Posted by Jeff from bgp01107368bgs.wbrmfd01.mi.comcast.net (68.42.59.180) on Saturday, June 08, 2002 at 0:32AM :
In Reply to: jeff posted by Julia from dhcp100049.res-hall.northwestern.edu (199.74.100.49) on Friday, June 07, 2002 at 7:24PM :
: First of all, last time I checked this forum was for debate and discussion. I can't help it if I disagreed with your logic about legalizing prostitution.
**** Please understand that I'm not tryign to stifle or muzzle your debate and/or discussion.
: Next time, I will ask you about your day or electrons, or whatever else that will make you feel better.
**** Please don't do that. I would venture to say that our disagreeing brings about more of our true beliefs than would be the case if we just argued. How's that for a poorly written sentence?
: What is realistic is recognizing what problems are, and constructing solutions that fit the problems.
**** Yes, realistic in a perfect world. Please prove me wrong.
I'll tell you what realistic is. Lina Nissan is in Chicago. She was flown there from Syria and she needs a bone marrow transplant. Her brother is an EXACT match, something that is VERY rare.
Your method of action would be to analyze the pros and cons of Syria's medical technology, and their ability to treat cancer patients. Then, a figurative overhaul of their medical system, and... after years of work, voila! They would be able to do the bone marrow transplants themselves. Then, the moral ramifications of capitalistic medical practice should be examined to determine whether or not the doctors should perform the procedure without being paid, and then analyzing just why the procedure costs so much and what can be done to lower the cost in the early stages of....... Meanwhile, innocent children have died.
My method of approach: Call her family and everybody I know that could possibly help her situation, and hope to God that I can help them raise the needed money for the surgery. Then, ACT. Call, write letters, and work my ass off to do whatever I possibly can, physically, mentally, and otherwise.
There's your compare and contrast.
: I disagreed with how you posed the problem. I began with the assumption that most women who are in the position of education and wealth do not elect to sell sex for money.
*** I never disputed that position, nor did I intend to speak about it at all. I merely wrote a comment which you insisted on debating, then you "projected" your belief that I believed "x and y" and tried to argue what you believed I believe in. See where this is going?
: Their poorer counterparts who end up prostituting do it because of a lack of financial options. Why do you think that there is a high incidence of prostitution and poverty? Go to Manila, why do you think young boys and girls start whoring themselves? BEcause they like it? Why is it that women will take pigs blood in a plastic bag to a client, and pour it on the sheets and fake menstruation when it's time to get it on? is it because they want extra drama? or an easy way to exit out of a situation with at least some money?
**** No disputes here.
: You don't have to be condescending and mock studying public policies.
*** As if I would have done that had you not patronized me yourself. Want to start a name calling match? Wait, you already did.
: I don't know of a process of osmosis where you can just absorb information and go in the real world.
*** Who'se mocking whom?
: You have to study some stuff, debate it, analyze it, and walk away with some understanding about a field.
*** I suppose that's something one can ONLY do in College, right? The greatest minds understood their respective subjects better than all others without "formal education". Instead, they studied alone.
: That is what you are doing and that's what I'm doing.
: And for your information, I don't just have this book-like information that is not tempered with what is going on in the real world. I work for a professor who interviewed over 170 low income women, and the interview is nothing special - you ask the women to tell their life story. And i've read over 50 of the life stories of old women, young women, blacks, latinas and whites who all shared the reality of being poor and raising kids alone. And guess what, alot of them had drug problems, or parents that didn't care about them, or abusive boyfriends, or sexual abuse from their families or those they trust; their poverty, coupled with that kind of upbringing, led them to do many things..including stripping or prostitution to make extra money. And this is not one or two women; these women and countless others (especially in poor countries) have no options and find that the best way to make cash is to prostitute.
**** More interesting info to support your argument against something that I never contended.
: Oh yeah, and I'm a woman too, and I know what it is like to feel like a piece of meat and feel like i'm nothing except for a chest and a butt. This is not mean women don't like hearing that they are beautiful; but when women are reminded that they are only chest and ass and they have no voice or way to oppose that thinking - then they feel like shit. when you can't do anything about it. and i know women hate being treated like a piece of meat. and i think it is completely stupid to say that we should legalize something just because it's been going on for so long - because legalizing the problem says nothing about how to improve a woman's existence so that she does not feel that prostitution is the only way she can survive.
*** Say you were a man, or a woman... what would you say to legalizing drugs? Obviously this topic, which I never intended to debate in the first place, does get to you. If we were speaking about big noses or cell phones or "systems in my pimped out ride", I'm sure they would get to me, too.
: My challenge to you is to not look at the symptoms of problems, but the causes of problems. I can't help it if you think that's being overly idealistic; i think it's being rational.
**** Idealism, rationalism, and "realistic idealism and realistic rationalism" are all in the eye of the beholder, dearest Lules.
-- Jeff
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