Feminism and Figure Skating

[Bluebonnet]

Doris, I'm surprised at you! The reasons:

The wit and wisdom of James Dobson:

It's important to beat your dog
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=33;t=001112;p=0

This is online forum talking about Dobson, just like what we have here. They are totally no creditabilities. Will you use this kind of garbage to support your opinions?

Also your four year old.
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/...james-dobson/the-rod-of-discipline-29804.html

Dr. Dobson was correct!:thumbsup:

Just never use your hands to do it-only a rod, stick, belt or similar beating aid.

Where did Dr. Dobson say this?!

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/W00021.html

This is a popular belief and politically correct. But it is as stupid as letting baby cry into sleep. Violence is on the rise as fast as this popular idea spreads, you know.

 

[Mathman]

When i was in college in the 1960s the university had just gone co-ed a few years before. They added a "women's college." The other arts and sciences college was just "the college."

So they had to build a new women's dormitory, co-ed dormitories being decades in the future. The women's dorm won a lot of awards for its architecture. From the outside it looked like a fortress, with stark stone walls and severe square windows (from which to pour down boiling oil on any possible invaders). The top was ringed with closely packed spears curved to point outward from any angle of approach. It was surrounded by a moat and the only access was a long narrow bridge resembling a draw bridge.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr...306719&Signature=a0vXqYcyD06oCpU9wA+cEP0LjEc=

But once you got inside (boys were allowed inside during the lunch hour if invited and accompanied by a resident), it was the garden of eden. Babbling brooks, tropical foliage, and flowers everywhere, ever abloom.

 

[Mathman]

About girls and mathematics, there was a very famous episode of "Father Knows Best" in the late fifties on that subject. ("Father Knows Best" was a popular television show about typical American family life, starring Robert Young. He had a son "Bud" and two daughters that he called "Princess" and "Kitten.")

In this episode his high school age daughter (Princess) announced that she wanted to go to college and study to become an engineer. But Father knew better. He explained that to be an engineer you have to study hard subjects like trigonometry and calculus. The issue was resolved when the next week Proncess got a new boyfriend and forgot all about studying hard subjects. Father knew best.

 

[gkelly]

In this episode his high school age daughter (Princess) announced that she wanted to go to college and study to become an engineer. But Father knew better. He explained that to be an engineer you have to study hard subjects like trigonometry and calculus. The issue was resolved when the next week Proncess got a new boyfriend and forgot all about studying hard subjects. Father knew best.

Peggy Seeger's response

 

[skatinginbc]

College gender gap widens: 57% are women

Men have more career options that pay well (e.g., plumbers, carpenters, mechanics) and thus have less incentives to go through college. To earn a comparable income, women usually have to get a higher education or use their sex appeal or artistic talents (entertainment business).

I don't know which exalted people get to make these rules [regarding female vs. woman]

After testing on my husband, who speaks a mixture of Midland and Southern American English dialect, I was surprised to discover that he uniformly uses "woman" and "male" to specify the gender of a position holder. The only situation where he would use "man" as an appositive noun for a position holder is "man president". "Presidents in all countries throughout human history are 99.99% male. If there is a need to specify his gender, it is also necessary to point out his being a human, not an alien species," he said. "Woman and man are for humans only whereas female and male can refer to animals. A man toy means a male human toy." And he said "female" as an attributive adjective for humans sounds rather presumptuous, not natural, as if someone from a lower middle class tries to be extra correct in grammar. While he was opening a can of beer, he heard a woman character in the Family Guy saying "a female welder". "Did you hear it? She said female," he called out. "Now that I think of it, female usually comes from a woman's mouth. Men would have said a woman welder instead," he concluded. If he was right, then I was wrong. Female is not doomed at the hands of women. It is doomed at the hands of men.

Lady killer = a debonaire and handsome man.

That belongs to a different category, namely idiom (e.g., "red tape" meaning "excessive rules"), which is separate from the literal or basic meanings of the words of which the phrase is made. "Queen regent" and "queen consort", where a noun is modified by another noun, are also examples of idioms. What I discussed in my previous posts pertains only to woman/lady as a free modifier (e.g., "glacial" is a free modifier in the phrase "glacial calm"). Nevertheless, you touched on the fact that "woman" or "lady" as an attributive adjective can easily turn into a set phrase and adopt extra connotations beyond the literal or basic meanings of its components. Such connotations are usually diminutive or trivializing--Another reason I prefer "female" over "woman".

 

[Olympia]

About girls and mathematics, there was a very famous episode of "Father Knows Best" in the late fifties on that subject. ("Father Knows Best" was a popular television show about typical American family life, starring Robert Young. He had a son "Bud" and two daughters that he called "Princess" and "Kitten.")

In this episode his high school age daughter (Princess) announced that she wanted to go to college and study to become an engineer. But Father knew better. He explained that to be an engineer you have to study hard subjects like trigonometry and calculus. The issue was resolved when the next week Proncess got a new boyfriend and forgot all about studying hard subjects. Father knew best.

Oh, dear.

That's an argument for leaving at least some elements of the good old days back in the good old days!

ETA: skatinginbc, the one thing i'd change is that at least in Britain, it's "queen regnant" (a queen ruling in her own name) that's the opposite of a queen consort (the wife of a ruling king). A queen regent is the queen who is wielding royal power in the name of a monarch who is unable to do so by virtue of youth or illness.

 

[Spun Silver]

This is a very belated response to Buttercup's opinion below (post 181):

I agree that [the NYC abortion rate is] appalling, but I'm not sure how it got into a discussion of feminism - I don't think it has much to do with feminism or liberalism.

This is amazingly uninformed. At least in the USA, abortion rights have been a feminist issue in this country in my whole lifetime, since before Roe v. Wade in 1973. See the home page of the National Org. for Women, lead story:
http://now.org/
See the linking of feminism and abortion here http://fwhc.org/ and here: http://www.feminist.org/rrights/.
See the history of abortion rights as described here (note, it's a passage from a feminist book recommended by Doris earlier in this thread): http://www.feminist.com/resources/ourbodies/abortion.html

I think it would be much harder to demonstrate that feminism and abortion rights are not connected in contemporary politics. (Of course pro-life feminists de-link them, but they are explicitly distinguishing themselves from the feminist mainstream which defends abortion rights.)

 

[jcoates]

The wit and wisdom of James Dobson:

It's important to beat your dog
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=33;t=001112;p=0

Also your four year old.
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/...james-dobson/the-rod-of-discipline-29804.html

Just never use your hands to do it-only a rod, stick, belt or similar beating aid.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/familydevelopment/W00021.html

OTOH, it seems a bit eyebrow raising to suggest on one hand beatings for all, and on the other hand, worrying about the self esteem of boys so beaten, given that beatings do not generally seem to raise self esteem. See above link.

I would not use James Dobson as a guide to anything, let alone dog or child training. YMMV

He also supports and promotes reparative therapy and the whole so-called ex-gay movement. Of course the American Psychological Association has thoroughly dismissed these "treatments" as not only lacking scientific value, but also as being extremely harmful to those being treated. In addition, he's blamed rising divorce rates, unmarried cohabitation and other issues with heterosexual families and relationships on the so-called rise in visible openly gay people. He also recommends that women with kids under 18 not work outside the home (easier said than done).

 

[Medusa]

This is a very belated response to Buttercup's opinion below (post 181):

This is amazingly uninformed. At least in the USA, abortion rights have been a feminist issue in this country in my whole lifetime, since before Roe v. Wade in 1973. See the home page of the National Org. for Women, lead story:
http://now.org/
See the linking of feminism and abortion here http://fwhc.org/ and here: http://www.feminist.org/rrights/.
See the history of abortion rights as described here (note, it's a passage from a feminist book recommended by Doris earlier in this thread): http://www.feminist.com/resources/ourbodies/abortion.html

I think it would be much harder to demonstrate that feminism and abortion rights are not connected in contemporary politics. (Of course pro-life feminists de-link them, but they are explicitly distinguishing themselves from the feminist mainstream which defends abortion rights.)

I think what Buttercup wanted to say was that, of course, the right to have an abortion is a feminist issue - but that alone can't explain this high rate. Because that would mean that the US are way, way more feminist than lots of Western European countries - like three times more feminist. The abortion rate in the US is three times higher than the German one. And we are the ones with the liberal-socialist-old-Europe-doctrine.

I'd also like to point out that feminists were fighting for the right to legal abortion, abortion itself existed before feminists did. It wasn't like - bam, a feminist --> abortions.

 

[dorispulaski]

I had an unfortunate run in with the minions of Dr. Dobson back in the 1990's when Mr. Ski was a consultant in the semiconductor industry. One of his clients was from a religiously conservative family. The client's daughter sent us a letter. She wished to take a course at Dr. Dobson's institute in Colorado so that she could get a job teaching at a local "Christian Academy". It was quite expensive. The client's family was large (no surprise, contraception is bad in the group they belonged to). He couldn't afford it. The daughter contacted the Dobson group, who recommended that she contact (...I would say shake down) her & her parents' business associates and friends for the money. They had decided we should pay $500, and that if we sent it to Dr. Dobson, it would be deductible.

Mr. Ski & I read through Dr. Dobson's website at the time (very advanced by those days' standards, but primitive as to today's), and found both the advocacy of the dog beating and the child beating (then it was 2 years old for beatings, but the age has gone up since.) Dobson was also publishing virulently anti gay stuff at the time (which didn't go well with us, as our oldest child is gay), and Dobson felt that the men who killed Matthew Shepard should get off scott free.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

Even if you feel God made millions of gay people, but thinks they are garbage, it still doesn't mean you have to support murdering them.

Furthermore the website was full of Shopping Cart opportunities-I had never seen such a clear case of moneychangers in the temple before. (These days, it's more common).

Also, I had been severely beaten many times with a bamboo fishrod by my mother when I was a child, and I can assure you it did nothing to improve my self esteem, which is still very, very weak. It did however give me a desire to leave home as soon as I was old enough.

Mr. Ski & I were appalled, but Mr. Ski needed the business. Yet we refused to send anything to Dr. Dobson. We compromised by sending the money directly to the client's daughter, and told her why we would not be sending any money to Dr. Dobson, and hoped that she would take what she heard in CO as something to think about critically, rather than swallow whole unquestioningly, that we trusted her with our money, but not him.

Consequently, I have had an extremely low opinion of Dr. Dobson for over 20 years.

 

[jcoates]

FABULOUS post Doris! :agree:

Best I've seen in a while. Dobson is a creep and a snake oil saleman.

BTW, my mother also beat me as a child when I misbehaved (leather belt). Same result as you. She now strongly regrets that choice although she did it because that's how she was raised as did her father. That cycle stopped with me.

 

[Olympia]

oh, God, Doris.

When I think of a child faced with the person she should trust most in the world, and that person is holding a stick up to hit her...


I think that proponents of corporal punishment with implements set up a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between swatting your offspring and creating spoiled, violent brats. Discipline (and more important, the instilling of self-discipline) is very important in bringing up a child. But there are more effective ways to achieve this.

 

[Spun Silver]

Doris, I have very little familiarity with James Dobson ... but it's hard to believe that any well known figure could have advocated NO punishment for the murderers of Matthew Shepard. I mean, murder is against the law.... Are you sure about that? How could he possibly have argued such a thing? A brief Google search revealed that he did oppose the hate crime law inspired by MS's death. Don't know his arguments but I have read decent conservative arguments against such legislation -- e.g., it's unnecessary, as murder and other crimes are already just that - crimes; and that it makes some victims more important than others. But opposing punishment for murder? That would be shocking.

 

[Tonichelle]

Dr. Dobson has his place, I don't recall Doris' interp of certain events and Dobson as accurate, and I'm not a fan of him. He's the one that started the cause a few years ago to have Spongebob taken off the airs because it promoted and made children become gay. He wanted "wholesome" to return and cited Looney Toons.

Focus on the Family - Dobson's organization - is a great ministry, I won't knock it, and partners with groups like the VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer's latest endeavors of What's in the Bible and JellyTelly.com. Neither of which promote gay bashing - they don't promote homosexuality either, just to be clear - they also run "plugged in online" that reviews films and gives not just a conservative look at all of the films in theaters, but also lists everything someone may find offensive in the film. Some of them even they say seems silly, but at the same time they don't want to be blamed for overlooking something. Sometimes their reviews can even make me roll my eyes about how sensitive they are (boogers was an offensive word in some of their reviews lol) but it's a GREAT tool and one I use when I'm worried that People.com or Fandango glance over just how much nudity or language etc

Many churches partner with FotF even when Dobson is not one of their "heroes". I went to a church that my pastor was friends with Dobson and worked together on a few projects together (IIRC Paul Wylie has also worked with Dobson via his work with Franklin Grahm.) so I know Dobson is considered a bigot and a gay basher and all of that because our pastor has been labelled as such (Jerry Prevo, he's pretty well known in the anti-Christian circles).

Not sure where I'm completely going with this, other than to say that all I remember is how appauled people were in my circles (conservative christians who were big supporters of Dobson and his ministries) about what happened. And we all knew the backlash would fall back on us.

 

[Spun Silver]

Toni, I'm not sure I follow you. What are you referring to when you say your circles were "appalled ... about what happened"?

 

[Tonichelle]

with the Matthew Shepherd case - no one, that I'm aware of, thought the killers should get off scott free and like the rest of the country found the crime to be so heinous...if anything people believed they should be put to death because of the manner of the killing.

The ONLY "Christian" (they aren't but since people say I can't judge them on that...) group that I can think of that thought the act was justified was Westboro Baptist church... and as a card carrying (just a saying, we don't have cards) Southern Baptist I can say that they are NOT Baptist much less recognized as SBC.

ETA - and I see they now say they're Independant Baptist... which again is not true, they aren't recognized with that denomination either. I grew up and still consider myself Southern Baptist, but attended an Independant Baptist church as an adult in Anchorage.

 

[Olympia]

As far as Dobson and what he produces, as usual, things aren't always black and white. I'm obviously pretty liberal, but in my experience the radio dramatizations of children's classic books that I've encountered from Focus on the Family are completely neutral on hot-button issues. (I don't know what his personal involvement are with any of these.) They did a beautiful set of CDs of the Narnia books, which are far more satisfying to me than the recent Disney movies, and they've produced some other classics, too (I hear there's an Anne of Green Gables one) are of very high quality, very faithful to the books (pun not intended).

I wouldn't buy any of his books on child-rearing (not even out of curiosity!) or on theology, but the world is wide, and there are plenty of other choices. You probably wouldn't read Dr. Spock or Eda LeShan on child-rearing, or Garry Wills or William Sloane Coffin on theology. all of whom I find very enlightening. (Interestingly, both Dr. Spock and Rev. Coffin were antiwar activists during the Vietnam war, and both were arrested at least once. It gives them added luster, in my opinion.)

Certainly one can be a Christian (or other kind of believer) and not endorse corporal punishment of that type for children, just as one can be a pro-life feminist. In fact, the actual phrase "spare the rod and spoil the child" is not from the Bible at all. Moreover, various interpretations of one passage about discipline in Proverbs apparently dispute whether the "rod" mentioned there is a literal implement or a symbol of authority--in other words, an exhortation to parents to assert their authority with kids, not necessarily to hit them with anything. If I was looking at a fractious three-year-old child, I hope I'd be enough smarter than that kid so I wouldn't have to even the odds by wielding an object.

ETA: Toni, I'd heard that Westboro had been repudiated by the rest of the Baptist organizations, so I'm not surprised to hear confirmation from you. I can't imagine any of my evangelical friends having any sympathy at all for that awful group--I hesitate even to call them a church, and I join you in refusing to call them Christians.

 

[Spun Silver]

That Westboro "church" is in a class by itself - luckily.

 

[Mathman]

I believe that what Dobson opposed was adding gay people to the list of groups specifically protected by the hate crimes law (racial and religious minorities). His concern was that it could suppress free speech, especially the free speech of ministers of the gospel.

Dobson was afraid that if the hate crimes act were amended in this way then a minister might have to think twice before decrying homosexuality from the pulpit. The Reverend might incite some member of his flock to commit murder, and then the preacher could end up in trouble as well as the murderer.

By the way, the home base of Dobson's group, Focus on the Family, is Colorado Springs -- the same smallish town where the USFSA is headquartered.

 

[Tonichelle]

When done correctly, spanking can be a form of disipline. I've seen it done both right and wrong. Extremes on either side are incorrect. I don't know Dobson's teaching on the subject - as I said I'm not a fan because I think he does fall into the "extreme" of certain things and misses the mark a lot of the time (he picks teh wrong battles). I've dealt with children of both extremes within the church and it's interesting to see that the Dr. Spock as gospel group raises Children just as difficult to handle as those that believe spanking the crap out of their child is the way to go. Those parents, and not their children, are the ones I want to beat over the head with whatever book they are using or misusing.