>From: Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org>
>Somebody else wrote:
> > Harmless by your definition, not mine. If you ever get a chance to
> > talk to a woman who's been raped, or forcefully groped, ask her if
> > she was physically hurt.
>
>In what way is a flan in the face comparable to rape?
>
I'll take this opportunity to point out a common mistake people make during
a debate.
I say: your position in support of such-and-such is ridiculous. If what you
said was true, that would mean that it's ok to kill people.
You respond: Huh? Such-and-such is completely different from murder.
[What I would mean if I said this is that, insofar as far as I understand
your premises by which you derive support for such-and-such, you can derive
a support for murder from those same premises. This would be my attempt to
prove you wrong by showing a contradiction in your premises (since we all
believe murder is wrong and to support it is a contradiction). If I am
wrong, it is either because I misunderstood the premises from which you
derived support for such-and-such, in which case you should now explain your
premises more clearly, or because I mis-applied logic in getting from your
premises to the conclusion of murder, in which case you should point out
where. What you understood by my statement, however, is that I was trying to
just use an emotional tie-in between murder and such-and-such, to get people
to reject such-and such].
But anyway, of course rape and pie-in-the face differ enormously in scale.
Here's something comprable more comprable in scale: animal rights protesters
who throw (fake) blood at people wearing fur. Is this acceptable?
There is some guy in the US South who protests outside the funerals of
people who died of AIDS, holding up signs which say "AIDS cures fags". If
this guy started throwing pies at people leaving the funeral home, would
this be acceptable? I think it's comprable - he has a certain political
opinion that certain people are bad, and maybe who he feels they "take
themselves too seriously". He'd be throwing a pie at them to humiliate them.
Throwing symbolic "fetus pies" at women leaving abortion clinics?
When I use these examples I think it becomes more clear that any initiation
of force, no matter how slight, is bad.
Of course, it is just a pie. I can think of a few peices of real damage it
would cause. First, it's going to ruin your shirt.
---------------------------------------------------
Zeb Haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
My personal webpage:
http://www.inconnect.com/~zharadon/ubunix
A movie I'm directing:
http://www.elevatormovie.com
"Fish fuck in it." - W. C. Fields answer to why he never drank water.
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