[ExI] dna ethics question

[spike]

>. On Behalf Of Tara Maya
Subject: Re: [ExI] dna ethics question

 

>.I didn't say paternity certainty would solve ALL problems. But paternity
uncertainty explains otherwise inexplicable laws -- fairly common in many
older civilizations -- that the penalty for rape FOR THE WOMAN WHO WAS
ASSAULTED was to either marry her rapist or be herself murdered.

 

Ah yes, that one is odd indeed.  To a large extent I am in agreement with
your thesis.  The culture in which those kinds of laws exist are based on
the notion that their leader is a man who is held up as the ideal of human
behavior, kinda like their equivalent of the Christian's Hoerkheimer or his
twin brother.  That culture's ideal of human behavior, that paragon of
virtue, when in his 50s married a girl when she was NINE years old, and
copulated with her at age 11.  They can talk until I fall asleep permanently
about how times were different back then, but no, I ain't buying.  Times
were different indeed, but even then they had to know that if a fifth-grader
gets pregnant, she is at a high risk of dying.  Her child-body isn't ready
for that yet.  They will not be able to convince me that it was somehow OK
to mate with her at that tender age.  This guy is their ideal of human
behavior, a man who demonstrated such callous disregard for the safety and
well-being of his own child bride.  Given that, have we any reason for
astonishment when they derive weird laws like the one you mentioned?

 

That is not really explainable as a concern about property, but I submit
that it is explicable (if still horrid) as a way for a man to ensure that
property is inherited by his own heirs.  Tara Maya

 

I heard something like this from a neighbor who fled Vietnam in a small open
boat in 1975.  She was trying to explain what we heard so much about: the
fleeing refugees were raped by pirates.  We think of rape as a brutal sex
crime, which it is here.  For the fleeing Vietnamese, the pirates primarily
wanted the gold that some of them, especially the women, had secreted in
their private orifices.

 

Oy such a grim topic.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

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