"I Want To Be A Girl, Because Girls Can Do Anything"

a reply to: andy06shake

How many girls (or boys in the village who are likely herding cattle) dream of wanting to be astronauts or the president though?

You are assuming that every child throughout the world has exactly the same dreams. Reaching for the sky for that little girl and that little boy may be as simple as aiming to be the village headman or headwoman. Certainly, those are attainable goals, and no less worthy than anything you or I or our children might dream up. Just because they are not what you or I in our vastly different societies consider to be the pinnacle doesn't mean they are not the pinnacle to those children.

You diminish them and their dreams with your first world perspective.

a reply to: sapien82

Come and see the inherent inconsistencies of Intersectionality and the Progressive Stack!

She made the assumption that she would be fine because women are victims. But, white women are not as high on the victim stack as women of color, and by excluding them, she opened herself to criticism. Remember, in intersectionality, no one can talk to the perspective and experiences to of a group like an authentic member of that group.

She's lucky the LGBT+Whatever Other Letters We're Adding This Week lobby didn't also fire at her for not including women and transwomen from their perspective on her little party.

Then you need LGBT+Whatever Other Letters We're Adding This Week + Women of Color to really round out the circle.

And I'm sure there are many other intersectionalities in the progressive stack this women left out of her Brexit Knitting Circle.

a reply to: ketsuko

I don't think i am assuming that at all.

If i am assuming anything its that most people simply wish to have enough to get by and survive.

And that's not even in the third world nations but the first ones also.

I cannot have any other perspective than the one that i have, which is a first-world perspective, which is not to say that i have not witnessed poverty or been part of such.

Fact is though it's not all sunshine and rainbows, austerity is rife and going nowhere anytime soon.

It's not me that diminishes peoples dreams, that's just the world in which we live.

a reply to: andy06shake

Let me try it another way:

I spent some time as an inner city school teacher. Do you know what those kids were dreaming of? They all wanted to be rappers or pro basketball players. There were no doctors, lawyers or presidents in that crew.

Granted, the odds were about the same, but different walks of life have different dreams. Different cultures will have different dreams. Just because the little girl walking 20 miles to gather water in her African or Indian village has no chance ever of being the US president, doesn't mean her dream is negated. She almost certainly never dreams of being the US president in the first place.

So it's wrong for you to say that you should never tell your kids they can be what they want based on that.

After all, who was Malala? She was just a simple village girl who dreamed about getting an education and wouldn't take no for an answer even when there was a gun pointed at her head. She survived getting shot for her dream, and now what does she do?

I'm pretty sure you would have told her she couldn't have her dream if she had been your daughter.

a reply to: ketsuko

Rappers or pro basketball players are even less realistic than doctors or astronauts in some respects.

Might not be wrong but its unrealistic and amounts to the same as telling them fairytales.

I'm pretty sure if i was Malalas father i would have married her off for the dowry as unfortunate as the case may be.

No point in the little fellows having there heads in the sky when they canny even afford or be facilitated the education and/or basic amenities to allow them to achieve their dreams as its simply nonsensical at best even if the intention is well-meant.