hello

hehehehe

she's in/famous in the dance community

I'd never bumped into the thing until several days ago (some odd link at TPM, if I recall correctly). I'm all for variety in humans but she took me by surprise. What I gather was her first video http://bit.ly/1lVuegq is equally surprising, to me at least... "Hello, I'm Joanna Rohrbach and this is my labia"

Going sideways fast here (moving a discussion from another thread) but first of all, george, take a look at that video I just linked (the first of them to which Bethie responded). I could see you and I joyously criss-crossing in that field.

*********

blatham wrote:

Tough to formulate any sort of response that might stand in the face of such wit but...

Up until 1980, it was legal in every state in the nation for a husband to rape his wife.

Why might this have been the case? Either of you two brave chaps care to formulate some cultural analysis or explanation for this rather odd fact?

george responds:
I think your statement may be a bit misleading, in that it is very likely that the same situation likely existed in most countries then, even including (gasp!) Canada, and in that, in many or most cases, the supposed "legality" was implicit in the then legal definition of rape (and not an explicit exclusion as you mistakenly infer).

I don't find this odd at all. Perhaps, when you recover your breath, you could provide us a cultural analysis establishing the "oddness" of the earlier prevailing perspective .

***********

First, I've made no suggestion as regards American uniquenss in this matter. We all understand the situation for women in many parts of the world including our own countries. I don't know how Canada or Australia etc might differ.

The issue of the laws' contents (whether implicit in definition of rape or husbands explictly excluded) is irrelevant for women raped by husbands, of course. And it is irrelevant as regards what seems the fundamental issue here - power held by males as a cultural norm and that being expressed in written law. America serves as a good subject for the discussion if only because we all know about it to some depth.

You said that you don't find this situation odd. I presume you also don't find it odd that this legal condition has changed. That this legal situation held until such a recent period in all states is something I do find genuinely surprising, particularly given the changes in laws regarding, for example, rights and legal status of colored people or the rights of blacks and whites to marry. As women constitute 1/2 of the population, how is it that an issue of this import affecting so many was left unaddressed?

Of course, this isn't the only issue that reflects a cultural inheritance which placed women in a position of unequal status and power. We see it in unequal pay, in unequal representation within government and private administration, etc. We also see, over our lifetimes, an increase in the recognition of this inequality and in attempts to correct that inequality. Because, of course, it is injust. We understand that other groups have been marginalized and disallowed access to power structures, such as Catholics and Jews. Kennedy had to fight off claims he would function as an agent of the Vatican. Jews couldn't get golf club memberships, etc. The Augusta National allowed its first female member about three years ago - Condoleezza Rice. We understand, I think, that such moves towards equality can be slow in coming but that as a function of our cultural inheritance coming up from Athens through Brit law to the US constitution, we deem it the morally responsible path to take.

Given all of that, my focus of interest in on those entities which resist such moves to equality. We could be glib and say some bits or corners of us are bound to be a tad slow in change but that doesn't really involve any sort of look at the thing, it really just avoids it.

So, my next post will take a look at that question. For example, we ought to look at Phyllis Schlafly. But I want to give you a chance to respond if you see something I'm missing in the above. Please do this in an orderly manner with specifics where available.

Hmnmm. We round up horses differently over here.

See The Man from Snowy River.

Of course you do. You people down there do everything differently. You're like Scottish people made worse from sunstroke.

You appear to believe that human nature can be reformed by a sufficiently progressive government. I don't. Moreover the fact that the several attempts to reform humanity in recent centuries have all ended in tyranny and slaughter suggest the effort is not only futile, but dangerous. Lenin's effort to create a "new socialist man" ended with his euphemistically named "elimination of the irreconcilables", and the subsequent degenerate exterminations of Stalin and the Gulag.

I don't believe that the sum of human intolerance is measurably less now than two generations ago, and I believe that from an historical perspective, the burden of proof is on you in this area. That you and other progressives are able to mouth lofty sounding goals doesn't mean you can achieve them at all, or appear to do so without worse side effects than the original cause.

The process by which successive waves of immigrants to this country rose from general contempt and hostility to acceptance and relative prosperity in two to three generations - a process that was roughly the same for Scots Irish, Irish, Italian, Polish, German and later Ashkenazi Jew, and more recently Puerto Ricans and many others - occurred without significant intervention on the part of government. In each case it culminated with the growing prosperity self-respect of those undergoing it, and the generally grudgingly-given respect of others. Unfortunately slavery and later Jim Crow stopped the clock on that process for blacks. It is moving ahead now. However, I think that, apart from the enforcement of justice in voting and participation in the political process, you would have a very hard time demonstrating that government intervention has helped them in any meaningful way. Indeed there is ample statistical evidence to the contrary.

Many of the "advances" to which you refer come at the expense of traditional families - with all their well-known defects. We shall soon enough see whether the new arrangements we are busily creating will do any better in the long run There are side effects attendant to all these "progressive" advances, and we don't yet know their net effect. In many areas there are good reasons to be skeptical.

I like both of you, bias towards Bernie, but wise as you both are, you together occlude the rest of us..
This was a hello thread.

We get you are smart.
At this point, the last thing for me to want to do is read all this.

I can talk about bricklaying.

Sorry Osso. I had to move that discussion to a thread of my own from a thread begun by someone else.

@ osso Let me add (because I love you) that I've never felt very protective about threads I begin. Whatever folks might want to engage in is fine with me so long as mutual respect and kindness mark the engagements. Georgeob and I have been friends for a long while too and share an interest in political theory.

Can you see your way to simply ignoring our discussions?

George - you complete frigging douchebag

Me neither. Nothing changes that; not police, not religion, not good weed nor scotch, nor sex nor gizmos. 100,000 years or so of evolution can make some differences. But behaviors can change, individually and as regards groups of individuals. That's the target of political theorists or religion or any such endeavor.

But I've got to set to some other tasks right now. I'll pick this up a bit later.

In George's defense, let me say that I doubt he truly meant that you think human nature can be reformed by a sufficiently progressive government. (Only death can actually do that.)

I think he just said it as way of pissing on progressive/liberal thought...and you in particular.

So you shouldn't take it so seriously.

You misrepresent my intent. I am unconcerned about your estimate of my intelligence, or lack of it.

Why not just skip over what you don't want to read?

OK. Family here including two at 3 months and another two at 2 1/2 years. It is all quite lovely not least because these four all seem to find me completely adorable.

So, anyway, to add to what I said re changing human nature. Outside of genetic variation working in tandem with natural selection over very long periods of time - no, of course not. The two examples I can think of who might hold such a view are those incompetent scientists in sci fi movies or Michelle Bachmann and her husband. Also, possibly, the Pentagon.

But behavior of individuals or groups of individuals is changeable. That's what a constitution is all about. It's what laws are all about. It's what sermons are all about. It's what education is all about. It is what marketing is all about. It's what the Catholic Church is all about. Grover Norquist has said that he isn't interested in what moves individuals, he's interested in what moves groups of people. And in this, by "moves", he means that he is interested in real aspects of his target audience and in what he might do to manipulate those factors so that audience behaves as he wishes them to behave. More broadly speaking, "culture" is the framework of a group that has evolved over time precisely so that behavior will be directed in particular ways.



This isolation of Russia (and China, one presumes) into a category makes no sense as you frame it. The Nazis were not Marxists or Leninists. Nor the theocracies emerging in the middle east nor numerous other examples of ugly tyrannies. Perhaps you are working off of some theoretical set, unstated and un-explicated, which holds that human nature is marked by certain features (tendency towards hierachy and a "natural" possession of power/domination by those who deserve to maintain their dominance - a Burkean view - over the filthy rabble). Whatever you're thinking, you ought to make that clear, for yourself if not for the rest of us. If you hold some theory set like the above, then you really ought to be honest as regards the consequences for citizen democracy - which necessarily becomes a sham or pretense under such a theoretical model.



In most ways, it is not. Women and blacks and gay people, to take three examples, are now included in community far more than two generations ago. But so what? Does that mean the job is done? Does that mean that any and all efforts to continue this progress are somehow a social evil greater than the remaining bigotry?



Equality for blacks and women and gay people is lofty "sounding" only? Or empty of real moral meaning? Or course, goals such as this are not absolutely achievable, but that's a rationale for demeaning the attempt or the ideal?

I personally believe 'lofty sounding goals' for equality (in status, rights, and opportunities) for everyone is the ultimate in human endeavors.

It really is interesting phrasing from georgeob, isn't it.

First, he seems to implicitly acknowledge that we (mainly speaking of America) have made desirable progress towards equality for women, minorities, gay people, etc. He seems to implicitly acknowledge that this is progress in the moral realm - we're moving where we ought to move because racism or sexism or bigotry are moral wrongs and tempering them are moral advances. But then he suggests they just "sound" as if they are instances of a moral good but really are not or might not be.

Here's some lofty "sounding" stuff...


And here's a lofty "sounding" notion regarding what government ought to be concerned with...


One of the points I've been making to georgeob is that in America over the decades most of us have lived through and witnessed, the sector of the population which has been and continues to be the most strident and activist in opposition to extension of the liberty principle heading up the Bill of Rights to marginalized minorities and groups has been conservative in ideology. Hardly a controversial claim. But it is the real world circumstance that george is fighting so hard to deny.

And george, along with the majority of conservatives presently, seems to be unhappy with the second portion of that quote above and what it tells us, explicitly and without ambiguity, was the framers' understanding of government's role in protecting and forwarding social issues.

Don't you ever sleep?

Understandable question. I do, just not according to any normal pattern.

Ahhh...anyway, I am off to work right now. Gotta be there by 5:30.

See ya. See yez all.

what the hell are you doing for work? I almost can't imagine the scenario.