[Luis Dias]

That might have something to do with them being not similar circumstances. The amount of pay football women get is extremely low. It's almost like amateur players having an international party, more than anything else. I'm not saying this is a good thing! They definitely should be paid *a lot* more (like, orders of mag more), they actually played well and gave a good spectacle.

I'm just not seeing the huge sexism here. Just as I didn't see it in the latest tennis shenanigan.

[karajorma]

And when someone actually posts such a message about the men's team, you may have a point.

But noone does. Noone would even think of doing that under similar circumstances.

I saw numerous posts about WAGs whenever the mens team were abroad. Those comments were far worse than this fairly harmless tweet which would have passed completely unnoticed had it not been posted without the context.

[Flipside]

Look at how much we focused on Paul Gascoines' tears that year (don't remember which, not a footie fan). If Laura Bassett had been subject to that level of attention for her tears, there would have been an outcry that it was 'sexism'.

Sometimes the shapes in the clouds are just your imagination...

[NGTM-1R]

Why is one a "nazi flag" while the other is just homage to the dead people who fought in a senseless war?

A fascinating, and irrelevant, straw man.

Neither flag, particularly, is enthralling in its history. However, the authentic battle flags at least have an excuse that you are memorializing those of your state or your relation who did what they perceived to be their duty. The flag is still distasteful as ultimately the symbol of the bizarre idea of a republic founded on preserving slavery, but it is also on some level defensible as a banner under which the future of mankind was expressed at Hampton Roads and Petersburg, great deeds were performed, and many died in what they thought was the defense of hearth and home. If someone chooses to fly an authentic flag over a memorial to Confederate dead or display it out of respect for ancestors who fell, this is something about which I think reasonable people can disagree. I am myself of two minds on the subject as this probably makes clear. (While I personally find it too distasteful to want to ever make a personal display, despite a family history that is mildly distinguished in its service to the Confederacy, I do not necessarily have objection to others doing so. There are of course ways to quickly cause such objection to develop.)

The elongated version, as I commented before and which you have conveniently forgotten by the time of this post, does not actually match the naval ensign (stars and layout of them, also general shape of the rectangle) or anything save a prototype considered for the national flag of the Confederacy that was not selected, and was introduced to widespread use only in the late '50s and early '60s to provide a symbol for resistance to civil rights and the federal government. (Before that point only a single example existed.) The only people who died as result of that flag were black; the only way in which they died was at best "civil unrest" rather than "active combat". Its history includes no great acts of bravery or world-altering moments. The flag, as I have now pointed out twice, is not really a flag of the Confederate States of America. It has been imbued with that meaning as a defense, but it is not a meaning it has any legitimate title to.

And on the other hand, there is also the fact that even if it was accepted to be "a Confederate flag" it is not the flag those being memorialized supposedly would recognize or have fought under. While it is a dangerous thing to argue emotional attachment should necessarily make sense, I think that in general we can all agree that if we are attempting to be respectful it behooves us to do so with an eye towards performing respectful acts with the correct implements and behavior. It would be perceived as a grave insult by most veterans to fly the flag of the wrong nation or even the wrong service over war dead, yet that is in effect what is being done. A great deal of my contempt for the argument to preserve the elongated flag stems from this.

[Bobboau]

so, what exactly is the argument at this point?

[General Battuta]

That it's disingenuous to say the 'Confederate flag' has ever been a symbol of state's rights or respect for soldiers in the Civil War. That it's always been a coded symbol of anti-black violence, created for that purpose in the post-Reconstruction era, and that while many people didn't understand that when they flew it, that understanding is spreading now.

[Bobboau]

ok, so if many people flew it with it with the understanding that it was symbolic of something else, then how is it not a symbol of that something else?

[General Battuta]

Because symbolism is not a property of the individual. Symbols exist in popular consciousness and their effect is measured by their ability to communicate.

[Scotty]

I was sorely tempted to post this as an img, but decided it was in poor taste.  Have a link instead, re: symbolism as it relates to popular consciousness

[Bobboau]

Yeah, and there seems to be two populations with two different meanings for the symbol. Which is not surprising when one of those groups was the loser of a very bloody civil war and the other group was the victor and the symbol is related to that war for both sides. I think the message that this symbol communicates varies depending on the region of the population.

Though I do seem to be in the awkward position of defending people who I neither agree with nor who are present and trying to defend themselves (is there anyone reading this who actually sports the confederate flag as a symbol of the south?). but this does feel an awful lot like one group of people trying to force their meaning of a symbol onto another group to whom that symbol is somewhat important.

[Scotty]

The elongated version, as I commented before and which you have conveniently forgotten by the time of this post, does not actually match the naval ensign (stars and layout of them, also general shape of the rectangle) or anything save a prototype considered for the national flag of the Confederacy that was not selected, and was introduced to widespread use only in the late '50s and early '60s to provide a symbol for resistance to civil rights and the federal government. (Before that point only a single example existed.) The only people who died as result of that flag were black; the only way in which they died was at best "civil unrest" rather than "active combat". Its history includes no great acts of bravery or world-altering moments. The flag, as I have now pointed out twice, is not really a flag of the Confederate States of America. It has been imbued with that meaning as a defense, but it is not a meaning it has any legitimate title to.

I want to point out again (thank you NGTM-1R) that the current flag under debate was literally conceived as a symbol of racial oppression.  That does matter, you know, and somebody ignorant of its origins 50 years later does not excuse how it is a deliberate symbol of hate and inequality.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, and there seems to be two populations with two different meanings for the symbol. Which is not surprising when one of those groups was the loser of a very bloody civil war and the other group was the victor and the symbol is related to that war for both sides. I think the message that this symbol communicates varies depending on the region of the population.

No, that's exactly what we've been saying isn't true, or at least what NGTM1R has been presenting quite convincingly. The gap is not between north and south. It's between southerners who created the symbol to say Hurt Black People, and people who replicated that symbol without knowing what it meant.

How did you get from that to what you just said, which is nearly the opposite?

[karajorma]

Basically the point needs to be made to people that flying that flag is actually disrespectful to the people who died in the civil war.

[Bobboau]

people who replicated that symbol without knowing what it meant.

Those people seem to have a different meaning for the flag than 'symbol of oppression' (or supremacy depending on perspective), and that meaning seems to be communicated amongst themselves well. I would like to think they are a much much larger group of people than your first group. Assuming discussions about it's racist origin are correct, then it seems this symbol had been quite thoroughly reappropriated to mean something other than what it used to/was constructed to represent. At least in the south. And it feels like this larger group is having a meaning which is foreign to them being forced upon them (mainly by third parties if we want to shift the focus to just the south). It's origin seems irreverent to me, because if it was concocted to act as a symbol of white supremacy but you have a lot of people in the south who have been raised being taught that that symbol had a meaning different than that, then to all of these people it's legitimately not a symbol of hate. Understanding this history can explain why there exists this dichotomy of meaning, but I don't think it legitimizes one meaning over the other.

[General Battuta]

I mean this as a genuine question, not some kind of smarmy put-down: have you ever read about the modern rhetoric of Neo-Nazi groups and the KKK? It's really fascinating. It involves extremely savvy manipulation of what the group stands for to create claims about 'pride', 'heritage', and 'memory.'

If a large number of people can be taught to believe a symbol has a new meaning, but none of those people are the people the symbol was originally designed to harm, who gets to choose what it means?

[Bobboau]

I mean this as a genuine question, not some kind of smarmy put-down: have you ever read about the modern rhetoric of Neo-Nazi groups and the KKK? It's really fascinating. It involves extremely savvy manipulation of what the group stands for to create claims about 'pride', 'heritage', and 'memory.'

I am familiar with it, and I can see how that could be the nucleus for southerner's current understanding of the flag's meaning. If you take that manipulated language out of the context of the groups that started it, the racist component could end up completely lost. Or the entire south could be a bunch of blatant racists, wall to wall, without exception, and I'm naively giving them the benefit of the doubt. I know it's certainly a much worse problem there, but I would like to believe that the problem is overstated and an inaccurate stereotype.

If a large number of people can be taught to believe a symbol has a new meaning, but none of those people are the people the symbol was originally designed to harm, who gets to choose what it means?

I do not see why a symbol cannot mean different things to different people. The modern American flag certainly has that effect globally. I don't think anyone gets the choose what other people think or believe, and to that effect southerners can't tell blacks*/northerners it's not a symbol of slavery, hence the current conflict.

*it is my understanding that there are a great many blacks in the south who have been educated in the 'southern' meaning of the flag and so who would not be applicable here

[General Battuta]

But we do choose what we think and believe, all the time! We make collective choices about what's acceptable. I cannot greet your mother by leering at her and telling her we should ****. The American flag is another great example. If the capital of Zambia flew the American flag, that would (rightly) draw a lot of protest from people who see it as a sign that Zambia is expressing submission to America.

[Bobboau]

'we' don't always agree. The fact that we do sometimes, even most of the time, does not mean we will always be able to, this might be an example of a time when we cannot.

[General Battuta]

But somehow we ended up at pretty universal meetin' your mom etiquette, and pretty universal agreement on what it would mean to fly another country's flag.

[Bobboau]

In Japan you bow as a sign of respect, in European culture it is a sign of submission, remember this?

different cultures, different groups of people have different meanings for things.

This is cultural relativism 101. I know you know this.