Take some fucking responsibility!

[FatAndFaithless]

I honestly have no idea where you're going with this, Thump.  I also don't see why my position is so hard to understand.  I'm focusing on punishment because that is what the courts sentence a criminal for, in our current justice system; they are enforceable penalties for committing a crime.  I've explicitly stated multiple times that this sentencing of punishment should NOT be emotional, as best as we can make it anyway.  I've also literally agreed that if I experienced something like this personally, that I would be extremely emotional, and would very likely very much want the people who did that to me to be sentenced to death.  But hey, as I said, we don't make laws and sentencing based on the emotional response of the victims, because that's a can of worms on a slippery slope.

Is forcing someone to modify their body okay if it's not punishment? In some circumstances, yes, like mandatory vaccinations.  

I've ALSO said multiple times in this thread that I don't believe that prisons should be about punishment, and that they should be about rehabilitation.  WHICH IS WHY I'M AGAIN CASTRATION AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE FIRST PLACE.  You literally just asked me "what good do you think is served to society by punishing criminals as opposed to rehabilitating them?"  I've been saying that exact same freaking thing.  That's why I'm against these punishments.

It's a complicated issue, but I've clearly and explicitly said things that have already answered your objections, and it seems like you're implying that I am advocating for things which I am very obviously against.

I'm sorry to have implied, inadvertently, a position to you. I'm asking questions because, as I said above,  I have mixed feelings on this and think that both sides have both good and bad points.

Believe me -- I am not reading your posts in an antagonistic frame of mind, and if I'm coming across that way, you have my apologies.

I struggle with my own emotions regarding issues like this, for my own personal reasons.

I think that if chemical castration is reversible, it might be acceptable, but at the same time part of me recoils at the prospect of the government extirpating a part of a person's being -- their sexuality.

I get that it's complicated, I just try my best to be as clear as I can.


But this thing you said..

 but at the same time part of me recoils at the prospect of the government extirpating a part of a person's being -- their sexuality.

Doesn't that sound cruel and unusual to you?  Hell, holding people in solitary confinement without any light for 23 hours a day in a closet-sized box is reversible, and I still think solitary confinement is cruel and unusual. The 'reversible-ness' of the punishment doesn't automatically make it not cruel or not unusual, in my mind.