Raped, impregnated, then jailed - Page 19

On November 24 2011 19:34 ETisME wrote:

if you define the key terms based upon your own definition, how do you expect the discussion can continue/develop??

On November 24 2011 20:05 Nizaris wrote:

because weak minded ppl (and i'm being nice) believe in this absurd thing called religion.

On November 24 2011 19:50 Synwave wrote:

Yup you told him...to semantically defend himself.
While not doing so yourself.
...your so... how and where do I find that school of argumentation because its so..
yeah

On November 23 2011 22:14 Zvek wrote:
What is disgusting is all the posters here on TL taking the "moral high ground".

Really, what do we/you know about culture/justice? I say they can handle on their own. Our disgust over it, no matter what it is, is a product of ignorance, or worse unchecked elitism. This cultural difference occur everywhere, why should Afganistan be singled out? In the USA, you can divorce, which is totally inhumane and completely idiotic for the Arabs. Not to mention all the wars the US has started in the name of "democracy". In some tribes in Africa, the boys are introduced to adulthood by making them have sex with their sisters, and drink the semen of older men.

Let them solve their "situation/problem". Keep your judgment to yourself.

On November 24 2011 18:46 vetinari wrote:
Rapes were not ignored, Biff. It was a crime that got people lynched, after all. However, for the crime of rape to exist, there must be both the actus reus and the mens rea, that is the penetration without consent and the knowledge that one is having sex without the consent of the woman. Given that the medical evidence often doesn't show more than that sex occured, and that rape cases often come down to the verbal testimony of the alleged victim against that of the alleged perpetrator, it should be hard to prove rape beyond reasonable doubt. Thats why the history of alleged victim was dredged up: because if you are going to send someone to prison or the chair on the basis of a person's word, you want make damn sure that she is of unimpeachable integrity.

The first third of UNWANTED SEX describes the inadequacy of American laws against rape. Schulhofer begins with a sketch of what many readers will believe to be the bad, but bygone, days of restrictive definitions of the crime that drew upon Blackstone's eighteenth century yardstick: "carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will." American statutes employed Blackstone's standard until the 1950s. Legislators, police, judges, and jurors, virtually always male, demanded a showing of extreme violence, lest consent be considered to have been given by the victim. As a result, conviction rates for individuals accused of rape remained low. A typical judgment cited by Schulhofer was that of the Nebraska Supreme Court which, in 1947, stated "'submission' would count as consent 'no matter how reluctantly yielded'" (p. 20).

On November 25 2011 03:06 Modeath wrote:
this is why we shouldnt have freed these people we should have just dropped a nuke on them and called it a war. We wasted american lifes oversea's to protect trash like this? F bush wish we would have had a president who had the balls to drop a nuke.

On November 25 2011 03:06 Modeath wrote:
this is why we shouldnt have freed these people we should have just dropped a nuke on them and called it a war. We wasted american lifes oversea's to protect trash like this? F bush wish we would have had a president who had the balls to drop a nuke.

On November 25 2011 02:20 Dark_Chill wrote:
Ok I'm seeing a big problem in this thread, with people saying we can't talk about this, our cultures and our countries are fucked up too. And the weird thing is, in most of the comments, no one had ever said my country and culture is better than that one. The fuck is wrong with you people? I can't talk because my place sucks too? Does that somehow hinder my understanding? I still know that what's happening is fucked up. That fact wouldn't change if I lived in heaven or hell.

On November 25 2011 03:13 Zvek wrote:

Try to relax a bit. What we are saying is that don't ever assume you have a moral high ground on this matter, especially that it operates on a different cultural context. Complain and rage all you want, but never make the mistake that this is a simple right and wrong issue, and that you know with absolute certainty which is which.

On November 25 2011 01:31 dOofuS wrote:


I find it hard to accept that views like this are completely tolerable on these forums, whereas a firm religious conviction will often close a thread. I understand the desire of moderators to play the neutral role, but in silencing religious opinion it's basically not neutral at all. I am glad that this thread has not yet been closed, but don't appreciate that posts like these go unwarned.

Just because you don't have faith in a deity and its associated moral teachings, doesn't obligate you to degrade those who do.

On November 25 2011 04:08 Dfgj wrote:

That's very haphazard logic.

Suggesting a lack of objective values entails either cultural relativism/subjectivism or outright nihilism. For the former, not only can we point to extreme cases where clearly relativism cannot extend (genocides, torture, etc), but there is nothing inherent in saying 'X act is moral in Y culture' that demands that another culture accept that Y perform X as moral. While it is true that each culture possesses different morals and upholds them in different ways, there is also sound argument that many of these cultural morals are internalized uncritically and are not subject to rational scrutiny. Something of the nature of what happens in this thread's topic is a case I would argue falls into this, as its attribution of blame is utterly irrational.

In the latter case, if you're arguing for nihilism (which I assume you're not), we don't have a discussion.

On November 25 2011 04:25 Zvek wrote:

The overabundance of -isms in your post got me a bit dizzy. Don't be simple. The sooner you realize that the world is more complicated than it appears, the better you'll be. Societies and cultures do not necessarily, and in fact do not have to operate on moral dichotomies.

On November 25 2011 04:32 Dfgj wrote:

Trying to find an overall solution is far better than simply saying 'we don't know which is which' with regards to right and wrong and leaving it at that. I'd argue that that mindset is a lot more 'simple'.

On November 25 2011 04:41 Zvek wrote:

Unless you are GOD himself, stop pretending that you have an "overall solution." Before you reply again, let's go back to the OP, try to read the story again, and realize how little you know about the cultural context at play on that case, much less on the philosophical epistemes that animate and have animated such beliefs for such a long time (long enough to migrate them into the level of laws). And we are not even on the part of the actual narrative of events itself.

On November 25 2011 04:54 Dfgj wrote:

Nobody claimed to have a solution to morality or ethics.

I don't consider 'it's their culture' as an acceptable reason to take acts like this - that's logic by which you can excuse any action unconditionally. In any case, Islamic law in society does not necessarily justify this as far as I know - while law in Islamic texts is extremely harsh, punishments of that meter were not always administered, rather it has been suggested they were written as deterrence in an unstable society. Religious texts in the past also forms only the core of Islamic legal process, being supplemented by schools of law and secular rulings (sunni), or interpretation by major religious figures (shia).

The Afghan law behind this ruling is technically in line with Sharia - a hadd punishment for haram (prohibited actions). However, we can definitely argue as to how reasonably this ruling was applied in terms of establishing blame, and the discretion of the judge.