Yeah, I know. People like you have been yelling “sexist” at me for saying things that are perfectly obvious for decades. A woman I once knew was fond of claiming that there was no difference between women and men at all and there was absolutely no job that a man could do that a woman couldn’t do just as well, if not better. I finally got fed up with listening to her and pointed out that women lack the upper body strength to be firemen and couldn’t carry people down ladders to save them in a fire. She called me a sexist, too.
Look, men and women are different. There are some things that women are better at and some things that men are better at. Neither is necessarily better than the other, they are just different. And if you want to call people names for recognizing that perfectly obvious fact, it speaks much worse of you than than the person making the observation.
Your vision (or version) of Woman is truly disconnected from reality. Clue phone: we don’t belong on a pedestal, especially not a “noble” one and we don’t want to be “protected”. From whom are you proposing to “protect” us?
[/quote] I’m not proposing to protect you from anything. But many women (and I assume you’re one) want the government to protect them from health problems and bankruptcy and unemployment and so forth, don’t you? Women are more inclined than men to want government to provide a safety net to protect them from the vicissitudes of life. That’s what I was talking about.
If you’ve been giving me the benefit of the doubt, I certainly haven’t noticed it. You don’t engage me much but when you do I’ve never gotten the impression that you were being particularly forgiving.
Yep, they sure are. Partly so, anyway.
Yep. Probably more than you. I also know guys who are cops and my former wife was a police dispatcher at one time and my brother in law is drawing retirement from both the metropolitan city police force and the U.S. Marshall’s service, having served twenty year stints with both.
So in all your nostalgiafy SA do you remember the obscure play called “West Side Story?” Gangs, fighting, police, love, death. Oh wait that was in the 50’s. Oh wait it was based on an older story, in England… Yeah all the bad shit happened after 1969 and life was just perfect before then.
What you got here, is you got your big time post hoc ergo propter hoc, the one about assuming that because something happened after something else, it happened because of that something else. What about wierd as shit art, Starving? You know the kind I mean, truly stupid paintings, they the result of liberal policies? I mean, the result of the bad kind of liberal policys, the one that guys do. How about post-modernist irony, is that a result of liberal policys?
Wait a minute, who’s to say liberalism isn’t the result of post-modernist irony? There was some irony before 1969, I’m pretty sure. Maybe its all a result of sarcastic, nihilistic humor? Maybe single parent homes, STDs, liberal policies and drug addiction are all a result of flouridated water!
On the other hand, the insight of male/female liberalism is one I may have to give some thought to before I reject it out of hand as being really, really stupid. “Women aren’t combative”. Never been to Texas, eh, hoss?
Why should I when you are so condescending to my gender? You deserve all my scorn and contempt. You are completely correct in that men and women are not equal in all abilities. I note, though, that you do not use an example wherein women have an advantage over men to make your point. Are you even aware of any?
Being correct as to differing abilities does not make the last millennia of thwarted and lack of opportunity, stereotype, oppression and prejudice right or good; in fact, it’s not even relevant to the matter at hand. But “the sexes are different” is not what you mean at all–it is not even what you said in your prior post. Your prior post re the “nobility” (but misguided) liberalism of women makes your POV very clear.
I pity the women in your life, but I’ll go bail that they do not esteem you as you think they do, nor are they in need of your “protection”.
Here’s how it goes, when you’re brain is so addled you can’t understand the progress of the world around you it’s easier and reassuring to develop your own unified theory of everything, than try to keep pace with an ever moving and changing reality.
It’s what old, addled, codgers do. Cling to their one theory. Because it covers everything. And because it requires no new data or thinking.
Be honest, whatever happens in the next 5, 10, 15 yrs, be it world peace, religious unity, peace in the middle east or alien invasion, nothing’s going to change with SA. No new thinking or information has been allowed in for decades and that ain’t going to change.
See he’s got it all figured, he don’t need no new information or worrisome facts messing things up. He’s all set. Expect no change in this stagnant backwater, he surrendered the ability, a couple of decades ago.
He’s an embarrassment to thinking seniors who have managed to keep pace with the times and didn’t close their minds off some time in the 40’s.
He’s also an object lesson in what to avoid as you age. Stay engaged, stay informed, resist the urge to just stop thinking and become such a, well, addled old codger.
I know. That’s my point. And it’s the violence they inflict on each other and upon society in general that causes me to condemn that type of lifestyle and the people who defend it. There is nothing positive about the drugs, thugs and gangsta lifestyle. Nothing good comes out of it. So it’s an utter mystery to me why so many people on the liberal side of the aisle seem compelled to defend it…or at least to condemn condemnation of it.
Again, I agree completely. And not to put too fine a point on it, it’s kids shooting each other of a pair of Nikes that is typical of the kind of crime I’m talking about. A young guy with a wife and family was shot and killed here recently by a couple of gangsta types out to hijack his car for the rims. He was pumping gas at a 7-11 when they accosted him and they shot him in the back as he ran for the store. A friend of my sister’s was shot and killed by a couple of these jerks a few years ago in the parking lot of a restaurant while bent over and taking something out of her trunk. This shit wasn’t going on back in the day even though there’s much less racism now, so what do you think has changed. I’m going with the rise and glamorization of thug life myself.
I used the word “benign” because it appeared from Vekatesh’s description that most gangstas weren’t doing much of anything but trying to suplement their substandard pay by selling drugs. I agree with you completely in that gangland activity is much worse and more threatening than organized crime, and it results in much more grief and misery for the families of the people committing the crimes and their victims. I’m not black and so can’t speak with authority, but I would think that your average black parent, trying to live a normal life and bring their kids up well, live in constant fear of their kids either falling into the drug and gang lifestyle or becoming a victim of it.
I think a fair number of them do both.
Nah! You got lots of time left. I’d say more but eleanor will accuse me of sexism if I do. Just keep tryin’ and the law of averages will bring romance your way.
Sorry, but I disagree. Fear of crime from the gangsta element is pervasive throughout the country, precisely because of the kinds of crime I just mentioned above. People didn’t fear Mafia violence much in the main because it was directed mostly at other Mafioso. Gangsta crime hits kids and innocent citizens going about their daily business. Much more grief has been caused by the gang life than was ever the case with the Mafia.
And now I gotta back out of here. This place has taken up most of my day today.
Now you are being just flat out dishonest. Where did I say women desiring government protection and/or care was misguided? In fact I said the exact opposite.
Again, more dishonesty. I just explained to you what I meant by women wanting to be protected, and you not only don’t contest it (probably because you can’t) but you blow right past it and go right on claiming that I’m saying women need my (or men’s) protection when you perfectly well know better.
So I’m done with you.
(And by the way, a fair number of women do exist who value men who make them feel protected. That’s a bitch, I know, but reality sucks sometimes.)
Yep, sure do. And I remember how gangs and gang fighting was something most people were only vaguely aware of, too. Nowadays it’s everywhere. That’s the difference and the rub. You too remind of the guy who attempted to rebut today’s high STD rates by pointing out that people got STDs in New York City in 1908. What liberalism has done is to fertilize, nurture and grow previously existing relatively minor problems and grow them into full-blown, pervasive ones.
And elbows, thanks for the tutorial, but it looks like you’ve missed where I’ve said that I was just as disgusted by the politics of the counter-culture at that time as I am now, and that I’ve watched with a combination of disgust and disbelief as each of my predictions about it has come to pass. If this board had existed thirty years ago you’d be hearing me say the very same things only they’d be about what was going on presently rather than what has happened in the past.
You hold that liberalism is the root of all evil (or some such–I’m paraphrasing). You also state that women “tend toward” liberalism due to some deep desire in them to be protected.
You don’t see that your post reeks of “bless their little hearts” condescension and patronizing? If you think that the very ideology “women are drawn to” is so horrid, it follows that either you think women need to be protected from themselves or their foolish choices. IOW, women are misguided, but with the best of intentions. You might as well say, “forgive them for they[women] know not what they do”. And yet, to add another layer of irony to this: it is the conservatives and the GOP who claim to be better “protectors” of our way of life (whatever that may mean). So wouldn’t women as a group be more inclined toward the GOP and conservatives? If what we yearn for is protection, surely it’s the Bob Doles and George Bushes of the world to whom we would cling.
Yay! I won’t have attempt to follow your twisted logic. I didn’t blow by anything–your statement re women wanting to be protected–by anyone, the government or the males in their life-- is ridiculous for the majority of women. Since I am a woman, I feel I have some expertise in this area. More than you do, unless you have some news for us you’d like to share.
If anything, I’d say that women need protection FROM your attitude and others like you, but that’s yet another topic for another day. I especially like the “noble liberalism” that females are supposed to embrace. What on earth do you do with people like Anne Coulter or Sarah Palin? They would seem to embody all that you esteem in women, yet they are the antithesis of noble liberalism. How do they fit in your simple Venn diagram of the world?
Yes, I suppose some do. And they’re free to do so. The problem was when women weren’t free to NOT do so. You remember those days–you wax nostalgic about those very days ad nauseam.
Add the history of the labor movement to the list of subjects on which your knowledge could be placed into the eye of a needle without making it any more difficult to thread it.
In his own damn words. You gotta love the addled, old fart, hasn’t had a new thought in decades, sure he knows it all yet, never let’s it slow him down.
Now he’s making my points for me;
If you think the same as you did 30 yrs ago, you’ve wasted 30yrs of your life old man. I know it’s sadder than funny, but I still gotta laugh.
I guess I have to jump back in one more time. There aren’t two liberalisms. I view all liberalism as something that is mostly bad. Conservatism seems to make more sense to me so I’m “drawn” to it. But unlike many of my liberal brethren, I acknowlege that other people are free to feel differently than I do, and more women than men, if what I’ve read and heard and observed is correct, feel that government policies which provide and care for them and protect them from the vicissitudes of life make more sense, and so they are “drawn” to it. So you see, there is no reason to read insult into the word “drawn”. We are all drawn to one thing or another.
It’s just that I find the reasons why women tend to be drawn to liberalism for reasons of government social programs easier to understand than the type of liberalism that screws up schools and promotes promiscuity and STDs, broken familes, drug use and crime. So given that I think womens’ motives are more laudable, I’m less resentful of them for having them. I still disagree with them and oppose what they want, but they are free to disagree with and oppose me as well. We all think our opponents are misguided. It’s not a sexism thing at all.
And what’s with this Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin stuff? Are you simply incapable of speaking in generalities? The exception doesn’t prove the rule. There are millions of women out there who are conservative and who don’t approve of liberal programs or ideas. Still, that doesn’t mean women in general don’t skew liberal more than men do.
Oh, sure, I’ve had lots of new thoughts. Most of them along the lines of “Oh, shit, they’ve fucked things up worse than I thought.”
Is it really your belief that if I considered drugs (for example) and the effect they have and the crime necessary to support them were bad things thirty years ago, that I should have quite properly come to be of the opinion now that they are just peachy-keen?
Or that if breaking up the institution of marriage and kids being raised without guidance or proper support was bad thirty years ago, I should have morphed into thinking it’s a pretty great thing now?
I’m afraid I’m not the one whose brain is addled here, chum.
:smack: