this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
490 points (98.2% liked)
Microblog Memes
10944 readers
2232 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Absolutely no NSFL content.
- Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Alright. Let's do this. I'll bite.
So first thing's first, this article is clearly click bait and no, the Chinese government isn't going to start encouraging or even allowing women to simply carry flamethrowers and open fire on any threat like it's nothing. So let's start by establishing that we are arguing hypotheticals here over a clearly click bait article.
However, the point of self defence isn't to provide an equivalent punishment to the crime committed, but to allow someone to use violence preemptively against an aggressor to stay safe. You don't practice self defense after you get raped, but hopefully before you do.
This opens the door to many difficult and vague situations where it's hard to tell whether an act was justified or not, but that doesn't mean that burning someone is necessarily in any way less justifiable than shooting them or stabbing them etc.
So in this hypothetical scenario, the question isn't whether burning someone is equivalent to being sexually harassed, because that's not the type of situation that self defence is meant to be used in. It's not equivalent but rather preemptive.
So we are now asking the question: are women entitled to self defence against sexual harassment? And I'd guess the answer probably lies in the middle of "yes every time" and "never" because no one should get raped for lack of self defence avenues, but also I don't think someone should get burnt to death for cat calling someone else, no matter how inappropriate I may think it is.
However, if a woman (honestly, any SA victim, not just women) gets touched inappropriately and feels threatened, I think it's fair to allow her to preemptively attack. So I'd say you can't argue self defence without the presence of a physical threat. And even then, self defence obviously needs to be clearly outlined to minimise the likelihood of unjustified attacks.
That being said, this is both obviously clickbait and also a terrible idea simply because of how much uncontrolled collateral damage a flamethrower can do to others, structures and even first responders. So yeah, it's a dumb idea. But I don't think that's because sexual assault is not a basis for self defence, rather because flamethrowers are extraordinarily unsafe weapons for everyone involved.
Great response. I agree.