Badger3k
Posts: 861
Joined: Mar. 2008
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| Quote (Jim_Wynne @ May 27 2012,07:49) | It's hard to believe that what amounts to a notincident not only created the stir it did, but has now been resurrected for another go-around. It brings to mind Loudon Wainwright III and his "Drinking Song" and in particular the opening verse:
Drunk men stumble, drunk men fall
Drunk men swear and that's not all
Quite often they will urinate outdoors
Drunk people do stupid things. There was plenty of reason for the woman involved to feel uncomfortable, and even afraid, because drunk men also do unspeakable things sometimes, and those things are often directed at women. As it turned out the man was rude, or at least obliviously insensitive, and caused someone to be uncomfortable and indignant. This is not the stuff of great controversy.
Men, and especially young ones, want to have sex, and lots of it. It's a biological imperative. This causes some of them to do rude and insensitive things. This is not an excuse, however, for rude and insensitive behavior, because as John Hiatt, another of my favorite songwriters said, "We can choose, you know we ain't no amoebas" Therein lies the seed of the controversy, which is not a controversy at all. Someone did something stupid and insensitive and someone else thought, apparently, that commonplace behaviors are the stuff of Profound Meaning and Injustice. They're not.
As for PZ, there's no doubt in my mind that he occasionally foments this type of thing deliberately and with great glee in his powers of manipulation. He is, in that sense, a sort of liberal Rush Limbaugh at times. He throws a pork chop into a pen of hungry dogs and then sits back and watches with delight as the post count rises. That many otherwise intelligent and perceptive people allow PZ to attach his electrodes to them amazes me sometimes. |
As long as it raises hackles, people will talk about it, and it'll be used for traffic (or whatever other purpose people want).
Your point about drunk men is the same for drunk women. If you ever lived in bars like I have, from college through the army and after I got out, especially bars near military bases, you'd know that drunken stupidity is egalitarian. Biologically, both men and women want sex. Depending on the culture and the conditions, they may go about it different ways, but there's a lot of times they don't. That's a point that many seem to forget - they seem to rely on the old-fashioned notions of women not wanting sex or having to be protected from evil sex-seeking men. I'm not saying this is you, just that the general point gets turned into that for some (just using your comment as a springboard). To me it's pretty patronizing, and granted, most of the women I know are or have been military, but I listen to my kids at school and can tell that the girls are just as responsible as the boys. Cultural norms have been changing (or maybe that's sub-cultural?).
That doesn't take away all the dangers (rape, robbery, assault, embarrassment, whatever), just that the whole affair isn't quite so cut-and-dried as some people prefer to think (or want others to think for reasons of their own).
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"Just think if every species had a different genetic code We would have to eat other humans to survive.." : Joe G
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