Two days of #thingsrapistssay

Yeah, thank you to those people who kept this idiot talking long enough to expose his rampant misogyny.

Now Twitter misogynist Brian G likes to whine over and over again about being aware of consent as it applies to the law and assures us women he has no intentions of breaking it (as if we can believe that claim when he decided to expose how he didn’t mind breaking the law when it came to drunken women). He tried to argue that the law as it stands in regards to consent is immoral (insert concussion-inducing headdesk here) compared to his position.

What is his position? Well he sates it pretty clearly by saying “being in a relationship implies a level of consent. or it should.” but then proceeds to muddle the problem by refusing to fully define that level. Most reasonable people would maintain the “level of consent” implied by relationships is that your partner may proposition you respectfully for any number of safe and legal acts of mutual enjoyment. Brian G, on the other hand would argue that this level of consent at least sometimes supersedes a right to bodily autonomy, especially if the two partners in question are engaged in coitus. If one partner “decides on a whim” that he or she no longer wants to continue, the enthusiastic partner aka rapist is morally obliged to continue. Furthermore “nice guy” Brian G thinks that partners are also morally obligated to just lay there and take unwanted sex even when they didn’t initiate sex, that sex is an assumed part of a relationship contract.

This “nice guy” has one fucked up sense of morals. One would almost bet he was christian if there wasn’t plenty of evidence to suggest there are a lot of these types of misogynists in the atheist community as well. Nonetheless, it is his “moral code” that needs to be argued. He has little to no evidence on his side to support his skewed sense of morality as being greater than that which is reflected in the current rule of law. He resorts to the naturalistic fallacy to suggest that male on female forced subjugation is “the natural order of things” and therefore more moral. He does not offer any actual evidence how it is more a “natural order of things” than egalitarian partnerships are a “natural order of things. ” Nor does he offer any evidence why a natural order of things is more moral than an unnatural order of things. I am willing to bet he drives a car despite that, by his logic, cars would be less moral than walking. The naturalistic fallacy has no bearing on reality. Other than the naturalistic fallacy Brian G has no evidence to support the claim that his way is the best way.

Well a couple times he did say “it just is.” It’d be laughable if it weren’t so fucked up.

So I guess it is my turn to offer why the legal moral code in its current form may be more moral than his. First I have to define morality. In some ways, I am a moral relativist which means I can technically define Brian G’s claim as actually being a set of morals. I can also debunk his “greater morality claim” using the concept of  moral relativity by stating that we no longer live in a culture where the accepted norm is the subjugation of women. Nor do we live in a culture that continues to accept a marriage contract as an obligatory sex contract. Rather in a morally relativistic sense, our laws are of higher moral value than his personal sense of morals because they typically reflect the will of the culture as a whole.

But I am not a moral relativist in that sense, so I won’t stick to merely using that argument. Instead I am also going to suggest a normative morality of sorts. Some sort of morality that is greater than culture, perhaps even greater than humanity (by being represented to some degree by most social creatures.) A moral code that is ultimately based on the autonomy of individuals.

That moral code is the basis of our most crucial laws. Recognizing individual humans as autonomous with fundamental freedoms in respect to that autonomy is the basis for the bill of rights. Yes, a long long time ago, some humans had a different view of humanity than we do today where some humans were considered not quite as human as their white male counterparts. That has changed though, we learned though science and reason, that humans are humans regardless of race, gender or other aspects inherent to their existence as humans. It is not a smooth linear transition. There is no full and complete recognition of humanity by all humans. It is a mythical state, but still easily seen as a one of greater morality.

In a true and complete egalitarian society, bodily autonomy still may not be respected by everyone. People may still commit immoral acts. Ultimate morality does not necessarily follow from a shift toward egalitarianism. What does cease to exist is systemic immorality. Systemic violations of individual autonomy has no basis in egalitarian societies. All violation’s or crimes against humans would exist independent of privilege and culture.

But that is an invisible pink unicorn (or god) of morality. We won’t ever see that utopia. The only aspect of that morality we can individually hope to acquire is our own personal respect of the bodily autonomy of others. That should essentially be our greater goal as humans. To find the greatest balance for ourselves in respecting and sometimes protecting the autonomy of our fellow humans. A very complicated, heavily nuanced golden rule of sorts.

But Brian Granger**, I have to say to get there, you must first recognize us women as fully human. Until then your morality will always be skewed to favor crimes against us. Until then you will continue to be a rape apologist and a rapist.

*Twitter would only let me go back so far into the debate. It starts somewhere around when he is tweeting all the followers of another user and claiming he is a pedophile.