I disagree.
I know thats what the average man thinks. But for me, personally, its not that. I know the average man could beat the ever living fuck out of me. I wouldn’t stand a chance. Thats just logic and facts. I’d be a fool not to recognize that.
No, the fear is that another person can take pleasure in my pain.
The fear is that another person can be so alien to my mind, to my philosophy, to my entire way of life, that they can literally take pleasure while causing pain. THAT is the fear. To be faced with something so cold and know that you and your pain, in that moment, do not matter. Thats terrifying.
If it was just a matter of violence and being beaten up then every woman would have a black belt in Aikido.
Because “conservative” is shorthand for “wants a society in which alpha males rule”. That’s what it is. They don’t mean “careful with money and doesn’t speculate” or “evaluate the safety of new medicines properly before releasing them” or “always build bridges with a good safety factor”, which is what conservative means in finance, pharmaceuticals and engineering respectively. They mean “go back to a time when men were men and women and people of different ethnicity knew their place.”
If you look at the Bible at least semi-objectively you will see it recounts a battle between the conservatives - the kings and priests of the city - and the radicals - the prophets of the desert. It is a very ancient distinction. The Catholic Church exterminated the Cathars to stop people saying that the clergy must be held to the same standards as ordinary people.
Radicals are not always progressive, feminist or socialist. The big test is - is their radicalism trying to reinforce the existing order only bigger and faster, or is it marching away from acknowledging the right to rule of kings and priests?
Nor was I. I was raised in a socialist environment. There is nothing hippy or dippy about socialism. The socialists who taught me had flown bombers and fighters, commanded ships, developed weapons, spied, and fought in the ranks to fight fascism.
Coming from a working-class family, I’ve always rejected this. My great-grandmother didn’t have a paying job because she enjoyed it, or because she was big on being a suffragette – she had a paying job because it was going to take the income she was making, and her husband was making, and the older kids who were still at home were making to keep the family afloat. My grandmother was forced to quit school at age 14 to go work. They needed the money.
Now, if you can get by or even thrive on a single income, I say go for it if both partners agree. And it doesn’t have to default to the woman in a straight couple either – I know several happy househusbands.
But here’s what happened to one of those househusbands: the wife left him for a newly-divorced mutual friend of theirs. She does pay child support, he does have custody of the kids during weekdays, but now he needs his own income to support himself.
And he’s been out of the workforce for 15 years.
That’s what really galvanises the “both spouses work” argument. I was so glad my mum had a full-time job when my dad passed away suddenly, leaving her with 3 kids to support on her own.
Single income or double income is only an issue under the “feminism is about choices” paradigm, which I’ve always seen as phony and bourgeois.
If you can afford it and you’re willing to accept the risks, go for it. But you don’t get to beat up those who don’t – and they don’t get to beat up you.
The Bible is an excellent source of writings drmonstrating the innate depravity of humanity; both tedtaments old and new are agitprop, mostly written by alpha-male dudebro patriarchy types. Especially the Epistles - forgeries1, by and large, indicative of the larger society around them.
Textual analysis shows us yhat many of the works attributed to Paul do not share the same author. Ehrman’s written at length with regards to the false attributions and history of early Christianity.
I’m even taller than you, but I’m underweight. I’m like a human stick insect, hardly what I’d consider to be imposing. I’m sure there are guys 5’7" or so who size me up, think they can take me in a fight, and are almost certainly right. Besides, just because I’m taller than average doesn’t mean I’m somehow impervious to gunshot wounds, knife wounds, blunt objects, etc.
Right. I was raised the exact opposite. Everything you just said about conservatives applies exactly to my family, as well as most if not all negative Republican stereotypes you can imagine. We were anti-intellectual, so not socialist at all.
My political beliefs have nothing to do with how I was raised, but more with how I felt when I got out in the world and saw things for how they really are.
Regardless, I have to point out yet again that this is not a political issue. I can see saying “hmm, I don’t need any social safety net functions, and I’m making more money than I used to, so let’s cut taxes and social welfare programs, I’m a Republican now”, but not, “I was taught that rape was wrong, but I haven’t been laid in awhile, so I’m going to switch my position from anti-rape to pro-rape, just until things get better for me”. They better not think that way, because that would be horrifying. Why can’t rape just be one of those things that literally everyone who’s a decent person will agree is wrong?
I don’t think people work because they need a little mad money, or because they love what they do. They work because if they don’t have a steady stream of revenue coming in, they will literally starve to death, if they don’t freeze to death first.
If both partners agree that they can manage money well enough where they both don’t have to work, then by all means, they don’t have to work. But this is still a very privileged position,* where one considers whether or not they want to work rather than if they need to work.
*yes, I know, it used to be a lot easier, but that was before we were living in a kleptocracy. Welcome to life in Russia Jr, everyone
Unfortunately, we have a political party committed to white Christianist male cis-het abled supremacy. From a distance it looks like they’ve decided that being a decent person is wrong-- either being a decent person means being a traitor, or being a human rights extremist, or being a cuck, depending.
Yes, but it’s also a document (or set of documents) that tell us interesting things about the worldviews of several societies that occupied the end of the Mediterranean for quite a long time, just as we have Greek documents that tell us about societies around the Aegean in the same general period. The difference is that we don’t treat the Greek documents as sacred, though I guess if there was one telling me that my family had an ancestral and god-enforced right to, say, the Isle of Samos, I might take an interest. Especially if a US President supported it.
The conflict between the city, nomads and rural areas is such an intrinsic part of so many societies that it’s interesting to observe it in action in such a small group. It’s also interesting to see how the conflict between aristocracy, capitalism and emergent socialism plays out. Most early societies weren’t as literate as the Jews or the Greeks, which is why we tend to use them for source material. (We don’t know Etruscan so, for instance, the development of Rome is pretty much hearsay.)
I don’t give a toss about “Saint Paul”; the material is of interest to people trying to get a clue about the early Church and to Protestants, but really there’s not much in there, even compared to, say, the Apocryphal Book of Ekklesiasticus, which tells us a lot about manners and upper class life of the period. Ekklesiastes, on the other hand, shows that doubt and pessimism of quite a sophisticated kind were tolerated if not encouraged.
I find it more useful to regard the Bible as a collection of sources shedding light on a society as it advances and retreats, than something to get morally excited about.
I never said it was the only reason, nor even the main reason. The idea isn’t original with me; I hear it and read it from women. What @MissyPants wrote is surely the larger issue.
That said, I am more cautious around large dogs than I am around housecats, even though I firmly believe the cats thirst for my blood more greedily than the dogs do, and wouldn’t hesitate to pounce on me, toy with my fear and panic, and eventually murder me like a mouse, if our size ratios were reversed.
You might want to read the ‘why I’m afraid of men’ article. 'Cos no, that is not the takeaway. Unless you think holding onto a woman by the back of her neck and squeezing so she stays close to you on a first date is also normal.
Big red flag with these guys is they don’t offer, or if they do it’s not an offer but a command. If you’ll use your words and are happy to accept a no, you’re unlikely to cause offence.
No, we are not saying we don’t appreciate kindness or courtesy, not at all.
I posted a story on the Victory thread a few days ago. I was trying to wrestle a taillight bulb out of my car’s assembly in the auto parts store parking lot, and a complete stranger came by to offer his help. Sure, I probably could have done it myself eventually, but I accepted, and thanked him afterward. It was a wonderful gesture, and a welcome reminder that not everyone in this world is horrible.
But. I have to admit, I was a little wary. Not because I wanted to be, but because I felt I had to be. Because while I don’t have the awful stories some women on the board have been brave enough to share, I’ve had enough negative experiences of my own to be cautious around strange guys. I’ve been catcalled. I’ve had men shout curses and call me a bitch when they didn’t get the response they felt they deserved. I don’t want to be suspicious of the people around me. But time and again, whether we experience it ourselves or hear about it from other women, we learn to be wary. Because we honestly do not know if some random guy on the street is genuinely friendly, or a predator in disguise. And if we guess wrong, we can get hurt, or worse.
So please, be friendly, open doors, help other people. We will appreciate it if you do. But please, please, don’t take it personally if we’re a little cautious. It isn’t personal. It’s not about condemning you. We’re just being careful, because we feel we need to be. I don’t know how else to explain it.
One thing I’d like to add to this here, is to be suspicious of that “but I’m a nice guy!” response. It might be worth reading through the How I Learned To Be Afraid of Men article under the lens that a lot of these frightening men are behaving that way due to that very defensiveness:
Why wouldn’t she respond when I talked to her on the street?? I’m such a NICE GUY!
Why wouldn’t she give me her real phone number?? Is she saying she doesn’t trust me? But I’m SUCH A NICE GUY!!
Why wouldn’t she want me in her dorm room? Is she saying I’m a creep, or I might do something bad? No way, I’m actually a REALLY NICE GUY AND I’LL PROVE IT!!!
Again, if you are more sensitive to what a woman wants / is afraid of rather than feeling that need to prove yourself, you’re unlikely to make mistakes like this, and if this is someone you see frequently, they’ll learn to trust or distrust you based on your interactions. I wish I could say this was easy, but all social skills take time to develop and more than once I’ve run into a creepy-acting guy and thought, that could easily have been <younger, male enceladus>. Fuck up but learn from it, is the only way to live.
If you genuinely feel this way, please contact your local mental health services. I mean that sincerely.
If you don’t genuinely feel like that, you should be aware that those kind of remarks are very hard on those of us with mental illness who take suicide very seriously and not something to joke about. In addition, the way you phrased your post is very, eerily similar to the language used to manipulate people and keep them in abusive situations.
Again, if you genuinely are thinking of self-harm, please do contact someone.