Bay 12 Games Forum

Saying all men are misogynist pigs is just as sexist as saying all women are incapable of comprehending machinery.

But saying men are sexist isn't the same as saying all men are misogynist pigs.

To put it another way, people who are brought up in racially segregated communities, or who spend a lot of time exposed to racist stereotypes will tend somewhat racist in their thinking. That doesn't mean they are KKK members and it doesn't even mean that they will act racist. But recognising their preconceptions and misconceptions is the first step avoiding turning that cultural racism into actual practised racism.

Given that our culture is and always has been sexist, all guys are raised with some level of sexism internalised. How much of that is acted on and fed back into that culture is in no small part dependent on how often we recognise and confront it, within ourselves or others.

And somehow every time people try to point out sexist biases against women a bunch of guys make it about them and how they obviously aren't misogynistic, but those feminist bitches keep saying that they are.

All that is well and good, but doesnt explain the interveiw given on channel 4 by a protestor who confirmed that "many people" (her words...) left at night.

Because many people do leave at night.

The tents are provided by the organisation as a whole. People sign into them each night if they are staying. But a large amount of protesters go home. Much the same way many go to work during the day. Some people are in poor health and can't stay overnight. And finally there simply isn't room for everyone. Estimates put daytime protests at around 1000 people while about 250 stay overnight. Using the accounts from the protesters, that's around 75% of the tents taken. They probably couldn't house more than 500 people at night without serious overcrowding or expansion. Which is hard because there isn't really much public land in London to occupy like this.

This is how longer term protests and occupations work. People come and go so that there is a constant presence. The occupiers have said they are planning so they could stay for months if possible and necessary. Not many people will be able to actually stay on site till Christmas, but for a well designed and maintained camp keeping a presence till then is entirely possible.

EDIT: That article reminded me of something;

Last week, on Have I Got News For You, MP Louise Mensch asked why the occupiers, if they hated capitalism so much, bought coffee from Starbucks.

Well, for one thing they needed access to some sort of hygiene facilities. Under UK law they were only required to be provided with portable toilets when the police kettled them, and those were taken away later. Then there were problems once they secured new ones thanks to St Paul's utterly inconsistent stance on health and safety. During the day they make do with public facilities in the area, including those at local businesses.

Speaking of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch...

It's when having a job becomes a requirement to get a job that there are real problems.

In his rush (no pun intended) to find something to prove that Obama is a secret commie Muslim who hates Christians, Rush Limbaugh openly defended the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, one of the most brutal, vicious terrorist organizations known to man.

Bravo, sirrah. Tell me, which part of their modus operandi do you find to be the most Christian -- the child soldiers, or the sex slaves? Or perhaps the hacking off limbs, that's certainly "an eye for an eye" (and an arm, and an ear and a nose...)

This response from one of their victims is very hard to watch.

They were asking UN. NATO just formed a coordination and command body for a coalition of 19 countries which had some interests in Libya.

That's how the UN works.

The UN has zero standing forces. They have two paths to military intervention;

1) Calling for peacekeepers under a UN flag.
2) Authorising a third party to intervene.

Calling for peacekeepers is an incredibly complicated procedure. The level of peacekeepers (size and strength of the force) must be agreed on by the host nation. In this case they would have needed Gadaffi to sign off on how many troops were deployed and how much kit they brought. Once that was agreed on a call would go out for troops to be committed by different nations to form part of the force. Until and unless the precise size of the force agreed on can be reached not one body can be deployed.

Such peacekeeper forces are the only explicitly UN forces available.

Authorising action is far more likely and usually has more direct effect. In this case the UN authorised the plans put forwards by, among others, France, the UK and US, in response to the calls from the Libyan rebels and diplomats.

By the way, IIRC Gadaffi even wrote the letter to Obama saying something like "Son, let`s fight terrorism together!" and generally was ready for the negotiations. Some more agressive diplomacy would have been enough to topple the regime without a drop of blood hitting the ground, but instead of this NATO chose the violent way again.

Lets be serious here. Gadaffi has serious history when it comes to bullshitting. He has said pretty much everything imaginable at some point. But more importantly he has had a history of sponsoring terrorism. He had zero credibility when it came to negotiation, especially while still attacking civilians.

Hell, Gadaffi declared a ceasefire after the resolution was passed. At that time no missiles had been fired by NATO or any other outside forces. However, he continued artillery attacks against opposition groups. It was when tanks rolled into Benghazi that France (at that time not under the NATO flag) started the attacks.

France took that action because the UN's resolution required any steps short of an invading foreign ground force in order to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas. Basically they were under UN orders to stop civilians being killed by any means.

Drawing a line here between the UN and NATO/the coalition is false. You can argue against the intervention on other terms, but saying NATO=EVIL doesn't really get anywhere.

Someone versed in legal jargon will have to answer this: Does it also include forcing to penetrate? The way I read it, it seems men can only be victims of rape if they get something stuck in their bum. I'm hoping I'm reading it wrong.

Yeah, it's still fairly crap.

Just considerably better than it used to be.

I don't really see the problem with just using the UN's definition of "sexual intercourse without valid consent," but at least now they are ignoring fewer subsets of... yeah, I can't finish that one.