Question on the age from yesterday

[CarolineM 0]

Dean - I think you rock, you know that...

but you calling us chopf#cks for having an opinion and voicing it is actually YOU being judgemental on US!!!

Just IMO.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

Dean - I think you rock, you know that...

but you calling us chopf#cks for having an opinion and voicing it is actually YOU being judgemental on US!!!

Just IMO.

eek dean is a judgemental chopf##k too

[Sister Fracas 5]

Dean - I think you rock, you know that...

but you calling us chopf#cks for having an opinion and voicing it is actually YOU being judgemental on US!!!

Just IMO.

who said Dean was talking about you?

Edited September 8, 2006 by Frances

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

bad dean

[almaty 19]

Dean - I think you rock, you know that...

but you calling us chopf#cks for having an opinion and voicing it is actually YOU being judgemental on US!!!

Just IMO.

eek dean is a judgemental chopf##k too

of course i am..and sister karo, a fellow professional of mine..knows that everyone is judgemental to a certain extent that has any knowledge on a subject or a backbone....

bad dean

i am certainly a judgemental chopf##k...i hope that clears up the point for one and all..

Edited September 8, 2006 by almaty

[Alex+R 0]

I guess they're looking for a very traditional dominating-male marriage set-up, I guess. Apparently they want to be Daddy.

Traditional is a good word. The "tradition" may be dead here but it's very much alive in

third-world countries where women are expected to "know their place" and expect to be

dominated. This doesn't necessarily mean they are unhappy -- traditional male-dominated

marriage set-ups are not synonymous with abuse and often are strong and successful. If

anything, these women are probably more likely to be abused by someone from their own

country than by their American husbands in the United States.

I have a hard time buying any argument that's based in the idea that "it's bad here, but it would have been worse where they come from." If they're on on our turf, we should be keeping things up to a certain standard. And I'm not talking about making sure nobody is a housewife--that's a fine role to have. I mean making sure that husbands and wives treat each other as equals.

And I think that should be expected in the US.

[Sister Fracas 5]

of course i am..and sister karo, a fellow professional of mine..knows that everyone is judgemental to a certain extent that has any knowledge on a subject or a backbone....

ahhhh, so it's ok to be judgemental, but not a chopf#ck?

I'M SO FONCUSED!!!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I mean making sure that husbands and wives treat each other as equals.

And I think that should be expected in the US.

But I thought we were supposed to create an environment where people from different cultures could come together and live peacably? An environment where people didn't feel the need to assimilate, where differences were celebrated?

Hasn't that been the lefty mantra all along?

What you're suggesting sounds awfully like assimilation.

[Yodrak 7]

LisaD,

OK, thanks for clarifying who you were referring to for me.

As for a 17 year old being a child, some are and some are not. We know nothing about either of these two 17 year olds, keith's fiancee and crow_dio's fiancee - other than their age and nationalities. They may be more or less mature than we expect depending on how their lives have been - after all, knowing nothing about them, what are we basing our expectations on? Certainly not their life experiences.

My first wife was 17 years old when I met her, 19 when we married, and 20 when she bore our first child. The marriage lasted 30 years.

There's been mention in this thread of Thai women being less mature as teenagers than their western sisters. When I was in Thailand a few years back I had a girlfriend who was sent by her parents from her village home to Bangkok to be a maid to a family there at the age of 13. She did that for a couple of years then went to work in a shop. By the time she was 17 she's had a few jobs and a boy friend who ultimately got her pregnant and then disappeared before she was 20. She was not naive about anything in her teen years and hers is not an uncommon story in Thailand. (Or in many US cities - kids tend to grow up faster in the city than on the farm.) Some things that cause us in the west to think that young Asian women are immature and naive are in reality differences in behaviours and cultural reasons for those differences. They think the same of us, for the same reason.

So, until I know more about these two 17 year olds, I'm not ready to declare them children or adults. They could easily be one or the other or somewhere in between.

Yodrak

LisaD,

Oh, so who is it that we're crucifying with regard to an unacceptable age difference?

Do we know Keith's age difference? Or that he's had sex with his fiancee? (I find Ana and Dan's speculation that he must have had sex with her when she was 15, long before he knew she even existed, to be quite amusing.)

Yodrak

Well, my issue is with crow_dio and his 10 year age difference with his 17 year old child fiancee. I think it's wrong, I think it's ikky...I also think a 5 month relationship, 3 of which living together with a minor is wrong. I also happen to think that this process is dauting enough for the best of em as far as leaving your homeland...and for a child in a country which still needs parental consent for marriage until 20? This child is going to be cut off from everything she knows. Most probably emotionally not as mature as American 17year olds...but EVEN SO...he's with a child 10 years his junior for 3 mos and they're getting married?

Absolutely deplorable imo.

If one truly loved this child, one would give her the freedom to become a woman before having her to commit her life to something of which she probably hasn't the first clue what she's getting into. Get her a student visa...support her emotional growth.

This child needs freedom to become a woman, not a decade older sugar daddy...

Edited September 8, 2006 by Yodrak

[mawilson 2,133]

I mean making sure that husbands and wives treat each other as equals.

Why should they treat each other as equals if they are not?

Equal rights demand equal responsibilities.

[Alex+R 0]

I mean making sure that husbands and wives treat each other as equals.

And I think that should be expected in the US.

But I thought we were supposed to create an environment where people from different cultures could come together and live peacably? An environment where people didn't feel the need to assimilate, where differences were celebrated?

Hasn't that been the lefty mantra all along?

What you're suggesting sounds awfully like assimilation.

Yep. Frankly, I think anything in any culture that subordinates females is flat-out wrong. It goes against everything I believe in. I'm not THAT much of a relativist.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I accept nothing in any culture that keeps women oppressed--and I'm not ashamed to admit that I find certain aspects of religions, like Islam in some of its applications, intolerable.

[Marilyn. 340]

I agree. There are a million facts that we don't know.

Cass (bebop the great)

I will not get into a debate on moral issues. I just want to say that openly calling other members pedophiles is total BS. Nothing illegal has been stated by any poster as being done. That is the FACTS.

I maybe be mistaken but one of those million facts we don't know is the OP's age.... I looked through all his previous posts and nowhere does it mention how old he is...

[Alex+R 0]

I agree. There are a million facts that we don't know.

Cass (bebop the great)

I will not get into a debate on moral issues. I just want to say that openly calling other members pedophiles is total BS. Nothing illegal has been stated by any poster as being done. That is the FACTS.

I maybe be mistaken but one of those million facts we don't know is the OP's age.... I looked through all his previous posts and nowhere does it mention how old he is...

I think people are more upset about a different poster, not the OP. He was 27, she 17.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Yep. Frankly, I think anything in any culture that subordinates females is flat-out wrong. It goes against everything I believe in. I'm not THAT much of a relativist.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I accept nothing in any culture that keeps women oppressed--and I'm not ashamed to admit that I find certain aspects of religions, like Islam in some of its applications, intolerable.

You can believe whatever you want.

The problem arises when you decide that what you believe should be the only acceptable/tolerable belief in this country.

Just so we're clear, I am all for a clear enunciation of American values, I am all for including equality of gender in that value system... and I am all for openly stating that immigrants are expected to assimilate into the common American value system; but all I hear around me is how bad it is to expect people to assimiliate and how wrong it is to expect immigrants to conform to American values.

Edited September 8, 2006 by Gupt

[Marilyn. 340]

I agree. There are a million facts that we don't know.

Cass (bebop the great)

I will not get into a debate on moral issues. I just want to say that openly calling other members pedophiles is total BS. Nothing illegal has been stated by any poster as being done. That is the FACTS.

I maybe be mistaken but one of those million facts we don't know is the OP's age.... I looked through all his previous posts and nowhere does it mention how old he is...

I think people are more upset about a different poster, not the OP. He was 27, she 17.

oh ok ....