You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Culture’ category.
I spent my years learning French in Highschool(and now forgotten). Now with double the disappointment as I realize how word-awesome German is.
Consider this small list of bon mots:
Weltschmerz – world weariness.
Schadenfreude – a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people
Backpfeifengesicht – It describes someone who you feel needs a slap in the face.
Sitzfleisch — (seat meat) – it describes a character trait. Those who possess a lot of seat meat are able to sit through and weather something incredibly hard or boring.
Dreikäsehoch (Three cheeses high) – However, what it describes is a person who is vertically challenged, implying they’re only as tall as three wheels of cheese placed on top of each other.
Schattenparker (Shadow parker) – This word is part of a series of insults for men which accuse them of unmanly behavior. In this case, of parking their car in the shadow to avoid heating up the interior.
Forget French as Canada’s second language it ought to be German. :>
Prostitution hurts women. It doesn’t matter whether the trade in commercial rape is legal or not – reducing women to the role of fuckable object corrodes their body, mind, and soul.
But it can’t be all that bad for everyone, right? Let’s see what Rae Story, one of the ‘lucky’ high class escorts has to say on her experiences.
“Towards the end of my work as an “escort” I was thoroughly exhausted. The brothel work had been brutal on my body, but the “independent escort” work had exhausted my spirit. Whereas once I just ran the gamut of garden-variety sexual activities with, at best, a distant smile and a “good day to you,” I now had been obsessing over my appearance, my apartment, my advertising, and my “image” as well. I’d been made to adopt the most insidious of all contracts: The Girlfriend Experience — winsome, involved, overly nurturing, and available. Intelligent enough to understand but never enough to contradict. Lying to “clients” about my background, my views, and my habits in order to demonstrate a pleasing personhood for the paying male ego.
Friends had also left brothels in droves and began to navigate this landscape of pretense for themselves. According to “clients,” we didn’t drink heavily, smoke, do drugs, swear, speak coarsely (other than at appropriate sexual moments) argue, have opinions, or refuse to gratify. In truth, most of the women I knew had problems with drink, drugs, eating disorders, mental health problems, and anger issues. We may not have been routinely beaten by punters or raped (although it does happen), but our self-esteem and self-assurance was as paper thin as our digital platforms.We pretended to be happy, empowered, sexy, and comfortable in our roles as sponges for immediate male satisfaction while pushing our maladies and distresses down the sides of the sofa… just like those women detailed by Betty Friedan: isolated housewives, secretly quaffing vodka and pills to deal with their controlled misery. In each of our separate apartments, the “high class escorts” I knew were indeed like those housewives, only now it was more than one “husband” we served to keep a roof over our heads.”
— Rae Story
It would seem that centring your existence around pleasing of others (men) – the traditional and expected role for females – is a shit job no matter how you package it.
[Source]
-‘The Lie,’ Andrea Dworkin. 1979. Letters From A War Zone, 1993.
-“We harbor an ideological bias against the feminine voice, rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity.”
Some highlights from the JSTOR article On Men and Women’s Public Speech.
“Gunn uses speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination to illustrate how gendered norms about speech create a double bind for women.
Gunn argues that the field of public address is an important symbolic arena where we harbor an “[ideological] bias against the feminine voice,” a bias, he contends, that is rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity (and the corresponding devaluation of femininity, the voice that constrains and nags—the mother, the droning Charlie Brown schoolteacher, the wife).
Both Gunn and Campbell contend that masculine speech is the cultural standard. It’s what we value and respect. The low pitch and assertive demeanor that characterize the adult male voice signify reason, control, and authority, suitable for the public domain. Women’s voices are higher pitched, like those of immature boys, and their characteristic speech patterns have a distinctive cadence that exhibits a wider range of emotional expression. In Western cultures, contends Gunn, this is bad because it comes across as uncontrolled. We associate uncontrolled speech (what Gunn calls “the cry, the grunt, the scream, and the yawp”) with bodily functions and sexuality—things that happen in the private, domestic spheres (both coded as feminine). Men are expected to repress passionate, emotional speech, Gunn explains, precisely because it threatens norms of masculine control and order.
The notion of control also relates to the cultural ideal of eloquence. Eloquence is not just a Western value but is rewarded in many cultures around the world.”
[…]
““Eloquence” is, essentially, code for values associated with masculinity.”
Ouch. Yet another patriarchal societal barrier that needs to be brought to light and rectified with all due haste.
The Female Version:
And then there is male date preparation:
Wearing pants? Don’t smell? Check! Good to go!
Men worry that their date won’t measure up to their aesthetic preferences. Women worry that they’re going wind up dead.
The disparity is RIDICULOUS, and the fact that dudes get offended when women try to protect themselves is hard proof that way too many guys Do Not Understand how dangerous it is to be a woman. (Not to mention it’s fucking insulting. “How dare you not trust your life and safety to a complete stranger whose intentions you have no way of knowing”?)
The point is, “WE HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING A NICE GUY FROM A SERIAL KILLER.”
It’s not like they fucking wear nametags, okay? Moreover, the most awful people with the worst intentions often put on the nicest face or deliberately make themselves seem harmless and likeable, to lull potential victims into a false sense of security. (Read up on Ted Bundy sometime. It’s horrifying shit. Or read any thread on the “Let’s Not Meet” subreddit.)
In order to protect ourselves, we are forced to assume the worst of every man we meet, because statistically speaking, the biggest danger to women…IS MEN. Saying “not all men are out to get you, you’re just being paranoid” is like saying “not every car you ride in is going to crash, so buckling your seatbealt is stupid.”
When dealing with an unknown situation, in the absence of absolute proof of safety, exercising a little extra caution can be the difference between life and death. Shaming women for being what you may view as overly cautious is every bit as horrid as blaming them if something goes wrong later on.
[Source]
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…