MriyaMachine on 14/5/2022 at 21:36

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Um, my mistake on referring to them as females. I uh…didn't mean anything sexist by it. I'm just not really into this new lingo thing we have with correct terms and such. A woman is a female to me. Speaking of the new lingo I gosh honest had no idea I was mansplaining, a word I do not use. I know we all hate each other and it's men against women against men against straight against queer against uninteresting, maybe my mind just managed to somehow bypass that vortex and love people for who they are, man or woman, helplessly smart or helplessly stupid. I've kept a good distance from the direction of culture lately. Think of it what you will. I just don't believe in any of it. I think public discourse altogether is going to shit. So whatever I said wrong, it wasn't with wrong intent. And yes, I will be the first one to admit that I am simply incapable of seeing things through the view of a woman, because I am a man.

mopgoblin on 16/5/2022 at 00:32

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Also, we generally know about all this stuff, like even if we don't have personal experience of violence we're well aware of the possibility. And carrying a knife might help, or it might make things worse if you're not experienced in using it to fight, but it's got nothing on getting together with your friends and making things hell for the people in power, or replacing them with better people.

Tangent about self-defence spoilered for being a bit tangent-y:
[spoiler]I will say that personally I have been down the self-defence route, and it's served me well. It's the reason a creepy bus stop guy wasn't able to kiss me on the mouth (though I didn't manage to stop him getting my face), and I was able to break his grip - his arm would have been next if he hadn't backed away after that. The thing is, it probably wouldn't have worked so well against an armed or well-trained man, and perhaps even against a very strong one. And to women who wouldn't be able to fight back as effectively on account of disability or medical stuff or age, most men are very strong, so it doesn't work as a systemic solution*. There's definitely a part of me that wants a world where men are too afraid to commit sexual violence because they know there's a solid chance they'll get the shit beaten out of them if they try, but we shouldn't have to learn to fight just to be safe.

All that said, there is value in learning martial arts, but in my experience the main benefit is the self-confidence it can give you, both in terms of standing up for yourself and (more importantly) in having the confidence to intervene when a guy is creeping on someone else (ideally before it comes to the point of physical violence).

* Also most sexual violence isn't from strangers on the street, it's from partners and relatives and friends and bosses and priests and other people you already know.[/spoiler]

Anyway, this US situation is properly fucked up. It's a symptom of a society with a serious misogyny problem, a broken political system, and a politicised supreme court. I hope this is the tipping point that properly sets off a fourth wave of feminism, because we sure as fuck need that right now.

Draxil on 16/5/2022 at 17:34

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There is nothing morally equivalent to abortion in the situation you described. A more morally equivalent situation would be a person, with your permission, grafting an unconscious person to your body that depends on you for life; this unconscious person had no say in the matter, and you fully consented to the terms of the grafting. Then you decide that it's not working out for you, not because of severe health complications or danger of death, but because having an unconscious person grafted to your ass is unpleasant and inconvenient. So you shoot him.

That describes abortion in the United States, where roughly 85% of abortions are performed for reasons of timing, finance, or desire (convenience), less than 8% are performed for serious health reasons (fetal or maternal), and less than 0.5% are performed due to rape or incest. These are statistics according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization which tries to collect figures from every abortion provider in the United States. There have been 60,000,000 abortions performed in the United States between 1973-2020. That's every American death from every war from the Civil War onwards--times 46. The total worldwide deaths of the first World War, times 3 or 4 (depending on the source of estimate). It's the population of Italy. Of Spain and Portugal, combined. The population of Scandinavia times three.

That should be bothersome to anybody. As should the racist and eugenic goals of Sanger and her ilk when they started Planned Parenthood. Today, again according to the Guttmacher Institute, black women are 4-5 times more likely to have an abortion than white women. In New York City, in 2016, there were 1120 abortions per 1000 live births in the black population. The rate for white women was 240 per 1000. 79% of Planned Parenthood clinics are within walking distance of majority-minority neighborhoods. And PP puts out such lovely tweets as (https://twitter.com/ppblackcomm/status/925380307242582016?lang=en) this. Finally, something the progressive left and white supremacists can agree on.

Since Roe, the United States has had some of the most liberal abortion laws in the world. Far more liberal than the majority of Europe, where it is widely and strictly regulated after the first trimester, and more in line with China and North Korea's abortion policies. Not a good place to be. I, for one, welcome the overturning and am happy to have it back in the control of the individual states. Now, instead of relying on judicial activism, the pro-choice side will have to engage in persuasion and the democratic process to achieve their goals. Or they can continue to protest loudly dressed in pink pussy hats and red gowns, 'cuz that's a super convincing argument.

I'm all for providing whatever level of health care and financial services necessary to pregnant women during and after pregnancy, too. Maybe legislation could be passed to lighten the financial and bureaucratic burden of adoption, while we're at it. There's an estimated 1-2 million couples waiting to adopt in the United States at any given time (no official statistics).

Draxil on 16/5/2022 at 20:09

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And it's never just about the woman and her body, either. There is a new and genetically distinct human life involved in every pregnancy. In the overwhelmingly vast percentage of pregnancies, that life is there because she engaged in consensual sexual intercourse without using a method of birth control. I believe the state has a compelling interest in protecting the rights of individuals, including the right to life, and the individual in her uterus is the definition of "vulnerable minority".

Edit: if you've never heard anyone treat abortion as a frivolous subject, you've never lived in the (https://twitter.com/i/status/1518630253694001153) United States. (https://www.salon.com/2015/09/22/my_abortion_made_me_happy_the_story_that_started_the_shoutyourabortion_movement/) Here's the founder of "Shout your abortion" talking about getting high and having an abortion as casually as if she was describing getting a haircut.

Phatose on 16/5/2022 at 20:50

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Eh, no. If genetic distinctness was sufficient to make it a fully human life, any time one of our cells mutates we'd be required to let it grow. Which is likely to be pretty terrible, since that's actually cancer.

Actually, that's a fair challenge. Please prove your reasoning does not also follow through to right-to-life for a tumor. Chances are, any person who's ever had a tumor has done at least one thing in their life that could lead to cancer, and the tumor is unlikely to be genetically identical to the rest of them.

I believe anybody calling a fetus an individual without acknowledging that it's not a given at all that there's a mind there, much less a human mind, probably shouldn't be asked anything about reproduction.