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Which is your favourite of the ST?

Open the pod bay doors, Hnau!

12
22%
20
37%
22
41%
 
Total votes : 54

Postby rusmeister » May 25th, 2008, 10:06 am

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Postby Ben2747 » May 25th, 2008, 11:18 pm

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Postby rusmeister » May 26th, 2008, 1:05 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Postby Mornche Geddick » May 26th, 2008, 12:24 pm

As it happens I have read GKC's "What's wrong with the world", because I make it my business to read everything he wrote. Usually I agree with him, but not this time. This time he's just being stupid. When the men have pinched all the good jobs for themselves and have all the fun, it's not "surrender" to fight to get them for yourself. He might as well have said that the British and the French "surrendered" to the Prussians in 1914 by going to war with them. After all, they both fought with bayonets and dug trenches. :rolleyes: And now I come to think of it, that probably was what the Pacifists did say. But it would have been quite irrelevant to the real issue of the war, just as Chesterton's remarks in that book were quite irrelevant to the real issue of the struggle for the vote, which was this:

However nice the individual men I know may be, I really, really do not want to live in a country where I can't go to university, can't practice a profession, can't get a decently paid job, where the age of consent is thirteen, where married women can be sacked with impunity, where male adultery is not held to be grounds for divorce but female is, where women can be forced to undergo VD tests, and where marital rape is legal.

That was the situation in 19th century England when the feminist movement started. Some reforms did happen, but the pace of chance was excruciatingly slow.

The suffragettes thought rightly or wrongly (and many of them had years of experience in activism) that they had little chance of stopping most of these abuses without the vote. They knew well enough that the vote would not be enough by itself. And I might add that I myself was an adult before that last one on my list of injustices was outlawed in my own country.

The trouble is that whenever people start preaching the difference between the sexes and recommending different roles for men and women, they always must do it by placing restrictions on you. These restrictions may be relatively wide and generous, but they are always felt as an intolerable burden if they stop you doing what you really want to do; that is, if they are preventing you from being yourself.
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Postby Ben2747 » May 26th, 2008, 3:42 pm

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Postby rusmeister » May 26th, 2008, 4:02 pm

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Postby Ben2747 » May 26th, 2008, 8:09 pm

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Postby Mornche Geddick » May 26th, 2008, 9:07 pm

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Postby rusmeister » May 27th, 2008, 4:49 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Postby cyranorox » May 28th, 2008, 5:45 pm

i love Perelandra best.

I too feel that the character of Jane Studdock in THS is below the standard of his creation of male characters, and her weak feminism is straw man for that cause.

If the workplace, including politics, government, academia, the professions, and enterprise, is the place where social freedom is played out, then women should allow men as much access to these realms as is consistent with their sexual difference from the norm, and their obligations to family life.

No, that was not a typo. To see the absurdity of many kindly offers of limited freedom to women, just substitute 'men' and see if you still agree. If it goes without saying for men, say it and have a fresh look. Wage slavery is an evil for both sexes, but since this is, or can be, a route to greater secular scope, there is no need to restrict men's participation in contrast to the other sex.
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Postby galion » May 28th, 2008, 6:24 pm

Just a flying visit to say to Rus that by asking for women to join in I didn't mean that men shouldn't - it was simply that, as so often happens, we found ourselves to be a group of blokes arguing about what women should be / do, and a little input from the subject of our pronouncements might aid understanding.

Mornche, I suspected you might be of The Sex, but I wasn't sure. I am unapologetically male, and I have some old (and young) friends who are very active feminists, but who do not think men are dirty, common and inferior. You'd be more likely to find that attitude among the DAR (or in the UK Conservative women).
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Postby rusmeister » May 29th, 2008, 2:15 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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Postby Mornche Geddick » May 29th, 2008, 1:08 pm

Anybody who has had a mother or sister is entitled to an opinion about the sexes. But nobody has a right to say that women should be restricted to homemaking - or anything else. And by nobody, I don't just mean men, but women. There are women who enjoy being homemakers and do it well. There are other women who do not. If you are one of the first group, well and good, but remember your neighbour may not be and do not condemn her for choosing a different path.

Now I am one of the second group. I have known this nearly all my life, long before I was even a teenager, and certainly before I had heard the word "feminism". It is a fact as plain and practical as potatoes. This is why I am immune to appeals for women to go back to the home.

Rusmeister, of course I'm more bothered by the sins of rulers, law-makers and spiritual leaders than those of ordinary people. They have a far greater power to do harm. They can oppress, they can allow people to sin against other people with impunity, and sometimes they do both. And similarly, I am, and you should be, worried about the ideology of a minority if that minority happens to be the ruling class, as in, for example, Soviet Russia.

(And by the way, about the VD tests, you're wrong about your facts. The Contagious Disease Acts, which mandated medical examinations of any woman suspected of being a prostitute, were promulgated in the 1860s. Even before the development of the Wassermann test for syphilis in 1906, it was possible to diagnose VD from, for example, syphilitic sores).

As for Chesterton, one day I mean to write and publish a complete answer to "What's wrong with the World" but for the present I'll just say this: When I was growing up I learned far more from other kids than I did from my mother.
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Postby kbrowne » May 29th, 2008, 2:43 pm

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Postby rusmeister » May 29th, 2008, 2:47 pm

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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