ZPG, help me out here, please. If a man decides he does not want a child he has conceived, in what way can so many lives be ruined? All that can be imposed on him legally is a bill every month. Courts can not demand that he accept the child or that he spend time with it. They don’t demand money from other family members. It’s just money.
I would be disgusted if one of my sons had a child outside of marriage. You do not pull the trigger on a loaded gun at someone if you’re not willing to accept the consequences. I don’t think a man should be able to back out when he discovers the deal to be more expensive than he anticipated.
I somewhat agree with you on the handshake. I do not accept for random people to handle any part of me. Anyone who is offended or insistent, I agree has boundary issues.
I must admit, I don’t have an issue with “random” people constantly wandering up and sticking out their hands at me. However, I do shake hands with NON-random folks all the time. It’s called a business setting in a corporate environment, where such a gesture is a common courtesy along the lines of saying “You’re welcome” when thanked, or to offer guests a small beverage.
Sheesh.
OP, I do hope your question has been very thoroughly answered at this point.
It’s just money that barring independent wealth someone has to earn and not everyone has a nice jobs with a lot of discretionary income. Many people have extended family they must help or those people, already born and breathing, will face very dire lives. Money taken for child support for an unwanted birth does take money from other family members that way. For example right now my salary from two jobs, one in academics, the other in entertainment (fortunetelling), helps support over 30 people in the United States and even more outside the United States where luckily, I suppose, American dollars go further. The money I send my cousins in Montenegro and Serbia keeps their teenage children in school as opposed to on the streets doing illegal work. I have plenty of neighbors from Mexico in the similiar situation. The money they send home keeps a lot of young men away from the drug gangs.
Yes, just like you want to impose your Roma values on everyone else. You specifically say that people shouldn’t be allowed to do these things you find objectionable, despite the fact that you are a member of the 0.001% or less of people who feel this way.
All you’d have to say to be accepted is that, although you are offended grossly by a male offering his hand to you, you respect the guy’s beliefs that this is perfectly normal behavior, and respond courteously saying that you don’t shake hands.
Yeah, you also got a lot more crazy ideas. But at least that would be a start to showing you aren’t such a hypocrite.
Well maybe if you have a low income job or a lot of people depending on you and you can’t possibly deal with a child, you shouldn’t be having potentially reproductive sex with someone. Or if you do, you should talk about the possible results of said sex with your partner and figure out what will happen if the woman does happen to become pregnant. If you had a mutual agreement to abortion and she backs out of it, then you might have grounds for not supporting the resulting child (not legally, but morally). If you never talked about it, or if you knew that she didn’t believe in abortion, then you get what you get. It turns out that there are repercussions to sexual activity. Who knew?
Also - you support more than 30 people on one persons income? Damn, fortunetelling must be a hell of a lot more lucrative than I thought. But surely if you’re that wealthy one more wouldn’t make much difference.
Actually, “fortune-telling” or “psychic reader” or whatever can be surprisingly lucrative. When I lived in Rogers Park an old Native woman used to do that out of a used bookstore. One day while perusing their book selection I noted how many people she saw an hour, and her rates. Then I asked her what hours she was usually there in the store. While some days she saw few “clients” others she easily made four figures. I think the main problem, other than having to deal with a certain amount of batshit crazy (which is true of most jobs) is that the income flow was uneven.
I’ve since casually know a number of other “psychic readers”. Again, the customer flow is inconsistent day to day, but apparently a comfortable living can be had in the profession.
I will also note that these were legal, ethical operations, they weren’t bilking people out of life-savings to lift a “curse”. I can only imagine the scams are even more profitable.
Is it ever really ethical to convince people that you have supernatural powers and then charge them money for the stuff you make up? I notice that even ZPG refers to fortunetelling as ‘entertainment’, but I wonder if she’s upfront about the fact that it’s all just a show and she doesn’t have any special talents (except perhaps cold reading or whatnot).
I get what you’re saying - there is an obvious difference between just giving a reading and promising to lift a curse or whatever, but I have trouble seeing any of it as an ‘ethical’ way to make a living.
I agree there are some morally shady aspects to it, but if we went down that route we’d have to prosecute everyone who ever published a book on astrology or whatever occult system you’re talking about. And maybe every state lottery and casino there ever was.
I’ve done Tarot readings at parties. I will note that I did them for free, and I was very up front that I did not have Magical Powers and it was just entertainment. No costume, no props, for those interested I’d even explain how it was done, including how I modified the reading based on what I either knew about or could deduce from the person in front of me. I’d say about half the folks I did readings for were still absolutely convinced it was magic, and I was somehow “spot on”.
Sure the level of wink-wink/nod-nod varies. I don’t doubt some readers are true believers and others exploitative skeptics with everything possible in between.
My observation of the Native reader I knew was that she was often acting as an informal counselor to many of the locals who couldn’t possibly afford an actual psychologist/psychologist. If some woman came in with a faceful of bruise given to her by a boyfriend or husband the Native Crone Magic Woman could either predict a dire future if the gal stayed with him or say her actual soulmate was someone else or whatever. That particular reader was often giving out some very solid advice along with the entertainment and woo-woo. She was probably a net benefit to the area. Of course, not everyone is so benevolent.
And then there are people who get off on the “naughty” aspect of psychic stuff, or just have a giggle with it.
I guess my test is the net harm/benefit going on. There are certainly worse things to spend you money on. Is it ethical to sell tobacco? Work in a casino? Sell lottery tickets? Open a liquor store? Start a porn studio?
Admittedly, I would also be astonished if a hand appeared out of an arsehole and aimed for me.
Huh? How is that a Roma rule? It’s not like non-Roma regularly piss on their dinner.
Do you really support 30 people plus yourself in the US on your wage, plus a few outside it? That’d require an income of $620,000 at $20,000 dollars per person, or $310,000 at $10,000 per person if they’re all very frugal, and that’s not including putting kids through school in Serbia. I don’t believe you’re earning that.
If a man is already responsible for the welfare of 30 people, which hardly anyone is even in the Roman community (there’s more interfamilial help, but the numbers don’t add up - it’s simply impossible for all Roma men to support 30 people), then you should be really careful about making sure you don’t get anyone pregnant.
What if the pregnant woman is also supporting 30 people? Killing her is going to make them suffer financially much more than reducing the man’s income, isn’t it?
You can report the thread and ask the Pit mods to do that if you want. I was just asking if you felt like you’ve now had the full ZPG Zealotexperience.
This thread got me curious, because while i had noticed ZPG Zealot around the boards before, i hadn’t been really involved in any of her controversial threads. Or at least, not that i could recall.
Anyway, ZPG, i went and had a look at a few threads to see what all the fuss was about. I found some, including the one containing your opinion on men and women shaking hands.
After all that, i now know why people think you’re crazy: because you’re fucking crazy, you crazy-ass crazy person.
However, I do shake hands with NON-random folks all the time. It’s called a business setting in a corporate environment, where such a gesture is a common courtesy along the lines of saying “You’re welcome” when thanked, or to offer guests a small beverage.
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