The ideal woman is fictional

I'm sorry but I call bullshit on this one. In Kazakhstan young girls are kidnapped to be force married. In Mali, young girls have their genitals mutilated to prevent them from ever feeling pleasure. And you're telling me the US is 10th, above those 2 and a few others. Yeaaah no.

@Santeyan It's a poll among experts (not sure what qualifies them but I can accept that they are). While that's somewhat different from simply a poll of public perception, it's still close enough which means there's a bias making it more likely that countries are named that are:
1.) more prominent in reports of problems
2.) getting worse
Kazakhstan and Mali are on pretty much no one's mind. There were no prominent recent news about the state of civil and women's rights and while they're (to quote Trump) "shithole countries", they've been that for a long time while. On the other hand, for the past few years there have been massive news about attacks on civil and women's rights in the USA or rape and human trafficking in India and the perception is that the situation is getting worse because of their current nationalistic governments. So surely India is worse by now than Afghanistan (where half the country is controlled by the Taliban) and America is worse than at least Mali or Kazakhstan? Yeah, according to the perception-based methodology of this study - though certainly not according to proper statistics.

Now that I think about it, it's pretty much a perfect representation for the state of the world today: Facts don't matter if they don't feel right.

@VeryCreativeName such poll will never reach news headlines in Mali , Kazakhstan or other countries much worse than U.S.. Maybe the top should be callled top 5 worst relevant countries. This 'news' is targeted. U.S. has a lot of freedoms, with the freedom to complain and be outraged ranking high. Among the news about attacks on civil and women's rights in the USA, you will also find healines about men encarcerated for false rape accusations. Liberty is great, but is prone to abuse.

@dlaV In USA 20% of women were raped. https://www.thenation.com/article/rape-minute-thousand-corpses-year/
"She says she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and gave birth to a daughter when she was just 10 (the birth certificate confirms that). A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-forced-on-me-child-marriage-in-the-us.html
In US in 90's marital rape was legal.

@VeryCreativeName "It's a poll among experts"
Their sampling of experts includes things like twitter celebrities. Things like violence indexes and living standards are completely overshadowed by, essentially, passionate opinions.

Lots of people are dismissing "this looks wrong" with "well that's just you rejecting reailty", but with that methodology it's the study that's rejecting reality.

@Synapse Really? Wow, here I thought they at least polled qualified experts...

@VeryCreativeName Well they "contacted 548 experts focused on women’s issues including aid and development professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, non-government organisation workers, journalists, and social commentators."
While some may seem legit like academics or even health workers, some seem dubious at best like journalists and social commentators (those last guys are actually getting money for having a biased opinion)... I couldn't find the representation of those "experts" anywhere but it would be interesting to know which ones made the bulk of the survey...

@Santeyan "...In Kazakhstan young girls are kidnapped to be force married..." When you notice that you don't know anything about Kazakhstan and you only put it there because it ends in "stan" and in your social imaginary, those countries are of that style. Ignorance is dangerous.
But hey, it's my turn, did you know that in Switzerland it's the capital of child pornography in Europe?

@HHWinston Switzerland, you say? Well, that's news to me but hardly surprising. Switzerland is the capital of most kinds of black market deals (unless it's bulk - like counterfeit products - or drugs, in which case it's the Netherlands). Also, why do you point this out?

@VeryCreativeName I don't know, because everyone likes to name the faults of other places as if we were saints and Europe is never mentioned? Kazakhstan is far from half the things that ignorant people think when they hear the "stan".
Maybe it was necessary to mention it so people realize that Europe is not really different from other places, I would never let my daughter travel alone in Europe knowing all the human and sex trafficking there is.

@HHWinston But how does Switzerland compare to the rest of the world? I’m sorry, but this reminds me of a conversation I had with friends, who were talking about how Sweden is a hellhole because it has the highest rate of rape in Europe. I immediately checked, and saw it was lower than America’s; so context matters.

I have yet to check, but I would be beyond surprised if Switzerland’s child porn numbers exceed that of Japan or Thailand,

@HHWinston Okay, I'm not from Kazakhstan, but we are hearing a little bit from there here in Russia, also I have some Turkmen and Kazakh blood and obviously relatives in these countries. And actually that is completely true, not for Kazakhstan only, but also for all countries of Central Asia, amount of such cases can differ depending on country. Such kidnapping practised mostly in villages. Sometimes there is an agreement between young people, they using it as a way to be together if their families don't allow them to marry. But in most cases it is just violence against women, girl just brought to man's house where is a lot of his relatives and they make some engagement celebration because there is a bride in their house now. Girls can't say no and just leave physically and mentally, because it would be shame for a family if daughter returns home after that, it is quite rare when family go and save girl out of that situation, in most cases they just do nothing and go to an engagement. And quite often if not always that kidnapping including rape. In Russia is widely common in regions of Caucasus like Chechnya and Dagestan, I think even more common then in Kazakhstan, despite the fact that it is strictly prohibited by the law, and it is very complicated situation because we have our not concerned about people government on the other hand and regions with nationalities that extremely dislike interference from outsiders on the other hand. I saw a project a couple of years ago where some women who was kidnapped told about their stories and also there was a lot of discussions when a 18-years girl from Chechnya married a 40+ years old man, he is a big official in there, she wasn't kidnapped, but as there is everything built on family ties in the region, she practically had no choice, her denial would affect all her relatives. However still all this countries and regions are a way less dangerous than Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and etc.

@HHWinston https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-rise-non-consensual-bride-kidnapping-kazakhstan-developing-culturally-informed-and

Ignorance is dangerous indeed.

@The_Catman https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-forced-on-me-child-marriage-in-the-us.html
A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”

@HHWinston https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping
https://en.tengrinews.kz/laws_initiatives/When-traditions-violate-human-rights-bride-kidnapping-in-25506/
There are people in the world who like to stay informed on what happens, thank you very much. I've been able to differenciate Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan since I was 6 years old. There's even a few kazakh singers and groups I listen to. If your entire argument against mine is assuming that I'm an idiot, you won't get far if it turns out I'm not one. Plus, I had no idea about Switzerland but it doesn't surprise me much.

@Santeyan @The_Catman
Oh, how strange so that I lived in Astana for two months and never seen any girl, Kazakh or Russian, being forced to anything. I don't deny that there are Kazakhs who remain isolated from society while preserving those costrumbres, but they are not part of the day-to-day of Kazakhstan, so, "in Kazakhstan, girls are forced" is to generalize and shamelessly fetishize.
With the same logic, I could say that all Englishmen are women beaters because some people do it and call it something "cultural".

@HHWinston Of course it's not part of the day to day, and obviously you wouldn't see those practices in the capital. I'm just saying that a country where, in rural areas, bride kidnapping is frequent enough to be reported on regularly and accepted by the inhabitants of those areas has more problems in terms of women's rights than the US. I'm not generalising, it's a fact that those things happen and denying it doesn't make you an open minded citizen of the world, it makes you blind to statistics. I'm not saying kazakh culture is bride kidnapping, I'm saying that central asia as a whole is a place where those practices exist. Whether or not it's cultural or flat out crime is irrelevant to the argument that women are safer in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan than Texas, for instance.
An example of something which is indeed cultural is the burqa, and Saudi Arabia is in the top10 list partly because women aren't even allowed to show their faces there, and can be sentenced to death for crimes that aren't even illegal for men. I don't get your argument at all, it's like you're trying to paint me as an ignorant and generalising xenophobe because I recognise that there are worse countries than the US as far as women's rights go.

@Santeyan I don't know all of Central Asia, but I know Kazakhstan, and that is why I know that these practices are not as common as you would think, and it doesn't happen in all rural areas, but so many foreign communities would not live so happily in Kazakhstan. I never denied anything, I even gave you the reason that in certain areas there are Kazakhs who rotate to those customs, but they are isolated cases unrelated to the reality of the country. I agree 100% that Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship for women, a young woman was recently beheaded for trying to fight for women's rights. But Saudi Arabia is not comparable to Kazakhstan in any way. It's still strange, that Saudi Arabia is so ally of the United States and the West being such an ... extremist country.
Of course, there are countries worse than the United States when it comes to women's rights, like their friend Suadi Arabia, but Kazakhstan, to the exclusion of unfortunate and isolated cases, is not among them.
And still recognize that the United States, Europe, etc., still have problems with women's rights, without comparing with other countries, it's not bad.

I'm sorry if I offended you at some point.

@HHWinston "It's still strange, that Saudi Arabia is so ally of the United States and the West being such an ... extremist country."
*cough cough* oil...

@Santeyan Regarding your status as an "ignorant and generalizing xenophobe", I'm just going to leave these two items.

First, from https://www.expatwoman.com/saudi-arabia/guide/faqs/saudi-arabia-dress-code-for-foreigners : "If you are out in public, you are required to wear at least an abaya over your normal clothes (which too must be modest). A headscarf, also known as a hijab, is optional...."

Second, this:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/women-in-saudi-arabia-do-not-need-to-wear-head-cover-says-crown-prince-1.3433096

Now, is it possible given how wrong you were about dress codes for women in Saudi Arabia, perhaps some of your other perceptions of foreign cultures are wrong as well?

@Santeyan "[...] since I was 6 years old" O_O 6 years old ?!? Props to you man !
To me they are some countries in central Asia with Kazakhstan being the biggest blob of the -stans. I imagine the people living there as nomads living in huts and refers to them as steppes people ! :O
Still I suppose kazakhstan is special as it has been a part of Russia for a long time...

But hey ! Being ignorant and being an idiot are different things, take me for example, I'm ignorant but I'm not an id... Well... maybe it's not such a good example but you see what I mean.

@HHWinston Young girls are not kidnapped to be force married in Kazakhstan. That happens in Mongolia a lot, though.

@Xordic ...And?

@Santeyan Agree. Not sure if the cartoonists believe this is true, but I don't feel that it is more unsafe in the US for me than other European countries I've visited. It may actually be more safe than some.

@NaCltyGrl Publishing that sort of study for a country as large and diverse as the US is kinda asinine. You'd probably get more use out of a study that focuses on the rates in each state rather than the country as a whole.

@VRipper That I agree with. States like Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado are vastly different from the Bible Belt states, Florida and really anything in the south east.

That being said, it is seen as a whole country, even if the states should honestly be their own countries, or at least put up into regions considering how different east to west can be or north to south. So that's the way it's often taken in studies. Per capita is probably a better measurement because it still accounts for the population density.

As a dual citizen of USA and a country in Europe I personally attest to the study being probably true. And am frustrated with the nay sayers thinking that the bar to be measured is nearly any middle eastern country that is known for basically no women's rights at all. It's not a hard level to pass and no one should be patted on the back for not shaming if someone is raped, not committing genital mutilation etc. No gold star for basic human decency.
I would call the list bunk if USA wasn't the last on it though, because it is definitely better than many of the other countries mentioned, just shit compared to a lot of other industrialized nations. So 10th place sounds about right.

@Sinvanor Sorry darlin'! I've lived in the South East, North East, West Coast, and also travel around the US routinely. It certainly is not any less safe in the SE than anywhere else in the US, or anywhere in Europe for that matter.

There are areas of cities in Europe that aren't particularly safe for women, just like in the US. Seems quite bunk to me.

@Santeyan
In US if you rape a girl and impregnate her you get to marry her. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/opinion/sunday/it-was-forced-on-me-child-marriage-in-the-us.html
"A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.”"

It's dangerous to be ANYTHING in America with all the damn gun violence.

@tc49pz True, but some animals are more equal than others. Rich, white, straight, cis-masculine people are in a lot less danger than anyone else. Poor black people of any gender are in a lot more danger than most people, especially from the so-called “criminal justice system”.

@Tualha Pretty sure poor blacks are in more danger from their local gangs than the criminal justice system (no quotation marks because that's what it actually is).

As for gun violence: Yeah, being legally allowed to shoot back at the people wishing you harm is *awful.* I'm sure criminals would be more than happy to turn over their illegally acquired firearms if we just ask nicely.

@Brigid God I am sooooo tired of that asinine argument. Want to end gun violence? Ban ammunition sales. Do you really think the scary straw man criminals you refer to have the means or ability to setup underground factories to produce primers and smokeless black powder?

@TuxedoCartman You can just buy smokeless powder, it's also fairly simple to make. primers are also fairly simple to make, you can make them with matches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nSf8dOBYI (you can buy primers tooooooo) and people probably stockpile both
about a quarter of america owns guns and i assume most of them have ammo to go with them. the guns are already here, you are correct that if you could poof of all the ammunition out of existence you couldn't really shoot guns anymore. (other than people making their own with the powder and primers already mentioned)
except banning ammunition sales would not get rid of all ammunition. in fact, as soon as anyone caught wind of a law that bans ammunition sales, i'd imagine people would buy as much ammo as they possibly could because they want to keep shooting their guns. because they're not stupid. "they just banned ammo cletus. "bob aint that like banning guns? is the guvrnment tryna steal our freedom?" nah cletus it's probably fine, they're just doin' it so people stop eating shotgun shells"
not to mention criminals, the ones we want to stop from getting ammo, would be the only ones able to buy it. because the black market is a thing. and if you're gonna shoot someone you probably don't mind buying ammo illegally
you sadly can not poof guns out of existence, it would cost a lot of money and a lot of deaths to try and take guns from america. but even if you could, you would have to poof the knowledge of guns out of existence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA because people will make their own.
i'm of the belief that you have to actually teach gun safety to people, mainly "THIS THING WILL KILL YOU, DO NOT POINT IT AT THINGS, THEY WILL DIE, AND YOU WILL GO TO JAIL" and to teach people that their actions actually have consequences. a ton of the kids i talk to are suicidal or depressed, we need to help them so that they don't become future school shooters or criminals. But i am not here to stuff stupid beliefs down your throat, i'm just trying to educate you about guns

@TuxedoCartman It's hardly asinine if it's true. Might want to look up how many attempted mass shootings are thwarted by a good guy with a gun. Might also want to take a look at how many criminals *don't* legally own the guns they use in committing crimes.

@Brigid Well this is honestly a theoritical debate that could make sense because it is a valid argument to think that giving people the means to fend off criminals by themselves would reduce crime. But it is also a valid one to think that preventing people from having an easy access to weapons will render more difficult well... the access to those weapons. Plus by doing so you also prevent firearms accidents ("oops I was just playing with my gun and I shot someone by mistake"). And the occasional psycho from killing anybody ("I want to blow off some steam, so I'm gonna shoot some guys until I calm down").

All that being said, I prefer facts to theoritical debate. I'm certainly not an expert on that subject, but statistical evidence suggests that there is a correlation between the number of firearms circulating and the number of death by firearms (https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301409). Overall gun regulation seem to reduce significantly gun violence (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/201803/do-firearm-laws-reduce-gun-related-deaths).

I'd like to pinpoint to you that in europe where such regulation are enforced we have 7 times less (at least) gun violence than in the US, so it could be that Americans are 7 times more prone to violence than Europeans... or it could be that they are allowed to use guns to unleash that violence...

@Isdaril Except cities like Chicago, which has some of the strictest firearm regulations in the USA, also has some of the *highest* gun violence stats in the USA.

Which is another point that a lot of these studies don't bring up. Regulations vary from state to state. Some states, like Hawaii, have several permit requirements for owning and carrying different kinds of firearms and carrying a *loaded* firearm at all is a felony. (Which, honestly, seems to defeat the whole point of carrying a firearm.) North Dakota, on the other hand, just requires that you be a state resident to carry a concealed weapon and carrying a loaded firearm is only regulated in regards to storage in a vehicle.

And I'd like to reiterate that most criminals *don't* obtain their weapons legally. Though I will grant that it's a lot easier to get an illegal weapon when there are a lot of legal owners around you can steal from.

I think the problem is less about the legality of firearms and more about cultural attitudes. And not necessarily cultural attitudes toward guns. I'm talking about attitudes about community, self-control, responsibility, and mental health. A lot of the people who commit, or try to commit, mass murder showed a lot of warning signs that something wasn't right beforehand. Often, nothing was done to intervene. Sometimes a token effort was made, usually involving the prescription of some medication, but little to no follow up. I can't even begin to count how many times one of these stories involve phrases like "was off his medication" or "diagnosed with..."

In short, yeah, the USA has problems, but banning guns is treating a symptom, not the disease.

@Brigid Well because violence is related to firearms possession doesn't mean it is the only factor... As someone said, brazil has a ban on guns but has way more gun violence than the US. So obviously gun regulations aren't the only problem here. That being said, the first study I linked is comparing US states and making correlations between US states so it obviously is taking the difference in the states themselves and still finds a link between gun possession and gun violence (and if Chicago is indeed a counter example, then it means it should be even harder to find such correlation)...
NB : I didn't read the whole study of course because gun control in the US is not something I am THAT passionnate about (and the study is pretty long).

I'm not so sure banning guns would only be treating a symptom, growing up with guns being a normal thing to use and have around and growing up with guns being dangerous thus illegal to use and posess probably push you in a different mindset overall (again this is theoritical speculation, but data seem to indicate that, while social factors may have a bigger impact on violence overall, gun regulations do have an impact too). And anyway what could be the hurt in trying to implement harsher regulations ? Hurting US weapon industry ? I mean do we really want to have our industry producing weapons instead of food, houses, health and education (I'm speaking in a general sense, I'm no US citizen myself, but we do have a flourishing weapon industry in France too... Though we can't compare with the US obviously...) ?

@Isdaril Thing is, these studies generally only look at *firearms,* not other possible weapons. While I haven't been following the news in Britain all that closely, their 'stop violence by banning weapons' policy seems to be having less than stellar results. (Like stopping handymen on the street and confiscating their toolboxes because they contain sharp implements that would be in *any* toolbox.)

You also have a good point with how people grow up. And that's exactly the problem. Even in states where owning a gun is largely unregulated, kids still grow up hearing that guns are bad, guns kill people, everyone should be afraid of guns. This largely from the school system and national-level media. Their home-life, on the other hand, may agree with the schools and media, disagree and promote proper gun safety and experience, disagree but that's it, or be completely ambivalent. There's no consensus and is a *huge* departure from what things were like when my parents and grandparents were growing up.

Interestingly, the first half of the 20th century had kids driving to *school* with loaded rifles in their trucks because they were going hunting later as a matter of course and there wasn't anywhere *near* the problem with school shootings that there is now. Heck, my grandma had a story of a bunch of kids deciding to deal with a skunk in the school's woodpile with *dynamite.* The skunk was definitely gone. As was the woodpile and most of the paint on that side of those school. building. No one called the cops, the kids were just held after school to clean up the mess and repaint.

The story is anecdotal, of course, by I think it speaks to the difference in attitude between then and now. Give me a running start, and I could go on for *days* about personal responsibility, absentee parents, over-crowded classrooms, parents expecting teachers to do their jobs for them, zero-tolerance policies, and America's school system in general. Also, people with no practical experience acting like their pet theories on how the world *should* work are fact and, scarily enough, those people being allowed to make policy decisions.

As for "what could be the hurt?" To start with, I don't think it's a matter of either producing weapons *or* producing food, houses, health care, and education. It's more of an *and.* Beyond that, I could give a pretty long answer. Practically a book. To be brief, I direct your attention to what happened when the Federal Government decided to ban alcohol.

@Brigid Well as I said violence is probably more closely related to social inequalities and poverty than to gun regulations, but still if you are prone to violence, it's a lot easier to kill someone with a gun than with a knife or with your bare hands...

As for your last section, this is probably not the place to make an economic argument, but nothing is produced "for free". If you choose to spend some time producing guns, then you won't spend that time producing healthcare or education (well I actually believe our economy works the other way around, it is rather limited by its consumption than by its production -thanks again, fossil fuels-, but it is still the same : if someone spends money on buying guns and ammo, he won't spend it on something else, like education or health care)

I'm not sure you can compare guns with alcohol or even drugs in that matter. Because it is quite easy for anybody to make alcohol (well I don't say it's gonna taste good but anybody can make it and it will serve its purpose : making you drunk), it's really hard to control and regulate alcohol production. But not anybody can manufacture guns, so it is WAY easier to regulate and control gun production than alcohol.
Also guns are not something humans really need while for as long as there has been human civilizations, alcohol has been around (probably before that even). What I mean is you can only benefit from selling guns if there is a need for them, which means the society is already violent. I feel it is dubious gun trafficking would lead to violence as it needs violence in the first place to be profitable (while drugs or alcohol trafficking quench basic human thirsts).
Also a lot of european nations have banned gun usage and there are still no "gun cartels" in sight in Europe...

@Isdaril Poverty does *not* equal crime and violence. The problem is more a lack of respect for the lives of others.

Of course nothing is produced "for free." But I also doubt that the people who go into gun manufacturing would, in the absence of such jobs, go into healthcare or education. They're's very little in common unless you're looking strictly at departments like accounting or marketing that are common to *all* businesses.

Considering inmates are able to make reasonable facsimiles of firearms from newspaper and rubber bands, I'm going to stand by my comparison. Doubly so now that 3D printing is entering the common market.

Need? Not by your definition. But, then, by your definition we don't need cars, electricity, democracy...

I'd also like to point out that most European nations don't dominate international trade routes. 'Gun cartels' mostly exist in the USA because legitimate freight goes through here in such massive quantities that slipping illegal stuff in is fairly easy.

And then there's the whole 'defending me and mine' argument. Opinions vary, of course, but I personally feel more secure living in a country whose government does *not* have a monopoly on armaments.

@Brigid Poverty does not equal crime and violence, but there is a strong connection between those 2. Ultimately I suppose it comes down to your personal moral code, to your own descent into fear and despair, but let's just say that if the society denies your existence, you are way more likely to follow your own rules and to have moral codes that don't match the no crime, no violence code enforced by the society, which is probably why violence is way more frequent in poor areas. Because when you are poor in our societies, where all the worth of an individual is measured by its ability to make money (it's probably even truer in the US than in Europe), you are considered trash. I'm not saying that there are no other reasons to become violent and that all poor people become necessariy violent, I'm saying it's a systemic cause that can explain violence and probably the one that has the biggest impact.

Well what you are talking about is a transitional problem, that you can probably solve by introducing gun regulations little by little instead of just vote a hard ban on guns. But it has nothing to do with the political concept that you ultimately want to produce more healthcare or education (or transports, or solve fossil fuel dependancies... those are just examples) than firearms.

Ok I guess my argument was a little weak, I never realized it was that easy to make weapons nowadays. Well it's still way harder than making booze (it may be a little harder than making drugs I suppose), but I suppose if the incentives are strong enough it wouldn't be a deterrent for a shadow organization to start making them.

Well you misunderstood me about basic need : I would consider cars (even if this one is sure a problematic need) or electricity as basic human need in our society. Democracy is a little tougher to consider a basic need. I would say freedom is a basic human need, but not democracy, democracy is just an idea that the people making important decision are the people. But it doesn't represent much for an individual, because an individual is not the people. Also the best proof we have is that we live in oligarchies not democracies (well the luckiest of us, some people still live in autocracies or totalitarian regimes).
What I meant by basic need was something that you need in your day to day life. If I don't have food or electricity or cars (well actually I don't have one, but let's just say means of transportation in a broad sense) in my day to day life, I would certainly miss it a lot, but a gun... well... not really (I never posessed one though so maybe it's why I can't see what it would bring me). Sure, if someone was trying to kill me I would certainly be happy to be able to defend myself, but it never happened once in my life... That is why I said violence precedes gun need, not the other way around : if there is no violence where you are living, you don't need a gun.

Well actually Europe as a whole is a biggest trade node than the USA. Sure each country individually is less important, but I think there are enough of legitimate freight here to conceal illegal stuff in it.

Well I suppose it depends on the government, if you live in a real democracy (which you don't because there is no such thing), the state is the embodiement of the people, so it's probably safer that the people have a monopoly on armaments. In a real world though, I'll grant you it is at least debatable. That being said people who have the means to mass produce guns are part of the elite that rule our precious 'democraties', I'm not so sure they act that much as a counter-power as one might think.

@Isdaril Good to fair points all around, at least in theory, though considering what I know about the production of moonshine, I'd argue that firearm manufacture is *safer* if not easier. I'd also argue that violence is more common in poor areas because that kind of crime is much easier to pull off while folks with more resources have more criminal options.

That said, organized crime is very lucrative for some folks and not only involves quite a bit of violence but also tends to prey on those at the lower end of the economic scale. So going primarily by *where* the crimes are committed doesn't necessarily say much about *who* is committing them.

As for the gradual ban thing, the problem is two-fold. First, that's what the government's been doing, and, second, it's not working. The whole process is tainted by the first gun-control laws, which were targeted at blacks. Laws, I will admit, the NRA supported before the organization went through a huge management change in... the '70s, I think, and went full '2nd amendment rights for all.' Personally, I would've changed the name at that point to avoid some of the inevitable backlash, but that's a whole lot of water under the bridge.

Besides that, background checks don't catch first offenders and proposals to ban sales to people with known psychological disorders opens up a *huge* can of worms. For example, I suffer from clinical depression and anxiety. The government could argue that I could use the gun to commit suicide (even though I have no history of attempting or wanting to attempt such), or that my anxiety makes me a risk to others, with the additional argument that my Asperger's means I'm not emotionally mature enough to handle one. But, I also live on a farm in a sparsely populated area. While the main threats to my life are wild animals like cougars, it would be far too easy for a human to come, do terrible things, and leave long before the police could possibly arrive.

Not that I have to personally own a gun for protection, which brings me to another point. Folks who want to use a gun but can't acquire one legally can borrow (or 'borrow') one from a friend or relative who can. Using myself as an example again, the farm I live on is actually owned by my sister and brother-in-law (long story, short version is they gave me a job when no one else would). Besides an antique musket kept as a family heirloom, there's at least one firearm on the property that I could easily access.

That antique musket brings up yet another point. Given how 'zero tolerance' policies have gotten people in trouble for carrying *fake* guns, I don't trust the government to exempt items like that. Good grief, kids have gotten suspended for having *G.I. Joe* accessories in their lockers. You know, bits of plastic up to an inch long shaped roughly like firearms. Our tax dollars at work.

I do agree, though, that there are no real democracies and the real world is much more complex than any one argument. Sure, those who own facilities that mass-produce firearms are part of the elite. Along with all the other people with large stakes in major industries. It's also true that the firearms normal people can *afford,* never mind legally buy, wouldn't be terribly effective against a professional armed military. If it came down to a second (or third, depending on how you see the Civil War) American Revolution, well, let's say I'm glad I live in the armpit of nowhere. On the other hand, as described above, folks who live in the armpit of nowhere have more immediate reasons for wanting guns to stay legal. Which, I think, is where the primary difference between Europe and the USA lies. To quote a foreign student my dad knew in college, "There is not so much... nothing in my country."

@tc49pz Yet, here in Brazil the murders are almost 5x higher.
And here guns are almost universally forbidden.

Trust me, access to guns is not a cause nor a deterrent of violence statistics.

@tc49pz
Gun violence... you mean the issue with people who are mentally unstable and the lack of proper services to help them after we decided it was better to axe asylums and throw crazies in jail cells or ignore them altogether rather than fix the issues with the system we had?

One school shooting involved a kid who had not only done it before, he did everything possible to show people he'd do it again and since the school counselor couldn't help him they did nothing to get the kid the real help he needed before things got out of control.

This study is done by an american. They love to be in top 10s.
Joke aside, the americans take 1st place in outrage. The love to be outraged by anything; i think they are capable to release such studies with outraging results so the they can have something to be outraged about. I bet there isn't any raw data about the scientific method by which this "study" was conducted.

"The[y] love to be outraged by anything"

Pretty much, yeah, @dlaV .

@dlaV This seems to be the study : https://poll2018.trust.org/methodology/
And as you can see there are probably raw data somewhere BUT they have no real value as they are a collection of opinions of so-called experts (including and I quote "journalists" and "social commentators")
It is basically a poll conducted among pseudo-experts so it has a little more value than a vox but not much...
It is more a reflection of how people around the world see the world than how the world really is.
I don't know if the survey was altered to have such an outcome (I doubt it was) BUT it was probably twitted on social media a lot BECAUSE the US had such a position (so it's basically the same)... What I mean is that there are probably thousands surveys like this one out there that have not the USA in such a bad spot but those ones were ignored because they were not deemed interesting by social commentators (or as you put it people couldn't feel outraged about it).

@Isdaril This... is basically true. You see, the comic does not mention what the survey's categories for "best for women" entailed, but I can probably guess.

@dlaV As an American, I can confirm we thrive on outrage. We drink it the same way the French drink wine or the Germans drink beer (I'm told both are still pretty popular, but it's been a loooong time since I was in Europe). Wasn't always like this, but my generation did a pretty good job of driving our children collectively insane. What we need is for Russia to land a guy on the moon and kick over our flag on video. Preferably while laughing wildly. The urge to put up an even bigger flag might sane us up (relatively) for a decade or so.

Fair. Embryos have more rights than grown women in some states.

@sofyachy Gotta protect thoose embryos. The rest can go die. Thoose same "some states"

@sofyachy
If you ask me, embryos aren't people until they grow brains and ability to think

USA as one of the worst countries to be a woman in?


I call bullshit

@blue4029 Sounds about right to me. Without reading the study, the biggest problems are probably related to wages, access to healthcare (especially reproductive healthcare), and parental rights (e.g. parental leave, childcare credits).

For instance, despite abortion being a constitutional right (for now), women in many locations find it effectively impossible to have an abortion due to state laws which make it hard for abortion clinics to operate in the state.

Despite laws which nominally prevent employers from discriminating against pregnant women, women are still fired for being pregnant because most workers in the US are "at will" workers who can be fired for most any reason, and it would be time consuming and expensive, if not impossible, for the woman to prove that the reason was because she got pregnant.

So, yeah, I'm sure this is accurate.

@kbdick

Actually while those are issues for the US compared to western European countries especially their not points where the US is in the top [bottom?] 10. They only rank in two areas, joint 3rd for sexual violence and 6th for violence IIRC. I'm still dubious about this considering how much such violence occurs in so many other countries and the idea those two categories drag the US into the overall worst 10. [Unless its say 12th in another area and that's taken into account but the on-line details doesn't make clear how the overall 10 are selected.

@kbdick "The US has issues" doesn't compare at all with things like "You risk getting stoned for not being in the company of your father or husband" and "your genitalia will be mutilated and complaining will only make it worse", or even a plain, simple and universal "you and your family are starving to death".
If you think the rotten teeth babies fed with dr pepper rather than milk because it's cheaper is the worst, you lack perspective, and a lot of it.

Everyone's upset about the US being on the list but I looked it up and the list is specifically in terms of sexual violence, harassment, and being coerced into sex. I don't think they count genital mutilation as part of it. Also, the US was bumped up due to all of the exposure to these issues from the #MeToo and Time's Up campaigns, so it's only the more quantifiable reports that are worse. It's still rather disingenuous of the study, though.

Was that a poll among 548 female experts from the USA? There is 30 countries where people practice female genital mutilation regularly according to the WHO and that's just barely scratching the surface of awful practices that happen around the world. I get it that the USA has a pretty poor human rights record for a developed country but you need to keep it in perspective.

It's a bird!
It's a plane!
It's a survery with questionable date anylysis!
No really,call me skeptical but on that list we only have 3rd world countries, then all of a sudden you have a first world country?No one else thinks is this at least questionable in the way they collect the data?

@Lostdaydreams First, I'm not sure you can say a "first world country" ^^
Secondly, yeah, the survey is questionable by its own confession : https://poll2018.trust.org/methodology/. It is based on a collection of opinions of experts not on actual data...

I live in the USA and I've been to some different countries for both business and pleasure - Canada, Mexico, Belize, India, Egypt, England, France, Holland, Ireland, Greece, Bimini... anyway, my experience, for what it's worth - the US can be sexist but I don't see it as dangerous. In India, women in rural areas will go to the bathroom in a field rather than risk public restrooms because of the danger of being ambushed and raped. I've never had to worry about that in the US. When I was working on my degree, I would sometimes walk from the lab late at night and was never bothered, though if I had been worried, the campus police were available to escort women home.

Now, at the same university, there was a frat culture where we knew that the drinks might be overly-alcoholic, because frat boys wanted to get into girls' panties. So when I went to those parties, I went with friends, and we'd keep an eye on each other. This was over 20 years ago and there has been a growing awareness of how toxic that culture is. However, even back in those days, I never had any issues at dorm parties or other gatherings except for frat parties at a few of the frat houses - it wasn't even all the frat houses, just a few that had a bad reputation. And I would say 95% of the men were not that way - I dated a LOT in college and only had one incident where the guy was not respectful. Whereas from talking to friends from Islamic countries - the percentage of men who see women as prey is much higher and in places like S. Africa the rate of rape is much, much higher.

As far as traveling alone - I felt perfectly safe traveling all over the US, Canada, Greece, England, etc. There are places to avoid (such as the red light district in any large city or the South side of Chicago) but for the most part, I was never harassed or bothered. If anything, I'd find friendly people talk to me when I traveled alone in the US or Europe, never had problems when asking for directions or for a recommendation of where to stay or eat. However, from talking to friends, this is not safe when traveling in parts of Asia or Africa. In the US, I could also wear shorts or other revealing clothes and I might get a wolf whistle or some other annoying verbal attention but I never felt unsafe, whereas when I wore something a little revealing in Egypt I felt very unsafe.

I have driven my car cross country in the US as a single woman, no problems. Sorta doubt I could do that in most of the Islamic world. I have women friends who have hiked the Appalachian Trail in groups of just 2 or 3 women - no problems. So as a woman in the US, you can go backpacking, camping, etc. I also have been able to do all the stuff that independent women should be able to do - open a bank account, buy a house, etc. I did not face discrimination when hired for a job in engineering in the US but I did face some discrimination when it came to promotions... but that was in specific companies. When I changed to other companies, that issue went away.

I guess my point is - the US is not perfect, it still has a way to go, but overall I think I get a pretty fair shake as a woman. I feel safe except in a few places (where men would also not feel safe), I can go to a bar by myself, make and manage my own money, travel independently, and so on. There are definitely areas the US needs to become more equal but there are some really good signs that the US is pretty good - lots of women from other countries try to immigrate to the US, and will preferentially marry American men vs. men from their own country. It's because they have more freedom and rights in the US and because their American husbands treat women with more respect. For example, my American husband did more than half the housework when we were both working.

Having traveled in India and having friends and relatives from the Philippines, Pakistan, S. Korea, Japan, China, Colombia, Peru, parts of Africa, etc., I have seen the differences in the expectations of these cultures for women vs. my experience as an American.

One thing that should not be minimized - rape is probably reported more in the US than it is in places like India or the Islamic world. In places like Dubai, when a woman reports a rape, unless there are 4 male witnesses she could be charged with having sex outside of marriage. I was reading an article about a woman who was raped while working at a hotel in Dubai, she was an Australian - and her friends told her not to report the rape. She did, figuring, since she'd fought the attacker and had bruises and so on, that they would realize she was attacked and the sex was not consensual. But she ended up in jail. There are many reports of this kind of thing happening in the Islamic world.

In the US, it's bad enough for rape victims but at least you won't end up in jail for reporting a rape.

Again, not saying the US is the best. There are still areas the US can improve and should improve. There are still misogynistic men and bad attitudes. But I would really want to dig into the statistics of any survey that put the US behind most of sub-Sahara Africa and the Islamic world when it comes to treatment of women... and maybe I am wrong, not going to say I know everything or am an expert, just giving my opinion.

@Shefali Part of this is that there are so many different experiences for American women depending on your social or economic situation. Women who are financially advantaged, white, and Christian tend to be more protected by society in general. Women of color, LBTQ women, poor women, Muslim women, etc. are significantly more likely to experience harassment, rape, sexual trafficking, abuse, and exploitation. And they are significantly less likely to receive support and protection from law enforcement.

We also lead the bottom of the pack in women's health care with a maternal death and injury rate that rivals third-world nations, rather than advanced nations. And women tend to receive much more severe sentences than men for similar crimes.

@Shefali #9813053

Wow! Thank you. I guess there might be a difference between if a person FEELS safe and if they ARE safe. And there is in some quarters and exagregated sense of danger in some quarters.

I think the numbers that made up the data for this survey are from reported crimes only. The US is seeing a lot more reports of sexual assault now that victims have more support (we’ve also seen a few gender-based killing sprees within the last few years, which are throwing the numbers off). We certainly are no where near perfect, but i have a hard time believing that it’s worse here than in Japan (where more sexual assaults happen, but they are not reported), or Honduras (where murders of women are under-reported because their remains haven’t been found and identified), just to name two examples.
The people who did this study might also be looking specifically at women’s healthcare, which the US lags far behind in, compared to other developed nations (fun fact: the US has the highest maternal death rate of any developed nation, and the only one that is increasing). Add the fact that poor women of color are far less likely to be able to afford healthcare or have a job that pays for it, and i can see where this study is coming from, even though it is incomplete.
All in all, I think that the worldwide gender gap report (https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2018) is a much more accurate study of gender equality around the globe. The US ranks number 49 on that list, which sounds about right (better than most third world countries, but at the bottom of the stack when compared to other first world ones).

@felinecritic Sounds about right.

In certain aspects the US is (relatively) fine, but in others it can be quite regressive relative to other western countries.

Sometimes it has to do more with repressive capitalism than personal or cultural sexism. The US has no nationally require paid maternity leave, and only required UNPAID leave if a company has 50 or more employees.

I could write an essay on why this sucks, but it would fall on deaf ears.

Of course, this is combined with the anti-choice crowd bombing clinics that help women's health, and the general lack of universal healthcare coverage makes it pretty bad for women's issues, even those that have no relation to pregnancy.

Pisses me off. Women got enough to deal with, adding systemic trouble to the mix just makes it worse.

@felinecritic What you are saying makes sense, but it doesn't fit with the popular narrative.

It seems that the MeToo movement has shown that women coming forward to report sexual assault in the US have actually been more supported than in some European countries with more traditional cultures (some of which didn't even grant women the right to vote until much later than the US).

"the US has the highest maternal death rate of any developed nation, and the only one that is increasing). Add the fact that poor women of color are far less likely to be able to afford healthcare or have a job that pays for it, and i can see where this study is coming from, even though it is incomplete."

Agree, these are major problems that need to be addressed.

@felinecritic Top 4 countries on that list: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland. I see a pattern.

@felinecritic I read a few similiar comments, but you are the first one where the logic and argumetns seems sound. Thanks for giving an additional view.

@felinecritic
I am a Japanese woman from Tokyo who has also lived in USA 10 years and while I agree that the culture in Japan makes it harder to report assaults, I felt an incredibly huge difference in day-to-day safety. In USA, in a small college town, I would constantly and daily get catcalls, approaches by men on the street, men yelling lewd things from cars. Men at parties and clubs were extremely aggressive and many got angry and violent when a woman is saying "no". I ended up cutting my hair short and wearing boy clothes just to decrease some of the unwanted attention. This tangible threat of sexual violence was everywhere, constantly, and again this is in a small college town.

In downtown Tokyo I have walked home at 2 am through drinking districts several times a month for over ten years, and not once had an approach from a random man on the street, touch me on a train, or try to do something unwanted. Similarly never have I been catcalled, made to feel unsafe as a woman anywhere, or sexualized for wearing a skirt or having long hair. The day-to-day risk of violence is staggeringly less than I experienced in the USA and I can live in peace.

I recognize that my country has many problems with women not reporting sexual assault, and this is part of the culture of police not taking it seriously, and also women themselves being socialized to not speak up, but as a woman I feel significantly safer in Japan than in USA. It is just how it is. Not everything is just about reporting and statistics.

@felinecritic 3 years later and texas has started a war on women.... Curious if USA has actually gone further up the list now...