Wait… Holly… NO! Men said was bad… that means you have to disagree… otherwise it might look like you don’t believe Woman = Good, Man = Bad.

You just have to explain how letting women run the test will solve everything.

@Pecunium I think the tires was TitforTat again xD

Gah… they are ALL running into one.

On the topic of fluoridation, I’m wondering if deliberate fluoridation is such a good thing in terms of aquatic life? I mean if it’s good for our teeth (it’s also not known for having any especially adverse effects on people), that’s all well and good, but we aren’t the only species here, and nor do we live in the water. *shrug* Just something to think about.

… and then all the frogs start growing breasts!

For sexual age of consent, I like the system in Washington State (where I lived when this was relevant): 13 and under shouldn’t have sex. 14-15 can have sex with up to 2 years older. 16-17 can have sex with up to 4 years older, and at 18 anything goes.

It allows kids to experiment together and with slightly older people and avoids “boy with 17-year-old girlfriend becomes a criminal on his 18th birthday” absurdities, but still keeps the 30-year-olds at bay.

Yeah, but how do you apply that to other stuff? 15 year olds can have lite beer, 16 a shot, and 18 anything goes? :P

@Kirbywarp: There have also been studies that suggest the amount of estrogen in the water may have more to do with plastic than birth control but the end result is the same.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090326100714.htm

We dump a lot stuff in our water.

@Holly, I really like the leveled system you just described. As a guide-line I think its pretty outstanding.

I think the need for the “bright line” is how we ended up with idea of on the books age of consent laws, initially. Should it be national like the drinking age?

Molly Ren: It used to be like that sort of. There were a lot of places where 18-21 could drink 3.2 beer, but nothing stronger.

The feds (under Reagan) made that impossible, by saying that any state which didn’t (in the summer of 1982) prohibit all alcohol consumption by anyone under the age of 21 would lose all federal money for supporting the interstate highways in the state.

But they would also be legally responsible for maintaining those roads.

Hence the nationwide drinking age of 21.

“I could be convinced of slightly larger age ranges actually, but something of this form sounds like a really good solution.”

I can’t find a list of states that have them, but Texas, Kansas, Florida, and a few other states have Romeo and Juliet laws like that, exempting sex between teens within a certain age range from statutory rape laws, or at least diminishing the punishment. I don’t know a whole lot about it … I am actually a little shocked to find that in Kansas it only applies to heterosexual teens.

@Bee:

Knowing what has been going on in Kansas lately, I’m shocked but sadly not surprised… -_-

@kirbywarp but the law for age of consent isn’t to protect the older person, so it’s still about the person in question… i know the fear is that with another person in the mix, that means that they could be manipulated or coerced, but that can be applicable in other situations as well like consenting to boxing, MMA, signing contracts, etc (and often is used for situations like abortion, pregnancy, gender identity, that they’re not mature enuf and are being coerced, tho w/ GID an easy solution would be to get rid of mandatory psych evaluations, real life tests and doctor’s letters, which would be GREAT xD )

“You could do it for trans ppl.. hormone blockers at 14, full hormones at 16, surgery at 18 if you wanted to :\”

They showed a school for kids where that was the goal, in “Becoming Chaz.” It was really interesting. The school seemed like a great place — at least what they showed of it. I am having a little bit of a problem with Chaz himself, what with his statements about testosterone and his newly annoying girlfriend, but the documentary had some interesting stuff in it. Yes, I do watch the O channel. Busted.

@Ami:

They aren’t to protect the older person, they are to protect the older person from the younger person. It’s true that coercion can exist in any situation, but I don’t think that should effect the age limit for other things. The rationale is that we aren’t litigating a person’s resistance to coercian, we are litigating a persons ability to make the decision in the first place. If it was the former, we’d take into consideration how easily a person can resist another person’s buffaloing (couldn’t think of the right word, so thought I’d use a weird one). With sex this fear is an inherent part of the act.

Chaz pisses me off a lot w/ the statements he’s making (and the trans guys I know are even MORE angry). :\ And I get that this is still a new thing for him, and ALSO that the media is eating it up and spreading it, cuz it’s the narrative that ppl want to hear (that gendered actions/thoughts/etc are natural and caused by either genetics or hormones) but he’s the one w/ the platform and he’s the one who’s claiming to speak for trans ppl, and our experiences, and more than that, as some sort of objective voice on how each gender feels now too -__-;;; I think the thing is, that when you transition and you become more comfortable with yourself, things will come out that you were repressing before, or afraid to exhibit … or that you feel you CAN now… :\ or you notice the stuff you want to notice… or other ppl do… (like if trans woman still likes sports, but now goes clothes shopping a lot b/c it’s something she never felt she could do before, or kept herself from doing, ppl will observe this and go “ahhhh see she’s filling her natural instincts” when in fact they’re just seeing the part they want to see and fitting it into the narrative they want to believe, conversely, trans-exclusionary rad fems see that as proof that a trans woman is a man who is trying to mimic a stereotypical woman’s behaviour)

“they are to protect the older person from the younger person”

Urk, just noticed this typo.. should be:

“they are to protect the younger person from the older person”

Also, good convos = troll repellent. :D I like this side effect.

@Holly So I’m not sure that “involves other people” is a bright line in itself.

that’s exactly what I was saying :3

A blog I am a regular commenter on just had an entry on sex-offender registries. Our comprehensibly insane sex-offender laws. It’s a blog run by, and with commenters who also happen to be (by and large) feminist in outlook, and liberal, to moderately conservative, and progressive, in their politics.

It’s an interesting read (though I caution the folks who think they get treated badly here. from taking the stuff they peddle here there; the commenters at Making Light are less gentle than I am in calling shenanigans).

@Molly Ren – they actually do staggered drinking ages in Germany and it seemed to work pretty well when I lived over there. IIRC, at 16 people could buy wine or beer and at 18 they could buy hard liquor. They could also drink wine or beer in public at any age if they were being supervised with their parents. It definitely took some of the mysticism out of drinking and it let people get adjusted to it and slowly realize their limits. Not a whole lot of 21st birthday power hour-style drinking there, except among American teens who’d just moved over there. Plus they push back the driving age to 18 (with a required 6-week extensive driving course), so drunk driving is limited, too. It seems like a more responsible system to me. That and the Washington state-style consent laws seem to acknowledge that people grow slowly over time and that it’s better to ease people into new privileges and responsibilities instead of just dumping everything on them at 16 or 18 or 21 (depending on what we’re talking about).

@Ami, I think of age of consent rules and things like transition or pregnancy to be rather distinct. Because, the former involves no immediate crisis for the teen at issue. While it might be annoying to not be able to have sex with adults, they can have sex with teens their own age and the odds of lasting harm from being made to wait a few extra years to have sex with adults is extremely unlikely to do long term or permanent. However, when you have a dysphoria situation or a pregnancy, the issue can’t just be delayed for a few years without extreme damage. Pregnancy decisions (one of which is the abortion decision) have to be made in those day to day moments. There really is no option of having the teen wait a few years, it has to be dealt with at the moment. While it isn’t the most wonderful thing in the world that a thirteen year old, for example, is making those decisions, there really is not a better option. Immediate, permanently life altering decisions have to be made in that moment of crisis, and there really isn’t a better workable alternative than letting the kid make those decisions. I think transition hits a similar issue. Body changes (for those with body dysmorphia) present an imminent crisis, with decisions that need to be made, as do social presentations. While it isn’t ideal that kids have to make those big decisions at such a young age, again, its the best option out there. It makes me think of that Churchill quote “Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time. ”

There is a notion of competancy tests for minors in major medical decision disputes. But, when competancy to make major medical or legal decisions is at question, it is more than a lay person glance, it usually involves either a hearing or multiple psychologist signing off. Legal Emancipation proceedings also generally involve a hearing. Which makes the age of consent thing even more tricky, because the goal of the law is not so much to keep the underaged partner in line, but rather to govern the behavior of the adult. We want adults to take the cautious approach, especially as many people are not great at determining the competancy of minors (particularly when they have a loaded interest towards one direction). More cautious “bright line” rules are by far easier for the adults in practice to use to govern their behavior in a way that is legal and does not end up taking advantage of a minor who is not competant to make those decisions.

I lived 300 miles from home, with no adult supervision, when I was 17, so I do have sympathy for the fact that teens can and do make a lot of decisions about themselves. But I think that the best policy is a slightly flexible for close ages bright line rule for age of consent.

Random sidenote: Happy Juneteenth US folks!

Though, uh, I just did the math in the other direction and that means I could in theory date someone who is 56?? Ugh, just… ugh. I changed my mind. It’s an awful standard.

@Darksidecat I agree.. it’s actually something I was thinking of (about not being able to wait) but didn’t want to write it out, b/c some ppl don’t consider transitioning an urgent issue, or one that a person can decide at a young age, or even know… and I dun feel like debating that tonite >_<;;; But I dun think that makes it separate from the body autonomy issue or being mature enuf to make choices… b/c it has a lot to do with trusting ppl to know what they want and how they feel (I'm also not saying btw that there should be one strict age for everything, so therefore if a trans person can consent at age 14, then sex is 14 too) and I don't like things like this being an exception based on the argument of immediacy b/c a lot of ppl don't believe that, and don't trust a child to know, or be mature enuf to consent to the future consequences :\ And what if they're not trans "enuf"? Or they want to do things to their bodies that don't fit typical trans narratives? Or that there is no desperation for them? :\ This is why I go back to body autonomy for this stuff (this stuff being specifically right now trans stuff) b/c so much of it is tied to that (i'm not saying immediacy does not matter either, but it's not a bright line for society and the medical community and the narratives, and those narratives can also change and then the exception for trans ppl will change :\)

@Darksidecat not grumpy or frustrated at you :\ I’m having a seriously bad ED episode right now :\ and I dunno what to do… I’m kinda a crying mess and I’m worried I’m coming off as a jerk in my responses :( or rly defensive or something :\ can’t handle this atm..

Looks like I missed the thread.

I don’t have anything to add to the discussion of the actual topic, but I would like to make the following observation concerning Subbie:

It’s always safe to assume he’s ignorant; it’s always safe to assume he’s stupid; and it’s always safe to assume he’s lying. The hard part is deciding which one (or ones) he’s being at a given moment.

DF – Disagreeing with you about the CTS is not misandry. Ozymandias is hardly a misandrist, and has just started a site devoted to … advocating for men’s rights. (Not Men’s Rights as the MRM construes it, but men’s rights nonetheless.)

ME – the feminist position, telling lies about CTS is inherently misadric and the willful creation of an abuse culture. Ozymandias site is dedicated to feminism. Her position is the oppression of male victims and protecting female abusers and apartheid in services as evidenced by her repetition of feminist CTS lies. She is unconscious of her misandry.

DF -Jezebel ran one admittedly awful piece four years ago in which the writers talked about attacking men. I think this article was a terrible one. The site has run probably tens of thousands of pieces, so finding one piece that is again, admittedly, very bad is not the same as showing that the site is riddled with misandry.

DF – Stop telling lies David, that is not an isolated incident. You apologize for misandry and scour for misogyny and hold the two to different standards, because you are a sexist and your job depends on it.

DF – Jessica Valenti wrote one sentence in one piece (that was not on feministing) that might be construed to mean what you think it means.

ME – Rubbish, the site is riddled with misandry and you apologize for it, no leader of the mens movement has called called for Stalinist conditions for women, the majority of feminists support VAWA, which is discriminatory in its application and has significantly eroded the presumption of innocence for men already and the drive to remove the legal protections against false accusation of rape is widely supported in feminism, that’s extreme misandry present in most feminists and all your links, regardless of whether they realize it or chose not to realize it.

DF – Against this I offer, well, the entirely of this site. I could find ten times as many examples of misogyny in a single Spearhead thread.

ME – Rubbish, you will defend and ignore misandry, while scouring for misogyny becuse your profession depends on it, You go out of your way to tell lies about domestic abuse and marginilise and ridicule abuse victims. you are as bad as the worst misogynist on the spearhead, its just that someone told you that your bigotry is correct. You and your followers jump up and down with glee every time you find a marginalized abuse victim that is losing it and venting so you can say “look, this is why we should marginalize the advocates for marginalize abuse victims”. You don’t recognize oppressing and mocking male abuse victims and discriminatory services as misandry, that’s the only reason you mistakenly believe that there there is less bile here, than there is on the Spearhead. Your bile is protected bile.

Its self perpetuating for you, feminism oppresses abuse victims and facilitates abusers, victims get damaged and angry, you make a living out of finding them mocking them and helping feminism continue

So, what’s the deal with your weird interpretation of Lolita?

I went to bed early and missed all the fun!

Ami, I get what you’re saying – that if kids don’t have bodily autonomy about sex they don’t have the autonomy to make decisions about their bodies that only they can make. Darksidecat’s distinction between consenting to sex/making a decision about transitioning and/or reproduction (that the 2nd and 3rd are crises that can’t wait a few years and the 1st is not and can) makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t know how what kind of legal framework would be necessary to make that work, since transition and pregnancy/abortion involve medical decisions, which are usually framed in terms of consent. Hmm.

Brett, the idea that people will transition just for the hell of it without thinking it through sounds a lot like the anti-choice idea that if abortion is unrestricted, women will just have abortions at 8 months and 3 weeks. Because transitioning is such a piece of cake. And pregnancy is such a barrel of laughs that women happily go through most of it then say “Meh, not really into it”. I mean, in a world of 6 billion people it must have happened once or twice, but it hardly should be a consideration in law-making.

In re: the “kids belong to their parents” thing, to me the idea that parents are *responsible* for their children is a better framing. As a parent you’re responsible for raising your child, but you do not own and can’t control them. Setting age-appropriate limits isn’t the same thing as control and is part of teaching a child how to be a responsible adult. (I remember reading somewhere that Lars von Trier’s mother believed that “children should make their own decisions” – about EVERYTHING – and raised him accordingly. Which explains a hell of a lot.)

Also I love that NWO responded to my twitting him on his crankery…by linking to a fluoride crank site!

Here’s the story of the woman who accidentally poisoned herself with fluoride by drinking too much iced tea:

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20050125/harmful-fluoride-levels-found-in-instant-tea

Kave: With a caveat I agree with you. Those who take advantage of those who can’t meaningfully consent, are wrong.

The grey area is in that phrase, Meaningfully consent. I was a teen in Calif. I spent a lot of time in Arizona. Legally I was allowed to have sex in one place, but not another (and if someone who knew that had said, ‘gee, I really like you, let’s go to Arizona where it’s legal for you to consent… that violates the Mann Act, transportation of a minor across state lines for immoral purposes).

But somewhere shy of 18 I was able to give informed consent. The law (reasonably) doesn’t allow for case by case determination (because that would let pretty much everyone off the hook for all but the most egregious cases…. effectively moving the age of consent down to about 14, and letting NWO’s, “Pure Love” defense be used to allow adults to exploit people who didn’t know better).

ngz3120: The issue here (your rants) is that you have a litmus test. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is misandrist. The least deviation = oppression of men; in a systemic way.

Call oneself a feminist, and boom… one is a misandrist because, “feminism requires it”.

So yes, no one can point you to a site/book/paper which is written by someone who identifies as feminist; which you won’t say is misandrist: because someone, somewhere, somewhen, will have said somehhing which gets your panties in a twist, and therefore any topic on which they agree with the basic premise of some laws/customs/cultural norms (i.e. the patriarchy hurts men too) is as nothing to you.

You want no fellow-travellers, only dedicated revolutionaries.

Which is what makes you a bigot. It’s also what makes you misogynist (which isn’t the same as your bigotry).

It’s also a huge part of the reason the MRA movement is unable to get anything done. They insist on an ideological purity to make Mao, or Stalin, blush. The leat idea that any woman, anywhere might have a legitimate right to think about something which might be seen to disadvantage some man, somewhere = Misandry!!!!!, and she must be shouted down, mocked, and otherwise abused.

If man doesn’t agree with you, or worse, sides with a feminist… he’s a traitor, less than a man, a snivelling worm, brainwashed by women. That, or he’s a slave to the pussy, pretending to think women are the equal of men, just to get laid. Those men are pathetic.

Anyone who doesn’t agree is… a misandrist too.

So places like Rossey, fools like Derbyshire, fora like the Spearhead are toxic swamps of bile and hatred. When someone who thinks there might be some aspects of things which could be better they take a look and they find fools like you, and Meller, and all the rest, and they go elsewhere.

Just look at how you say, Jill = feminist leader, but The top-posters at the Spearhead are just guys with opinions (that’s the argument you make when you say Dave is cherry-picking).

THat’s a double standard. It’s hypocritic practice. It makes you look foolish (or mendacious). It hurts your cause.

DKM (with his call to kill/enslave women) is as much a leader of the MRM as Jezebel/Jill/Amanda Marcotte. Accept it, and deal with the schemndricks in your midst. Then you might have some success.

Pecunium

MOST feminists support gender apartheid in services, compassion and law for abuse victims on the basis of gender, so most feminists are misandrists, most are blissfully unaware that their bigotry is what it is, because it has been labeled good and justified through lies. And that’s the reason why such a buring hatred for feminism is growing, and you guys compound it by mocking the backlash and the abuse victims you seek to keep marginalized.

I’m not stretching the definition of misandry at all. This site is personified by misandry and misandry apologism.

Your argument against the push for equal rights, awareness and compassion for abuse victims of female abusers, the falsely accused, fathers, husbands and male students is based entirely on pretending the misogynist and angry commentary by abuse victims on a few websites is what its all about while excusing equal, opposite, and often worse attitudes on most feminist websites, oppression of male victims and protection of female abusers and support for gender apartheid in law and services is the norm, on feminist sites.

Here is a challenge for you, David or any of the rest of the peanut gallery here at the Colosseum.

Construct ONE argument against men’s rights that does not depend on fallacious argument I mentioned above or a similar fallacy.

And for the entertainment of the manboobz and the peanut gallery – two men self immolate in protest of the feminist system. ROTFL!

http://www.articlesaboutmen.com/2010/06/man-who-set-himself-on-fire-dies-another-family-law-victim-911/

http://www.avoiceformen.com/2011/06/18/the-indifference-to-male-pain/

There are likely angry comments in the comments sections from men, which of course means that any sort of advocacy for this man or others trapped in similar situations or criticism of governance feminisms family law is invalid, like totally.

I picked up this quote from Dr. Tara Palmatier

“Once society sees men as human, the feminist ideologues will begin to have an uphill ride. This is why they resist acknowledging the fact that men are just as human as women and have feelings that are just as capable of being hurt.”

That’s all its going to take. And this site, the biggest feminist feminist site on the net, is based on mocking and oppressing abuse victims on the basis that they are male, is an indelible look into the misandric heart of feminism.

I’m not actually debating with you here, so I might not even respond to whatever strawman and false allegations of abuse that you come back with. I know the minds here are closed by ideology and politically correct hate. I’m publicly stating what you are and what you stand for and how you will be viewed in the future.

“Here is a challenge for you, David or any of the rest of the peanut gallery here at the Colosseum.

Construct ONE argument against men’s rights that does not depend on fallacious argument I mentioned above or a similar fallacy.”

The only problem with you little challenge ngz3120 is that no one here is actually arguing against men’s rights in any way shape or form, except perhaps in your mind.

ngz3120:Your argument against the push for equal rights, awareness and compassion for abuse victims of female abusers, the falsely accused, fathers, husbands and male students

My what? Please show me what you think I’ve said that is an argument against those things. Because you’ve just created a strawman (and in a very clever move have put it offstage… you don’t show what I’ve said, you just say I’ve made such an argument, no citiation, no quotation… nothing to actually rebut.. just the imputation that I said some terrible thing).

Construct ONE argument against men’s rights that does not depend on fallacious argument I mentioned above or a similar fallacy. What fallacies have you mentioned? Not what things you believe to be false, but actual errors in logic?

But I won’t pick up that gauntlet. Your subsequent comment† (and previous argument) make it plain you have a religious belief in the oppression of men. You quotation (from

The bit about the man who killed himself in Australia is tragic. It’s awful. It’s also not quite the thing you think it is. Are you arguing that he was killed by “feminism”. If you want to go there, you won’t like the comparison. Since you linked to it I have to ask if you agree with this quotation from it,”Heffernon claims that Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon, a longtime misandrist with vocal sexist ideologies against men, needs to accept that the Federal government should be doing more to prevent so many of our young men committing suicide. “With Australia experiencing gender genocide unparalelled in our history” he says, “we need real genuine leadership in mens health and a parity in health spending in order to reverse this alarming but often ignored tragedy.”

Because really.. Gender Genocide: An organised campaign to kill men… that’s what Heffernon accused the Australian Government of doing. I particularly like, the, “unparalleled in our history”, which is true, I suppose, if you figure the actually organised killing of Aboriginal People in Australia was gender neutral, and that (somehow) all Australian males who die by suicide are 1: doing so as a result of “the feminist agenda” and 2: it is being actively sponsored by the Gov’t. (that, by the way is actually full of actual fallacies in logic, in addition to it’s patent nonsense).

But any group which seriously makes such claims… is going to have a hard time being taken seriously.

Your quotation from Dr. Palmatier is amusing… in that sad sort of way one is amused when someone attempts something known to be beyond them, in that it’s a paraphrase of a feminist truism, and is contains a logical fallacy (the fallacy of many questions). It presumes that feminists (some of whom are men) don’t see men as human. This is patently false. It also assumes feminists are in favor of equality, but desire dominance.

This is also false. That equality of the sexes removes men from being in charge is true. That this reduces the superiority of men is true. That some (perhaps even most) men will dislike this a lot is true. That many of those men will whine and stamp their feet and say it isn’t fair that Jane gets to do everything they used to be able to do, and sometimes they don’t get to do it at all… well that’s the MRM in a nutshell.

†I’m not actually debating with you here, so I might not even respond to whatever strawman and false allegations of abuse that you come back with.