ravan | More Lameness

Current Mood: amused

Entry tags:

wank

More Lameness

Aww, gee, I'm special! Fuckwit

elorie has decided to refer to me by name in her little fief. That means I got to her, pricked her in the ego! I should have saved the comment for posterity! That's a better prize than having a community named after me!

Awww, and she accuses me of conflating '"debate" with "verbal abuse"'. Stupid girl. I wasn't trying "debate" with her, I don't think she has the intellect to comprehend it, much less respond to it in a rational manner. Her knee jerk stereotyping is proof of that, along with her innane "They say *all* the same things...almost word for word...and make the same specious arguments that are either blatantly untrue, make no damn sense, or BOTH." Sorry, but it's only 'the same' if you are unable to consider and comprehend things other than your own narrow, knee-jerk, point of view. So no, I was not attempting to debate with her, I was flaming her. Too bad she's too dumb to realize it.

Furthermore, she is responding to a comment that she did not allow to be seen by anyone else, thus looking even more capricious and insane. ROTFLMAO!

I was wondering if she was smart enough to cut her losses and get back to her regular community business. She's not - she won't be happy unless she thinks she's "won" by having the very last word, and can get all of what she believes are her fans to help. What a little wankette. The "neener, neener, neener" at the end is just classic wank, too.

Dang, I need to filch

kshandra's "LOLLERSKATES" icon. May I? Pleeeeease?

BTW, I will probably still read

note_to_asshat from time to time, as well as

note2asshat. Some of the posts in there are great, prime snark, quintissential flambe. Why? For the same reason I read

kittypix and

kitty_luff_only - it makes me smile. Why should I let the fact that the moderator is immature and chickenshit bar me from reading fine snark by other people?

Note: this post left public out of fairness. Apologies to those who are tired of the wank stuff.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I was offline all weekend, sorry. I did want to respond.

So by your estimation, bigotry and prejudice are trivial and can be ignored or mocked if they are not "systemic oppression"?

By that estimate, unless a thing is against the law, or otherwise codified in an institution, it's not *systemic* oppression, it's just "social difficulty" or "prejudice encountered on a personal level". Is this your demarcation line? So is an individual landlord discriminating against a renter on the basis of being black, perceived homosexual, or whatever just "prejudice encountered on a personal level" or is it oppression? What makes a thing "systemic"?

Whoa, there, no. I see where I may not have made myself clear (trouble with language, especially when you’re thinking fast). I apologize for that. Just because it is now against the law for a landlord to discriminate, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, nor does it mean it’s no longer systemic. By “systemic”, I mean firmly entrenched in society whether or not it’s codified into law. We all suck in plenty of messages that teach us racism and classism and homophobia simply because we live in a society where now it’s quieter, but it’s still SOP.

I don’t buy childfree discrimination as being systemic. While the “standard” held up is that you will marry and produce offspring, what is held up as “standard” or “ideal” still leaves a lot of wiggle room. It may or may not be the assumed default. There is a lot of stuff in this country geared toward people without children. For every instance of “What the hell is wrong with you for not having children you barren sideshow freak” there is the landlord who won’t rent to people with kids (even if that’s not the stated reason. For every benefit extended only to working parents, there is the secretary who can’t get her bosses to give her the afternoon off to deal with a kid with chicken pox. BTW, I’ve noticed those family-oriented work benefits tend to only be extended to people not in support positions – the lower you go on the corporate food chain, the less leeway you have on “family time.” It works both ways in this society. There are enough people without children who have enough clout that system-wide discrimination isn’t really effective. And that’s an important component of systemic discrimination: power. There must be some element of power behind the prejudice for it to have real clout. Given how many of the previous generation (the Baby Boomers) chose to forgo having kids at the “normal” age in order to work on career advancement, it’s not at all socially unusual to find people in their thirties and forties without kids. Hell, there were so many of them they practically made it a new social norm, especially among the upper economic classes.

Which doesn’t make it hurt any less if you’re faced with someone’s personal bullshit; I don’t wanna sound like I’m telling you “Oh, you shouldn’t feel bad; lots of people have it so much WORSE.” But it’s not the same as systemic oppression. You are not low man on the totem pole because you have no kids. If it sounds like I was waving my hand and going, “You have no problems”, I apologize for that.

Everyone gets the sting of some kind of prejudicial treatment in their life. Can it be painful? Oh, hell, yeah. Is it a sign of oppression or systemic discrimination? Depends on what force there is behind it, what power there is to reinforce it socially.

All right, now I'm wanking...so sorry, but this is really all I have to say, since I'm answering you:

Should Christians have to form their own new religion, by a different name, because of the intolerance of the fundamentalist wing? Or is it better to be moderating voices of sanity in the existing religion? Try being a Muslim convert in America. *wry grin* You learn to try to show truth by example, and try to be the compassionate voice people hear when they think of the word that defines the group. But you still face distrust, the need to justify your ideology, and understand that the zealots who co-opted your belief shout louder. Does that make it right? No. But you find where you need to be at balancewise while understanding why some folk will harbor distrust.

I say “you” there, because I’ve had to think about that a lot.

And I’m not sure that choosing to not have children really is analogous to one’s religious beliefs. You can disagree.

By the way, in the state I live in, TANF, as you say, is only open to those with children. You know what the guidelines for TANF are here? “A family of three (mother and two children) may qualify for TANF if their gross income is below $784 a month and assets are worth less than $1,000.” (Poverty level for a family of three: $1,157/month.) The maximum benefit for a family of three? $280 a month. People who swear it’s like free money for people squirting out kids really haven’t been there. Do the math and tell me who’s getting fat off that. Anymore, social programs to help the needy – anyone needy -- really are so stingy and so limited in who they help that they’re rather horrifying.

Problem with having any discussion about privilege, power, discrimination, etc., is that no one ever agrees. I reckon it’s because we have too many different life experiences to really necessarily all see it the same way. I think discussions can be productive about it, but it’s hard to arrive at any kind of agreement. Hell, even on basic things like working definitions (I’ll tell you now I’m wary of dictionary definitions as the Last Word, since they lack nuance). I can respect your right to disagree completely with me, because realistically, I figure we ain’t going to agree.

OTOH, this has probably been a more productive, polite, and interesting discussion than it might have been, so thank you for that. At least it has me thinking…

Anymore, social programs to help the needy – anyone needy -- really are so stingy and so limited in who they help that they’re rather horrifying.

Agreed on that. But two adults, sans kids, who are even more destitute, get *nothing*. Then again, homelessness and starvation are becoming more and more prevalent, thank to "compassionate conservatism".

IMO, birth control ought to be free and easy to get, just to encourage people to use it. IMO, being homeless sucks, being homeless with kids sucks worse.

Ah, we are in agreement here. At laaaast:P!

IMO, being homeless sucks, being homeless with kids sucks worse. And I suspect that this is why the brutal triage exists which prevents childless adults from getting anything (and all but the poorest of the poor from getting any more than a pittance which doesn't even bring them up to poverty level). Because not only does it suck even worse, but the social costs (not just the financial ones) wind up being higher. There is so little allotted for *anyone* anymore, and it's submoronic because the final costs for not providing are so high.

I bet you probably know that the Shrub cut all federal spending for any BC programs that weren't "abstinence only". Including a singularly sane one here in GA which allowed new moms on Medicaid (provided to expectant mothers who were working poor and without insurance) to get birth control for free for two years after the birth of their children. You know, exactly the demographic likely to benefit from self-righteous "abstinence only" lectures. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of this tomfoolery; I just know of that one firsthand.

Abstinence only - uuuuurgggghlehackspit! I hate that kind of self-righteous bullshit. It's a sick joke, and coupled with BC restrictions and abortion bans it's hypocritical, at best, and a recipe for breeding a generation of discontent, at worst.

I actually end up encouraging people who are ambivalent on the kids question to get sterilized. If they want kids later, they can adopt the kids that the "pro-life", "abstinence only" hypocrites have dumped on the gutted and non-existent safety net.

My own sister, who has turned into a religious right dittohead like her husband, doesn't want real sex ed for her kids. Even though she had the truth about birth control and STDs. She thinks it "gives kids permission". Nevermind that the forbidden fruit is always sweeter to a teenager. I end up incoherent with anger at the stupid every time she comes up with that tripe.

I wish I was really, really rich. I would start a fund to provide BC and sterilization services for *anyone* who wanted it - kids, no kids, young, old. I'd partner with PP, and just provide the finances. Then I'd advertise it in all of the kid hang outs - myspace, LJ, etc, even buy keywords on Google.

My own sister, who has turned into a religious right dittohead like her husband, doesn't want real sex ed for her kids. Even though she had the truth about birth control and STDs. She thinks it "gives kids permission". Nevermind that the forbidden fruit is always sweeter to a teenager. I end up incoherent with anger at the stupid every time she comes up with that tripe.

I hear ya. Because we all know that providing a kid with information about BC is going to result in some kid out there going, "Well, hot diggity damn! I was fixing to sign that 'Jesus wants you to wait' abstinence pledge thing, but then I found out about rubbers, and now I can’t wait to go out and get all jiggy with anyone who’ll poke me!"

Providing information does not make people who would otherwise not have sex have sex. And denying access to birth control does not prevent kids from having sex. Particularly if they’ve been filled with misinformation, or given *no* information.

The high school I went to refused to teach sex ed, claiming it would “give good kids bad ideas.” Of course, during my time there, 1 out of every 32 students there was a *parent* (no, I’m not guessing on that statistic). They already had their own bad ideas.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

More Lameness

This is waaay long...apologies...

So freaking long it's two parts!

Re: So freaking long it's two parts!

Re: So freaking long it's two parts!

Re: So freaking long it's two parts!

Re: So freaking long it's two parts!