aqvarivs

"This isn't a personal attack. I simply wonder in what world you live in."

I live in the same world as you do, I just happen to have different politics that's all, no need to try and marginalize my views by implying I haven't lived or I don't live in the real world or any of those other put downs you're alluding to.

"Communism failed. It never was going to work out anyway. You can make all the labour camps you want but, you can not stifle imagination nor enslave it to the benefit of someone else with out reward."

The fact that I believe a society should be grounded in the collective or common good does not mean that I advocate communism. Communism relied on force and violence to impose its order and I reject it on that basis alone. A capitalist system that gives priority to the common good would be far fairer to the earth and to all its inhabitants than the dog-eat-dog system we have moved to in the last few decades where the market reigns supreme. The 'one-year-old-today' IR reforms epitomise the difference I'm referring to here. Where's the reward for individual effort for the workers at the bottom of the supply chain? The comparative little there was to begin with is being removed bit by bit. Poverty and crime is going to increase as a result and our society as a whole will suffer further.

"Those horrible 'male values' are the only thing keeping the world afloat at the moment. Take them away and Palestine and Sudan and Saudi Arabia, and Australia, and every other society would collapse immediately."

Once again, our differing politics gives us an opposing view. I happen to believe, as do millions of others the world over, that it is America's aggressively acquisitive and militaristic foreign policy that is the cause of most of the turmoil and unrest in the world today, particularly in the Middle East. If ever one man personified an extreme example of what I mean by male values it is George Bush.

Bronwyn, "Where's the reward for individual effort for the workers at the bottom of the supply chain?"

Motivation to get educated and get a better job and let the next person who needs a start position step in. Working the counter at Micky D's ain't a career unless your studying management. But hey. let me know when their wages hit $25.00/hr. in your utopia and I'll quit my job and sign on for counter service. You want cheese with that. How about I super size it for you.
What's that $2.00 happy meal going to cost in your NEO-capitalism $30.00. plus another $15.00 in taxes?

P.S. My take on George W. is he does what his wife tells him is best. He doesn't strike me as a fellow who is the author of the ideas he puts in motion. You might be giving GW credit that belongs to one of your fembots. :-) One never knows do one!

I wish you the best of luck. I know there are millions around the world unhappily working being rewarded by merit. I see and talk to many every day. They always want me to give them something for nothing. It's just not fair. The guy stemming outside of my workplace should be a dentist or surgeon. I'm sure he would be just as good as the man or woman who actually excelled in their studies and invested the time and effort in their chosen profession.

And Bronwyn, I don't think I ever really broke the poverty barrier by much in 31 years of employment. I certainly didn't in the army and as a civilian I've always chosen to work with the underprivileged and disenfranchised. It cost me financially to do what I want and to live by my beliefs. I believe in a hand up. I don't believe in carrying people from cradle to grave. Or the enslaving of the able to the needs of the collective. I'm no Borg drone.

aqvarivs wrote " This perpetuated and reinforced the male view of placing a higher value on white women.

Confirmed that view. Just been reading laws enacted during the 17/1800's and cases of the time and judges reasons for decisions.

There was little effort to address the whole issue but push a limited factor favouring women, eg when women lost their supporting men through death/separation the church used to take over until laws passed which moved to make man responsible or allowed woman to inherit the whole estate- and I saw no reference to woman own responsibility to earn and look after herself...children was used a lot to explain this away beyond the reasonable point and as in no effort to look at the details of that care...

I think on that score, we have advanced to look at the woman/group than at the carefully cultured image by group action of women. What I am at a loss is to understand why at that time did the men not see this and went along with the image nor see the one sided womens benefit of it, particularly the unnatural effects it was leading to on society like in the laws passed at the time which were effectively antimale...its just me, but feminism and acting in their interest as a group has existed a lot longer than women care to admit...

Sam
Ps~interesting point, at law a child was always seen as the property of the father, and whom can enforce the 'ownership' by demanding 'possession' of the child after the age of 6(when they no longer needed breast feeding to survive which does not apply since bottle feeding)and the woman had to comply(ie woman free to live her life by herself, and the father raises his child)...women as a group acted to change this law till child an adult ie 'possesion' but not law to 'ownership' of child, ie father still had to pay for child's care as the 'owner' without the connected right to bring up his own child...'up there for thinking, down there for trouble if not very careful...eh'

Bronwyn writes: “The values I would describe as male values are those of individuality, competitiveness, power-play and aggression, while the values I consider to be female values are those of co-operation, consensus, empathy and compassion.”

So women are socialists and men either capitalists or terrorists (or both), depending on Bronwyn’s hormonal mood. While it may be simplistic homogeneity, if true, we are indeed a schizophrenic society irreparably fractured along our gender lines.

Maybe we should just ignore each other for a while… Come to think of it, maybe it’s already begun; it would certainly explain the porn star pole dancing of in-your-face intensity, we’re currently witnessing.

You have indeed come a very long way.

Its just not the way that you had hoped for, a way shrouded in warm fuzzy ideological pretentions, totally devoid of the basic nature of the human animal.

You forgot to take a look before you took the leap.

Cornerstone of equality is CHOICE. Ultimately the ability to choose for yourself. And what you see out there in the world is evidence of the choices made. You sound dissappointed in your own cohort. Dispondent even.

It takes two to make a sex object. That path is about as limiting as making oneself a money object. But they are paths most commonly travelled be the sexes, playing into a status quo that we know best. A path of least resistence.

Its not easy using freedom responsibly. Most folks cant handle freedom. They prefer constraints, in this case social, which ironically seems to be what you are advocating for in your not so unsual indirect, passive-aggressive, veiled manner.

Old saying...

'careful what you wish for you just might get it.'

Another one l like a lot, is 'clean up your own mess, dont expect someone else to pick up after you.'

Good luck.

What I find interesting is that if everyone agreed on how poorly done bye and exploited women were in this post, it'd have at least a couple of hundered posts by now.

I love Bettina Arndts statement that;

"Women do not like being shown their true colours."

There is often a huge gap between the ideal image of women and their actual behaviour.

I've just been reading Caroline Overingtons blog "Can You combine career and motherhood."

Where one blogger wrote that after publicly and loudly stating ones position on a contentious issue, that is embarassing to admit to changing ones position in the light of new evidence or a well constructed arguement.

But then if kept ones mouth shut and ears open until all the evidence is reviewed there would be no need to have to embarassingly admit to changing ones opinions that were previously written in stone.