Imagine, if you will, a very large island (or a small continent if you prefer).
On this island there are horses, but for various evolutionary reasons they
are all brown. Every last one of them. Also on the island are people, who
develop completely isolated from the rest of the world. They develop language,
writing, and eventually create dictionaries, all without interacting with any
other civilizations. Not unsurprisingly, their dictionary defines their word
for horse basically as a large, brown, four-legged, hoofed animal.
One day, a boat arrives with people from another island/continent. Cultural
exchanges of various kinds ensue, and eventually one of our island-folk visit
the other island. Shortly after arriving, he sees someone riding a
black horse. "What's that animal?" he asks his guide. "Why,
it's a horse," she replies, confused. "I've seen many people
riding them on your island." "Ridiculous," replies the man
from our island, "horses are brown!" "But surely,"
says his guide, "you can see that it is in every practical way
identical to the horses on your island, except that it happens to be
brown." "Perhaps," says our islander, "but it's clearly
not a horse. As you can see, it says right here in this dictionary that
horses are brown, so that creature must be some entirely different
animal."
At this point, it should be apparent that our islander is rather foolish.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine how this story
applies to people who try to base their primary argument against gay marriage
on the fact that marriage is defined to be between a man and a woman.
(For those of you already compiling a list of reasons why this is a
terrible analogy, I invite you to consider the definition of "person"
at the drafting of the US Constitution, and what bearing that has on the
validity of the civil rights movement.)
Category: Society
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Anyone unsure about Blizzard's target audience should take a look at their
wallpapers.
These artists are clearly all people who grew up on the old D&D books,
which teach us the important lesson that fantasy-genre women wear basically no
clothing. I always felt sorry for the women depicted in these books, on the
covers of fantasy novels, and in now in many video games. Don't they realize
how doomed they are? Their male fighting companions get full suits of plate
armor, or at least a nice hauberk or something. What do the women fighters
get? Chainmail bikinis, and if they are really lucky some thigh-high boots.
Helmets? No way. So basically, they will be fine if their opponents attack
only their breasts (or rather, the third of their breasts that's protected),
but otherwise that they are SOL.
On the other hand, heroines are better off than evil women, who often
don't
get any clothing at all. I guess the fact that she's not human makes the
nudity ok? At some point, they should give up the pretense and just
strap feathers to some women's arms and legs and film porn to sell to
teenagers.
Category: Society
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