11th April 2007, 2:52 PM
Quote:I don't think anyone here is arguing against the ideal that the best person for the position ought to be selected, regardless of sex. I think we simply believe that an affirmative action type of policy should not be utilized by the military in the name of gender equality.
Well, currently women cannot go into "combat roles". I'd say that that is wrong and that instead they should set standards and allow people in that meet them, period.
Quote:IIRC, the military WAS lowering standards for admission to allow in more women. For all I know, they still are. But yes, I agree with this sentiment (the quote).
No, not really. They certainly are lowering the standards for everybody, but they aren't singling out women. All they're doing is sending them despite the fact that they know there are no real "back lines" in this war, so they will likely be in danger. That may be considered a breaking of the spirit of the law, but I don't have a problem with that...
I do have to say one thing though, of course (that I'm sure I've said before) -- women DO have a much harder time in the military. Not because of the combat or strength, though... the biggest problem is sexual discrimination, sexual abuse, and related issues. They are a huge, huge problem, and the fact is that female military veterans have higher chances of getting PTSD and related illnesses because of the impact of the pervasive sexual abuse in the military. This is something we need to work hard to stop, now.
Quote:Although this topic has nothing to do with homosexuals, very interesting article. I've lately believed homosexuality to be a sexual deviation (i.e. a fetish), but perhaps I was wrong in that belief. I suppose I had forgotten that biologically, gay men have been found to have different neurological properties.
This, in particular, I find to interesting and in line with my beliefs:
I've always thought it was mostly genetic, though the suggestion that it's not (as much?) for women would be very odd if it is for men... more study is definitely needed.
While unrelated, part of that quote made me think of some things that make me disagree with the tone I got from the sentence... (that is, part of the referenced differences I have with parts of the article)
Quote:Dr. Bailey believes that the systems for sexual orientation and arousal make men go out and find people to have sex with, whereas women are more focused on accepting or rejecting those who seek sex with them.
"Men choose women, who decide to either accept or reject them"? While this makes sense when you look at other species, the does not necessarially mean that the result is a male-dominated society like we have now; in fact, the opposite is also possible -- a society where men may express interest to women, but the women have the right to decide, not the man (or the parents/fathers, as was the most common marriage system for a long time) -- for instance, this:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/hea...8700.story
Quote:Women, not men, choose spouses on this island
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
Posted February 2 2007, 2:50 PM EST
ORANGO ISLAND, Guinea-Bissau -- He was 14 when the girl entered his grass-covered hut and placed a plate of steaming fish in front of him. Like all men on this African isle, Carvadju Jose Nananghe knew exactly what it meant. Refusing was not an option. His heart pounding, he lifted the aromatic dish, prepared with an ancient recipe, to his lips, agreeing in one bite to marry the girl.
"I had no feelings for her," said Nananghe, now 65. "Then when I ate this meal, it was like lightning. I wanted only her."
In this archipelago of 50 islands off the western rim of Africa, it's women, not men, who choose. They make their proposals public by offering their grooms-to-be a dish of distinctively prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil. Once they have asked, men are powerless to say no.
To have refused, explained Nananghe, remembering the day half a century ago, would have dishonored his family -- and in any case, why would he want to choose his own wife?
"Love comes first into the heart of the woman," he explained. "Once it's in the woman, only then can it jump into the man."
But the treacherous tides and narrow channels that have long kept outsiders out of these remote islands are no longer holding back the modern world. The young men of Orango, 40 miles off the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, are finding jobs carrying luggage for tourist hotels on the archipelago's more developed islands. Others collect oil from the island's abundant palm trees and sell it on the mainland.
They return with a new form of courtship, one which their elders find deeply unsettling.
"Now the world is upside down," complained 90-year-old Cesar Okrane, his eyes obscured by a cloud of cataracts. "Men are running after women, instead of waiting for them to come to them."
For a man to go so far as to openly propose marriage is dangerous, say traditionalists on this island of 2,000 people.
"The choice of a woman is much more stable," explains Okrane. "Rarely were there divorces before. Now, with men choosing, divorce has become common."
Records are not readily available, but islanders agree that there are significantly more divorces now than in the years when men waited patiently for a proposal on a plate.
They waited some more, as their brides-to-be then set out for the eggshell-white beaches encircling the island, looking for the raw materials with which to build their new house.
Women built all the grass-covered huts here, dragging driftwood back from the ocean to use as poles, cutting blond grass to weave into roofs and shaping the pink mud into bricks. Only once the house was built, a process that takes at least four months, could the couple move in and their marriage be considered official.
There are matrilineal cultures in numerous pockets of the world, including in other parts of Africa, as well as in China's Yunnan province and in northeastern Thailand, says anthropologist Christine Henry, a researcher at France's National Center for Scientific Research.
But the unquestioned authority given to women in matters of the heart on Orango island is unique -- "I don't know of it happening anywhere else," says Henry, who has written a book on the customs of the archipelago.
That things are changing is evident in the material chosen for the island's newest house: concrete. It was erected by paid laborers, not local women.
Although priestesses still control the island's relationship with the spirit world, their clout is waning, as Christian missionaries have established churches here.
"When I get married it will be in a church, wearing a white dress and a veil," says 19-year-old Marisa de Pina, striking a modern pose outside her family's hut wearing tight Capri pants and sequined sandals.
She says the Protestant church she attends has taught her that it is men, not women, who should make the first move and so she plans to wait for a man to approach her. To make her point, the teenager pops into her hut and returns holding a worn copy of the New Testament, its pages stuffed with post-it notes, letters and business cards.
Her decision has caused strife inside the mud walls of her family's house.
Like her niece, Edelia Noro wears store-bought clothes instead of the grass skirts still favored by some older women. She, too, attends church. But she says she doesn't see why these trappings of modern life should alter the system of courtship.
Although the island's unique customs may be fading, there are still pockets of resistance. Often, it's women who lure men back into the fold of ancient ways.
Now 23, Laurindo Carvalho first spotted the girl when he was 13. He worked in a tourist hotel, wore jeans, owned a cell phone and thought of himself as a modern man, so he thought he could turn tradition on its head and ask the girl to marry him. With the wave of a hand, she rejected him.
Six years passed and one day, when both were 19, he heard a knock at his door. Outside, his love stood holding out a plate of freshly caught fish, a coy smile on her face.
Carvalho still wears sandblasted jeans and flip-flops bearing the Adidas logo, but he now sees himself as embedded in the village's matriarchal fiber.
"I learned the hard way that here, a man never approaches a woman," he says.
I remembered reading this article when it was released (not at that site, as another one, but it's the same article)... took me a while to find it, though, but I did eventually. :) Interesting stuff. Wikipedia also says that the traditional priesthood of the island was/is female as well.