Should this pro-choice girl join a Curves?

In My Humble Opinion
41

[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
When the guy is the founder and CEO, the only real difference between giving HIS money and corporate money is a dollar amount. Curves gets a billion dollars, he gets maybe 50 million, and gives 5 million to whatever (I’m just making these numbers up as examples, BTW).

The company is his money machine, and he is funnelling it to pro-life groups. He has an absolute right to do this, as people who know this have an absolute right to not participate.
[/QUOTE]

I agree. My point was simply to make the facts known.

42

[QUOTE=RickJay]
I agree. My point was simply to make the facts known.
[/QUOTE]

Ok, I appreciate that. Apologies if my reply seemed overly snippy.

43

I worked at a Curves for about 9 months several years ago. I didn’t realize it had any sort of religious/pro-life affiliation until about a month before I quit. FWIW, it is a good workout, and easy to stick to. I was in fantastic shape when I worked there, even though when I did the workouts they didn’t feel all that challenging to me. It’s not really a gym for people who consider themselves athletes or body builders, it’s more of a get and stay reasonably in shape and thin kind of thing. If you’re already used to working out regularly and spend several hours a week at a regular gym, you’re probably not going to like it. Definitely do a week trial before you join.

I like the idea of donating a few dollars a month to planned parenthood to counteract your membership, though.

44

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
It’s one thing to ban abortion. It’s another to discourage it. The pro-choice movement advocates the choice to have an abortion, it doesn’t advocate abortions, and it shouldn’t despise people who discourage them. To the extent of boycotting gyms and pizza places? Quit with this partisan bullshit of who’s on your team and who’s your enemy. Mindsets like these are what’s wrong with this country.
[/QUOTE]

There’s a big difference between giving straightforward neutral advice on ALL the options and pushing someone to keep a baby via lies and guilt-trip type measures. Pro-life pregnancy centers overwhelmingly do the latter rather than the former, because they know that there are a percentage of women who’d choose abortion when given the actual information on both abortion and keeping the baby. A lot of people think that giving misinformation is unethical, and I dislike pro-life pregnancy centers purely on that matter. I don’t care if their goal is to “help” women who find themselves pregnant to let the baby gestate to term; I care about the manner in which they “help” these women with information that may be doing more harm than good.

There simply are not enough men and women out there who have been given enough correct information about how their bodies and reproductive systems work to necessarily understand everything that’s going on and what their options are. The “cola as spermicide” myth is still going fairly strong, as are other tidbits of misinformation. I don’t think that a center that’s purportedly out there to educate and help women should be adding to that misinformation.

45

Those “pro-life” centers also push adoption like it’s a totally positive experience and every adoption is heaven sent from God and no woman has ever suffered from giving her newborn to strangers. Turning women into breeders for the infertile is such a positive thing.

If “pro-lifers” want the woman to get all the truth about all the choices, why don’t they ever give her any of the negatives about adoption?

46

Tolerance of others’ opinions for some people is just a self-evident fact. For others, tho, it’s an understanding; an understanding that while we believe many things to be correct, we know they might not be.

If in someone’s worldview throwing a kid into the adoption system is better than just putting him out of his misery, then you have to have just a smidgeon of respect, a token of humility that you don’t have the omniscience to be sure they’re wrong.

Tolerance of opinions may be an outgrowth of ethics or of wisdom, but either way it’s a quality that too many people profess, but too few have.

(P.S. You may say the pregnancy centers egregiously spread misinformation that adoption can’t be painful and botched. They’ll say planned parenthood fails to mention one of its alternatives is death. Tolerate.)

47

One of my exes was adopted and so was her brother. Her parents took pleasure in beating them. It happens.

48

I wouldn’t join “Curves” simply because it seems that their target audience is women who hate to exercise. So they’ve taken all the pain out of it. Their system (doing a circuit of different machines all in 30 minutes) ensures it’s not a good workout. Once your heart rate goes up, or your muscles start to get challenged, your time on that machine is finished. That, IMO, is the antithesis of a good workout.

When a Curves went into a strip mall a few years ago, half the neighborhood women joined. Within 6 months, they’d all quit. The routine got boring and they weren’t seeing any results.

If you have cable, see if you have the Fitness Channel. They have all kinds of workout programs: yoga, step, band, exercise ball. If you have digital cable, you might even have Fitness on Demand, so you won’t even need to DVR it. I personally like All Star Workout with Petra Kolber.

49

>Tolerance of others’ opinions for some people is just a self-evident fact. For others, tho, it’s an understanding; an understanding that while we believe many things to be correct, we know they might not be.

>If in someone’s worldview throwing a kid into the adoption system is better than just putting him out of his misery, then you have to have just a smidgeon of respect, a token of humility that you don’t have the omniscience to be sure they’re wrong.

I think these two statements taken together are a good model of the way people create discord around the entire abortion debate.

Tolerance for the opinions of others sounds like a good thing. It’s hard to imagine arguing against that.

But in the second statement, by “putting him [“a kid”] out of his misery”, you mean abortion, right?

Yes, hypothetically, if the two choices are to kill a child and to place him into the adoption system, and I were promoting killing the child, and someone else promotes the adoption system, then I’d have to have respect and humility regarding the other person’s opinion. But it’s a ludicrous statement. I’m not going to promote killing children. I might promote abortion, but that isn’t killing children.

I think your statements amount to a two step process:

  1. Take it for granted that abortion is exactly the same thing as killing children, that the reasoning behind it is trivial and doesn’t merit any examination.
  2. Now that we are all clear about the topic, let’s have a thoughtful debate about whether we approve of killing children. You are on the side approving of killing children, and perhaps you will find that you don’t have the omnicience to be sure my side is wrong.

And, I think that step 1 is the only significant step here, and that it’s incorrect.

If you’re in favor of toleration of other’s opinions, of a smidgen of respect, of a token of humility, step 1 would be the place to exercise it.

I hope you don’t think that people on the “pro choice” side of the debate would agree with the statement “We approve of just putting children out of their misery.” Do you?

50

The Curves in my area has hours that are not convenient for me, 8a-6p. Well, I have to be at work at 8a, so any early morning workout is impossible. I work until 5pm, and depending on traffic, I get to the gym about 5:45p…not enough time.

I’m a member here. Swimming pool, huge locker rooms, free weights, cardio machines, weight machines, massages, personalized trainers, and I’m planning on getting my metabolism tested soon. Athletes from all over the world train there, as well as lots of local students who use the pool for swim team.

51

[QUOTE=Napier]
I hope you don’t think that people on the “pro choice” side of the debate would agree with the statement “We approve of just putting children out of their misery.” Do you?
[/QUOTE]

“The Og I believe in don’t need no trigger-men or nail-bombs, Mister.”

Sure, support Curves. But have no illusions about what you’re buying.

At least their money-machine doesn’t have catchy “26+6=1” bumper stickers and a political arm that has absolutely ‘nothing to do’ with terrorism. * Oh wait… * :rolleyes:

52

Napier, I’m not sure if it’s worth replying, but you completely misread me. What is the opening clause of the ‘putting him out of his misery’ sentence? “If in someone’s worldview”

Anyway, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you to sympathize with pro-lifers or to ‘get’ where they’re coming from. Tolerance doesn’t mean that.

53

I don’t go to Wal-mart, or drink Coors . If I don’t like their politics I don’t buy their products ,I have other choices.

54

Well, given that abortion is legal and will remain so, why do you care what the man does with his money? If he wants to waste it in a Quixotish attempt, how does that harm anyone?

55

>Napier, I’m not sure if it’s worth replying, but you completely misread me.

>Anyway, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you to sympathize with pro-lifers or to ‘get’ where they’re coming from.

Hmm, I’m not sure if it’s worth pursuing, either. I may well not be clear where you’re coming from, but in either case it bothered me all night that I was kind of helping turn Drain Bead’s inquiry into the umpteenth hopeless abortion debate. Yet, there’s another idea in this thread about how far to extend one’s ethical thinking and how to figure the indirect consequences of one’s actions, and it’s a fascinating debate on its own. I’m sorry I went barking further up the divisive abortion tree and now intend to watch this other idea grow.

56

[QUOTE=ivylass]
The Curves in my area has hours that are not convenient for me, 8a-6p. Well, I have to be at work at 8a, so any early morning workout is impossible. I work until 5pm, and depending on traffic, I get to the gym about 5:45p…not enough time.
[/QUOTE]

Those seem like astonishingly stupid hours for a gym. Have they just given up on the working woman market to focus on retirees and stay-at-home mothers?

57

As someone who was formerly fit and knew a little bit more about workouts and routine than the average schmoe, I just don’t get how Curves helps .

The heart rate never gets up and is sustained at a fat burning rate.

The person is not doing squats one day and triceps the next day. Mixing it up. It’s all on the same day.

I think it is more of a ‘quilting bee’ community thing for women.

Their hours suck donkeyballs, too.

I’d rather be out of shape than doing it wrong.

58

>I’d rather be out of shape than doing it wrong.

Oh, come now! Surely you jest!

59

[QUOTE=burundi]
Those seem like astonishingly stupid hours for a gym. Have they just given up on the working woman market to focus on retirees and stay-at-home mothers?
[/QUOTE]

I can only assume so. For me it means I can never go there, even if I wanted to.

60

[QUOTE=PunditLisa]

If you have cable, see if you have the Fitness Channel. They have all kinds of workout programs: yoga, step, band, exercise ball. If you have digital cable, you might even have Fitness on Demand, so you won’t even need to DVR it. I personally like All Star Workout with Petra Kolber.
[/QUOTE]

Eureka! FitTV is perfect. They have a yoga show on right after I get home from work, even. Problem solved!