God, I'm sorry for what happened to you, and let me assure you that not all women are like that... although, I will certainly grant you that there are women like that.
There are so many double standards for men that I find it funny we haven't responded against these more strongly.
That's basically the point that I was trying to make with my rant. That there are double standards and they're "real" because they're enforced in the social and political worlds.
There's a lot more work to equalizing the genders than just granting allowance for women to do X or men to do Y... even if they're allowed to, in many ways the culture actively works to dissuade them for doing it.
My point is, don't think it's women being asshats for getting special treatment, because it's the culture that pushes us to treat women differently... and to treat men differently...
As a gay man, I'm sure you can attest to how you personally have been pressured... silently, yet pressured none the less into avoiding certain behaviors.
And, I just have to say this as a last parting thought... it really is hard to avoid taking the ditz approach, because it works so well, and so easily... my comments have been all about cultural positive-reinforcement of irrational behaviors and beliefs.
People mock Ebonics because we see it as harming a group by locking them in to non-standard English and therefore limiting their social mobility. Even if Ebonics' grammar were superior or had some advantages, it would still be a mistake to teach it as a primary language as it would still serve to isolate those students (I'm focusing on primary education here, I don't make any claims about the merits of studying it for any cultural insights that can be gleaned from it). The strong accents in minority communities are barriers to assimilation and should not be encouraged by the educational process as they serve to separate rather than integrate society. A Queens or Bronx accent showing up in the South would result in difficulty communicating with others in the community, denying such an individual full access to the knowledge and opportunities there. In the same way, someone who speaks Ebonics as their primary language would be at a disadvantage outside of the pockets where it is spoken. If we wish to better those from a community that speaks Ebonics, we must seek to convert speakers to SAE as best we can. If we do not seek to maintain SAE, we will eventually see American English disintegrate into truly separate regional langauges as happened to Latin in Europe.
How how do we actually get them to speak SAE? Corporal punishment?
The same argument you make has been made for ages in a dozen different countries, and for a dozen different languages. My grandmother was part of the generation that was beat when they spoke Spanish in school, because it harmed their "ability to integrate". There is a recently extensive history of oppressing Spanish speakers in New Mexico, and it's ridiculous...
There are Spanish courses taught at my alma mater that are geared towards people, who can understand spoken and written Spanish perfectly, and score perfectly on "which preposition goes in this spot" tests, yet they insist that they are unable to speak, or write Spanish at all. The culture has literally oppressed their Spanish use so much, that they have a mental block against speaking it.
There is no danger in allowing Ebonics to develop, and there is no harm to the speakers of it beyond the crazy social stigma that we lay upon their language... which was the entire point of my post...
We don't listen to reality when it comes to social and political interaction... in those world, arbitrary irrational beliefs bring about real consequences to individuals for no better reason than "just 'cause".
See, you're missing all of this. It's not like, you remove the glass ceiling and poof women are equal. It's not like, you put in a bus line in your city and people use it. People take time to change, and take an especially long time to change culture, which is why our American society doesn't elect a female president.
The problem, which this article shows in fact, is not that people are equal, because they are... rather, no one thinks that they're equal, and they then act upon those beliefs.
So, women are just as smart as men, but everyone thinks that they aren't, and act like they aren't, which causes the de facto situation to be that women are treated as stupider than men.
Another good example of this behavior is that if a bunch of people all believe in magical beings and act as if those magical beings exist, it doesn't matter if those magical beings do exist, because socially and publicly one must treat them as extant.
People's irrational beliefs still have real world consequences and power in social and political worlds. It's like why people in America will typically tell you that Ebonics is a lazy form of Standard American English, when it is actually a different grammar that has some expressions that are not expressible in SAE.
So, we're in a situation where a large group of Americans speak a reasonably mutually intelligible different language, yet are treated like they're inferior because they speak it, because the whole culture tells them that it is inferior, and they start to believe it themselves... even when it's not true.
So, get off your misogynist horse and realize that we need to change our culture before women will be treated equally, and that means taking your bigot opinions and stuffing them with the rest of the filth that your body produces.
One must often have intent to perform an action before they can be found guilty of a crime.
I think you're looking at this wrong. The law she broke states nothing anywhere about violating copyright. The law she broke is for operating a recording device in a theater. She certainly had intent to operate the recording device. She didn't accidentally and/or unintentionally activate the device. So her transgression has nothing in any way to do with copyright or fair use or whether or not she even filmed the movie actually.
Yes, bad law for sure... however the question is if a judge would find that the intent of the law was to prevent copyright violations...
This is still a Common Law system that we have in the USA... just because the law is silent about an issue doesn't mean that a judge cannot rule to clarify it.
The main reason why law is so difficult is because of all the case law involved with issues.
It is a bad law... it also notes something that I've known for awhile... if you want to do something usual, you should probably get permission to do so. The law specifically permits the operation with consent of the establishment... well, and the company that owns the copyright of the material being shown.
But still... what kind of friends would disrupt you in a theater for a movie that you paid $8 or more for? Seriously, that's pretty inconsiderate.
At least from the story, it sounds like law was not followed to its intent.
Intent? That has nothing to do with it. The law states if you're filming the moving in a theater you go to jail. There's nothing in the law about intent. She should do 3 years.
The courts regularly deal with what the intent of a law was, and why the legislature passed it.
As well, one of the primary factors in prosecution almost always is something called "mens rea" or in the non-latin version that some US states have adopted, "guilty mind". One must often have intent to perform an action before they can be found guilty of a crime. The other alternative is negligence.
This person had absolutely no intent to film any amount of the movie that could be considered in any way anything other than fair-use. I fully expect that this case would never get in front of a jury.
Even boys are exposed to crazy amounts of estrogen in utero.
Once a child has been born, you can't effect a change to their gender. Check David Reimer. He was born as a boy, and after a mishap during circumcision it was decided to raise him as a girl. He was given estrogen at the appropriate points, he was treated always like a girl... and he hated it. Eventually, he became a man again, and even married. Later in life, he committed suicide.
Right. I didn't think the point of the study was that boys were suddenly growing vaginas... I thought the point was that BPAs might be effectively delivering a daily life-screwing dosage of synthetic estrogen. If that sort of dosing were being willfully administered we'd call it abuse.
Just because a chemical doesn't shrivel your frank and beans or kill you immediately doesn't mean it's not causing hormonal turmoil. This is an article about how we have NO IDEA what the "safe" chemicals we use for everything are really doing to our bodies. Does that mean that a plastic baby bottle makes you want to play with barbies..... darned if I know, but it's time we were willing to question the large scale effects of modern consumerism, if chasing a few wild ideas is part of that process then I for one applaud them for being willing to ask.
We've actually studied this stuff well enough. BTW, you want to stay away from soy and flax seed... they're contain proteins that are not estrogen, but bind to estrogen receptors, and thus act like estrogen in your body...
So a single anecdote disproves him? What about girls who don't do those things, or boys who do? Do you think that desire for frillyness is somehow hardcoded into female DNA or something?
Um... my name is "snowgirl" for a reason, and its not because I'm a guy.
However, you're correct... his argument is flawed because it's anecdote, but also because of a lack of imagination.
His daughter was exposed to significant cultural pressure to conform to her assigned gender. The parental influence doesn't matter, as noted below, if the parents of a child only speak Japanese to a child in America, they will still speak English.
OK, but, now to reconnect to TFA, does then the observed variations in gender parity, if they are caused by this chemicals, mean that it's XY women whose numbers are rising?
My educated opinion would be yes, more XY women are being produced.
Also, are XY women (and XX men) fertile?
It's almost guaranteed to be a no. It's possible, but would require extraordinary circumstances on an already extraordinary circumstance.
Do women with testicles produce sperm which can fertilize eggs?
Typically, the only thing that those testicles are good for, is contracting cancer. They're typically left in until the individual passes through puberty, as the testosterone will turn into estrogen, and they will develop fairly typically for any girl. At that point, the doctors typically remove the testes.
Even if those testes were capable of producing sperm though, it would require surgical extraction to retrieve the sperm, so... unlikely that someone would ever spend the money trying to become the father of a child as a woman.
Can man with ovaries and uteri get pregnant and give birth to children?
Given proper hormones? Yes, they could. The feminizing effects of the hormones associated with pregnancy would make him grow large breasts however.
Can XY mothers conceive, and give birth to, YY sons?
XY women almost universally have no uterus, and so could not conceive. They almost universally have testes, which means that they will not produce any ova.
If their situation was however caused by a defective SRY gene, they will have ovaries, but it's very likely that their ovaries will fail to produce viable ova.
Each post of yours makes less sense than the last. (And makes your pedant sig funnier).
And have you actually studied law?
> However, in real life--in how they're set up in law--the rights are given and guaranteed by the government.
Nope. Both in text and in practice in the US, the rights originally belong to the people and the government is barred from restricting them. You should observe contrived third party example: if a newspaper doesn't print the letter you send them... that's it, they didn't print your letter, and you cannot get the government to compel them to do so). The German case is a clear example of the opposite way, where a citizen is claiming a right and getting the government to force other citizens to comply.
You apparently didn't RTFA... The German case is an example of where the state has already declared an open right of an individual convicted of a crime, and the citizens are now suing on the basis of that law.
Here's the funny thing about Common Law systems vs Civil Law systems. Common Law systems allow torts actions to be brought that are not already established by statute. Product liability is a good example of this. A snail in a drink bottle prompted someone to sue the manufacturer, because the individual never purchased the product, there was no direct tort action before that case, but the judge held that the action may stand because he would consider the possibility that a product manufacturer has a general duty to produce a safe product.
In the Civil Law system, if it is not in statutes, then you may not sue over it. This means that literally, those German citizens could not bring this suit in a German court without the law granting them said right explicitly.
If they're suing in a US court, then they're in for a wonderful surprise in that German law is not enforceable in the USA. However, if they're suing in German courts, and Wikipedia thinks that they can just get around it by claiming that they're not subject to German courts, they're likely to run into the problem of Yahoo v. LICRA, which found that Yahoo, a US company is subject to French law.
Guess what? Your all-caps PRIVACY's foundations ARE in property law. (In the US specifically, the 4th amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.) The legal foundations of US privacy law are all extended from there by grouping information into that protected person/house/paper/effect class. And, as with the free speech examples, in both text and in practice, those rights originally belong to the people and it's specifically the government that is barred from violating them. (If someone *else* violates your privacy, you can sue them. But that's a civil case, not a criminal case.)
If the Government breaches your privacy, you can sue them as well. Just because a government is "barred" from some action, doesn't mean that it won't happen.
I enjoy your argument that rights are held by the people and they license the government to intrude upon certain rights... it really sounds wonderful, and it's certainly a great ideal... and you are right that the US has things written to say such... such is the philosophy of the law as it was written.
However, look at the Slaughterhouse cases... the government evaluated the claimed right of various individuals and found them to be lacking.
To have your right enforced, you need the Government's assistance. This is usually due to the Monopoly of Force doctrine, such that the government is the only agent allowed to apply force, and they license application of force to others under some conditions.
The US Government, and many other Modern Governments, in
Actually, it's less about older relatives, and more about society's pressures as a whole. The children are assaulted with ads of girls playing with dolls, and boys playing with cars.
Two parents raising their child speaking... say, Japanese, in the United States will end up with a child that speaks English. Our society as a whole has a crazy big impact on determining our general culture than anything a parent can do.
Sure, I'm all for helping fix the planet, but if you don't have a clue about what the fuck you're saying, then how can I trust you to tell me what even needs to be done to fix it?
Well, the first step is to give all of your money to me, then after that, it will be much better.
God, the skeptic in me says "no", but your voice is just so trustworthy!
> Most countries in the world do not hold to the barbaric idea of execution. We are supposed to be more moral than animals.
If you were more moral than animals, the issue would be moot, because you would have no murderers to worry about not executing.
> A government grants the rights of their citizens to their citizens
How... pre-Enlightenment of you. In civilized countries, the people begin with all rights, and when they form a government they cede some level of authority to it.
I understand it might be "pre-Enlightenment" in so far as philosophy works. However, in real life--in how they're set up in law--the rights are given and guaranteed by the government.
You have the right to Free Speech because of it being written down on a piece of paper drafted in words by a government. The limits of that Free Speech have been determined in courts by your government.
While the philosophers of law may argue about wherefrom the rights of the people are derived, however they are guaranteed by the Government, enforced by the Government, and defined by the Government.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I'm going to say it is a duck, even if the pervasive philosophical opinion is that it is a dog.
> People have a right to privacy.
Who owns the information that a murder happened? Of all possible answers that could be argued for here, saying that the murderer owns this information is the weakest one. If you're more moral than an animal, how is it moral that one can commit murder and then claim to that it was private?
It's not about who owns the information... it's a matter of PRIVACY. Privacy is not recognized as property, but rather as a separate legal concept. Privacy cannot be stolen, however it can be invaded.
They have served their time, and it is no longer the business of the public at large who committed the murder that they committed. If it happens to be your business; say you're looking into employing them, guess what? There is still the public record, which you may examine, and determine that they had been convicted of the crime.
However, to allow newspapers to drag their names out every time the murders come into news is punishing those individuals beyond what they were sentenced to.
Sometimes, even if information is true, if it is presented with actual malice, it is wrong, and the individual is entitled to damages.
Never true in the US legal system. Some European countries believe this, and some go even further and don't allow the spread of damaging even if presented without malice, and even if entirely true. Here, it's clear the barbaric USA has got it right, and most of the world has it wrong.
Funny. It's like I know about this legal tort called "False Light" that you don't know about...
Seriously, my sig isn't there just to be funny... I really am pedantic enough to have read law, and understand it; even without a law degree.
The problem is that simply publishing simple facts does not mean that it's ok... HOW one publishes those facts can impact how they are interpreted.
Please, read up about "False Light" in the US law system, and then get back to this conversation...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence carries no legal weight in the United States or anywhere. It's nice that you can point out someone who thinks that rights come from a higher power, I can find lots more than just the Declaration of Independence. However, LEGALLY, there is no creator who came down and put pen to paper and wrote the Bill of Rights... that was the US government.
Here's the deal: it is the law here in the United States, and I am under absolutely no obligation to honor German laws on this matter.
Once again, if a newspaper reports on a conviction of any kind, I can go back through their archives two decades later and still read about it. You can argue all you want about you THINK freedom of speech should be... fact is, that doesn't make you right.
I'm not telling you what you can do in the USA... what I'm saying is that Germany has different laws, and you're idea of what the rights are don't apply to Germans.
Biological gender (dictated by the presence of an Y vs. X chromosome) is irrevocably determined at the moment a spermium merges with an egg, excluding very rare cases of extra chromosomes etc. External pollution by endocrine disruptor chemicals plays no role in this.
Exhibition of female traits in biological males is a completely different story, and there is increasing evidence that this may be linked to certain classes of chemicals.
However, I am not aware of any studies which link these chemicals to decreased viability of Y-sperm, which could be a reason for the decline of male births. The number of biological males feminized to a degree that they pass and spend their lifes as females, and is however far too low to account for this change.
Ah... such a simple world you live in. One baby has a Y, and it's male, and the other has an X, and it's female.
Actually, it's the SRY (sex determining gene) on the Y chromosome that initiates... I said INITIATES sexual distinction in males. Without this gene, the germ cell line "stripe" turns into ovaries. If there is a mutation in this gene, you will get an XY female with ovaries. If this gene is present and there are no mutations in this gene, then the germ cell line "stripe" becomes testicles.
The testicles produce androgen. Androgen drives the external development of the genitalia. If there is insufficient androgens, or insufficient response to androgens then the scrotalabial folds become labia, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a clitoris. If there are sufficient androgens, and response, the scrotalabial folds fuse into a scrotum, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a penis. The development of the external genitalia can also vary anywhere along a continuum between the two.
Separately, the testicles produce Anti-muellerian hormones, which prevent the development of the muellerian ducts, namely, the upper vagina, cervix, uterus, and fallopian tubes. If there is insufficient AMH, or insufficient response, the fetus will develop such organs regardless of the genetic makeup of the child, regardless of the external appearance of the genitalia. YES, there are MEN with UTERUSES, if they're AMH resistant.
Now... notice that none of this depends upon estrogen levels. That's because the mother floods the bodies of all children with estrogens. However, it's heavily dependent upon hormones that are produced in the testicles. There a number of chemicals that block androgens, and these result in birth defects, which is why you get in ads for things like Rogaine "pregnant women should never even TOUCH these pills."
There a hojillion different ways to define "biological sex" and none of them are conclusive, and none of them are guaranteed. There are women with XY, and men with XX (and they were born that way, and assigned their sex by doctors), there are women with high androgen levels (5-alpha-reductase deficiency) and men with low androgen levels, there are women with testicles, and men with ovaries, there are women without uteruses, and men with uteruses. The only thing left to define men from women biologically, is external genitalia... and that can be surgically altered.
So, seriously... you don't know anything... I hope this short lesson on sexual distinction in humans helps you out.
blah blah, and more polar bears exhibit hermaphroditic features, and there's a higher percentage of Florida alligators that are female, and girls are hitting puberty earlier these days, and, and, an
Well, I would think that, when you people are ignoring that animals in nature are all becoming genders, 10 year old girls are getting pregnant, that, you might look up from your Wii and say, "hey, you know, the whole planet is fucked up, and we might well, actually try to FIX IT." Sometimes when there is a fire, you have to yell more than once.
Just a thought.
Wait wait wait... florida alligators being a higher percentage of females? So... what? global cooling or what? Alligator sex is determined by temperature, and LOWER is female, HIGHER is male.
Sure, I'm all for helping fix the planet, but if you don't have a clue about what the fuck you're saying, then how can I trust you to tell me what even needs to be done to fix it?
It's a perfectly ridiculous thought. Many of the listed 'masculine' qualities aren't masculine, and almost all of the 'feminine' qualities aren't feminine either. And this idea some people (seemingly including the OP) have that the world would be all sunshine and happiness and everyone would shit rainbows if we put women in charge is just delusional.
If women were in charge of the world, diplomatic relationships would never be better....
However, there would be way more covert disruption of other governments...
I note you said "effeminate" males. However, biologically, they're "underviriziled". One cannot feminized males, because males are virilized away from women.
Exactly! I remember a study investigating the color preferences of boys and girls showing that the favorite colors for boys are more blue, and for girls are more red... for Americans... for the Chinese the whole of it was shifted towards red.
It's like how pink wasn't worn by women until recently, because it is a "warm" color, and thus too aggressive. We should blame this feminization on us exposing our boys so early to light warm colors like pastel blue...
It's not simply *what* they play with, but *how* they play with them. If you put a girl in a room with a bunch of G.I. Joe action figures, the way she plays with them will likely involve some sort of social connection (i.e. doll A and doll B want to go and visit dolls C, D, and E at their imaginary house, so A and B jump into the Humvee and drive over to visit). Put a boy in a room with a bunch of Barbie dolls, and he will either decapitate them, or Barbie will fight with her friends using some sort of karate moves. Some parts might be social constructs (i.e. the girl might not specifically have dolls A and B married if she isn't exposed to the concept of marriage yet), but there are underlying concepts of how boys and girls interact with the world around them that *aren't* taught by society.
And what do you do, when your boy will only play with his GI Joes like a girl? It has been well established that this cannot be "fixed" anymore than you can "fix" a girl to be a boy, or a boy to be a girl... so what's the most humane option?
Also, child rearing isn't a particularly female position beyond infancy. Girls simply got stuck with it because they gave birth so its their responsibility. And the idea that violence and aggression is a manly thing. Or that it is something we should hope to aspire to is complete BS.
It's not just that the woman gave birth. One partner has to gather food / earn money / etc. Historically speaking, the man was more capable of doing this job because of his physical makeup. So the other job of caring for children fell to the female. Not to mention that, again historically speaking, the amount of time she was not caring for one infant or another was usually pretty small.
You could also argue there are other gender differences that make women more effective at caring for children that aren't just the result of socialization. I don't have a link handy, but I recall reading some research about how women (as a group) are better able to discern emotions by looking at the faces of other people. Stuff like that.
I'm not mentioning these to defend the idea that men should have no part in child-rearing. Not at all. But I think you oversimplify the reasons why this task has traditionally fallen to women.
While it is true that women have taken primary position on raising children, because as you note, men are more physically capable. Women collected food in pre-agricultural societies as well (and still do today). In at least one culture, the men are given the job of collecting food, because they're the subordinate gender. While the women sit around drinking and spitting, and playing cards. The men wear the makeup and the lavish outfits, while the women typically dump an aging man for a hot young boy.
As well, you also have a point that women are more likely to be able to read emotions in others... it also relates to the fact that autism is vastly more likely to affect men than women.
All that said, in pre-agricultural societies women do not solely raise children. In fact, the men spend/spent less time acquiring goods for the family than in any other society, and participate a lot in raising the children.
The idea that women are solely and individually responsible for raising children is us over-accentuating the differences that were already there.
That could very well be true. Several years ago I heard stories about how estrogen-like chemicals could theoretically leach out of plastic bottled water containers under certain conditions.
Not any plastics, but polycarbonate is a polymer of Bisphenol A -- and Bisphenol A was investigated as a synthetic estrogen before it was used in plastics. We've know that it had serious biological effects since the 1930s, but I suppose that was just another inconvenient, profit-reducing fact.
I don't suppose you knew that the single greatest source of estrogen in the development of a child is the mother, right? Even boys are exposed to crazy amounts of estrogen in utero. It's the levels of androgens that affect the gender of children.
Once a child has been born, you can't effect a change to their gender. Check David Reimer. He was born as a boy, and after a mishap during circumcision it was decided to raise him as a girl. He was given estrogen at the appropriate points, he was treated always like a girl... and he hated it. Eventually, he became a man again, and even married. Later in life, he committed suicide.
Treating transsexual children the same way (forcing them down a path that they disagree with) meets with the same resistance and frustration.
The gender is somehow locked into an individual before birth, and it doesn't change... even if you gave a bucket of estrogen to a boy everyday for his life... you know... even though that would technically kill him.
Yeah it has nothing to do with forcing boys to engage in more timid play, impressing upon them that when they grow older they'll be expected to do their share of the child rearing, presenting them with effeminate roll models, balking at allowing them to take risks or play "politically incorrect" games, keeping them away from violence and agression more than any previous generation, or putting them in female clothing for a giggle. Nothing to do with that at all. It's the chemicals!
GIMME A BREAK.
While you put it quite offensively, you're correct. The toys that we play with are culturally defined. Being "feminized" has nothing to do with which toys one plays with, and if they wear female clothing. I could imagine back when women first started wearing pants in America, someone tried to look for what was "masculinizing" them.
And even then, men are not feminized into women, or even partial women... biologically, women are virilized into men, or partial men. This is the same thing as "you're letting the cold in!" no... I'm letting the heat out. Take a man, give them estrogen... say from an estrogen generating hormone, and what do you get?... A MAN! He doesn't feminize, he doesn't change significantly. Mood swings, and crying? Yeah, very likely some of that, but you don't get a woman. He won't start wanting to wear dresses, and loving pink, etc etc etc.
This whole idea that there are significant biological differences between men and women is a bunch of horse shit, and it's tiring. There are some biological differences, and we notice them, because the differences are accentuated by our culture, but so many of the differences that we purport, like toy choice, favorite colors, how we handle relationships? All that is NOT biologically determined. Men and women separate on those choices out of a desire to conform to their separate subcultures.
Right, if you're hiring them, then it is your business. However, as a general newspaper reader, it is however, NOT any of my business.
That we want to be a gossip state is a different position from that that Germany seems to have taken.
This law doesn't prevent disclosure of their conviction, it says that news reports about the event after the sentence has been served cannot name the convicted individual(s).
Taking someone's criminal record from public records and publishing it widely would likely open someone up to a false light tort.
Look... you can argue all you want about what you THINK the law should be... fact is, that doesn't make it law... and just because some people can do XY doesn't mean it's fair to expect that all similar people can do XY.
Slashdot Mirror
God, I'm sorry for what happened to you, and let me assure you that not all women are like that... although, I will certainly grant you that there are women like that.
There are so many double standards for men that I find it funny we haven't responded against these more strongly.
That's basically the point that I was trying to make with my rant. That there are double standards and they're "real" because they're enforced in the social and political worlds.
There's a lot more work to equalizing the genders than just granting allowance for women to do X or men to do Y... even if they're allowed to, in many ways the culture actively works to dissuade them for doing it.
My point is, don't think it's women being asshats for getting special treatment, because it's the culture that pushes us to treat women differently... and to treat men differently...
As a gay man, I'm sure you can attest to how you personally have been pressured... silently, yet pressured none the less into avoiding certain behaviors.
And, I just have to say this as a last parting thought... it really is hard to avoid taking the ditz approach, because it works so well, and so easily... my comments have been all about cultural positive-reinforcement of irrational behaviors and beliefs.
People mock Ebonics because we see it as harming a group by locking them in to non-standard English and therefore limiting their social mobility. Even if Ebonics' grammar were superior or had some advantages, it would still be a mistake to teach it as a primary language as it would still serve to isolate those students (I'm focusing on primary education here, I don't make any claims about the merits of studying it for any cultural insights that can be gleaned from it). The strong accents in minority communities are barriers to assimilation and should not be encouraged by the educational process as they serve to separate rather than integrate society. A Queens or Bronx accent showing up in the South would result in difficulty communicating with others in the community, denying such an individual full access to the knowledge and opportunities there. In the same way, someone who speaks Ebonics as their primary language would be at a disadvantage outside of the pockets where it is spoken. If we wish to better those from a community that speaks Ebonics, we must seek to convert speakers to SAE as best we can. If we do not seek to maintain SAE, we will eventually see American English disintegrate into truly separate regional langauges as happened to Latin in Europe.
How how do we actually get them to speak SAE? Corporal punishment?
The same argument you make has been made for ages in a dozen different countries, and for a dozen different languages. My grandmother was part of the generation that was beat when they spoke Spanish in school, because it harmed their "ability to integrate". There is a recently extensive history of oppressing Spanish speakers in New Mexico, and it's ridiculous...
There are Spanish courses taught at my alma mater that are geared towards people, who can understand spoken and written Spanish perfectly, and score perfectly on "which preposition goes in this spot" tests, yet they insist that they are unable to speak, or write Spanish at all. The culture has literally oppressed their Spanish use so much, that they have a mental block against speaking it.
There is no danger in allowing Ebonics to develop, and there is no harm to the speakers of it beyond the crazy social stigma that we lay upon their language... which was the entire point of my post...
We don't listen to reality when it comes to social and political interaction... in those world, arbitrary irrational beliefs bring about real consequences to individuals for no better reason than "just 'cause".
See, you're missing all of this. It's not like, you remove the glass ceiling and poof women are equal. It's not like, you put in a bus line in your city and people use it. People take time to change, and take an especially long time to change culture, which is why our American society doesn't elect a female president.
The problem, which this article shows in fact, is not that people are equal, because they are... rather, no one thinks that they're equal, and they then act upon those beliefs.
So, women are just as smart as men, but everyone thinks that they aren't, and act like they aren't, which causes the de facto situation to be that women are treated as stupider than men.
Another good example of this behavior is that if a bunch of people all believe in magical beings and act as if those magical beings exist, it doesn't matter if those magical beings do exist, because socially and publicly one must treat them as extant.
People's irrational beliefs still have real world consequences and power in social and political worlds. It's like why people in America will typically tell you that Ebonics is a lazy form of Standard American English, when it is actually a different grammar that has some expressions that are not expressible in SAE.
So, we're in a situation where a large group of Americans speak a reasonably mutually intelligible different language, yet are treated like they're inferior because they speak it, because the whole culture tells them that it is inferior, and they start to believe it themselves... even when it's not true.
So, get off your misogynist horse and realize that we need to change our culture before women will be treated equally, and that means taking your bigot opinions and stuffing them with the rest of the filth that your body produces.
One must often have intent to perform an action before they can be found guilty of a crime.
I think you're looking at this wrong. The law she broke states nothing anywhere about violating copyright. The law she broke is for operating a recording device in a theater. She certainly had intent to operate the recording device. She didn't accidentally and/or unintentionally activate the device. So her transgression has nothing in any way to do with copyright or fair use or whether or not she even filmed the movie actually.
Yes, bad law for sure... however the question is if a judge would find that the intent of the law was to prevent copyright violations...
This is still a Common Law system that we have in the USA... just because the law is silent about an issue doesn't mean that a judge cannot rule to clarify it.
The main reason why law is so difficult is because of all the case law involved with issues.
... reads through it all...
It is a bad law... it also notes something that I've known for awhile... if you want to do something usual, you should probably get permission to do so. The law specifically permits the operation with consent of the establishment... well, and the company that owns the copyright of the material being shown.
But still... what kind of friends would disrupt you in a theater for a movie that you paid $8 or more for? Seriously, that's pretty inconsiderate.
At least from the story, it sounds like law was not followed to its intent.
Intent? That has nothing to do with it. The law states if you're filming the moving in a theater you go to jail. There's nothing in the law about intent. She should do 3 years.
The courts regularly deal with what the intent of a law was, and why the legislature passed it.
As well, one of the primary factors in prosecution almost always is something called "mens rea" or in the non-latin version that some US states have adopted, "guilty mind". One must often have intent to perform an action before they can be found guilty of a crime. The other alternative is negligence.
This person had absolutely no intent to film any amount of the movie that could be considered in any way anything other than fair-use. I fully expect that this case would never get in front of a jury.
Even boys are exposed to crazy amounts of estrogen in utero.
Once a child has been born, you can't effect a change to their gender. Check David Reimer. He was born as a boy, and after a mishap during circumcision it was decided to raise him as a girl. He was given estrogen at the appropriate points, he was treated always like a girl... and he hated it. Eventually, he became a man again, and even married. Later in life, he committed suicide.
Right. I didn't think the point of the study was that boys were suddenly growing vaginas... I thought the point was that BPAs might be effectively delivering a daily life-screwing dosage of synthetic estrogen.
If that sort of dosing were being willfully administered we'd call it abuse.
Just because a chemical doesn't shrivel your frank and beans or kill you immediately doesn't mean it's not causing hormonal turmoil. This is an article about how we have NO IDEA what the "safe" chemicals we use for everything are really doing to our bodies. Does that mean that a plastic baby bottle makes you want to play with barbies..... darned if I know, but it's time we were willing to question the large scale effects of modern consumerism, if chasing a few wild ideas is part of that process then I for one applaud them for being willing to ask.
We've actually studied this stuff well enough. BTW, you want to stay away from soy and flax seed... they're contain proteins that are not estrogen, but bind to estrogen receptors, and thus act like estrogen in your body...
So a single anecdote disproves him? What about girls who don't do those things, or boys who do? Do you think that desire for frillyness is somehow hardcoded into female DNA or something?
Um... my name is "snowgirl" for a reason, and its not because I'm a guy.
However, you're correct... his argument is flawed because it's anecdote, but also because of a lack of imagination.
His daughter was exposed to significant cultural pressure to conform to her assigned gender. The parental influence doesn't matter, as noted below, if the parents of a child only speak Japanese to a child in America, they will still speak English.
OK, but, now to reconnect to TFA, does then the observed variations in gender parity, if they are caused by this chemicals, mean that it's XY women whose numbers are rising?
My educated opinion would be yes, more XY women are being produced.
Also, are XY women (and XX men) fertile?
It's almost guaranteed to be a no. It's possible, but would require extraordinary circumstances on an already extraordinary circumstance.
Do women with testicles produce sperm which can fertilize eggs?
Typically, the only thing that those testicles are good for, is contracting cancer. They're typically left in until the individual passes through puberty, as the testosterone will turn into estrogen, and they will develop fairly typically for any girl. At that point, the doctors typically remove the testes.
Even if those testes were capable of producing sperm though, it would require surgical extraction to retrieve the sperm, so... unlikely that someone would ever spend the money trying to become the father of a child as a woman.
Can man with ovaries and uteri get pregnant and give birth to children?
Given proper hormones? Yes, they could. The feminizing effects of the hormones associated with pregnancy would make him grow large breasts however.
Can XY mothers conceive, and give birth to, YY sons?
XY women almost universally have no uterus, and so could not conceive. They almost universally have testes, which means that they will not produce any ova.
If their situation was however caused by a defective SRY gene, they will have ovaries, but it's very likely that their ovaries will fail to produce viable ova.
Each post of yours makes less sense than the last. (And makes your pedant sig funnier).
And have you actually studied law?
> However, in real life--in how they're set up in law--the rights are given and guaranteed by the government.
Nope. Both in text and in practice in the US, the rights originally belong to the people and the government is barred from restricting them. You should observe contrived third party example: if a newspaper doesn't print the letter you send them... that's it, they didn't print your letter, and you cannot get the government to compel them to do so). The German case is a clear example of the opposite way, where a citizen is claiming a right and getting the government to force other citizens to comply.
You apparently didn't RTFA... The German case is an example of where the state has already declared an open right of an individual convicted of a crime, and the citizens are now suing on the basis of that law.
Here's the funny thing about Common Law systems vs Civil Law systems. Common Law systems allow torts actions to be brought that are not already established by statute. Product liability is a good example of this. A snail in a drink bottle prompted someone to sue the manufacturer, because the individual never purchased the product, there was no direct tort action before that case, but the judge held that the action may stand because he would consider the possibility that a product manufacturer has a general duty to produce a safe product.
In the Civil Law system, if it is not in statutes, then you may not sue over it. This means that literally, those German citizens could not bring this suit in a German court without the law granting them said right explicitly.
If they're suing in a US court, then they're in for a wonderful surprise in that German law is not enforceable in the USA. However, if they're suing in German courts, and Wikipedia thinks that they can just get around it by claiming that they're not subject to German courts, they're likely to run into the problem of Yahoo v. LICRA, which found that Yahoo, a US company is subject to French law.
Guess what? Your all-caps PRIVACY's foundations ARE in property law. (In the US specifically, the 4th amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.) The legal foundations of US privacy law are all extended from there by grouping information into that protected person/house/paper/effect class. And, as with the free speech examples, in both text and in practice, those rights originally belong to the people and it's specifically the government that is barred from violating them. (If someone *else* violates your privacy, you can sue them. But that's a civil case, not a criminal case.)
If the Government breaches your privacy, you can sue them as well. Just because a government is "barred" from some action, doesn't mean that it won't happen.
I enjoy your argument that rights are held by the people and they license the government to intrude upon certain rights... it really sounds wonderful, and it's certainly a great ideal... and you are right that the US has things written to say such... such is the philosophy of the law as it was written.
However, look at the Slaughterhouse cases... the government evaluated the claimed right of various individuals and found them to be lacking.
To have your right enforced, you need the Government's assistance. This is usually due to the Monopoly of Force doctrine, such that the government is the only agent allowed to apply force, and they license application of force to others under some conditions.
The US Government, and many other Modern Governments, in
Actually, it's less about older relatives, and more about society's pressures as a whole. The children are assaulted with ads of girls playing with dolls, and boys playing with cars.
Two parents raising their child speaking... say, Japanese, in the United States will end up with a child that speaks English. Our society as a whole has a crazy big impact on determining our general culture than anything a parent can do.
Sure, I'm all for helping fix the planet, but if you don't have a clue about what the fuck you're saying, then how can I trust you to tell me what even needs to be done to fix it?
Well, the first step is to give all of your money to me, then after that, it will be much better.
God, the skeptic in me says "no", but your voice is just so trustworthy!
lol
> Most countries in the world do not hold to the barbaric idea of execution. We are supposed to be more moral than animals.
If you were more moral than animals, the issue would be moot, because you would have no murderers to worry about not executing.
> A government grants the rights of their citizens to their citizens
How... pre-Enlightenment of you. In civilized countries, the people begin with all rights, and when they form a government they cede some level of authority to it.
I understand it might be "pre-Enlightenment" in so far as philosophy works. However, in real life--in how they're set up in law--the rights are given and guaranteed by the government.
You have the right to Free Speech because of it being written down on a piece of paper drafted in words by a government. The limits of that Free Speech have been determined in courts by your government.
While the philosophers of law may argue about wherefrom the rights of the people are derived, however they are guaranteed by the Government, enforced by the Government, and defined by the Government.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I'm going to say it is a duck, even if the pervasive philosophical opinion is that it is a dog.
> People have a right to privacy.
Who owns the information that a murder happened? Of all possible answers that could be argued for here, saying that the murderer owns this information is the weakest one. If you're more moral than an animal, how is it moral that one can commit murder and then claim to that it was private?
It's not about who owns the information... it's a matter of PRIVACY. Privacy is not recognized as property, but rather as a separate legal concept. Privacy cannot be stolen, however it can be invaded.
They have served their time, and it is no longer the business of the public at large who committed the murder that they committed. If it happens to be your business; say you're looking into employing them, guess what? There is still the public record, which you may examine, and determine that they had been convicted of the crime.
However, to allow newspapers to drag their names out every time the murders come into news is punishing those individuals beyond what they were sentenced to.
Never true in the US legal system. Some European countries believe this, and some go even further and don't allow the spread of damaging even if presented without malice, and even if entirely true. Here, it's clear the barbaric USA has got it right, and most of the world has it wrong.
Funny. It's like I know about this legal tort called "False Light" that you don't know about...
Seriously, my sig isn't there just to be funny... I really am pedantic enough to have read law, and understand it; even without a law degree.
The problem is that simply publishing simple facts does not mean that it's ok... HOW one publishes those facts can impact how they are interpreted.
Please, read up about "False Light" in the US law system, and then get back to this conversation...
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Declaration of Independence carries no legal weight in the United States or anywhere. It's nice that you can point out someone who thinks that rights come from a higher power, I can find lots more than just the Declaration of Independence. However, LEGALLY, there is no creator who came down and put pen to paper and wrote the Bill of Rights... that was the US government.
Here's the deal: it is the law here in the United States, and I am under absolutely no obligation to honor German laws on this matter.
Once again, if a newspaper reports on a conviction of any kind, I can go back through their archives two decades later and still read about it. You can argue all you want about you THINK freedom of speech should be... fact is, that doesn't make you right.
I'm not telling you what you can do in the USA... what I'm saying is that Germany has different laws, and you're idea of what the rights are don't apply to Germans.
Let's not forget, the German Wikipedia complied.
This article does not make sense.
Biological gender (dictated by the presence of an Y vs. X chromosome) is irrevocably determined at the moment a spermium merges with an egg, excluding very rare cases of extra chromosomes etc. External pollution by endocrine disruptor chemicals plays no role in this.
Exhibition of female traits in biological males is a completely different story, and there is increasing evidence that this may be linked to certain classes of chemicals.
However, I am not aware of any studies which link these chemicals to decreased viability of Y-sperm, which could be a reason for the decline of male births. The number of biological males feminized to a degree that they pass and spend their lifes as females, and is however far too low to account for this change.
Ah... such a simple world you live in. One baby has a Y, and it's male, and the other has an X, and it's female.
Actually, it's the SRY (sex determining gene) on the Y chromosome that initiates... I said INITIATES sexual distinction in males. Without this gene, the germ cell line "stripe" turns into ovaries. If there is a mutation in this gene, you will get an XY female with ovaries. If this gene is present and there are no mutations in this gene, then the germ cell line "stripe" becomes testicles.
The testicles produce androgen. Androgen drives the external development of the genitalia. If there is insufficient androgens, or insufficient response to androgens then the scrotalabial folds become labia, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a clitoris. If there are sufficient androgens, and response, the scrotalabial folds fuse into a scrotum, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a penis. The development of the external genitalia can also vary anywhere along a continuum between the two.
Separately, the testicles produce Anti-muellerian hormones, which prevent the development of the muellerian ducts, namely, the upper vagina, cervix, uterus, and fallopian tubes. If there is insufficient AMH, or insufficient response, the fetus will develop such organs regardless of the genetic makeup of the child, regardless of the external appearance of the genitalia. YES, there are MEN with UTERUSES, if they're AMH resistant.
Now... notice that none of this depends upon estrogen levels. That's because the mother floods the bodies of all children with estrogens. However, it's heavily dependent upon hormones that are produced in the testicles. There a number of chemicals that block androgens, and these result in birth defects, which is why you get in ads for things like Rogaine "pregnant women should never even TOUCH these pills."
There a hojillion different ways to define "biological sex" and none of them are conclusive, and none of them are guaranteed. There are women with XY, and men with XX (and they were born that way, and assigned their sex by doctors), there are women with high androgen levels (5-alpha-reductase deficiency) and men with low androgen levels, there are women with testicles, and men with ovaries, there are women without uteruses, and men with uteruses. The only thing left to define men from women biologically, is external genitalia... and that can be surgically altered.
So, seriously... you don't know anything... I hope this short lesson on sexual distinction in humans helps you out.
blah blah, and more polar bears exhibit hermaphroditic features, and there's a higher percentage of Florida alligators that are female, and girls are hitting puberty earlier these days, and, and, an
Well, I would think that, when you people are ignoring that animals in nature are all becoming genders, 10 year old girls are getting pregnant, that, you might look up from your Wii and say, "hey, you know, the whole planet is fucked up, and we might well, actually try to FIX IT." Sometimes when there is a fire, you have to yell more than once.
Just a thought.
Wait wait wait... florida alligators being a higher percentage of females? So... what? global cooling or what? Alligator sex is determined by temperature, and LOWER is female, HIGHER is male.
Sure, I'm all for helping fix the planet, but if you don't have a clue about what the fuck you're saying, then how can I trust you to tell me what even needs to be done to fix it?
It's a perfectly ridiculous thought. Many of the listed 'masculine' qualities aren't masculine, and almost all of the 'feminine' qualities aren't feminine either. And this idea some people (seemingly including the OP) have that the world would be all sunshine and happiness and everyone would shit rainbows if we put women in charge is just delusional.
If women were in charge of the world, diplomatic relationships would never be better....
However, there would be way more covert disruption of other governments...
I note you said "effeminate" males. However, biologically, they're "underviriziled". One cannot feminized males, because males are virilized away from women.
Exactly! I remember a study investigating the color preferences of boys and girls showing that the favorite colors for boys are more blue, and for girls are more red... for Americans... for the Chinese the whole of it was shifted towards red.
It's like how pink wasn't worn by women until recently, because it is a "warm" color, and thus too aggressive. We should blame this feminization on us exposing our boys so early to light warm colors like pastel blue...
It's not simply *what* they play with, but *how* they play with them. If you put a girl in a room with a bunch of G.I. Joe action figures, the way she plays with them will likely involve some sort of social connection (i.e. doll A and doll B want to go and visit dolls C, D, and E at their imaginary house, so A and B jump into the Humvee and drive over to visit). Put a boy in a room with a bunch of Barbie dolls, and he will either decapitate them, or Barbie will fight with her friends using some sort of karate moves. Some parts might be social constructs (i.e. the girl might not specifically have dolls A and B married if she isn't exposed to the concept of marriage yet), but there are underlying concepts of how boys and girls interact with the world around them that *aren't* taught by society.
And what do you do, when your boy will only play with his GI Joes like a girl? It has been well established that this cannot be "fixed" anymore than you can "fix" a girl to be a boy, or a boy to be a girl... so what's the most humane option?
It's not just that the woman gave birth. One partner has to gather food / earn money / etc. Historically speaking, the man was more capable of doing this job because of his physical makeup. So the other job of caring for children fell to the female. Not to mention that, again historically speaking, the amount of time she was not caring for one infant or another was usually pretty small.
You could also argue there are other gender differences that make women more effective at caring for children that aren't just the result of socialization. I don't have a link handy, but I recall reading some research about how women (as a group) are better able to discern emotions by looking at the faces of other people. Stuff like that.
I'm not mentioning these to defend the idea that men should have no part in child-rearing. Not at all. But I think you oversimplify the reasons why this task has traditionally fallen to women.
While it is true that women have taken primary position on raising children, because as you note, men are more physically capable. Women collected food in pre-agricultural societies as well (and still do today). In at least one culture, the men are given the job of collecting food, because they're the subordinate gender. While the women sit around drinking and spitting, and playing cards. The men wear the makeup and the lavish outfits, while the women typically dump an aging man for a hot young boy.
As well, you also have a point that women are more likely to be able to read emotions in others... it also relates to the fact that autism is vastly more likely to affect men than women.
All that said, in pre-agricultural societies women do not solely raise children. In fact, the men spend/spent less time acquiring goods for the family than in any other society, and participate a lot in raising the children.
The idea that women are solely and individually responsible for raising children is us over-accentuating the differences that were already there.
Not any plastics, but polycarbonate is a polymer of Bisphenol A -- and Bisphenol A was investigated as a synthetic estrogen before it was used in plastics. We've know that it had serious biological effects since the 1930s, but I suppose that was just another inconvenient, profit-reducing fact.
I don't suppose you knew that the single greatest source of estrogen in the development of a child is the mother, right? Even boys are exposed to crazy amounts of estrogen in utero. It's the levels of androgens that affect the gender of children.
Once a child has been born, you can't effect a change to their gender. Check David Reimer. He was born as a boy, and after a mishap during circumcision it was decided to raise him as a girl. He was given estrogen at the appropriate points, he was treated always like a girl... and he hated it. Eventually, he became a man again, and even married. Later in life, he committed suicide.
Treating transsexual children the same way (forcing them down a path that they disagree with) meets with the same resistance and frustration.
The gender is somehow locked into an individual before birth, and it doesn't change... even if you gave a bucket of estrogen to a boy everyday for his life... you know... even though that would technically kill him.
Yeah it has nothing to do with forcing boys to engage in more timid play, impressing upon them that when they grow older they'll be expected to do their share of the child rearing, presenting them with effeminate roll models, balking at allowing them to take risks or play "politically incorrect" games, keeping them away from violence and agression more than any previous generation, or putting them in female clothing for a giggle. Nothing to do with that at all. It's the chemicals!
GIMME A BREAK.
While you put it quite offensively, you're correct. The toys that we play with are culturally defined. Being "feminized" has nothing to do with which toys one plays with, and if they wear female clothing. I could imagine back when women first started wearing pants in America, someone tried to look for what was "masculinizing" them.
And even then, men are not feminized into women, or even partial women... biologically, women are virilized into men, or partial men. This is the same thing as "you're letting the cold in!" no... I'm letting the heat out. Take a man, give them estrogen... say from an estrogen generating hormone, and what do you get? ... A MAN! He doesn't feminize, he doesn't change significantly. Mood swings, and crying? Yeah, very likely some of that, but you don't get a woman. He won't start wanting to wear dresses, and loving pink, etc etc etc.
This whole idea that there are significant biological differences between men and women is a bunch of horse shit, and it's tiring. There are some biological differences, and we notice them, because the differences are accentuated by our culture, but so many of the differences that we purport, like toy choice, favorite colors, how we handle relationships? All that is NOT biologically determined. Men and women separate on those choices out of a desire to conform to their separate subcultures.
Right, if you're hiring them, then it is your business. However, as a general newspaper reader, it is however, NOT any of my business.
That we want to be a gossip state is a different position from that that Germany seems to have taken.
This law doesn't prevent disclosure of their conviction, it says that news reports about the event after the sentence has been served cannot name the convicted individual(s).
Taking someone's criminal record from public records and publishing it widely would likely open someone up to a false light tort.
Look... you can argue all you want about what you THINK the law should be... fact is, that doesn't make it law... and just because some people can do XY doesn't mean it's fair to expect that all similar people can do XY.