> “Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here’s the answer to the letter you sent my wife.” Muybridge aimed his Smith & Weston No. 2 six-shooter, fired once and shot the man dead.
> against the judge’s direction they acquitted him on account of justifiable homicide.
The most interesting part to me is how he was so casually acquitted of murder.
The thing they don't tell you about jury nullification and prosecutorial nullification is that it's been historically used for far more injustice than justice.
It sounds like it "ment" you literally owned your wife and if she didn't enjoy being with you, you were justified in taking your rage out on others... So, kinda glad people can just get divorced now instead of having random psychopaths propelling around the country murdering with impunity
Did he kill his wife or not? No?
Then why are you even bringing his wife into it.
Some man fucked a married woman, he got killed.
At no point does this bring up questions of "ownership" or "random psychopathy".
A random psychopath out of nowhere didn't kill you, you got killed by a husband of a married woman you fucked. Action -> Consequence. Very deterministic.
There's no randomness in who got killed in this circumstance, in fact it's pretty predictable outcome (like rolling a dice where one face of a dice might kill you).
Actions had consequences.
Unless the woman hid that she was married, and the man had no way of knowing then that'd be bit different.
Additionally, according to the article, they did end up getting divorced, which seems to indicate that a divorce was an available option.
I get it, consequence-free, zero responsibility stuff is all the rage now, and thus marriage means jack shit now (and little to no reason to do it really)
Since we're playing the action->fatal consequence game, what other perfectly legal (although irritating) things should justify first-degree, premeditated murder?
It is telling that you're refering to adulterly as this innocent "perfectly legal", but "irritating" (LOL!) thing, given that within the context of the article, the mid 19th century, it was pretty darn far from "perfectly legal" to say the least, and has legal consequences even to this day.
Legality is absolutely irrelevant in any conversation about morality, ethics or societal norms and their decline and similar.
They are not laws of universe and are malleable, made up and thus completely irrelevant outside of context of seeking legal advice.
Legality of thing X, implies absolutely NOTHING about thing X, other than it being legal that is.
It's the hidden implicit implication (but "hey, it's perfectly legal", and therefore) which is particularly dishonest and insidious.
And in many cases a murder as a consequence of adultery would not necessarily be classified as "premediated first-degree murder" either.
What I'm asking is: By your code of justice, which by your comments above is extra-judicial and instead based on morality, what other acts would justify first degree murder?
My comments are not necessarily extrajudicial.
They are and can be very much judicial and "legal" depending on time & place.
(which is why legality in out of itself is irrelevant, outside of seeking legal advice)
You're still using terminology like "first degree murder", any kind of "killing" which could be called "justifiable" can't be without provocation or prior infliction of serious harm from the victim beforehand directly or indirectly. In other words, it's retaliatory and defensive in some sense.
>what other acts would justify killing somebody?
From top of my head, probably transmission of HIV without disclosing your status might be there (with some exceptions).
Legality of this warries from country to country and punishment for it is often times not proportional to the severity of the crime (of bodily harm/transmission). Like what's 5years for ruining somebody's life? Or no punishment at all?
But I think you're missing the key point and it isn't justifying "murders", but about actions having serious consequences. Compared to having ...... none basically.
I see. I think some of the pushback you may receive is because shooting someone who slept with your wife ignores the agency your wife demonstrated when she broke her vows. The third party was probably an opportunist. The wife made as much the decision as not. To believe that a wife must be guarded and lethal consequences kept as a reserve just seems a little old fashioned and pretends that women have no say in the latter.
Would the loss of home, potentially children, definitely household income, life partner, probably some respect from peers, etc, not be enough punishment for an unfaithful wife?
Or are you crying that it's unfair that she didn't get her head blown off too?
Fair enough, these cases do occasionally end up with both perpetrators getting their head blown off.
However in this case, that wouldn't be advised since she already had a child (and not even necessarily his!)
>Would the loss of home, potentially children, definitely household income, life partner, probably some respect from peers, etc, not be enough punishment for an unfaithful wife?
You surely can't be serious.
This would have happened regardless is she just had a divorce first, and that would have been the proper procedure for her in this case anyway if she "wants to be with somebody else" (I like how casual this sounds LOL).
Especially taking into account how these things are settled nowadays? Fuck, it's anything but a punishment.
And the man would just..... walk it off?
Of course wifes/woman have to be guarded. Can they defend themselves in an attack? No?
However in this case, what's defended is the institution of marriage.
Without adultery having serious conseqence, marriage is utterly and absolutely meaningless procedure, without any benefit or consequence.
Oh, I'm not crying about anything. I'm just watching this go further and further off the rails. It's clear we have such different opinions of the women in our lives that I think we irreconcilable.
Fair enough.
I don't think I've strayed from the original remark:
which is that marriage as an institution was a semantically meaningful and adultery had serious consequences.
Which has nothing to do with "women in our lives" whatsover, since it easily could have been a wife who gunned down the mistress and/or husband for adultery.
Everyone seemed to haphazardly latch onto "womans rights and agency", which I find particularly odd since when zero consequences for actions is some sort of fundamental (woman?) right or something to that effect.
The only way I can interpret is that they desire and quite enjoy the "zero consequences" pure indulgence, hedonistic culture and are too cowardly to own up to it, instead hide behind all sorts of other excuses("but what about them women agency") which makes no sense whatsover given the context.
Ie. they want to be able to fuck somebodys wife with the legal protection on their side, thus somewhat reducing the risk of their face getting mashed in with a steel pipe.
The crucial part of the discussion is whether:
(a) marriage as an institution should be serious and have serious consequences
(b) or should it be abolished and/or remain an empty meaningless husk of it's former self, a pure old fashioned tradition/sentimentality without any real substance behind it
Victorian society was borderline schizofrenic. There was a "public" view of what is right, and private behaviour.
For example, indeed sex itself was frowned upon from many angles, but prostitution was rampant in London. Same for drugs. And indeed it was often the same people holding the same views at the same time.
I think there are similar themes in other historical settings. I remember reading that many of key drivers of US prohibitions were themselves major alcohol abusers.
I think the hypocrisy itself isn't that unusual, but the scale of it (how widely the "public" beliefs were held and how large the gap between private and public was) was quite extreme, compared to similar cases.
> But I'd assume there were enough people in sexual relationships that, at least in private or cras venues, reality would prevail.
I think there's a bad assumption here that women felt safe to express or acknowledge a sex drive, even in private, even to their husbands. Then, just as now, the main danger to a woman was her husband.
If only whores or women who are insane have a sex drive, that's a backwards way of saying that you will be judged for having a sex drive, and if you're found guilty, you will be punished as a whore, and if you are found innocent, you will be medicalized as a crazy person. Taboos are restrictions.
I'm not a historian, so this is just guessing, but I can imagine it's survivorship bias, as in, surviving history. What are the sources that historians use to base these things on? It's going to be things like newspapers, personal correspondence, books, and other such publications.
I do vaguely recall there was a lot of "medical" science about sex at the time, it might be it's from that one; see also hysteria, the treatment of which was a vibrator, but the remaining publications are clinical at best - denying that women have a sex drive, basically.
> The true story is that the use of vibrators became widespread only when they were marketed to the general public, both men and women, as domestic and medical appliances in the early 1900s. Ads featuring men and women, babies and older people, promised vibrators could do everything from eliminating wrinkles to curing tuberculosis. When doctors did use vibrators on women, they assiduously avoided touching their clitorises. “The greatest objection to vibration thus applied is that in overly sensitive patients it is liable to cause sexual excitement,” the gynecologist James Craven Wood wrote in 1917. If, however, he continued, “the vibratode is kept well back from the clitoris, there is but little danger of causing such excitement.”
I'm no historian, but I think we do something similar (although probably not to the same extent) in the status quo regarding the sexuality of the elderly. Of course we know some old people have a sexuality, and we implicitly know that grandma must have been doing something back in the day, but we don't discuss it.
Older people are horndogs, they just have many age-related issues, and not everyone is able to overcome them or the stigma, since we tend to idealize the elderly, like they are supposed to be pristine and wise, when the evidence is to the contrary on both counts.
> they are supposed to be pristine and wise, when the evidence is to the contrary on both counts.
The brain elasticity of an 80yo might not always be up to learning the JS framework of the week (though perhaps that is a wisdom in itself...), but I find, when talking to older folks, that their years of experience offer an irreplaceable perspective. That I would consider to be a form of wisdom.
Its not that they know everything about everything or that being old makes them automatically smart, but experiencing the world through a much longer lens of time (then my lens) can change how they see things and in particular can allow them to recognize patterns that younger folks would miss...
(None of this should be construed as me advocating for a geritocrasy, but just as a reminder to take the time to listen to the older folks around you. You do not (and probably should not) take what they say at face value as given facts, but listen, consider, and test their perspective as you form your own opinions of the world...
It’s not too crazy to believe. I’ve seen multiple studies say the sex drives of males are higher and more consistent than that of females on average. If men were always initiating in a world where female voices were being repressed, it probably didn’t leave room for men to know or care whether their partners actually enjoyed intercourse as well. The narrative might’ve also been more convenient to believe since it would mean one less motivator for infidelity.
I suspect the women themselves were complicit. If having no sex drive was seen as attractive back in the day, it is very possible that women played that role to get the attention (and sex!) from the man they wanted.
I am convinced most of the Victorian behavior is an act. It is the classical game of seduction, up to 11.
By dint of a misleading history textbook I grew up thinking that it was standard practice for romans to stick feathers down their throats to clear their stomachs for more feasting. Such generalizations are treacherous ground...
If your partner is not at all concerned with your pleasure/enjoyment/feelings during a sexual encounter, it's probably not going to be particularly enjoyable for you. It's not surprising people don't enjoy being treated like a Fleshlight.
I STILL hear modern day men saying (or implying) that women don't really like sex or care about it very much. It's not a cultural view, but sexually active individuals absolutely still hold that belief to an extent.
There's an idea called 'Queer Erasure' which is all about pretending that homosexuality didn't exist in the past.
I'm not saying that's happening here because I really have no idea what was happening with this photographer but it's an interesting thing to keep in mind.
Seems like it's mostly memes about how it's always happening, but few/no actual examples of such erasure... plus a few "weird things from insert social network".
That's kind of the terminal state of most subreddits, so maybe it was better once.
Yes, your assessment is exactly right. I remember when that sub was very young and I was a teenager. It started with the 15 or so actual examples of historical queer erasure, and then went on to the 50 or so examples of ambiguously queer figures that the members of the sub felt should be viewed as queer, and for a while it was the same few things being reposted so memes were tolerated, and now it's basically just memes and social media posts. Such is the life cycle of a subreddit.
It's still happening. Recently, two models got married after several years of quite intimate and personal photos on instagram... but they were just very good friends.
Christianity's Genesis directly involves both nakedness and being covered and directly relates the latter to the knowledge of good and evil.
Before the fall, we didn't know any better. Afterwards, they "knew they were naked" and the immediate response was for Adam and Eve to cover themselves—before being given the skins of a slain animal for clothing.
> And in 2022, the idea that kissing on the lips used to be more common is conveniently pushed aside to shrill more wokeness. Because of course they must be lesbians! Otherwise they wouldn't have kissed!
You're misrepresenting the article. It clearly states Victorian Britain had a double standard for sexuality: two naked men kissing was out of the question because it would point to homosexuality, but two naked women kissing was -- if not harmless -- at least not outrageous, because they claimed women had no sex drive and therefore the scene couldn't be construed as sexual, much less homosexual.
It has nothing to do with wokeness, please don't introduce something that's simply not there in the article. This is about erasing female sexuality.
They even assert the photographer sometimes assigned the role of a "man" to one of his models, because the point wasn't "women kissing" but "humans doing everyday activities, including kissing". They claim there was no erotic component to the photos, though I find that claim hard to believe.
What are you even talking about? The article never says they're lesbians.
It says that Victorian prudishness would never have allowed either a man and woman kissing, nor two men kissing -- the latter because of views of homosexuality. But they had no such compunctions about two women kissing because it would have been seen as non-sexual.
You seen to be reading something that isn't in this article, and using the word "woke" in a bizarre way.
> What are you even talking about? The article never says they're lesbians.
Click on the first picture and you get the undertitle:
"Eadweard Muybridge first lesbian kiss
Item x of 16
Eadweard Muybridge naked kiss women lesbian"
So even if not the photographer's statement or intention (though the article does also not clearly state the opposite..) and the article's author made thst up, it is like it is.
> You seen to be reading something that isn't in this article, and using the word "woke" in a bizarre way.
Those judgements are often seen quick and given easy, but not always as simple, eh??
Hell, why are we even discussing that??? Point for OP...
I think it would be reasonable to confine judgement of an article to the actual text of the article, which is explicitly making the point that two women could kiss because it wasn't seen as sexual, rather than some SEO keywords that have been added to an image subheading that is invisible unless you click on it.
That is now how you phrase it! I think it is reasonable to assume as it is or most publications, that pictures and subheadings are intentionally chosen by the author and belong to the article (I mean no doubt about that here, these are not random pictures?)
But again, why do we discuss that at all in relation to what GP said is the actuap question.
I'm bisexual myself, and so would be most prone to gay interpretations of things. However, when I read the article I assumed the standard probabilities for sexual orientation (roughly 85% straight, 15% gay or bisexual) because they were paid to be models. I think that the gay interpretation of things mainly occurs over private correspondences with sensual undertones, or people who lived together in a way similar to marriage.
> against the judge’s direction they acquitted him on account of justifiable homicide.
The most interesting part to me is how he was so casually acquitted of murder.