Chapter 45: discussion

[bulmabriefs144]

Fair enough.

Lucky.

I had a roommate with a girlfriend who was seriously neurotic. And both of them were extremely emotionally unstable. Basically, think bad romantic drama on again-off again with some physical and verbal abuse on both sides. He had a body scar with a painful birth and was hung up on the idea that nobody would love him. Part of what attracted him to her was that she was okay with that.

Then later during one of their abusive periods she said that he was "lucky" he found found someone who loved him despite this scar. Only, later on he found a girl who seemed much happier and healthier, who didn't see it as a problem either. He found some lame excuse not to stick with this one, and went back to the first. There is an important lesson here. Well, two. The first is that abusers try to keep each other down by convincing them that they can't do better. The second is that we gravitate towards either what we want (which is mostly healthy), or what we believe we deserve (which is mostly not healthy).

I seriously doubt they "love" this. More likely they are either too stupid to protest, or too horny to care.  Suspiria is looking better and better. Pass on this one.

9_6, probably both. 

[Brion Foulke]

I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.

In my view, both could be true depending on where in Iscariot you are.  Kind of like our world.

[Daisuki-chan]

Rape is only necessarily about power to the extent that power is necessarily required to make the rape happen, but varying degrees of power are required to make ANYTHING happen. I'm sure some rapists enjoy demonstrating their power (I clearly wasn't denying this, I think: "The fact that you need power in order to rape doesn't mean that male rape of women is usually committed for the purpose of gaining or demonstrating power."), but there are MANY other ways to do this (and indeed other forms of violence and abuse are far more common), so it's clear that a desire for sex is the primary cause of rape (incidentally, soldiers at war supposedly are pretty rapey, which makes sense since they're super-duper-stressed (orgasm helps with this) and from a biological perspective "need" to pass on their genes NOW (meaning that men that didn't have sex in these situations were outcompeted in the genepool by those that did, regardless of anyone's "actual" motivations), since they are likely to be dead tomorrow (and since most men throughout history failed to reproduce (while most women succeeded in doing so) they quite often wouldn't have any children already, not that having more wouldn't be "better" for their genes, but rising above zero children is the greatest proportional improvement of all)). A would-be male rapist of women with no desire to have sex would be unable to get erect and would thus have to use other body parts and/or items to rape, but this doesn't seem to resemble the average rape to me, and doesn't explain why women of ages where women are far more attractive to men are raped significantly more often than for example 45 year old women. It's pretty much impossible to make people not enjoy having power (it's too advantageous to have power, after all), but making sex and masturbation as cheap, easy, and satisfying as possible would lessen the desire for some...unwanted, undersexed people to rape, and desire for sex is a basically ubiquitous thread throughout rape in comparison with desire for power (in the sense of power for power's sake rather than power for the sake of having the ability to rape, since the latter means that EVERYTHING AT ALL TIMES is about power) is. Anyway, I understand that people vary and can have many different pathologies or reasons to do bad things, but the most common thread for male on female rape is that the male wanted sex, since this is the only typical reason to choose to rape instead of doing any of many other terrible things (which can also be about power, but not sex), most of which are punished much more lightly than rape is.

As for Crest and Moby...Crest obviously is naive and thinks justice is blind, while Moby is used to men being happy to accept casual sex with her attractive body (note that her brain contents don't particularly matter in this equation to many of the men she selects so long as they still receive propositions from the same body; this is why she's turned down so infrequently, since it's obvious that almost nobody has a personality THAT great, to where "everyone" loves them, and I don't as of now see why Moby's personality would be so magical). Moby may indeed be happy with this while she's able to select the more exciting, attractive, or whatever type of men she likes, although it tends to be unsustainable one way or another (if the brain doesn't care about doing this forever then eventually the body will age and fail to attract the same level of quality in men).

Incidentally, there aren't many non-young women in Flipside in terms of character presence and importance (as I recall even Crest's mother has aged much better than average, not that she's a terribly important character), but I don't mind this since there's no need to make a fantasy as bad as reality is, where people inevitably become less attractive. Reality is bad and Flipside is one escape, so I prefer it this way! ;p

[9_6]

I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.

In my view, both could be true depending on where in Iscariot you are.  Kind of like our world.

Yeah, I know.

Guess I just find it weird that this magical fantasy land just so happens to perfectly mirror this real world issue and how none of the fantasy magic stuff seems to influence it. I mean surely the century-long presence of blasty mc mind control would kind of shake the whole "men strong, men threatening, women weak, protect women" paradigm up a little, would it not? And this is not a low-magic universe, practically everything is enchanted left and right or at least the things we get to see are and since magic doesn't seem to favor either gender, out the window goes that level-of-threat-indicator.

Also magical healing is a thing, d-bags are a thing, magical x-ray glasses are a thing so I assume the consequences of sex, stds, pregnancies, you name it are non-issues in flipside land and can literally be hand-waved away at any stage, no problem.
So how come this inequality still persists in this universe?

[Brion Foulke]

Well, I decided to keep certain things the same as our world for storytelling purposes.  I don't personally see that as a contradiction with the existence of magic, to me magic is just like technology in that it's something which improves our quality of life, but it doesn't necessarily cure society of all it's ills.

I think maybe you're getting the wrong impression if you're reading into this scene evidence of "inequality" between genders.  After all this is just the ravings of one human being.  But even if what she says is true, I wouldn't find it unnatural for asymmetry to exist between genders, because after all men and women are asymmetrical beings.  Which simply means they're not exactly the same.  I would assume that cultural differences would tend to arise from biological differences in any society.  And I don't think that sorcery changes that.  That's not necessarily the same thing as "inequality," though.

[Azure Priest]

That wasn't seduction. That was attempted rape. Pure and simple. She didn't try to make him comfortable or play up her sexuality, she tried to outright force him to have sex with her, and then justify it by saying "you're a guy, of course you like it."

Crest is completely in the right here. The one who's being a dick is Moby (no pun intended).

[bulmabriefs144]

I have no idea if this is a "it's the repress-o-matic dark ages so of course this is going on" or a "even in a magical progressive fantasy utopia do those double standards exist" situation.

In my view, both could be true depending on where in Iscariot you are.  Kind of like our world.

Yeah, I know.

Guess I just find it weird that this magical fantasy land just so happens to perfectly mirror this real world issue and how none of the fantasy magic stuff seems to influence it. I mean surely the century-long presence of blasty mc mind control would kind of shake the whole "men strong, men threatening, women weak, protect women" paradigm up a little, would it not? And this is not a low-magic universe, practically everything is enchanted left and right or at least the things we get to see are and since magic doesn't seem to favor either gender, out the window goes that level-of-threat-indicator.

Also magical healing is a thing, d-bags are a thing, magical x-ray glasses are a thing so I assume the consequences of sex, stds, pregnancies, you name it are non-issues in flipside land and can literally be hand-waved away at any stage, no problem.
So how come this inequality still persists in this universe?

To a large extent, because all those things exist. If you can wipe away any sexual encounter with a magical birth control pill, there will be no baby but it doesn't change the reality of being raped. In fact, because rape has no consequences, that guy can go on raping 6 other women (and as Moby points out, it isn't just men). No pregnancy = no accountability.

In many ways, Flipside does present a world where women are more empowered. The only real objection to Bern being a knight (before the whole lesbian deal) was that it hadn't been done before. Same with May being a jester. In terms of magic on the other hand, no prejudice exists at all, a talent wizard or witch is just that, with their gender never brought up.

In other ways, the fact that Flipside has a violent culture means that violence between men and women will exist, not in spite of equality elsewhere, but practically because of it. The more people are able to claim sexual freedom, the more the backward medieval folk will abuse this.

[9_6]

Well, I decided to keep certain things the same as our world for storytelling purposes.  I don't personally see that as a contradiction with the existence of magic, to me magic is just like technology in that it's something which improves our quality of life, but it doesn't necessarily cure society of all it's ills.

I think maybe you're getting the wrong impression if you're reading into this scene evidence of "inequality" between genders.  After all this is just the ravings of one human being.  But even if what she says is true, I wouldn't find it unnatural for asymmetry to exist between genders, because after all men and women are asymmetrical beings.  Which simply means they're not exactly the same.  I would assume that cultural differences would tend to arise from biological differences in any society.  And I don't think that sorcery changes that.  That's not necessarily the same thing as "inequality," though.

Magic isn't just someone having a gun, magic is someone being a gun.
That someone could be anyone and you have no idea how that gun operates. It's learnable too, wide-spread and can manifest in all kinds of shapes.

You can't separate that from people like you can with technology. Can't take their "gun" away.
It's a part of them just like their gender and that asymmetry seems a lot more lopsided than men vs women since one "half" can casually fart lightning bolts.
Kind of blows making use of their muscle-mass more efficiently out of the water.
I'd imagine, over time, that would function like an equalizer so women are perceived as no less threatening than men and everyone is just a "player" in the matrix in which muscles and strength are only secondary.
https://youtu.be/V8ZdGmgj0PQ?t=2m50s

So yeah now in that climate, women are still favored by society.
Or at least moby appears to be and it's the most natural thing in the world to her.
Just seems a bit odd to me.

This is all based on my belief that this comes from which gender is perceived as the greater threat by the way.
Men are the "aggressors" and treated as such.
A woman beats up a man, societies reaction is "haha, funny", "he had it coming".
The other way around, all hell breaks loose.

In flipside world, I can't really see that happening.
A woman beats up a man "oh no, poor guys enchantments were probably weaker than hers/he had none/was just weaker", "why did she beat him up?".
Nobody would think of laughing at, say, bloody mary nibbling on crests nipples and nobody laughed at someone losing to bern so far.
Conversely, not attacking a woman "because she's a woman" doesn't even appear to cross the mind of any man who did so in this comic so far, that concept doesn't seem to exist in this world.
And why would it.

[Brion Foulke]

I'm still not convinced that technology is different because "you can take someone's gun away."  I mean, that's only if they don't shoot you, first!  Guns are really a huge equalizer in our society, there's basically no difference between a well trained man or woman with a gun.  It seems like a nit-picky difference to me.

And also, not everyone in Iscariot is a sorcerer, it's not easy and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to become a powerful sorcerer.  There's magically enchanted weapons that anyone could use, but those are expensive, and can be taken away as easily as a gun.

[9_6]

Well if we advance technology to the point of transhumanism, it is similar to the concept of magic, sure.
At some point, those 2 things become indistinguishable from each other.
Maybe one day we can think "pizza" and materialize a pizza from our d-bag or just re-grow limbs and do all the cyberpunk, star trek and shadowrun things.

Our current technology which I guess is what you're referring to isn't on that level though. Not yet.

[Brion Foulke]

Well the way I see it, our technology can do some things Iscariot's sorcery can't do.  And vice versa.  For example, they don't have ipads!

[9_6]

No ipads.
They live like animals.

[bulmabriefs144]

I wouldn't call that an improvement.

(PC user, can't stand touchscreens)

[Daisuki-chan]

That wasn't seduction. That was attempted rape. Pure and simple. She didn't try to make him comfortable or play up her sexuality, she tried to outright force him to have sex with her, and then justify it by saying "you're a guy, of course you like it."

Crest is completely in the right here. The one who's being a dick is Moby (no pun intended).

It wasn't seductive to Crest, but from Moby's perspective just flashing some skin has typically been good enough to get it to voluntarily (on both the man's part and hers) happen time and time again. She didn't try to make him comfortable by his standards because she doesn't know him well at all and she never or rarely needed to know anything much about the man in her past experiences...it was enough to appeal with pure sexuality to other men. Anyway, she's unapologetically entitled and Crest had to call her "rapey" to get her to even understand that he was serious about not wanting things to continue, but so far she hasn't actually done anything to force Crest to have sex with her. She simply assumed he wanted to and was just being shy or whatever. It's wrong and shitty, entitled behavior, but it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY below actual attempted rape (which could represent forcibly altering the victim's consciousness with drugs or magic without their consent and then trying to make it happen, or just using nonmagical or magical violence to attempt to make it happen; surely these are crazily worse?) so far.

Note that I'm truly not defending Moby's actions as if they were proper here, but this REALLY shouldn't affect Crest ANYWHERE nearly as badly as an ACTUAL attempted rape or more especially a successful rape of him would. I think he could easily be more negatively affected by having to face that the justice he naively assumed would care about him is not remotely blind. Maybe he should ask his mother why she didn't teach him that women are no more wonderful than men. Or maybe she taught him but in the society he grew up in a "slut" would be shamed HEAVILY (if not more), so he didn't consider it a possibility where he is now, where Moby can possibly be much wilder in comparison.

I realize that a man in our society doing the same thing to a woman would practically just be executed on the spot on the woman's word alone, but there's no need to jump in with the feminists and redefine words to the point of practical meaninglessness. Unless you like it both ways, that is (basically no one only likes it the "reverse" way, where only the male gets extreme "defense" and reversing Crest and Moby's sexes would receive a far lighter response to male Moby's actions). I like it neither way because I don't see the point of having to replace words that used to have relatively clear meanings with speeches to get the truth across, since now who knows what anything means...was it newspeak or not? You never know and therefore have to treat it like it quite possibly was! Sadly, newspeak is winning, and people are getting loonier as the signal to noise ratio approaches zero.

[bulmabriefs144]

That wasn't seduction. That was attempted rape. Pure and simple. She didn't try to make him comfortable or play up her sexuality, she tried to outright force him to have sex with her, and then justify it by saying "you're a guy, of course you like it."

Crest is completely in the right here. The one who's being a dick is Moby (no pun intended).

It wasn't seductive to Crest, but from Moby's perspective just flashing some skin has typically been good enough to get it to voluntarily (on both the man's part and hers) happen time and time again. She didn't try to make him comfortable by his standards because she doesn't know him well at all and she never or rarely needed to know anything much about the man in her past experiences...it was enough to appeal with pure sexuality to other men. Anyway, she's unapologetically entitled and Crest had to call her "rapey" to get her to even understand that he was serious about not wanting things to continue, but so far she hasn't actually done anything to force Crest to have sex with her. She simply assumed he wanted to and was just being shy or whatever. It's wrong and shitty, entitled behavior, but it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY below actual attempted rape (which could represent forcibly altering the victim's consciousness with drugs or magic without their consent and then trying to make it happen, or just using nonmagical or magical violence to attempt to make it happen; surely these are crazily worse?) so far.

Note that I'm truly not defending Moby's actions as if they were proper here, but this REALLY shouldn't affect Crest ANYWHERE nearly as badly as an ACTUAL attempted rape or more especially a successful rape of him would. I think he could easily be more negatively affected by having to face that the justice he naively assumed would care about him is not remotely blind. Maybe he should ask his mother why she didn't teach him that women are no more wonderful than men. Or maybe she taught him but in the society he grew up in a "slut" would be shamed HEAVILY (if not more), so he didn't consider it a possibility where he is now, where Moby can possibly be much wilder in comparison.

I realize that a man in our society doing the same thing to a woman would practically just be executed on the spot on the woman's word alone, but there's no need to jump in with the feminists and redefine words to the point of practical meaninglessness. Unless you like it both ways, that is (basically no one only likes it the "reverse" way, where only the male gets extreme "defense" and reversing Crest and Moby's sexes would receive a far lighter response to male Moby's actions). I like it neither way because I don't see the point of having to replace words that used to have relatively clear meanings with speeches to get the truth across, since now who knows what anything means...was it newspeak or not? You never know and therefore have to treat it like it quite possibly was! Sadly, newspeak is winning, and people are getting loonier as the signal to noise ratio approaches zero.

This isn't loony. Killing unborn children is loony. Declaring war on people you have never met is loony. Wanting to go one day without being hit on or harassed is perfectly sane.

Newsflash, so to speak. Most rape victims do not speak up. The problem is, there are a few that cry wolf for celebrity status or for money. But this is actually a disservice to the rest of them, meaning they can't speak up or be told "you just want to make trouble".

As for Moby, this is totally off base. Switch the genders like Crest said. Suppose you were at a bar some guy closed the shades, took off his shirt, and expected women to jump his bones. He has a ripped chest but he's not an actor or anything, just some random guy? Most people find it charming? Not really. Most people find it weird, then creepy as when you say no he wants to take off his pants and show his package. Ummmm, yeah I can't imagine this works on ANYONE and the entitled behavior after calling on it is seriously unappealing.

This isn't loony thing. This is real. There are some frivolous rape "victims" but you should at least know when the claim is valid.

[Brion Foulke]

Hey guys, a friendly reminder to keep it civil, okay?  Neither of you are loony.

All I can say is that Moby's little awkward "seduction" would probably work on me.  That's just me.  That doesn't make me a bad person, right?

I have a feeling that there's a general difference between how men and women would react to this situation, but that's just in the aggregate.  How an individual reacts is going to be unique to that individual, and that's more important than whether they're a man or a woman.  Crest is definitely a very different guy than me, and that's okay too.

[9_6]

I dunno, if the devil was onto me I probably wouldn't have the head free for random butt-touching OR societal criticism by pointing sexisms out and calling things rapey.
The fact that the freaking devil is nearby would probably dominate my mind at that point.

Now some people get turned on by danger, sure, but I'd probably just boringly poop my pants and think of a way to avoid dying prematurely first and touching butts later.

[bulmabriefs144]

Hey guys, a friendly reminder to keep it civil, okay?  Neither of you are loony.

All I can say is that Moby's little awkward "seduction" would probably work on me.  That's just me.  That doesn't make me a bad person, right?

I have a feeling that there's a general difference between how men and women would react to this situation, but that's just in the aggregate.  How an individual reacts is going to be unique to that individual, and that's more important than whether they're a man or a woman.  Crest is definitely a very different guy than me, and that's okay too.

Mmmm. What Crest said is perfectly valid. People are not all the same. Some people go for that.

But those people are evil and should be shunned. 

It's just me, maybe, I find that situation very messed up. Clean, safe, and consensual for me. That said, I'm likely demisexual.

[Daisuki-chan]

This isn't loony. Killing unborn children is loony. Declaring war on people you have never met is loony. Wanting to go one day without being hit on or harassed is perfectly sane.

Newsflash, so to speak. Most rape victims do not speak up. The problem is, there are a few that cry wolf for celebrity status or for money. But this is actually a disservice to the rest of them, meaning they can't speak up or be told "you just want to make trouble".

As for Moby, this is totally off base. Switch the genders like Crest said. Suppose you were at a bar some guy closed the shades, took off his shirt, and expected women to jump his bones. He has a ripped chest but he's not an actor or anything, just some random guy? Most people find it charming? Not really. Most people find it weird, then creepy as when you say no he wants to take off his pants and show his package. Ummmm, yeah I can't imagine this works on ANYONE and the entitled behavior after calling on it is seriously unappealing.

This isn't loony thing. This is real. There are some frivolous rape "victims" but you should at least know when the claim is valid.

I didn't claim anyone here was loony as some general rule, although I'd say everyone is pretty much guaranteed to be loony about some things, myself included. I should be able to claim that newspeak, pushing for cruel, unfair laws and "justice" while ignoring SEVERE suffering that could be fixed by the same group clearly able to get the laws to change over and over again, and other THINGS are loony. Or stupid, or wrong, or bad. If these things are so core to one's identity that this is "triggering" then all I can say is that you're free to explain to me how I'm wrong with pure facts and reasoning. I don't always care what arbitrary feelings are out there in others any more than they care about my feelings when I see our disgusting world and they complain about metaphorical paper cuts when they could care about metaphorical beheadings instead. Obviously I can't give good solutions in many cases, but some things are just "loony" to where a clear improvement is simple to conceptualize.

I consider newspeak loony in that it pollutes our world and causes enmity and disorder by abusing trust in the honesty of people when they make a claim. It's clearly not a good thing. Moby DIDN'T attempt to rape Crest by a definition of rape that ONLY includes a range of activities worthy of heavy punishment. Trying to shove more and more and MORE under the term "rape" just makes the term soften to the point of meaninglessness, because you now never know if someone was just made uncomfortable or if they were actually ASSAULTED.

The reason I brought up feminism is because this newspeak definition of rape is overwhelmingly feminist. There is other newspeak (for example the "defense" budget) that is non-feminist in origin, but this is this and that is that. I'm sorry you can't accept that feminism is as untrustworthy and abusive as pretty much any other dominant form of politics, but the truth is the truth, and feminist newspeak is feminist newspeak. I honestly don't know why you were "triggered" to defend this clear violation of the concept of rape unless you continue to view feminism as a great thing for all and/or continue to reject the TRUE definition of rape which Brion already corrected you on, but which you must have rejected. In the former case you should simply accept that nothing is pure, and in the latter case I don't know what you're doing, really, unless you actually like the endless grab for power feminists make in part through redefining words such as rape and harassment. Certainly rape victims are not better off with the definition of rape watered down, nor is society better off by misunderstanding the motivations of rapists.

There are lots of false rape accusations, too (especially the ones made publicly), and REAL rape victims tend to view the redefinition of rape to include this, that, and the other thing (such as "I totally consented at the time but my boyfriend will think I'm a slut so I'll just say I was raped, since I know women are RARELY punished (and almost never punished heavily) for false claims." or "Boohoo "Moby" made me uncomfortable but I was totally able to refuse and leave whenever I pleased and "Moby" was totally nonviolent..."MOBY" TRIED TO RAPE ME!", etc.) to CHEAPEN their ACTUAL HARD EXPERIENCE to the point of meaninglessness. This is what Brion was probably at least in part alluding to when he called your 100% wrong definition of rape "insensitive".

Never mind that mixing truth and lies, harsh reality and hyperbolic inflation or even pure fabrication of victimhood, makes it harder to effectively act to prevent rape in the future. Victims by definition can't do anything to reasonably prevent being victimized, so their feelings don't matter when it comes to prevention, since the one you have to prevent is the victimizer, who again by definition doesn't particularly care about the victim's feelings either. This may seem cold to you but it's not because the focus is on minimizing victims, not ONLY coddling them by lying to them about why they were victimized by conflating their feelings with the cause of the victimizer's actions. One doesn't call lightning striking someone to be "about" a shocking, burning feeling and project this onto the lightning; one instead recognizes that the laws of electromagnetism dictated that you were a convenient target, and that in the future one may try using things such as lightning rods (and avoiding holding things that function as such) to avoid being struck again in the future (or for others who were never struck to avoid ever being struck).

The claim that Moby attempted to rape Crest is NOT valid. Brion clearly understands this (I doubt he's self-hating enough to say he would've accepted Moby's offer while believing that she was trying to rape him) but you want to defend someone trying to stretch "attempted rape" from 100% serious to approximately 0.01% serious (and I'm being generous here) in comparison with ACTUAL attempted rape. This just makes the whole thing ridiculous to people who care about REAL RAPE and not nearly so much about mere discomfort, jerk behavior, etc. Moby acted entitled, but this is NOT attempted rape unless rape is stretched to include things that are TRULY trivial in comparison with forced or non-consenting sex or the attempts of such. Crest was made uncomfortable and his sense of fairness was trampled on, but SURELY this is nowhere near an actual ASSAULT.

In your example with male "Moby" and female "Crest" I would ALSO say there was no attempted rape, so long as it was the same, meaning that "Moby" didn't alter "Crest's" mind (to induce direct (but ultimately false) consent where there would otherwise be none or make "Crest" unconscious) without "Crest's" consent or initiate any violence against "Crest". This is key to ACTUAL equality, justice, and truth. Just because something is uncomfortable doesn't make it on the level of ATTEMPTED RAPE. For a comparison, imagine someone, let's say a hobo, said "How about you give me your money?" to you on the street, but you said "No." and were completely free to walk away alongside the hobo initiating NO violence towards you. Is this "the same" as if another hobo pulls out a knife, corners you, and ignores your wishes? It's NOT. This should be easily understandable, but our current world is just a sad place in this respect.

But those people are evil and should be shunned. 

I just have to ask...what happened to your ideal of a world without shaming? Because you just unambiguously declared shaming to be good in this case, undermining what you were saying before. Well, I doubt it matters how you answer (so don't feel like you need to), since you probably don't really care that much about justifying this to me, and that's fine.

------------

I sent Brion a PM semi-related to things here, since apparently even he can't get through to some of you sometimes even though he's super-tolerant and reasonable, and it sometimes becomes "loony" to me.

[9_6]

Meanwhile, in Reginas crazy-ass sex dungeon that she totally has, Glyphs nipples get blow-torched b/c that boy needs to be spanked!

[Brion Foulke]

I already sent Daisuki-chan a cautionary message.  Let me just post a reminder in here for everyone.

Please remember that the page discussion forum needs to stay very respectful.  I dislike the term "safe space," but this particular part of the forum, where the new Flipside comics are discussed needs to stay on topic and welcoming for everyone.  Arguments have no place here.  If you read the forum rules, you'll see that this is made clear.

So while it is okay to bring up your own personal beliefs and to discuss them with others to an extent, please exercise some restraint getting into those things here.  This is not a good forum to challenge people, or for debate.  We have a debate forum specifically for that, and you should take more challenging discourse there.

[Daisuki-chan]

Well, I'll keep my main response to Brion via PM, but I'm not sure we agree on what real/phony respect vs. courtesy (I'm not sure if he really means the former or the latter) are and/or what a safe space is. Hopefully he can help me understand, but so far I don't feel like I've been considered by others as seriously as I've been considering them (maybe this is instead just meant to be a circus where everyone just reacts to characters however without interacting with each other at all on any serious level; I don't know), which feels rather safe spacey to me (if only I should be cautioned; I have no more information so far).

[Brion Foulke]

Right, courtesy is what I actually mean.

[Brion Foulke]

So, I just wanted to post this for the record.

The current legal definition of rape in the U.S. is: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

So, what Moby did wouldn't come close to meeting the definition of rape.  If she had gone a bit farther, it may possibly have been considered assault, but since the only touching was to stroke Crest's cheek and lean in for a kiss, I don't think it would quality for that either.  "Pushy" and "rude," definitely.

Since the word "rape" is a very hot button word, personally I'd prefer it if we would stick to the legal definition when using it. 

[bulmabriefs144]

Instead of quibbling over what is (or isn't) rape, though, let's just agree that what she did was definitely sexual assault, and leave it at that. Sexual assault is way broader, and what she did definitely qualified.

Types of Sexual Assault

There are many types of sexual assault. Some victims may not even realize that they've experienced sexual assault unless they become educated about the different forms of this violent act. Any type of nonconsensual sexual activity or contact qualifies as sexual assault, including:

    *Rape – both stranger and acquaintance
    *Date rape
    *Attempted rape
    *Inappropriate touching or fondling
    *Incest
    *Child sexual abuse
    *Vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse
    *Exhibitionism
    *Voyeurism
    *Obscene phone calls
    *Sexual harassment

Anyway, moving on. Crest is going to need to determine whether he is cool with Moby or not.

[Brion Foulke]

We'll have to agree to disagree on that as well, because I'm not sure if any of the ones you've bolded actually apply to that situation, legally speaking.  Sexual harassment is generally a workplace term, exhibitionism should only apply to public nudity and not in a behind closed doors situation (the "love restaraunt" they are in has curtains for that purpose), and Moby barely touched Crest and more or less stopped when asked.  Of course I'm not a lawyer so I may be misinterpreting one or more of those.

In my opinion if she had begun to force herself on Crest after the "no no no" moment it would definitely have crossed into the realm of sexual assault.  But in any case, she was certainly pushy and rude, and skirting the line of sexual assault.  Certainly not a way people should behave, no doubt!

[Daisuki-chan]

It's impossible to get anywhere here, because in the end there is what is reasonable, there is what is nominally the law, and then there is how the law is actually applied. Feminists (and others, but it's mainly feminists relevant here) work tirelessly and successfully to warp things in their "favor", so all sorts of nonsense gets treated like it matters, alongside all sorts of injustice such as "Man is victim of domestic violence, man calls police hoping for help, man is arrested and treated like he was the aggressor when he did nothing.", etc. occurring. Note that Brion's listed legal definition of rape doesn't even allow women to rape men except via the men's anuses (although in practice fat chance even that is treated fairly). That's how ABSOLUTELY absurd things are, so no, the law means nothing. NOTHING. Law without justice in both the letter AND application of the law can ONLY mean nothing.

Sexual assault is likewise watered down and unequally prosecuted to the point of meaninglessness. Assault should mean violence or at least some severe invasion of personal space that is hard to resist physically or due to strong reasons such as "I would be fired and go homeless." (note that you should be obligated to clearly object and try to get out of it (if it's a suggestion/request/etc. rather than something already in action without consent, although obviously you have to object there, too, but in that case you're already being assaulted (IF you find it objectionable and therefore clearly object), whereas for mere speech sans action things MUST be clarified if there is to be justice), not merely imagine that this might be the situation...let the boss prove it to either be or not be the case; otherwise leads to wild disparities in information that can't be ideally dealt with because justice by definition doesn't automatically favor the CLAIMED victim). These things are frustrating to see supported if you're just a "normal person" (probably a minority at this point if it ever wasn't) who wants a world where only legitimately life-crushing things are cracked down on, rather than a demotivating, paranoia-inducing/cultivating, wildly unjust police state. But it just can't be helped, right? This is the world we live in, and lots of people actually like it this way... Let it burn, let it all burn...

The world works better if Moby is simply treated like an entitled jerk whether male or female. No need for society-wide shaming, ostracism, or violence and/or imprisonment. People that don't appreciate her can simply avoid her (the key issue here!) and life goes on. Since she's a jerk (IF she's actually a jerk often, that is) she'll end up mainly associating with other jerks and/or people that "use" her, so she still gets punished without any need to waste resources on her (so you can violently steal less money from people via taxes as well as not waste time employing people to accomplish nothing worthwhile when they would otherwise at least sometimes do something worthwhile), as well as no randomly punishing person after person after person that didn't do anything significant, if anything at all. If you legally punish or take from people unjustly they naturally often don't give a damn about things as they're already heavily owed by society, and who can blame them? Not me...

------------

It seems that Crest and Moby are able to get along again now, although I still don't think she's that great of a person given that she "pressed" him into an apology for this before actually apologizing for what she did first to contribute heavily to his speech. Of course this is not uncommon behavior, but she's still being entitled or similar like this, because she still cares more about being called "rapey" than how she made Crest uncomfortable up to the point that he objected THAT strongly...and she cursed at him in response, too, which apparently doesn't matter either as it has "slipped her mind".

[Brion Foulke]

Hey hey, cmon.  No more rants about feminists, okay?

[Azure Priest]

Glad to see Moby admit she was wrong... but DAMN has she got a rather low opinion of men. And from "personal experience?" What kind of guys did she date?

Yeah, there's a perception going back hundreds if not thousands of years that humans of the male gender are just walking erections looking for a warm hole to put it in.

That is simply not true.

Crest isn't the only guy who has hang-ups about women.

In fact, a significantly large population of the male gender is very insecure around women, and even in those that are not, the fear of rejection, or being entrapped is very, very high.

A woman, who is a complete stranger, starts ripping her clothes of and physically jumping on a guy, is going to send MOST of them running. It's just so out of the norm, for starters, that they're not going to handle it well.

The guys that go "yeah baby!" and jump in with gusto are NOT the kind of guy that will do well in society, at all.

[Brion Foulke]

The guys that go "yeah baby!" and jump in with gusto are NOT the kind of guy that will do well in society, at all.

I think you kind of missed the point, which is that *any* kind of sweeping generalizations like this about a group of people are almost inevitably wrong.  The "type" of guys who are into aggressive women "will not do well in society?"  Isn't that just another unfair stereotype?