What qualifies a man to talk about an issue like feminism?

@Gala,

Hmm us poor males for the first few decades of our lives tend to think with the smaller head not the bigger one!

After all it hard to think after all the blood had gone south from your brain<grin>.

0 Replies

@Gala,

We call them condoms.
-----------------------------------
And how many people do you think is now walking around because the old condoms broke my freind?

1 Reply

@spendius,

What rights? They brought her into the world and they get what they get. Are we to suppose that the parents have the right to tell someone who didn't ask to be here how to react to the world when that world has changed from that the parents grew up in? Some people forego parenthood because of that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
They and society sure do have that right without question and you are beginning to sound like a member of NAMLA.

2 Replies

@BillRM,

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

1 Reply

@spendius,

What sounding like a group that claim that 10 year old boys should be allow to have sex with growth men? You can tell me if that sound like a good thing or a bad thing.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Well then-explain what makes you think I am in favour of that. I bet none of the ladies think I am. The idea is a product of your own imagination it seems to me but I'll listen to your explanation nevertheless.

1 Reply

@spendius,

You are sounding like that group IE a minor/child should have the right to have sex no matter the society or the parents wishes in the matter.

To bad if the the parents are then handed the job of raising another generation because the mother is in fact still a child in the case we are talking about.

This sound like NAMBLA type position to me down to the fine print except NAMBLA is talking gay male sex.

A child is a child and until she or he is ready to assume adult responsibilties for the all the to possible outcomes of his or her actions the parents and the society as a whole have every right and duty to limit the child behavior.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

I'm not interested in your silly ramblings about homosexuality you silly ******.

We are talking about feminism. Nobody said anything about under-age girls except you. Plenty of girls have babies at 16 and 17 and most of them are fine mothers and their children a blessing to their grandparents.

What on earth are you on about?

1 Reply

@BillRM,

Bill said:

Quote:

They and society sure do have that right without question and you are beginning to sound like a member of NAMLA.

And then spendius asked:

Quote:

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I have to say that's one of the funniest exchanges I've ever read on A2k- aside from the one where some guy called Chai Tea - China Tea and asked her to help him with his hemorrhoids...

Anyway - the organization is called NAMBLA and it's an acronym for an organization which advocates man/boy sex - which you obviously didn't know - and actually Bill, you forgot the B- so it's no wonder.

I'd take it as a compliment that you didn't know what it is Spendius - I'm just laughing at the thought of the whole thing - not Nambla (that's a disgusting organization and those guys should be hunted down and arrested) but just the obvious disconnect in communication...

Anyway - I know that losing my virginity wasn't a big issue for me, even though I was raised religious- I just remember thinking that I shouldn't hand it over to some asshole who didn't give a crap about me - and luckily I didn't- so I have no regrets.
By the time I came along - there wasn't so much stigma about it and the expectation certainly wasn't that most girls would wait til marriage anymore. I can't even remember anyone being called names or anything - even something like 'loose'.
I came up in the time right before AIDS where people did their own thing and other people minded their own business.
I wonder which generation was the last generation where the women were stigmatized if they weren't virgins when they were married - probably my mom's.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

We are talking about feminism. Nobody said anything about under-age girls except you. Plenty of girls have babies at 16 and 17 and most of them are fine mothers and their children a blessing to their grandparents.

I think that's a little optimistic spendius. Most 16 and 17 year old girls who are mothers would do anything to turn back the hands of time to have avoided that situation at that age and would have been happy to have had a few more years of freedom to just take care of themselves and be girls - just as their parents would have been thrilled to have delayed becoming grandparents until their daughter was a little older and probably married.

1 Reply

@aidan,

Aidan first a small note I did see that I let out the B and in following postings place the B in<grin>.

Second I have no moral/religion problem with a young female having sex my problem is if she is not at the time an adult with an adult ability to take care of herself she is placing a possible new life at risk along with perhaps volunteering her parents into years of child rearing. She is also placing the taxpayers in possible harm way.

If you was not at the time an independent adult no matter what mean of birth control you may or may not have used you took it in your own hands to place all the about people at risk by your having sex.

1 Reply

@BillRM,

I totally agree Bill. I was nineteen and a half before I had sex and 28 before I got pregnant and you know what - I wouldn't have been ready to be a mother a minute before that. It's a huge commitment that becomes the first and last and most important thing you'll think of everyday for the rest of your life.

And you're right - condoms do break...

My daughter is seventeen and believe me, if she came home pregnant - I'd help her as much as I could, but my first reaction would be to cry - for all that I'd know she'd be giving up.

0 Replies

@aidan,

You have to take into account the society in which these young women live. If they were valued more they might not have that many regrets. I know and have known a few dozen I suppose and they seem quite happy and contented in the main. Most grandparents dote on their young daughters kids.

Mrs Thatcher brought in rules whereby local authorities were obliged to find a young woman with children free accomodation and a good few of them took advantage. A few years later she brought in more rules and these women could buy these houses at half price. And it got even better when their mortgages were paid for them. They are now sitting in houses worth £80-£100 grand which they got for nothing.

I think Bill's smear is a disgrace. So gratuitous. It shows he uses that sort of thing as a matter of course when he is a bit stumped.

I could make it stick if I said he sounded like a member of UCFMTB. (The Union of Calvinist Faggot Dealers and Torch Bearers.

Anybody you use a trick like that. I just showed how easy it is. I get it a fair bit on here.

And anyway--as I understand it babies of older women are more likely to have certain negative characteristics which those of young women don't. I don't know for sure but I've read it on numerous occasions.

And they get their freedom later whilst young enough to enjoy it.

Individual cases are another matter entirely. Anything can be proved by selection one of those to suit an argument.

1 Reply

@Gala,

Gala wrote:

Quote:
Sorry Gala, but you're just far off on this. The social perception of virginity differs between men and women. I'm not saying that it should, but it does. Mystique to men? You think that women are less concerned on the topic of a women's virginity? How is this mystique to men? Most of the comments I've ever received about the difference in perception, have come from women. If talking about mystique, could it not be the females mystique with the man's social allowance to be promiscuous and rewarded?

Of course it differs between men and women, however, I believe this topic would be best left to the 13-18 year olds to parse through.

You wouldn't be suggesting that at after age 18 the negative stereotypes cease to exist or that they could not effect an individual are you? Reducing the topic of virginity to a teen issue is a bad idea IMO.

Gala wrote:

As far as I'm concerned, virgininty ought not be the emphasis so much as sexuality. In the end, virginity doesn't really matter (unless you're super religious).

The idea that virginity is only important to the super religious is outright false. The religious certainly are the most vocal about their reasons to abstain, but their reasoning is but only one reasoning to choose either way.

Gala wrote:

As for the moral subjugation, that still exists maybe on a high school level.

And the college level...
And the workplace level...
And the social level...
And in politics...
And in film...
And in music...

Let's leave it to the 15-18 yr olds to parse out these issues on their own? I don' think so. Moral subjugation based on gender occurs on every level of society.

Gala wrote:

I recall being in my teens and knowing how perilous having a sex life would be among my peers, especially with the jaw wagging. So I did what any self-respecting girl would do-- I didn't choose to lose my virginity with some pimply-faced peer who would blabber to all his pals about it being a conquest. I decided it would be best to go with an older more experienced man, so as to enjoy the experience.

This is exactly my point. You made a choice based on the premise that the alternative would have been you degrading yourself. Not just yourself though, this is what "any self-respecting girl" is to do.

It's not that you SHOULD have lost your virginity to some pimply-faced peer braggart, but you took your choice and made the general statement that others should do as you. You aren't advocating that people choose for themselves, you're perpetuating the same negative stereotypes. Feminism is not about being promiscuous or nun like, but having choices. You demonize choice by implying that you did what a self-respecting girls do.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

It's nature TK. The incalcuable discrepancy between number of sperm and the number of eggs. The vulnerabilty of women when pregnant or nursing and rearing. The evolutionary division of function. Men are expendable. Women are special. They need protection and cosseting and to retire from the dinner table when talk turns to the orderly management of society. They are not designed for jumping up and down, getting up early, parking cars, fighting, objectivity, waiting and guilt. They are designed by evolution for more important tasks such as making men strain and sweat.

Understood. You think they are wretched things that get more than they deserve. Opinion noted.

spendius wrote:

Of course, if they are made to get up early, park cars, fight, pretend to be objective, wait patiently and feel remorse it eats away at their cellular structures and they gradually feel the need for some wellness education so it is perfectly understandable that a wellness educator will promote women doing those things in order to maintain a steady and growing supply of customers which eventually results in queues of patiently waiting women seeking his advice and looking up to him as their saviour.

Wellness educators don't have customers. We didn't sell anything, and we didn't take money.

T
K
O

1 Reply

@Diest TKO,

Quote:

You think they are wretched things that get more than they deserve.

Not at all. That's a complete misreading of what you quoted me as saying and which I stand by.

Why you misread it like that is your affair.

Quote:

Wellness educators don't have customers. We didn't sell anything, and we didn't take money.

How is it funded then?

We have wellness educators coming out of the woodwork. Each with their own territory, statistics and theories. Engineers and agriculturalists are the real wellness educators. But there's sweating and straining involved with those occupations.

1 Reply

I have some creds here as I was a young woman who stopped reading Betty Friedan's book and tossed it.

At that time, I still agreed with the obey thing, and
Friedan's apparent disagreement with that annoyed me, so help me, so catholic, even though by then I was on my way out - I was just hoping I'd find someone I might agree with. I'm not sure what year this all was, mid sixties. I consider that as a kind of sleep, though I was busy and awake most hours of the day and night.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

I'll add that my experience is very different from those who benefitted from my time's fights (not my fights, I was a petunia). A lot of prominent a2k women are in their fifties, while I approach seventy, not yet, not yet. The med and law schools were newly opened to women, along with other workplaces, when they were closed in my university years, or, virtually closed.

I'll never dump on all men, but there was a ethos that ruled.

0 Replies

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Quote:
You think they are wretched things that get more than they deserve.

Not at all. That's a complete misreading of what you quoted me as saying and which I stand by.

Why you misread it like that is your affair.

Nobody but you are accountable for what you say. I suggest you learn what you're saying before you say it. Your post is littered with chauvinistic language.

You ramble about how men and women are "designed," and wow, big coincidence, men are designed to be all useful and utilitarian, while women are good at and designed to do things that are socially looked down.

For instance, you assert that men are patient. Because you say so I guess.

spendius wrote:

Quote:
Wellness educators don't have customers. We didn't sell anything, and we didn't take money.

How is it funded then?

We have wellness educators coming out of the woodwork. Each with their own territory, statistics and theories. Engineers and agriculturalists are the real wellness educators. But there's sweating and straining involved with those occupations.

Wellness programs on most campuses are funded with student fees. They don't make profit. The number of individuals that come in the door doesn't get them more money or bonuses or anything. The motivation for the people who do this is that they help provide an educational service and help people get access to what they are seeking.

T
K
O

2 Replies

@Diest TKO,

What do I have to do to get your attention, tko, re your new york thread?

1 Reply

What qualifies a man to talk about an issue like feminism?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know