Brad Hudson wrote:If being concerned with making moral and ethical choices in how I treat my fellow humans makes me a "white knight," so be it.
I guess it's marginally better than board douche bag.
Well, that's just it. You take an uber-emascuated stance that somehow gives you the moral high ground... Still trying to figure that one out.
Wait.
Holy crap.
You were one of those kids who were given a rape whistle by their mothers! Any time an adult would touch you, you'd scream, "Rape! Rape! Rape!", and begin to vigorously blow on your rape whistle (an apt metaphor, methinks).
Brad Hudson taking a selfie:
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
I hope you are not talking about my posting of the SNL skit. If so, I am almost speechless. I can say it was not and really couldn't have been about showing anybody anything.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
Brad Hudson wrote: I understand what you are saying. I think that discussions about distribution of power tend to be threatening to those who are told they have power. Because of privilege, they don't perceive themselves as having power, and so they fear that they will lose something unfairly. I think that's a pretty natural human reaction. It also creates a significant amount of defensiveness -- nobody likes thinking that they are abusing power.
The thing is, I don't think pretending that the distribution of power doesn't matter is helpful. If you buy into the notion that patriarchy is harmful to men, then changing the allocation of power can make things better for both groups. I don't see it as some sort of zero-sum game. I see the distribution as a moral choice that those who choose the rules of the game are directly responsible for. Looking at the issue from that perspective changes my thinking quite a bit. I see the issue as how to construct laws, rules, cultural norms, etc. in a moral and ethical manner..
Have you noticed how the discussion can't help but drift into "Your fault" language, though?
ETA: I should expand on that. One of the three xkcd's EA's article linked to included a side-by-side panel. On the left were two men at a chalk board. One had finished writing an equation, wrong it turns out, and the caption said "Dude, you suck at math" or something similar. The panel on the right was the same but replaced the man with a woman who wrote the equation incorrectly. The caption was not in the singular, but a broad condemnation of a class of people - "Women suck at math."
You want to fight to end abuse, the unequal treatment of women, the imbalances in society, and balancing out access to achievement based on ability I'm with you. You want to target specific individuals or specific institutions that have internalized these behaviors, I'm with you - "Dude, you suck at equality". You want to broadly target male power dynamics against women? You lost me at "Men suck at equality".
Where in the world did I say "men suck at equality" or assign fault? I've been answering your questions and telling you how I see things. I don't think it's a matter of fault at all. But I do think that to say we could end abuse, bring about the unequal treatment of women, change imbalances in society, and bringing about equal access to achievement based on ability while turning a blind eye on the structure of the society in which we find ourselves is an exercise in self-deception.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
