Please re-add me to the group if it comes back as well!

Thanks to Trump supporters, all we have is our taxpayer money being wasted on Trump vacations, no major progress done in the first 100 days, a whole bunch of political tension among Americans, a shitload of scandal, and Republicans revealing their hypocrisy and incompetence because they couldn't reform healthcare despite controlling all 3 branches of government and basically admitted Obamacare was the best solution to healthcare despite bitching endlessly about it and sabotaging it back when they were out of power pretending they had a better healthcare solution when in reality they were just solution-less obstructing complainers providing absolutely no value to Americans while getting paid to do nothing.

Oh yeah, and the Republicans used the nuclear option to force an anti-gay judge on the Supreme Court who follows in the tradition of that homophobic bigot Scalia.  ::)

Stop talking facts brianboru72!  You're destroying the thread starter with truth and exposing him as an idiot fanatic!

@wrestling82:

alol you're delusional.  "Most people"?  What kind of polling did you to come to this ridiculous conclusion.  Besides your incredibly small sample size of your personal friends which you believe somehow represents everybody in the US.

I'm not black and I'd vote for her in a heartbeat if she ran as would many of my friends.  Only jealous haters, people trying to have the edgy/contrarian opinion, or hyper-Republicans bitter that she leans left dislike Oprah and even though huge chunks of America are petty like that (re: Trump's victory), that's still not the majority of the country.

I can't stand Trump, but Oprah is way too emotional and self centered as well. I can't believe people can't see through her ego trip veiled as altruism. Sure, she does a lot of good, but she is NOT presidential material and we've already seen enough of American President Celebrity edition for the past 8 years and Trump's short but drama filled run.

Even if everything you said about her was true, she's STILL be a better Presidential candidate than Trump (and many other politicians).  You're acting as if we have so many better options who ARE "presidential material".  So I would vote for Oprah easily.  Pretty much against any Republican since they all had homophobic platforms, which is just the tip of their shit covered iceberg.

@amicusets:

@YoungGun:

Only jealous haters, people trying to have the edgy/contrarian opinion, or hyper-Republicans bitter that she leans left dislike Oprah and even though huge chunks of America are petty like that (re: Trump's victory), that's still not the majority of the country.

It seems you have yet to learn a very important lesson about living in a democratic republic: majority rule doesn't matter. It is all about getting to 270.

I already knew that.  You're now talking about something entirely different.

I was replying to your comment of "but here in the United States most people-even black women are tired of Oprah."

Instead of blaming women for their failings, you blame some made up crap.     You believe women have no agency.

Because according to you, people raise themselves apparently.  Everybody has individual accountability for themselves of course.  That's a given.  But society as a whole has accountability as well.  We all affect one another.  Not surprising though that you have no sense of social responsibility and don't understand the basics of how life works though.

@raphjd:

@YoungGun:

@raphjd:

Your only point is no female US President.   The rest of it is a bunch of crap.

You have no rebuttal to my points so you claim that I'm confused.   Typical SJW bullshit.

You demand that we ignore the lunatic fringe, but fighting against gender equality is mainstream feminism.

There are actually more points, but the President point alone invalidates your whole argument so you definitely need to defend that if nothing else.  So far you have not, which means you've formed opinions based on a truth you clearly can't even justify.  That betrays a lack of objectivity and a trend towards bias and emotional decision-making.  AKA that's why I claimed you've been programmed by the right.  You should have thought through all the arguments on all sides, and if you haven't, then at least admit when you haven't and be willing to admit when you're wrong/uninformed/etc.  Instead you want to play games and try changing topics when you can't defend points.  It's a credibility-destroying tactic and shows you're arguing out of ego or agenda instead of truth-seeking or higher values.

As Trudeau said, it's extremely difficult to get women to run for office.

If women wanted a woman President, it would happen.   There would be nothing men could do to stop it.

This is where you blame "patriarchy".

Now refute my points.

There's nothing to refute.  You still haven't given an alternate explanation to why enough women don't want women as President. I said the reason is patriarchy.  You have offered absolutely no other explanation and want me to refute…what?  We both agree that not enough women have wanted a woman as President (or want to run as President).  I obviously don't have to refute the parts that we already agree on.

This is exactly why I don't believe you understand what patriarchy is or at least the definition I am using.  You're not being active in THIS argument.  You're arguing with demons from your past, instead of addressing the points that I specifically raised.

SUMMARY

Conclusion = This country hasn't achieved complete fairness or equality and isn't even close to it

Conclusion based on evidentiary support that this country has had no female Presidents (unequal outcome) which is a ridiculous statistic assuming this country was "fair" in gendered politics.  Therefore, this country is not "fair" in terms of gendered Presidencies

WHY IS THAT?

Both of us agree = Less women run for politics and women don't automatically vote for women
I would add = Overt and subtle sexism plays a role as well, but let's just stick to the above explanation which we both agree on anyways

*** You seem to stop here in this argument.  I am already at the next step (which I already addressed and you ignored):

THE NEXT QUESTION: WHY IS THAT?  Why don't women run for politics or why don't women vote for women?

My explanation = Agree with feminist argument that patriarchy exists = social structures/systems that give males more power in this area of life which include culture, traditional gender roles, social programming, the old boy clubs and other male dominated networks, lack of historical female role models in politics compared to males, outright sexism, etc.

• Thus, females are discouraged and/or not encouraged to WANT to try becoming President
• When the minority of females do want to become President, other females have been programmed to not want/trust/believe/etc. females should or can become President

Your explanation = So far nothing.  I'm still waiting for your answer

2. Since that point, there have only been 16 presidents, not 45.  If you want to say that 0 in 45 isn't just bad luck, nobody would disagree with that point, technically, because of point 1.  However not having one female president in 16 clearly isn't as meaningful.

Even if somehow I think patriarchy would be erased simply because females got the legal right to vote (a claim that is so obviously flawed to me, because that's like arguing gays don't get discriminated against just because we can legally vote), 0/16 is still a ridiculous significant statistic.  It's not as big as 45, but it's still a terribly meaningful stat when females aren't even minorities!  If you look at it as a simple statistics problem (which is more objective than people voting since it's based on random chance), the chance of 0/16 "heads" or "tails" with a fair coin is:

0.0000152588

http://calculator.tutorvista.com/coin-toss-probability-calculator.html

In other words, the odds of having 0 female Presidents in a fair environment is close to 0% and at best rounded up big time is 1%.  In other words, something is augmenting pure luck.  One can argue females are innately biologically inferior when it comes to politics and/or patriarchy exists (an environment that gives males advantages in the political arena).

3. You seem genuinely interested in gaining the opposite perspective, but the alternative explanation is actually kind of obvious.  Don't you think it's strange that you seemed as if you weren't able to even mentally consider it?

There are more men on both extremes, dumber and smarter, of the normal distribution.   It directly follows that there are proportionately more highly qualified men than women in certain tasks and abilities.

Women and men have different pre-dispositions for different majors, and thus different careers and jobs.

I did consider the point, and I follow your logic.  However, the difference between us is this:

A possible explanation you have given for Presidential results is that the "best" males of our population (in terms of being able to win in politics) are more competitive than all the females in our population.  That is possible.  But then I must ask…why?  What causes those pre-dispositions for both males and females?  To me the answer is: biology and environment.  For those who are religious, they may feel there's spiritual or God-given programming too.  But pre-disposition comes from somewhere right?

And in the case of politics, which is a non-nature-based talent/skill and is completely social (people voting for people, people influencing people, etc.), that's why much of the "merit" or "qualification" involved in that must necessarily be environmental and not biological.  That means the inequality is at least partly and largely coming from society itself.  Which means patriarchy exists.

**Unequal outcome does not logically follow from unequal opportunity, and NEVER has.  **

I agree with you on that.  But at the same time, where there's smoke there's often fire.

Given both the historical context, the incredibly extreme nature of the statistically unequal and highly improbably outcomes, and obvious facts that all societies (even the more egalitarian ones) contain people with different statuses, powers, and privileges–it requires a ridiculous amount of naivety and benefit of the doubt to assume that we have somehow achieved complete equality among the 2 genders.

If indeed the unequal outcomes is the product of PURE LUCK, then one needs to come up with amazing explanations for all the clear indicators of inequality and have them make sense.  When you can do that, then I could get more on board with the argument of ridiculously improbable luck.

@raphjd:

Your only point is no female US President.   The rest of it is a bunch of crap.

You have no rebuttal to my points so you claim that I'm confused.   Typical SJW bullshit.

You demand that we ignore the lunatic fringe, but fighting against gender equality is mainstream feminism.

There are actually more points, but the President point alone invalidates your whole argument so you definitely need to defend that if nothing else.  So far you have not, which means you've formed opinions based on a truth you clearly can't even justify.  That betrays a lack of objectivity and a trend towards bias and emotional decision-making.  AKA that's why I claimed you've been programmed by the right.  You should have thought through all the arguments on all sides, and if you haven't, then at least admit when you haven't and be willing to admit when you're wrong/uninformed/etc.  Instead you want to play games and try changing topics when you can't defend points.  It's a credibility-destroying tactic and shows you're arguing out of ego or agenda instead of truth-seeking or higher values.

@raphjd:

I'll talk with you, since "raphjd" either lacks the intelligence to stay on topic (I could see going off on a tangent here and there as we all do that, but when it's pointed out to him and he is literally just repeating himself over and over again–then there's nowhere for us to go) or knows he can't counter logical arguments based on truth, so he's just relying on reciting the same talking points which have little to do with the points that I brought up.

I'll ignore the personal attack.

You have no points that are worthwhile and you have no answer for the things I have talked about except "the patriarchy".    "The Patriarchy" is you answer for everything.

Why did feminists fight against gender neutral sex crime laws in the UK?  THE PATRIARCHY

Why did feminists fight against a gender neutral retirement age?  THE PATRIARCHY

You excuse away everything feminists do to prevent true gender equality.    You ignore all examples of female privilege, while screaming that everything oppresses women.

Not all criticism is a "personal attack".  Sometimes it's constructive criticism or entirely on point observation.  But apparently your strategy for dealing with anything you don't like is to "ignore" it.  You admitted it.  So of course this is not a discussion or even a debate.  You want to talk about certain things and ignore the points I brought up.  And now I'm doing the same to you.

My whole point was that this whole topic got started because you claimed feminists don't suffer from genuine inequality.  When I countered with evidence, instead of addressing that (because you couldn't), you ignored it (your go to strategy with dealing with inconvenient facts), and then created entirely new conversations which never addressed the original tangent topic that YOU started.  The original topic of this thread had nothing to do with any of this.

So clearly, you're bringing a whole bunch of new topics into this thread which is okay, but it's probably better in terms of organization to finish the original debates first before opening entirely new massive topics up and creating chaos and confusion.  But I suspect that's your life strategy when debating with things you're wrong about and/or you're confused about things yourself so your thoughts literally jump illogically from topic to topic without you actually thinking through the ramifications of your ideas and conclusions.  It is what it is.

Learn something from this or don't and continue thinking you're right about everything in life.  But we've gone as far as we can go, and you've clearly made up your mind that you're way of thinking is the only valid way of thinking and that anything else should either be ignored, dismissed, etc.  You have no room for personal growth with that kind of close-mindedness, arrogance, and delusion.