Lost resources & a new search
When I was in college, I had an Anth/Sexuality textbook in which a feminist (only marginally important) author documented "rape" among flies and ducks. I can't recall the bit about ducks, but the part about flies was hilarious. Apparently, the studies suggested that female flies mated with males as determined by strength. That strength, apparently, had to do with food resources. Thus, a weaker fly would attack a stronger fly, scent itself with food, and thus lure a female fly into mating. Frankly, and the only reason I mention that the author was feminist, I find such an extension of a social crime into the world of animals a hard blow against the idea of rape. After all, have you ever watched
cats mate? Let me take after
Xev on this one:
Ewwwwww! :bugeye:
To the other, on a more humorous note, perhaps the funniest thing I ever saw in nature was a tomcat stalking a female, flipping her over onto her back, and mounting her ventrally. Feline missionary; I laughed for days about that.
But ye gods, I wish I still had that sexuality text. Some of the material in it was beyond funny, some of it beyond morbid.
However, a new search begins for me. A question has occurred to me to which I have no answer. Thus, I shall be attempting to discern the earliest conceptualization of rape while undertaking the question,
What is the crime here? That is, did rape arise as a social recognition as a crime against women? Or did it rise as a violation of a male's property rights?
After all, rape is mentioned in the Bible, but whose daughters was it that got him drunk and f--ked him? Furthermore, to stay with the Biblical vein for a moment, apparently allowing sodomy was a greater offense to God than throwing your daughters out to satisfy a frothing crowd.
But, to the topic itself:
•
Is condemning practitioners of the above “outrages” (as I personally would) merely cultural arrogance? Are there actually any morals that are fundamental to humanity? If so, what are they?
I'm going to stand with
Chagur on this one, in general. I, personally, find such ideas abhorrent, but I am also aware of the subjectivity of decency and the myth of human equality. However, it's not entirely fair to the offenses to class them together.
Genocide (topic post),
slavery (
Cris), and
torture (
Cris) are acts which require a certain amount of collusion among multiple entities; that is, a conspiracy, confederation, or other convention among human beings. Genocide by one man is impossible; slavery cannot be maintained by one man alone; torture, in this sense, is performed toward a cause that typically involves more than one person.
However, torture can be carried out by a single individual for no particular reason. Such psychopathic behavior, though, seems well out of the range of any cultural arrogance or any broader prohibition. One cannot account for another individual in this sense. In terms of the state, though, one has (by my cultural arrogance) an obligation to prevent or actively intervene against torture.
Rape,
murder, and
pedophilia (including incestuous relations) involve a single perpetrator against a victim. True, these crimes can involve more than one perpetrator, but compared to the requirements for genocide, slavery, or torture, it is much easier to accomplish these as individual crimes.
Incest among consenting adults ... again, I take after
Xev.
If we choose to remain absolutely subjective, though, it is definitely cultural arrogance which compels us to condemn such acts. However, I think an objective examination of the issues show that the human species has an obligation to prevent some of these.
Torture is its own argument, unfortunately, insofar as the species has an obligation to prevent it. Murder occurs among other species, and often for arbitrary reasons. Incidentally, are there any recorded deaths among animals known to fight for mating rights? (I'm pretty sure there are, I'm just too lazy right now to look it up.) The moral condemnation of murder is thoroughly subjective. Crimes of passion, however, seem to have precedent in nature. (That girl is
mine!)
(Bang-bang you're dead. Did not, did too!)
Condemnation of rape is both subjective and objective. On the one hand, the condemnation is one of empathy; to the other, it is hardly healthy for the species to be abusing its reproductive center. Apologies for the utilitarian approach, but so it seems when we get right down to it.
Pedophilia has an outright objective need for condemnation. While the social damage and psychological damage in the social creature might be either subjective or objective, what is most definitely objective is what we now know about sexuality and developing bodies. It is quite unhealthy for a girl to start having sex at too early an age; structural damage to the uterus and cervix can occur, and the likelihood of cervical cancer triples, as I recall, if a female has sexual intercourse at too young an age. This is bad for the species as well as the individual. And, frankly, you can't tell me that sodomizing a young boy and causing
that physical damage isn't bad for the species.
So perhaps I would draw a line against the notion of cultural arrogance when the species itself comes into play. Genocide and slavery are bad for the species; while wholesale destruction may occur among other species in nature, the added burden of humanity's self-awareness lends toward a standard of choice. If two groups of ants go to battle, and one entirely wipes out the other, perhaps that upset to the ecosystem will be bad for the victorious species. Perhaps their presence will offset that damage. But in humanity, where we can choose "genocide", "ethnic cleansing", "purging", and other such atrocities, we cannot allow acceptance of such destruction. Eventually, human diversity becomes threatened at the biological level and the species would be endangered.
It may seem cold, but it's a numbers game as such. I would oppose slavery for the benefit of the species because any choice affecting a broad portion of humanity can create volatile results. To take the hypothetical: what if we never ran the African trade in the US? Where would our social development be? But if we accepted each other as a human family, what would our social progress look like? Perhaps in a more demanding, more primitive environment, slave labor accomplished more good than bad, but I cannot construct any vision of the modern world in which that would be so.
But yeah, it's a numbers game. I find all these things abhorrent, but the reasons why ... well, it's an interesting question.
By and large, though, yes, it's cultural arrogance and no, there are no fundamental morals that humans recognize.
And we could probably argue about what's good or bad for the species until we're extinct and never figure that out.
(
Bang! Say da da-da da. Tell me yes, and let's feed the fire.)
thanx much,
Tiassa