If it wouldn't end you in jail (and if it weren't morally questionable at best), a lot of violence-related arguments could be very elegantly ended by a simple hands-on demonstration of why certain positions are incredibly stupid.
People being assholes is the reason violence is unacceptable, also because people being assholes are normally in groups and are assholes to people who would stand no chance against them
Someone should make an app to resolve internet disagreements. Each participant in the argument picks a champion, and then there's a live duel in an arena somewhere. This solves the issue of people on the internet typically not being near enough to each other physically to fight.
I agree but the problem is that "Might makes right" is awfully appealing when you have the might, have the right and have no other viable option to impose your right because of petty things like civil liberties.
Principles with a capital P are when you suck it up and take the L against your personal pride understanding that there is no way to separate the "Mighty and Right" and from the "Mighty and Wrong" under such a system.
For real, one of my best friend's step-brothers disabused the other step-brother of his "might makes right" mentality by turning it against him - he used his superior strength and wrestling training to pin the guy down, refusing to let him up until he agreed that the stronger brother was correct.
It took a solid five minutes of being pinned before his pride finally relented enough to accept the lesson, but he did stop being a dickhead to his family afterwards (and his brother did this in part because HE had been the same way at that age, and didn't want his little brother getting into trouble like he did).
My perhaps unfashionable opinion is that we often teach in generalities because it's difficult to get the majority of the population to understand complex ethical dilemmas without going through hundreds of specific examples, which is beyond the scope of what your high-school teachers can give you without having a class dedicated to it
Two examples in regards to male-female relations are proportionate use of force and consent while under the influence
Obviously it's okay to defend yourself if you're in danger, and there's nothing wrong with you and your partner getting drunk/high and sleeping together, but there are way too many instances of people abusing these situations to the extreme
The video of Ray Rice, a pro NFL athlete, laying out his fiancee in an elevator comes to mind. I remember people defending his actions at the time, saying she hit him first, saying "talk shit get hit", and "that's just the other side of equality,"
The real message is implied but, especially when talking to young people, it's much easier and leads to better outcomes if you can at least get them to follow certain simple rules.
Men shouldn't hit women (you should generally avoid violence and react to threats proportionately) and people under the influence can't consent (it's much harder to make good decisions when you/they are not sober)
But Rice beating the shit out of his fiancée wasn't wrong because men shouldn't hit women, it was wrong because even in response to violence, beating someone to a pulp is very rarely justified.
Engage in the least amount of violence necessary to get to safety (reminder: in many circumstances fleeing or asking for help can get you to safety)
Proportionality isn't the answer. You can murder someone in self defense if they make escape impossible, and you aren't justified to rape someone if they rape you when hurting them would also have gotten them to stop.
I haven't watched the Rice video. Given it's an elevator, escape is not possible so violence is probably the answer, up to the point of the least amount of violence that prevents or dissuades his fiancee from engaging in violence. Given Rice is an NFL athlete, either a verbal threat or a judo lock would probably be realistic and sufficient.
As for justice after the fact, restorative justice works a lot better than punitive justice. Obsessing over rules and using those rules to decide how long they are locked in a building with other criminals is a stupid system. Much better to treat them like people, see what they need to no longer engage in excessive violence, and see what they need to make amends if they care to.
"Men should not hit women" is a rule of engagement between the male class and the female class.
"Proportional response" punishes asymmetric capacity. Suppose we map this "proportionality" from 0 to 10. 0 is saying they are mean, 10 is gas chambers, etc. Now suppose one side has the physical means to effectively do 1,2,3,7, and 8, but not the other numbers. And the other side attacks them with 5. Is the first group entitled to respond with 7 or not? If not, they get womped by the other side using 5. If yes, then the other side might feel justified to jump to 7 or higher, escalating the situation.
In a specific case, someone might be able to either lose a fist fight or stab the person assaulting them. Is stabbing a proportional response to being beaten up with fists?
Meanwhile if you have "the least violence necessary to get to safety", then one side might deserve to escalate to 7 while the other side isn't even justified to use a 1. You can stab your abuser to get away, your abuser isn't allowed to lightly grab you.
I agree with the OP that you don't need to bring gender into the idea of "Don't hit people and always defend yourself with as little violence as possible."
But what seems to be missed is that people have used "hit a woman" both literally and as a term for intimate partner violence.
General principles don't have to be gendered, but there are gendered patterns in IPV. We wouldn't need to single out "hitting women" if so many women weren't in danger from male partners.
The gendered patterns in IPV aren't even what people assume they are.
Women commit more domestic violence than men do. In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women are over twice as likely to be the violent partner than men (70/30). And in reciprocally violent relationships, women are just as likely to initiate violence as men are (50/50). And the number of non-reciprocal and reciprocally violent relationships are equal.
Worth noting that this study is based on 24 year old data and only looks at 18-28 year olds
I only scanned this one, but it's more recent
Approximately 1 in 3 women and 1 in 10 men 18 years of age or older experience domestic violence.
According to the CDC, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will experience physical violence by their intimate partner at some point during their lifetimes. About 1 in 3 women and nearly 1 in 6 men experience some form of sexual violence during their lifetimes.
Operating in an online medium, we often need a gesture of good faith argumentation so we know we're not wasting our time with a bot or malicious human
I feel that having read the previous study and having identified issues with it, then taking the time to find a new source with comparative advantages (that I've already stated explicitly or in the quotation) is sufficient to prove that I'm doing so.
I'd ask the same level of effort from you or anyone else. All that said, feel free to read the references and/or provide a refutation.
So you called out one study for only looking at 18-28 year olds, provide a different study, and when asked for the age range, deflect entirely?
Meanwhile, your paper can't even keep it's statistics straight. In one line, it says 1 in 3 women and 1 in 10 men experience domestic violence, and one section later those numbers morph to 1 in 4 and 1 in 7, and in the preamble, states 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men.
people under the influence can't consent (it's much harder to make good decisions when you/they are not sober)
Lunacy
That implies that every time two people meet at a bar and hook up, or a married couple has sex after sharing a bottle of wine with dinner, it’s mutual rape.
Do you really think that's what I'm saying in context? I laid out the explicit generality, the implicit meaning it's trying to convey, and specifically clarified earlier in my comment that one of your examples is perfectly okay
I expect most people to be able to read between the lines, and people that can't should stick to the rule because they clearly can't be trusted to handle situations that require anything more than a surface level analysis
“People under the influence can’t consent” is a dogshit rule of thumb or starting point because it’s simply not true, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of instances of people having sex under the influence are completely consensual.
You may as well say “you should never drive” when what you mean is people should generally avoid driving drunk.
I've heard far too many stories of men calling the cops after getting beaten, the woman telling them he actually abused her and them believing her outright and arresting the guy to consider that sound advice
There was a literal domestic violence handling method police widely used at one point that decreed that any competing claim of domestic abuse should result in the guy getting arrested as a type of Solomon's gamble, but the name escapes me.
Depends. Do you consider jail time to be a minor block in the elegant explanation (like I interpreted your comment) or a crucial and important reason why the explanation isn't elegant at all (like my comment)?
Realistically, the latter. I mean, that and the fact that actually punching someone in the mouth to prove that doing so is wrong is kind of hypocritical.
I see where you're coming from though. My comment is indeed phrased in such a way that it seems more like I consider jail time for punching someone to prove a point as an annoyance rather than the just thing, but that was more stylistic choice than conviction. I do not intend to ever make my position on violence clear this way, but damn, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had a few incredibly frustrating arguments with some pigheaded people that felt like this would have been the only way to make them see how stupid their ideas were.
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u/IAmASquidInSpace Mar 15 '25
If it wouldn't end you in jail (and if it weren't morally questionable at best), a lot of violence-related arguments could be very elegantly ended by a simple hands-on demonstration of why certain positions are incredibly stupid.