American Women

[Shura Balaganov]

American women, I've noticed lately, generate these sort of emotions. OK, not all of them, but a good subset. Not at all like outside, in Europe, even in Canada, for christ sake. What's up with that? What's the deal with 50% divorse rate, with across the board obesity...not just "a little chubby", but I personally have trouble looking at half of the american women over 30.
Actually, it's men also, but then noone expects us to look good... :roll:
Lately I started to think that someone is running a grand scale experiment in this country: how much crap can a human consume before becoming fat, ugly and getting arthritis, cancer and heart diseases. Or maybe its my paranoya again? :roll:
Shura

[Thomas Paul]

Such nonsense is best ignored.
The song, by the way, was originally written by the Guess Who (Burton Cummings, Gary Peterson, Jim Kale, Randy Bachman) in the 60's.

[Dave Vick]

Shura
You're right it is your paranoia again. Now shut up and eat this pasta.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Shura, where are you from?
[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Gregg Bolinger ]

[Shura Balaganov]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Such nonsense is best ignored

Ignorance is a bliss
Dave Vick: You're right it is your paranoia again
Maybe, but it increasingly showing up every time I come nack from a trip abroad... Or maybe it is a nostalgia...Pasta, btw, has nothing to do with obesity. but chickens that grow in a month instead of a year do. Europe, probably has a reason not to buy american meat products (will someone tell Hersey that you suppose to put "chocolate" on a product containing a certain persentage of real chocolate???)
Gregg, you were able to do a search on this site before, and you would've found lots of references about this...i'll tell you anyway..russia
Shura

[Thomas Paul]

Shura, have you been eating any cow meat from England?

[Jim Yingst]

Any posted remarks that may or may not seem offensive, intrusive or politically incorrect are not truly so.
Sounds like you're really trying hard to avoid that. :roll:

[Shura Balaganov]

Yeah, I'm really splitting hair here not to get overboard, but that's what makes life fun, isn't it?
Shura

[Rufus BugleWeed]

Should Spock should beam you back to the old country, I'll bet you would be complaining about a whole bunch of the practices in a NY minute.
Somethings here are better and somethings are worse. Personally, I really like a well cooked chicken.
The problem with American women is that equality is not enough for them. They want a better deal.

[Garann Means]

Methinks someone's been listening to a bit too much Tom Lychus (Lykus? sp?)...

[Shura Balaganov]

Rufus, NY minute, I guess, is the time between light turning green and a driver ibehind you hitting horn?
I personally like Upper West Side girls (I should put "women under 30"). But boy, aren
t they unapproacheable?!
Shura

[Anonymous]

Originally posted by Shura Balaganov:
American women, I've noticed lately, generate these sort of emotions. OK, not all of them, but a good subset. Not at all like outside, in Europe, even in Canada, for christ sake. What's up with that? What's the deal with 50% divorse rate, with across the board obesity...not just "a little chubby", but I personally have trouble looking at half of the american women over 30.
Actually, it's men also, but then noone expects us to look good... :roll:
Lately I started to think that someone is running a grand scale experiment in this country: how much crap can a human consume before becoming fat, ugly and getting arthritis, cancer and heart diseases. Or maybe its my paranoya again? :roll:
Shura

I doubt people in this forum will ever agree with these comments but you are right on the money!

[Rufus BugleWeed]

Everything is faster in NY. A NY minute is 55 seconds.

Aside - I love the NY'ers use of the horn.
[ August 15, 2002: Message edited by: Rufus Bugleweed ]

[Jason Menard]

If anyone is actually curious what the song is really about....
The Guess Who were a Canadian band. For one thing, according to the guy who wrote it, it was basically stream of consciousness that came out in a jam on stage one night and wasn't really pre-meditated. The comment he was trying to make is that he preferred Canadian women, because, as he states, he felt American women grew up to fast compared to Canadian women (he seems to be talking about girls in the 18-24 yr range). That's his story at least, and he's sticking to it.

[Robert Paris]

Ridiculous ignorant drivel. Unfortunately, not meaningless drivel but dangerous drivel.
I noticed you said "American Women," as if that were a homogenious group. So your stereotypes can be applied to women of all ages, all economic statuses, all races, all sexual orientations, etc.? And even within those groups, you really think any two people are alike?
The only people who fit generalizations are the ones you don't know.

[Angela Poynton]

Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:

The problem with American women is that equality is not enough for them. They want a better deal.

How do you know that? They haven't even achieved equality yet!

[John Fontana]

Originally posted by Angela Poynton:


How do you know that? They haven't even achieved equality yet!

An American Woman has spoken! Rock on, Angela!

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by John Fontana:
An American Woman has spoken! Rock on, Angela!

Actually she's a Brit.

[John Fontana]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
Actually she's a Brit.

Oh, then nevermind. At least the Brits are open-minded enough to have female Prime Ministers and Monarchs.
Come to think of it, maybe the Queen should run for President of the U.S...

[Rufus BugleWeed]

Equality is a hard thing to measure. If we add up all the wealth in the US who comes out with more male or female. Shura, you're good at this, could you help me out?

[Shura Balaganov]

Wealth and power are two different animals...Some women have more power than people realize (say, Hillary, when Bill was i.o.?)
Robert Paris: Ridiculous ignorant drivel. Unfortunately, not meaningless drivel but dangerous drivel
Oh, and I am really scared... so dangerous topics are better be avoided... I guess let's put a condom on a candle, just to be safe... :roll: Of course, anyone can point finger and blame me in generalizations and stereotyping. As I said above, not all of them, but a good subset... and my opinion is obviously biased, more or less as everybody else's. I was just planning to start a good discussion about women (american, in this case), not nesessarily blaming flame.
Equality, shmequality. what the heck are you guys talking about, what equality? take any two people, are they equal? Maybe in height... :roll: Angela, if you talking equality in salary and such, that another discussion.
Looking from another angle (and trying to make it as innocent as possible), how many men support women, and other way around? If you count that, maybe there shouldn't be any equality. I know a girl (don't misunderstand me, she was smart as hell) who was hired by a very well respected company based on personal preference (you know, one of "old farts" met her and parents in church, they chatted, yada-yada, she got job offer. some better qualified people had no chance getting there). Now, anyone knows many examples when it happened otherwise... So what is equality, if ephemeral, unreacheable myth?
Shura
[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Shura Balaganov ]

[Robert Paris]

Equality does NOT mean equal in possessions. It simply means equal in value. It applies to the value judgement we put on each other. So some see men as superior and others see women as superior, and a few others see neither as superior. In those realms, we are seeking equality. The point is not that women are equal to men, or vice versa, the point is that gender is not even relevant. The examples you give have nothing to do with gender and the abilities given by gender, rather they are all about people's experiences and the environmental conditioning they were shaped by. I am not all that eloquent, and not particularly brilliant, so I'll back out here and let ZhuangZi say it:

Saying is not just blowing wind. Saying says something. But what it says is not fixed. So does it really say something? Or does it not say anything? We think that it is different from the peepings of baby birds; but is there really a difference? How is the Way obscured that there is right and wrong? Where could you go that the Way is not? Where could you be that words are not acceptable? The Way is obscured by small accomplishments. Words are hidden by glory and show. And so we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Mohists. Each calls right what the other calls wrong, and each calls wrong what the other calls right. But if you want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, nothing is as good as using clarity.
"There is nothing that cannot be looked at this way.
"There is nothing that cannot be looked at that way.
"But that is not the way I see things;
"Only as I know things myself do I know them."
Hence it is said: "That emerges from this. And this, too, follows along with that." This is the doctrine of the simultaneous birth of this and that. But although this is so, being born together they die together. Dying together they are born together. Being both acceptable they are both unacceptable. Being both unacceptable they are both acceptable. In being right in a way, they are wrong in a way. In being wrong in a way, they are right in a way. For this reason the Right (or True) Person does not go along with this but illuminates them all with nature, which is also just a way of looking at things. But what is this is also that, and what is that is also this. That is both right and wrong. This is also both right and wrong. So is there really a this and a that? Or is there no this and that? The place where neither this nor that find their counterpart is called the hinge of the Way. Once the hinge is lodged in its socket it can respond endlessly. Right is one endless response. Wrong is another endless repsonse. This is what I mean when I say nothing is as good as using clarity.

Wow, there's quite a bit in there. Sorry for that looong quote, but I think it perfectly captures the problem here. We're all arguing right and wrong, equal/not equal, sterotypes/not sterotyped, but we're getting nowhere because they're all coming from perspectives, granted different perspectives, but perspectives nonetheless. Now it's impossible to NOT come from a perspective, as ZhuangZi points out, but as long as we KNOW they're simply perspectives, we can start getting somewhere. Perhaps the most important part of the passage is the Wittgenstein observation (although Wittgenstein did not exist when ZhuangZi was alive):
"Only as I know things myself do I know them."
Wittgenstein's observation on this was to show (in the "Blue and Brown Books") that even though the words "I" and "Me" refer to something in our language, there is in fact nothing there to refer to. This is because the only thing we have is our own experience. We cannot experience anyone else's perspective or experience, there is only our own. And to refer to something, you must be able to pick it out, to show "this is what I mean by me, not that." It must be an object and have boundaries, i.e. something or a point at which you can say, "that is no longer the thing I mean." However, if the only experience we have is our own, then there is nothing to contrast it to - it is not an object.
The point is simply that we need to understand the limitations of our perspectives when we make claims about "the way things are." As Nietzsche said, (paraphrased) we're looking at the world from just one corner.
[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Robert Paris ]

[Rufus BugleWeed]

It's still an american mans job to ask the woman out first.
Woman usually still wants man to be older.
We got sugar dadies and?

[Shura Balaganov]

Robert, great post, but I was actually trying to steer this discussion into more down-to-earth road.
A few hundred years back russian military elite treated women and horses as a highly respectable admiration subject (hey, they had no cars back then, and they meant no disrespect). ...quote from Pushkin is escaping me, maybe Map will help...They knew nothing like who pays for whom, how many dates before sleep-over.
And what's the deal with all these stupid rules, like you have to call by Wednesday to get a Friday night date? Is this high school again?
I wanna be a shugar daddy. note to yourself: need to buy a BMW...
Shura
[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Shura Balaganov ]