So it's official, southern France is rotten.

[Louis VI the Fat]

What did you say, Louis? I think the dictionary disagrees with you.

This is like showing a picture of a Black man and arguing that the dictionary agrees he is a 'n-word'. Yes, it is a word used to describe Blacks, yes.

[Fragony]

Not really, only closing the borders are the goverment way of saying that we have a problem and then leave the solution to the population. And that will not be a solution, rather the opposite. That's how you get the BNP style parties in power. And they don't provide a solution outside deportation of citizens or worse. And that's not counting that the issue is not about immigration itself (even if it has a strong influence).

And that won't become sharia enclaves, but rather ghetto hell holes.

Excuse for excusing the BNP, but it's the very height of logic that a party without solutions emerges in a country without problems. They do have solutions you just don't like them.

[Skullheadhq]

This is like showing a picture of a Black man and arguing that the dictionary agrees he is a 'n-word'. Yes, it is a word used to describe Blacks, yes.

Glad you agree.

[Furunculus]

Same with gays. And Jews. No matter how much some conservative simpleton may dislike gays, and Jews, and Israel, he will still find it in him to berate the Arabs for being homophobe antisemites.
.

just checking that you are using "conservative" in the small "c" convention?

otherwise i would have to point out that it is very much a feature of the left to dislike jews and israel rather than the right.........

[Louis VI the Fat]

Glad you agree.

I'll play.

Is Barack Obama a 'n-word'? Because, you know, n-word refers to Black people and Obama is Black and all that...

just checking that you are using "conservative" in the small "c" convention?

My beef is not with rightwing voters. Fine with me etc etc

That point was about white homophobe misogynists who suddenly turn champions of gay/women's right's when they are complaining about teh Arabs.

[Scienter]

You gave a perfect definition of a whore, congratulations.

Also: a key that opens many locks is a master key, a lock that's opened by many keys is a worthless lock.

What now? This type of analogy is invalid dreck. "Virginity" is not a gift and a woman's reproductive bits are not a lock.

Sure, some guys want to marry virgins for cultural or religious reasons. Or maybe because they don't want their wives to have a basis for comparison in the sack. But saying a woman who dares to *gasp* enjoy sex with more than one partner is 'worthless' and that a man who has had sex with many people is a 'master' is a sexist and hypocritical double standard. When two people engage in something consensually, no one is devalued. In what crazy world is it okay for a man to have sex many women and then label woman who has done the same thing as a whore?

This comment makes me a combination of angry and sad.

Re: France: I've been lucky enough to not have experienced this type of harassment in the few times I've been there. I've gotten more negative attention for going running outside in the US in different parts of the country. I don't attribute it to any specific culture or nationality. I think it happens anywhere where women are seen as less valuable than men, or as sexual objects.

That point was about white homophobe misogynists who suddenly turn champions of gay/women's right's when they are complaining about teh Arabs.

I think these are the same people who try to hide their racism behind the guise of 'patriotism.' Because if you hate group X of people because you're patriotic, it's somehow ok!

[Crazed Rabbit]

Since when does being an attractive young female mean you're a jew? And does this mean antisemites are homosexuals thus they're implying they're gay? But yet they hate homsexuals so they are self-hating? And since they wish the death penalty for homosexuals, does this mean they're suicidal? Arab logic is hard to understand for us outsiders.

You seem to understand the misogyny of the creeps in southern France perfectly well;

Also: a key that opens many locks is a master key, a lock that's opened by many keys is a worthless lock.

It is correct that the one culture I spoke of earlier is not the only one that is deeply misogynist; gangster rap and college fraternity brothers in the US both come to mind.

It seems to me that it is the culture of certain North African/Arabic immigrants behind the increase in treating women like objects.

As Banquo pointed out, their behavior is more tolerated. Such behavior by others was not in the past.

So the those in charge must decided whether to bite the bullet and disregard the politically correct, multicultural thinking, or watch as treatment of women worsens.

CR

[Skullheadhq]

I'll play.

Is Barack Obama a 'n-word'? Because, you know, n-word refers to Black people and Obama is Black and all that...

Technically, he is. Some of my friends at school even use that word to refer to Obama. But that might be because I go to school in Wassenaar.

[Fragony]

But that might be because I go to school in Wassenaar.

$$$$$$! PECUNIAS MUCHOS

[Rhyfelwyr]

That point was about white homophobe misogynists who suddenly turn champions of gay/women's right's when they are complaining about teh Arabs.

Rubbish! I have only ever stuck to plain, honest, outright racism.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Technically, he is. Some of my friends at school even use that word to refer to Obama.

You know what, forget it. Life's too short. Why do I bother explaining why women aren't whores and Blacks and 'n-words' to someone who doesn't wish to understand.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Rubbish! I have only ever stuck to plain, honest, outright racism.

Thaty's the cool thing about being a WASP Hun.

Me I'm a terribly confused mixture between a social progressive and a creepy fascist. The fights I have with myself!

Ah well, never a dull moment being a schizophreniac. We always have somthing to argue about.

[Strike For The South]

Whores?

Why are women whores when they seek some physical fun? For thrills, young men seek conflict, danger, drive dangerously. Young women for thrills engage in experimental sexual behaviour. 'Look what I dare'.
They are not whores. They are your daughters, your mothers, your sisters. And indeed they are those girls you sleep with - which makes you cool, but them a whore, despite you both engaging in the same act.


This much is true: there is no fundamental difference between the Taliban and the West. Women's rights in both are but a matter of degrees on the same scale. In the end they are always just a whore.

+1 and at some point I'm going to commit this line to memory and use it. You're smarter than you look
Just becuase a women has a bit of sex does not make her a whore. If the women use sex as a weapon, Then we start to dive into whore terroritory. Of course how sex is veiwed is an entirely different can of worms. Needless it doesn't surprise that on a forum filled with 19 year old semi virigins we get a very misogynic and dated view on womens sex habits

If you people had half a brain you'd realize you're only hurting your chances, but that is a leap of logic that would force some of you to cross the chasm of ignorance that is your posts.

But of course we are now deviating from said topic.

[Furunculus]

who is "you people"?

[Banquo's Ghost]

+1 and at some point I'm going to commit this line to memory and use it. You're smarter than you look
Just becuase a women has a bit of sex does not make her a whore. If the women use sex as a weapon, Then we start to dive into whore terroritory. Of course how sex is veiwed is an entirely different can of worms. Needless it doesn't surprise that on a forum filled with 19 year old semi virigins we get a very misogynic and dated view on womens sex habits

If you people had half a brain you'd realize you're only hurting your chances, but that is a leap of logic that would force some of you to cross the chasm of ignorance that is your posts.

But of course we are now deviating from said topic.

Since Louis was responding to something I wrote, your entire tirade rather fails flaccidly at the feet of a 49 year old married man.

Had you bothered to read the exchange, you would have seen that my point was akin to the bolded sentence of your own post. I was not (as Louis was keen to pin to me) claiming that all women who enjoy sexual freedoms are whores, but that the behaviour of many young women these days is debased by a modern desire to be "popular" or to somehow "control" their environment through sexual availability. Modern morality seems to embrace the sexualisation of young girls and the message that being attractive and sexually available is the only way for women to progress. The media and corporate marketers constantly push that female promiscuity can guarantee "acceptance" and a degree of "power" and wrap it up as choice and freedom.

I find these attitudes to be fundamentally opposed to the feminism and concept of women's rights that I have always believed in, and in fact a rather terrifying subversion of the aspiration to those rights by the male-dominated corporate world. The fact it is bought-into so readily by otherwise liberal minded commentators as Louis is deeply concerning - to me, at least. Consciously or otherwise, those women that choose to pursue this path are indeed "whoring" themselves out - no more or less than the poverty-stricken prostitutes of the 19th or any other century.*

In context, I was noting that where one finds contemptuous attitudes towards women in Arab countries, it is invariably in tourist areas where drunken western women whore themselves around to equally reprehensible men. It is therefore unsurprising that one can find comments about this behaviour. Of course, one can find just as much condemnation from the tourist spots of Greece or Spain, which is precisely why I was arguing this is not an "Arab" problem.

Now Strike, you can disagree with me on my perhaps traditionalist views on sexual promiscuity (though you will find many feminist commentators of long-standing making the same points about the misplacement of the sexual revolution) but since experience seems to be the only benchmark you will allow, you will find that though my brain may be deemed semi-complete, I have nonetheless been laid a few times.

*And just so we don't go off even further down this tangent, I consider the facilitators - invariably men - of this trade to be far worse. How we might address this in the context of sexual rights is another topic thread, one thinks.

[Husar]

Excellent post, Banquo, just excellent.

[Fragony]

Kinda annoyed by those setting a standard on what makes a woman a whore. As if it is their fault they get harassed, as if there somehow is a justification?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Since Louis was responding to something I wrote, your entire tirade rather fails flaccidly at the feet of a 49 year old married man.

Had you bothered to read the exchange, you would have seen that my point was akin to the bolded sentence of your own post. I was not (as Louis was keen to pin to me) claiming that all women who enjoy sexual freedoms are whores, but that the behaviour of many young women these days is debased by a modern desire to be "popular" or to somehow "control" their environment through sexual availability. Modern morality seems to embrace the sexualisation of young girls and the message that being attractive and sexually available is the only way for women to progress. The media and corporate marketers constantly push that female promiscuity can guarantee "acceptance" and a degree of "power" and wrap it up as choice and freedom.

I find these attitudes to be fundamentally opposed to the feminism and concept of women's rights that I have always believed in, and in fact a rather terrifying subversion of the aspiration to those rights by the male-dominated corporate world. The fact it is bought-into so readily by otherwise liberal minded commentators as Louis is deeply concerning - to me, at least. Consciously or otherwise, those women that choose to pursue this path are indeed "whoring" themselves out - no more or less than the poverty-stricken prostitutes of the 19th or any other century.*

In context, I was noting that where one finds contemptuous attitudes towards women in Arab countries, it is invariably in tourist areas where drunken western women whore themselves around to equally reprehensible men. It is therefore unsurprising that one can find comments about this behaviour. Of course, one can find just as much condemnation from the tourist spots of Greece or Spain, which is precisely why I was arguing this is not an "Arab" problem.

Now Strike, you can disagree with me on my perhaps traditionalist views on sexual promiscuity (though you will find many feminist commentators of long-standing making the same points about the misplacement of the sexual revolution) but since experience seems to be the only benchmark you will allow, you will find that though my brain may be deemed semi-complete, I have nonetheless been laid a few times.

*And just so we don't go off even further down this tangent, I consider the facilitators - invariably men - of this trade to be far worse. How we might address this in the context of sexual rights is another topic thread, one thinks.

Very much agreed. Though I would go slightly further, by saying that "modern" female promiscuity is driven partly by a perception that men can have lots of sex and get away with it.

Not so, unless you go to prostitutes. Especially as men are still expected to be the "active" agents in most liasons, which can make "gettinglaid" time consuming and expensive. I personally never seem to have the time.

More seriously though, maybe the real problem is not our attitude to women's sexual activities, but to men's.

[Strike For The South]

Since Louis was responding to something I wrote, your entire tirade rather fails flaccidly at the feet of a 49 year old married man.

Had you bothered to read the exchange, you would have seen that my point was akin to the bolded sentence of your own post. I was not (as Louis was keen to pin to me) claiming that all women who enjoy sexual freedoms are whores, but that the behaviour of many young women these days is debased by a modern desire to be "popular" or to somehow "control" their environment through sexual availability. Modern morality seems to embrace the sexualisation of young girls and the message that being attractive and sexually available is the only way for women to progress. The media and corporate marketers constantly push that female promiscuity can guarantee "acceptance" and a degree of "power" and wrap it up as choice and freedom.

I agree completley and unequivocally, I read through the entire thread and decided to quote Louis becuase his post resonated with my thoughts as I finished the thread not becuase I was trying to pile on your thoughts. I'm fully aware you're an old man and I would've said as much had I wanted to grab your attention

I think we agree but are arguing two seperate sides of the coin, IMO the whole thing stems from the instant gratification society society we are living in, I think these girls (and boys) are being over and hypersexualized entirely to early because of terrible parenting and terrible media which often portrays an image of sex which is quite frankly, wrong.

Respect, love, and compassion are truths that are never broached. Instead sex is the womens weapon and money is the mans and at different times these things occilate for whom has control over the relationship.

But of course this is what happens when the feminist movement goes from Susan B Anthony to women whom are burning bras. This is also where the feminist movement falls vicitim instant gratification. Old style feminism like most other movements was built upon small but tangible victories but by the time the next round of feminists rolled around the tune had changed from the workplace and the ballot box to burining bras and not shaving.

The whole reason being these are "in your face" ways to get peoples attention and in their minds they are still breaking away from societal norms, which of course the first wave of femininsts were as well but the new waves tactics were, I submit to the esteemed peanut gallery, pointless. which brings me to my next point

I find these attitudes to be fundamentally opposed to the feminism and concept of women's rights that I have always believed in, and in fact a rather terrifying subversion of the aspiration to those rights by the male-dominated corporate world. The fact it is bought-into so readily by otherwise liberal minded commentators as Louis is deeply concerning - to me, at least. Consciously or otherwise, those women that choose to pursue this path are indeed "whoring" themselves out - no more or less than the poverty-stricken prostitutes of the 19th or any other century.*

In context, I was noting that where one finds contemptuous attitudes towards women in Arab countries, it is invariably in tourist areas where drunken western women whore themselves around to equally reprehensible men. It is therefore unsurprising that one can find comments about this behaviour. Of course, one can find just as much condemnation from the tourist spots of Greece or Spain, which is precisely why I was arguing this is not an "Arab" problem.

Exactly, the superficiality of this new wave plays right into the terrible "truth" of modern society. A woman is only what her body allows her to be (now the same can probably be said for men and money but that is another thread) And I'm not simply talking about beauty, I am also referring to her using her genitals as a weapon because modern society tells her that's the thing to do. Of course it’s not just and Arab problem what is happening in Southern France is endemic of Western society, it is just unfortunate that the most vulnerable group to this disease happens to be brown immigrants whose society placed little value on women in the first place

So now we have women who use their genitals to navigate the courtship landscap. Now don't get me wrong I love vapid and inane sexual encounters as much as the next guy but this hyper sexualzation of society combined with a false "empowered" woman caricuture is creating real problems. People have tradtional "going-steady" relationships less and either save themselves for marrige (stupid) or hook up until they are about 30 (stupid)

Now we all know by completely squelching your biological need to procreate you tend to wrap your mind a bit, this been espoused by the wonderful liberals on this site since the dawn of time and I don't feel I need to go into detail about why demanding everyone be abstinent is not only untenable but also unhealthy.

Of course the opposite side of things, the hyper sexualized society that is being crammed down our throats is equally as bad, to quote a dear friend of mine "it's just people having sex at a party" it's not so much the sex that I mind it's the mindset that allows this promiscuity to fester

I'll be the first one to admit at times on this board I have often made statements like the quoted one above but (and save this post because it won't happen often) I was wrong. I was demonizing the wrong thing, of course at the dawn of time it was a necessity to mate with as many people as possible as quickly as possible but civilizations are not made by aequsing to every biological imperative that come from the deepest recesses of out mammalian brains. They are made by employing logic and rational thought.

Perhaps a bigger impetus of me reassessing my beliefs was I just looked around me and saw broken people. People whom saw a glamorized version of something on tele or the tubes and when they put it into practice it wasn't nearly as glamoures. So we turn to pills, booze, or food and the result is a highly medicated, obese society that is quite simply rotting from their souls. I can't tell you how many 20 year olds are in the deepest doldrums of depression, silently screaming out. Suicides barley bat an eyelash anymore and the amount of suicides attempters on campus may as well follow the Dow and Nasdaq ticker, barley worth a mention

Hyper sexualzation, Instant gratification, and the presence of social media (which feeds the I'm the center of the universe mentality) create a treble of emotional destruction

So of course immigrants are going to have a rough go of things because the come into a society that is nothing like the pamphlet said it would be and they revert to their own brand of ugliness. Instead of drugs and food, it's tyranny and a nasty sort of patriarchy. Of course the way the chips are falling lately we seem to be doing our damnedest to catch up

So here we are, I sit with broken hyper sexualized friends on one side of me and broken unsexed friends on the other side of me, trying like hell to be a voice of reason. Of course how we got here is partly for the reasons you claim and, at least in America partly because of the reactions for the reasons you claim. I agree with you 100% that people are becoming more and more lost every second of every day.
So either you have people who put no stock into the emotional value of sex or put way too much emphasis on it. Either way everyone ends with a whole where morality once was
If you are still following this post I commend your ability to handle a ramble as suffice to say I have no answers. I understand what’s going on but have no way to stop it.


Cliff Notes: It is the curse of my age that I am growing up in a broken generation but contrary to belief I don’t think it is because we revel in being devoid of morality but we don’t know what it is, so we fill that whole with something destructive and let it break us from the inside out. I don’t like acknowledging the fact that we have serious flaws in Western society but it would be an even bigger crime to simply blame the brown man

Now Strike, you can disagree with me on my perhaps traditionalist views on sexual promiscuity (though you will find many feminist commentators of long-standing making the same points about the misplacement of the sexual revolution) but since experience seems to be the only benchmark you will allow, you will find that though my brain may be deemed semi-complete, I have nonetheless been laid a few times.

My op was never an attack on you or your manhood, aplogies if you took it that way. I also feel like we agree, even If I am upset with my conclusion. Next to my mother you probably the only person who has had the ability to stand my rediculosness for an extended period of time

Edit: this is why I tend to stick to brevity, this is a novel of insanity lol

[Louis VI the Fat]

the heck? no way I am going to read all that what on earth has gotten into that silly texan but we are friends I suppose he expects me to read that Moby Dick of a post of his what's wrong with you people

[HoreTore]

I present both the drunk texan and the whiny Frenchman with a few precious gifts:

.................................................................................


You may thank me later. I don't expect anything, but I like expensive stuff that comes in bottles.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Since Louis was responding to something I wrote, your entire tirade rather fails flaccidly at the feet of a 49 year old married man.

Had you bothered to read the exchange, you would have seen that my point was akin to the bolded sentence of your own post. I was not (as Louis was keen to pin to me) claiming that all women who enjoy sexual freedoms are whores, but that the behaviour of many young women these days is debased by a modern desire to be "popular" or to somehow "control" their environment through sexual availability. Modern morality seems to embrace the sexualisation of young girls and the message that being attractive and sexually available is the only way for women to progress. The media and corporate marketers constantly push that female promiscuity can guarantee "acceptance" and a degree of "power" and wrap it up as choice and freedom.

I find these attitudes to be fundamentally opposed to the feminism and concept of women's rights that I have always believed in, and in fact a rather terrifying subversion of the aspiration to those rights by the male-dominated corporate world. The fact it is bought-into so readily by otherwise liberal minded commentators as Louis is deeply concerning - to me, at least. Consciously or otherwise, those women that choose to pursue this path are indeed "whoring" themselves out - no more or less than the poverty-stricken prostitutes of the 19th or any other century.*

In context, I was noting that where one finds contemptuous attitudes towards women in Arab countries, it is invariably in tourist areas where drunken western women whore themselves around to equally reprehensible men. It is therefore unsurprising that one can find comments about this behaviour. Of course, one can find just as much condemnation from the tourist spots of Greece or Spain, which is precisely why I was arguing this is not an "Arab" problem.

Now Strike, you can disagree with me on my perhaps traditionalist views on sexual promiscuity (though you will find many feminist commentators of long-standing making the same points about the misplacement of the sexual revolution) but since experience seems to be the only benchmark you will allow, you will find that though my brain may be deemed semi-complete, I have nonetheless been laid a few times.

*And just so we don't go off even further down this tangent, I consider the facilitators - invariably men - of this trade to be far worse. How we might address this in the context of sexual rights is another topic thread, one thinks.

An excellent post. But it does adress two issues at the same time. To one of which we all seem to agree, and another which is a point of contention.


One, there is a certain pornofication of society. One can wonder if - in their heart of hearts - women are truely happy with this direction in which sexuality, and female sexuality in general, has moved. PVC and I recently had an, altogether too brief, little side debate about it, expressing that to our bemused satisfaction the urban social progressive and rural liberal-religious conservative seem to meet on this subject.
One can wonder indeed if modern sexual pressures aren't a terrifying subversion of the aspiration of women's rights. Far from failing to see it, the opinion of liberal minded commentators such as myself is permeated with it.


Two, women who engage in sexual experimentation are whores.
Despite the above, women are still mistresses of their own sexuality. And women do enjoy sex, they do enjoy exploration. Because of intense social scrutiny of female sexuality, women sometimes find it easier to engage in certain practrices away from the suffocation of their normal surroundings. Much more relaxed to leave it for the holiday, for springbreak. But they are not whores. They are not sluts. They are not unworthy of respect.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I present both the drunk texan and the whiny Frenchman with a few precious gifts:

.................................................................................


You may thank me later. I don't expect anything, but I like expensive stuff that comes in bottles.

Dots?

¿Que?

[HoreTore]

Dots?

¿Que?

Oh, terribly sorry, I forgot the second part of your gift:

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


Don't spend it all in one place now, ya hear?

[Louis VI the Fat]

Oh, terribly sorry, I forgot the second part of your gift:

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


Don't spend it all in one place now, ya hear?

The gift of keeping our mouths shut?

As if, eh?

So here we are, I sit with broken hyper sexualized friends on one side of me and broken unsexed friends on the other side of me, trying like hell to be a voice of reason. Of course how we got here is partly for the reasons you claim and, at least in America partly because of the reactions for the reasons you claim. I agree with you 100% that people are becoming more and more lost every second of every day.
So either you have people who put no stock into the emotional value of sex or put way too much emphasis on it. Either way everyone ends with a whole where morality once was
If you are still following this post I commend your ability to handle a ramble as suffice to say I have no answers. I understand what’s going on but have no way to stop it.


Cliff Notes: It is the curse of my age that I am growing up in a broken generation but contrary to belief I don’t think it is because we revel in being devoid of morality but we don’t know what it is, so we fill that whole with something destructive and let it break us from the inside out. I don’t like acknowledging the fact that we have serious flaws in Western society but it would be an even bigger crime to simply blame the brown man

So I've read it all at last.

A great post, passionate and personal. Let's get married!, or were you flirting with BG?

[Subotan]

No Louis.

I condemn the men too. This kind of moral debasement has its consequences for both sexes. I do not have to approve of it to respect women's rights. Men and women's rights are concomitant with responsibilties. They do not simply enable hedonism.

Feminism is not about having the right to debase oneself as a plaything for corruption and vice, though of course that right exists. Such moral choices lead to diminishment for all.

Modern feminism is certainly in part about women having the choice to do such things without being judged in a way which men who behave in a similar way aren't.

Generally in English the term whore is merely descriptive when talking about a woman selling herself or being sold for sex. Describing a woman as a whore merely because she is considered promiscuous is an insult.

Both uses are deeply insulting. Consider the thoughts of that most odious of hacks, Richard Littlejohn, on the serial killer who stalked Ipswich in 2006:

The men who used them were either too mean to fork out whatever a massage parlour charges, or simply weren't fussy. Some men are actually turned on by disgusting, drug-addled street whores. Where there's demand, there'll always be supply. This wasn't a case of women going on the game to put bread on the table, or to look after their "babies". That's what the welfare state is for. They did it for drugs.

...

These five women were on the streets because even the filthiest, most disreputable back-alley "sauna" above a kebab shop wouldn't give them house room.


...


These women were on the streets because they wanted to be.


...



It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of "work'=", death by strangulation is an occupational hazard. That doesn't make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/co...-routine-.html
Littlejohn uses words like "whore" in order to dehumanize the victims of this scumbags. To him, the sex workers who were murdered by that scumbag aren't people, aren't individuals, they aren't even victims. They're something sub-human, and the use of words like "whore" is absolutely key to Littlejohn's definition of them as sub-human.

To be fair, Stewart Lee discusses this a lot more succinctly, and a lot more NSFW here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAOCVwLrXo&t=4m50s

Had you bothered to read the exchange, you would have seen that my point was akin to the bolded sentence of your own post. I was not (as Louis was keen to pin to me) claiming that all women who enjoy sexual freedoms are whores, but that the behaviour of many young women these days is debased by a modern desire to be "popular" or to somehow "control" their environment through sexual availability. Modern morality seems to embrace the sexualisation of young girls and the message that being attractive and sexually available is the only way for women to progress. The media and corporate marketers constantly push that female promiscuity can guarantee "acceptance" and a degree of "power" and wrap it up as choice and freedom.

I find these attitudes to be fundamentally opposed to the feminism and concept of women's rights that I have always believed in, and in fact a rather terrifying subversion of the aspiration to those rights by the male-dominated corporate world.

I agree completely with the premises - not so sure about the conclusion. Girls are now expected to look sexually attractive at a much earlier age, and that's certainly the fault of companies trying to press junk onto naive children. Maybe a thread about the loss of childhood would be a more relevant area for that discussion, but there's definitely a problem with the idea that sexualisation is the only way to be popular, and by implication, happy.

I've more mixed feelings about the conclusion though. The "Girl Power" theme as always struck me as a load of hooey, if only because if women want parity with men, then trying to "get back" at them by being girly is a poor way of doing it. That said, modern feminism is absolutely about choice, and if women want to do it, then that's fair enough.

In context, I was noting that where one finds contemptuous attitudes towards women in Arab countries, it is invariably in tourist areas where drunken western women whore themselves around to equally reprehensible men. It is therefore unsurprising that one can find comments about this behaviour. Of course, one can find just as much condemnation from the tourist spots of Greece or Spain, which is precisely why I was arguing this is not an "Arab" problem.

I have a personal anecdote which completely contradicts the bolded part of your post, but it isn't one I want to discuss. Suffice to say that men in Arab societies are thoroughly backwards in their approach to women. This is neither the fault of them being Muslim, nor that they're Arabs, but because of their society's views of women as being "separate but equal", and also because of weird stereotypes in the Arab world that all Western women are Bilquis-esque nymphomaniacs. It is something which will hopefully change with increased democratisation in the Middle East, but who can say.

Gutmensch knows it's an enrichment. Rightwing party's have been warning for this for years, what decades. How very mean of us to doubt the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us leftist militants and activist judges

Read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...n-europe-state

. Over the last decade multiculturalism, like political correctness, has come to mean whatever its opponents want it to, so long as they don't like it. Usually, the policies and dilemmas referred to are difficult to fathom or entirely invented. Ill-defined, the term is much-maligned – a lightning rod for the majoritarian impulses, cultural anxieties, economic insecurities and nationalist mythologies of the 21st century. Its contemporary critics keep telling multiculturalism's supporters to admit it has failed, without identifying what "it" is and who ever supported the lampooned version they present.

[Rhyfelwyr]

People have tradtional "going-steady" relationships less and either save themselves for marrige (stupid) or hook up until they are about 30 (stupid)

Why are either of those stupid?

[Tuuvi]

Why are either of those stupid?

Yea I wanted to ask this too, I'm curious.

[Jaguara]

Kinda annoyed by those setting a standard on what makes a woman a whore. As if it is their fault they get harassed, as if there somehow is a justification?

For once Fragony and I are in total agreement.

I find the entire conversation, in which some of you are discussing when it is justified to call a woman a whore...to be reprehensible. May I suggest that the answer is never? The term is derogotory and demeaning, even when used to refer to a prostitute.

[PanzerJaeger]

Why are either of those stupid?

They are the two extreme ends of a spectrum on which it is best to live somewhere in the middle. (Just my opinion.)