You missed the point.. Entirely.
I submit that's because you failed to make one.
More generally, it would be great if you'd just take responsibility for your own failures at comprehension and communication, and stop trying to browbeat me into accepting the blame for them. I'm not going to.
The OP asks a very clear question.
And in the ensuing several pages of discussion, a variety of related questions were raised and pursued, with several tangents often running at once. This being typical here, and already noted by me in my previous response to you. I note that you have raised no objection to the topicality of any of those other tangents, nor demanded that any of them answer to the "rape" framing. And, again, you did nothing to indicate that you were addressing the larger rape framing until late in the ensuing exchange, after it became clear that the generic framing in effect in the tangent in question was a rhetorical liability for you. Note that nothing in Fraggle's instantiation of said tangent mentions rape - it's all generic commentary on the lack of male standing, as such. Well, to the extent that his view of "males" is distinct from "rapists" to begin with.
You then commented at the lack of a female perspective on this forum.
In point of fact, Fraggle Rocker commented on such, and tossed off some inflammatory remarks dismissing any male standing on the issue of childbearing. I pointed out that S.A.M. had previously participated in this thread, and noted that SciForums in general lacks for female
feminists , and, to the latter, offered both the obvious counterpoint (men are fathers) and the contention that such radical anti-male feminist framing was a tactical mistake.
And I responded that men pay too much attention at what comes out of our vaginas when the majority should not.
And I responded by listing the various stakes that men have in child-bearing, abortion decisions, etc. Since then you've been trying furiously to back out of the discussion without admitting error, by insisting that you were only referring to rapists (even though you never said so at the time, nor would context make any such assumption reasonable), and pursuing this inane, browbeating thread-narrative-revison approach. I know what happened. I was there, and I'm not going to accept whatever convenient whitewash you want to impose here. Why would anyone? It's all right there in black-and-white, and nobody is under any compulsion to accept your convenient revisions. Least of all me.
Except now, right in the middle of insisting that we're only talking about rapists, you're back to blanket statements about men, as such:
For example, the only male who has a say in what comes out of my vagina in a non-abusive and where rape is not involved, is my husband. Not you.
That's great, but the issue is not "Bells's vagina," but abortion legislation and the standing of men to have a say in such. That each man has an individual standing to what comes out of his wife's vagina, adds up to a collective standing for men, in the aggregate, to care about what comes out of women's vaginas (in the aggregate). Surely this is not such an obscure point? That everyone has a stake in their society's policies regarding human reproduction?
You should not get a say if some random woman you have never met wants to have an abortion.
But I should get a say in whether abortion, as such, is available. Given that abortion is legal, then, no, I personally have no standing to decide whether some random woman I've never met actually goes and gets one.
What she expells from her vagina is really none of your business.
On the other hand, that's not quite true. How many children women have, and in what circumstances, affects me and everyone else. My taxes will pay for their schools, their taxes for my retirement. We are not islands.
So why the hypocrisy? Why do so many support abortion when it comes to rape but call it murder when it is not rape?
I answered that question back on page 6 or so, and quite satisfactorily I think. You can feel free to go read it, and let me know your thoughts on it. If you actually are serious about using this thread to discuss that - which you obviously aren't, since you've spent all your energy on this particular tangent, and none of the OP question. You don't seem interested in the OP question as anything other than a club to browbeat me with, when you don't get your way on the other stuff you want to talk about.
And that is what this thread is actually supposed to be discussing.
Not your non-parental rights on the bodies of women you don't even know.
Take it up with Fraggle, if you are unhappy with the presence of that tangent - he's the one who spawned it. Oh, and stop contributing to it yourself. And probably go complain to all of the posters involved in the various other tangents in this thread. Funny how you only care about "what this thread is supposed to be discussing" when it happens to work as a pretext to tell me to stop disagreeing with you about some tangent you freely pursued.
I did not say the word "rape", but seeing that the thread title and the OP deals directly with abortion and rape and its acceptance in the case of rape.. I would have assumed it would have been obvious.
As discussed above, the relevant context was otherwise, and it does not appear that you were/are seriously limiting your comments to the case of rape. It's pretty clear that such was an ill-advised dodge, which you don't even seem to be pursuing any more (thankfully).
My communication skills are lacking terribly at the moment due the medication I am on. My speech is even worse. For that I apologise.
Miscommunication happens (medically induced or otherwise) - and I have no problem being a good sport about it when people recognize such and take responsibility for it. I've done it myself plenty of times.
But when they try to weasel out of it, and pin the blame for such onto me, well... you've seen what happens.
That said, if you do not like it, you are free to not read it.
And I am also free to read it and write a response telling you exactly what I didn't like, and why. Guess which one I prefer?
I'm also free to issue similarly aggressive dismissals: if you don't like me disagreeing with you, don't challenge me on anything, ever.
But do you think you have a stake in what a woman decides for herself if you are not connected to her in any way, shape or form?
Again, there is no such woman to begin with. We are all connected in some way, shape or form. We've all got a stake in the composition of the next generation, the circumstances of its upbringing, etc.
What of a rape victim? Do you think you should have a say in her decision?
Again, the issue is not random males swooping in to issue judgements on individual cases. It's a policy question. And, yes, all males have a legitimate stake in what abortion policy consists of.
You do understand that I support access to abortion, and the prerogative of rape victims to make the final decision on whether to terminate a pregnancy arising from that, right? But that such is not the same as asserting that men have no place in the abortion policy debate?
You were the one who brought my Moderator status into this discussion and then issued insults and then called me a troll for sticking to the subject matter of the thread.
Actually I noted your troll
tactics. But I'd add that I'm equivocal on the question of whether you truly are a troll. A proper troll is something more manipulative and insightful - you seem to be something more like a bigot. You don't seem to be doing this for lulz (
what lulz?), but out of sheer pig-headedness. But it's worth noting that the basic tactics of bad-faith argumentation and general discursive subversion are shared by both trolls and bigots.
But as for the invocation of moderator status: it's always at issue, every time any moderator posts anything. Everything you do carries the implicit approval of the administration, by virtue of your office. It is not the case that you can go around and act however you want, and not have this reflect on your office and the expectations thereof, so long as you aren't explicitly using moderator powers or having your status explicitly noted. If you aren't comfortable with that, then you should resign. We went over all of this stuff a long time ago when S.A.M. was de-modded, for largely the same reasons - and yet it remains mysterious?
For you to accuse me of browbeating you when you were the one who brought up my Modetaror status and then insulted me is funny.
I never claimed I wouldn't browbeat you in return, nor meet insult with insult. That I also happen to be better at it than you are should present some deterrent.
It is not browbeating to expect that you be able to stick to the topic and not be so insulting or rude,
The browbeating is in the attempts to dictate what said topic is, in contravention of the actual situation and as a tactic to avoid responsibility for previous statements, and in an insulting and rude way at that.
when all I was trying to do was discuss the subject of this thread as per the OP.
... and in the persistent attempts to assign your own failures to comprehend and communicate to me, and demand that I accept your revision of the narrative of the thread in order to portray you in some favorable light. That latter one is just stupid - the thread's all there in black-and-white, for anyone to read. What good does it do to lie about it now? And how aggressively pig-headed do you have to be to expect me to actually participate in something like that?
If you have an issue with that, I would suggest you take it up with the administration or the moderator of this forum.
I prefer to note such things as they happen, in situ. Running to the mods with such is in the first place a crybaby move, and in the second place allows them the convenience of ignoring issues they don't want to deal with, without any publicly visible record of such.
If you deal with me in a way that I find objectionable, I'm going to let you know, and probably respond in kind. I judge this to be a reasonable way to deal with people in this sort of setting. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it, or respond to it. Except I know perfectly well that you're far too proud for that.
