Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they’re basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair.
Why not? The only people vulnerable to this particular type of attack are women - and they’re fair game, right?
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...you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Eric Hines
This argument is improper on a level beyond the one pertaining to the sex of the participants.
Imagine a physically rough game -- rugby or Aussie rules football, say -- being played in an integrated neighborhood of ethnic groups Blue and Red. Red kids observe Blue kids playing in a certain fashion, and work out what the rules are. When they try to join the game, everything goes fine at first; however, as soon as they tackle a Blue they are driven out with abusive language and shouting.
The Red players are stunned, as they used no more force to execute a tackle than they'd seen the Blue players use against Red players. So... what's going on here?
If these groups were White and Black instead of Blue and Red, Mr. Fish would see the problem at once.
The sexual aspect complicates this problem, but doesn't remove it. Say that Blue male players roughly tackle Red female players; but when a Red male player does the same, he is driven out of the game. Now what's going on?
I realize, by the way, that the analogy as presented does not quite capture the unique damage these kinds of attacks represent to women. The analogy can be corrected in this regard, but not in ways I'd like to put into print; the point is that, even making such corrections, the Blue/Red issue remains.
Of course, Mr. Fish's point would be that the Reds aren't just an ethnic group, they're people who are by nature immoral. That, though, is what everyone always thinks about the ethnic groups they despise.
they're people who are by nature immoral.
That, though, is what everyone always thinks about the ethnic groups they despise.
Yes, the arrogance of this is breathtaking. And the willingness to demonize fellow citizens who simply have a different view of what is right is heartbreaking. I am simply unable to understand it. Even with people whose opinions I consider absolutely unacceptable, I would not demonize them. Refute or ignore but not consider them unworthy of common decency.
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