Seth wrote:lordpasternack wrote:Seth, I already held every single view that I've articulated in this thread. I already saw the hypocrisy of some feminists. I already know… You really didn't need to shove the eggs into mouth for me to suck… (errrrr, pardon the analogy choice.
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Glad to hear it. I refer you to Aristotle again. As for "need," since when is "need" a component of free speech, particularly here? I came, I saw, I posted. And nobody actually shoved anything anywhere, except some electrons down a wire. The thing about trolling that makes people angry is not that the provocative exercise of free speech occurred, but rather that the reader is embarassed at how they reacted to it, to their inability to control their emotions and be logical and rational, at their surrender to that little spark of outrage that leads them to, as I like to say, "post in haste, repent at leisure™." (yes, another trademarked Sethism...) I see the flash of anger and loss of rationality at being successfully trolled by, as someone here said, the "grandmaster zen troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him," as a manifestation of deep embarrassment and humiliation.
I like to refer to it as "stimulating debate." Trolling, you see, in my lexicon, is the fisherman idling along on the surface dragging a baited hook through the water, waiting for the fish below to bite, at which point he reels them in and watches them flop around on the deck before bashing their brains out. My methodology is a bit more sophisticated. I like to fish for prey with a #24 Griffith's Gnat on an 8x tippet and play the catch till it's exhausted, at which point I gently and carefully unhook and slip it back into the stream so I can play with it another day. You know, like catch and release trout fishing.
It's also something like Zen trout fishing, where you present the fly and await the strike, but the lure has no hook.
The intention, of course, in cruder terms, is to "shove the eggs into [your] mouth" to induce you to mumble around them in protest. More politely put, it's to create sufficient controversy and reaction to get the debate off and running. It's quite an effective technique that I developed way back in the Usenet Days of Yore, and have been refining ever since. In this case it was so marvelously effective that I fomented a lengthy (and at times interesting) debate in two completely different forums, one of them by successfully trolling and pwning the mighty Atheist intellect and icon, PZ Myers, who was so outraged by the debate that he thoroughly embarrassed himself and diminished his stature as an intellectual by publishing a scurrilous and defamatory post on his own blog site rather than manning-up and taking me on here, or at least showing a modicum of reasoning ability and constraint in his own pond. It was most excellent proof of the advanced state of my technique. Thanks PZ!
Remember, I warned you, my job is to be the interlocutor, to cause you to react emotionally and then eventually to think hard. I'm gratified that you previously thought hard about this subject, but there's nothing wrong with doing it again, particularly since like allergy shots, bringing the subject up in a provocative manner allows you to learn to react rationally and thoughtfully to such provocations, rather than embarrassing yourself with a knee-jerk reaction. That's part of my lesson plan as well.
To quote Aristotle again, "it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." I agree with Aristotle, and so I have no boundaries when it comes to entertaining thoughts and debating them. I care nothing for your feelings, they are yours to control, I care only for the examination of the subject, of the path to enlightenment, wherever it may lead one.
But to be Aristotlean about it, one must learn to control one's thoughts and emotions so as never to become irrational and emotional. Again, Aristotle: "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." It's my habit to expose myself to provocations like PZ's quite deliberately, because it helps me to achieve excellence in self-control and rationality through an act of will.
I highly recommend the practice.
I do find your idea of opt-in fatherhood quite intriguing, though. There is actually something like that in the UK (or at least Scotland). If the father isn't present at the registration of the birth, he isn't a full legal parent in some (if not all) respects. I don't know the ins and outs of it, and the implications. I suppose it might work as an idea. I wouldn't take marriage as irrevokable consent for any future events that happen between the two parties, though...
The problem, as I see it, is that the Scottish methodology is more about denying the father full rights for failing to be present than it is permitting him escape from liability. I imagine, though I'm not familiar with Scottish law, that the father can still be held financially liable for child support, while being denied full parental access by the mother. That's not at all what I have in mind in this regard.
And just to address the other calumny involved, this discussion is specifically about the relationship between the parents, and how their power is divided, not about whether the child deserves to be supported. That's an entirely different debate.
There's still no ideal solution where the man wants a foetus that a woman doesn't. You simply cannot compel someone to remain physically attached, and physically constrained and put at risk by a foetus that they don't wish to support.
Why not? That's been the historic practice for most of human history.
Like I've said, I think unwanted biological parenthood is a perfectly sound reason for terminating a pregnancy (it was my main one, for the record), and a responsible decision to make in the circumstances - I just think it should be addressed explicitly a little more in discussions about abortion - and from the pro-choice perspective. 
