Joss Post at Whedonesque
POSTED BY: FireflyPassenger
UPDATED: Monday, June 11, 2007 08:49
VIEWED: 40107
PAGE 10 of 14
You know, I don't particularly see either sex as inferior. Actually, I don't like the idea at all. Not inferior, different, and I wish we were more able to celebrate those differences rather than despise them or use them as sticks to beat each other with.
Obviously a woman cannot reproduce without a man being involved somewhere along the line even if it's just some private time with a cup.
The only way you can argue that women have control over procreation
(If you exclude forcible or coerced impregnation) is that the woman gets to choose who does the deed. Excepting IVF, donor egg situations, when you see a baby come out of a woman’s womb you have a pretty damn clear indication of who the mother is.
Without DNA tests (or before they existed) you would have no guarantee of who the father is.
No, I'm not suggesting that lots of women are fickle deceivers. I'm just saying that at that point there is no proof.
It comes back to something I said earlier, maintaining control over your women increases the likelihood that it is your genetic material that is passed on. We are just complicated animals.
A lot of male animals do not want to raise the offspring of another male. A Male lion after deposing another will kill any cubs still in the pride. Male Gorillas will sometimes do the same thing and you know how closely related we are.
The human excuse may be religion, or honour, or pride but I think (and I really do accept that I could be wrong, it’s just an opinion) that this is just cloak for a basic animal desire to ensure that it's our genes that are passed on.
Does this make stoning a girl to death right, acceptable in anyway? Are we just poor animals who can't help ourselves?
Of course not. For crying out loud how long have we been upright and talking? We should have conquered this by now.
But we haven't.
And I really hope the above makes some kind of sense, because, damn, I’m tired.
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Originally posted by ChrisMoorhead:Quote:
And yet over the millenia this gift has been peverted.. by men, who, when it all comes down to it are just bloody jealous of women, because essentially we men ARE inferior!
I'd also like to note how sick I am of this sentiment that it is women alone who perpetuate existance. Last I checked, they still NEEDED a seed to be planted in their garden, so to speak. Without that seed they're just as useless in reproduction as a man. You can flower it up however you want with the 9 month bond the woman has with life growing inside of her, but fundementally, she's just as incapable of that as a man if he's not there to give it to her.
To offer a POV about the "women are more important in reproduction than men" factor...
(and I want to emphasize that I do NOT think this in any way assigns greater value to women!)
.. it's a question of numbers.
The amount of babies born is entirely up to the amount of women. You can have ten men and one women and you get one baby after nine months. Maybe two if they're twins.
With ten women and one men, you could get ten babies in the same amount of time.
In terms of species survival women as individuals are more important, because it just takes one healthy man. That makes most men really expendable. They matter in terms of genetic variety, but with all individuals healthy, this can be skipped over for a couple of generations.
Plus, up until very recently, the question of paternity locked them out even more. Without scientific confirmation, they can never be sure, unless the impose limitations upon the woman's sexual behavior, whether they were even successful in passing on their genetic material. They don't get know in the way a woman does, that they had any part in a new life at all.
Procreation, biologically speaking, reduces men to one single act that they can never even be sure happens at all: fertilization.
I can't imagine that this doesn't have an impact on the subconscious.
And again I want to emphasize that we are more than just biology, so this procreational expendability has absolutely no bearing on the value of a person or gender.
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Howdy, folks.
Whew! Where to begin? So many valid sidebars to the main topic, all deserving of consideration and commentary...
I guess I'll start with the main topic. While I disagree with sansmercy's insulting and condescending tone, I do not disagree with his/her main point. To wit, that women are mistreated and generally undervalued throughout the world. I do disagree with her/his sentiment that Joss' post is indicative that he has 'just woken up to the plight' of women because of this one video. I further agree with sansmercy, however, that Joss' post seems a bit knee-jerk reactionary to a couple of viscerally grotesque visual images, when there are many millions of unseen, un-video-recorded acts of lesser or greater grotesqueness that occur on a daily basis around the world. I believe that was sansmercy's underlying point, that he/she was somewhat justified in being indignantly opposed to making Dua's murder a cause celebre when so many unobserved crimes happen daily; but, I also strongly believe that he/she was wrong for attacking Joss. He/she was angry with the world-in-general's apathy towards the plight of the 'permanent underclass' treatment of women, and took out that anger on Joss, who did not deserve it...
I vaguely agree with those who claim men are being painted as villains and that we, as a society, should cease doing that, in addition to our efforts to address the on-going disparity between men and women. We cannot seek redress of a societal ill by exchanging victimization of one group for victimization of another...
I strongly disagree with anyone who possesses lethal force, of any kind. My sentiment on this issue is not going to be welcomed by many, I know. But I strongly believe that violence begets only violence; that those who live by the sword die by the sword. I strongly believe that more handguns will not lead to less criminal activity, but to more people being criminalized as they wield ultimate authority. Making a person the judge, jury and executioner -- in the blink of an eye, as a seemingly life-threatening event unfolds -- threatens that gun-toting individual more than the specter of violence does; possibly turning an innocent, potential victim into a very real murderer. With a handgun, you feel powerful, in control of your destiny. But what happens when you actually pull the trigger? What happens to you when you end another person's life? Some say they could end another person's life -- in self-defense -- and sleep soundly at night. I'm not so sure...
I strongly believe that one should live an exemplary life, reflecting the type of ideal world they'd choose to live in. I want to change the world. I do that by living my principles, not necessarily what society expects of me. I do that by raising my children -- male and female -- to be self-sufficient and beholden to none.
Beyond that, though, our society is delusional and self-contradictory. Give money/support to women's activist groups, but, be a slave to fashion? Rail against the inequalities women face -- with much hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth -- while maintaining an emaciated and properly painted facade? Women who starve their selves to death or disfigure their selves surgically while still seeing their selves as fat and ugly? What about what's inside the 'pretty' or 'ugly' exterior?
The film and advertising industries have much to answer for in keeping women 'in their place' as sexual objects, window dressing, subservient to male appetites. Males are victimized by this objectification of women, too, whether that's a popular notion or not. As much as women are lessened by Sales of Image, men are brainwashed by these unreal depictions of 'what a woman should look like/be', too. Is the death of Dua Khalil somehow more poignant than the death of a teenage girl who perishes of bulimia? I assert that they are the same. But who is holding the film and advertising industries responsible for promulgating and maki
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Quote:
Originally posted by zoid:
I strongly disagree with anyone who possesses lethal force, of any kind. My sentiment on this issue is not going to be welcomed by many, I know. But I strongly believe that violence begets only violence; that those who live by the sword die by the sword. I strongly believe that more handguns will not lead to less criminal activity, but to more more people being criminalized as they wield ultimate authority.
Hi Zoid, you've made some really, really excellent points...and with the same respect, I'd like to disagree on the issue of lethal force. I think that by eschewing the use of defensive force, you're actually advocating for more victimization.
I do apologize for how harsh that must sound. But it is a fact that terrorists/tyrants/muggers/rapists/murderers
are all willing to use force to achieve their goals. Those who are unwilling or unable to resist them end up in the morgue--or, in places like Iraq and Cambodia and Rwanda and WWII Europe, in mass graves.
You are entitled to believe whatever you want to believe, but unfortunately, the facts are not on your side. Here are some statistics from Australia:
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From Las Vegas Review Journal, http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/1999/Sep-19-Sun-1999/opinion/11
963774.html
Unintended Consequences of Gun Control
Can gun control reduce crime?
One year ago, Australian gun owners were forced to surrender for destruction 640,381 personal firearms...This program cost the Aussie government more than $500 million.... Now, Keith Tidswell of Australia's Sporting Shooters Association reports the results are in.
Drum roll, please. Mr. Tidswell reports, based on a full 12 months of data:
Australia-wide, homicides up 3.2 percent.
Australia-wide, assaults up 8.6 percent.
Australia-wide, armed-robberies up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent.)
In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300 percent.
(Up until the government gun grab, figures for the previous 25 years had shown a steady decrease in homicides with firearms, as well as armed robberies, Mr. Tidswell notes.)
Although at the time of the victim disarmament order, the Aussie prime minister decreed "self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm," there has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, now left with no means to protect themselves. (One wonders whether the prime minister's personal bodyguards gave up their military-style weapons.)
Mr. Tidswell reports: "Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in 'safety' has been observed after such monumental effort and expense to successfully 'rid society of guns.' "
It is a sad fact that there are evil actors in the world. Some of them are only evil enough to beat up their girlfriend or molest the neighbor kid or stone their cousin to death. Other, more charismatic evil actors, can attract followers--sometimes millions of follwers--and thus have the ability to perpetrate evil on a massive, genocidal scale. And virtually every genocide in modern history began with a mandatory disarmament of the citizenry.
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"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so."
-- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitlers Tischegesprache Im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1942.
Nazi Germany was a model society in terms of "gun control." Nazis controlled the country, so only Nazis were allowed to have guns. In the 1930s, Hitler outlawed gun ownership for Jews. Being law-abiding citizens, most Jews turned their guns in to the authorities, and hoped the whole Nazi thing would blow over. But by disarming themselves, they had sealed their fate. They had no way to resist when the Nazis came to round them up, force them onto cattle cars, and transport them to the gas chambe
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KayleeWannabee replied, in part:
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...Moving on to your next point...
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Making a person the judge, jury and executioner -- in the blink of an eye, as a seemingly life-threatening event unfolds -- threatens that gun-toting individual more than the specter of violence does; possibly turning an innocent, potential victim into a very real murderer.
Killing someone who is attempting to seriously injure, rape you, or kill you is not murder, it is self defense. To say otherwise is to imply that the rapist/murder's life is actually more valuable than his victim's, IMHO. You seem to be saying that "potential victim" is only innocent until she defends herself...and then she's no better than the creep attacking her. If this isn't a glorification of victimhood, I just don't know what is. I haven't seen the video of the stoning that inspired Joss' comments...but what you're saying, Zoid, is that you'd hold the victim in less esteem if she had tried to defend herself. That is simply chilling.
In actual fact, handguns are used in self defense about 2 million times a year in the U.S. In most cases, the would-be victim simply pulls the gun. The perp, having more of a sense of self-preservation than you seem to, Zoid, runs away. No shots are ever fired. This is true in law enforcement circles too--most cops never have occasion to fire their weapons--ever. (Except on the range, of course.)
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With a handgun, you feel powerful, in control of your destiny.
You say this as though it's a bad thing to be in control of whether you live, or die at the hands of a thug.
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But what happens when you actually pull the trigger? What happens to you when you end another person's life? Some say they could end another person's life -- in self-defense -- and sleep soundly at night. I'm not so sure...
I don't know what I would do in that situation. My fervent hope is that I'll never, ever have to use my gun in self defense. But if a thug kicks my bedroom door down in the middle of the night, I'm not going to ask him to please use a condom while he rapes me. I'm just going to shoot. I don't know how I'll feel about having injured or killed him. I'm willing to deal with the consequences of my actions--especially because I'd rather not have my loved ones dealing with the consequences of my death or serious injury. Anyone who breaks into my house with the intent of assaulting me will have to deal with the consequences of his actions...
Okay, you misunderstood the brunt of my argument against handguns in the hands of innocent people and then expecting them to be judge, jury and executioner 'in the blink of an eye'. I suspect this is because I was being more subtle than I should (to the point of loss of signal), rather than you being too emotionally attached to your gun to listen to reason.
What I meant is that people in general tend not to be adept at making split-second decisions. They wind up guessing at the level of threat being directed at them in this situation. Was the attacker really going to do me grievous bodily harm? Or were they just going to get nose-to-nose with me and engage in a shouting match, maybe up to and including punching me in the gob for being such an asshole? How can I know, now that I've preemptively killed the 'attacker'? How can I know if the guy (because men are the most likely to perpetrate violent arguments) had a wife and kids who will miss him? Will it ever make me feel better about ending his life if I just keep muttering my mantra, "I did it in self-defense...", "How was I to know he didn't mean to bludgeon me to death?", and of course, "It was his own fault; he should've been nicer to people who might be armed to the teeth."
Politeness...at the point of a gun. Good Manners...or a diet of lead. There's your bumper stickers. Arming the populace to ensure a kinder, gentler, more polite society has certainly worked wonders along the PCH, hasn't it?
Now let's take the case of your 'thug'. Believe i
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Zoid,
With all due respect, I think I understood you perfectly. We just have a completely different set of values. And that's perfectly fine, as long as we agree not to force our values on each other.
I value my life as being something of my own creation, a unique thing in the 'Verse for which I'm completely responsible. I'm willing to use force to defend myself. I'm not willing to be a victim of force perpetrated by someone else.
I'm sad for you that you have such a prejudice against guns and self-defense in general. Facts have no ability to change your opinion or beliefs, and it's a shame.
I have only been a gun owner for a couple of months now, and it's remarkable how amazingly nice and kind and generous I have found gun owners to be! Completely the opposite of what you would expect, Zoid. I went to a pistol match on Mother's Day, and without exception, everyone treated me like a long-lost high school buddy. People loaned me their equipment, allowed me to fire their guns, gave me pointers, congratulated me when I shot well, and were just generally extremely kind and welcoming. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was the nicest group of strangers I've ever encountered.
And if I were a cop, I'd never work in a state that didn't trust its citizens to concealed carry. Violent crime rates are uniformly lower in states where potential victims have the ability to shoot back.
-----
It's my job to incite powerful yearning in the hearts and loins of my clients. No, silly, I'm not a Companion...I work at an advertising agency.
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KayleeWannabee replied, in part:
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...I'm sad for you that you have such a prejudice against guns and self-defense in general. Facts have no ability to change your opinion or beliefs, and it's a shame...
I might also say that I'm "sad for you", in that you have such a materialistic outlook on life, that you have no sense of spirit within yourself...That "Facts" (in Australia) mean more to you than self-evident Human Nature...That "it's a shame" that the history of mass murderers means more to you than all those simple folk (and law enforcement officials) who became either killers or 'the deceased' at an alarming rate in our own history (between c. 1850 and the first decade of the 1900's).
But, I won't say "I'm sad for you" or that "it's a shame" that you don't see things the same way I do. That would be the same thing as saying that you don't think as well as I do. I believe you're thinking. I just don't know that you're necessarily projecting the potential future consequences fully enough. Having said that, you probably believe the same is true of my line of 'projection', and fair enough.
One of us may prove to be disastrously wrong. I fervently hope (and privately pray) that it will be neither of us. Hopefully, we'll both live out our days without either of our personal philosophies on self-defense being proved definitively wrong, for us or for anyone who believes as we do.
On the subject of home defense, btw, I have an oversized GSD, by the name of 'Cobb'. I pity the person who comes into my house uninvited. You see, unlike myself, Cobb has absolutely no conscience. He will not hesitate to hurt an intruder in the most horrifyingly effective way. He will not spend sleepless years struggling with ethical questions. He will simply do what he and his wolf forebears have done since Man invited them into the cave: He will protect the home and his masters to his last breath.
...And of course, another advantage a large dog (I prejudicially prefer male German Shepherd Dogs) has over an arsenal of personal weapons is that my GSD barks like the rolling thunderclap of Doom itself, while your handgun does not (until it's entirely too late to defuse the situation). Ergo, I 'project' an image of the perp creeping up to my darkened domicile and attempting to jiggle the door handle to see if he needs to negotiate the locks or not. From somewhere inside my darkened home -- very near the door, but where precisely? -- comes a booming and vigorous bark that might lead one to think that the house in fact contains a lion, instead of just a dog.
Criminals are not the most intelligent people. There, I've said it. But, even as dumb as your standard criminal may be, he ain't that stupid. Unless there's something he really needs inside my house, he's gonna go rob somebody else when he hears Cobb going off on the other side of my door. It doesn't take too much intellect to calculate one's chances of killing a leaping 150 lb. GSD, a hurtling cannonball of 1 3/4" fangs and 320 pounds per square inch of bite pressure -- in the dark. In addition to getting off the lucky/incredibly skillful one-shot kill (or else you've only terminally pissed the dog off), the report of the gun is gonna draw the police and other unwanted attention.
The most likely scenario though is that the burglar, rapist or would-be murderer would be unable to get off an effective split-second shot-in-the-dark, and is going to get incredibly f*cked up. ...And afterwards, while the EMTs are scraping what's left of the guy (or girl) into a baggie, I'm going to say, "Good dog, Cobb!" and buy him a steak. Cobb's way of saying, 'I'm armed and lethally dangerous' is much more effective than the way your standard human would express the same sentiment. With the dog, there can be no reasonable doubt that he is unflinchingly, deadly serious. If a would-be perpetrator ignores that warning, he/she does so at their own risk.
...Just to let you know. I'm not saying, "Don't protect yourself." I'm
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Zoid...I used to be a gun control advocate myself, so I'm quite familiar with all the anti-gun positions and beliefs that you have. At one time we had a possibly identical opinion on this issue.
Eventually, it came to pass that the house next door to me was robbed, and the theives made off with the homeowner's entire gun collection, which he had locked up in a gun safe. It took them hours, but they managed to break into it.
I then realized criminals (and terrorists) don't mind breaking the laws against murder, rape, armed robbery, child molestation, etc., so they're not going to obey gun laws either. It was then that I realized that criminals and terrorists will always have weapons, always, no matter what.
That is what's real. I would love it if things were different, and if there were no evil people, and everyone obeyed all laws all the time, and no one littered, and Firefly had never been cancelled, and [fill in your own definition of Nirvana]. But that's not what's real.
And what's real is that there is a direct correlation between concealed carry of firearms by law-abiding people and reduction in violent crime. In none of the 38 states that allow concealed carry has there been an explosion of gun crime, contrary to the dire predictions of gun banners. Blood has completely failed to flow in the streets. Random gunfights have completely failed to break out. And would-be murderers fail to kill as many people, would-be rapists fail to rape as many people, and would-be armed robbers fail to kick in as many doors.
Concealed carry permit holders (who, in most cases, have to pass an FBI background check to get their permit) keep failing to break the law, just as they didn't break the law before they got their permits.
That's just the way it is.
It's a little insulting (actually, it's a lot insulting) for you to assume that an inanimate object (my gun) has the power to transform me into a reckless, crazy, out-of-control, psycho-bitch madwoman intent on destroying anyone who annoys me. It's a lump of metal (and polymer). It doesn't have special mystical powers. I'm exactly the same person I was seven weeks ago, except now I have a greater sense of personal responsibility and $400 less cashy money in my bank account. I'm no more a threat to you (or any other law-abiding person) today that I was before I had the gun.
See, I can even remain calm while respectfully disagreeing with you.
I think we both agree that honor killings are appalling, and that videotaping them with your camera phone adds an entirely new, completely rank layer of disgustingness. We disagree on what it takes to end violence against women (or any person, actually.)
Let's leave it at that. As I said, I've been on both sides of the "gun control" issue at one point or another. I've come to the conclusion that it's more important to deter criminals than it is to disarm the innocent. You have come to a different conclusion.
So let's agree to disagree, okay? Neither of us is going to change the other's opinion, and besides, we seem to have killed the whole thread!
Now, let us return to our regularly-scheduled Firefly love-fest!
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It's my job to incite powerful yearning in the hearts and loins of my clients. No, silly, I'm not a Companion...I work at an advertising agency.
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In reply to kayleewannabe Wo! I feel so lucky, My Dad is Sicilian. A culture where men behave like those you described. Not him though. He raised me to defer to NO ONE. I have Tourette's so I kind of stick out, and I got picked on when I was little. My dad taught me to defend myself verbally and physically from a young age. So I can look after myself, and I don't get intimidated by anyone. I don't know about using guns ... it seems kind of extreme, but I guess you do what you have to to feel safe( admittedly My dad taught me how to use guns, and knives ) there are a lot of self defence classes that teach effective skills for different situations, and the really good ones include empowerment strategies.
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Hi Boris,
I think it's great that your dad taught you not to take any crap off anybody. 
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boris wrote: I don't know about using guns ... it seems kind of extreme, but I guess you do what you have to to feel safe
Using a gun isn't "kind of" extreme, it's as extreme as you can get. And my concealed carry permit doesn't allow me to USE a gun (except under very specific circumstances--i.e. I'm in danger of being killed or seriously injured), it only allows me to CARRY a concealed handgun. Should I ever have occasion to draw it, the situation would be, by definition, extreme. As I said in a previous post, I expect that just pulling it out would be enough to deter the majority of would-be perps.
Oh, and I'd rather BE safe than FEEL safe.
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(admittedly My dad taught me how to use guns, and knives) there are a lot of self defence classes that teach effective skills for different situations, and the really good ones include empowerment strategies.
Yes, I'm going to be researching self-defense classes. My ex-boyfriend (the one who taught me to shoot) is an expert at hand-to-hand combat and has shown me a few things. The most important of which is situational awareness--always being aware of your surroundings, not putting yourself into positions where you're vulnerable to ambush, etc. Having a plan of what you'd do in various circumstances. That's even more important than having a weapon--knowing how to avoid situations and prevent incidents in the first place.
This point was driven home to me just 2 nights ago. I was leaving a vacant house I own (I'm getting it ready to sell) at about 11:30 p.m. As I stepped off the front porch to walk to my car--about half a block away--I realize there's a guy coming down the sidewalk toward me, and he's yelling. He was Hispanic and he was very angrily ranting about "f-ing whites" and saying things like "we own this country, you f-ing belong to Mexico, you stole it," etc. Well, everybody is entitled to a vicious rant (I suppose). What scared me was when he yelled, "you want a piece of my c*ck, bitch? You want some of this? I'll give you some of my f-ing c*ck, m-ther f-er!!" It was too dark for me to see if he was just screaming, or if he was screaming at me. And he was getting closer and closer to me as he was screaming this stuff.
I was very disappointed in myself because I froze up for a second while I tried to figure out what to do. This was a big guy--maybe 250 lbs. He could have easily overpowered me. I didn't want to go back into the vacant house...but my car was half a block away. I had pepper spray in my purse, but it was dark and I didn't want to fumble around for it. I did not have a gun with me.
So my decision was to run for my car, lock myself in, and get the hell out of there. That's what I ended up doing. It worked--but I wasted valuable time because I didn't already have a plan. The guy got within 6 feet of me before I could get the door locked and start the car.
I think it's possible the guy was drunk or crazy, but I couldn't tell. I just knew he was pissed off, and I didn't want to be the gringo woman that he took his anger out on.
I'm now working on my own list of "lethal force scenarios." Those situations in which I will resist with a gun if necessary. One is, if a perp tries to force me into his car. 95% of women who are transported away from the initial crime scene are later killed. So I'm not getting into anyone's car. Another is if the perp tells me to get on my knees facing away from him (classic execution pose). Another is to protect my loved ones from being killed or seriously injured. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I stood idly by and watched someone kill my parents, for example.
There's a lot of soul-searching involved in this.
Anyway, I'm working on having a plan and getting more training. As the Boy Scouts say, "Be Prepared."
Boris, it sounds like your dad really did you a service by preparing you to deal with a sometimes hostile world from a young age.
-----
It's
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