’re doing the same thing for the theoretical rapists in your hypothetical. If you blame a victim for any violence committed against them that they did not provoke with violence in the first place, you are justifying unwarranted violence—up to and including rape and murder—for reasons I cannot fucking fathom.
What the fuck does that have to do with conservatives?
If you have to ask, you haven’t done enough research into comments from conservatives about rape. Start with “legitimate rape” and work from there.
Also…
Tell me why there should be no penalty for filing a false crime report?
…what you suggested sounded like more severe punishments for filing false rape claims, as if that specific subset of false criminal complaints alone warrants a harsher punishment. It’s the “tough on crime” mindset—you know, the kind that conservatives love to say they have even as such thinking, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to shit like the bullshit described in this article and grade school kids being handcuffed in said schools.
We Americans love punishment. But conservatives love punishment like it’s a sexual fetish—especially if they have the power to punish their political enemies for any perceived slights. If you need proof of that, look at how the Republicans have become the party of “own the libs at all costs”, especially in the wake of Old 45 (you know, the fascist shithead you voted for twice).
tell me why there is no penalty for intentionally ruining a person’s life
What the fuck penalty do you want, life in prison? The death sentence? God to reincarnate them as a mushroom so they can never die in a way that matters?
Besides, it’s not like famous/powerful/wealthy men have to worry about that shit unless they’re convicted of a crime. To wit: Shithead comedian Louis CK was accused of some heinous sexual misconduct a few years ago and he picked up a Grammy nomination this past week. And hell, even if they are convicted of a crime, they might still be able to escape accountability and remain powerful and influential—I mean, look at Roman Polanski.
What I am saying, to be clear, is that she created the environment where the rape would eventuate. AND Such an preceding environment does nothing to lessen the crime. It simply diminishes the innocence of the victim.
Just so you know, that sounds like you’re saying “if a woman is acting like a slut and she gets raped, she’s at least partially responsible for the actions of a whole other person over whom she has no control”. It sounds like you’re eager to blame the victim for being attacked. It also sounds like the kind of rhetoric you might hear from Religious Right fuckbois who talk about modesty and purity and shit when they decry “loose” women.
Paraphrasing what I said in another comment: Even if a woman is asking a guy for sex, if she says “no” right before penetration (or at any point during sex) and the guy keeps going anyway, that’s rape—regardless of whether she said “yes” at first and regardless of what she was wearing or doing before she said “no”. To so much as even imply otherwise is to imply that you believe there is a situation where rape can be justified. I don’t want to think even you are such a ghoul that you’d say there is such a situation.
But if you’re willing to even partially blame a woman for her own rape, I have to wonder whether you think the now-convicted killers of Ahmaud Arbery deserved to walk as free as Kyle Rittenhouse.
And if you think the obscenely wealthy can’t/won’t find ways to skirt the law even with the supposed closing of loopholes, I’m gonna have to ask you what reality you’re living in, because it sure as shit isn’t this one.
Multi-billionaires aren’t the problem. They’re the symptom. The after effect. …of bad corporate tax policy.
No, they are the problem, because they’re the ones paying for the passage of those corporate tax policies—as well as all the other tax loopholes that let them hoard their obscene wealth. The system that lets billionaires remain billionaires does so because that same system is rigged by billionaires. I mean, do you think the wealthiest members of Congress are about to risk their own earnings by passing laws that tax their wealth at higher rates than the poor, never mind the earnings of the millionaires and billionaires who pay for their political campaigns?
Hitting Bezos or Musk with 80% doesn’t do anything about the company itself.
It’ll still help pay for the social safety net (including higher salaries for government workers).
Individual wealth is a tiny fraction of corporate wealth.
So hit them both. Nailing one without the other will accomplish nothing.
So the minimum wage worker, again, pays 0.
You’d like to think that, but I speak from experience when I say that taxes and the social safety net don’t work like that for people living beneath, at, or even a little above the poverty line. (Not that you care to think about the actual humanity of the situation.)
the guarantee has always been put forward.
[Your] base level income is non-taxable.
And therein lies the problem: A CEO could easily claim a huge “base level income” (e.g., several million dollars per year) and have the tax code work in their favor by only taxing any “extra” income on top of that “base level income”. And that doesn’t even get into taxes on investments such as the stock market or inheritance taxes or anything else that the wealthy (obscenely or not) see as an obstacle to obtaining more wealth for the sake of their egos.
The idea at 10%: You maintain motivation to go to work despite a social safety net.
You know what would help maintain the movitation to go to work? Knowing one’s basic needs have been met without worrying about going into financial ruin to do that. Rich people get to do that every day; poor people don’t. You wanna fix that? Tax the wealthy and the corporations in every possible way (including a 100% tax on all annual income above a certain multi-million-dollar limit) but leave the poor alone—like, say, no taxes of any kind for anyone making within three times the annual full-time federal minimum wage salary (which would be about $45,000 right now), then the tax rate gets progressively higher as the amount of wealth goes up, including that 100% tax I mentioned.
These plans don’t hurt the poor
They would continue to exacerbate income inequality by way of letting the obscenely wealthy stay obscenely wealthy. Then again, you don’t seem to have a problem with a comparative handful of people sitting on billions of dollars in personal worth and doing dumb rich people shit while millions of less fortunate people struggle to pay for their basic needs every day, so you probably think that outcome is a good thing.
A more accurate comparison would be: ‘Look how she was dancing, rubbing his crotch. As she slides her hands down his pants. How she flashes her chest dozens of times. The sexual actions she is making’
And absolutely none of that would justify rape, any more than any non-violent actions of any civilian would justify police violence. A woman can literally bend over naked in front of a man and say “fuck me until I can’t walk”, but if she says “no” before the man sticks his dick in her and he does it anyway, it’s still rape. I can’t believe you apparently need to have that explained to you.
I’m a morally and socially liberal libertarian who likes guns and government and despises the god and race aspects of conservative politics.
Sounds like you’re a centrist-leaning conservative, then. Makes me wonder why you ever voted for a racist, sexist, fascism-enabling idiot like Trump.
that I don’t run and cower at the site of a firearm says I have a slightly better outlook for people in general than you apparently do
A gun is a tool with a single (and lethal) purpose. If someone can fire a gun, someone can kill—even by accident. Hence why I try to stay as far away from people with guns as I knowingly and purposefully can while in public: Even the mythic “good guy with a gun” could kill me without meaning to.
Your delusion that eliminating legal gun sales will stop gun violence is just that.
Three things.
I never said “eliminating gun sales would stop gun violence” and you can’t show where I did.
I never said “I want to eliminate all legal gun sales” and you can’t show where I did.
I want gun sales to be more tightly regulated in terms of what guns can be sold to civilians, who can legally own a gun, and how many rounds a single gun can store in a given magazine/clip/whatever-they’re-called.
And while I hate to do the borrowed opinions thing, The Weekly Sift has a damn good take on how to craft a modern Second Amendment that doesn’t take the Super-Dee-Duper Hyper Ultra Leftist (Turbo Champion Edition [& Knuckles {Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series}]) route of “ban all guns plz” you probably think it would because of the author’s left-leaning biases. (The follow-up to that article is worth checking out, too.)
sounds like pointing out something clearly seen from the footage
“Look at how that woman was dressed, and watch how much she drinks—she was clearly asking for sex!” cries the defense attorney at a rape trial, who is only pointing something out something clearly seen from security footage at a bar before said rape occured.
If you think that comparison is offensive, maybe don’t say shit that sounds like an apologia for unwarranted violence.
You keep going on about how people shouldn’t be able to get wealthy. About how you think having wealth is obscene.
You misunderstand me. I don’t think people shouldn’t be able to get wealthy.
I think certain levels of wealth—especially any level including and above $1 billion—are obscene. I think, at a certain point, a wealthy person can give up a shitload of their wealth and still not have to worry about living comfortably. I think hoarding wealth is an example of greed and pride consensually fucking one another in public while poor people beg for enough money to eat at Burger King.
Wealth in general isn’t the issue. The issue lies in the hoarding of wealth to amass obscene amounts of it—that is the shit I can’t abide. That you don’t see this as obscene—or even a problem that can cause serious economic issues—is your issue, not mine.
Would I like to be rich? Sure. Would I like to have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life? Hell yes. Would I like to have more money than God and sit on it for the rest of my life while people starve in the streets? Fuck no—because that’s obscene.
That wouldn’t be the case with fully funded minimum income, would it?
Yeah, but you say that like the rich are going to pay for that. Given how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are still worth billions of dollars and act like they’re benevolent demigods, I have to believe they’ll do whatever they can to make sure their wealth stays at that level.
Well it is to me.
Of course it is—you don’t believe the wealthy have more to give of themselves than the poor. Hell, you probably believe they’re giving “too much” already. You look at the numbers on the ledger and ignore the humanity staring you in the face because you don’t want to think about how your position would exacerbate the same poverty you claim you want to eliminate.
I don’t care about your hatred of money and people who have a penny more than you do.
I don’t hate people who have more than me. I don’t even hate people like you, who think wealth hoarding is both morally righteous and ethically decent instead of both a moral obscenity and an ethical nightmare. (If anything, I feel pity for you and your fellow shitheads.) I hate the people who hoard that wealth instead of paying into the public treasury so all people can benefit from that wealth.
There wouldn’t be any more poor. That’s kind of the point.
You keep saying that, but even you know deep down that it isn’t true.
Seeing how a flat tax doesn’t kick in until above the poverty line they wouldn’t be giving up anything.
And what about people living on or barely above the poverty line—how much of their money should they pay in taxes, and why do I get the feeling they’re going to give more of themselves (in terms of economic and personal utility) than the obscenely wealthy ever will?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the obscene wealthy—in this argument, anyone who makes over $250 million in a given year—has to pay 50% of their income from that given year in taxes. For someone who makes $250 million, that’s $125 million. That person isn’t going to be hurting for food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and other such expenses if they only have $125 million added to their bank account in a given year.
Now let’s go back to the minimum wage worker and say their tax bracket is the same: 50%. (You keep crowing on about “fairness” in the percentages, after all.) That means they would pay $7,500—or just about half of a little over $15,000. That person will be hurting for all those same expenses I outlined in that scenario. And the situation would remain the same even if you started the flat tax at $25,000 (they’d give up $12,500).
And I know your next argument: “But they can live in places that are cheaper to live in!” Not really a solid argument, though—such places are typically lower-income areas with no room for career growth, and I guarantee the people living in such places would absolutely live somewhere nicer if they could afford to do so. “Affordable” poverty is still poverty.
Again: You’re so obsessed with “fairness” as a number on a ledger that you’re missing the innate unfairness of obscene wealth—and how a flat tax will harm the poor far more than it could ever “harm” the obscenely wealthy.
coupling the two flat taxes with a social spending act would eliminate poverty completely
Isn’t that cute, you think you can eliminate systemic poverty in a late-stage capitalist society filled with megacorps exploiting the poor as if thinking magical thoughts such as “the obscenely wealthy will voluntarily submit to having all their income sources taxed” will somehow do the trick.
The US lost, in a single year, more people than they lost in the damn world wars. Because defying basic medical safety had become a loyalty test inspiring "covid parties" and similar gatherings out of spite.
And here is where I point out that the current Grand Poobah of that brand of sociopathic ignorance is the exact same person Lozenge voted to install as POTUS in 2016 and 2020.
everyone should just lay down and ignore any threat property and possessions
Ignore it? No. But act like property needs to be protected with far less fervor as one might protect human life? Abso-fucking-lutely. When buildings burn, they can be rebuilt; when a life is taken, it can’t be brought back. (Not that I expect someone who fetishizes property rights like you do to care about that difference…)
He was asked to be there, and he was there for that reason.
I thought you said he was there to be a medic, not to be a “defender of property”.
Then why did nobody say as such in the trial.
Well, one of the two men who did respond to Rittenhouse after his first killing was dead, so…that might’ve had something to do with it.
Not even the prosecutor came up with that for any real justification for pointing a gun at someone.
Doesn’t make that justification any less plausible.
referring to Americans
I am an American. And if I see someone with an AR-15 outside of a gun club or a firing range—regardless of the context of that sighting—I’m going to assume they’re out to do harm and act accordingly (which, in my case, means “run and/or hide as best I can”). If I see someone walking down the street or walk into a coffeeshop with a goddamn assault rifle—and I don't give a fuck if it’s slung on their shoulders or back—I’m getting to somewhere safe before (and yes I recognize the irony in my saying this) calling the goddamn cops.
Not every American is involved or enamored the culture/fetish of guns. Not every American sees someone with a gun and immediately thinks “he must be a good guy or else he wouldn’t get to have a gun in public”. Some of us see guns for what they are—a tool with the sole purpose of making killing things easier—and try to avoid being near people who have them (including the cops) as much as humanly possible. That you would say all or even most Americans are unafraid of guns is a sign of either ignorance, hubris, or intentional trolling.
people like you who have an absolute few of anything bigger than a piece of paper used for defence are a tiny tiny minority
You really don’t get why people fear guns, do you.
A gun is a tool that exists for a single purpose. A gun gets that purpose done with frightening speed and destructive accuracy. A gun makes killing easier to the point where it’s point-and-pull, no questions asked.
A gun doesn’t ask you if your kill is morally righteous in the eyes of the law of the land. A gun can’t stop you from killing someone, including yourself. A gun won’t prevent needless death by stopping itself from working in specific contexts.
We have prescription drugs that are more heavily regulated than the sale of guns. We have medical procedures that are more heavily regulated than the sale of guns. Someone who is legally barred from owning a gun (regardless of why) can still buy a gun through legal channels and get away with it if they know when and where to buy said gun.
And you think people who fear guns do so because of their size or the noise they make?
No, we fear guns because of 60 people dying and over 400 people injured by gunshots in Las Vegas. We fear guns because of nine people dying in a church because of one racist asshole. We fear guns because of Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, the Pulse nightclub, the Tree of Life synagogue, Fort Hood (where even the goddamn military couldn’t stop an active shooter from killing 13 people), Aurora, Virginia Tech, and the D.C. sniper killings.
We fear guns because they’re readily available to any whackjob that wants one with next-to-no real oversight in who gets to own them and how many people those guns can kill in a short amount of time. We fear guns because we see politicians actively fight against regulating the sale, ownership, and even the manufacture of tools that exist only to make killing easier. We fear guns because people like you are okay with a country where gun ownership is an inalienable human right and access to medical care is an expensive-as-fuck privilege instead of the other way around.
Keep telling me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative, Lozenge. Every denial you make in that regard is undercut by literally everything else you say.
they weren’t completely innocent civilian bystanders. They actively and intentionally put themselves into that confrontation.
Something for you to think about: That “confrontation” wouldn’t exist without the cops. You want to talk about bystanders not being “completely innocent” as if that excuses the behavior of the cops who ultimately instigated violence.
If it doesn’t hurt the people you don’t like you simply write it off.
You think this is about hurting people? You think this is about causing pain? Motherfucker, how the fuck would Jeff Bezos be hurt if he couldn’t be worth more than a billion dollars? Because that question is the whole fucking point of the Law of Diminishing Utility.
Take away a significant amount of wealth from the obscenely wealthy and they’re not going to be hurt by it. They’ll still have so much wealth that they’ll never have to worry about meeting their basic needs for the rest of their lives. Losing their wealth won’t hurt them in any way but psychologically, and even then, who gives a fuck about their fabergé egos.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has many people who are working multiple full-time jobs just to make rent, and you’re still more worried about whether it’s “fair” to tax those who absolutely have more to give of their own personal wealth at a higher percentage rate than the poor. Fairness isn’t just about “the same percentage”, you son of a bitch—and if you cared about the poor instead of the rich (a group that includes your personal orange Jesus), you’d realize that.
Or do the poor only matter to you when you can make them give up more of the money they need to merely subsist?
Well, not to fuckwit conservatives with a boner for the Second Amendment…
Not to us.
…and I thank you for proving my point.
he did what he thought was best for his community that evening
It wasn’t his fucking community. He didn’t fucking live there.
the protesters weren’t completely innocent either
The only violence that resulted in harm to people that night was Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people and wounding a third. If people were breaking the law that night, they deserved to be arrested and tried in a court of law, not gunned down by a teenaged vigilante who had no fucking business being there that night.
there was reason for protection of property
It wasn’t his property.
The three people he shot were shot because they actually threatened his life.
You might be able to get away with some semblance of a self-defense explanation for the first killing. But the other two men were responding to what they likely saw as an active shooter threat. To blame them for their own deaths/injuries because they were likely trying to stop someone they believed was an active shooter from killing more people is so far beyond the pale that I have to wonder if you’re the judge who helped acquit Rittenhouse.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Nobody here has said that anyone who breaks the law shouldn’t face the consequences of doing so. What we have a problem with is you either implying or outright saying they deserved what they got from the cops—a violent response to a non-violent crime—only because they were breaking the law. And you’ve been doing exactly that with that “well, the cops didn’t need to do that, but…” bullshit you’re pulling.
The cops didn’t need to be (and shouldn’t have been) violent towards people who weren’t being violent—full motherfucking stop. For what reason do you keep going out of your way to prove how callous and cruel and heartless you are with your “they deserved what they got for breaking the law” bullshit?
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
No, now you’re outright stating it by saying a woman who “sets up” a situation where there is a possibility that she could be raped deserved to be raped for being in that situation. Change the details and the wording all you want to say you’re not blaming the victim, but you’re doing exactly that until and unless you explicitly say “absolutely nothing can justify or defend rape” without any further qualifications (e.g., “nothing can justify or defend rape, but…”).
Acting sexual (e.g., dancing naked) is not consent. Dressing provocatively (e.g., wearing a miniskirt) is not consent. Getting drunk/high is not consent. Leveraging socioeconomic power (including peer pressure and blackmail) to induce sex from someone is not consent. Giving drugs to someone is not consent. Giving consent to one person is not giving consent to all people, nor is it giving permanent and continual consent to that one person. Implied consent to one kind of sexual act (e.g., groping) does not grant blanket consent to all other kinds of sexual acts (e.g., penetrative sex). No non-consensual sexual act is defensible or justifiable under any circumstance, and the victim of a non-consensual sex act is not to blame for the actions of their rapist—even if (and it’s more “when” than “if” at this point) you think a slut is “asking for it” by acting like a slut. And all of that applies to everyone regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Oh, and once more, with feeling: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Being in a free-for-all kink club does not—and I repeat with extra emphasis for your sake, abso-fucking-lutely does not—mean someone automatically and continually consents to being touched/fondled/fucked by anyone and everyone in that club without limit. You keep equating the idea of being in a sexual situation with continual consent; that isn’t the case at all. Stealthing, for example, is considered rape even if the removal of the condom happens during the actual sex act.
Consent for sex should be knowing, enthusiastic, and continual right up to the end of the act itself. (How you feel about the act after you’re done is your own fucking business.) The burden of mutual consent initially lies on all involved parties, but once someone involved in that act says “no” (or an agreed-upon safe word), the other person(s) involved must stop what they’re doing without question or hesitation. Otherwise, it’s a non-consensual sex act—better known as either sexual assault or rape.
Acting sexual (e.g., dancing naked) is not consent. Dressing provocatively (e.g., wearing a miniskirt) is not consent. Getting drunk is not consent. Leveraging socioeconomic power (including peer pressure and blackmail) to induce sex from someone is not consent. The victim of a non-consensual sex act is not to blame for the actions of those who assaulted the victim. I honestly can’t believe I have to explain all of that to you again. If you make me do it a third time, I’ll have no choice but to write you off as someone who thinks rape can be justified under “the right circumstances”. And yes, that is exactly what you’re doing when you’re out here trying to blame the survivors of rape and sexual assault for the actions of their attackers in even the smallest possible way. I mean, fuck, even Jesus basically said “if you can’t stop looking at women, gouge out your own eyes, you goddamned pervert”.
(Once again: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.)
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Gee, maybe it’s because an illegal act that didn’t require an overly violent response—which you yourself admit is the case!—received one and people are focused on why that is~. But that really couldn’t be it, could it~?
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Once again: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.
No, she is without fault. No matter what a woman says or does before (or even during!) a sex act, if she says “no” or otherwise refuses to consent to a sex act, someone going through with said act is raping her. She can’t and doesn’t control what other people do in reaction to her actions; while the act you describe might be best defined as “provocative”, the burden for the reaction still lies on her rapist(s). To say otherwise is to heavily imply—if not outright declare—that she deserved to be raped because she provoked her rapist(s).
They shouldn’t be getting beaten at all. They should be getting kicked out at best, arrested by the cops at worst. I understand the desire to act on such provocation—and yes, I’m more than happy to repeatedly watch Richard Spencer get his stupid face punched—but even so, it’s still assault unless the racist shithead (and it’s okay to call them racist shitheads, I promise I won’t tell your orange Jesus that you called some white people “racist”) provoked the violence against them with some kind of violence or physical contact on their part.
(That said: I hope the person who punched Dick Spencer is never found and never reveals their identity. They should take that bit of personal satisfaction to the grave.)
If they’re committing an act of violence against the vehicle, yes, they have provoked a violent response in kind. If all they’re doing is standing around and/or talking shit, no, they don’t deserve a violent response—regardless of whether they were violating a curfew.
But you are giving them a free defense by saying their victims deserved what they got from those cops. And you’re doing the same thing for the theoretical rapists in your hypothetical. If you blame a victim for any violence committed against them that they did not provoke with violence in the first place, you are justifying unwarranted violence—up to and including rape and murder—for reasons I cannot fucking fathom.
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If you have to ask, you haven’t done enough research into comments from conservatives about rape. Start with “legitimate rape” and work from there.
Also…
…what you suggested sounded like more severe punishments for filing false rape claims, as if that specific subset of false criminal complaints alone warrants a harsher punishment. It’s the “tough on crime” mindset—you know, the kind that conservatives love to say they have even as such thinking, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to shit like the bullshit described in this article and grade school kids being handcuffed in said schools.
We Americans love punishment. But conservatives love punishment like it’s a sexual fetish—especially if they have the power to punish their political enemies for any perceived slights. If you need proof of that, look at how the Republicans have become the party of “own the libs at all costs”, especially in the wake of Old 45 (you know, the fascist shithead you voted for twice).
What the fuck penalty do you want, life in prison? The death sentence? God to reincarnate them as a mushroom so they can never die in a way that matters?
Besides, it’s not like famous/powerful/wealthy men have to worry about that shit unless they’re convicted of a crime. To wit: Shithead comedian Louis CK was accused of some heinous sexual misconduct a few years ago and he picked up a Grammy nomination this past week. And hell, even if they are convicted of a crime, they might still be able to escape accountability and remain powerful and influential—I mean, look at Roman Polanski.
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Once again: Tell me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative.
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Just so you know, that sounds like you’re saying “if a woman is acting like a slut and she gets raped, she’s at least partially responsible for the actions of a whole other person over whom she has no control”. It sounds like you’re eager to blame the victim for being attacked. It also sounds like the kind of rhetoric you might hear from Religious Right fuckbois who talk about modesty and purity and shit when they decry “loose” women.
Paraphrasing what I said in another comment: Even if a woman is asking a guy for sex, if she says “no” right before penetration (or at any point during sex) and the guy keeps going anyway, that’s rape—regardless of whether she said “yes” at first and regardless of what she was wearing or doing before she said “no”. To so much as even imply otherwise is to imply that you believe there is a situation where rape can be justified. I don’t want to think even you are such a ghoul that you’d say there is such a situation.
But if you’re willing to even partially blame a woman for her own rape, I have to wonder whether you think the now-convicted killers of Ahmaud Arbery deserved to walk as free as Kyle Rittenhouse.
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And if you think the obscenely wealthy can’t/won’t find ways to skirt the law even with the supposed closing of loopholes, I’m gonna have to ask you what reality you’re living in, because it sure as shit isn’t this one.
No, they are the problem, because they’re the ones paying for the passage of those corporate tax policies—as well as all the other tax loopholes that let them hoard their obscene wealth. The system that lets billionaires remain billionaires does so because that same system is rigged by billionaires. I mean, do you think the wealthiest members of Congress are about to risk their own earnings by passing laws that tax their wealth at higher rates than the poor, never mind the earnings of the millionaires and billionaires who pay for their political campaigns?
It’ll still help pay for the social safety net (including higher salaries for government workers).
So hit them both. Nailing one without the other will accomplish nothing.
You’d like to think that, but I speak from experience when I say that taxes and the social safety net don’t work like that for people living beneath, at, or even a little above the poverty line. (Not that you care to think about the actual humanity of the situation.)
And therein lies the problem: A CEO could easily claim a huge “base level income” (e.g., several million dollars per year) and have the tax code work in their favor by only taxing any “extra” income on top of that “base level income”. And that doesn’t even get into taxes on investments such as the stock market or inheritance taxes or anything else that the wealthy (obscenely or not) see as an obstacle to obtaining more wealth for the sake of their egos.
You know what would help maintain the movitation to go to work? Knowing one’s basic needs have been met without worrying about going into financial ruin to do that. Rich people get to do that every day; poor people don’t. You wanna fix that? Tax the wealthy and the corporations in every possible way (including a 100% tax on all annual income above a certain multi-million-dollar limit) but leave the poor alone—like, say, no taxes of any kind for anyone making within three times the annual full-time federal minimum wage salary (which would be about $45,000 right now), then the tax rate gets progressively higher as the amount of wealth goes up, including that 100% tax I mentioned.
They would continue to exacerbate income inequality by way of letting the obscenely wealthy stay obscenely wealthy. Then again, you don’t seem to have a problem with a comparative handful of people sitting on billions of dollars in personal worth and doing dumb rich people shit while millions of less fortunate people struggle to pay for their basic needs every day, so you probably think that outcome is a good thing.
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And absolutely none of that would justify rape, any more than any non-violent actions of any civilian would justify police violence. A woman can literally bend over naked in front of a man and say “fuck me until I can’t walk”, but if she says “no” before the man sticks his dick in her and he does it anyway, it’s still rape. I can’t believe you apparently need to have that explained to you.
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Sounds like you’re a centrist-leaning conservative, then. Makes me wonder why you ever voted for a racist, sexist, fascism-enabling idiot like Trump.
A gun is a tool with a single (and lethal) purpose. If someone can fire a gun, someone can kill—even by accident. Hence why I try to stay as far away from people with guns as I knowingly and purposefully can while in public: Even the mythic “good guy with a gun” could kill me without meaning to.
Three things.
I never said “eliminating gun sales would stop gun violence” and you can’t show where I did.
I never said “I want to eliminate all legal gun sales” and you can’t show where I did.
And while I hate to do the borrowed opinions thing, The Weekly Sift has a damn good take on how to craft a modern Second Amendment that doesn’t take the Super-Dee-Duper Hyper Ultra Leftist (Turbo Champion Edition [& Knuckles {Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series}]) route of “ban all guns plz” you probably think it would because of the author’s left-leaning biases. (The follow-up to that article is worth checking out, too.)
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
“Look at how that woman was dressed, and watch how much she drinks—she was clearly asking for sex!” cries the defense attorney at a rape trial, who is only pointing something out something clearly seen from security footage at a bar before said rape occured.
If you think that comparison is offensive, maybe don’t say shit that sounds like an apologia for unwarranted violence.
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I’m no economist—but how about reading what an economist thinks of flat tax proposals instead? And if that’s not to your liking, try a paper from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy on the matter.
You misunderstand me. I don’t think people shouldn’t be able to get wealthy.
I think certain levels of wealth—especially any level including and above $1 billion—are obscene. I think, at a certain point, a wealthy person can give up a shitload of their wealth and still not have to worry about living comfortably. I think hoarding wealth is an example of greed and pride consensually fucking one another in public while poor people beg for enough money to eat at Burger King.
Wealth in general isn’t the issue. The issue lies in the hoarding of wealth to amass obscene amounts of it—that is the shit I can’t abide. That you don’t see this as obscene—or even a problem that can cause serious economic issues—is your issue, not mine.
Would I like to be rich? Sure. Would I like to have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life? Hell yes. Would I like to have more money than God and sit on it for the rest of my life while people starve in the streets? Fuck no—because that’s obscene.
Yeah, but you say that like the rich are going to pay for that. Given how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are still worth billions of dollars and act like they’re benevolent demigods, I have to believe they’ll do whatever they can to make sure their wealth stays at that level.
Of course it is—you don’t believe the wealthy have more to give of themselves than the poor. Hell, you probably believe they’re giving “too much” already. You look at the numbers on the ledger and ignore the humanity staring you in the face because you don’t want to think about how your position would exacerbate the same poverty you claim you want to eliminate.
I don’t hate people who have more than me. I don’t even hate people like you, who think wealth hoarding is both morally righteous and ethically decent instead of both a moral obscenity and an ethical nightmare. (If anything, I feel pity for you and your fellow shitheads.) I hate the people who hoard that wealth instead of paying into the public treasury so all people can benefit from that wealth.
You keep saying that, but even you know deep down that it isn’t true.
And what about people living on or barely above the poverty line—how much of their money should they pay in taxes, and why do I get the feeling they’re going to give more of themselves (in terms of economic and personal utility) than the obscenely wealthy ever will?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume the obscene wealthy—in this argument, anyone who makes over $250 million in a given year—has to pay 50% of their income from that given year in taxes. For someone who makes $250 million, that’s $125 million. That person isn’t going to be hurting for food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and other such expenses if they only have $125 million added to their bank account in a given year.
Now let’s go back to the minimum wage worker and say their tax bracket is the same: 50%. (You keep crowing on about “fairness” in the percentages, after all.) That means they would pay $7,500—or just about half of a little over $15,000. That person will be hurting for all those same expenses I outlined in that scenario. And the situation would remain the same even if you started the flat tax at $25,000 (they’d give up $12,500).
And I know your next argument: “But they can live in places that are cheaper to live in!” Not really a solid argument, though—such places are typically lower-income areas with no room for career growth, and I guarantee the people living in such places would absolutely live somewhere nicer if they could afford to do so. “Affordable” poverty is still poverty.
Again: You’re so obsessed with “fairness” as a number on a ledger that you’re missing the innate unfairness of obscene wealth—and how a flat tax will harm the poor far more than it could ever “harm” the obscenely wealthy.
Isn’t that cute, you think you can eliminate systemic poverty in a late-stage capitalist society filled with megacorps exploiting the poor as if thinking magical thoughts such as “the obscenely wealthy will voluntarily submit to having all their income sources taxed” will somehow do the trick.
But it’s wrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.
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And here is where I point out that the current Grand Poobah of that brand of sociopathic ignorance is the exact same person Lozenge voted to install as POTUS in 2016 and 2020.
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Ignore it? No. But act like property needs to be protected with far less fervor as one might protect human life? Abso-fucking-lutely. When buildings burn, they can be rebuilt; when a life is taken, it can’t be brought back. (Not that I expect someone who fetishizes property rights like you do to care about that difference…)
I thought you said he was there to be a medic, not to be a “defender of property”.
Well, one of the two men who did respond to Rittenhouse after his first killing was dead, so…that might’ve had something to do with it.
Doesn’t make that justification any less plausible.
I am an American. And if I see someone with an AR-15 outside of a gun club or a firing range—regardless of the context of that sighting—I’m going to assume they’re out to do harm and act accordingly (which, in my case, means “run and/or hide as best I can”). If I see someone walking down the street or walk into a coffeeshop with a goddamn assault rifle—and I don't give a fuck if it’s slung on their shoulders or back—I’m getting to somewhere safe before (and yes I recognize the irony in my saying this) calling the goddamn cops.
Not every American is involved or enamored the culture/fetish of guns. Not every American sees someone with a gun and immediately thinks “he must be a good guy or else he wouldn’t get to have a gun in public”. Some of us see guns for what they are—a tool with the sole purpose of making killing things easier—and try to avoid being near people who have them (including the cops) as much as humanly possible. That you would say all or even most Americans are unafraid of guns is a sign of either ignorance, hubris, or intentional trolling.
You really don’t get why people fear guns, do you.
A gun is a tool that exists for a single purpose. A gun gets that purpose done with frightening speed and destructive accuracy. A gun makes killing easier to the point where it’s point-and-pull, no questions asked.
A gun doesn’t ask you if your kill is morally righteous in the eyes of the law of the land. A gun can’t stop you from killing someone, including yourself. A gun won’t prevent needless death by stopping itself from working in specific contexts.
We have prescription drugs that are more heavily regulated than the sale of guns. We have medical procedures that are more heavily regulated than the sale of guns. Someone who is legally barred from owning a gun (regardless of why) can still buy a gun through legal channels and get away with it if they know when and where to buy said gun.
And you think people who fear guns do so because of their size or the noise they make?
No, we fear guns because of 60 people dying and over 400 people injured by gunshots in Las Vegas. We fear guns because of nine people dying in a church because of one racist asshole. We fear guns because of Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, the Pulse nightclub, the Tree of Life synagogue, Fort Hood (where even the goddamn military couldn’t stop an active shooter from killing 13 people), Aurora, Virginia Tech, and the D.C. sniper killings.
We fear guns because they’re readily available to any whackjob that wants one with next-to-no real oversight in who gets to own them and how many people those guns can kill in a short amount of time. We fear guns because we see politicians actively fight against regulating the sale, ownership, and even the manufacture of tools that exist only to make killing easier. We fear guns because people like you are okay with a country where gun ownership is an inalienable human right and access to medical care is an expensive-as-fuck privilege instead of the other way around.
Keep telling me you’re an American conservative without telling me you’re an American conservative, Lozenge. Every denial you make in that regard is undercut by literally everything else you say.
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Funny, because…
…sounds like victim-blaming to me.
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Something for you to think about: That “confrontation” wouldn’t exist without the cops. You want to talk about bystanders not being “completely innocent” as if that excuses the behavior of the cops who ultimately instigated violence.
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Then go convince your conservative brethren to join you, Trumpist.
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You just couldn’t leave it be, could you.
You think this is about hurting people? You think this is about causing pain? Motherfucker, how the fuck would Jeff Bezos be hurt if he couldn’t be worth more than a billion dollars? Because that question is the whole fucking point of the Law of Diminishing Utility.
Take away a significant amount of wealth from the obscenely wealthy and they’re not going to be hurt by it. They’ll still have so much wealth that they’ll never have to worry about meeting their basic needs for the rest of their lives. Losing their wealth won’t hurt them in any way but psychologically, and even then, who gives a fuck about their fabergé egos.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has many people who are working multiple full-time jobs just to make rent, and you’re still more worried about whether it’s “fair” to tax those who absolutely have more to give of their own personal wealth at a higher percentage rate than the poor. Fairness isn’t just about “the same percentage”, you son of a bitch—and if you cared about the poor instead of the rich (a group that includes your personal orange Jesus), you’d realize that.
Or do the poor only matter to you when you can make them give up more of the money they need to merely subsist?
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Well, not to fuckwit conservatives with a boner for the Second Amendment…
…and I thank you for proving my point.
It wasn’t his fucking community. He didn’t fucking live there.
The only violence that resulted in harm to people that night was Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people and wounding a third. If people were breaking the law that night, they deserved to be arrested and tried in a court of law, not gunned down by a teenaged vigilante who had no fucking business being there that night.
It wasn’t his property.
You might be able to get away with some semblance of a self-defense explanation for the first killing. But the other two men were responding to what they likely saw as an active shooter threat. To blame them for their own deaths/injuries because they were likely trying to stop someone they believed was an active shooter from killing more people is so far beyond the pale that I have to wonder if you’re the judge who helped acquit Rittenhouse.
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