People are not property, or are they?

A person cannot own another person, but they can control another person through processes of coercion or manipulation. In every situation, your choice to participate is based on a negotiation in the form of an offer that meets your wish, a manipulation that meets some need, or in some cases a force you just cannot resist. I would say that attending your workplace, not a voluntary act, fulfils the former two of these criteria. You are both, compelled to be there because there is the offer of remuneration in play, and because you have bills to pay. Our codified laws mean that this ownership, the modern type of slavery, wage slavery, is just a more subtly represented flavour of a force that has ever existed. Where the circumstances you find yourself born into dictate how you must participate in other people’s wishes. I may be self traded, from one ownership to another, doing this by changing jobs, but I am in some way, in some service, an asset of another person, one that they control.

There are people in this world that will strive to own other people in the labour sense, there are people that will act like they own their family members, there are even people who are okay with slavery still. If you witnessed a person smashing up their own possessions you might think them unhinged, but what of the person that beats the wife/husband or assaults their own children? To do so in the first place indicates the presence of a belief that he/she has the right to do so? In the words “my family“, “my husband“, “my wife” the most important word is MY, it is a possessive description, it says that this is not just a person who has chosen to be in union with me, it is someone that has chosen to make that union recognisable to others in a legal ownership sense. It infers rights and expectations upon me and upon them to do this, but those objects may be misunderstood as being that she/he is compelled to do as I direct or act as I prescribe, as it once was understood. I would argue that no person who recognises the right to freedom in others would gain such a perspective from joining this type of union in modernity, but that doesn’t stop people from thinking that it is something they can expect. I actually knew a guy who admitted that his wife “needed a little clip now and again to keep her in line”. What he was saying was that he corrected her behaviour so that she would express his will, rather than her own, and that is the idea of ownership.

I got thinking about this subject because of a news story about a French couple, where he was alleged to have drugged his wife and was encouraging other men to sleep with her while she was unconscious. Now I do not know all the facts, just what I hear on the news, but it is as fascinating as it is abhorrent. What I mean by that is, the thinking that drove all the people who participated, the husband and the visiting rapists. That is what they are (if convicted), make no mistake and fall into no error in logical justification, there are none to be grasped at, each one of the participants is an alleged rapist. To have sexual relations with any person who has not indicated beforehand that they wished to participate is unambiguously a rape, it is the very definition. And you cannot gain permission from a third party to have sex with a second party, because that permission is not theirs to give. We are back in the realm of ownership of people again.

I contend that people do not believe of themselves that they act badly, what I mean is that for whatever act that occurs at the volition of any person, that person has, after or before the fact, a mental mechanism that allows them to arrive at the conclusion that their actions were either a necessity of the time, could not reasonably be avoided, or were okay because it was them acting. To them, the situation warranted their behaviour, the outcome justified the means, the happening was inevitable. If you watch enough shows where they interview criminals, and we all love Louis Theroux, you see murderer after murderer making their case, desiring to be understood and sympathised with. One might even come to the conclusion, if one was weak minded, that they are the actual victim of the crime they were convicted of. We see the same perspective in concern of political actors, where they have convinced themselves, and are trying to convince you also, that they had to bomb that village or move those people on from their land. It seems possible in 2025 that there are people who, with a little bit of fancy rhetoric, can justify just about any evil.

Our nefarious French fellow, he has done wrong (I’m going to continue to caveat this piece with the word “allegedly”, this is because I am not a criminal lawyer nor an investigative journalist, I do not have all the facts, bear that in mind throughout), but let’s not examine the details of that, let’s just accept that it is so. What I wished to think about was what lead him to believe that he could consent to sexual relations on behalf of someone else, that he had that right over a woman who had trusted him? Did his jollies dictate that they could not arrive without a violation of this contract, or was he fully aware of the wrong, but only considered it would be a wrong if it were discovered? I’ve already discussed the men who visited, they are rapists by any measure, but did they know that of themselves at the time, would they have described themselves in those terms, and would that have made a difference? I say yes, they should have known better, we could reasonably expect that, and they were not in any way hoodwinked into doing what they did. What they all share though is that they recognised, probably because they wanted to, and falsely, the French husband’s okay as an okay. He made an offer and they took it, as if she was his possession to offer. I suspect that this is again an affect of power, indicating, as I always seem to, that enablement is a corrupting force that either promotes and creates nefarious behaviour where it was previously undiscovered, or lets it out to play where it was previously restrained. Nobody can be truly known until they are given the power to play out their will, then we will see the darkness in them revealed. I know if I could have anything in the world, one wish, it would be to be unconstrained from the will of others in any way, not to become powerful, just to get the boot of power from my neck.

Power exerted over people is stimulating, not just in a sexual sense, it enables certain feelings of self worth for the person holding dominion. This elation is a fleeting falsehood though if it is sexual, and must be repeated over and again, like a pornography habit. If it is a non fleeting falsehood then it is likely a money based power, yet remains a falsehood because when the money stops the power stops also. If it is the better argument then it is true lasting power because it is unarguable, and true even in the absence of the interlocutor. Note: Contrary to popular, or media, belief, pornography is not a gateway to sexual violence, if it were we would be swimming in beasts because most males have a tendency to absorb this material regularly without any manifest issue. I think as long as it is remembered that a performance is being viewed there will be no more problem than watching a TV soap, but that’s just what I think. For serial killers there is no stopping point, there is no getting bored of it, they get caught or they become incapable of continuing, I think I am correct in saying that. The payload of pleasure wears off and must be replenished by new or repeated endeavours.

The fetish to control others, or to be one of the others, is understandable, each one of us wants to see our desires made real, that is what it is to have desires. People who are interested in freedom are restrained by an inner mechanism we tend to call a conscience, whether that mental object is a product of evolution, or inherent in human instinct, is debatable. We built modern societies and civilisations upon ideas of freedom, informed consent, and willing participation, these are often in contradiction to our personal desires. We live as if we have a free will (we may not be free, but we act with the practical postulate that we are), and we realise that for us to be free we must recognise that same right to be free in others, or they would not recognise it in us, thus we could not be free. In short, a society is a functioning model of agreed constraints.

The instinct for totalitarian rule is only felt by those that think they could be, or benefit from closeness to, the dictator. So power enabled is a structure where dominion over persons is recognised by those persons who are oppressed by it, only in this way is power actually expressed, because if it is not recognised, and it does not make most people act some way, then it is not power at all. In a modern society, post-religion, the convincing of people that they become powerful by giving up their power to an ultimate power is an impressive and effective con trick we refer to as propaganda or marketing.

In the case of the French guy, his wife had not been aware of his acts, therefore it is not a power that is recognised other than by those that participated. It would not have empowered him if he could not have had people willing to do the deed, it is them that create his power. Did the participants stop to question if this woman was willing, did they recognise her right to be consulted, or were they just lead by their desire for a power granted to them by a person they then gave power back to by being involved?

Would you take someone’s word for it that it is okay to have sex with a person who is not conscious? We would have to be the most naive of persons to think that they were so naive. I say lock them up.

Paul S Wilson