American Women

[Sinanju Master]

There are 50,000 people born into this world every day, many of whom will never live to see their teen years due to disease, malnutrition, war, etc. On one side of the coin, bringing another human being into the world WITHOUT a lot of thought is plain stupid and selfish. A former coworker of mine suffered this dilemma. He and wifey ALREADY had a kid (who has anger management issues, it seems, AND is very strong for his age. I fear for their safety when he gets to be a teenager and DOESN'T get his way) and when wifey heard that her friend recently gave birth, she pressured her poor schmoe of a husband to have ANOTHER child (she wanted a girl but got another BOY) even though she has hypertension AND the medicine COULD have created problems with the birth. The kid came out fine through C-section. On the OTHER side of the coin, if I had a kid, I'd admittedly have an ulterior motive of my own: to pass on the martial art to HIM that will one day be passed on to ME by MY master. I'll admit to not being a kid-friendly adult, but interacting with one of my very own (biological or adopted) and passing on my life's experiences and watching him create his own would form a bond between us that I'd never known I was capable of. That being said, I wouldn't have a kid (okay, I can't "HAVE" a kid like say, RN can "HAVE" a kid) JUST BECAUSE my friends are having them. In my current situation, I'd be more likely to adopt a kid (IF I wanted one), or foregoing that, I'd meet Miss Right (and incur the ridicule of my bretheren from this board for swearing off my skirt-chasing ways), fall in love and make one with her AFTER a loooooong conversation about the pros and cons.

[Happy Chappy]

People used to save for a home that they could raise their families and grow old together in - now people save for an early retirement so they can travel the world staying in 5-star resorts and sleeping with exotic hotties. Very sad.[/QUOTE]

I don't see the sad part in the above statement. It is what I intend to so, I believe I am the best person to know what makes me happy, and I also believe such plans shall not hurt anybody else.

What do I find sad? Children being raised by couples constantly fighting, often over family finances. Also couples becoming parents without thinking long and hard about whether that is right for them or the children, but jumping in without much thought because that is what all their friends are doing, or the wife is bored at her day job. Also is having children that generous? It is usually considered selfish when someone decides not to have children, but if we are really becoming parents purely because of the care we have for children, shouldn't we be helping the poverty stricken children in the world first before we decide to introduce our own into the world? Of course if a couple decided not to have children, and instead use the money intended to raise them on sponsoring children in poverty stricken countries in desparate need ,that may not work. That couple would miss out on the unconditional day to day love you usually receive from your own children, you wouldn't "fit in" with all the mother's group discussions about kids, and the wife would have plenty of spare time in the day to do what? maybe search for paid employment?

What is sad and what is selfish?

[Rubber Nursey]

...the average American male does not support such initiatives, so it is rather unfair to claim that men in general want to reverse the progress previously made in this area.

I was talking the men currently in power - the Bush Administration and the Australian Federal Government in particular. No offence to the Americans amongst us, but that Dubya is one scary sonofabitch. And my own Prime Minister has his head planted so far up your President's arse, that he has no choice but to follow him around on his knees, like the snivelling little toad that he is. No offence to the Christians amongst us either, but I consider a Christian extremist just as dangerous as any Islamic extremist. A zealot is a zealot; there is just no reasoning with them. The thought that one of those zealots is also one of the most powerful men in the world, is really quite frightening to me.

I should mention that it's also rather unfair to claim that women in general support some of the outlandish so-called 'feminist' policies that have been discussed so often in this section.

I'm not sure I agree that marriage is usually demanded by the woman. Sure, many women want to get married, especially if they want to have children. Women are also very insecure and yes, its nice to know that your man 'belongs' to you and he's not (hopefully) still running around sowing his wild oats. But many men think the same way. Men still want to have a family and raise children. Men also like to put the ring on a woman's finger to show her (and other men) that she now 'belongs' to him. Surely the decision to get married should be based on a desire you BOTH have to take your relationship to the next level. I guess sometimes one party may want it more than the other, but short of the 'unplanned pregnancy' type scenario you mentioned, nobody can really be FORCED into getting married.

But I do agree with what you said about both parties being forced to work and less couples having children. I think it's sad that we've become so money hungry and possession-driven, that we would choose working towards a condo and a Mazerati over a having children. People used to save for a home that they could raise their families and grow old together in - now people save for an early retirement so they can travel the world staying in 5-star resorts and sleeping with exotic hotties. Very sad.

[Chocha Monger]

I seriously doubt that men and women will ever swap roles to any significant degree, at least in the US. I have female friends who have good incomes but they still blatantly state that they're looking for a man to pay the mortgage.

Despite the religious right's success in lobbying the president to deny naughty NGO's Federal dollars for family planning programs, the average American male does not support such initiatives, so it is rather unfair to claim that men in general want to reverse the progress previously made in this area.

When it comes to marriage, it is usually the woman who aggressively markets the cow and demands a purchase contract. Most men seem perfectly to content to fuck the pussy with no commitment until the woman pressures them into marriage through threats to cut off access to the pussy, an "unplanned pregnancy" or numerous other tactics to get her man.

I don't think women ever need to worry about men forcing them to stay at home and bear children while they go out to work as it was in the past. The new economic reality pretty much requires both parties to a marriage to work outside the home in order to maintain a good standard of living. Less college educated men means that more women will have to work full time if they don't want to end up living in a trailer. That in turn means they are less likely to have many, if any, children. The birth rates for many industrialized are low or negative. The US is the exception due to the fact that hispanic immigrants tend to have more children than if they had remained in their own countries.

Feminists did some good things for women's rights, however, like all good things it can be taken too far when it gets to radical extremism. Moderation is key. Now, if America loses the Gobal War on Islamic extremists then women can forget about driving SUVs, going to school or making decisions. Perhaps, the best thing a feminist can do to protect women's rights to go see her friendly Army recruiter.

[Rubber Nursey]

marak - i would much rather you were 'open in your disdain' than sucking up my arse on the board and then slagging me off in private. i respect both your honesty and your opinion.

my opinion, as sin said, is always gonna come from a female point of view - as a woman, it's the only frame of reference i have. but as a woman, i experience the world differently to you and your experience of the world is different to mine. bart and i are not so much presenting undeniable facts of how the world is - we are essentially describing how the world is for us, as individuals of opposite genders. and i am not necessarily addressing every point that he makes because either a) it's not how i see the issue and i am presenting how i do see the issue for his assessment, or b) i agree with him. as a matter of fact, i have agreed with almost everything he's said in his last few posts, but on some issues i don't agree with his perception of what causes the particular issue. for example, i completely agree with his statements on female consumer spending...what i don't understand is the correlation between that and the amount of sex that men are getting. are we really saying that a man is willing to spend half a million dollars on a house and an suv, just so his wife doesn't withhold sexual favours from him? wouldn't it be soooo much easier, if sex really is the primary goal, to just have an affair? go to a hooker? does withholding sex really make a woman that powerful? as i said before, i find that concept just a wee bit insulting to men, but that could be because i genuinely don't understand the issue - which is why i am genuinely asking for bart's opinion on it.

for the record, i said 'if that's the case' with regards to less men entering college, for two reasons. one, because i am not an american and would have no clue what the gender balance in american colleges is (nor australian colleges for that matter, because i don't move in those circles). and two, because bart used the qualifier "i believe", which i took to mean that he wasn't sure of the exact facts.

and i also stated that i would get back to address the sexual harassment issue when i was finished playing housewife and mother.

i'm not excited by the prospect of any part of the community being forced into subjugation, and that includes men. i believe it's bad for men and women when one party has more power than the other, just as it is when one race has power over another. this is absolutely not about bart being wrong and me being right, or vice versa. this is me sharing how i view the world - as it affects me, as a woman - and hearing about how bart (and others) experience the world as men. you can't claim, with authority, that the grass is greener on the other side, unless you take a peek over the fence.

[Sinanju Master]

M5, the fact that RN is a woman, she's gonna ALWAYS present a view that is central to a woman (a woman who actually sees both sides, mind you), but I gotta hand it to her that she DOES present some facts that ARE irrefutable. I'll never begrudge her the desire to try to make the plight of women BETTER than it is. I don't think she wants to make a world where subjugation of men is the norm, but merely to make it more equitable. I have more dealings with her than most of you here, dating back several years, so, my endorsement of her is not something I do lightly.

[Sinanju Master]

Doll, the day I don't wanna do naughty things to you (I never mentioned I have a thing for redheads) is the day you can call yourself OLD, not a DAY before!

[Rubber Nursey]

It's the other one...my 'baby' turns 10 today. Oh my God! When did I get so OLD??!!! LOL

But thank you, babe!

[Sinanju Master]

i do have a comment to make about the [CodeWord123]/sexual harassment issues that both of you mentioned, but i'll have to come back to that later. it's my son's birthday today and i've gotta go make him a birthday cake.

wish your son a happy 16th b-day for me, doll!

[Rubber Nursey]

women don't have power? you along with us were maligning paternalistic "biddies"....who are politically powerful due to having copious free time and financial resources...

and i will continue to malign feminazis and religious zealots and anyone else who aims to create one rule for one part of society and another rule for the other. i don't care whether its about black and white, rich and poor, male and female or wh*res and saints - i believe in equality. i believe that everyone should have equal access to employment, health services and the legal system. i certainly don't believe that women deserve more rights than men, just as i don't want to see a return to men having more rights than women. i am absolutely on your side when it comes to alimony payments (not usually a factor in aussie divorces, unless you're a hugely rich megastar), 70/30 property splits and automatic placement of children with mothers. i, personally, don't believe in 'affirmative action' of any kind (whether it's about gender or colour) if it means that some moron will get the job over someone more qualified, just because their skin is black or they have a vagina. i also don't believe anyone has the right - male or female - to tell us what we can and can't do in our own bedrooms (sex workers and the gay and lesbian community) or to our own bodies (abortion, contraception and casual sex) or censor what books we can read or what movies we can watch, blah, blah, blah. the list of civil liberties violations, mostly made in the name of radical feminism and/or religious zealotry, is endless.

and i am definitely not saying that women don't have power. women are very much the target demographic for most advertising and it's not just for the fridge and washing machine any more. i used to work in real estate and as much as you had to impress the husband (because he was the one signing the cheque, so he had to at least trust you with his money) ultimately, the decision on which home to buy was usually made by the woman. same goes for the family car. to me, that makes a degree of sense, because she will be the one spending the most time there and she is more able to assess whether it's 'child-friendly', etc - but i can't see men ever having allowed women to make such huge financial decisions in the past. and women still have a fair degree of clout in the political arena, with more and more women becoming strong political figures - however, i actually see that being to the detriment of women. as i have said many times before...women are our own worst enemies. between the tendency to 'behave like men' to prove themselves in politics and the jealous/judgemental way that some women treat other women, things like sexual and reproductive freedom seem to suffer when placed in the hands of female politicians. women can be very cruel to each other. but i digress...

the point you made about less men entering college was a very interesting one. if that is indeed the case and there will eventually be less skilled/qualified men entering the workforce than there are women, it has the potential to really alter the power dynamic in middle to upperclass families. even without the (somewhat dated) notion that men should be the breadwinner just because he's the man of the house, men are generally the ones who keep their jobs after the kids are born because they have always had a much better capacity to earn than women do. wouldn't it be an interesting 'social experiment' to see what happens when women are the leering, sleazy ceos pinching the mail boy's arse and the men are at home with the kids and dr phil. how would workplace sexual harassment laws change? how would divorce courts deal with the property settlements and custody issues? would women eventually spend their free time in bars and brothels looking for younger men, complaining loudly that their fat house-husband has 'let himself go' and is too tired for sex any more? hmmm very interesting indeed!

i do have a comment to make about the [CodeWord123]/sexual harassment issues that both of you mentioned, but i'll have to come back to that later. it's my son's birthday today and i've gotta go make him a birthday cake.

[Bart9000]

Nursey,

I can speak only for myself that despite musings to the contrary, am not looking for the day that women are returned only to having the rights of children....or the rights of the family pet. Those days were an imbalance of fairness and equity.

The "pussy power" that you do not believe in is making an affect much more on a micro level than the macro, which you seem to be asserting.....you don't think that women have power in this country? I have to point to consumer spending....near my home on the commercial strip, there is on average, every half mile, a 10,000-20,000 square foot furniture superstore......and I really don't think that it is men as a whole who are driving the demand for $10,000 new living room sets......then we have SUV's also.....often 30-50K to run back and forth to the corner grocery store, tanning studio, and kid's soccer practice.

Women don't have power? You along with us were maligning paternalistic "biddies"....who are politically powerful due to having copious free time and financial resources.....Why do they have these resources? Is it because they work endless hours under dangerous conditons? No. Is it because they have developed high level skills in medicine, law, or business? Not so much, they are generally ignorant and isolated from reality....the money and comfortable lifestyle comes primarily from the work of men, who's primary motivation in getting married is to "buy the cow"

Divorce is now, again, an imbalance...... I agree with you that a MOTHER and her children should not be cast into the streets for failing to please her husband......this is unconsciounable. However, on the other hand, it is also unconsciounable that a man now who can easily be divorced at the whim of his wife, has to then support her and the kids in the big luxurious suburban house and keep up her SUV payments ("the style to which she is accostomed").....while trying to stil support himself, and toss together a few dollars for his retirement after he has been cleaned out by the divorce.....yes, he has a responsibility to his children....would it be so terrible to have to move to a safe clean, but plain 3 bedroom apartment (partially underwritten by the ex-husband), and ride the bus to your little job......not "the style to which you are acustomed" but still hardly being tossed into the streets.....and under that scenario, the husband has a fighting chance of making a new life for himself.

And yes, women are over powered in other ways, such as what Sin mentioned in the ability to have a man guilty until proven in sex related allegations. A woman can literally end a man's career with an allegation of sexual harassment, and the burden of proof is on the man to prove himself innocent. I have seen it(in actual response to something having nothing to do with sex) happen.

And yes, as Sin asserted, the trend is towards not equalization, but instead towards subjugation. Western society is becoming increasingly feminized, and males and male behavior are being progressively made into the underclass....a recent trend has been to push males out of the education system (controlled by women hmmmmm), for basically not acting like girls........male enrollment in college is I believe on a percentage basis at an all time low, and in a few years, there should be an interesting collision of trends as a lack of educated skilled males to be strong providers collides with women's propensity to drop out of the "real" workforce and be homemakers.........women may find themselves in a position of being forced to be the "breadwinner" as their lesser producing husbands keep little nothing jobs, attend to the children, and maintain the household.........and threaten to take away the wealth that they have accumulated in a divorce.

B9k

Oh, and regarding the bible thumping morons who are against contraception, abortion, and REALISTIC sex education plans et, all, I will laugh my ass off when that one comes home to roost....hopefully while safely ensconsed in a pimp daddy condo in Eastern Europe, or a private island in the Carribean.

[Sinanju Master]

unless the entire planet converts to fundamentalist islamic ways of thought, i don't see this reversal of power actually occuring. i'm all for women having the rights that men have, but for them to complain about being oppressed for the last five millenia and to try to "balance the scales" by augmenting those rights (in other words penalizing men and putting us at a higher/tighter standard than women) is the same bullshit that they accuse us of having done since before the dawn of recorded history. some crude examples would be: when a woman accuses a man of [CodeWord123], the public instantly assumes she is right and he is wrong. sexual harassment: same thing. employment: i'm not certain that affirmative action would be the best course of action if you are going to hire the best applicant for the job instead of fulfilling a quota set by a government that is slowly being worn down by the relentless feminazi agenda that will not end at equality for the sexes, but our (men's) eventual subjugation. remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and as long as they are around to vociferously promote their argument to an unwitting (and/or uncaring) audience, they will gain ground, like kudzu. for a specific argument, divorce: if a woman stays at home and takes care of the "king's" kids and upholds the maintenance of the house, i have no prob with her getting a sizeable settlement from the divorce, since she invested a sizeable chunk of her life and effort toward the union. however, if said woman tries to drain the last drop of financial blood from a guy simply to satisfy a craving for revenge, then i have a huge prob with that. women have it better now than in the past and i don't see the sentries of feminism ever letting it go backward.

[Rubber Nursey]

We love you Nursey!!!

Awww shucks, babe. Much appreciated. Although you might regret saying that in a minute - I'm about to go all feminist on your ass...

POWER...the more that men want sex and can't get it, the more power women have, which manifests all over the place.....

This is a statement that's been made in this section, over and over, since Adam was a boy - I had a problem with it then and I still do now. I don't get it! Are you honestly suggesting that the whole power dynamic between women and men is shifting because men don't have ready access to pussy? Do you really believe that the unfulfilled sexual desires of men, as individuals or collectively as a gender, are a force of such significance in the grand scheme of things, that men will eventually crumble under the pressure and be forced to submit to the whims of a matriarchal New World Order, just to get a root? Isn't a wee bit insulting to to men? I mean...you're basically accusing mankind of thinking with their dicks.

I too have a theory about the power dynamic in today's political climate. Many years ago, the Church stomped all over the world's matriarchal societies and installed a man at the head of every family dinner table. Over the centuries that followed, a man was free to drink, gamble, vote, travel, be educated and indulge in pleasures of the flesh. His wife existed solely to serve him, as maid, cook, nanny and wh*re. Every man was a king and the whole world was their kingdom. Their power was absolute.

Then, a few decades ago, the Women's Movement arrived on the scene and to cut a very long story short, men were eventually forced to concede that women were actually human after all and, as such, we probably deserved a few more rights than the right to pop out your babies, cook your eggs and wash your dirty underpants. By the 60s and 70s we had discovered a new right that you guys had been hiding from us for centuries - the right to have indiscriminate casual sex with strangers, without having to marry them first. We also discovered employment and then we could have financial security, as well as sex, without needing to get married. And so the sexual revolution began.

Over the next few years, women gained more and more independence, power and political clout. Women voted for things that would improve women's health and social status, such as making abortion and the contraceptive pill accessible and changing divorce laws so that a) women could leave domestic violence situations and b) when they did leave, they didn't walk away with nothing but the clothes on their back. (I know this eventually went overboard, but their original intentions were good). More childcare centres were opened so that mothers could return to the workforce and affirmative action plans gave women more diverse occupations to choose from. And in many countries, prostitution was decriminalised and/or legalised, with feminists supporting sex worker activists' claims that it was a woman's right to use her own body as she sees fit.

Ok, that brings us to today. Today, I DO see the power dynamic beginning to shift, but not towards women. What I see is men trying to claw that power BACK. In the last couple of years (and this is why I just summarised the entire history of womankind - not to be a pain in the ass, but so I can demonstrate the rise and fall ) our Governments have been slowly stripping away many of the rights that feminists fought so hard to secure.

There are moves all over the world at the moment to REcriminalise abortion. Many countries are reviewing their prostitution laws, with some who used to have a liberal approach now turning towards outright abolition. A few years ago, teenage girls were being told that condoms were not only the boys responsibility and that they should be carrying them as well - now total abstinence is being preached at schools. Here, there are currently attempts to raise the age that girls can access the Pill without their parents consent and teenagers are being denied access to the morning-after pill. Actually, the morning-after pill was only made available over the counter a couple of years ago, but now there is talk of withdrawing it again and returning it to prescription-only. The Federal Government is in the process of slowly changing the divorce laws with the aim of make them harder to obtain. They are also offering financial incentives to married women to encourage them to stay in the home and pop out more children. Childcare has become inaccessible to many and unaffordable to most, but despite Govt promises to fix it, nothing has been done. Welfare payments to single parents are being cut (are they trying to make us single parents get married, or are they trying to discourage single childless women from making the decision to have a baby alone?)

What I see is a push towards 'traditional' families and 'traditional' gender roles (read: putting the man back at the head of the dinner table) and a really big blow to women's sexual and reproductive freedom. HOWEVER, if the Government takes away all our freedoms and forces us back into subservience - but unlike in the old days, we'll know what we're missing out on this time - women are REALLY gonna be wanting some sort of reward in exchange for the only bargaining tool that we'll have left. Pussy is gonna be worth more than gold and I can see you guys having an even harder time than you're having now.

[Bart9000]

We love you Nursey!!!
B9k

[Rubber Nursey]

To those of you incensed by the pro-IMBRA petition that Chocha posted the other day - I found a (much more rational, level-headed) anti-IMBRA petition you might be interested in.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takea...ltl=1151287024