Jive Turkey
ONE love, blood, life
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If you're looking for balanced opinions "Feminist Superstar" probably isn't any more objective than "Conservative Opinion Writer"
If you're looking for balanced opinions "Feminist Superstar" probably isn't any more objective than "Conservative Opinion Writer"
My point. Wasn't looking for balance there.
My point. Wasn't looking for balance there.
Conservative bloggers are the absolute last people who should be consulted about sexism/feminism.
Exactly. The article was presented as an unbiased view from inside Australia. Thank you for pointing it out as a conservative opinion piece.
Actually, I didn't make any such claim, so I'm not sure what you are contributing with your post.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Helen Thomas, the irrepressible White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill nine presidents — often to their discomfort and was not shy about sharing her opinions, died Saturday. She was 92.
Thomas, who died at her apartment in Washington, had been ill for a long time, and in and out of the hospital before coming home Thursday, according to a friend, Muriel Dobbin.
Thomas made her name as a bulldog for United Press International in the great wire-service rivalries of old, and as a pioneer for women in journalism.
She was persistent to the point of badgering. One White House press secretary described her questioning as "torture" — and he was one of her fans.
Her refusal to conceal her strong opinions, even when posing questions to a president, and her public hostility toward Israel, caused discomfort among colleagues.
In 2010, that tendency finally ended a career which had started in 1943 and made her one of the best known journalists in Washington. On a videotape circulated on the Internet, she said Israelis should "get out of Palestine" and "go home" to Germany, Poland or the United States. The remark brought down widespread condemnation and she ended her career.
In January 2011, she became a columnist for a free weekly paper in a Washington suburb, months after the controversy forced her from her previous post.
In her long career, she was indelibly associated with the ritual ending White House news conferences. She was often the one to deliver the closing line: "Thank you, Mister. President" — four polite words that belied a fierce competitive streak.
Her disdain for White House secrecy and dodging spanned five decades, back to President John Kennedy. Her freedom to voice her peppery opinions as a speaker and a Hearst columnist came late in her career.
The Bush administration marginalized her, clearly peeved with a journalist who had challenged President George W. Bush to his face on the Iraq war and declared him the worst president in history.
After she quit UPI in 2000 — by then an outsized figure in a shrunken organization — her influence waned.
Thomas was accustomed to getting under the skin of presidents, if not to the cold shoulder.
"If you want to be loved," she said years earlier, "go into something else."
There was a lighter mood in August 2009, on her 89th birthday, when President Barack Obama popped into in the White House briefing room unannounced. He led the roomful of reporters in singing "Happy Birthday to You" and gave her cupcakes. As it happened, it was the president's birthday too, his 48th.
Thomas was at the forefront of women's achievements in journalism. She was one of the first female reporters to break out of the White House "women's beat" — the soft stories about presidents' kids, wives, their teas and their hairdos — and cover the hard news on an equal footing with men.
She became the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She was also the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members and she had to fight for admission into the 1959 luncheon speech where Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev warned: "We will bury you."
The belligerent Khrushchev was an unlikely ally in one sense. He had refused to speak at any Washington venue that excluded women, she said.
Thomas fought, too, for a more open presidency, resisting all moves by a succession of administrations to restrict press access.
"People will never know how hard it is to get information," Thomas told an interviewer, "especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp TOP SECRET on the color of the walls."
Born in Winchester, Ky., to Lebanese immigrants, Thomas was the seventh of nine children. It was in high school, after working on the student newspaper, that she decided she wanted to become a reporter.
After graduating from Detroit's Wayne University (now Wayne State University), Thomas headed straight for the nation's capital. She landed a $17.50-a-week position as a copy girl, with duties that included fetching coffee and doughnuts for editors at the Washington Daily News.
United Press — later United Press International — soon hired her to write local news stories for the radio wire. Her assignments were relegated at first to women's news, society items and celebrity profiles.
Her big break came after the 1960 election that sent Kennedy to the White House, and landed Thomas her first assignment related to the presidency. She was sent to Palm Beach, Fla., to cover the vacation of the president-elect and his family.
JFK's successor, Lyndon Johnson, complained that he learned of his daughter Luci's engagement from Thomas's story.
Bigger and better assignments would follow for Thomas, among them President Richard M. Nixon's breakthrough trip to China in 1972.
When the Watergate scandal began consuming Nixon's presidency, Martha Mitchell, the notoriously unguarded wife of the attorney general, would call Thomas late at night to unload her frustrations at what she saw as the betrayal of her husband John by the president's men.
It was also during the Nixon administration that the woman who scooped so many others was herself scooped — by the first lady. Pat Nixon was the one who announced to the Washington press corps that Thomas was engaged to Douglas Cornell, chief White House correspondent for UPI's archrival, AP.
They were married in 1971. Cornell died 11 years later.
Thomas stayed with UPI for 57 years, until 2000, when the company was purchased by News World Communications, which was founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church.
At age 79, Thomas was soon hired as a Washington-based columnist for newspaper publisher Hearst Corp.
A self-described liberal, Thomas made no secret of her ill feelings for the final president she covered — the second President Bush. "He is the worst president in all of American history," she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif.
Thomas also was critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, asserting that the deaths of innocent people should hang heavily on Bush's conscience.
"We are involved in a war that is becoming more dubious every day," she said in a speech to thousands of students at Brigham Young University in September 2003. "I thought it was wrong to invade a country without any provocation."
Some students walked out of the lecture. She won over others with humorous stories from her "ringside seat" to history.
In March 2005, she confronted Bush with the proposition that "your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis" and every justification for the attack proved false.
"Why did you really want to go to war?" she demanded.
When Bush began explaining his rationale, she interjected: "They didn't do anything to you, or to our country."
"Excuse me for a second," Bush replied. "They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for al-Qaida. That's where al-Qaida trained."
"I'm talking about Iraq," she said.
Her strong opinions finally ended her career.
After a visit to the White House, David Nesenoff, a rabbi and independent filmmaker, asked Thomas on May 27, 2010, whether she had any comments on Israel. "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she replied. "Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, it's not Poland," she continued. Asked where they should go, she answered, "They should go home." When asked where's home, Thomas replied: "Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else."
The resulting controversy brought widespread rejection of her remarks. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called them "offensive and reprehensible." Many Jews were offended by her suggestion that Israelis should "go home" to Germany, Poland and America since Israel was initially settled in 1948 by Jews who had survived or escaped Hitler's attempt to kill all the Jews in Germany, and many in neighboring conquered countries.
Within days, she retired from her job at Hearst.
CALVIN WOODWARD,Associated Press
Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Awesome Sex
AUGUST 12, 2013 BY FERRETT STEINMETZ 543 COMMENTS
There’s a piece of twaddle going around the internet called 10 Rules For Dating My Daughter, which is packed with “funny” threats like this:
“Rule Four: I’m sure you’ve been told that in today’s world, sex without utilising some kind of ‘barrier method’ can kill you. Let me elaborate: when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.”
All of which boil down to the tedious, “Boys are threatening louts, sex is awful when other people do it, and my daughter is a plastic doll whose destiny I control.”
Look, I love sex. It’s fun. And because I love my daughter, I want her to have all of the same delights in life that I do, and hopefully more. I don’t want to hear about the fine details because, heck, I don’t want those visuals any more than my daughter wants mine. But in the abstract, darling, go out and play.
It doesn’t lessen you to give someone else pleasure. It doesn’t degrade you to have some of your own. And anyone who implies otherwise is a man who probably thinks very poorly of women underneath the surface.
Because consensual sex isn’t something that men take from you; it’s something you give. It doesn’t lessen you to give someone else pleasure. It doesn’t degrade you to have some of your own. And anyone who implies otherwise is a man who probably thinks very poorly of women underneath the surface.
Yes, all these boys and girls and genderqueers may break your heart, and that in turn will break mine. I’ve held you, sobbing, after your boyfriend cheated on you, and it tore me in two. But you know what would tear me in two even more? To see you in a glass cage, experiencing nothing but cold emptiness at your fingers, as Dear Old Dad ensured that you got to experience nothing until he decided what you should like.
You’re not me. Nor are you an extension of my will. And so you need to make your own damn mistakes, to learn how to pick yourself up when you fall, to learn where the bandages are and to bind up your own cuts. I’ll help. I’ll be your consigliere when I can, the advisor, the person you come to when all seems lost. But I think there’s value in getting lost. I think there’s a strength that only comes from fumbling your own way out of the darkness.
You’re your own person, and some of the things you’re going to love will strike me as insane, ugly, or unenjoyable. This is how large and wonderful the world is! Imagine if everyone loved the same thing; we’d all be battling for the same ten people. The miracle is how easily someone’s cast-offs become someone else’s beloved treasure. And I would be a sad, sad little man if I manipulated you into becoming a cookie-cutter clone of my desires. Love the music I hate, watch the movies I loathe, become a strong woman who knows where her bliss is and knows just what to do to get it.
Now, you’re going to get bruised by life, and sometimes bruised consensually. But I won’t tell you sex is bad, or that you’re bad for wanting it, or that other people are bad from wanting it from you if you’re willing to give it. I refuse to perpetuate, even through the plausible deniability of humor, the idea that the people my daughter is attracted to are my enemy.
I’m not the guard who locks you in the tower. Ideally, I am my daughter’s safe space, a garden to return to when the world has proved a little too cruel, a place where she can recuperate and reflect upon past mistakes and know that here, there is someone who loves her wholeheartedly and will hug her until the tears dry.
That’s what I want for you, sweetie. A bold life filled with big mistakes and bigger triumphs.
Now get out there and find all the things you fucking love, and vice versa.
Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Awesome Sex — The Good Men Project
perhaps another way to combat sexism -- getting fathers to treat their daughters no differently from their sons when it comes to sexuality.
perhaps another way to combat sexism -- getting fathers to treat their daughters no differently from their sons when it comes to sexuality. that the protectiveness men feel towards their daughters in regards to other men reinforces the idea that women are there for the conquering.
This sounds nice on the surface, but most research (and even just deeper thought) indicates that it is a poor way to go about it. Sex is an important part of a relationship, whether you like it or not. It's not shallow to consider it so; it's just a fact. Not experiencing it with your partner before getting married only increases the chance that things go wrong later.It is my preference that both my son and daughter marry before they have sex. If that doesn't happen (which it probably won't) - I pray it is consensual and protected sex in their 20's.
Sure, father's can be protective of their daughters - but mother's can also be very protective of their sons. Usually, both parents are protective of both genders of their kids.
Is it really sexist to hope your daughter finishes her education and perhaps spend some time as an adult before settling into a serious sexual relationship?
Sex is not the "be all and end all" to happiness. Those who rank it that high probably live very shallow and self-centered lives.
I find myself pretty protective of my younger sister however... mostly because I was a teenage boy not that long ago and I remember what most teenage boys are like.
This sounds nice on the surface, but most research (and even just deeper thought) indicates that it is a poor way to go about it. Sex is an important part of a relationship, whether you like it or not. It's not shallow to consider it so; it's just a fact. Not experiencing it with your partner before getting married only increases the chance that things go wrong later.
I used to hear people spout off things about how people shouldn't move in together before they get married, which is clinically insane. You simply can't marry someone before you know if you can even share a small space with them. Obviously, that's more important than sex, but not as much as you think it is.
Deconstruct that one and you quickly find a girl who has been taught to regard her body as a property owned by someone else; her dad. Yick.
This is a good point, Cobbo.
I think the general attitude is sexist, but it's sexist toward males. Because a man knows what a scoundrel a teenage boy can be
I think father's generally feel it is their duty to protect their entire family: wife, sons, and daughters.
Fathers don't feel like they own their daughter because they won't let teenage boys stream into their house and pile on her. That's ridiculous.
The article and this line of thinking just seems really - strange.
it an absolute given that parents of teenagers should object to their children's sex lives? In American culture, the answer is largely assumed to be that it is. The range of acceptable responses from parents to the news that their high-school-age children are sexually active is to rage angrily and forbid it or, at best, reluctantly provide contraception while emphasizing that you wish they wouldn't have sex. But what would happen if parents embraced another possibility and actually accepted their teenagers' sex lives, even going so far as to allow teenagers to have their boyfriend or girlfriend sleep over? After all, sleepovers will begin pretty much the second they walk out your door, so what's the harm in letting it start a little earlier?
These are the questions that Henry Alford addressed in the New York Times late last week, in a piece about how a handful of American parents are experimenting with giving respect to teenage relationships. He interviewed a couple of parents who allow sleepovers—and in one case, cohabitation—and found that they felt quite positive about the results. Parents reported that the experience taught their children values like responsibility and even that it subtly encouraged monogamy. Writing of one mother who allowed her high school senior's boyfriend to move in for a year, Alford notes:
But the greater dividend of his stay was that it gave Ms. Collins’s three younger adolescent children a view of committed love that far surpassed most of what they had seen from adults. Ms. Collins said, “I hope they won’t settle for less.”
Of course, there's no reason to stab around in the dark, just guessing at whether allowing teenage sleepovers is some kind of sign of the apocalypse or just a way for families to handle teenage sexuality in a responsible, realistic fashion. Sleepovers have been normalized in the Netherlands for decades now, and as social scientist Amy Schalet's research suggests, the results have been generally positive. By demonstrating acceptance and respect for their kids' relationships, Dutch parents, on average, enjoy more communication with their kids about sex and relationships than American parents do, which in turn means the kids are more likely to get the health care and education they need to prevent STIs and unwanted pregnancy. Oh, and the teenage pregnancy rate in the Netherlands is nearly four times lower than ours.
Schalet also discovered that the Dutch way helped minimize negative stereotyping about gender, love, and sexuality. In the U.S., there's a tendency to see sex as a battle between boys and girls, with parents falling for "the stereotype that all boys want the same thing, and all girls want love and cuddling." But because Dutch parents respect teenage relationships, they have a more holistic view, understanding that most young people of any gender want a combination of both.
Allowing sleepovers in not a license for licentiousness. If anything, the practice even tends to reinforce the idea that sex is about relationships, whereas sneaking around lays the groundwork for the hookup culture that has caused so much hand-wringing of late. Parents actually have the power to lay the groundwork for more responsible behavior about sexual health and relationship management while making sex a little less illicit. Might not be such a terrible idea.