Help! Reverse lookups using address info only

[DarrylParsons]

I wouldn't go blaming any particular group myself.

Many humans in the West are beyond that phase where the male/female unit is essential for scaping by in life, that day to day team necessary for survival.

Money gives people who can afford it, choices.

The main reason my folks stuck it out together was because we were pretty poor. If we had been rich they wouldn't have stayed together.

Money gives people the opportunity to choose the path of least resistance.

We are all very spoilt people compared to (say) fifty years ago, and the culprit is the level of disposable income i.e. money.

--------------------------------------

The stuff we see now used to be only done/affordable by the middle/upper classes.
Whereas nowadays a large section of Western society can behave 'scandalously'.

What previously kept people in their place, was poverty, but poverty is no longer a restricting factor for huge numbers of people.

Nice post. I truly believe this is the number one challenge in the modern world -- how to manage all the choice we have to separate what really matters from what only seems to matter. We are being forced to use our brains in ways we've never had to before.

 

[xpanda]

OK, cool, I see significant progress here, especially in your last paragraph. Our views are either getting closer together or they were not that far apart to begin with...

Nothing's changed at my end; these have been my views for at least a decade now. Where we diverge is that I believe that feminism needs to retain a role in society -- if only as a reminder -- but because I believe in individualism so much. Without feminism, women were largely cut out of the 'personal responsibility' and 'liberty' circles. I think we have every bit of a right as men to make our own choices in our lives.

I agree that the early stages of the feminist movement had merit and they were simply fighting to avoid negative stereotyping and get a fair shake. Then it started to get out of hand with affirmative action and the like. And now, as you say, those who continue to press it are probably blaming men unfairly.

Affirmative action isn't specifically a feminist issue. It's specifically an anti-white-male-establishment issue. It certainly has merit (white males still have the highest proportion in gov't, business, wealth, education, etc) but is misguided. It creates a backlash, for one thing. And I've always maintained that hiring me because I'm a woman is equally as stupid as not hiring me because I'm a woman. If women want equally opportunity in the workplace, they need to go get it themselves. Much is said about the wage gap, but most of that is because women either still pursue low-paying jobs or have failed to negotiate more appropriate salaries for whole sectors. This isn't men's fault, it's ours.

I firmly believe it is not (in most cases) because they would be fighting mechanisms which are deeply rooted in them

If this were true, we would not have embraced feminism. If we were truly meant to stay home and raise babies, we would have done nothing else. We still sit down to pee.

Okay: I don't believe monogamy is natural, first. So I don't really believe that marriage (or life partnerships) had anything to do with instinct. I do believe that males would stay around and protect their offspring for the first couple of years, but only because of long gestations and infancies. That would be instinctive. Marriage was about property rights and has been used for all sorts of societal controls since. Because of high death rates, women would likely have had only two births. That leaves only ten years or so of needing male protection and twenty for fending for herself.

[I also believe that the females in the group are naturally drawn to each other to pool resources and care for the young and that lesbianism is a natural occurance either as a result or to encourage the group bond.]

I believe our sex was beaten down over the millenia and that it will take several generations, at least, to truly undo.

and while they may score temporary successes, I have yet to see a woman who has had a successful high power career look truly happy at age 50 or higher. Compare that to the glowing smiles of traditional grandmothers just enjoying some moments with their grandchildren and it's no comparison.

Excellent. Find me a 50-year-old high-powered-career man and tell me how happy he looks next to the guy who's retired and playing with his grandkids.

My dad is night and day from ten years ago.

My 90-year-old grandmother tells me all the time how she wished she'd been born in my generation. She had her own business when she married my grandfather and then gave it up promptly. She watches me go to pool halls and wishes it was allowed in her day. When she was born, her mother wasn't allowed to vote. Etc.

Therefore, I agree with feminism up to the point when it opened the doors. But once it went beyond that and started pushing women through those doors who might otherwise not want to go there, that's when it became problematic IMO.

Well said. I agree 100%. The movement forgot it was about choice.

I suppose if you use a narrow definition of nagging then you are right, but if you use a broad one like "a woman using communicative means to coerce a male partner into doing something of material value for her benefit", then I think we'll have to look to pre-historic times to find the origin.

This is what I was saying.

I simply refuse to believe it's a coincidence that the country in the world with the most rampant feminism is precisely the one with the highest spending rate and the lowest savings rate. I'm not saying the feminists themselves do the spending, just that they empower the other women to follow their instincts and make men think twice before questioning them. Again, men are responsible also IMO, probably even more so than the feminists but I don't want to sound like a broken record so I'll just stop here for now.

Maybe you should stop dating goldiggers.

Incidentally, the US is miles behind most other Western nations in terms of feminist advancement. American women do, in fact, have more to bítch about than I do.

 

[DarrylParsons]

What I have learned from this discussion:

1) Feminism is not necessarily the same thing as hearing yappy JAP types whine for favors and material stuff.

2) Feminism CAN be viewed in a way that is genuinely fair.

BUT, I still maintain that

3) Most who practice feminism, weighted based on influence, just like with liberalism, do not exhibit behavior which shows they understand what their own movement is about, and therefore they are at least partly responsible for guys like me not understanding the true philosophy behind the true movement that they are not properly representing.

Can you accept this one?

Also, I have no problem with having rights to make choices, and if the feminist movement could restrict itself to the true cause, then I'd have no problem with that either. I would never want to force you, your family, or people like yourselves to "get in line". Using artificial force like that is very primitive and could hardly be effective, so all I would continue to do is use the power of the written word to reduce the size of your "market" -- ie. convince men to behave in ways that would make you like them more as people, yet make them less likely to make sexual advances on you, making you desire them more. If it still doesn't work, so be it, but I'm going to keep pushing in ways that are totally fair IMO and will always be legal, no matter how successful feminism ever gets.

 

[xpanda]

What I have learned from this discussion:

That sentence makes me a happy girl!

1) Feminism is not necessarily the same thing as hearing yappy JAP types whine for favors and material stuff.

What's a JAP?

It mgiht be the opposite, DP. Many women living the feminist dream have their own careers and thus their own money. They don't necessarily need to nag men to buy them stuff; they can do that themselves. Golddiggers come in all stripes, unfortunately.

3) Most who practice feminism, weighted based on influence, just like with liberalism, do not exhibit behavior which shows they understand what their own movement is about, and therefore they are at least partly responsible for guys like me not understanding the true philosophy behind the true movement that they are not properly representing.

Ninety-nine percent of movements have this problem. I hope that I'm helping to represent the movement in a manner more accepting to you and people like you.

convince men to behave in ways that would make you like them more as people, yet make them less likely to make sexual advances on you, making you desire them more. If it still doesn't work, so be it, but I'm going to keep pushing in ways that are totally fair IMO and will always be legal, no matter how successful feminism ever gets.

As you can imagine, I've only ever attracted men who were attracted to strong women. (Plus I have a nice bum. :>Grin>) Also, I'm only attracted to strong-willed men. There's someone for everyone, so don't worry so much about our ability to continue the species ... we will always find ways to ensure we keep fornicating, trust me!

 

[SENDITIN]

(Plus I have a nice bum. :>Grin>)

Yeah maybe...but you enjoy listening to that ghetto rap....sorry Pepper that has to change!!

 

[JDeuce]

Trying to catch up in this thread...


Funny enough, these are the same people who had to listen to precisely the same arguments from their parents in defense of measures to prevent interracial marriage from becoming legal.


Not exactly the same argument. A large part of that old-school logic was to prevent "interbreeding" of races...and gays don't procreate. In other words...some racists viewed interracial marriage as polluting the races due to interbreeding. That was the single biggest concern for many of them, and its obviously not a concern with gays.


The movement forgot it was about choice.

I've always thought the euphemism of a woman's right to 'choose' is stupid as hell. Choose <!--EZCODE ITALIC START-->what<!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->, exactly? What color shoes to wear? Whether to take heroin? Whether to murder her husband? Help me out here...I don't get it. And if we're talking about the *main* issue, then why not just say the right to have an abortion? 'Choice' is so broad, its essentially meaningless.

Anyways, XP...I think you owe BB a shipment of cookies. You do indeed laud the values of the Hollywood left, because you support the exact same issues they do. You're all fired up about socialization, bigger government, and gay marriages, for example. Hollywood is one of the main support hotbeds for all those issues, and many more.

Have you ever been out here before? If not, you'd quickly find out this place is the epitome of the self-absorbed, immoral elitist attitudes that mainstream America thankfully abhors. People who are surrounded by sycophants hanging on their every word. People who haven't driven their own car, bought their own groceries, who send their own children to private school, and live behind gated, guarded walls. People who think the fact they make obscene amounts of money is proof of their wisdom. People who are caught up in surface beauty as much as their shallow attitudes. People who have little respect for marriage vows and stable families...where debauchery is a virtue rather than a sin.

I see it every day, and the good news for us Republicans is that the Hollywood left IS indeed the face of the democratic party. They are the ones who get the ink and airtime because they are celebs. That differentiates them from the perceived face of the GOP...ie far right nut jobs. They don't have the media pull (unless they're busy bombing abortion clinics).

I'll say it again...whether you like it or not, Hollywood Dems are<!--EZCODE UNDERLINE START--><!--EZCODE UNDERLINE END--> the national face of their party. Michael Moore and Co. hijacked it. If he wasn't one of the major figures in '04, then why did all those people see his movie? John Kerry was more than happy to install him in a spot at the convention.

This gives me a chance to paste one of my all-time fav quotes about the Dems; a Nick von Hoffman quote from 1994:

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START-->"To its committed members, the Democratic Party was still the party of heart, humanity, and justice, but to those removed a few paces it looked like Captain Hook's crew -- ambulance chasing lawyers, rapacious public policy grants persons, civil rights gamesmen, ditzy brained movie stars, fat assed civil servant desk squatters, recovering alcoholics, recovering wife beaters, recovering child-buggers, and so forth and so on, a grotesque line up of ill mannered, self pitying, caterwalding freeloaders banging their tin cups on the pavement demanding handouts."<!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->
-- Nicholas Von Hoffman, The Washington Post, 11/12/94

 

[xpanda]

You don't understand my politics at all. Like many Americans, all you see is Left or Right and nothing else. If I'm anti-war and dislike Bush, I must be a socialist. Etc.

I do not laud Hollywood "values." If I happen to share a few political beliefs that some in Hollywood espouse, it's a coincidence. (Like freedom of expression, for one.) I also share a few beliefs with conservatives, libertarians, Marxists, and capitalists. I do not like the Democrats any more than I like the Republicans.

I'm a Liberal in the true sense of the word, not the made-up American leftist version.

Hollywood represents, in my view, greed, self-absorption, narcissism, arrogance and shallowness. I don't see environmentalists or humanists or anything of the sort. These people are so divorced from reality that anything Liberal out of their mouths is largely public relations. If California falls into the ocean, I won't miss it.

Oh, and do a search for my review in this forum of Fahrenheit 9/11. I'm not a sheep, thank you very much.

Edited to add: aside from my arguments on socialised medicine (it's more efficient than the US model) where do you get that I favour bigger government and more socialisation?

 

[DarrylParsons]

I've always thought the euphemism of a woman's right to 'choose' is stupid as hell.

I think it was phrased that way to avoid the appearance that they are pro DEATH, in case some people might think they were in favor of abortions even in cases when a woman wanted to keep her baby. I agree it's ridiculous to use a certain phrasing just so dumdums don't misunderstand, but I see it as rather benign and not worth making an issue over.

Some nice other points you make, though...carry on!

What's a JAP?

Jewish American Princess -- a liberated high-powered icon of feminism in the USA, as I perceive it from here anyway.