I think I saw not one, but maybe a half dozen golden calves there. You know, we outlawed those for a reason. They misappropriate the energy we're supposed to be spending serving God.

I am appalled at some of the responses to this here on the Sift: "she should just take it and shut up", "yeah what's wrong telling someone they're fat" and @scannex's craptacular line of argumentation. This discussion took such a bizarro turn that even bobknight33 has more sense in his comment than a good half of the commenters!

There are several important issues at stake here:

1) Unethical behaviour should be called out, as done here, not silenced/ignored, no matter how "petty" it may seem. Silence (often enforced by shaming and/or interiorised guilt) is one of the main contributors to a culture of abuse of privilege, of bullying, humiliating, harassing, etc etc. I just wish stuff like this (the video) happened more often on TV and in the media in general. The more this kind of behaviour (be it sexist, ableist, bigoted, etc.) is called out as socially unacceptable, the less it will spread over the next generations.

2) Privilege: this guy thinks it is his place to tell a perfect stranger that she's too fat for TV, as if his small-minded opinion was worth anything. Even if it hadn't been so disgustingly condescending, he should know (lets hope that's now the case) that it's not his place to make those remarks. Even if he's a doctor, nutritionist, you name it. He's not her doctor, nor friend, and you have to be pretty fucking stupid to think you're illuminating someone on their hitherto unnoticed BMI, and even more fucking stupid to defend that as "doing her a favour".

3) Obesity is not like smoking. Yes, they are both health problems, but unlike smoking, being obese is not a behaviour. It can be caused/aggravated by certain behaviour, among many other factors. But while a behaviour can be inhibited while in front of others (e.g. not smoking in front of kids/a camera), you cannot "stop being obese". This brings out another distinction, namely that, while seeing people smoke can entice impressionable minds to do the same, seeing someone who is fat will not make one want to be fat as well. Seeing an overweight person on TV having a job or living a normal life might, on the other hand, give hope to people who are mocked and discriminated against for their weight issues, something which does not undermine in the slightest the struggle against obesity.

I could go on, but I've ranted enough as is. Suffice it to say that I fully *support what this woman and her colleagues have taken the courage to do, and hope it is a situation we will see more of in future. We can't (and shouldn't) outlaw douchebaggery, but we sure as hell can make it socially stigmatising, and we damn well should. (and unlike obesity for some, douchebaggery and hateful/hurtful ignorance is something anyone can be cured of)

/rant

To anyone claiming something prior to birth is alive and any abortion is murder, then you cannot hold that position to outlaw abortion if you also do not demand and end to death sentencing, assassination by drone, cops killing someone not in self-defense should be tried as murder.

If you cannot hold every life as sacred and be adamant about ending those other forms of murder, then you cannot be against murder of unborn humans.

@ReverendTed
You have been a courteous sparring partner so I will try to answer in kind, but I must admit being very exasperated by your last response. Moreover, I do not think I want to pursue a debate with someone who cannot see how adoption-in-place-of-abortion is neither feasible nor even remotely ethical (vis-à-vis the woman, the would-be child and human society in general). So this will probably be my last wall of self-indulgent dross.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: we both agree that we need more education all ‘round, on all subjects. And as you know, those most opposed to it are the same that are against abortion. Abstinence education is redundant when proper sex-ed is given, because it goes without saying that “no sex = no unwanted pregnancies” is a part of basic sex-ed. Of course, it is un-pragmatic to expect teenagers (or anyone for that matter) to forego sex, so why harp on it, other than for misguided religious purposes?

Your conception of consciousness is fuzzy at best. Everything we feel, experience, etc. is due to electro-chemical reactions in our body/brain. Magical thinking is saying some non-physical “me” exists attached to it, what religious people call a soul. Consciousness is not subordinate to cognition in terms of value, but in the sense that without the one (cognition) you simply don’t have the other (“subordinate” as in “dependent upon”). I mentioned blind-from-birth people for a good reason; they have no visual aspect to their consciousness, their identity/consciousness is built upon the other sensory input. Now imagine a being that has zero sensory input (or a central system capable of making use/sense of it), and you have a mass of muscles/cells/organs devoid of consciousness. And that is what is aborted before the 25th week. I must make it clear, however, that even if this developed much earlier it would still be the woman’s prerogative to choose what she does with her own body/life. In that respect I think the “viability” argument is a pragmatic (albeit conservative) one, because it draws the line between an excrescence and a (possibly) autonomous being.

After the first two paragraphs, your response goes from bad to worse. What I said about adoption v abortion still stands, but I would add that it is still forcing women to go through a pregnancy they do not want (thus still affecting the quality of their lives), not to mention leaving them with the guilt of abandonment, the kids with issues, etc etc. And all for what? So some third person’s unfounded superstitions be upheld? And then you have the gall to compare criminalising abortion with criminalising incest and crazy people locking up/raping their families. You seriously need to think a bit before making comparisons. In the case of child abuse and/or rape (incest itself is a victimless crime, but that’s for a different discussion), there are actual victims, for one, and secondly, the crazies would lock them up whether it was legal or not, because it is a question of absolute control over the other.

Since you cite Guttmacher statistics, allow me to suggest you read a little more:

• Highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower abortion rates. For example, the abortion rate is 29 per 1,000 women of childbearing age in Africa and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America—regions in which abortion is illegal under most circumstances in the majority of countries. The rate is 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds.

• Where abortion is permitted on broad legal grounds, it is generally safe, and where it is highly restricted, it is typically unsafe. In developing countries, relatively liberal abortion laws are associated with fewer negative health consequences from unsafe abortion than are highly restrictive laws.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html

So basically pushing for the criminalisation of abortion is pushing for there to be more abortions, and more dangerous ones.

You note how a large percentage of abortion-seekers are above the poverty line. Obviously, they can afford it / are aware of the possibility. Ever notice how the poor/uneducated tend to have more kids than the others? Do you really think being poor makes you want to have more mouths to feed? Or perhaps it is because they lack access to contraception/abortion (not to mention the poor/uneducated tend to be more religious; religion thrives on misery). Of the “developed” world the US is a bit of a special case, because it is so backward with regards to healthcare and contraception. Notice how most women in the US pay for their abortion out of pocket, and “Nearly 60% of women who experienced a delay in obtaining an abortion cite the time it took to make arrangements and raise money.” (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html/) As an aside, the religious right here in Switzerland (not as influential but almost as stupid and backward thinking as that of the US) are trying to make abortion be no longer covered by the universal healthcare system.

On the “potential” question, everything has been said. I’d simply point out that your “95%” potential leaves out something absolutely crucial, namely the choice of the woman to terminate the abortion, which can reduce that to “0%”. You say “it’s nearly guaranteed”, but so what? Two people having heterosexual vaginal sex without projection over a long period of time will conceive of a child, it’s “nearly guaranteed”, therefore every possible pairing of male and female should have continuous unprotected sex otherwise they are depriving potential beings from existing. “But what if they don’t want to?” Exactly, what if the woman doesn’t want a child at that moment? See how absurd the “potential” argument is?

I’ll risk making this wall of text even wallyer and propose an analogy, The Analogy of the Film and Camera. When you put a film in a camera, the potential for it becoming a strip of individual, unique photos goes up. But so long as no pictures are taken, so long as nothing is imprinted on the film’s receptive surface, you lose no individual photos by taking the film out, and there’s the same amount of potential if you put in a different film at a different time. It’s wonky, I know, but it illustrates that potential individual (the film) is not the same as existing individual (the photo), nor does destroying the first cause any damage to the second, because the second doesn’t exist yet.

The comparison with the IGB campaign is terribly inappropriate and simply false. In one case it is question of keeping living individuals from ending their lives, whereas abortion is about preventing eventual individuals from coming into existence because it would harm the quality of life of an already existing individual (as well as the one to be). IGB is about giving people options/hope, whereas criminalising abortion is about taking that away (from women, to give it to the mind projections of superstitious third parties). The only connection between the two is that in both cases the unsubstantiated beliefs of third persons impinge on an individual’s quality of life and liberty. I already addressed your “good from bad” argument, which you draw out again in an emotionally manipulative way (which frankly made me sick).

On eugenics, oh boy. What you’re saying is akin to saying “self-defence should be outlawed because otherwise some (like Zimmerman) might commit crimes and say it was self-defence”. Or, a little closer to home perhaps: “we shouldn’t have universal healthcare because some might fraud”. Yes, some people fraud the insurance, and yes, some people are aggressive and try to pass it as self-defence. That’s why we have a judicial system. Bringing in eugenics is seriously grasping at straws and you know it.

I’ll end my last contribution to this exchange with the following: having a child should never be an inevitability. Bringing a human life into existence is way too big a responsibility to be an obligation. A women’s body is her own, to deal with as she chooses, uterus and co. included.

Cheers

@ReverendTed

Abortion is not murder, but that's not really the point. America, and by extension, the world, doesn't really have a problem with killing as a whole. We war with ourselves and kill fellow beings in the name of religion, politics, land and other resources. We kill criminals if they commit heinous enough crimes. We kill vast amounts of wildlife for fun and sport. We kill flies and other insects merely because they bother us. We step on insects without even knowing it.

We humans kill.
We are killers.
There is no escaping this fact.
Create the right conditions and anyone will kill...anyone.

The only thing you can do is: 1. Hopefully create a world in the future where we don't have to kill as much and 2. Hope that we are killing for the right reasons. Sometimes this will be true, sometimes it won't be. But that's life. That's the human condition. A law will change nothing other than whether or not abortions are performed safely or not. I choose to live in a world where if someone I know decides to have an abortion, that they do it safely with a doctor and not in some back alley. Abortions will happen REGARDLESS of what the law says. If we're going to end an unborn child's life, let's at least make sure the mother remains safe. Outlawing abortions just increases the chance that we'll have two ended lives instead of just one.

Abortion, by definition is the LAWFUL termination of an unborn child...LAWFUL. Murder is the UNLAWFUL termination of a life. Key distinction there.

This false morality that some people are somehow above and beyond the rest of us mere mortals and hold life to be irrevocably sacred just does not understand history or the human condition. These sorts of people seem to be the same people who would casually send us to war for religious or ideological reasons and thus condone the termination of more lives. The hypocrisy is glaring.

In regards to this notion that a person would go have an abortion just because a baby would be inconvenient is sad certainly, but when it comes right down to it....tough. Cost of living in a free society. people are going to things you don't approve of. deal with it. Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa. People who go have abortions out of convenience are in the minority. Quit worrying about what the minority does..especially with their own body. You and I don't get to decide what is right for someone else.

We don't live in a post-scarcity world yet. If every viable pregnancy ever was brought to term, we would have an even bigger resource shortage problem on our hands.

We live in a world where your quality of life (and your offspring) is directly related to your job. Until the quality of life of humanity becomes more equalized, We are going to continue to have situations where if someone gets pregnant it will directly affect their quality of life (and their child's) for the worse. So I really don't have a problem with someone terminating the pregnancy so that they go on to improve their quality of life so that they can have a kid later who will benefit from that better quality of life.

I too would ideally prefer adoption to abortion. But that's not exactly saying much. Adoption agencies have tons of kids and not enough parents to go around. As fertility science continues to improve, fewer and fewer parents are going to want adoption when they can just undergo a procedure and still have their own. This recently happened to a friend of mine who was having difficulty conceiving. She and her husband initially decided to adopt, but at some point, they changed their mind and pursued some massively costly fertility treatments so that they eventually did conceive. I was immensely happy for her, but at the same time, I personally felt they should have stuck with the adoption as those orphans are already here and need help now. But here's the thing. It's not my choice, it's hers and her husbands. So we can deal with the realities of the situation or continue to play hypotheticals. If everyone gave their kid up for adoption instead of abortion, we'd just have a different kind of problem and the quality of life of a vast amount of kids would be affected for the worse.

As for your big questions, They are best left to people far more educated on this subject than you and I. Of course there is some point in a pregnancy where abortion should no longer be an option. I don't think anyone is arguing this. As you say, the question is when. I simply don't know and am unqualified to make that judgement. No matter what is decided upon, it obviously won't satisfy everyone, but a decision has to be made and you can't please everyone.

Yeah, but the instant you start talk of repealing or restricting the right to own weapons, you put forth an image that you want them unarmed for your own gain.


Oops, meant to reply in the video. Oh well.
In reply to this comment by VoodooV:
>> ^kymbos:

If I was wandering down the street and happened upon a man or two walking with those fucking guns I would shit my pants! Are you serious? The idea that this is ok to do is fucking perverted. Insane.


I'd be ok with armed open carry civilians..if crime really was that rampant. But it's not! We're just not fighting for our lives on a daily basis here. We have a gov't that allows for peaceful change and we vote for a president every four years. These people who casually throw around the idea of "2nd amendment remedies" just haven't really experienced a truly oppressive gov't Oh crap, the price of a latte went up. Time to lock and load fellas!! First world problems.

If I'm just walking along and I see these kids openly carrying, How am I supposed to know that they're going to protect me if some armed robber magically jumps out from the bushes? How do I know these kids aren't the robbers themselves? I'm sorry, we don't live in a world where we can easily identify our protectors with their shining auras and perfect teeth and the bad guys can be identified with their black top hat and their furled mustache.

I'm ok with an armed citizenry. Just not to this degree. It just shows how insecure and paranoid we are.

I just feel the 2nd amendment serves more of a symbolic function than an actual practical one. All it really says is that you have a duty to do something if your gov't truly becomes oppressive. By who's judgement? Again, we have people throwing around the idea of "2nd amendment remedies" whenever a vote doesn't go their way. That's not oppressive gov't people. Come back to me when we actually can't vote anymore. Any successful revolt is going to need large popular support. If you don't have that, then maybe your revolt wasn't meant to succeed.

Here's the thing though, when has the lack of a 2nd amendment ever stopped anyone from overthrowing their gov't if enough people thought it was oppressive throughout history? if an oppressive gov't revokes your right to firearms. Do you just go home and twiddle your thumbs? No, you revolt anyway. Oppressive gov'ts don't just sit around and wait to be overthrown. If they make you an outlaw for having a gun and revolting...so what? being labeled an outlaw never stopped a successful revolt. If they take away your guns...you steal them back. To me it just doesn't seem to make a difference if we have a 2nd amendment or not. A modern military is not going to be deterred by dad's old shotgun. so even if you were allowed only home defense weapons and you needed to revolt. The first thing you do is that you steal some military weapons and/or you find sympathetic members of the military to side with you. if the gov't really has gotten that bad, you'll find entire outfits willing to defect I'd be willing to bet. You're going to need military training for your revolt in any case. 2nd amendment just tells you that you aught to revolt if gov't gets bad. Doesn't say anything about whether or not revolt would be easy. 2nd Amendment or no, ANY revolt is going to be massively bloody.

So hey..maybe we should put down the guns and solve our problems like adults in the 21st century. No one wants a revolution on their hands.

>> ^kymbos:

If I was wandering down the street and happened upon a man or two walking with those fucking guns I would shit my pants! Are you serious? The idea that this is ok to do is fucking perverted. Insane.


I'd be ok with armed open carry civilians..if crime really was that rampant. But it's not! We're just not fighting for our lives on a daily basis here. We have a gov't that allows for peaceful change and we vote for a president every four years. These people who casually throw around the idea of "2nd amendment remedies" just haven't really experienced a truly oppressive gov't Oh crap, the price of a latte went up. Time to lock and load fellas!! First world problems.

If I'm just walking along and I see these kids openly carrying, How am I supposed to know that they're going to protect me if some armed robber magically jumps out from the bushes? How do I know these kids aren't the robbers themselves? I'm sorry, we don't live in a world where we can easily identify our protectors with their shining auras and perfect teeth and the bad guys can be identified with their black top hat and their furled mustache.

I'm ok with an armed citizenry. Just not to this degree. It just shows how insecure and paranoid we are.

I just feel the 2nd amendment serves more of a symbolic function than an actual practical one. All it really says is that you have a duty to do something if your gov't truly becomes oppressive. By who's judgement? Again, we have people throwing around the idea of "2nd amendment remedies" whenever a vote doesn't go their way. That's not oppressive gov't people. Come back to me when we actually can't vote anymore. Any successful revolt is going to need large popular support. If you don't have that, then maybe your revolt wasn't meant to succeed.

Here's the thing though, when has the lack of a 2nd amendment ever stopped anyone from overthrowing their gov't if enough people thought it was oppressive throughout history? if an oppressive gov't revokes your right to firearms. Do you just go home and twiddle your thumbs? No, you revolt anyway. Oppressive gov'ts don't just sit around and wait to be overthrown. If they make you an outlaw for having a gun and revolting...so what? being labeled an outlaw never stopped a successful revolt. If they take away your guns...you steal them back. To me it just doesn't seem to make a difference if we have a 2nd amendment or not. A modern military is not going to be deterred by dad's old shotgun. so even if you were allowed only home defense weapons and you needed to revolt. The first thing you do is that you steal some military weapons and/or you find sympathetic members of the military to side with you. if the gov't really has gotten that bad, you'll find entire outfits willing to defect I'd be willing to bet. You're going to need military training for your revolt in any case. 2nd amendment just tells you that you aught to revolt if gov't gets bad. Doesn't say anything about whether or not revolt would be easy. 2nd Amendment or no, ANY revolt is going to be massively bloody.

So hey..maybe we should put down the guns and solve our problems like adults in the 21st century. No one wants a revolution on their hands.

@rbar have these thousands of philosophers, lawyers and activists ever considered that, if people have material needs, they may or may not be satisfied in exchange for money, money that may or may not be provided through a job? What about other ways of making money, like being self-employed, a businessman, an investor, or a beggar? What if I can satisfy those needs without money, as a farmer?

Should the self-employed have a right to customers? Should a businessman or an investor have a right to profits, or a beggar to handouts? Should farmers also be entitled to good crops? If there's no direct and necessary link between job->survival, what, then, would justify it being declared an unalienable human right?

Your objection about government causing social injustice, sounds to me like asking, "if government outlaws drinking, how is it wrong to stop people from drinking if it's against the law?". If government outlaws something that doesn't use force, it inevitably uses force to outlaw it, thus increasing the overall use of force in society and diminishing our condition as a civilization. On the other hand, any force used to repress wanton shooters is a good deterrent to their use of force, no?

About laziness, your characterization of capitalism as "more and more efficiency", with no regard to human hapiness is very typical of a socialist's portrayal of capitalism as a social order of relentless profit-seeking and competition. When in fact, capitalism is the most cooperative of any social system ever devised. Markets thrive in capitalism, and markets are a bunch of people trading and making agreements with each another. There's nothing more cooperative than trades and handshakes. You get more cooperation in capitalism than in feudalism, mercantilism, corporatism, socialism or any other "ism". In the end, you're allowed more choices, including that of softer lifestyles in capitalism, than anywhere else.

The Libor and derivatives markets scandals, are not examples of free markets at all, they're abuses where the bad behavior was encouraged by policy. What you and I argued about making the weak complacent, also applies to bad rules encouraging excessive greediness and risk-taking that went unpunished, bad behavior that would, otherwise, be "regulated" in a free market by the very real prospect of bankruptcy, and being sued for fraud instead of a get-out-of-jail-free card and juicy bailouts granted by a secretive central bank (which wouldn't exist in a free market!).

Things are not necessarily less regulated when you have economic freedom, and anything resulting from deregulation is not an automatic example of free markets at work. Regulation just happens to come from the bottom-up, from forces in the market itself, instead of by force from the top-down, by well-intentioned bureaucrats who fancy writing human rights declarations in their spare time.

In that scenario the murderer is infringing on the rights of the woman by removing her life and the chance that her fetus will become a life. Those laws were probably also designed by people like you who would love to engineer this sort of logical conflict in the legal system exactly for the specific purpose of arguing "when life begins" and ultimately outlawing abortion.

In the case of a legal abortion, a woman is deciding what to do with the flesh of her own body. These are not valid comparisons.

I think this has a lot to do with zeitgeist as well. The market for degrading porn is there, so it gets produced. There are different ways to quell it, like outlawing, or affecting the market in some way. Essentially, we would want to make people want the "good stuff" and not want the "bad stuff", but this is a problem with all sorts of things.

Some places, like denmark, have a "fat tax", to make people eat more healthy. You can also subsidize healthy food/porn from a government perspective. Alternatively, you need someone high in the industry that says "fuck this, we're only making good things now" like a steve jobs of porn. Heh.

When peoples' tastes change, the market changes with it. It's a shame that we're being driven towards wilder and wilder stuff, but I'm not sure what it takes to push back.
>> ^spoco2:

@gwiz665
I agree that the 'control group' isn't really one, as it is, as you said, severely skewed, it's just the best he had to work with.
I haven't looked at the studies at all, but you would think they could do ones that looked at frequency of porn use vs affects. They said they couldn't find anyone who didn't use it, but there sure as hell will be big differences between the amount people do.
And surely they could have a trial where they prescribe the amount of porn watched, and types for a period of time.
All of these things can be done even without a 'clean' control group.
So yeah, it seems like there isn't 'good' data on this.
But I certainly dislike the way that porn is so mainstream, and so anti female now. If you look hard enough you can find pockets of porn where everyone in it is respected and you see her feelings and arousal being addressed as well as his, but it's rare. There's far more 'Bangbus' and 'drunk coeds' shit.
I'd love to know a way to swing porn back to the respectful side of the spectrum, so that when people did just random porn searches, more often than not they saw real looking people having loving sex.... but I have no idea how that could ever be done.

You're implying that I watched it.

Porn harms bad relationships, or good relationships with bad people in it. It's that simple. Porn isn't bad. Porn can be fun.

Would you say that sugar is always bad? It certainly hurts our health, why not just outlaw that? It's clearly the prevalent cause of death in our western society.

I don't particularly like cigarettes, I think they're bad, and it's been shown quite a few times the effects it has both long term and short term. And to dot the i, it's pretty easy to see the very short term effect by sitting in a smoke filled room. This issue is also a problem of teaching, not enforcing. We don't need to prohibit smoking, we need to either educate or "incentivize" not smoking. That's soft-prohibition, but that's fine by me.

>> ^marinara:

gwiz665 you are impervious to facts. The whole presentation was one fact after another about how porn harms relationships.
I think it's safe to say that porn is never good. Just like smoking, and something tells me you have an opinion on cigarettes.

to be fair, any kind of sex was pretty much outlawed in the old testament, except the married kind

do they want everyone to follow the goofy literal rules of their religion or not??? Grow a fucking pair and just say you want people to listen to the bible or you'll kill them. stop beating around the burning bush!

i think the point is, if there is no place for this kind of thing due to relevancy... at what point did the govt decide in the past it WAS relevant? and outlaw abortions, same sex marriage, interracial marriage... at some point someone said no. that is always relevant, and maybe its past time to wait any more to get real answers on why people in congress can decide our personal lives based on their personal religious beliefs (or proclamation of belief)

Damn. And here I'd hoped that QT made a movie about the guitarist Django Reinhardt. But no, it's another story about outlaws and vigilantes kicking ass. Oh well.

@Porksandwich all good points. There is corruption and a lot of collusion between government and corporations. Can we consider the possibility that this collusion happens mostly because the role of government is not well defined, because the economy is a grey area, because businesses covet the power politicians have?

I don't see churches fighting over privileges with politicians, not since a clear separation of church and state was established.

I don't see big media networks fighting over censorship rights with politicians, because freedom of speech mostly outlaws censorship by the government.

Do you see where I'm getting at?

The businesses that hold a monopoly, most of the time, hold it because of regulation. If you remove the regulation, you remove the obstacles for competition. The business might still hold the monopoly even for a long while, maybe decades, but any dissatisfaction by consumers is an opportunity for competitors to step in, slowly pushing the monopoly to be more efficient or risk being toppled.

If we dial back regulation, that doesn't mean there won't be any regulation, that the industry will only answer to itself. Regulation will come from consumers, clients, advertisers, consumer groups, unions, shareholders, and competitors. Didn't GoDaddy pay dearly for supporting SOPA? That's a great example of society punishing a business for an unpopular decision.

Besides, we can't consider it unfair for a business to establish a monopoly or a cartel, if we're ok with workers forming a union. That's a double standard because, in essence, they're basically the same thing. I don't judge either to be good or bad, fair or unfair, it's all part of the market and the right for people to freely associate.

You are absolutely right when you say people are held to more standards than just making money, but who establishes those standards? Are there laws dictating that we shouldn't be dicks, that we should never take advantage of others or "negatively impact people"? Those aren't laws, it's social pressure and your reputation that ****regulate**** you to act as a better person.

Let society and people hold businesses to better standards, not laws and politicians.