Philosophy Now Forum

Advocate wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2023 7:25 am
The distinction between murder and manslaughter is that of intentionally, which is essential.

So if you want someone dead, make sure you kill them by accident.

A polite way to ask for an AIDs negative certificate is in days before a physical relationship rather than in the moments before so as to give preparation time and to reduce temptation to skip the exam.

The limit of vigilantism being evil is that if the country is explicitly evil then individual vigilantism would be ethical when good people are collectively at war with evil. By contrast a corrupt country often implies that vigilantism is amoral rather than ethical. Vigilantism by itself is a vague term to begin with when it can be disproportionate violent in an immoral way. The logical proof of vigilantism as not always being evil is that vigilantes can attack other vigilantes.

The lack of gun control in society might be an amoral clue as to why manslaughter is sometimes tolerated in court along with low rape prosecutions.

One way to assess sexual assault is to contrast it with physical assault. So if someone is punched there’s no stigma attached to it and it’s easier to call the police afterwards or to push back against the attacker to try to flee. Very few people would ever consent to being punched. Yet if people get threatened by a thief to them give money then many are willing to sacrifice impersonal money without fighting back. So if a sexual assault merits a high jail sentence then the resistance of the victim against the perpetrator is important but not the be all and end all.

Even if we could all agree that people should be slightly forgiving there might never be a precise answer as to how forgiving others should be not simply out of the uniqueness of each incident but also because the people are themselves individualistic.

A dilemma with light sentences for juvenile or mentally ill offenders isn’t that the sentences are evil but the sentences can be very ethical in a capitalist or amoral way. The harsh reality is that temporarily giving low sentences to juvenile offenders until wealth inequality is addressed isn’t always honest if society isn’t urgently doing much about childhood poverty. Likewise the insanity defence can demand perfection in the mental health services which isn’t always achievable. For example we could technically give all female offenders light sentences in order to dissuade misogyny in certain parts of Islamic societies. Yet unless we’re actively critical of Islam then it’s unlikely Islamic countries would care too much if we defied gender norms. As such the ethical system of preferential sentencing for disadvantaged people can be too indirect when it takes far more than lower jail sentences to address the underlying issues.

No one ever has to be a murderous sex addict if people had a sex-after-death card much like an organ donor card!

Gaming is becoming scarier these days...

Irregular sentences for sex crimes might reflect how sex crimes can be more tempting than non-sexual crimes. So an inordinately high sentence for rape would be ethical if everyone else were being incited to rape.

Statutory rape might seem harsh until we realise that evil people might always be more masculine no matter what form of hedonism with the age of consent is legalised. After all evil people have a worldview of violence. It’s possible that an older adult could marry a teenager to mitigate statutory rape but this would force everyone to be extreme about the situation. Yet an advantage of a lowered age of marriage would be to limit promiscuity seeing as most acts of statutory rape aren’t monogamous. Needless to say non-penetrative sex acts like kissing might not be as culpable as sexual intercourse when it comes to violations of the age of consent.

Banning perversions might always be complicated when there are innocent versions of the perversion. Feigned choking to mimic homicide and dodo wearing to mimic infantilism can deceive others in spite of being physically safe. So there might always be grey areas in sex crime. For example the close-in-age exemption mirrors nude child art in finding exemptions that are potential slippery slopes. You could technically combine a nude adult and nude child in art without them touching to realise that the court system might have to be slightly arbitrary in limiting what’s legal. For example nude breastfeeding recordings appears to have partially legalised except that pictures of nude men holding nude babies really wouldn’t look appropriate! The internet poses additional challenges in combing slightly inappropriate images by the thousand such that anyone can look hundreds of little girls in bikinis. Technically the legality of child bikinis could be an aggravating factor in those who demanded even more child nudity but goes to show how subjective sex crime can be. This is where case law and consistent sentencing can be helpful.

"Richard Patterson, 65, of Margate, was acquitted of killing 60-year-old girlfriend Francisca Marquinez in 2015 after a week-long trial, according to the Sun Sentinel.
During the trial, his lawyers initially argued that Marquinez died accidentally while performing oral sex on him at her apartment."
https://nypost.com/2017/05/23/murder-su ... ot-guilty/

Another "big dick defence" concealed off screen for the sake of discretion(!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foNu1u1w5Jw
Sicario (2015) - Hell in Yankee Land Scene

When I was in first year of secondary school I was given a wedgie in the changing rooms before hurling training. I’m not sure if I could sue for sexual assault!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKlpL4FhzUs
Shakira - Las de la Intuición

Michael McMahon wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 7:24 pm When I was in first year of secondary school I was given a wedgie in the changing rooms before hurling training. I’m not sure if I could sue for sexual assault!

Anyone can sue for anything. Winning, OTOH...