Bodily integrity vs moral responsibility

[Secular Sanity]

We can choose whether we wish to be effected by disapproval. We can choose whether we internalize it or not. Any hell you live is not created by any taboos you violate but by the criticism of others you internalize as shame or just a general rebelliousness to the society around you. If you blame the opinions of others for your life, you do not tend to take full responsibility for your own lot. 

You can judge right and wrong by the results. Is the result of a taboo that you feel others think you repulsive? This is not a problem of their opinion but of your underlying agreement with their opinion. Why should you care otherwise? People who demand others to accept their chosen taboos demonstrate an irrational double-standard, where they demand to be accepted but refuse to accept the chosen mores of others.

Let’s not forget that there are places in world where acceptance is vital.  Where any disapproval can result in life imprisonment, torture, and even death.  Atheism is a taboo that is still punishable by death in many places.  Even here in the states, there’s a history of violence against LGBT people.

My identity? No. While it provides me a great amount of pleasure, my identity is not tied to number or frequency of "conquests". I assume that derives from some need for social acceptance. I'm not interested in false-dilemma hypotheticals (limb or genitals).

According to you, you’d lose your intrinsic value. 

Our sense of self is shaped by our culture, social interactions, our physical bodies, and our physical environment.  Our bodies and brains are inextricably linked.  Even our hormones affect our personalities and behavior.

[Syne]

Let’s not forget that there are places in world where acceptance is vital.  Where any disapproval can result in life imprisonment, torture, and even death.  Atheism is a taboo that is still punishable by death in many places.  Even here in the states, there’s a history of violence against LGBT people.

And? There's a history of violence against just about any group of people at some time or another. How does that argument change anything? Yes, rebellion against the social norms may have bad results, but then who is forcing the atheist or LGBT to let others know their controversial identity? Even in those situations, the individual must choose to make their identity known before anything untoward happens to them.

It's not like being black, where your appearance, dictated by genetics, identifies you. Or even prejudices against the Irish because they couldn't change their accent (coincidentally, were also slaves in the US).

My identity? No. While it provides me a great amount of pleasure, my identity is not tied to number or frequency of "conquests". I assume that derives from some need for social acceptance. I'm not interested in false-dilemma hypotheticals (limb or genitals).

According to you, you’d lose your intrinsic value. 

Our sense of self is shaped by our culture, social interactions, our physical bodies, and our physical environment.  Our bodies and brains are inextricably linked.  Even our hormones affect our personalities and behavior.

You are conflating the intrinsic value of life, as a universal abstract, with the subjective value of my life personally. When you start talking about "sense of self", you can only be talking about the subjective...and I answered the question for what it was. I have not doubt that your sense of self may be highly contingent upon culture, social interactions, your body and environment.

Just because most people tend to be stimulus response engines, does not mean that the generality is universal.


But hey, way to ignore my last post...maybe too challenging?

[Secular Sanity]

But hey, way to ignore my last post...maybe too challenging?

I wasn’t ignoring it.  I asked for your opinion and you gave it to me.

I appreciate it. 

See you later, Syne.

[Syne]

Now for another wrinkle...

If it is reasonable to have requirements to help ensure people do not make rash decisions about permanent functional body alteration, why is it so unreasonable to require an ultrasound and three day waiting period for an abortion? Advocates hang their argument on the premise that the fetus is part of the woman's body, and the loss of functional healthy tissue is potentially a whole life, rather than just sex organs, a limb, or sense. So it does seem contradictory to have fewer requirements to end a whole life than it does to remove a limb, sex organ, or even consensually end of a life (in the case of assisted suicide).

If the rationale for having requirements for GRS, transabled, or assisted suicide is to protect people from making decisions they cannot competently consent to, why no such precautions for rash pregnancy decisions that involve the ending of life without its consent?

Can anyone justify the double-standard?

[Secular Sanity]

Oh, damn!  After all that work, it turned out to be overwhelmingly anticlimactic.  Your little wiggle worm would have had some potential at the other forum, but the fish weren’t biting. Aww, that's too bad. It would have been a good show.

Well, like I said earlier, a diagnosis, or pregnancy test in this case, and preoperative evaluation doesn’t seem unreasonable.

I'm curious, though. Do you feel that abortion is morally tantamount to murder?

[Syne]

If murder is defined as an unlawful killing, no, since abortion is obviously legal. Do laws make things moral or ethical? No, since most would agree that "just doing your lawful duty" does not excuse things like war crimes. But there is no way to refute that abortion is the ending of a human life. Whether you wish to consider personhood, sentience, dependence, etc. as rationales, the fact is that a fetus is alive and it is part of the human species, genetically distinct from the mother.

As such, I consider the mother seeing an ultrasound and three days to contemplate the decision a very minimal requirement, especially compared to those of GRS.

[Secular Sanity]

We serve reproduction, but we don’t have the desire to reproduce.  All that was needed was a sex drive.  The desire for children is influenced externally.  Once we conceive, an internal instinct kicks in, but a maternal fetal attachment takes time.  Chemical reactions are necessary.  The physiology of motherhood is the physiology of love. Love can spur individuals to spend themselves.  Love can transform self-interest into devotion.  From an evolutionary standpoint, reproduction is costly.

We talked about collateral damage.  Intent is the key element in understanding the definition.  Collateral damage is damage aside from that which was intended. A woman’s intent is to withdraw support.

     Out beyond ideas of 
wrongdoing and rightdoing, 
        there is a field. 
     I'll meet you there.

I love that saying, don't you?

[Syne]

We do have an innate desire to reproduce. It's not just desire for sex that keeps a species going. The desire for sex only helps ensure genetic diversity. You may not desire to reproduce, but bad childhoods and traumas can often alter our natural views on having children.

Why is there no such thing as a sex drive?

A drive is a motivational system to deal with life-or-death issues, like hunger or being too cold. You’re not going to die if you don’t have sex.

But biologists might say that if you don’t reproduce, that is a form of death
Yes. That’s the argument that was used when desire was being added to the way sexual dysfunctions were diagnosed in the 1970s, to justify the framing of sexual desire as a drive. But when it comes to sex, there just isn’t any physical evidence of a drive mechanism.

It makes sense evolutionarily, since bacteria were reproducing long before sex became the vector.

There are mothers who do not feel an emotional attachment to their child even for quite some time after birth. Evolution-wise, this is a counter-survival abnormality. Some people are just broken. People who need some sense of emotional investment in themselves before they will feel any emotional investment in another. From conception, a child cannot be otherwise but emotional invested, because they are so physically dependent. But some people need some sort of outward validation.

Collateral damage is only ethically justified when facing a threat to life. Or is collateral damage suddenly okay when a woman wants to end one human life, but not okay when a country wants to save thousands of lives? Since abortion is a threat to life, the woman's desire, alone, doesn't come anywhere close to ethically justifying it.

There's much to be said for not getting hung up on blaming others, but without right and wrong, no stand you may take can be taken seriously. Protestations against rape, murder, bigotry, etc. are pointless from the moral relativist. Who are they to say what's wrong for another?

[Secular Sanity]

Did you research the author?  She's an activist.  It’s more political than scientific.  She’s trying to assert that female sexual dysfunction doesn’t exist.

The mother’s body is required for support. I believe that she should have control over her own body and its life-support functions.

Do you remember that movie, "My Sister’s Keeper"?  We’re not required to rescue or prolong another's life.  It’s a personal choice.

Rape, murder, etc., it’s all a nod or a handshake.  Punishment, revenge, tit for tat, whatever you want to call it is a deterrent.

[Syne]

Where is the science to refute her assertions? If just being an activist is enough to dismiss someone, we can forget all about catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. And how are you defining sexual dysfunction? How is a responsive, instead of impulsive, sexual desire dysfunctional? Or are you only speaking from your own impulsivity?

And if you rely on the "it's her body" argument then you should have equal minimum requirements for abortion as GRS. It's not a personal choice to kill an innocent and unconsensual human life (which in any other circumstance is murder). It's ethically unjustified by personal choice. Yes, you are not responsible to save others, but you are responsible for the life you chose to create, knowing the possible results of sex. It's not that life's fault that you made the choice to take that risk. But instead of taking responsibility for your own choice, you'd rather kill. How can you justify that ethically?

"Nod and handshake"?! So you're fine with being raped or killed...so long as some person's arbitrary morality justifies it?