your least favourite shakespeare play ?

[MorpheusSandman]

Morph you are the one making a claim here so you're the one who needs a real source to verify it. I'm just explaining to you that market forces would absolutely destroy any huge pay gap between men and women (for the same work) because all businesses would prioritize hiring women to save money. All of them, not just one Morph.

I posted a source and I never said there was a "huge pay gap," I said there was a gap. 5-7% is nothing to sneeze at over a long period. Very few businesses could get away with hiring only women. For one thing, it would be a clear case of gender discrimination and, for another, they'd quickly run out of women to hire!

Though I wouldn't expect someone who posts the "make privilege checklist" as a serious citation in an argument to be able to reason or think clearly so I understand that you won't be able to understand what I'm saying.

I posted that because it had several references all in one place. It's one reason so many link to Wikipedia. It's not the source, the references are.

The pay gap myth

Not a myth, and I gave you a statistical link that verified it.

As far as male vs female dominated positions, frankly a lot of the higher paying jobs which are dominated by men are extremely dangerous, carry with them long term health risks (labour positions) and a very low level of job satisfaction. I don't think a female elementary school teacher would be happier making a higher salary in Fort Mac as a rig driver for the oil patch, working a Godawful, dangerous job and doing Godawful shifts.

You really think manual labor are amongst the higher paying jobs in this day and age?

By the way, I believe women live longer and happier lives and tend to report enjoying their jobs much more when surveyed. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Still doesn't justify a paygap. Men are perfectly free to go get jobs they like better. Women can't insure they're getting paid the same as the same jobs.

Men can be raped too, only it's usually funny to people, or not really a big deal.

Of course they can and of course it shouldn't be funny and it should be a big deal. However, there is hardly a culture that promotes and facilitates like there is with women.

The suicide stats are pointless unless you can point to something in our culture that's driving all men to suicide and then insist on having it changed. We don't live in a culture that pressures men into committing suicide. Personally, I don't even object to suicide morally as I believe people have the right to end their own life if they choose too. However, if suicide became epidemic like it appears to have in the UK, then I'd seriously be wanting an investigation into why it's becoming so common and see if there is something that should be culturally fixed. So, yeah, I do care, but I don't live there. Go cause the public outrage yourself (I mean this genuinely). The problem is that you don't know what in UK culture needs fixing to stop the suicides like we know what needs fixing to stop the wage gap.

No Mortal you don't understand. Men are all over privileged patriarchs who can't possibly face any problems, and who honestly can't even walk down the street without being showered with unequal pay or being offered high powered jobs and political positions of power!

All this snark is doing is proving you don't understand privilege. It's like the stupid argument that if you can name a successful black person and a struggling white person that white privilege doesn't exist. Privilege doesn't mean you face no problems, what it means is that you don't face certain problems OR have certain advantages over other people. In some cases, this is natural and can't be helped (there's a privilege in being born with a higher IQ, eg); but in some cases they are cultural artifacts and CAN be helped. The latter are what we need to identify and eradicate in ALL cases.

So, now that we've cleared up that misconception you can understand why the rest of your post is utterly irrelevant.

[MorpheusSandman]

If you think Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa aren't better than Murnau, Dreyer, and Eisenstein perhaps you either like weird stuff or have bad taste. As I recall, you like Stan Brakhage, Bela Tarr, and other crazy avante garde stuff. How can you like film while disdaining narrative, color, and sound? If I don't like the early beginnings of film, it sounds like you don't like the majority of film production, ie mass market films, blockbusters, narratives, or commercial films.

To get the easy stuff out of the way first: I don't disdain narrative, color, sound, mass market, blockbuster, or commercial films. I don't know where you got that from.

For the record, Kurosawa and Bergman are my favorite filmmakers behind Hitchcock; I have Dreyer ahead of Kubrick and Fellini, but Kubrick and Fellini ahead of Murnau and Eisenstein. I think you misunderstand what I mean when I say no filmmakers were definitively better. What I mean is that the latter reached the pinnacle of film artistry, but there's more than one way to scale that pinnacle, and some filmmakers did it more than they did. If Dreyer had made 60 films and most of them were of the same or similar quality to The Passion of Joan of Arc, then I think we'd have a definitive greatest director ever, period. The problem is that Dreyer was a selective perfectionist who, like Kubrick, chose to perfect the few films he made rather than being prolific. I think pretty much everything he made after Joan of Arc is a masterpiece of varying levels, but he just didn't make enough. That's one reason why I have Hitchcock, Bergman, and Kurosawa at my top, because they were prolific AND consistently great.

The key point you seem to be missing is that film, like music, has a few fundamental elements that can be perfected. The two constants are editing and mise-en-scene. If you master these, then you master film. Period. Griffith was the first to do it; Dreyer, Murnau, and Eisenstein innovated in several different ways. Between them you basically have the foundations for every filmmaking style after them. The only thing "original" left to do was to find variations on what they did and ways to mix them. Color adds a different visual texture, but doesn't create a new fundamental. Music turns film into a hybrid medium, but still doesn't change the fundamentals. So, yes, those elements gave filmmakers more to play and innovate with, but they still had to master the basics, and mastering the new elements didn't mean doing more than the early greats did, it just meant doing something similar but different. You can dislike them all you want, but I maintain you can not genuinely love film as an art-form and dismiss or downplay Griffith, Murnau, Eisenstein, and Dreyer, because to do so is to dismiss and downplay the fundemantal elements of what makes film a unique art-form.

I'm talking about the nature of justice and how we punish people or maintain order in this country, from the felon or terrorist, which you have frequently mentioned, to the pet or child as I have frequently mentioned.

Yeah, but I don't see what you think this has to do with TOTS.

Fair revenge in Shylock's case would be insulting Antonio back, charging him high interest on his loan, or not loaning to him at all. Tricking him into a bargain that endangers his life, and then insisting on his blood instead of cash repayment is villainous.

The problem is that Shylock is living in a culture where nearly everyone demonizes him because of his religion. When you're an outcast and perpetually made to feel like it, your insults hardly "sting" to begin with. It would be the equivalent of the nerd calling a bully a A-hole.

There you go again with your imaginative interpretation: how pray-tell does Shylock "trick" Antonio? I wasn't aware that he put the "pound of flesh" in super small print. Anyway, I already agreed that him insisting on his blood rather than cash payment was villainous, but, again, to me this is a case of a reasonable emotion (revenge for wrongs done) pushed to the extreme (unreasonable), but in a manner that is understandable, especially in an age where we've become more sympathetic to what constant bullying does to people.

Again you want to argue that Shylock is a "stock character," but I keep telling you that if Shakespeare only wrote stock characters (instead of using stock archetypes and enriching them into 3-dimensional human beings) nobody would care to begin with.

But she's subjected to the same societal pressures as Katherine while maintaining a good attitude.

Just because some women can adjust to and even thrive in a patriarchal soceity doesn't mean they all can or that any should be forced to.

Then neither did Falstaff or Malvolio.

Falstaff was a liar, drunkard, braggard, and thief, who wanted to have as much fun and be as wealthy and well-thought of as possible while doing as little as possible. The notion that he didn't "deserve" the ribbing he got is nonsense. Malvolio is a moralist prude who probably deserved to get prank, but I do rather feel that the prank was overly mean given the circumstances. If anything, Falstaff's prank was underdone and Malvolio's overdone.

Katherine might've deserved something in between if she just had a bad attitude in general that had nothing to do with patriarchal oppression, but the point is that there's no doubt that Petruchio's "taming" is WAY overboard, especially when the end goal is to make her conform in a completely unjust society. This wasn't the case with either Falstaff or Malvolio. Neither were tortured. Falstaff was (rightfully, and playfully, and of his own doing) embarassed; Malvolio was, IMO, overly humiliated; Katherine was tortured. There's big differences in all three scenarios.

Clopin made a very good point about male/female equality in the job market with those videos showing how the wage gap is actually about 5-7% and not 23% when adjusted for various factors. The videos Clopin posted also made an interesting point that the 5-7% wage gap may be due to men being more willing to ask for a raise.

Clopin made a good point against a strawman, i.e., a point I never made. I said there was a wage gap, I never said how much. He assumed I got my numbers from Obama. Even if the gap WAS caused by that, it still wouldn't make it OK. Why do you think women would be more reluctant to ask for raises anyway?

Men get the short stick in this society all over the place, like Clopin showed with that list on the last page. The draft! Are you kidding me? All us men gotta die so the women can stay home and do their nails. Uh uh. No. You want that wage equality and the vote you pick up a gun. Gonna' leave everything on our shoulders? You gotta be kidding me. Israel's got it right.

The areas where men do get the "short stick" in society need fixing too. I never said otherwise.

Idealism needs to give way to pragmatism in the real world. Here we do what works, not what we wish worked.

I have no idea what you think this has to do with racial profiling. The crime that happens and has happened in corporate America is far worse and affects far more lives than what goes on in poor black neighborhoods. Pragmatically it would be far better to "profile" and "police" that than it would be to take tax dollars and having police trolling for people driving while black.

Lot of rich women out there.

Yeah, you think if you take the richest women and the richest men and then put them on a pie chart it will be nearly equal?

Or I'm highly skeptical of the source of that information, and think it would be a waste of my time to read it.

This is known as disconfirmation bias.

Tell that to Howard Stern, George Carlin, or Opie and Anthony.

Yeah, because, afterall, trying to censor these people absolutely devastated their careers. Howard and George who?

You said that you enjoyed the romcoms where men were abused. Then you said that it's okay to abuse men because they are a privileged class.

1. I said I enjoy old romcoms, I never said I enjoyed them because men were abused.
2. Men aren't abused in old romcoms.
3. I never said it was OK to abuse men.

So you don't have a problem with violence. You have a problem with compulsion or patriarchy.

Where do you get this stuff? Of course I'm not OK with violence, BUT FAMILY GUY IS NOT PROMOTING OR DEPICTING REAL VIOLENCE. It's absurdist exaggeration of typically non-violent conflicts.

You don't know what kind of options he had to leave Othello's employ. He mentions at one point that creditors are eating him to death. He has a wife to consider. He might have some real financial problems. Remember back in those days, there was no social safety net. You couldn't pay your debts you'd go to debtor's prison, or become a beggar. Also, with the patron system of the time Iago probably needed a good reference from Othello to change employment. Personally, I think poverty and classism can sting as much as racism, or sexism.

Othello isn't one of my favorite Shakespeares, so I'll admit you may remember more of the details of why Iago hates Othello than I do, but I still think there are some KEY differences between the Iago/Othello relationship and the Antonio/Shylock one. Firstly, there's no indication that Othello has been knowingly malicious towards Iago. Perhaps he's mistakenly overlooked him, but there's no indication that he actively saught to hurt him by not promoting him or paying him more. You can't say this about Antonio and the whole of Christian society demonizing Shylock and other Jews. Secondly, Iago secretly undertakes the revenge, while Shylock tries to get his revenge in plain site by a contract that Antonio enters willingly. I think these are two KEY differences.

However, I absolutely agree that classism is as much a problem as racism or sexism. In fact, the latter two are often exasserbated by the former.

I don't think it is. I think Kate spells out an obligation to love one's husband, and as a natural consequence of that love you will want to serve him, just as he in his turn will want to serve his wife, for love. The language may be couched in feudal terms of lords and vassals but it's just as true today. We gladly serve those whom we love and a house divided against itself cannot stand.

There you go creatively interpreting again. :/

[mortalterror]

The suicide stats are pointless unless you can point to something in our culture that's driving all men to suicide and then insist on having it changed. We don't live in a culture that pressures men into committing suicide. Personally, I don't even object to suicide morally as I believe people have the right to end their own life if they choose too.

It's not that men attempt suicide at several times the rate of women. The problem is that men are several times as successful at it do to the nature of how they go about it. Men tend to use more violent methods like guns, knives, or jumping from high places. Women try to overdose on pills or drown themselves.

However, if suicide became epidemic like it appears to have in the UK, then I'd seriously be wanting an investigation into why it's becoming so common and see if there is something that should be culturally fixed. So, yeah, I do care, but I don't live there. Go cause the public outrage yourself (I mean this genuinely). The problem is that you don't know what in UK culture needs fixing to stop the suicides like we know what needs fixing to stop the wage gap.

There is a correlation between suicide and secularism. Religious societies tend to repress suicidal urges more.

To get the easy stuff out of the way first: I don't disdain narrative, color, sound, mass market, blockbuster, or commercial films. I don't know where you got that from.

Because you said in this thread that sound and color aren't important parts of film, and you've mentioned in a past discussion that you don't think things like plot or subject matter to a story. There are some major vital elements of various mediums that you don't think are relevant, but which to most people are as important as wheels on a car.

For the record, Kurosawa and Bergman are my favorite filmmakers behind Hitchcock; I have Dreyer ahead of Kubrick and Fellini, but Kubrick and Fellini ahead of Murnau and Eisenstein. I think you misunderstand what I mean when I say no filmmakers were definitively better. What I mean is that the latter reached the pinnacle of film artistry, but there's more than one way to scale that pinnacle, and some filmmakers did it more than they did. If Dreyer had made 60 films and most of them were of the same or similar quality to The Passion of Joan of Arc, then I think we'd have a definitive greatest director ever, period. The problem is that Dreyer was a selective perfectionist who, like Kubrick, chose to perfect the few films he made rather than being prolific. I think pretty much everything he made after Joan of Arc is a masterpiece of varying levels, but he just didn't make enough. That's one reason why I have Hitchcock, Bergman, and Kurosawa at my top, because they were prolific AND consistently great.

There's always room for improvement. Perfection doesn't exist in human labor. The Passion of Joan of Arc may be one of the best films of all time but there are other better films and I think Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Scorsese, and Lang made most of them.

The key point you seem to be missing is that film, like music, has a few fundamental elements that can be perfected. The two constants are editing and mise-en-scene. If you master these, then you master film. Period.

No. Sound and color are essential parts of film too.

Griffith was the first to do it; Dreyer, Murnau, and Eisenstein innovated in several different ways. Between them you basically have the foundations for every filmmaking style after them. The only thing "original" left to do was to find variations on what they did and ways to mix them.

You think that Jean-Luc Godard would agree with that? I don't care for his work but he found dozens of ways to innovate and experiment with film. And he wasn't the only one.

Color adds a different visual texture, but doesn't create a new fundamental.

Tell that to a painter. The combination of colors, their balance, harmony, and interaction are sometimes the whole reason for a film.

Music turns film into a hybrid medium, but still doesn't change the fundamentals.

Film, like opera or ballet is a hybrid medium.

So, yes, those elements gave filmmakers more to play and innovate with, but they still had to master the basics, and mastering the new elements didn't mean doing more than the early greats did, it just meant doing something similar but different. You can dislike them all you want, but I maintain you can not genuinely love film as an art-form and dismiss or downplay Griffith, Murnau, Eisenstein, and Dreyer, because to do so is to dismiss and downplay the fundemantal elements of what makes film a unique art-form.

Even the so called "silent" films weren't silent. They have scores, and they were often edited to specific scores. I'm thinking of course of how modern versions of The Passion of Joan of Arc are accompanied by the track Visions of Light, written for the restored film. Or Giorgio Moroder's modern rock score to Metropolis, and how Prokofiev collaborated with Eisenstein on Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. Griffith's Birth of a Nation has an original score by Joseph Carl Briel. Do you know where Kurosawa learned to love film? His brother was a pianist for a movie theater. They had score sheets written for the movies and would even do sound effects when called for. Even the early films of the Lumiere brothers were accompanied by musicians.

You are forgetting two other important aspects of film Morpheus: the writing and the acting. Griffith, Murnau, and Eisenstein were sometimes lousy storytellers. They might compose a good shot or edit two shots together splendidly but they'd be filming a lousy actor, playing a lousy character, in a lousy story. Some of the stuff I've seen by them is just melodramatic and silly.

Yeah, but I don't see what you think this has to do with TOTS.

Then I don't see what Abu Grahib has to do with it either.

Falstaff was a liar, drunkard, braggard, and thief, who wanted to have as much fun and be as wealthy and well-thought of as possible while doing as little as possible. The notion that he didn't "deserve" the ribbing he got is nonsense. Malvolio is a moralist prude who probably deserved to get prank, but I do rather feel that the prank was overly mean given the circumstances. If anything, Falstaff's prank was underdone and Malvolio's overdone.

Katherine might've deserved something in between if she just had a bad attitude in general that had nothing to do with patriarchal oppression, but the point is that there's no doubt that Petruchio's "taming" is WAY overboard, especially when the end goal is to make her conform in a completely unjust society. This wasn't the case with either Falstaff or Malvolio. Neither were tortured. Falstaff was (rightfully, and playfully, and of his own doing) embarassed; Malvolio was, IMO, overly humiliated; Katherine was tortured. There's big differences in all three scenarios.

Katherine was definitely not tortured. She was treated better than either man. And going overboard is called comedy.

Clopin made a good point against a strawman, i.e., a point I never made. I said there was a wage gap, I never said how much. He assumed I got my numbers from Obama. Even if the gap WAS caused by that, it still wouldn't make it OK. Why do you think women would be more reluctant to ask for raises anyway?

Testosterone makes men more aggressive and assertive, thus more likely to ask for a raise than women.

The areas where men do get the "short stick" in society need fixing too. I never said otherwise.

You definitely said otherwise when you implied that you were happy with the double standard and talked a lot of nonsense about privilege and how men are just getting what they deserve when people harm them but women are all helpless victims who need saving.

Yeah, you think if you take the richest women and the richest men and then put them on a pie chart it will be nearly equal?

I don't know. There are a lot of super rich billionaire women.

This is known as disconfirmation bias.

Otherwise known as common sense.

Yeah, because, afterall, trying to censor these people absolutely devastated their careers. Howard and George who?

Howard Stern went from having an audience of around 25 million on terrestrial radio to having an audience of maybe one million on satellite radio. It drastically harmed his brand and how relevant he was to society. To a lesser extent this applies to Opie and Anthony for chasing them to satellite radio, getting them fired several times, and do to contractual obligations they weren't even allowed to work for a year. As of about a year ago, Anthony Cumia was fired from satellite radio and broadcasts a podcast from his house. If you don't think that hurts his revenue, the guests he can get, or how many people his program reaches, you're crazy. George Carlin was arrested for doing his act and then dragged through the courts like Lenny Bruce.

1. I said I enjoy old romcoms, I never said I enjoyed them because men were abused.
2. Men aren't abused in old romcoms.
3. I never said it was OK to abuse men.

I disagree. I believe you did, except you don't think the men are being abused because they come from a privileged class that it's okay to abuse with impunity.

Where do you get this stuff? Of course I'm not OK with violence, BUT FAMILY GUY IS NOT PROMOTING OR DEPICTING REAL VIOLENCE. It's absurdist exaggeration of typically non-violent conflicts.

Then so is Taming of the Shrew.

Othello isn't one of my favorite Shakespeares, so I'll admit you may remember more of the details of why Iago hates Othello than I do, but I still think there are some KEY differences between the Iago/Othello relationship and the Antonio/Shylock one. Firstly, there's no indication that Othello has been knowingly malicious towards Iago. Perhaps he's mistakenly overlooked him, but there's no indication that he actively saught to hurt him by not promoting him or paying him more. You can't say this about Antonio and the whole of Christian society demonizing Shylock and other Jews. Secondly, Iago secretly undertakes the revenge, while Shylock tries to get his revenge in plain site by a contract that Antonio enters willingly. I think these are two KEY differences.

Thoughtlessness is probably better than outright malice, but the injustice is still greater. And Shylock does trick Antonio by saying that he'll lend him the money without interest in a spirit of friendship, and that the pound of flesh clause is just for sport.

However, I absolutely agree that classism is as much a problem as racism or sexism. In fact, the latter two are often exasserbated by the former.

There we'll agree.

There you go creatively interpreting again. :/

I don't think it's a creative interpretation at all. I think it's as plain as the nose on your face.

[MorpheusSandman]

It's not that men attempt suicide at several times the rate of women. The problem is that men are several times as successful at it do to the nature of how they go about it. Men tend to use more violent methods like guns, knives, or jumping from high places. Women try to overdose on pills or drown themselves.

Ok... so what do you suggest we change in society to remedy this?

There is a correlation between suicide and secularism. Religious societies tend to repress suicidal urges more.

Again: OK... so what do you suggest we change in society? Start forcing people to be religious?

Because you said in this thread that sound and color aren't important parts of film, and you've mentioned in a past discussion that you don't think things like plot or subject matter to a story. There are some major vital elements of various mediums that you don't think are relevant, but which to most people are as important as wheels on a car.

Sound and color are important parts of films that have sound and color. They do not innately make film better, just as having a drama (as in opera) does not make music better. Plot and subject matter matter to a STORY, they do not matter to the art of filmmaking. You can make great films with poor "stories" just as Shakespeare made great plays from what were traditionally stock characters and plots. It's all in how well it's done.

There's always room for improvement. Perfection doesn't exist in human labor.

This assumes a kind of Platonic ideal towards which art aspires to, but this is a fallacious notion. Color is not innately better than B&W, sound is not innately better than silence. Art is a long history of things changing rather than getting better and better. In many respects, we haven't bettered Homer in literature. You're free to PREFER color and sound. To me, they're just additional tools that can be used well or poorly. Frankly, I think most directors use color poorly and would've been better served in black & white. There are exceptions: Kurosawa, Bergman, and Fellini amongst them, but few directors have their painterly eyes.

No. Sound and color are essential parts of film too.

No, they're essential to color films and sound films. Removing sound and color does not make a film not a film, ergo they are not essential parts of film. What makes a film not a film is removing editing and mise-en-scene.

You think that Jean-Luc Godard would agree with that?

Probably. Godard knew the history of film as much as anyone. He KNEW he was experimenting with what had already been done. Most of Godard's innovations (not all, but most) were about subverting the expectations that had been created by classic filmmaking standards. He was not innovating at a fundamental level but rather innovating in how those fundamental elements were mixed.

Film, like opera or ballet is a hybrid medium.

It's a hybrid medium once you add sound, not before.

Even the so called "silent" films weren't silent. They have scores, and they were often edited to specific scores. I'm thinking of course of how modern versions of The Passion of Joan of Arc are accompanied by the track Visions of Light, written for the restored film.

Most of them did not have scores but were accompanied by theater orchestras. Dreyer explicitly stated his preference for POJOA being seen as a silent. I've seen it both ways. Frankly, Voices of Light is an anomaly in that it's one of the very few scores written (long) after a masterpiece that doesn't detract from it and, in many respects, does make it (IMO) better. However, I still think Dreyer's unadulterated film is transcendentally powerful and beautiful without the score. The score makes it a different experience, and a valuable one, but not an essential one. POJOA would still be in my top 5 either way.

Prokofiev collaborated with Eisenstein on Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible.

Those aren't silents.

You are forgetting two other important aspects of film Morpheus: the writing and the acting.

These are important aspects of theater that was carried over into film. Early on, nobody had a clue how to use the medium of film to actually narrate stories. The vast majority of pre-Griffith film is like theater in front of a static camera with editing done only when necessary. Again, the ART OF FILM is in how to use the medium (mise-en-scene and editing) in order to narrate a story (or non-stories). So the question becomes do you love stories or do you love film? If you place stories above film then you might indeed deride Griffith and Eisenstein and Murnau for having poor stories, but if you love film then you love the ways in which they used the medium to tell these poor stories.

Then I don't see what Abu Grahib has to do with it either.

I mentioned Abu Ghraib in passing in a passage where I was clearly being sarcastic and exaggerated, I wasn't drawing a 1:1 analogy: "Awww, the poor misogynistic torturer is tired for his hard day of torturing. Surely what he's suffering is on equal grounds with her. Why, I bet the guards at Abu Ghraib were drop-dead tired after a whole day of waterboarding!"

Katherine was definitely not tortured. She was treated better than either man.

You're delusional. Falstaff causes his own downfall when he runs away from the robbery and then lies about it. Malvolio is humiliated into believing Olivia loves him and his humiliated when wrong; KATHERINE IS TORTURED INTO CHANGING HER ATTITUDE ABOUT HOW WOMEN SHOULD BE SUBSERVIENT TO MEN. You'd REALLY prefer that someone starve and deprive you of sleep until you changed your whole way of being instead of making a fool of yourself?

Testosterone makes men more aggressive and assertive, thus more likely to ask for a raise than women.

And men are also encouraged by society to BE aggressive and assertive, while women get called *****es and shrews.

You definitely said otherwise when you implied that you were happy with the double standard and talked a lot of nonsense about privilege and how men are just getting what they deserve when people harm them but women are all helpless victims who need saving.

I never said any of this, so you're arguing against a strawman as well. Please go back in this thread where I ever said a double standard is OK and that "men are just getting what they deserve" when they're harmed. When you can't find it, I expect an apology.

Otherwise known as common sense.

Common sense is riddled with cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Howard Stern went from having an audience of around 25 million on terrestrial radio to having an audience of maybe one million on satellite radio. It drastically harmed his brand and how relevant he was to society. To a lesser extent this applies to Opie and Anthony for chasing them to satellite radio, getting them fired several times, and do to contractual obligations they weren't even allowed to work for a year. As of about a year ago, Anthony Cumia was fired from satellite radio and broadcasts a podcast from his house. If you don't think that hurts his revenue, the guests he can get, or how many people his program reaches, you're crazy. George Carlin was arrested for doing his act and then dragged through the courts like Lenny Bruce.

Like I've said before, I don't support censorship in any form, so I don't even really know what your point is of continuing to mention how these people were hurt by censorship.

I disagree. I believe you did, except you don't think the men are being abused because they come from a privileged class that it's okay to abuse with impunity.

Then prove I did. It's easy enough to do. Just go through my past responses to you and quote where I said anything remotely resembling this. Also, it might be helpful to show how any of the men are "abused" in old romcoms. How is Grant abused in His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby?

Then so is Taming of the Shrew.

Except it's not. What "typical non-violent conflict" is Shrew exaggerating? Are you suggesting that the closing speech is NOT meant to be taken as the ideal to which the torture aimed at? Because Family Guy certainly never closes with any idealistic speeches that justifies the violence in real life to achieve that ideal.

Thoughtlessness is probably better than outright malice, but the injustice is still greater.

I couldn't disagree more with the later. There's not even evidence that Iago ever mentioned his troubles to Othello and Othello refused to help him.

And Shylock does trick Antonio by saying that he'll lend him the money without interest in a spirit of friendship, and that the pound of flesh clause is just for sport.

Antonio still makes the agreement of his own free will, and if he believed Shylock then he was a moron seeing as he had only known Shylock as an enemy. It's still not the same situation as Othello had no reason (in his mind) to suspect Iago of such treachery.

I don't think it's a creative interpretation at all. I think it's as plain as the nose on your face.

Of course you think this, but you're a misogynist with a bias to see blatant misogyny as the ideal.

[Clopin]

Not a myth, and I gave you a statistical link that verified it.

Well fair enough. When most people talk about the pay gap they are referring to the oft cited 23% which is definitely a myth.

You really think manual labor are amongst the higher paying jobs in this day and age?

Uh... yes? I mean you won't be raking in the same as a successful lawyer or CEO, but if you're working in the right place you can make six figures as a welder, pipe fitter or even rig driver. Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc, all make decent salaries as well. I mainly brought up manual labour/trades because these jobs are overwhelmingly occupied by men, they are dangerous and unpleasant, they carry reasonable salaries, and I think it's very illuminating to see how men and women voluntarily work in different fields for different salaries, perquisites, job satisfaction, etc, when it comes to discussing pay gaps and gender discrimination.

Still doesn't justify a paygap. Men are perfectly free to go get jobs they like better. Women can't insure they're getting paid the same as the same jobs.

Wait what? Aren't women perfectly free to get jobs in traditionally male dominated fields? Women can ensure they are paid the same by negotiating for raises and positions at the same rate as men do. I mean if societal pressure is the only thing keeping women from pursuing careers in labour or STEM subjects then doesn't this go both ways? Mightn't men feel societal pressure in many different areas of their lives which may prevent them from seeking careers in, say, childcare, or other female centric careers? Is it really reasonable to say "oh, women are underrepresented in X and Y, we need to do something about it, but all those areas where men struggle, well, they're perfectly free to just behave differently and solve their own problems". Do you see the contradiction? I have no issue with telling someone they can solve their own problems, but I don't appreciate the double standard.

Of course they can and of course it shouldn't be funny and it should be a big deal. However, there is hardly a culture that promotes and facilitates like there is with women.

Oh dear, now we're on to "rape culture". Polly want a cracker? Bleat bleat, buzzword, bleat. Please, oh please, let me know how you can honestly believe that Western society "promotes and facilitates" rape. I would love to hear how you can honestly defend that ridiculous absurdity.

The suicide stats are pointless unless you can point to something in our culture that's driving all men to suicide and then insist on having it changed. We don't live in a culture that pressures men into committing suicide. Personally, I don't even object to suicide morally as I believe people have the right to end their own life if they choose too. However, if suicide became epidemic like it appears to have in the UK, then I'd seriously be wanting an investigation into why it's becoming so common and see if there is something that should be culturally fixed. So, yeah, I do care, but I don't live there. Go cause the public outrage yourself (I mean this genuinely). The problem is that you don't know what in UK culture needs fixing to stop the suicides like we know what needs fixing to stop the wage gap.

But when people like you argue you argue from result. Women are underrepresented in certain fields? Well there must be discrimination against them. How do we know that there is discrimination against them? Why because they are underrepresented of course! And around and around we go. Now i would be fine (well not fine, but a little less offended) with this horrific logic if you applied it evenly, you know to everything, but you don't. You can look at a statistic like how men are vastly overrepresented in suicides and other unpleasantries and say "well, how can we possibly know what is causing that!" Pick one. Either we accept that men and women are naturally very different and come to terms with everything this entails or we look at every imbalance of result between the genders as the fault of "society" and "social construction" and we try to deal with it. But if we choose the latter we do not discriminate in favour of women and we do not downplay the real problems men face. Deal?

All this snark is doing is proving you don't understand privilege. It's like the stupid argument that if you can name a successful black person and a struggling white person that white privilege doesn't exist. Privilege doesn't mean you face no problems, what it means is that you don't face certain problems OR have certain advantages over other people. In some cases, this is natural and can't be helped (there's a privilege in being born with a higher IQ, eg); but in some cases they are cultural artifacts and CAN be helped. The latter are what we need to identify and eradicate in ALL cases.

That's right, white privilege does not exist. None of these "privileges" exist. What privileges people are things like money and opportunities. A black person could be vastly more privileged than me, and I could be vastly more privileged than another white person. It would be absurd to say that the average Romanian is exceptionally privileged or that the Irish have historically been a privileged group. There is no such thing as "privilege", and you discredit yourself every time you fling around these ridiculous, meaningless phrases. Rape culture? My God! Look, just stick to watching movies okay? You are not intelligent, or capable of critical thinking.

[mortalterror]

Ok... so what do you suggest we change in society to remedy this?

Get rid of guns.

Again: OK... so what do you suggest we change in society? Start forcing people to be religious?

Not force, but encourage and promote publicly from a cultural, public health, and social capital point of view.

Sound and color are important parts of films that have sound and color.

Which all films have even silent films. Silence and musical scores are sound. Black and white are colors.

They do not innately make film better, just as having a drama (as in opera) does not make music better.

I think they do. If you are trying to excite and stimulate an audience that is one more way to do it. I think eventually when we get 3D down, and add smell and touch, things are going to be even better.

Plot and subject matter matter to a STORY, they do not matter to the art of filmmaking.

Almost every film ever made is a narrative. Hard to say the story doesn't matter when almost every single film in history has a story. Find me a great film without a story. There aren't any.

You can make great films with poor "stories" just as Shakespeare made great plays from what were traditionally stock characters and plots. It's all in how well it's done.

I don't think that you can. Or if you can, the film is flawed and not as good as it could be, or as good as other examples of the medium which don't have those flaws. Shakespeare retold stories that were already popular and well constructed. He relied on stock characters because Commedia dell'arte had streamlined the use of them into a brilliantly effective recipe. The characters aren't bad characters just because they are stock characters. They are stock characters because they are popular and work consistently.

This assumes a kind of Platonic ideal towards which art aspires to, but this is a fallacious notion.

You said that Griffith and Eisenstein's films were perfection. I told you nothing is perfect.

Color is not innately better than B&W, sound is not innately better than silence.

Be aware that you hold a minority view in this respect. In painting there are two color or even single color paintings, but few are as great or well liked as others with a wider pallete. Michelangelo, Raphael, Carravagio, Rubens, Rembrant, and Van Gogh used all the colors at their disposal.

Art is a long history of things changing rather than getting better and better.

Sometimes they do get better though. Sometimes they go from crummy eras to golden eras and golden eras to crummy eras. Most people wouldn't say that Mannerism is better than the High Renaissance. And most people would prefer the work of the High Renaissance over the work of the early middle ages.

In many respects, we haven't bettered Homer in literature.

That is true.

You're free to PREFER color and sound. To me, they're just additional tools that can be used well or poorly. Frankly, I think most directors use color poorly and would've been better served in black & white.

And I think that a lot of early directors used black and white poorly. They are colors just the same as red, green, or blue and they have a gray scale to work with too. Eisenstein and Griffith's films have definitely been bettered in the use of color. Pretty much every film where Vittorio Storaro, Sven Nykvist, were cinematographers were better for light and color.

There are exceptions: Kurosawa, Bergman, and Fellini amongst them, but few directors have their painterly eyes.

Kurosawa was a painter. Fellini drew caricatures and cartoons. Bergman however was not responsible for the visual style of his movies. That was Nykvist. Bergman was a writer of plays and his early films have no visual style worth noting. But James Cameron was trained as a painter, and so was Ridley Scott. Kubrick was a photographer, etc. The Cohen Brothers owe their visual style to Roger Deakins. I also have to wonder how much Wong Kar Wai owes Christopher Doyle since he uses him for every film.

No, they're essential to color films and sound films. Removing sound and color does not make a film not a film, ergo they are not essential parts of film. What makes a film not a film is removing editing and mise-en-scene.

If you remove color and sound you have black and white photography. Remove narrative and it's abstract photography. Without color is it even photography? Or is it concept art? It ain't film. I think your argument is reductio ad absurdum. It's like John Cage saying you don't need sound to make music.

Probably. Godard knew the history of film as much as anyone. He KNEW he was experimenting with what had already been done. Most of Godard's innovations (not all, but most) were about subverting the expectations that had been created by classic filmmaking standards. He was not innovating at a fundamental level but rather innovating in how those fundamental elements were mixed.

I don't think the early guys thought of everything. I don't think they could have. Besides with their technological limitations there were plenty of things they simply couldn't do.

It's a hybrid medium once you add sound, not before.

It's a hybrid medium because it combines photography, writing, acting, painting, and music. Sometimes it includes fashion, and architecture.

Most of them did not have scores but were accompanied by theater orchestras. Dreyer explicitly stated his preference for POJOA being seen as a silent. I've seen it both ways. Frankly, Voices of Light is an anomaly in that it's one of the very few scores written (long) after a masterpiece that doesn't detract from it and, in many respects, does make it (IMO) better. However, I still think Dreyer's unadulterated film is transcendentally powerful and beautiful without the score. The score makes it a different experience, and a valuable one, but not an essential one. POJOA would still be in my top 5 either way.

I don't think I'd enjoy silent films as much without the scores.

Those aren't silents.

There's no such thing as a silent film or a film without color. Now that I think of it, I seem to recall Lang and Murnau using colored tints in their films. And some silent film guys would hand paint certain scenes to inject color into them.

These are important aspects of theater that was carried over into film. Early on, nobody had a clue how to use the medium of film to actually narrate stories. The vast majority of pre-Griffith film is like theater in front of a static camera with editing done only when necessary.

You don't think that film acting has come a long way since then? Don't you think that a great performance by Peter O'Toole, Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, or Robert De Niro can improve a film?

Again, the ART OF FILM is in how to use the medium (mise-en-scene and editing) in order to narrate a story (or non-stories). So the question becomes do you love stories or do you love film? If you place stories above film then you might indeed deride Griffith and Eisenstein and Murnau for having poor stories, but if you love film then you love the ways in which they used the medium to tell these poor stories.

I love film and I love stories. I don't know how I feel about sequential photography or flip books which is what you are describing.

You are not intelligent, or capable of critical thinking.

For what it's worth, I think he's intelligent. He's just really liberal which comes with as many crazy biases as being really conservative does.

[Clopin]

Falling for a bunch of idiotic biases doesn't do his critical thinking faculties much credit. He seems knowledgeable about a few things, but not really able to think. Which is quite common. I mean his argument is diarrheal spew parroted from social justice blogs and "male privilege" checklists. It's not really possible that an intelligent person could swallow something like "rape culture" hook, line and sinker.

Also I loved his dig at you earlier about how "if you had posted what you're saying on a different message board all of his liberal friends would tear you to shreds". Of course they would absolutely make you out to be some sort of monster for questioning their unquestionable dogmas about "privileges", "rape culture", wage gaps", et al. It's interesting that he considers this sort of censorious, dialogue destroying tactic to be a positive thing, or an acceptable given, however.

[Ecurb]

Privilege : a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor : prerogative; especially : such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office

Clopin: That's right, white privilege does not exist.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. However, in the American South of 60 years ago it existed, based on this definition (white people had the legal "right" to sit in the front of the bus, for example). Based on this definition, I consider myself "privileged" to be born an American (instead of, say, a Ruandan) and you to be "privileged" to be a Canadian. We enjoy "rights and immunities" and "benefits and advantages" that others do not, based on our "positions" as citizens.

Clopin: But when people like you argue you argue from result.

Clopin:
You are not intelligent, or capable of critical thinking.

Aren't you "argu(ing) from result"?

[Clopin]

'Canadian' and 'American' are nationalities and not colours Ecurb. I am immensely privileged to have been born an English speaking citizen of a first world country. However, there are citizens of Canada who represent every ethnic background you can think of, and who enjoy the same rights and freedoms as i do regardless of their skin colour. Remember when I said:

What privileges people are things like money and opportunities.

Both of these things are afforded you in spades simply by being born in the first world. But this comes back to class and wealth before it comes back to race.

And Morpheus pointed out that people are also privileged or not so privileged by their natural abilities. Someone who is a spectacular genius is, all else being equal, richer in opportunity than someone who is of sub average or very low intelligence.

Ecurb: Aren't you "argu(ing) from result"?

No, from observation. The basic logic behind a sequence like:

-If women are underrepresented in X it is because they face overwhelming discrimination
-Women are underrepresented in X
-Therefore women face overwhelming discrimination...

Is just wrong.

[Clopin]

And if everything is determined by privilege and racism why is it that in countries like America and Canada ('white' countries) citizens of East Asian descent are vastly underrepresented in crime figures and vastly overrepresented in academics? Are we really supposed to assume that the police, judges and schools are granting Asians special favors because the state is racist against Whites and other ethnicities in their favour? That just doesn't make any sense.

[mortalterror]

Falling for a bunch of idiotic biases doesn't do his critical thinking faculties much credit. He seems knowledgeable about a few things, but not really able to think. Which is quite common. I mean his argument is diarrheal spew parroted from social justice blogs and "male privilege" checklists. It's not really possible that an intelligent person could swallow something like "rape culture" hook, line and sinker.

I know a lot of smart people who think some pretty wacky things. There's no such thing as 360 degree intelligence. We are all strong on some fronts and weak on others.

Also I loved his dig at you earlier about how "if you had posted what you're saying on a different message board all of his liberal friends would tear you to shreds". Of course they would alsolutely make you out to be some sort of monster for questioning their unquestionable dogmas about "privileges", "rape culture", wage gaps", et al. It's interesting that he considers this sort of censorious, dialogue destroying tactic to be a positive thing, or an acceptable given, however.

Yeah, he's right too. Sometimes I move in very liberal circles and I catch a lot of flack for things which I don't in moderate or conservative social groups. There are some people who live in those bubbles where everyone thinks like they do and it reinforces their ideas about how things are or should be, and since nobody questions them in their group they just assume that everyone holds the same beliefs.

[Ecurb]

No, from observation. The basic logic behind a sequence like:

-If women are underrepresented in X it is because they face overwhelming discrimination
-Women are underrepresented in X
-Therefore women face overwhelming discrimination...

Is just wrong.

Yes. That would constitute "assuming the antecedent" (if that's the right name for the fallacious logic that suggests that if the conclusion is correct, the axioms must be correct). I'm not sure that's what Morpheus did, though (although I haven't read the thread very thoroughly). It's perfectly reasonable to suggest possible reasons why women get paid less than men, one of which is discrimination (there are doubtless multiple factors).

Discrimination itself can be a secondary factor: discrimination against a group might change the culture of that group. IN the U.S. (for example) it seems reasonable that African American subcultures would have less respect for America's laws than many white subcultures (because the subcultures developed in a time when legal discrimination existed). For women, specific discrimination limiting their participation in certain professions in the past may no longer exist, but culturally constituted norms about women's role in child care, about whether drive and ambition are attractive qualities in men or in women, or about what professions are consistent with femininity might have developed as a result of discrimination.

[mortalterror]

I figured I'd reply to your comment in two separate posts since the first was getting long and dealt mostly with film. I hope that's okay with you.

I mentioned Abu Ghraib in passing in a passage where I was clearly being sarcastic and exaggerated, I wasn't drawing a 1:1 analogy: "Awww, the poor misogynistic torturer is tired for his hard day of torturing. Surely what he's suffering is on equal grounds with her. Why, I bet the guards at Abu Ghraib were drop-dead tired after a whole day of waterboarding!"

Alright, you were just exaggerating. Understood.

You're delusional. Falstaff causes his own downfall when he runs away from the robbery and then lies about it. Malvolio is humiliated into believing Olivia loves him and his humiliated when wrong; KATHERINE IS TORTURED INTO CHANGING HER ATTITUDE ABOUT HOW WOMEN SHOULD BE SUBSERVIENT TO MEN. You'd REALLY prefer that someone starve and deprive you of sleep until you changed your whole way of being instead of making a fool of yourself?

No, I'm talking about when Falstaff was hiding in the tub of laundry and everyone beats him. Or when the sprites and fairies pinch and smack him.

Katherine isn't tortured. She just skips a meal, is kept up late, and has a dress torn. Honestly, I've had much worse days. And in the past, when people made me uncomfortable, I usually complied a lot quicker than Kate, instead of holding out and being stubborn or pig headed. Although, sometimes I don't change and just continue to suffer, and after a while you blame yourself for your troubles more than other people. Thinking "Man, I could have changed this and this a long time ago, and things would have been so much easier." It's frustrating, when you look back on all the time you've wasted being angry, or obstinate, lacking social graces, when you think of all the things you didn't do or people you hurt because you didn't know better. I can sympathize with Kate. I struggle with my own shrewish nature all the time. It's an uphill battle. I have to remind myself all the time to be nicer to people, but I think I'm getting better.

And men are also encouraged by society to BE aggressive and assertive, while women get called *****es and shrews.

Sometimes. Although, there's a lot of backlash lately, trying to make men act like women or women act like men. I think that tends to go against biology, but there are advantages and disadvantages to being either sex. Also, there's a fine line between being assertive and aggressive and being a ***** or an *******. Some people can't see the line. Occasionally, I have that trouble. I'll think I'm being frank and honest when I'm really being rude and tactless.

I never said any of this, so you're arguing against a strawman as well. Please go back in this thread where I ever said a double standard is OK and that "men are just getting what they deserve" when they're harmed. When you can't find it, I expect an apology.

Alright, you didn't say that men are just getting what they deserve when they are beaten in romantic comedies. What you said was more like it's more socially acceptable, or it's less of an injustice to beat and humiliate men than when women go without food or sleep for a day.

Common sense is riddled with cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Even logic breaks down at some point when applied to the real world.

Like I've said before, I don't support censorship in any form, so I don't even really know what your point is of continuing to mention how these people were hurt by censorship.

You said that there isn't any censorship anymore and I said that those men would disagree with you.

Then prove I did. It's easy enough to do. Just go through my past responses to you and quote where I said anything remotely resembling this. Also, it might be helpful to show how any of the men are "abused" in old romcoms. How is Grant abused in His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby?

Page six post 96 "this is where privilege becomes an important factor. When you have one group that has historically been in the privileged position, making light of them does not have the same affect that making light of those who are in a much weaker position does. It's like suggesting that both slaves and slaveowners should be equally subject to ridicule. Well, no, they shouldn't. Your "double standard" presumes a level playing field in real life, when the truth is that there is no level playing field, and the playing field back then was far more unlevel then than it is now. Besides, as I suggested above, in those RomComs the women are not TORTURING the men by any stretch of the imagination. "

How are men abused or humiliated in screwball comedies? How about this threatening line of dialogue in His Girl Friday "I'm going to walk right up to you and hammer on that monkey skull of yours until it rings like a Chinese gong." Hildy also kicks Walter under the table. Then there is the character Bruce who is a classic milquetoast, the opposite of the female shrew, who's constantly emasculated and subjected to put downs.

Except it's not. What "typical non-violent conflict" is Shrew exaggerating? Are you suggesting that the closing speech is NOT meant to be taken as the ideal to which the torture aimed at? Because Family Guy certainly never closes with any idealistic speeches that justifies the violence in real life to achieve that ideal.

It's exaggerating the domestic squabbles every marriage has for comedic effect. Plus, Family guy justifies violence and other stuff all the time. Remember the time they panned over to Lee Majors who says "What, women are things?" or the time they showed Ralph knocking out Alice from the Honeymooners, making good on his old "One of these days Alice, bang, pow, straight to the moon!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSKDNKI0--s
I thought this next one was from Family Guy too, but I misremembered it and it's actually from the Simpsons. Ricky Ricardo beating Lucy from I Love Lucy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x46GfkTN8vE
Homer: Ha ha ha. He hit her again!

Found another from Family Guy, a Horton Hears a Who parody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20knMq7_JZY

I couldn't disagree more with the later. There's not even evidence that Iago ever mentioned his troubles to Othello and Othello refused to help him.

That's because he's too afraid to ask Othello for help. He's been victimized so long, held under his abusers thumb, that he doesn't even dare to show displeasure or object. Classic authoritarianism.

Antonio still makes the agreement of his own free will, and if he believed Shylock then he was a moron seeing as he had only known Shylock as an enemy. It's still not the same situation as Othello had no reason (in his mind) to suspect Iago of such treachery.

So you think Antonio deserves what happens to him because he's an idiot and Othello doesn't deserve what happens to him because he's oblivious?

Of course you think this, but you're a misogynist with a bias to see blatant misogyny as the ideal.

Ie, a man.

[MorpheusSandman]

Uh... yes?

Uh... no. 6-figures is piddly-squat when you look at how wealth is ditributed in the US (at least in the US; I don't know about the rest of the West).

I mainly brought up manual labour/trades because these jobs are overwhelmingly occupied by men, they are dangerous and unpleasant, they carry reasonable salaries, and I think it's very illuminating to see how men and women voluntarily work in different fields for different salaries, perquisites, job satisfaction, etc, when it comes to discussing pay gaps and gender discrimination.

And you seriously think that cultural biases play no role in what jobs men and women consider appropriate for their sexes?

Aren't women perfectly free to get jobs in traditionally male dominated fields?

In the strictest sense, yes, they're free, but neither encouraged before to pursue them or encouraged while pursuing it to continue. A great many women have written about terrible, misogynistic treatment after breaking into the "mens' club" atmosphere of any number of professions. Even in my own profession of poker I've seen it (even though I don't play live that much).

I mean if societal pressure is the only thing keeping women from pursuing careers in labour or STEM subjects then doesn't this go both ways? Mightn't men feel societal pressure in many different areas of their lives which may prevent them from seeking careers in, say, childcare, or other female centric careers? Is it really reasonable to say "oh, women are underrepresented in X and Y, we need to do something about it, but all those areas where men struggle, well, they're perfectly free to just behave differently and solve their own problems". Do you see the contradiction? I have no issue with telling someone they can solve their own problems, but I don't appreciate the double standard.

To answer you first and second questions: ABSOLUTELY! Again, you and Mortal keep assuming this "double standard" where none exists. I've already admitted that there are, indeed, social pressures that are biased against men on many fronts as well, and they need remedied as well. Bringing up the fact of male privilege does not mean that there aren't areas where men don't struggle more and don't need society to change as well. One reason we don't see these addressed is that far too many men (like yourself) are out there trying to "debunk" the problems that women face (rather than remedying them) instead of focusing on the problems men face (and trying to remedy them as well).

Oh dear, now we're on to "rape culture". Polly want a cracker? Bleat bleat, buzzword, bleat. Please, oh please, let me know how you can honestly believe that Western society "promotes and facilitates" rape. I would love to hear how you can honestly defend that ridiculous absurdity.

Oh dear, now we're back to you being all reactionary at hearing another term you don't like.

Rape culture is fairly easy to prove. Just look at the statistics for one thing: it's one of the most under-reported, under-prosecuted, under-convicted crimes. Whenever it is reported, victims are held up to more scrutiny than the perpetrators and are frequently accused of making it up (or changing their mind) for "revenge" (never mind that the statistics suggest such false accusations are extremely low). How common is it in our society to use alcohol to try to incapacitate women so they're in no position to consent? How in the world do you think Bill Cosby got away with what he did for so long?

But when people like you argue you argue from result. Women are underrepresented in certain fields? Well there must be discrimination against them. How do we know that there is discrimination against them? Why because they are underrepresented of course! And around and around we go.

Except it's not just the statistics, it's also hundreds of thousands of anecdotes of women talking about how they've felt going against what society encourages women to pursue and trying to break into male-dominated fields, and every time they raise a complaint it provokes the ire of misogynists like yourself and Mortal who just dismiss what they have to say. "Elevatorgate" was a perfect example of a woman talking about what it felt like to be so "pursued" because she was one of the few women at atheist conventions, and how scary that could be, only to get lambasted by Richard Dawkins who went on a non-sequitor rant about women facing harsher problems in African countries (as if that lessens the problems women face here).

Now i would be fine (well not fine, but a little less offended) with this horrific logic if you applied it evenly, you know to everything, but you don't. You can look at a statistic like how men are vastly overrepresented in suicides and other unpleasantries and say "well, how can we possibly know what is causing that!" Pick one. Either we accept that men and women are naturally very different and come to terms with everything this entails or we look at every imbalance of result between the genders as the fault of "society" and "social construction" and we try to deal with it. But if we choose the latter we do not discriminate in favour of women and we do not downplay the real problems men face. Deal?

Other than their physical traits, men and women are far more similar than they are different, so the extreme differences we see are predominantly sociological and, yes, they need changing and, yes, they need changing when they unfairly hurt either side. Again, I don't know where you're getting this "double standard" from as I have not suggested that societies are perfectly fair to men.

That's right, white privilege does not exist. None of these "privileges" exist.

So you have a deep fear that the cops will pull you over for no reason? Or a fear they'd shoot you in the back if you dared to run from them and then try to plant a gun on you?

Oh What privileges people are things like money and opportunities.

Wealth privileges are merely one type of privilege and, as I already said to Mortal, I agree they are arguably an even bigger privilege that tends to exaserbate the problems of white and male privilege (because white males are also predominant amongst the richest people, and because money equals power, and because people are selfish by nature so they use that power to benefit themselves and others like them).

I'll take a page out of Mortal's book and use a popular TV show as an example. Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the episode where Will and Carlton are arrested in a small town for driving a fancy car that was loned to them. They're held in prison for hours without cause or without representation. Of course, Carlton's dad (Will's Uncle) is a rich, black, judge, and when he finds out and goes down there he rips into the blatantly racist cops and gets them out of jail. This is a case of illustrating both the negative effects of white privilege (two blacks being arrested for no reason) and how wealth privilege helped mitigate the damage. However, the presence of the latter doesn't erase the former in principle. What happens when you aren't related to someone who's rich and you happen to black? Well, you spend the night in jail for no reason (at best) and, at worst, you can end up like Walter Scott.

Privilege is not something you consider on a case-by-case basis, it's something you consider on a statistical average level. If you think statistics are in favor of women when it comes to wages, or blacks when it comes to... just about anything, then you aren't living in this little place called reality.

There is no such thing as "privilege", and you discredit yourself every time you fling around these ridiculous, meaningless phrases. Rape culture? My God! Look, just stick to watching movies okay? You are not intelligent, or capable of critical thinking.

There is such a thing as privilege (statistics prove it) and you discredit yourself everytime you fling around these ridiculous, reactionary claims. I have a 150 IQ so I have zero doubt I'm intelligent and quite capable of critical thinking; you I have my doubts about.

[MorpheusSandman]

It's not really possible that an intelligent person could swallow something like "rape culture" hook, line and sinker.

What's impossible is for an intelligent person to look at statistics on rape, the wage gap, or anything having to do with blacks, prison, and the justice system and deny privilege. You seem to have swalled Fox News's lies hooks, line, and sinker by comparison.

Also I loved his dig at you earlier about how "if you had posted what you're saying on a different message board all of his liberal friends would tear you to shreds". Of course they would absolutely make you out to be some sort of monster for questioning their unquestionable dogmas about "privileges", "rape culture", wage gaps", et al. It's interesting that he considers this sort of censorious, dialogue destroying tactic to be a positive thing, or an acceptable given, however.

That's not actually what I said. I was thinking of posting it on any huge public forum, not one with my "liberal friends." What they would do would be precisely what was done to me when I used to be in an insular bubble like yourself and Mortal: they'd throw out so many facts and statistics that you'd either have to illogically twist and contort them to justify your reactionary Fox News nonsense about "no privilege," or you'd do what I did (what any intelligent, rationalist would do) and accept the facts that were staring you right in the face. If you did the former, then I'd say let the censorious bashing begin. Of course, if you think you can stand up to those facts and come out in the end a winner, I'd be more than happy to point you in the direction. It would be amusing for me, either way. Hey, you never know, you might actually be right and get me to change my mind again. The good thing about us intelligent people who care about the truth is that we can always be swayed by evidence. Of course, all you've offered so far is vacuous bluster, so that's not a good start.