“ Your instinct in reading [The Vice Guide To Everything] may be to harp on the crass gender-normativity of that last sentence [under the ‘Tough Guys’ heading] — suppress it for a moment and consider the one before it, which uses a Hammurabi-ish syllogism to draw what is actually well-defined ethical boundary. I happen to agree with the equivalencies the author sets forth, but even if you don’t, it’s framed in the terms of community ethics — you, the potential nose-breaker, are most exemplary in your behavior when your id-fueled morals are secondary to the communal concerns as they are codified; which is a good way to think about these things (instead, say, of lashing out with some jingoistically indulgent “moral” iddy response).
— Alexander Böhn on Quora
