It appears that Barbie has found religion. After rebelling with Harley Davidson Barbie and bikini Barbie. There is even an S & M Barbie in all leather and fishnet stockings. Now, however, there is Burka Barbie.
Of course, this could be a surplus GI Joe in a Burka but the covered Barbie is on display with 500 other Barbies at the Salone dei Cinquecento, in Florence, Italy. To complete the image of subjugation for feminists, Burka Barbie will be auctioned off to the highest bidder as part of the fundraiser by Sotheby’s.
For many, the doll teaches girls to accept an obnoxious practice of women covering themselves — a practice common in areas where girls as young as ten are routinely married off. Then again, many Muslims would likely argue that, if Mattel markets kinky Barbie, why shouldn’t it also make Barbies for conservative Islamic families?
Would do you think?
For the picture of Burka Barbie and full story, click here.
Dar:
“To Gyges, Byron, and Elaine M.,
On other words, you are intellectual cowards and losers.
Just what I suspected from three immoral monkeys.”
you are not only insulting but not too bright, monkeys are neither moral or immoral, they are amoral. To be moral or immoral one must have free will and the ability to exercise free will. One must also posses a conscience to be able to determine right from wrong.
A monkey may posses limited free will but it is a slave to it’s nature and does not posses a conscience in the sense that humans do. A monkey cannot be moral or immoral and therefore your post makes no sense.
The 3 of us could be immoral but we are not monkeys based on our ability to think and use a computer and communicate higher level concepts.
Since we are trading insults I am reminded of a statement by the Philosopher (I trust even a barbarian such as yourself has read some works of the great man-Aristotle?) which basically stated that nomadic goat herders have no ability to integrate into modern civilization and are thus relegated to roaming the desert tending their camels and goats. Unable to assimilate because of a lack of sophistication of thought.
Apparently what was true 2,000 years ago is still true today. Isn’t it about time to quit herding goats?
The very idea that someone who comes from a society grounded in superstition and tyranny calling anyone a monkey is ridiculous.
lol
No, just looking for something to distract me from two projects I’d rather put off until Monday.
I’m a bad monkey.
Buddha,
Are you lonely and asking Dar out. This is not a dating, mating site. I am sure the Professor can help you in your yearning burning desires of the night.
Dar,
If you just want to be an insulting retard, you’re picking on the wrong people. They’re much nicer than I am. I’ll be glad to clean your primitive little retrograde fundamentalist clock.
I suspect you know this too since you avoiding the issue of Sacred Prostitution and the history of sexual mores. I haven’t even gotten to the good stuff where the ancient Egyptians considered the bisexual as blessed by the Gods as having the pleasure of two lives. There are many more arrows in that quiver than I loosed in the first volley. You just showed your cards though and – too bad for you – it says “troll”. It’s always open season on trolls. That your trollery surrounds your self-righteous indignation that you can’t control other people’s sex lives? Awww. Boo hoo. It says more about you than your arguments say about reality.
But I have another suggestion that just might cure your troll status. It’s organic and 100% natural.
Get laid.
Pay for it. I’m guessing you’d probably have to pay, but hey, it’d be worth it to get that huge chip off your shoulder about humans having genitalia and sex. Anyone who screams as much about whoring as you do is likely just jealous they can’t get any has been my experience. Psychologists call it “projection” for a reason.
It’s sad when you can’t GIVE it away, but you’ve got such a charming personality, I can’t imagine why no one would want to sleep with you. If any troll around here has shown that they really just need to get laid, it’s you, you uptight sexually repressed half-wit. It’s just what I expected from a trained follower monkey. Got free will? I kinda doubt it. Well, you HAVE it. But having and not using is a lot like not having at all. Kinda like sex. Which your comments indicate you have a problem using as well.
If you just want to be insulting?
I’m your huckleberry, fundie.
Did someone forget about the Temple Prostitute? I am looking for the same religious exchange…..
To Gyges, Byron, and Elaine M.,
On other words, you are intellectual cowards and losers.
Just what I suspected from three immoral monkeys.
Dar:
“I don’t believe that one can spin the Bible to make prostitution righteous.”
I don’t think most people think prostitution is righteous. It is a terrible state for a woman or man. I don’t see anyone here spinning prostitution as righteous.
But we do try to help people that are down and out, we don’t cut their heads off or stone them. But hey who am I to judge.
Gyges–
I gave up my discussion with Dar quite some time ago. Why waste energy trying to discuss a topic with someone whose mind is closed and who thinks of me as lowly female–as one of those “she who must be subjugated” people.
************
I wrote in an earlier comment: “Is it moral to treat women as subservient to men and allow them few freedoms?”
Dar responded: “Purely subjective. You may think they’re treated “subservient”, but they may not feel that way, since unlike you they may not believe in that nonsense about men and women being exactly the same and doing the exact same things in life.”
************
I don’t recall saying anything about men and women being exactly the same. I might have commented that I thought women should be afforded equal rights–which isn’t the same thing.
Anyway, I’m not going to reread all my previous comments to Dar. I have better things to do with my time.
Dar,
So basically, we’re back to appeals to antiquity? Remember what I said about those?
By the way, for a good time why don’t you look and see just how often I’ve criticized another culture on this thread? It seems to me all my criticism has been directed squarely at you and your faulty arguments.
Since we’re just talking in circles at this point, I’m done. Feel free to keep ranting about how Women in America are all whores for letting men look at their bodies.
To Byron,
“you are subject to man’s laws in the form of a subjective interpretation of the Quran…”
Not the same thing. No matter the differing interpretations, there are certain underlying assumptions that cannot be changed. For example, I don’t believe that one can spin the Bible to make prostitution righteous. Further, while there are differing interpretations, the faithful are aware that ultimately the laws are divine, so that certain things shouldn’t change through “popular will”.
In your precious Lockean case, there is no such respect for the underlying basis of the laws, since the underlying basis is “popular will” (i.e., popular mood), and while a citizen may have to obey the law for fear of punishment, divine punishment or the immorality of his disobeying it, are non-existent.
In a society where religions plays a role, even if not legally then culturally, a thing that is wrong is wrong. But in a legally and culturally secular society where religions does not inform public behaviour, that which is wrong today can be made right tomorrow if enough people can get enough legislators to change it.
–
“My societies cultural standard is to kill every non-christian we encounter and eat them. How are you going to defend that?”
Stupid example. Supposing that is your beliefs, on what basis are they founded?
Making up beliefs out of nowhere is precisely what is wrong with today’s liberal America.?
–
“Your statement is ridiculous, not all cultures are equivalent and there must be some standard by which to judge.”
And I suppose according to you that global timeless judgement is to be made by the “popularly elected”legislator of the West, right?
–
I shall ignore the monkey nonsense of the rest of your post.
As a contrast, John Ashcroft is famous for covering a statute that showed the human body.
The Greeks and Romans used the body as motif. All those naked chunks of marble didn’t pop out of the ground looking like people. Somebody carved them because, gasp, they liked naked people!
It the old fashioned way to make babies, sure, but I like it.
“got drunk and loaded”
My fingers must know it’s Friday.
That’s pretty funny considering the practice of sacred prostitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution And let’s not forget all those wonderful Bacchanalia parties where everyone got really drug and loaded on psychedelics and humped anything that moved. We shouldn’t forget those worshipers of Pan either. Carnivale, or Mardi Gras as they call it in New Orleans, is a response to a repressive Catholic holiday. Nobody EVER gets drunk and naked for that one.
There are a lot off people with really interesting genetics that makes what you say simply wishful thinking nonsense and worship of a past that didn’t exist, dar.
People used to be A LOT naughtier than today and recently I might add. It wasn’t until venereal diseases started going lethal in response to antibiotics and increased risk of exposure to exotic viruses that deforestation creates that people finally started quit humping like dogs. Some of them still haven’t.
There is a difference between sexuality and crassness. Modern culture is certainly more crass than some past cultures. We can now communicate more, faster than any time in human history. Too much bandwidth means a lot of empty to fill up. Not all of man’s creations are gems. Much of it’s just average quality. A lot is just crap. But it’s no more sexual in content than the entertainments let alone the worship practices of the past. I’ve got a planet full of babies to prove it. And a lot of dirty Greek pottery. I don’t mean dusty either.
To Gyges,
The core of your argument is non-existent, since you’re side-stepping my main points.
I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks of others’ cultres, but that is different than actually trying to impose one’s views on them.
Further, there is a vast difference between a member of a given society criticizing another society, and criticizing his own. Therefore, assuming you’re an American as well, my criticism of current American culture is not the same as your criticism of a whole other culture.
As for the my use of the term “whore”, I believe it is valid, since that is how they would be described in another time not too long ago when personal moral standards still mattered.
Most of your (and Mike Spindell’s and Byron’s) criticisms of me would me valid if the current state of America’s socila mores was something that was deeply rooted and based on older traditions and values based on religion or geography. IN that case America’s current urban culture would be as valid as any other, and the way youths dress would be no less valid than the way youths in Arabia or the Amazon or Tibet dress.
But that isn’t so. The current state of public behaviour is a quite recent phenomenon, one which is heavily driven by entertainment, and motivated by consumerism and extreme hedonism. Further it is one that is still resisted by countless Americans (and not all of them Bible-thumpers either).
On other words, what you are defending is not so much a real culture (in the historic sense of the word), but rather a fashion, a style, and current that is driven by certain specific engines (feminism, consumerism, extreme secularism, etc…).
I hope I’ve been clear.
Dar:
“I defend all societies’ rights to their own cultural standards, unlike others here.”
My societies cultural standard is to kill every non-christian we encounter and eat them. How are you going to defend that?
Your thinking is what allows women to be stoned to death for adultery and people who convert to Christianity or some other religion or no religion at all to be killed. Whatever floats your boat, anything goes, there are no standards except what are culturally acceptable. Tribal rule, mob rule is what you are promoting.
Your statement is ridiculous, not all cultures are equivalent and there must be some standard by which to judge. And as Gyges pointed out above you are being judgemental about American society so you are grossly inconsistent in your application of your own belief system.
Oh and by the way if we suck so badly why do you live here? Maybe it is because you like the fruits on our tree after all, liberty, the ability to have your own opinion, the possibility of making a good deal of money with a little hard work, freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Little things like that, the fruits of our immoral secular society.
America may not be perfect but we sure beat whatever is in second place by one heck of a lot.
Dar,
As a post script:
Now that I’ve apologized for making assumptions about you (I’m always willing to admit when I’m wrong) I hope you’ll address the core of my comments.
I’m not so easily distracted or embarrassed as you may hope, and the basis of my argument had nothing to do with your location and everything to do with your words.
Dar,
You got me, I made an assumption and I apologize.
Let’s make the necessary edits: If you want to be intellectually honest, you don’t get to use your belief system as a shield and a sword. You don’t get to say “my beliefs are different then yours, so you have no right to judge them” right after calling women with other beliefs whores because of the way they dress (assuming you mean whore as an insult) and expect me and others here not to point out the inconsistencies.
Fair enough?
Dar:
you are subject to man’s laws in the form of a subjective interpretation of the Quran. No one can know the actual will of God. Our Christian Bible has been modified over time, I am guessing the Quran has been as well.
I think God wants man to live in freedom and will take the bad (a diminished cultural morality in your opinion) with the good (a relatively free country). The things that I have read about the Middle East in particular are very disturbing, the authorities are out of control and have a boot across the throat of the citizenry.
When you stone people for adultery you could say there is a bit of an issue with the legal system. That sounds like revenge as contemplated by a deranged teenager rather than justice.
To Gyges,
I’m not sure what my “culture” is, given that I’m writing this in the middle of Los Angeles. If you can’t put your mind around the idea that someone can defend something without being a part of it or living in it, then you’re right, you’ve no business “talking” to me.
I defend all societies’ rights to their own cultural standards, unlike others here. My problem with the current Western moral standards is that they are contradictory and unnatural and, yes, immoral. Nor is this the way the West’s always been, but rather a recent phenomenon driven by feminism, consumerism, and extreme hedonistic individualism, none of which were the case even a couple fo generations ago, and are still decried by a large segments of the West’s populations.
To Byron,
Your quote of Locke sort of doesn’t work on me as I don’t agree with its basic premise, namely that only the laws of man are legitimate. This is acceptable to an athiest, but I am no athiest so cannot agree with it.
Nor do I agree with the assumption that only laws by common consent are right, since common consent could be driven by misinformation and prejudice.
Besides, there are nearly no laws today written by common consent. How often do you sit down and read the full text of a new bill passed by Congress?
Finally, I’m not sure who my “boys” are, but whomever they are, what they live under cannot be regarded as a dictatorship, since the laws are inspired or based on divine laws.I suppose you can argue that God is a dictator, but that’s be your opinion and I’d disagree with it as God is above such judgmentalisms.