GOP candidate: "God Intended" Pregnancies from RapeFollow

Your solution, at best, allows for me to help address the problem with regards to local representation. What it doesn't help solve at all is the issue of a culture-wide system of oppression. Even if I was successful in getting a woman elected in my district, that doesn't actually address the core problem at all.

The lack of women in Congress is a symptom of the greater issue, not the problem itself. Which is precisely why I think it's imperative that our government and our culture recognize that this greater problem exists. Right now, it's fundamentally the same as the new racism that has taken hold of our culture.

But pretending like it isn't an issue we have to actively address because a representative system means we can address it ourselves is steeping with privilege. It's easy to take that stance when you aren't the one facing the oppression. When a good half the country (including many, many women) have been taught by their culture to think of feminism as a dirty word, that is a serious blow against ALL women.

It's irresponsible to charge a group, any group, with picking themselves up by the bootstraps when the systems in place do just about everything they can to keep that group from even believing that change is necessary, let alone desirable.

Except that you're inventing cases in which real distinctions become arbitrary. I could just as easily imagine that we could invent a matter transformation device capable of transforming any matter into any other matter of identical atomic weight. I could then imagine that the snickers bar I'm about to eat could be transformed into organic cells, which could then be genetically modified into human stem cells, which could then be grown into a human embryo, which could then be implanted and become a human being, and thus conclude that if I eat that snickers bar, I'm committing murder (and cannibalism!). But that would be kinda silly. We have to pick a point at which we distinguish between whether something is a human life or not. And it makes the most sense to put that distinction at some point where we're actually dealing with a complete human organism (in any stage of development). So a single adult cell is not a complete human organism. A collection of cells is not. Sperm is not. Eggs are not. Only if we're talking about Zygotes, Blastocysts, Embryos, fetus', children, teens, adults, etc are we talking about actual stages of complete human organisms.

I think that distinction is neither meaningless or arbitrary.

This suggests that there is a core problem.

Did you forget what started this discussion?



So your response to the question of whether or not its acceptable for a group of men to debate women's rights is to discard it because you don't know... if that's a problem?

Right, okay then. That makes perfect sense.

What you're missing, or ignoring, is that the solutions to these problems work in tandem. It isn't either/or, it's cumulative. Women running for office at the local level eventually means that more women will run for office at the state and national level. The culture changes all the time, but it isn't easily forced. Our inability to solve all problems right now does not excuse us from solving the problems we can.

There has always been sexism, and I suspect it will always be with us just due to the nature of heterosexual sex. Doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't confront it, but waiting for that to change is a fool's game.

I'm going to go ahead and quote this, again, because you're consistently missing the point.



I suggested that a debate on whether or not men had the right to dictate the rights of women was necessary.

You responded by taking a stance in the debate.

You never addressed why the discussion itself wouldn't be valuable, which is specifically why it's not necessary for me to tell you why you're wrong. You're arguing against a position I didn't make. If you want to have that discussion, then I'm game, but you have yet to address the point I originally brought up--that I think it's important for there to be a national debate on whether or not women are being fairly represented in our government.

Personally, I don't like the idea of legislative quotas. But there might be other options to help break social stigma I haven't even considered. And even if the debate led to nothing useful at a legislative level, it forces it into the public awareness. Right now, this issue is only discussed when the question of women's rights in particular comes up, so it never gets to be the subject of a discussion itself. But isn't that problematic? It keeps being used as a defense, primarily by the left, but we've never even had a concerted discussion on whether or not its a valid criticism?

I think that's a serious problem.

I also think a national debate would have serious social utility--it would put the question in people's minds, make it a part of public discourse in a way it hasn't been. It's a national issue that's gotten next to no airtime in the national discourse. Yet every person in America has an opinion on oil pipelines that largely don't affect us.

If you wanted justification on why I think a national-level debate is needed, there you go.

Crap, missed out.. can we get back to abortion?



But that population is small in comparison to the amount of people who did vote with race as their primary voting factor. Whether positive or negative, it demonstrated that race is still a big issue.

The original statement of voting for a half-black man mean that racism was over, with the implication that "race isn't an issue". You countered that the fact that there wasn't enough people who didn't want a black person in office to prevent a black person from getting in office, insinuating that "race isn't an issue". However, many people voted for President Obama simply because he was black, from all races, so race is still an issue. Just because his race wasn't used AGAINST him, but FOR him, doesn't mean that it wasn't a factor.

Doesn't mean it was a majority issue. I'm sure some number of people voted for or against him on the basis of his race. Unless you can support that a majority of voters did so, you don't have much of an argument.

Edit: To get a jump on the "black vote" argument, a brief look shows that Kerry received 88% of the black vote. Gore received 90%. Obama 96%. If we take that 6-8% difference at face value (and ignore the fact that nearly all demographic groups voted more heavily Democratic that year), you're still a far way from positing that a majority of voters voted on the basis of race.

Edited, Oct 25th 2012 8:30pm by Jophiel

Until men are able to "abort" child support, it affects them as well.



There's no way of proving one way or another, but it does support the notion that it's still an issue.



I was already aware of those numbers and given that the black population has been less than 15%, it's simply not enough to overcome the "white vote". At the same time, if you don't think there was a significant amount of non-blacks voting for President Obama, simply because he's black or voting for Hilary, simply because she's a woman, then you're sadly mistaken.

Blacks always vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Obama did seem to bring a noticeably higher percentage of black voters to the polls though.

Yeah, and rich white men tend to vote for rich white men issues... EVERYONE has a bias.

Alma, I agree with you that child support is a touchy issue. I agree that it is unfair for a man to have to pay child support for a child he did not want and has no interest in being involved in their life. However, there are ways around this. Wear a condom every time. It's not 100% effective, sure. But it drastically cuts down on pregnancy and STDs, and then you don't have to worry about whether the women you sleep with are lying to you when they say they're on birth control. Also, I'm pretty sure that terminating your parental rights is a way of getting out of paying child support.

I also agree that it is unfair for a man to accidentally impregnate a woman, decide he actually wants said potential child, and then have her get an abortion without his say. However, it is also unfair to ask a woman to act as a human incubator for a child she does not want. It is also unfair that women make less money in comparison to men, it is unfair that we have to deal with stupid reports from CNN citing studies that claim that women vote with their periods, and it is unfair that we don't have a single payer health care system in this country. The day that men figure out how to get pregnant and carry a fetus to term, you can have a legitimate say in abortion rights. Until then, get the **** out of my uterus.

that's not a reasonable argument though. We collectively have a say in laws, and trying to restrict this is ******* stupid.