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Also it storms pretty much every afternoon.

and with astonishing regularity. between 2-3pm almost every single day there is some rain, though the intensity varies.

at least thats how it is on the gulf coast anyway

edit: page 1323 critical snipah

because you spend the majority of your time in the climate controlled boxes you live, work, and drive in.

going outside is for blue collar people and normies.

leaving things out to dry in the summer or fall in central/south florida isnt really an option given that the humidity is rarely <90%.

It'll probably get dry, sure, but it'll smell like a swamp basically forever after.

ooook. I took a day off from this and the other thread. Lets dive back in.

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especially when you are talking about the infringement of our basic values of meritocracy and equality.

I'm gonna need you to clarify this blurb. I know definitions of words these days are fluid when talking about topics like feminism and (more often) civil rights so this statement is kind of a curve ball for me as the concepts of meritocracy and equality are diametrically opposed in this context.

You cannot achieve equality without abolishing or, at the very least, putting a hiatus on meritocracy as the baseline required for the former does not allow for the latter, and the latter can never be achieved without inviting criticisms that the former has been compromised.

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We shouldn't be satisfied that we have eliminated the inequalities that we have so far, we should be ashamed that there are still inequalities left. And I'm sorry, but regardless of your reasoning, and regardless of how much you chide him for it, I don't think you can fully appreciate this point if you are still willing to elect as your head of state a well-known racist, sexist, ableist, and all-round bigot. You are willing to tolerate discrimination under certain grounds, and I just fundamentally disagree with that position.

I'm willing to tolerate a lot of things if I gauge that the benefit is greater than the cost. That is the basis of compromise. If anything, it makes me a realist. Not a proponent of all the horrible things Trump says/does. We don't elect perfect candidates because such a thing does not exist. From a realistic perspective, we don't elect the candidate that represents us best, we elect the candidate that is least in opposition to our interests as citizens. Perhaps you elect your officials on the basis of what feels right, but I elect mine on the basis of whether or not they will make my life better or worse with their policies. Idealism flies out the window when you have to figure out where rent is going to come from next month.

In this election, I have come to the conclusion that while Trump and Hillary would be equally bad, I am supporting Trump because he is less likely to make things worse simply because he will not have the broad base support to do anything. Remember that only about half of the population of the US votes, and due to the quirks of the electoral system, a majority of those don't even necessarily select the president. Thus a presidential win is not a mandate as <25% of the population elects the president in the US. And those are the high turnout elections - a fraction of that elects the real power in the midterms. These considerations are where I have hedged my bets. It has almost nothing to do with a belief that Trump is the better candidate from a policy standpoint.

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Again, another problem I've had with third wave feminism is that it has been too focused on white, middle-class women, rather than women of different ethnicities and backgrounds - who tend to have enjoyed far fewer of the benefits second wave feminism work. However, I do think much of third wave feminism has started to shift towards this angle in recent times.

And this is where I think the national differences start to rear their heads. At least in the US, third-wave feminism (hence 3F its a fingerfull m8) is notoriously objectiveless and welcoming to 'other' causes. The 3F focus on intersectionality has done nothing but hurt the valid causes because 3Fers tend to get lumped in with their allies and frustrations with both groups are amplified. If they focused on, say, the gender pay gap then that would give them more cohesion and something to rally behind. Instead its just an amorphous blob of people that just seem angry about everything without offering real solutions to what seems to be, more often than not, the fake problems they highlight. Body/fat acceptance, for example, tends to fall under the feminist umbrella and I don't think any rational person will find that to be a valid cause, nor do I think it is a feminist issue because overeating is a genderless sin.

3Fers are currently wandering around in the desert firing scuds at the mirages of the ivory towers they seek to destroy. Its ineffectual and pointless, but I guess if nothing else its a statement. They don't have a Gloria Steinem or a Susan B. Anthony to lead them out. When they find their Moses and decide on a destination, they will have no issues getting support and conquering whatever they want.

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I mean, you yourself freely admitted you blasted me with a bunch of strawmans and reductive reasoning simply because you knew I went to uni; you freely admit you lack objectivity here. End of the day, both sides definitely need to just step back and get a little bit more perspective, and stop applying the views of vocal minorities to majorities. We need more of a dialogue between feminism and wider society, imo, with the problem atm that third wave feminism is becoming somewhat more of an inward-looking movement, whereas feminism should be a gender equality movement that does actually benefit men by challenging traditional gender roles (ie. toxic masculinity, the frequent anti-feminist "but divorcing men never get custody" complaint), even if the net benefit is mostly to women.

I freely admitted I went hard on the offensive because I assumed you were one of the indoctrinated massed that floods out of the university gates with a useless degree and a mind full of tropes invented by people who have never left academia. I knew you were older, but I did not give you the consideration of assuming you grew mentally along with physically. I admit to mischaracterizing and underestimating your ability to think rationally on the basis of our past interactions.

I do not admit to anything else you claim.

3F in its current form is dangerous from an intellectual standpoint because of the prior mentioned lack of an objective, and the fact that so many vocal minorities can get so much airtime is the best example of that. 3F is dangerous because the alleged silent majority isn't standing up to the vocal minorities and telling them that they do not represent the majority. And those very loud, very belligerent minorities are the ones that are going hard into the totalitarian mindset and accusing everyone who stands up to them of thoughtcrime or guilt by association. Fighting against 3F in its current, leaderless and objectiveless, form is not wrong. Movements like those can do nothing but harm as they ultimately become impenetrable to outside influence and interaction. Attacking in every direction is bad for both sides.

I think we agree on this at least, yes?

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But it patently does though - to both sides. I agree that it shouldn't influence voting intention, but the positive impact that a female POTUS would have in breaking the glass ceiling is obvious, and can't be dismissed out of hand. The day Hilary Clinton being a woman does not matter to her presidential campaign will be the day that being a woman doesn't matter to your career prospects and place in the world as a whole - and we are a fair way off of that.

I'd argue that it would have been much more important in 2008.

Electing a black man as the undisputed leader of the free world is the single most progressive thing the US has ever done or likely will do unless we can finesse a dog or something into the presidency. Perhaps the impact of that statement won't really resonate with you, since I imagine you only have a topical understanding of race relations in US history, but every other glass ceiling was shattered the moment he took office. A woman taking office at this point would be little more than a formality to reiterate the point. And like I said in another post elsewhere, there are many other women who are more deserving of that honor than Hillary Clinton.

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So how we get there is defined by how open the society we create is for women and men who want their employment prospects to go beyond traditional gendered spheres of employment. We need to stop closing entire fields of employment off to people based off of gender - and this is not just limited to women. Mainly, we need to make the sciences, computing and engineering feel less like old boys club, but likewise fields like construction need to be more open to women, and fields like health and beauty and childcare more open to men (there's never gonna be an equal gender balance here, but that's not the point - here in Britain, Andrea Leadsom implied there's a risk of paedophilia with male carers). Mostly, this is about the education system, but the fields themselves can and often to have plenty of issues present for the women who do manage to enter them.

Long term, positive discrimination is of course anti-meritocratic. In the short-to-mid term, however, some level of it is a necessary tool to help achieve this by providing more visible female role models in fields where they are under-represented, as a way of showing young women that pursuing a career in politics or the sciences isn't futile. I think mostly, though, you start by changing the ways parents raise their kids, and how the education system genders roles.

Take a look at this and this

It shows a ~2% growth in female representation in the span of 6-7 years in traditionally male dominated positions, specifically as it relates to STEM. I don't really think the workforce at large will ever see full equality in either pay or representation simply do to the fact that females will never be physically capable of performing the highly dangerous and physically demanding jobs that usually garner higher pay for their risks. I'm talking about oil workers, construction, and things like that. But if you narrow it down to a particular sector that doesn't carry those caveats, then you see gradual growth.

The ramifications of the victories won by the 2Fers in the 70s are starting to pay dividends a generation and a half after they won their battles, which is about what you would expect to see given the time it takes for a human life cycle. Nobody should ever suggest that we will see equal representation in the workforce overnight, and continuing to highlight what is a changing situation only acts as an irritant. Things are changing. Gradually. As they should.

The pay gap, however, is a concern, and a very valid cause that I wish had a cohesive movement behind it.

d'aww :3

aww, i kinda liked the idea of having to be moderately self-sufficient

the devolution into "pass the resources to the guy with the best ratio" was always kinda lame

thus each player is mostly playing on their own.

is mostly playing on their own.

on their own.

Confirming my status as doomed.

lest we forget

Ok. We have gotten off the original message here, so I will say a couple things to clear this up and restart. I forget that you're not 10 or whatever anymore so being sloppy isn't going to work like it used to. My argument remains unchanged, but perhaps a rephrasing will clear things up.

Nobody disputes that ~sexism~ in whatever form it may take still exists in the western world. My grandmother is refusing to vote for Hillary despite being a lifelong solid south democrat because "thats not a job for a woman." Likewise there are probably some men (and women) who are wary of Hillary being in that position as a woman and refusing to vote for her. But there is a much, much larger number of people who have come to the perfectly valid conclusion that Hillary Clinton is a corrupt and manipulative tool of the elite. I am one of those people. To suggest that anyone who dislikes Hillary Clinton is a potential sexist even at a very low level is an affront not only to those people, but also those who are still fighting legitimate battles against inequality in the western world. Using their weapon to push Hillary bastardizes the original aim of the feminists which sought not to see women be free of critique, but rather to be in a position where they could be critiqued with the same qualifiers as their male counterparts.

Further, without knowing the particular circumstances of a person's background and lifestyle, it can only serve to do harm to your position to suggest that they are - inadvertently or otherwise - guilty of harboring sexist prejudices. So to throw the entirety of anti-Hillary voters into the mix as possible sexists is beyond extreme and greatly mitigates the power of their legitimate criticisms of a presidential candidate of the United States. You are effectively shaping the conversation to be about something that does not, and should not, even matter in this scenario.

As a motivator and topic for discussion in choosing a president, sex/race/religion/etc. do not have a place. Society is changing and it has become more egalitarian than ever. Our current president is walking proof of that. I do not want a president that was chosen because society at large was bullied into supporting her, just like I do not want a president that was chosen because his opponent had a vagina.

Obama was famously quiet about being black in both 2008 and 2012. Even though to a pragmatist that would appear to be his most devastating weapon, he did not use it. He didn't have to. His positions and record spoke for themselves. Hillary's campaign shouting to every corner of the country that she is, in fact, a woman, is offensive and childish and utterly epitomizes the concept of pandering. Go and watch the democratic debates. At one point she literally answers a question about how she would be different from Obama by saying "because I am a woman." Why does that even matter? Almost nobody under the age of 30 today will get the benefit of social security and even fewer will ever retire but you're the best choice for president because of your lot in the genetic lottery?

However, as others have mentioned, sexism as a motivator is a much less important issue than it was in the past and its continued value as a weapon is very often espoused by an extremist vocal minority in order to push their agenda and browbeat people into an apology they do not owe, an action they needn't take, or a position they don't necessarily believe in.

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Now for why I was initially so mad:

My initial reaction when I read your second post was one of incredulity along the lines of "jesus christ he grew up and went to university and now hes one of those social justice nutcases" so my objectivity wasn't all that strong when I made my first (long) reply.

Third wave feminism is dangerously attractive to young people. It offers an easy excuse for why things suck for our generations, and the ease with which opponents are shut down is even more attractive because while confronting prejudice is the best way to end it, inventing prejudice where none exists is much easier to do and much harder to combat. Any movement which turns minor sleights into 'micro-aggressions' and loudly and vehemently shouts down opposing thought using red herrings and appeals to ignorance while calling for the implementation of voluntary segregation in the form of 'safe spaces' is not a movement worth defending. And those are the less insane ones - others espouse killing all white men or infringing rights to prove some kind of vacuous point. It is a fruitless distraction from the real issues facing everyone in today's world - income inequality, crippling debt at every level, corporate involvement in politics, etc.

Especially when it seems appear in the form of a sweeping generalization about the nature of what will eventually be about half of the US electorate. Burying ones head in the sand is a much different act than consciously ignoring an issue because it does not matter.

Hillary Clinton being a woman does not matter.

Hillary Clinton taking bribes from sovereign states through her foundation, using that private email server, pushing for the arming of what would become ISIS, loudly advocating for wars in the middle east and greater intervention in the Levant and Libya, bullying women who spoke out against Bill's sexual abuses in the white house, actively manipulating her party to ensure her eventual selection... These are things that do matter, and 100% valid criticisms of any political candidate that can be made before even considering who is behind them. I firmly believe that if the presidential race was an anonymous contest without the gaffes and comments, that Trump would be winning with an historic margin of victory predicted. To me, that is the measure of a political candidate.

Can the things they have done hold up to scrutiny when separated from their person?
How do those things inform their present positions?
How often do they change positions?
Have they ever stood for something controversial and stuck with it despite opposition?

do you have a link to the actual study?

To suggest that positions are informed by diffuse prejudices perpetrated by real sexists at the top of the food chain is the exact same thing as suggesting that society is sexist. I did not create this argument, you did.

A cogent argument is one that can be boiled down to its constituent parts and analyzed without drawing in too many complications or details to justify or rationalize the constituent parts. This is why third wave feminism has largely been confined to the internet - under public scrutiny and outside of the confines of the echo chambers it does not hold up. The work the second-wavers and first-wavers did is paying dividends, albeit slowly. Its the same with civil rights and other equality initiatives. Society does not change overnight, and continuing to loudly and dismissively marginalize vast portions of society can only serve to incite a backlash against the fundamental principles of the original feminists, those being justice and equality for all.

What your argument boils down to is that society is sexist, thus Hillary is hated.

You are trying to dodge that fact by painting it as accidental, that somehow people who hate Hillary just didn't know any better than to hate her, but that does not change the constituent parts of the argument. It simply obfuscates them with a barrier of plausible deniability.

There is also the problem of the direct contradictions:

So no, the majority of people don't hate Hilary because they hate women, but it definitely does serve to amplify their existing grievances.

overt vs. subtle sexism

So are they sexist or aren't they?
If you suggest that they aren't, then the foundation of the entire argument crumbles.
If you suggest that they are then I am right.
If you suggest that there is a grey area, then that opens your argument up to the the same accusations of gender-based criticism - people support Hillary only because she is a woman.

See you aren't participating in some crusade against MUH PATRIARCHY, you are actively perpetuating a dead-end line of thinking that only serves to incite with no tangible end-game. You will never eliminate sexism, racism, other -isms, or indeed any other societal ill by painting all of society with a large brush and then complaining about the paint job.

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You're the one who freely who admits you're voting for US president a politician who uses sexist language to belittle his female candidates.

And this is the perfect example of the point I am making. I've made probably nearly 6,000 words worth of explanations for why I will be voting for Trump including sources and rationalizations for that action. And with the exception of the last blurb in my first post on the UMD thread, the gender of the candidates has been the furthest thing from my mind.

Yet my support for a candidate who said something offensive - a quirk I have not shied away from calling him names for - is all your point boils down to.

That is your argument in a nutshell, and why it is objectively wrong.

They are, or at least Australia is. Aus has a truly horrendous track record of sexism in politics, which Genevieve alluded to.

For example, this little doozy from Tony Abbott:

"What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up,"

thats pretty awful

As for why Obama doesn't get a bad rap, he is a sitting president and our media giants (with the exception of Fox news) are very much liberal organisms. Fox News does mention the drone strikes, BUT the people who watch Fox news are, by and large, people who see no issue with the practice. There isn't any widespread outrage (outside of the internet) because it is a 'liberal' president bombing brown people and it would be bad for his liberal supporters to decry the drone strikes because that would only serve to hurt the party and, since there's only really 2 of those, it would mean helping the opposition with swing voters.

Hillary is a candidate - essentially a civilian - so she is open game for criticism. No major outlet or politician is suggesting that Hillary is bad because shes a woman. Mostly because that would be suicide. It seems like straya and England are much more backwards in this regard if politicians and news organizations are actively bringing anatomy and gender roles to light.

The fundamental basis of your position and the request you are making of me and anyone else is not to dispel the idea that sexism exists, but to dispel the idea that we do not like Hillary because we hate women. Ergo, you are asking anyone responding to you to assume the role of a secret sexist in order to blow away that notion and to prove that they have a valid reason to criticize Hillary Clinton. You are asking them to assume guilt and then prove innocence. There is no 'agree to disagree' in this instance.

Suggesting that everyone who hates Hillary is secretly a misogynist is no different than suggesting that everyone who is an atheist secretly hates god or that everyone who opposes immigration secretly hates brown people. You are lumping everyone who disagrees with you into an easily manageable lump and then asking them why they are a lump.

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There are people who hate Hillary Clinton because she is a woman.

There are people who hate Hillary Clinton because she is corrupt and manipulative.

What you are suggesting is that the second group is a superset of the first group. The suggestion is not only blatantly a red herring, but also really offensive to anyone who has valid reasons to criticize Hillary.

I don't know how thoroughly your news is covering the election, but from our perspective Hillary is not a poor woman under attack, but a career politician who is currently fighting off legitimate claims of corruption and negligence.

well i like you anyway <3