You don't have to legally define hazing to deal with it unless you live in a state where hazing has become such an ingrained tradition that there needs to be a specific law to convince the guys that do it that tradition does not trump law.
In certain states, hazing specific laws exist specifically because hazing has become such a problem.
In other states, common law and standard legal practice concerning unreasonable or unconscionable contracts is sufficient to prevent any contract, including a hazing pledge, from becoming a license to assault.
For those who understand the law.
And, no, free speech is not absolute. Do I need to cite you back to the archetype example of crying "FIRE" in a crowded theater?
As far as slippery slopes go, unfortunately, human language is inexact. Ethics and justice are also inexact. Maybe you don't want there to be a slippery slope here because you want free speech to protect your access to your hit of porn. No, I don't know why you seem so determined to assert that free speech is absolute on the ground where you stand, but, whether you want to believe it or not, there are both slippery slopes and quicksand pits aplenty here.
Otherwise, we really wouldn't need judges. Hardly even need lawyers, just legal assistants who would enter the data for both sides into a large rules engine with a large database, which would spit out the decision, and no need for appeals.
According to what we have heard of the story, she has secluded herself.
One doesn't have to play psychiatrist to guess that she may not be emotionally ready for court. One only needs to guess that there may be a reason for her not pressing a case to shrug and say, "Maybe there is a reason for her not pressing a case."
On the other hand, one does have to take the position that one knows more about what's best for her than she herself does to demand that she should go to court and face those who attacked her.
Do you think you know that much more about what is good for her than she herself does? Do you really want to assume that she hasn't already been in contact with lawyers, psychiatric help or psychological counseling, and maybe even the police?
Maybe you want to be her psychiatrist? or her lawyer, or priest, social therapist, police liaison or whatever? Just so you can spout your artificial ideologies at whim?
Do you really think you know more about what about what she should do than she does?
No, my final defense will be this, when I get to it:
You have to face the consequences of your own blindness. I can't do that for you.
But I can try to tell you that you are blind. Which I have done several times unsuccessfully.
But how many of your friends would consume human waste for money and fame? Could I tell you how I think money and fame aren't worth the health risk of consuming human waste?
How many of your friends would consume human waste for the indirect sexual thrill? Could I tell you how I think sexual thrills can be had with much less danger?
Yeah, I can defend this conviction under quite a few different theoretical frameworks of liberty, and some notions of liberty as well. So far, you don't seem to be willing to listen. You don't seem to understand that freedom cannot be absolute if you want to do anything.
Physics -- Friction restricts freedom, but can you get any traction without friction? Can you move at all without any restrictions?
Maybe she needs time to heal the wounds of being betrayed by friends before she allows herself to be put _back_ in the limelight by taking this to trial.
Maybe she never quite ends up healing enough to dare.
Hmm. I suppose we don't want to make laws against deliberately maiming oneself. Not that we think it's a good idea, but that it would be hard to enforce.
We really don't want to make laws that would prevent contracts where there is a possibility of one party to the contract ending up getting maimed in fulfillment of the contract. That would put professional stunt actors and professional sports and firefighting and all sorts of other things outside the realm of contract. (At least, with the current legal definition of contract, we wouldn't want that.)
And if you can't see a difference between, say, contracting a motorcycle stuntman to make a dangerous jump with plenty of preperation and contracting an inexperienced young motorcyclist to crash a motorcycle into a wall at high speeds, for the express purpose of filming the injury processes, well, it's going to be hard to talk with you.
Legal or otherwise, there are some potential acts of business that should not be engaged in, and, sometimes the difference is in fact a matter of intent.
And a camera rolling implies something about the intent, too.
Yeah, but you're not watching me have sex with my wife.
(I assume.)
There are better things to do than watch people have sex, you know.
Things like living with your sex partner.
And, if she thought you were her ticket out of poverty or something else bad, treating her as well as you can so she can believe she is free after all.
So, no, we shouldn't eliminate marriage, neither from society nor from the discussion of morals.
One, maybe if this kind of story is posted all the time it is because it happens all the time.
Two, if you can't have sympathy for people who get sucked into this kind of thing, then I suppose you can't have sympathy for people who get pushed into buying vacuum cleaners from door-to-door salespersons or drugs laced with cyanide on the streetcorner.
Or for the shy kid in the locker room who gets pushed into giving the jock head, or for the scared and not-quite-innocent jokers on the sidelines who watched it play out. Or for the guy who might have been able to stop it but left because he could see what was happening and didn't want to risk getting his head beat in again.
Or for the (pregnant, no less) woman whose husband, for his own supposed glory, berates her and otherwise uses bad logic on her, and finally, when all else fails, drugs her up, wraps her up in explosives, and sends her out on a suicide mission to show them damn yanks a thing or two.
Degrading? Yeah, pornography degrades, but when you've degraded yourself, it's easy to pretend it doesn't.
It may be a sin to let a bleeding heart move you to make bad laws, but a bleeding heart is not a sin. And it isn't a sin to try to help people who get caught in these kinds of traps.
Or maybe you're one of those who think you profit from catching people in traps?
But if the industry can't regulate itself, bad laws are going to end up being made. So get off your high horse and listen to reason.
As long as people are alive, they have to go to the toilet regularly. Cleaning up after that is not exactly the safest job, but it is honorable, even though society doesn't always recognize that it is.
Janitors are necessary in any society that maintains infrastructures.
Sex is not as necessary as some want to say it is, but it isn't exactly something the race can live without, either.
Porn is not exactly necessary. In fact, for most people, porn is either superfluous or actually offensive.
It is a necessary fact (different meaning of necessary, here) that porn exists.
What some people view and use as physiological diagrams, others (or even some of the same) will view and use pornographically. That's going to happen in a society of free, imperfect people. We don't want to regulate that because regulating it will require judging too many people's intent too regularly basis.
It's better when people will keep their behavior within reasonable limits, so as not to cause problems for others.
We know about endorphins. They are natural, but they do cloud judgement. Inducing them with pornography is somewhat similar to pushing opiates, even though a lot of people don't want to admit it.
I'm going to go out on a limb, here. I think there are some people who have personal issues that (temporarily) viewing pornography may help them work out. If I'm thinking this way, I'm thinking that we would want them to be consulting some sort of psychiatrist or spiritual leader as long as they are doing this. I'm not sure we have any specialty field capable of handling it, however. The porn industry and the sex industry at this point in time are too biased towards making money.
We are talking about some of the victims, here. If we even admit that sometimes people are induced into it through improper influences, it's not victimless.
Yeah, social and economic activities tend more to abuse when driven underground, but I don't want to invite government regulation, either. We should, as a society, be able to regulate ourselves. (Or, maybe, I should say, learn to regulate ourselves.)
How many of your friends have consumed human waste for curiosity? on a dare? How many of those would do it again? Or admit in mixed company that they have?
How many of your friends would do such a thing for money and fame?
There is a difference. Whether we want to admit it or not, when it comes to things that relate to. or appear to relate to sex, logic seems to fail us. When logic fails, it's very easy to apply improper influence. So, yes, it is different from ordinary contracts.
Right now, the "entertainment industry" is not regulating itself. Too many envelopes being pushed at once. That's going to invite regulation.
However, 12 of 249 is what? 5%? Does the porn industry account for 5% of actors overall? Is one in 20 actors working in porn?
To tell the truth, I'm inclined to think it's time to dissolve the RIAA and MPAA, not just because they are screwing with the copyright law, but because they've enabled the entertainment industry to become too big, too centralized. When things get that big, the government has to watch their activities much more closely. Minor abuses in big industries quickly become major abuse, where similar things in small industry will not become so much a part of the momentum of the industry that society has to do something.
I think, if we were to present this kind of argument in court, the judge is going to ask something along the lines of why we should assume that someone who is willing to to drink natural but biologically hazardous materials just to be on film is actually capable of giving consent.
Think of it this way -- do we really want to create yet another government regulatory department just so said department can check the age and mental and legal competence of actors and actresses? Make sure the contracts were freely entered into and not influenced, for example, by extreme poverty or emotional instability? or peer pressure? Check that really dangerous stunts are actually done with special effects? And so forth?
I suppose, if the entertainment industry (not just porn) is going to continue to push the edges of social responsibility, maybe we do need to bring the entire movie industry within the reach of OSHA or whatever the current equivalent agency is.
There is no 4th person, everything neither you nor your interlocutor have direct knowledge of is hearsay.
That means that pretty much everything on the 'net is hearsay.
Therefore, even if I were to claim first person knowledge, you have an excuse to ignore what I say.
Or you could consider the locker-room logic of pornography.
You have first-hand knowledge. You chose to call it entertaining because the "cool" crowd called it entertaining.
I choose to call it abusive and leave. I have seen occasions where, had I not intervened, someone would not have been allowed to leave.
There have been other occasions where I failed to intervene, and the person who was the target was coerced into something they didn't really want to do. And then they were stuck. Do they admit they let themselves be taken advantage of, or do they claim to "enjoy it" after all?
And that's one question that I don't see treated properly in these discussions -- how many of us do it because someone says it's cool? We know that there will be people who get coerced or fooled into participating.
How abusive does it have to be before the law has to step in and say, no, cool doesn't cover some things when we know that there will be some participants who get coerced or fooled into participating?
So, because we fail to regulate abuse x and abuse y by law, we should quit trying to regulate abuse z by law?
That's another slippery slope.
Hazing can get pretty abusive. Should we allow all forms of hazing just because we allow mild forms of hazing? Should illegal acts of violence committed during hazing be allowed because it's "just hazing" and (theoretically) the initiates asked to be hazed by signing up for the fraternity/sorority?
Should such such violent hazing (ergo, done without stunts and special effects) that is recorded on film be allowed because it's an expression of free speech?
In fact, there are all sorts of slippery slopes here.
Should we allow people to maim themselves on film in the name of art? How about committing suicide?
Should we allow films in which the actors are hired (in other words, it's in the script and in their contracts) to actually maim themselves, or commit suicide, or be murdered on film?
And, as someone else pointed out elsewhere (and I got modded flamebait for linking to it), we don't know that the production is actually consensual in every case. We do hear about those who supposedly enjoy about it, but we often only hear about those who don't after they commit suicide or OD or end up afraid to leave the house or something.
Well, we have mention elsewhere here (and not by me) of at least one case where it was rape, even though the "actress" was of age -- deception, and violence. And the "actress" is reportedly _not_ running around making more movies, not feeling like getting out at all, although she is reportedly still breathing.
The fact that we giggle and move on indicates that we don't really know how to respond.
Maybe there's a reason we're uncomfortable, and maybe that reason isn't just that we're not used to it. Maybe we shouldn't get used to the idea that people should make money of video of urinating in someone's mouth, or of drinking body fluid cocktails. Maybe physical intimacy (violent or non-violent) is no longer intimate when it gets plastered all over the screen and people make money off of it.
Maybe there are better ways of dealing with our personal problems than watching other people fail to deal with theirs.
Slashdot Mirror
The laws exist.
You don't have to legally define hazing to deal with it unless you live in a state where hazing has become such an ingrained tradition that there needs to be a specific law to convince the guys that do it that tradition does not trump law.
In certain states, hazing specific laws exist specifically because hazing has become such a problem.
In other states, common law and standard legal practice concerning unreasonable or unconscionable contracts is sufficient to prevent any contract, including a hazing pledge, from becoming a license to assault.
For those who understand the law.
And, no, free speech is not absolute. Do I need to cite you back to the archetype example of crying "FIRE" in a crowded theater?
As far as slippery slopes go, unfortunately, human language is inexact. Ethics and justice are also inexact. Maybe you don't want there to be a slippery slope here because you want free speech to protect your access to your hit of porn. No, I don't know why you seem so determined to assert that free speech is absolute on the ground where you stand, but, whether you want to believe it or not, there are both slippery slopes and quicksand pits aplenty here.
Otherwise, we really wouldn't need judges. Hardly even need lawyers, just legal assistants who would enter the data for both sides into a large rules engine with a large database, which would spit out the decision, and no need for appeals.
According to what we have heard of the story, she has secluded herself.
One doesn't have to play psychiatrist to guess that she may not be emotionally ready for court. One only needs to guess that there may be a reason for her not pressing a case to shrug and say, "Maybe there is a reason for her not pressing a case."
On the other hand, one does have to take the position that one knows more about what's best for her than she herself does to demand that she should go to court and face those who attacked her.
Do you think you know that much more about what is good for her than she herself does? Do you really want to assume that she hasn't already been in contact with lawyers, psychiatric help or psychological counseling, and maybe even the police?
Maybe you want to be her psychiatrist? or her lawyer, or priest, social therapist, police liaison or whatever? Just so you can spout your artificial ideologies at whim?
Do you really think you know more about what about what she should do than she does?
No, my final defense will be this, when I get to it:
You have to face the consequences of your own blindness. I can't do that for you.
But I can try to tell you that you are blind. Which I have done several times unsuccessfully.
But how many of your friends would consume human waste for money and fame? Could I tell you how I think money and fame aren't worth the health risk of consuming human waste?
How many of your friends would consume human waste for the indirect sexual thrill? Could I tell you how I think sexual thrills can be had with much less danger?
Yeah, I can defend this conviction under quite a few different theoretical frameworks of liberty, and some notions of liberty as well. So far, you don't seem to be willing to listen. You don't seem to understand that freedom cannot be absolute if you want to do anything.
Physics -- Friction restricts freedom, but can you get any traction without friction? Can you move at all without any restrictions?
Maybe she needs time to heal the wounds of being betrayed by friends before she allows herself to be put _back_ in the limelight by taking this to trial.
Maybe she never quite ends up healing enough to dare.
Being sensitive is not necessarily a sin.
And you are not her psychiatrist.
Hmm. I suppose we don't want to make laws against deliberately maiming oneself. Not that we think it's a good idea, but that it would be hard to enforce.
We really don't want to make laws that would prevent contracts where there is a possibility of one party to the contract ending up getting maimed in fulfillment of the contract. That would put professional stunt actors and professional sports and firefighting and all sorts of other things outside the realm of contract. (At least, with the current legal definition of contract, we wouldn't want that.)
And if you can't see a difference between, say, contracting a motorcycle stuntman to make a dangerous jump with plenty of preperation and contracting an inexperienced young motorcyclist to crash a motorcycle into a wall at high speeds, for the express purpose of filming the injury processes, well, it's going to be hard to talk with you.
Legal or otherwise, there are some potential acts of business that should not be engaged in, and, sometimes the difference is in fact a matter of intent.
And a camera rolling implies something about the intent, too.
Yeah, but you're not watching me have sex with my wife.
(I assume.)
There are better things to do than watch people have sex, you know.
Things like living with your sex partner.
And, if she thought you were her ticket out of poverty or something else bad, treating her as well as you can so she can believe she is free after all.
So, no, we shouldn't eliminate marriage, neither from society nor from the discussion of morals.
One, maybe if this kind of story is posted all the time it is because it happens all the time.
Two, if you can't have sympathy for people who get sucked into this kind of thing, then I suppose you can't have sympathy for people who get pushed into buying vacuum cleaners from door-to-door salespersons or drugs laced with cyanide on the streetcorner.
Or for the shy kid in the locker room who gets pushed into giving the jock head, or for the scared and not-quite-innocent jokers on the sidelines who watched it play out. Or for the guy who might have been able to stop it but left because he could see what was happening and didn't want to risk getting his head beat in again.
Or for the (pregnant, no less) woman whose husband, for his own supposed glory, berates her and otherwise uses bad logic on her, and finally, when all else fails, drugs her up, wraps her up in explosives, and sends her out on a suicide mission to show them damn yanks a thing or two.
Degrading? Yeah, pornography degrades, but when you've degraded yourself, it's easy to pretend it doesn't.
It may be a sin to let a bleeding heart move you to make bad laws, but a bleeding heart is not a sin. And it isn't a sin to try to help people who get caught in these kinds of traps.
Or maybe you're one of those who think you profit from catching people in traps?
But if the industry can't regulate itself, bad laws are going to end up being made. So get off your high horse and listen to reason.
As long as people are alive, they have to go to the toilet regularly. Cleaning up after that is not exactly the safest job, but it is honorable, even though society doesn't always recognize that it is.
Janitors are necessary in any society that maintains infrastructures.
Sex is not as necessary as some want to say it is, but it isn't exactly something the race can live without, either.
Porn is not exactly necessary. In fact, for most people, porn is either superfluous or actually offensive.
It is a necessary fact (different meaning of necessary, here) that porn exists.
What some people view and use as physiological diagrams, others (or even some of the same) will view and use pornographically. That's going to happen in a society of free, imperfect people. We don't want to regulate that because regulating it will require judging too many people's intent too regularly basis.
It's better when people will keep their behavior within reasonable limits, so as not to cause problems for others.
We know about endorphins. They are natural, but they do cloud judgement. Inducing them with pornography is somewhat similar to pushing opiates, even though a lot of people don't want to admit it.
I'm going to go out on a limb, here. I think there are some people who have personal issues that (temporarily) viewing pornography may help them work out. If I'm thinking this way, I'm thinking that we would want them to be consulting some sort of psychiatrist or spiritual leader as long as they are doing this. I'm not sure we have any specialty field capable of handling it, however. The porn industry and the sex industry at this point in time are too biased towards making money.
We are talking about some of the victims, here. If we even admit that sometimes people are induced into it through improper influences, it's not victimless.
Yeah, social and economic activities tend more to abuse when driven underground, but I don't want to invite government regulation, either. We should, as a society, be able to regulate ourselves. (Or, maybe, I should say, learn to regulate ourselves.)
Government is not the only institution that can take people's freedoms away.
You're staring at one of the reasons for regulating the obscene and you can't even see it.
Maybe it's her fault she trusted the wrong friends. Maybe it's her fault she thought that any kind of modeling might be in some sense legit.
Maybe it's your fault your stupid, too.
Or, maybe you're one of those friends she shouldn't have trusted.
How many of your friends ride a motorcycle?
How many hang glide?
Rock climb? Bungie jump?
How many of your friends have consumed human waste for curiosity? on a dare? How many of those would do it again? Or admit in mixed company that they have?
How many of your friends would do such a thing for money and fame?
There is a difference. Whether we want to admit it or not, when it comes to things that relate to. or appear to relate to sex, logic seems to fail us. When logic fails, it's very easy to apply improper influence. So, yes, it is different from ordinary contracts.
Sure, accidents happen in every industry.
Too much regulation. Too little regulation.
Right now, the "entertainment industry" is not regulating itself. Too many envelopes being pushed at once. That's going to invite regulation.
However, 12 of 249 is what? 5%? Does the porn industry account for 5% of actors overall? Is one in 20 actors working in porn?
To tell the truth, I'm inclined to think it's time to dissolve the RIAA and MPAA, not just because they are screwing with the copyright law, but because they've enabled the entertainment industry to become too big, too centralized. When things get that big, the government has to watch their activities much more closely. Minor abuses in big industries quickly become major abuse, where similar things in small industry will not become so much a part of the momentum of the industry that society has to do something.
Lots of ifs there.
I think, if we were to present this kind of argument in court, the judge is going to ask something along the lines of why we should assume that someone who is willing to to drink natural but biologically hazardous materials just to be on film is actually capable of giving consent.
Think of it this way -- do we really want to create yet another government regulatory department just so said department can check the age and mental and legal competence of actors and actresses? Make sure the contracts were freely entered into and not influenced, for example, by extreme poverty or emotional instability? or peer pressure? Check that really dangerous stunts are actually done with special effects? And so forth?
I suppose, if the entertainment industry (not just porn) is going to continue to push the edges of social responsibility, maybe we do need to bring the entire movie industry within the reach of OSHA or whatever the current equivalent agency is.
1st, 2nd, 3rd person.
There is no 4th person, everything neither you nor your interlocutor have direct knowledge of is hearsay.
That means that pretty much everything on the 'net is hearsay.
Therefore, even if I were to claim first person knowledge, you have an excuse to ignore what I say.
Or you could consider the locker-room logic of pornography.
You have first-hand knowledge. You chose to call it entertaining because the "cool" crowd called it entertaining.
I choose to call it abusive and leave. I have seen occasions where, had I not intervened, someone would not have been allowed to leave.
There have been other occasions where I failed to intervene, and the person who was the target was coerced into something they didn't really want to do. And then they were stuck. Do they admit they let themselves be taken advantage of, or do they claim to "enjoy it" after all?
And that's one question that I don't see treated properly in these discussions -- how many of us do it because someone says it's cool? We know that there will be people who get coerced or fooled into participating.
How abusive does it have to be before the law has to step in and say, no, cool doesn't cover some things when we know that there will be some participants who get coerced or fooled into participating?
So, because we fail to regulate abuse x and abuse y by law, we should quit trying to regulate abuse z by law?
That's another slippery slope.
Hazing can get pretty abusive. Should we allow all forms of hazing just because we allow mild forms of hazing? Should illegal acts of violence committed during hazing be allowed because it's "just hazing" and (theoretically) the initiates asked to be hazed by signing up for the fraternity/sorority?
Should such such violent hazing (ergo, done without stunts and special effects) that is recorded on film be allowed because it's an expression of free speech?
In fact, there are all sorts of slippery slopes here.
Should we allow people to maim themselves on film in the name of art? How about committing suicide?
Should we allow films in which the actors are hired (in other words, it's in the script and in their contracts) to actually maim themselves, or commit suicide, or be murdered on film?
If you want to fix it, you're going to have to sacrifice to do so.
That's the way it has always been, don't expect things to be easier now than back in 1776.
Just make sure it's something really worth sacrificing for, and try to make the sacrifice meaningful.
I'm not sure this level of pornography is worth sacrificing for.
Well, freedom is never absolute.
And, as someone else pointed out elsewhere (and I got modded flamebait for linking to it), we don't know that the production is actually consensual in every case. We do hear about those who supposedly enjoy about it, but we often only hear about those who don't after they commit suicide or OD or end up afraid to leave the house or something.
there's no difference between being invited to think while you're being turned on and being invited to not think while you're being turned on?
A lot of the porn made in Japan is illegal in Japan, too.
Well, we have mention elsewhere here (and not by me) of at least one case where it was rape, even though the "actress" was of age -- deception, and violence. And the "actress" is reportedly _not_ running around making more movies, not feeling like getting out at all, although she is reportedly still breathing.
I personally think all porn is fake.
Faked intimacy, faked excitement, etc.
If it's published, unless it's published privately, it's public.
Publishing privately generally does not include offering something for sale to basically just anyone who claims to be over 18.
One of the difficulties in dealing with pornography is the ambiguities in the language we use to describe it.
But, yeah, if I hadn't posted already, I'd have modded you insightful.
That is indeed a good question.
The fact that we giggle and move on indicates that we don't really know how to respond.
Maybe there's a reason we're uncomfortable, and maybe that reason isn't just that we're not used to it. Maybe we shouldn't get used to the idea that people should make money of video of urinating in someone's mouth, or of drinking body fluid cocktails. Maybe physical intimacy (violent or non-violent) is no longer intimate when it gets plastered all over the screen and people make money off of it.
Maybe there are better ways of dealing with our personal problems than watching other people fail to deal with theirs.