Censorship?

Has anyone claimed that Sweden is? Also you appear to have skipped my post where I specifically explained Sweden's statistics. But yeah none of the numbers are fun.

I mean it's a bit of a waste of money, but there's nothing wrong with a mutual divorce on the ground that two people don't work. So it's a meh from me.

Because American macho culture encourages such actions? Because many Americans are pushed into unhappy marriages and pushed to stay in them? Because when you make two teens wed via shotgun cus an abortion is impossible and a single mother is 'sinful' you're going to get a lot of fuck ups? You can change culture without banning ideas.

It's nice to have a new Middle Eastern person here, I'd suggest coming by the Arab Spring and General Middle East threads, they're good fun.

But yeah seeing as several countries (both Middle East and elsewhere) allow rapists to escape prosecution if they marry their victim[1], and marital rape is legal in a bunch of countries[2] I'm gonna have to call bull on rape not being legalised in a lot of places, though I don't know about your country specifically.

This isn't to say that the west doesn't have a bunch of problems with abuse and mistreatment of women, we do, but we're far from the global worst.

Edit: Oh Aszur the linked UN thing does show general rape stats (it's a multi tab thing), though it makes no note of gender, so male rape victims will also be included in those stats if the police record an instance of a man being raped.

edited 11th Mar '16 7:37:23 AM by Silasw

In actual news of actual censorship of which using rape statistics with different legal distinctions to say women are raped more has nothing to do with anything, a Nicaraguan comedian was barred from entering Costa Rica for inflammatory characters and routines that are rather hate filled.

I am biased, being from Costa Rica, of course, but you know. I am more insulted in the sense of comedy. He takes 5 minutes of uncreative insults for a half a second punchline, complete with homophobia, sexism, and calling for murder. Insults have a place in comedy, but that's just "heee hee he said poop" sort of elementary school humor.

edited 11th Mar '16 7:35:04 AM by Aszur

Yeah so much that Saudi Arabia is infamous for impunity when it comes to rape. From blaming the victim for being provocative and thus washing away the accusation of rape for the rapist to Saudi patrons abusing their guest workers, like the case where several Indonesian maids being raped and killed.

And Saudi Arabia is one of the most strict countries in terms of censorship, from media preventing showing the bodies of women to drinking, and yet has some very insipid behaviours and unhealthy attitudes despite of it.

Also in the Middle East in general has a big issue on what constitutes as rape and what doesn't and information gathering on rapes is very limited either because the country has loose laws regarding what is rape and what isn't, is at war or because the officials don't keep any records of those types of crime.

Even if rapists get hanged or have their balls chopped off, it only serves to state the brutality of the punishment, not the efficacy of reporting and punishing the perpetrators.

Your infidelity claims are also flawed because there are plenty of countries that don't make to the list because they have a strict control of information and those data are based not on government gathered data but surveys were reporters or researches interview a pool of people to provide statistics.

Guess what? There are plenty of countries that would outright punish people for infidelity. China is rather infamous for having extramarital affairs not being considered cheating if it is the men seeking prostitutes of having concubines. And it is a country that bans pornography from being sold and still didn't do jack shit to curb cheating or even the consumption of pornography.

You examples become void because you gather the data of places that actually seek the data and compare to the lack of data of other countries that don't do the data gathering. Assuming that the absence of data regarding a specific practice equals the lack of practice.

edited 11th Mar '16 7:37:30 AM by AngelusNox

Actually I'm just gonna quote the UN rape numbers thing itself.

Oh and thanks for pointing at the tabs, silas. I had not noticed them, my bad.

But really, the guy is from Saudi Arabia? And using United Nations data to back it up? The united Nations has widely condemned Saudi Arabia for its awful, awful, awful record on human rights and womens rights abuses.

Short of, you know, women themselves and maybe Amnesty international, I cannot think of anyone who has called out Saudi Arabia more on its sexist shit than the U.N.

P.S: Any thoughts on the censorship thing of the nicaraguan comedian?

edited 11th Mar '16 7:44:53 AM by Aszur

We have no idea what mhsta's nationality is and it's not relevant to the discussion anyway. For Shinra and I's sake could you please not scare away one of the Middle Eastern troopers to wonder into OTC?

Anyway back to censorship, do we want to shift the abuse of women discussion over to the Women's Issues thread?

As for the comedian thing, it's possible that there is a genuine threat and they don't want a diplomatic incident, it's also possible that they're just trying to shut the guy up.

edited 11th Mar '16 7:54:26 AM by Silasw

Technically we can, but the topic is still heavily tied to censorship, so it's not necessary.

Not just that. One of the biggest debates going on right now in the areas of law and psychology here is how to handle the issue of custody and how children feel and how are their rights being respected (or not).

There's more to divorce than just money. Much more (as my father and my brother, who are lawyers, could tell you)...

Oh, and I'll subscribe Silas' words: I want more tropers from many other areas of the world to come here (and conservative tropers as well).

Even if they argue poorly, there's no excuse for pulling out statistics from countries that troper may not be from in order to paint the whole of the Middle East as a backwards land on every area of human life and law) and induce guilt-tripping by association.

edited 11th Mar '16 8:44:39 AM by Quag15

I don't want to scare people away either and think it is healthy to have other views on the forums, but the main point most of us were making was about the rape problems in some middle eastern countries and how "media censoring has lessened sexual crimes in these countries" is completely inaccurate on multiple fronts. I don't think it was the intent to try to paint the middle east in a completely negative light or anything.

I was assuming divorce without a kid caught in the middle, things become a lot more complicated then. I've seen enough family dynamics (split parents, parents who keep splitting and getting back together, very argumentative but somehow functional parents (my own), apparently happy but really repressing issues parents. strait up happy parents) to know that once a kid is added into the mix things become a lot more serious.

Sure but we don't need to be making wild guesses about a person's national origin while we do it. It's disrespectful both to the troper who you're making assumptions about but also to any tropers who are from the country you're assuming such a negative stereotype about.

edited 11th Mar '16 8:34:51 AM by Silasw

I prefer the approach of generous support for single mothers. It does lead to lower marriage rates IIRC, obviously because of economic independence is much easier, but it's pretty positive overall. Notwithstanding the conservative family values hysteria.

Well, I didn't make any national assumptions and I'd like to point out that scaring people or not, extremely bad faith arguments should be called out.

And let's not pretend the Middle East statistics weren't presented in response to a grossly loaded, dishonest, and inaccurate assumption and generalization about the "liberal countries".

Speaking of someone not from a "liberal country" to begin with, for that matter...

edited 11th Mar '16 8:57:30 AM by Luminosity

I agree with you that making assumptions about people's nationalities isn't very helpful or nice, though I do think that the stories posted about Saudi Arabia are relevant to the discussion anyways, since they illustrate the point that censorship doesn't really promote better attitudes.

edited 11th Mar '16 8:49:38 AM by wehrmacht

, It's almost as if my post was aimed at Aszur and not you two...

I thought you might also been speaking about Nox since he followed up on Aszur's post, but yes I didn't really take your post to be aimed at me specifically or anything, so I guess we're all agreed on this front.

edited 11th Mar '16 9:11:43 AM by wehrmacht

I wasnt even the first person to bring up Saudi Arabia. Just went with it as the example Nox mentioned.

About the Quran, Bible thing, if any book or media inspires crime it should be banned. that is why I believe any form of promoting Wahhabi ideology (the ideology behind ISIS and Al-Qaida) should be banned.

about the whole rape thing, all I wanted to say is that many people who listen to western media think that in the middle east if you rape a woman you are awarded with her, I actually asked someone with quite a lot of legal knowledge if this was the case and he was surprised that I would even consider this. I just wanted to point out that one the negative effects of unrestricted media is stereotyping. and stereotyping any group will lead to emotional and sometimes physical abuse of that group.

And about divorce, do you really think it is nothing more than a waste of money? do you have any Idea how much emotional pain it causes, do you even care what the children have to go through? who are you kidding?

that is exactly what I am talking about, why do 2 of 3 marriages end up becoming miserable marriages? bad luck? I don't think so. nothing is because of bad luck, it's bad lifestyle. So you should ask yourselves "what problem does this liberal lifestyle has that causes people to make such erroneous and destructive decisions when it comes to choosing a spouse and the way of living with them?"

So you support banning any kind of religious text? You realize that a lot of things cause people to commit crimes, right? And that people can be exposed to these things, realize they are wrong and not do them? Trying to ban everything that potentially caused people to commit crimes is an exercise in futility, because every single ideology has inspired crimes.

I don't think anyone is denying that media does have an influence on the way people behave, but it is not as simplistic as you are making out to be, and changing people's behaviors is not as simple as banning their media. Like I've said over and over, banning an ideology does not mean the ideology disappears, it does not challenge the ideology and show why it is wrong, it merely leaves it out of discussion, period.

You are making very broad generalizations about why people divorce and the circumstances of divorces.

I'm not denying that divorces can be and often are painful and difficult, but it does not necessarily mean that there was something wrong with the way people were living. People are not immutable or perfect by your own admission, sometimes people change and grow apart, and are better off going in their own directions. It does not even mean that the marriage was miserable per se, just that they lost interest and felt that it was not something they wanted for them anymore. That is perfectly natural and healthy, not everything that causes pain is inherently bad for you if it's something you need to do to eventually be happier.

You seem to be very focused on the idea of preventing anything that could be considered bad from happening at any cost, but I will tell you right now that there is no perfect solution that will make this so. And the solutions that you're proposing are worse than other ones, they are impractical and inefficient. I do not trust people to censor only and exclusively things that are bad, and you have failed to prove that censorship does anything to solve these issues.

edited 11th Mar '16 1:30:59 PM by wehrmacht

My word, you are actually serious...

You do realise any ideology(and by extension, the media it created, even if a book) in the world "inspired crime"? Including yours, whatever it may be?

This is your proof now? "I actually asked someone"?

Ok, I actually asked a someone, like, a real someone with a lot of astronomical knowledge, if meteorites would grow wings if given Red Bull. He said absolutely yes before calling the police on me for breaking into his house naked.

See? Anyone can claim anecdotal evidence.

Actual proof please. What you call "stereotyping"(actually the notion that some, note I said some Middle Eastern countries have records of horrible human rights abuse that correlate with heavy media censorship), unlike your "liberal countries" generalization that's totally not "stereotyping") is actually backed by proof. Your points aren't.

You're yet to address non-Middle-Eastern places that have the same correlation. China, North Korea, etc.

What you're once again happily ignoring is that unhappy marriages are worse than a divorce. You have no idea how much pain that causes, including for children who mostly aren't stupid and realise their "mommy and daddy" no longer love each other.

Or that maybe not every marriage immediately results in children and many marriages end before that stage, divorce in those is much smoother.

Or that people rush into marriages because they are told to by societal pressure, parental pressure, and peer pressure.(and all of that, btw, exists everywhere, not just in the scary "liberal devil worshipping cult dens". Only not everywhere can a person actually divorce...) But of course why would you mention those complex social factors, after all, they don't fit into your easy and convenient narrative.

No, you should ask yourself "Why do I keep asking these ridiculous loaded questions"?

And you are yet to provide proof on your "statistic" anyway.

Time to play the game of which of my points you have ignored this time. Let's see... you ignored your abuse and misuse of rape statistics, and how they do not in any way fit in your conclusion. You ignored the need to prove your "60%" comment, or even the sexual assault one.

edited 11th Mar '16 12:02:19 PM by Luminosity

I am in partial agreement there. Arranged marriages actually have a lot of benefits, people just don't like to admit it these days.

But I think going back to the days where divorce was illegal, or else just being fine with how things are now, is a false dichotomy.

There's other options to mitigate these kinds of harm.

As for the argument that censorship makes crime decrease, I don't really have much to comment other than saying I can't take it very seriously.

Is there a place more appropriate for me to ask you to elaborate on this? Because I am wondering what kind of benefits a situation like this offers, but this isn't really the best place for this tangent.

Does "not having your family be angry at you over your failure to find any romantic partners of any kind, sentient or non-sentient" count as a benefit?

Maybe on 15th century Prussia but today? Hardly.

edited 11th Mar '16 12:18:17 PM by AngelusNox

So is the death of a beloved, an accident, going through your first rejection, being fired from a job, or hearing something for the first time about, say, your parents that you disliked.

Just because it ended up being a mistake, it does not mean it is a mistake beyond our control, and that we need to do everything to stop it. I am sorry, but people are free to commit mistakes so long as they do it in a safe sphere. If they are engaging in an emotional relationship one or both are not ready for, then it is betterfor them to realize it through their respective hardships, than to have a government instituted legal way to forbid people making their own social mistakes.

Before you compare this sphere of influence of "humans are allowed to make human mistakes" to other less favorable ones, take into account that stuff that we are legally allowed to commit mistakes on are those that afflict us and us alone. Murder, robbery and several other crimes are not done between two consenting adults who would only harm each other.

So yeah. Boo hoo. Breaking up is sad. Not the end of the world. An not something government, law, or religion, oughta get a say on.

It would be sadder if they didn't learn the lesson at all.

I will refrain from commenting on the latter, but the law does need to address divorces, so they oughta get a say on this matter (regardless of whether the lawmakers are for or against divorce), because there are a whole lot of factors at play (e.g. children's custody, separation and/or split of material goods and money, and so forth). Otherwise, there's censorship of jurisprudence and legalistic discussion (the matters of how beneficial pro-divorce or anti-divorce positions are belong to another kind of thread, and I won't talk about them here).

And the government (or other specific state authorities) needs to enforce that law (as much as possible and as long as there's no violation of some specific and related rights), otherwise there will always be people who won't give a shit about the law and will seek to break it (not matter how much society in general tells them they're wrong).

edited 11th Mar '16 2:54:19 PM by Quag15