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Peikoff on date rape

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Ninth Doctor

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I think Peikoff is suggesting that aliens are forcing the humans to have sex!

Seriously, whatever it seems like Peikoff isn't getting right on this question, let's keep the pure speculation to a minimum -- especially since Peikoff literally wrote an Objectivism book with topics that included volition.

That's an odd request. Isn't it pro-Objectivist to think in principles and to make philosophical connections? Peikoff's position is that sexual consent cannot be revoked once it has been merely implied -- that there is something about the nature of sexual activity that apparently makes it unstoppable once it is initiated. It is not "pure speculation," nor is it anything like suggesting that Peikoff believes that aliens are forcing people to have sex, for me to address the issue of how volition must tie into the belief system of someone who thinks that there is a point during any consensual activity in which it is "too late" to not consent or to no longer consent.

J

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Alrighty then: kidnapping and "plug your ears and bone her", both added to the list. Anything else?

So what is wrong with either drawing analogies for illustration OR following what appear to be the logical consequences of the statement in question?

If you don't like the results of these processes perhaps you should identify that you really have a problem with the original statement.

If you think that someone has made a bad analogy or incorrectly derived consequences from LP's statement, rather than simply ridiculing their statements, show how they do not follow (or illustrate via analogy) what LP said.

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Btw, I think that Rand would be appalled at Peikoff's statement, and that she'd go much farther than I have in questioning and challenging the implications and flawed premises that one must hold in order to make such a statement, and she'd be rightfully enraged at the suggestion that anyone should keep speculation to a minimum because Peikoff has earned some leeway or authority or respect or whatever. I think her view would be that Peikoff should know better, and is therefore deserving of less slack than others, and that he should be condemned for tarnishing the image of Objectivism by speaking as its representative.

J

Edited by Jonathan13
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That's an odd request. Isn't it pro-Objectivist to think in principles and to make philosophical connections?

Objectivism starts with reality as a whole. That's the entire known Universe. Everything that exists. That's what it integrates into concepts, and principles which guide our choices.

That's not what you're doing. Your starting point is a throwaway line. That's your reality, and, not surprisingly, the result of your efforts is a conclusion obviously in contradiction with actual reality.

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So what is wrong with either drawing analogies for illustration OR following what appear to be the logical consequences of the statement in question?

If you don't like the results of these processes perhaps you should identify that you really have a problem with the original statement.

If you think that someone has made a bad analogy or incorrectly derived consequences from LP's statement, rather than simply ridiculing their statements, show how they do not follow (or illustrate via analogy) what LP said.

He didn't say anything about sex. All he said was that consent is not the equivalent of just saying "Yes" or "No". He said nothing else. There is nothing there.

I would love to identify some mistakes in some inferences. But there aren't any inferences. There is nothing in the quote about sex. That long list of sexual/violent acts has nothing to do with the quote. What processes?

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Btw, I think that Rand would be appalled at Peikoff's statement, and that she'd go much farther than I have in questioning and challenging the implications and flawed premises that one must hold in order to make such a statement, and she'd be rightfully enraged at the suggestion that anyone should keep speculation to a minimum because Peikoff has earned some leeway or authority or respect or whatever. I think her view would be that Peikoff should know better, and is therefore deserving of less slack than others, and that he should be condemned for tarnishing the image of Objectivism by speaking as its representative.

J

Meh. I think she would just ask for clarification, and then Peikoff would say what I just said above, and that would be that.

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He didn't say anything about sex.

A woman can give her consent by her presence, in certain contexts, and that frees the man to have sex regardless of what she then says. I'm thinking of that case of Kobe Bryant, where the woman came up sometime in the middle of the night, after some drinking, to his bedroom, and then when he purported to do something, she said, "No, I don't consent." You cannot do that. You have given every evidence that that is what you are going to do, and it's too late at that point to say, "Sorry but no."

Now, by "frees the man to have sex", do you suppose maybe he meant masturbation? Otherwise, who's he going to have sex with? The woman who just said "Sorry but no"??????

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He didn't say anything about sex. All he said was that consent is not the equivalent of just saying "Yes" or "No". He said nothing else. There is nothing there.

I would love to identify some mistakes in some inferences. But there aren't any inferences. There is nothing in the quote about sex. That long list of sexual/violent acts has nothing to do with the quote. What processes?

But the nature and requirements of consent are highly applicable to sex. You can't talk about what consent is without it having implications relevant to sex. What is there to consent in our real lives besides one's explicit yay or nay? If one has explicitly set up a safe word system ahead of time, that would be a context where the exact wording and actions that signal what is normally meant by "no" would be different, yes, but the example given of the drunk woman does not have any explicit arrangement that reassigns the meaning of "no" to something else. Additionally though, the example given is a sexual situation, so the quote does have something in about sex. It not only logically applies to sex but knowingly and intentionally does so by the speaker here, ie Peikoff.

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The quote starts up with Peikoff stating that fraud would invalidate consent, and that it would be immoral to use it to have sex with someone. Then it makes a point about the nature of consent, where it in no way implies that the man may use force to have sex with the woman.

Enter a thread containing a long list of violent acts against women and even one against a man, all involving the use of force.

So tell me, what part of the quote did you guys divine all those violent acts from? Where does Peikoff say that force is appropriate? Did you read "freed up to have sex" to mean "freed up to use force"? Because I can tell you that's not what sex is.

Now, by "frees the man to have sex", do you suppose maybe he meant masturbation? Otherwise, who's he going to have sex with? The woman who just said "Sorry but no"??????

Yes. Unless she leaves of course. There is no mention in the quote about kidnapping, or any use of force. You made that part up, remember? Not "deduced", made up.

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But the nature and requirements of consent are highly applicable to sex. You can't talk about what consent is without it having implications relevant to sex. What is there to consent in our real lives besides one's explicit yay or nay?

I don't want my writings on this site. I don't want them.

I did this gag already, but I'll do it again. Me continuing to post in this thread is implicit consent to have my posts published here. My statement that I don't want them here is irrelevant. The website's owner can safely assume that I'm screwing around, and ignore what I say in favor of what I do.

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Is there a special OO award for stubbornness? How about obtuseness? I have a couple nominations to make.

The next time that I hear young, enthusiastic converts to Objectivism asking, "Why hasn't Objectivism caught on, and why isn't it having more influence?" I think I'll point them to this thread. The mindset seen here is how many people out there in the real world see Objectivism and Objectivists.

J

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Did you read "freed up to have sex" to mean "freed up to use force"?
What do you read "freed to have sex" to mean, in concrete terms? Let's grant that the concrete examples given above have been outlandish. Well, what would be one concrete example you're thinking of? Are you saying the context being described is where the woman is saying "no" while taking her clothes off, getting into bed and beckoning the man on? If not, what do you imagine to be the context here?

Now, if you're saying that LP's remark was "throw away" in the sense that he did not really mean it and would probably change his mind if he contemplated it once more, that's a different argument. I'm not sure if that's what you're saying, or if you're saying that he meant it, but that the concretes he was thinking of did not involve any force of any type, but rather willing participation by the woman.

Edited by softwareNerd
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What do you read "freed to have sex" to mean, in concrete terms? Let's grant that the concrete examples given above have been outlandish. Well, what would be one concrete example you're thinking of? Are you saying the context being described is where the woman is saying "no" while taking her clothes off, getting into bed and beckoning the man on? If not, what do you imagine to be the context here?

There are contexts in which a woman would resists a little, but give in at the end. Maybe less these days, but certainly when Dr. Peikoff was a young man, that happened quite often. We've all seen movies in which the guy gets his hand slapped right around second base, cut to a happy couple raising a couple of rug rats. Sex is not something that happens after a factual discussion on who agrees to what. There are nuances involved that Yes/No doesn't cover.

But it's not for me to imagine a context. I'm happy with just shooting down the product of everyone else's imagination. If you want to indict Peikoff, you have to rely on the things he actually said, not anyone else's imagination.

I would however assume that Dr. Peikoff was thinking of a scenario that in no way involved the use of force. I base that assumption on his statement that it would be wrong to use fraud, to have sex with a woman. Don't you agree that fraud is merely the less egregious form of the use of force, and that Peikoff knows that, and therefor it is safe to assume that he also believes using direct force to sleep with a woman would be wrong?

Now, if you're saying that LP's remark was "throw away" in the sense that he did not really mean it and would probably change his mind if he contemplated it once more, that's a different argument. I'm not sure if that's what you're saying, or if you're saying that he meant it, but that the concretes he was thinking of did not involve any force of any type, but rather willing participation by the woman.

I think he meant his comment on the nature of consent. Absent fraud or the direct use of force (and they are absent, you can check the quote, there's no mention of them), there is no reason to think that a woman is being coerced into having sex, given the few details Peikoff gave.

But I just googled the Kobe case, and I think that part is clearly a throwaway example. He probably has some wrong info on that case.

Edited by Nicky
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I cannot imagine a scenario in which a woman says "I do not consent to this", and a man *continues* freely having sex "regardless of what she says", that does not necessarily involve forcing her to continue on with the sex. As I said previously, a woman who doesn't consent to sex isn't going to just sit there saying politely, "please stop".

If you say I am misrepresenting the scenario, then describe a scenario that accurately represents what Peikoff said, but which does not involve force, because I can't think of any.

Edited by brian0918
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I'm going to again suggest we stop making assumptions that are either favorable or unfavorable to Peikoff and trying to ascertain more context than he directly stated and just write in asking him directly to clarify things about this. Why try to infer what he means when you can get the answer straight from the horse's mouth?

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I'm going to again suggest we stop making assumptions that are either favorable or unfavorable to Peikoff and trying to ascertain more context than he directly stated and just write in asking him directly to clarify things about this. Why try to infer what he means when you can get the answer straight from the horse's mouth?

At the earliest his reply will take a week, you want to shut the conversation down until then? With no guarantee that he's going to address the question?

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Couldn't we at least try giving it a week or so? Is it that hard to not argue over speculation while waiting a week to see if we may get certainty? I'm sure we can manage.

While I'm not comfortable with Jonathan's phrase "there is something about the nature of sexual activity that apparently makes it unstoppable once it is initiated", I do think that contentious discourse is unstoppable. This genie's out of the bottle, sorry. And it'll be on other sites too, as Bogie would have said, that's the press, baby, and there's nothing you can do about it.

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for no really good reason , given what ttime has pointed out

Even ttime says it's not clear whether his point applies. I'm not "up in arms" - it seems likely that Dr. Peikoff has simply made a poorly-worded comment, and given more time would clarify that he was referring to a legal context.

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