I wanna be a window...or the top part of the throne of bones...mostly a window...

That may be how the term is now being used, but according to a dictionary, it just means "the faith, doctrine, or cause of Islam". But I guess I'm nitpicking. As Telika noted, it seems to be a linguistic thing rather than anything else.

Well maybe, maybe not. I am not sure what he means, but I wouldn't consider autism along the lines of things that should be "fixed". But there are true genetic diseases which are simply medical issues - i.e. the type that kills you horribly after XX years of being diagnosed. Huntington's comes to mind. It just kills the person in a manner which is truly horrific. Now we're not actually that close to do doing gene repair in the womb or germ-line nor to mapping out complete genotype to phenotype relations - especially for complex phenotypes like autism. But if we had the ability there are, especially mendelian, genetic diseases which no one should suffer from. There are many, many more however where the ethics become a lot murkier and a lot of bio-ethicists struggle with how to delineate between them. Because it is coming and the scary thing is it will probably be, as you say, also used to weed-out "undesirable" alleles and not just the deadly ones. So a lot of people are concerned with it right now. But Science always moves both slower and faster than you think it's going to, so I wouldn't care to estimate when the ethical debates will be forced into sharp relief as the practical catches up with the hypothetical.

I don't agree with you on the bolded part. All the changes outlined in the OP would never have come around if they weren't adopted by enough people. And most people don't addopt anything unless they've actively taken part in the "information exchange", being given the opportunity to voice their own point of view - even if that's simply regurgitating propaganda they've been fed. Your government may decide to spend billions on promoting one idea or another, make it part of legislation and what not, but it won't take root until people discuss it with others to the extent where they feel ownership of the thoughts they express.

Popular view on racism, sexism, homosexuality, religion etc is controlled by those able to controll the discussions - right/wrong isn't really that important, "activism" much less so. Make sure that everyone saying negative things about what you want to be "the new belief" are consistently and publically crucified and riddiculed, and you can just lean back and wait for the inevitable change of public opinion, all through the population. You'll get so much free help from people loving to tell others what they can and can't say that once you've gotten the ball rolling, it'll keep gaining momentum, and can only be slowed down by directing the same people towards a new "PC flavour of the month". While I agree with the direction of the changes of most of your items the last 50 years, I disagree with most of the stated "goals" of public opinion - most having to do with the distinction between "of equal, inherit value" and "equality". I'm too tired to get into that now, though..

Yeah, I wish.

(Sexual) violence against women isn't decreasing, the attitude towards it isn't getting any better, pornography is becoming more and more ubiquitous and violent and is basically mainstream now (very much related to points 1 and 2, of course), women still earn less, there's still a glass ceiling in most companies, gangsta rap is popular, cosmetic surgery is always on the rise (vaginoplasty, for Christ's sake!) and so forth. The only way feminism can be said to have won is that pressure is mounting on males too, we're basically engaged in a cold war of genders. But that's not what was originally intended.

As for gay rights, that's a weird one. In Germany, some of our top politicians are openly gay, as are many of our most popular TV personalities. Yet, same-sex marriage is still not legal. Hate to say it, but Christian moral values are partly to blame.

What I thought when reading the title: The earth is round.

Because they believe in the values of families, of a women and a men more specific which can have children. They believe so strongly that they feel such a relation must be subsidized by special tax rules etc.

Being gay in the arabian world is no picnic either. Probably not all people will agree but religion is nowadays a good excuse for being a bad ass. Just look at the recent example. Somebody produces a really distasteful movie and others take this as an excuse for burning some houses down and killing others and themselves. Both in the name of religion or nationalism or whatever.

Plato already said he is a citizen of the universe. We don't need to say more. It was clear 2000 years before what is right and wrong and still people do the wrong things and they will continue...

Hear, hear! :)

Speaking of the population, that must be a really tricky one. Because of the basis of our future survival we'll probably never legalize, on a world scale, to minimize reproduction and I hope I never will have that job, it must be beyond ridiculously hard.

What do we agree on?

Death and taxes

There are men in porn too, you know. Just... Saying.

Pretty much, yeah. It's all about this very conservative view of the institution of marriage and the family unit. I find it hard to believe that even one of our top politicians is a homophobe in the traditional sense.

Yeah... I know.

Sadly, I notice that modern feminism relying on "positive discrimination" is just another form of sexism.

And pornography, because somebody said that. There is no slavery in porn. Women act in porn voluntarily.

Depends on your definition of voluntarily. Having to support an expensive drug habit (since most women and men in porn are addicts), being forced by a violent pimp or fiancé (many porn "stars" are prostitutes), having to relive traumatic experiences of abuse (because most women in porn have been sexually abused, often when they were still children), being bound by shady contracts... not that all this is why I mentioned pornography.

Eeem.... They voluntarily became an addicts. I don't see milions of people crying over junkies, why would they care about porn star junkies?

You know, many people go to work they hate, because they need to feed their families for example, but it doesn't mean they don't work voluntarily.

At least here "pimping" is a crime, so if it happens, the girl may seek protection by law, if she wants to.

With your def. nobody works voluntarily, because everybody needs money to survive. Except for commies who live on expense of others.

I like German position on pornography and prostitution. It's the healthiest thing in the world to make it legal and taxated.

Except they don't get beaten up or raped when they quit. And aren't suicidal with anywhere near the same likelihood as workers in the sex industry.

Not that there aren't many other shit jobs. I've worked in companies where the line workers were treated like slaves, and that's obviously wrong, too.

Depends who you ask. Sorry I don't have a link handy, but I have read a feminist writer arguing that a man (male) cannot be a feminist, only women can. I think I need to find that article stating that, as I don't recall what was her basis for that argument. But, it was said by someone who calls herself a feminist. Maybe she is wrong, I don't know. (***)

So going by that, I think I can say that I am not a feminist (because I am male?), but I don't think people should be discriminated for their gender, anymore than for their height, age, looks etc. Yet, I also believe that such discrimination exist in all those levels, and it may be very hard to get completely rid of it.

For example, deep down many people may feel that a taller, older(?), or more handsome/beautiful, person is more fit to be a president than someone who is less of any of those. Or, there seems to be a consensus that on the average taller and more handsome people have better careers and earn more money in their lifetime.

I don't know if there should be laws granting short, ugly and obese people to have a quota in company executive boards etc., just so that no such discrimination takes place.


(***) Googling for "voiko mies olla feministi" ("can a man be a feminist") found many hits, so here's one of the hits, google-translated from Finnish:

http://translate.google.fi/translate?sl=fi&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=fi&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vihrealanka.fi%2Fnode%2F4887

A rough quote: Also, another hit concluded that a man can't be a feminist because men lack the knowledge of what it is like to be a woman in men's world ("...puuttuu naiseuden kokemus...").

I guess that is why some have come with the "pro-feminist" term, apparently meaning "quasi-feminist" or "lesser feminists" who should have no say on the feminist agenda, whatever that is. But they are still free to agree with and promote the ideas of the real (female) feminists, I gather.