(#127 and #128 are basically the same. #127 wasn't posting, so I retyped it.)

The atheist feminist GirlWritesWhat speaks of women's sexual agency.

For example, women who are dressed provocatively should be prepared to fend off unwanted advances in other ways.

Also, women should know how much it takes to stop an escalating sexual encounter that they're not sure they want:

Ladies, please. If you do not have the sexual confidence and maturity to utter the word "stop" when you are lying naked in a man's bed after choosing to climb into it, then you had absolutely NO business climbing into it in the first place. Seriously. You've spent all evening moving from "maybe" to "I think so" to "probably" to "most likely" to "almost definitely" to "practically guaranteed" to "score!", moving out of the public eye (where you're safe) and into a private space (where I'm sorry, you're not), discarding inhibitions and bits of clothing along the way. The further along this sexual continuum you are, the more momentum has built up, and the more clear your 180 degree "no" needs to be.

Given the ambiguous nature of many date/acquaintance rapes (was it rape or regrettable sex?), her advice might prevent some rapes.

The atheist feminist GirlWritesWhat speaks candidly about what women can expect if they dress provocatively without taking other precautions.

She also has common-sense advice on what it takes to stop a sexual situation you don't think you want. Excerpt:

Ladies, please. If you do not have the sexual confidence and maturity to utter the word "stop" when you are lying naked in a man's bed after choosing to climb into it, then you had absolutely NO business climbing into it in the first place. Seriously. You've spent all evening moving from "maybe" to "I think so" to "probably" to "most likely" to "almost definitely" to "practically guaranteed" to "score!", moving out of the public eye (where you're safe) and into a private space (where I'm sorry, you're not), discarding inhibitions and bits of clothing along the way. The further along this sexual continuum you are, the more momentum has built up, and the more clear your 180 degree "no" needs to be.

Considering the ambiguous nature of many date and acquaintance rapes (was it rape or just regrettable sex?), her advice is quite useful. She is profane and crass but essentially right.

No.

But a woman who is insufficiently aware of her own beauty is at risk of getting more attention from men than she bargained for. That in turn can lead to horrible misunderstandings of the sort which may be actionable as sex crimes because the definition of a sex crime these days is vague and over-expansive.

Denise, consider exactly what I said, because I chose my words carefully:

A beautiful woman who is not adept at repelling unwanted attention by other means  might  consider whether modifying how she dresses could reduce the amount of unwanted attention she receives in the first place. 

Women have many different ways of repelling unwanted attention. Some women naturally project a confident, formidable demeanor. Some women are so good with social cues that they can signal their withering lack of interest in an unwanted male with a single glance. Some women have martial-arts training. Some women have guns.

A woman who's already successful at repelling unwanted attention doesn't have to worry about how she dresses. But what if a woman is unsuccessful?

Example: Suppose an innocent, conservative, Christian girl dresses like a hippie. Hippie chicks have a reputation for being easy. Guys might see how she's dressed and mistakenly think she's advertising her loose sexual morals. If she's able to fend off unwanted advances successfully, fine. But if fending off the unwanted advances is a struggle or a hardship for her, she might consider dressing less like a hippie. It  could  make a difference.

It's a very zen sort of looniness, isn't it?

So what if it is? Though fear often manifests itself in counterproductive ways, fear presumably has a useful purpose, too. Where would we be without an instinct that told us to avoid risky situations?

Even an actuary can't explicitly calculate every risk present in daily decision making. We rely on instinct and habit to subconsciously do the bulk of our risk analysis for us. Fear is helpful to the extent it gives us the right instincts about risk. More fear than that is unhelpful, but less fear than that is also unhelpful.

Denise, Jeff is right that beautiful women must take more care for modesty. You're reading into Jeff's argument something that's not there.

Beauty isn't innately immodest or shameful. But beauty is innately attractive, no? Women who are more beautiful tend to attract more attention, which includes unwanted attention. And unwanted attention that isn't repelled before things get too heated can have terrible consequences.

A beautiful woman who is not adept at repelling unwanted attention by other means might consider whether modifying how she dresses could reduce the amount of unwanted attention she receives in the first place. That's not a moral judgment, merely prudent risk analysis.

Read up on the Sahara when it was green. That's prehistory, so there's just archeological evidence. But it's interesting.

The warm weather did help, though it was also unpredictable:

[B]etween 800 and 1300 AD, the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a relatively mild climate... with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. Barley was grown as a crop up to the 70th parallel.... [T]he ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years. Similarly the Icelandic Book of Settlements records famines during the winters in which "the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs".

Well, I am. Or would be if I thought that's what they were.

I'm no stranger to visionary fervor, though it's inevitably riddled with doubt. If poets have a lover's quarrel with the world, perhaps my faith life is best described as a lover's quarrel with God.  I don't naturally have a happy medium -- being halfway between visionary ecstasy and acedia is medium, maybe, but hardly happy.

I attribute this to an over-vivid imagination. I don't need drugs to take a head trip (one reason, perhaps, I'm not attracted to them), my mind just works that way. Having visions straight out of a mystic's diary is not hard for me. But that, by itself, doesn't mean these visions have moral weight.

So, in the end, the moral content of my faith comes down to cold conviction, though perhaps conviction is the wrong word, as it suggests absence of doubt.

When I was about nine, and my gran took me to communion for the first time, the pastor's injunction to "Go and sin no more" influenced my behavior for months afterwards. Oh, I was sickeningly good during that time!

Now that I'm older, communion doesn't change my behavior as easily. Sometimes I'm afraid to take communion because I doubt my sincere resolve to sin no more. Oh, I  feel  repentant, all right. But if that feeling doesn't lead to a significant change of habits, how sincere is it, really?

Does that count?

That's very sad, since laws that are vague or over-broad usually hurt the people they're supposed to help.

Suppose I can prosecute something as a sex crime when it's not a sex crime. How does that help my credibility if, God forbid, I should ever have to report a real sex crime?

Thanks for answering.

(Dumb as such questions sound, they can help people figure each other out.)

I don't think you don't share those goals. I supposed you must share most of these goals, actually, to be here.

My question wasn't about your goals or your sincerity, but what you make of the sincerity of others. Do you think we're being dishonest with you? Or do you just think we're being stupid? Or what?

In that respect, you're most likely in agreement with the majority of libertarians.

And many here on Ricochet agree with that -- I would. A perfectly free market has never existed, and given the nature of politics, is unlikely to ever exist.

Nonetheless, some countries approximate a free market better than others, or approximate the free market in differing respects.

Is it unreasonable to think that, though a perfect free market will never be achieved, approximating a free market makes life better for the average Joe?

Is protectionist economic policy the only way for someone to prove his concern for the American worker?

If a person claims to support a simpler tax code, or a lower tax burden, because he thinks our current tax burdens hurt the American worker, can he be sincere?

If a person claims that abolishing the minimum wage and removing burdensome licensing requirements will help the American worker (especially the less privileged American worker), can he be sincere?

Or is such a person only sincere if he also supports protectionism (American mercantilism)?