Nope. I was using comparison.

 

Between what? I suggested that it would make more sense to find people willing to trade sex for shelter with you than prisoners you rape. Your response was that threatening to kill them might make them more willing to take the deal, but wouldn't make it a good situation for them (obviously that's paraphrased into what I interpret to be the point of the post).

It may seem that I'm overreacting to this, but yours is at least the third post that assumes I'm suggesting threatening people when this arrangement is offered. That's what I'm trying to understand. Is it the sex? If I suggested that they offer someone food for ammo, is it assumed that all your group is pointing guns at them when you propose the transaction? Or is it just the sex?

I mean, it can't be the post itself. If you were going to threaten someone, why make them an offer? Wouldn't you just put a gun to their heads and tell them, "This is how it's going to be..."?

The whole line of discussion is because the group all being a bunch of rapists (or sexual assaulters, since it's not really stated that they've raped anyone) is illogical to me. It's like the whole community at Terminus agreeing that luring people to the place to kill and eat is a good lifestyle choice. One crazy dude I can see, but everyone there?

I can see a group like Joe's all being rapists. After all, they do the deed, kill the victims and head off to yell Claimed!! at stuff. That's way different from bringing people back to the place you sleep and giving them a reason to want to kill you. I just like things to be plausible and I seen no reason for their behavior.

 

Nope, not even close. You still don't seem to understand my post.

 

OK, cool. I don't want to misunderstand so what did you mean by:

other than threatening someone might cause someone to agree to something they really don't want but that doesn't make what they're agreeing to a pleasant option?

 

That's closer to what I was saying. But that's not what you said during your previous 2 interpretations of my post. Your first interpretation claimed that my post somehow implied "if you suggest to someone that the 2 of you get together to have sex, they should assume that refusal means you're going to freaking kill them?!?" and your following interpretation claimed that my response " was that threatening to kill them might make them more willing to take the deal". I wasn't talking about making people more willing to take the hospital deal under thread of death, I was drawing an analogy between the hospital deal and the gun to the head 'deal'. In some of your previous posts you seemed to be implying that because most people would agree to the deal meant it wasn't forced rape, and I was using the analogy to show that this reasoning isn't exactly accurate.

But my post meant even more than that, because its not only that the choice they are making is an unpleasant one, it also means that its a false choice. If you walk up to someone and force them to choose between 2 unpleasant options, one just a bit more unpleasant than the other, when a third, more pleasant option would have existed had you never produced the 'choice' [being able to live there without having to agree to sex], then you're still forcing them into something.

 

I love psychological/moral/cultural discussions about the human behaviour because I can grow empathy with other people's POV's and that broadens my understanding of this world and the meaning of being human. That being said, this is a post about TWD episode Slabtown, we're supposed to stay in-topic. I've a couple of things to discuss:

1. We all agree what Gorman does is wrong, and is rape. It is hinted in the beginning but screaming bloody murder in the scene in Dawn's office. I mean we see his hand under Beth's blouse and she's clearly saying no, so it is rape.
2. It is never clarified that this is the norm: that all the officers go around the halls raping the surviving women.
3. The whole point of the episode and the reason the writers want us to think "WOW THOSE IN THE HOSPITAL ARE SOME BAD PEOPLE." is the whole skewed exchange system: "We save you, so now you owe us your life so you can't leave because you NEED to repay us." That's the deal with Slabtown. Gorman's raping attitudes are just there to bring our potential hate to this group to the gut level by showing us that they do things that are clearly marked as wrong, immoral and just plain sick. I'm not saying that the rape is not that bad and that you should stop discussing it, all I'm saying is that the whole point of the episode and Beth's (and now Carol's) risk is the sick labor-life exchange system Dawn has down there.


PS: My own personal AND-BY-PERSONAL-I-MEAN-TOTALLY-BIASED-UPON-MY-CULTURE-STATUS-GENDER-ETC opinion is that I'm a straight white male and I find totally outrageous the straight white male priviledge thing. Of course this specific group has an unfair advantage upon every other out there and I'm not ignorant about the injustices being made all day to other groups. But, and maybe that's just my privileged POV talking, it is not hypocrite that many people searching equality treat this group as the villian? Because hating someone for his/her sexual preference is discrimination (homosexual or heterosexual), hating someone for his/her ethnicity is racism (african american, latin, asian, caucasian), and hating someone for his/her gender is sexism (women, men and many other the person defines him/herself). Equality is just that, everybody is equal. Carryng the flag of equality but hating any other groups, whatever that group is, is not equality, is discrimination. And not every straight white male is a racist, homophobic, or a macho man.

PSS:Everyone who says that Beth is a flawed character who is not as developed as many others are right. But the reason is that she hasn't had that many time to define her character. To have a personality she needs more air time, like this Bethxclusive episode.

 

That wasn't an interpretation, that was just smart-assery. As in, if you assume my hypothetical arrangement is proposed on threat of death, do we assume your offering to have sex with someone comes with the same threat?

OK, THAT'S the part I'm trying to come to grips with. I've stated repeatedly that threatening someone to coerce them into having sex is rape.

I feel that making someone an offer of shelter for sex without threat is not rape.

What I'm not getting is where is the threat? Surely it's not that I'll leave you to continue your shitty life raiding zombie filled buildings for canned goods. Is it? Because that's not a threat from the person proposing the deal to the person receiving the proposal. That's just what life is.

And yes, I definitely feel that someone accepting the arrangement is not rape. It's not rape unless you don't or can't consent - not because you feel like you're making the choice (in other words, giving your consent) between the less shitty of two shitty options.

You could say it's exploitation. You could say it makes the person offering a bad person. I just don't see how you could say that someone's giving consent to have sex (even if they wouldn't if their world were a better place) equals that person being raped.

You're right. It's not clarified, but some of the dialogue does suggest that it is the case and Dawn turns a blind eye because she doesn't want to alienate the cops.

This is what makes it a heinous situation IMO. You grab people who never asked for your help off the street and tell them they're now either your slaves or they're taking the flying aaaaah to the bottom of the elevator shaft.

I think a lot of it's Kinney's acting (meaning how she talks, how she stands, her facial expressions). I don't have a problem with it, but I can see that there are things people would find annoying. Beyond that, she just isn't terribly convincing.

There have been a few episodes where they clearly tried to develop the character, but the development doesn't "stick" because Kinney can't make it seem real.

On top of that, it doesn't help that the scenes involving Beth are so often eye roll worthy - like her 90 pound self taking her first taste of alcohol in the form of a couple of pints of moonshine and still being coherent enough to have a meaningful conversation or Gorman's saying how good it is that she's not a fighter, was there a single person who was surprised that she immediately started fighting?

 

Here's another way to look at the hospital situation, even with the scenario that the women are allowed to leave if they want.

Lets rate the pleasantness of some different options, on a scale of 0 to 10.

A)Getting to live at the hospital without being forced to say yes each time you're asked for sex: 10
B)Getting to live at the hospital WITH being forced to say yes each time you're asked for sex: 1
C)Being forced to leave the hospital and go back to being exposed in a massive ZA by yourself without knowing where to go, or where to find food and water, and with an itchy wenis: 0

By forcing someone to choose B or C you are by default forcing them into a situation with a pleasantness level of 1 out of 10 or less. You are negating their option of living in a situation with a pleasantness of anything higher than 1/10, even though situations with pleasantlesses of much higher levels exist. To look at that situation and say "hey, the woman made her choice, she choose the 1/10, she's a willing participant" is a view that I think most abusers would love, because it enables them.

 

OK, I'm fine with those numbers being assigned to the different arrangements.

Here's where the false characterization of the arrangement comes in. You can't force someone to choose C because that's where they already are. What you'd be proposing is that you can offer a chance to exist at a higher number in exchange for this or we can each go on with our lives, such as they are.

Again, is it just the sex? If you made the same proposal only what they had to do was wash your clothes, would it be slavery? Assuming they're free to end the arrangement, I'd say no. Substitute sex for washing clothes and rape for slavery and I think the same answer applies.

 

LOL people who abuse the weakness of others would probably use your statements and lines of thinking as their motto. And no, they aren't already at C, once they are brought to the hospital they are at A, until they learn of the other options. Not only that, but to base your argument that its the woman's own choice off the semantics that the world they just came from was C anyway is frankly absurd. Sexual abusers would adore it, but its absurd.

 

Ugh, rape is about power. These hospital cops are all about abuse of power. That's enough for me, the rest is just semantics.

 

You're going back to mixing what I'm suggesting with how they actually operate on the show. I'm not talking about dragging them back to the hospital (putting them at A) and threatening them with death (or with C) if they don't agree to be your sex toy. Remember, I just said that's the worst aspect of how they're operating on the show.

What I'm saying is that you find someone out in the world (at C) and you think they're someone you'd like to have in the position of concubine, you lay out the arrangement and they decide whether it improves their lives (in which case they come home with you and everyone feels like they have gained something) or they decide they don't like the terms you're proposing, in which case you go your separate ways and no one has lost anything.

You think it's absurd that I believe someone offering up resources that keep them and theirs alive can require a service in exchange for those resources without being an abuser? I think it's absurd that you believe that simply because someone exists, I'm somehow obligated to offer them a room in my home and whatever they want to eat or drink without expecting them to do anything to earn it.

I'll bet you really don't believe that, though. I'll bet you wouldn't think it's abuse if they were brought in under the condition that they read stories to the group's kids. It's just the sex, isn't it?

 

I'm not even sure you are believing your own bs anymore.

 

Too bad I never said anything remotely like that, but nice try with the straw man argument.

 

Boys and Girls gather around, bring your blankies and your sucking thumbs, because guess what time it is!

Its smile and nod time!!

 

was in response to this:

In the interest of clarity because your response was pretty vague (and I must confess, I see no bs), could you explain the part that you think is bs?

Well, granted, you took it from the other end. Instead of saying I owe them my resources, you implied that my offer to trade those resources for sex would make me an abuser (and here's where I'm making an assumption - that offering to trade resources for services is as opposed to just giving them the resources). You're right, the verbiage is not remotely similar, but the message seems nearly identical (assuming again that I haven't gotten a different message than the one you meant to convey). Like the bs, I see no straw.

If your message was different from what I read and means that you feel that if I meet a survivor somewhere, I'm under no obligation to give them any of my food or let them live in my shelter, that's great because we have finally reached agreement that leaving someone where they are doesn't make me responsible for their being there.

 

I've already smiled and I've already nodded. I think the only person you are still trying to convince here is yourself.

 

OK, then. I return the smile and nod and try to sidle away without making any sudden moves.

I was never trying to convince you of anything. I was trying to understand why you thought leaving someone in the situation they're in is the same as putting them there.

But it's all good. Horses die and it's only interesting to beat them for so long after that happens.

 

Your horse died before you even left the town.