He's nowhere near as weak. And nowhere near as different.

Ten or guys can do whatever they want to one guy. The weakness differential between that one guy and one girl is proportionatly nothing.

And you never hear abou ten or twenty girls raping anyone.

Women may be second class citizens in those socities to us, and their situations may be untenable to us, but that is their culture, and they have the very same human right to live their culture as I do mine, whether I agree with it or not. I can't impose my own ideals onto their culture, no matter how much I might think it's 'better'.

Well, if the gender roles, say, are that women are valued as home makers who are protected or cover themselves out of modesty or the like that argument has its place. But when you're slicing people up...

Slicing the clitoris off of screaming, struggling 9 year old girls isn't a right of culture, it is a crime against humanity.

You say. And I think. But us thinking that has no bearing on what the people doing it think. Female circumcision is almost always performed by a female and in the lowest economic and educated strata of the societies in which it's performed. It's as much an issue of education and economic oppression as it is one of female oppression.

Male circumcision doesn't rate an awful lot higher than female circumcision in a lot of places too, but I assume you have no problem with that?

News of my quitting seems to have spread through the office like wildfire, and the prevailing emotion from my coworkers seems to be envy that I'm getting the hell out of here.

Which I think indicates that I should have done this a long time ago, but hey, better late than never.

As long as women are readily available and obviously more "them," the pizza boy is (the lowest ranks, probably) of "us."

I think this can bring us back to Allyson's point that women are not viewed as people. "Otherizing" women to the point that they are not even human.

Ten or guys can do whatever they want to one guy.

This is x-posted with my explication, but that's not the point I'm making. There are much better victims out there. Why bother with the pizza guy?

eta:

I think this can bring us back to Allyson's point that women are not viewed as people.

I was taking Allyson's point as hinging on being a second class citizen. Some dickheads viewing themselves as better than women is not the same thing in my book, but I don't want to go too far in characterising her position for the benefit of then disagreeing with it.

My point hinged on it not being so much a gender thing as a power thing. People suck. I don't think men suck more than women, or white people more than black, or straight people more than homosexuals. I think we just get to see the fruits of suckiness more from the powerful against the people that are "other" by virtue of being less powerful.

I really think its more along the lines of if you can't get a woman to rape you sub in a weak guy and call him your bitch or your wife or whatever.

Prison rape is a really complex issue. There are actual sex-needs issues. There are power issues. There are become-the-monster-so-the-monster-doesn't-get-you issues (which a concise person would have called "self-defense" issues). I don't think all or even most males who do rape in prison would have been rapists, if they'd remained free.

Hmmmm....do you mean that because he's too much like the frat boys just by being a boy that the frats wouldn't want to oppress someone that they could, conceivably, identify with?

I know you didn't ask me, but I'm just chiming in on the stripper v. pizza boy as likely victim comparison, here.

Most humans self-identify as heterosexual. Frat boys are no exception. They're not imprisoned. And neither gay nor straight frat boys are prevented from seeking sexual satisfaction with people of the sex they find attractive (unlike het prisoners in single sex environments).

On top of that, being in a frat is a voluntary membership. Imprisonment in involuntary. The stripper vs. the pizza boy as a likely target for Frat-boy gang rape topic is pretty much not going to go anywhere too meaningful.

Male circumcision doesn't rate an awful lot higher than female circumcision in a lot of places too, but I assume you have no problem with that?

If you're daring to compare one to the other, I have to recuse myself from Natter for awhile, else one of us is going to end up dragged into Bureau for a fine warning, and that person will be me.

If you're daring to compare one to the other,

I'm afraid I am.

I'm perfectly willing to leave it here, but I was simply extending the example you used to point out how the social milieu one is brought up in and exposed to informs one's ideas of 'right' and 'wrong'.

IO (noncontroversial) N

I was googling my last name with "Sweden" to see how popular my last name is in the homeland

Scandinavian governments keep track of absolutely everything. Åström is the 91st most common name in Sweden and 8740 Swedes claim it.

[link]

Jars, I think they're not comparable, because the male sex organ isn't mutilated in a successful circumcision. Circumcised males still feel sexual pleasure, and can climax, and sex isn't painful for them, because they've been circumcised. That's why it's not too useful to equate them.