What a load of bias rubbish. Very selective quoting. The ban on fox hunting was nothing to do with human rights, but rather animal cruelty. Foxes can still be hunted, with a gun of all things. You're just not allowed to let your dogs maul them to death because that's cruel. So what they're apparently campaigning against is a load of rubbish, hunting with guns is still legal.

Oh, and so is pistol shooting - you just have to keep your gun at a gun club. The only thing that's illegal is keeping your gun at home.

As for Tony Martin, he's a nutjob. Tony Martin had his gun license revoked in 1994 because he shot at someone who was stealing his apples. Ok, so the guy was on his land and stealing fruit, but it's OK to shoot them? No. No it's not.

There are a lot of inconsistencies in his story of the incident. He claimed to have shot from the stairs having been woken by the break in. He didn't, he was shown to have shot from a downstairs doorway. He was lying in wait for them and ambushed them. He shot the kid that broke in in the back as he was trying to escape.

I'm pretty sure in America the feeling is just that the kid had it coming, he shouldn't have been there. I don't buy into that at all.

Homicide with a gun in the UK: 0.07 per 100,000

Homicide with a gun in the US: 2.97 per 100,000

US rate is more than forty times that of the UK. Which country has broken gun laws? The simple facts are that I'm safer in the UK without a gun than I am in the states with a gun.

Figures found here.

In the US, every year, firearms in the hands of citizens are used 2.5 million times in self-defense.

Fifty-four percent of the defensive gun uses involved somebody verbally referring to the gun. Forty-seven percent involved the gun being pointed at the criminal.
Twenty-two percent involved the gun being fired.
Fourteen percent involved the gun being fired at somebody, meaning it wasn't just a warning shot; the defender was trying to shoot the criminal.
And then in 8 percent they actually did wound or kill the offender.


Disarmed citizens are serfs. Three guesses which political party promoting government dependency doesn't want you to be able to defend yourself.

Getting even part time minimum wage work can take months, at least where I live. When McDonalds had a hiring day for all their locations in the area, there were huge lines of people hoping to get a job there. I counted close to twenty at the one I was at (which was a fairly small McDonalds compared to the rest in the area), most of them twenty to forty something aged people. Every time I checked on my status, up to a month later, they were still evaluating people from that day. I would guess the weed part was a joke, but even then I wouldn't judge the guy, some people waste their money on alcohol (far worse for the person and society), others waste their money on tobacco (he does, and again far worse for the person and society), some waste their money on the lottery, gambling, clothes, movies, games, cable... who cares what they spend money on. Everyone spends money, if they got it, to help hide the misery of their life or improve their life. So long as they aren't spending it on actively hurting others (hiring hitmen, dog fights, etc.) who cares what the money is being spent on? I can think of billions of things better to spend money on than drugs (I personally don't get the point of drugs unless it is for medical reasons, but I don't get alcohol or legal depression drugs and the like either), but I'm not going to fault the guy for doing them.

Anyhow, I have a part time (barely more than minimum wage) job, and still can't pay any creditors (largely just a student loan and some old utility bills and one credit card that is all of a thousand or less that keeps trying to garnish but child support is in the way, you would think they would give up)... hell, my kids will have a very disappointing Christmas this year... I have to borrow money some weeks just to get gas to get to work (very poor gas mileage and work is 20 or so miles each way) so getting a part time job likely won't help pay the debts at all. Even a full time minimum wage job doesn't make enough to pay for basic living expenses like rent, food and essential utilities (that is no cable) let alone cover any debts created while better employed. Who knows how many applications/resumes he'll send out that day, its only 11 am (although the place looks excessively dark for daytime), so he could be heading out later. I don't expect an unemployed person to spend 8 hours a day 40 hours a week driving all over town, especially since a great many jobs only take applications/resumes online these days (especially the part time minimum wage ones).

That all said, I agree any company scared of being recorded is sketchy... how do they know you are actually recording for one, and then who cares second unless you are breaking or at the very least bending the law?

Even the most profligate girl-labeller would use 'grown woman' to refer to the other kind of guy in that scenario.

This is actually the key to our disagreement.

Are you unwilling to allow that the same words can suggest completely different meanings in different contexts?
I'm not talking about 'bear' and 'bear'. I'm not even talking about 'boy - a five year old male' and 'boy - a forty year old black guy'. I'm talking about 'boy - a forty year old black guy' and 'boy - a forty year old black guy'.

We're both aware 'boy' and 'girl' can be used in denigrating ways, so can, say, 'liberal', 'geek' and 'yankee'; and all of these have neutral and positive applications.

In fact no word has a meaning independent of the context in which it's used, this is literally true - words depend entirely on interaction with each other and on the circumstances of their transmission to impart information; rhetoricians call this 'interinanimation', dictionary writers call this 'damned annoying'. It's also true that no communication is possible where words have meaning only to their speaker. Consequently, language is an ongoing negotiation.

So, my position isn't that these words are literally interchangeable, in every context, but that they are interchangeable in a lot more contexts than you will admit. You have to look to the attitude of the speaker; to do that you have to examine what they're saying contextually. Monitoring individual word usage is a cheap, futile shortcut to understanding where a person is coming from.

>> ^bareboards2:
I still think it is mostly about power, though, and your example of "grown man" kind of proves it to me. Why couldn't you say "grown boy"? If boy is the same as man, just as girl is the same as woman? A grown boy is indeed a man, yes? It actually is more accurate than "grown man."

@bareboards2

Don't be sorry - I love long posts, but I'll reply with a relatively short one.

It's amazing that you mention the 'authoress/poetess' controversy because I had exactly that in mind earlier. Good riddance.

This may not have been the case forty years ago, but today I'm all but certain the reason 'girl' is a popular alternative to 'woman' is what is lost in the substitution - one syllable. It just rolls off the tongue more easily, whereas there's no similar incentive to switch 'boy' for 'man'. Sometimes it's that simple. I suspect your answer would differ, which is why I ask.
For myself, I call women women, but that's just the way my vocabulary has evolved; I'm not making a social statement by doing so and if there were a single-syllable alternative that appealed to me I would jump on it for the same reason as if we finally fixed the number seven and the letter W.

When I say these words have come up in the wrong contexts, I only mean when they're being used to refer particularly to age, "grown man", and there's no way to reconcile the substitution with the meaning of the sentence. Actually if this exercise has taught me nothing else over the last couple of days, it has exposed how infrequently we seem to use these words outside of pop music - and I'm not sure getting Katy Perry to sing 'California Women' would necessarily redeem the song as a feminist anthem.

@gorillaman, my having the "same conversation" for forty years is because I have heard it all. I would LOVE for someone to present a new argument so I could think about it. However, that hasn't happened in this thread. For me, it's all same old, same old.

What bothers me? The fact that it has taken me forty years to come up with my experiment. I am deeply embarrassed that in 40 years I have never changed tactics. I just kept repeating myself, thinking that since I was talking to a different person, a different group, the result of the conversation would be different.

Unfortunately, this is my personality -- guileless, obstinate, passionate, deeply sure of my own point of view (because I have constantly tested it against new information, constantly changed my opinion based on new information). But I never had the personal skills to think -- hey, try a new tactic.

There is a reason I am not in politics or sales. I lack some real people skills.

I have told people for 40 years that I was changed when I did this experiment on myself. Well, actually, my personal experiment was more radical. Every time I heard the word "girl", I imagined the subject was a black man, changed the word to "boy" and checked in with how comfortable or uncomfortable I was. That little experiment knocked my socks off as it revealed the power of words to subjugate a group of people. [In the 1970s, you DID NOT call a black man a "boy." The stereotype of a white Southern sheriff with a see-gar in his mouth, calling a grown black man a "boy" was very powerful and real back then. Not so much anymore. Thank goodness.]

But in 40 years, I have never asked anyone to do this experiment, with a time frame so it isn't too onerous. Never framed it as a scientific and social experiment. Never changed my tactics.

I am deeply embarrassed by that. I am also deeply thrilled that I finally figured this out.

If you are willing to do it, of course. It does require effort on your part.

You game? You wanna play? I honestly would love to hear how it goes for you. If that Southern sheriff stereotype resonates with you, feel free to try that version. If you want.

>> ^bareboards2:

Same conversation for forty years. Sigh.
I woke up thinking about this. And before reading what awaited me here, I had an idea. An experiment.
A rational, non-paranoid experiment.
@Stormsinger @gorillaman.... Wanna do a scientific and social experiment? Just for laughs?
Spend one day and use the word "woman" to refer to anyone female over the age of 20. Doesn't have to have any big meaning to it. Just try it. If you happen to hear or read someone use the word "girl" to refer to a female over the age of 20, substitute the word "woman" in your mind.
During this day, for this rational, non-paranoid scientific and social experiment, substitute the word "boy" in your mind whenever you hear the word "man." Say the word "boy" instead of "man" when speaking.
Doing it for a week would be better. I'll settle for a day.
If you decide to try this rational, non-paranoid scientific and social experiment, I'd love to hear about your experience.
One day. Rational. Scientific. Social. Experiment.
Since the words are interchangeable, then you really shouldn't have any trouble doing this rational, scientific, social experiment.
You up for it? I think it would be intellectually interesting. Anybody else out there game for it? We could have a Sift-wide rational, scientific and social experiment!

I do find it a bit odd that you call these different views "the same conversation". I see each of us talking about somewhat different issues.


I'll give it a try...and what's more, I'll make a prediction, based on my own knowledge of my life.

If I hear any of those four words (man, woman, boy, girl) about someone over the age of 20, it'll be an unusual day. They're not words that come up in my normal conversations, and I don't watch TV. If I'm talking to or about someone, I tend to use names. If I'm talking about groups of people, they're rarely segregated by gender, so I would usually use "folks" or "people".

P.S. this quoting thing is starting to get annoying again. It can take anywhere from 1-3 carriage returns to get a blank line between paragraphs now. Did something change recently?

@bareboards2

It seems to me that since you're currently talking to several people with wildly different viewpoints and having the 'same conversation' with each of them, and given you decided what your latest contribution was going to be before you read the replies to the previous one, the reason you've been stuck in this forty year rut may be that your idea of conversation differs somewhat from the accepted multidirectional standard.

Which renders your repeated exhortations to "open your mind" and "think a new thought" spectacularly ironic.

Presumably it's occurred to you that your experiment can be run in reverse? Force yourself to hear 'girl' and 'woman' and 'boy' and 'man' as equally valid and harmless ways of addressing people, and observe to what extent it undermines your ability to perceive others as equal and treat them fairly.

Same conversation for forty years. Sigh.

I woke up thinking about this. And before reading what awaited me here, I had an idea. An experiment.

A rational, non-paranoid experiment.

@Stormsinger @gorillaman.... Wanna do a scientific and social experiment? Just for laughs?

Spend one day and use the word "woman" to refer to anyone female over the age of 20. Doesn't have to have any big meaning to it. Just try it. If you happen to hear or read someone use the word "girl" to refer to a female over the age of 20, substitute the word "woman" in your mind.

During this day, for this rational, non-paranoid scientific and social experiment, substitute the word "boy" in your mind whenever you hear the word "man." Say the word "boy" instead of "man" when speaking.

Doing it for a week would be better. I'll settle for a day.

If you decide to try this rational, non-paranoid scientific and social experiment, I'd love to hear about your experience.

One day. Rational. Scientific. Social. Experiment.

Since the words are interchangeable, then you really shouldn't have any trouble doing this rational, scientific, social experiment.

You up for it? I think it would be intellectually interesting. Anybody else out there game for it? We could have a Sift-wide rational, scientific and social experiment!

I won't go as far as gorillaman, and say you're being paranoid and oversensitive...that's not really for me to decide. But I will say that from what I'm hearing you say, it seems more of a "pet peeve" than something that actually is going to make a difference to anyone else. I can relate to that...I have a number of those myself (many related to the English language, like irregardless, and alot).

But he does have a good point about the way they use the term "men" being in reference to a rite of passage, and I have indeed heard similar statements from women (well girls, technically...too immature to be called women).

I don't agree with him about feminism in general...I do think there are many gender-related issues still worthy of support. I just don't find this to be one of them, even after having given it a fair amount of thought and debate over the years. Girl, boy, kid...there are many different uses for those words, and I do use them pretty evenly. Well, kids probably gets a bit more use, because it covers multi-gendered groups of people < 40 years old. >> ^bareboards2:

Sorry my response was so pissy..... I am just frustrated that after forty years of talking about this, I am still hearing the EXACT SAME RESPONSES from folks who don't take the time to actually think about the topic. It all just parroted back, the same old same old.
I sound like a broken record because I hear a broken record. For forty years.
Anyway, had you gone back and listened to the beginning of the clip where they call themselves "real men" or something like that, my comment might have made more sense. Can you imagine three young women saying "if I do this amazing act of bravery, then I'll prove myself as a real woman"? We just don't talk like that in our culture. And that makes me sad. And had done for FORTY YEARS.
If it is still going in ten years, I shall be even more sad.
>> ^bareboards2:
You are off by decades....
You boys are so touchy. I just made a suggestion that you think about something in a different way and your panties are all in a bunch.
It wouldn't hurt to think a new thought. Just lie back and relax. You might enjoy it.
>> ^Stormsinger:
>> ^bareboards2:
For folks out there who call women "girls", please note the use of the word "men" in the beginning of this vid, and store it away for the future.

What use of "men"? I can't take watching it again...
I assume it was one of them, referring to the three of them? Worrying about that is like worrying about whether the pug down the street calls himself a puppy or a dog. Utterly pointless and irrelevant.
As far as I'm concerned, the terms "girls" or "boys" are totally appropriate for my friends that are my age or younger (which doesn't rule out too many of my friends any more at 50+), or when used in informal conversations. I'd be unlikely to use it in a speech I was giving, but in day-to-day life, talking about a boys' night out, or girls' night out...well, I can't see why it matters.
BB2, I generally agree with you, but this particular issue carries distinct hints of college-age-rabid-feminist. My advice would be to pick fights that are worth fighting. Revisit this one to see if it still seems important in a decade or so...I suspect it won't.

>> ^bareboards2:

Sorry my response was so pissy..... I am just frustrated that after forty years of talking about this, I am still hearing the EXACT SAME RESPONSES from folks who don't take the time to actually think about the topic. It all just parroted back, the same old same old.
I sound like a broken record because I hear a broken record. For forty years.
Anyway, had you gone back and listened to the beginning of the clip where they call themselves "real men" or something like that, my comment might have made more sense. Can you imagine three young women saying "if I do this amazing act of bravery, then I'll prove myself as a real woman"? We just don't talk like that in our culture. And that makes me sad. And had done for FORTY YEARS.
If it is still going in ten years, I shall be even more sad.


I have some exciting new thoughts for you to try out, but let's start with the mundane specific case of the gentlemen in the video. It seems obvious that they're contrasting 'men' with 'boys' rather than 'men' with 'women/girls'. That's the old rite of passage being invoked, nothing to do with sex at all. Being British, they also can't help talking with a certain degree of irony that some might miss. These points are only worth making because they highlight your paranoia and oversensitivity.

Sex is ultimately irrelevant; at a 50/50 split it's too shallow a distinction to be meaningful in most cases. Gender is a personal construct, which scarcely signifies outside the individual who inhabits it. If someone, for whatever reason incomprehensible to us, chooses to incorporate their ability to tolerate capsaicin into their gender identity then it's really none of our business. We've certainly no cause to be threatened by it on a personal or cultural level.

I don't consider myself to have a gender. The rational thing to do is treat people as individuals. When you talk about the cultural implications of calling someone a girl, that means as much to me as a teenagers complaining about discrimination against vampires.

It's possible to think very seriously about a topic and decide it doesn't matter. It's just as important to point out what doesn't matter as what does. Then we can stop wasting our energy, forty years worth in your case, on trifles - and concentrate on what's actually worth thinking about. Feminists seem to only think about things that don't matter, which is why everyone hates them. Every human being on earth, and I mean that literally, agrees that the various sexes and genders don't need to be assigned different rights, or at least that we're not sophisticated enough to be able to tease out and codify the very subtle differences between those groups, individuals, and any individual at different moments in their life. That's where the issue ends. There is nothing else to talk about, but when you've squandered so much time on and identified yourself so strongly with such a simple little idea you have to invent a lot of nonsense non-issues to rant on about just to make it all seem worthwhile.

Stop being a feminist; start being a rational person who naturally agrees with the single sensible point feminists have to make and go and do something useful with your time.

>> ^bareboards2:

Sorry my response was so pissy..... I am just frustrated that after forty years of talking about this, I am still hearing the EXACT SAME RESPONSES from folks who don't take the time to actually think about the topic. It all just parroted back, the same old same old.
I sound like a broken record because I hear a broken record. For forty years.
Anyway, had you gone back and listened to the beginning of the clip where they call themselves "real men" or something like that, my comment might have made more sense. Can you imagine three young women saying "if I do this amazing act of bravery, then I'll prove myself as a real woman"? We just don't talk like that in our culture. And that makes me sad. And had done for FORTY YEARS.
If it is still going in ten years, I shall be even more sad.
>> ^bareboards2:
You are off by decades....
You boys are so touchy. I just made a suggestion that you think about something in a different way and your panties are all in a bunch.
It wouldn't hurt to think a new thought. Just lie back and relax. You might enjoy it.
>> ^Stormsinger:
>> ^bareboards2:
For folks out there who call women "girls", please note the use of the word "men" in the beginning of this vid, and store it away for the future.

What use of "men"? I can't take watching it again...
I assume it was one of them, referring to the three of them? Worrying about that is like worrying about whether the pug down the street calls himself a puppy or a dog. Utterly pointless and irrelevant.
As far as I'm concerned, the terms "girls" or "boys" are totally appropriate for my friends that are my age or younger (which doesn't rule out too many of my friends any more at 50+), or when used in informal conversations. I'd be unlikely to use it in a speech I was giving, but in day-to-day life, talking about a boys' night out, or girls' night out...well, I can't see why it matters.
BB2, I generally agree with you, but this particular issue carries distinct hints of college-age-rabid-feminist. My advice would be to pick fights that are worth fighting. Revisit this one to see if it still seems important in a decade or so...I suspect it won't.




I...still don't understand your complaint on this one. Are you upset they referred to themselves as men? or are you saying because they're using the term "real men" they're trying to.. I don't know, describe an aspect you feel isn't reflected upon women?

Or is the argument that 'men' still refer to women as 'girls'?

I see you making an argument about something you're definitely passionate about.. but I really just have no clue as to what that is.

Sorry my response was so pissy..... I am just frustrated that after forty years of talking about this, I am still hearing the EXACT SAME RESPONSES from folks who don't take the time to actually think about the topic. It all just parroted back, the same old same old.

I sound like a broken record because I hear a broken record. For forty years.

Anyway, had you gone back and listened to the beginning of the clip where they call themselves "real men" or something like that, my comment might have made more sense. Can you imagine three young women saying "if I do this amazing act of bravery, then I'll prove myself as a real woman"? We just don't talk like that in our culture. And that makes me sad. And had done for FORTY YEARS.

If it is still going in ten years, I shall be even more sad.

>> ^bareboards2:

You are off by decades....
You boys are so touchy. I just made a suggestion that you think about something in a different way and your panties are all in a bunch.
It wouldn't hurt to think a new thought. Just lie back and relax. You might enjoy it.

>> ^Stormsinger:
>> ^bareboards2:
For folks out there who call women "girls", please note the use of the word "men" in the beginning of this vid, and store it away for the future.

What use of "men"? I can't take watching it again...
I assume it was one of them, referring to the three of them? Worrying about that is like worrying about whether the pug down the street calls himself a puppy or a dog. Utterly pointless and irrelevant.
As far as I'm concerned, the terms "girls" or "boys" are totally appropriate for my friends that are my age or younger (which doesn't rule out too many of my friends any more at 50+), or when used in informal conversations. I'd be unlikely to use it in a speech I was giving, but in day-to-day life, talking about a boys' night out, or girls' night out...well, I can't see why it matters.
BB2, I generally agree with you, but this particular issue carries distinct hints of college-age-rabid-feminist. My advice would be to pick fights that are worth fighting. Revisit this one to see if it still seems important in a decade or so...I suspect it won't.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Take it away, Rush:
"A lot of people have been saying this kind of thing. It's been one of the raging debates about where we are as a country, and have we lost the country. That's what this is all about. So went back, I went back to the news archives. And look what I have here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. This is USA Today, April 26th, 2011. Headline: "Americans Depend More on Federal Aid Than Ever." It's not Romney saying it. Ha-ha. It's USA Today, shazam. It's the Drive-By Media saying it.
"Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history." Exactly right. It's why Obama has to be stopped. It's not what this country is, as Obama said his convention, "It's not who we are." This is not who we are. Forty-seven percent of this country's population is helplessly dependent on the government because of policies created by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party year after year after year. Why are they dependent? Nobody's saying that all 47% of 'em are slackers. Nobody's saying that all 47% of 'em are losers. A lot of them are victims of Obamaism, of the Democrat Party. They're victims of liberalism. They're victims of an economy that does not grow. They're victims of an economy that shrinks. They are victims of an economy where there are fewer jobs and where there's less income to be earned. They are victims of failed Democrat Party policy after policy after policy."


Look I'm not fan of either party, in fact I hate politics in general... but this one-sided rhetoric doesn't help anyone... The headline reads that in 2010 Americans depended more on government assistance than ever", then it gets subtlety tweaked into "47% of the country is helplessly dependent on the government" Really?? 47% helplessly dependent??! Nice little shift there... And Obamaism? wtf does that even mean? So they really believe that before Obama took office everything was great then one year later it had all turned to shit?

Again, I don't care for Obama or any politician's for that matter, but do you not see how this kind of divisive rhetoric will only drive people further apart then they already are? What's the endgame, a civil war between the 'right' and the 'left'? I just don't get what people like Rush actually want other than the total annihilation of the left. Isn't democracy supposed to be about working together (even with opposing views) for the good of the people? Or am I wrong about that?

Take it away, Rush:

"A lot of people have been saying this kind of thing. It's been one of the raging debates about where we are as a country, and have we lost the country. That's what this is all about. So went back, I went back to the news archives. And look what I have here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. This is USA Today, April 26th, 2011. Headline: "Americans Depend More on Federal Aid Than Ever." It's not Romney saying it. Ha-ha. It's USA Today, shazam. It's the Drive-By Media saying it.

"Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history." Exactly right. It's why Obama has to be stopped. It's not what this country is, as Obama said his convention, "It's not who we are." This is not who we are. Forty-seven percent of this country's population is helplessly dependent on the government because of policies created by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party year after year after year. Why are they dependent? Nobody's saying that all 47% of 'em are slackers. Nobody's saying that all 47% of 'em are losers. A lot of them are victims of Obamaism, of the Democrat Party. They're victims of liberalism. They're victims of an economy that does not grow. They're victims of an economy that shrinks. They are victims of an economy where there are fewer jobs and where there's less income to be earned. They are victims of failed Democrat Party policy after policy after policy."