Mastodawn

ÐДѷє ۷ǿȵ ຣ 4d ago

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"

Okay. I'm a teacher, so let me say this in a way everybody can understand.

If you ask me for $5 and I say no, but you take it out of my purse anyway, that's stealing.

If you ask me for $5 and I'm too drunk to either say yes or no, but you take $5 from my purse anyway, that's stealing.

If I give $5 to your friend, so you decide that gives you the right to take $5 out of my purse, that's stealing.

If I gave $5 to you yesterday, so you decide to take $5 out of my purse today, that's stealing.

If I'm flashing hundred dollar bills on the street, just really flaunting how much money I have, so you decide to take $5 out of my purse, that's stealing.

If I tell you I'll give you $5, but then, while reaching into my purse to get it, I change my mind and say actually no, but you decide to take the $5 anyway, that's stealing.

If you hold a gun to my head and force me to give you $5, even if I physically reach into my purse and hand you the $5 without another word, that's stealing.

If no one has ever given you $5, and you can see I have extra money in my purse, so you take $5, that's stealing.

If we're married, and you ask for $5 and I say no, but you decide to take $5 out of my purse anyway, that's stealing.

If you say "God gave me $5" and then take $5 out of my purse, that's stealing.

If you're my boss, and you tell me you'll fire me if I don't give you $5 right now, that's stealing.

If you want $5, and I reach in my purse and only give you $1, but you reach in while the purse is open and take $5 anyway, that's stealing.

If you pretend to be my friend in the hopes that being my friend will someday lead to me deciding to give you $5, you aren't actually my friend. And if you take the $5 you were expecting to get for pretending to be my friend, that's stealing.

The reason all men can easily understand this, and that there are no "grey areas" in stealing $5, is that men value $5 more than they value a woman's body.

leslie breniaux -itkacreations 6d ago

@Lana 👏🏻 Some men probably understand better when we talk about money 🤷🏻‍♀️

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"6d ago

@itkacreations it's nauseatingly sad that I have to literally objectify women in order to illustrate to men that rape is wrong.

⠠⠵ avuko 6d ago

@Lana @itkacreations it is not that men can’t understand. It is that they don’t want to understand.

Also, better than the tea one imho. You are clearly a great teacher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ

Tea and Consent

YouTube

MatthewToadAgain 6d ago

@avuko @Lana @itkacreations Nice video on why "tea consent" is problematic and FRIES is better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLKWEUhOHss

Consent - Its not as simple as tea!

YouTube

@MatthewToadAgain @avuko @Lana @itkacreations Thanks for that. Especially the coercion part, or lack thereof bothers me a lot about the original video. And it could have easily been included in the extended metaphor.

Woozle Hypertwin 6d ago

@Lana Applause for the punchline.

blobcatupsidedown

@woozle @Lana 💯

Tobias Denkinger 6d ago

@Lana
Even for me (a man) this is pretty obvious. Why would you ever give $5 if you get nothing in return.

scattershot 6d ago

@Lana excellent.

Amoshias 6d ago

@Lana 1. I think this is incredible, I somehow didn't see the punch coming at the end, and I am definitely going to use this analogy.

2. I think the marriage paragraph is the one spot where legally I didn't think the metaphor works. "Stealing" in a martial context is complex. As you obviously know, rape in that context used to be complex too (actually it used to be horrifyingly simple.)

If you say "and you put it in a private bank account" I think that makes it much more likely to be theft.

Katy TransWomenAreWomen Ereira 5d ago

@Amoshias @Lana Nah. It really is that simple. If my husband takes $5 from my purse, that's stealing. We're not talking about _lawfulness_ here.

Carina C. Zona 6d ago

@Lana 👏👏👏👏👏👏

Is it ok if I share this on a couple fb feminist groups I’m in, with credit?

Very powerful ☺️

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"6d ago

@JaxVent please do

Thank you 🙏

Sky-haired Miranda 💙🐙6d ago

@Lana I wasn't completely at ease when reading the conclusion, and it took me a while to understand why. Because I fully agree with the point you make, sexual consent is no more difficult to understand than consent to give five dollars.

What made me uncomfortable is that it's where the comparison stops. Because I think theft can sometimes be morally right. If a starving person steals five dollars from a billionaire, yes, that's stealing, no doubt about it, but I'll probably not think bad of it, especially if it incurred no violence. It causes negligible harm to the billionaire and prevents someone from starving for at least a few hours. (And even if there was violence, depending on the specifics, I feel the matter would at least be debatable.) Stealing can be justifiable, rape and sexual assault never are. That's what made me uncomfortable. (Again, I'm fully aware you're making a point about definition and understanding and not about what is justifiable or not. I just wanted to point that out before someone who is comfortable with justifying rape tries to push the analogy further than it can be.)

(I was trying to find something worse to compare it to, but even murder can sometimes be justifiable, at least in defense of your own life if nothing else is possible. The only thing I can think of is torture, it's similarly unjustifiable in any circumstances.)

@miranda_blue @Lana same! I was reading through going "ok, so what is the point going to be... will it be a consent thing, which obviously we still have a LOT of problems with in our culture, or is this going to turn out to be about native title, colonialism, or something else in which theft gets turned on its head?" so it left me feeling a bit" hmmmm" as well.

I guess I've been reading too much about economics lately, yesterday I just watched a video about money (the fatal design of debt-based money, in case you are wondering) and so that was kindof swirling about in my head more. Money is imaginary. But we sure put a huge amount of stock in it. It's going to get weird soon as our financial system collapses.

But yeah, consent is really important!!

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"6d ago

@kudra @miranda_blue the thing about analogies is they will never, ever, ever be a 1:1 perfect representation of the thing you're making the analogy about. If it was a 1:1 perfect representation of the thing, it would just be the thing. So while I agree with you in the specifics of how this analogy differs, I disagree with you that this is a falling of the specific analogy. That is, rather, a falling of ALL analogies, because that is how analogies function.

@Lana @miranda_blue you are right, and I don't think the analogy fails, this and the cup of tea analogy are both excellent! Nothing is ever 1:1, for sure. I can't speak for @miranda_blue but for me, I was curious what other point might have been being made with the setup, because money and theft are both complicated. Consent imo is clearer than both, but that's probably because I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and do not subscribe to a patriarchal view of the world in which all women are "naturally" less than men and all things other than (white) men are seen as property, as opposed to equals with self sovereign rights. We need more people to understand consent, so what you are doing is great!

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"6d ago

@kudra @miranda_blue

Sorry I thought the point was made rather clearly with the final sentence. In case it was unclear, the point of the analogy is:

Men easily understand ownership of $5, but in many cases refuse to accept women's ownership of our own bodies and the reason for this discrepancy is that men value women's bodies less than they value $5.

@Lana @miranda_blue I can only speak for myself, but yes, I understand the point of the analogy. I've also been clear that I think the analogy is a good one.

But while reading and before getting to the final paragraph, I wondered if it was going to go somewhere else, and so understood what @miranda_blue was talking about as well. Not a criticism, just pondering theft and money on a different level.

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"6d ago

@kudra @miranda_blue

Fair enough.

To be honest, even under the conditions you mentioned (theft of $5 from a billionaire), I think the analogy still holds up to scrutiny. I could, for instance, happily concede the following to a hypothetical Andrew Tate style misogynist:

"If I owned a billion bodies (notice how his hypothetical already fails due to arguing from a false premise), and you needed one body to survive (a second false premise) then it might be legally illegal and classed as stealing, but morally potentially reasonable, to take one of my billion bodies that I acquired through immoral means (again, a third false premise, women only have one body and it is not acquired unethically) and use it for sex."

I could happily agree to that conclusion based on the analogy. A conclusion of ambiguous morality, reached via three different false premises, which is still legally stealing.

@Lana @kudra @miranda_blue seems clear enough, especially as you wrote "grey areas" being the point. but one has to accept the premise, it's not about the morality of stealing, but the scope of the term and - way milder - cases of victim blamings with thefts are also not relevant. so I wonder, if this is convincing for those who disagree; or if they could be reasoned with anyway. it's better to try than resign anyway.

@Lana @kudra @miranda_blue thinking of discussions about the trolley-dilemma: many don't get the ends of it and that it ist part of the game to accept the premises of thought experiments. the other - bigger - problem is, that only talking about the trolley dilemma raises the probability of people accepting the "utilitarist" solution, it's similar with debates about torture.

I really don't know which way that works in this example, using proberty in the analogy.

@Lana @kudra @miranda_blue so the circularity-problem is salvagable, the willing-stupidity-problem on the other hand …

Kestenan's Typoist. BSc SSc 1d ago

@miranda_blue @Lana thank you, I thought I wasn't quite getting the post, how it was mean and who it was targeted at. Sometimes I need someone to just say things bluntly :)

Maggie Maybe 6d ago

@Lana This is so good! I’ll never remember all this, but I hope I remember some of this should I ever need to explain consent to a man.

Relationships aren't supposed to be transactional. You're not buying a product or service. You're helping someone out, because they need it. Or you're hurting them, and they don't need it. I don't care how eagerly a woman gave her $5 to a man, if he's treating her like a piece of shit then she has every right to be upset, and it's not her fault for making the wrong decision.

Fat_Farang 6d ago

@Lana If you are a man, and did not see where this was headed after the first few examples, you might want to take a hard look at yourself.

Gary Houston 6d ago

@Fat_Farang @Lana it was either going to be that, or "When the government takes $5 and calls it taxes ... "

@Lana
If your friend gives you $5 and then, when she is sleeping with you, you take another $5 bill from her purse it is stealing.

If your friend allows you to take $5 from her purse but you are caught taking them with dirty fingers in a way she would not notice and/or consent, it is harrasment and a juge will allow her to void your allowance about those $5.

@Lana 👌👌👌👌👌

Kestenan's Typoist. BSc SSc 1d ago

@Lana I've never felt less manly in my life. I can't imagine equating someone's personhood and bodily autonomy to property.

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"1d ago

@Kestenan it's nauseatingly sad that in order to explain bodily autonomy to men I literally have to objectify women.

Klaus Frank 1d ago

@Lana lawyers must be cringing so hard right now.

Cause even though all of this is obviously wrong not everything here is technically (just) stealing...

Also you'd be surprised by how many "grey areas" there are, especially when talking to people in finance or legal...

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"1d ago

@agowa338 The only men having trouble with this are the men who value $5 more than they value women's bodies, Klaus. Shame that you're struggling with such a basic concept.

Klaus Frank 1d ago

@Lana I think you misunderstood. I totally agree with you. However I may have had to deal with exactly that kind of people for way too long by now.

I just wanted to point out that there in fact is more "shades of gray" to the stealing thing for way too many people than one probably would imagine otherwise.

(Also it is quite hard sometimes to not slap them in the face when they tell you jet another way they're going about screwing over people without facing any punishment...)

𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒶 "not yet begun to fight"1d ago

@agowa338 oh, hi sealion.