In my post yesterday about self defense outside of the home, Weer'd's comment got me to thinking about a strange mental gyration many women go through about condoms. It goes like this.
1. Only sluts go out deliberately looking for sex
2. If I carry condoms in my purse, I am acknowledging that I am looking for sex
3. If I just happen to get drunk at a party and have sex, then it was an accident, not me being a slut
This is why many women who should know better will end up pregnant when there is an easy and simple way to avoid it. They cannot reconcile their desire for sex with their self image. It is actually more damaging to their self image to plan ahead for the contingency than it is to risk disease and pregnancy.
Sounds a lot like the arguments you hear against carrying a gun for self defense.
1. Only bad people kill others
2. If I carry a gun, I am acknowledging that I am a bad person who will kill
3. If I kill the other person in a fight, it was just an accident and I am not a bad person
Then end result is generally not as successful as planning ahead and bringing the gun. When you look honestly at the world and carry the tools necessary to deal with the situations you may encounter, you are thought of as a bad person. If you pretend that nothing bad is going to happen and you end up diseased, pregnant, robbed or murdered, somehow you are a more moral person. Does that make "Common Sense?"
NYC decided to take the condom issue to a whole new level. They decided to arrest people for carrying too many condoms. Apparently this means you are planning to have sex with a lot of people, and the only reason to do something like that is prostitution. As Weer'd said,
Also you'll see a lot of confusion between "killing" and "murder". Killing is a very broad term, you can kill bugs, or animals because they're pest. You can kill larger animals for sport. We execute people as a punishment for severe crimes. There are all sorts of accidents where somebody can get killed. We have a special word "Suicide" for the intentional killing of one's self. We often talk about "overdosing" when people may-or-may-not have intentionally killed themselves with drugs.
ReplyDeleteBut then there's the elephant in the room. Justifiable homicide. As a rule most people agree there comes a time when it is socially understandable, and legally acceptable for one person to kill another person. Generally its somebody offering grave bodily harm.
When thinking about this the idea of carrying a personal firearm becomes very reasonable, hence why those who are opposed to firearms ownership like to confuse and vilify the notion of lawful self-defense.
Funny you should mention this. Tomorrow's post is already written and is on this exact subject. The three categories of legal self defense and why only one should require a duty to retreat. It's based on a post by Sebastian about a year ago.
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