The NationStates Feminism Thread IV: Fight Like A Girl!

[Odreria]

I think that the bigger problem is the economic order of the world than the amount of people being born. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're failing people. We could feed, clothe, and house every person on this planet but we're really choosing not to do it.

So how does that help the carbon dioxide and methane killing the planet issue going?

It's tough to worry about carbon emissions when you don't have food and shelter.

[Sundiata]

So how does that help the carbon dioxide and methane killing the planet issue going?

It's tough to worry about carbon emissions when you don't have food and shelter.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

Because you're acting like I want people to suffer under ideal conditions and that's not true.

Well, you actively advocate for policies that would result in greater human suffering. That is to me indistinguishable from someone who wants greater human suffering.

I could say I respect the sanctity of life while going on a murdering rampage across the country, but then my actions would demonstrate my words to be insincere. In a similar sense, you religious conservatives can say all you like that you love your fellow human beings, but I can see from your actions that your words are insincere.

Or at least, the love that you have is that obsessive, abusive kind of love we are all better without.

[New haven america]

It's tough to worry about carbon emissions when you don't have food and shelter.

It actually makes those issues worse because then you loose valuable land for agriculture and habitation.

[Odreria]

It actually makes those issues worse because then you loose valuable land for agriculture and habitation.

If you think that’s a problem, you are welcome to stop eating and sheltering.

[Sundiata]

Because you're acting like I want people to suffer under ideal conditions and that's not true.

Well, you actively advocate for policies that would result in greater human suffering. That is to me indistinguishable from someone who wants greater human suffering.

I could say I respect the sanctity of life while going on a murdering rampage across the country, but then my actions would demonstrate my words to be insincere. In a similar sense, you religious conservatives can say all you like that you love your fellow human beings, but I can see from your actions that your words are insincere.

Or at least, the love that you have is that obsessive, abusive kind of love we are all better without.

I could say the same about your socialism which has a horrible track record in practice but I won't sink that low. We both know that I don't want people to suffer. I know that you don't want people to suffer. I don't think it's fair to call my attitude abusive. In the context of inevitable human suffering I think it's a bold idea to offer any sort of solution, even really hard ones.

If we're ever going to live in a good society then we've all got to bear each other's burdens. We've also got to try to be good people so we don't make the problems worse. People have done so many horrible things to each other. We don't want to be like that. Is there a reason to be? Yes. There's lots of reasons to be horrible and resentful to each other but that only makes our economic and social problems worse.

When I talk about human life I want our society to foster that. We know exactly what the problems are with individuals, with society, and that's why I know we're capable of uniting against that. It's a miracle that society even works to any extent given how flawed we are.

[The Blaatschapen]

...and we see yet another demonstration of the religious-conservative mindset on politics.

God demands that everyone that has sex raise children. No, God doesn’t care if you’re ready for that responsibility or not. Whatever life plans you might have had - shove it, God isn’t interested, just have children. If you have a few unresolved mental problems - hey, living is always good, right? I’m sure God won’t mind that children are being raised under unsuitable parents as long as, y’know, they’re born and exist.

God wants civilisation to detonate in environmental catastrophe under uncontrolled population growth.

I think that the bigger problem is the economic order of the world than the amount of people being born. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're failing people. We could feed, clothe, and house every person on this planet but we're really choosing not to do it.

I should get dressed and have breakfast.

Thanks for reminding me.

[Sundiata]

I think that the bigger problem is the economic order of the world than the amount of people being born. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're failing people. We could feed, clothe, and house every person on this planet but we're really choosing not to do it.

I should get dressed and have breakfast.

Thanks for reminding me.

You're welcome. There's so much to get done just so we can live and you're brave for facing the unknown in that small way.

[Thepeopl]

...and we see yet another demonstration of the religious-conservative mindset on politics.

God demands that everyone that has sex raise children. No, God doesn’t care if you’re ready for that responsibility or not. Whatever life plans you might have had - shove it, God isn’t interested, just have children. If you have a few unresolved mental problems - hey, living is always good, right? I’m sure God won’t mind that children are being raised under unsuitable parents as long as, y’know, they’re born and exist.

God wants civilisation to detonate in environmental catastrophe under uncontrolled population growth.

I think that the bigger problem is the economic order of the world than the amount of people being born. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're failing people. We could feed, clothe, and house every person on this planet but we're really choosing not to do it.

No, we couldn't. It would cost too much resources and it would not help people to be responsible parents.
I don't want to have 10/ 18 children and two adults living in a 1 room apartment . That's what will happen if we don't allow any birth control. It will render us completely vulnerable for epidemics.

We don't need more parents, we need better parents. Having so many children will lower the life expectancy for all family members.

Birth control ensures that I can feed, clothe and educate the 4 children I have. More children will mean no university for all. And I do think a few better educated people will do more good than many poorly educated people.
Studies have shown that poverty leads to bad decisions, hunger is detrimental to mental health and brain structure. Let's not push more people into poverty because your god tells you to advocate for more babies.

[Punished UMN]

...and we see yet another demonstration of the religious-conservative mindset on politics.

God demands that everyone that has sex raise children. No, God doesn’t care if you’re ready for that responsibility or not. Whatever life plans you might have had - shove it, God isn’t interested, just have children. If you have a few unresolved mental problems - hey, living is always good, right? I’m sure God won’t mind that children are being raised under unsuitable parents as long as, y’know, they’re born and exist.

God wants civilisation to detonate in environmental catastrophe under uncontrolled population growth.

Conception should be a matter of personal freedom, but most of your criticisms have little grounding in economic reality. There's more than enough resources for most people alive today to have children comfortably, they're just being hoarded by a handful of the population. But even if they weren't, how high do your standards of living have to be to be "suitable" parents? Was everyone two-hundred years ago an unsuitable parent because penicillin had yet to be invented? Like it's fundamentally the idea that people who have suffering shouldn't exist, and there's very obvious problems with going down that road.

[Punished UMN]

I think that the bigger problem is the economic order of the world than the amount of people being born. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we're failing people. We could feed, clothe, and house every person on this planet but we're really choosing not to do it.

No, we couldn't. It would cost too much resources and it would not help people to be responsible parents.
I don't want to have 10/ 18 children and two adults living in a 1 room apartment . That's what will happen if we don't allow any birth control. It will render us completely vulnerable for epidemics.

We don't need more parents, we need better parents. Having so many children will lower the life expectancy for all family members.

Birth control ensures that I can feed, clothe and educate the 4 children I have. More children will mean no university for all. And I do think a few better educated people will do more good than many poorly educated people.
Studies have shown that poverty leads to bad decisions, hunger is detrimental to mental health and brain structure. Let's not push more people into poverty because your god tells you to advocate for more babies.

You're confusing "most of the world's resources are beings hoarded or wasted on trifles" with "there aren't enough resources." Every human on the planet could have a reasonable standard of living simply by ensuring a more equal distribution of resources and stopping for-profit redundant production.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

There's more than enough resources for most people alive today to have children comfortably, they're just being hoarded by a handful of the population.

Depends on your standards of "comfortable", I guess, which does rise rather substantially as civilisation continues to advance - nobody ever heard of the internet 50 years ago and yet good luck participating in the social, cultural, and economic life of any large and high-income city nowadays without it.

I was born in a high-income democracy and have enjoyed a lifestyle characteristic of the same. I have certain ideas about what a "comfortable" lifestyle looks like, and if I divide the world's economic production by the number of people sharing it I don't like the quotient that I get.

I think it's a very risky bargain to enact policies guaranteed to lead to rapid and permanent population growth, just hoping that technological and economic growth will keep up. Sure, it might, and for the last few centuries it has, but if it doesn't in the future then the resulting deprivation and poverty would then be the result of religious people who pushed for such policies.

But even if they weren't, how high do your standards of living have to be to be "suitable" parents?

Easy. If the parents don't want the maintenance of an additional child in their budget, then they're not wealthy enough to have one.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

So how does that help the carbon dioxide and methane killing the planet issue going?

It's tough to worry about carbon emissions when you don't have food and shelter.

Nah I'd still be worried about that even if I was homeless. The apocalypse should scare everyone.

[Punished UMN]

There's more than enough resources for most people alive today to have children comfortably, they're just being hoarded by a handful of the population.

Depends on your standards of "comfortable", I guess, which does rise rather substantially as civilisation continues to advance - nobody ever heard of the internet 50 years ago and yet good luck participating in the social, cultural, and economic life of any large and high-income city nowadays without it.

I was born in a high-income democracy and have enjoyed a lifestyle characteristic of the same. I have certain ideas about what a "comfortable" lifestyle looks like, and if I divide the world's economic production by the number of people sharing it I don't like the quotient that I get.

I think it's a very risky bargain to enact policies guaranteed to lead to rapid and permanent population growth, just hoping that technological and economic growth will keep up. Sure, it might, and for the last few centuries it has, but if it doesn't in the future then the resulting deprivation and poverty would then be the moral responsibility of the religious people who pushed for such policies.

But even if they weren't, how high do your standards of living have to be to be "suitable" parents?

Easy. If the parents don't want the maintenance of an additional child in their budget, then they're not wealthy enough to have one.

And for a person born into the family of a billionaire, they likely would believe that your lifestyle is not enough to be "comfortable."

There shouldn't be a thing as being "wealthy enough" to have children. For a socialist, you have a lot of ideas that intrinsically favor the systemic power of the ruling class and their continual control over the world's resources. Whether someone would be a good parent should never be reducible to the amount which Capital has declared their labor to be worth after exploitation.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

There shouldn't be a thing as being "wealthy enough" to have children.

Nobody should be prohibited from having children, regardless of their economic stature, and earlier discussions in this thread has convinced me that the State should support those who choose to have children economically.

But if an enterprising young couple decides that they don't have enough money to raise a child, for whatever standard of "enough" makes sense to them, then that is their decision and nobody else's.

I don't think I have enough economic security to be even thinking about a family, and who are you to tell me what my priorities should be?

[Punished UMN]

There shouldn't be a thing as being "wealthy enough" to have children.

Nobody should be prohibited from having children, regardless of their economic stature, and earlier discussions in this thread has convinced me that the State should support those who choose to have children economically.

But if an enterprising young couple decides that they don't have enough money to raise a child, for whatever standard of "enough" makes sense to them, then that is their decision and nobody else's.

I don't think I have enough economic security to be even thinking about a family, and who are you to tell me what my priorities should be?

I already said conception should be a personal choice, but the way you've framed your arguments is pretty implicitly favorable to bourgeois wealth-distribution.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

I already said conception should be a personal choice, but the way you've framed your arguments is pretty implicitly favorable to bourgeois wealth-distribution.

Eh; despite my current username I'm only a Socialist in the expansive sense of that word - I've described myself as a social-democrat in my signature and that's probably more accurate.

I agree with the basic capitalist idea that people should be free to choose what they wish to consume within the bounds of resources they control in an open market. My position on this discussion stems from that, as does my position on narcotics, prostitution, etc. I just happen to not agree with liberal-capitalists on who ought to control how much in the open market.

[Punished UMN]

I already said conception should be a personal choice, but the way you've framed your arguments is pretty implicitly favorable to bourgeois wealth-distribution.

Eh; despite my current username I'm only a Socialist in the expansive sense of that word - I've described myself as a social-democrat in my signature and that's probably more accurate.

I agree with the basic capitalist idea that people should be free to choose what they wish to consume within the bounds of resources they control in an open market. My position on this discussion stems from that, as does my position on narcotics, prostitution, etc. I just happen to not agree with liberal-capitalists on who ought to control how much in the open market.

But it's that idea which is driving up the amount of resources being consumed and continuing to increase production, which is creating the climate crisis. The system isn't sustainable, it depends on continuous expansion, and it requires that continuous expansion with or without an increase in the population, and so with declining birth rates in the wealthiest countries, producers have simply relied on getting people to spend well-past their means to continue justifying their overproduction, but overproduction is inherent to Capitalism and was one of the first criticisms Marx made of the system. That your standard of living requires such a massive amount of resources in a capitalist system does not meant it inherently requires such a massive amount of resources to continue relatively unchanged. The issue is that capitalism has many redundant industries that fundamentally are not that vital to your standard of living, but which require massive amounts of resources. Electronics and digital media are a great example of these.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

-snip-

The claim that my basic idea, that it is good when the market gets people what they want, is the prime driver behind the wastages and inefficiences of modern-day capitalism requires some explanation.

But that's getting really off-topic. There's probably a capitalism discussion thread out there somewhere.

[Andsed]

1. Or maybe they just want some fucc without having to worry about child support or the socioeconomic needs of a young child.
2. This is why theocracy is bad, children.

Well, don't you think that it's a problem with our society that poverty is even possible for any young person, for anyone? We need a more reasonable floor. I understand the socioeconomic concerns about becoming a parent.

I also get that people want to express love romantically without feeling stressed, it's totally normal.

There is more than just finances in why someone would not want to have a child. Even if you capable of supporting them, it still requires you to basically give up over a decade of your life and much of any future plans. Thats no small commitment. So, I don´t see what the problem is with couples using contraceptive so they can freely enjoy sex without having to worry about that.

[Thepeopl]

Well, don't you think that it's a problem with our society that poverty is even possible for any young person, for anyone? We need a more reasonable floor. I understand the socioeconomic concerns about becoming a parent.

I also get that people want to express love romantically without feeling stressed, it's totally normal.

There is more than just finances in why someone would not want to have a child. Even if you capable of supporting them, it still requires you to basically give up over a decade of your life and much of any future plans. Thats no small commitment. So, I don´t see what the problem is with couples using contraceptive so they can freely enjoy sex without having to worry about that.

Wow! Your children are independent at 10? Mine take 2 decades and even longer if I look to other families. I know of an adult child who has relationships with a lover, they move in together. The "child", let's call them Alex. Alex sells the surplus inventory, gives up their apartment and after 1.5 years the relationship ends. Alex is forced out of the house, goes to the parents to live in. They pay for the new inventory of the new apartment and Alex finds a new relationship. Alex has done this at least 5 times now. And every time the parents buy new inventory...Alex is 46 years by now.

[Punished UMN]

-snip-

The claim that my basic idea, that it is good when the market gets people what they want, is the prime driver behind the wastages and inefficiences of modern-day capitalism requires some explanation.

But that's getting really off-topic. There's probably a capitalism discussion thread out there somewhere.

It's the prime driver of waste and inefficiency because people constantly want new things and aren't satisfied with what they have. People continually want more, and the market is what satisfies that demand, by continually producing more. This is true even in the replacement of items with updated versions which do not offer substantial improvement. The oil companies and others aren't continuously producing in order to meet a non-existent demand, they produce as much as they do and it is destroying the climate because the consumers continue to demand it.

[Fahran]

The working classes of today live better, in most material respects, and longer than the aristocrats of 1066. Fertility has not declined solely due to an inegalitarian distribution of wealth. A large part of the change has had to do with the shift from a labor-intensive agrarian economy to a capital-intensive post-industrial economy, greater reproductive freedom through contraception, higher standards of living becoming normalized and deemed non-negotiable, and lower rates of infant mortality, religosity, etc.

[Kowani]

European Commission proposes legislation to engender equality

Pay transparency and better enforcement of equal pay

The legislative proposal focuses on two core elements of equal pay: measures to ensure pay transparency for workers and employers as well as better access to justice for victims of pay discrimination.

Pay transparency measures:

Pay transparency for job-seekers – Employers will have to provide information about the initial pay level or its range in the job vacancy notice or before the job interview. Employers will not be allowed to ask prospective workers about their pay history.
Right to information for employees – Workers will have the right to request information from their employer on their individual pay level and on the average pay levels, broken down by sex, for categories of workers doing the same work or work of equal value.
Reporting on gender pay gap – Employers with at least 250 employees must publish information on the pay gap between female and male workers in their organisation. For internal purposes, they should also provide information on the pay gap between female and male employees by categories of workers doing the same work or work of equal value.
Joint pay assessment – Where pay reporting reveals a gender pay gap of at least 5% and when the employer cannot justify the gap on objective gender neutral factors, employers will have to carry out a pay assessment, in cooperation with workers' representatives.
Better access to justice for victims of pay discrimination:

Compensation for workers – workers who suffered gender pay discrimination can get compensation, including full recovery of back pay and related bonuses or payments in kind.
Burden of proof on employer – it will be by default for the employer, not the worker, to prove that there was no discrimination in relation to pay.
Sanctions to include fines – Member States should establish specific penalties for infringements of the equal pay rule, including a minimum level of fines.
Equality bodies and workers' representatives may act in legal or administrative proceedings on behalf of workers as well as lead on collective claims on equal pay.

[Wink Wonk We Like Stonks]

Texas school scraps chivalry assignment that had girls "obey any reasonable request of a male"

The history class wanted the girls to roleplay as Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind or some other obsolete gendered archetype for women that isn't around much anymore in the present. Then it was cancelled when it was realized it unfortunately, has too much risk for backfiring or misunderstandings from certain people or interest groups.

If history is any guide, I'd be willing to bet that eventually, our societies will regress back towards the gender roles being more like how it was in the past once again. These things seem to go in cycles. If enough circumstances change to where women can't work in the workplace as much anymore, because of climate change; or maybe men will take the place of women in staying at home too much from there being fewer male dominated industries remaining going forward.

Who knows the future for sure?

you had me in the first third half, not gonna lie