Sunday 12 June 2011

Question time?

When I first heard Germaine Greer's slur on Thursday's Question Time (a BBC political discussion show) I was outraged. I started to write a post before thinking better of it, because it was simply angry and incoherent. After a few days of thought it strikes me as more absurd than anything else. Her exact comment was:
"All soldiers, in certain circumstances, will rape, regardless of whether they're ours or theirs or whose."
Her reasoning is completely off. I am going to suppose what she was implying was that because the occupation they are in necessarily involves violence this strips away their morals and in a war zone they're going to go around sexually assaulting people. Can I amend this to what she should have said?
"All soldiers people, in certain circumstances, will rape, regardless of whether they're ours or theirs or whose." 
That is, essentially, what she is saying. I disagree with my 'amended' statement. I do not believe that all people, all soldiers, will rape, whether they're "ours or theirs or whose" but by Ms. Greer's reasoning, all people are capable of committing rape depending on their circumstances. A soldier is no more likely to rape someone in whatever this 'circumstance' Greer is envisaging than a non-soldier in exactly the same circumstances. Her claim that 'all soldiers' will is null. If all soldiers would, she is also just as likely to if put in the same certain circumstance. By her reasoning, so am I (a pacifist through, though willing to allow for self defence), and so are you. 

Great.

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