Things that are making you crabbit! [5]

Petty and I are saying the same thing. It's not that women shouldn't speak up about these things, it's that there should be a sense of proportion between what's illegal and what's inappropriate. Bosses should not be inflicting any such shenanigans on underlings, which is illegal and a fireable offence. Such things between co-workers are best handled internally, and if it doesn't stop once it's been pointed out and complained about, then the firings and perhaps even public embarrassment can commence.

But dredging up inappropriate conduct (as opposed to illegal) from the past and waving it around is massively destructive. Men now have a much better idea of what is inappropriate, and they honestly did not have such a keen sense of it until now; most definitely not 50 years ago. We've been having a very therapeutic wake-up call, but the way the purges are going there may not be many left if it continues on this tack.

{{Not sure that helps the debate Figg- funny as it is!
Just think there is some double standards at play here and a blurring of lines between what is something which is just offensive or unwanted and something which is predatory and dangerous. And I dont see any advantage to treating the two as if they are the same thing save to victimize men who made some crude or clumsy passes in their past or who simply acted within the perceived normality of those times. }}

I'm having a "foot in mouth" day today so, I don't expect this to be any different. Unless the old codger, who slapped your bum in 1972, is still slapping bums but has moved onto fondling boobs & young boys, then I would just forget it. If said man has got worse he then needs a lesson taught. I feel I believe that men have learnt to behave themselves nowadays. I don't see the thrusting a young girl up against a wall with the romantic line of " go on, you know you want it !" anymore. Having stories reviewed on TV, the news, documentaries, radio newspapers etc has helped highlight the situation. Though I admit it doesn't seem that long ago when women felt like they were no better than a dogs chew toy with men grabbing & saying what they liked. Funny this has crept up as on Sunday (18th ) there was a tv show on More4 called " It Was Alright in The 1970's " & the men on that who were watching clips from the 70's were amazed & astounded at what they saw & heard. And all agreed it was NOT the way to treat women at all. How any of it was aired on TV is amazing in its self. They showed clips from "Confessions of a Window cleaner" & in it you actually saw full frontal nudity....of a woman....of course. Then there were song lyrics brought up. The Drifters singing about Kissing in the back row on a Saturday Night. What amazed the guys as well as the women watching the clips was the words to that song, practically paedo. This is the only clip I could find, its not of the show last Sunday but, it gives an idea.



One verse from that song that surprised the watching 'team'.........
"Every night i pick you up from school
cause your my steady date
but from monday through to friday night
i leave you at the gate (yeah)
you know we can't have too much fun
til all your homeworks done
but when the weekend comes
You knows where we will be"

Even the men reviewing said that it sounds too much like a much older guy singing to a 12 yr old schoolgirl.

If "your homework" was changed to "our homework" it would be sweet, but the way it is, is creepy.

Mmmmm, & Rod Stewarts song "Tonights The Night" was mentioned as yuk also. When he sings "spread your wings & let me come inside" & " My virgin child". Both lads & ladies were shocked. One guy watching the clips on this show was young himself, in his 20's maybe ? & he agreed that's no way to treat a woman.

{{Amazing thing is that's not even unusual for the time Azriel-

The Beatles song I saw her standing there opens with the line- 'she was just seventeen/you know what I mean.

Chuck Berry wrote 'Sweet Sixteen'

Bowie slept with infamous groupie Maddox when she was 14. As did Iggy Pop and Jimmy Page.

Ted Nugent released a song called 'Jailbait' which contains the lines- 'Well, I don't care if you're just 13 / You look too good to be true / I just know that you're probably clean/ It's quite all right, I asked your mama / Wait a minute, officer / Don't put those handcuffs on me / Put them on her, and I'll share her with you.

Steven Tyler slept with a girl who had just turned 16.

And then of course there was Jerry Lewis who married, and I'll repeat that, he married his 13 year old cousin.

Bill Wyman began his relationship with Mandy Smith when she was just 13, they started having sex when she was 14.

Elvis starting dating Prescilla when she was 14.

Iggy Pop wrote a song, 'Naughty Little Doggy' about his 13 year groupie Sable Starr- it has the lyrics-
I slept with Sable when she was 13 / Her parents were too rich to do anything / She walked her way around L.A. / Till a New York Doll carried her away.

And Mike Jagger was at it with a seventeen year old.

I think what is of cultural interest here is there was obviously not a lot of shame or social stigma attached to this- they are singing songs about it, mainstream songs being played on the radio world wide. There is no sense of trying to hide anything, quite the opposite they are often boasting about it in their songs and that was perfectly fine, acceptable and expected.
I think that more than anything shows how much things have changed since.

But I also think context is also important- its only a few generations before the above examples when the average lifespan of the poor was between 35-45. That doesn't leave a lot of time for finding a mate and raising a family.
Its easier I think to say women needs to mature, and have a childhood and be at least eighteen when everyone expects to live to be 90. Not so easy when the average lifespan is less than half that.
And I think that normality- you had to marry young because of necessity- took a long time to change to the current position and views with our modern lifespans. }}

Maybe ? I can understand that shorter life span necessitated finding a partner young. Medieval times people were married as children but, I don't feel that gives a guy the right to be so arrogant on how you treat women ? And of course there were plenty of women acting like flirts & its no good denying it. But it did seem like winning a gold medal if a guy got a girl pregnant & said he didn't want to know & that the poor girl would not get a penny out of him. He got a well earned slap on the back from his mates & the girl was classed as a slut. No fun there

{{Oh no argument on treatment there Azriel, its no excuse to treat anyone badly or use them for stupid power games or anything else, but for the poor in those days the male was often not much older than the girl- though from the testimony of some of the above women- notably Maddox and Starrr who were active groupies- they look back with fondness on those times not hatred, or regret, same goes for Mandy Smith who married Wyman at 17 and divorced him several years later- but seems to bear no grudges for his picking her up so young in the first place.
I find it amazing though that Wyman and Smith regularly appeared in the newspapers of the time when she was just 14, not as a scandal but as celebrity news- 'Wyman seen stepping out with his new girlfriend' that sort of thing, in newspapers like the Sun who today would be the first to call out such behaviour as unacceptable and scream from the rooftops- back then they essentially endorsed it and publicized such behaviour.

Regards the past and the need to marry and have children young- it makes sense because of two factors- shorter lifespans and infant morality- in a time when you might need to have six children to have one or two survive to adulthood time is very much of the essence if your own window of opportunity for birth and raising them may well be less than fifteen years (and thats assuming you manage to stay in good health yourself all that time).
Also I think (some other primates might too, not sure) that humans are the only species on the planet who, for purely social reasons, do not begin breeding as soon as the female is physically capable of doing so.
But we used to in the past like all the rest of the animals- and I think that probably thousands of years of that takes a bit of shaking off. Especially on a global scale across cultures. }}

Druggie moms that yell at their kids.

Makes me crabbit and sad at the same time.

There's a lot of unwanted kids in the world.

If it were practical I'd tie everyone's tubes at birth, with the option to get reversal surgery if they really honestly wanted kids and were ready enough to go through with it. The reversal should be available for free but still not trivial, not something you would do on a lark.

Lots of potential for government abuse I'm afraid, but I'm dreaming anyway. On the other hand, I know several unexpected kids that led to very happy marriages and very happy kids.

Rebooting Buffy with a Black actress because 'diversity'. I thought the whole point of Buffy was that she looks like a blonde bimbo wasp, but is in reality a kick ass vampire slayer. ffs. is there nothing identity politics wont fuq up.

Yeah, not easy to see someone named "Buffy" being a black girl. I can see giving her a more diverse coterie of friends - the show was pretty white.

{{Not just that as Figg says the basis of the idea is a simple joke- take a stereotype of the dizzy dumb high school blonde cheerleader type and subvert it.  And thats a universal stereotype- I dont know of a black female highschool stereotype thats universal which it could work off. No problem with her having more diverse group of friends, that seems likely to me at a American Highschool }}

The world is changing, I feel like an outsider, I don't belong in this Time & I don't like it.

yeah if the rebooted Buffy had the Cordelia character as a sassy Black chick friend which is fine, but why change the main character.

Oh Azriel come off it, people still like pizza, movie nights, and walks on the beach.

(There is a Netflix original called "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore" that you could try out if you're feeling overwhelmed by this feeling though.

people still like pizza- Forest

{once you've stopped arguing over vegan, glutton free, allergy issues and the ethics of pepperoni!}

'movie nights'

{if you like explosions, loud noises and actors shouting at one in other instead of a plot or characters! }}

walks on the beach

{{if you can avoid all the dead seabirds choked on plastic and not getting hospitalised standing on junkie needles or broken bevvy bottles that is!

Sorry Forest- give it another twenty years you'll be ready to join the old crabbit moany bastards club!   }}

I know exactly what Az means, I should have been born in 1860.

{{I thought you were!!   }}

Hee Hee As much as I like Forest's positivity ( and thank you for that ) Im with Petty on this Its not the world its the people in it.

"Back in my day movies were about good plots! And ideals! And... sophisticated ideals!"



"And we didn't have any pollution!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
https://www.epa.gov/air-trends/air-quality-national-summary

                         

{{You're  making my point for me Forest- it's not that things were better in the past, they weren't, its that somehow its got even worse!!!!   }}

It's too fucking hot!

I need to work in this shit!

Bastard sun!!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{You're  making my point for me Forest- it's not that things were better in the past, they weren't, its that somehow its got even worse!!!!   }}

I have to follow Forest's lead and hold up pollution in California and the Great Lakes among other things as a shining example of how things can get better. Well...at least until the current atmosphere in the country takes root back down to the local level.