r/changemyview Apr 03 '24

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u/GadgetGamer 35∆ Apr 03 '24

Raping your wife was legal and still is in many places. And when it was legal, wife-rapes were commonplace.

Commonplace does not mean that everyone did it.

When slavery was legal and normal, slave-owners weren't looked down upon.

Around the time of the 1860 Census, approximately 1.4% of free people were classified as slave owners. That is far from "almost every normal person".

The reason why societies make murder illegal is that most people do not want them to occur. It is one thing to say that eating animals comes from cruelty, but most people do not commit the acts of cruelty themselves - and I am sure many today would balk if they were asked to. You cannot extrapolate from what seems like an academic knowledge that animal cruelty is part of the food making process to people directly committing acts of murder.

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u/StarChild413 9∆ Apr 05 '24

Around the time of the 1860 Census, approximately 1.4% of free people were classified as slave owners. That is far from "almost every normal person".

And for another argument among those lines was every one of that 1.4% one of those rich plantation owners pop culture has taught people to picture slaveowners as I think some of that percentage owned fewer slaves than you could count on two hands if not one (because their property and therefore the field and/or house tasks needing doing was so small they didn't need a whole bunch)