The unimportant news thread

[ibanezmonster]

As I suspected, the patriarchy is to blame.

It's always evil patriarchy. 

I am really amazed by some of the comments to that video. As someone who has walked the streets of NY, I cannot understand them. First, there are comments ascribed to the woman and how she was rude/arrogant/etc. These are things you are interpretting - they are not facts. All she does is walk and never respond to the people around her. Second, I would never respond to someone who said anything to me like that in NY. Being nice is something dirtbags (I am not referring to anyone in the video) take advantage of. Even when someone needs directions, I am on guard. Personal safety has to come first. I mean, who knows who those people really are. Third, the guy who walks next to her for several minutes is creepy. He was trying to get into her head. Finally, if I was her, there are a number of times in the video where I would not feel safe - and I'm a guy.

Some of those comments didn't deserve an acknowledgement- like "hey baby" and such, but "hey there, have a good evening..." at least say "you, too" or nod and keep walking if someone says hi. That's what I'd do in Orlando, but idk, maybe NYC is different. Either way, wearing headphones would be the way to go if you really don't want to talk to anyone.

[Ken B]

The guy who follows her for several minutes is an interesting case, and I expect I will outrage many here.
First, we know he doesn't follow every woman. But he followed her. Why? This is related to the question I asked about the camera. Was that related?
If not, why her? Does he follow other people? No-one has asked and no-one has followed up that I have seen.
He seems to be portrayed as exhibit #1 on how awful men are to women, but he could simply be a guy who needs treatment. Seriously, is there something in that video that shows otherwise? He may well be scary, and  I'd be worried if he did that to my wife or daughter, but he may also need help, a fact entirely lost in every single mention of him I have seen. The video editors expended time and effort on making him look bad, but none at all I expect on concern for his welfare.

[amw]

"Criminalizing verbal harassment and unwanted gestures is neither the final goal nor the ultimate solution to this problem and can, in fact, inadvertently work against the growth of an inclusive anti-harassment movement. The criminal justice system disproportionately targets and affects low-income communities and communities of color, as evidenced by policies such as New York City's Stop and Frisk program and other degrading forms of racial profiling. Our objective is to address and shift cultural and social dialogues and attitudes of patriarchy that purport street harassment as simply the price you pay for being a woman or being LGBTQ. It is not to re-victimize men already discriminated against by the system."

Thanks Todd, this is by far the most reasonable, objective and meaningful statement made in this entire thread (& possibly The Diner as a whole). Wish we had more like it.

[mc ukrneal]

Some of those comments didn't deserve an acknowledgement- like "hey baby" and such, but "hey there, have a good evening..." at least say "you, too" or nod and keep walking if someone says hi. That's what I'd do in Orlando, but idk, maybe NYC is different. Either way, wearing headphones would be the way to go if you really don't want to talk to anyone.

No, you don't. You do exactly what she did - you make no acknowledgement and get the heck out of there. If it's rude - fine. I can live that. Btw, I would also never wear headphones (anywhere), because it just puts you more at risk. You can't hear someone coming at you from not-sighted angles.

[mc ukrneal]

I have not said she's the bad guy. I won't debate with you if your go-to tactic is that kind of thing.
I have said interpreting how the men react is not as simple as some would like to see it. I have explained why above. If you care, google how Joyce Carol Oates reacted.

But our specific point of comtention was your assertion I was interpreting whilst denying you were. We all are, and not just about her. (I hope and trust your interpretation is not Oates's. )

It's clever how you have tried to turn a point about the way you interpreted the events into a point about me. But since I have not denied or asserted my opinion in the way you would like, you have done it for me. So I'll bow out, since we seem to be going nowhere.

[Florestan]

Romanian presidential elections, first run: the Socialist prime-minister Victor Ponta (a pathological liar, a proved plagiarist and a sinister demagogue) leads 10 percents ahead of the Liberal-Conservative Klaus Iohannis, mayor of Sibiu (a sober, even taciturn person of German ethnicity), roughly 40% vs 30%. If all non-Socialist parties would have supported the same candidate, Mr. Iohannis would have been ahead. Run-off on November 16. I have high hopes that Iohannis will defeat Ponta and the Socialists will lose the third Presidential elections in a row.

[Todd]

The Gray Lady gets in on the Hollaback! thingy, with a "debate".  Sure enough, catcalling is lumped in with other thought crime "hate speech" by one of the first debaters.  (I don't know if the NYT cycles through different opinions frequently, or if select ones stick.)  A new front in the fictitious War on Women has apparently been opened.  Who knows, this could be a 2016 issue.  That would be freakin' awesome. 




I wonder how Hollaback!'s fund raising efforts are going.

[Brian]

"Criminalizing verbal harassment and unwanted gestures is neither the final goal nor the ultimate solution to this problem and can, in fact, inadvertently work against the growth of an inclusive anti-harassment movement. The criminal justice system disproportionately targets and affects low-income communities and communities of color, as evidenced by policies such as New York City's Stop and Frisk program and other degrading forms of racial profiling. Our objective is to address and shift cultural and social dialogues and attitudes of patriarchy that purport street harassment as simply the price you pay for being a woman or being LGBTQ. It is not to re-victimize men already discriminated against by the system."

Love 90% of this quote.

[Todd]

Love 90% of this quote.

I love 100% of it, though for entirely different reasons than you love it.

[Ken B]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/03/street-harassment-catcall-video-race-women-gender-equity-column/18373531/

[jochanaan]

I am not sure that any man can understand what a woman goes through.  Not just the present harassment, but a history of thousands of years of being treated as second-class unless she could prove herself much more than the equal of any man, of having to deal with cultures that blame her when she gets attacked, of not knowing whether a "Hello" is a simple greeting or a prelude to rape... And New York City is in fact a historically violent place.  Now, most New Yorkers bark much worse than they bite, but there are the occasional monsters in human form...

[Ken B]

I am not sure that any man can understand what a woman goes through.  Not just the present harassment, but a history of thousands of years of being treated as second-class unless she could prove herself much more than the equal of any man, of having to deal with cultures that blame her when she gets attacked, of not knowing whether a "Hello" is a simple greeting or a prelude to rape... And New York City is in fact a historically violent place.  Now, most New Yorkers bark much worse than they bite, but there are the occasional monsters in human form...

"thousands of years of being treated as second-class"? I have never met a 1000 year old woman. There is an important point here. The disadvantages of being black are heritable and therefore could accumulate over time.  This is not true for the disadvantages of being female. Rich families have daughters, and women give birth to sons; no woman has had only female ancestors. My sister and I have exactly the same set of ancestors. So you cannot just talk about the cumulative effects of sexism the way you can with racism.

I am not disputing that cultures form ideas and that these persist. I quite agree. The example you alluded to is a particularly nasty one. But your poetic talk about thousands of years muddies not clarifies.

[Brian]

The disadvantages of being black are heritable and therefore could accumulate over time.  This is not true for the disadvantages of being female.

This is the kind of "thinking" I never expect to see from a person whose opinions I respect.

I'm going to take a temporary hiatus from this thread to think about some things.

[Ken B]

This is the kind of "thinking" I never expect to see from a person whose opinions I respect.

I'm going to take a temporary hiatus from this thread to think about some things.

Brian, look at it this way. As a group women's parents inherit as much as men's parents. My parents are my sisters parents. So the deleterious effects of past sexist discrimination that transferred wealth unfairly from women to men did not result in my being born to a richer family than she was.  My sister is no richer or poorer due to sexism in 1840 than am I. Our circumstances were effected to the same extent. So sexist discrimination in 1840 say does not cause a persistent shift in wealth from women to men as a group. Inter-sexual thefts do not accumulate through time; the counter is reset every generation.
Contrast that with race. Imagine that my ancestors owned my black neighbor's ancestors, and pillaged their labor via slavery and Jim Crow for a century. Each generation my family was able to effectively steal from his. That wealth was passed on from generation to generation. At no point did the wealth my family stole flow back to his family. As a result I inherited 10,000 acres and my neighbor a hovel.  The effects of interracial theft are heritable. And my sister would likewise be enriched at their expense.

This is the whole basis of reparations claims of course. Blacks who descend from slaves were unfairly impoverished at the expense of whites who descend from slave owners.

Good thinking is precise. If you want I will give you a formal mathematical model of my argument (I am a mathematician by training). All I ask in return is that instead of scare-quoting "thinking" you find an actual error in the logic.

UPDATE, as threatened. Easy to write a Python simulation

Here is a simple mathematical model to illustrate the effect.

Our model consists of populations consisting of successive generations of males and females
who breed on average one child of each sex.
The population is divided into two races W and B which do not interbreed.
For simplicity the numbers of W and B are the same, and the M?F split is the same in each group.

In the intial state all persons have the same endowment e.
Children split equally their parent's wealth.
We model the ill effects of the past on current attitudes and practices by way of a toll t
levied upon persons of one group at birth and paid to persons in another.
That is, if you are disavantaged then t is taken from you, if you are advantaged t is given to you.
This toll is paid in g successive generations.
In the present generation the toll is finally ended,
representing a reform of the attitudes and rules that disadvantaged the one group.

It is not hard to show that if the toll is paid by each member of B to a member of W then
a B child born now has an average endowment of (e - gt) and the average child of W has (e + gt).
This difference persists in all future generations.
Group B has been permanently impoverished to the benefit of group W.

If the transfer is from F to M then in the last toll paying state, females have an average (e - t)
and males (e+t).
In the next the average is e for both groups.
This is true for all succeeding generations.
Group F has not been permanently impoverished to the benefit of group M.

[ibanezmonster]

Python? You mean the programming language?
I've been planning to learn that on my own pretty soon. Scripted language syntax is so wonderfully simple.

[Ken B]

Python? You mean the programming language?
I've been planning to learn that on my own pretty soon. Scripted language syntax is so wonderfully simple.

Yes. I usually use javascript for my (rare) scripting, but I liked Python when I used it briefly a decade ago, and it seems the trendy choice now.

[jochanaan]

"thousands of years of being treated as second-class"? I have never met a 1000 year old woman. There is an important point here. The disadvantages of being black are heritable and therefore could accumulate over time.  This is not true for the disadvantages of being female. Rich families have daughters, and women give birth to sons; no woman has had only female ancestors. My sister and I have exactly the same set of ancestors. So you cannot just talk about the cumulative effects of sexism the way you can with racism...

But the institutions and cultural ideas that perpetuate sexism continue down the centuries, and that history affects how women perceive their lives.  And many men even today, confronted by the reality of women's desire and efforts to gain equality (or more) in every aspect of their lives, fight back, using methods that would shame a professional wrestler (at least, a wrestler with integrity).  Yes, "male privilege" is inherited, at least institutionally.

[Ken B]

But the institutions and cultural ideas that perpetuate sexism continue down the centuries, and that history affects how women perceive their lives.  And many men even today, confronted by the reality of women's desire and efforts to gain equality (or more) in every aspect of their lives, fight back, using methods that would shame a professional wrestler (at least, a wrestler with integrity).  Yes, "male privilege" is inherited, at least institutionally.

Indeed there are attitudes that have hardened into institutions and rules etc. (Religion is the worst offender I say, but I think you disagree. Leviticus or Sura 4.) But not cumulatively. Read through my example. If you change the rules  the ideas and the attitudes to be fair then for women the fairness takes effect right away in the next generation. Not so for victims of racism. It's an important distinction.

[Ken B]

I think this is thread we discussed this topic on ...

One of the things where I disagree with all decent right-thinking people is voter turnout. High voter turnout is not something we should aim for. Here is one reason why. http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/texas-tech-students-parade-their-knowledge/

[Florestan]

I think this is thread we discussed this topic on ...

One of the things where I disagree with all decent right-thinking people is voter turnout. High voter turnout is not something we should aim for. Here is one reason why. http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/texas-tech-students-parade-their-knowledge/

I´m with you all the way.There is a whole series of similar videos here in Romania and to say that the results are dismaying is an understatement.

For instance:

Q: Who invented water?
A: Don´t know, I am from another village.

Q: Who wrote the Bible?
A: The parson.
Q: The parson here in the village?
A: Oh no, this one´s a crook. A really devout parson.

Q: What´s the name of the country we are living in?
A: Don´t know.
Q: I can´t believe it. ´You never thought about it?
A: No.

Q:What continent is Romania on?
A: Don´t know.
Q: Ok, I´ll give you three options to choose from: America, Africa, Asia
A:(after a bit of thinking) Asia

Q: What countries are Romania´s neighbors?
A: Don´t know.
Q: USA?
A: Oh yes, USA, yes.
Q:Where is Romania´s border with the USA?
A: South.

aso, aso, aso