Re: Abandoning the ill?

I usually reply very selectively to your posts. But as a random sample, I'll reply to this post in full.

First I note that you are deliberately ignoring my overall point and arguing about specific trees instead of cooperatively looking at the forest.

I don't think that "inherent" and "innate" mean what you think they do. If its "innate" to girls how can that apply to only a minority?

Of course. There is variation in any population. To pick a trivial example, blue eyes are innate but only some people have them.

Could something be "innate" and only be found in one person?

We don't usually know enough background to identify an individual who's the only one with an innate condition, but in theory they exist. If someone suggested that Usain Bolt has some genetic configuration previously unknown in human history that sets the stage for his ability to run so fast, I wouldn't think it implausible.

And why shouldn't a minority of one be "significant" when it comes to something "innately" harmful. Is my allergy to garlic enough to ban it?

Society makes these tough choices all the time. One person is hardly ever enough to make society change completely, but we fight battles over minorities of different sizes. Should peanuts be banned from certain public places because enough people are allergic? What about fragrance sensitivity? Strobe lights for those with epilepsy? Etc.

"You could claim that a person cannot feel good about sadistic fantasies because harm to another is inherent in full expression of the desire."
Or you could realize that they're fantasies. And no expression of a fantasy is any fuller than another. Clearly you haven't met any BD/S&M couples.

You are just ignoring my parenthetical You could also argue that there is no need to feel bad in that case either without comment. Not very cooperative to assume I know nothing about another way of thinking about things when I've just suggested that I do.

I was trying to engage with Dissident's view that if a person believes that acting on an attraction to children is wrong, it undercuts the person feeling good about the attraction and is linked to self-hatred. Given what you've said here, I would expect you would disagree with him and see no contradiction between the VP position and feeling good about pedophilic attractions -- or would need other reasons for doing so.

This is why I don't trust you to handle fantasy very well. You cannot tell a fantasy about harm from the infliction of harm; and you believe that there is a relationship between the two characterized by "fullest expression." In reality the fantasy is a fantasy. And what someone wants in RL might not remotely match your impoverished imagination. ( In reality the person being "harmed" in most such fantasies is claiming a power over the other. Luz's rape fantasy was hers. And my part in catering to it was very clear once we finally had our little chat. )

You focus on sadistic fantasies that can be fulfilled through role play. Of course they exist, but there are others where play would not be enough, and only the real thing would be satisfactory. Focusing on the one instead of the other is uncooperative and just picking a fight without trying to go with my point and understand it.

"Suppose I really want to have intercourse with a grown woman, who reciprocates those feelings. Suppose I the find out (but she doesn't) that this will make her very sick. I have no need to suddenly feel guilty about my desire for intercourse -- all I have to do is abstain from the activity."

Or maybe you're misinformed and treating her with contempt by refusing to talk to her about why you're "arbitrarily" refraining. Perhaps she deserves to know why so that it can be addressed by her with info you don't have. You aren't Ghod, you know? Perhaps if she's got this illness that intercourse with you will trigger, she deserves to know why so that she can avoid the next guy who might make her sick with this trigger. There is no situation in which your decision to unilaterally abstain without telling her why is justified.

I never said I wouldn't tell her. If you were being cooperative you'd fill in the blanks in the analogy as intended. I put in the "and she doesn't" to explain why she was in favor of this despite the harm to her, but we can do it a different way. Readers who weren't just trying to pick a fight would let it go. But for you... Let's instead assume that she has some degree of mental impairment. You can in your mind adjust the knob of that impairment to a setting where she is competent to agree to the sex by itself but not competent to properly consider certain long-term consequences. (Note: no actual women with mental impairments were harmed by this thought experiment.)

"The parallel is not perfect (it never is)"
Actually there are plenty of parallels which are perfect; because they're perfectly real.

It seems to me that analogies properly used are an important tool for analyzing a complicated situation.

We can learn stuff from RL, because ultimately our choices are expressed in RL. So engaging in "what ifs" which indulge what we would like to see rather than what are seeing can be seductive, but dangerous. ( Did I just say that? ) If we can't learn about "harmful" fantasies from those who do "fully express"them, nor about communicating so as to avoid the "communicable," then we've learned nothing from reality and are just retreating to strained analogies to avoid engaging with reality.

I have a glimmer of pieces of what you're talking about here but don't see how it relates in a relevant way to anything at hand. I see this kind of thing in your posts a lot. Trying to sort it out is too much work.

I'm not sure I'd trust a girl to someone who would leave a woman rather than alert her to a potential agent of sickness.

I never said I would leave her, I just said I would abstain from intercourse. You took the analogy in an unhelpful direction and assumed I would have a position on it that you could then attack me for. Not what someone does who is trying to achieve understanding.

I could reply to all your posts at this level of detail, but the exchanges would get tedious.