05-12-2016, 01:50 AM
(05-05-2016, 07:24 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I witnessed the transition from filthy rivers to cleaner rivers. I witnessed the use of DDT and the transformation that occurred after it was outlawed. I witnessed the effects of acid rain. I was aware of previous use of a coat hangers to perform illegal abortions. I doubt a second wave boomer would actually have a greater claim on morality than a 1st wave Gen Xr. What the second wave boomer experienced, the first wave Gen Xr would have experienced as much second hand or more directly. I probably benefited more from the sexual liberation of women than most women my age.
I am a late-wave Boomer, and when I was in college in the mid-1970s the women were discovering feminism. I recognized that even if a female my age came from a male-chauvinist culture (at UC Berkeley that meant largely Orthodox Jews, Chinese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, and Japanese-Americans) I recognized that if I ended up with such a woman she was likely to end up a feminist. But I could have lived with that. Similar culture and good conversation make people equals.
At a first-rate college one learns upper-middle-class values, and in the upper-middle class, men and women are much closer to being equals, anyway. Intellectual power does not know gender; brute force does largely divide along lines of gender.
The feminists were prudes. They were not sleeping around with everyone. Sleeping around with everything that moves is unwise.
Quote: The women my age were still tied to the old notion of respect and placed in the position of having to sexually complete on an even playing field with women of less respect. I wonder how many woman are sexually competing and finding themselves being forced to comply and fall in line with the images and activities commonly associated with female porn stars today.
And there is much of the problem. Girls need enough esteem to recognize that they are still valuable even if they don't look like porn stars. The fault with pornography isn't its salaciousness; it is instead its unreality. Most significantly, the girl in porn is showing parts of her anatomy that a husband (or lesbian spouse) will want exclusively. You may enjoy looking at a pornographic image, but so do hundreds or thousands of other people.
People who have heavy involvement with pornography take the risk of being too fussy for their own good for a healthy relationship with a spouse. Most men want a woman who is a virgin to other men but a slut to him. That has nothing to do with ethnicity, age, religion, or social class. Most women want basically the same, only with the gender tags inverted.
But ask yourself -- by respect do you mean subordination?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.