Hi Dissonant.

I suspect this is true, but not as prevalent as the article makes out. The main point is that there is a big division between urban liberals and rural conservatives, which you get in all countries. The speakers are in the former, but they are a minority and not in power.

Ya, but he asked you about Iran, not the US. Hiyooooooooooooo!

Your little quip would be cuter if their weren't in fact high rates of sexual promiscuity (or at least unwanted pregnancies), drug and alcohol abuse in rural, conservative/religious areas of the US.

I'm not sure I see the point. Are drugs, alcohol and sex liberal things?

I always associate alcohol with farmers who started making whiskey as opposed to watered down beer, fueling alcoholism and domestic violence.

Likewise, to me, drugs seem easier to make in the countryside (large property, smaller police force) that you can then ship off into the cities.

Ie I don't think liberals have a chokehold on those vices and don't associate them with political philosophy. Especially not hooch.

In fact I think it's the prevalence of them that creates a conservative backlash. (Similar to stricter/semi-militant churches in poorer urban areas.

When I have sex I do it with a strong liberal bias.

Your penis is bright red, and it points to the left?

Around here, liberals are blue.

I don't think it fits a strict left/right spectrum.

Alcohol is something humanity always wants. It isn't especially difficult or expensive to make, so it attracted taxes from Imperial powers as a way to extract wealth from a subjugated population.

Was it left or right wing for the Irish to make Poitín to deny the English bastards the tax on malted barley?

Obviously such indulgences have no political bias- but there is that tendency for religious conservatives to blame such excesses on 'liberal' cultural values, despite the fact that their own communities (and leaders) tend to be particularly plagued by them.

You say "sexual promiscuity" like it's a bad thing.

It's a bad thing by the standards of these particular communities. The actual bad thing is that the repression, misinformation, and hypocrisy leads to the bad side effects- unwanted pregnancies, STD's, persistent poverty, etc.

But the point also (although it gets lost in the sensationalist "orgies! sex parties! tidbits) is that Iran's traditional culture affords relatively equal status to men and women. This is not any less true among conservatives than it is among liberals, and in fact can be traced back to ancient Iranian culture.

People always love to blame religions such as fundamentalist Islam for repression of women and phenomena like female genital mutilation, but the reality is that these things have been and always will be far more related to culture than to religious beliefs. The fact that women represent 70% of university graduates and 43% of salaried workers in Iran, an Islamic theocracy where women are legally restricted, makes this fairly obvious.

I highly recommend reading Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, as it covers much of this same territory.

Yes, wonderful book!

I don't share a beer and actually try to understand anybody at all.

The article on ladyboys is quite interesting too.

Jumping from article to article, site to site, I eventually wound up at the satirical How To Spot A Masturbator



I think we can safely accept that 100% of SEers look like this. Including the girls.

I've seen enough "what do you look like" threads to know you're right.

Aren't we due for another of those posts? Its been over 2 months!