It appears that Barbie has found religion. After rebelling with Harley Davidson Barbie and bikini Barbie. There is even an S & M Barbie in all leather and fishnet stockings. Now, however, there is Burka Barbie.
Of course, this could be a surplus GI Joe in a Burka but the covered Barbie is on display with 500 other Barbies at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy. To complete the image of subjugation for feminists, Burka Barbie will be auctioned off to the highest bidder as part of the fundraiser by Sotheby’s.
For many, the doll teaches girls to accept an obnoxious practice of women covering themselves — a practice common in areas where girls as young as ten are routinely married off. Then again, many Muslims would likely argue that, if Mattel markets kinky Barbie, why shouldn’t it also make Barbies for conservative Islamic families?
Would do you think?
For the picture of Burka Barbie and full story, click here.
Except troll boy of course. His life is pure misery and nothing makes him happy except sharing his misery. Please, apply any articles or modifiers to the word “troll” you like and I won’t quibble.
Buddha: “You can define rape as something it’s not all you want too but you can’t paint me with not following the definition.”
1. Common law rape is generally defined as non-consensual sex with a female PERSON; NOT PROPERTY. Under the law as it existed and was applied in the time of Jefferson, Sally was property. As I said earlier, if you leveraged the entire DOI against Jefferson, you would have had an argument for the court to accept Sally as a person for purposes of prosecution. Whether this would have acted like a Dred Scott decision and helped spark a civil war; I have no idea. Nonetheless, you cannot define Sally as both property and person simultaneously.
Look, diagonally! http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/square/
Buddha: “Her chattel status IS NOT proof of lack of actual consent.” “You claim actual consent is somehow not possible, yet offer no proof relevant to the specific case at hand other than her legal status as property. Either way, it MAY NOT HAVE BEEN RAPE. Yet you both rush to the conclusion she COULD NOT HAVE CONSENTED AS A MATTER OF FACT. Which isn’t the reality of human sexuality.”
2. Per the issue of consent, as lottakatz pointed out earlier, and in accord with the Lockean argument I set forth above, a slave LACKS THE CAPACITY to give any meaningful consent; just as if the victim were too young, mentally defective or intoxicated. IOW, even if Jefferson and Hemmings (treating her as a person in lieu of property) were a veritable Halmark card, it’s still rape. State of mind is irrelevant per status incapacity such as rape and being too young to consent; thus the statutory rape laws. Don’t believe me, pick up your old Crim Law outline from law school and look up the section on consent and see for yourself.
I will settle if you’ll all agree that he was a “possible or likely rapist” instead of “a rapist”.
This is my offer. 😀 And I think everyone leaves the table happy.
You can’t help it can you?
I take my que’s from Buddah. I think it’s funny when he comes up with stuff like BDAtroll. Funny how, Like a freakin clown.
I can’t no matter how hard I try Mike. Maybe I just didn’t get wired right. Short of suicide nothing I can do about it now. The sad part is I get enjoyment from this type of behavior. I think you are an ex behavioral expert, sometimes I wonder if you can help and other times I realize I’m beyond that. I feel as if I’m an addict trying to get the next fix.
Mike,
And I’m not saying you are all right about rape or wrong about rape. Just about human nature and the very definition of rape are logically counter to your assumptions of Sally’s perception.
If there’s no perception of coercion, there’s no rape and without her testimony, we cannot know the specific circumstances.
My goal arguing this was never to win. It was to cast reasonable doubt, which is exactly what I did. That we disagree does not mean that my argument was unreasonable or that others do not agree with me. That you let two crimes meld into one is flawed reasoning. Slaver, yes and a bastard for it. Rapist? Not enough evidence is my reply. What evidence we have looks bad, but it’s not conclusory, only indicative and – worse – presumptive. Without her testimony, there is room for error. Error can lead to injustice. This is why, especially in the days before DNA, it was so very very critical that women testify against their attackers. It’s the simply the best evidence of how they felt about the situation.
My position isn’t that he didn’t rape Sally, even if at times it appears that way. Carefully parsing the details reveal my position is that we don’t have enough evidence to know with conclusive certainty either way. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my arguments come to conclusions based on the best evidence possible, not a supposition no matter how reasonable that supposition may be. Quality of evidence counts.
And that’s my greater point. Someone hurls a label like rapist rather casually for a situation that may have another, non-vile, reasonable explanation. It’s a crime of perception, just not our perception unless we are the victim proper. The charge of rape also damaging to both the accused and the victim albeit for different reasons, but doubly so if unfounded in reality. What if you’re all wrong and she did love him? Would she consider it justice if he were punished for rape? Or would she find you a bunch of meddling bastards? The road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions. No one can prove I’m wrong about her state of mind any more than you can prove you’re right. Your evidence, while strongly indicative and prejudicial, is incomplete in quality without her thoughts on the matter as her thoughts are a key element of the crime charged. Rapist is a word that should be used carefully.
Clarity and the best evidence possible is a good thing when frail human lives are the subject, be it legal or any other analytical framework. The best evidence of if Sally was raped is to ask her before making presumptions.
There is no flaw in that logic.
I would like to add something to DAR as well. It isn’t just westerners that object to the burka. Women, and men who are Muslim speak out against it. Cultures aren’t monolithic, nor are religious people> Here’s a short example of someone who disagrees with your “one way”. “I am a Muslim, I am a feminist and I detest the full-body veil, known as a niqab or burqa. It erases women from society and has nothing to do with Islam but everything to do with the hatred for women at the heart of the extremist ideology that preaches it.
We must not sacrifice women at the altar of political correctness or in the name of fighting a growingly powerful right wing that Muslims face in countries where they live as a minority.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/opinion/03iht-edeltahawy.html
I’m pissed off right now. The changes at wordpress never sent me follow up comments on this interesting thread and so I’ve just had to read through and catch up.
Sorry Buddha,
I agree with Jill, Elaine and Bob. If you have sex with a slave it is rape, whether or not the slave wants it and/or consents to it. To me there can be no mitigating circumstances that temper that. Jefferson, who I also admire greatly, was a hypocritical pig in this respect. This should come as no surprise to any of us because there simply aren’t any perfect human beings and great ones often have great flaws.
Dar,
I must say that your comments really are basically attacks upon Western Culture and justification for your own cultural beliefs. While I am no fan of the objectification of women in my culture from a sexual standpoint, I personally believe that there is nothing morally wrong or sexually prurient about the human body. In my youth I was in many situations where there was legal public nudity of both sexes and surprisingly found that despite the overactive hormones of my youth, they were not at all sexual. The reason is that sexual prurience exists in the mind of the beholder.
While your point that different cultures have different mores is a valid one, I must say that these cultural/religious mores are open to criticism, just as you do with “Western” culture. To me the use of the burka is an obscenity and an oppression of women, that says much about the sexual insecurity of males and the need for those cultures to oppress women. While it is a truism that it is important to respect cultural diversity, to withhold judgment about oppressive aspects of a given culture is not only cowardly, but gives license to inhumanity. The practices of some Islamic cultures is to me utterly barbaric, immoral and inhuman. Primarily this is in regard to the treatment of women, but also the enforcement of religious belief. I find it a sad fact of humanity that Islam, which has expressed many noble truths, has morphed in some venues into an instrument of terrible oppression. Sadder still is the need for some of those with religious conviction to fail to understand that by making the will of God into an avenging one, they are blaspheming that which they purport to worship.
Bdabigot,
“I know Slartsafart asked for one on climategate”
You can’t help it can you? no matter how hard you try to appear reasonable, your vitriol just comes out around the edges. Dumb word plays on people’s names is worthy of your 10 year old mentality.
Elaine,
Again, we’ve run into a limitation of the medium.
As to your last comment: yes. Legal guilt and actual guilt can be two different things. Justice Learned Hand once called law a “pale shadow of justice”. It’s not perfect but it can be more efficient and just than it is now. Need I say more than OJ? It’s murder, but the corollary holds. On another thread, Mike S. mentioned that he watched the OJ trial (as did I) and that he would have acquitted because the state didn’t make their case. And that’s the sad, sad truth of it. A weak and superficial starstruck judge combined with a team of expert bullshitters (they were excellent at obfuscation) and a prosecution that simply wasn’t up to the job led to a man being technically not guilty but the reality of the science says he did it without reasonable mathematical or scientific doubt. Verdict aside, everyone capable of understanding genetics knows he did it too (even if you figure in new data on false positive matches due to variations in testing procedures, the numbers still say he’s our guy).
BIL–
I wrote: “To me–looking at it from my personal feminine perspective: Rape IS rape…no matter what you call it–and whether or not in can be proved in a court of law.” That should have read: “…whether or not ‘it’ can be proved in a court of law.”
I don’t think I was clear as to what I was referring when I used “in/it” in that comment. I wasn’t speaking about the Jefferson/Hemings relationship–about whether or not the relationship involved rape. I was adressing the issue of rape in a general, non-legal/semantic way.
Maybe I should just leave the rest of this discussion to the lawyers.
Just one more thing before I bow out of this thread: A man could commit a rape–yet be found innocent of the crime in a court of law. Does that mean that the man who is found to be legally innocent of the crime–can’t be, in reality, guilty of the rape?
Elaine,
Again, even from the female perspective, you can’t know it’s rape without talking to Sally first. The crime of rape is a mental crime and if she didn’t feel coerced, it may be “improper sex” of some sort, but it wouldn’t be rape. And all Jefferson would have had to do to modify their chattel relationship was say “You’re free to refuse this advance.” And we can’t know that he didn’t, or that she didn’t initiate the relationship either, without talking to her.
Rape has a very narrow legal definition. It’s “the crime of sexual intercourse (with actual penetration of a woman’s vagina with the man’s penis) without consent and accomplished through force, threat of violence or intimidation (such as a threat to harm a woman’s child, husband or boyfriend).[Law.com]
Even at the common usage, aside from being a plant in the mustard family, rape is relevantly defined as roughly the same thing by Webster’s. The problem here is perception. That she was a slave is creating the perception she was presumably coerced to have sex. That does not follow logically if there are other reasonable scenarios where she felt she wasn’t under compulsion for sex. I don’t think anything I’ve said about the nature of human sexual interaction and pair bonding is unreasonable either. I have made no outlandish claims unless you count as outlandish the idea she might have actually cared for him and he for her. Crazier love stories have happened. To sort through those scenarios for the truth though – both legally and ethically, we are logically required to know her state of mind regarding Jefferson before concluding he used force. His perception is not required in this analysis as it’s only the alleged victim’s perception of coercion that makes sex into rape.
It might have been rape. Equally so, it might not have been. Only Sally can answer that question.
BIL–
I wrote: “Rape is rape…no matter what you call it. You can call a chicken a turkey–but it’s still a chicken.”
I didn’t write that in reference to any particular situation. I was talking semantics. I wasn’t attempting to prove that Hemings must have been raped by Jefferson. I don’t feel I’m qualified to participate in a legal discussion about the Hemings/Jefferson relationship. As I stated in an earlier comment, I’m just taking part in this discussion. To me–looking at it from my personal feminine perspective: Rape IS rape…no matter what you call it–and whether or not in can be proved in a court of law.
I think you may have inferred more from my comment than what I meant to express with my words.
Wow, someone really needs to realize I don’t give a flying F what they think. And for the record, I’d rather have a straw up my nose (and I think cocaine is EVIL) than have my head where you keep yours, Propaganda Bigot Boy. When I take the straw out, it won’t make an audible “POP!” like it will when you pull your head out – whether it’s up your own butt or somebody else’s.
Pardon, I meant “if” not “when”. That lack of sleep is really getting me down. Thanks for your faux concern, Dipstick.
I quess no cases today, or is the jury still out.
WOW someone needs to put the straw down. That stuff will ruin your nasal cavity.
Mornin Mr. Sunspot I see you were up with another all nighter. Must have some really good coffee beans EHh!!!!
And I see some trolls cannot differentiate thread high jacking and naturally evolving conversations.
Ignorance and poor language skills are par for your course, bdaman.
“her ability to refuse”
Elaine & Bob,
You can define rape as something it’s not all you want too but you can’t paint me with not following the definition. I’m not the one having and issue with “actual consent” as a valid defense. You’ve all tried to dance around your lack of proof. Her chattel status IS NOT proof of lack of actual consent. It’s proof she was a slave with limited rights and recourse and that is all. It is not the same thing as rape. That legally her refuse was impaired doesn’t Q.E.D. means that she DIDN’T consent. Again, if desire and law are moving the same direction, it can’t be rape.
If she was property, it wasn’t rape by your own admissions as property cannot be raped. If she wasn’t property but being considered a human (like I am giving her credit for DESPITE her chattel status), she wasn’t raped if she actually consented. She could think you know.
You claim actual consent is somehow not possible, yet offer no proof relevant to the specific case at hand other than her legal status as property. Either way, it MAY NOT HAVE BEEN RAPE. Yet you both rush to the conclusion she COULD NOT HAVE CONSENTED AS A MATTER OF FACT. Which isn’t the reality of human sexuality.
And how exactly do you know what she thought? Either of you? And I don’t to hear about her being a slave anymore. You can presume coercion based on her legal status. It’s still a presumption and a presumption isn’t a fact. You can’t prove it without her testimony. Either of you. Any more than I can prove 100% it wasn’t rape without her testimony. Rape is a crime against a person but if that person feels no wrong in the area of sexual interaction has occurred and they wanted to do it? It’s NOT rape. Period. No matter how they met or how much you don’t like it. Sex without the trauma of coercion is just sex. You saying her status was fundamentally coercive still does not eliminate the fact she could have actually consented. Since assuming is really a big theme here, I’ll make one too. Assuming that like most lesser included charges, if Jefferson were before the bar for slavery and lesser crimes, her actual consent would still vitiate the ability to legally penalize him for that lesser included charge even if convicted of being a slaver. It’s unconstitutional to punish a man for crime he wasn’t convicted of. Unless you want to exclude rape from that little bit of due process.
The bottom line is her reaction and motivations are required to answer whether it was rape or not. Everything else is just guessing.
The fact is without proof of her state of mind, it’s speculative and semantics based on her legal status versus the fact she was a flesh and blood person who may or may not have thought sleeping with Jefferson was fine. You ASSUME she thought it was rape. And THOUGHT is a key part to the crime: if she didn’t feel coerced or threatened into sex IT’S NOT RAPE. Period. Her status as property is irrelevant or tangential at best and you cannot ASSUME her emotional state or her intentions from that alone. That’s still called “making shit up”.
Neither of you are psychic, yet you both claim to know she thought the interactions were rape. That’s both supposition and prejudicial.
Rape is (and was) non-consensual sex. Unless you can prove her state of mind, you can’t prove coercion. Your evidence of her chattel status may be aggravating evidence (in the sense of the word opposite to mitigation/militation), but it’s not conclusive without her testimony. It can’t be conclusive without Sally’s testimony because of her state of mind is key to the charge. Basic logic.
I can say that light acts as both a wave and a particle, but if I can’t prove it acts like a wave, I’m talking crap. It’s all about the proof people, and proof of her legal status as chattel isn’t proof she didn’t love the man she had children with or felt that she was raped. Saying YOU think it was rape is not the same as proving SHE THOUGHT it was rape. And if she didn’t think it was rape, it simply wasn’t rape no matter what you guys think. That’s how it would be today if they met in a bar. That’s how it was then.
Why don’t you?
Are you kidding me, the money is to good for doing what I’m doing. As long as you meat yor Quota the pudding is quite tasty, and sometimes you have to eat your meet, if you don’t you can’t have any puddin. How can you have any puddin if you don’t eat your meet.
Elaine rape is rape, hijacking a thread is hijacking a thread. You can justify it any way you like but the result is still the same. Allow me to ask, did the property owner of this blawg consent to the hijacking of this thread? Hummm I think not. If someone is passed out drunk or incapacitated and intercourse takes place just because you were unable to say no doesn’t mean it’s not rape.
bdaman:
as evidenced by this thread, they don’t care if the thread diverges on it’s own but you just pull stuff out of thin cold air (AGW reference) and paste without the slightest regard for content of the existing thread.
Someone:
Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemmings.
Bdman:
He raped Polar Bears too and here is the proof:
www tjrapedpolarbears com (web site about veracity of AGW)
Bdaman:
and another: www jamesmadisonrapedeskimos com
bdaman:
www georgemasonfreedthepolarbears com
Spelling correction: “Veer of” should have read veer off in my comment at 9:17 am.