World News Random, Random
- mmmm8
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Re: World News Random, Random
My view is less in good-heartedness and more around efficacy. Violence begets more violence and polarization (very easy to "other" people when there is a risk of violence). And the point should be to solve the underlying problem (the proverbial "patriarchy") not treat the symptoms with punishment.
IMO the key steps are: to provide women with access to positions of power and financial independence. Does that mean that domestic violence against women will go away? No. (Russia has one of the best cases of career gender equality and, among developed countries, one of the worst cases for domestic violence prevalence).
But maybe it'll help get ahead on this next point - I agree with you, legislation and the legal system would need to come in. But the problem is that the legal system doesn't work well in general in most countries in the world, let alone for people at risk of being victims. And whether it does or not, it's inherently sexist because people are inherently sexist.
So, then, a cultural shift is important. That's the toughest one of all because all the -isms are extremely persistent in every society everywhere (and to be clear, women perpetuate almost as much misogyny as men!). I'm really curious to see how the tolerance education that Sweden introduced into their school curriculums along with other cultural shifts on gender roles (shared parental leave, etc.) is going to play out in the long-run.
Anyway, I think my conclusion is that everything's bad and won't get much better in our lifetimes but shooting people is going to make it worse in the long-term.
(Waiting for Suliso to respond with statistics about how much better off women are vs the Dark Ages )
IMO the key steps are: to provide women with access to positions of power and financial independence. Does that mean that domestic violence against women will go away? No. (Russia has one of the best cases of career gender equality and, among developed countries, one of the worst cases for domestic violence prevalence).
But maybe it'll help get ahead on this next point - I agree with you, legislation and the legal system would need to come in. But the problem is that the legal system doesn't work well in general in most countries in the world, let alone for people at risk of being victims. And whether it does or not, it's inherently sexist because people are inherently sexist.
So, then, a cultural shift is important. That's the toughest one of all because all the -isms are extremely persistent in every society everywhere (and to be clear, women perpetuate almost as much misogyny as men!). I'm really curious to see how the tolerance education that Sweden introduced into their school curriculums along with other cultural shifts on gender roles (shared parental leave, etc.) is going to play out in the long-run.
Anyway, I think my conclusion is that everything's bad and won't get much better in our lifetimes but shooting people is going to make it worse in the long-term.
(Waiting for Suliso to respond with statistics about how much better off women are vs the Dark Ages )
- Suliso
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Re: World News Random, Random
Well, is there any other land and time you'd prefer to be a middle class woman at instead of early 21st century NYC?
- ponchi101
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Re: World News Random, Random
I will. Remember that in the Middle Ages, there was no rape because not even the concept was understood. Women were "possessed", and that was the end of it.
Back to the XXI.
Back to the XXI.
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- mmmm8
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- mmmm8
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Re: World News Random, Random
You mean there were inhumane things like ....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... avoid-jail
(Picked this one because it's this month and Supreme Court of India
- ponchi101
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Re: World News Random, Random
Don't get me started on India. Or China.
I don't know if to use a or a
I don't know if to use a or a
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- ti-amie
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Re: World News Random, Random
I haven't been able t put myself into the mental space to even read that article.mmmm8 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 11, 2021 3:41 amYou mean there were inhumane things like ....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... avoid-jail
(Picked this one because it's this month and Supreme Court of India
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: World News Random, Random
Bolivian police arrest former president Jeanine Añez on terrorism and conspiracy charges
Añez, a conservative politician who led Bolivia as an interim president after socialist leader Evo Morales fled the country following an alleged coup in 2019, was arrested on Friday evening after prosecutors accused her of terrorism, conspiracy and sedition. Observers fear the move will reignite political tensions in the South American country.
Photo via @AgenciaTelam
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
- ponchi101
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Re: World News Random, Random
Reignite political tensions in Bolivia? This is a country with 13 coup d'etats, which was not the case with Evo.
Political tension is how Bolivia handles their politics. Always.
Political tension is how Bolivia handles their politics. Always.
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Re: World News Random, Random
Remember when be more like Japan was a mantra in educational circles? Also, remember how there was a brief focus on the high umber of suicides among Japanese students? Also, isn't there a huge US military base near Osaka?
Black hair, white underwear: A battle resumes over Japan’s bizarre school rules
Japanese high school students attend a ceremony for the reopening of their school in Higashiosaka, Osaka prefecture, last summer. Many schools require students to have straight black hair. (Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)
By
Simon Denyer and
Julia Mio Inuma
March 14, 2021 at 4:00 a.m. EDT
TOKYO — There is a saying in Japan: "When rules exist, they have to be obeyed."
But there are surely few rules as pointless, divisive and cruel as the widely enforced regulation that Japanese schoolchildren must have straight jet-black hair, sociologists and activists say.
It is supposed to prevent rebellious students — girls and boys alike — from dyeing or perming their hair and encourage them to concentrate on their studies. But as with other rules here, including a ban on dating and a requirement that students wear white underwear, the result often fuels discrimination, crushes individuality and enforces a rigid conformity that holds Japan back, according to critics.
The battle to change the rules has been reignited by a court ruling in the western city of Osaka last month that awarded a former student $3,000 for “emotional distress” incurred after she was hounded out of high school because her hair wasn’t black enough. But the court controversially backed the school’s legal right to impose the rule.
The young woman’s lawyer, Yoshiyuki Hayashi, said his client, now 21, intends to appeal, saying her childhood was destroyed when she entered the Prefectural Kaifukan High School. By her second semester, she was ordered to dye her hair black every four days but was banned from classes and even excluded from a school trip because teachers decided it still “wasn’t black enough,” Hayashi says.
When she refused to keep dyeing her hair, she was told not to bother coming to school. Later, her parents tried to negotiate a way for her to return, only to find her desk had been removed from the classroom and another pupil assigned her school ID number.
“She was hit very hard psychologically,” Hayashi said. “At one point, it was so bad that just seeing herself in the mirror or seeing her hair caused her to hyperventilate.”
The woman, who declined to comment herself, had always wanted to attend university, he said, “but she became extremely mistrustful of people” to the extent she does not interact with many people outside her family. “She has now started a part-time job, but she is still struggling,” he said.
In a news conference after the ruling, principal Masahiko Takahashi said the school would not change its black hair policy but would “take more care.” Osaka’s prefectural government noted the court upheld the school’s rules but said the girl’s name shouldn’t have been removed from the school’s directory.
Nearly half of Tokyo’s public high schools require students whose hair is not black and straight to submit certification to prove it’s natural and not dyed or permed, according to a report by NHK, while the Mainichi newspaper found the proportion even higher in Osaka.
Schoolgirls walk on a snow-covered street in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, last month. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)
Miyuki Nozu, a 32-year-old woman now working with refugees, went to a private school that demanded students with brown or curly hair carry certification with them at all times. Eyebrows were regularly checked to make sure students had not plucked them, while socks had to be white and folded three times.
She says the rules make it much harder for immigrant and mixed-race children to feel they belong.
“Schools just assume without any thought that all Japanese people have black straight hair and girls should act a certain way,” she said. “But Japan is not a single-ethnicity nation anymore. Schools don’t realize society has changed and that they are forcing an outdated ideal on students. This proves they have no intention or ability to teach about diversity.”
Nozu said one of her classmates was labeled a “troublemaker” because she struggled to follow the rules, but went on to graduate top of her class at the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts. Still, she said, “there are plenty of people who are repressed and lose their creativity.”
Kayoko Oshima, a law professor at Doshisha University who focuses on the issue, says some students are “emotionally damaged and lose their self-esteem” and can also be isolated and bullied by classmates who absorb the underlying ethos — that those who don’t conform don’t belong in Japanese society.
“In Japan, people have an impression that when someone stands out, they will be targeted or bullied,” she said. “So people learn not to stand out, and young people see this as a survival method. Teachers talk about individuality, and yet people’s uniqueness is crushed.”
In corporate Japan, that in turn creates an atmosphere in which people are often scared to speak out, particularly in meetings, and especially if they are women, Oshima and Nozu said.
In schools, it doesn’t stop at hair color. In the city of Nagasaki, nearly 60 percent of 238 public schools demand that pupils wear white underwear, NHK reported, with one student telling the broadcaster teachers regularly check their underwear when they change for gym class.
In Fukuoka, 57 out of 69 schools surveyed by the lawyers’ association had rules about underwear color, the Asahi newspaper reported. Some schools even reportedly asked pupils to remove their underwear if they broke the rules.
Yet pressure is growing for change.
A young Japanese woman has taken her Tokyo high school to court for abusing its power by asking her to “voluntarily withdraw” after she broke the rules by dating a boy in her class Even though she was just a few months from graduation, she felt obliged to drop out, Japan Today reported.
In 2018, when the Osaka case first came to court, Yuji Sunaga was so outraged that he helped start a campaign to “Stop Extreme School Rules” and collected 60,000 signatures for a petition demanding the government take action.
He says the rules not only entail discrimination but can also lead to sexual harassment. Strict uniform policies impose financial burdens on poor parents; rules requiring children to take all their textbooks home can cause back problems; and rules banning winter clothing or scarves can also damage children’s health. Some children may be driven to suicide, he says.
“Because of the rules, the children themselves exert peer pressure that everyone needs to conform, and this continues into adulthood like an obsession,” he said.
“Children’s self-esteem is plummeting, in some cases so low they are losing their will to live,” he said.
Black hair, white underwear: A battle resumes over Japan’s bizarre school rules
Japanese high school students attend a ceremony for the reopening of their school in Higashiosaka, Osaka prefecture, last summer. Many schools require students to have straight black hair. (Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)
By
Simon Denyer and
Julia Mio Inuma
March 14, 2021 at 4:00 a.m. EDT
TOKYO — There is a saying in Japan: "When rules exist, they have to be obeyed."
But there are surely few rules as pointless, divisive and cruel as the widely enforced regulation that Japanese schoolchildren must have straight jet-black hair, sociologists and activists say.
It is supposed to prevent rebellious students — girls and boys alike — from dyeing or perming their hair and encourage them to concentrate on their studies. But as with other rules here, including a ban on dating and a requirement that students wear white underwear, the result often fuels discrimination, crushes individuality and enforces a rigid conformity that holds Japan back, according to critics.
The battle to change the rules has been reignited by a court ruling in the western city of Osaka last month that awarded a former student $3,000 for “emotional distress” incurred after she was hounded out of high school because her hair wasn’t black enough. But the court controversially backed the school’s legal right to impose the rule.
The young woman’s lawyer, Yoshiyuki Hayashi, said his client, now 21, intends to appeal, saying her childhood was destroyed when she entered the Prefectural Kaifukan High School. By her second semester, she was ordered to dye her hair black every four days but was banned from classes and even excluded from a school trip because teachers decided it still “wasn’t black enough,” Hayashi says.
When she refused to keep dyeing her hair, she was told not to bother coming to school. Later, her parents tried to negotiate a way for her to return, only to find her desk had been removed from the classroom and another pupil assigned her school ID number.
“She was hit very hard psychologically,” Hayashi said. “At one point, it was so bad that just seeing herself in the mirror or seeing her hair caused her to hyperventilate.”
The woman, who declined to comment herself, had always wanted to attend university, he said, “but she became extremely mistrustful of people” to the extent she does not interact with many people outside her family. “She has now started a part-time job, but she is still struggling,” he said.
In a news conference after the ruling, principal Masahiko Takahashi said the school would not change its black hair policy but would “take more care.” Osaka’s prefectural government noted the court upheld the school’s rules but said the girl’s name shouldn’t have been removed from the school’s directory.
Nearly half of Tokyo’s public high schools require students whose hair is not black and straight to submit certification to prove it’s natural and not dyed or permed, according to a report by NHK, while the Mainichi newspaper found the proportion even higher in Osaka.
Schoolgirls walk on a snow-covered street in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, last month. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)
Miyuki Nozu, a 32-year-old woman now working with refugees, went to a private school that demanded students with brown or curly hair carry certification with them at all times. Eyebrows were regularly checked to make sure students had not plucked them, while socks had to be white and folded three times.
She says the rules make it much harder for immigrant and mixed-race children to feel they belong.
“Schools just assume without any thought that all Japanese people have black straight hair and girls should act a certain way,” she said. “But Japan is not a single-ethnicity nation anymore. Schools don’t realize society has changed and that they are forcing an outdated ideal on students. This proves they have no intention or ability to teach about diversity.”
Nozu said one of her classmates was labeled a “troublemaker” because she struggled to follow the rules, but went on to graduate top of her class at the prestigious Tokyo University of the Arts. Still, she said, “there are plenty of people who are repressed and lose their creativity.”
Kayoko Oshima, a law professor at Doshisha University who focuses on the issue, says some students are “emotionally damaged and lose their self-esteem” and can also be isolated and bullied by classmates who absorb the underlying ethos — that those who don’t conform don’t belong in Japanese society.
“In Japan, people have an impression that when someone stands out, they will be targeted or bullied,” she said. “So people learn not to stand out, and young people see this as a survival method. Teachers talk about individuality, and yet people’s uniqueness is crushed.”
In corporate Japan, that in turn creates an atmosphere in which people are often scared to speak out, particularly in meetings, and especially if they are women, Oshima and Nozu said.
In schools, it doesn’t stop at hair color. In the city of Nagasaki, nearly 60 percent of 238 public schools demand that pupils wear white underwear, NHK reported, with one student telling the broadcaster teachers regularly check their underwear when they change for gym class.
In Fukuoka, 57 out of 69 schools surveyed by the lawyers’ association had rules about underwear color, the Asahi newspaper reported. Some schools even reportedly asked pupils to remove their underwear if they broke the rules.
Yet pressure is growing for change.
A young Japanese woman has taken her Tokyo high school to court for abusing its power by asking her to “voluntarily withdraw” after she broke the rules by dating a boy in her class Even though she was just a few months from graduation, she felt obliged to drop out, Japan Today reported.
In 2018, when the Osaka case first came to court, Yuji Sunaga was so outraged that he helped start a campaign to “Stop Extreme School Rules” and collected 60,000 signatures for a petition demanding the government take action.
He says the rules not only entail discrimination but can also lead to sexual harassment. Strict uniform policies impose financial burdens on poor parents; rules requiring children to take all their textbooks home can cause back problems; and rules banning winter clothing or scarves can also damage children’s health. Some children may be driven to suicide, he says.
“Because of the rules, the children themselves exert peer pressure that everyone needs to conform, and this continues into adulthood like an obsession,” he said.
“Children’s self-esteem is plummeting, in some cases so low they are losing their will to live,” he said.
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: World News Random, Random
Japan and South Korea as well are extremely conformist societies. Difficult to adjust if you are not exactly like them. Also why a fair few leave for US or Europe despite high incomes.
- ti-amie
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Honorary_medal
Re: World News Random, Random
It also explains why their fantasy lives involve characters with different colored hair, sometimes wild/outlandish clothing, for women really crazy make-up.
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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- ponchi101
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Re: World News Random, Random
Not fun. it takes seconds before the sand gets into your mouth and you are grating your teeth, and then it is your ears. And in a storm like this, pretty soon it is everywhere in your clothes.
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