FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
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User ID: 157
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
3hr ago
it’s simply that only highly educated men decided things in Islamic nations.
And who educates those men at an early age and influences them afterwards?
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology gives four distinct forms of concubinage, three of which are applicable to the Muslim World: 'elite concubinage', where concubine ownership was primarily related to social status, such as under the Umayyads; royal concubinage, where concubines became consorts to the ruler and perpetuated the royal bloodline and politics and reproduction were deeply intertwined, including under the Abbasids and in the Ottoman empire; and concubinage as a patriarchal function where concubines were of low status and the children of concubines became permanently inferior to the children of wives, such as in Mughal India.]
...The concubines of Islamic rulers could achieve considerable power, and often enjoyed higher status than other slaves.
...Almost all Abbasid caliphs were born to concubines and several Twelver Shia imams were also born to concubines.[citation needed] The Ottoman sultans also appeared to have preferred concubinage to marriage, and for a time all royal children were born of concubines. Over time, the concubines of the Imperial Harem came to exercise a considerable degree of influence over Ottoman politics.
Valide sultan was, in most cases, the most important position in the Ottoman Empire after the sultan himself. As the mother to the sultan, by Islamic tradition ("A mother's right is God's right"), the valide sultan would often have a significant influence on the affairs of the empire. She had great power in the court and her own rooms (always adjacent to her son's) and state staff. The valide sultan had quarters within the New Palace, where the Sultan himself resided, beginning in the 16th century.
As the Valide sultan (Sultana mother), who had direct and intimate access to the Sultan's person, often influenced government decisions bypassing the Imperial Council and the Grand Vizier altogether or the grille-covered window from which the Sultan or Valide sultan could observe Council meetings. This left her at the heart of the political ongoings and machinations of the Ottoman Empire. valide sultan also traditionally had access to considerable economic resources and often funded major architectural projects, such as the Atik Valide Mosque Complex in Istanbul. Many valide sultans undertook massive philanthropic endeavors and buildings, as this was seen as one of the main ways to demonstrate influence and wealth. Valide sultans were also conveniently one of the few people within the empire with the station and means to embark on these expensive projects. Nurbanu Sultan's daily stipend as valide sultan to her son, Murad III, was 2000 aspers, an extraordinary sum for the time, which revealed the highly influential position she held at court.
The valide sultan also maintained special privileges that other harem members could not participate in. A valide sultan was not subject to sole seclusion within the confines of the palace. She had mobility outside of the harem, sometimes through ceremonial visibility to the public or veiled meetings with government officials and diplomats. Additionally, the valide sultan spearheaded one of the most crucial elements of diplomacy within the Ottoman Empire’s court: marriages of royal princesses. The most powerful and influential valide sultans had multiple daughters, with whom they forged crucial alliances through by marriage. During the 17th century, in a period known as the Sultanate of Women, a series of incompetent or child sultans raised the role of the valide sultan to new heights. Two Valide sultans acted as regents for their sons, assuming the vast power and influence the position entailed.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4hr ago
Guy, men, lads, fellas, I don't even know where to begin with all this. I am intrigued that Catholics Not Christians, though 😀 So the Horrid Popish Plot met the Global Zionist Conspiracy and we made beautiful music together?
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4hr ago
Again, not blaming men as the primary movers and shakers. But in all the "birth rate dropping, women should be having more babies" discussion I see, nobody is talking about the other side of the equation - the fathers of these babies. Women are not having babies for reasons of convenience, but so are men. If you want more marriage, stable marriage, and more babies, you need to sort out the culture and social values and that includes guys as well as dolls. Men also have expectations, standards, and conditioning from wider society around marriage and family (which culturally has shifted from "early marriage, be main breadwinner, have two to four kids" to "develop your career, enjoy yourself while still young, mature adulthood is put off until thirties, kids are an expensive drag which prevent you from spending your money on having fun and buying stuff").
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
1d ago
My own view is that there is not going to be magic all-powerful AI providing for the world, so most people are goiung to have to work for a living just like always. The type of work available may be different, but the profits of AI are going to the big institutional shareholders.
I'm not saying you don't intend the best for your kids, but your view of "this is best for you" and their view of the results, which after all they are the ones living with it, may differ. "Dad, I hated that from the age of three you were measuring me every week and if I didn't match up to what you expected, your disappointment and disapproval were evident. Sure, I'm six foot tall, but I'd prefer to be five foot nine and we spent time together doing stuff when I was a kid".
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
1d ago
At the end of the day people who care about improving things and have specific goals like a society with more healthy monogamous relationships and at least replacement fertility rate, should change things.
Yeah, and if men want that, they are going to have to face up to it that they can't eat their cake and have it: be 'sowing their wild oats' in their 20s with a bunch of hot, willing chicks, then settle down in their 30s with a modest wifey to pop out kids. If you want hot chicks willing to have casual sex with you, you are going to have a culture where women will expect the same sexual market value as men. If you don't want a culture of promiscuity and infertility, you are going to have to change back to the old values of "respectable men don't fuck around and will try and wait for marriage".
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
I don't think you should treat your kids as biological experiments, but as you say, it's nothing to do with me. I'm not talking about "don't put your kids through college", I'm talking about "don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington". If you want to be the equivalent of a stage mother pushing your kids to live your dreams vicariously through them - okay, that's your family business and if they're happy or not with how things turn out, they'll let you know in later years.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
For a long time, it's been a tricky balancing act. Don't put out? You're a frigid bitch. Do put out? You're a slut. Men seem to want (and I'm emphasising "seem" here because this is all gross generalisation) women to be agreeable to have sex with them, but never to have had sex with previous partners, or only a couple of previous partners. If you think about it, it's not really doable; if you dump/break up with the girlfriend and both of you move on to new relationships, after a while you're both going to have a past history. If Joe has had more relationships than Annie, that's great. If Joe and Annie have the same number, that may be a problem: too high for Annie, too low for Joe even on the same numbers. If Annie has had more relationships than Joe, that's bad because that means she's promiscuous.
The double standard hurts men and women both because men are supposed to rack up more experience, but women are not, which means how do you do that? If the guy is always dating a new girlfriend who had only one or two boyfriends before him, then a small number of men are getting all the 'good' girls and leaving 'sullied' girls after them for the rest of the guys.
So women have an incentive to report lower numbers, and men to report higher numbers, of previous partners than they really have had.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
2d ago
Look, I'm old enough that I remember the tail end of the Sexual Revolution becoming aware of it as going into my teen years. The attitudes then about men versus women were nuts by modern standards, and I don't mean "crazy ultra-feminists hate all men" standards, I mean "treating the other person as a human" standards. The attitudes parodied here where guys were tough and macho and women loved it, and the notion was to be sexually available because this was the new era of doing away with hang-ups. Men did benefit from it, so it does make me smile wryly to read all the crying now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Is it great that women can now be emotionally abusive to men? No. But in general guys are now getting a taste of the medicine that women had to put up with, and they don't like it. Newsflash: neither did women, hence feminism. "Women have the power in the dating market! Women are too picky! Women spurn nice guys and go for the alphas!" Yeah, the sexual market place used to be a male buyer's market, now it's a female one. And men can't shove off all the blame onto women, because men wanted to eat their cake and have it: women willing and available for casual sex, no demands for committed relationships or marriage, and access to novelty. Women were then conditioned into 'if guys can do it, so can you'. And now we have the results, where nobody is happy save for a few who can command premium attention, be they men or women.
If you're going to complain that women are not having babies, you need to look at the other side of "where do you get babies" because it's not out of thin air. Why don't women want marriage and kids? What are the social forces driving this? A lot of it is economic - unless you have one partner with a lot of money, it's not really feasible to be a stay at home wife and mother. If both of you have to work, then there's little chance to have kids because it all needs to be planned around education and careers, and then when you do, you're paying for childcare which is pretty much eating up one of your wages. You won't get a mortgage without two incomes, and renting is another problem (can you even find a place to rent, and if you do how high is the rent, and will the lease allow children?)
I'm not trying to blame men, I'm saying that there are no easy answers and putting all the blame on women alone is as unfair as putting all the blame on men alone.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
Sure, height matters for men and there are studies out the ears about the advantages of tall men over short men in work and life.
But saying casually that you'll slap your sons on HGH if they aren't tall enough at an age you decide they should be a certain height grinds on me the same way that giving 16 year old girls boob and nose jobs grinds on me: something that is meant to be helping them but is more about stupid societal standards. I don't think a 16 year old girl needs stripper boobs. I don't think a 12 year old boy needs HGH unless there's a genuine medical condition there, not just "Dad thinks I'm four inches too short for the optimum life".
For me, it's the same with puberty blockers and the trans issues; we've only got the long-term usage history for them on kids with medical conditions like premature puberty, so jumping from that to "it's perfectly harmless and reversible and will have no effects" when you're talking about blocking normal puberty and development is disingenuous, to say the least. We don't know yet what the effect on normal puberty children is, and we won't until we get the long-term information from the kids being used as guinea pigs right now.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
The problem is that that is the age most sensitive, and most under the cosh of brutal honesty. It may well be that you will have to wait four years to grow out of the awkward, shy, spotty stage (for both boys and girls) but that is cold comfort to be told that "jam tomorrow but not jam today" when you see (as you think you see) 'everyone else is dating and having sex but not me'.
Resentments do seed themselves at that time, and come to bloom in later years. There is no way around the realities of nature, but we try and wrap it up in cotton wool for good reasons. But some people will never find anyone, and it's not anybody's fault in particular. And state-mandated girlfriends are no solution there, neither are the AI waifus (though for some very bruised psyches, the perfect girlfriend or boyfriend you can tailor to your exact tastes who will never leave you and always love you will be an aid, the way spectacles or a wheelchair is a necessary aid for physical lack of abilities).
I don't and never cared, which saved me from the worst of it. But my God, had I wanted romance and love and sex in my teens and twenties, I'd probably genuinely have tried killing myself because of the need that could never be assuaged, because I'm too weird, too ugly, too wrong to get someone who loves me. Whatever flaw of nature means I don't feel the want of that really was a lucky one.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
I don't think that women and men should necessarily have the same interests; I don't see why men shouldn't have their own little clubs and women theirs, but I also see why that was lobbied against because there were advantages to being 'all boys together' networking. I think "your spouse should be your best friend as well" and the whole laundry list of requirements makes marriage tougher, because no one person can be all-in-all to another.
But if men and women can't be friends and have mutual interests outside of sexual attraction, I think that's bad for society as well; if both sexes are only looking at the other sex in terms of "do I find them fuckable?", then they don't see that person as a person, merely as a list of requirements to be ticked off and if failed, then not even considered. Yeah, I'm influenced here by Catholic teachingson human dignity and the idea of a person as a whole person, not a convenience and lifestyle add-on.
A lot of it is that now we are so used to choice, and a range of options, and maximally making our lives more convenient and to our own requirements, all over the entire range of experience, that we're shoving relationships into the same "I want to order off the menu and add in the secret sauce and can I get the special offer deluxe?" mindset of choice, choice, choice or else it's all wrong and someone is to blame.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
Do you disagree, and think we ought to prioritize the original blame?
I think if you're going to say it's all on women alone to be having more babies, and getting married young, and the rest of it, and discussing sanctions to force women to do this, it's no bad idea to remember that men are part of it too (unless you mean the women should all be in same-sex marriages and having babies by sperm donation?) and it was men who were eager to break the bargain of "marriage and domesticity for access to sex" in return for "access to sex, no need to marry or commit long-term".
You can't fix the problem by looking at one side; there are plenty of low-value men quite happy to have a string of kids by different women but not marry any of the mothers, and that's not the kind of "we must increase the birth rate" that people want when they discuss "why aren't people marrying and having kids?" Women may well be much too fussy and choosy now, but the shoe used to be on the other foot with men not wanting to be tied down before they got a chance to sow their wild oats and have their fun.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
Thanks, I did think November at first but wasn't sure. Should have gone with it! But even if there isn't a likelihood of Sotomayor having to retire due to ill-health in the next eight+ months, and even if Biden wins a second term, I think there is enough reason to be concerned that if her health is bad, she may have to retire soon anyway even into a second term, and planning for that is not a bad idea.
Mostly I think it's coming from people pissed-off about Kavanaugh, Bader Ginsburg, Barrett and the astounding decision on abortion, and they're over-compensating for "what if the evil wicked fascists win by a fluke this time again?"
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
He's talking about being perfectly ready to start his kids on HGH the second they don't seem to be measuring up to some arbitrary metric in his own mind, and people are happily discussing polygenic embryonic selection (and companies are offering this as a service) for the benefits of future kids. Not alone for "there's the high risk of this disease in our family background, we'd like to avoid that for the child" but "why don't you give your kid every benefit?" and they too like to quote the surveys on being tall etc. It's probably only my own impression, but I'm already getting hints of looking down at having kids the 'old-fashioned way' without selection, even if you don't have fertility problems, because duh why leave it up to chance when you could select for the tall genius extrovert beauty contest entrepreneur transhumanist baby?
So I'm sure there will be an arms race amongst the people smart enough to be this stupid about it.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
If you're doing those things because you like them and get benefits from them, then "women will be more attracted" is secondary benefit. If you're doing it primarily because "women will be more attracted" and then it turns out they're not, that gets to be a problem of resentment on both sides: "I wasted all this time and effort for nothing, women are bitches" versus "joined an evening class in pottery, guy there was friendly and seemed nice while we were chatting about the class, the second he learned I had a boyfriend he ignored me and then dropped out of the class, guys only want one thing".
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
4d ago
I was wondering, because of all the controversy around "She's only an AA pick", how she would turn out in the job when she got the chance to do it. So neither terribly bad nor terribly good? That's good enough!
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
Quarter Asian, or quarter ginger? Which is more worrying? 👩🦰👨🦰
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
The trouble is, you will get the arms race. If everyone is now 6 foot minimum, the new filtering level will be 6 foot 3. Then future versions of you will be "I hope my sons won't be 6 foot manlets, I'm going to put them all on HGH so they're at least 6 foot 6".
Do that enough and we will end up with the 7 foot NBA version of "we must ensure our kids have all advantages" you're scorning.
On the plus side, Elendil the Tall is the role model to aim for 😁 "2 rangar minimum, 6 foot shorties DNI"!
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
I wish I could be asexual as well, certainly would free up a lot of space in my head.
It's great, I'm aromantic as well which means I don't give a flying fig about men or their views of me as fuckable or not, and I have no stress around all that 😁 Means I relate to men on the level of "do I find you a likeable specimen of humanity?" and not "me want snoo-snoo", so if I don't like you, I don't have to tolerate your bullshit (unless you're my boss) on the faint hopes of "well maybe I can get a situationship* out of this".
*Stupidest fucking concept I've heard to date, what the hell is this need to invent new degrees of idiocy? You're fucking around, sleeping around, casual sex, fornicating. It's not a 'thing' or any kind of romantic association. It's mere convenience. 'Oh no, see, it's this special new modern thing that past generations never even thought of'. Past generations fucked around casually just fine, friend.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
Very luckily for him, he's borderline asexual so doesn't give a shit about women.
This is actually what is at the root of the dispute between men and women. That men only like women because "all I am to you is a hole for you to stick your dick in". Without that desire, men don't care about women and don't want to interact with them. Of course women are going to resent being treated as a sex doll. We want men to like us for ourselves, to be interested in us as a unique person, not an interchangeable set of tits'n'ass.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. If men only like women because SEX and nature prodding us all to reproduce the species, while women want LOVE besides/outside of sex again because of nature and forming groups to support and raise the new offspring, then we're all screwed because the traditional guard rails around sex/love = marriage and kids are being torn down and melted for scrap and we're getting nothing in return except unhappiness.
If we were all ape troupes back on the savannah, with one dominant male monopolising the females and the less dominant males sneaking around for sex, it might work out: males get sex or fight each other for access to females, females get offspring and support from other females in the troupe and genes from the winners of the male struggles. But we grew big brains on top of our instincts and we want seventeen contradictory things at once.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
Well, yes. "Couldn't get laid when I was 16, now I'm 30 and I still can't get laid" could be down to "all women are bitches" or it could be "there are reasons why this is down to me" (and that needn't be "I don't make any effort", it's "unfortunately due to nature I'm odd/weird/ugly/otherwise unattractive").
But "couldn't get laid when I was 16, now I'm 30 and I can" has little reason to still resent the 16 year old girls back then. You're older now, improved, grew up (we hope), are better value, know now what to do and how to act when you want to attract someone. Still being resentful over "Lisa wouldn't date me when I was a spotty, gangly, awkward 16 year old, that bitch, I hope she's fat and single and poor today" is just being mean.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
Which I understand, there was a period between 16-18 when it seemed like I had somehow already missed the boat: every girl I hit on who didn't reject me immediately eventually told me she had lost her virginity some time ago to her [asshole] ex bf, and that now she wasn't really interested in that kind of thing anymore.
And I can understand that attitude on the part of the girls; they had sex for the first time with their boyfriend because that's what you're supposed to do when you're In Love (as well as the other social attitudes dinned into us about sex and freedom and the rest of it); it probably wasn't that great for her because inexperience and a guy who is more interested in getting off himself; she thinks "well I don't know what is supposed to be so great about this" and then they break up. And the boys who replace him are, as you say, 16-18 and clearly aching for the chance to get sex, which is why they want a girlfriend. And it's clear to the girl that they primarily see her as a route to sexual access. And if she isn't that keen on having sex, and the boy isn't that impressive, then "sorry but no, Horace, I can only think of you as a brother".
Nobody is being deliberately bad, the boys are boys at that age and Nature is having its way with them, the girls are being girls. The boys will want sex a lot more than the girls and be less interested in the girls as persons, conversely the girls will be socialised into putting huge emphasis onto the personal element and be turned off by "he only has one thing on his mind". There isn't really a cure for it, it does no good to be brutally honest and tell 16-18 year old boys "you will want sex much, much more strongly, and want it more frequently, than the girls will, and unless they really like you there is little chance you'll get it" and tell 16-18 year old girls "basically all you are is a warm body to him so if you don't put out he'll dump you". The boys are not being mean or horrible on purpose, but neither are the girls. It's evolutionary drives all the way down, with the layers of civilisation on top!
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
For example neither women nor society benefits if birth rates crash and we have a culture that abhors necessary pain and self sacrifice.
And I'm going to say here that it takes two to tango, the Sexual Revolution was for the benefit of men as much (or even more) than women. Attitudes in the 60s-70s were "why should I be trapped and bound down by marriage, why can't I get sex outside of marriage?" Men were seduced by the promised lifestyle of free love and liberation, where they could have as much sex as they wanted with loads of willing women who would not demand committment and marriage from them. They didn't want their fathers' life of marriage and family and domesticity and 9-5 job where you work thirty years for the gold watch and pension. They wanted the new freedoms the new era promised, and that did not include "get married and have a kid by 25-30".
I'm certainly not excluding women and feminism here, but it was men as much as women who didn't want family and kids to get in the way of the fun the new world of good jobs with good pay, increased access to air travel, the opening up of global tourism and holiday destinations, and 'now you can spend your money on things that you enjoy' offered to them.
FarNearEverywhere
undereducated and overopinionated
5d ago
The D justice that would get past this D Senate is probably going to be a milquetoast, below average, moderate
After all the nasty partisan fighting over Kavanaugh and Barrett, wouldn't a milquetoast moderate not offensive to either side be a nice change?
I'm not sure if the version we sang as secondary school kids at Mass in the late 70s/early 80s is the one you mean, but the very name makes me shudder.
I will gladly donate to this worthy ecumenical project!
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