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[Aqizzar]

Also the Supreme Court will hear the health care law. Naturally, the conservative majority 5-4 court will have people saying there is a liberal bias, though clearly the number 5 is larger than the number 4.... It seems despite the recent massively conservative rulings, the only acceptable number of liberal leaning justices, minority though they may be, is 0....

There's talk, just talk of course, that Clarence Thomas for the first time in his life might actually act like a judge and recuse himself from the decision, in light of his wife having been paid craploads of money to campaign against the law before, during, and after its passage.  I find it doubtful, since he's tackled the matter head on before and said he won't recuse himself no matter what.  What I find amazing is that there's no mechanism short of impeachment to force him to, since there is absolutely no question about a conflict anywhere except inside his own head.


(I also find it amazing FireFox doesn't recognize 'recuse', what.)

[Il Palazzo]

(I also find it amazing FireFox doesn't recognize 'recuse', what.)

Neither does Cambridge "Advanced" dictionary, if that's any consolation.

[Truean]

(I also find it amazing FireFox doesn't recognize 'recuse', what.)

Neither does Cambridge "Advanced" dictionary, if that's any consolation.

I've been ranting this incoherently for years. My day has come....

[Vector]

The shaming of teenaged girls

Ownage of condoms used to convict suspected sex workers... what?

Blackface in the Netherlands

You might have read something about this before, but... once again, gendering in the Olympic Games.

[GlyphGryph]

Netherlands being racist is nothing new. :/

While I'm honestly not sure if that particular celebration is particularly racist in and of itself (I don't know much about it, but that usually requires it plays up some sort of stereotype, particularly a negative one. It's certainly possible, here, but there's not enough information to judge the full breadth of the context). Blackface isn't inherently racist after all - it is so due mostly to historical context. But their having a xenophobia and racism problem is pretty well known, I think, as is their media silence on the issue, so the context might well be there.

The Gendering issue is... tough. Because there are obvious reasons you don't want to force gender checks on athletes, but there are obvious motives for countries to lie about the gender of the athletes they push into the competition if they can. There are arguments against gendering-discrimination in the Olympics at all... but the alternative is very few women, since the men are simply superior at a large number of events. Ultimately, a country casting men as women to bring home gold harms the women in the event, but at the same time the sort of environment that forces them to undergo "sex checks" harms them as well. I'm honestly not sure what the best course of action is here.

Probably read the other two later.

[Virex]

Netherlands being racist is nothing new. :/

We do our best to make life as unpleasant as possible for those less well-endowed than us.

While I'm honestly not sure if that particular celebration is particularly racist in and of itself (I don't know much about it, but that usually requires it plays up some sort of stereotype, particularly a negative one. It's certainly possible, here, but there's not enough information to judge the full breadth of the context). Blackface isn't inherently racist after all - it is so due mostly to historical context. But their having a xenophobia and racism problem is pretty well known, I think, as is their media silence on the issue, so the context might well be there.

It's racist alright. They're the black "helpers" to a white saint for one, which, in a country that was once one of the largest slave traders in the world, should raise a few red flags. Secondly, children's rimes waste no time pointing out that, yes they are black and strange. One especially egregious example goes (translated) "Even though I'm black as coal, I still mean well" Implying that blacks in general don't mean well at all. Want more examples? Well, one of the threats to naughty children is that they'll be taken away to Spain in Nicolas' bag, perpetuating the racial slur that blacks will steal your children. Another one is that they'll get spanked with a rod, since as we all know, blacks are violent. Then there's the fable that they only come through the chimney, which means they are apparently not good enough to use the door and it perpetuates the stereotype that blacks are muggers. And then there's the inherent racism in white people posing as blacks.
It's not just racist though. There's an unspoken assumption in many tales that all blackfaces are either male, or that the female blackfaces fulfill the less important positions. And then there's Nicolas himself, who's gender is mandatory to be male, because as we all know, women will only steal your money away instead of hand out presents.

[JoshuaFH]

You might have read something about this before, but... once again, gendering in the Olympic Games.

I am suddenly reminded of a certain Futurama episode, and it blows my mind that that was a real thing that happened.

[kaijyuu]

The shaming of teenaged girls

I agree with the overall sentiment but this line just made me laugh:

Never mind that teenage girls are considered more mature than their male counterparts.

I'd love to see them quantify maturity, put it on a scale, and compare young men and women. The rest of the author's generalizations about teenage men and women can be backed up with statistics, but not this one. It's just comical.

Ownage of condoms used to convict suspected sex workers... what?

Not much to say other than "yep, that's pretty dumb."

You might have read something about this before, but... once again, gendering in the Olympic Games.

[/quote]
I'd prefer no segregation at all, myself.

Statistically men have more potential for physical capability than women, and though that means roughly squat most places, at high levels of competition is actually does matter. However, you can find similar trends of physical capability among many other lines, such as race. Being tall gives one an advantage in basketball; are we going to have a league for short people?

The olympics (and sports in general) are already all about who won the genetics lottery. Whoever got the right traits from their parents will have an advantage over the ones who didn't. Not to marginalize hard work or training or any of that, but it's not like everyone has the same capability in the first place. Why split the games based on one trait but not others?

[Phmcw]

http://feministing.com/2011/11/14/guest-post-shaming-and-taming-teenage-girls/

I don't like that one too much, because I think he miss the point. The craze surrounding teenage boy is just as high, if not higher, than the one surrounding teenage girl. And of course, if you listen to the media, teenager = psychopath, boys and girl.

Where he's all right, though, is that there are vicious attack at teenage girl, and women in general, if their appearance is so much than a tad neglected, and they create an hysteria toward one's appearance, and any leap of conduct is ferociously criticized.
Seriously I try to imagine what it would be like to get so much that part of the pressure girl have to resemble icons (who must otherwise behave like a perfect mix of virgin, whore and mother) and boy, would it be though.
Every-time a female relative is complaining her (usually perfectly fine) appearance in front of me, it make me want to shoot an editor in the face.

[Virex]

Except that for males this kind of pressure arguably doesn't lead to any stunted development or anxiety problems, while women get the full load of those problems and then some. You could argue that it happens too, but not that it is anywhere near to being a problem.

The shaming of teenaged girls

I agree with the overall sentiment but this line just made me laugh:

Never mind that teenage girls are considered more mature than their male counterparts.

I'd love to see them quantify maturity, put it on a scale, and compare young men and women. The rest of the author's generalizations about teenage men and women can be backed up with statistics, but not this one. It's just comical.

You must've spent your high school years under a rock. Or at home. Anyway, here's an article that proves womans' brains are fully developed well before male brains, which in turn results in more mature behavior.

[ChairmanPoo]

Well, one of the threats to naughty children is that they'll be taken away to Spain in Nicolas' bag, perpetuating the racial slur that blacks will steal your children.

And perpetuating the racial slur that Spaniards are black and evil.

[GlyphGryph]

Maturity the way most people use it is a bit more complicated than that, and it is at best statistical. Not really disagreeing, just something to keep in mind. And as we've already mentioned several times in this thread, culture probably plays a larger role in maturity than brain matter.

Also, color me convinced the ritual is racist, heh.

[kaijyuu]

You must've spent your high school years under a rock. Or at home. Anyway, here's an article that proves womans' brains are fully developed well before male brains, which in turn results in more mature behavior.

You're still failing to quantify "maturity." Even ignoring it's impossible to put maturity on a scale for comparison, you can state your definition of it and I can prove quite handily that "brain development" has, at best, a shoddy correlation.

Most people's definitions of maturity correlate strongly with experience. Not age. Not brain type or development.


And as for my personal experiences, I really saw no gender based differences relating to responsibility, morals, etc that couldn't be explained much more easily by cultural influences. Where I live, women are considered weak, helpless pretty much inferior, so of course I saw a lot of "make the men do the hard work" and stuff like that in my youth (and still do). I don't blame such immaturity on anyone's gender.

[Il Palazzo]

You must've spent your high school years under a rock. Or at home. Anyway, here's an article that proves womans' brains are fully developed well before male brains, which in turn results in more mature behavior.

You're still failing to quantify "maturity." Even ignoring it's impossible to put maturity on a scale for comparison, you can state your definition of it and I can prove quite handily that "brain development" has, at best, a shoddy correlation.

Most people's definitions of maturity correlate strongly with experience. Not age. Not brain type or development.

But given the same experiences, age and all other things being equal, a person with a less developed brain will exhibit less mature behaviour.
You don't even need to define maturity as anything more than a process in the brain to see that.

[kaijyuu]

Alright, first you'll have to qualify what type of brain development. Someone with a brain disability will generally exhibit more child-like behavior; I'm not disagreeing with that (even then you'll have to say what disability; someone with autism isn't inherently less mature than someone without). Secondly, you'll have to prove that it actually does correlate to your personal definition of "maturity."



The thing about "brain development" is really, it can mean whatever the hell you want it to mean. People bring it up a lot expecting it to somehow give weight to their argument.


Want a bullshit assumption about brain development? Ok, here goes: Girls brains stop developing at an earlier age, while men's continue to develop past that.  That means they're smarter and more mature!

I think we can all agree that's a bullshit argument. There's nothing there proving A) that men's brains develop more, or B) that development correlates to maturity. Yet people make arguments using the exact same line of thinking and expect it to carry weight. You cant' just say "brain's more developed!" and automatically assume it correlates to (much less causes) what you want it to.


EDIT: I get this sort of argument a lot when dealing with people who think kids are sub-human and deserving of prejudice, so apologies if I'm rather venomous about it.