MRA blog suggests a cooling-off period would make statutory rape ok

I don’t need a masters degree in Eastern Studies to have an interest in Thailand. I have lots of interests, but according to you they aren’t interests unless I go to college for 6 years…elitist much?

You don’t need a degree to be interested in something; just look at almost everyone who posts here. Pecunium has no graduate education, but he’s well-read and, from what I can gather, extremely intelligent. I brought up my degree to mention that I probably know enough to talk to you about Thailand, assuming the culture is what you’re into.

But seriously, what do you know about Thailand? You said you find the culture interesting, is there anything in particular that you can cite as an example of the products of that culture? The religion, the movies, the archaeological sites, Muay Thai, the fact that it’s the only place in the region that’s never been colonized, the cat poetry, (no, seriously, there’s cat poetry), anything? Pecunium asked you this too, because it’s pretty fucking telling that for a country you’re so “interested” in you’d like to move there, you are unwilling to cite a single book, poem, sporting event, archaeological site, or whatever, that would be a catalyst for such consuming interest.

I thought Voip and Bagelsan were genuine progressive feminists…they seem to find it ok to stereotype Thailand as some cesspool of prostitution.

What about “progressive feminism” makes it sound to you like it’s synonymous with “likes sex trafficking”?

PP in Boston is hard up for funds and has had to cut sliding-scale services, actually. On the scale of “at least we HAVE services,” our state isn’t the worst off, but we’re no women’s-health utopia.

But I get the impression that Brandon’s only measure of these things is Brandon’s healthcare, so for him our national health status is something along he lines of “just great, except our nation gets the sniffles occasionally and last year our nation broke its ankle.”

“One of them wrote on his blog that while riding a bus through a lower income hood, a Latino teenaged girl got on, sat next to him and asked, “whats that?” pointing to his iPad. He got all excited and wrote a blog about how he got “hit on” by a teen that day.”

so many things make more sense now….

@Lauralot: My state has plenty of Planned Parenthood’s and other women’s clinics. Women have no problem receiving services in Mass. There is also little chance of that changing for the worst since Mass is a Democrat stronghold. So what else needs to get done? It’s legal and available.

Problem is over because Brandon’s State is fine, people!

Good christ, and you unironically called other people narcissists.

Defensive? Slightly. I find it insulting when someone just off the cuff tries to make a connection between me and being a pedophile because I mention a desire to move to Thailand. I thought Voip and Bagelsan were genuine progressive feminists…they seem to find it ok to stereotype Thailand as some cesspool of prostitution.

VoIP at least has demonstrated clear knowledge of thailand as much more; thinking you’re that stupid isn’t the same as actually thinking Thailand is only for sex tourism. You’ve been pretty stone cold stupid in the past, and it’d be a pleasant surprise for you to actually consider a place broadly.

Also, you did see the opening post, yes? Why this might be a sensitive issue can’t be that difficult a set of dots to connect.

@Voip: I don’t need a masters degree in Eastern Studies to have an interest in Thailand. I have lots of interests, but according to you they aren’t interests unless I go to college for 6 years…elitist much?

Reading comprehension, you don’t has it.

Also my goal of moving is years off. Who is to say if Ashley and I will still be together. When the goal is within eyeshot, I will bring it up. She also knows that I have had multiple partners in the past and that currently I am in a monogamous relationship with her. I don’t have to lie to her because I don’t see the way I live as shameful of something to hide. I am probably too honest at times. I would only have to lie to her if I thought what I was doing was “wrong”…which I don’t.,

You’re too honest and straightforward, but you’re not going to tell her about your long term goals? You wouldn’t know honest and straightforward if it asked you by name!

NullPointer: Really? Ignoring my parents pleas to get married is all it takes? Everyone’s parents pressure their children to live a certain way. It’s not going to change. So if patriarchy is just ignoring social norms…seems pretty damn easy to do. Unless some form of physical coercion is involved.

No. It is categorically not that easy, you just never had it anywhere near as bad as you think it is. I know the kind of pressure men have to have kids; it’s nothing compared to the bullshit women face. Shit, you could get a vasectomy now and you wouldn’t have a wise-ass tell you it’s not what you want. Constant barriers, constant irritation, constant EVERYTHING is not comparable to your dad saying every so often “Hey you should get settled down, have kids…”

@HellKell: I didn’t call you a narcissist. I called Voip one. Voip tried to make a connection between me and my desire to move to Thailand and that of the sex tourism trade. Like I am some “woman crazy” male who only thinks with his dick. Basically Voip is was acting as a narcissist because of the immediate thought that I was moving there because of women. As if my desires to go there couldn’t possibly be valid unless I plan around my interest in women.

Words, you don’t understand them. That’s not what narcissist means.

Male bias in the media: Men are seen as buffoons and incompetent twits. Wives in sitcoms are always right and the man is a simpering moron. See practically every husband/wife sitcom.

No, the wives aren’t. Don’t you idiots usually quote Everyone Loves Raymond? Take the episode where we find out that the mom hasn’t had an orgasm ever. The focus isn’t on how much that sucks for her, to have had to lie back and think of England; the episode’s focus is on Raymond’s pain at her telling him. It was more important for her to let him think he was a stud than it was for him to take the effort help her enjoy sex as much as he does. And it’s not like anyone else pointed out how big a jackass this makes Raymond, as in the Boondocks, when Riley had his amazingly sexist plan to have Condy get laid to end the war (Wherein Jasmine immediately points out that he is relying on a sexist, idiotic trope to work at all), the episode’s sympathy is on Raymond as well.

The media is rife with this shit; yes, men take the buffoon role, but the buffoon has paradoxically become a better place to be. It plays in part with more powerful narratives that downplay intelligence, critical thinking, problem-solving ability, etc.

You wanna quote sitcoms, 2 and a Half Men is hailed as so fantastic and awesome, but it’s amazingly misogynist. People claim this is a misanthropic narrative, but they miss a subtle point; the men are terrible because they individually have flaws. The women are terrible because they are women. Men may be terrible, but at least they’re differentiable humans, not like those women. Plus, the premise of the show is centered on a completely dead narrative, one that was dead when it launched. Of course, you think it reflects the reality of divorce, going by what you’ve said about alimony, but your beliefs, they don’t sync up well with the facts.

Title IX: My main concern is that male sports programs are held back because sports rosters have to have roughly the same participants. While girls want to play sports, boys want to play sports in bigger numbers. I don’t think boys should be denied playing because not enough girls signed up for another sport.

Sauce, that sounds… extremely dodgy as more than a potential hypothetical that isn’t born out in actual sports teams.

Marriage: I don’t think that equality can be obtained when we still have an institution that allows one person to become financially dependent on another.

You have no idea what marriage has looked like throughout most of human history, so I’m not really surprised you’re saying this.

Child Support: While men should pay child support (hey, it’s your kid). I think some of the payment systems can extract far too much. Also the phase “in the best interests of the child” is far too subjective.

Based on? Considering they have ways out for the indigent, and that too many slip through the cracks as is, this seems a stupid objection. I mean, there’s smart ones, but you don’t seem likely to advocate a general tax to replace child support so that everyone actually gets covered.

Making laws gender-neutral: Just because a bill is gender-neutral doesn’t mean that it is being applied properly or in a relatively unbiased way. So I should have tacked on “…and remove gender bias in the law”

I’m pretty sure I know better than you where there’s gender bias in the law. Currently, male judges are more likely to apply roughly 10% harsher sentencing in most criminal laws (I believe female judges are still slightly harsher on men, but the gap was much smaller, 4% if I recall correctly). Hint, higher sentences relate to a perception of a greater share of responsibility for the crime…

Getting rid of “all men are rapists”: Just like women make claims that men can’t understand certain things about women because men don’t live as women. I think the same could be said of women don’t understand what it is like to live as a man.

Once again, the MRM tries to parody a civil rights movement in aping their form.

The claim is not that it is utterly impossible to understand any part of the experience of the marginalized, so much as to understand it more than academically. Even if it were, however, you aren’t marginalized. The claim doesn’t just come from the fact that we’re humans and can generally only understand each other imperfectly. There’s also the concrete fact that the marginalized are removed from the discourse almost entirely, and the majority simply doesn’t hear about it. Guess what: The experiences of men are the default! I can’t understand you perfectly, but society frames things primarily in terms of you. It’s easier to understand where you have come from, by a wide margin, than where I have been. It’s also in part there to combat the omnipresent Mighty Whitey stereotype seen in media where a White Man becomes a better version of whatever group he’s entering (The Last Samurai and James Cameron’s Avatar are two recent entries in this ever so long tradition).

If women walked around as a man, they might see that men have to be careful around children for fear of being labeled a deviant, even when we just want to help. (i.e helping lost children). Or if a man wants to enter a female-dominated area (like day care). He is seen as creepy because he wants to be around children.

Most of the shit men take in feminine-dominated areas, absent children at *least*, is from misogynists.

Paternity fraud: While this might not happen all that much (stats go from 3 to 30 percent…so not really helpful), I think it is such an egregious crime that actions should be taken to prevent it as much as possible. No man should be forced to be liable for a child he didn’t help create. Adoption is the different situation since both parties have to sign a lot of paperwork and jump through a lot of hoops to establish guardianship.

Agreed, but how much does it actually affect men in the age of blood tests? I can actually see this being an issue for the poor, potentially, I’ll give you that.

And BTW, I don’t have six years in college… quite. I sure as fuck don’t have a degree, unless it’s in ‘the myriad ways you and your life can fuck up college.’

You forgot “has a car”, TK.

Also, it seems to me that what Brandon is talking about with the ‘all men are rapists’ and men aren’t allowed to teach young children…are social constructions of gender which pressure men to be and act certain ways.* Why not just ignore them?

*Note: these are patriarchal pressures. Most feminists I know laugh at the argument that rape happens because men’s sexual impulses are FULL ON and cannot be controlled. Yes, feminists have argued that rape is bad, but the whole ‘men can’t control themselves’ and ‘women should just dress so they don’t set men off’ thing is the world according to patriarchy. Not feminists.

VoIP at least has demonstrated clear knowledge of thailand as much more; thinking you’re that stupid isn’t the same as actually thinking Thailand is only for sex tourism.

Not to mention that it’s pretty obvious that sex tourism is more about the dominance of the First World over the Third than anything to do with Thailand itself. I mean, unless the observer is consumed with a pathological disregard for the weak…oh wait…

I need a Cole/Cliff’s Notes of Brandon… >_>

Born on third base; thinks he hit a triple.

I spent some time in Tokyo and found it fascinating on how parts of their culture are the complete opposite of ours. Their whole take on sex and money is completely flipped around (sex: Japanese don’t feel shame while Americans treat sex as something that should be hidden away and money is rarely flaunted in japan while Americans flaunt their wealth all over the place)

whoah dude, you are the Richard Burton of Internet libertarians. (no not that one the other one.) Next you’ll be telling me about these awesome cartoons you found. Did you know they aren’t just for children over there? Truly, the mysterious east is a land of wonder.

Well, Brandon, America does have you. I know you’re not all Americans, but…

“Japanese don’t feel shame while Americans treat sex as something that should be hidden away”

Explain what you mean by this? From my perspective Americans don’t hide sex away at all. They are very open about discussing it and advertising it and so on. So what are the Japanese doing – having it in public?

No, Brandon. You could send donations, start a letter campaign, or a website or Facebook group to try and help fight for reproductive rights in states that are not as lucky as yours. Just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it has to be out of mind.