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Regarding MRAs and ideological arguments

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Sat, 2014-06-07 13:05
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Smokeskin wrote:The whole
Smokeskin wrote:
The whole shelter issue is bogus anyway. They treat it like shelters are some sort of compensation for getting battered that men are getting cheated of. But that's not why there are women's shelters. Women's shelters are there because they sometimes need to flee an abusive partner they can't protect themselves from. There's a big difference in men being being violent to women and women being violent towards men, and that is in 99% of the cases it will happen on the man's terms. He's typically much stronger so he decides when it stops, regardless of who initiated it. Even if she's the abuser she's not going to rape him, and she's not going to hospitalize him if she flies into a rage.
Like pointed out above that sentiment is troublesome for a few reasons. First, it need not always be true. While the average upper body strength of human males is higher than the average upper body strength of human females, average doesn't make it always so. There's also the possibility of training which can skew things one way or the other, not to mention access to weapons that makes strength irrelevant. Secondly, you forget the psychological part of abuse. It doesn't really matter who actually [i]is[/i] the stronger, all that matters is how you [i]feel[/i]. One of the foremost reasons people don't leave abusing relationships is fear and let's not fall into the macho-trap of assuming a man can not fear a woman. While she only talks about her own experience, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yW5IsnSjo]this TED talk[/url] explains how an abusive relationship works pretty well. That being said, spousal abuse [i]is[/i] much more common towards women. However, is there any reason at all why there shouldn't be places to go for anyone that is being abused, regardless of gender. Your problems might be physical or psychological or both, but they're equally important to get help for.
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Sat, 2014-06-07 13:12
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Smokeskin wrote:If we're
Smokeskin wrote:
If we're dealing with a psychopath who is willing to plan and use surprise and weapons, I agree. But it is my impression that most domestic violence is not of that nature. It happens during heated arguments, when an approach is rejected or other situations like that. And in those cases, the man will typically have an enormeous advantage due to superior strength and size. He can walk away, pin her down or punch her face in, regardless of what she wants to happen and even if she is the abuser.
While it is just one [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yW5IsnSjo]story[/url], it is very possible that domestic abusers are much more psychopathic in nature than you might think.
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Sat, 2014-06-07 14:56
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Lorsa wrote:
Lorsa wrote:
Like pointed out above that sentiment is troublesome for a few reasons. First, it need not always be true. While the average upper body strength of human males is higher than the average upper body strength of human females, average doesn't make it always so. There's also the possibility of training which can skew things one way or the other, not to mention access to weapons that makes strength irrelevant.
I agree that it isn't always true, which I also wrote in my post. But numbers matter. You don't run a 10-bed male shelter if there's rarely even need for 1. I don't believe in gender equality in the sense that "abused women get shelters, so abused men must get them too." I believe that there are people in need, for a variety of reasons like disease, abuse or poverty. When we want to do good, we prioritise the limited resources at hand. Abused women needing the means to flee safely is a problem so widespread that shelters make sense. I don't see that the same problem for men is common enough that shelters make sense. I think that it sucks that we have to make do with limited resources and that means that we can't help everyone, but that is just how things are and we can't change that.
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Secondly, you forget the psychological part of abuse. It doesn't really matter who actually [i]is[/i] the stronger, all that matters is how you [i]feel[/i]. One of the foremost reasons people don't leave abusing relationships is fear and let's not fall into the macho-trap of assuming a man can not fear a woman. While she only talks about her own experience, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yW5IsnSjo]this TED talk[/url] explains how an abusive relationship works pretty well.
I agree. But if you're staying, you don't need a shelter. And if your shackles are psychological, once you decide to leave, you can do so safely - you don't need to run. I just looked at the wiki entry on women's shelters and it mentions that the experience from a shelter open to both sexes is that the men that show up don't come to stay or for their own protection but to get aid in getting the woman out of the house to protect the children. And just to reiterate: I'm not saying that men are never abused or that women can't abuse. I'm saying that in the vast majority of cases I don't believe that shelters for men would serve much of a purpose.
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That being said, spousal abuse [i]is[/i] much more common towards women. However, is there any reason at all why there shouldn't be places to go for anyone that is being abused, regardless of gender. Your problems might be physical or psychological or both, but they're equally important to get help for.
I agree, but that is not the function of shelters. Shelters are there to allow women to escape from an abusive relationship that they can't otherwise get out of safely. They are used in the cases where she fears he will track her down at friends and family and assault her because she moved, and that she can't find a new place to stay without him discovering it or she doesn't have the money for it, or she's too traumatized to handle it. I am fairly sure that most shelters would send you away if you weren't in any sort of physical danger. If your issues are only psychological, you need a therapist, not a shelter.
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Sat, 2014-06-07 16:19
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Lorsa wrote:Smokeskin wrote
Lorsa wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
If we're dealing with a psychopath who is willing to plan and use surprise and weapons, I agree. But it is my impression that most domestic violence is not of that nature. It happens during heated arguments, when an approach is rejected or other situations like that. And in those cases, the man will typically have an enormeous advantage due to superior strength and size. He can walk away, pin her down or punch her face in, regardless of what she wants to happen and even if she is the abuser.
While it is just one [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1yW5IsnSjo]story[/url], it is very possible that domestic abusers are much more psychopathic in nature than you might think.
I'm sure that psychopathic abusers exist, but the question is how common they are. I googled it and read a few reports like this one http://scielo.isciii.es/pdf/ejpalc/v5n2/original2.pdf with 187 batterers tested. You can see their Psychopathy Checklist scored on table 1 and 2. There's not anything like a general pattern of them being psychopathic. Even the worst group only scored like average criminals do, and lots of them were quite normal. Unless psychopathic abusers avoid getting caught, they don't appear to be a significant factor in domestic abuse.
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Mon, 2014-06-23 00:20
Unwholesome_Ide... Unwholesome_Ideologue's picture
Ideological bias
Why the hell does Posthuman Studios get so much flak for their ideological leanings? How many sci-fi works are out there that are blatantly pro-state, and pro-militarism that don't catch any goddamn flak for being so? Hell, it's not even like they portray anyone else in a light that's particularly bad for the brand of fiction. The pro-state Titanians are portrayed quite favorably; the hypercorps, for all that they fall into that brand of megacorp cliche are portrayed as being just as often concerned for the well-being of their consumers; even the Jovian Republic doesn't get portrayed all that poorly (which doesn't stop people from trying to make them more sympathetic, because militaristic dictatorships that are difficult to sympathize with never happen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea). That's not to say I don't think their setting gets a bit unfair in its portrayal of other ideologies at times (I think the portrayal of Catholics represents some seriously missed potential for complexity and I find it baffling that pro-state objectivists, who traditionally detested anarchists are lumped in among market anarchists), but claiming that they're anywhere in the same league as Ayn Rand for proselytizing is just wrong.
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Mon, 2014-06-23 11:39
Erulastant Erulastant's picture
It's because PS+ makes an
It's because PS+ makes an effort to portray a variety of systems but fails to do so evenhandedly. We get an example of a working state (Titan) and a failed state (Jovians), a working ancapia (Extropia) and a failed one (PC), a number of working anarchist habitats, and... well, we don't see the failures. We know [i]why[/i] we don't see the failures (They're pretty much all dead) but that fact is glossed over and frequently ignored by the books, while the evils of the Jovians (Secret police! Great firewall! etc etc) and the PC (Slavery! Secret police! More slavery!) are mentioned nearly as often as the Jovians and the PC are themselves. I can't explain anyone else's reasoning, but for me it is because they've done a pretty good job portraying mixed political ideologies that I complain. Because PS+ has done well so far, I feel like they might actually listen when people on the forums say "Hey, could we get a less biased portrayal of bioconservatism and/or anarcho-collectivism?" Whereas elsewhere, complaining would do no good. (Also because as an RPG, the setting is interactive and can be modified, so discussing ways to modify it on the forums seems perfectly reasonable. And if some of those modifications are correcting for perceived author bias, that should not be surprising.)
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Mon, 2014-06-23 12:11
Alkahest Alkahest's picture
Rhetorical question?
Unwholesome_Ideologue wrote:
How many sci-fi works are out there that are blatantly pro-state, and pro-militarism that don't catch any goddamn flak for being so?
I know it was probably meant to be a rhetorical question, but do tell. Do you know of any sci fi settings (preferably an RPG, but I'm not fussy) that are as heavily... ideological as Eclipse Phase and somehow avoid criticism?
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Mon, 2014-06-23 14:23
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Erulastant wrote:
Erulastant wrote:
We get an example of [..] a working ancapia (Extropia) and a failed one (PC)
The PC is close to the opposite of ancap. It can't be called ancap by any stretch of the imagination.
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Mon, 2014-06-23 14:24
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Alkahest wrote:Unwholesome
Alkahest wrote:
Unwholesome_Ideologue wrote:
How many sci-fi works are out there that are blatantly pro-state, and pro-militarism that don't catch any goddamn flak for being so?
I know it was probably meant to be a rhetorical question, but do tell. Do you know of any sci fi settings (preferably an RPG, but I'm not fussy) that are as heavily... ideological as Eclipse Phase and somehow avoid criticism?
Star Trek?
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Mon, 2014-06-23 18:42
Googleshng Googleshng's picture
Erulastant wrote:We get an
Erulastant wrote:
We get an example of a working state (Titan) and a failed state (Jovians), a working ancapia (Extropia) and a failed one (PC), a number of working anarchist habitats, and... well, we don't see the failures. We know [i]why[/i] we don't see the failures (They're pretty much all dead) but that fact is glossed over and frequently ignored by the books
I'd argue the issue there is that the failed anarchist habitats are meant to serve as the meat of adventures, and Post-Human Studios very much believes in providing a blank slate for GMs. Sort of like how it's more or less stated that the PCs are constantly going to be dealing with freaky exsurgent monsters but short of one-off examples in published adventures provides nothing at all on them aside from a single page worth of examples in the core book. I'm not really a fan of that mindset. I'd argue that a big part of what makes the various flavors of D&D so successful is printing those big books of monster stats, and Pathfinder's current standing at the top of the heap is fueled by those and the plethora of other specific examples they print to make GMs' lives easier (setting guides, big books of NPC stats, whole campaigns in a book, etc.). But... here, it's pretty clearly left to the GMs to work out the specifics of what horrible conditions wait to be found on countless orbital cans of horrors where a lack of oversight and safety protocol have lead to unpleasant situations.
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Tue, 2014-06-24 11:52
Erulastant Erulastant's picture
Smokeskin wrote:Erulastant
Smokeskin wrote:
Erulastant wrote:
We get an example of [..] a working ancapia (Extropia) and a failed one (PC)
The PC is close to the opposite of ancap. It can't be called ancap by any stretch of the imagination.
It's the failure mode of ancap. Just like a tyrannical state (Like the Jovian Republic) is a failure mode of democracy and...exurgent filled derelict space habs?... are a failure mode of anarcho-collectivism. When an ideology fails, it usually winds up producing something quite a bit different from what its proponents intended q: Large corporations, unbound by law and with no government to rein them in decide to scrap the idea of competition in favor of mutually profitable cooperation, with no regards to the rights or well-being of the masses? This obviously isn't ancap working as intended, but it's something that could reasonably follow from ancap, given the right conditions. But this will be the last I say on the matter, I don't want to get into an ancap debate with you, Smokeskin, especially not outside of the designated ancap-debate-thread.
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You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.
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Tue, 2014-06-24 14:46
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Erulastant wrote:
Erulastant wrote:
It's the failure mode of ancap. Just like a tyrannical state (Like the Jovian Republic) is a failure mode of democracy [...] Large corporations, unbound by law and with no government to rein them in decide to scrap the idea of competition in favor of mutually profitable cooperation, with no regards to the rights or well-being of the masses? This obviously isn't ancap working as intended, but it's something that could reasonably follow from ancap, given the right conditions.
Ok, I see what you mean. I don't think we disagree on what ancap is, but what we'd call a failure mode. The failure mode of democracies wouldn't be turning into a tyrany in my book. It would be something like a functioning democracy for example voting Hitler or The Islamic Brotherhood into power, where the population is fueled by hate or fear and elect oppressive and aggressive politicians. Likewise, the failure mode of an ancap society would be something that was still without government and had free markets, where the problems with the PC are the opposite - that there is an oppressive government and their markets aren't free.
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Mon, 2014-06-30 14:35
Steel Accord Steel Accord's picture
My creation
Thought you might find this funny. https://docs.google.com/document/d/14fjgtd0mK5NgJn_m9AtKbdociO5t--5Wlqwi...
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Thu, 2014-12-25 11:00
NatureDruid NatureDruid's picture
Where will Posthuman studios
Where will Posthuman studios be offering refunds for MRAs?
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Thu, 2014-12-25 11:15
Bursting Eagern... Bursting Eagerness Soul's picture
NatureDruid wrote:Where will
NatureDruid wrote:
Where will Posthuman studios be offering refunds for MRAs?
I highly doubt that they will.
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Thu, 2014-12-25 11:20
NatureDruid NatureDruid's picture
They say that they don't want
They say that they don't want them in their community anymore. It would only be fair for those who purchased without hearing this that they are refunded.
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Thu, 2014-12-25 11:36
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
NatureDruid wrote:They say
NatureDruid wrote:
They say that they don't want them in their community anymore. It would only be fair for those who purchased without hearing this that they are refunded.
I'm sure PHS will pay back their MRA customers the [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] community participation fees.
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Fri, 2014-12-26 21:11
kindalas kindalas's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:NatureDruid
LatwPIAT wrote:
NatureDruid wrote:
They say that they don't want them in their community anymore. It would only be fair for those who purchased without hearing this that they are refunded.
I'm sure PHS will pay back their MRA customers the [i]Eclipse Phase[/i] community participation fees.
A full refund on that fee. Even if it is an industry standard. Also they are free to sell their hardcopy books for whatever they can get. And if they could give their PDFs away that would be great too.
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Fri, 2014-12-26 21:15
sysop sysop's picture
If this is a genuine question
If this is a genuine question the better location to ask would be the company directly. They may be easily contacted at the contact form: http://eclipsephase.com/contact The forum community is not the company and is not the correct place to ask this question if you're looking for a genuine answer. Please make use of the contact features you have available to ask the correct people this question. Otherwise this is thread-omancy and baiting in an attempt to get the members of the forum to engage in a topic that has been addressed and resolved as far as this community is concerned. It is a transparent attempt to stir-trouble and it is not appreciated. Knock it off or get out.
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Fri, 2014-12-26 21:19
kindalas kindalas's picture
In case it needs to be said
sysop wrote:
[color=red]Knock it off or get out.[/color]
[color=red]Sysop also speaks with moderator voice.[/color] [color=red]Kindalas[/color]
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I am a Moderator of this Forum [color=red]My mod voice is red.[/color] The Eclipse Phase Character sheet is downloadable here: [url=http://sites.google.com/site/eclipsephases/home/cabinet] Get it here![/url]
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