Twenty years after a horrific rape, Liz Seccuro pressed charges on her creepy, oblivious rapist. It was a horrible situation, and she could have run away from the conflict…but she faced her fears and got the rotten guy locked away after he tried to resume a friendly conversation, as if nothing had happened.PZ Myers comments:
The villains here are, unfortunately, all men — men who think they can use and abuse women. It makes me embarrassed for my sex … and it embarrasses me further that there will no doubt be whiny little half-men complaining in the comments of this article. Could you all try to make that prediction false?Let us consider the above paragraph as if PZ had addressed it to me:
I'm resistant to your gender-tribalism, comrade.
I don't feel obligated to calibrate my pride/guilt setting in response to the behavioral performance of men generally. My condemnation of rape centers on an individual and an act--not on a gender.
Seccuro provides 'a letter' she received from her attacker. She doesn't say if the paragraph constitutes a verbatim quotation--nor are we allowed to review their other correspondence. ('The letter', attributed without quotation marks to Will Beebe, reeks ghostwriter.)
We have no basis upon which to evaluate Seccuro's claim that her rapist is a horrible person now. (When we don't know if someone is good or evil, we treat them as good, mind you.)
Liz Seccuro and PZ exude contempt for present-day Will Beebe; I am unable to participate in the scornherd, as no evidence has been put forward in its favor.
Why is it so important to the feminist--that the Will Beebe character be a moral maggot today?
'Beebe marshaled significant resources to minimize his punishment. That proves his remorse is insincere.'
If that's PZ and Liz' meme, it's a dumb meme:
Felons quite rarely come forward, consciously incriminating themselves to law enforcement. It is not reasonable to expect law-breakers to sing so as to assuage their consciences. That's not how humans work.
Most of the criminally accused do not view their courtroom trials as, first and foremost, the adjudication of their moral culpability.
If their consciences pang for their misdeeds, they set such disquiet aside during the courtroom trial.
In a criminal trial, the accused tries to minimize punishment. That's what happens--and the innocent and guilty are both incentivized similarly. (The same disposition, of course, colors one's every interaction with the law.)
The fact that Will Beebe tried hard to minimize his legal liability does not demonstrate that his remorse is false, IOW.
Accused individuals generally try hard to minimize their legal liability: Such conduct tells us little or nothing about the genuineness of their remorse.
