Awesome!!

And y'know, the way he's open about his body being fucked up actually makes it way easier to relate to him. Here in Sweden, for example, we've got this cultural tendency to pretend like everybody's essentially exactly the same (because difference, of course, is inherently bad), and that always makes things awkward and difficult when people are obviously different because you have to pretend that they aren't different at all, which really only makes you focus even more on the actual differences.

All right, so I just went back and read my earlier reply to this, and I think it got a bit too harsh at one point (it was very late, and I was very tired). Sorry about that.

And I'm really sorry about your mom. Seriously. It fucking sucks in so many ways, and nobody should have to go through what you, your mom, and probably many others around you went through due to one horrible sack of shit.

However, it's still only anecdotal. Just like you claimed that the issue shown in this video might individual rather than systemic, and that women as a whole shouldn't be blamed for the actions of one woman.

But that's exactly the kind of judgment you are passing on men.

I mean, conversely, I have my own shitty-ass stories of abuse ...except the villains in all of my stories just happened to be women (no male teacher ever abused me in any way). But I don't necessarily hold that against women as a gender. Sure, I think it might've been exacerbated by the fact that the school system is heavily dominated by women who, when they are pushed into a corner by the incredibly bad system they're stuck with, just have a harder time understanding and relating to young boys than they do young girls. But I don't go on masculinist rants claiming that I was somehow systematically oppressed by women as a group, because that is just crazy-talk (and no, I am not a masculinist, or even MRA (partisanship is for fucking CHUMPS, and I am no chump)).

However, the fact remains that you've brought nothing to this conversations except belligerently stated opinions which you refuse to back up when asked to do so. That's not fair to the people who are talking to you, and it certainly isn't fair to you yourself who is made to look like an idiot because hey; stupid is as stupid does.

If you engage me in a conversation and are able to back your shit up, I will gladly give you the time of day. I may not agree with you - in fact, it's possible that my disagreement will be downright vehement - but I'm going to review your statements and your sources seriously and respond to them (somewhat) seriously.

Unless they are TOO stupid, in which case it is possible that I will point at you and laugh.

If I think your arguments are sound, and believe me when I say that I am fair in this because I push myself hard to stay rational, I will actually tell you that your arguments are sound. And if you actually manage to prove me wrong, I will literally tell you that you proved me wrong. It has been known to happen (exceedingly rarely), and I always manage to stay upfront and honest because the only thing that really matters to me is the truth.

So please don't fucking bail on an argument like that again, because it drives me up the fucking walls.

I guess you couldn't find me those sources, huh?

If you had watched the video, you would know that it had clearly not been edited.

But again, you didn't, so you don't.

Anyway, here we go.

First of all, all that wage gap bullshit? Yeah, read this: http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Oh, and that violence-against-women bullshit? I'm going to need a citation on that.

Also, I'm sorry about your mother, but one anecdote does not mean that feminism suddenly makes sense. I've been physically and mentally abused by more female teachers than I can count on one hand, but I'm not going to use that to claim that women are somehow evil.

Did you even watch the video?

Oh wait, nevermind. I'm sure you didn't, because if you had watched it, you would have had to question your delusions regarding the status quo.

See, what we see in this video is a woman who is abusing her power, and the man with the camera, to a ridiculous degree. She literally starts off extremely aggressive and completely unwilling to listen to what the guy is saying, and you STILL feel the need to ask for "the other side."

But it's all in the video. You just don't want to see it.

For what it's worth, the fantasy world you feminists are living in seems just awful. I can't understand why you all put so much effort into staying there.

Dude.

READ.

"What it boils down to is this; the chief benefit of legalizing prostitution is that it gives us a chance to protect the workers and possibly take a bite out of crime in the process. However, legalization is not the end, as criminal abuse of the workers can and will happen if the law isn't properly enforced.

It is perfectly possible, and perhaps even plausible, that trafficking continues to flourish even in countries where prostitution has been legalized, but is that an issue of weak legislation and enforcement, or is it simply an issue that is inherent to prostitution?"

But I guess it's easier to claim that I said the OPPOSITE of what I actually said when you just cut out everything but a single sentence from my original comment.

And when I said that newtboy made good points, I was talking about stuff like;

"Ending a prohibition does not eradicate the huge black market that prohibition created, but it can shrink it to a manageable size. If they legalized brothels in the Netherlands but don't do any regulation, they'll never remove the black market/sex slave trade."

Or...

"My question would be, do the prosecutors believe legalization contributed to their ability to prosecute this case, or is it the consensus that legalization has made it easier for the criminals to make slaves of women? Either could be the case based on this article."

If you cherry-pick specific sentences or cut out most of the text in our messages and then substitute our arguments with your own interpretations of our positions, you are going to make it impossible for us to communicate.

DayZ seems potentially awesome to play with friends.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnSbRxcdiPs

Honestly, I feel that he presented many points that were put quite well. While the articles you linked are interesting, they don't really give us enough data to actually know what's going on. All they tell us is that these two things happened, and they may or may not have been caused by deeper, systemic issues. Two articles isn't enough to form a big picture (no matter how you or I might feel about it personally).

What it boils down to is this; the chief benefit of legalizing prostitution is that it gives us a chance to protect the workers and possibly take a bite out of crime in the process. However, legalization is not the end, as criminal abuse of the workers can and will happen if the law isn't properly enforced.

It is perfectly possible, and perhaps even plausible, that trafficking continues to flourish even in countries where prostitution has been legalized, but is that an issue of weak legislation and enforcement, or is it simply an issue that is inherent to prostitution?

Later!

This guy reminds me of someone I knew back in what I assume must be Sweden's equivalent to High School.

I'd always thought he seemed like a nice, intelligent and well-adjusted guy, and... then I sat down and spoke to him.

To put it mildly, he shattered my expectations of him.

See, apparently, this guy had figured out (through various prophetic texts as well as the Bible) that there was a huge comet hurtling towards Earth, and that it would surely eradicate all life on the planet if we failed to stop it. Luckily, my (absolutely fucking bat-shit crazy) buddy had it all figured out.

He had three plans; either we simply send up four rockets with a great big rubber net suspended between them, or we pile everybody into Russia and cause the Earth to roll out of orbit, or we take a bunch of atoms, squish them all together, and create a kick-ass and completely impenetrable force field. Obviously, I asked him how the atoms were going to be kept together - after all, atoms are notoriously unwilling to cuddle - and for a moment, this gave him pause. He simply sat there with a frown, looking down at the table between us. Then, his face suddenly lit up with self-congratulatory smugness and, with one arched eyebrow and supreme confidence, he proudly uttered two words:

"Computer chips!"

We didn't really talk much after that.

*promote

I distinctly remember having spent an entire day, when I was seven years old, trying to breathe as quietly as possible.

See, I could never hear all the other kids breathing, but I could always hear it very clearly when I did it myself, so I figured that there was some really simple trick to breathing through your nose that I was just too stupid to figure out.

Then again, I also went several days without talking at one point. I was a pretty awkward kid, to say the least.

@0:39

Mitch Hedberg is still alive and playing professional baseball in South Korea?

@alien_concept

Thanks! I was struggling to come up with a username, and then I just decided to accept my true nature.

And this is a timeless issue that I think we've all run into at times. A woman comes to a man to talk about her emotions. The man sees that she has a problem, and tries to help her solve it. This frustrates the woman - she only wanted to share her troubles with him, and she feels insulted that he would assume she is incapable of solving her own problems. This, in turn, frustrates the man; after all, why would she come to him if she won't accept his help? He's sincerely doing his best, and he feels that she is being unfair and overly emotional.

A fight ensues, and neither party understands how it even happened, or how to find a way out of it.

And as I have a VERY emotional mother and VERY rational father, I've been on both sides, as well as in the middle, of this conflict many times.

As for Assange, he once said that Sweden is the "Saudi Arabia of feminism," and having grown up here, I can vouch for the veracity of that statement.

It has gotten to the point here that most guys are just too afraid to stand up to even the most obvious acts of bigotry because the one-way sexism has become so widely accepted. We're only left with three choices; we either accept the abuse and join in it ourselves, or we simply give up and take it with a sort of hopeless resignation.

Since I can't stand to be victimized, I favour the third option; pointing out the bullshit and then riposting with facts, logic and righteous anger.

But I've had some utterly INSANE examples of sexism happen in the classroom, including a teacher derailing a lecture right at the beginning of it and instead spending her entire hour to essentially claim that all men are either rapists or potential rapists, and as a guy, it's just difficult to know what to do in that situation.

It's also very hurtful, as I find rape to be one of the most despicable acts imaginable.

And... that's why my reaction to this guy's poem was so strong. It's like he's been abused for so long that he's begun to think that it's actually true.

You gave your son a very good answer! Men and women are different from one another (though this isn't entirely set in stone), and I think that anybody who claims otherwise simply prefers ideology or fantasy (same thing, really) over reality.

And for what it's worth, I think those differences are pretty freaking valuable. I love women, and part of the reason for that is the fact that they aren't men.

@alien_concept

I'm used to people just getting incredibly angry at me whenever I take a position that is in some way in opposition to some facet of feminism, so thanks for not doing that.

And yeah, it's possible that I'm taking it way too literally. It just feels like I've heard this stuff so many times, and it always makes me sad. I mean, I'm Swedish, and here in Sweden, radical feminism is essentially ubiquitous. A bit less than half of all the female teachers I've ever had have been so aggressively feminist that they've made their ideology part of their curriculum no matter what their subject has been, and have passed off doctrinal truths as scientific fact.

And... it wears down on you. Not the stuff about equality or treating women like people because all of that stuff is just FANTASTIC. Rather, it's all the stuff people either won't talk about, or will attribute to some insane radfem groups they'll claim are so small that they almost can't be said to exist at all. In other words, it's all the stuff people usually don't want to admit is there.