Ubisoft is trying to sue Lowtax.

[Jenner]

HAH.

You think women can choose whether or not they're objectified?

The only choice is in the degree of complicity in their own objectification... and far too often it's a matter of simple survival. Probably not in this case, but not only are the chances so slim as to be nonexistent that she gleefully chose and volunteered to be a public prostitute, even if she had it's not a real choice because like everyone else on the planet she's been programmed from infancy to learn her place in society, to be rewarded by conformation to the sexbot role and punished for refusing. She has about as much ability to choose to be unaffected by that lifelong conditioning and the realities of the world around her as she does to choose not to obey the law of gravity.

There's no question that I think less of women exercising what choice they do have to act like this. It's repulsive. But it's absolutely unrealistic to say that because she wasn't forced at gunpoint it was all her choice and that she likes being portrayed this way. It's like the illusory "power" that some females (with the agreement of even more males) claim they have over men by being sex objects. It's only the power to be abused and dehumanized more overtly.

Y'know Alun... There are times I really loathe your views on certain things, but every time you post up in defense of women, and female empowerment, you always wind up saying everything I would pretty much be saying better than I would say it. I can only find myself grunting and pointing "Yeah, what she said!"
In many ways, Alun is, once again, right. Degrading women has been a time-honored tradition in almost all marketing since the dawn of public media. Even on the radio, women were depicted as helpless without a man. From Booth Babes to skimpy cut-scenes, it was once said that a woman could never make anything of herself without exploiting herself in some way. We have to survive too, and now, we're trying to survive on our own. Every woman who sells out and tosses on a bikini makes it harder for women like Alun and myself to do it the right way. This wrong way to financial independence has been so profitable and successful that anything less is unexpected. I have always loathed Chugworth Academy, and I have never really enjoyed its content. All CA ever did was whore out over-sexed and over sexually-drawn animated characters with NO REAL STORY SUPPORT and no True Content. Now, I don't write romance novels with explicit sex scenes and my poetry does not rhapsodize about how much I desire physical love. Epic fail on my part? I am completely unmarketable? Why? The sad thing is people do not realize how much bullcrap this is because it's been happening for so long. Our time to make a change was when it first started happening, but, we women didn't really have the voice to.

It still doesn't make it right.
It doesn't validate it.
sigh...

[Werefrog]

Oh, and B_G, in case you want to learn about the research that has been conducted on the etiology of depression in women, here's a pretty good article about it.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/con ... 159/7/1133

It probably requires a subscription to read, but if you are in college, your college probably has it. You may have to go to a library or something.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

the way the myspace girl is somehow totally absolved of any responsibility whatsoever in the situation.

Okay, so let me get this straight. You are saying that you never said it was the victims fault in any of this, but instead of focusing blame we should all move on? Yet you clarely state that the myspace girl should have been the one to tkae the blame, or in your words, responsibility, for it. I fail to see how anyone who is so depressed and kills themselves should have any sort of responsibility to anything about it.

Second, if you say we should move on. A prostitute is raped. What would your reaction be? It was her choice, she has sex for a living so what is she complaining about, and instead of taking the time to make her a victim and look for the man/woman who assualted her we should just move on to fixing the problem of prostitution?

Granted, the depression adds to the feelings of hopelessness, but many clinically depressed people have become solution oriented and improve the quality of their lives. I don't fail to see how she shares some responsibility in her death since she strung herself up with a belt. we certainly don't need to FOCUS on blame, but we don't need to act like she had absolutely none.

a prostitute that has been living that lifestyle doesn't really seem like someone you can change. ending prostitution would require changing people. people only change for themselves. not to mention that not every prostitute is out there just to make ends-meet (ROFL!). some of them are just dirty people that enjoy what they do.

[Agawa]

a prostitute that has been living that lifestyle doesn't really seem like someone you can change. ending prostitution would require changing people. people only change for themselves. not to mention that not every prostitute is out there just to make ends-meet (ROFL!). some of them are just dirty people that enjoy what they do.

So in essence you do believe it is the prostitute that bears the responsibility of being raped, that they don't deserve the decency of justice other humans do, and there's nothing we can or should do about it? Because the moral character of someone who's been the victim of a crime really has absolutely nothing to do with the crime. It's one thing to advocate using common sense (don't hitchhike, don't walk around dangerous parts of town along at night) but another to use that to place blame on the victim. The crime still only happened due to the person who committed it.
If I'm misunderstanding you, feel free to explain, since I honestly don't quite get what you're trying to say, but that's what I got out of it.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

a prostitute that has been living that lifestyle doesn't really seem like someone you can change. ending prostitution would require changing people. people only change for themselves. not to mention that not every prostitute is out there just to make ends-meet (ROFL!). some of them are just dirty people that enjoy what they do.

So in essence you do believe it is the prostitute that bears the responsibility of being raped, that they don't deserve the decency of justice other humans do, and there's nothing we can or should do about it? Because the moral character of someone who's been the victim of a crime really has absolutely nothing to do with the crime. It's one thing to advocate using common sense (don't hitchhike, don't walk around dangerous parts of town along at night) but another to use that to place blame on the victim. The crime still only happened due to the person who committed it.
If I'm misunderstanding you, feel free to explain, since I honestly don't quite get what you're trying to say, but that's what I got out of it.

I feel like the dad in Freddy Got Fingered sitting there trying to make sense out of a world of crazy.

BESIDES, i've been arguing against people that've been blaming the victims in the Edison Chen scandal.

I was talking about the concept of solving the problem of prostitution. Some of those women are out there romping for a fee because they WANT to. Somehow people seemed to get the idea that all of those women are struggling single parents or something. I never said any woman ever deserves forced sex. No woman ever owes a man sex. unless he already paid for it...then i guess she'd owe a refund.

[phyco126]

Alright, well, this is running along the same lines as an arguement that happened many many years ago on this board. Just substitute hungry poverty stricken people stealing bread with prostitutes selling themselves for money.

No one makes anyone do anything, but sometimes women have to do what they feel is necessary to survive, even if it means underminding sexual morals and ethics.

I blame men overall in this respect. If men didn't crave sex so baddly for the need to pay for it, there wouldn't be prostitution. Likely not as simple as I want, ultimately, but perhapes it would be a good start. I say put all men on Effexor. Fexor all you want, because once you are on Effexor, you can never Fexor again.

Now as for the depression girl, look, nobody knows any damned thing about what goes on with anyone else in their head. "Oh, I know how they feel, but I still wouldn't do this" only goes so far. B_G, have you ever taken a Psycology class? We can never, EVER, know what it truely feels like to be in someone elses shoes. Just because I, or You, or Alun, or G1, or Kiz, or anyone else can handle what they girl had gone through, doesn't mean she didn't. Depression is almost always about brain chemistry and imbalances with brain impulses.

It's like you have three boxes. One is you. The other is me. The last is that girl. In your box, you have a firecracker. It may hurt, cause a little damage, but you can move on. In my box, is a stick on TNT. It'll go off, destroying the box, but I can always get a new one. In the girls box, is a 1,000,000,000 Megaton Hydrogen bomb. It goes off, the whole damn world is destroyed, which is in essence, what she likely felt emotionally. There is no boxes to replace it, because the world is gone. Might as well as finish it all off to end the pain, right?

So if you never had that Hydrogen bomb in your head, how the hell do you think that she should be held responsible for some part in all this?

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

Alright, well, this is running along the same lines as an arguement that happened many many years ago on this board. Just substitute hungry poverty stricken people stealing bread with prostitutes selling themselves for money.

No one makes anyone do anything, but sometimes women have to do what they feel is necessary to survive, even if it means underminding sexual morals and ethics.

I blame men overall in this respect. If men didn't crave sex so baddly for the need to pay for it, there wouldn't be prostitution. Likely not as simple as I want, ultimately, but perhapes it would be a good start. I say put all men on Effexor. Fexor all you want, because once you are on Effexor, you can never Fexor again.

Now as for the depression girl, look, nobody knows any damned thing about what goes on with anyone else in their head. "Oh, I know how they feel, but I still wouldn't do this" only goes so far. B_G, have you ever taken a Psycology class? We can never, EVER, know what it truely feels like to be in someone elses shoes. Just because I, or You, or Alun, or G1, or Kiz, or anyone else can handle what they girl had gone through, doesn't mean she didn't. Depression is almost always about brain chemistry and imbalances with brain impulses.

It's like you have three boxes. One is you. The other is me. The last is that girl. In your box, you have a firecracker. It may hurt, cause a little damage, but you can move on. In my box, is a stick on TNT. It'll go off, destroying the box, but I can always get a new one. In the girls box, is a 1,000,000,000 Megaton Hydrogen bomb. It goes off, the whole damn world is destroyed, which is in essence, what she likely felt emotionally. There is no boxes to replace it, because the world is gone. Might as well as finish it all off to end the pain, right?

So if you never had that Hydrogen bomb in your head, how the hell do you think that she should be held responsible for some part in all this?

Tell me the part i bolded is all a joke. Please. My sarcasm detector is on the fritz.

I've read a book. The Social Animal. That focuses on social psychology, though. ...wait, i didn't get to finish it.. ROFL! i actually lost the book right at the final chapter entitled "Liking, Loving and interpersonal sensitivity". damn that's funny...

i suppose i can see your point at the end, but by that logic, you never get to have a POV on anything anyone ever decides to do. perhaps i'm just an ass. but i see no reason i should be reprimanded for it. it has to be the result of society and genetics molding me into the person i can't fight becoming.

[Alunissage]

First, I don't do fake outrage. Real outrage or nothing.

Solving "the problem of prostitution", or any other problem, requires recognizing what the problem is. Not the smug comfy problem you think it is. What on earth makes you think that the number of women who enjoy being prostitutes is statistically significant? It's not. It's just that that minuscule fraction of women who say so get widely publicized because it makes their potential clientele -- that is, every man who thinks prostitution is defensible -- feel good to tell themselves that she really likes it, I'm doing her a favor by allowing her to earn her money the way she wants to. Saying that "all of these women are struggling single parents or something" is a generalization, but it's far closer to the truth than the implied large proportion of "some of those women are out there romping for a fee because they WANT to."

A solution that has been proposed, and I think has been tried somewhere with some success, is to decrminalize prostitution for the prostitutes only, while still making it a crime to pay for sex. That is, the act itself is still illegal -- this is not legalization -- but only the person doing the payment is criminally liable. The approach that is usually tried in practice is the opposite: only the person getting paid is liable and criminalized. What tends to happen in real life is that the fourteen-year-old streetwalkers are arrested, imprisoned, returned to their abusive families and situations that forced them into prostitution, etc... while totally ignoring the fact that the men who paid them (or their pimps) for sex were breaking the law not only by soliciting paid sex but having sex with a minor.

Obviously there are a great many prostitutes who are over 18, but that illustrates the problem, doesn't it? Those "adult" prostitutes get punished far, far more than their clients and pimps -- or, to put it another way, the women are punished way more than the men, a situation that is merely an extreme of the way males and females are treated differently in general. (The old language comparison: where are the masculine equivalents of terms like slut and whore? Instead, there's "stud". It's pretty obvious which sex gets punished.) To return to the original point, the idea is that there's the same legal deterrent against paid sex acts, but rather than kicking the person who's already down -- the prostitute -- the person trying to use her is punished and provided a disincentive to continue using people. After all, taking one prostitute off the streets doesn't prevent a man from soliciting another one.

Another point raised above that relates to needing to correctly identify the problem in order to find a solution is hinted at here: "It's one thing to advocate using common sense (don't hitchhike, don't walk around dangerous parts of town along at night) but another to use that to place blame on the victim." Isn't it funny how all the "solutions" to the problem of rape are additional burdens placed on potential victims to curb their actions and curtail their freedoms further to keep those inevitable, unchangeable, hopelessly monstrous rapists from seeing them and attacking them? The problem isn't that women get raped, it's that men rape women. Do something about the rapists! It's so infuriating, and terrifying, every time one hears of a repeat rapist. My question is not so much what is he doing out on the streets after the first time as it is why does he still have the equipment TO rape? Castrate that monster. Give men a REAL reason not to do it in the first place. To those who will inevitably whine "what about false accusation ruining those men's lives?" I will say that the conviction rate for rape is obscenely low (I think I've read it's below 5% in Britain) and that rape has permanently ruined many, many women's lives. The proportion of women who admit to being raped is something like one in four. And many women won't admit or report rape, because of the cruel and humiliating gauntlet that she must run to try to get that trial. There are still people out there who believe that men can't rape their wives (because she gave permanent consent by getting married), or that if she dressed femininely or walked in the wrong part of town or went on a date or was alone in the house with any male over the age of eight she was asking for it.

I don't remember where this came from, but I think it's pretty undeniably true: "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them."

i suppose i can see your point at the end, but by that logic, you never get to have a POV on anything anyone ever decides to do. perhaps i'm just an ass. but i see no reason i should be reprimanded for it. it has to be the result of society and genetics molding me into the person i can't fight becoming.

Perhaps? You know you're being an ass, trying to be oh so very clever by claiming the same situation of women not being free to be nonsexual due to how they're treated by society also saves you from having any responsibility over your own attitudes. You know better than that. You don't get to hide behind that, because you have a hell of a lot more control over your own attitudes than people being objectified have over the attitudes of those doing the objectification.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

Perhaps? You know you're being an ass, trying to be oh so very clever by claiming the same situation of women not being free to be nonsexual due to how they're treated by society also saves you from having any responsibility over your own attitudes. You know better than that. You don't get to hide behind that, because you have a hell of a lot more control over your own attitudes than people being objectified have over the attitudes of those doing the objectification.

of course i know that i'm an ass. i was illustrating a point. i KNOW i'm the one who has to take responsibility for my actions. i also know that who i am, the good and the bad, is a result of a combination of society and genetics. i know that because it's obvious. EVERYONE is molded by the world around them. combine that with what you said about not being able to change the attitudes of others and there ya go. having a medical term for it and explaining it from beginning to end doesn't change anything at all.

[Werefrog]

i know that because it's obvious.

You'd think so... but historically this hasn't been the case. It's only been recently that scientists have put the Nature vs. Nurture debate aside. Even now, scientists are trying to figure out which is the more prominent of the two on various issues.

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

It's at least obvious that we're molded and changed steadily by society. If it didn't, we wouldn't wanna be a part of it.