Hrm, you are right of course, working class people do go to such things. I used the concert in tha park as an example. I'm just referring to a general change I've noticed over the last few years. The writers nowadays seem to have little idea what it was like to be raised working class.
I hope they mean some of the earlier authors. The buffoons they have writing for the Simpsons these days should be beaten to death with their own worthless Ivy League diplomas. The situations they put the Simpsons in are about as far removed from the working class experience as it is possible to get. Add to that the tendency to try to inject Family Guy style pop-reference non-sequitur humor and you have a recipe for disaster. The Simpsons is not Family Guy, and it is definitely not fucking Frasier, you twits. They are a working class family, they don't go to fucking jazz concerts in the park, m'kay?
Beatings came into it because you said that promiscuity was immoral to persons who believe that one should dedicate one's self to a single person. I was merely pointing out that dedicating one's self to a single person was not necessarily morally superior.
Anyway, now I feel like a dick because I was taunting you, and you turned out not to be a repressed and unaware individual in need of a good shaking up, but an introspective and self aware person who has made different choices than I due to different circumstances.
As for my choices ultimately causing pain, I don't doubt they will. They already have. Pain is part of growing. Unnecessary pain is bad. Muscles pain from excercise is not bad, and neither is emotional pain that comes from conscious and considered choices directed towards personal growth.
I doubt that is what you meant though. I think it was more along the lines of, "things will end badly and people will be unnecessarily hurt." That may well happen, but I doubt it. I've never had a single polyamorous relationship end badly. Hell, I've never had a relationship end badly. I'm still on good terms with all my ex partners. I'm very, very good at relationships.
I'm a compulsive person with an addictive personality, too. Luckily, I'm far too lazy to put much effort into any of my addictions, and far too easily bored to stay addicted to any one thing for too long. I've done all kinds of things that other people get addicted to, and I never have, except for two things: cigarettes, which I just kicked, and video games, which I've managed to keep under control.
You get attached from being physical with someone? Are you sure you're a guy? Heh, I'm joking. I do that too. In fact, I've always used sex as a shortcut to emotional intimacy. I fall in love easily and quickly, but I don't mind getting my heart broken because I know I can go out and do it again.
The thing is, for me, it's not about monogamy but fidelity. Going out and doing it again takes time, and work. Building a relationship takes work. Why throw out all that work just because someone new comes along? I guess that was my "Joe Sixpack" point: you can be monogamous without being faithful and true to your partner, and you can be faithful and true without being monogamous.
Sexually compulsive behavior leads to loneliness. I've had several promiscuous encounters that led to long term relationships. I'm not sexually compulsive, in that I've never endangered or diminished any other part of my life for sex. I just have a very high sex drive. I've had many partners, both short, medium and long term. Very few that I didn't know their name, and yes, those were unfulfilling. But plenty where we were just friends with privileges, and most of those were very nice.
Sex can be all kinds of things. I've practiced tantric sex, and that can be very spiritual. I've also had lots of rough sex, where some outside observer might think I was degrading my partners. But the parameters of the situation were mutually agreed on, and we both would have been turned off if anyone's feelings or body were really hurt. I've also had sex where it wasn't much more than friendly, pleasant exercise. Even then it's nice.
My point is that you can't equate all promiscuity with compulsive, unhealthy sexuality. Some of us are naturally promiscuous, some of us aren't but act that way out of hurt. There's a world of difference, and the fact that you appear unable to look at that rationally suggests that yes, you are in fact jealous that there are people out there getting off in all kinds of kinky ways, having worlds of fun that you'll never have. All you can do is call sour grapes on the situation, claiming that all promiscuity is empty, shallow, and meaningless.
As for dedicating yourself to one person, I've been in polyamorous relationships that were far healthier and more stable than most monogamous relationships. If you have trouble forming relationships, you'll have trouble being monogamous, too. if you form relationships easily and openly, you can easily have more than one close, loving, committed relationship. My wife and I are doing just that, and it's working fine for us.
I can be a better partner to more than one person than most men can be to a single partner. Explain to me why it's immoral for me to have deep, loving, committed relationships with two women where everyone is getting their needs met. Then explain why Joe Sixpack, who has a monogamous relationship with the wife he beats daily, is more moral than I am. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
If you invoke God in your explanation, please prove to me that God wants what you think He wants.
Bill Clinton, as president, was more conservative than centrist. Heck, he was more of a true conservative than our current "conservative" president. The Democrats are hardly leftist.
Well, you know, it's not like I didn't know that. I'm very far left. I volunteered for years with Food not Bombs. I was a labor organizer for the IWW during their Border's Books campaign in the mid ninties.
Great. All along, I thought states rights was just a smaller Federal government, and more autonomy for individual states, leading to a 'free market' of governance where the more successful states would win the lion's share of the population and commerce.
Turns out it just means the right to enforce segregation. Damn.
Well put. I think in one regard, free will not only exists but is very important. We all know, I think, what it feels like to have many choices, and what it feels like to have but few. The latter is distinctly less pleasant. China Mieville's Perdido Street Station contains a great philisophical argument that the only real crime is choice-theft, all other crimes boiling down to that in the end.
Thus it is not even important whether free will exists in some abstract, universal sense. It exists in the sense that we feel that we have it, and we know when it is being constrained. It is important that we defend each other's ability to freely make choices for ourselves, and to punish those who would unjustly contrain the choices of others. To me, that is the only real reason to discuss the concept.
I don't see any parallel between a hurricane causing deaths and an abortion, at any level.
Then you are still caught up in dualistic thinking. You believe there is a fundamental subject/object distinction, that you are separate from the universe, and that consequently, you have free will. Understandable, but wrong.
For a simple essay on why free will is a null concept, read Mark Twain's essay, "What is Man?". For a more in depth understanding, read any Buddhist literature, especially that which deals with the concept of dependent origination.
Although the rest of your post is well argued, it does not deal with the crux of the matter.
Saharasia by James DeMeo. The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. Numerous papers on recent economic research by various authors, google "fairness reciprocity economic research."
That is why, whenever I use the words such as evil or good, I define what I mean. And I shouldn't have thrown that "always" in there, a "usually" would have been more accurate.
First, that "would you disagree?" was in relation the the question directly preceding it, not the whole paragraph.
At the highest level, all notions of good or evil, and in fact all definitions and even subject-object distinctions disappear. Aborting any fetus is neither good nor evil, any more than a hurricane is evil for killing people. It just is.
The question is whether a given action furthers or hinders a society or group, whether it is efficient or inefficient, skillful or lacking in skill, conducive to freedom or creating hindrances to freedom. "Good" and "evil" are just shorthand notations for more complex ideals in my way of looking at things.
I found some links from the wiki "games theory" page, and doing a google or academic paper search on "fairness reciprocity economics" seems to find some relevant articles/papers.
I defined what I meant by evil. Most societies, despite what they profess with words, by their actions encourage selfishness, dishonesty, and a lack of empathy, and thus encourage harm to others. This is a basic fact of all famine based, patristic cultures. The feast based, matristic cultures are a distinct minority nowadays.
Our economic system is based on the idea that people are motivated by selfishness, and because it assumes that, it also encourages it. This leads to people acting dishonestly because they see that as the only way to protect themselves from other dishonest individuals.
Our entire system of child raising is designed to weaken the mother-child bonds and thus damage the child's empathy so that they can more easily kill other humans in wars without suffering debilitating post traumatic stress.
I hope that at least raises my ideas above the level of "claptrap" in your mind, at least to the level of "misguided and incorrect.";-)
I defined the term evil precisely because i knew someone would come back with an argument like this. Try substituting the definitions I used and see how much sense your post makes.
"You cannot have a [selfish, dishonest, lacking in empathy, harmful to others] society." Absolutely untrue.
"Every society does what it thinks is [fair, reciprocal, sharing, kind, loving] and right." Sadly, also not true.
"[Selfishness, dishonesty, lack of empathy, harm to others] is just other people doing [fairness, reciprocity, sharing, kindness, loving] opposite of you." And this one just makes no sense.
That being said, I also have to point out that, while everything is relative on one level, there is always another level on which things are not relative at all. So good and evil may be relative on an individual basis, but absolute on the higher level of the family, tribe, nation, or species. I would say that unjustly* depriving another thinking entity of choices they could have freely made is evil, for the set of all thinking entities. Would you disagree?
*Yes, this is open to interpretation, but "What is justice?" is a whole other ball of worms, and that's a can of wax I just don't want to open right now.;-)
The research I heard about was done in India, because the researchers could set the stakes of the experimental games at several months (local) salary without bankrupting themselves. I'm fairly sure the results were corroborated in other countries afterwards, though. Look up "games theory" on wikipedia for a start, or google "fairness reciprocity economic research." Or use your favorite search site for academic papers with the same search.
Lots of information is out there, it is a hot topic in economics right now, because it seems to show that the "selfish actor" theory is fatally flawed. Most people seem to be more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than they are by self interest, even going against their own self interest to achieve fair and reciprocal results.
From research I have seen recently in economics, it appears that about 15% of people are always prone to good (i.e. fairness, reciprocity, sharing, kindness, loving, etc.) , 5% of people have sociopathic tendencies and will tend to act selfishly with callous disregard for others. The rest pretty much do as their society tells them. That means they will be good in a good society and evil (selfish, dishonest, lacking in empathy, harmful to others, etc.) in an evil one.
Most societies are prone to evil. Most socioeconomic systems are founded on evil premises. Therefore, most people in the world are prone to evil, but they would be just as prone to good in a better system. Still, your optimism and assumption of goodness are themselves a good thing. "Doing what society tells them" is another way of saying "doing what other people expect of them," and you are doing your part by expecting good things of people.
Oh man, I don't usually respond to ACs, but the level of rabid, frothing defense of the status quo here is just too funny not to comment on.
I have every right to get together with other workers and your customers and decide amongst ourselves to fuck you and your business over through entirely legal, market driven means if you don't treat us the way we want to be treated, and there's nothing you can do about it, chump. It's called the free market, get used to it. The days of kings, nobles, and slave-owners telling us what to do are several centuries gone now.
If you see a post with a link claiming "You could pound away at this crack with a jackhammer and not defeat it," or "An even bigger crack," or even "Expanding the crack," DO NOT CLICK IT!
Re:If you think that is evil
on
Google's Evil NDA
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Are you trying to say that no one has the right to complain about these NDAs simply because they have the option not to sign them? We are simply discussing things that we don't like. If enough people can agree that we really don't like these things, then together we can force employers not to do them. This is the free market in labor at work.
You don't have a problem with free speech and the free market, do you?
Companies have every right to ask us to do anything, and we have the right to discuss what was asked and tell them to fuck off if we don't like it. It sounds as though you wish we weren't even discussing this.
That's simplifying what I wrote quite a bit. I've posted plenty about how I don't think Hillary gives a shit about anyone but herself. Democrats aren't that great, but they are far batter than the alternative.
Being "In Love" is far different than loving someone. Being in love is a feeling that is designed by evolution to get you to lie to yourself about who someone else is, so that you'll bother to mate with them. Loving someone is a series of actions.
Most relationships are based on fantasy, I will give you that. Fantasy about what you are, about what the other person is, and what a relationship should be. A real partnership is different, it requires honesty about who you are and what you want. There is no need to lie, because you've created a safe space for each other to just be who you are. To me, that is the whole point.
Out in the world, I feel as though I have to lie in small ways about who I am and what I want all the time. It would kill me to feel that way at home too.
Well you are the second person to say that, and perhaps you are right. All I'm saying is that she seemed to me to have convictions when she started out as First Lady, and she doesn't seem to any more. Maybe she was always corrupt, maybe she just had the seeds of corruption within her, maybe she was stalwart and true until Washington worked its evil magic on her. Besides possibly the woman herself, who knows? Can you honestly claim to know what's in another person's heart?
I'm also sorry that you've never gotten to know and trust someone to the point that you can love them, and not the fantasy you have about them. It is one of the most crucial steps towards having an adult relationship. Maybe you haven't met the right person yet.
'm a staunch Independent and anti-feminist (I believe women should embrace femininity and stop trying to be masculine,
Oh my word. Is that what you think feminism means? Uh uh, whoever told you that was having a go at you. Feminism means women get to decide for themselves what labels, if any, they want to apply to themselves. It means equal opportunity to succede and equal pay for equal work. It means women's issues get equal billing with men's issues.
It categorically does not mean women have to be masculine. That is about the most anti-feminist assessment of feminism I've ever heard.
Richardson may be Hispanic, but his last name isn't and he doesn't look Hispanic, so he will appeal to the unwashed masses who don't know any better as well as the Hispanics who do. That, along with his anti-Iraq-war stance and a generally centrist position on most other issues are why I think he is among the most viable Democratic candidates.
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Hrm, you are right of course, working class people do go to such things. I used the concert in tha park as an example. I'm just referring to a general change I've noticed over the last few years. The writers nowadays seem to have little idea what it was like to be raised working class.
I hope they mean some of the earlier authors. The buffoons they have writing for the Simpsons these days should be beaten to death with their own worthless Ivy League diplomas. The situations they put the Simpsons in are about as far removed from the working class experience as it is possible to get. Add to that the tendency to try to inject Family Guy style pop-reference non-sequitur humor and you have a recipe for disaster. The Simpsons is not Family Guy, and it is definitely not fucking Frasier, you twits. They are a working class family, they don't go to fucking jazz concerts in the park, m'kay?
Beatings came into it because you said that promiscuity was immoral to persons who believe that one should dedicate one's self to a single person. I was merely pointing out that dedicating one's self to a single person was not necessarily morally superior.
Anyway, now I feel like a dick because I was taunting you, and you turned out not to be a repressed and unaware individual in need of a good shaking up, but an introspective and self aware person who has made different choices than I due to different circumstances.
As for my choices ultimately causing pain, I don't doubt they will. They already have. Pain is part of growing. Unnecessary pain is bad. Muscles pain from excercise is not bad, and neither is emotional pain that comes from conscious and considered choices directed towards personal growth.
I doubt that is what you meant though. I think it was more along the lines of, "things will end badly and people will be unnecessarily hurt." That may well happen, but I doubt it. I've never had a single polyamorous relationship end badly. Hell, I've never had a relationship end badly. I'm still on good terms with all my ex partners. I'm very, very good at relationships.
I'm a compulsive person with an addictive personality, too. Luckily, I'm far too lazy to put much effort into any of my addictions, and far too easily bored to stay addicted to any one thing for too long. I've done all kinds of things that other people get addicted to, and I never have, except for two things: cigarettes, which I just kicked, and video games, which I've managed to keep under control.
You get attached from being physical with someone? Are you sure you're a guy? Heh, I'm joking. I do that too. In fact, I've always used sex as a shortcut to emotional intimacy. I fall in love easily and quickly, but I don't mind getting my heart broken because I know I can go out and do it again.
The thing is, for me, it's not about monogamy but fidelity. Going out and doing it again takes time, and work. Building a relationship takes work. Why throw out all that work just because someone new comes along? I guess that was my "Joe Sixpack" point: you can be monogamous without being faithful and true to your partner, and you can be faithful and true without being monogamous.
Sexually compulsive behavior leads to loneliness. I've had several promiscuous encounters that led to long term relationships. I'm not sexually compulsive, in that I've never endangered or diminished any other part of my life for sex. I just have a very high sex drive. I've had many partners, both short, medium and long term. Very few that I didn't know their name, and yes, those were unfulfilling. But plenty where we were just friends with privileges, and most of those were very nice.
Sex can be all kinds of things. I've practiced tantric sex, and that can be very spiritual. I've also had lots of rough sex, where some outside observer might think I was degrading my partners. But the parameters of the situation were mutually agreed on, and we both would have been turned off if anyone's feelings or body were really hurt. I've also had sex where it wasn't much more than friendly, pleasant exercise. Even then it's nice.
My point is that you can't equate all promiscuity with compulsive, unhealthy sexuality. Some of us are naturally promiscuous, some of us aren't but act that way out of hurt. There's a world of difference, and the fact that you appear unable to look at that rationally suggests that yes, you are in fact jealous that there are people out there getting off in all kinds of kinky ways, having worlds of fun that you'll never have. All you can do is call sour grapes on the situation, claiming that all promiscuity is empty, shallow, and meaningless.
As for dedicating yourself to one person, I've been in polyamorous relationships that were far healthier and more stable than most monogamous relationships. If you have trouble forming relationships, you'll have trouble being monogamous, too. if you form relationships easily and openly, you can easily have more than one close, loving, committed relationship. My wife and I are doing just that, and it's working fine for us.
I can be a better partner to more than one person than most men can be to a single partner. Explain to me why it's immoral for me to have deep, loving, committed relationships with two women where everyone is getting their needs met. Then explain why Joe Sixpack, who has a monogamous relationship with the wife he beats daily, is more moral than I am. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
If you invoke God in your explanation, please prove to me that God wants what you think He wants.
Bill Clinton, as president, was more conservative than centrist. Heck, he was more of a true conservative than our current "conservative" president. The Democrats are hardly leftist.
Well, you know, it's not like I didn't know that. I'm very far left. I volunteered for years with Food not Bombs. I was a labor organizer for the IWW during their Border's Books campaign in the mid ninties.
Great. All along, I thought states rights was just a smaller Federal government, and more autonomy for individual states, leading to a 'free market' of governance where the more successful states would win the lion's share of the population and commerce.
Turns out it just means the right to enforce segregation. Damn.
Well put. I think in one regard, free will not only exists but is very important. We all know, I think, what it feels like to have many choices, and what it feels like to have but few. The latter is distinctly less pleasant. China Mieville's Perdido Street Station contains a great philisophical argument that the only real crime is choice-theft, all other crimes boiling down to that in the end.
Thus it is not even important whether free will exists in some abstract, universal sense. It exists in the sense that we feel that we have it, and we know when it is being constrained. It is important that we defend each other's ability to freely make choices for ourselves, and to punish those who would unjustly contrain the choices of others. To me, that is the only real reason to discuss the concept.
I don't see any parallel between a hurricane causing deaths and an abortion, at any level.
Then you are still caught up in dualistic thinking. You believe there is a fundamental subject/object distinction, that you are separate from the universe, and that consequently, you have free will. Understandable, but wrong.
For a simple essay on why free will is a null concept, read Mark Twain's essay, "What is Man?". For a more in depth understanding, read any Buddhist literature, especially that which deals with the concept of dependent origination.
Although the rest of your post is well argued, it does not deal with the crux of the matter.
Saharasia by James DeMeo. The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. Numerous papers on recent economic research by various authors, google "fairness reciprocity economic research."
That is why, whenever I use the words such as evil or good, I define what I mean. And I shouldn't have thrown that "always" in there, a "usually" would have been more accurate.
First, that "would you disagree?" was in relation the the question directly preceding it, not the whole paragraph.
At the highest level, all notions of good or evil, and in fact all definitions and even subject-object distinctions disappear. Aborting any fetus is neither good nor evil, any more than a hurricane is evil for killing people. It just is.
The question is whether a given action furthers or hinders a society or group, whether it is efficient or inefficient, skillful or lacking in skill, conducive to freedom or creating hindrances to freedom. "Good" and "evil" are just shorthand notations for more complex ideals in my way of looking at things.
I found some links from the wiki "games theory" page, and doing a google or academic paper search on "fairness reciprocity economics" seems to find some relevant articles/papers.
I defined what I meant by evil. Most societies, despite what they profess with words, by their actions encourage selfishness, dishonesty, and a lack of empathy, and thus encourage harm to others. This is a basic fact of all famine based, patristic cultures. The feast based, matristic cultures are a distinct minority nowadays.
;-)
Our economic system is based on the idea that people are motivated by selfishness, and because it assumes that, it also encourages it. This leads to people acting dishonestly because they see that as the only way to protect themselves from other dishonest individuals.
Our entire system of child raising is designed to weaken the mother-child bonds and thus damage the child's empathy so that they can more easily kill other humans in wars without suffering debilitating post traumatic stress.
I hope that at least raises my ideas above the level of "claptrap" in your mind, at least to the level of "misguided and incorrect."
I defined the term evil precisely because i knew someone would come back with an argument like this. Try substituting the definitions I used and see how much sense your post makes.
;-)
"You cannot have a [selfish, dishonest, lacking in empathy, harmful to others] society."
Absolutely untrue.
"Every society does what it thinks is [fair, reciprocal, sharing, kind, loving] and right."
Sadly, also not true.
"[Selfishness, dishonesty, lack of empathy, harm to others] is just other people doing [fairness, reciprocity, sharing, kindness, loving] opposite of you."
And this one just makes no sense.
That being said, I also have to point out that, while everything is relative on one level, there is always another level on which things are not relative at all. So good and evil may be relative on an individual basis, but absolute on the higher level of the family, tribe, nation, or species. I would say that unjustly* depriving another thinking entity of choices they could have freely made is evil, for the set of all thinking entities. Would you disagree?
*Yes, this is open to interpretation, but "What is justice?" is a whole other ball of worms, and that's a can of wax I just don't want to open right now.
The research I heard about was done in India, because the researchers could set the stakes of the experimental games at several months (local) salary without bankrupting themselves. I'm fairly sure the results were corroborated in other countries afterwards, though. Look up "games theory" on wikipedia for a start, or google "fairness reciprocity economic research." Or use your favorite search site for academic papers with the same search.
Lots of information is out there, it is a hot topic in economics right now, because it seems to show that the "selfish actor" theory is fatally flawed. Most people seem to be more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than they are by self interest, even going against their own self interest to achieve fair and reciprocal results.
Why would anyone read an article?
My guess would be: so they don't look like complete idiots, flaming someone for no good reason, asshole.
Sorry, but you deserved that.
From research I have seen recently in economics, it appears that about 15% of people are always prone to good (i.e. fairness, reciprocity, sharing, kindness, loving, etc.) , 5% of people have sociopathic tendencies and will tend to act selfishly with callous disregard for others. The rest pretty much do as their society tells them. That means they will be good in a good society and evil (selfish, dishonest, lacking in empathy, harmful to others, etc.) in an evil one.
Most societies are prone to evil. Most socioeconomic systems are founded on evil premises. Therefore, most people in the world are prone to evil, but they would be just as prone to good in a better system. Still, your optimism and assumption of goodness are themselves a good thing. "Doing what society tells them" is another way of saying "doing what other people expect of them," and you are doing your part by expecting good things of people.
Oh man, I don't usually respond to ACs, but the level of rabid, frothing defense of the status quo here is just too funny not to comment on.
I have every right to get together with other workers and your customers and decide amongst ourselves to fuck you and your business over through entirely legal, market driven means if you don't treat us the way we want to be treated, and there's nothing you can do about it, chump. It's called the free market, get used to it. The days of kings, nobles, and slave-owners telling us what to do are several centuries gone now.
If you see a post with a link claiming "You could pound away at this crack with a jackhammer and not defeat it," or "An even bigger crack," or even "Expanding the crack," DO NOT CLICK IT!
Are you trying to say that no one has the right to complain about these NDAs simply because they have the option not to sign them? We are simply discussing things that we don't like. If enough people can agree that we really don't like these things, then together we can force employers not to do them. This is the free market in labor at work.
You don't have a problem with free speech and the free market, do you?
Companies have every right to ask us to do anything, and we have the right to discuss what was asked and tell them to fuck off if we don't like it. It sounds as though you wish we weren't even discussing this.
That's simplifying what I wrote quite a bit. I've posted plenty about how I don't think Hillary gives a shit about anyone but herself. Democrats aren't that great, but they are far batter than the alternative.
Being "In Love" is far different than loving someone. Being in love is a feeling that is designed by evolution to get you to lie to yourself about who someone else is, so that you'll bother to mate with them. Loving someone is a series of actions.
Most relationships are based on fantasy, I will give you that. Fantasy about what you are, about what the other person is, and what a relationship should be. A real partnership is different, it requires honesty about who you are and what you want. There is no need to lie, because you've created a safe space for each other to just be who you are. To me, that is the whole point.
Out in the world, I feel as though I have to lie in small ways about who I am and what I want all the time. It would kill me to feel that way at home too.
Well you are the second person to say that, and perhaps you are right. All I'm saying is that she seemed to me to have convictions when she started out as First Lady, and she doesn't seem to any more. Maybe she was always corrupt, maybe she just had the seeds of corruption within her, maybe she was stalwart and true until Washington worked its evil magic on her. Besides possibly the woman herself, who knows? Can you honestly claim to know what's in another person's heart?
I'm also sorry that you've never gotten to know and trust someone to the point that you can love them, and not the fantasy you have about them. It is one of the most crucial steps towards having an adult relationship. Maybe you haven't met the right person yet.
'm a staunch Independent and anti-feminist (I believe women should embrace femininity and stop trying to be masculine,
Oh my word. Is that what you think feminism means? Uh uh, whoever told you that was having a go at you. Feminism means women get to decide for themselves what labels, if any, they want to apply to themselves. It means equal opportunity to succede and equal pay for equal work. It means women's issues get equal billing with men's issues.
It categorically does not mean women have to be masculine. That is about the most anti-feminist assessment of feminism I've ever heard.
Richardson may be Hispanic, but his last name isn't and he doesn't look Hispanic, so he will appeal to the unwashed masses who don't know any better as well as the Hispanics who do. That, along with his anti-Iraq-war stance and a generally centrist position on most other issues are why I think he is among the most viable Democratic candidates.