itwasgoodtobealive:

“Privilege” is the current buzzword amongst the online liberal community.

And I fucking hate this word.

I DON’T KNOW, maybe in my blinkered, white, heterosexual male life, with my somewhere in between working and middle class upbringing, I’m just too sheltered to see how fucking great my life is.

But I don’t see why, I should have to be ashamed of the benefits of being that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in absolutely no way proud to be any of those things, cos a. that’s just fucking stupid, and b. people that say they’re “proud to be white” don’t really mean that, they really mean they’re proud not to be something else.

But the thing that really irks me, is all the contempt for people of “privilege”, rather than the individuals, that create inequalities.

Everyone, has the right to equal pay, regardless of their gender.

Everyone, has the right to get married and start a family, regardless of their sexuality.

Everyone, has the right not to be murdered because of the colour of their skin.

The problem is, not everyone is afforded these rights, I’m one of the lucky ones, and thankfully, I am afforded them.

But I’m not the one to blame here.

Blame the cowards in government, that won’t legalise gay marriage because they fear the wrath of social conservatives.

Blame the sexist employers that underpay female staff.

Blame the man with a gun in his hand and shit for brains.

I’m sure you all have good intentions, but don’t direct your anger to the people that have basic rights afforded to them, direct it at the people that prevent other people from having them.

Which, as it happens, happen to be largely white, heterosexual males.

But it’s not like we’re some sort of fucking club is it.

I’ve even see people claim that religious people are privileged!

Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand the oppression that some atheists have to suffer, particularly in countries as religious as America, and I’m in no way denying it.

But I think that oppression is a small price to pay, for not having to devote your life to mythology.

And in those cases, if you get punched in the face by a Christian, for being an atheist, blame him, don’t blame some fucking Muslim thousands of miles away.

And the thing I find most deplorable about this whole thing, is the idea that all privileged people have perfect lives in their bubbles of ignorance, and that everyone elses lives just suck.

What if your priviliged guy has a mental illness, depression, goes to bed every night not wanting to wake up the next day, and when he does, can’t bring himself to leave his bed cos the world just seems to bleak, is he still privileged, does he still lead a better life than some happy successful gay guy?

And once again, maybe this is just my privilege talking.

But if I was a black guy, and one of you social justice people came along and started going all “oh I feel so sorry for you being a black guy, it must be so tough” I’d say “Go the fuck away you condescending prick”.

And yeah, maybe that black guy has to suffer a bit of racism in his lifetime, but he’ll be fucked if he’s going to let it ruin his life, and pray every night that he’ll wake up and magically be white.

Footnote:

In case any of you conveniently forgot to read the bit of this post where I point out that everyone should be afforded basic human rights regardless of their privilege or lack thereof, I will say that I fully support all minority rights, women, lbgt, ethnic minorities, absolutely anyone, and I wish all of you battling for those rights, the best of luck in all your endeavours.

Privilege is reality.  It has absolutely nothing to do with being ashamed with who you are.  It is merely a fact to be acknowledged.

You, as a white male, have no idea what it’s like to live a poor black female in an impoverished neighborhood.  You have no clue what it is like to be systematically thought of as a lower class of person, to be called racist names, to see your peers and struggles dismissed daily by rich white conservatives trying to rule the world, people who think they know you and have pre-judged you as being lazy, as being a slut, as being someone with an “entitlement” mentality.  You have never been judged by the majority because of your skin color.  You have absolutely no idea what it would be like to live like that.

And I don’t either.

When I was younger, I had a terrible skin condition.  It made me want to wake up every day and rip the skin off of my face.  That kind of thing changes you…changes the way you look at others and at life, even though I was not in any serious way teased or made fun of.  I do not compare what I went through to what others have gone through.  But I don’t expect anyone who has not experienced this kind of crippling self-hatred to really understand what it felt like.

You have never walked down the street in fear of being raped.  You have no idea what that is like.  I don’t either, but I can imagine how it can affect someone deeply in ways that are not easy to articulate.

There is no shame in this.  There is absolutely no reason why you should feel bad about it.  You are not being asked to give up your privileges or your rights in the slightest bit.

All you are asked to do is to acknowledge the reality that there are those with backgrounds that have created mindsets that you may not be capable of understanding.  And to listen, respectfully, opening, but critically, to what someone outside of your mindset has to say.

~ Steve

elegance4290:

How will it affect your life if I get an abortion?
How will it affect your life if I marry someone of the same gender?
How will it affect your life if I marry someone without a gender?
How will it affect your life if I use birth control?
How will it affect your life if I have sex?
How will it affect your life if I am a man with a vagina?
How will it affect your life if I  am a woman with a penis?
How will it affect your life if I don’t identify as male or female?
How will it affect your life if I don’t believe in God or a higher power?
How will it affect your life if I am a man who wears dresses, thongs, and high heels?
How will it affect your life if I am a woman who wears boxers and “men’s” clothing?
How will it affect your life if I get a tattoo?
How will it affect your life if I pierce my body?
How will it affect your life if I dye my hair?
How will it affect your life if I eat meat?
How will it affect your life if I wear leather?
How will it affect your life if I smoke marijuana?

Not your relationship. Not your happiness. Not body. Not your decision.

Get your primitive moralities out of my fucking life! ~ Steve

Hey Steve, I have noticed lately your debates on abortion and while I personally appreciate your intent and I think you are doing a great thing by making the other half of the population (males) more aware of female’s struggled, I would like to make an attempt to explain to you why some people are having issues with it. For one, It is not a good idea to use phrases such as “De-feminize’ especially when referring to a feminine issue.

Part of Pro-choice is female empowerment. Women having the say on their OWN bodies and having the choice on whether or not they would like to abort. I think it is great that you make this issue aware to the male population but a lot of females may see this as a male still making a decision for their female body. and some women may find it insulting when a male attempts to make up situations regarding it when he does not have the burden of making that decision himself. Regards, Lydia.

Thank you, and I agree that the phrase “de-feminize” was not the best choice.  I have learned quite a bit through this exercise.

In terms of women having ownership of their own bodies, this reality was EXACTLY the intent of my post.  You see, from the male perspective, there are NO real parallels to this.  Men are simply almost never put into positions where the question of ownership of their own bodies is brought to the fore in this way.  Hence the hypothetical, abstract nature of the post.  It HAS to be hypothetical to make the point, because there are no non-hypothetical situations where men are forced to see things from a perspective that millions of women have to deal with.  The question is designed to force the male mind to see how they would respond to a situation that roughly parallels the question of the unwillingly pregnant female.

And of course this doesn’t just apply to men either.  There are women who, also, are never really placed into a position of having to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.  They thus don’t ever have to deal with this perspective.

And yes, it IS insulting when anyone who does not have the burden of making this decision themselves tries to impose their opinion anyway.  This, also, was in my intent to demonstrate in this post - to demonstrate just how insulting this is.  I hope that no one feels that I was trying to impose my opinion onto others.  I was just trying to help people who don’t have to deal with the issue understand why their opinion doesn’t matter.

It is also why I chose not to include my opinion in the post.  To me, it was vital that the person reading reach the conclusion of, “my body, my choice” ON THEIR OWN, without any external stimulation to either prejudice them for it or against it.

Thanks for your response.  :)

~ Steve

patentlywill:

abaldwin360:

religiousragings:

marmoulak:

religiousragings:

Suppose you woke up one day and found yourself attached by tubes to another person, and then you are told that this other person will die if you disconnect the tubes.  You, however, will not be injured.  Supposed that at no point did you agree to have this other person tethered to you.

Suppose this other person is in a wheel chair.  You can get around, but it obviously severely limits your movements.

Do you, as an autonomous human being with your own rights, have the right to disconnect the tubes, therefore causing the other person to die?

What if it was just for an hour?

What if it was for a month?

What about 9 months?

What if the connection was threatening your own health?  What if the connection could potentially kill you?

What if this connection could cost you your job?  Your family?  Your friends?

What if you had to expend major financial expenses to keep this other person alive, to the point that it would bankrupt you?

And before you say anything, I am aware that this is not an exact parallel for abortion.  I have my own thoughts on this, but I’m hoping to get some reasonable discussion on it.

~ Steve

Honestly, if it were a “person”, I probably wouldn’t disconnect the tubes, at least not without going through significant trauma and emotional pain for killing another person. But I think most of the controversy is on the “personhood” of a fetus and at what point in time it actually becomes a something/someone who can have emotions and feel pain. I think a better analogy in this case would be something like being sucked on by a parasite, or a set of cells, at least during the first trimester. 

You probably wouldn’t disconnect the tubes.  I suspect that many people wouldn’t disconnect the tubes.  Should, however, there be a law requiring that you to keep the tubes attached?

I’d disconnect the tubes. Go ahead, call me a bad person. No one has the right to take my bodily autonomy away from me with out my permission. 

Would I feel bad? You bet your ass I would. I’d feel horrible, but I have two children I’m already raising, I need my job, I need my health to do my job and raise those children.

I wouldn’t have the resources to keep this other person alive.

So, then you ask, what makes my life more important than the life of this person attached to me?

Remember that part about having permission? To quote Deus ex Human Revolution, “I never asked for this.”

I was not prepared, someone did this to me without asking me first, it would be different had I volunteered, but I’m not going to destroy my life, or the life of my children, for something that was put upon me without my permission.

So, then, how does this apply to abortion?

Look at it this way, we have come to a point technologically, where we can cure diseases, we can effectively repair a lot of bodily damage, people can survive injury and disease that they never could have just a few generations ago.

We can now repair injuries that at one time meant certain death, there are even methods to exert control over how our neurology functions. 

We now have more effective control over our bodies, we can defeat our own biology, and we can defeat the biology of many pathogens.

Having this new control over our biology, we also have a means to be able to have sex for reasons other than procreation. I mean, people always have, sex feels good, it feels good for a reason, so we would want to procreate, if something feels good you’re going to want to do it, it’s kind of what drives life.

But now that we have the means to control our biology, we are no longer slaves to it. We can have sex and enjoy it for physical pleasure, emotional closeness, or just for the simple fact it’s fun.

That’s wrong you say?

Why? 

It’s not natural you say?

Being able to have your heart replaced isn’t natural. Removing diseased or cancerous tissue isn’t natural, but it saves our lives, it repairs us or preserves us in order to continue living.

I mean, simply as the human race, very few things we do is natural. From driving cars to flying in airplanes, to artificial lights using guns and generating electricity.

As a species we shape our world, we control our biology, so why wouldn’t this be part of our “unnatural” existence, to have sex just for the sake of having sex, as long as we’re safe about it, we can use a preventative means over our biology, and just as everything else I’ve listed improves the quality of our existence.

Now, no means of contraception is 100%, and one can slip by the goalie, but this goes back to permission. If you are using contraceptives, then it isn’t your intent to have and raise a child.

You didn’t want to get pregnant, that’s not why you’re doing it. So, as a last means, you can have the fetus terminated before it develops, and this is what most abortions actually are, the are performed very early, before it’s grown into anything resembling a human being, it never knew it existed - remember the year 1743? - No? - That’s what it’s like.

Just like every bit of medical and external technology I listed above, this improves the quality of our lives, the lives of the already living.

If forced to have a child one does not have the resources for, the quality of life for those that person is supporting gets worse. Some animals eat their young because of lack of resources, that’s natural, ghastly, but natural. We wouldn’t want to do what’s natural in that case, would we?

In this way, everyone who is already living sees an improvement in quality of life, less people are consuming resources, people only raise the amount of children they can afford to.

Society benefits overall, the same way my family would benefit if I unhooked the person attached to me with tubes, that I didn’t ask to be there in the first place. Why sacrifice my already existing, living, breathing, thinking and feeling family for that?

Exactly like using a means of birth control, this means you do not intend to get pregnant, you have not made the conscious decision to get pregnant, to have sex, yes, but not to bring another person into the world, that’s why you were using birth control.

You make the decision to, fine, then it’s your responsibly, you made the conscious decision to, that means you got yourself into it on your own, not by having sex with contraceptives.

In most cases you won’t wake up one day with the proverbial person attached to you with tubes, nearly 99% of the time you won’t, but very, very, rarely someone sneaks into your house at night and hooks you up to someone who is totally dependent on you and you have to make the decision to maintain your family’s quality of life, or your already living offspring’s quality of life, or even your future offspring, that you will have when you decide you have the resources for them.

That, or we could just eat our young, which is natural, buy the way. 

Just a couple of things:

1. Is anyone surprised that the original post was made by a middle-aged white dude? No? Solid, that’s what I thought.
2. I love how the OP and a few others try to word this like they’re being respectful and just want an interesting debate. No. Fuck you. This is none of your god-damn business. You are never going to be put in a position where you have to make that choice. You don’t get to start a conversation on it, especially when your wording is so obviously slanted towards the anti-choice side of things.
3. A FULL GROWN PERSON IS NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE SAME THING AS A FETUS. YOU AWFUL, AWFUL PERSON.
4. The original post and this whole discussion is just fucked.

Ummm..hello?  I, the original OP, am VERY pro-choice.  I made this post with the point of making that even in this situation, I would think it FULLY within my rights to pull the tubes.  This argument was made to put to DE-feminize the issue and cause males to consider it from the feminine viewpoint.  Perhaps my more exact analogy followup would be more to your liking?

And as for my not getting to start a conversation on it, I must say, with all due respect, that I start conversations on whatever the fuck I want, and I don’t really care if you think I have the right to or not.

Peace,

~ Steve

In light of some of the weaknesses that were pointed out in my previous analogy, I’m revising it as follows.

Suppose you woke up one day and found yourself attached by tubes to another living thing, and then you are told that this other living thing will die if you disconnect the tubes.  You, however, carry a low risk of injury if the tubes are removed by professionals.  You could easily die if you try to pull the tubes out yourself, however.  You, however, did not in any way want this living thing connected to you.

Suppose that you knew that this possibility was a known risk of being around another person that you love and interact with in a historically normal manner. (The risk was compared to being like that of a sky diver by a commentator, but I feel that it would be hard to improve on this analogy.)  Your selection of people to love becomes limited if you do not choose to interact with them in a historically normal manner.

For a length of time, this other life that you are hooked up to is a houseplant, which then becomes an insect, which then becomes a turtle, and then (at some point close to 9 months) becomes a cute kitten, and then, at 9 months, becomes a full human being.

Please bear in mind that at every stage, even at the houseplant stage, the other living thing is a full POTENTIAL human being.  The houseplant has a 41% chance of reaching the human stage (based on success rates of in vitro fertilization).  If it makes you feel better, you can make the houseplant look exactly like an embryo.

If you are religious, you may try to imbue this houseplant with a human soul.  I am not religious however, and this argument will not work with me.  There is no scientific evidence for a soul whatsoever, nor is there ANY biblical support that a child in any stage of fetal development has a soul.  This contention would be based solely on unsupported opinion.

At any stage, you could lose friends or family if they find out that you have become tethered.  You could also lose your job.  The longer you wait, the greater the risk to your health it becomes.

Would you elect to carry this other life with you until it became a human being?

I suspect that this analogy will be somewhat more contentious than my first, but I strongly believe that it is much more accurate.  :)

~ Steve

marmoulak:

religiousragings:

Suppose you woke up one day and found yourself attached by tubes to another person, and then you are told that this other person will die if you disconnect the tubes.  You, however, will not be injured.  Supposed that at no point did you agree to have this other person tethered to you.

Suppose this other person is in a wheel chair.  You can get around, but it obviously severely limits your movements.

Do you, as an autonomous human being with your own rights, have the right to disconnect the tubes, therefore causing the other person to die?

What if it was just for an hour?

What if it was for a month?

What about 9 months?

What if the connection was threatening your own health?  What if the connection could potentially kill you?

What if this connection could cost you your job?  Your family?  Your friends?

What if you had to expend major financial expenses to keep this other person alive, to the point that it would bankrupt you?

And before you say anything, I am aware that this is not an exact parallel for abortion.  I have my own thoughts on this, but I’m hoping to get some reasonable discussion on it.

~ Steve

Honestly, if it were a “person”, I probably wouldn’t disconnect the tubes, at least not without going through significant trauma and emotional pain for killing another person. But I think most of the controversy is on the “personhood” of a fetus and at what point in time it actually becomes a something/someone who can have emotions and feel pain. I think a better analogy in this case would be something like being sucked on by a parasite, or a set of cells, at least during the first trimester. 

You probably wouldn’t disconnect the tubes.  I suspect that many people wouldn’t disconnect the tubes.  Should, however, there be a law requiring that you to keep the tubes attached?

Suppose you woke up one day and found yourself attached by tubes to another person, and then you are told that this other person will die if you disconnect the tubes.  You, however, will not be injured.  Supposed that at no point did you agree to have this other person tethered to you.

Suppose this other person is in a wheel chair.  You can get around, but it obviously severely limits your movements.

Do you, as an autonomous human being with your own rights, have the right to disconnect the tubes, therefore causing the other person to die?

What if it was just for an hour?

What if it was for a month?

What about 9 months?

What if the connection was threatening your own health?  What if the connection could potentially kill you?

What if this connection could cost you your job?  Your family?  Your friends?

What if you had to expend major financial expenses to keep this other person alive, to the point that it would bankrupt you?

And before you say anything, I am aware that this is not an exact parallel for abortion.  I have my own thoughts on this, but I’m hoping to get some reasonable discussion on it.

~ Steve

abaldwin360:

This is Richard Floyd, Tennessee State Representative and sponsor of the Bathroom Harassment Act, a bill that would fine transgender people $50 for using restrooms and dressing rooms.

True to his name, the man is a dick. Here’s a direct quote from this shining example of morality:

I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.

Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.

Think Progress has a video of an interview with Dick Floyd, where he tries to state that the bill doesn’t “penalize anybody,” that it “protects everybody,” and that he could “care less” what transgender advocacy groups think.

Which begs the question, if this guy says that the bill doesn’t penalize anybody, does that mean he doesn’t think of transgender people as “anybody”?