Poll: Would you have sympathy for these guys?

[jlopo]

This is just a random thought experiment. DO you have sympathy for people who have bad things happen to them because of their own choices? I'd like to present three scenarios:

Scenario A: A man gets drunk in a bar . He meets a sexy female stranger there... He takes her to his apartment for a one night stand .Instead of having sex the woman robs him blind. She steals his wallet (including all his credit cards) and numerous valuables. was the man asking to be robbed?

Scenario B: It's Jim crow era american south. A black man has sex with a white woman who has an extremely racist father( think kkk level racist), He knows that the father is extremely racist . He also lives in an extremely racist town, interracial relations are extremely taboo in the town. He is fully aware of this but doesn't seem to care. The white female is extremely embarrassed that she had sex with a black man so she falsely accuses him of rape so her father won't disown her. The woman tells her father that the black man raped her, so the father gathers a mob at night to hunt down the black man. The mob swarms the black man and beat him to death. DO you think that the black man was just asking to be lynched?


Scenario C: a man named bob loves to have random unprotected one night stands all the time. One day he gets super drunk and meets a chick at a bar. They go to his apartment to have sex. However the woman is HIV Positive , but she doesn't tell bob this but she doesn't lie and tell him she's clean either. He has unprotected sex with her. A couple of weeks/months later during a routine check up at the doctor's office bob discovers he now is HIV positive.

I have some questions :

1) do you have sympathy for any of the men in my scenarios? Why or why not?

2) Do you think that the men are partially at fault/responsible for their misfortunes? DO you think that they were "asking" for their troubles?

3) do you think that they deserve sympathy?

 

[tippy2k2]

This feels like a trap. Some kind of "GOTCHA! Here's what I'm ACTUALLY talking about!!!" thing or an ax to grind or something of that nature. Because frankly, I can't see any other answer to the question other than Yeah, of course you should feel sympathy for these men. Why in the world wouldn't you?

Hell, #3 seems to be the only one who should actually get a little bit of blame here (don't be silly wrap your willy fellas!) but even then, it's a shitty thing to do to someone.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yes, I feel sympathy for the victims in all three of those scenarios.

This is clearly intended to be a gotcha thread drawing parallels between the hypothetical male victims in the OP, and female victims of sexual assault who are often considered to be "asking for it" based on how they dressed or vulnerable positions they found themselves in. I'm just unclear on who the OP is trying to "get".

Should be obvious once the OP posts a few more times though. Stay tuned!

 

[sanquin]

I don't care whether this is a "Gotcha" thread. I have my views and aren't about to lie to other about it to prevent a possibility of offending someone. As a side note, there's a reason why I intentionally will never try to become a policeman. I'd probably end up breaking more laws than I would uphold, considering the people they have to deal with at times.

Scenario 1: No sympathy. Was the guy asking for it? No, he's still very much the victim. But it's also the risk you take when having one night stands with complete strangers. (While drunk off your ass, no less.)

Scenario 2: Anyone having no sympathy for the black guy...well, let's just say I'd want to stay far away from them. Racism is no excuse for what happened.

Scenario 3: I'd have sympathy for the guy yes. Plus, it's illegal by law isn't it? Not telling someone you're HIV positive and having unprotected sex with them is considered intentionally infecting someone, isn't it?

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

All three scenarios are worthy of sympathy, we all take risks for things and it often enough back fires. Yeah they all kinda set themselves up for a potential fall, taking varying levels of unnecessary risk, still the scenarios are all pretty awful. Still I can't fault such behavior, I'm ace(asexual), but for some of my friends, they get pretty desperate and cranky when not getting laid, because of their high sex drives. Still when it comes to fictional accounts(as far as I know) I have a hard time feeling any real sympathy for characters in fictional scenarios.

Now regarding the subject manner, this sounds very much MGTOW/Redpill/MRA/etc type of thing, not sure if it's intentional, but it sure paints women as evil manipulators. Sadly though, men are more often the ones guilty of a crime when engaging in a one night stand. Though it's more things like date rape, corrosion, or knowingly spreading an STD by not wearing protection, or informing their partner.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

The phrase 'asking for it' is sort of ridiculous in the first place. If I ask you to punch me in the face and you punch me in the face, that is 'asking for it'. Taking a known risk and having something bad happen is, well, one of the possibilities of taking a risk.

Anyway, yes, I feel sympathy for these guys because none of them did anything wrong, they simply made decisions that they knew were risky, but they decided the risk was worth it. It's not too different from someone deciding to try some crazy stunt. If they get injured, I still feel sympathy for them, but I know that they decided to take a risk. I might personally have never have taken that risk, but that doesn't mean I can't feel sympathy, especially considering that we've all done something in our life we later regretted.

 

[01189998819991197253]

I expected something thought provoking, all I'm getting is someone who doesn't understand what "wrong choices" actually are.

 

[the December King]

Of course I feel sympathy for those men. Switch the genders if you like, and I'll still feel bad for them (or rather, those women). Is the point that women and men can both be equally horrible, or victimized, or something like that? I hope this is going somewhere sensible, but I have a sinking feeling...

 

[Pseudonym]

I'd like to point out that having sympathy for somebody and their misery, thinking their misery is not their own fault, thinking they deserve their misery, and retrospectively recommending not to take certain actions to avoid said misery are four different things to be carefully distinguished.

I can be sympathetic to all three and I do not think they deserved what they got.

I would strongly recommend using condoms though and I think Bob is rather stupid not to use a condom for a one night stand. I think he has been irresponsible and is to blame for what he did. This does not mean that his one-night-stand-partner isn't also to blame for not telling him she had HIV. (there is no fixed amount of blame for bad things)

I would also recommend against pissing off the racist dad unless his daughter is really important to you. Note that the dad is still a complete asshole and you still should have every right to fuck his daughter (assuming she consents, obviously). I wouldn't recommend it though. Unlike the case with Bob though, I don't think it is your fault if you get lynched for having the wrong skincolor and being careless around racists. That is all on the racists.

As for scenario A. I would not recommend to be suspicious of everyone you meet. Most people do not want to rob you. If somebody comes to your house and makes it clear this is for the purpose of having sex, than 99/100 times I would expect them to be truthful about that. If you get robbed by somebody like that, that just seems like plain bad luck.

 

[visiblenoise]

Fuck yea. But they had it coming.

 

[Thyunda]

Instead of having sex the woman robs him blind. She steals his wallet (including all his credit cards) and numerous valuables. was the man asking to be robbed?

What was he doing at the 'instead of having sex' point? I mean, my wallet it surgically attached, but I accept that he may have gone to brush his teeth. But I'd like clarification before I give a full answer.

Scenario C: How do we know Bob wasn't already HIV+?

Probably tied to the bed. Or the doorframe. Or the radiator. Possibly duct taped to the bathtub. In the absence of a bathtub, duct taped to the shower.

 

[Squilookle]

Kinda curious about the circumstances in B) that lead her to tell someone she was raped. Were they caught in the act or is it discovered afterwards?

and in C), does the woman know she's HIV positive? Did either of them have condoms there in the first place?

 

[EyeReaper]

From what I gathered from your poll, absolute abstinence is the best way to succeed in life.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I really am not seeing the point of this poll. I kinda thought there was going to be a bit more moral ambiguity or something. The three men shown here are just as "at fault because of their own choices" as I would be for daring to walk across the street around the same time Speedy McDrunkerton discovered his unyielding hate for red lights.

I just don't see how someone else actively going out of their way to needlessly ruin someone else's life wouldn't garner at least a bit of pity for the victim.

 

[ChaplainOrion]

I just want to say I accidently selected no, I do actually feel sympathy for these people. Though B and C are definitely knuckleheads, these are all bad things happening to people who don't deserve them, and nobody deserves to get STDs, except a rapist really.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

From what I gathered from your poll, absolute abstinence is the best way to succeed in life.

It's basically, from the reading of the poll and the scenarios presented, it's an MGTOW/MGHOW thing. Portraying women as evil exploitative creatures that will lure men into sex just to destroy their lives, or rob them blind. At least that's what I gathered.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

You could have just saved time and said "hey guys, let's talk about rape and victim blaming", it would have been more subtle that way.

Scenario 1: No sympathy. Was the guy asking for it? No, he's still very much the victim. But it's also the risk you take when having one night stands with complete strangers. (While drunk off your ass, no less.)

Scenario 2: Anyone having no sympathy for the black guy...well, let's just say I'd want to stay far away from them. Racism is no excuse for what happened.

Scenario 3: I'd have sympathy for the guy yes. Plus, it's illegal by law isn't it? Not telling someone you're HIV positive and having unprotected sex with them is considered intentionally infecting someone, isn't it?

Are you serious? How is the person in scenario 1 any less deserving of sympathy than the others, outside of the fact that the consequences are less severe? If anything, I'd have less sympathy for the guy in scenario 2. While he hasn't done anything morally wrong, if he knows that he live in an area where people could kill him an get away with it, and he knows that by having sex with this woman people will kill him if he's caught, then going ahead and doing it anyway seems like you have a deathwish. While I do still have sympathy for him, given how unfair the situation is to begin with, my sympathy is diminished by his absurdly stupid decision.
Now, again, he hasn't done anything morally wrong, but neither is it morally wrong for someone to drink a bottle of bleach, but the consequences seem pretty obvious.

In fact, I really don't see how scenario 1 is any different from scenario 3, again, other than consequences, and in this case, the fact that #3 apparently does this regularly. Some woman you met at a bar is far less likely to secretly be a robbery trying to seduce people than they are to have some kind of STD, which can actually be avoided through protection anyway.

I would be very interested in hearing your explanation as to why #1 should get zero sympathy for taking a minor risk against an extremely rare occurrence, but #2 and #3 get sympathy even though #2 knowingly jumped into the fire and #3 shunned basic precautions against a rather common occurrence, and has rolled the dice on a consistent basis.