Kenley, re. religion you are 100% correct. I guess the difference is that the founding of LDS happened in recent times. Most established religions came about a long time ago and at least have some history to obscure the ’strangeness’. The whole finding golden plates in an Indian burial ground is just too funny for words.

As for them being an offshoot of Protestantism, I thought that too until I started reading LDS websites where they swear blind that they are not Christians.

I agree with Aaron about roles. They have changed. But society still rules that women staying home with kids is ok, but if it’s a man, then it’s weird… But I have run out of ideas now. Please post something new.

@kenley Jesus is one of many prohphets in the range of prophets found in Islam, he’s just not THE prophet, or THE saviour, he is one of them. (along with Mohammad, etc.)

anyway, all of that is beside the point. again, I think we’re pigeon-holing and getting bogged down with concise differences, that don’t REALLY make a difference in terms of the overall subject at hand. the subject, being that there are differences between those physical groupings of people are not of their race/class/gender, but instead their ideology, and their legitimate interests.

@kenley and brenna, in terms of women ’staying-home’ with uni degrees, it’s the same reason we graduate highschool even if we’re going to be fisherman in gimli. I also think that ’staying-home’ is an extremely important and complex thing to do, and that we ought to be working on a system that encourages those kinds of proper child-care values. I really feel that there has to be some kind of movement in terms of public policy on this…
jeannine’s mom, for example, could have been anything she wanted to be, I think, and chose to ’stay-home’. she’s smart, and funny, but in terms of the dynamic in their household, it was a mutual decision between the parents for her to stay at home and raise their kids and work the household. the social and educational implications were extremely important to them. I think you and I are lucky to have been brought up in a system of private child-care that just happened to be extremely nurturing. I don’t think that those kinds of things are very typical.
but this is really a whole other post…. sorry :P
I just think it’s important to keep in mind that every mother is a working mother. (not to say you were, but just to keep in mind the overall scheme of how important it is.)
in terms of the last question, i’m a bit unsure about… the dynamic between the kind of ‘passive’ and ‘aggressive’ -ness is a development of centuries of assumed ideals, and assumed roles and practices that each gender could do. Engels has a lot to say about this in ‘Origins of the Family, Private Property and the Sate’ and I tend to be swayed by the socialist feminist movement in general. in light of these kinds of modern social developments, I think that the old system of ‘roles’ doesn’t really stand anymore… but I think i’m really misunderstanding the question…

Sorry, that last comment was quite rude of me!

Of course labels are trivial. But they exist. And the difference between men and women is there. I look at the little kids at my son’s daycare everyday and there is something there. It’s not learned as far as I can tell, it’s just there…

Hell, if I see a New Zealander making it big in another country, I think that’s pretty cool. We are minorities in this world too…

Brenna and I have recently had this conversation with regards to women getting university degrees, then becoming stay-at-home mums. While there is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mum, why go through a university degree if you aren’t going to use it?

For the record, I am playing “devil’s advocate” and either sex can do whatever they want. Stay-at-home-mum’s usually aren’t just ‘mums’ and often take this time to explore other interests. See, now that sounds like something that I would love to do: Spend time with my children and read, grow, write, be artistic…

I know that there really isn’t a whole lot of time to be artistic when the kidlets are little, but you know what I mean.

And now I’m getting off-track, this is a hard topic to stay focussed on :P Your last sentence makes a lot of sense, though: “we’re calling the system of economic materialism and capitalistic greed ‘male’, because it has been.” I think that that’s absolutely true. As much as we talk about diversity and gender policies, the top floor of Investor’s Group or the highest tier of the US Senate is still a boy’s club.

One question that Brenna had was whether or not when are disposed to a position of passivity as a result of men struggling for power or control. Is their disposition a result of being dealt a “second hand?” I’m not saying that that’s necessarily fair (and I’m sure that she is much more eloquent than this and has a better idea of what it is she’s trying to say).

Anyways, Brenna is brilliant, you guys should talk about this :) She’s so smart :)

(yes, I like how this ends :P)

i think that the entire notion of these ‘labels’ is difficult and trivial at best. even though there is more diversity in terms of the ‘kinds’ of human beings in our government offices, there doesn’t seem to be a diversity of ideology.

being a woman, i think, has more to do with your moral convictions and your interests, and not so much about your hair, or your genitals. i only say ‘white-male’ because those are the people who are historically holding the positions in the social structures that purport the system. it’s not exactly meant to racialize, or sexify (heh… sexify) the issue, it just so happens we’re calling the system of economic materialism and capitalistic greed ‘male’, because it has been.

I think White Male is the norm. So a deviation from the norm is labelled. Women across the board in all (well almost all) societies are discriminated against and so it is a big deal that Clinton is in a position to challenge for president. Obama is in the same boat.

Mormons are in fact not a sect of Christianity, they are way off on their own… much like the Scientologists, so for the Republican Party which prides itself on its’ conservative Christian values, this was a real challenge. That’s why it was significant, if not important.