r/DisagreeMythoughts

At a wedding last fall, I ended up next to a cousin who is deeply pro life. She called abortion murder, plain and simple. Then, without much hesitation, she added, "Obviously rape is different." I asked why. Her answer was, "Because she didn't choose it."

That distinction is the part I can't get past.

I know plenty of pro life people genuinely believe they are protecting children. I'm not questioning their intentions. I'm questioning why the circumstances of conception suddenly change the answer if the fetus itself is the thing that makes abortion wrong.

If the fetus is a baby, rape didn't make it less of a baby. The difference is what happened before the pregnancy. So when consent changes whether abortion is acceptable, the argument seems to be about more than the fetus. It also becomes about whether the woman chose the sex that caused the pregnancy.

And that's where the broader politics get harder to reconcile. Some of the same people who say "it's a child, not a choice" are much less supportive of sex education, contraception access, or policies that make raising an unplanned child easier. If preventing unwanted pregnancies matters less than punishing abortion after one happens, then maybe the baby isn't the whole argument.

The rape exception forces that question into the open.

A friend brought up the usual hypothetical a few weeks ago: what would you do if God appeared tomorrow and somehow made it impossible to doubt that he was actually God?

Most people at the table said they'd kneel. I said I'd probably have a lot of questions first.

Because proving that you're God only proves that you're God. It doesn't automatically prove that you're good, or that I owe you worship.

And if we're talking about the God described in the Bible, there are some pretty serious questions there. The flood. Job. The destruction of entire groups of people. Hell, depending on how you understand it. I'm supposed to look at all of that and conclude that unlimited power must also mean unlimited moral authority?

The usual answer is that God's ways are beyond human understanding. But that creates a weird problem. If being more powerful means you're automatically beyond moral judgment, then morality has basically become another word for whoever has the most power.

I don't have a problem with people finding meaning or comfort in religion. I'm questioning the assumption that worship is automatically the right response to power.

If God is good, I'd want to know why. If the answer is simply "because he's God," then that's not really an answer.

At a barbecue last summer, a guy said he would love to stay home with the kids. Naps. TV. Watch the game. No boss bothering you all day.

His wife was standing there with their two kids.

Breakfast. Getting them dressed. Cleaning up. Someone needs something. Someone spills something. Lunch. More cleanup. Then dinner, baths, bedtime. Whatever didn't get done during the day is still there tomorrow.

There isn't a clock to punch. Nobody is waiting for you to finish before handing you the next thing.

The weird part is that plenty of people can understand a nurse being exhausted after a shift, or a warehouse worker after eight hours, but somehow childcare becomes "just staying home" when nobody is getting paid for it.

The guy at the barbecue wasn't picturing his wife's day.

He was picturing his own day without work.

I genuinely think hiking has become way too commercialized over the past several years, especially with the rise of social media. It seems like something that used to be relatively straightforward, just getting outside and enjoying nature, has increasingly turned into a competition over who has the nicest gear, the best pictures, or who has visited the most popular destinations.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that good equipment can be important, especially for more technical hikes, but I think we've gotten to a point where people feel like they need hundreds of dollars in gear just to go walk around in the woods.

I also think social media has changed how people approach hiking, sometimes making the experience more about documenting it than actually enjoying it.

I'm curious whether people think this commercialization has actually been good for outdoor recreation, or whether I'm just looking at it through a pretty biased lens. Change my thoughts!

By not upvoting helpful topics, you are complicit. The fact is the number of upotes in a subreddit are an indication of how believed that topic is on balance. So if you see a topic that you think is helpful, you should upvote it. Stay on the right side of history. All too often, when people post a helpful topic, a few [will not use term because I don't want to get banned] users gang downvote it to censor it: these people make no sense: if they are so convinced that it is wrong, then why not use rebuttals? Why censor it via downvotes? So others who think that on balance a topic being read can help the world more than harm it, have a duty to upvote. Especially when they see it is at 0 upvotes. This is more the case when now there are targetted bots going around downvoting certain topics. I noticed that sometimes when I post controversial topics, it might get a few upvotes first, but then suddenly it goes below 0, and hovers at the 45-49% upvote rate, below .5 keeps it at 0 and not 1, this significantly reduces visibility. I believe bots may be doing this to shut down the proliferation of certain viewpoints. So don't forget to upvote these types of posts.

At a family birthday last month, an uncle leaned in and kissed a seven year old on the lips. The kid wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned away. The uncle laughed, pulled him back in for another one, and said "come on, we don't do shy in this family." A few people laughed. After that, the kid stayed close to his mom for the rest of the afternoon.

Let me be fair. Most families who do this aren't trying to make anything weird out of it. For plenty of households, it's just how they show affection. I'm not accusing anyone of anything beyond treating it as a family habit. This is not that conversation.

The issue is who gets to decide when the kid says no. We tell kids their bodies are theirs, then every holiday we make affection something they are expected to give because the person asking is family. "Give Grandpa a kiss" teaches that refusing means saying no in front of a room full of adults who may think you're being rude. The kid who learns that no is negotiable at seven doesn't magically forget that lesson at seventeen.

We spend years teaching kids about strangers and personal boundaries, then sometimes make family the exception: affection is expected because the person asking is related and older.

A child who is allowed to decline a kiss learns that no can actually mean no. A child who isn't gets a very different lesson.

Too many young women want to have a baby at any cost, and there are plenty of low caliber suitors ready to make that possible. This dynamic creates vulnerable children, and the chomos are loving it.

4th party is the trophy cuck naive enough to believe America still has a promising future because of him.