I followed up my 5 Legal Rights Women Have and Men Don’t post with another one addressing a few ways that society actively discriminates against men. That first article has over 70K shares, and the second one is closing in on 5K shares in 2 days. This seems to be a conversation people want to have.
Gender really does not tell you anything meaningful at all about what forms of oppression or discrimination any given individual is likely to face. A homeless male war vet up on a felony charge of assault is both legally and socially at a huge disadvantage over someone like me. To simply point to his gender as if that confers an advantage is not only deeply inadequate, it’s worryingly reminiscent of fascism.
Interestingly enough, commenters rarely have any salient points to make, other than typical patriarchy blah blah toxic masculinity blah blah bullshit. The personal attacks are getting rather vitriolic. I find it amusing more than anything else. And wow, some commenters really hate men!
Enjoy!
http://thoughtcatalog.com/janet-bloomfield/2014/08/5-ways-society-discriminates-against-men/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/janet-bloomfield/2014/08/5-ways-society-discriminates-against-men/
judgybitch 
Wow! I hadn’t been aware about the longer prison sentences — but I have heard of a sort of stereotype that women who commit serious crimes are often following the instructions of a man. For example, I haven’t researched this but I’ve heard that Charles Manson didn’t physically commit any murders — or only physically committed a few. Virtually all of the actual killing was done by women who were infatuated with him. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine anyone holding a man less responsible for a murder because he’d been “brainwashed” by a woman. If Charles Manson had been a female, maybe he wouldn’t have gone to jail at all.
I guess there’s just this bizarre notion that men are “predatory” and naturally aggressive, so people see crime as an uncontrolled expression of the male nature, while people see women as naturally gentle and non-aggressive, so if a woman does horrible things, there must be a man behind it.
About the more dangerous jobs, I’m seriously in favor of mechanizing all of those jobs that can be mechanized. I don’t want my husband doing them, I don’t want to do them, and I sure as hell don’t want my daughters doing them, or my sons if I had sons. I’ve heard that the main reason so many jobs that could be mechanized aren’t, is NOT because it would be too expensive — it’s actually less expensive to build, program, and maintain robots than to have human employees — but the problem is that we’re stuck in an income-based economy where people need jobs to buy things, and if there’s too much unemployment, you can’t sell your products and your company goes out of business. So if you mechanize too much, you’ll initially have savings but sales will drop with there not being enough working people to buy your products.
So it seems to me like it’s time for a major economic overhaul. It’s silly that there are still people risking their lives and dying to do work that a robot could do, just because we’re operating under a defunct economic system where we have to keep periodically printing out new money and raising our debt limit to avoid going bankrupt.
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On the predatory bit… If you look back to 1910ish, feminists of the time were actually pushing hard for women to get lesser sentences than men (they also pushed the idea that women shouldn’t have to work; they celebrated the victory of 90% of women being unemployed) and were successful. I’d have to dig around again but there is a book from 1911 or 1912 about this very subject; women were held equally accountable for crimes prior to this (unless they were wealthy of course..)
Also yes, Charles Manson didn’t physically kill anyone. It was the men and women of his “family” that did the deed.
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Off topic
Myriam González, Spanish woman, in her 40s, very attractive, lawyer, Catholic, conservative, wife of the leader of the British Liberal Party, and vice-president, Nick Clegg and.. feminist.
The point is she says sensible things on women and men:
“If we, woman, we don´t have children, everybody things we are frustrated; if we do and we are stay home moms… we are lazy; if we have part time jobs…we are bad mothers and bad workers; If we read female magazines… we are frivolous; if we read science magazines everybody thinks we are freakies…”.
It sounds to me pretty much like all the female shaming language on men.
And she says too: “Men who help women to raise the children have more “cojones” (balls) than men who don´t”.
Probably this lady is quite close to a fair and honest concept of equality. Probably she is the right kind of feminist.
If would be British I would vote Labour but I could make an exception in case Mr. clegg had serious possibilities of reaching Downing Street and Mrs. González as First Lady.
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I am careful where I comment. It does matter if you can put the right stuff in them. Links can help. Here’s an example of feminism going off the rails.
http://elusivewapiti.blogspot.com/2014/08/womens-spaces-for-women-mens-spaces-for.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheElusiveWapiti+%28The+Elusive+Wapiti%29
Elsewhwere, one mother sai that if she were confronted in this manner, she would “Go Medieval”.
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Wow, they sure love their sarcasm over at Thought Catalog…
I think I like it here better 🙂
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Just one remark: “liberal” in UK is not “moderate lefitie” like in US. Is more like “libertarian”, Ron Paul style.
I guess you know, but just in case.
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Cannot agree more.
In my country we have cooking clubs just for men. And we have religious fraternities just for men. Since ages.
Now, some women want to get into that male spaces. Why the hell they don´t make their own sororities?
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They still are–there are feminists in England who don’t think women should be sent to prison at all.
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You’ll also find there are women who manipulate men to commit serious crimes for them. eg Pamela Smart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Smart http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/when+lover+persuaded+kill+husband+moved+security+prison/10025311/story.html
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http://www.standard.co.uk/news/womens-prisons-should-all-close-within-a-decade-7240659.html
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Why da fuck I cannot decorate the area of my workplace with pics of babes from “Penthouse” magazine like men we used to do back in the 70s, before the female invassion of male working spaces?
Why da fuck I cannot hang a holy crucifix (Catholic, very very gore, not that empy boring Protestant crosses) in the wall of my workplace? I cannot cuz is politically uncorrect since all the secular paranoia.
Why feminsits tend to be atheist? I know they are not. They believe in God but “they shake” (James 2:18). They are Stan´s servants.
Hate all this bloody NWO conspiracy!!!
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Good point!
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There are also partners in crime that often get lesser sentences by claiming the man “made them” do it.
Karla Holmolka is one that comes to mind (albeit a bigger reason she got a lesser sentence was because they badly needed her testimony..)
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It’s interesting watching the mental health of a man slowly erode over time. Horrifying, yes, but also interesting.
Seriously, dude, seek help.
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I’m just glad there’s no-one around here that could be seen as some kind of stereotypical conservative religious right-wing reactionary sexist racist conspiracy theorist…
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Sadly, I don’t think he will… So…
Popcorn?
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Hehe yeah, really.
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I hope you die slowly and alone.
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https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/status/504100450434838528
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One of my activisms is judicial and criminal justice reform, and one of the most annoying things I have to bite my tongue about is the presumably feminist membets of the group who insist that the only thing we need to focus on is how the U.S. has the highest incarceration of women in the world. When coupled with the people of color wanting to focus on the real disproportionate rate of their incarceration, I start wondering if anyone is involved in that movement because they understand how useless incarceration is.
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might be a bit difficult, seeing as she’s married with 2 kids
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What do you mean useless? It simultaneously traumatises AND hardens criminals, whilst letting those who get away with shit demonise people they never met…
Sometimes I worry about you…
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LOL!
I don´t spend money in schrinks. That is very American. And Argentinian too.
Here in the Deep South (of Europe) we go to the bartender, the priest in confessionary box or to the brothel.
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Jacinta, why you hate JudgyBitch?
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I have to correct myself: “childless” (actually “childfree”) shaming, for both female and male, is a female thing.
Exactly the same about slut shaming.
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Stan? Would that be Stan Jefferson? I knew him in High School – he was a cool dude. Jeez he must get around!
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Prolly because she’s judgy, and a bitch. Some questions just answer themselves, don’t they?
As for Jacinta, a very fine example of the (usually justified) assumption of complete impunity that females operate on. Veiled death threats over the internet – classy. And ironically, therefore a very fine example of *exactly what JB’s post is about*.
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If you disagree with JB, why not give an intelligent argument? I happen to agree with her about the ways that society discriminates against men, so I don’t have any argument to offer about this post, but when I have disagreed with something she’s said, I haven’t hesitated to say so. And I happen to believe that the world would be a very boring and empty place if everyone who disagreed with me was dead.
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Trust me, men know how bad the court system can be to them. My own personal story.
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That story is horrific, Grant. 😦
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Satan, sorry.
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You are going to like this.
Some days ago, in Málaga, south of Spain, after an outdoors macro party, a 20 y-o girl had a gangbang with several boys. Completely consensual from all the parts. The gang bang was taped by one of the boys.
A few hours later she reported “rape” to the police. All the boys were arrested.
The tape was seen by the judge (female) and she freed the boys. Was very clear everything was consensual.
Now they have sued the girl.
Ok, so now, after all the evidence was not rape at all, the feminazi lobby still shouting “RAPE!!!”. Even an historic feminazi leader in this country -Cristina Almeida- a fat, ugly old bitch,, has said: “Ok, was not rape but was a disgusting act promoted by the men to degrade the girl”. According to the video was clearly the girl´s initiative.
I know this things are pretty common in US, I do not know in Australia, but it is something new here, so still a shock in society.
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We all die alone, Jacinta. You too.
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Black people have it much worse there than women. Its not even close.
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Typical!
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The funny part is that since Janet is not a feminist, she won’t die alone. She’ll die surrounded by family that loves her, with memories of years with a loving husband and the happiness they shared together.
The “die alone” think is more a feminist trope, isn’t it? Die alone with only your “kick ass career” to ease your loneliness?
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Having found what I think was an article about this case, I’m glad the men weren’t prosecuted, because it doesn’t sound like there was sufficient evidence for anyone to be sure that the sex wasn’t consensual. At the same time, based on what I’ve read, I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to convict the woman of a false accusation, either.
The minute or so of video footage that was available simply showed that there was no sign of violence or a struggle — but I can’t honestly say that if I were raped, I’d spend the whole time fighting and struggling. Once it seemed inevitable, I might be inclined not to struggle so as to get through the experience with the least amount of harm possible. I can’t honestly say that I’d be thinking, “I better make sure that it looks like I put up a good fight!”
There was a witness who reported seeing the woman behaving intimately toward the men, or maybe just one of the men. I’m not really sure what that meant, but flirting or even being willing to accept a kiss doesn’t equate consent to sex.
I’m completely opposed to anyone being convicted of a crime when there’s insufficient evidence to prove that they committed it. I feel this way about someone being accused of rape, and I also feel this way about someone being accused of making a false accusation.
Now, there have been some records of women coming right out and admitting that they made a false rape report. I’m in complete agreement that these women should be prosecuted and convicted, and serve time equal to the amount of time that the accused would have served if he’d been convicted, and I think it’s silly when anyone says, “But if we prosecute this person who admitted to lying, real rape victims will be afraid to come forward!”
However, it wouldn’t be at all silly for rape victims to fear coming forward if every woman who reported a rape ended up going to jail whenever there was insufficient evidence to support a case. If a man is falsely accused, he certainly has as much right to seek justice as a woman who was raped — but just as I’d rather see a rapist walk free than see someone falsely convicted of rape, I’d also rather see a false accuser walk free than see someone who made a truthful accusation serve time simply because she couldn’t prove her rapist’s guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. I believe in innocent until proven guilty straight across the board.
I want an egalitarian justice system — not one that’s slanted in favor of any group.
https://www.euroweeklynews.com/news/costa-del-sol/itemlist/tag/malaga
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It is. Unfortunately the only way to help stop it from happening to others is to make it public. For a private person that proved difficult but I believe it will prove worth it if it helps to change a broken system.
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Sorry, still typing on a mobile device, so I truncate my messages, I suppose I should have included a few extra words in my last sentance like: “…how useless inarceration is for rehabilitation and recidivism reduction as well as making the general population safer”
Does that ease your concerns or exacerbate them?
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I don’t disagree, but is the solution to give black people special consideration, or is it to address the underlying cause of the problem of incarceration in this case, so that all boats may be raised? My frustration is with pet interests taking over reform movements, after all at some point one has to realize that the problems run deeper and broader than their specific pet interest, and they will either have to adopt a more complete approach to fixing the problem, or run into serial infighting when competing interest groups inevitably come to disagreements.
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Hey, if you could read my former post in the most blatantly sarcastic voice imaginable, you’d realise we’re on the same page, re: the “benefits” of incarceration…
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This. It’s one of the reasons I can’t even comprehend the whole “Feminism = equality” lie. If Feminism has to downplay the male victims of domestic violence in order to have as many shelters as they want, something tells me we’re not on a path that’ll ever lead to less domestic violence for anyone…
Balkanising human rights is a great way to not have any.
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No it doesn’t. Libertarian means libertarian. A liberal will usually take the form of a social democrat. Liberals in America are actually rather central, opposed to ‘liberals’ in the UK.
Liberalism is essentially a meta-ideology and it’s stupid to call someone a liberal as a pejorative.
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We shouldn’t give people special consideration, no doubt about it.
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I did read it that way, I knew we were on the same page. I guess my tongue in cheek sarcasm also didn’t get through… sorry.
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Ah, the internet, proof that tone of voice and body language convey far more than we’re comfortable admitting 🙂
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And people wonder why MGTOW exists?
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Grant what you went through sucks but you made one mistake. NEVER try to play white knight and help any of these women. just Run! Run as fast as you can at the FIRST sign of insanity! You WILL ultimately pay for it! I’m sorry that you have and in such a painful way.
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You didn’t know that men get far longer prison sentences?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/men-women-prison-sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742.html
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002
63% more to be exact. Let me explain how the world works: Men are held ACCOUNTABLE for what they do wrong. Women are NOT held accountable or just given a slap on the wrist. In fact women are even REWARDED for bad behavior in divorce court.
Fuck around on your husband? Get the house and kids. Beat and/or shoot your husband in the face, stab him in the neck? Under VAWA when he calls the police HE goes to jail for being the victim of YOUR crime. That is the insane world we live in and no one does anything about it. Why? Because everyone is completely ignorant of the legal system like you (and ignorant of just about everything else). Of course you’re an expert on all the LIES and fraud and half truths of Feminism. Like the 1 in 3 myth or the wage gap myth- all lies, half truths and fraud. Meanwhile the real truth is that it is MEN who are completely fucked over by women every day.
In addition women (at least in the U.S.) are rarely ever accountable, as in “I’m sorry I’ve been so terrible and I’ll change.” In fact women attempt to RE-DIRECT blame and accountability back onto the accuser because for the most part U.S. and/or Western women do not have any CHARACTER. So you learned some new words today.. ‘accountable’ and ‘character,’ foreign words to U.S. females.
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*eye roll* Charles Manson. Please. That case was SO extremely rare it’s laughable. Listen, women can and do get away with murder EVERYDAY. VAWA makes it practically legal for women to murder their husbands and boyfriends. “Can you say MARY WINKLER?!? HELLO! YEA OVER HERE BACK IN THE REAL WORLD.” Far away from all your goofy Feminist fantasies.
Mary Winkler murdered her husband in cold blood and went scott free and there are scores of women just like her everyday and who also murder and beat their children and are only given ‘counseling.’ You didn’t KNOW that is the reason why there is the myth that women are not as violent?
Jodi Arias was only found guilty because she LIED. Not to mention she went way overboard on her murder of her boyfriend. So those are the rules: Women can murder any man they want, just say the magic words, “I was abused,” and admit that you did it and don’t overdo it and you’ll be out of central booking in time to get to the mall before it closes. It is a JOKE. Women can basically do whatever they want to their children too and get away with it. Make false accusations all day and get men thrown in prison or to get rid of their children’s fathers and are never punished. EVER.
I guess it’s difficult for women to comprehend just how privileged they are in this society, they’re so used to it they think it’s normal and everyone can just live like they do with zero accountability. Or who even knows? I can’t even imagine how women think nowadays- one thing is for certain is that men and women have NOTHING in common at all today. NOTHING.
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Thanks for the patronizing “mansplanation.” I’m sure glad that NAMASSLY (Not All Men Are Stereotypically Sexist Like You). Many men, and many women, in this world are actually pretty tolerant of people who start questioning and rethinking various aspects of their worldviews.
One piece of food for thought for you is that if you want to exemplify being a person of character for us poor, stumbling, ignorant U.S. women, you might want to actually try, well, BEING a person of character yourself. Learn to tolerate people who may know less than you do about some things, and even to humbly open yourself to the possibility that those same people may have some pieces of knowledge that you lack.
Learning can be fun — and it’s for everyone, not just for everyone else but you.
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P.S. I shouldn’t have insulted men, the majority of whom are great people, by calling your insulting post a “mansplanation.” I’d like to change my initial sentence to the following one:
“Thanks for the insulting assplanation.” At least donkeys can’t read. 🙂
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Therapy. Therapy and valium.
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I don´t use it a s pejorative way.
U are saying exactly the same i said.
In USA a “liberal” is a “socialdemocrat” in Europe.
In Europe a “liberal” or “neoliberal” is a rightwinger who supports an extreme way of capitalism. So, it is what in USA you call a “libertarian”.
In Europe, a “liberal”, is too (it is a polisemantic word) an open minded person.
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More:
In Europe a “libertarian” is an anarchist, but not an “anarcocapitalist” but a “socialist anarchist” (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, etc)
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A “socialdemocrat” (at least in Europe) is a “moderate lefitiest”.
So, we are saying the same.
I guess we can consider the American Democrat Party equivalent to European socialdemocrat parties. Right?
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I meant “POLYSEMIC” not “polisemantic”.
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News from the world:
Finally Putin invades Ukraine.
Hurrah for Putin!!! Saving Ukraine, the cradle of Mother Russia, from the NWO.
The Coen bros -perpetrators of boring, weird, arty-fahrty, intellectual wannabe, crappy movies- rant againt Palestinian terrorism and say nothing about Zio terrorism.
Their hypocresy is bigger than their noses.
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What a bout a nice guy who loves bad girls? (and can deal with them perfectly)
Is he still a nice guy?
Is he corrupted nice guy? (happily corrrupted)
Does he become a “bad boy”?
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The general mainsream consensus would agree with that analysis of the Democrats, but America doesn’t have a mainstream political party that could be considered true social democrats. The American Democratic party is significantly to the right of the British Tory party or the Spanish Partido Popular, it’s closr to a Christian Democratic party, like Angela Merkel’s CDU in Germany. Part of the reason why there is so much obfuscation on this issue is because if the “left/liberal” party in America is so conservative by world standards, where does that put the conservative/right party, the Republicans? The uncomfortable truth, which will often be accused of being hyperbole, is that the Republicans fall somewhere in the range of the German NDP, the Greek Golden Dawn or any of the numerous National Front parties, for the Americans in the audience that puts them pretty damn close to being Nazi’s.
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I think the Green Party is more like the social democratic party.
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Well, is a nice girl who loves bad boys still a nice girl?
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Maybe “happily corrupted” nice girl. My type.
And “extremely corrupted” still my type.
Bad girls rock.
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It is very interesting.
But the Euroean far right is pro State and socialist (Francoists in Spain, fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany, Le Pen in France…)
It seems American far right (Tea Party) is anti-State (except Army and Cops) and anti socialist.
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There are certainly similarities, however Social Democrats place less emphasis on the environment than Green Parties, while Greens place less less emphasis on human rights (note I said less not none). There are two socialist parties in the US, I don’t recall which is which, but one is “more moderate” and is therefore closer to Social Democracy while the other is radical enough that it is what most people in Europe mean by socialism (non despotic communism). That all said I suppose I should have written “America doesn’t have a mainstream/viable social democratic or even left leaning party”.
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Arguably the far, far right in America doesn’t even want cops and military either, although now we’re getting into the difference between libertarian and conservative. When I described Republicans as comparable to NDP and Golden Dawn, I was refering to mainstream, establishment Republicans, as they are pro-state and o.k. with very limited goverment regulation and safety nets, but are more closely related based on militarism, jingoism, xenophobia, religious extremism and brutally excessive crminal justice. I admit to not being aware if there are any plutocratic political parties in Europe, which would more closely resemble Republicans on economic policy.
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Yes, I see your point — and I honestly don’t see the point of putting human rights ahead of environmental rights because we ARE part of the environment. All our rights, and all our money, will count for nothing if there’s no place for us to LIVE — no breathable air, no drinkable water…
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I understand where your going, but that reasoning is part of why I have become skeptical of the Greens. Keeping in mind that I did see you make the point, that we are part of the environment (something I’m critical of most environmentalists of for not recognizing), the no drinkable water or breathable air is a hyperbolic fear without reasonable scientific merit. Not having air and water would be bad, but we aren’t seriously in danger in even worst case scenarios, of not having air and water. The Green party is composed of people who have pathologized humanity as being wholly unnatural, parasitic and evil, a monstrous steroidal version of liberal intellectuals view of white Europeans, or feminists view of men. The common thread here seems to be an essentially unfair and unjust desire to penalize people today, for the actions of demographically simillar people in the past which were carried out with less information than we have now and turned out poorly.
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Yes, Partido Popular in Spain. Definetely.
The irony is that in USA, the Republicans are against the building of a national public healthcare.
In Spain, we have already, since the 80s, a very good -at the same level of Sacandinavia- national public healthcare (we have private healthcare as well, if you can afford it) and Partido Poular (the current government) is trying to destroy it by privatizing it.
They faced almost a revolution in the streets last months when they tried it. So they had to cancel the plan. Thanks God
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Scandinavia.
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Do you think there’s any truth to the allegations that the oil and automotive industries are trying hard to block initiatives that would make city dwellers less dependent on cars for their daily needs, and the allegations that both liberal and conservative politicians depend on big industries’ support to get reelected and therefore push concerns about pollution and other environmental issues to the back burner?
While I don’t personally live in a city with bad air pollution or water problems, I did spend a month, back in 1997, in Macau, South China, where there was such a thick layer of smog that I (who normally sunburn in a heartbeat) could spend hours outdoors in the heat of the day with no sunscreen, and see absolutely no change in my skin. So it doesn’t seem to me like concerns about water and air are just hyperbole — simply because these issues haven’t come to my city yet.
I agree with you about not treating ourselves as a disease — but it bothers me that, in my own country (the U.S.) at least, many of my fellow European Americans seem quite insistent that minorities like Native Americans and African Americans should just “get over” whatever happened in the past, because it supposedly has no effect on their lives today. Everyone supposedly has equal opportunity today, and any minority who’s in a bad situation must just like being in a bad situation.
I’ve been learning a lot lately about how hard many Native Americans are still working to get our government to honor its treaties with them, and also to get permission (and why should they even need permission?) to worship at their sacred sites. For a nation that was supposedly founded on the principle of religious freedom, we haven’t done a very good job — and I don’t think it was 100 percent because of lack of knowledge. Some Europeans gave the Indians the smallpox-infected blankets that their loved ones had died in, because they saw it as a quick and easy way to solve the Indian “problem” (see link below).
Yes, everyone, even my own group (European Americans) is human and deserving of a second chance after having made mistakes, whether intentional or not. But I think many of our mistakes warrant more than an “oops, sorry!” as if we just accidentally bumped into someone. I just hope we’ll start earnestly trying to make things right while there’s still time to turn things around.
As far as your idea that we’re not in danger of losing crucial things like clean air and water, I don’t think either of us is in a position to personally verify all the information that we’re getting about this from the scientific community. I can’t exactly shrink the Earth down to a manageable size and examine it all with a magnifying glass, and I don’t imagine you can either.
So I guess it all comes down to who seems more trustworthy — the mainstream scientific community, or the scientists being paid by big oil and other industries. And of course, I realize that virtually all scientists are being paid by someone, and I’m not claiming that there’s no money being made in the green movement, either. So it’s all very tricky — but I’ve learned about forgotten corners of the third world, and even Cancer Alley here in the U.S., that have become dumping grounds for toxic waste and are harmful environments for the poor families raising their children there because they can’t afford to leave, and this is just unacceptable to me. I think we can and must do better.
Of course the people publicizing this stuff are most likely making money doing so, but it seems unlikely that it’s all just totally fabricated.
http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/amherst/lord_jeff.html
http://www.latimes.com/great-reads/la-me-c1-subra-enviro-20130827-dto-htmlstory.html
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Indeed, learning can be fun. Such as learning about the evil that feminism has perpetrated on Western society by perhaps listening rather than seeing sexism and “mansplaination” at every turn.
As the feminists blithely blurt: education yourself.
(And using the term “mansplaining,” even if you try to backtrack, eviscerates your credibility around here.)
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I am learning a lot here, as well as from other places — but not from those who seem to be looking for reasons to find fault with and “eviscerate” others, or others’ credibility, for an occasional poor choice of words accompanied by a belated realization that it was a poor choice of words.
By the way, if I truly have been screaming “sexism and ‘mansplanation’ at every turn” on this thread (I’m taking the liberty of assuming that your “seeming” was just a typo), could you kindly point out any other posts of mine in which I’ve been “screaming” about these things? Or were you just referring to one post and exaggerating a bit (a lot) by accusing me of screaming about it “at every turn?”
In contrast to your thoughts about me, I don’t think your credibility needs to be “disemboweled” if you decide to “backtrack” a little about what you’ve just said here. I’m all in favor of people recognizing they were wrong about something, admitting it, and moving on. That’s a big part of what education is all about.
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I also do realize that you and some others may feel justified in “female bashing” because there are indeed feminists who regularly bash males and justify it by going on about how they’ve been so abused and they’re just “empowering” themselves by getting back at their evil “oppressors.” And now they’re realizing (or maybe not realizing) that it’s time to pay the piper, as they see a growing number of young women express their disillusionment with feminism and their realization that they want no part of it.
So, I mean, if all everyone here wants is a male version of the feminist “let’s lick our wounds and bash the oppressors”-club, I’ll gladly back out and let you enjoy your misery. I guess I just think that we each — men and women — comprise roughly half the world’s population, and we can’t accomplish much of anything if we can’t start learning, growing, and working together.
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I wouldn’t bother. This isn’t the fist time he’s justified block capitals mid-sentence, and it won’t be the last. If it’s any help, he’d just as much of a dingleberry to us guys too
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Heh, don;t think that because they’re the loudest, they’re somehow the majority around these parts.
It’s just that, unlike Feminism, we don’t just walk away from them, leaving them with our label. We engage and discuss. Thing is though, we can’t use the great Feminist line of “Oh, that’s not Feminism” the same way Feminists can. Instead, we’d say, “Yeah, they’re an MRA, but they’re batshit insane and I tell them that, publicly, probably three times a week”
One day I’ll read a paper by a Feminist decrying an older Feminist for something other than a flavor-of-the-month sub-cause, and I think I might cry when that day comes.
In any case, regardless of their condescension, and your… opportunity to learn that some words aren’t nice to use in place of “condescension” (gendering insults has always worked in the past, right?), there’s an important lesson to be learned here for all: Being arbitrarily mean because you’re defensive doesn’t win you anything but isolation, and judging collectively due to the actions of one idiot is hardly nice.
Having watched both of you and how you conduct yourselves in your public discourse, I expect one of you to get this completely, and the other to say something about how I’m not a real man, possibly in block capitals…
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“Eviscerates” implies lasting damage. Backtracking implies intent, followed by fearing repercussions.
Personally, I’d like to state that I see none of these things here. This was merely problematic cross-cultural issues that could have resolved themselves with far less fuss, had people not leapt straight for the jugular…
Try parenting like that, see how snidely demeaning someone whilst threatening permanent repercussions for not having known something they didn’t know. Then, mayhaps you’d learn to tone down the rhetoric, and also stop speaking for the rest of us. We have voices too, and, like you, we don’t always toe the line.
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And there it is :p I should read all my notifications before I post, but… Sometimes it pleases me to take each comment as though it just came up. It makes me feel less… antipodean :p
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After learning all I have about trauma-based mental illnesses, no, no I don’t wonder. Worked that one out about 5 seconds after hearing about you guys.
Still, credit to the lesbian separatists, at least they don’t pay the enemy to make love to them…
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I agree that I was unfair to judge collectively. I really think most people here would like to see things get better for both men and women, and would also like to see true equality. And I think most also realize that none of this can happen if I keep antagonizing each other.
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With my tongue planted firmly in my cheek….
I think you are mistaken, whatever fault can be laid at your feet for this disagreement, you don’t deserve all the blame. Let your antagonists take their share of blame as well.
I know it was a typo, but I couldn’t resist…
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🙂
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This really deserves more of a response than I can or will give right now, but I don’t want you to think I’m cowardly hiding from you.
I think your position is sufficiently nuanced to say you aren’t a knee jerk anti science environmentalist. I agree with much of what you said, but no two people will ever agree on everything, and there are “nitpicks” I would make with you on details. The smallpox claim for instance is persistent and popular in some communities, but it is pretty dubious and widely rejected as either unprovable or disproven by most historians of the period. I also think there are alternative positions to hold between, white people aren’t at fault for minority problems at all, and everything is white peoples fault. I suspect you agree with that, and we probably both occupy similar positions near the middle.
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I didn’t think you were hiding — I wrote a really long post about a topic that’s unrelated to this thread. I agree with you that the real truth on any topic is usually somewhere between all the extreme views on it. For example, I am now becoming more aware of the reality of female-to-male oppression — but I can’t help but see that there are still women being oppressed, and not just in places like Saudi Arabia, either. One big difference is that when an abused woman gets out, she usually doesn’t have to make a choice between protecting her own wellbeing and getting to raise her kids, while abused men have often been forced to make that choice. But as I’ve already mentioned, in my own state at least, it’s not longer just a given that the kids go with mom following a divorce. Kids really do have a right to both their parents, and at least in Missouri, courts are starting to recognize that.
And following that train of thought, I think most divorces are due to problems on both sides, so I can’t just go along with the tendency to demonize either women or men. I think the reason that more divorces are initiated by women is that we tend to look to our romantic relationships as our source of meaning and satisfaction in life, and our whole girlhood is like a prelude to the big wedding day, which we see as the starting point to REAL LIFE, and then when that real life turns out to be, in actuality, a continuation of reality and imperfection and periodic disappointments, there’s a tendency to not want to accept that life is just really hard sometimes, no matter who you are living it with. With this in mind, here’s a link to an article that I find really interesting.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10536016
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I think you may get some vitriolic pushback from some of the more angry posters here on your claim that men and women are equally responsible for divorce, when you categorize women’s culpability as what amounts to being completely disconnected from reality. Let me say, that while I can see how that can be read into what you said, I would offer this pre defense for you that I’m sure there are some pretty genuinely rotten men too.
That said, for all the legitimate problems that Men’s Rights are attempting to address, it seems issues with family courts via divorce and custody seems to be what drives most people to Men’s Rights, I’m a never-married gay guy, and its what drove me to at least Janet, if not Men’s Rights. Growing up my dad was a very well paid and successful engineer, yet I wore second hand cloths, never got electronics or much of a birthday or christmas, and three trips to Disneyland were canceled en route to the airport… I know this is going to sound superficial and petty to the men who’ve personally been raked over the coals, but the reason we lived like paupers is because my mom is my dads second wife, most of the money he made went to his ex as child support even though she spent more then half the years she was collecting, in jail for one of her many crimes including drug dealing, welfare fraud, and perhaps most exasperating since the courts kept reinforcing her custody rights: trafficking in child prostitution. So I have an idea of how bad the family courts are especially back in the 70s and 80s when my dad got screwed over.
As an adult all of my friends were either victims of paternity fraud or married men who were. Then when I was telling my parents about how prevalent paternity fraud was becoming and maybe feminism had some problems, they decided to come clean about how soap operaesque our neighborhood had been growing up. I grew up in a place where divorce and absentee fathers were the norm and the reasons I was given for why encouraged my entry into feminism. Turns out however that the things my parents told me and my brother about why, were Santa Clause like lies so that we couldn’t tell our friends what really happened to their dads. Most of them left because the mom was sleeping around like they were living on Knotts Landing; some were removed because they were the victims of violence by their wives and even before VAWA courts favored women. In the two most extreme cases we were told that the man lost his leg falling out of a moving car while drunk, and he got depressed and took it on his wife by divorcing her, when in fact he asked her not to fuck her barely legal boyfriend in their (his) bed on Christmas eve while he and the kids were in the house, so she shoved him out of the house got in the car and ran him over than took a shovel to hack his leg off and then left him in the street overnight. The other case the wife got pissed that the husband didn’t get a promotion so she started bringing her boyfriend (this one was at least an adult) around taunting him about what a failure he was and goading him into suicide, which he did try and failed at, we were told he hated his family and went away and shouldn’t be allowed near kids… you know suicidal people are unstable after all. What devestated me about that one was I was the weekly babysitter for their kids and I had on several occasions after that refused him access to his kids, whom he wasn’t allowed to see, after learning what really happened I felt like a real shitbag. Instead of lying to me, I wish my parents had told the neighbors that Knotts Landing was fiction not a how to documentary.
Susan, I know men can and do, do some really shitty things, and I know you acknowledged that women are more guilty then we normally hear about, however the level of depravity that women can sink to with impunity is much worse then what any man has ever done. I know those neighbors growing up were exceptions not the rule, and most marriages and divorces are more mundane, but even in those cases what culpability do men have if their wife is experiencing enuie due to unrealistic expectations about life? I hope this hasn’t come off as an attack, I do recognize you’re an ally, I don’t want to call out the false equivalence or balance fallacies because I think they’re stupid and oft abused, but I think there is a real disconnect in our culture between actual marriage/divorce and the public discourse on those topics, where claiming equal culpability is problematic at best.
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Heh, I remember sometime in the mid-nineties, there was a huuuuuge spike in teenaged girls getting arrested and convicted of violent crimes over here. Lots of headlines, lots of drama, and psychiatric/sociological hand-wringing re: What’s gone so wrong in society that girls are suddenly being monsters, when they’ve always been such angels? Seriously, there were questions along the lines of “What’s so wrong that girls have started *drumroll* behaving like boys??!?”
Heh… Turned out the initial spike could be traced to new guidelines for the police. New guidelines that made them kinda have to actually arrest people for reported crimes, and thus taking away their “discretion” as to who to charge when… SO, basically, it wasn’t a spike in reports, or incidents. Just a spike in anyone having to acknowledge crimes committed by teenage girls.
Which is kinda hilarious, in a sort of really fucking horrible way…
I’m still trying to figure out how “The Patriarchy” benefits from assuming women > men, but men’s culpability > women’s…
So, yeah, I wouldn’t be the least surprised by your home town being no different to anywhere else, to be honest. White guys in suits at big firms can steal billions, because no-one thinks white guys in suits steal. Women don’t need suits…
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I see now that I read your word “seeing” as “seeming” and then thought it was “screaming” — sorry about that.
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Jason, it is sad when people try to live real life like it’s a soap opera. Most of what I’ve seen isn’t that extreme. As women, we tend to see our husbands and children as our life’s work and tend to be rather obsessed with doing everything right, especially when kids are small.
As an example, years ago when I was still young and single, I was friends with a young mom with three small children, and I recall one Saturday morning when I went to her house to pick her up because we were going Christmas shopping. The plan was that the kids would stay home with their dad, and she was just getting breakfast on the table before heading out.
As she served the kids their oatmeal, the husband decided to make fun of her new concern about limiting the kids’ refined sugar by saying, “Look honey!” and smiling gleefully as he heaped tons of sugar into the bowls of oatmeal. She calmly said, “Well, you’re the one who’ll be dealing with their sugar high.”
Within a few minutes, he let her know that he’d decided that he didn’t want to watch the kids after all, and she calmly said okay, we can take them, and we did and it was no big deal. I was impressed that she’d stayed so calm about everything, and she never complained when we left, either.
Well, fast forward some months into the future, and their marriage had ended. One of the last times I spoke with her, she said she’d realized it was time to get out one day when he got so mad at her, he tried to shove her out of the car while he was driving. The last I heard, she’d taken the kids and headed up into Canada with some guy. I don’t know if he ever got to see his kids again.
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I had to rush a bit with my last post. I think culpability is a hard thing to measure, and I also think the ways that each of us processes our own childhood experiences can create biases that sort of frame how we organize the rest of the “data” that we see throughout our lives — so that one person can easily churn out data that supports a perception of one sex or another as the root of all evil.
As far as the people I know who’ve been through divorces, I’ve obviously never lived with any of them 24/7, so it’s not like I can take this tally sheet and mathematically figure out who was more at fault. But it does seem like a lot of the marriage failures I’ve heard about are closely related to issues of dependence and co-dependence — where one person has issues such as addictions or depression that keep them from being a fully functioning adult, and the other person (the codependent) takes on a sort of caretaker role and enables the dependent to at least give the appearance of functioning in society.
This may mean that a dependent who’s afraid to risk his or her job by behaving assertively towards a domineering, disrespectful boss, will utilize the spouse as a sort of verbal or physical whipping-boy or girl and let all the tension out at home that has to be held in at work. There are all kinds of dependency. I know of a man who simply never had the patience to go through the phone book and look up a number, so his wife always had to do that for him. Now that they’re divorced, it may not be so tough for him if he’s learned how to look all that up on the Internet.
I also know of a woman who had to throw a screaming fit whenever she couldn’t find anything. One day my husband was helping her husband with a job, and she called him at work to scream when she couldn’t find her car-keys, and he put her on speaker phone to show my husband how irrational she was, because my husband had previously gotten onto his case when I’d noticed some bruising on her shoulder and her son had piped up and said that his stepdad had done it; she then explained that he was angry over learning that she’d had a soft drink, which he’d told her that she was not allowed to do because she was still breastfeeding their baby.
At any rate, my husband came home saying that he’d sure hate to live with this wife, but he still didn’t feel the husband was justified in being violent. We’ve kind of lost touch with them, but as far as I know, they’re still married, though they’ve been through at least a couple of separations.
It just seems that with dependent and codependent personalities, the dependent needs the codependent to function and the codependent needs the dependent to need him or her, so when one or the other gets tired of the codependent/dependent dynamic and starts working on him or herself, the other feels threatened. For example, one of my friends used to be married to an addict who, at one point in their marriage, started making some real progress in a treatment program and she said, “I know what’s about to happen: he’s going to get his life together, and then he’ll take one look at me and say, ‘I can do a lot better than that!’ and I’ll lose him.”
When it’s the man who’s the codependent, that fear often seems to morph into anger. For example, I read on a message board about a woman who’d spent years being depressed and overweight, always finding excuses for not achieving the things that she wanted to achieve such as starting her own business. But one day she had some sort of epiphany and started exercising and losing weight, and started getting her business off the ground…
But her epiphany just happened to coincide with her husband losing his job and going though a long period of unemployment, which may have been why one day he just exploded over the fact that he’d been trying to get her to lose weight and get her shit together for years. Now that she was finally doing it, he couldn’t contain his anger. I don’t live with them so I don’t really know anything, but it seemed like maybe now that she’d stopped being depressed and dependent on him for pep talks and coaching about how to get her shit together, he was kind of at a loss for what to do with himself.
Codependents are more comfortable focusing on other people than on themselves, and if the dependent grows out of being a dependent and no longer needs intensive management to get through each day, this can cause the light to suddenly shine on all the stuff the codependent should be working on in his or her own life, and be rather uncomfortable.
I’m sorry I don’t have much Knott’s Landingish stuff to share. We’re a rather low-income family living in the inner city and the marital problems I see are just not all that sexy and glamorous. They seem to be more about needy people needing to feel needed, and having a hard time coping when one partner changes — even for the better — and sets their world off-kilter. Having little spare money tends to exacerbate any difficulties in the relationship, too — but it can also keep people at home together more. My husband can’t afford a fancy “bachelor-pad” to carry out relationships on the side, so he’s just kind of stuck being here with me all the time. 🙂
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Susan, if you’re really interested in learning, it doesn’t help to use cliched feminist buzzwords. I’m not “eviscerating” you (nor did I even say that: I referred to your credibility), you do it to yourself.
Reading closely might help. I don’t need to backtrack on anything. And there was no typo in my comment, just your willing misinterpretation, twice actually. I wrote “seeing” as in you are seeing sexism and “mansplanation” that isn’t there. You first read it as “seeming, then make the assumption that it was a typo for “screaming.” That’s kind of telling, really. But, in fairness, you do recognize your error later, so perhaps there’s hope
I don’t engage in “female-bashing,” I aim more for exposure of feminism in all it’s rank forms. That some women do not claim the mantle of “feminism” doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy and support the greater rights and advantages that feminism has wrought on society.
I’ve also seen the feminist version of “can’t we all just get along?”–your “start learning, growing, and working together” and it’s just another feminist lie. Their version of “working together” is for men to sit down and shut up. Thank you, but no.
If you want to learn the truth about the harms done in our society to men and boys in the name of feminist “equality” and work with us, you’d be welcome, but if you post feminist-sounding criticism while denying the feminism, we’ve seen that before and you should expect to get called on it.
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JShaft, if you’re referring to me, I don’t use block capitals mid-sentence. But I may just be following the threading of comments wrong…
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Jason is right that you’ll get push-back on your claim that “most divorces are due to problems on both sides.” Nice try, but the attempt at rhetorical balance out of a desire to not “demonize” is misplaced.
Especially when, amusingly, your next sentences you “eviscerate” your own argument by correctly pointing out that many women who unilaterally initiate divorce do so out of an emotional inability to face the reality of life and accept responsibility for their choices. And in these cases, it’s usually husbands and children who pay the price.
Yes, there are men who walk out on their families. Yes, some women are quite justified for leaving abusive relationships. And yes, there are some marriage relationships that just peter out. But the incidence of women cashing in a marriage for cash and prizes are a very significant portion of divorces, leaving a trail of wreckage in their wake.
As for your link, it’s an example of doing marriage right, something a huge number of couples manage to do quite well (and surprising to see on NPR). I applaud them.
But they’re not the problem…
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I think one reason that more divorces are initiated by women is that many women have bought into the idea that who they are married to determines the course of their life. Women who feel like their identity is totally dependent on the identity of the man they’re with are extremely likely to jump ship if they see indications that the ship they’re in is not taking them where they want to go.
Our youth-worshipping culture doesn’t help in this area, because young women tend to feel like their clocks are ticking really fast — that while a man past a certain age is “seasoned,” a woman that same age is just “past it,” so they’re kind of in a hurry to find the right ship while they’re still cute enough to get invited on board. I have at least one friend who grew to sorely regret how much it hurt her kids when she divorced their dad — but it took her a lot of years to reach the place where she didn’t feel like she had to find the right man in order to be the right woman and person, and her poor kids were just along for the ride, and her ex-husband suffered too, of course — but at least they are good friends today and both have good relationships with their kids.
Women who know their own power — and here, I’m talking not about power over others, but about power within our own lives — know that they can find happiness, love, beauty, and success in virtually any corner that they happen to be in, if they’re just open to appreciating what they have, and also to giving to others without feeling a need to control them. Power is about being strong enough in ourselves to let go and not seek control.
One of my favorite verses from Tao Te Ching reads, “Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.” Living this way is real freedom and real joy — but part of releasing control is also releasing others to think whatever they like about me. For example, my fourteen year old thinks of me as a “hippie without the drugs.” 🙂
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I’ve just thought of a marriage that, in my opinion, was totally wrecked by Christian fundamentalist views of male-female roles. Some years back, we were friends with a young family in which the wife was very high-energy and had a really strong entrepreneurial spirit. They both fell in love with coffee, and early in their marriage, they decided that they wanted to open their own coffee shop as soon as they could.
The problem was, the husband ended up being very happy working as a barista and seemed to have no drive to take the steps necessary to branch out on his own. The wife got progressively antsier about it — but even though she was really awesome at absorbing all kids of legal and financial information and really would have been the ideal person to run their coffee house, while he likely would have been quite happy to switch jobs and work as a barista in their own shop, she wanted to do things in GOD’S ORDER, and therefore just kept waiting for him to step up and be an entrepreneur like her.
But he wasn’t an entrepreneur, and he also wasn’t very good about verbalizing his frustrations at knowing that he wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to be married to (mind you, he hasn’t told me any of this; this is just me playing amateur psychologist, but I think I’m right). He honestly seemed like the kind of person who was always placid and never got upset about anything. Then one day when we were at their house and noticing some structural changes, and she was explaining stuff like, “When he rebuilt that wall, he built that shelf right into it” —
And we were kind of impressed by his creativity, and also impressed that anyone would put that much work into a rental house, and it came out that he periodically went into silent rages in which he broke things apart and demolished walls, and then he had to rebuild. Well, there came a day when she got tired of all the tantrums and — I think you can pretty much guess what happened to that marriage.
I seriously don’t see either of them as a total victim. She could have thrown out the fundamentalist ideology (like she kind of did a short time later when she left him) and taken the initiative to start that business herself. By the same token, he could have said, “Look, honey, I’m just not that guy that wants all the headaches of being In business for myself — but you ARE that guy, I mean, girl, so why don’t you just go for it already, and I’ll be right behind you, supporting you one hundred percent of the way!”
I think it could have been a beautiful story…too bad we can’t just write a different ending for them and their kids. However, in this case, he IS the one with primary custody of their kids; it’s just sad because their kids don’t get to grow up in a home with both of them.
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Well, anecdote doesn’t equal evidence, but these stories are indicative of the damage of the feminist narrative that women can not only “have it all”–the fairy tale marriage and dynamic career–but that women “deserve” to have it all.
I disagree that women have bought into the idea that married women define their identity by the man they marry and are “totally dependent” on that identity. Quite the opposite.
This is also indicative of the essential solipsism of many Western, especially American, women: everything is view and judged by how it benefits those women, with little consideration for anyone else. Of course, women who engage in “frivorce” blame it on the failings of their men. Feminism teaches that nothing is a woman’s fault and women can never be criticized for their actions. Like your friend, they may come to regret those divorces, and even is they can move beyond, the damage is still done and isn’t really considered before-hand.
Such is the toxic nature of modern feminism. When one considers the on-going development of Third Wave “gender feminism,” it will only get worse…
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Nice assumptions.
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I don’t see how it can be feminism, when it actually seems much more like a total lack of contentedness with oneself — the idea that a woman can’t be anybody without the right male leading her through life, so if the current husband doesn’t seem to be leading her anyplace, she has to find someone who WILL lead her into greatness. The thing is type A and type B personalities tend to be attracted to each other, and there’s seriously nothing wrong with a guy who’s happy working eight hours as someone’s employee, and coming home to hang out with his family.
It’s only a problem when people adopt a worldview that says that the man is always supposed to be the leader who’s up front and the woman is always supposed to be the support person in the background — and that worldview doesn’t seem like feminism to me. I guess you don’t have to call it patriarchy but it’s not feminism, either.
I honestly think my friends might have been able to work out their marriage if she could have just felt okay about doing the entrepreneurial stuff that she was itching to do, without waiting for him to take the lead, and if he could have used the energy he was using to bash in the walls, to just open up and say, “I’m a guy who’s happy clocking in for eight hours, so you just start the shop and I’ll come clock in for you.”
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Either that or I hit reply to the wrong comment… Who can tell in here past the fourth reply?
If you look up a ways, you’ll eventually spot block capitals being used mid-sentence, and not under your name :p
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This is…
I guess the nice way to put it would be…
One of those assertions I’ve seen floating around these spaces that’s…
Hmmm…
I know this is a big one for people, and thus not one I’ve engaged with much, so bear with me, there may be some missteps as I try to put my perspective to you.
When I think on this assertion, two things pop up. One is a lack of anything but anecdotal evidence, and the other is the thought “How could this even be proven?”.
Seriously, I’m curious as to how one could even get stats on this. I just get this image of some guy with a clipboard outside a divorce court, asking women if they left him for his money, and, aside from my comedic mind giggling at all the one-liner responses I think up, well… I can’t see how this statement can be proven.
Yet it is stated as fact. And now, here I am, being nice, even after long since having subscribed to Christopher Hitchens great statement that “that which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence”.
I poked the holes I had to in Feminism, and lost the friends and acquaintances one loses when one falls out with Feminism. I did so sadly, but also with a strange sense of pride. So… When I see people in this sphere do the same things that forced me to give up on Feminism, well…
I gotta call it. You, them. I try my best to be nice, but I know it doesn’t matter to most. Once one’s passionately held position that fits with one’s personal experience is questioned, it seems the questioner inevitably grows three heads and starts breathing fire. Me, I’ve got tired of fitting the description just to cushion myself from the (seemingly) inevitable blows.
So, with the utmost respect, and with the greatest compassion I can muster, I call bullshit on this assertion that a large, significant proportion of all divorces are women frivolously trying to make money. I base this on the stats we have on just how many people we expect to be either sociopaths or Narcissistic Personality Disorder types, versus the sheer bulk of marriages that fail.
I could further assert that, were divorce courts rigged the other way, men would be divorcing just as much, and the Feminists would be decrying their alimony payments, and through that implying some sort of inherent defect in masculinity.
And I’d still be here, calling that bullshit too.
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I sometimes use block capitals midsentence, especially when making up my own acronyms to poke fun at guys saying, “Don’t try that NAWALT excuse here.”
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So is it better to put the block capitals at the beginning or the end here? I’ll try to keep in mind that mid-sentence is a no-no. 🙂
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Heh, it doesn’t give the same impression as BREAKING INTO BLOCK CAPITALS, especially not MULTIPLE TIMES in the ONE SENTENCE.
It’s a habit I personally associate with being called a moron for not getting how the CIA MIND PROBES along with the ILLUMINATI and LIZARD PEOPLE are ruling the Eart with their NWO inspired drive to TAKE GUNS FROM AMERICANS thus rendering them RIPE FOR INVASION. Seriously, the fact that I keep failing to respond appropriately must be proof I’M WORKING WITH THE ENEMY.
Heh.
In any case, the culprit I was poking at here is one of those people who constantly uses anally-derived statistics, misrepresents (or just misunderstands) the difference between lived experience and statistical certitude, and constantly uses gendered and demeaning “buzz words” from his gender warrior clique to shame those who disagree with him. So, at least he has nothing in common with Feminists :p
*braces for allcaps*
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Incidentally, I never got the concept of “Mansplaining” at all, it made no sense to me. Having seen Realityforever talk to, well, anyone, gives me a reasonable starting point.
Remember, it only takes one nutjob to start a stereotype. Seriously, even when I agree with the basic meaning of everything he’s saying (a rare occurrence indeed) I can still feel myself edging away from him and avoiding eye-contact.
So, I’d submit that, by judging anybody based on their reaction to Realityforever, you’re possibly focusing too much attention on the reaction, and not enough on what they’re reacting to.
Seriously, out of him and Spaniard… If I was getting a lift from Spaniard, I’d point out where my house was so I could get out, even though that’d mean he knew where I lived. Realityforever, I’d just walk, regardless of the distance…
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You merely assume I assumed, rather than researching, reading and looking at a group that got burned once (or more) and decided that a significant portion of humanity were to be avoided, but, unlike lesbian separatists, didn’t adjust their sexuality accordingly.
But, like with all things, maybe you’re point of view on MGTOW will be the exception that shatters my perceptions and opens my eyes.
So, by all means, share and prove me wrong…
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🙂
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It’s not block capitals, I’m just using a font that doesn’t have lower case…. (~;
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Susan,believe it or not,I couldn´t find the video. Could send me the link, please?
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Not to go all Biblical here — but Old Testament law actually addresses the process a man can go through to divorce his wife. It doesn’t say anything about her being able to decide that she wants to divorce him. And then Jesus (or the person quoting Jesus) seems to be cautioning men not to be so quick to divorce their wives by saying that if a man divorces his wife and another man marries her, he has just essentially forced his ex-wife into adultery.
I’m honestly not sure what happened to the children if the man decided to cast off his wife — but I think breastfeeding tended to continue a lot longer than it customarily does today, so presumably if they were small enough to still be very dependent on their mothers for nursing and comfort, they probably let them stay with their mothers unless they were total and absolute assholes. And I guess the divorced woman just had to go back to her father’s tribe unless there was some guy willing to take her in and make her an adulteress. And then the first husband may have just gone and gotten the children whenever he decided he had use of them — like when he wanted to make some money selling his daughters into marriage, or something.
As I understand it, until around the mid-19th century in the U.S., married women had no property of their own. I think that even if they brought their own property into the marriage, it became their husband’s. So anything a wife would have had after a divorce, I guess, would have just depended on him being a decent enough guy, or wanting to be seen as a decent enough guy, not to turn his family out on the streets.
So I’m just curious — do most people here see pre-feminist times as the good old days? I don’t see either situation — the scales tipping in men’s favor, or the scales tipping in women’s favor — as good. I honestly believe that feminism righted some wrongs, but has become way out of balance and punitive towards men. So I want equality — not modern feminism or what we had before feminism.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/366305/Married-Womens-Property-Acts
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_were_women's_lives_like_in_the_1800s
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YER SO COOL, MAN. 🙂
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🙂
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Spaniard, I didn’t see the video, either. In Spain, is it common to release stuff like that to the public? I was going by what was said in the article — that the video only lasted for about a minute, and didn’t show signs of violence or a struggle. So it sounded to me like there simply wasn’t sufficient evidence of it being a rape — whether the video contains absolute proof that the sex was entirely consensual remains to be seen.
I was just pointing out that if I were the victim of a gang rape, there might be reasons why I wouldn’t struggle and would just go along with it, other than that I was totally loving it. Some women, once they’re resigned themselves to being raped, just make up their minds that they’re going to do everything they can to survive.
I do believe that if it can be proven that the sex was consensual, she should be prosecuted. But just as it’s hard to prove a rape, it’s doubly hard to prove a false accusation. And I believe, in both cases, in innocent until proven guilty.
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Yes, the video is part of the evidence so the normal protocol is to keep it as “secreto del sumario” (summary secret) until the judge considers it is ok to release it to the media.
So, has not be leaked. I thought due to your comment that maybe it was already and you found it.
Thanks anyway.
But it seems that in that minute (probably is more than one minute) it is extremely clear that was not a rape.
The girl is a literal “putón verbenero” (open air dance slut). “Putón verbenero” is a popular expression here (almost affectionate) but in most ocasions you cannot use it in the literal way. This time yes because it happened in an open air dance (verbena). 🙂
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Jshaft, if you ever come to Madrid and you walk across Plaza Mayor (Main Sq.). good for your culture in History to know that in that square the Holy Inquisition used to burn (XVI and XVI Centuries) people such: protestants, heretics and witches.
It was the big popular show of the time and all the mob (children included) used to go there to watch and party while drinking wine and eating.
I cannot agree with the burning of protestants or heretics but I understand the burning of the witches. I know is wrong but I understand it.
The problem today in this country is that the Holy Inquisition did not burn enough witches at the time.
Spanish hubbies learn this lesson the rough way every single day of their miserable sexless, stressful, wife-terrorized lives.
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Susan, you seem to be operating with a severe disconnect about feminism…
I don’t see how it can be feminism, when it actually seems much more like a total lack of contentedness with oneself
That’s one of the main points of feminism, keeping women discontented. That’s the whole point of the constant feminist drum-beat that women are always oppressed and therefore should be discontented and aggrieved. And that the fault of that discontent is men. Which is why it’s damaging. No one here is saying that women shouldn’t have the right to choose their course in life (as much as anyone can) or even in marriage, but feminism encourages not finding content no matter what the path.
It’s only a problem when people adopt a worldview that says that the man is always supposed to be the leader who’s up front and the woman is always supposed to be the support person in the background — and that worldview doesn’t seem like feminism to me
Of course that’s not feminism. Quite the opposite. But that “worldview” is largely confined these days to Muslim society and some of the more strict evangelical Christians in the West. That world-view may or may not be a good thing. For some who can find balance and contentment with that lifestyle, I gather it can work quite well. I’m not really Christian in the church sense, so not really my call. But even in the church, the rot of feminism has seeped in. Which is what I expect happened to your friends. For more on that aspect, I’d recommend Dalrock’s blog as he covers those topics extensively.
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I checked to see if the men had actually pressed charges or what was happening with that, and couldn’t find anything. However, I did find another article (link below) that looks to be about the same case, in which it did indeed say that the video proved that the sex was consensual, so maybe they really do have grounds to press charges against her. I’d been going by what the other article had said, because that article made it sound to me like the video didn’t prove that it was rape, but may not have proven that it was consensual either.
http://www.yourjewishnews.com/2014/08/25-n34107.html
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You could be right about feminism encouraging discontent. However, it supposedly also encourages women not to feel like they need a man to be complete. That’s the aspect that I was talking about. I think that a woman who already feels good about herself just as she is while single, can make things work in virtually any marriage in which she’s not being abused or dealing with someone with addictions or dishonest or adulterous tendencies. Because such a woman doesn’t feel like her whole life hinges on how amazing and successful her husband is.
For example, he can decide that he’s happy working a regular nine-to-five job and being a family guy and just doesn’t care about making a huge dent in the world, and that doesn’t have to stop her from pursuing whatever great dreams she has brewing in her head. I mean, look at Judgy Bitch. I don’t really know much about her husband, other than that he checks in with her before agreeing to work any overtime, but it sounds to me like when she and one of her girlfriends got their vision about where they wanted to make their dent in the world, they went ahead and started doing it.
I mean, I’m sure she probably checks in with her husband before committing to stuff that ‘s going to affect the whole family, just as all spouses and parents should do because our families come first. So I’m sure she takes care of first things first, but then she goes ahead and follows her dreams and probably doesn’t fret if Mr. Judgy Bitch has entirely different interests. So if that’s not really feminism, maybe it’s just being a whole, empowered person.
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This is where Feminism (and some types of MRA’s) and I parted ways completely.
I had to do therapy for my mental illness, and that had a lot of massive cognitive structural changes to go through. One of which was stepping away from blame, and basically taking responsibility for what I need to do. I wasted much of my life working out who was to blame for where I was in life. Funnily, that’s not to say there weren’t massive, frightening and above all difficult to share crimes committed against me at early stages of development, both too numerous and far, far too salacious for me to bother sharing in public, as they tend to derail conversations. But, yelling at/blaming/writing parers on just how bad it was achieves *drumroll* fuckall.
Looking at where you are in your life and realising you can be either A) towed, whilst yelling at the tow-truck driver or B) learn to drive. Blame leaves your hands off the wheel, and Feminism is, fundamentally all about blame. “Men run X, men did Y” is all I ever hear. (As a side note, if we count “Patriarchy” as a man, does any Feminist meeting pass the Bechdel test?)
So, Feminism dresses itself as a bastion of Female empowerment and equality, and fails drastically (but understandably) on both counts, and it saddens me. I’m sure there’s a lot of good people who, with the right advice, could get their own lives in order and achieve great things for themselves, if they weren’t assuming that the cause of all their shortcomings was male sexism, and the solution was to “Fight the patriarchy” rather than alter their own behavior.
Not saying I don’t see massive, ongoing parallels between some of the discourse around these parts as well, but at least here I don’t get death threats when I call people on it.
I like here better…
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As for “Encouraging them not to think they need a man”… Most people need people. Moreso when they’re one’s sexually preferred partner type…
This whole “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle ” thing gets me. Seriously, how many more people don’t need this lesson than do? How many women do “need” a partner for love, comfort, support, validation, or just someone to occasionally make them a cup of tea? I’m sure telling them all they’re wrong just to “encourage” the few who really don’t… Surely if they’re that independent, they can validate their own position without needing everyone else to toe the line?
My girlfriend/babymomma/de facto/love, she’s an odd duck, like myself. I’m slowly coming to terms with accepting my odd duck nature, after years in the wilderness. She has almost always known who she is and accepted it. At many times in her life, she’s lived and worked in circumstances where no-one agreed with her about virtually everything. She got lonely at these times, but never questioned herself, or allowed perceived social norms to crush her into some sort of meta-being with no personal boundaries of sense of self. Me, well, you could pretty much say the opposite.
Thing is, neither of our positions would or could have been helped by some movement either championing our causes or deriding our way. Only one of us was really ever effected by feminism, and that caused them lasting psychological and sexual issues.
Can you guess which one?
Then therapy comes along, and almost the first structure I had to pull down was the one feminism erected. The victim pure and holy/abuser evil must die dichotomy. It gets no one anywhere and achieves nothing, unless you count validating the madness of millions of people who need therapy, whilst deriding any calls for them to get help.
Same thing happens here with MGTOW and general “99% of all women” ranters, the difference is that they have to go there themselves.
Here’s not hugely better (by here I mean these parts, not this page, although this page is one of the few places around these parts I’m really comfortable), but it’s also not fundamentalist. Most people agree on the premise of “Gynocentrism” to some degree, but the interpretation of what that can and does mean for society differs wildly. Me, I don’t even see it as a bad thing, just as a thing. I’ve yet to hear any Feminist say that about “The Patriarchy”…
TL;DR: Feminism = crazysauce, but so does MRA stuff, but feminist crazy > mra crazy, and no one else wants to talk about gender at all, so…
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I think I created some misunderstanding, because I agree with people needing each other, too. We all have basic human needs for love, comfort, and sex, which is part of the beauty of being human. But there’s a difference between needing, or preferring, to keep warm against another warm body rather than relying on an electric blanket — and feeling like I can’t achieve the things I was meant to achieve in life without some man driving me in the right direction.
There are some things I really care about doing and thinking about, some conversations I really care about having, that aren’t all that interesting to my husband. And vice versa. Having our love and belonging-tanks filled makes us stronger to approach life in our own unique ways. So, yes, we need each other — but still, I was me before I met him and he was him before he met me. I think we’ve added a lot to each other’s lives by coming together and sharing and making a life together, and we’ve certainly wrought some transformations in one another, but we’re still unique people.
It’s like the wedding candle tradition that you see in some weddings. There are two ways to do it — at least two ways that I know of. In one version, the bride and groom each take the candle that represents their life and use it to light a big candle in the center that represents their marriage, and then blow out the individual candles. In another version, which is generally seen as the new and improved version, the big candle get lit but the individual ones keep burning, too.
I think the new and improved version is the healthier one, because if one or both spouses truly give up their identity and dreams, you don’t really have a marriage anymore. It’s more like one person ate the other, or the “institution” of marriage ate them both.
I also want to say that I see a big difference between need and neediness, and I think what you shared about your own journey in your earlier post is sort of a reflection of that difference. I’ve noticed that I was on a similar journey at various points in my life, and I probably haven’t seen the last of it.
When we’re in a state of neediness, it’s virtually impossible to get our need tank filled — kind of like a tree crying out for water but the roots can’t push down into the soil to receive it. I’ve learned that when I feel needy, I really have to just move inward and be still, mainly because reaching out for human reassurance when I’m in this state kind of scares them off. I actually have to relearn how to be comfortable with myself and how to like myself.
Then, once I’m rooted again, it’s like I see all kinds of human kindnesses coming my way. New friendships spring up, sometimes old ones get renewed, and I experience new connections and levels of understanding with my husband and children.. it’s just amazing how easily all my needs get met once I can get over being needy.
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I have no idea why you keep getting caught in moderation, Susan, but I am trying to keep up and set you free!
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This post demands a lot of mature reflection for me to reply to it. The only problem with that is, well…
I’m Australian, and as such read English slightly differently to your mob. Maybe if you can find an online Australian dictionary and look up colloquial meanings of the word “Rooted”, you’ll come to see why that’s hard right now :p
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I listen to an Australian comedy duo on occasion, and they make “rooted” jokes every 30 seconds.
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Susan, how it comes you are so on touch to Spanish people and news?
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Share?
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Lol, now you’re trying to flirt with a feminist in the JB comments section…
Just when I thought you couldn’t get more… interesting…
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That’s so kind of you! It’s probably because I’m so long-winded. 🙂
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Oh my gosh! I learn something new every day here. 🙂
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Well, I looked up the story because I wondered about it when you mentioned it. But I am certainly interested in other cultures, especially Spanish-speaking cultures. We have a lot of Spanish-speaking neighbors.
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Susan is married woman, Jshaft.
And probably she lives in the Pacific Coast. Too far for me.
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Write me here: uberfrau@hotmail.es
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Scared Weird Little Guys, they were autosuggested to me by both Pandora and Youtube because I’m a fan of Tripod and Axis of Awesome, which I just learned was Australian and not British.
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Ah, yeah, Scared wierd little guys aren’t my favorite, and tripod are kinda meh for me, but Axis of Awesome… *mwah!*
Their song “What would Jesus do” is the greatest work of Australian musical comedy outside of TISM…
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Thank you for not holding it against me that I thought Axis of Awesome was British, honestly to my ear they sound like Americans feigning a British accent. I like Tripod best because they are clearly nerd comedy, which is what I like.
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Heh, clearly you missed some Axis of Awesome songs of late, like their one about Game of Thrones :p
And meh, no-one outside this country can tell the difference between us and kiwis, which breaks my head on a regular basis. It’s up there with being unable to tell the difference between a Scotsman and a South African. Still, like with a lot of what I talk about, seeing how things should be different and wishing they were isn’t always valid. Logically, there must be something about the two accents that sounds similar to those who don’t hear either that often.
Still, here’s me, an Aussie who can tell the difference between northern English accents and Scots accents (but can’t differentiate between their respective subtypes), regularly getting asked if I’m English or a Kiwi
Sometimes, one must accept that reality and one’s personal preferences aren’t ever going to see eye to eye.
And that’s me proving I’m better than Feminism for the day :p
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I’ve lately been re-sorting what I think about issues like patriarchy and rape culture — mainly because, throughout my life, most of my experience of people, which of course includes men, have been positive. On the one hand, having grown up in fundamentalist Christianity, I do realize that much of organized religion has promoted a negative view of women, in that we’re the ones who supposedly brought evil into the world and we’re supposedly the ones with the power to lead great men, like King David, into lives of sin. In many of the most extreme fundamentalist Christian churches, women aren’t allowed to be in leadership roles because of this idea that we’re more easily deceived by Satan.
And of course, if you read blogs like Homeschoolers Anonymous, you’ll learn about boys and girls growing up immersed in this kind of subculture. There’s a small group of fundamentalist parents in the U.S. who feel like children, and especially girls, are prone to ruin their lives if they’re allowed too many choices, so these parents want to return to what they see as “the good old days” of old fashioned courtship and arranged marriages, usually at a young age while the girls still have plenty of time to make lots of babies, because they’re raising a Christian army with which they plan to take back over the government — only it’s not panning out so well because many of these kids are becoming atheists or agnostics, or embracing more liberal theology (sometimes not even Christian), in their adult lives.
So I’m aware that there are these pockets of patriarchal ideology — but that’s honestly not how most of the world thinks, and even many of the young people being raised with this world view are able to wise up and form their own opinions when they’re older.
Also, regarding rape, I realize that there is a victim-blaming element in our culture. I encountered this a bit when, as a young woman, after going through a few years of being really scared about the scary rape stats, I decided that I liked going for long walks in my inner-city neighborhood on my own, and living in fear wasn’t really living at all, so I just up and decided to get out there and do more of the things I liked doing, without being so worried that some guy would “get the wrong idea” and rape me. And I definitely encountered some negative feedback from concerned people who thought I was opening myself up to disaster by doing something as normal and simple as taking a walk.
But now I’m 50, and have never been raped, and have gotten to know many different kinds of men, none of whom have ever tried to force me into anything. So while I’m not saying that I’m immune to something horrible happening even now, I just don’t feel like I’m living in a rape culture. And a few years back when our 14-year-old daughter was about 11 and started expressing a real need to be allowed to go out and walk places on her own (we’re still in the inner city), her dad and I were initially quite scared but we got a big Labrador and started letting her take her for walks.
And we’ve gradually become more confident in her ability to assess situations while she’s out walking and fend for herself. For example, one time she said she was about to go up the street she normally goes up to get to the park, but she saw that the police had a guy on the ground there, so she decided to go up the next block instead. And sometimes men try to strike up a conversation with her (she’s almost 5’10” so people tend to think she’s older than 14), but she just says, “I’m 14” and they quickly move on. Which tells me that most men are good people; they naturally like meeting pretty women but if they realize that who they thought was a woman is still a child, they leave her alone.
So I honestly feel like we have a pretty good and decent culture overall. I feel safe even though I’m not in what’s considered the safest neighborhood in the U.S.
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