Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

In the VI polling, there’s been a marked shift to LAB – politicalbetting.com

18911131421

Comments

  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    Leon said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    How are the cucumbers?
    Is that some kind of sick, perverted code? Moderators!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,635
    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    No I don't think so. The heart will do what the heart will do.

    I've long had a Venn Diagram in my head which is overlapping sets of "People who are attracted to people like them", "People who are attracted to people not like them" and "People with a fixed type".
    My weakness, is, always has been, and always will be redheads.
    Given that their are zero south Asian redheads that means your preference is to mate with women outside your racial background. WHICH OF COURSE IS FINE

    But there are some mad identity politics people who would say you are suffering from false consciousness, you’re quasi racist, you’re a self hater, you’ve been conditioned by evil white culture. Cf black men who date white women, they often get intense amounts of grief online
    I've only ever been intimate with white women.

    Freud would have a field day with me.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    Leon said:

    Maybe men who can only get an erection for black women, or white women, or gingers, should shout at their penis for being a bigot, then take it to be re-educated?

    That should sort out this lingering prejudice

    Nah, every hole’s a goal, I mean you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fires.

    Look, everyone has standards, it’s just mine are lower than everybody else’s.
    Including the Prime Minister? The mind (and libido) boggles!
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    It seems to do fine in the USA without redistribution and to be going that way here.

    I am against the uber rich contenders to succeed Boris simply on grounds of their wealth.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,507

    Leon said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    How are the cucumbers?
    Is that some kind of sick, perverted code? Moderators!
    No. That’s just PB doing what it does.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,813
    Andy_JS said:

    Kemi Badenoch would be my first choice, but don't know whether she has enough support to get into the final two.

    Strikes me as a future prospect. Get her in the cabinet in a decent role, let her get more experience. The stuff about taking a scythe to the state that she came out with today is true blue rinse, but it isn’t going to excite floating voters. She needs to build a case for herself beyond red meat, which she will be able to do with time.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    Cicero said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Someone mentioned Sri Lanka earlier - and I just came across this quite nice write up by a journalist in Colombo : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62077109

    Spoiler: it doesn't sound like things are that great.

    Could happen to us. There's a clamour for tax cuts when the country is broke. We're living in denial.
    I often think of this when I see modern Britain:

    "In today's modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable....So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called "one whole joojooflop situation," everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year old civilization had just collapsed overnight."
    On the other hand, 40% of us haven’t just voted for the hard right (France), we aren’t desperately keen to appease Putin (Germany), we haven’t failed to grow our economy in 30 years (Italy), we haven’t sent in troops to repress secessionists (Spain), we’re not about to be run over by Russia (the Baltics), our national name does not literally mean “the buggerers” (Bulgaria), we don’t subsist entirely on salt fish (Portugal ), we aren’t pathetic (Belgium), we’ve not entirely abandoned our own language (Ireland), we’re not intensely boring and look like potatoes (Finland), we’re not a parasite (Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Netherlands, Andorra, Monte Carlo, Andorra, Luxembourg), and we’re not incapable of building proper toilets (Greece), so it could be worse
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497

    algarkirk said:

    With the possible exception of Mordaunt, I no longer think Keir has a damn thing to worry about.

    The contenders are all mad, bad, or dangerous to know.

    Generally agree. But would add Badenoch. Facing either would be a dangerous and unpredictable ride. They could both make SKS look yesterday's man, and worthy but dull. He can eat the rest without trouble.

    SKS's bigger problem is that he and his party are committed (by force, they have no real choice) to a Brexit they don't and can't believe in. It will come home to us in due course that the best government available to us (Lab/LD coalition) has the moral force, over the big issue of the decade, of Nicola Sturgeon trying to promote the interests of a 'better together' United Kingdom.

    I must admit my lack of knowledge about most of the possible PM/Tory leader, can anyone enlighten me as to whether any would qualify as 'One Nation' tories, or is that a quaint idea nowadays?
    Tugendhat and Hunt seem close. Remarkably Wallace looks like a stereotype one nation Tory, but isn't standing, and except for being fond of Armed Forces and weaponry doing loud things to Johnny Foreigner and big mate of Boris is a political blank slate.

    In general the big recent qualification for 'ONT' is that you gently support the EU, support big stable capitalism, don't flaunt your wealth, don't believe in allowing the poor to starve or freeze themselves to death, agree with moderate Labour chappies about pretty much everything, and believe in Burkean organic societal development.

    So its day may have gone.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    Those are some nifty chairs and table.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,945
    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,103
    edited July 2022
    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    No I don't think so. The heart will do what the heart will do.

    I've long had a Venn Diagram in my head which is overlapping sets of "People who are attracted to people like them", "People who are attracted to people not like them" and "People with a fixed type".
    My weakness, is, always has been, and always will be redheads.
    Given that their are zero south Asian redheads that means your preference is to mate with women outside your racial background. WHICH OF COURSE IS FINE

    But there are some mad identity politics people who would say you are suffering from false consciousness, you’re quasi racist, you’re a self hater, you’ve been conditioned by evil white culture. Cf black men who date white women, they often get intense amounts of grief online
    I can remember an old BBC story about a black activist talking about getting gried for her white fiance

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45186881

    I cannot find it right now but I'm sure I read one about black americans coming to Europe for romance, and if it involved an amount of fetishising them.

    Problem is me talking about such things could be like this

    https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/1545700994763427841?cxt=HHwWgsC8nbC3t_MqAAAA

    me, mixed race woman: ah I'm not sure I should wade into this, I am very white-passing after all and I don't think it's always my place to talk about this stuff as a result

    the whitest people on god's green earth: HERE IS WHAT I'D SAY TO BROWN PEOPLE [1/74]
  • Leon said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    How are the cucumbers?
    Is that some kind of sick, perverted code? Moderators!
    I hope we’re talking about these




  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,103
    Andy_JS said:

    Kemi Badenoch would be my first choice, but don't know whether she has enough support to get into the final two.

    Needs one of the 'established' candidates to struggle, or else really make a splash at the earliest opportunity.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    algarkirk said:

    With the possible exception of Mordaunt, I no longer think Keir has a damn thing to worry about.

    The contenders are all mad, bad, or dangerous to know.

    Generally agree. But would add Badenoch. Facing either would be a dangerous and unpredictable ride. They could both make SKS look yesterday's man, and worthy but dull. He can eat the rest without trouble.

    SKS's bigger problem is that he and his party are committed (by force, they have no real choice) to a Brexit they don't and can't believe in. It will come home to us in due course that the best government available to us (Lab/LD coalition) has the moral force, over the big issue of the decade, of Nicola Sturgeon trying to promote the interests of a 'better together' United Kingdom.

    I must admit my lack of knowledge about most of the possible PM/Tory leader, can anyone enlighten me as to whether any would qualify as 'One Nation' tories, or is that a quaint idea nowadays?
    Tugendhat and Hunt.

    Sunak, Truss, Javid, and Badenoch are all actually on the libertarian right. Probably Zahawi and Braverman too.

    Mordaunt is the most interesting, she’s a Brexiter but a centrist on social and probably fiscal issues too.
    Javid i'm not so sure is libertarian. He was apparantly clamouring for lockdown over Omicron. If true he can fook right off
    Self professed Ayn Rand fan, and first thing his did as Health Sec is recerse some of the Hancock stuff.

    I concede there is a spectrum though.

    What is notable is that all the ethnic minorities running seem to be post-Thatcherite libertarians who all voted for Brexit to “unlock” a smaller state.

    They are roughly my age so I understand the mental journey, but they seem not to understood any lessons from the GFC for starters.

    Britain is already one of the most deregulated countries on Earth (and I don’t really buy that the US is significantly more deregulated).
    Yet incomes haven’t grown. Why?
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,913
    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    With the possible exception of Mordaunt, I no longer think Keir has a damn thing to worry about.

    The contenders are all mad, bad, or dangerous to know.

    Generally agree. But would add Badenoch. Facing either would be a dangerous and unpredictable ride. They could both make SKS look yesterday's man, and worthy but dull. He can eat the rest without trouble.

    SKS's bigger problem is that he and his party are committed (by force, they have no real choice) to a Brexit they don't and can't believe in. It will come home to us in due course that the best government available to us (Lab/LD coalition) has the moral force, over the big issue of the decade, of Nicola Sturgeon trying to promote the interests of a 'better together' United Kingdom.

    I must admit my lack of knowledge about most of the possible PM/Tory leader, can anyone enlighten me as to whether any would qualify as 'One Nation' tories, or is that a quaint idea nowadays?
    Tugendhat and Hunt seem close. Remarkably Wallace looks like a stereotype one nation Tory, but isn't standing, and except for being fond of Armed Forces and weaponry doing loud things to Johnny Foreigner and big mate of Boris is a political blank slate.

    In general the big recent qualification for 'ONT' is that you gently support the EU, support big stable capitalism, don't flaunt your wealth, don't believe in allowing the poor to starve or freeze themselves to death, agree with moderate Labour chappies about pretty much everything, and believe in Burkean organic societal development.

    So its day may have gone.
    Yes, I think you're right, Brexit has taken over the Tory party and booted out the One Nation Tories. That certainly seems to have happened in my constituency
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    edited July 2022

    Leon said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    How are the cucumbers?
    Is that some kind of sick, perverted code? Moderators!
    I hope we’re talking about these




    Impressive!

    Have you tried growing cucamelons?

    My stepmother grows them, they are DELICIOUS

    https://savvygardening.com/growing-cucamelons-in-a-garden/

    https://hub.suttons.co.uk/gardening-advice/how-to-grow-cucamelons

    They’re great on their own but pickled they are divine. Also good for smaller gardens (as they themselves are so small)
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Andy_JS said:

    Kemi Badenoch would be my first choice, but don't know whether she has enough support to get into the final two.

    Im increasingly drawn to her.
    Kemi for PM!
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    kle4 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kemi Badenoch would be my first choice, but don't know whether she has enough support to get into the final two.

    Needs one of the 'established' candidates to struggle, or else really make a splash at the earliest opportunity.
    She might get most of Braverman's support if she's able to overtake her.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,368
    Leon said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    A white person only being attracted to other white people, clearly meets many, but not all, the various definitions of prejudice. I don't think it is a particularly harmful prejudice or one that needs to be addressed by society, but linguistically, yes it is not wrong to call it prejudice.
    Don’t be ridiculous. what if white skin colour is the one colour that turns you on?

    I know men that can only fuck blondes, or tall women, or women with tiny feet, or men, or young men - they just don’t fancy the alternatives, much as they might like to (as it would broaden their choices)

    Sexual preferences are not chosen, they are also fairly immutable once you are well beyond puberty
    Oh s***, has David Sullivan taken control of PB? Or have I stumbled across Old Colonial Rustler.com?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Andy_JS said:

    kle4 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Kemi Badenoch would be my first choice, but don't know whether she has enough support to get into the final two.

    Needs one of the 'established' candidates to struggle, or else really make a splash at the earliest opportunity.
    She might get most of Braverman's support if she's able to overtake her.
    Shes a much more natural bet for the ERG than JRs missus
  • Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    How are the cucumbers?
    Is that some kind of sick, perverted code? Moderators!
    I hope we’re talking about these




    Impressive!

    Have you tried growing cucamelons?

    My stepmother grows them, they are DELICIOUS

    https://savvygardening.com/growing-cucamelons-in-a-garden/

    https://hub.suttons.co.uk/gardening-advice/how-to-grow-cucamelons

    They’re great on their own but pickled they are divine. Also good for smaller gardens (as they themselves are so small)
    I haven't tried them, but may well do. I do love to pickle
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497
    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    Vive.

    One corollary for a happy society. The big rule which arises from this in decent societies is to maximally apply the convention of, in the long run, one man each and one woman each, whether serially or for life.

    In stable societies this gives opportunity for the awkward, the ugly, the dim, the shy, the different etc. There being about equal numbers of all these across genders. Look around you. It usually works.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,900
    Andy_JS said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    Those are some nifty chairs and table.
    And ideally placed for sunburn and sunstroke.

    UK heatwave: Parents warned to keep children out of sun
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62102733
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    It's surely a bit ominous for Jeremy Hunt that only 3 MPs have so far declared their support for him.

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Bought myself a little table and chairs for my backyard today. I will be drinking wine there later!

    How are the cucumbers?
    Is that some kind of sick, perverted code? Moderators!
    I hope we’re talking about these




    Impressive!

    Have you tried growing cucamelons?

    My stepmother grows them, they are DELICIOUS

    https://savvygardening.com/growing-cucamelons-in-a-garden/

    https://hub.suttons.co.uk/gardening-advice/how-to-grow-cucamelons

    They’re great on their own but pickled they are divine. Also good for smaller gardens (as they themselves are so small)
    I haven't tried them, but may well do. I do love to pickle
    They’re a revelation, honestly. Pickled or raw

    My stepmum also says they are absurdly easy to grow. They’re like a weed. Just plant em and go
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,900
    edited July 2022
    Betfair next PM prices:-

    2.58 Rishi Sunak
    6.6 Penny Mordaunt
    8.2 Liz Truss
    10 Tom Tugendhat
    18 Nadhim Zahawi
    20 Sajid Javid
    23 Suella Braverman
    24 Kemi Badenoch
    26 Jeremy Hunt
    34 Dominic Raab
    70s bar (and that's Kier Starmer!)
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    With the possible exception of Mordaunt, I no longer think Keir has a damn thing to worry about.

    The contenders are all mad, bad, or dangerous to know.

    Generally agree. But would add Badenoch. Facing either would be a dangerous and unpredictable ride. They could both make SKS look yesterday's man, and worthy but dull. He can eat the rest without trouble.

    SKS's bigger problem is that he and his party are committed (by force, they have no real choice) to a Brexit they don't and can't believe in. It will come home to us in due course that the best government available to us (Lab/LD coalition) has the moral force, over the big issue of the decade, of Nicola Sturgeon trying to promote the interests of a 'better together' United Kingdom.

    I must admit my lack of knowledge about most of the possible PM/Tory leader, can anyone enlighten me as to whether any would qualify as 'One Nation' tories, or is that a quaint idea nowadays?
    Tugendhat and Hunt seem close. Remarkably Wallace looks like a stereotype one nation Tory, but isn't standing, and except for being fond of Armed Forces and weaponry doing loud things to Johnny Foreigner and big mate of Boris is a political blank slate.

    In general the big recent qualification for 'ONT' is that you gently support the EU, support big stable capitalism, don't flaunt your wealth, don't believe in allowing the poor to starve or freeze themselves to death, agree with moderate Labour chappies about pretty much everything, and believe in Burkean organic societal development.

    So its day may have gone.
    Yes, I think you're right, Brexit has taken over the Tory party and booted out the One Nation Tories. That certainly seems to have happened in my constituency
    Not Brexit, but hard neo-liberalism.
    See my comment about the prevailing ideologies.

    The risk is that the country doesn’t really want to slash the state, so the temptation will be to try to bait people into it via culture wars.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Andy_JS said:

    It's surely a bit ominous for Jeremy Hunt that only 3 MPs have so far declared their support for him.

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/

    Increasingly yesterdays man. Like Davis vs Cameron. Fighting the last war.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497

    Just seen the Wallace news. Must make Rishi far more likely. Big question now is whether Truss or Mordaunt can make it through to the final two and force it to the membership (in which case they’ve both got a chance as the stop Rishi candidate). If however he cleans up in the MPs vote in then there might be a fair bit of pressure for a withdrawal.

    Prediction: Rishi won't make last two.

  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,945
    algarkirk said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    Vive.

    One corollary for a happy society. The big rule which arises from this in decent societies is to maximally apply the convention of, in the long run, one man each and one woman each, whether serially or for life.

    In stable societies this gives opportunity for the awkward, the ugly, the dim, the shy, the different etc. There being about equal numbers of all these across genders. Look around you. It usually works.
    Not necessarily disagreeing with you there. In olden days, when you had to go to bars, or even older, when you were more or less societally expected to marry the girl you met at the village dance and have babies at 21, it was probably a lot easier for people to find partners.

    But now we live in a world where, pretty much anyone with a phone anywhere in the world can set up an instagram account (or tinder, if you must), post a couple of selfies and, if they're hot enough, will have dozens of potential suitors within the hour.

    Same for those in a break-up. Set up a new account, have a half dozen potential candidates in your DMs an hour later. All without lifting a finger.

    Of course if you're not hot enough, you can post dozens of selfies, and have nothing back for weeks, months, or even years. Which is where the whole incel thing comes from. People who have essentially been rejected by the entire world (and who are too fat and lazy to join a gym).

    But this is what I mean when I say that the sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalistic. You may not like it, you may not agree with it - but you can't deny how human beings behave when given the opportunity.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    I don't know if anything you're saying is true. There are people in open relationships, people who happily share their partners and allow themselves to be shared. There are relationships of convenience where sex maybe repugnant to one or even both parties but it still goes on.
    Speaking personally, I wouldn't be averse to my wife sleeping with another women (depending on who it is, and, no, I would not like it if she slept with some man).
    I think there is considerably more than meets the eye in a lot of relationships, but a culture of silence and even shame around the idea of non-standard relationship types. We're left seeing other people through vanilla-tinted spectacles.
    There’s a saying in the kink community that half the young women who say they are lesbian are really heterosexual women who are doing it to please their boyfriends/partners, who, ideally, would like to watch

    Definite truth in that
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    Betfair next PM prices:-

    2.58 Rishi Sunak
    6.6 Penny Mordaunt
    8.2 Liz Truss
    10 Tom Tugendhat
    18 Nadhim Zahawi
    20 Sajid Javid
    23 Suella Braverman
    24 Kemi Badenoch
    26 Jeremy Hunt
    34 Dominic Raab
    70s bar (and that's Kier Starmer!)

    What are the rules on 'caretaker'? Cos Raab at 34 is tempting if a 4 week run counts. Boris could flounce at any time imo
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,790
    DavidL said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    No I don't think so. The heart will do what the heart will do.

    I've long had a Venn Diagram in my head which is overlapping sets of "People who are attracted to people like them", "People who are attracted to people not like them" and "People with a fixed type".
    After 36 years of marriage I would not pretend to have much of a feel for the old dating game but what happened to nice personality and GSOH, let alone beauty being more than skin deep?
    Oh - sorry, I didn't mean to suggest they were cast in stone for meaningful relationships. Just that 'who generally catches your eye at a party' or the like. You still might well find yourself sat next to someone who wouldn't be your normal casual 'go to' and fall head over heels.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,720
    James Heale
    @JAHeale
    ·
    4m
    Grant Shapps formally announces his intention to run, becoming the fifth candidate to officially declare
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    James Heale
    @JAHeale
    ·
    4m
    Grant Shapps formally announces his intention to run, becoming the fifth candidate to officially declare

    Stop laughing in the back
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,749

    Scott_xP said:

    The new education minister Andrea Jenkyns MP has released a statement after she was caught on camera appearing to make a rude gesture while entering Downing Street ahead of Boris Johnson's resignation speech.

    https://trib.al/dwvcRFT

    📺 Sky 501, Freeview 233 and YouTube https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1545748543306178561/video/1

    Sounds like a very human reaction. It is certainly a lot less serious than the day Prescott was egged and threw a punch.
    Absolutely. Perfectly natural expression of contempt for the electorate. Who do these people think they are complaining about it?
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Wonder who that’s aimed at?

    BREAKING: Grant Shapps unveils his candidacy to be next Conservative leader and PM

    Transport secretary says he'll deliver goals of Johnsonism but end "tactical" and distracted" era of govt

    And he says he hasn't spent years "mobilising behind [PM's] back"


    https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1545800504810373122
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    edited July 2022
    kyf_100 said:

    algarkirk said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    Vive.

    One corollary for a happy society. The big rule which arises from this in decent societies is to maximally apply the convention of, in the long run, one man each and one woman each, whether serially or for life.

    In stable societies this gives opportunity for the awkward, the ugly, the dim, the shy, the different etc. There being about equal numbers of all these across genders. Look around you. It usually works.
    Not necessarily disagreeing with you there. In olden days, when you had to go to bars, or even older, when you were more or less societally expected to marry the girl you met at the village dance and have babies at 21, it was probably a lot easier for people to find partners.

    But now we live in a world where, pretty much anyone with a phone anywhere in the world can set up an instagram account (or tinder, if you must), post a couple of selfies and, if they're hot enough, will have dozens of potential suitors within the hour.

    Same for those in a break-up. Set up a new account, have a half dozen potential candidates in your DMs an hour later. All without lifting a finger.

    Of course if you're not hot enough, you can post dozens of selfies, and have nothing back for weeks, months, or even years. Which is where the whole incel thing comes from. People who have essentially been rejected by the entire world (and who are too fat and lazy to join a gym).

    But this is what I mean when I say that the sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalistic. You may not like it, you may not agree with it - but you can't deny how human beings behave when given the opportunity.
    it’s very dangerous tho. A society where 10% of men sleep with 500 partners in a lifetime, and 50% of men get ZERO partners in a life, is a society headed for terrible trouble. It is, as you say, a kind of perverse hyper capitalism, where the 1% live in ultra luxury and half of society can barely feed themselves

    Normally, we would intervene to correct these imbalances. The rich pay taxes so the poor don’t starve, for the benefit of all, but how does that work here?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,103

    Wonder who that’s aimed at?

    BREAKING: Grant Shapps unveils his candidacy to be next Conservative leader and PM

    Transport secretary says he'll deliver goals of Johnsonism but end "tactical" and distracted" era of govt

    And he says he hasn't spent years "mobilising behind [PM's] back"


    https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1545800504810373122

    So he's the loyalist candidate. Splits some off from the ERG bloc.

    I have never heard anyone talk about 'Johnsonism' before.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,635
    edited July 2022

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,567
    Andy_JS said:

    It's surely a bit ominous for Jeremy Hunt that only 3 MPs have so far declared their support for him.

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/

    His support base took a battering in 2019, in terms of those who did support him exiting Parliament, and those who never would entering it.

    It's looking like a really dark horse that is going to be put to the membership outside Rishi, Mordaunt, Truss and Zahawi.

    And Truss and Zahawi may well be off to the knackers yard rather than the races.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Maybe they prefer a candidate who isn’t going to stumble on a simple question like “what is a woman”?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,220

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    With the possible exception of Mordaunt, I no longer think Keir has a damn thing to worry about.

    The contenders are all mad, bad, or dangerous to know.

    Generally agree. But would add Badenoch. Facing either would be a dangerous and unpredictable ride. They could both make SKS look yesterday's man, and worthy but dull. He can eat the rest without trouble.

    SKS's bigger problem is that he and his party are committed (by force, they have no real choice) to a Brexit they don't and can't believe in. It will come home to us in due course that the best government available to us (Lab/LD coalition) has the moral force, over the big issue of the decade, of Nicola Sturgeon trying to promote the interests of a 'better together' United Kingdom.

    I must admit my lack of knowledge about most of the possible PM/Tory leader, can anyone enlighten me as to whether any would qualify as 'One Nation' tories, or is that a quaint idea nowadays?
    Tugendhat and Hunt seem close. Remarkably Wallace looks like a stereotype one nation Tory, but isn't standing, and except for being fond of Armed Forces and weaponry doing loud things to Johnny Foreigner and big mate of Boris is a political blank slate.

    In general the big recent qualification for 'ONT' is that you gently support the EU, support big stable capitalism, don't flaunt your wealth, don't believe in allowing the poor to starve or freeze themselves to death, agree with moderate Labour chappies about pretty much everything, and believe in Burkean organic societal development.

    So its day may have gone.
    Yes, I think you're right, Brexit has taken over the Tory party and booted out the One Nation Tories. That certainly seems to have happened in my constituency
    Not Brexit, but hard neo-liberalism.
    See my comment about the prevailing ideologies.

    The risk is that the country doesn’t really want to slash the state, so the temptation will be to try to bait people into it via culture wars.
    Hence the dishonesty of 2016, and the ongoing impossibility of resolving it.

    The Conservative right hate the EU because it's seen as a roadblock on state-slashing pseudo-American neo-liberalism. In their heads, that's what Brexit was about, and why Norway/Switzerland etc were an utter betrayal of the referendum. (Sorry, those of you who voted Leave to get Norway/Switzerland etc... you were had.)

    But state-slashing pseudo-American neo-liberalism isn't about to win a general election, because it's not where the country is at. But it could do very well at an internal party election.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,840

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Didn't he front the most recent HS2 cuts? Or am I misremembering?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    edited July 2022

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
    It’s not a direct read-across, the class aspect.

    But it is notable that the post-Thatcherite thing I wrote about tends to be a lower middle class thing (as is Brexit).

    True patricians tend to be One Nationers, yes.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,635
    Carnyx said:

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Didn't he front the most recent HS2 cuts? Or am I misremembering?
    He did.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,813
    Liz is leaving it late. I hope she’s going for a blockbuster launch.

    If she’s not riding in on a lion dressed as Britannia while choirs sing the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi I’ll be very disappointed.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    I don't know if anything you're saying is true. There are people in open relationships, people who happily share their partners and allow themselves to be shared. There are relationships of convenience where sex maybe repugnant to one or even both parties but it still goes on.
    Speaking personally, I wouldn't be averse to my wife sleeping with another women (depending on who it is, and, no, I would not like it if she slept with some man).
    I think there is considerably more than meets the eye in a lot of relationships, but a culture of silence and even shame around the idea of non-standard relationship types. We're left seeing other people through vanilla-tinted spectacles.
    There’s a saying in the kink community that half the young women who say they are lesbian are really heterosexual women who are doing it to please their boyfriends/partners, who, ideally, would like to watch

    Definite truth in that
    ok, that sounds believable. For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't particularly thinking of my wife having sex with another woman and that scenario involving me in any way. I would be totally ok with her sleeping with one of her female friends and me finding out about it later. As long as it wasn't that bitch Kim.
    I hooked my wife up with a woman and watched. It’s fun

    I couldn’t have done it as a young man. Far too jealous and possessive and insecure
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286

    James Heale
    @JAHeale
    ·
    4m
    Grant Shapps formally announces his intention to run, becoming the fifth candidate to officially declare

    Another timewaster...
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,840

    Carnyx said:

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Didn't he front the most recent HS2 cuts? Or am I misremembering?
    He did.
    Thanks. So slightly odd for a ONT.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,900

    Betfair next PM prices:-

    2.58 Rishi Sunak
    6.6 Penny Mordaunt
    8.2 Liz Truss
    10 Tom Tugendhat
    18 Nadhim Zahawi
    20 Sajid Javid
    23 Suella Braverman
    24 Kemi Badenoch
    26 Jeremy Hunt
    34 Dominic Raab
    70s bar (and that's Kier Starmer!)

    What are the rules on 'caretaker'? Cos Raab at 34 is tempting if a 4 week run counts. Boris could flounce at any time imo
    Not really clear but operationalised as:
    We will settle this market on the Prime Minister after Boris Johnson as published on
    https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/prime-minister
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,567

    Liz is leaving it late. I hope she’s going for a blockbuster launch.

    If she’s not riding in on a lion dressed as Britannia while choirs sing the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi I’ll be very disappointed.

    Even then, she'd still look like a Thunderbirds puppet.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    edited July 2022

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
    It’s not a direct read-across, the class aspect.

    But it is notable that the post-Thatcherite thing I wrote about tends to be a lower middle class thing (as is Brexit).

    True patricians tend to be One Nationers, yes.


    ++++++++

    Really not true. As a Kiwi you are by definition at best middle middle class. Bourgeois with aspirations if you’re lucky

    The richest, poshest people I know - and I am talking vastly wealthy and incredibly posh - are all Leave. Like the Queen
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,945
    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    algarkirk said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    Vive.

    One corollary for a happy society. The big rule which arises from this in decent societies is to maximally apply the convention of, in the long run, one man each and one woman each, whether serially or for life.

    In stable societies this gives opportunity for the awkward, the ugly, the dim, the shy, the different etc. There being about equal numbers of all these across genders. Look around you. It usually works.
    Not necessarily disagreeing with you there. In olden days, when you had to go to bars, or even older, when you were more or less societally expected to marry the girl you met at the village dance and have babies at 21, it was probably a lot easier for people to find partners.

    But now we live in a world where, pretty much anyone with a phone anywhere in the world can set up an instagram account (or tinder, if you must), post a couple of selfies and, if they're hot enough, will have dozens of potential suitors within the hour.

    Same for those in a break-up. Set up a new account, have a half dozen potential candidates in your DMs an hour later. All without lifting a finger.

    Of course if you're not hot enough, you can post dozens of selfies, and have nothing back for weeks, months, or even years. Which is where the whole incel thing comes from. People who have essentially been rejected by the entire world (and who are too fat and lazy to join a gym).

    But this is what I mean when I say that the sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalistic. You may not like it, you may not agree with it - but you can't deny how human beings behave when given the opportunity.
    it’s very dangerous tho. A society where 10% of men sleep with 500 partners in a lifetime, and 50% of men get lZERO partners in a life, is a society headed for terrible trouble. It is, as you say, a kind of perverse hyper capitalism, where the 1% live in ultra luxury and half of society can barely feed themselves

    Normally, we would intervene to correct these imbalances. The rich pay taxes so the poor don’t starve, for the benefit of all, but how does that work here?
    You're not wrong. The woman-hating incels are the most visible problem (to use an economic term - externality?) you get from a hyper-capitalistic globalised sexual marketplace.

    But I dare say there's an awful lot of young men who aren't misogynists who just switch off - can't get a girl, can't afford a house, etc, so they become less fit, less economically active ("what's the point in trying?")

    I think in Japan it's called herbivore men, in China they call it "lying flat". People who have just gone "well, there's nothing in society for me, so I will do the least amount of work and participate only in what I need to in order to get by".

    It's probably not sustainable - and you could also argue it ends when societies like ours are out-bred by those from more traditional cultures that value child-rearing and long-term monogamy.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    edited July 2022

    Liz is leaving it late. I hope she’s going for a blockbuster launch.

    If she’s not riding in on a lion dressed as Britannia while choirs sing the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi I’ll be very disappointed.

    I'm hoping the distress of not being able to get back for 48 hours has broken her and she announces in a Fanny Cradock chiffon ball gown and curlers whilst holding back a snarling dog
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    edited July 2022
    I have taken the very difficult decision to resign as the Deputy Chairman of the Party so I can be free to support
    @KemiBadenoch to be our next PM.


    https://twitter.com/JustinTomlinson/status/1545801532100284420
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557

    Wonder who that’s aimed at?

    BREAKING: Grant Shapps unveils his candidacy to be next Conservative leader and PM

    Transport secretary says he'll deliver goals of Johnsonism but end "tactical" and distracted" era of govt

    And he says he hasn't spent years "mobilising behind [PM's] back"


    https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1545800504810373122

    Prediction: he'll be the first to be knocked out in the voting, if he lasts that long.
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 6,053
    If you’re Shapps, you sort of have to stand to keep a seat in Cabinet afterwards I think.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,567
    kle4 said:

    Wonder who that’s aimed at?

    BREAKING: Grant Shapps unveils his candidacy to be next Conservative leader and PM

    Transport secretary says he'll deliver goals of Johnsonism but end "tactical" and distracted" era of govt

    And he says he hasn't spent years "mobilising behind [PM's] back"


    https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1545800504810373122

    So he's the loyalist candidate. Splits some off from the ERG bloc.

    I have never heard anyone talk about 'Johnsonism' before.
    Shorthand for wankers?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,840
    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    I don't know if anything you're saying is true. There are people in open relationships, people who happily share their partners and allow themselves to be shared. There are relationships of convenience where sex maybe repugnant to one or even both parties but it still goes on.
    Speaking personally, I wouldn't be averse to my wife sleeping with another women (depending on who it is, and, no, I would not like it if she slept with some man).
    I think there is considerably more than meets the eye in a lot of relationships, but a culture of silence and even shame around the idea of non-standard relationship types. We're left seeing other people through vanilla-tinted spectacles.
    There’s a saying in the kink community that half the young women who say they are lesbian are really heterosexual women who are doing it to please their boyfriends/partners, who, ideally, would like to watch

    Definite truth in that
    ok, that sounds believable. For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't particularly thinking of my wife having sex with another woman and that scenario involving me in any way. I would be totally ok with her sleeping with one of her female friends and me finding out about it later. As long as it wasn't that bitch Kim.
    I hooked my wife up with a woman and watched. It’s fun

    I couldn’t have done it as a young man. Far too jealous and possessive and insecure
    “There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like to give the youngsters a chance.”
    — Jerome K. Jerome
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 21,664
    Anyone else backing the Grant Shapps / Michael Green dream ticket?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,720

    Betfair next PM prices:-

    2.58 Rishi Sunak
    6.6 Penny Mordaunt
    8.2 Liz Truss
    10 Tom Tugendhat
    18 Nadhim Zahawi
    20 Sajid Javid
    23 Suella Braverman
    24 Kemi Badenoch
    26 Jeremy Hunt
    34 Dominic Raab
    70s bar (and that's Kier Starmer!)

    What are the rules on 'caretaker'? Cos Raab at 34 is tempting if a 4 week run counts. Boris could flounce at any time imo
    The rule is whoever appears on the Government's website list of Cabinet as "PM" after Johnson.

    Plenty of good honest betting folk are wondering though what BF will do if it is Raab as a caretaker.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    edited July 2022

    Andy_JS said:

    It's surely a bit ominous for Jeremy Hunt that only 3 MPs have so far declared their support for him.

    https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/

    Increasingly yesterdays man. Like Davis vs Cameron. Fighting the last war.
    Two of his three supporters are men in their 60s.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    edited July 2022
    Leon said:

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
    It’s not a direct read-across, the class aspect.

    But it is notable that the post-Thatcherite thing I wrote about tends to be a lower middle class thing (as is Brexit).

    True patricians tend to be One Nationers, yes.

    ++++++++

    Really not true. As a Kiwi you are by definition at best middle middle class. Bourgeois with aspirations if you’re lucky

    The richest, poshest people I know - and I am talking vastly wealthy and incredibly posh - are all Leave. Like the Queen

    Brexitism is the child of people like Norman Tebbit and David Davis. Lower middle class kids done well via grammar school etc.

    Badenoch et al are their inheritors.

    You may know some wealthy posh Brexiters, these things are never cut and dry. There is of course the hedge fund element of pro-Brexitism, but I think that’s only a slice of society and in any case the very posh are not as rich as the very rich.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Has wee Dougie Ross not gone for a Calcutta cup unification bid?
    As a Linesman i will be straight with you. Etc etc
    Yes, its Dougie Time!
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,900
    biggles said:

    If you’re Shapps, you sort of have to stand to keep a seat in Cabinet afterwards I think.

    Is that fair? Shapps's main problem is he looks about 12, rather than any egregious cock-ups in government that I can recall. Good enough to be a minister but not PM material.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    I don't know if anything you're saying is true. There are people in open relationships, people who happily share their partners and allow themselves to be shared. There are relationships of convenience where sex maybe repugnant to one or even both parties but it still goes on.
    Speaking personally, I wouldn't be averse to my wife sleeping with another women (depending on who it is, and, no, I would not like it if she slept with some man).
    I think there is considerably more than meets the eye in a lot of relationships, but a culture of silence and even shame around the idea of non-standard relationship types. We're left seeing other people through vanilla-tinted spectacles.
    There’s a saying in the kink community that half the young women who say they are lesbian are really heterosexual women who are doing it to please their boyfriends/partners, who, ideally, would like to watch

    Definite truth in that
    ok, that sounds believable. For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't particularly thinking of my wife having sex with another woman and that scenario involving me in any way. I would be totally ok with her sleeping with one of her female friends and me finding out about it later. As long as it wasn't that bitch Kim.
    I hooked my wife up with a woman and watched. It’s fun

    I couldn’t have done it as a young man. Far too jealous and possessive and insecure
    “There was a time, long ago, when I used to clamour for the hard work: now I like to give the youngsters a chance.”
    — Jerome K. Jerome
    You’re not wrong. All I had to do was sit back and drink my Nyetimber English Fizz (and occasionally refresh their glasses), as they went at it

    i just enjoyed the spectacle (and it was very enjoyable). The ideal form of sex for the older gent

    I only intervened at the end to REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    Betfair next PM prices:-

    2.58 Rishi Sunak
    6.6 Penny Mordaunt
    8.2 Liz Truss
    10 Tom Tugendhat
    18 Nadhim Zahawi
    20 Sajid Javid
    23 Suella Braverman
    24 Kemi Badenoch
    26 Jeremy Hunt
    34 Dominic Raab
    70s bar (and that's Kier Starmer!)

    What are the rules on 'caretaker'? Cos Raab at 34 is tempting if a 4 week run counts. Boris could flounce at any time imo
    The rule is whoever appears on the Government's website list of Cabinet as "PM" after Johnson.

    Plenty of good honest betting folk are wondering though what BF will do if it is Raab as a caretaker.
    Then i'm nibbling!
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,103

    Betfair next PM prices:-

    2.58 Rishi Sunak
    6.6 Penny Mordaunt
    8.2 Liz Truss
    10 Tom Tugendhat
    18 Nadhim Zahawi
    20 Sajid Javid
    23 Suella Braverman
    24 Kemi Badenoch
    26 Jeremy Hunt
    34 Dominic Raab
    70s bar (and that's Kier Starmer!)

    What are the rules on 'caretaker'? Cos Raab at 34 is tempting if a 4 week run counts. Boris could flounce at any time imo
    Not really clear but operationalised as:
    We will settle this market on the Prime Minister after Boris Johnson as published on
    https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/prime-minister
    I see they list past PMs on that site. If Boris wants to emulate one and make a comeback can be it be the Duke of Portland? His second stint was 24 years after his first.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468

    Andy_JS said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Nearly all mixed relationships seem to involve a white person. How often do you see a black/Asian couple, even in very multicultural areas?
    One of my best friends at primary school (this was back in 1980-87) was mixed Indian/Chinese.
    One of my best friends at primary school was mixed Lebanese/Chinese. His baby sister spoke Levantine Arabic, Chinese and English, but hadn’t yet learnt that most people don’t know all 3. She’d start sentences in one and finish them in another. I’m sure she’s impressively trilingual today.
    That is still the everyday experience in Lebanon, although the more traditional mix is Arabic, French and English within the same sentence. "Hello bonjour aalaykum."
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    kyf_100 said:

    Leon said:

    kyf_100 said:

    algarkirk said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    Vive.

    One corollary for a happy society. The big rule which arises from this in decent societies is to maximally apply the convention of, in the long run, one man each and one woman each, whether serially or for life.

    In stable societies this gives opportunity for the awkward, the ugly, the dim, the shy, the different etc. There being about equal numbers of all these across genders. Look around you. It usually works.
    Not necessarily disagreeing with you there. In olden days, when you had to go to bars, or even older, when you were more or less societally expected to marry the girl you met at the village dance and have babies at 21, it was probably a lot easier for people to find partners.

    But now we live in a world where, pretty much anyone with a phone anywhere in the world can set up an instagram account (or tinder, if you must), post a couple of selfies and, if they're hot enough, will have dozens of potential suitors within the hour.

    Same for those in a break-up. Set up a new account, have a half dozen potential candidates in your DMs an hour later. All without lifting a finger.

    Of course if you're not hot enough, you can post dozens of selfies, and have nothing back for weeks, months, or even years. Which is where the whole incel thing comes from. People who have essentially been rejected by the entire world (and who are too fat and lazy to join a gym).

    But this is what I mean when I say that the sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalistic. You may not like it, you may not agree with it - but you can't deny how human beings behave when given the opportunity.
    it’s very dangerous tho. A society where 10% of men sleep with 500 partners in a lifetime, and 50% of men get lZERO partners in a life, is a society headed for terrible trouble. It is, as you say, a kind of perverse hyper capitalism, where the 1% live in ultra luxury and half of society can barely feed themselves

    Normally, we would intervene to correct these imbalances. The rich pay taxes so the poor don’t starve, for the benefit of all, but how does that work here?
    You're not wrong. The woman-hating incels are the most visible problem (to use an economic term - externality?) you get from a hyper-capitalistic globalised sexual marketplace.

    But I dare say there's an awful lot of young men who aren't misogynists who just switch off - can't get a girl, can't afford a house, etc, so they become less fit, less economically active ("what's the point in trying?")

    I think in Japan it's called herbivore men, in China they call it "lying flat". People who have just gone "well, there's nothing in society for me, so I will do the least amount of work and participate only in what I need to in order to get by".

    It's probably not sustainable - and you could also argue it ends when societies like ours are out-bred by those from more traditional cultures that value child-rearing and long-term monogamy.
    Most incels don't hate women, they love them. The problem is women don't love them.
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 6,053

    biggles said:

    If you’re Shapps, you sort of have to stand to keep a seat in Cabinet afterwards I think.

    Is that fair? Shapps's main problem is he looks about 12, rather than any egregious cock-ups in government that I can recall. Good enough to be a minister but not PM material.
    I don’t think he’s cocked up massively, but I do think he’s anonymous at a time when “new blood” will be called for. I think he needs to remind people he exist.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    biggles said:

    If you’re Shapps, you sort of have to stand to keep a seat in Cabinet afterwards I think.

    Is that fair? Shapps's main problem is he looks about 12, rather than any egregious cock-ups in government that I can recall. Good enough to be a minister but not PM material.
    Hes like a mate of a mate you meet and after hes gone they say 'what do you think of him?'

    'Seems alright. BIt of a plank though.'

    'Yeah'
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,830

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
    Boris is an even more ghastly public schoolboy.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,362
    biggles said:

    If you’re Shapps, you sort of have to stand to keep a seat in Cabinet afterwards I think.

    I think that's right, and I think that's why Patel said she was considering standing. Given the number of candidates if you don't stand, or aren't a key supporter of the winner, then you'll be frozen out.
  • TimTTimT Posts: 6,468
    I have a feeling that, were it not for The Fall of Boris, the clusterfuck that is American politics atm, and Ukraine, we'd all be obsessing about Sri Lanka.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557

    I have taken the very difficult decision to resign as the Deputy Chairman of the Party so I can be free to support
    @KemiBadenoch to be our next PM.


    https://twitter.com/JustinTomlinson/status/1545801532100284420

    The Kemi campaign is picking up speed.
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 6,053
    edited July 2022

    biggles said:

    If you’re Shapps, you sort of have to stand to keep a seat in Cabinet afterwards I think.

    Is that fair? Shapps's main problem is he looks about 12, rather than any egregious cock-ups in government that I can recall. Good enough to be a minister but not PM material.
    Hes like a mate of a mate you meet and after hes gone they say 'what do you think of him?'

    'Seems alright. BIt of a plank though.'

    'Yeah'
    He’s the 6th form teacher who thinks he’s down with the kids and is a bit tragic. Brings his guitar in. Plays the radio in form, switched to Radio One.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,359
    edited July 2022
    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    I don't know if anything you're saying is true. There are people in open relationships, people who happily share their partners and allow themselves to be shared. There are relationships of convenience where sex maybe repugnant to one or even both parties but it still goes on.
    Speaking personally, I wouldn't be averse to my wife sleeping with another women (depending on who it is, and, no, I would not like it if she slept with some man).
    I think there is considerably more than meets the eye in a lot of relationships, but a culture of silence and even shame around the idea of non-standard relationship types. We're left seeing other people through vanilla-tinted spectacles.

    I think that it tends to be younger people who value fidelity more than older people. I'd prefer my wife to be faithful, but it wouldn't be a deal breaker.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,315

    Leon said:

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
    It’s not a direct read-across, the class aspect.

    But it is notable that the post-Thatcherite thing I wrote about tends to be a lower middle class thing (as is Brexit).

    True patricians tend to be One Nationers, yes.

    ++++++++

    Really not true. As a Kiwi you are by definition at best middle middle class. Bourgeois with aspirations if you’re lucky

    The richest, poshest people I know - and I am talking vastly wealthy and incredibly posh - are all Leave. Like the Queen
    Brexitism is the child of people like Norman Tebbit and David Davis. Lower middle class kids done well via grammar school etc.

    Badenoch et al are their inheritors.

    You may know some wealthy posh Brexiters, these things are never cut and dry. There is of course the hedge fund element of pro-Brexitism, but I think that’s only a slice of society and in any case the very posh are not as rich as the very rich.



    +++++++

    But I am talking about the absolutely posh and rich. Trust me. Sunday Times 500 and Debrett’s. Leavers

    I guess if you’ve lived in the same big house for 700 years or you are worth £400m you are able to take the long view, and the transient loss of frictionless trade with Germany or Denmark matters a whole lot less
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,830
    TimT said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Nearly all mixed relationships seem to involve a white person. How often do you see a black/Asian couple, even in very multicultural areas?
    One of my best friends at primary school (this was back in 1980-87) was mixed Indian/Chinese.
    One of my best friends at primary school was mixed Lebanese/Chinese. His baby sister spoke Levantine Arabic, Chinese and English, but hadn’t yet learnt that most people don’t know all 3. She’d start sentences in one and finish them in another. I’m sure she’s impressively trilingual today.
    That is still the everyday experience in Lebanon, although the more traditional mix is Arabic, French and English within the same sentence. "Hello bonjour aalaykum."
    I must dans la Zimmer gehen.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    edited July 2022
    So — the "right-wing nutter" contingent will be supporting either Suella Braverman or Kemi Badenoch.

    Interesting.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Shapps is probably also a “One Nation Tory” if we are counting. Albeit a slightly raffish example of the type

    Ugh, he's a ghastly grammar schoolboy.

    This one nation Tory cannot vote for him.
    It’s not a direct read-across, the class aspect.

    But it is notable that the post-Thatcherite thing I wrote about tends to be a lower middle class thing (as is Brexit).

    True patricians tend to be One Nationers, yes.

    ++++++++

    Really not true. As a Kiwi you are by definition at best middle middle class. Bourgeois with aspirations if you’re lucky

    The richest, poshest people I know - and I am talking vastly wealthy and incredibly posh - are all Leave. Like the Queen
    Brexitism is the child of people like Norman Tebbit and David Davis. Lower middle class kids done well via grammar school etc.

    Badenoch et al are their inheritors.

    You may know some wealthy posh Brexiters, these things are never cut and dry. There is of course the hedge fund element of pro-Brexitism, but I think that’s only a slice of society and in any case the very posh are not as rich as the very rich.



    +++++++

    But I am talking about the absolutely posh and rich. Trust me. Sunday Times 500 and Debrett’s. Leavers

    I guess if you’ve lived in the same big house for 700 years or you are worth £400m you are able to take the long view, and the transient loss of frictionless trade with Germany or Denmark matters a whole lot less

    We are perhaps talking about Tories vs Whigs and traditionally the Whigs were the very wealthiest.

    I suppose the Bamfords are Brexit, but they’re in trade…
  • TresTres Posts: 2,696

    The more I think about Kemi for PM, the more I like it.

    She’s an intelligent, articulate, charismatic, attractive, young, Conservative, black woman. She castrates so many of the traditional attacks against the “traditional” Conservative Party, while still being impressive enough to have been picked on merit.

    It might be too soon for her, but if the Tories want a proper break from Boris/Eton/Oxford they could do a hell of a lot worse.

    Essex seat. What's her views on levelling up the North?
    She was the Minister for Levelling Up.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,784

    Leon said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    No I don't think so. The heart will do what the heart will do.

    I've long had a Venn Diagram in my head which is overlapping sets of "People who are attracted to people like them", "People who are attracted to people not like them" and "People with a fixed type".
    My weakness, is, always has been, and always will be redheads.
    Given that their are zero south Asian redheads that means your preference is to mate with women outside your racial background. WHICH OF COURSE IS FINE

    But there are some mad identity politics people who would say you are suffering from false consciousness, you’re quasi racist, you’re a self hater, you’ve been conditioned by evil white culture. Cf black men who date white women, they often get intense amounts of grief online
    I've only ever been intimate with white women.

    Freud would have a field day with me.
    I'm with Leon on this, you can't control who you find attractive. It might be fun to psychoanalyse, but as long as whatever might be driving it doesn't act as a block to a loving and healthy relationship then who cares.
    FWIW I have never slept with a white woman, so perhaps we can cancel each other out.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Farooq said:

    Has wee Dougie Ross not gone for a Calcutta cup unification bid?
    As a Linesman i will be straight with you. Etc etc
    Yes, its Dougie Time!

    He wouldn't make it past the halfway mark. He'd soon be flagging, cornered, and sidelined.
    Im struggling to think of a more incredulous candidate.
    Bone, obviously or Chope. But hes down there
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,557
    Final two are Sunak and Badenoch.

    Who(m) does the membership vote for?
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,900
    Betfair also has a very thin market on who will make the final two

    1.33 Rishi Sunak
    3.15 Penny Mordaunt
    3.35 Liz Truss
    4.6 Tom Tugendhat
    5 Kemi Badenoch
    7 Jeremy Hunt
    7.2 Nadhim Zahawi
    7.2 Suella Braverman
    7.8 Sajid Javid
    11.5 Priti Patel
    13 Grant Shapps
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    Andy_JS said:

    So — the "right-wing nutter" contingent will be supporting either Suella Braverman or Kemi Badenoch.

    Interesting.

    You think “right wing nutters” are in favour of “Net Zero” like Badenoch?

    Looking at the voting record posted above Mordaunt and Braverman (both Leave and against Vaccine Passports and Net Zero respectively) appear better fits.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,103
    Andy_JS said:

    I have taken the very difficult decision to resign as the Deputy Chairman of the Party so I can be free to support
    @KemiBadenoch to be our next PM.


    https://twitter.com/JustinTomlinson/status/1545801532100284420

    The Kemi campaign is picking up speed.
    Her day in the sun at least. Sunak yesterday - the one to beat. Kemi today - the newcomer. Truss tomorrow - the members choice.

    Interesting to see if Badenoch gets the 'fresh candidate' momentum.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,459
    Tres said:

    The more I think about Kemi for PM, the more I like it.

    She’s an intelligent, articulate, charismatic, attractive, young, Conservative, black woman. She castrates so many of the traditional attacks against the “traditional” Conservative Party, while still being impressive enough to have been picked on merit.

    It might be too soon for her, but if the Tories want a proper break from Boris/Eton/Oxford they could do a hell of a lot worse.

    Essex seat. What's her views on levelling up the North?
    She was the Minister for Levelling Up.
    Doesn't really answer my question
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    TimT said:

    I have a feeling that, were it not for The Fall of Boris, the clusterfuck that is American politics atm, and Ukraine, we'd all be obsessing about Sri Lanka.

    Utterly off topic, if your flavour of Netflix currently has High Plains Drifter on it watch the first 3 minutes just to see Clint's horse. Horses in westerns are usually completely unschooled kick n go types, this one looks like an advanced eventer. Walks down hill so nicely I am tempted to show it to my horses as an example to follow, then canters through a graveyard doing tempi changes between each tombstone.

    Whole film is worth seeing actually, though John Wayne thought it was so nasty he declined ever to work with CE.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,404

    ohnotnow said:

    Sean_F said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    No I don't think so. The heart will do what the heart will do.

    I've long had a Venn Diagram in my head which is overlapping sets of "People who are attracted to people like them", "People who are attracted to people not like them" and "People with a fixed type".
    My weakness, is, always has been, and always will be redheads.
    Call me.
  • I think we should see how the PB votes are piling up for the Tory leadership contest.

    I've only been counting Kemi declarations and I'm up to three (me, @wooliedyed and @Andy_JS )
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,497
    kyf_100 said:

    algarkirk said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Farooq said:

    kyf_100 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    In response to @maxh who asked this-

    "What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?

    Is
    (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong?
    (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia?
    (c) something else going on?"

    My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.

    A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.

    So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.

    Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.

    TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.

    If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?

    I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
    Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.

    In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.

    I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
    Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
    Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.

    The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.

    The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.

    As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
    Vive.

    One corollary for a happy society. The big rule which arises from this in decent societies is to maximally apply the convention of, in the long run, one man each and one woman each, whether serially or for life.

    In stable societies this gives opportunity for the awkward, the ugly, the dim, the shy, the different etc. There being about equal numbers of all these across genders. Look around you. It usually works.
    Not necessarily disagreeing with you there. In olden days, when you had to go to bars, or even older, when you were more or less societally expected to marry the girl you met at the village dance and have babies at 21, it was probably a lot easier for people to find partners.

    But now we live in a world where, pretty much anyone with a phone anywhere in the world can set up an instagram account (or tinder, if you must), post a couple of selfies and, if they're hot enough, will have dozens of potential suitors within the hour.

    Same for those in a break-up. Set up a new account, have a half dozen potential candidates in your DMs an hour later. All without lifting a finger.

    Of course if you're not hot enough, you can post dozens of selfies, and have nothing back for weeks, months, or even years. Which is where the whole incel thing comes from. People who have essentially been rejected by the entire world (and who are too fat and lazy to join a gym).

    But this is what I mean when I say that the sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalistic. You may not like it, you may not agree with it - but you can't deny how human beings behave when given the opportunity.
    When it comes to relationships from Adam and Eve onwards societies are dealing with incompatible impulses and realities. Male nature, female nature, the needs of children who take decades to grow up don't all fit together nicely. Something has to give way, either by convention, custom, religion or some even more selfish force.

    In the small town industrial/agricultural wwc northern town where I live this works quite often.

  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 21,298

    Tres said:

    The more I think about Kemi for PM, the more I like it.

    She’s an intelligent, articulate, charismatic, attractive, young, Conservative, black woman. She castrates so many of the traditional attacks against the “traditional” Conservative Party, while still being impressive enough to have been picked on merit.

    It might be too soon for her, but if the Tories want a proper break from Boris/Eton/Oxford they could do a hell of a lot worse.

    Essex seat. What's her views on levelling up the North?
    She was the Minister for Levelling Up.
    Doesn't really answer my question
    Her whole platform is about reducing the size of the state so, no, she is not a leveller upper.
This discussion has been closed.