Philosophy Now Forum

Skip wrote:CDN and witty - eh?

It also happens that nobody else took any notice of him at all. So....

CDN and nice, yeh.

Never let it be said us Canadians aren't a pleasant, obliging lot, Skip.

You ever tried to put an deflated air mattress back in the carrying case? That's the kind of trouble I'm having with the concept of refereeing roller derby. Curling, I could just about handle.

With four pack refs on the outside of the track, and three others to watch the jammers and scoring, it's pretty straight forward. Everyone has a job to do, and it flows smoothly.

Ah. I was trying to imagine how fast one person would have to see. Air mattress neatly stowed.

Pretty fast, or you don't call it. Almost like air traffic control.

Congratulations.

Hegesias wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:Could you be a little more vague?

You're kind of breaking the flow here. Okay, essentially I wanted to complain about feminists, discredit some of their oft cited "statistics" and then complain about how society treats men unfairly in a lot of ways many haven't thought about. And how men deal with "sexual harassment" - ie, unwanted attention, compared to how women do. That sort of thing. This is the "gender" subforum after all. Although I always thought words have genders and people have a sex...either one or the other. Point being there's only two of them.

This is different from country to country.

If you talked to your chief about unwanted attention at work in Norway, they would by all likelihood take you seriously.

Ever notice how competent, attractive men with good manners tend not to meet these unstable, manipulative women, while the uncouth losers keep running into them everywhere? I wonder whether that's biologically ordained.

Well, we certainly know how to avoid them. We also know to keep unstable, uncouth men at arms length.

Actually, I was only half kidding. I've met people with various psychological problems, and there really are sets - if that's an adequate description - that seem to exert a mutual attraction. They make terrible marriages and worse families and are an absolute nightmare for service agencies.

Half a joke is half a truth. People with issues hook up as they have issues in common. Nothing wrong with that, as they can work together to strengthen their resolve to overcome the issues they have. Quite often though, if the resolve is not there, they end up only magnifying the issues in a twisted synergy.

Skip wrote:Ever notice how competent, attractive men with good manners tend not to meet these unstable, manipulative women, while the uncouth losers keep running into them everywhere? I wonder whether that's biologically ordained.

A truer word was never spoken and the reverse is also true. I've often wondered how women who manage to escape one violent and abusive relationship walk so easily into a new one not so different. I may be revealing my dubious ideological purity by suggesting it but maybe that's what they're subconsciously looking for.

Social psychology is complicated. But, yes, victims and abusers tend to find each other. Of course, it partly depends on the culture and what it expects of women and how far it's willing to support them. Partly, too, it really is down to biology: she's stuck with the baby-making and can always be coerced through threats to her children.

Skip wrote:Social psychology is complicated. But, yes, victims and abusers tend to find each other. Of course, it partly depends on the culture and what it expects of women and how far it's willing to support them. Partly, too, it really is down to biology: she's stuck with the baby-making and can always be coerced through threats to her children.

I agree, Skip. There are very complex interpersonal dynamics at play in such situations, as well all the biological, psychological and sociological dynamics. It's all too easy from the outside in to concoct glib solutions for such complex questions but I reserve my deepest admiration for those sisters in an abusive situation who choose to solve their problems with a 12lb sledgehammer while the arsehole lies comatose in a drunken stupor. Only as a resort, it goes without saying.

Never let anyone hear you give that advice. In fact, don't give it. You should see the emotional train-wreck after this most obvious of solutions has been implemented, either by the wife or the (usually eldest, 14-17 year-old) son. Most people make really bad killers.

Skip wrote:Never let anyone hear you give that advice. In fact, don't give it. You should see the emotional train-wreck after this most obvious of solutions has been implemented, either by the wife or the (usually eldest, 14-17 year-old) son. Most people make really bad killers.

I'm sure you'll understand that I was being facetious, Skip, and not seriously advocating for summary justice. I try to never allow my heart to over-rule my mind but this doesn't mean I haven't got one. Obviously I'm being strongly affected by the cultural values of my upbringing, and some might even see these quaint values as patronising and sexist, but to me blokes that beat up on sheilas are the lowest of the low. However in spite of that let me assure you that I was a feminist long before it became fashionable for blokes to define themselves as such.