Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)

[Viktor77]

My personal vent: my wife thinks I'm a dirty creep for supporting the right of women to go bare-chested in public, purely out of feministic principles. She assumes I'd want to see women bare-breasted so I can drool over it, no matter how much I explain to her it's out of principle, that it's unequality to have a law that allows men but prevents women to go bare-breasted in public and so on etc., but she's extremely prudsih about it and says that women should be protected against having to do that. My statement that the same protection argument is used to have women wear burkas wasn't favourably received. Bleh . I can take men's arguments against feminism (even though misguided), but women's? And then my own wife? Bleh again.

How does she feel about breastfeeding then because in principle that also involves women revealing breasts in public. Other than that all I can say is women, brah. I'm just kidding of course. And I thought the Dutch were pretty well known for being anything but prudish. Perhaps I am misunderstanding this documentary and it's an American thing? I couldn't even count how many boobs I see walking around town here in Belgium. Not on people of course, but on art, posters, magazines, even TV, etc. It seems like it'd be a non-issue here.

[jal]

How does she feel about breastfeeding then because in principle that also involves women revealing breasts in public.

She's not agains it, as long as it is done discretely (which is perfectly possible given a feeding bra and a shawl or other piece of garment).

And I thought the Dutch were pretty well known for being anything but prudish.

Yes, but there has been a counter movement, especially using breasts for advertising is frowned upon (which is good!), but that also means that breast are now seen as more "private" than a decade ago (e.g. on beaches there's a lot less topless sun bathing, as far as I remember).

Perhaps I am misunderstanding this documentary and it's an American thing?

The documentary is American, and it is mainly an American thing, as far as the extreme American prudishness goes. But there's still a Dutch law against bearing breasts for women, which I think is bad, purely from a feminist perspective (I'd be highly uncomfortable if women actually did it, though, but I'm highly uncomfortable with a lot of things, amongst which overt religiousness and far-right politics, but that doesn't mean I want to legally ban them).

I couldn't even count how many boobs I see walking around town here in Belgium. Not on people of course, but on art, posters, magazines, even TV, etc. It seems like it'd be a non-issue here.

That was the case in the Netherlands a while ago, but not so much today.


JAL

[vampireshark]

It's just a mess and headache to have to mail them a check for repayment, though, and it might be an even bigger mess come tax time next year. This wasn't a university in Europe, though: it was the one in the US I attended/worked at immediately before moving to the Grand Duchy.

Mail them a check? Really? No on-line banking and be done? That's a real reason to vent :).

Yes, really. My bank doesn't permit wire transfers other than those done in person, plus the stuff designed for the online bill payment is meant for recurring payments rather than one-time things. It does depend on the bank, but the one I have isn't yet in the 21st century in some regards (though they do have a SWIFT code, unlike my parents' bank, so at least there's that).

[jmcd]

@jal: Yeah, I don't get your wife's reasoning. She's jumped from having the right to do something to the obligation to do something "women should be protected against *having to* do that". Nobody would be making anybody do anything. If anything, the forcing is already going on. Some people do this sometimes, acting as if a new right is actually a new obligation and opposing on that grounds; completely different from what is actually being proposed.

[Travis B.]

Then there is my mother's use of ostensibly feminist positions combined with notions of collective responsibility to come to distinctly conservative conclusions, e.g. opposing Muslim refugees coming to the US on the basis of that they're* mostly men, and Muslim men are sexist (yes, in her mind every single last one of them) and that because they* are mostly men they are obviously leaving behind their* women in Syria, so we would not want them* immigrating to the US, especially since if they* eventually get US citizenship they* will be voting for conservative positions.

* in that conversation my mother used the word they a disturbingly large amount, implying she does not think of the refugees as individuals but rather as a mass of people where everyone is responsible for what some of them do

[KathTheDragon]

* in that conversation my mother used the word they a disturbingly large amount, implying she does not think of the refugees as individuals but rather as a mass of people where everyone is responsible for what some of them do

I am instantly reminded of my English Language GCSE, where you had to learn how to overanalyse... I mean, that just sounds like normal deixis. How should you refer to the refugees?

[Imralu]

I know this belongs in the happy things thread, but since anyone who knows what's up with me knows it from here, it's more logical to share it here: I should be getting a text tomorrow with an appointment time to see a psychiatrist for free. It'll be paid for by a lefty NGO that organises and pays for medical appointments for people in vulnerable situations, mostly but not exclusively people living in Germany without papers.

Yay! How did you manage to arrange that?

My counsellor gave me the contact. I sent them an email and they said to come along - by coincidence, they were having a time-of-being-able-to-see-them the next day. (This is how I speak English these days, apparently.) There was a long wait to see them, but I've got time.

I got an SMS today saying that they were unable to make an appointment today but that they'd try again next week.

My personal vent: my wife thinks I'm a dirty creep for supporting the right of women to go bare-chested in public, purely out of feministic principles. She assumes I'd want to see women bare-breasted so I can drool over it, no matter how much I explain to her it's out of principle,

I'm with you on that, and I really don't have any interest in seeing bare-breasted women. Tell her some gay guy you know on the internet agrees with you ... if that will help at all.

Also, so much conflict arises out of people confusing similar but different concepts. In this case it's permission versus obligation. A lot of the time, people think that having the right to have an opinion and voice it means that no one can tell you it's incorrect. There are a whole lot of people who want to have "straight pride" marches because they haven't understood that "pride" can be about being better or about being no worse. And then there's this awesome quote about the two meanings of "respect".

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”

and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”

and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

This kind of stuff really annoys me. Unclear thinking causes so much bullshit.
__________________

And now a vent from me. The other morning, I woke up in the daytime and was lying in bed, feeling OK, well rested and pretty positive and I picked up my phone to see what time it was. It was about 11AM. I had a single message from a good friend of mine in Australia. It just said "It is war." This was the day after Turkey shot down the Russian plane. I'm a pretty panicky person as it is, but with world events being pretty not cool at the moment, and being mentally ill and more panicky than usual, my heart-rate went right up and I was just saying "No no no no NO NO NO NO!" as I opened the browser and tried to open a news site. My phone was not cooperating. "Fuck, the internet's down!" I kept trying. I had a full five minutes of thinking WWIII had broken out before the site finally managed to load and I could see that it hadn't. Just when I was about to write to my friend "Dude, what the hell? You nearly gave me a heart attack!", she wrote back "Oops, wrong person." It was about a dispute with her neighbour. I had a friend years ago who would send a text any time a celebrity died and one morning I woke up to the news of Anna Nicole Smith dying and another morning it was Heath Ledger - but this was the worst thing to wake up to. She apologised profusely, because she would have had the same panic.

[Imralu]

* in that conversation my mother used the word they a disturbingly large amount, implying she does not think of the refugees as individuals but rather as a mass of people where everyone is responsible for what some of them do

I am instantly reminded of my English Language GCSE, where you had to learn how to overanalyse... I mean, that just sounds like normal deixis. How should you refer to the refugees?

Yeah ... I'm not sure how you expect her to refer to them, Travis. There is more than one, so plural is the only option, and it's neither you (2nd person) nor your mother (1st person), so it's got to be third person ... they, them, their, they're etc. It depends if she stressed it though.

Anyway, something unverified that I heard about those pictures of male-only groups of refugees coming off trains in Europe is that most of the men let all the women and children off the trains first, and so taking a picture towards the end is only going to show the men who stayed on the trains until the women and children were off.

As for the demographic make-up of the refugees, it's not like a male-only crowd spreading out across the world.

And there's this too.

[Travis B.]

* in that conversation my mother used the word they a disturbingly large amount, implying she does not think of the refugees as individuals but rather as a mass of people where everyone is responsible for what some of them do

I am instantly reminded of my English Language GCSE, where you had to learn how to overanalyse... I mean, that just sounds like normal deixis. How should you refer to the refugees?

Yeah ... I'm not sure how you expect her to refer to them, Travis. There is more than one, so plural is the only option, and it's neither you (2nd person) nor your mother (1st person), so it's got to be third person ... they, them, their, they're etc. It depends if she stressed it though.

Anyway, something unverified that I heard about those pictures of male-only groups of refugees coming off trains in Europe is that most of the men let all the women and children off the trains first, and so taking a picture towards the end is only going to show the men who stayed on the trains until the women and children were off.

As for the demographic make-up of the refugees, it's not like a male-only crowd spreading out across the world.

And there's this too.

I should have noted that it was her noting that they were mostly male, not me claiming that they were.

About the use of they, it was not solely that she was using the 3P pronoun alone but rather her tendency to refer to the refugees as one uniform group; instead of saying that some refugees are sexist she was saying that they are sexist, i.e. all of them as a group.

[jmcd]

Stretching facts to the max.. slightly more than half are female and less than a quarter are young males. And people act like they're mostly young males...

Anyway, I managed to trace the "being forced to cover up because of refugees" remark in the first comment here to the Daily Mail. The head teacher states there never was any such order. I sent it to Snopes.

[KathTheDragon]

* in that conversation my mother used the word they a disturbingly large amount, implying she does not think of the refugees as individuals but rather as a mass of people where everyone is responsible for what some of them do

I am instantly reminded of my English Language GCSE, where you had to learn how to overanalyse... I mean, that just sounds like normal deixis. How should you refer to the refugees?

Yeah ... I'm not sure how you expect her to refer to them, Travis. There is more than one, so plural is the only option, and it's neither you (2nd person) nor your mother (1st person), so it's got to be third person ... they, them, their, they're etc. It depends if she stressed it though.

Anyway, something unverified that I heard about those pictures of male-only groups of refugees coming off trains in Europe is that most of the men let all the women and children off the trains first, and so taking a picture towards the end is only going to show the men who stayed on the trains until the women and children were off.

As for the demographic make-up of the refugees, it's not like a male-only crowd spreading out across the world.

And there's this too.

I should have noted that it was her noting that they were mostly male, not me claiming that they were.

About the use of they, it was not solely that she was using the 3P pronoun alone but rather her tendency to refer to the refugees as one uniform group; instead of saying that some refugees are sexist she was saying that they are sexist, i.e. all of them as a group.

Well you should've said that.

[finlay]

Yeah, but you know full well as a user of this language that there's using "they" as a regular pronoun and there's using it in a slightly insipid way. It's a subtle distinction that doesn't come across in writing, but it exists.

[KathTheDragon]

And Travis should also be aware, hence he should've been clearer. But anyway, that's beside the point, since he has now clarified.

[din]

To be honest, I didn't think there was any other interpretation that the one he intended, as you'd never complain about someone using a pronoun in a normal, neutral manner.

[Viktor77]

Flying in Europe requires sacrifice. On our way back from Poland the cheapest afternoon flight that could get us closest to Belgium was Dortmund. So I guess we're going to Dortmund, ha.

[din]

But are you sure that a train ticket from Dortmund to Liège isn't much more expensive than the difference between the price of the ticket to Dortmund and the cheapest flight you could find to Liège or an airport that's closer to Liège?

[vampireshark]

But are you sure that a train ticket from Dortmund to Liège isn't much more expensive than the difference between the price of the ticket to Dortmund and the cheapest flight you could find to Liège or an airport that's closer to Liège?

This. Train tickets in Germany are not cheap at all, especially when you're using an IC or ICE train. The exceptions are the Sparpreis tickets, but those lock you into specific trains, which isn't ideal when you're arriving in on a flight and could be delayed.

Granted, I'm having a similar issue with my trip to India, though that's a special case as well because there at least is a reasonably-priced shuttle between Luxembourg and Frankfurt Airport... the extra cost and time still needs to be factored in, though.

And, as a vent of my own, it's been about six weeks since I got here and I still don't have my carte de séjour. Which is making me nervous, because I want to book the tickets to India... and Immigration wasn't very helpful when I asked them what I would need to return to Luxembourg without the residence permit while still in the 90-day visa-free window.

[Viktor77]

Granted, I'm having a similar issue with my trip to India, though that's a special case as well because there at least is a reasonably-priced shuttle between Luxembourg and Frankfurt Airport... the extra cost and time still needs to be factored in, though.

We're going to do something like this. We'll visit and stay with friends in Germany, hopefully Frankfurt, and a ticket from Dortmund to Frankfurt is 19 euros. At least if we have to pay out the wazoo for the Thalys between Frankfurt and Liege we'll have gotten to see some friends, which is better than paying the 300 euros to fly to Brussels. But the Thalys shouldn't be too bad. We paid 30 euros for Liege to Cologne.

The problem is that if you leave at 6AM you can get really cheap flights (flying in from Charleroi to Krakow is 20 euros, but we leave Belgium at 6AM.), but we can't get to the airport in Katowice until noonish when all the prices go up. (Flying out of Katowice turns out to be cheaper than Krakow as Wizz Air serves Katowice).

[Bristel]

I had an inguinal hernia today, went to the urgent care center and had it taken care of. No meds or anything, but I should be fine as long as I don't strain myself.

[Imralu]

Ow! And did it begin and get mended on the same day??

[rotting bones]

Ugh, get well soon.

I don't have anything that extreme, although I still haven't recovered from drinking those 48 cans of Mountain Dew over the course of a few weeks from the end of October. I don't know, they were cheap.

I hope this brain fog is due to caffeine addiction and not bromide poisoning, which is apparently something you can get from binge drinking Mountain Dew.

[KathTheDragon]

Ouch! Hope you get well soon, rotting bones.

[Imralu]

Whoah, I didn't know that about mountain dew.

I got so annoyed a few years ago when mountain dew in Australia suddenly went from a regular soft drink to a caffeinated energy drink. I had a taste for it, but drinking energy drinks sets of my heart arrhythmia. For some reason, coffee and cola are OK, but a mountain dew was not.

This year, I've found my brain really bad at recalling names, specifically names of websites, companies and celebrities, which is really strange. Like, if I want to do internet banking, I sometimes can't think of how to get to the website. Sometimes I forget where my email is. Last week I forgot what Google was called. Tonight, I couldn't think of Donald Trump's name for about a minute. I nearly googled "man with bad hair America". It seems to be getting worse and I'm really hoping it's just something that my depression's doing to me and not something aging related or more permanent. It seems trivial, but these are simple things and when I can't recall them, it's even without that on-the-tip-of-my-tongue feeling. I just have no idea for a little while what these things are called.

[Xephyr]

Whoah, I didn't know that about mountain dew.

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bvo.asp

[rotting bones]

Imralu: Did you see a doctor? Don't leave this kind of thing for the last minute.

Xephyr: All sources agree that PepsiCo said they will remove it. No source says they have removed it from Mountain Dew. Some sources say they haven't yet, including PepsiCo's online ingredient list: http://www.pepsicobeveragefacts.com/Hom ... TD&size=12 ("Last updated on November 20, 2015.") Either way, I'm pretty sure I just went cold turkey on caffeine. 1 can = 12 fl oz = .35L, and I doubt I drank more than 2 cans a day, which is nowhere close to 2L. (Of course, my symptoms weren't that extreme either.)