Excluding elements contained within another element with CSS or XPath

Here's a chunk of XML:

<xml>
   <section>
     <element>good</element>
     <section class="ignored">
       <element>bad</element>
     </section>
   </section>
 </xml>
 

It's easy enough to select all elements, or all elements inside a section.ignored:

@doc.css('element').text
  => "goodbad" 
 @doc.css('section.ignored element').text
  => "bad" 
 

But how do I select all elements that are not inside section.ignored? This doesn't work:

@doc.css('section:not(.ignored) element').text
  => "goodbad" 
 

...because that actually means "all elements that are contained in any section that is not ignored", including the top-level section that wraps everything else!

Additional twist: unlike the simplified sample above, the real XML I have to deal with is nested to arbitrary depth, including sections within the ignored section(s).

And yes, I could just substract the bad array from the full array in Ruby and call it a day, but I'd prefer a pure CSS solution (or, if you must, XPath) if possible.

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