Re: Holy *hit can this b*itch take a punch!
Yes, I lacked clarity and you attrbuted the worst possible interpretation to my words, despite that it had absolutely no relevance to anything on topic. My bad.
Are you even following anything in the thread? I answered the hypothetical question of having a female relative in that position already, while on the other hand I never said any of the things that you are attributing to me. You might as well have just fallen out of the sky and started hurling insults at me for all the relevance it has with this discussion!
Clearly, you are not participating in this discussion with any kind of willingness to understand opposing views. Sadly for you, I don't expect that to change overnight.
No. I read the whole thing and I followed the thread for a bit before I posted. I read the opposing views, I just dont' buy it. I can understand a view without cedeing that the view is legitimate. I don't think it is.
On a broader, philosophical point of view, I am not disparaging anyone's right to defend themselves and others. But as I stated before, the reasonable, moral human being uses as much for as is
necessary to defend himself and not more. That is not a simplistic principle and I won't try to define it here, but as the Supreme Court was wise enough to say "Pornography is hard to define, but I know it when I see it." I take much the same view with "excessive force".
On a more personal level, when I was younger, I used to believe that insults had to be met with violence, that if someone insulted me and I didn't punch them in the face, that meant that I was weak. Thats not to say that I am some trained expert fighter, but I never shyed away from a fight. I see a lot of that mentality here, maybe I am older now and my blood doesn't boil the way it used to, but I guess I get it.
I think much the opposite now. I don't think there is anything honourable about vengence, or retaliation. I think the only legitimate use of force is to prevent harm, and that restraint is strength. I believe that people who are reactionary are weak. I think that the mentality that people "had it coming" is borne of insecurity. A real man doesn't let others pick his actions for him, he acts the way he believes is right, without making excuses by pointing to what others do.
On this particular example. I don't see a man being threatened. I see an annoyed man, but by the time he actually got to his feet, that girl was retreating already. There is nothing he did that smells like self defense. Sure she shoved him first, but so what? this isn't a playground, this isn't a "she started it" argument. He could have done a multitude of things that would have been both reasonable and wise. He could have just stopped the bus and walked away, he could have just tossed her crap off the bus and drive off when she followed it. But no, he chose to "teach her a lesson" and followed that up with what was clearly the lesson with that "treat you like a man" comment.
As a matter of fact, a reasonable person probably wouldn't have bothered getting into it even verbally with the girl at all, talking about slicing her face up. Who the hell in their right mind argues with children?
Lastly, I wasn't the one that brought up equal rights, or equal pay, or the right to vote. etc. I reject that as a justification for physically hitting a woman, or anyone else weaker than you. That is an argument from someone who never had a problem with it in the first place, but just didn't do it because of the stigma.
