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Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

not really.

'boys will be boys' doesn't assert that 'boys' get away with whatever they want because they are neuro-divergent, it asserts that gender allows for additional privilege.

>Just because somebody is different doesn't mean they can be a creep

For the sake of argument : what if that person has neurological quirks which disallow 'non-creep' , to use your parlance, behavior?

To take the example even further , it's illegal with fine attached to say curse words on certain beaches in the United States. Is it reasonable to fine an individual with Tourette Syndrome when they scream expletives on such a beach?

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Take it to the extreme - murder is illegal; if you kill someone because you're a bad bad person, we jail you. If you kill someone because you're "insane"...we still remove you from society, but you just get treatment instead of punishment. We still consider the act of killing someone unacceptable.

If swearing at the beach is unacceptable, full stop, then it's unacceptable for a person with or without TS. (Personally, that sounds like a dumb law, but what do I know)

I think there is a clear distinction. People have a right to live above insane persons freedom. TS people have a right to freedom above people's inconvenience to hear curse words. Law balances these kind of things all the time, that's why we don't slave people when they own money anymore, to put one of many examples.

Weirdly I think taking it to the extreme made your point somewhat worse. Something like theft versus kleptomania is just a punishment versus treatment scenario, but I would definitely perceive someone who commits an unprovoked murder to inherently require psychological treatment, even if they don't meet the requirements of an insanity defence.

But I do agree with the idea that letting someone off the hook for all consequences on account of a mental illness isn't viable. That makes things a lot harder for neurodivergent individuals, but that's why we should have extensive support programs and provide resources to help them cope with the expectations of general society.

It's a tricky problem, because to meaningfully distinguish between someone who is mentally incapable of following a law and someone who is capable of doing so but systematically elects not to, you are functionally deciding which humans do and do not have free will on an individual basis. I think most people would believe that either all humans have free will, or no humans have free will, not somewhere in between, so this is a scenario that is uncomfortable to pretty much everyone.

They're removed from society to protect society from them. However, depriving someone of their liberty is a pretty extreme step to take, and not one which should be taken lightly.

A TS individual for instance may be annoying, however they aren't causing actual physical harm to other people, in the same sense that a murderer might be.

"Boys will be boys" was usually said when boys were doing something asinine. I've never heard someone frame it the way you did.

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