Simon Paynton

Unseen wrote:
My “one that got away” would probably be thought of as a bit chubby by many. Her main attraction was her personality. She was the nicest girl I ever met and being with her was just…easy.

@robert – you see, a pretty face can’t make you laugh or hold your interest (in itself).

Unseen wrote:
LOL You come off as political by fashioning yourself as a self-appointed judge of intelligence in others, I guess. Come to think of it, that kinda goes along with a woke personality.

Is that the green-eyed monster talking?  If one is a trans woman, it’s pretty impossible not to be highly politicised.

_Robert_ wrote:
Surely. However, you must get through that first gate to play.

OK.  But there’s nothing wrong with women enjoying attention from men they find attractive, and not enjoying attention from men they don’t find attractive.  It’s logical.

“That first gate” is quite a low bar.

I’m no expert, but I believe that while women may find the “tall dark and handsome” stereotype physically attractive, – what makes one person settle down with another is highly idiosyncratic.  Who knows why people fall in love?  It’s different in every case.  At the same time, one is less likely to fall in love with some people (who don’t have th…[Read more]

Belle Rose wrote:
Ever since Court my stomach has been tied into knots.

Conflicting emotions.

Davis wrote:
I’d be extremely interested to see evidence that the overwhelming majority of women are interested in tall dark haired men. Please back this up.

Yes, this sounds like a Men’s Rights Activists myth, that justifies their binary win/lose view of the world.  I think it’s more like horses for courses.

The thing that causes all the senseless (?) problems with wokeness is the age-old problem of puritanism.  Puritanism is by nature callous, aggressive and single-minded (etc.).  It can lead to evil, because zealots forget about things like compassion and human rights.  It’s on the way to being a mini-fascism, wherever it rears its head – on the le…[Read more]

Noel wrote:
Speaking up about that is WOKE? You bet your ass it’s WOKE! It means that the folks speaking out against this shit have awakened to the possibility that it’s not acceptable to behave this way and also, screw freedom of speech trumping our pursuit of life and liberty. WOKE.

The good kind of woke.

_Robert_ wrote:
I simply think there are better ways to achieve those goals than the forceful fantasies presented in the media.

I think the biggest problem is that young people often don’t have much experience of how life works, so they are impressionable to the media and people out to control their young minds.  So, boys can think that porn is…[Read more]

Davis wrote:
Most people who are dismissed as woke, are simply standing up for their own equality and dignity. I’m sorry, quietly asking people if they would kindly treat others with respect and equality does not work. This is, once again, a conservative overreaction to people standing up for their rights, equality and dignity.

But how do you a…[Read more]

Noel wrote:
I really had no reference or idea about WOKE. So thanks.

You might be interested in these BBC Radio 4 programmes:

a 28-minute one-off documentary https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gkwc

a 5-part series of 15-minute programmes tracing its history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jc1k

Both are fascinating.

Unseen wrote:
“Uniformed officers may take an initial report, after which specialist detectives may investigate.”

This text is from the Wiltshire Police page about reporting child abuse, by which I presume they mean sexual or physical abuse.  It’s not for reporting playground taunts.

However, since the story appears in three mainstream…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
So it depends on the context whether malicious bullshit is acceptable or not.

Not that strange ideas, that I might not agree with, are necessarily ill-intentioned.  It’s not malicious to believe that the Earth is flat.

Unseen wrote:
Schoolyard taunts 1/burglaries 0.

I haven’t heard anything about this story, and no reputable or mainstream UK media sources are carrying it.  I suspect it’s not true.

I don’t know about hate speech.  People need to be protected from bullying.  But as far as loopy ideas go, it is better for them to be aired and challenged rather th…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Cisgendered (a woke term, BTW) white males who are not elderly do have advantages, to be sure, but not all of them are due to irrationality.

1) it may be a woke term, but that doesn’t make it illegitimate, in itself.  The core message of wokeness is a legitimate one in my opinion.

2) society is run by men and society fails to take…[Read more]

@unseen – I agree with what you say – it is all of those things.  But it also has a “legitimate” meaning or something it’s supposed to mean – to be “awake” to the fact that Western society is inherently oppressive to certain demographics – i.e., everyone who isn’t a cisgendered straight white male.  Now, is it also oppressive to cisgendered s…[Read more]

Woke just means progressive.  But it also means a kind of aggressive puritanism.

Noel wrote:
Who knew, STRONG FEMALE characters; WOKE. The learning never stops.

I don’t think that having strong female characters is woke.  But having a stereotype of white men as inherently stupid or evil is woke.

PopeBeanie wrote:
So currently, I’m just baffled by both sides’ stubbornness and predicaments. I have no idea if/how we’ll ever get past these true crises, at least not soon. Jeebus, I had no idea the right would be so afraid of melting into non-existence, like, umm, snowflakes.

It’s definitely a difficult problem.  There are researchers in the…[Read more]

It’s possible to do something woke with a movie, that doesn’t mean reducing people to stereotypes of identities that you have to make a point about.  Just telling someone’s story, from a certain demographic, so that their point of view is heard, is a woke or progressive thing to do in my opinion.