Publishing offensive content about the Prophet

[FortyTwo]

In the mammal kingdom, it is usually the males who fight, rather than the females. The way our society is set up, people are well into adulthood before they choose their mate and reproduce. So the young man is like the lion who got kicked out of the pride for being male, but isn't strong enough to have his own pride. He fights with other males to try to establish dominance, or tries to sneak in and find a female.

I also think the schools are very frustrating for boys and young men, especially when they discontinue physical education and make the kids sit all day.

In addition, I think there are too few opportunities to actually fight with other males. Sports helps with this to an extent, and so does martial arts. I wish the schools taught martial arts to children.

I have a massive gripe with this on the basis of gender essentialism in the first place, but I also think it's flat-out incorrect.

Schools funnel funding from everything into their sports teams. Hypermasculine behavior and its resulting violence is at best ignored and at worst encouraged. Schools are far from discontinuing physical education and stifling traditional masculine activities. In fact they do their absolute best to shoehorn anyone who doesn't care for these things, into doing them anyway.

I say this as someone who just graduated from a very typical high school, less than a year ago, in a relatively liberal part of the US.

 

[Second Summer]

Where is this magical place, where women are not victims of male brutality?

It's some place in the future where the culture is no longer hostile to women.

 

[Blobbenstein]

maybe when men and women don't have to depend on each other financially, and for housing, there will be more harmony between the sexes.

 

[Second Summer]

Schools are far from discontinuing physical education and stifling traditional masculine activities. In fact they do their absolute best to shoehorn anyone who doesn't care for these things, into doing them anyway.

Do they still have those cheer-leading teams we see in US TV series? Which incidentally seem to consist exclusively of sexually attractive females?

 

[Second Summer]

There is not some menacing Islamic threat. That is hate and propaganda and the media latching onto instances of Islamic extremism while ignoring the constant barrage of Christian extremist hate crimes. Nothing more. They are insubstantial claims motivated by far-right racist ideology, and so I am going to disagree with any support for them, even if it's well-intentioned.

There is a conflict between western geo-political interests and the unprivileged masses in the Middle East. This has been going on for some time. Over the last decade or two, the groups who stand up for the little man in this area have increasingly tended to be islamists. This conflict is now spilling over into Europe which has a large Muslim immigrant population, and other places such as Africa. So far Europe has not suffered much because of the conflict, probably much thanks to vigilant intelligence agencies. Africa on the other hand is less fortunate.

 

[FortyTwo]

maybe when men and women don't have to depend on each other financially, and for housing, there will be more harmony between the sexes.

Where does this idea come from though? Who says men and women have to depend on each other financially and for housing? Is that really the big endgame? Women and men depending on each other financially and for housing? There will be more harmony between the sexes when sexism is dismantled, not when heterosexual people stop getting married.

 

[Mischief]

Do they still have those cheer-leading teams we see in US TV series? Which incidentally seem to consist exclusively of sexually attractive females?

Oh, yes.

And in high school at least, only popular girls were chosen for the cheerleading squad, at least back in the dark ages when I went to school.

 

[Blobbenstein]

Where does this idea come from though? Who says men and women have to depend on each other financially and for housing?

well I have often read about people who are together for practical reasons. Marriages which have ended but the people still live together because they need the roof over their head. It's not good for people. Perhaps you should consider what it might be like to be homeless. It isn't a trivial situation, and not all men and women are go getters who can easily land on their feet if they split up, and set up a new home.

In a Start Trek(or possible future) world, then every person could have their own house to live in, if they wanted that. And I think less people would end up in violent relationships.

Of course some people would still have emotional dependency, in an unhealthy relationship, but if they wanted, they could more easily escape from it.

 

[FortyTwo]

well I have often read about people who are together for practical reasons. Marriages which have ended but the people still live together because they need the roof over their head. It's not good for people. Perhaps you should consider what it might be like to be homeless. It isn't a trivial situation, and not all men and women are go getters who can easily land on their feet if they split up, and set up a new home.

Of course not. But that's like saying that all the problems of sexism stem back from homelessness due to heterosexuals getting divorced. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

In a Start Trek(or possible future) world, then every person could have their own house to live in, if they wanted that. And I think less people would end up in violent relationships.

Okay, I kind of see what you're saying here? Because individual housing if needed is absolutely attainable in this world and should be aimed for no matter how difficult it would be to implement. If every person was given somewhere to live for certain then there'd certainly be a lot less violence in the world.

 

[Blobbenstein]

But that's like saying that all the problems of sexism stem back from homelessness due to heterosexuals getting divorced. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I wasn't talking about all the problems of sexism, I was talking about some reasons for domestic violence between a lot of people, homosexual, heterosexual, or even just friends and any other relationship.

 

[FortyTwo]

I wasn't talking about all the problems of sexism, I was talking about some reasons for domestic violence between a lot of people, homosexual, heterosexual, or even just friends and any other relationship.

Okay, I was just going off this:

maybe when men and women don't have to depend on each other financially, and for housing, there will be more harmony between the sexes.

which sounded to me like a sort-of reductive catchall scenario of heterosexual marriage, and blaming it for sexism.

I'm still a little bit foggy on where you were going with this, but I think I agree with what you're saying?

 

[Dropkick]

I support the free expression of thought unless it calls for the harming of others.
If you don't like the message expressed either ignore it, or argue against it.
Suppressing free expression is the work of barbarians and despots.

 

[Blobbenstein]

Suppressing free expression is the work of barbarians and despots.

do you think we have a free press in the west?
Or do you think that maybe we are all fed various narratives that suit powerful interests?
I don't mean websites with relatively small audiences, I mean mainstream TV, and papers.

We all grow up, being given various frames of references, about how to view the world. The most pertinent one for here is the frame of reference that killing animals for meat is AOK, and we acturlly need milk, but isn't our whole world view influenced by the people who wrote the history books; the victors?
Do we really know what is going on in the world? Is the media really free to tell us?
What do the best lawyers get paid per hour, if they were to take some paper to court if they printed X,Y and Z? Isn't it easier to toe the line of the media narrative, most of the time.
I know some times the truth gets in the papers, but hidden away in some small article.

Anyway; I am greatly taken by the book Manufacturing Consent, as I probably mentioned in this thread, and I think anyone who is interested in freedom of speech should read it.

 

[Dropkick]

do you think we have a free press in the west?
Or do you think that maybe we are all fed various narratives that suit powerful interests?
I don't mean websites with relatively small audiences, I mean mainstream TV, and papers.

We all grow up, being given various frames of references, about how to view the world. The most pertinent one for here is the frame of reference that killing animals for meat is AOK, and we acturlly need milk, but isn't our whole world view influenced by the people who wrote the history books; the victors?
Do we really know what is going on in the world? Is the media really free to tell us?
What do the best lawyers get paid per hour, if they were to take some paper to court if they printed X,Y and Z? Isn't it easier to toe the line of the media narrative, most of the time.
I know some times the truth gets in the papers, but hidden away in some small article.

Anyway; I am greatly taken by the book Manufacturing Consent, as I probably mentioned in this thread, and I think anyone who is interested in freedom of speech should read it.

You're confusing the right to free expression with how that expression is presented.

Just because someone's views aren't seeing expression via the mainstream media, that doesn't mean they're being suppressed (or oppressed) it normally means that their views don't match that of mainstream media.
Just as you wouldn't expect the veg*n community to disseminate diatribes of meat eaters expounding their worship of meat, you can't expect mainstream media outlets that are slanted towards their own views and agendas to advance views other than their own.

The internet is making the playing field more level, in this instance.

 

[Blobbenstein]

Just because someone's views aren't seeing expression via the mainstream media, that doesn't mean they're being suppressed (or oppressed) it normally means that their views don't match that of mainstream media.

yes, they don't match the mainstream media, and so are suppressed. A newspaper can't risk expressing certain ideas due to the threat of attack by the rest of the media, by the threat of clever and evil litigation, by the threat of loss of advertising contracts. They risk being excluded from news sources....Ideas are most definitely suppressed, although most of the time the people who end up working for the media don't even have, or research these ideas.

In the book Manufacturing Consent they mentioned a TV channel in the US that wanted to run a documentary about some environmental concerns, and situation. Well, guess what; one company threatened to end its advertising contract, if they went ahead and broadcast the doc....I can't remember the details, but that sounds like suppression of ideas to me.

ETA: I think this is what I was referring to:

Public-television station WNET lost its corporate funding from Gulf + Western in I985 after the station showed the documentary "Hungry for Profit," which contains material critical of multinational corporate activities in the Third World. Even before the program was shown, in anticipation of negative corporate reaction, station officials "did all we could to get the program sanitized" (according to one station source). The chief executive of Gulf + Western complained to the station that the program was "virulently anti-business if not anti-American," and that the station's carrying the program was not the behavior "of a friend" of the corporation. The London Economist says that "Most people believe that WNET would not make the same mistake again."

Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

 

[ledboots]

yes, they don't match the mainstream media, and so are suppressed. A newspaper can't risk expressing certain ideas due to the threat of attack by the rest of the media, by the threat of clever and evil litigation, by the threat of loss of advertising contracts. They risk being excluded from news sources....Ideas are most definitely suppressed, although most of the time the people who end up working for the media don't even have, or research these ideas.

In the book Manufacturing Consent they mentioned a TV channel in the US that wanted to run a documentary about some environmental concerns, and situation. Well, guess what; one company threatened to end its advertising contract, if they went ahead and broadcast the doc....I can't remember the details, but that sounds like suppression of ideas to me.

ETA: I think this is what I was referring to:



Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

The mainstream media here in the US is overwhelmingly privately owned. Public television like WNET is dependent upon government and private contributions to fund it. Public tv is commercial-free for the most part, and shows a lot of documentaries and quality children's programming.

I'm just making the distinction; I think the press is far less free than it should be. That book looks very interesting.