Sunday, September 28, 2014

paying for sex?

interesting read! It's 2014: Why Are Men Still Paying for First Dates?

i've ALWAYS said that whoever does the asking should pay for the first date. and i can't think of any common exception to that. i've written about this subject before (twice, actually!), so i'm not going to rehash that again since my views haven't changed. so i will instead write about the other interesting stuff in the article.

"A 1985 study... presented subjects with a variety of fictional dating scenarios—mixing up who invited whom, who paid, and the venue—and asked them to evaluate the acceptability of the sexual encounter that followed. Disturbingly, they found that money contorted men’s opinions of sexual consent. “Rape was rated as more justifiable ...when the man paid all the dating expenses...” A more recent study, from 2010, found that men were more likely than women to think that sex should be expected when a man pays for an expensive date."

this is wrong. obviously. but it's also understandable. people naturally have the expectation that when they pay money, they should get something in return. in this case, they are paying for your food and expecting, well, more than good conversation!

"Almost half of the men surveyed in the study he co-authored said that they would break up with a woman if she never offered to help pay the bill on a date."

good for them! tho i wonder how many dates it would take for them to get fed up? also wonder if a man would date a womn longer regardless of her not paying but if she slept with him? probably.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

child abuse?

the adrian peterson case basically asks us to define child abuse. is it any kind of physical punishment towards a child? or is "light" physical discipline okay, but nothing "excessive"? [i'm only focusing on physical punishment in this post]

my parents didn't beat me. i don't remember ever being spanked, whipped, or hit, though i probably was at some point. (let's call this type active physical punishment [app]). the worst thing i remember is that my mom would use a wooden ruler with a metal edge and hit my open palms with it. she hit pretty hard, but i can say with near certainty that i never bled from it. i think it was more of a shame thing. i do not feel traumatized.

my friends told me some of what they went thru: kneeling in the corner, pulling their own earlobes, holding their arms straight forward for extended periods of time (this sounds easy; it isn't!). this type of physical punishment doesn't leave scars (tho apparently kneeling a lot causes your knees to become hairy?) let's call this passive physical punishment [ppp].

i don't know which is worse, or which is more effective, or if any type of physical punishment is effective at all. app is probably more traumatic, but it's usually over faster. i don't know what the average duration of ppp is, but i would think that forcing a kid to keep their arms out for half an hour would hurt a lot more than a spanking that doesn't leave bruises!

personally, i think physical punishment is permissible, and yes, even app. so where do i draw the line? i think that if you ever leave bruises, welts, or break skin, you are doing it too damn hard. you're trying to teach a lesson, not mentally or physically scar your child. you are an adult; you are very strong compared to your kids. you should not ever purposely semi-permanently hurt them physically. it is unacceptable.

and that's how i judge adrian peterson. his kid was bleeding from multiple wounds. peterson should have stopped as soon as his kid started bleeding. he should never have gone on to further inflict that amount of physical abuse. if you wouldn't let another adult put you thru that much, you should never put your kid thru that.

Friday, September 12, 2014

ray rice

this ray rice thing. i'm not going to link any articles since i don't want to color your opinion if you haven't seen the video yet. so here's the video.



i absolutely think ray rice should be cut from the ravens and suspended by the nfl. if he doesn't admit to any wrongdoing then he should probably be cut from the nfl entirely.

i think that accidents to happen. he could have accidentally knocked her unconscious. she rushed at him, he deflected her, she then fell head first into the handrail. so the fall could have knocked her out. EXCEPT that if he didn't mean to hit her unconscious he would've checked on her once she hit the floor! but he doesn't move to check on her. he doesn't even shift her body so she's a little more comfortable. when he drags her out of the elevator he isn't careful with her. he doesn't even make sure that she's completely out of the elevator. and psychically, he is able to. he just does not care to. and all that, to me, shows that this is not a one time accident. this is domestic abuse.

they both need to go to counseling. go separately. we can't make her press charges against him, but hopefully, through counseling they'll both realize that he was wrong. if the govt can charge him with aggregated assault or battery, they should. she is currently in denial about what happened. she has defended him, and has said she didn't agree with the nfl suspension. but she is wrong. i mean, sheesh, has she watched the video?

i also think there should be a criminal investigation about how the nfl commissioner roger goodell handled the case before tmz published the elevator video. but that's a different discussion.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

god is dead. maybe.

there's a saying (which i cannot find online since i don't remember the wording) that "god needs us as much as we need him." another is that "without us, god wouldn't exist." i think they're both true. if god does exist, he wouldn't "physically" cease to if people stopped believing in him. but in a very real way, he would no longer exist. ...until he convinced people to believe again that he did.

it's a little like the old "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" yes, of course it makes a sound. it fell, so it would because that's how gravity, sound, and reality work. but no, it doesn't really make a sound because there is no "observer."

ha, mixing existentialism and god. it's practically meta!


sartre wrote in his Existentialism and Human Emotions that "Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism."