About your rephrasing of his comments, I think the exact phrasing matters as I consider the comment at least vague, and something he'd likely clarify if questioned about it specifically. "Clarifying" his sentence to something you consider equal makes its original likely inaccuracy less obvious. Compare with someone writing "I'm a nazi" when he meant "I'm not a nazi"; if you expand this to an explanation about how he denies holocaust, wants to preserve racial purity and so on, then the possibility of a typo becomes a lot less obvious.
The essential difference between what his sentence could literally be taken to mean and what Valerie Aurora said is whether it depends on one person only. The first would say that it's legally OK to rape anyone on the street you can catch in your drunken state; the latter wouldn't. Another difference is that the first was clearly about interpretation of (US?) law only, while the latter wasn't.
"You're basing this asymmetry argument entirely on the belief that Ted meant something other than what he said."
Where did you get that idea? I'm not. His thought experiment was a symmetrical case. The "meant something other" question is whether his legal analysis of that case would imply a drunk can never be a rapist in any other case either.
Your line I was responding to was "exactly as ridiculous to claim that it's not rape purely because both parties were too drunk". Maybe that's just nonsense? I thought you were saying he implied (before the legal analysis, in addition to it) that in the symmetric case there would be no rape, and this would be the "other claim" compared to. If not, that I don't see what your "exactly as" would mean.
"He clearly and explicitly says that if both parties are drunk, it's not rape."
He clearly and explicitly says his symmetric thought experiment case with both Alice and Bob drunk is not rape. He does not say that any case where both parties are drunk would not be rape. That's exactly what you got wrong originally, so you shouldn't confuse those. (The questionable sentence about law could be taken to imply that ONE party being drunk would be enough to say that party can't legally be a rapist.)
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Re: My overall take on the discussion
Date: 2012-11-09 06:15 am (UTC)The essential difference between what his sentence could literally be taken to mean and what Valerie Aurora said is whether it depends on one person only. The first would say that it's legally OK to rape anyone on the street you can catch in your drunken state; the latter wouldn't. Another difference is that the first was clearly about interpretation of (US?) law only, while the latter wasn't.
"You're basing this asymmetry argument entirely on the belief that Ted meant something other than what he said."
Where did you get that idea? I'm not. His thought experiment was a symmetrical case. The "meant something other" question is whether his legal analysis of that case would imply a drunk can never be a rapist in any other case either.
Your line I was responding to was "exactly as ridiculous to claim that it's not rape purely because both parties were too drunk". Maybe that's just nonsense? I thought you were saying he implied (before the legal analysis, in addition to it) that in the symmetric case there would be no rape, and this would be the "other claim" compared to. If not, that I don't see what your "exactly as" would mean.
"He clearly and explicitly says that if both parties are drunk, it's not rape."
He clearly and explicitly says his symmetric thought experiment case with both Alice and Bob drunk is not rape. He does not say that any case where both parties are drunk would not be rape. That's exactly what you got wrong originally, so you shouldn't confuse those. (The questionable sentence about law could be taken to imply that ONE party being drunk would be enough to say that party can't legally be a rapist.)