Poll: Would anyone here object to or be offended by skimpy outfits on male volleyball team members?

[ElboRuum]

19. Ugh.

"You've subscribed to a more secular, materialist notion of rights."

Yes. Because there is no other notion. The problem with modern philosophical argumentation is that, rather than avail itself of obvious truths, honest in their character, there is this romanticism in invoking Godwin's law. In your post, you've ascribed to me several philosophical disciplines to which I do not ascribe or give credit.

While I am impressed you would invoke Nietszche, I am a little less impressed by Rand. You've invoked Jefferson and Paine too, if only to say, "I know Jefferson and Paine, and you, sir are no Jefferson and Paine".

If you understood thing one about me, you'd have left the Capital Creator out of it, being an atheist as I am, but since you've managed to conflate my personal observations and views on the world as some unholy grabbag of mixed metaphors and quasitheology, I suppose "getting it right" isn't something you do very often. I can always tell when someone is educated in the philosophical disciplines, because they take great pleasure in noting which part of what you "borrowed". I should know. Part of the fun of being educated within the philosophical disciplines is figuring out who ripped off who, is it not? Of course, this is the modern philosophical state, everything is derivative, nothing is original, which explains why no real philosophical luminaries exist in the modern age.

So I'm not even going to dignify your interpretations. I am no philosophical scholar by any stretch. It is a fuckton easier to understand the world if you just do your own thinking without trying to figure out if that thought filtered its way out of someone else's gray matter. If some things that you think bear any resemblance to something that came before, it is at worst accidental.

"If rights are taken from oppressors, there's no reason to stop the struggle there."

Taking this at face value. What is the rest of the struggle (assuming there is a purpose) intended to accomplish? An oppressor can only oppress if those oppressed do not have the rights of the oppressor. When the oppressor and the oppressed are on equal footing, neither is the oppressed nor the oppressor. So what does further struggle accomplish. What is the goal? To become the oppressor? Patriarchy vs. matriarchy. Hmm. What a choice.

"And with the lauding of arrogance as a virtue reminds me of Rand. Is that where you're taking this? I rebut that making the choice means nothing if you then don't succeed at making the goal. Empowerment doesn't come with the choice."

And a variant of Godwin's Law shows up. Congrats to that.

You make some interesting claims with this. Choice must be met with success ergo it means nothing. I sense an entitlement there. I made a choice, ergo, I must be successful at achieving my goal or it was meaningless. Who is ascribing to a material view here? You sound more like Rand than I could ever hope to. Choice is empowerment, empowerment is choice. Empowerment guarantees NOTHING but the opportunity to see through to a goal, it in no way guarantees its achievement. You see this fallacy in the modern feminist view of equal opportunity being subservient philosophically to equal outcomes. It's bosh, to be blunt.

"What? No. Another party can damage your rights whether you believe it or not. This happens all the time. We're in different universes if you think empowerment can be isolated from a group. In nature, the alpha dog is only alpha compared to the rest of the pack. Take him from the pack, and he's a dog. In human affairs, the only type of power that involves no relation to another person is fantasy power. Even in fantasy, your mind simulates other persons or beings. I think that could instinctively be in preparation for performing in a group, a form of learning in lieu of when you can socialize it. "

No, another party cannot damage your rights unless you are unwilling to defend them or believe that such defense is the responsibility of another and they fail to provide this service. And I am not immediately dismissive of the idea that we live in different universes. Empowerment can mean isolation from a group, specifically if one's desires and goals run counter to the desires or agenda of that group. If you cede your self to a group so wholly that you believe that your esteem and worth is intimately attached to the rising or falling approval of that group, you are precisely the OPPOSITE of empowered. It is the idea that one's power exists only in relation to a group is odd. If self-esteem is a factor in all this, it is nonce. One cannot have esteem absent of group in your universe, so esteem must therefore be group originated. People who derive their esteem from a group cannot be said to have self-esteem. Therefore, empowerment from group identification is not empowerment at all but the relinquishing of one's power, placed in custodianship of others.

"Is Hollywood too far from the real world for you?"

What, you mean the world where people get paid millions of dollars for pretending to be other people, where if anyone else not in the business of entertainment tried this, they'd be labeled a phony and no one would take them seriously? Yeah, I'd say that's pretty fucking far from the real world for me.

"To explain a the term nausea: I'm going by what an ex-girlfriend told me, and other women I've talked to have concurred. She had had more than fifty sex partners in thirteen years, and she was used to the "ubiquitous male gaze." Also couldn't turn the sex appeal off (and if ever saw her, you'd know why). She lost her virginity to four guys over one weekend. I'm emphasizing: she was not a porn-averse prude.

She told me when a male's attention wasn't wanted, what she felt was not arousal, it was more "like a nausea."

So, you know a highly attractive woman who, obviously, got attention. Of course, you look at that from another point of view, it sounds like a so-called First World Problem. The problem of "plenty", of "ennui", of aristocratic boredom. Many women would kill for half of that kind of attention, and you present it like it is some sort of burden. It sounds like a rich person complaining about all of the people who serve him/her standing around waiting for big tips. "Oh, why oh why won't they just see that I'm just a regular man/woman" as they fan themselves with a big stack of C-notes. People complain of male fantasy, but let's put her loss of virginity in terms of fantasy, how many men would have loved to have lost their virginity to four women? The point of all of this is that she is living in a real-life fantasy. No real life workaday person gets to have that. Yet, this is the rule and the rest are the exception? So precisely where are your fringe examples going to end? Moreover, through all of her sexual exploits, were her encounters her choice? I'm willing to bet they were. Every time. So I am supposed to feel sorry for a so-called victim of the insane burden of "the ubiquitous male gaze" who is so attractive that she can pick and choose her mates?

She's empowered. She gets to choose. And it's a burden. And you would put this forward as an oppression of sorts?

If you don't believe me, ask some of those female friends how they feel when the attention or advances aren't welcome. Ask them about things that could raise the creep factor with the persona non grata.

What this sounds like is that they find the societal necessity to turn away these advances as somehow burdensome, that all of their interactions in life should somehow come with a prescreener. You will only be approached by people you want to be approached by. You will only have to talk to people you like. What a bunch of entitlement nonsense. They sound like the entitled rich.

I would love to know precisely how anyone is supposed to know that an advance is unwelcome unless they make the advance and experience the rejection... I have a feeling I'm never going to get a reasonable answer to that question...

I'm not easily rattled about sex.

You keep saying shit like this. I'm starting to wonder who you are trying to convince.

Good negotiating skills? lol. That's a stretch. I think it usually goes like this: "If you show up tomorrow for this shoot, we'll pay you a thousand dollars."

Yes. And the video grosses a mint. So the next one she negotiates 3 grand. Then 5. Or whatever. Just ask Jenna Jameson. In porn, women drive the industry and are the most well paid. They dictate who they will work with or won't. Only a fool would not realize this, and then claim this a burden.

"So, why do I either have to agree with "great negotiating skills" or "disturbing"? What a false dilemma. Having a guy hand a woman a buttload of money photogenic tits doesn't take skills. Just like posing nude isn't empowering, either."

I didn't create the false binary, you did. I suggested that empowerment exists in the ability to negotiate your salary with the leverage these women have, in response to your suggestion of it being disturbing. You are the one making the choice here, not me. Empowerment isn't about skills or the "quality" of choices you make. It's in the choice. Posing nude isn't empowering if you were coerced, but it is if you made the choice of your own volition.

Empowerment is the realization of a mental framework from which an individual can draw to take unitary action to serving their own sense of purpose and to seek fulfillment. It doesn't mean people won't MIND that happening. Choices have consequence and there is no guarantee of success. What's bizarre is that those who speak reams of empowerment deride those who are self-driven when they perceive that they are making the "wrong" choices. No, they are rising above the idea of oppression.