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.
Hey amybody want to talk about Barbie or the Burka. Thats what this thread is about.
I could post some climate change stuff but I don’t want to take over another thread. It would be against your will and could be considered rape.
Elaine M:
Are you saying that she had to say yes by virtue of her position and so that is the equivalent of rape? In general I would agree with you, but I don’t believe the man who wrote the Declaration would force his will upon a subordinate woman and this is, I think, what Buddha is saying.
What you and Jill seem to be saying is that Thomas Jefferson is an inveterate scumbag or at least a typical male in this regard. And I believe that is the idea that Buddha is taking to task (conjecture only).
You don’t seem to allow for the possibility that Jefferson did not force his will upon her, he may even have resisted her advances at first. I may be putting Jefferson on a pedestal to which he does not belong, but the man that wrote the words he has written should be given the benefit of the doubt at the very least.
Men who believe in property rights, as in a person has a right to self ownership do not take what is not theirs to take. I know this isn’t making much sense in terms of slavery but the idea that a person can be a slave and a free agent to the extent granted by the owner is still possible. Even though Jefferson may have owned her, did not necessarily mean he was willing to take all manner of liberties without her willing consent.
Elaine,
No.
What I am saying is that lack of recourse and actual lack of consent are not the same thing. One is a legal relation – the chattel relationship – and one is normally occurring natural human interaction that can have legal repercussions without consent of all parties involved because rape is defined as non-consensual intercourse. That as chattel she had no legal standing or recourse and could have been punished for refusing an order does not mean Q.E.D. that she did not consent. We don’t know her state of mind. Nor his. Nor can we. Rape is a crime of violence and domination, not sex, and the key component of the offense is lack of consent. Just because legally at the time she had no right to refuse an order it does not mean that she didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t consent to an affair with Jefferson. Her reasons for doing so would be her own secret taken to the grave and we’ll never know. By the same token, we’ll never know if she was compelled by force either. But to call “rape” when we simply cannot know is just not fair to either of them as individuals. It demonizes one and victimizes the other.
Gyges/Buddha:
thank you.
And while were at it, Bob, your e-mail address also met the same fate as Gyges. Drop me a line sometime, my Kantian friend.
Gyges,
I did indeed loose your address. I hadn’t copied it over to my regular e-mail yet when I lost the old dummy account. Drop me a line and I’ll be glad to forward it on to Byron.
BIL–
I believe that Jill addressed your points seriously–and responded in a thoughtful manner. At no point in the dicussion did I think she sounded a lot like the “Men Bad, Women Good” crowd.
I may need some clarification of the following: “Sex happens. When it’s not consensual, it’s rape, but not having the legal capacity to refuse is not the equivalent of not consenting no matter how many times you say it.”
Lots of not’s and a no in that second sentence. Are you saying that because Hemings had no legal right to refuse fornicating with Jefferson that it couldn’t possibly be considered as rape–even if Hemings wanted to say no?
Byron,
You can ask Buddha for my e-mail, there are lots of things that could’ve gone wrong, and I don’t want to take up space here going through the check list.
Buddha,
If you lost my e-mail with your old account just let me know, I’ll get it to you again.
Jill,
Logic is a precision tool. You don’t like being taken to task for being wrong. It’s your logical error in analysis at issue. If you don’t like being wrong, learn to proof your logic better. I have nothing to apologize for or refrain from other than what I have already stated. You made an inflammatory claim and it was unfounded other than to show your bias. And I didn’t mean bias as in prejudice or in a bad way whatsoever other than bias in the analytical sense of the term. Everyone has some and it screws with their logic too. Your logic was and is flawed in re rape unless you’re a time traveling mind reader. It’s extemporaneous, attenuated on abstraction and assumption rather than a knowable reality of group dynamics and pair bonding. I like you Jill, but if you think I was being mean to you because I showed the giant hole in your reasoning, that’d be your problem.
Gyges:
I bottled on saturday and the beer was all clean and everything but tasted like water. Did we screw up or will the bottling bring out the flavors?
We put it in a secondary a week or so ago and it just sat. This was a kit and the hoppes were pelletized. Could this be the problem?
It had a bunch of sugar in it, about 7 lbs altogether what with the malt extract, malt and brown sugar.
?????????????????
Buddha,
I am asking that you refrain from personal attacks and condescension in your posts to me. I took each of your points seriously and answered them one by one. You may not agree with my analysis but that is not an excuse for name calling. It is unworthy of any thoughtful discussion of a situation.
Elaine M.,
I was thinking of Holiday Dress. Would you suppose you could tell me how to get the Holly to not prick?
To Elaine M.,
There is no need to use the word “indiscretion”, as “cheating” and “infedility” and “being an ass” are just fine.
As for your other questions, I don’t see how they relate to this discussion.
I could ust as easily ask how killing millions of u born babies each year is moral, but I won’t as it has nothing to do with this discussion.
But if you want:
“Is it moral to force young girls into marriages with older men?”
I don’t see how anyone is “forced” to do anything. Such marriages are rare anyhow.
–
“Are honor killings of women moral?”
Not your business. Every society has its own standards, which goes back to original point of not forcing your ways on others.
In many lands drug dealers are executed. Many would find this extreme, but to them it is their way. Just because things like “honor” and “chastity” and “morals” mean nothing to you, doesn’t mean they don’t for others.
Besides, such things are also rare. Most of the time when a daughter is found to have screwed around, she and the guy are made to marry each other (which I’m sure you disapprove of as well, thinking that everyone should be free to f**k each other anytime anyplace).
–
“Is it moral to treat women as subservient to men and allow them few freedoms?”
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.
Jill,
Again, legal relations are an abstraction. Actual interactions another matter.
I stand by my analysis that your reasoning has a blind spot. You can scream rape all you want. The fact is you have nothing to argue from in the specifics of their day to day relationship simply because you weren’t there any more than I was. You want to put Hemmings on a pedestal as victim in her relationship with Jefferson despite there being no evidence of their individual intent toward each other going either way. Do you have proof Sally Hemmings didn’t consent? No. Do I have proof they were in love. No.
You say rape, I say you can’t know without being psychic because the salient feature of rape is lack of consent. What the law allowed them to do and what they did or did not actually do are not the same thing simply because the law said so.
Not legally having legal recourse or facing punishment if you refuse is not the same thing as not consenting DESPITE WHAT THE LAW SAYS. A possibility you seem willing to completely dismiss. It was also against the law for blacks and whites to sleep together in many places but there sure are a lot of those coffee colored humans running about and not all of them the product of rape. Some people LIKE the Jungle Fever, Jill. Sex happens. When it’s not consensual, it’s rape, but not having the legal capacity to refuse is not the equivalent of not consenting no matter how many times you say it. You’re not just doing Jefferson a disservice, but Hemmings too. You’re now starting sound a lot like the “Men Bad, Women Good” crowd, Jill. And that’s horseshit.
Your argument is still fundamentally flawed.
Dar–
I asked you the following questions to which I received no response–so I’ll ask them again:
Is it moral to force young girls into marriages with older men? Are honor killings of women moral? Is it moral to treat women as subservient to men and allow them few freedoms?
BTW, I used the word “indiscretion” because I didn’t want to use the actual term for what happened between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I was using verbal discretion.
To Gyges,
“It turns out that as a race we humans tend to enjoy having sex. What some of us don’t enjoy is the fact that other people enjoy having sex too.”
So what? ofcourse people have always enjoed sex, otherwise none of us would be here today.
The difference is that the idea of sex and sexuality as a thing to display and flaunt publicly was rarely acceptable in most societies, including the West, until recently.
To Elaine M.,
I’ve answered your non-points just fine.
Through-out most of human history, including in the West, there was an understanding of what is proper and what isn’t outside the home, and that the way one dresses is important.
Recently in the West that has been abandoned.
Now people like you and Mr.Turley feel that this is the right and true and universal standard, so that other societies that choose to stick to their traditions are now wrong and bad.
And yes the modern West has abandoned most ideas of morality, for something vague and loose and rarely communal/religious. It’s not because people who brought this about are bad, rather it is a natural outgrowth of extreme secularism and hedonistic (consumerisism-fed) individualism. The same sentiment/world-view that would drive a young 17 year old idiot to spend $600 on an iPhone is the same thing that drives his sister to dress in a manner that 40-60 years ago would have tagged here as a street-walker.
–
Oh, and just you’d know, Clinton committed BOTH sexual indiscretions (funny how infidelity is now just “sexual indiscretion”), and killed “thousands and thousands of innocent people” over-seas as well.
Elaine,
I’m sure he was very conflicted about it. He had to be.
BIL–
Even if a male slave owner having sex with a female slave was not legally considered rape, one would think that a person of Jefferson’s enlightenment would perceive what he was doing as wrong–whether or not there were mitigating circumstances.
Elaine,
The remarks regarding the refusal to see those circumstances as mitigating was mainly to clear any lingering confusion among readers about my original point. I didn’t really perceive you as being on the non-mitigation side whereas Jill’s stance was somewhat less flexible. I sometimes speak sideways, especially when a conversation is in public.