TRIGGER WARNING.

This is going to ramble because this thread made my head explode a bit. Some oik over on the Scienceblog ERV has derailed a thread on the new artificially created organisms by revisiting what is apparently an old argument of his: that clear cut cases of rape and sexual enslavement of women allegedly ordered by God in the early books of the Bible might just not “really” be “rape”.

NB: If you are a Christian but not a fundamentalist biblical inerrantist, I already know that you probably don’t agree with this oik. Please don’t derail the discussion by feeling the need to defend your faith against this oik’s extremist position – it’s his position I am attacking, not yours.

You know, those cases where a prophet relays instructions from Yahweh to the Hebrews/Israelites along the lines of “kill every thing that breathes except the women who have not known men – those you may keep for yourselves” (there is more than one instance of this). People point out that to claim that this is not an atrocious instruction replete with immoral cruelty is, frankly, pretty damned atrocious.

Response from the oik is “prove that they were unwilling – prove that this was rape”.

For realz. Let the irony of a conservative biblical inerrantist arguing for cultural relativity from us when justifying this by how differently these ancient cultures viewed the sexual enslavement of women, that their view of slavery as just what you did to your enemies, and being ordered to slaughter and enslave by their deity, means that these atrocities weren’t really rape at all – when without turning a hair he would claim an absolute unchanging Law regarding homosexuality and abortion for all time forever and ever – let that just sink in there for a while.

“Prove that it was rape”

Why of course, what proof is there that a virgin girl who had just seen her family and every other non-virgin girl in her town killed by a band of bloody warriors would not be absolutely delighted, nay, champing at the bit, to leap into the bed of one of those bloody warriors for some slap and tickle with no sense of being coerced in any way?

His response to comments of that ilk was that we should not assume that women of that time would be “so grudging” as to “withhold sex” from a man who had taken responsibility for her support in his home. The oik appears to not find it relevant that the man we are talking about here is quite possibly the very same man who had slaughtered her family, nor to acknowledge that this might affect her willingness for sex in any way.

For realz. Because obviously women back then were just so damn fickle about those family bonds from their birth families that they didn’t mind them all being dead at all, and so they were utterly thrilled about leaving behind everything that they knew to go live amongst strangers that viewed them as enemy trophies, and contentedly resigned to their function as sex slaves, so that as soon as they were taken under the roof of a man then they just subsumed their will entirely to that of their new lord and master and totally willingly had sex with him without any grief or misgivings or regrets. No fear or loathing or resentment or grudging or traumatic shuddering or flinching or emotional numbness. Certainly never ever, not even for one of them, a wish to die every day before he touches her again and if only he hadn’t removed all the sharp things from the room to which she is confined she’d kill herself with glad relief.

This is what happens to rigidly legalistic minds when the law holds the feckin’ survival tactic of acquiescence to the coercion of somebody who holds you in their power as equivalent to assent by refusing to distinguish between them, muddying the waters with the consent standard consisting of “well she didn’t say no” instead. Look at how focussing on “consent” and “not withholding” has buggered up this bloke’s empathy chip so that he simply doesn’t care whether their acquiescence was driven by fear of harm or not, so long as they weren’t actually kicking and screaming “No”.

Pass the brain bleach? Please?

There’s also another guy highlighted by PZ on Pharyngula [TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER TRIGGER] who is actively blogging about his fantasies of rape.

Categories: ethics & philosophy, religion, violence

Tags: rape