no action on racist/sexist jokes thread

actually there is a valid reason for her to be afraid... men are raised to think that they can prey on women however they please.

And I guess from my angle, I don't really think her nervousness at walking at night warrants mounting an intervention. Not really. I just think you're making more of the situation than is there. It probably won't be appreciated in my lifetime, I'll give you that. My genius is lost on the masses. Monotone internet speech may make it seem that way. I'm just pointing out that it's a situation and circumstances I know... so I know what the best possible reaction was.Since it doesn't serve a debate to hinge it on the specifics of my ex-girlfriend, I thought it might be best to back up a bit and say, "When it comes to my ex, trust me on this one." Dude, she's 5'1". She'd be lucky if her feet could reach my nuts, let alone do any damage. Well, for what it's worth, we did speak again after that night. (We lived together, it would have been rough not to.) And occasionally the subject of gender dynamics came up. It depends. If they were actively saying that black people were evil, then yeah, I'd stand up for black people. If they were simply saying that they had a nervous reaction around black people, I'd leave them to it. It's their personal reaction, and not something I'm gonna condemn them for if they're not inflicting it on others.Doesn't mean I'm gonna approve of it, but I'm not going to try and piece through their life of prejudice on the basis of them getting kind of nervous when a black guy walks by.

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"Egos drone and pose alone, Like black balloons, all banged and blown
On a backwards river the infidels shiver in the stench of belief.
And tell my mama I'm a hundred years late; I'm over the rails and out of the race
The crippled psalms of an age that won't thaw are ringing in my ears"
-Beck

No there wasn't. Dan himself has said there wasn't even anyone else on the street. Oh man... that's you're "valid reason". Do you have any stats to go with that?If this is true where you live (fields of innocence?), I'm glad I didn't grow up where you did.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I think I'm being misunderstood. Or maybe I misunderstood what you were saying and so my reply looked different than it was.Let's get this clear. It seemed to me you were backing schraf's statement about WOMEN having this HEIGHTENED SENSITIVITY that MEN DON'T HAVE, DON'T NEED, and CAN'T UNDERSTAND, namely because of these stats which show greater rapes and muggings of women.It seemed you were backing that up, saying her position was valid, with an anecdote about how your gf once revealed her own level of fear... to which you "shut up". This latter statement suggested to me that you not only felt schraf's statement was valid, but that you let your gf go on thinking it was valid.What I was trying to do was get at your backing up of schraf's position, by way of addressing your not helping your gf understand the irrationality of her fear.Okay, so it seems that the more important point, you backing up schraf's position with your anecdote, has gotten lost in the concrete situation you had with your ex.Let's drop the ex for a moment.A case like that in general would be (as you have gone on to admit) an irrational fear. Thus schraf's position is not valid and your anecdote does not help her. You mean she didn't have any hands? I guess there were additional reasons for her to be scared. I realize no one can sift through the minutiae of other people's lives, even those of their most intimate partners, but IMO when someone tries to verbally rationalize what is irrational it is sort of important to speak up in defense of reality.I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life, and I'm not trying to tell you to tell others how to live their lives. However I am saying that I believe helping people out of irrationality, especially when they are voicing it to me, is an important part of making the world a better place.Sometimes silence validates nothing but harm.If you don't agree, then fine.But Lenny Bruce agrees with me! Heheheh. The above is the basis for his most famous routines and what I understand most of what has been getting argued about on the racist joke thread (and a position which I thought you supported). Gladly appealling to authority.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

To an extent (but not the one to which you seem to be making it out) I do agree with her. The bottom line is that my ex was on guard in a way that I was not, and it would never occur to me to be. But I can understand her reasons for being on guard (validity being irrelevant to that understanding) and as a result, I shut up.It's not solely a gender thing, which is why height was mentioned as well. But gender's certainly a part of it.And again... whether the fear is valid is irrelevant to the fact that her sensitivity was heightened in a way that mine was not. I haven't really weighed in one way or the other on the racist joke thread. One of those "I ain't touchin' that with a ten foot pole" sort of situations.

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"Egos drone and pose alone, Like black balloons, all banged and blown
On a backwards river the infidels shiver in the stench of belief.
And tell my mama I'm a hundred years late; I'm over the rails and out of the race
The crippled psalms of an age that won't thaw are ringing in my ears"
-Beck

well then you tell me how women are treated in this society. enlighten me.

Actually, if you look at federal violent crime statistics, the case would be more like: "men are raised to think they can prey on men," since the majority of victims of violent crimes are men.So is female fear of victimization logical? Not if they somehow believe they are more likelyto be victimized than men.I (a male) was specifically taught by my parents and society that it was okay for me to hit other males, but that I should never, under any circumstance, strike a female. In fact, I was taught to lay down my life for a woman's honor, let alone her life.I had a similar argument with a couple of friends of mine - they were essentially afraid to spend to the night in my home because they thought of it as being isolated, in the middle of nowhere (though I would barely consider it rural).Because of their perception, they felt safer in their city environment, even though crime rates were much higher in the city. Indeed, they had been harassed by strangers repeatedly in their apartment building and had been robbed, but still believed my rural home more dangerous. No criminal activity has happened in or around my home, or in my neighborhood.My belief is that news media emphasizes crimes against women more than crimes against men, in part because women are considered more valuable in our society (even if in a twisted sense of protection of property). If you are in the US, I suggest you analyze your local TV news regarding the amount of time spent on male and female victims. From my viewpoint, female victims get more air-time, are more often the lead story, and are more likely to have a follow up stories regarding the victimization. I believe the relative hype given to female victim stories is partly responsible for women feeling unsafe.If the victim is female AND white, the time spent on a news story increases, even though white woman are the demographic group least likely to be the victim of crime.If the victim is female AND white AND upper class, you have an international media sensation complete with court TV coverage and TV movies - see the Lacy Peterson case as a prime example.

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Oh man... that's you're "valid reason". Do you have any stats to go with that?

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If this is true where you live (fields of innocence?), I'm glad I didn't grow up where you did.

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I think what you meant to say was, "I'm glad I didn't grow up the gender you did."I would actually ammend her sentence to read: I do accept the stats which say that men are victims of violence more often than women. I would hazard a guess that most of the people perpetrating this violence are men.So, this means that men are out there preying upon both women and men.The thing about us women is that we also grow up knowing that we are not likely to ever be able to overpower most men. I would also say that more women are the targets of rape than men (although stranger rape is more rare than rape by someone she knows).I once knew a man who was pretty homophobic, and he was freaking out to me once regarding the idea that a man might be able to overpower him and rape him.I realized at that point that I had always lived with the knowledge that most men would always be able to overpower me. I never had the luxury, unlike my male homophobic aquaintence, of thinking that I would be able to overpower most men.Women are vulnerable because we are not as physically strong, period.

i agree that the media sensationalizes everything and that yes men probably are more likely to victimize other men. the point is that when a man victimizes a woman he's not merely attacking her physically. he is attacking her entire personhood because these attacks are generally more geared towards sexual or personal crimes rather than random violence or bigger picture crimes like gang violence or violence related to any kind of deal gone wrong like drugs or what have you. no, i'm not trying to minimalize an attack that a man might experience. but think about it. women are more likely to be overpowered because they are not taught to defend themselves. many don't know how or that it is acceptable (often it isn't) for them to seek self-defence training, and further, the reporting and conviction possibilities of crimes against women are often skewed. rape kits can often not be closed once they are full of all the required evidence and thus could be contaminated and are thus often not admissible. so guess what... she gets fucked again. why? it is simply not important enough for her to be protected (however that might be accomplished). i know much progress has been made... but i suggest you try a lifetime as a woman and see what it is like.

Differently. WOMEN aren't one anything.Likewise, MEN aren't one thing. They are raised differently. I have absolutely NO experience of the instruction you said MEN recieve. I have no doubt that SOME men do, but that does not stain us all. I doubt that the instruction you described is even a majority, though I suppose I have no data to support this.You made a pretty bold claim. I am calling you on it. Do you have some data to back up that assertion? People can only enlighten themselves. However there are some good analyses of logic and data.I think Pink Sasquatch did a fantastic rundown on why women appear to be the sex at most risk (danger), when they are not.He did not point out, so I will, that in the latest war we just had, a wholly inordinate amount of time was spent on women POWs. Indeed any salacious detail of POSSIBLE mistreatment was gone through, despite the fact that they were (by their own account) treated BETTER than the male POWs as soon as their sex was discovered.If anything can be said, women seem to be put on a pedestal by society. This is not to say that that pedestal doesn't have some other social prices, but we appear to be obsessed with not treating women poorly (in a violent way).

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

i see you have personal experience to say that women are put on a pedestal?

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It seemed to me you were backing schraf's statement about WOMEN having this HEIGHTENED SENSITIVITY that MEN DON'T HAVE, DON'T NEED, and CAN'T UNDERSTAND,

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Never said that.I said that women have a heightened awareness that men don't tend to have.I never said they didn't need it, and I never said they couldn't understand it.Stop putting words into my mouth. It really seems like you can't help it.

No, I would hate to be either gender in that mythical place she (I had no idea what gender the poster was) postulated.Would you really want to grow up being taught to prey one women however you please?Thankfully I did not, nor do I know one person that ever was. I'm sure some must be out there, but they are not all men and I'd doubt they are even the majority.If the poster was a she that makes her post even more ridiculous. Absolutely. There is absolutely no question that men (at the very least in our society) are more aggressive and (when grouped by sex) have more offenders. That is even including the inherent bias of the justice system towards women such that they do not show up in statistics properly. I am sure male perpetrators will come up on top.That said, you still have no right to say men are raised to think they can prey on people however they please.Although I have known people that have taught others to be competitive, I have (just like before) not known anyone to teach their son to prey on other people. Most everyone I know was taught that preying on others was a weakness.My guess is you'll have to look in underclasses to find people teaching their kids that they have to grift or extort to get through in life.Your sexism is as ever glaringly apparent. Please stop talking like you speak for all women. I really really like strong women (willed, not just physical), thankfully I have been able to find lots of them, and your statements would make them puke (just as I'm sure you'd be sickened hearing some lady say "all women want to cook and clean for their man").It is fine if YOU feel that way, but larger claims are projection on your part. 1) Women are statistically not going to be fighting all men, or most men, and the majority of men (or at least half) cannot overpower most men.2) Women today have plenty of advantages to level the playing field in a fight. If all fights come down to a bare hand to hand struggle then a woman has the disadvantage without any training. This does not have to be the case. Agreed. Of course the latter part undercuts your initial argument. Well most men do not have that luxury either. By size alone half (which is ALL you are going by) are at the mercy of the other half. And even a quarter of that half may be smaller than a quarter to half of all women... so where does that get them? You do know women in other cultures (and in different parts of history) have fought alongside and against men in battles and done just as well, right?Sometimes they have done better because they have greater endurance, dexterity, and less vulnerable targets than men.In general, women are at a size and strength peak capacity disadvantage, compared to men. Everything, even fights to stop a rape, come down to specifics. Positive attitude (not viewing yourself as a victim who is weak) goes one hell of a long way in evening odds even when there is a case specific differential.By any chance have you ever seen the greatest war hero (most decorated) in WW2? Audie Murphy was 5'5" and a total mouse.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I just said sasquatch's post did a good job outlining how society has undue concern for the treatment of women... and I added one of my own.I'm gonna get real bored if you are about to play the game where you start asking me for evidence when you made the initial claim, and I asked you for evidence.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Absolutely correct, and I take it back. I was being a little over the top and it was unfair (in that it was certainly inaccurate).What you did say is that woman have heightened awareness in times and places that men generally do not have.And to this I have to say, you have also treated me poorly. I replied to your post directly and in a way that singled out why I thought the above statement was incorrect, and it did not use the more intense (and I agree inaccurate) language.I also find it odd that you pick out the inaccurate statement I made, and only reply to that, as if that gets you off the hook regarding the rest of my argument (even within that post if I remember right). You have falsely charged me with this on pretty much every other occassion, so I almost feel like not apologizing, but I will. I got it wrong in a moment of exasperation. I am sorry.I wish you would actually answer my arguments when they are correct, instead of disappearing, which is something it really seems you can't help.I also wish you would stop trying to add weight to your arguments by referring to "women" when you mean yourself, and others who happen to think like you.Just so you know, this wasn't a tit for tat thing. I really am sorry I twisted your statement up and deserved to be called on it.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)