Senate Let's Talk: Feminism

Plus these guys live in a world of contracts. Not the same world we live, sure its a bit stretched but when you got all that money on the line, deep down your selfish interests take precedent. Plus you never know how much of a gold digger she is until she has got you by the balls in divorce court with half your income that you earned before the marriage going to her.

Now this may sound repugnant but in marriages where the woman makes all the money its the same treatment. You work your ass off and thanks to community property laws the lazy person, who ends up cheating and wrecking the marriage is entitled to half the money. Its total BS, the only ones who make any money are the lawyers. Which is why rich people like prenups. Gives you a way out if the person made a lot of money before you wed. -

 

I swear, it's like you're using Google Translate or something.

 

"The lazy person who wrecks the marriage" - uh uh - I'd like to see your statistics. Are you claiming that in all divorces between folks of unequal incomes, it's the lower income wage earner who "wrecks" the marriage" and goes after the money?

 

lazy person means the person who chose not to work at the relationship. Not actually having money. For example a couple having an argument and the lazy person instead looking at themselves to see what they are doing wrong ignores common sense and sleeps around. Or the person that develops a gambling habit or drinking habit and ruins the lives of both parties but still demands half the money.

 

There are a lot of ways to ruin a marriage.


Most of them well pretty much all of them involve some sort of selfishness.

 

Speaking of marriage counseling, I took a marriage counseling course at DBU in 2012. It was pretty good, and I made an A in it. I did like reading over the material and the videos we watched of different marriage counselors and their theories better than the lectures of the professor. I agreed with him quite a bit, but he didn't seem too enthusiastic about the class. I imagine he was a pretty good marriage and family counselor before becoming a professor, though.

Anyway, I wanted to ask a couple of questions. What do you all think of movies like Fried Green Tomatoes, Frozen, Maleficent, and Mad Max: Fury Road for their feminism?

Also, I have been researching prostitution lately. I agree with some countries that punish those who pay for sexual services but not the prostitutes themselves. Well, obviously, not all prostitutes are female. But some countries have not criminalized it and some regulate it. According to some research I read, I found that over 50% of female prostitutes were abused as children. That's not surprising. I found a chart regarding convicted, reported, unreported, and falsely accused rapists. So many rapists are unreported and not that many are convicted. The smallest number are falsely accused. http://theenlivenproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/rapist_visualization_03.jpg

It was disgusting. Meanwhile, I appreciate those of you who introduced me to the term TERF on here. My friends, allies, and I have come to use the word more often now. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminism

The TERFs annoy me, but thankfully, I spend most of my time with accepting people. I also found this, which I think should be used against bigots. http://mic.com/articles/114066/stat...s-trans-people-have-attacked-you-in-bathrooms

Back to the whole prostitution thing, does anyone here have an opinion regarding sex-positive feminism? Sex-positive feminists basically believe that women should be allowed to work in pornography, stripping, prostitution, etc. They think that those who oppose such opportunities are sexist. Personally, I agree with the premise that women should be free to choose whatever career they please. However, from what Chris Hedges and others have said, I am aware that many women are abused by men in pornography. Plus, I can only see prostitution as being good if it is regulated, if prostitutes have good medical care, protection, etc. I'm inclined to agree with feminists who regard prostitution as abuse toward many women, since many of them are impoverished and they endured traumas both before and during their work.

 

Was Fried Green Tomatoes any good?

 

No, it's not. Luckily, there are good feminist films, but that is not one of them.

 

Sex-positive feminism is the mainstream where I live, and I'd certainly say I subscribe to it myself. As far as sex work goes, stopping abuse requires not criminalization (which hurts everyone, and since demand never goes away, drives the profit to more and more dangerous gangs), but empowering women to be self-employed or start their own businesses without stigma. The rise in female business ownership (and consumption) has done more than anything to curb abuse in the LA porn industry.
Like you, I don't want to see anyone forced into sex work by economic circumstances, and that ties into the issue of creating a strong social safety net. Something is broken in our society when a young woman can either put herself through college as a stripper, or get a "real job" and drop out, drowning under debt; taking away that opportunity doesn't fix it.
Most immediately and importantly, decriminalizing sex work allows abused women to go to the police for protection, instead of gangs and pimps. This makes a dramatic difference in both rates of abuse and gang profits.
Finally, you can't regulate something that's illegal, since the people doing it are criminals already. When someone has a legal business, with their real name on the papers, you can enforce regulations to prevent STD transmission and other problems.

 

There are some pretty ready examples we can look to in Europe. Germany and other countries have tried the route of legalized prostitution to fairly disastrous human consequences. Most women in the sex industry there still seem quite miserable, hugely marginalized, and of course wholly objectified. The imagined utopia that was supposed to emerge out of these legal reforms never really did, and it remains a destination for eastern European sex trafficking.

 

Oh, Carey Mulligan! She's such an amazing actress. One of the best young actresses working today.

 

Makes sense. I think I was trying to tackle too many ideas and concepts at once. That's nuanced and true. I can agree with it for the most part. Things are getting really bad near where I live in NRH and I'm tired of hearing stories about the sad things that happen. Well, I've been hearing them since I was in college years back. But you know what I mean.

I suppose my next question would pertain to regulation. There are some countries that decriminalize the practices of stripping, prostitution, pornography, etc. But there is no regulation. Do you think that regulation is required only for the STD matter? Or for others? I am aware of stories told by author Chris Hedges and others about women often preferring to work with other women than with men in pornography due to just how rough and violent some guys can be. It's nasty, obviously, and I don't think we can get too graphic on the public boards here about it. But I definitely agree that we would need regulation in terms of STDs spreading. There should be ethical guidelines for women and men or whatever gender about how people should be treated during filming, I suppose.

Gosh, I can imagine the innuendos and jokes coming from members of this website after this post. But I guess lightening the mood is normal, anyhow. Oh, dear.

 

I can't speak to the example of Germany that was brought up - I'm not familiar enough with Germany's laws and law enforcement to dissect that one, but it sounds like they're just doing a horrible job with worker's rights in general if that's a problem.
No-one should feel coerced into working anywhere, or working with/for people who are hostile and abusive. That goes for any old office as much as for prostitution and pornography.
With regards to male performers, that negative culture is going away at a remarkable pace. The more powerful women are in the industry, the more female standups are joking about their porn habits, the more female performers are out in the open on social media instead of hiding their 'secret life', the more being a **** to your co-workers, employees, audience, and potential employers is a career-ender. Performers are even unionizing, and work is being done to finally get judges to take sexual harassment suits from sex workers seriously.
With regards to prostitution, there are a great number of regulations in place in New Zealand to protect sex workers and public health. It has passed of the most liberal laws around it in the world, there was no growth of the industry, a decline in both STDs and violence, and it did severe damage to pacific human smuggling rings. According to last year's evaluation, the biggest remaining problems were social stigma and habitual mistrust of police.
It wasn't an instant fix, but it was clearly a step in the right direction.

 

As you're interested in this, seek out:

Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary Talbot, Kate Charlesworth and Bryan Talbot

It's a quite brilliant piece of comics work.

 

To be fair, there's no reason for you to have heard of it.

If you enjoy it, however, also look at the more autobiographical Dotter of her Father's Eyes, by the Talbots.

 

I found this article while looking up this topic after the furor over lines from Black Widow in the recent film. I'd never heard of this website, and I can't say I have sympathy for anarchists unless they are thoroughly anarcho-pacifists. But this was a fantastic article, and I agree with it. What do you Jedi and Sith think?

http://c4ss.org/content/37944

 

Interesting in that it went against the grain so to speak on Avengers 2, namely the idea that Joss Whedon is an evil misogynist bastard for that scene!

 

Thanks for sharing. I'm going to post that article on my Facebook. That quote is classic.

 

As evil as it was, the state had a really good reason to make her infertile. They spent time and money making her who she was. They were not about to lose their investment by allowing her to get pregnant. Sure it prevented her from having kids later but she was in essence property of the state.


And let's face it, Bruce Banner got so much radiation in him, when he attempts to impregnate a woman they can pick it up with an xray machine.

 

And that's what Whedon was partly taking aim at, but also for me, what constitutes a successful relationship.

Banner thinks that that is commitment and kids. He's right on the commitment but but not the rest, he's trying to do what society tells him is the right thing but for him and Natasha that's never going to be the case, nor should it be.

She cuts that away from him with the red room revelation.