Are dolphins getting gang *raped* or are they getting gang *banged*? Is rape even a notion that dolphins have or a word even applicable to them? Let's avoid the temptation to anthropomorphize animals.
Are dolphins getting gang *raped* or are they getting gang *banged*? Is rape even a notion that dolphins have or a word even applicable to them? Let's avoid the temptation to anthropomorphize animals.
Oh good grief. When male animals gang up on a female and force her to have sex even though she is trying to get away, that is the same thing that happens with humans. It happens with other primates too. We all share the same DNA and evolved from the same ancestors. Humans are not somehow apart from the rest of nature. The "anthropomorphize" argument is based on a fundamental fantasy about human beings. The same people think only humans have consciousness, even though that flies in the face of all common sense.
We aren't in much disagreement on this. It's just that dolphins don't have a frame of reference to make such occurrences outlaw behavior or a crime. It's probably happened since the beginning of time and is part of the complexity of their reproductive life.
It's probably quite traumatic for the females. But, you know, it must serve some purpose in perpetuating dolphins. If such behavior was caused by some new stresses (such as caused by humans) then we need be concerned. Otherwise, labeling some animal behaviors as being like human crimes is kind of ridiculous because the creatures don't have a need for or a notion of a code of law.
That is a straw man. It doesn't matter whether something is a crime or not, or what its label is. The point is that it's an evolved behavior, whether it is a dolphin or a human. Therefore, whether it is legal or illegal, or shocking or unshocking, we must admit, because we see it around us in the animal kingdom, that it is to a certain extent "natural" behavior. Cultural taboos will only get you so far, and that is true whether the "world" is virtual or real. It is obvious that for the male avatars mentioned, taboos don't exist in a virtual world. Mark's point, which he explained in a comment, is that the Meta world is just a new way to control people. To me the more interesting question is how far the woke world has moved into denial of our animal ancestry.
I've heard that when they mate a champion racehorse stallion with a mare, they'll first send in some old workhorse to get the mare worked up, because female horses kick hard during mating and they don't want the racehorse stallion to get damaged.
It might be easy to conclude, out of ignorance impossible to overcome over what's going on in the mare's head, that she was resisting the whole affair. So that would be an example of anthropomorphizing the mare's reaction.
I know I'm beating, well, a dead horse here. But, attributing human motives to animals can be like the fallacy of projecting one's own cultural motivations onto events happening in distant lands, and that can be dangerous.
I'm very impressed with your well-organized comments.
You are assuming that human motives are different from animal motives. But how can that be, since our brain architecture is exactly the same? Humans have a thicker top layer of the brain than most other animals, but the differences between humans, dolphins and elephants in that respect are negligible. With rape, it is not the pre-frontal cortex at play anyway, but something much older, which we would call a drive rather than a thought. Those we share with most other animals. And also, an animal's desire not to be coerced is much more primitive and common to most of us as well. It is certainly not higher thought. Nothing about coerced sex has anything to do with cultural motivations. You seem to be irresistibly drawn to a fallacy yourself--your desire for humans to be distinct. Our ability to think about and name our own drives and emotions does not make those drives and emotions different from those of other animals. This is a trap, and leads to arguments like "Well, a dog can't think about its trauma the way a human can, so therefore it is okay to cause a dog severe trauma in a scientific trial." (Aside: this is Anthony Fauci level thinking.) But a moment's further thought (and experience) would show us that even though the dog can't ruminate on its suffering, it has learned the lesson of that suffering permanently, and will forever avoid similar situations, and may in fact never again trust humans. That is the very purpose of the suffering evolutionarily speaking. So a female dolphin who is gang raped by a pack of young males will learn from that experience to stay within a larger protective group and avoid situations in which she can be exploited. THAT is how we know her experience is negative and similar to a human's.
Well, that is interesting, that a female will learn from the experience and alter her behavior to avoid it happening again.
My own view of rape -- and by that I mean jump-out-from-behind-a-bush-and-grab rape, has always been that something has to be really amiss for it to happen. Humans, with their social mores and their sometimes alienating society, can become frustrated in ways that I think no animals can, and then there's child abuse and other terrible situations that can create monsters. I think it's safe to say that most young people, of both sexes, have experienced rape fantasies, but the gap between a fantasy and committing such an act is huge.
I don't desire humans to be distinct, and I certainly don't discount animal suffering just because other species don't understand it the same way humans do, but I can't help but see how human life has so very much more complexity.
For much of history the danger of a woman being raped was very real, all the time. Nothing needed to be amiss--it was in fact quite common. Thus women were protected by father and brothers, and never went out alone unless they were very foolish. And it was virtually expected in war that soldiers would rape everything in sight. That's still true. I don't know what kind of world you have experienced, but it was and is not typical now, and it certainly was not typical of anything but a few Western societies from about 1820 until about 1980. Religion had no effect on it. In order for rape to be unusual, the behavior of young men needs to be constantly observed and constrained, and women cannot be completely independent. In societies where those constraints have been relaxed, rape has become common again, both in East and West.
Our feeling that our lives are more complex than that of other animals comes from our ability to reflect on them, and our sense therefore that we are making "free" decisions. For the most part this is an illusion, as many studies have concluded. (What could possibly make our decisions other than our genetics and environment? There is nothing else.) The complexity of any creatures' lives are pretty much equivalent, as any animal ethologist can tell you. They consist of negotiating an environment, learning, mating, raising young, and finding a way to survive without being destroyed, while seeking pleasure or fun when possible. That's pretty much it.
You seem to be assuming that humans are no more likely to consider morals and ethics when making decisions than animals; however, humans are different from animals in that very way. This very thread is a discussion of such issues, and I guarantee that no animals ever sit around discussing and debating about morality and ethics, much less writing about their thoughts, opinions, and ideas!
Humans usually "make decisions," and then afterward try to justify them morally. We act based on drives and emotions just like other animals. We only imagine that we deliberate the ethics of our actions--this has been proven over and over in studies.
If you want to know why humans have much higher capacity to follow intellectual pursuits and consider moral and ethical matters, it is because the human brain is very different from animal brains:
"The main difference between humansтАЩ brain and animalsтАЩ brain is that humansтАЩ brain has a remarkable cognitive capacity, which is a crowning achievement of evolution whereas animalsтАЩ brain shows comparatively less cognitive capacity. Furthermore, the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the higher cognitive capacity of the human brain is disproportionately large, accounting for more than 80% of the total brain mass while the cerebral cortex of the animal brain is not significantly large."
Getting back to the initial question -- humans have to restrain themselves but dolphins don't. If a human doesn't restrain his or her self then it's a transgression, sexual abuse or rape. If a dolphin doesn't restrain themself then it's part of the reproductive chaos of their species. Therein is why it is anthropomorphizing to call the dolphins' behavior "rape", despite the fact that the primal drives and the female's reluctance is the same as with humans.
And this restraint can be no more than just human sympathy. I honestly can't remember well enough how I felt when I was 18, but I can't imagine that I would have callously terrorized and traumatized someone like that under any circumstances; and that was true, I think, of my friends as well. If rape really is more common than it used to be, I would maintain that it's caused by societal dysfunctional factors like increased poverty.
Sympathy is a strong characteristic of humans. Is it found to anywhere near that extent in other animals? I don't know. Perhaps you do. But it colors all of our interactions. Notably, it's why we like all of our entertainments, movies, plays, etc., sporting events. It's the emotional manifestation of compassion, the real "fabric" of the universe. Humans, because of what we are, can afford it. The tiger cannot afford it. The wildebeest cannot afford it.
And yes, our lives are immensely complicated, because of all the relationships we have. There is so much to do, and so much to consider, that it's hard to imagine that animal life, even with the other cerebral ones like dolphins, is anything nearly like it.
Dolphins will gang rape other species of dolphin (both male and female too) to death. For fun. Dolphins are sick creatures. Give me a shark any day of the week. :)
Are dolphins getting gang *raped* or are they getting gang *banged*? Is rape even a notion that dolphins have or a word even applicable to them? Let's avoid the temptation to anthropomorphize animals.
Oh good grief. When male animals gang up on a female and force her to have sex even though she is trying to get away, that is the same thing that happens with humans. It happens with other primates too. We all share the same DNA and evolved from the same ancestors. Humans are not somehow apart from the rest of nature. The "anthropomorphize" argument is based on a fundamental fantasy about human beings. The same people think only humans have consciousness, even though that flies in the face of all common sense.
We aren't in much disagreement on this. It's just that dolphins don't have a frame of reference to make such occurrences outlaw behavior or a crime. It's probably happened since the beginning of time and is part of the complexity of their reproductive life.
It's probably quite traumatic for the females. But, you know, it must serve some purpose in perpetuating dolphins. If such behavior was caused by some new stresses (such as caused by humans) then we need be concerned. Otherwise, labeling some animal behaviors as being like human crimes is kind of ridiculous because the creatures don't have a need for or a notion of a code of law.
That is a straw man. It doesn't matter whether something is a crime or not, or what its label is. The point is that it's an evolved behavior, whether it is a dolphin or a human. Therefore, whether it is legal or illegal, or shocking or unshocking, we must admit, because we see it around us in the animal kingdom, that it is to a certain extent "natural" behavior. Cultural taboos will only get you so far, and that is true whether the "world" is virtual or real. It is obvious that for the male avatars mentioned, taboos don't exist in a virtual world. Mark's point, which he explained in a comment, is that the Meta world is just a new way to control people. To me the more interesting question is how far the woke world has moved into denial of our animal ancestry.
I've heard that when they mate a champion racehorse stallion with a mare, they'll first send in some old workhorse to get the mare worked up, because female horses kick hard during mating and they don't want the racehorse stallion to get damaged.
It might be easy to conclude, out of ignorance impossible to overcome over what's going on in the mare's head, that she was resisting the whole affair. So that would be an example of anthropomorphizing the mare's reaction.
I know I'm beating, well, a dead horse here. But, attributing human motives to animals can be like the fallacy of projecting one's own cultural motivations onto events happening in distant lands, and that can be dangerous.
I'm very impressed with your well-organized comments.
You are assuming that human motives are different from animal motives. But how can that be, since our brain architecture is exactly the same? Humans have a thicker top layer of the brain than most other animals, but the differences between humans, dolphins and elephants in that respect are negligible. With rape, it is not the pre-frontal cortex at play anyway, but something much older, which we would call a drive rather than a thought. Those we share with most other animals. And also, an animal's desire not to be coerced is much more primitive and common to most of us as well. It is certainly not higher thought. Nothing about coerced sex has anything to do with cultural motivations. You seem to be irresistibly drawn to a fallacy yourself--your desire for humans to be distinct. Our ability to think about and name our own drives and emotions does not make those drives and emotions different from those of other animals. This is a trap, and leads to arguments like "Well, a dog can't think about its trauma the way a human can, so therefore it is okay to cause a dog severe trauma in a scientific trial." (Aside: this is Anthony Fauci level thinking.) But a moment's further thought (and experience) would show us that even though the dog can't ruminate on its suffering, it has learned the lesson of that suffering permanently, and will forever avoid similar situations, and may in fact never again trust humans. That is the very purpose of the suffering evolutionarily speaking. So a female dolphin who is gang raped by a pack of young males will learn from that experience to stay within a larger protective group and avoid situations in which she can be exploited. THAT is how we know her experience is negative and similar to a human's.
My way of thinking as well. Well put.
Well, that is interesting, that a female will learn from the experience and alter her behavior to avoid it happening again.
My own view of rape -- and by that I mean jump-out-from-behind-a-bush-and-grab rape, has always been that something has to be really amiss for it to happen. Humans, with their social mores and their sometimes alienating society, can become frustrated in ways that I think no animals can, and then there's child abuse and other terrible situations that can create monsters. I think it's safe to say that most young people, of both sexes, have experienced rape fantasies, but the gap between a fantasy and committing such an act is huge.
I don't desire humans to be distinct, and I certainly don't discount animal suffering just because other species don't understand it the same way humans do, but I can't help but see how human life has so very much more complexity.
For much of history the danger of a woman being raped was very real, all the time. Nothing needed to be amiss--it was in fact quite common. Thus women were protected by father and brothers, and never went out alone unless they were very foolish. And it was virtually expected in war that soldiers would rape everything in sight. That's still true. I don't know what kind of world you have experienced, but it was and is not typical now, and it certainly was not typical of anything but a few Western societies from about 1820 until about 1980. Religion had no effect on it. In order for rape to be unusual, the behavior of young men needs to be constantly observed and constrained, and women cannot be completely independent. In societies where those constraints have been relaxed, rape has become common again, both in East and West.
Our feeling that our lives are more complex than that of other animals comes from our ability to reflect on them, and our sense therefore that we are making "free" decisions. For the most part this is an illusion, as many studies have concluded. (What could possibly make our decisions other than our genetics and environment? There is nothing else.) The complexity of any creatures' lives are pretty much equivalent, as any animal ethologist can tell you. They consist of negotiating an environment, learning, mating, raising young, and finding a way to survive without being destroyed, while seeking pleasure or fun when possible. That's pretty much it.
You seem to be assuming that humans are no more likely to consider morals and ethics when making decisions than animals; however, humans are different from animals in that very way. This very thread is a discussion of such issues, and I guarantee that no animals ever sit around discussing and debating about morality and ethics, much less writing about their thoughts, opinions, and ideas!
Humans usually "make decisions," and then afterward try to justify them morally. We act based on drives and emotions just like other animals. We only imagine that we deliberate the ethics of our actions--this has been proven over and over in studies.
If you want to know why humans have much higher capacity to follow intellectual pursuits and consider moral and ethical matters, it is because the human brain is very different from animal brains:
"The main difference between humansтАЩ brain and animalsтАЩ brain is that humansтАЩ brain has a remarkable cognitive capacity, which is a crowning achievement of evolution whereas animalsтАЩ brain shows comparatively less cognitive capacity. Furthermore, the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the higher cognitive capacity of the human brain is disproportionately large, accounting for more than 80% of the total brain mass while the cerebral cortex of the animal brain is not significantly large."
Read the Bible.
Matthew 7:13-14, King James Version
13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Getting back to the initial question -- humans have to restrain themselves but dolphins don't. If a human doesn't restrain his or her self then it's a transgression, sexual abuse or rape. If a dolphin doesn't restrain themself then it's part of the reproductive chaos of their species. Therein is why it is anthropomorphizing to call the dolphins' behavior "rape", despite the fact that the primal drives and the female's reluctance is the same as with humans.
And this restraint can be no more than just human sympathy. I honestly can't remember well enough how I felt when I was 18, but I can't imagine that I would have callously terrorized and traumatized someone like that under any circumstances; and that was true, I think, of my friends as well. If rape really is more common than it used to be, I would maintain that it's caused by societal dysfunctional factors like increased poverty.
Sympathy is a strong characteristic of humans. Is it found to anywhere near that extent in other animals? I don't know. Perhaps you do. But it colors all of our interactions. Notably, it's why we like all of our entertainments, movies, plays, etc., sporting events. It's the emotional manifestation of compassion, the real "fabric" of the universe. Humans, because of what we are, can afford it. The tiger cannot afford it. The wildebeest cannot afford it.
And yes, our lives are immensely complicated, because of all the relationships we have. There is so much to do, and so much to consider, that it's hard to imagine that animal life, even with the other cerebral ones like dolphins, is anything nearly like it.
Dolphins will gang rape other species of dolphin (both male and female too) to death. For fun. Dolphins are sick creatures. Give me a shark any day of the week. :)
Cats and dogs do that, too! They are such animals!!!