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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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madcap
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Gangneung, Korea
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 Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| OK, scratch that. I hadn't read enough of your posts. Just remember, sarcasm doesn't come over as well in writing as it does in speach. Scared me for a second. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:16 pm Post subject: ... |
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| Apparently I missed something. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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| madcap wrote: |
| OK, scratch that. I hadn't read enough of your posts. Just remember, sarcasm doesn't come over as well in writing as it does in speach. Scared me for a second. |
Y'know, I don't think what MOS wrote is intended as satire. I hope I'm wrong though. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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While this board demonstrates that the human race still spews out nutjobs by the batch, I think the general American public would have no trouble with a president who is not a white male. Among the voting population (about 50% of the adults), I think only a minority consider gender and ethnicity a factor in voting for or against a candidate.
I got an e-mail from a friend the other day who said he thinks the Dems should sit out '08 so that the GOP has to shoulder the burden of getting us out of the mess they've gotten us into. I admit I find that a mildly interesting proposition. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| madcap wrote: |
| OK, scratch that. I hadn't read enough of your posts. Just remember, sarcasm doesn't come over as well in writing as it does in speach. Scared me for a second. |
Y'know, I don't think what MOS wrote is intended as satire. I hope I'm wrong though. |
not too familiar with him are you? |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| not too familiar with him are you? |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 2:30 pm Post subject: ... |
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| I got an e-mail from a friend the other day who said he thinks the Dems should sit out '08 so that the GOP has to shoulder the burden of getting us out of the mess they've gotten us into. I admit I find that a mildly interesting proposition. |
I kind of feel that way, too.
It's hard to imagine the GOP fielding something worse than what's there.
It's their mess. Imagine if Kerry were pres right now. Iraq would fall on him.
Why not thoroughly explore the Republican agenda?
Someone has to raise taxes at some point. Aside from war, that's half of what they stand for.
You can't deficit spend forever.
Give them the rope. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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Some women in positions of power in the English-speaking world in recent history...
Maggie Thatcher = partly responsible for initiating neoliberal economics and the end of the welfare state; waged war against Argentina over the Malvinas
Nancy Reagan = tyrannized the White House staff and determined who would serve and in what position on the Cabinet, if the inside gossip is reliable
Jeanne Kirkpatrick = argued we should back authoritarian, anticommunist dictatorships
Madeline Albright = argued for war in Yugoslavia
Condi Rice = black woman, no less. Should be perfect. Everyone on this board happy with her?
Hillary Clinton = voted for the Iraqi War; preferred to see "a vast right-wing conspiracy" rather than the truth that her husband had actually cheated on her
Nancy Pelosi = inconclusive at the moment; too soon to tell
In any case, this is "diversity?" This represents an improvement over the hated white male? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:01 pm Post subject: |
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| How could you forget Helen clark, the PM of New Zealand since 1999! |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| How could you forget Helen clark, the PM of New Zealand since 1999! |
And Jenny Shipley, PM of New Zealand before her? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| How could you forget Helen clark, the PM of New Zealand since 1999! |
And Jenny Shipley, PM of New Zealand before her? |
And Indira Gandhi, PM of India 1966-1977, 1980-1984
(or more recently Sonia Gandhi - who could have been PM if she had wanted to?)
And Golda Meir, PM of Israel - 1969 - 1974
And Benazir Bhutto, PM of Pakistan - late 80s
And Angela Merkel, current chancellor of Germany
And quite a few other female presidents and heads of states, whose nasty foreign names are too difficult for me to spell or even remember...
Last edited by Big_Bird on Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:16 pm Post subject: |
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Not only have we drifted far, far from the center of the English-speaking world that I referenced -- which, I guess, is forgivable. But we have left that world behind entirely -- which goes beyond the scope of what I said.
And I am not certain that it matters too much whether New Zealand's PM is a woman, a Maori, or a Pygmy, for that matter. Still a peripheral, at best regionally-relevant, entity in world affairs.
The issue is whether putting women in positions of power in the United States (or Britain) significantly changes the calculus of things, increases "diversity," or makes for a less "white-male-like" evil world...
I am inclined to suggest putting women in positions of power across the board. Deprive the left of one of its highest-profile scapegoats. Put all of us white males in concentration camps for that matter. And then ask our far-seeing, nuanced friends what they want to do now that, I predict, nothing significantly changes.
Last edited by Gopher on Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:21 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
And I am not certain that it matters too much whether New Zealand's PM is a woman, a Maori, or a Pygmy, for that matter. Still a peripheral, at best regionally-relevant, entity in world affairs.
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Oh gang ah jee...are you going to sit back and take that....?  |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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Excerpt from a classic leftist historical narrative. Has all the standard elements: a male-dominated, capitalist, Western colonization project confronted, oppressed, and raped a female, naturally-occurring Marxian and ecological-friendly, native lifestyle in Peru...
| Irene Silverblatt wrote: |
By the seventeenth century, colonial institutions were firmly entrenched in Peru. While [cowardly!] indigenous men often fled the oppression of the mita and tribute by abandoning their communities and going to work as yanaconas (quasi-serfs) in the emerging haciendas, [heroic! native] women fled to the punas, inaccessible and very distant from the reducciones...Once in the punas, women rejected the forces and symbols of their oppression, disobeying their Spanish administrators, the clergy, as well as their own community officials. They also vigorously rejected the colonial ideology which reinforced their oppression, refusing to go to Mass, participate in Catholic confession, or learn Catholic dogma. More important, women did not just reject Catholicism; they returned to their native religion, and, as best they could, to the quality of [Marxian-like] social relations which their religion expressed...
...women were persecuted...the male bias of these official institutions to which women were prohibitted access...
The return to native religion...was a form of cultural resistance...women attempted to return to the ways of their anscestors. But return meant defiance... |
Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru, 197-210.
Women are virtuous saints, blah, blah, blah.
No they are not. If we are all equal and all differences are socially-constructed, unreal ones, then women are just as human as men. Women share men's faults, then. Each fault, especially ignorance and aggression. Maybe a little more equal, even.
Nietzsche saw this.
| Nietzsche wrote: |
| In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man. |
While I am citing Nietzsche, how about something to buttress Manner of Speaking's parody...?
| Nietzsche wrote: |
| When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexually...Comparing man and woman on the whole, one may say: woman would not have the genius for finery if she did not have an instinct for a secondary role... |
In any case, answering discrimination against women with a new discrimination against men will change little or nothing in the grand scheme of things.
We need to stop this (re)focusing on sexual differences and think about merit and ability. The left needs to remember that this was where they started: EQUALITY. Not absurd romanticization, bitter villification, or unjustly answering undue discrimination with more undue discrimination.
This talk of giving preferences to non-whites, simply because they are non-whites is not different than giving preferences to whites, simply because they are white.
At the end of the day, we either go about this in a principled way or we move the actors around, cosmetically changing things while actually continuing the older, non-inclusive pattern... |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Gopher wrote: |
And I am not certain that it matters too much whether New Zealand's PM is a woman, a Maori, or a Pygmy, for that matter. Still a peripheral, at best regionally-relevant, entity in world affairs.
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Oh gang ah jee...are you going to sit back and take that....? |
Heh, Forbes magazine named Helen Clarke as the 20th most powerful woman in the world for 2006. I heard that and thought, 'wow, if even Helen can get in the top 20 there really can't be that many truly powerful women worldwide.'
(and apart from their irrelevancy, neither Clarke nor Shipley are known for anything particularly controversial, which may also be grounds for exclusion from Gopher's list)
Personally, I'm not interested in diversity for diversity's sake, more with fairness of representation. Women and many minorities have their access to certain types of power limited through various factors (and equal legal access isn't the same as equal actual access), and this can lead to their interests being underrepresented. This is, in my opinion, a challenge for democratic societies to overcome. Otherwise, they start to resemble more and more the traditional Chinese testing system for government officials - in theory, the lowliest peasant could become advisor to the King and marry the princess; in practice, only the the exceptional poor end up being able to compete with the most mundane of the rich. |
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