In feminist theory there are many branches. There are two main branches that have sub-branches.

Liberal feminism - the idea that we are all equal through our capacity for rationality. Equality will come about through the practice and recognition of this equal capacity for rationality and as institutions change so too will women's capacity to demonstrate this. The reason that this currently can't be exhibited is because of a patriarchal system that views women as weak and soft minded. This leads lib fems to try to be "man-like" of mind so as to assert their equal status; girly but strong minded, ie. Thatcher(extreme example), Clinton, Rachel Maddow.

Radical feminism - Men are the oppressive class and women are the oppressed. (Try to deny it seriously. If not within the West then within the rest of the world) As a result women must form a opposition to this oppression by mens of taking sides. Women can still be equal of any attribute such as reason etc but none the less by virtue of their biological sex they are relegated to 2nd place based on that alone. The response is to form an equally if not more powerful class to overthrow the patriarchal system. Now this is where the original video things its anti men. It is anti patriarchy, anti a system millennia old that places political capital on birth right/biology. To argue against this risks committing a naturalistic fallacy whereby what IS is what is RIGHT. Through time we can cite all sorts of examples where that is not the case - slavery, pederasty, segregation. One way of addressing this patriarchy oppression is by banding together and attacking overt examples of gender/sex discrinination and oppression as is put forward in the video as reverse oppression (whatever). The other more radical feminism asks that women forgo their own proclivities and become political lesbians. This requires that they become a lesbian not only in solidarity with their sexed brethren but also actively reject men as a necessary part of a flourishing life.

So much of the discourse, on both sides, confuses the aims of which ever brand of feminism they prescribe (sometimes a mix of both) with instances of activism/oppression. Anecdotal evidence can only do so much in a systematic and ingrained norm such as gender roles.

The original video is laughably inane and self-agrandising in its selective use of anecdotes and conflation of one idea with another. It is as worse than radical-radical feminist arguments insofar as it cherry picks examples to highlight that which is unsystematic whereas rad fems point out things that are systematic but their ends are not understandable, or acceptable if understood, by most. That doesn't mean they are wrong.

TLDR; Lib fem, go with the flow and ask for gradual change. Rad fem, form a opposition of power and overthrow current system then restructure from what is divorced from historically contingient oppressive gender description.

I love how such a narrow clip provokes such wide-ranging discussion here on the Sift. I think the clip itself raises two central questions:
1) Is Islam - in this point in history - more dangerous a religious ideology than the others, and
2) Is such a question/comparison even relevant? Or perhaps "promotes Islamic hatred" as the douchebag facing Maher seems to think?

To 1), I've argued above that yes, it is. as for 2), raised mostly by the commenters here, I would have to say "no, but" to both. Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm. In the US, for example, Christianity does way more harm (to women's/gay's/atheist's rights, to education, etc.) than Islam does, but neither excuses/diminishes the evil done by the other. The "but" would be for when people get accused of discrimination and "islamophobia" when calling out the evils of Islam.
The necessity of the second "but" is illustrated by @shinyblurry's comment: there is always the danger of right-wing and/or Christian fundamentalists taking criticism of Islam to be a defense/validation of their own strain of wrong/dangerous BS and/or racisms (to be fair, sb only exhibits the former). This is inevitable, and should not stop people from criticising/denouncing unethical ideologies, nor should it prompt amalgamation of "criticising Islam" with "hating the for'ners/ragheads/Muslims".

Beyond the subject of the video itself, the correlation between poor socio-politico-economico-etc. status and the adherence to extremes, a point well-made by @Babymech, @Yogi and others is an important factor in the higher numbers of "Islamist evil" worldwide, one that I am well aware of. There is no better way of turning whole populations to fundamentalist extremes (or at least worse ones than they had before; let's not fall into the "noble savage" fallacy) than by meddling with their politics and then bombing the hell out of them. The danger is to go to the extreme of excluding the very nature of those fundamentals from the picture, which is just as simplistic and false as is blaming them exclusively.

Moreover, I always shudder at the left-wing strain of argumentation which puts ALL the blame on the Western invaders, (edit: 19-20th c.) colonisation and co. This view relies heavily on the "noble savage" form of racism, which assumes that only "White people/Westerners/Judeo-Christians" can wreak political/social havoc in the lands of those poor, innocent "Brown people/Muslims" (those two often being conflated). Having lived in Africa for 5 years I have a knee-jerk reaction to this kind of self-centered guilt-tripping, which deprives the "Brown/Black people" of one aspect of human nature: the ability to be evil, to fuck themselves up without any help from the "West". They can, and they do.

This tangent may seem irrelevant here, but the reason I bring it up is because that it is this sentiment that is behind much of this "Islamophobe" name-calling in the US and Europe, and behind the difficulty many "Westerners" have in bare-facedly criticising Islam, when they often have no such difficulty with their "home"-religion, Christianity.

@aaronfr raises the problem of how to go about denouncing an unethical set of beliefs, and gives several good examples of how not to (it is noteworthy that the only example of violent action is one taken by other religious people; I have yet to hear of atheists using anything other than words and pictures to make their point). Hitchens’ endorsement of the Iraq war lowered my esteem for him greatly (somewhat saved by the fact that his stance on this was of no influence to anyone, contrary to his huge effort against the evils of religion), but it is noteworthy that he and Harris are the most criticised (and the least influential) when they hold such positions.
On the side of the religious, however, it is often the crazy fundies who are the loudest and, in certain areas (with the aid of socio-etc factors of course) the most influential. And they have, especially in the Quran and the life of M., a reliable and divine source of hate/violence-mongering.

As you say, peace and prosperity are some of the best deterrents to religious extremism and unethical behaviour (but not solely; cf: the US, Saudi Arabia and co.) This does not render unnecessary denouncing the unethical nature of Islam, Christianity, etc. As noted above, the negative effects of religion are still felt in relatively peaceful and prosperous nations today (in France, for example, homophobes of Christian, Muslim and possibly Jewish faiths are causing a significant rise in homophobic violence ever since the gay-marriage hearings).

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content. (Note how "Islamophobia" shits all over that distinction; one of the many reasons that term should never be uttered unironically).

_{My apologies for the dissertation-length comment}

per legalzoom:
A stop is justified if the suspect is exhibiting any combination of the following behaviors:

1. Appears not to fit the time or place.
2. Matches the description on a "Wanted" flyer.
3. Acts strangely, or is emotional, angry, fearful, or intoxicated.
4. Loitering, or looking for something.
5. Running away or engaging in furtive movements.
6. Present in a crime scene area.
7. Present in a high-crime area (not sufficient by itself or with loitering).

I would assume #3 would be the legal justification in this case. Someone calls and says that a suspicious looking man with a gun is walking down the street and when the officer approaches him he is acting defensive and is obviously emotional as you can hear in the video, the officer has reasonable suspicion at that point for a stop. The guy saying "I don't consent to search" does not protect him from being frisked if the cop has reasonable suspicion for a stop. It also does not stop the officer from holding onto his weapon while they are conversing.

People, you all know who the VS trolls are. The stupidity they exhibit time and time again is only one level above "a thousand monkeys with typewriters". Accept the fact that there really are people that stupid, stop feeding them, and just put them on ignore.

Greetings sir.

See if you like this one, it needs one vote to sift (posted by someone who is very close to silver):

http://videosift.com/video/The-Art-of-Video-Games-Exhibition-Trailer

That's interesting. In his Democracy in America Vol 2, Chapter XX "HOW AN ARISTOCRACY MAY BE CREATED BY MANUFACTURES", Baron de Tocqueville warned of these dangers (in 1840!):

In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the arti-
san recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated
men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were here-
tofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The mag-
nitude of the efforts required and the importance of the results to
be obtained attract them. Thus at the very time at which the sci-
ence of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.

While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive
whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that
of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require
nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other
stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success.
This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast
empire; that man, a brute.

The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and
their differences increase every day. They are connected only like
the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to com-
mand. What is this but aristocracy?

Then in Vol 3, Chapter VI, "WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR" he goes on, describing a situation where a democratic nation has become
subject to a despotic government, and when the people give up and stop participating in democracy:

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is grad-
ually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedi-
ence which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people
who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to
choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this
rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties
of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity.

Or in other words, once you have managed to oppress the people of a democratic nation, the very equality that defines a democratic nation leaves them powerless and unable to organise together and throw off their chains.

@chingalera

I'm impressed with your ability to craft an elegant response when you choose to. However, many of your arguments can be cast on yourself in the exact same way. From your argument that, 'it depends on your experience,' perhaps you live in an armpit down in texas where all the police treat everyone terribly, and you can certainly go online and find examples from all over the world which self-support your idea that all law enforcement is bad. However, I have lived in a college town area in the midwest all of my life, and I have found the local law enforcement to be extremely helpful and amicable. Most of my friends are not white, and I do hear an occasional bad story, though on the whole, we have far more good stories than bad.

We indeed have our own constructs, but your assessment that 'all law enforcement is corrupt' is an example of everything you hate about law enforcement which you exhibit yourself. When I first read your statement, '...profiling, unprovoked aggression, and general douche-baggery from the hind-brained, alpha-or-wannabe-alpha victims of abuse and racism...' I was legitimately confused about whether you were talking about those in law enforcement or not. Consider your opening statement, 'up voted for all the times I have personally told cops to go fuck themselves. Some reacted as expected or were otherwise prone without my attitude, and the others took it very well....and those that did not, simply, dicks,' You seem to be exhibiting all of the behaviors that you personally detest, and seem to be describing it as a social experiment. You don't have to stretch the imagination too far to see why people are thinking of you as 'whiny' or 'not a good person.' Unless your goal is to troll for responses so that you can blow off your canon about law enforcement corruption, don't be surprised when people continue to think lowly of you.

Low information voters eh? Maybe they would be better informed if news outlets actually started trying to report the truth and facts, rather than just acting as spin doctors for the party of their choice. I really like George Carlin, but I did take issue with his bit on shell shock vs. PTSD, I suspect that as time went by mental health professionals started seeing people who exhibited the same symptoms as someone with "shell shock" but had never been to war, so they ended up with a more clinical sounding and event neutral name.

@Sagemind beat me to it, call me when you see these things exhibiting controlled maneuvering.

still upvote purely because of the 2 steps from hell soundtrack

The door is open.

Thanks.

Anyway, I think it is foolish for anyone to say that god does not exist and they know it. But, god could mean so many things. All I know is that a bunch of dudes wrote the Bible based on older stories. It is man made, there may be some truth to it but there is some truth to everything. The kind of fascism hypocricy that today's extremist republican christians exhibit disgusts me. They would let rich, corrupt motherfuckers, manipulate them for their own gain and throw them from a plane. Their perception of reality is so completely bent by right wing think tanks and corporatism that they live in some sort of Christian inspired DaDa universe while the rich send their zombie minds to the polls to vote with their manipulated hearts and steal every last penny from their coffers as they self willingly turn a blind eye.

Well, in this context God means the being that created the Universe. The scripture claims to be revelation from this God, in the person of Jesus Christ. God says we have all sinned and are accountable to Him for our sins, but He sent a Savior who paid the price for our sins so we could be forgiven and have eternal life with Him. Jesus says everyone who comes to God must go through Him:

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So, God could be many things, but there is only one way to know God according to Jesus. So, it's not something you can just pick and choose from. If Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, none of it is true. I have found His claims to be true.

I can't speak for your impressions of Christians as seen through the lens of our current culture, but seen through the lens of society at large Christians have been a force for good. Before the welfare system was created, the church in America was providing the social safety net, and still does in a number of ways. They're the ones running the charities, food banks, youth centers, blood drives, homeless shelters, etc. Look in any community, you will undoubtedly find Christians taking care of the poor and doing good works. I'm not saying there are no secular charities, food banks, etc, but this is something the church is well noted for.

There is some truth to what you say. Christians are not perfect, and unfortunately in the western church this sometimes becomes very apparent. You do not usually see this kind of behavior from Christians in countries where there is some cost to becoming a Christian. When there is no cost to following Christ, the church becomes lazy and apostate, as you see today in America. A good percentage of American Christians probably are not saved. This isn't though a reason to reject Jesus. He in fact predicted this behavior from Christians in Matthew 24. It is simply that we are not following His ways that you see this kind of behavior.

Question: Do you have any church background or were you raised in a secular home?

Hey Shinyblurry,

This is exactly why you should come over to my house and try some DMT. You said anyone who does it is under control of demons. How would you know if you havent tried? Are you saying that you do not really know anything at all?

The door is open.

Anyway, I think it is foolish for anyone to say that god does not exist and they know it. But, god could mean so many things. All I know is that a bunch of dudes wrote the Bible based on older stories. It is man made, there may be some truth to it but there is some truth to everything. The kind of fascism hypocricy that today's extremist republican christians exhibit disgusts me. They would let rich, corrupt motherfuckers, manipulate them for their own gain and throw them from a plane. Their perception of reality is so completely bent by right wing think tanks and corporatism that they live in some sort of Christian inspired DaDa universe while the rich send their zombie minds to the polls to vote with their manipulated hearts and steal every last penny from their coffers as they self willingly turn a blind eye.

http://www.wackbag.com/threads/two-year-old-boy-falls-into-zoo-exhibit-gets-mauled-to-death.148097/

... too soon?

>> ^VoodooV:

And here's Exhibit B: @shinyblurry: Quoting a book supposedly from a creator which is "proof" of a creator, thereby committing one of the oldest logical fallacies in history.
suppressing the message? you've had 2000+ years of your message being dominant and it's only historically recently that more and more people are agreeing that the message is irrelevant.
and no Shiny, I don't read the bulk of your posts because you continue to use the bible as an authoritative source without justification. You, and neither has anyone else haven't ever given any halfway plausible reason to take it seriously. That's what happens when you take a fictional story and treat it as fact.


I'm not sure where you get this idea that Christianity is declining. Do you know that about 80000 people give their lives to Christ every day, and that 1/3 of the entire human population professes to be Christian? It is actually the most relevant message on the planet, whether you believe in it or not.

I'm not quoting the bible to prove there is a God; God works through personal revelation. I could not prove there is a God to you, but God reveals His existence to all men. That is why you cannot say there is no God, because you have received that evidence. You can say I don't know, but God says you do know what He expects of you, and He has reinforced that and warned you many times.

And here's Exhibit B: @shinyblurry: Quoting a book supposedly from a creator which is "proof" of a creator, thereby committing one of the oldest logical fallacies in history.

Universal agreement on Christianity? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You just don't pay attention very well do you.

suppressing the message? you've had 2000+ years of your message being dominant and it's only historically recently that more and more people are agreeing that the message is irrelevant.

and no Shiny, I don't read the bulk of your posts because you continue to use the bible as an authoritative source without justification. You, and neither has anyone else haven't ever given any halfway plausible reason to take it seriously. That's what happens when you take a fictional story and treat it as fact.

>> ^bobknight33:

There is also 521 proficiencies about Christ and all but 1 has been fulfilled.


Exhibit A re: god being a horrible communicator and educator.