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What could be done? Make it double illegal?

How about harsher punishments. First offenses usually only serve a few years at most before getting out in parole. It's not until their 3rd offense that it's a life sentence. Which means at least 2 more victims have to suffer before they are put away. Now, let's apply that to this scenario. The woman would basically only get a slap on the wrist the first two times she threw her baby away and it wouldn't be until the third baby thrown away that she has to face severe consequences.

Well, I have advocated for capital punishment in the past, for crimes such as rape and murder.
For some reason those arguments aren't too popular with the crowds calling for more laws.

Sexual assault isn't discouraged by increasingly large punishments. People who have committed a sexual assault do not to connect their actions at the time with possible consequences.
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I'm still forming what my overall advice will be (it's been my main focus for some time now) but sexual assaults don't just happen out of the blue. A lot of components need to fail (well, 10 to be exact) for an offender to offend. Some failures happen inside the offender and some failures in society.
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We need to invest in ways to reform people at risk. Even better, we need to make treatment available to anyone who might feel like they need it BEFORE an offense is committed. Fun fact: if every deviant fantasy vanished out of every mind right now, sex offending would fall to zero instantly.
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Stopping sex offending can be as simple as explaining to the potential offender that they're missing a key component from Maslow's pyramid. They can easily learn how to be a balanced person without hurting anyone.

That's a huge oversimplification, and it depends on the mindset of the offenender. But VERY few offenders find sexual assaults to be ultimately fulfilling. That's why they keep victimizing others. They need to learn that they can fill that perceived "need" in healthy ways that are ultimately fulfilling.
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Anyway, I'll stop now before I write 50 pages on the subject. My point is that OP has the wrong idea, but I think there are things that can actually be taught to kids in their later formative years to reduce the amount of sex crimes in the world.

It's not anyone else's responsibility to fulfill any other person's needs (except parents to their children and therapists to their patients, to a point). Let people live their lives as they will - until it interferes with another person's ability to do so. Then tear into the offender like a fucking Ka-Bar.

1 in 5 females and 1in 20 males are sexually abused in the US before they're 18. Taking a couple weeks to teach young adults basic coping skills (which you seem to have already, kudos) could have a very real impact on that number.
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The things people need to hear are more of a how-to for being happy and fulfilled in life. Teaching people to recognize and deal with deviant fantasies would be a very small portion of the overall content, but it would have a devastating effect (in a good way) on the frequency of sexual assault. I don't feel like that's a waste of time.
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The best parts: less victims, less lifers in prison, less unhappy people walking around.

That one in five statistic was from an anonymous survey conducted at a single college campus.
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Happiness and fulfillment vary from person to person. As does dealing with deviant fantasies.
For instance, I want a life of stress and peril. Or "Guts and danger", and my own fantasies are dealt with by either porn or a willing partner.
This will not apply to everyone. For instance, I know that if I was pushed towards a traditionally "fulfilling" lifestyle - then I would not be even half the man I am now.

I got the abuse number from the link below. There are a bunch of studies cited on the page, brother:
http://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics
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Also, I see what you mean about your particular brand of fantasy and life choice. Everyone is on their own path. Not every path is traditional, and not every path is destructive. The beauty of this information is how generally applicable the concepts are. YOU sketch out your path, YOU identify what you don't like, and YOU get the tools to deal with your problems.

I could get behind that kind of campaign.
Nothing makes me happier than individual empowerment.

@jasonmon is completely right here. The best thing for everyone is if the rape doesn't happen in the first place. Increasing overall access to mental health services would certainly help. So would better implementation of mental health education in schools.
We would also benefit from encouraging the idea that safe consensual sex is a good thing. It's a lot easier to ask people to go to a completely acceptable course of action over a immoral action than it is a morally ambiguous action over a immoral action.
The truth is lots of men and women want more sex than they are having but aren't willing to seek it out for social/moral/religious reasons. And young people especially tend to make under informed sexual decisions due to lack of access to information perpetuated by a culture whose views are sex are complicated.
Obviously I don't think we should push people to have sex if they don't want to. I just think, hey, if you want to have sex, and so do they, just be safe.

Nice! I'm in a unique position where I could actually, for-real, help to get some form of this implemented so that's encouraging feedback.

The offensive part here is the presumption of guilt. It's the same identity politics you find everywhere, where because you are a man, you are more likely to rape and therefore must be taught to not do that. We judge people as individuals, not as groups.
And besides, these things do literally nothing to help. The sensible men already understand that rape is bad, and will likely never do that anyway. Meanwhile, people who would rape someone, will not be dissuaded by simple persuasion, because most of them understand that what they are doing is bad and they simply don't care, or don't have the self-control to stop themselves. Either way, teaching all men isn't going to stop the ones who rape, and will insult everyone else by assuming that they would.

It's demeaning and offensive to my sensibilities.
Not to mention unnecessary. Literally nobody wasn't taught to be kind, or to at least not be a criminal piece of shit, so those courses just seem like a waste of time where I'm being accused of the most horrendous of crimes by some fucking civilian who doesn't seem realize they're keeping me from training to do my job - saving lives on the battlefield.

The only exception I see here is the case to be made about immigrants from third-world Muslim countries, because the cultural climates are so different, and the culture shock may cause people to behave in accordance with societal norms of where they came from, and not where they now live. As such, some may not be aware that rape is bad or illegal, and in that case, teaching them about the cultural differences and helping them acclimatise is actually a viable strategy that can alleviate some of the problems that countries end up in when cultures with different systems of values clash.

Also, high five @famousone nice to have some people on the same page here.

Or maybe we shouldn't try to play nice with cultures that don't think rape is wrong...

More or less.

you don't have to say "more or less" cause you're just right in general.

So since I have you both here can I ask what solutions you guys might have to help? Not even so much with things like serial rapists since they usually have something more wrong with them than any class could fix anyway. But things like inebriation and such like that. I'm not singling guys out but the statistics do show that most perpetrators are male, and we currently do actively teach women what they shouldn't be doing in order to avoid being raped
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I've never seen a class that was directed specifically at men, but I'm sure they exist. I don't think men specifically should be taught this (lord knows enough women feel entitled)-- but I'm not personally opposed to education in general. It feels a bit like WHIMS to me, where it's very unlikely I'll ever explode myself with one of these chemicals, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of possibilities or even what might happen to someone else

As a side note @famousone you're in the military correct? I know there's been a lot of issues with sexual assault in different organizations like that over the years. This isn't to say a majority or anything remotely like that, I have a deep respect for the military and police etc, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on those situations

well, im sorry to say thats theres no real way to solve all rape since ,as mentioned before, the people who do rape simply don't care. All we can do is use evidence to bring rapists to justice. if we do that we can discourage others from raping with severe punishments.
but i'm no expert in politics, not even being sarcastic i'm only 16.

Trust that most people are basically decent, or at least smart enough to fake it, and prepare for the eventuality of meeting someone who isn't.
I advise the women in my life to keep alert and be armed, much for the same reason I advise the same to the men in my life.
It's worked for me, and hoping you're fortunate isn't a plan. All the education and help in the world won't stop every POS out there, but proper preparation will do a hell of a lot more good than making already mostly good people sit through courses that only waste their time.
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Keep your head on a swivel, be armed and get some kind of training, and never take risks that you can avoid - without backup, at least.

Fair point, I'm not saying looking out for yourself isn't a good option. Self-defense and situal awareness won't work in a lot of situations, but if there's even a .01% chance it might save you from one it's worthwhile

I would have to agree that any problem that has its roots in an individual's free will, can never be eradicated completely. But it can be minimized in a huge number of ways. The easiest solution here is to go over the law enforcement system and see if any improvements can be made. Note, i'm not calling for any particular change, just to see if statistics show that some parts of it are less effective, because that is the easiest thing to adjust.

Secondly, the fabric of society needs to be fixed. There is just no question about it. You cannot have millions of immigrants with different values and norms come into a different culture and have it remain stable. So as much as I hate agreeing with alt-right arguments, I have to concede here: The most effective solution is to simply ban immigration from any third-world countries. Most of them at least. Just staunch the flow of people and focus on fixing the situation in countries that people flee from, WITHOUT compromising the lives of people of the first world.
The rise of the far-left, the pro-open borders activism, ANTIFA and reappearance of communist rhetoric, has come from people who have never been poor and have no idea how much life can really suck and how good they have it. So their ideals are detached from reality, and us sensible people must repair the damage they have already done first, before saving the rest of the world. Or we will go down with the ship.

Anyway, sorry for ranting on a slightly different matter, but my idea here is simple. Stop sinking the ship to save the drowning, and fix the ship first before building ships for other people. And then we won't have issues with culture clashes, women's rights in third world countries and Islamist radicalism. These things will erode as people understand what they gain by following in the footsteps of the West. Hopefully at least.

The alt-right nutjobs want to exterminate or bury other people's, and not even necessarily over culture. Those fucks are no better than the Nazi's they try to emulate, or even the assholes we're fighting today.
But secure borders and thorough screening were things that were wanted across the political spectrum - until recently, at least. Now that an administration is actually trying to make it happen people seem to conflate it with the aforementioned bigotry of the pieces of shit that hide behind white hoods, and turn to the opposite extreme as though it were somehow better.

On the one hand I do understand the point your making. Although, if I recall correctly most assaults do not cross racial boundaries (meaning white men/women are more likely to assault white men/women, etc etc). Women from cultures where rape is prominent also less likely to report, though that could chance. Looking at it from a strictly clinical level, It's possible less immigration could lower the rape/assault statistics, but I'm not sure it would be a substantial enough amount necessarily.
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I don't want to get too far into the immigration thing simply because it feels too likely to derail the topic. I do agree that an overhaul of the system is probably needed.

I'm not sure where that begins because, on the one hand, you want justice for the survivors. You also want prevention for the future, punishment/re-education for the perpetrator, support for the victims, punishment for false claims, relief for those who have been falsely accused (it's a minority, but those lives still matter).

@famousone
In this context, I'm talking about the more sensible portions of the right-wing, not the batshit extremists (alt-right in this case refers to them as being an alternative to the mainstream right wing, my bad, should've cleared that up). If you want to know who I mean in particular, I'm talking about people like John Mark. Link to his channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIGlVALFPYRROlXk511Cfhw
He seems to be one of the most sensible right-wingers I've seen, and argues based on logic and facts, although the conclusions he comes to are different from mine. I'm more centrist.

I can respect that.
So long is the end-goal is the same, I don't mind debating the means.
"Typical" left and right wingers all want the same ends. More money, less crime, sustainability, and a generally more prosperous country.
The problems come from those who don't want those ends, those who seek an end to western culture, and those who seek to exterminate and subjugate others merely for the color of their skin or their choice of god.
That's what I imagine when alt-right/left are mentioned: those who's ends fundamentally oppose what most believe to be just and reasonable.

@xvarnah
This is really not a race issue, as you pointed out. It's a culture issue. Look up the statictics on Scandinavian countries that accepted a shit ton of immigrants for rape, or search up some of the more famous cases in Britain for instance. I can link you those if you want.
And to give you my outlook. 1. Complete prevention is impossible, but prevention due to observable metrics such as cultural conflicts is possible and necessary. 2. Presumption of innocence MUST remain unchanged. BOTH LEGALLY AND SOCIALLY. It's unbelievable how many people's lives were already destroyed by false or unproved allegations and how easy it is to do. Even if they never get criminal charges, they will be ostracized by society for nothing, and that is unacceptable. 3. Punishment and rehabilitation can be handled by the legal system, and most that can be done is sharpening the edges on how that is done.

I've got to wake up for PT in five or six hours, so I'm gonna call it a night.

I've never had classes like this, but I wouldn't be offended by this, we've been taught many things to make us a better person. The problem is when classes like this is only given to men because people assume that women can't be rapists

Hopefully people won't find themselves overwhelmed. I know that it definitely varies from person to person.
I know that for me, conversations on the subject became much easier after I was able to experience sex in a healthy and positive way. And sometimes sex is still difficult, but conversations aren't anymore.
I also know that isn't the case for everyone.

Exactly so. I know a lot of people here have come to terms to the best of their ability with their experiences and their lives, but is still easy to get triggered. I also really don't want to see people getting pulled into stressful exchanges of angry words. It's clearly everyone's choice, and this is the Internet, but things like that on a topic like this will get damaging so very quickly.
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I know even jasonmon's perspective, no matter how he offers it, will likely upset some people (no offence jason), and I can see why it would. But then he has reasons and merit behind what he's saying. As do people who have suffered abuse. As do people like famousone and... I forgot the other guy's name (begins with a v). Even if I don't agree with everything everyone says all the time, if we don't learn to understand how and why people feel the way they do, we can't ever hope to find a solution that will benefit as many of us as possible

God I sound like a politician or something -_- "why can't we all just get along??" Yeesh. But hopefully people understand what I'm saying.
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Either way, I'm so very glad that you're here and you're willing to talk and you're able to talk. Everyone copes and recovers as best they can, but it's always... idek the right word. Amazing/hopeful/inspiring/relieving/a million other things anytime someone does manage to get to a level they can talk about it.

Your argument discredits itself. You call for a mass stop on mass immigration from certain countries- a singular policy aimed at a wide group of people. Yet you justify your disdain for these ads under a banner that people are individuals and aiming a policy at a whole group that contains certain individuals who behave undesirably is a foolish idea. You speak of agendas and yet you clearly have one of your own as your logic does not apply consistently, it is used as a tool which you target where you want to see change, and then try to justify what you desire under a guise of a logical stance. I do not need to attack you, only your argument, and I do not need to attack that because it already tears itself apart out of the gate. One thing I do notice though is that you seem to personally feel attacked a lot. You feel personally attacked by ads aimed at rapists when you say you are not one, and you feel attacked by me in a general comment which unless you somehow read a part of yourself..

... into, wouldn’t apply to you in a negative way. So don’t read this as a personal attack, but I think you need to sort out your own feelings before you try to make a logical argument because it is evident that they are influencing your judgment and leading your agenda. Now- of course a rapist who doesn’t care about rape laws won’tilely care about a rape PSA anymore than a pirate or a drunk driver or a drug dealer would care. Does that mean that we should stop trying to make people aware of these laws or the harms breaking them causes? What’s more- it isn’t the serial rapist these are targeted to. The point is to show well meaning and otherwise good men how certain actions they may not think about can be seen as assaults by others. To let men who don’t want to be sex offenders know that things you may see as “harmless” or “normal” behavior can either directly be or easily slide into harassment or assault.

I always wear a seatbelt even when moving my car a few feet in the driveway. I always wear a helmet and full gear when I ride. I have never driven on the same DAY I’ve had even a single sip of alchohol. I’ve never sold or consumed illegal narcotics, I’ve never beat a partner or even hit them, I’ve never had a gambling problem, I’ve never placed my hand s or arms outside of a ride while it was in motion. Yet- when I see ads, when I’m told directly, I don’t feel like I’m personally being targeted. I know better and I behave. I know they are telling a whole group because they know for a fact that some people do it, some people don’t know better, and if you fly planes or dive or do any critical task you know that you do not leave things to assumptions. You check and double check- or you crash a billion dollar probe into mars because people didn’t use the same math. So it’s a critical item and it needs to be as clearly verified as possible to mitigate critical failure and the consequences.

Bravo, @guest_. As usual, this is well-articulated, hilarious, and fair.

Thank you @jasonmon. You da real mvp to me though. Bro- I wouldn’t make a psa to change the world. Because you’re my world bro, and you don’t need to change.

Gotta admit, I wasn't expecting this to end in a bromance (or to actually ever see guest_ say bro in the first place)

"From Dumpster Babies to Bromance: Today's Funsubstance"

@xvarnah- there’s only one person I say that to. Well- not really. In general I use it when a certain tone is implied and then rarely and almost exclusively ironically or satirically. But for the sake of the joke- just the first sentence.
@jasonmon- lol. Yeah. Maybe a rough segue.

I would be absolutely terrified to click on that headline

Lol.

Causation and Correlation. You can't distinguish between the two, can you? Men can be rapists. Is that statement true? Yes. Men are more likely to be rapists BECAUSE they are men. False. Gender, at best plays a miniscule role in what drives people to commit crime. Now you can point at statistics that show that men commit or are convicted of more rape cases than women, but given that men commite more crimes overall and women are way less likely to be charged with rape, even if the accusation is true, is that really surprising?
Next, for a case of causation. As you can tell yourself, third-world Muslim countries have problems with women's rights, and effectively view them as lesser people. Then you can look at some of the more famous cases in Sweden, UK, anywhere in Europe where they accepted large numbers of immigrants from these places and see how that stacks up.

What's the difference here you may ask? Only that it can be proven in seconds that fundamentalist Muslims do not consider women to be equal in rights to men, and rape is more or less acceptable as part of their culture. It's not that they consider rape to be acceptable because they are men, it is that they consider it to be, because they are Muslim fundamentalists. Correlation and Causation.
Now you know what, I wouldn't even have a problem if anyone tried to solve this issue differently. Unfortunately we get shit like this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swedish-police-are-not-allowed-to-give-descriptions-of-alleged-criminals-so-as-not-to-sound-racist-a6810311.html
Lemme give you some quotes from that. "Swedish police will no longer be able to give descriptions of alleged criminals for fear of being seen as racist."

Huh, I wonder why. Next one: "The letter, dated September 15, 2015 was written just a few weeks after a youth festival in central Stockholm at which there were a number of alleged sex attacks." And this links to another article, so let me see that as well.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swedish-police-accused-of-covering-up-sexual-assaults-at-music-festival-a6806016.html
It's rather short, so let me grab the one important quote from there: "Gyllander couldn't confirm Dagens Nyheter's report that most suspects were from Afghanistan, but said "this involves young men who are not from Sweden.""
Yeah, ok.
Next one: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45269764
So this one actually has statistics by place of origin, which is nice, so let me read those out.
"About 58% of men convicted in Sweden of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were born abroad", and "In cases where the victim didn't know the attacker, the proportion of foreign-born offenders was above 80%

In addition to that, Swedish police refuses to give statistics by ethnicity for reported rape cases, and the nice graph that is in the article shows that their number overshadow the ones actually followed through on. But in the meantime, here's another quote from that article: "A former police officer born in Afghanistan told the programme that some young Afghans who had come to Sweden in recent years had views that differed significantly from Sweden's idea of sexual equality."
Yeah, thought so. You want any more examples, or is Sweden enough? I have empirical evidence to justify causation, and you cannot do the same for men, since it's one of the biggest spectrums of people possible. You inevitably will have to generalize by a location, an ethnicity, or some other metric.
I'll throw in one last article as well, just for lols: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5250755/Sweden-investigates-soaring-number-rapes.html

Next, going back to your attempted defense of these campaigns. As far as I understand your perspective, you dismiss these campaigns straight up telling people not to rape (as if they need to be told if they are sane people), and go for "sexual harassment", which I'm no expert on, so you know what, go ahead and give me your definition of it, to see how that stacks up.
And by the way, show me at least one fucking example where I went for attacking your character instead of your arguments. As you did. Every time you criticized my point of view, I continued explaining my logic, instead of making swiping assumptions about who you are and why you do this. It is an unnecessary and dishonorable thing to do in a debate.

I’ve read a lot of your stuff and I’m trying to figure out if you’re serious or just like trolling because it’s often almost satirical. But.... you say.... we can’t correlate that men are more likely to rape people because they are men... but we can correlate that Muslim immigrants are more likely to be rapists because they at Muslim immigrants... and you hand this on the fact that you say fundamentalist Muslims hold women as lesser than men, and that it is part of their culture... have... have you heard of like- anything that has been going on in America recently...? Like- the term “rape culture” or the over 100 year struggle of women to be seen as equal? You do realize that exactly what you are saying about Muslim culture is what many Americans are saying about American culture- that women are seen as lesser inherently? So again... your logic doesn’t apply equally. You are mixing up what you want to be true with what you can prove is true. Now I ask...

.. have any sources for your claims? Like for instance- men statistically commit more crimes than women- and you then posit that would mean of course there are more male rapists. Ok. Is the percentage of male rapists over female rapists proportional to the difference in general male offenders to female offenders? Oh yeah. You mention men are less likely to report rape. Very true. Unfortunately- we can’t plot a formula for calculating that with An “X” in that spot. So when forecasting- we would need to make assumptions. These assumptions should be based on real data. Where is the data? What criteria are being used to extrapolate the figures you are basing this assumption off of? Your inventing unverified statistics to back up an assumption based on an assumption without any evidence. So.... there’s not really much meat there to dig into.

I can’t really argue wether your imaginary math I can’t see is correct or not. My gut tells me it is not. But then again, the guy is a terrible tool to review data with compared to a spreadsheet.

Honestly, it's annoyingly hard to find statistics on this issue. Best I found this far is this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251877/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-race-ethnicity-and-gender/ and https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2017.0016
There isn't much and it's only on homicide, but it does show the trends that men commit more crime AND are victims of more crime than women. Obviously, the situation with rape cases would be different, but it's not even so much about how much men commit crimes, but if they commit crimes BECAUSE they are men. This is why you would need some sort of scientific evidence that proves that it comes from gender and not something else.
And it would help if you linked me anything you find, I would be interested in having a look at that.

And comparing US and Muslim countries is a losing battle. Because LEGALLY women have the SAME rights as men. Equality of opportunity. They are free to do whatever they want, and that is everything that needs to be done. You let people be themselves and choose what THEY want. Even if this means that the CEOs of top 500 companies or whatever that statistic is, will be male. Because they earned their place and it SHOULD be based on merit, not on arbitrary characteristics that have no bearing on a person's skill.
And you can't seriously compare that to Muslim countries. Pick any right that women don't have in these countries and see that they do in the US.
And please, just... explain to me, what do you mean by women being seen as equal? Because I just don't understand how they are not. They are the same in the eyes of the law (or sometimes better off), and they will never be exactly the same as men in behaviour, because they are biologically different. I need you to elaborate on this.

You raise some interesting ideas and make some eloquent assertions. However we come back to inconsistent logic. We can agree that there is nothing intrinsically criminal about being biologically male, and we also can agree that the letter of US law states that all are equal in rights. So then we must look at the factors that would make men more likely to be involved in crime other than the details of their birth. It’s what comes after. Gender- a social construct. A sub culture of its own. So we can say that environmental factors specific to how men interact and are interacted with by the world contribute to higher male crime statistics, and that elements of male culture- commonly referred to as “toxic masculinity, such as a general lack of humanity applied to females, are prime contributors to this higher than other gendered criminal statistic. Having removed differences in law from the equation- Muslim or not- as you have said: all American men and women are beholden to the same law..

.. so law isn’t a factor. We have removed genetics and biology, and true enough you will find rape or crime in all cultures and locations. So what we have left are specific values held by individuals. A group of which make up theor own generalized grouping, which we can then call a culture or sub culture. So the argument presented is as much an argument to ban men from free entry as it would be a whole group. I suspect- to your thoughts on the ststaistics of female rapists- that these countries likely have an even smaller percentage of female rape convictions. So then there wouldn’t really be an argument to exclude female Muslim immigrants would there? The idea doesn’t hold up under its own premise with any examination.

As for women being seen as equal- They are not the same. A biological female has distinct differences which influence behavior and thought independent of gender compared to a biological male. The idea of equality is often taken to mean two things being treated identically or being identical. That is not the case. If there are stairs, and I say “everyone can take the stairs..” that is equal. If you are in a wheel chair you can take the stairs. People in wheel chairs do it all the time if they have to. It is also not equal for me to say that there are no chairs in the stadium, wheel chairs can park wherever they like, and everyone else can bring their own chair to sit on if they need it. It’s equal in principal, but thatbisnt what is mean tby equality. So that is the first partner of the explanation. A solid wall- 5ft tall is equal to all, but only the 6’+ person can actually see to the other side.

Now- the law. Yes yes. Equal in the law. As you say- sometimes better off. Family courts tend to favor women, and we already touched on how male rape is often treated compared to female rape. But how can that be? There aren’t laws specific to men and women in rape. There’s one law that everyone is equal under. You’ve made that clear. So then, men must not face challenges with child custody or with rape reports against women then? It’s one law. If your wife hits you and you hit her in defense, you would be treated the same as a woman in your situation wouldn’t you? The law demands it. The law is equal. Isn’t it?

The law is written by humans, enforced and interpreted by humans. What’s more, the law cannot be too specific or strict. A principal in law is the understanding that a rigid and set law can’t cover all scenarios and will do more harm than good. So laws always have some vagueness to them, some room for adjusting to a situation, and even then sometimes things happen the law didn’t foresee and can’t adequately cover as written. So we know for a fact that not only is the equality promised by law not something we can count on, Justice may be blind but mos police and judges see just fine. We also know that one can operate to the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law. You mention that men should have most jobs in power IF those men were the best choices. Nothing wrong with that. That’s common sense. But...

Prove it. Prove that’s why a man got the job, or from the other side- prove the woman was more qualified. If I interview 6 men, I can choose the one I think is best right? And maybe this guy has a better school or resume, but one kid struck me as having a “fire” and potential. Or maybe one guy seemed like he’d be the best fit for the existing staff to get along with, or maybe one guy just had a former handshake or was my old friends kid or I liked them more, or maybe I just didn’t like the races of the other applicants? Prove which it is. Because unless a person is flagrant or dumb enough to outright say “yeah- I didn’t hire that one candidate because I hate their race or their gender or their sexuality...” you have a free pass because those other intangibles like “my gut told me they were the best fit...” it is very hard to argue and gather evidence against someone’s emotions. What’s more...

... it’s very likely that “best fit” usually means “most like me.” People like people like them. We like people who enjoy things we do, laugh at things we do, think the way we do. As we established earlier- men and women do in general have differences in biology and gender culture. It’s far more likely a man adhering to traditional gender ideas would feel a platonic bond with another man. It’s more likely that they will have shared experiences, political views, hobbies, the stories they tell... they can relate to each other easier. The ways women are not seen as equals are hard to go through because as stated- they hide in plain sight. They are deeply ingrained in many places in our culture, and usually bringing them up gets an eye roll because they are seen as trivial complaints. The compliant however isn’t the individual action but the thought process it shows

When was the last time you got your nails done? Wore makeup? When is the last time you wore frilly lace, or provocative lingerie? How often do you wear a dress? Speaking of differences- Why do male nurses commonly get mistaken for doctors but it’s far more rare for female nurses to be? see- the fact men and women are different both biologically and by concept of gender isn’t inherently unequal. But perception is. See- it’s aspirational right? When a woman wears a pants suit she’s taking charge, but when a male wears a dress... what’s he doing? You light say it’s because it’s an odd thing right? Unexpected or out of the ordinary. But.... no. Not quite.

When a female comedian breaks convention of feminity, when she is “masculine” in appearance or mannerisms, she walks on stage and no one laughs at her appearance. When a male comedian wants a laugh he can put on a dress or act “feminine” and we laugh. Why? Because aspiration. A woman acting “manly” is “elevating” herself. That “bitch” in charge is a professional. A real hard ass decisive leader. But when a man does “womanly” things- he is “lowering” himself. We have common stereotypes. Women can’t drive, women can’t measure, women can’t fight, women talk more, women are emotional, so on. And yes- before you say “we have those for men too!” Yes. But by and large they are stereotypes of virtue. Badges of honor. The “sports nut” the “strong silent type.” We tend to view these attributes for their positives and not consider the negatives of them as opposed to the tendency to view female stereotypes in negative without regard to positive.

And that itself is a large part of the issue- that the female perspective and voice is often set asides and the default lense we view things through is a male perspective. But- our stereotypes- society views the woman as inherently incapable. As you say- surely those men got those CEO jobs because they were more capable than women. It’s the default assumption- just as the default assumption often made of a woman in power is she got the position through manipulation and trickery, or through seduction, or as a token “diversity hire.” But we covered earlier with men and Muslims- there’s nothing genetic or biological that would explain it... I mean, unpopular opinion, but most “average” women aren’t going to be as suited for heavy manual labor as men right? The biology doesn’t support as strong an upper body for two similarly trained or untrained men and women no? So it would make sense that...

... if I’m hiring heavy manual labor I’m hiring the biggest and strongest who can do the job right? But most of the high paying or prestigious jobs we are discussing when we talk about women in the 21st century work place are office jobs, clerical jobs, administration. You don’t need to be jacked to touch a keyboard or lift a phone or make a spreadsheet. So you spoke early about how many men commit crimes versus women, and how that can’t be just because they are men. Does it then seek logical to you, that a disproportionate amount of women are not in certain jobs simply because they weren’t the best choice? What an insane coincidence that time and time again, in almost every field, women don’t manage to perform as well as men isn’t it? What about women specifically would make them on the whole less qualified to be a CEO etc? We have already established that it isn’t genetic or biological. So it’s other factors. They clearly want to be, many are clearly qualified on paper, legally...

They have equal right to be, so- where do you think the hold up is? Do you think that 99% of women on earth are incapable of doing the job better than a man, or do you think that there is a bias acting against women? If so either way- what might you think is the cause or major contributing factors to that? What is it that makes it so that the “best” in almost every field from physical activity, to sales, strategy, finance, science, technology- will almost always be a group primarily or exclusively made of men? Are men just so much better then women? If so- where is that coming from? What’s the cause of this advantage, and what underpins those causes?

If what you take issue with is human perception, then I'm sorry to say, but you will ALWAYS have stereotypes and preconceptions. You're fighting a battle against human nature. And you are looking at it from the wrong angle. Because if you want people to view women as being just as capable as men in areas where they are not, you don't try to break the existing stereotype and institue a new one, because that is damn near impossible. Instead you alter how much people take stereotypes into account. This is what I'm talking about by treating people as individuals. Stereotypes exist about a group. But when you are looking at a singular person you don't judge them by the group they belong to, UNLESS that group defines who they are. This is why looking at all women or all men is almost universally wrong, because at this point why not just look at humans in general? You'd get about as much variation on that scale too.

I see the nice out you left there. “UNLESS that group defines who they are.” Rather vague though. How do we determine if that group defines who one is? If someone else identifies you as a label which you use to identify yourself, we have a consensus that both you and others agree on that fact no? If that part of your identity is central to your being, to where if it were removed, you would be fundamentally altered- is that what defines who you are? Or- in a more abstract sense- do only your actions define who you are? By definition, in a world of individual humans, no person can be identified only by a group. Any group. Among any group of sufficient sample size you will find vast differences, even those who would in theory violate the fundamental criteria which differentiate that group from others or the group defines itself by. So.... Unless that group defines you to who? Because someone who is prejudiced will see a person who has distinguished themselves through word and deed as...

... a constructive member of society, but by virtue of some trait they posses will define that person as simply “another one of those.” Likewise- most prejudiced people can get to know and like or even love an individual of a group, while still harboring a prejudice for said group. They see “this one” as a person. An individual defines by who they are independent of their group, but “the other ones” as a singular entity defined by their perception of that group. So I can’t subscribe to your caveat because what is the burden of proof by which we strip anpersons individuality and say that they are merely a faceless and identical member defined by the group we have categorized them in?

If you think pianists are good people, but you believe the left handed are evil, and you meet a left handed pianist- you’re going to choose the label that you want to apply and say the other is incidental, and the one you wish to focus on is the defining label. You’ll argue being a lefty is inborn and thus more to their nature- so they are evil. Or that being a pianist is a choice, and so they have made a conscious effort to overcome the deficiency you see them being born to. It’s whatever you want it to be, you can’t apply logic to that beyond the basic logic of understand how it would be advantageous for an individual to hold a world view which allowed them to justify whatever their momentary desire is.

So it’s inconcistent. If we toss the bit about UNLESS their group defines them- which we must because it cannot be reconciled or proven- then we are back to square one. You would apply a logic of individuality to compare two groups, but when comparing two other groups you would use a logic that would treat all as one entity of a hive mind. The logic being used to try and justify differences between men and women flys counter to the logic being used to try and paint Muslim immigrants with a single brush stroke. Unless you can prove that any group defines a person. Speaking of Muslims for instance- one can covert to or from being a Muslim, and one can not only survive the transformation but remain largely unchanged as a person. Do they decide their spirituality defines them- or does someone else? What defines who I am? What defines who you are? Do I get to decide what defines you?

To clear up a couple of things, (and sorry for stopping at half-point, I had to leave urgently), it is consistent as long as the label has a reason. Going back to your pianist example, both of your assumptions would be false, because there is no logical connection between pianists being good people or left-handed people being evil. But there is a logical connection between fundamentalist Muslims and how they see women and their capacity for rights. Because there is empirical evidence for that connection. Which is precisely why you cannot say "All men are evil" and take that as an absolute, but there are feminists that believe that. And the thin line that you haven't noticed is that the distinction with my point on Muslims lies between the religion and the culture. You can convert to the religion and act against the beliefs that underpin it because they oppose your moral compass.

But a person who was brought up in a culture with these beliefs firmly imposed, almost certainly WILL consider them the moral truth, and will act in accordance with them without realising that there can be a different view. And because any religion is a dogma, it is nigh impossible to break some people out of this ice.

This is why we have Muslims who lived in US for decades and have adopted the values of the US, while dropping the contradicting values of Islam. A simple distinction really. So to answer your question about which labels define you. The ones that are supported by evidence. If you consider yourself an X and the majority of people who are X are proven to be Y, it can be assumed that you are Y. But if X has not been empirically proven to be Y, that assumption is false. For instance to be a pianist, you have to be able to play the piano. Therefore we can assume all pianists can play a piano. So this label gives me one piece of information about this person. And some labels contain way more information than others.

And another thing you have to understand, (which you frankly seem to ignore, because I said it twice already), is that the scale of the groups matters. You can't encompass all men under a signular group. The divide is just too big. But you can encompass a subsection of people under the label "intersectional feminists" for instance. Because this subsection shares something common that makes them a subsection and identifies their beliefs or preconceptions. And this is what these labels are for. What is the uniting factor for ALL men? That their biological sex is male. But does that tell me anything about them? Nope.

But getting back to the other points I wanted to make. You are asking why are women less represented in some industries and why should we be satisfied with that (at least as far as I can tell). And the answer is, because they don't want to. Women have general preferences for some jobs, which is why we have a 20:1 ratio of men to women in engineering and 1:20 ratio in nursing. Equality of opportunity will never lead to equality of outcome. And it shouldn't. When you leave people to do what they want, they make their own choices and they will always be weighted in a particular direction. For how many years have there been efforts trying to get women into STEM fields? And they still don't, because they are not interested, it is more work intensive, and they just don't want to. And that's fine.
What is not fine, is when women ask for unearned success. When they want special priviliges, instead of competing based on their merits. And not just women, this applies to anyone.

If feminists want true equality, why are they complaining about women not being in high-ranking office positions, but don't care about manual labor jobs almost exclusively being male? Because they want their cake and to eat it too, and to get another cake for free. That statistic I brought up earlier about CEO's of top 500 companies, if I remember correctly, 7 out of those 500 are women (yes I made a mistake above). And becoming a CEO of a company is not easy work. It most often requires intensely hard work, overtime, sacrificing personal life and relationships, and most women are just not ready for that. But the fact that there are women, means there are no extraordinary borders to success. What would be suspicious would be if after 40 years, no women made it to the top.
And if feminists or whoever want to encourage women to strive higher, sure, go ahead. But don't be surprised if women's happiness keeps declining, as was seen in this study: https://www.nber.org/papers/w14969

And if women truly want to be treated equally, they should not deserve special privileges. In principle. And no one should. Screw diversity quotas and screw affirmative action. If women want to have the jobs, they have to compete for them based on merit. That's it. There are no legal barriers why they can't. And if they face discrimination, or believe they are treated unfairly, the legal system if over in that direction, ladies. Stop complaining on social media, and grow the fuck up. Or at least present complaints in a proper manner and not screeching over Twitter like 21st century banshees, calling for blood.

Also, I know I sound salty, and I kind of am. I just hate seeing commons sense go down the drain and people creating problems out of nowhere. Because let's be frank, modern day feminism has turned to telling men they are just wrong always ("mansplaining"), claiming that straight white men have a better life than anyone else, and should be ostracized because they are "privileged", and other nonsense. They lost all empathy for people they don't directly care about. And it's affecting the world in all sorts of negative ways.

The logic of if X is correlated to Y then Y is interchangeable for X is a false equivalence to start. However- you speak of group size mattering and of men being too large a group in comparison- but roughly 1.5 billion people in the world are Muslim... I’m going to say that making anything but the absolute broadest assumptions (needs to breath to survive, requires nutrition to survive, etc.) can’t be applied to 1.5 billion people. You also cite the example of “Americanized” Muslims. That hurts your point doubly so. 1. To adopt these values they needed cultural immersion. Immigration is the primary method for this immersion. 2. That shows that not only is there nothing fundamental to the group that would make them any more dangerous or unable to acclimate to local values, but that such values do not define who they are as people since they are able to change such values. It also calls strongly into question if those were their values to begin, or if it is simply a case where....

.... the structure of the place they came from was different and like most organisms they adapt to an environment. For all the talk of superior civility and human rights- we have seen demonstrated repeatedly that independent of culture, religion, ethnicity, or nationality that when the presence of conscious of law and security or consequence are absent, in short when the chips are down or one is in a position of relatively unquestioned power- when one feels threatened or so on- that each individual reacts differently. Some people are willing to die to uphold moral principal. Others will, if needed, kill a companion and eat them to survive, and others will show that any morality they had was just whatever was forced upon them by law or social necessity. This idea that we are somehow better than- less likely to be rapist or criminals than Muslim immigrants is a clear demonstration of the types of subtle and often self oblivious discrimination I’ve mentioned. The fact that some people...

... are or aren’t Muslim isn’t material in wether or not they are or may be criminals or rapists. You likely pass people everyday who if not compelled by law or society, of not happily fed and placated by distractions and comforts would gladly rampage and rape and murder their way around town. You don’t know who a person really is until you strip it all away and see what they become when things aren’t so nice and easy. And you know what? It doesn’t really matter. The soldiers who finds out he LIKES to kill, he likes to hunt men and feel that rush that they might find you first? The sadist who might not admit it but actually likes the way people squirm when he’s got a gun and is asking questions? They can go home and be a nice, well adjusted teacher or office worker and no one who isn’t very close to them would ever even suspect. So it doesn’t even matter if some people inherently are or aren’t “good” “law abiding” people. Our society doesn’t require you to think happy thoughts...

... it requires you to follow the rules and fit in so that people can conduct their lives and commerce. In a “perfect” world we would all get along naturally because we had “love in our hearts” and happy thoughts in our heads. We aren’t evolved to that point yet. People can be very twisted- but you can’t preemtively classify offenders based on what they might or even actually do think. You spoke of defining people. The closest we get is people’s actions. You have to give a person a chance to commit a crime before you can accuse them of that crime. You can’t accuse them because someone like them, with their same name, in their family, etc. did. THEY the individual must outwardly define themselves by that act. What you are asking for is essentially to institute thought policing. We do not police peoples thoughts. If you keep it in your head you can think whatever you want so long as you don’t let any part of that spill into the real world that would do harm.

As for women- If you live in a town where the best job is going to be at an assembly plant, you’re probably going to want to work at the plant. Since a great number of vocal feminsists in a position to influence media and policy are educated, often urban or suburban women- I don’t think most University graduates with degrees in administrative, technical, financial, or arts degrees first thought for a career is to work as an HVAC specialist. So there’s one big group out of the way. Now- the next is this- women already fought a battle loooong ago to be accepted in manual labor jobs. Women who had worked in factories during WW2 were suddenly finding those sales jobs were closed to them, or being laid off. There was a lot of push for women in labor jobs through the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and even 90’s. Now here’s where the logic put forth falls short:

The fact that women aren’t being nearly as vocal about blue collar jobs despite fewer women in those fields may be because.... many women don’t want those jobs. There are two separate issues at hand. The first is being able to even get a particular type of job. Ok. I don’t ride the bus. Not counting coaches or charters and shuttles, I haven’t rode a bus in probably over 20 years. If all the public busses stopped tomorrow and I didn’t hear anything about it- I wouldn’t know. But... if you passed a law that said me, or people like me couldn’t ride the bus, or I found out bus drivers were colluding not to pick “us” up- I’d be outraged and I would fight it. I’d fight for all the people like me who might actually care, and for the principal that not only is that wrong and biased, but it is a slippery slope once we start making such targeted and bias practices acceptable in law or society.

So it doesn’t matter if women want to ride the bus. It doesn’t mater if women fight to be able to ride the bus and then afterwards only 4 women a year ride the bus. Being able to do something and deciding to do it are not the same thing. Now, next on the docket. Back to the factory. So women can get hired at the factory, perhaps begrudgingly. Then suddenly they see guys on the line next to them being promoted. More pay, less manual labor, more authority and the ability to be promoted even higher from there. So women want to be able to be middle managers too. Fight fight fight. Ok. Got it. Not perfect, but a possibility now. Ok. So now- these women in management hit a point where to go up- they need to become executives. But oddly- most of the executives are men, and everytime a spot opens- it goes to a man. We could chalk that up to skill- but it does seem odd that the same guys they had to fight against to get hired on the factory floor...

... the same guys they had to fight to be able to be in management, are also the same guys who are the corporate executives who are the only level of authority high enough to promote someone to an executive position- and those same guys who fought them every step seem to almost universally always feel the most qualified person is a man. What we get into is letteral integration. There was a term used in the 60’s and 70’s- the “glass ceiling.” It refers to a point where a woman has reached a “higher floor” of the office (and a higher level of career), but there’s those floors above, but there’s a glass ceiling that they can see through, but it’s solid. They can’t cross it. It’s a barrier that stops them at the floor they are on. See- who hires workers for the factory? A shift manager or such- low level management. Who assigns the jobs and shifts and projects which give experience and exposure and the means to build career advancement through these things and performance reviews? Who...

... does those reviews? That manager of course. On up the chain of management it goes with each manager above filling and influences the careers of the ranks below. So if I had to fight for a job because of the nature of who I am- that means someone doesn’t want me there. The same person I will likely eventually be beholden to for advancement. The fact you asked- and this isn’t an insult- shows the point. We’ve already discussed how men and women do have certain differences. How we communicate, even perceive things. A female perspective is often different from a male perspective but most organizations have primarily male figures in power which means it is more likely that the female perspective isn’t considered not just in daily operations and policy, but in work done as well. We all face perception. We’ve all likely had a scenario where we’ve seen someone as a poor worker or having poor judgment or character who was a “golden child” to those in authority and despite is being...

.... and objectively better performer or thinking we are- that person was favored by perception. Maybe a “brown noser” or “suck up,” a friend or family acquaintance, or maybe just good at looking good while relying on others work. Whatever the case we all know it. But now- realize that from the male perspective women are perceived differently. Women who are just as effective or experienced may be seen as less so by virtue of gender. They may not “fit in” with males as well and so not be able to capitalize on the benefits of being liked in that way by management. That means lost opportunities. As you said earlier- we can’t legislate perception. We can’t force people to be robotic or completely unbiased in how we see the world. But that is why female representation in management is important. Because we can equalize the bias at least so that there are female managers who aren’t prone to the same biases as male managers but at least different biases so that more people have a chance to...

... succeed. Moreover- when you ask why more women aren’t focused on manual labor jobs and are focusing on... being the head, highest levels of management... that should be self evident. What if women focused entirely on being workers? So then what- we could have one large group of the population be almost 100% used for manual labor and less than 1% be in any position of management? If I presented to you a plan- we agree men and women are different. We agree Ken tend to be physically stronger. So what if we present a new law where men- being better suited would do all manual labor jobs or jobs requiring strength. No more female infantry, no more females in construction, garbage collection... but that 95.2% of all executives jobs would go to women.. what would you think? Likely that I’m proposing to enslave men as a worker class no? That’s what that is- when one group owns most of everything and runs most of everything and another does the dirty work. So yeah- feminists talking about...

... larger policy are not really interested in creating a pyramid with a bunch of women in jobs- which may pay well like many trades do- but do not have a great deal of ability to influence policy, and- when’s the last time you saw a plumber make a hundred million dollars and open a side company before running for Congress? You see- these feminists aren’t after money. They want a seat at the table. They want women to have a voice in business, politics (effectively the same thing...). What’s more prudent and a better use of resources- Trying to put 100,000,000 college drop outs in entry level labor positions and hoping they manage to work their way up so that in 50 years there might be 20 female executives in the Fortune 500- or putting 1,000 educated professionals in the highest positions so that they can influence policy, be publicly visible, and help fill the ranks below them so that there can be integration at every level and many of the roadblocks in the way to females wanting....

... a career are gone so that those 100,000,000 women looking for entry level jobs do t have to fight just to be given a chance to do basic work? So yeah, that’s kinda it in a nutshell.

My response to the second part of your rant can be summarised by: "Yes, starting from the bottom is hard... for everyone." If women have no legal disadvantage and can use the law to defend themselves against overt discrimination, then what's the problem? Both men and women face the same difficulties in life and work, and it's no easier for a poor man to find work than for a poor woman. It's actually the other way around, since some women (not all), can easily utilized their attractiveness to find a job. A simple example: if a bar is looking for a bartender or a waiter, and they are faced with choosing between a young man or a young woman to work for a position, they will pick a young woman, because in addition to her doing the work, she is likely to attract more customers as well just by being there.

Anyway, my overall point is. Everyone has it hard. And women have it sometimes easier. So the best option to get rid of this argument is to give everyone the same rights (as we did), and let people do their thing. Success will always be based on merit, not on who or what you are. And you will never get equality of outcome, biology and psychology will not allow it.
As for the Muslim argument. Look, you can find a million ways to prove me wrong in details, so I will make my stance clear. Western culture and Muslim culture are incompatible. You either separate them or one of them will consume the other. And given that it was the Western culture that produced the most wealth, the best quality of life and most technological and social progress, it must be preserved. And what is happening right now, is that it is getting undermined by the immigrants from Muslim countries, bringing and spreading their culture. At it causes conflict. Of values, of people, of religions, etc.

And I can't see a better solutions than warding off the conflict through borders. Because as I said before, you can't save people from a sinking ship by ripping off planks from your own and throwing them in the water. You fix your own ship and then help fixing the other ships, so that people stop fleeing from them. The world isn't always a good place in the first world countries, but it's worse elsewhere, and it doesn't look like those places want change.
And the paradox here is that if you want the world to change for the better, you either have to wait for the social progress to catch up elsewhere (which will take centuries, if not more), of you will have to be tyrannical and suppress the countries that are far behind in human rights and/or are openly totalitarian.

I'll be frank with you, I like debates like these (as long as they remain civil), but I can only present long-winded rants and extended allegories for so long. If you can, summarise your system of beliefs on these topics in like 1-2 comments, and I will point out the parts I disagree with. Then you can point out the parts you disagree with in my summary. Capiche?

@vitklim success isn't nessicary based on merit. It's often biased by perspective. Let's move away from gender for a moment. Look at 2 men, both 30, both have master's, both have the same type of job experience, but one has worked said job a year longer. The employer doesn't know what the other guy was doing the year before they started the job. It isn't reflected in his work history. It could have been anything (from backpacking through Europe to selling drugs. Just doesn't know)
So, the guy who has been working there longer has objectively more job experience. You can interview them both though, one guy could be friendlier or whatever. More professional in the way they hold themselves. I get it, interviews matter.
So they both interview. And they both do great. Friendly attitudes, dressed professionally. Both are white men with thin framed glasses and well trimmed facial hair.
Both are great candidates.

The person hiring mulls over his considerations over the weekend, and is leaning towards the man with more job experience, simply because it is the only distinguishing factor.
That weekend he sees of of his candidates out to dinner. It's the man he was leaning towards hiring. That man is out with his boyfriend.
The man in charge of hiring considers this greatly. He has nothing against gay people, but he is concerned that his sexual orientation will mean he will not be too soft. That he will end up costing the company money (they work in insurance) because he accepts claims that should be denied. The other man gets the job.
The first man should sue for discrimination. But he doesn't know. He has no reason to know the man hiring him even knew he was gay. He figured someone more qualified got the position. And he will probably find another job no problem. But that doesn't change the fact that he lost this job from perspective. Not merit.

@vitklim- first I will respond to your rant as well as your request. I will try to be as succinct as possible, however we are discussing complex ideas and you yourself seem to have trouble clearly summarizing your beliefs in individual post limits.

Now- to the points raised. Western and Muslim beliefs are not incompatible. The Muslim world predates the western world and is the basis for many of our legal and moral systems as well as technology and mathematics. Summing up the Muslim world based on fundamentalist hardliners who use religion to forward an agenda is like summing up the western world on hardline evangelicals or the Amish. Norther looks good, and neither is terribly compatible with others systems which is why they tend to live as isolationsists or push for conversion to their beliefs. America is a country where the core belief system is freedom and rule of law to preserve said freedom. There is and was no clause in the founding principals of our country which precludes Muslims or Muslim beliefs. I’m fact- several of the principals underlying the United States ideology are specifically intended to preserve such differences in faith.

As for starting on the bottom- it’s not an apt analogy even if I get where you’re coming from on an individual level. Say that you and I both had to quit our jobs, get rid of what we have and start at square one, except I’m allowed to keep a support system of network contacts and you are not, or we have to compete to see who can find a job in a foreign country where I am fluent in the language and you are not- or perhaps that we move to a Mormon town and I am Mormon and in the church and you are not. Is that a fair contest, since we both must start from the same place, or is it unfair because I have an advantage? What if your favorite sports team were to play on the other teams home field for the championship, and all the refs were home team fans? Those are more apt if still flawed analogies. It isn’t that all women should automatically be given a leg up or not have to pay their dues like anyone else. It is that you aren’t paying dues like anyone else when you have to work harder...

... than the next person because they are favored by the system. The fact we NOW have relatively equal treatment under law doesn’t undo the fact that an established system is already in place which by its nature was built by men for men using mostly men. It took men hundreds, even thousands of years to come to be the “dominant” gender and build these systems and institutions and fortunes. Women were not allowed to- by men who made the rules. So now- we have a legal foundation in place that allows women to compete equally, but the field is still tilted against them. If women work hard enough and wait long enough their great great grand children may live in a world where we see more equal representation through natural effort, but those already established male dynasties will have had that long to grow larger by that time as well.

I can hear it now. Yes. Boo boo. That’s the way things are. But no. We make the laws. We make society. Nothing outside a physics book- and even sometimes that- is just the way things are. We make the world we live in and things don’t have to be a certain way of we decide they don’t.

Your larger point seems to be based in realist fact which I can’t deny. It’s an unpleasant truth but a truth until and if we solve the larger issue of resources. However- that is a different argument than what you are proposing. If you say: the world is a finite sealed system. There is only so much to go around. For one to have more, another must have less. This is true. Unless people can be happy with less and as long as we want more and better- someone has to pay. For one to win another must lose unless both agree to share. The United States consumes more resources for less people than most any other country. That means it literally is not possible using current means for everyone in the world to live like this. That means we need sources of cheap fast labor and unpleasant jobs. That means that to enjoy the life most of us do- someone else must suffer.

That’s a sad reality that we can only change by giving some things up. The middle class never disappeared. We exported it. Hundreds of millions of people have cars and running water and electricity that didn’t when I was a child. They got more and someone else had to get less. We are the 1% of the world. To much of the world a “blue collar” American or Western European is like bill gates. It’s easy to understand. Just as you or I might think that “The Zuck” can have one less ivory back scratcher to even the load while we struggle to make home and car and food expenses- someone else says boo boo that a poor American has to live in an apartment instead of own a house while they can’t afford toilet paper. So yeah- the harsh truth is that when you open up competition and stop repressing people things get a lot better for some, and worse for those giving up a position of privilege.

So say that. Don’t try and justify some high minded logical reason why it’s morally correct to be involved in subjugation. Just be honest and say that you like what you have, you don’t want to share. Many of those “sinking ships” you speak of are oil or resource rich nations ran by military dictatorships and monarchies. The people don’t have a voice or a share of the money. There’s a reason that the royal families build amusement parks and palaces and horde cars while people live like it was 1800. Their systems are messed up worse than ours. It’s easy to say they should change it. America did right? Left the Brits behind. Except we sailed away to “undiscovered” lands where there was no established recognized nation and committed genocide and took it. It also happened to be rich in resources and fair in climate. A reap lottery win.

So standing here on a country built by the struggles of people who died before you were born, that was taken through luck and genocide, you would tell these people what? Do what your forebear's did? Even if that were acceptable- where? Antarctica is about the only place left, and whenever a “Muslim” country tries to invade another one, one of the world powers gets involved. And what would you do if we didn’t, and a country like Iran gobbled up much of Africa to create an economic and military leader under a Muslim flag? What would that do to your way of life when an “incompatible” nation had the might and money to go toe to toe with the US? It doesn’t pencil out. It’s not a valid strategy.

It’s a free country. Do what the Amish did. Go buy a nice chunk of land and settle it with “like minded” folk and you can ban Muslim immigration and see how that goes for you. Bad advice? Standing up and saying what you are basically saying is almost the definition of privilege. Like Paris Hilton telling you “if you don’t like being so poor, do what I did. I put in a lot of work for what I have, and the law is equal so you can do it too.”

You know what, it's really hard to be polite at this point. Given that you are basically ignoring my argument and strawmanning it, or are just too dumb to understand.
Western and Muslim CULTURAL VALUES. Because what fucking middle eastern country with a Muslim culture doesn't have problem with women's rights (such as them not having any), or isn't openly hostile to LGBT people? Saudi Arabia is now considered progressive for allowing women to drive, what a fucking joke.
You are either misinterpreting most of what I'm saying or you are just refusing to answer my arguments fairly. But given that it's not easy to express all nuance in print, and the responsiveness of this discussion is also lacking, here's a better option.
https://discord.gg/pfRuCum
Join the server and find a time when you can talk, or just have a responsive written argument. My time zone is UTC+9:30. @thekaylapup you are also welcome to join.
I won't respond to the comment chain past this. I already said above as to why.