Interesting Links for 13-01-2016

[andrewducker]

• Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS economists
  • shares economics economy
• Actual Facts Related To The Bowie Social Media Shitstorm Today
  • consent age DavidBowie
• A radical new approach to generating human organs is to grow them inside pigs or sheep.
  • organs pigs sheep humans research
• DNA-testing kit 23andme: patient-powered healthcare

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Mmmh, statutory rape turns out to be a bit problematic doesn't it?

I guess I'm okay with the position that in the particular reference case the relationship was consensual, even joyous, no-one was actually exploited or harmed or even made an unwise decision that they regretted and that no-one acted negligently or with intent to prioritise their own pleasure over other people's safety.

However, statutory rape laws exist for a good reason and, as a general principle, people in a legitmate legal system ought to obey the law, even if a particular law is generally wrong or ought not apply in a specific case.

As a society we have decided (as have the Californians) that some people are not able to give genuine consent. We apply that principle to a range of activities, not just sex, and we apply it when people are young, when they are ill or when they are old and their brains are no longer working well.

With the young there are certain situations where society thinks there is a risk that they will actually lack the capacity to make proper decisions and are at risk of being harmed or exploited. Sexual activity is one of those situations.

We have chosen a particular age because we believe that offers the best balance of risks between too little caution or restriction and too much. The risk of setting the age too low is that more people are genuinely and seriously harmed. The risk of setting the age too high is that people are denied pleasurable experiences they would otherwise have enjoyed and, more importantly, people who in fact have capacity are denied the exercise of control over their own lives and bodies. Where that age is and where the right balance of risk is, I think, a matter for debate by the whole of society through the political process. (And we have changed the age of consent for sexual activity following debate several times and we are currently debating changing the age at which people are considered to have capacity to vote.)

(We could of course adopt a more specific test and instead of asking if a person was over the age of 14, or 16 or 18 ask if that particular person, in those circumstances was able to give informed consent but we didn't. We chose to have a more or less firm age based approach with a hard edge. I think that's the right decision. Judgemental approaches are problematic.

And once society has picked an approach and, in this area set an age, it's not really okay for someone to decide that they law doesn't apply to them.

I don't mean to suggest that a great and terrible evil has been done or that the performance of a single serious criminal act makes someone irredemably persona non grata but it sounds to me like someone has committed a serious crime here.

And that's not really okay.

[bart_calendar]

Well, if you want to just get into a debate over whether Bowie was a criminal or not, he certainly was. But he was breaking lots and lots of laws.

This just happens to be the one that people care about.

The sex law was a petty misdemenor.

The amount of drugs he was transporting and the firearms he was transporting were felonies. As was every instance where he got a blow job from an adult man or woman.

So, if someone were to make the argument that "we hate criminals and he was a criminal", then, fine.

But I've yet to see anyone give a shit about him engaging in not procreative sex, drug trafficking or being super into guns.

Instead people are focused on what legally was considered the least serious law he broke.

Also, interestingly, in 1987 he actually did in a cocaine fueled rage try to break a door down to sexually assault a woman - and nobody is bringing that up.

All of that makes me think nobody cares about him being a criminal.

Instead they simply want to hell a young woman how she should feel about her actions and make her into a victim when she says she isn't one.

All the while ignoring a woman who actually says she's a victim.

Seems pretty fucked up to me.

[danieldwilliam]

I don't doubt that he's done worse things (both things that I consider worse and which society considers worse) than the statutory rape that is the subject of discussion.

And you're probably right that the motivation of the people getting very excited about it is not a clean and clear love of justice and jurisprudence.

Personally, I'd be more concerned about the moral implication of kicking down doors whilst high or toting guns around whilst at the same time thinking that still doesn't put him beyond the pale (or at least my pale) completely.

Drugs laws start to push against my boundary of legimate laws. I think they are illiberal and unnecessarily restrictive and I think the process used to lobby for their creation and retention is perhaps corrupt enough to make those laws illegimate.

[steer]

Instead people are focused on what legally was considered the least serious law he broke.

Because it's the most clear moral transgression. The law is not germane here, it's whether what he did was actually pretty messed up.

Everyone (apart from the genuinely morally repugnant) believes that there's an age at which you cannot consent to sex no matter how precocious you are. So I think if the girl was five, you'd probably have a rather different position even if she maintained it was consensual.

Now I don't know if the girl in question was thirteen or fifteen at the time (it seems there's several accounts) but even with enthusiastic consent that put it into the extremely morally dubious territory even considering autre temps autre mores.

So, really, what seems to me pretty fucked up here is your insistence that it's completely unproblematic that he had sex with a child because the child in question continued to say it was OK when she grew up.

She says she's completely OK with it and remains so. (In passing, believing someone when they say they have not been raped is quite definitely not the flip side of believing someone when they say they have -- you don't have to look too long at celebrity rape accusations to realise that you're letting yourself in for a lot of pain if you make such an accusation). Even if she is OK with it, that's a hell of a chance to take with someone so much younger and more vulnerable.

So, long and short, don't fuck children even if they're OK with it and even if you really believe that they'll remain OK with it and even if they do remain OK with it. It's not that complicated -- just don't do that.

[nickys]

One of the things that really bugs me about this and similar situations, is that people seem to think that in order to like Bowie's music (or remain friends with somebody who has done something questionable) they should argue that what he did wasn't wrong.
I'd much rather that people just accepted that everyone sometimes does bad stuff, and acknowledge that a thing was bad, even if someone's general conduct was not especially bad, rather than get nasty with anyone who points out cracks in the perfection.

Trouble is, too many people say "I would never be friends with / hero-worship someone who does X", and then when presented with evidence that a friend/hero has done X they flat refuse to acknowledge it, because admitting an obvious truth would make them uncomfortable with an aspect of themself.

There is an option to say "My friend / my musical hero has done a bad thing. The thing is bad. It's not the whole story of their life or their personality, so I will stay friends with them. And I will not deny the thing, even though acknowledging the thing makes me personally uncomfortable."

[brixtonbrood]

I'll say this for being a Wagnerian - it trains you to be really really good at these distinctions.