Sekirara ni Kiss - Vol. 6 Ch. 22
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Go away older brother, if you already know her feelings then just accept that she doesn’t want you and move on.
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Frame the story one way, and a large part of the audience is just sure that the only proper path goes to the left. Had the same story been framed in a different way, most of the same people would be perfectly sure that the only proper path went to the right.
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@Oeconomist To a point, sure, it's all about who you see most of. People are tribal, they like to root for the people they know over the people they don't. And yet . . . it's pretty rare to have a romance where the MC doesn't just fall for someone who already has a girl/boyfriend, but pursues the person relentlessly anyway, systematically getting in the way of the relationship and so on. Why? Because it's a dick move and many people would dislike the character.
The normal romance pattern for "MC in love with an attached person" is passivity, punctuated by one or two inadvertent or nearly involuntary expressions of affection, until eventually the existing couple break up for some reason and the MC is in a position to be more up front. They're often in contact a lot, but it's usually defined as just a piece of luck, not the MC's fault. In short, there's a bending over backwards to show the MC as not making the dick move, so they can be a good person and deserve the good things that come to them in the end.
The normal romance pattern for "MC in love with an attached person" is passivity, punctuated by one or two inadvertent or nearly involuntary expressions of affection, until eventually the existing couple break up for some reason and the MC is in a position to be more up front. They're often in contact a lot, but it's usually defined as just a piece of luck, not the MC's fault. In short, there's a bending over backwards to show the MC as not making the dick move, so they can be a good person and deserve the good things that come to them in the end.
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@Purplelibraryguy—
What you actually describe and then call an uncommon story line is in fact pretty damn'd common, because you've left something out of the description of that which really is uncommon. It all turns upon whether the partner of the desired person is presented sympathetically. There are many stories in which the main character actively pursues a person partnered with someone who is depicted unsympathetically.
The idea that such pursuit is a “dick move” unless the other person is a jerk hangs on the fear of competition as such. Most or all of us would feel awful if we were partnered with someone, and third parties who seemed better matches to our partners began pursuing them. And most people grab for a claim under which that which threatens their interests is unethical, regardless as to whether they can make the case or just beg the question.
(Even people who pursue those with partners don't want in turn to be subject to such competition, so they tell themselves both that it's unethical unless the partner is a jerk, and that the partners of the persons whom they are pursuing are jerks.)
What really would be unethical would be to relentlessly pursue someone who has made it plain that he or she wants one to stop, and that's regardless of whether that desired person is in a relationship or not. Unfortunately, there are many stories in which the protagonist engages in such pursuit (with the desired person either being not in a relationship or in a relationship with an unsympathetic partner). But, in this story, Chitose hasn't declared to Yui that she wants him to stop. It's a bit implausible that she hasn't done so; but she hasn't.
Another thing that would be unethical would be for Yui to pretend to feelings that he doesn't have. The only argument that Kinosuke has made for Yui backing off is just that. But Kinosuke has been mistaken in thinking that Yui doesn't care deeply for Chitose.
What you actually describe and then call an uncommon story line is in fact pretty damn'd common, because you've left something out of the description of that which really is uncommon. It all turns upon whether the partner of the desired person is presented sympathetically. There are many stories in which the main character actively pursues a person partnered with someone who is depicted unsympathetically.
The idea that such pursuit is a “dick move” unless the other person is a jerk hangs on the fear of competition as such. Most or all of us would feel awful if we were partnered with someone, and third parties who seemed better matches to our partners began pursuing them. And most people grab for a claim under which that which threatens their interests is unethical, regardless as to whether they can make the case or just beg the question.
(Even people who pursue those with partners don't want in turn to be subject to such competition, so they tell themselves both that it's unethical unless the partner is a jerk, and that the partners of the persons whom they are pursuing are jerks.)
What really would be unethical would be to relentlessly pursue someone who has made it plain that he or she wants one to stop, and that's regardless of whether that desired person is in a relationship or not. Unfortunately, there are many stories in which the protagonist engages in such pursuit (with the desired person either being not in a relationship or in a relationship with an unsympathetic partner). But, in this story, Chitose hasn't declared to Yui that she wants him to stop. It's a bit implausible that she hasn't done so; but she hasn't.
Another thing that would be unethical would be for Yui to pretend to feelings that he doesn't have. The only argument that Kinosuke has made for Yui backing off is just that. But Kinosuke has been mistaken in thinking that Yui doesn't care deeply for Chitose.
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@Oeconomist I fear we'll have to agree to disagree. While the scenario you describe exists, it's not common. Rather, even in cases where the partner is presented unsympathetically, usually the MC stays fairly backed off. Sometimes there's some catalyzing event of mistreatment which will prompt an MC to step in, but you just don't get MCs doing the kind of pushy approach so common from triangle side characters. I really don't think the symmetry you see actually exists.
As to your view of the ethics of pursuing attached people, again I disagree. Your approach discounts the social, the existence of relationships (as I might expect from someone who identifies as an economist). And indeed, you yourself point out that "Even people who pursue those with partners don't want in turn to be subject to such competition" and so they know that, if they were to follow the Golden Rule, they wouldn't do it. So in your account, they come up with a reason to make it OK . . . but clearly if the reason is false, if the other person isn't actually a jerk (and really, not just a jerk--the key is that the person must be a jerk to the person you want to pursue), then they are in fact doing a bad thing.
Which brings us to all the "portrayed as" and "telling themselves" stuff. I think you're taking a relativist view of things which are actually quite subject to evaluation. Particularly in manga--someone "depicted unsympathetically" in fiction doesn't have another side; you couldn't talk to them and find out that it didn't really happen that way--if they're depicted unsympathetically they actually are unsympathetic to the extent that they are anything at all. But even in the real world, although things are more complex and subject to varying viewpoints, it's nonetheless the case that some people actually are assholes, and some people actually do mistreat their significant others. In extreme cases they can get put in jail for it; in less extreme cases it may indeed justify intervening to get someone away from them. How much of an asshole does someone have to be to their partner before it's OK to try to take them away? Well now, that does get into some shades of subjectivity--but that doesn't make it an arbitrary thing shaped purely by what you want to justify. Falsifying reality to justify bad conduct towards someone is wrong. But, saving someone from an actually abusive relationship on balance probably is not. And I don't think the difference is impossible to evaluate.
As to your view of the ethics of pursuing attached people, again I disagree. Your approach discounts the social, the existence of relationships (as I might expect from someone who identifies as an economist). And indeed, you yourself point out that "Even people who pursue those with partners don't want in turn to be subject to such competition" and so they know that, if they were to follow the Golden Rule, they wouldn't do it. So in your account, they come up with a reason to make it OK . . . but clearly if the reason is false, if the other person isn't actually a jerk (and really, not just a jerk--the key is that the person must be a jerk to the person you want to pursue), then they are in fact doing a bad thing.
Which brings us to all the "portrayed as" and "telling themselves" stuff. I think you're taking a relativist view of things which are actually quite subject to evaluation. Particularly in manga--someone "depicted unsympathetically" in fiction doesn't have another side; you couldn't talk to them and find out that it didn't really happen that way--if they're depicted unsympathetically they actually are unsympathetic to the extent that they are anything at all. But even in the real world, although things are more complex and subject to varying viewpoints, it's nonetheless the case that some people actually are assholes, and some people actually do mistreat their significant others. In extreme cases they can get put in jail for it; in less extreme cases it may indeed justify intervening to get someone away from them. How much of an asshole does someone have to be to their partner before it's OK to try to take them away? Well now, that does get into some shades of subjectivity--but that doesn't make it an arbitrary thing shaped purely by what you want to justify. Falsifying reality to justify bad conduct towards someone is wrong. But, saving someone from an actually abusive relationship on balance probably is not. And I don't think the difference is impossible to evaluate.
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@Purplelibraryguy—
I did not assert that stories in which there were active pursuit were the most common of those in which a principal character were in love with someone already in a relationship with an unworthy partner; I merely said that they were common — in other words, they are not rare. (I wouldn't know what were the most common without a survey.)
A sneer at economists is a poor argument. And, if you truly expect that economists discount the social or relationships, then you need to become more familiar with economists before making pronouncements about them.
If your invocation of the Golden Rule were valid, then it would also apply to a case in which neither would-be suitor is in a relationship with the desired person; the absurd result would be that all would-be suitors would have to back off because none of them would want another to be a rival. And, no, I'm not saying that nothing like the Golden Rule itself is valid; I'm saying that nothing much like your invocation of it is valid.
And, yes, when another person is misclassified as a jerk the ostensible principle (that one can only pursue someone already in a relationship if the partner is a jerk) isn't being followed; but the underlying nature of the ostensible principle is illustrated both by how most people don't include that exception until they have a felt need for an exception convenient to their present purpose, and by how readily they then are to classify people as jerks.
(It's possible for people to arrive at truth by invalid reasoning, and to develop and embrace a legitimate ethical principle by a process that will not itself withstand scrutiny. But the status of a proposition can never be better than unknown when the arguments given for it are all spurious.)
Your claim that I'm a relativist is very foolish. I'll get to that in a moment.
A fictional portrait remains a portrait. A fictional depiction remains a depiction. And it is at best misleading to insist that a purely fictional character simply is what its creator has made it. Authors are often surprised by what an audience makes of their characters, and by which characters are viewed as sympathetic and which are not. Authors who are especially insightful about how audiences will interpret things will sometimes frame a story one way, and then retell it framed a different way, without ever contradicting themselves yet impelling an audience to change its sympathies or to reconsider other patterns of inference. (Akuta Fumie has done at least a little bit of this in other work.) My point about sympathetic versus unsympathetic treatments was towards making a point about how the framing of a story affects the ethical judgments reached by many members of an audience.
No one here has claimed that, in the real world, right and wrong is simply a matter of how one looks at the situation. To point out that people do reach conclusions about ethics that are artefacts of the frame isn't at all to say that they should. (Likewise, for pointing out that the do reach conclusions about ethics that are artefacts of their aversion to competition.) I have objected to ethical judgments as artefacts of the frame, rather than claiming that it would be equally valid to reach different judgments by looking at the situation differently.
I did not assert that stories in which there were active pursuit were the most common of those in which a principal character were in love with someone already in a relationship with an unworthy partner; I merely said that they were common — in other words, they are not rare. (I wouldn't know what were the most common without a survey.)
A sneer at economists is a poor argument. And, if you truly expect that economists discount the social or relationships, then you need to become more familiar with economists before making pronouncements about them.
If your invocation of the Golden Rule were valid, then it would also apply to a case in which neither would-be suitor is in a relationship with the desired person; the absurd result would be that all would-be suitors would have to back off because none of them would want another to be a rival. And, no, I'm not saying that nothing like the Golden Rule itself is valid; I'm saying that nothing much like your invocation of it is valid.
And, yes, when another person is misclassified as a jerk the ostensible principle (that one can only pursue someone already in a relationship if the partner is a jerk) isn't being followed; but the underlying nature of the ostensible principle is illustrated both by how most people don't include that exception until they have a felt need for an exception convenient to their present purpose, and by how readily they then are to classify people as jerks.
(It's possible for people to arrive at truth by invalid reasoning, and to develop and embrace a legitimate ethical principle by a process that will not itself withstand scrutiny. But the status of a proposition can never be better than unknown when the arguments given for it are all spurious.)
Your claim that I'm a relativist is very foolish. I'll get to that in a moment.
A fictional portrait remains a portrait. A fictional depiction remains a depiction. And it is at best misleading to insist that a purely fictional character simply is what its creator has made it. Authors are often surprised by what an audience makes of their characters, and by which characters are viewed as sympathetic and which are not. Authors who are especially insightful about how audiences will interpret things will sometimes frame a story one way, and then retell it framed a different way, without ever contradicting themselves yet impelling an audience to change its sympathies or to reconsider other patterns of inference. (Akuta Fumie has done at least a little bit of this in other work.) My point about sympathetic versus unsympathetic treatments was towards making a point about how the framing of a story affects the ethical judgments reached by many members of an audience.
No one here has claimed that, in the real world, right and wrong is simply a matter of how one looks at the situation. To point out that people do reach conclusions about ethics that are artefacts of the frame isn't at all to say that they should. (Likewise, for pointing out that the do reach conclusions about ethics that are artefacts of their aversion to competition.) I have objected to ethical judgments as artefacts of the frame, rather than claiming that it would be equally valid to reach different judgments by looking at the situation differently.
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@Oeconomist As I said, we'll have to agree to disagree. You say they're not rare. I am convinced they are rare--even very rare.
As to economists--well, it's interesting. Yes, in the rarefied upper levels of the economics profession you can find almost any sensible point of view, you can find economists grappling with almost any real-world phenomenon, whether it's incomplete information or people's systematic deviations from economic "rationality", like being consistently risk-averse. You name it, somewhere there will be someone working on it. They still tell the rubes and the first years the same old shit, though, so all that sensible research doesn't matter much.
Apparently you're not a relativist. Good. All I can say is, your initial comments were pretty bad at conveying what you actually meant. Your initial stance seemed a whole lot less nuanced than what you're saying now.
As to economists--well, it's interesting. Yes, in the rarefied upper levels of the economics profession you can find almost any sensible point of view, you can find economists grappling with almost any real-world phenomenon, whether it's incomplete information or people's systematic deviations from economic "rationality", like being consistently risk-averse. You name it, somewhere there will be someone working on it. They still tell the rubes and the first years the same old shit, though, so all that sensible research doesn't matter much.
Apparently you're not a relativist. Good. All I can say is, your initial comments were pretty bad at conveying what you actually meant. Your initial stance seemed a whole lot less nuanced than what you're saying now.
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@Purplelibraryguy—
Stories of protagonists actively intruding are so far from rare that a moment in which one runs into a church and cries “Stop the wedding!” is considered trite.
Objecting that Econ 101 simplifies considerably is like objecting that Physics 101 does so. A large share of students still find it all too much, and there's not much case against economists or against physicists to be made from their not making the course-work still harder.
It wasn't that my initial comments were bad. You had a model of the world that didn't accept that I could mean what I said. No matter how good the transmitter, the receiver can foul the communication.
And your exploded Golden-Rule argument that Yui's behavior were unethical has been left without a replacement. You're really not arguing for anything more than a prerogative to adopt a tone of superiority.
Stories of protagonists actively intruding are so far from rare that a moment in which one runs into a church and cries “Stop the wedding!” is considered trite.
Objecting that Econ 101 simplifies considerably is like objecting that Physics 101 does so. A large share of students still find it all too much, and there's not much case against economists or against physicists to be made from their not making the course-work still harder.
It wasn't that my initial comments were bad. You had a model of the world that didn't accept that I could mean what I said. No matter how good the transmitter, the receiver can foul the communication.
And your exploded Golden-Rule argument that Yui's behavior were unethical has been left without a replacement. You're really not arguing for anything more than a prerogative to adopt a tone of superiority.
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I don't really place much value in economics(as it exists mostly to serve the wealthy), but being an economist doesn't negate the value of what someone says. Additionally, relativism itself isn't something I take issue with(though using it as an excuse for nihilism and thoughtlessness is). I can recognize that an action is not universally wrong without advocating for that action to be consequence-free(or even legal). I can recognize someone may view an event differently without discarding my own view. Neither of these seems like reasoned discussion that I tend to expect from Mr. Purple. =(
I've seen a decent amount of protagonists like those mentioned by the economist guy, but they are normally in stories/manga that I dislike/discard. Media seems to have a big problem with basic rules of consent. When stories shift perspective, they often portray some inference of consent. While this doesn't improve the situation for me, a number of readers will latch to this perceived inference. They use it to convince themselves of consent because they want to enjoy the story. Indeed, this can be troublesome because of the possible leakage of the idea of inferred consent into their own lives.
Seeing that people dislike the brother's behavior in this manga is heartening, to an extent. I wish some people would recognize how the pushy brother is making things difficult for the heroine rather than just sympathizing with the boyfriend. Sensitive seems to get it, though! =D She's told him her feelings, but he made clear his intention to persist aggressively. In my opinion, he should have accepted her feelings and tried to move on. At this rate, he is ignoring her(lack of) consent.
Wait a minute! I just wanted to write something short. How did this happen?
I've seen a decent amount of protagonists like those mentioned by the economist guy, but they are normally in stories/manga that I dislike/discard. Media seems to have a big problem with basic rules of consent. When stories shift perspective, they often portray some inference of consent. While this doesn't improve the situation for me, a number of readers will latch to this perceived inference. They use it to convince themselves of consent because they want to enjoy the story. Indeed, this can be troublesome because of the possible leakage of the idea of inferred consent into their own lives.
Seeing that people dislike the brother's behavior in this manga is heartening, to an extent. I wish some people would recognize how the pushy brother is making things difficult for the heroine rather than just sympathizing with the boyfriend. Sensitive seems to get it, though! =D She's told him her feelings, but he made clear his intention to persist aggressively. In my opinion, he should have accepted her feelings and tried to move on. At this rate, he is ignoring her(lack of) consent.
Wait a minute! I just wanted to write something short. How did this happen?
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@SoloSera—
It is worth noting again that Chitose has yet to say anything such as “Please stop” to Yui. Saying that she loves Kinosuke is not the same thing as saying that she does not want to hear entreaties from Yui. If someone wanted to argue that the story is implausible for not having Chitose ask Yui to cease, and then still more implausible for Kinosuke not raising that issue with Chitose, that someone would get no argument from me; but she hasn't, and one has to judge Yui's behavior in the given context, however unlikely that context may be.
It is worth noting again that Chitose has yet to say anything such as “Please stop” to Yui. Saying that she loves Kinosuke is not the same thing as saying that she does not want to hear entreaties from Yui. If someone wanted to argue that the story is implausible for not having Chitose ask Yui to cease, and then still more implausible for Kinosuke not raising that issue with Chitose, that someone would get no argument from me; but she hasn't, and one has to judge Yui's behavior in the given context, however unlikely that context may be.
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@Oeconomist Stories of protagonists running into a church and yelling "stop the wedding!" are precisely the result of said protagonists not actively pursuing the other person until that point. But in any case, some gimmicks manage to get considered trite without actually ever happening much. I've read a lot of stories and masses of manga, and really all I can think of is "The Graduate" for something much like that actually happening.
I don't think the rest of what you've said really would be productive for me to discuss. I could go on about economics forever, but I shouldn't--that sort of thing is frowned upon around here. None of the rest strikes me as actually relevant to what I was saying.
I don't think the rest of what you've said really would be productive for me to discuss. I could go on about economics forever, but I shouldn't--that sort of thing is frowned upon around here. None of the rest strikes me as actually relevant to what I was saying.
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@Purplelibraryguy—
Sometimes the pursuit that leads to an attempt to stop a wedding is active before the wedding and sometimes it only becomes active right before the wedding or during the wedding, but in all of those cases it is still active intrusion into a relationship. Examples that come immediately to my mind include Girl Shy (1924), Shrek (2001), and We Belong Together (2005). In the last example, the fellow left at the altar wasn't even shown to be a jerk. In the case of The Graduate, the actual interruption was after the those in the relationship had already been pronounced man and wife.
You're right that it wouldn't be productive for you to discuss anything more. In particular, it wouldn't be productive for you to return to the attempted defense of your prescriptive claim about behavior such as Yui's, because you haven't give the matter appropriate thought. But prescriptive claims were the central issue, and everything else has been at best secondary.
Sometimes the pursuit that leads to an attempt to stop a wedding is active before the wedding and sometimes it only becomes active right before the wedding or during the wedding, but in all of those cases it is still active intrusion into a relationship. Examples that come immediately to my mind include Girl Shy (1924), Shrek (2001), and We Belong Together (2005). In the last example, the fellow left at the altar wasn't even shown to be a jerk. In the case of The Graduate, the actual interruption was after the those in the relationship had already been pronounced man and wife.
You're right that it wouldn't be productive for you to discuss anything more. In particular, it wouldn't be productive for you to return to the attempted defense of your prescriptive claim about behavior such as Yui's, because you haven't give the matter appropriate thought. But prescriptive claims were the central issue, and everything else has been at best secondary.
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@Oeconomist Well now, that's very rude. Fine, fine, I wanted out of your little snarkfest but if you're going to be like that let me lay it out.
You are neglecting the social element in the sense that you keep talking as if there are only two people involved. I think I'll just define the genders of a reference case so I can talk a bit less clumsily: So, taking the case of a heterosexual couple including one boy and one girl, with another heterosexual guy who has fallen for the girl in this couple. All this could pretty much apply to whatever gender combinations you want, but we'll go with this since it's the pattern in this manga. If the guy horns in aggessively and successfully gets the girl, then that arguably doesn't do any net harm to the girl (on average--there is as much chance the new relationship will be better for her as that it will be worse). But it will certainly harm the guy who was in the relationship. If he was in love with the girl, he will be deeply unhappy and upset. You seem to assume that the new guy has no ethical reason to care about that, that he just doesn't owe the other guy any duty to behave decently towards him. But you wouldn't say that if he'd walked up and hit the guy with a two-by-four. Obviously, walking up and hitting the guy with a two-by-four would be a bad thing to do, and defending it on the basis that you have something to gain (his wallet, a girl's affection) clearly does not make it right. But busting up the guy's romance represents much more harm than hitting him with a two-by-four. You do try to camouflage the basic point that outsider guy is doing harm to boyfriend guy by talking about things like "competition", but they're not playing a game. Outsider guy is trying to gain something (the girl he likes) by inflicting harm on boyfriend guy. In terms of the guy, it's unprovoked aggression. Note that this does not hinge on the girl being in any sense the other guy's property. Rather, the two in a pair bond have built a relationship and the new guy horning in is trying to break it. This will do harm to both of them--in the case of the girl he will offer recompense in the form of a relationship with him, but he's not giving the guy anything, he's just screwing him over.
Further, although he has some ethical duty just to a fellow human being even if he doesn't really know the guy, the ethical breach is greater if he's doing it to a friend, greater still if it's a close or best friend, and of course about as bad is it can get if it's his little brother for whom he might be expected to feel familial love and to whom he owes a significant duty of care.
As I said, even though you denied it when pointed out, you yourself acknowledged that the golden rule is operative here. Just so we all know what page we're on, the Golden Rule goes like this: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Not so much a corollary as a restatement in negative terms, the obvious implication is don't do unto others what you wouldn't want others doing unto you. With me so far? OK. Now, you said
There is an additional way it's unethical. So far we've just talked about the results if he succeeds. But if the interloper fails, if he was persistent and aggressive in the process of failing there's a good chance he will put significant strain on the existing relationship, making both the guy and the girl he purports to love less happy, perhaps quite a bit less happy. There is even a significant chance he could break the relationship but still not get the girl (because she simply doesn't love him or because she thinks he's a dick based on his actions). Overall, while it's certainly true that it's unethical to pursue the girl if she says stop, it's still very clearly unethical even if she doesn't. People often do it anyway because the temptation is very strong, and what they hope to gain is very important.
Right. Now that that's established, let's talk about your initial assertion and my attempts to make sense of your subsequent elaborations and modifications of it. You said
Just for the record, although I would have thought we could just leave this be by now, I still clearly disagree with you about the frequency with which any main character in a romance goes aggressively after an attached person, with stuff like repeated protestations of love, aggressive initiation of both social and physical contact, and requests for the person to leave who they're currently with, as we see here from older brother. This kind of thing is very common from third wheel characters, but very uncommon from romantic leads. At least in manga, I dunno, maybe there's a lot of it in Harlequins, I don't read those. You think different, whatever, we're not going to convince each other.
It's not that there's nothing to your basic original point--readers are strongly influenced by who the central character is, by who arrives on the scene first and so on. In many plot scenarios who you root for is mainly determined by those factors. Just, not in this one; you picked a poor example. How the story is told is just one factor, although an important one; the actual events do still matter, and reframing can only do so much. I think you're a bit too cynical about people there.
Ah, but later on you modify things and bring in some new ideas. So first of all, although you think people shouldn't consider putting pressing and persistent moves on the girl with a boyfriend to be a dick move (unless the girl makes it clear she finds this undesirable, verbally and directly), you nonetheless seem to agree that people do think so, even if wrongly. And so you then say, quite validly, that in order for people, whether those doing the action or the audience to it, to feel comfortable with what they see as that unethical action, there needs to be some excuse, such as the significant other in the relationship being a bad person. Someone who believed in the reality of it being a bad thing in the first place might call it an "extenuating circumstance". OK, so you seem to agree that for the audience to be comfortable with that kind of behaviour, the story would need to have that kind of extenuating circumstance, ie you would have to, for instance, make what's currently the sympathetic male romantic lead into a nasty person who treats the female lead badly.
But this is inconsistent with your original claim. At this point, you're not talking about just "reframing" the story, you're talking about changing it significantly. Which leaves your claim amazingly trivial--your point becomes "the audience can be made to react to a story differently if you change it to a different story". Well, yeah, but so?
You are neglecting the social element in the sense that you keep talking as if there are only two people involved. I think I'll just define the genders of a reference case so I can talk a bit less clumsily: So, taking the case of a heterosexual couple including one boy and one girl, with another heterosexual guy who has fallen for the girl in this couple. All this could pretty much apply to whatever gender combinations you want, but we'll go with this since it's the pattern in this manga. If the guy horns in aggessively and successfully gets the girl, then that arguably doesn't do any net harm to the girl (on average--there is as much chance the new relationship will be better for her as that it will be worse). But it will certainly harm the guy who was in the relationship. If he was in love with the girl, he will be deeply unhappy and upset. You seem to assume that the new guy has no ethical reason to care about that, that he just doesn't owe the other guy any duty to behave decently towards him. But you wouldn't say that if he'd walked up and hit the guy with a two-by-four. Obviously, walking up and hitting the guy with a two-by-four would be a bad thing to do, and defending it on the basis that you have something to gain (his wallet, a girl's affection) clearly does not make it right. But busting up the guy's romance represents much more harm than hitting him with a two-by-four. You do try to camouflage the basic point that outsider guy is doing harm to boyfriend guy by talking about things like "competition", but they're not playing a game. Outsider guy is trying to gain something (the girl he likes) by inflicting harm on boyfriend guy. In terms of the guy, it's unprovoked aggression. Note that this does not hinge on the girl being in any sense the other guy's property. Rather, the two in a pair bond have built a relationship and the new guy horning in is trying to break it. This will do harm to both of them--in the case of the girl he will offer recompense in the form of a relationship with him, but he's not giving the guy anything, he's just screwing him over.
Further, although he has some ethical duty just to a fellow human being even if he doesn't really know the guy, the ethical breach is greater if he's doing it to a friend, greater still if it's a close or best friend, and of course about as bad is it can get if it's his little brother for whom he might be expected to feel familial love and to whom he owes a significant duty of care.
As I said, even though you denied it when pointed out, you yourself acknowledged that the golden rule is operative here. Just so we all know what page we're on, the Golden Rule goes like this: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Not so much a corollary as a restatement in negative terms, the obvious implication is don't do unto others what you wouldn't want others doing unto you. With me so far? OK. Now, you said
So. It's something even people who do it don't want done unto them. It's an ethical violation of the golden rule, as you pointed out yourself but then denied. How hard is this?
There is an additional way it's unethical. So far we've just talked about the results if he succeeds. But if the interloper fails, if he was persistent and aggressive in the process of failing there's a good chance he will put significant strain on the existing relationship, making both the guy and the girl he purports to love less happy, perhaps quite a bit less happy. There is even a significant chance he could break the relationship but still not get the girl (because she simply doesn't love him or because she thinks he's a dick based on his actions). Overall, while it's certainly true that it's unethical to pursue the girl if she says stop, it's still very clearly unethical even if she doesn't. People often do it anyway because the temptation is very strong, and what they hope to gain is very important.
Right. Now that that's established, let's talk about your initial assertion and my attempts to make sense of your subsequent elaborations and modifications of it. You said
Now, normally, if someone says "frame" the story, I, and I think most people, assume they mean telling it with different emphases, in this case probably changing the viewpoint character, but not introducing significantly different facts. After all, we're talking about framing "the story", not telling a different story. And I think in the case of this story you're basically wrong. I think it's pretty clear that in fact, if you simply told this story with the existing facts but with the older brother as the main character, showing him first and then introducing his younger brother and his younger brother's girlfriend onto the scene, giving some sympathetic attention to his emotional state--despite all that, if the existing facts are kept and the other characters get as much emotional attention as the older brother does in the existing story, I think most readers would be uncomfortable with what the older brother as main character was doing. Particularly since it's his little brother he's doing it to--a particularly rancid move, as I explained above. This last point is probably why I have never, in probably thousands of romance manga that I've read, ever seen a manga in which the main character is an older brother stealing his younger brother's girlfriend. So yeah, in the particular case you're just wrong--wouldn't work.
Just for the record, although I would have thought we could just leave this be by now, I still clearly disagree with you about the frequency with which any main character in a romance goes aggressively after an attached person, with stuff like repeated protestations of love, aggressive initiation of both social and physical contact, and requests for the person to leave who they're currently with, as we see here from older brother. This kind of thing is very common from third wheel characters, but very uncommon from romantic leads. At least in manga, I dunno, maybe there's a lot of it in Harlequins, I don't read those. You think different, whatever, we're not going to convince each other.
It's not that there's nothing to your basic original point--readers are strongly influenced by who the central character is, by who arrives on the scene first and so on. In many plot scenarios who you root for is mainly determined by those factors. Just, not in this one; you picked a poor example. How the story is told is just one factor, although an important one; the actual events do still matter, and reframing can only do so much. I think you're a bit too cynical about people there.
Ah, but later on you modify things and bring in some new ideas. So first of all, although you think people shouldn't consider putting pressing and persistent moves on the girl with a boyfriend to be a dick move (unless the girl makes it clear she finds this undesirable, verbally and directly), you nonetheless seem to agree that people do think so, even if wrongly. And so you then say, quite validly, that in order for people, whether those doing the action or the audience to it, to feel comfortable with what they see as that unethical action, there needs to be some excuse, such as the significant other in the relationship being a bad person. Someone who believed in the reality of it being a bad thing in the first place might call it an "extenuating circumstance". OK, so you seem to agree that for the audience to be comfortable with that kind of behaviour, the story would need to have that kind of extenuating circumstance, ie you would have to, for instance, make what's currently the sympathetic male romantic lead into a nasty person who treats the female lead badly.
But this is inconsistent with your original claim. At this point, you're not talking about just "reframing" the story, you're talking about changing it significantly. Which leaves your claim amazingly trivial--your point becomes "the audience can be made to react to a story differently if you change it to a different story". Well, yeah, but so?
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@Purplelibraryguy—
You're the one who introduced both snark and personal insult into the discussion.
And, no, I've never been writing as if there were only two people involved. I've been consistently writing as if there were two people each desiring a third person. (I've been thinking as if some person were desired by n people, with n greater than 1.)
Your most recent argument fails for exactly the same reason as did your original attempt to invoke a Golden Rule. Even without the existence of a prior relationship between one of the two fellow and the woman, the interests and feelings of whichever fellow does not get the woman are injured by the actions of the one who does. The claim that one must never act against the interest of another because one never likes having someone act against one's own interest would then require that neither fellow pursue the woman.
Although everyone has in interest in that which is his or her property, that doesn't mean that everyone has property in that in which they have an interest. I have property in myself, which is why your hitting me with a two-by-four would be an ethical breach. I do not have property in a woman simply because I have in interest in her. Even if we are dating, I don't have property in her.
I didn't deny that anything like the Golden Rule has application here; I denied that your attempted invocation were valid. And what is proposed to be the Golden Rule has different forms, such that the differences can be important.
While ethical principles should be universalizable; universalization is more challenging that most people, including you, realize. As I have already twice noted, absurd results follow from the proposition that we should never act against the interests of others because we don't like it when others act against our own interests.
A great deal of what is done to me that I don't like is none-the-less not unethical, and agreeing that I don't like it isn't the same thing as agreeing that it's unethical, because your version of the Golden Rule doesn't produce sound ethics. I don't like it when someone turns me down; that doesn't mean that ethically I have to date everyone who asks me out. I don't like it when someone competes with me for the attentions of a woman; that doesn't mean that I cannot ethically compete with anyone for the attentions of a woman.
And, again regardless of whether either is already in a relationship with the desired woman, having two fellows competing for the same woman can cause both to fail even though, had one of them not competed, the other might have succeeded. The possibility of that sad result doesn't mean that each must not compete for her.
It is only by not considering wider application that you imagine your ethical case to have been established. And it will only be by ad hoc formulation that you in particular would address those issues of wider application.
The relevant reframing of this story wouldn't simply make Yui the main character, but would begin with Yui's earliest interactions with Chitose, so that the audience were identifying with and hopeful about the two of them before Kinosuke were introduced. The principal dissatisfaction would then come from the hopelessness of Yui's situation, not from his ethics. The closest manga that I've seen to such a reframing is Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo, in which the main character is a girl who is increasingly assertive in expressing her desire for the wife of her brother, which wife the main character has loved since the two were children. And, indeed, a large share of the audience has been rooting for the main character. (The series would be commercially unsustainable were they not.) In more recent chapters, the husband has been painted as likely to be more of a jerk, but much of the audience had already been rooting for the main character.
No, my point about people making an exception for jerks isn't contrary to the issue of framing, because who is and is not considered to be a jerk is often an artefact of the frame. Reading comments to Blooming Sequence, I saw various members of the audience calling a character a “bitch” when there was no evidence to support such a claim, and later development of the story showed that she wasn't a jerk. But initial framing predisposed multiple readers to grab for the idea that she were a jerk, because there was a collision between her interests and those of the main character.
There are some stories in which framing effects are easy to produce; others in which they are difficult or impossible to produce. I've encountered some reframings that I regarded as act of genius. But, plainly, a claim about what happens when stories are reframed is not contradicted by finding a story that cannot be reframed.
You're the one who introduced both snark and personal insult into the discussion.
And, no, I've never been writing as if there were only two people involved. I've been consistently writing as if there were two people each desiring a third person. (I've been thinking as if some person were desired by n people, with n greater than 1.)
Your most recent argument fails for exactly the same reason as did your original attempt to invoke a Golden Rule. Even without the existence of a prior relationship between one of the two fellow and the woman, the interests and feelings of whichever fellow does not get the woman are injured by the actions of the one who does. The claim that one must never act against the interest of another because one never likes having someone act against one's own interest would then require that neither fellow pursue the woman.
Although everyone has in interest in that which is his or her property, that doesn't mean that everyone has property in that in which they have an interest. I have property in myself, which is why your hitting me with a two-by-four would be an ethical breach. I do not have property in a woman simply because I have in interest in her. Even if we are dating, I don't have property in her.
I didn't deny that anything like the Golden Rule has application here; I denied that your attempted invocation were valid. And what is proposed to be the Golden Rule has different forms, such that the differences can be important.
While ethical principles should be universalizable; universalization is more challenging that most people, including you, realize. As I have already twice noted, absurd results follow from the proposition that we should never act against the interests of others because we don't like it when others act against our own interests.
A great deal of what is done to me that I don't like is none-the-less not unethical, and agreeing that I don't like it isn't the same thing as agreeing that it's unethical, because your version of the Golden Rule doesn't produce sound ethics. I don't like it when someone turns me down; that doesn't mean that ethically I have to date everyone who asks me out. I don't like it when someone competes with me for the attentions of a woman; that doesn't mean that I cannot ethically compete with anyone for the attentions of a woman.
And, again regardless of whether either is already in a relationship with the desired woman, having two fellows competing for the same woman can cause both to fail even though, had one of them not competed, the other might have succeeded. The possibility of that sad result doesn't mean that each must not compete for her.
It is only by not considering wider application that you imagine your ethical case to have been established. And it will only be by ad hoc formulation that you in particular would address those issues of wider application.
The relevant reframing of this story wouldn't simply make Yui the main character, but would begin with Yui's earliest interactions with Chitose, so that the audience were identifying with and hopeful about the two of them before Kinosuke were introduced. The principal dissatisfaction would then come from the hopelessness of Yui's situation, not from his ethics. The closest manga that I've seen to such a reframing is Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo, in which the main character is a girl who is increasingly assertive in expressing her desire for the wife of her brother, which wife the main character has loved since the two were children. And, indeed, a large share of the audience has been rooting for the main character. (The series would be commercially unsustainable were they not.) In more recent chapters, the husband has been painted as likely to be more of a jerk, but much of the audience had already been rooting for the main character.
No, my point about people making an exception for jerks isn't contrary to the issue of framing, because who is and is not considered to be a jerk is often an artefact of the frame. Reading comments to Blooming Sequence, I saw various members of the audience calling a character a “bitch” when there was no evidence to support such a claim, and later development of the story showed that she wasn't a jerk. But initial framing predisposed multiple readers to grab for the idea that she were a jerk, because there was a collision between her interests and those of the main character.
There are some stories in which framing effects are easy to produce; others in which they are difficult or impossible to produce. I've encountered some reframings that I regarded as act of genius. But, plainly, a claim about what happens when stories are reframed is not contradicted by finding a story that cannot be reframed.
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@Oeconomist Took me a while to respond—got tempted to reread Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo since I was sure your take on it didn’t match my memory. But before that--
Come on now. The situation in which there is no relationship to break is not remotely comparable. Neither man can take away something the other does not have. Your comment that two people competing for the same (unattached) woman can cause both to fail is also pretty silly because in your alternate scenario where each refrains they will automatically both fail.
Your discussion of the nature of the Golden Rule is interesting, and you make some good points there. But I don't think they're really applicable to the "jerk move" thesis here. I think we can agree that it is usually wrong to take things from people, but it is not wrong to acquire a definitely unclaimed thing, even if someone else is also trying to acquire it. What you're claiming is that the guy in a relationship doesn't "have" anything that it is wrong to take from him because the woman isn't his property. No, he doesn't have the woman; she is not "his". That’s why normally nobody has any intuition that it’s wrong when someone decides on their own to leave a relationship. But he does have something; he has a share in a relationship. He has both put effort and emotion into it (as has she). Heh--as Hume might put it, he has mixed his labour with it.
(It’s not like it would be an awesome basis for anything if the woman was his property—to the extent that respect for property has any ethical rationale it comes down mostly to who got there first; if that’s not good enough to respect a relationship, there’s no reason it should be enough to respect property either)
Consider the case of someone who sets out to destroy a love relationship without seeking to enter a relationship with one of the partners. If they succeed, they will have injured both parties. This is an action that requires some really strong extenuating circumstances to excuse--typically, it has to be an intervention to end a seriously abusive relationship before we don't think of it as a vicious act. The action we're discussing is only different in damaging just one of the parties in the relationship.
Consider also the case of cheating. If a guy, rather than persuading a woman to leave a relationship, simply seduces a woman with a boyfriend, your account would seem to suggest there can be nothing ethically wrong with that either and that the boyfriend has no basis for complaint, since the woman isn’t his property. Or at least, if he does have a basis for complaint it would only be against the woman, for breaking some sort of commitment she might have made, but not against the guy. I find that a problem.
Your suggested reframing still wouldn't work worth a damn. When they were little the age difference was much more significant. I've seen that sort of age-gap-and-then-the-kid-grows-up stories; they're only not squicky if it's the younger one pursuing the older one. In fact, again, they're hardly ever done the other way. So, far from distracting from the screwing-over-your-little-brother thing, it would just make it worse.
As to Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo, I've been following it and the way you describe it is quite misleading; perhaps you’re misremembering. Technically I suppose every romance ever written has a character become “increasingly assertive in expressing their desire”--at the beginning they have not done so at all, and at some point surely they will express something somehow, which has to represent some sort of “increase” in assertiveness. But really, no, she isn’t assertive at all. Rather, it follows the pattern I pointed out—she is actually very passive through almost all the manga to date. Through the first 13 chapters the girl, Uta, makes no move whatsoever but spends her time agonizing about how she both has no chance and really it would be wrong to do anything. The woman she loves keeps insisting on getting closer as family, while Uta tends if anything to make moves to avoid getting too close.
Meanwhile, somewhere in there the relationship between the married couple deteriorates, the husband neglects her, and at a certain point you get a scene which very strongly suggests that he’s cheating—pretending to be on an extended work trip while actually being with a woman. Although it is carefully done so that some doubt remains—there could be some other explanation, perhaps, although it seems really unlikely. And further, Uta is not fully aware of this, probably. Nonetheless, the excuse, the extenuating circumstance, hits the readers pretty hard.
It is only after this, in chapter 14, that progress begins to happen—and even there it can hardly be considered as Uta being “assertive”. To the contrary, the young wife insists on going to hot springs together and then pushes hard to get Uta to talk about what’s been bothering her, giving her little way out; even then, Uta initially describes her love for someone she can’t have in general terms. Finally at chapter’s end she mutters Kaoru’s name; it’s an ambiguous confession.
In the next few chapters it’s clear this maybe-confession didn’t immediately lead anywhere; Kaoru pretended not to realize. Not only that, but Uta’s plans to move out so she can forget about the whole thing move into the foreground—so again, she is very far from pursuing Kaoru or trying to break up her marriage.
Finally in the latest chapter, again Kaoru insists they have a serious talk and pushes Uta into admitting that yes, she really meant she loves Kaoru. So now it’s in the open, but note that she hasn’t said “Go out with me” or anything like that, hasn’t even really considered the possibility it could happen, she’s just made an admission when pressured into it.
Overall, it has followed exactly the pattern I pointed out for romance manga where the main character loves someone who is attached: “passivity, punctuated by one or two inadvertent or nearly involuntary expressions of affection” and “They're often in contact a lot, but it's usually defined as just a piece of luck, not the MC's fault. In short, there's a bending over backwards to show the MC as not making the dick move, so they can be a good person and deserve the good things that come to them in the end.” It certainly bears no resemblance to how the older brother has been acting in this manga.
Come on now. The situation in which there is no relationship to break is not remotely comparable. Neither man can take away something the other does not have. Your comment that two people competing for the same (unattached) woman can cause both to fail is also pretty silly because in your alternate scenario where each refrains they will automatically both fail.
Your discussion of the nature of the Golden Rule is interesting, and you make some good points there. But I don't think they're really applicable to the "jerk move" thesis here. I think we can agree that it is usually wrong to take things from people, but it is not wrong to acquire a definitely unclaimed thing, even if someone else is also trying to acquire it. What you're claiming is that the guy in a relationship doesn't "have" anything that it is wrong to take from him because the woman isn't his property. No, he doesn't have the woman; she is not "his". That’s why normally nobody has any intuition that it’s wrong when someone decides on their own to leave a relationship. But he does have something; he has a share in a relationship. He has both put effort and emotion into it (as has she). Heh--as Hume might put it, he has mixed his labour with it.
(It’s not like it would be an awesome basis for anything if the woman was his property—to the extent that respect for property has any ethical rationale it comes down mostly to who got there first; if that’s not good enough to respect a relationship, there’s no reason it should be enough to respect property either)
Consider the case of someone who sets out to destroy a love relationship without seeking to enter a relationship with one of the partners. If they succeed, they will have injured both parties. This is an action that requires some really strong extenuating circumstances to excuse--typically, it has to be an intervention to end a seriously abusive relationship before we don't think of it as a vicious act. The action we're discussing is only different in damaging just one of the parties in the relationship.
Consider also the case of cheating. If a guy, rather than persuading a woman to leave a relationship, simply seduces a woman with a boyfriend, your account would seem to suggest there can be nothing ethically wrong with that either and that the boyfriend has no basis for complaint, since the woman isn’t his property. Or at least, if he does have a basis for complaint it would only be against the woman, for breaking some sort of commitment she might have made, but not against the guy. I find that a problem.
Your suggested reframing still wouldn't work worth a damn. When they were little the age difference was much more significant. I've seen that sort of age-gap-and-then-the-kid-grows-up stories; they're only not squicky if it's the younger one pursuing the older one. In fact, again, they're hardly ever done the other way. So, far from distracting from the screwing-over-your-little-brother thing, it would just make it worse.
As to Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo, I've been following it and the way you describe it is quite misleading; perhaps you’re misremembering. Technically I suppose every romance ever written has a character become “increasingly assertive in expressing their desire”--at the beginning they have not done so at all, and at some point surely they will express something somehow, which has to represent some sort of “increase” in assertiveness. But really, no, she isn’t assertive at all. Rather, it follows the pattern I pointed out—she is actually very passive through almost all the manga to date. Through the first 13 chapters the girl, Uta, makes no move whatsoever but spends her time agonizing about how she both has no chance and really it would be wrong to do anything. The woman she loves keeps insisting on getting closer as family, while Uta tends if anything to make moves to avoid getting too close.
Meanwhile, somewhere in there the relationship between the married couple deteriorates, the husband neglects her, and at a certain point you get a scene which very strongly suggests that he’s cheating—pretending to be on an extended work trip while actually being with a woman. Although it is carefully done so that some doubt remains—there could be some other explanation, perhaps, although it seems really unlikely. And further, Uta is not fully aware of this, probably. Nonetheless, the excuse, the extenuating circumstance, hits the readers pretty hard.
It is only after this, in chapter 14, that progress begins to happen—and even there it can hardly be considered as Uta being “assertive”. To the contrary, the young wife insists on going to hot springs together and then pushes hard to get Uta to talk about what’s been bothering her, giving her little way out; even then, Uta initially describes her love for someone she can’t have in general terms. Finally at chapter’s end she mutters Kaoru’s name; it’s an ambiguous confession.
In the next few chapters it’s clear this maybe-confession didn’t immediately lead anywhere; Kaoru pretended not to realize. Not only that, but Uta’s plans to move out so she can forget about the whole thing move into the foreground—so again, she is very far from pursuing Kaoru or trying to break up her marriage.
Finally in the latest chapter, again Kaoru insists they have a serious talk and pushes Uta into admitting that yes, she really meant she loves Kaoru. So now it’s in the open, but note that she hasn’t said “Go out with me” or anything like that, hasn’t even really considered the possibility it could happen, she’s just made an admission when pressured into it.
Overall, it has followed exactly the pattern I pointed out for romance manga where the main character loves someone who is attached: “passivity, punctuated by one or two inadvertent or nearly involuntary expressions of affection” and “They're often in contact a lot, but it's usually defined as just a piece of luck, not the MC's fault. In short, there's a bending over backwards to show the MC as not making the dick move, so they can be a good person and deserve the good things that come to them in the end.” It certainly bears no resemblance to how the older brother has been acting in this manga.
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@Purplelibraryguy—
Your original claim was that a man weren't allowed to attempt actively to attract a woman who were already in a relationship because one weren't allowed to do to others what one wouldn't want done to oneself. After I've repeatedly shown that absurd results followed from the ostensible principle that you were asserting, you claim that my argument must be wrong because, if correct, it would show absurd results follow from your claim; you are not merely begging the question, but trying to give your position priority over any logic.
You attempt to substitute an ad hoc revision of your original claim for that claim. You assert that, in the first noted case where your original claim produces an absurd outcome, neither man has anything.
However, each man does have something, and each man effectively loses that something in order to abide by the rule that you first presented. What each has is a perceived opportunity, and quite possibly each has a real opportunity. (More on that in a bit.)
Some inter-personal relationships entail property claims; others do not. But, outside of some extreme form of slavery, even in relationships in which one person has some property in another, the property is very limited.
All claims to property in something amount to claims about relationships with that thing, and to try to claim a property to a relationship with something without claiming some property in that thing is incoherent. (The practice of using the word “property” to refer to an object in which one has property causes some people to become confused on what it means to have property. There is no property other than right of use, and any right of use is a property.) I cannot possibly make a claim to a relationship with a woman without making a claim to the woman; I cannot claim property in a relationship with her without claiming some sort of property in her.
Setting aside your confusion of Hume with Locke, the earlier absurdity quickly returns with your labor-mixing claim. Both the chance that one fellow has to a relationship with a woman and the potential sort of the relationship that he might have with her will improve if he invests in his opportunity before the relationship is formed. Yet, if such mixing of labor with opportunity created a property claim, then any fellow who found out that someone else had earlier begun such investment would be obligated to step aside (despite the lack of a relationship and no matter what the woman might think about the monopsony), and the system of ethics falls into self-contradiction in the face of simultaneous investments. (Property would somehow only be possible when it didn't exist; impossible when it did.)
Locke's discussion of mixing one's labor with something concerned mixing what one owned with unowned resources. That's simply not applicable to women nor to other persons. When one comes to have property in relationship, it is by virtue of contract, in which property is transferred by agreement. To have an exclusive claim of some sort to some person, one must get that person to transfer property to oneself.
Indeed, when someone causes a relationship to come undone, we want a justification, and if that person isn't seeking a relationship with one of the other people, then we want a justification in terms of something else. But, more generally, we want anything serious to do with a serious relationship to have a serious justification; that includes formation of a serious relationship with someone who is not in a relationship and who is not sought by anyone else. Yui has a very serious reason for wanting a relationship with Chitose; so far, Kinosuke's only argument against Yui's actions has been the mistaken claim that Yui is not serious about Chitose.
And, no, what I've said doesn't mean that cheating is acceptable, nor that it is acceptable knowingly to abet someone in cheating. First, you have to recognize the nature of cheating. Something is or is not cheating based upon what amounts to a contract (creating a limited property by one or more parties in one or more of the other parties) amongst the people in a relationship. In some relationships, things such as flirtation are cheating; in others, having sex with strangers is not; what is or is not cheating is determined by an agreement. Someone who knowingly abets a cheater is like someone who provides a ride from the bank to someone whom she knows to have just robbed it. (That act is different from providing a ride to someone who won heavily at blackjack, though the casino might loathe the loss.)
Telling me that the suggested reframing would result in some issued of age that you or I found unpleasant doesn't refute my claim about framing. I find Gigi uncomfortable; it is a best-seller and has been made into a popular film at least twice. This site is loaded-up with pædophilic stories, framed in ways that psychologically allow many people to find them appealing.
Your objections to my characterization of Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo as “misleading” and your attempted characterizing of the story are illustrations of the significance of framing and of reframing. I didn't say that Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo were little more than Sekirara ni Kiss reframed to make Yui the main character. I said that it were “The closest manga that I've seen to such a reframing”. Indeed, the main character was very passive at the beginning and subsequently through much of the story, but she'd expressed her feelings to the other woman before the suggestion was introduced that her husband were an adulterer. When the wife shoves the main character in reaction to a confession (for which the wife in fact pressed), the main character declares “It finally… got through to you…” (underscore mine), exactly because the main character had been trying earlier to get through to the wife. And the reason that the wife shoved the main character away when she expressed herself in a manner that was psychologically impossible to ignore was because the implication about the sort of relationship that the main character desired was clear. (I've never once asked a woman “Please go out with me”, because “I'm in love with you” has carried the desire amongst its significations.) I have, by the way, seen at least one comment to Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo made by someone who, resistant to the frame, regards the main character as behaving unacceptably in expressing desire to someone already in a marriage. He didn't volunteer a justification for his ethical views, and when last I knew no one had asked. But he's in a minority because of the framing.
Your original claim was that a man weren't allowed to attempt actively to attract a woman who were already in a relationship because one weren't allowed to do to others what one wouldn't want done to oneself. After I've repeatedly shown that absurd results followed from the ostensible principle that you were asserting, you claim that my argument must be wrong because, if correct, it would show absurd results follow from your claim; you are not merely begging the question, but trying to give your position priority over any logic.
You attempt to substitute an ad hoc revision of your original claim for that claim. You assert that, in the first noted case where your original claim produces an absurd outcome, neither man has anything.
However, each man does have something, and each man effectively loses that something in order to abide by the rule that you first presented. What each has is a perceived opportunity, and quite possibly each has a real opportunity. (More on that in a bit.)
Some inter-personal relationships entail property claims; others do not. But, outside of some extreme form of slavery, even in relationships in which one person has some property in another, the property is very limited.
All claims to property in something amount to claims about relationships with that thing, and to try to claim a property to a relationship with something without claiming some property in that thing is incoherent. (The practice of using the word “property” to refer to an object in which one has property causes some people to become confused on what it means to have property. There is no property other than right of use, and any right of use is a property.) I cannot possibly make a claim to a relationship with a woman without making a claim to the woman; I cannot claim property in a relationship with her without claiming some sort of property in her.
Setting aside your confusion of Hume with Locke, the earlier absurdity quickly returns with your labor-mixing claim. Both the chance that one fellow has to a relationship with a woman and the potential sort of the relationship that he might have with her will improve if he invests in his opportunity before the relationship is formed. Yet, if such mixing of labor with opportunity created a property claim, then any fellow who found out that someone else had earlier begun such investment would be obligated to step aside (despite the lack of a relationship and no matter what the woman might think about the monopsony), and the system of ethics falls into self-contradiction in the face of simultaneous investments. (Property would somehow only be possible when it didn't exist; impossible when it did.)
Locke's discussion of mixing one's labor with something concerned mixing what one owned with unowned resources. That's simply not applicable to women nor to other persons. When one comes to have property in relationship, it is by virtue of contract, in which property is transferred by agreement. To have an exclusive claim of some sort to some person, one must get that person to transfer property to oneself.
Indeed, when someone causes a relationship to come undone, we want a justification, and if that person isn't seeking a relationship with one of the other people, then we want a justification in terms of something else. But, more generally, we want anything serious to do with a serious relationship to have a serious justification; that includes formation of a serious relationship with someone who is not in a relationship and who is not sought by anyone else. Yui has a very serious reason for wanting a relationship with Chitose; so far, Kinosuke's only argument against Yui's actions has been the mistaken claim that Yui is not serious about Chitose.
And, no, what I've said doesn't mean that cheating is acceptable, nor that it is acceptable knowingly to abet someone in cheating. First, you have to recognize the nature of cheating. Something is or is not cheating based upon what amounts to a contract (creating a limited property by one or more parties in one or more of the other parties) amongst the people in a relationship. In some relationships, things such as flirtation are cheating; in others, having sex with strangers is not; what is or is not cheating is determined by an agreement. Someone who knowingly abets a cheater is like someone who provides a ride from the bank to someone whom she knows to have just robbed it. (That act is different from providing a ride to someone who won heavily at blackjack, though the casino might loathe the loss.)
Telling me that the suggested reframing would result in some issued of age that you or I found unpleasant doesn't refute my claim about framing. I find Gigi uncomfortable; it is a best-seller and has been made into a popular film at least twice. This site is loaded-up with pædophilic stories, framed in ways that psychologically allow many people to find them appealing.
Your objections to my characterization of Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo as “misleading” and your attempted characterizing of the story are illustrations of the significance of framing and of reframing. I didn't say that Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo were little more than Sekirara ni Kiss reframed to make Yui the main character. I said that it were “The closest manga that I've seen to such a reframing”. Indeed, the main character was very passive at the beginning and subsequently through much of the story, but she'd expressed her feelings to the other woman before the suggestion was introduced that her husband were an adulterer. When the wife shoves the main character in reaction to a confession (for which the wife in fact pressed), the main character declares “It finally… got through to you…” (underscore mine), exactly because the main character had been trying earlier to get through to the wife. And the reason that the wife shoved the main character away when she expressed herself in a manner that was psychologically impossible to ignore was because the implication about the sort of relationship that the main character desired was clear. (I've never once asked a woman “Please go out with me”, because “I'm in love with you” has carried the desire amongst its significations.) I have, by the way, seen at least one comment to Tatoe Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo made by someone who, resistant to the frame, regards the main character as behaving unacceptably in expressing desire to someone already in a marriage. He didn't volunteer a justification for his ethical views, and when last I knew no one had asked. But he's in a minority because of the framing.
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