Has the #MeToo movement become a witch-hunt to a significant degree?

[TheAmazingGrace]

Define “deflecting.”

Why is what I am doing “deflecting,” when what you did…

You’re not answering my question. You know what “define” means, but I don’t know what your definition of “sheltering” children is. Is sheltering not hitting your children? Is it not having frank discussions with them? Is it preventing them from leaving the house? What is it?

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

Never said it was a “moral necessity,” but I would say that women not having children BECAUSE they want to avoid suffering or inconvenience does have moral implications.

See the difference between what I write, and what you read and think?

No, I don’t. You’re indicating that not wanting to have children is a moral failing in and of itself. Having a child isn’t an “inconvenience”: it’s a brutal, life-long commitment.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

And women very often prefer the immoral option of abortion to abstinence, very likely because of a greater aversion to pain, suffering or sacrificing their own interests for another.

A lot of the time the pressure to abort comes from husbands, boyfriends, and fathers. Abortion isn’t just a woman’s sin.

And I never denied that aversion to inconvenience and suffering is a societal problem. It is.

Our whole society is infected with moral tepidity.

That doesn’t mean that women are immune to tepidity merely because one particular kind of intense suffering (childbirth) can be pointed to as affecting women only.

 

[HarryStotle]

Having a child isn’t an “inconvenience”: it’s a brutal, life-long commitment.

How many have you had?

Your choice of words – “brutal” and “stuck with” – is, to say nothing else, interesting.

I suppose we could then add that Jesus calling us to love our neighbour, even our enemies, is a “brutal” demand and God has made it such that we are “stuck with” that responsibility.

There is “no guarantee that they’ll turn out” to have been worth it, so it should likewise be a moral option for individuals to be relieved and not burdened by that “moral necessity.” Is that your point?

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

That doesn’t mean that women are immune to tepidity merely because one particular kind of intense suffering (childbirth) can be pointed to as affecting women only.

I didn’t say it was. My point is that not wanting to be a mother (or a father) is not really a moral failing. Once you have a child, you’re stuck with him/her forever, with no guarantee that they’ll turn out to be a good person. Also, a lot of people my age just don’t have the money. Such factors, understandably, give some people pause with regard to parenthood.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

How many have you had?

None. I did watch my mother have four babies after me, and I saw firsthand what a brutal process it can be. Her last pregnancy was particularly strenuous, as she was in her forties by that point. It’s not something I would wish on anyone who didn’t actively desire children.

 

[Xantippe]

That would be unavoidable to an extent, but if you live your life determined to avoid it, that would be a whole 'nuther level of “avoid.”

It also means a lowered tolerance for pain such that even trivial inconveniences are magnified beyond one’s capacity to put up with them.

How would you explain the great popularity of tattoos and piercings among the “snowflake” generation, if they are so pain and discomfort-averse?

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

There is “no guarantee that they’ll turn out” to have been worth it, so it should likewise be a moral option for individuals to be relieved and not burdened by that “moral necessity.” Is that your point?

My point is that people who don’t want children shouldn’t feel morally obligated to have them. I like kids a lot, but even I go back and forth sometimes.

 

[HarryStotle]

I didn’t say it was. My point is that not wanting to be a mother (or a father) is not really a moral failing. Once you have a child, you’re stuck with him/her forever, with no guarantee that they’ll turn out to be a good person. Also, a lot of people my age just don’t have the money. Such factors, understandably, give some people pause with regard to parenthood.

Everything you say here applies to Jesus’ moral injunction to love and care for our neighbours.

You could claim that failing to show that level of love is “not really a moral failing.”

To mirror one of your previous posts…

Once people commit to the obligation to be moral, you’re stuck with other people forever, with no guarantee that they’ll turn out to be good persons. Also, a lot of people of any age just don’t have the money to take any responsibility for others. Such factors, understandably, give some people pause with regard to loving their neighbours.

I suppose that is a valid moral position – for a moral relativist.

 

[HarryStotle]

My point is that people who don’t want children shouldn’t feel morally obligated to have them. I like kids a lot, but even I go back and forth sometimes.

What should people be morally obligated to?

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

Everything you say here applies to Jesus’ moral injunction to love and care for out neighbours.

You could claim that failing to show that level of love is “not really a moral failing.”

To mirror one of your previous posts…

Once people commit to the obligation to be moral, you’re stuck with other people forever, with no guarantee that they’ll turn out to be good persons. Also, a lot of people of any age just don’t have the money to take any responsibility for others. Such factors, understandably, give some people pause with regard to loving their neighbours.

I suppose that is a valid moral position – for a moral relativist.

Being obligated to love your neighbors is a little different than being obligated to bring people into existence. If people already have children, then they absolutely owe them love and care. If they don’t, why make them feel as if they’re doing something wrong by not breeding?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

How many have you had?

None. I did watch my mother have four babies after me, and I saw firsthand what a brutal process it can be. Her last pregnancy was particularly strenuous, as she was in her forties by that point. It’s not something I would wish on anyone who didn’t actively desire children.

So you are unwilling to go through that “brutal” process?

How is aversion to suffering conducive to moral courage or doing the right thing in the face of pain or even the insinuation of minor inconvenience?

What should people have to put up with to not be immoral?

Should living a moral life be as easy as slipping on socks and anything else made optional?

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

How is aversion to suffering conducive to moral courage or doing the right thing in the face of pain or even the insinuation of minor inconvenience?

What should people have to put up with to not be immoral?

Not having children is not immoral.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

So you are unwilling to go through that “brutal” process?

I don’t know yet, but I’m not gonna sugarcoat it.

 

[Xantippe]

It isn’t clear to me that you can extrapolate from “some of the worst physical pain,” to me (or men in general) not ever having suffered equal or worse.

Calling childbirth “some of the worst physical pain” obviously leaves the door open to there being other kinds of severe physical pain.

So, no women do not have a monopoly on suffering.

But far more US women have babies (including multiple babies) than the percentage of US men who suffer battlefield injuries.

About 1/3 of US births involves the baby being cut out of the woman’s belly.

So, you are not denying that women today are “less willing” to tolerate the pain associated with childbirth compared to days past when some women birthed a dozen or more children without anaesthetics or epidurals?

Well, then the question arises–did women of the past actually have a lot of choice in the matter?

Also, I do have to warn you that wanting an epidural doesn’t necessarily mean getting an epidural. If childbirth is too fast, there won’t be time (I had one 90% anesthesia-free birth under those circumstances and OH MY). Also, while I’m the biggest fan of the epidural you’ll ever talk to, having a needle threaded into one’s spine is an extremely creepy experience in itself (as I’m sure you know if you’ve had one).

Breastfeeding is a major counter-example to your ideas about discomfort-avoidance among the young. It’s actually routine for women to make truly heroic efforts to breastfeed in the face of extreme pain and inconvenience. In fact, I honestly think that many women try too hard to breastfeed. Meanwhile, prosperous women of the past used wet nurses…

One piece of evidence for that would be that women are willing, today, in large numbers to abort their babies rather than put up with the inconvenience or burden of having them.

We’ve already established that abortion is at a 45-year low and that abortion is half as common as 38 years ago.

How does that fit with your theory that young people today are especially selfish?

And women very often prefer the immoral option of abortion to abstinence, very likely because of a greater aversion to pain, suffering or sacrificing their own interests for another.

Millennials are substantially less promiscuous than either Gen-Xers or Boomers–by an average of 3.42 sexual partners than Baby Boomers born in the 1950s

The paradox of millennial sex: More casual hookups, fewer partners

Millennials may have popularized hookup culture and the notion of “friends with benefits,” but social scientists have made a surprising discovery about the sex lives of these young adults — they’re less promiscuous than their parents’ generation.

www.latimes.com

 

[HarryStotle]

Being obligated to love your neighbors is a little different than being obligated to bring people into existence.

How is it?

How is “love your neighbors,” then, not simply code for “free to ignore them” because “I didn’t bring them into existence, so I bear no responsibility for them?”

What responsibility do you actually have for your neighbors?

Doesn’t that “responsibility” hinge entirely upon the extent to which you permit those neighbours to, figuratively speaking, “come into existence” in your life? So if you do not allow anyone into your life, i.e., you do not permit any neighbours to exist in the sphere your life, you can morally justify taking absolutely no responsibility for them?

I would argue that taking the prime responsibility for having your own children and accompanying them and your spouse faithfully through every aspect of their lives actually develops moral character far more extensively than not having children.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

What responsibility do you actually have for your neighbors?

To love them as I love myself. I don’t count people who don’t exist among my neighbors, though, BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

How is “love your neighbors,” then, not simply code for “free to ignore them” because “I didn’t bring them into existence, so I bear no responsibility for them?”

Non-sequitur.

 

[HarryStotle]

Perhaps, but perhaps not.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

I would argue that taking the prime responsibility for having your own children and accompanying them and your spouse faithfully through every aspect of their lives actually develops moral character far more extensively than not having children.

That’s your opinion.