According to an article in the NYTimes, the East German Communist regime crafted a new, better kind of woman, and today’s unified Germany should learn lessons from the totalitarian police state that was finally toppled along with the Berlin Wall at the end of the Cold War.
Today, women who grew up in Communist East Germany are supposedly more confident, mobile and happier with themselves than those from the West. Additionally, they make almost as much money as men on average, and are far more likely to be working mothers.
According to one working woman quoted in the article, the East was wrong to do such things as chain people to radiators in solitary confinement and force students to spy on each other, but it was better for women all the same. She says that the position of women was far better before the Communist state failed, but now Germany in general is headed in the “right direction” (i.e. becoming more like the Communist regime):
…on women, the East was ahead. We are still far from where we were 20 years ago, but at least we are now moving in the right direction.
{ 67 comments… read them below or add one }
The main title of that article was “THE FEMALE FACTOR”. It should have been “THE FEMALE CHAUVINIST FACTOR”.
It stated
“The success former Soviet bloc nations had in harnessing female labor offers lessons now that many Western countries are facing looming skill shortages, rising debt levels and declining birthrates. ”
There are looming skill shortages – at least in the US – due to sex discrimination in the education system. The US only worries about educating half its population.
http://sxmodels.blogspot.com/2010/01/decreasing-percentage-of-college.html
The declining birth rate is because the western judicial sytem has replaced famly law with feminist law. What man in his right mind would want to get married and start a family under these conditions?
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Well said. You know, the other day, my girlfriends’ boss told her he’s going to be retiring within the year, and that she’ll lose her job as his secretary.
And I’ve been mulling over the possibility of having her move in with me and taking a lesser paying temp job while we share costs. Of course, I’m a university educated professional and would make three times what she would.
But then I thought to myself, whoa… if I live with her for a year, we’re common-law, and she gets half my shit. If “we” buy a house and we live in it, she gets half the house if things go bad.
And that’s even before any children would get involved. Sigh.. you’re right. It’s insanity, why would any man agree to it?
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Yes, the article is correct – the right way to go, if you want to live in grass huts. The East German economy was not sustainable. And now unified German society is not sustainable because its birth rate is below its replacement rate. I’m sure when the Muslim immigrants become the majority, they’ll create a different kind of “new woman”.
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Marxism makes everyone the same. There’s no prospect of ever doing any better if you work harder or are more competent. That’s why it’s considered a utopia by feminists. It masks female inferiority. The ONLY people who do well are government beauracrats, as they get favorable treatment.
A gender neutral world where everyone makes the same amount of money and wears the same clothes and the state raises their children and intervenes on behalf of women. It’s a feminist orgasm.
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Feminism has always been about the transfer of power and wealth from men to women, via Big Daddy Guv. Affirmative Actine, Title IX, Divorce, DV, VAWA, IMBRA and a plethora of Government enforced statutes are what makes a police state.
Unfortunately, women fail to realize when you give a woman ALL rights during sex allowing them to claim “date rape” for any reason. The right to kill a mans child thru abortion, to hold a mans child ransom thru child support. Giving them preference in education and the job market along with make believe jobs in human resources will cause a society to fail.
Eventually men reach the conclusion that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Since men invent, build and maintain everything and women seem determined to disenfranchise men, all their really doing is putting a gun to their own heads and pulling trigger.
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From the article:
It’s amazing, isn’t it? The lack of an ability to make a connection? The fact is that all that spying, show trials, police state repression and suppression of free speech was necessary to create these “empowered” women? Sane men did everything they could to get away from this state, through escape or suicide.
From a wikedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
People flee from forced collectivism, in any way shape or form. When it’s especially heavy handed like the former Eastern Bloc, everyone tries to flee. The borders aren’t there to prevent foreigners from coming in, they’re there to prevent you from leaving. Even in comparatively benign socialisms like Canada’s, the Brain Drain has long been the topic of a lot of angst and debate.
The fact is, the majority of this collectivism is a wealth transfer from men to women. Why would any sane man participate in such a system? The nature of women is to choose the most powerful man possible. Why, then, put effort into a system that does not allow you to raise your own social status, and your desirability to women?
To maintain such a system, then, massive controls have to put in place on men in order to get them to keep them from fleeing or from formenting dissent. There is no other way to do it. Those “empowered” women the New York Times lionizes were empowered by male slaves who lacked the means to leave.
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This is truly an Onion-esque article.
I seem to recall at GDR female athletes in the Olympics were very muscular and hard-looking. The GDR dominated all women’s events, by a much greater margin than they dominated male events.
They effectively used steroids to create near-men to trounce all other countries (including the USSR) in female events.
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Why not ship all AW to East Germany?
A swap?
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Feminism has always been about the transfer of power and wealth from men to women, via Big Daddy Guv. Affirmative Actine, Title IX, Divorce, DV, VAWA, IMBRA and a plethora of Government enforced statutes are what makes a police state.
Don’t forget that seemingly gender-neutral programs like SS and Medicare are still 80% paid into by men, but 80% withdrawn by women.
The vast majority of all government spending is a transfer from men to women.
That is why feminism is heavily dependent on the government bubble, and will end as the government bubble ends (due to tax-base shrinkage, dollar devaluation due to high debt, etc.).
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I can’t help it, but when i’m thinkin about east-german women (and girls), two picture comes to mind:
1. The swimmer whales, who won everything on Olypics, with a little hair on their faces (and lots of steroids in their bodies);
2. Bunch of young chicks on the coast of the Balaton lake, every summer, known as the easiest fuck arond. Usually they lied they are from the west.
…but anyway, if that eastern -german regime was so good, why did they want to escape no matter what, all the time? Not only the men, but the women also. You should see how many people leaved their cars and everything behind, when the border was opening.
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Hermit, you got that right. Remember, they built a wall topped with razor wire to keep people IN, not to keep people out. No one in their right mind wanted to live in the Communist countries, except for the Commie apparatchiks, who gobbled up all the wealth while the people starved. (Except for the E. German women athletes, who were obviously well-fed.)
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I recently spent over a week in Berlin, so not nearly enough to make an informed opinion on this issue.
But my observation of the women was that they seemed to be low maintenance and lacked the bitch shield that American women have. They were also super-affectionate towards their boyfriends and husbands. When I saw couples, the women lacked that vibe of “look at this pathetic chump i’m stuck with.”
I talked to a German about it and he said the women have to be nicer to their men, lest the man say “F you” and go to a brothel for the evening.
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Soldiers have shot some people every year at that wall. But they did not stop trying to escape anyway…
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Don’t quote me on it but I believe east germany didn’t do so well economically before the wall fell, and is now the most economically depressed part of germany. That could explain the higher rates of working motherhood, etc. Quite funny what the feminists hold up as an ideal society for women.
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Peter, don’t do that shit man.
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I call the writer of the article a useful idiot [of marxists]. I have the right to do so, ‘cos she’s writing about us- eastern-european people- without asking us, how it was in reality.
The whole article is BS, mere fantasy.
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Ya know, for followers of the doctrine of dialectic materialism, they aren’t half prone to the reactionary romantic fanaticism the Germans call Ostalgia.
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The reason the east German women are better is because they got their asses kicked the same as everybody else. Western women are so priviledged that they have become a worthless drain on society. Even the article was written from the point of view of some spoiled clueless western cunt. The East Germans “got it right ,” the stupid ass thinks day care for all is the answer. The answer is no priviledges for pussy and get your ass to work bitch. “oh, you don’t like that? Well come over here to get your ass kicked and when we finish here you can get to work.” Social problems go away real fast when you run things like that.
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East Germany did have at least one thing in its favor. It collapsed after 45 years. So depending on how you age our feminist state, it offers hope.
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the hermit seems to know what I’m talking about. The east german women are like that because they were told to be like that.
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East Germany did have at least one thing in its favor. It collapsed after 45 years. So depending on how you age our feminist state, it offers hope.
The Misandry Bubble pops by 2020.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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thehermit: “Soldiers have shot some people every year at that wall. But they did not stop trying to escape anyway…”
Hermit, I’ll always remeber what the communists did. My ancestors were from Halychyna (Western Ukraine or Ruthenia depending on your history book) and many were slaughtered by the Reds. Those that were not killed were deported from their family farms, on which they had lived and worked for centuries, and sent to factories in Kiev to be virtual slave laborors – essentially, back to serfdom.
No, I will never forget.
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Does anyone need anymore proof that women are out to destroy freedom and civilization? It’s all because women refuse to give up their pussy privileges and stop being parasites on male created civilization. If we don’t stop them in a few years we will all be living in East Germany. In a few decades the new “East Germany” will collapse but there will be no one outside to save us since feminism is worldwide meaning those few of us who survive the collapse will be living in caves.
Men built civilization that got us out of the caves, and women are working overtime to take us back to the caves unless we men stop them.
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It’s hardly a surprise that the Soviet/Warsaw Bloc model would be advocated by feminists. Without even getting into feminism’s ideological roots and historical connections to Marxism, at the end of the day, the goal is to have everyone – men and women alike – absolutely dependent on the state, so they can thus be transformed and modeled into the “New Soviet Man”, if you will. For now it suits them to use women as a bludgeoning ram against men, to for example destroy the family, and since women are obedient herd creatures so easily manipulated, I doubt they’ll ever stop such favoritism entirely. But the tide will eventually start to turn somewhat against females, as the state relies on them more for labor and less on the feminine traits that the vanquished “patriarchy” sought to protect. In other words, like all totalitarian, unworkable utopian ideologies, expect it to start eating some of its own.
That’s if it gets that far, anyways. Let’s hope it collapses on itself before we get there.
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OT. Men who are fathers might want to read this;
http://www.avoiceformen.com/2010/09/11/a-lack-of-rights-for-men-a-mother-fights-back/
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I know. The ukrainians suffered much more from communism, than us hungarians.
i know about this also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
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I wish a lot of strenght for her.
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This is the same USA that enjoyed a period of McCarthyism? 50 years of feminism and communism can now be advocated as progress – the mind boggles.
The article itself is well worth reading for the lulz. Classic lines such as
bring to mind the image of crabs in a bucket keeping each other down, whilst
make me want to invent a time machine and travel back to a better age.
I’ll just bet she was, if the image of GDR female atheletes is anything to go by.
And I don’t even need to comment on this line:
lol
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Katrin Bennhold,the author of the original article is just another example of a woman lost in feminism.
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This article is like a parody!
She cannot be serious. Did she ever hop the border back in the day and see how those people were actually living? I was in East Berlin, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary regularly before the wall came down. It was sad, like visiting a third-world country. Even in the big resort towns, the buildings were crumbling, and only the fronts were painted. If you looked down a side-ally, it was a ghetto.
Eastern German women worked because if they didn’t, then they didn’t eat. And do you know how they worked? They were so unproductive that they probably cost the enterprises more money than they earned. Western German women were only hired for jobs where their employment made economic sense, because the companies wanted to make some actual money. One of the reasons German companies became economic powerhouses was because they were majority-male, and the workforce consisted of children raised in married families by their mothers and fathers. The Western women were valuable to their husbands as wives and mothers, so they didn’t have to do “pretend jobs” in order to be respect and fed. That was the sociological basis of the Wirtschaftswunder. After the fall of the wall, the profitable and productive West German companies bought up all of the East German pretend-companies that made crappy products nobody wanted to buy.
They put their kids in day care because they had to, not because they were liberated. When the wall came down, the young Czech women lined up along the road to Marienbad, in the hopes that some German tourist would pick them up and fuck them for some lunch money. Girl Power!
Their lives sucked ass. We Western German women used to send them care packages because we felt sorry for them. When we’d go visit our relatives on the other side, we brought them food and supplies, and they cried when receiving it. They were in the middle class and their houses were like hovels!
After the wall came down, East Germany practically emptied of young women because they all ran over to the Western side to get away from the grimy hell-hole they lived in. You could see the new arrivals walking around the grocery stores, in awe at all of the cheap food for sale. It was pathetic.
The reason East German women are so self-confident now is because there is an enormous sex-imbalance in the East (25 percent or higher excess of men in these regions), whereas West German women have more sexual competition. And the pay gap is smaller because of unionization, not feminism.
This woman is insane and a complete idiot.
You want to know how the West Germans feel about East Germany? They say: Put the damn wall back up! As soon as they came over, the damn Ossies ground the Wirtschaftswunder to a halt. They’re also draining the retirement coffers and living off of our Solidaritätszuschlag. East Germany is like one giant ghetto, living off of our monthly welfare check. Then they have to nerve to write crap like this. Put back up the damn wall and let them rot in their own shit, like they were before! We saved them from that fate, and sacrificed on their behalf, and now they show zero gratitude. I’m sick of the Ostalgie.
She’s conveniently leaving out a vital part of the story: East German tend to be poorer than West German women, and have more illegitmate children. In other words, she’s comparing the proles with the middle class. Of course they have children younger and are more likely to work full-time. They aren’t married! They’re a bunch of working-class ghetto hoes with blonde hair. They’re self-confident alright, which is why nobody wants to marry them. The West German women who emulate them also die alone with cats. Nearly 1/4 of college-educated German women end up completely childless because nobody wants to marry them. And, just like with American ghetto hoes, their men are mostly unemployed and everybody’s living off the dole.
Yeah, they’re dragging us down with them and demolishing our country with their Marxist crap. Put back up the damn wall and tell them to STFU!
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I was in Northern Germany a year after the wall came down and I remember it being a huge culture shock for East Germans driving over stuffed in there sad little Trabants to visit. They were so clueless about concepts like business and work and self-reliance. The government did everything, they even thought for you.
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That’s me above.
Slipped on the keyboard…
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Socialism 2.0.
Women don’t even seem to grasp that you’ll have to earn it through sweat and blood. But then again, we’re living in a spoiled generation. where idiocy reigns supreme
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I did a little googling, and a little bing, here’s one salty christian. I don’t know if I should chuckle, or worry. Well I let you decide
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Feminism/feminism_is_evil.htm
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Okay, I’ve calmed down. This article was very shocking, although you think I would know to expect this by now. The ungrateful wretches.
At any rate, I just wanted to note that it is an affront to decency to refer to Angela Merkel as an example of East German womanhood. She is the good and moral daughter of a Christian minister, born in West German Hamburg, who’s political rise was in the CDU under Helmut Kohl in the West. Most Eastern voters can’t stand her, but even the Bavarian CSU voters have great respect for her. She is nothing like the women over there, which is the reason for her political success.
Furthermore, another NY Times article states:
But that is an enthymeme, not a syllogism. Where is the proof that the falling birth rate is caused by mothers not working full-time? The truth is that the birthrate for homemakers is much higher than across the female population. If more women went to work, the birthrate might drop even further. There is proof of that, because as more women have entered the workforce, the birthrate has declined further (and the children do worse in school). The more women work, the fewer children they have. Just as in America, England, Canada, and anywhere else you look at the statistics.
There are fewer children because there are fewer marriages, and not everyone wants to push out bastards. Unless they are enlightened souls from the East, of course.
The stupid Elterngeld program that they mention was a complete and utter failure. All that resulted was in the lower-class reproducing at an even higher rate than before. The women at the top aren’t going to make more babies until they are married, and no self-respecting German man is going to marry a woman who refuses to cut back on her working hours. They only laugh at them and call them Karrierefrau. Such women are worthless because they are like lesser men, and most German men aren’t gay.
German men don’t have to put up with that feminist crap because they have other options. They marry “out” at a higher rate than any other population of men in the West; many even emigrate permanently for that very reason. That is what is underlying the net-emigration of college-educated German men. Everyone knows that they are good husbands, so women all over the world line up to say, “I do”. Unlike the stupid feminists, we’re smart enough to value them for the prizes they are.
That puts pressure on the West German women to behave themselves and keep to Kinder, Küche, Kirche. And the women who don’t go along with the program can go cry with their cats, or line up for the dole with the Ossies.
American men would do well to take a page from the German men’s book.
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Silly feminists. Can they name even one woman who lead a communist/marxist nation?
Perhaps they think it would be better to have a communist/marxist “patriarch” rule over them?
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@ Alte
I have a great respect for Germany because I was a chemistry major and chemistry was born and raised in Germany. I even took German in high school (ultra geek).
When I say I am leaving the US I am serious. When I traveled you know who convinced me to do it? German men I met.
The best countries to live in if you want a relationship with a women have had long time German emigrees by the bunch. Lot’s of beer gardens and German food.
And when I discussed the things we discuss on here they all agreed with what I am saying. In fact some of what I am saying is stuff they told me.
German men, very smart, I think we could indeed learn a lesson from them.
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Every third child in Germany has a foreign parent and a German parent, and in the majority of cases the German parent is the father. And, as you note, there are a lot of German men married to foreigners who are expats (such as my husband).
About 1-in-5 German marriages in 2006 were binational marriages. This number was actually a decline from before, as more couples marry in Denmark (elope), and German men simply leave the country entirely.
Here’s the list:
When my husband introduces me to male acquaintances in Germany, they often give me a long stare, smile broadly, and shake his hand emphatically in congratulations. After he points out that I’m American, not South American or Southeast Asian (what they usually assume), they look at him like he’s nuts.
It’s funny to watch their faces and guess at what they’re thinking. Why bother marrying an American woman? They’re like German women except that they can’t cook, shop more, and are very loud and obnoxious.
I’m bewildered by American men’s loyalty to their women. As if the women were anything special, just because they are American. Women are women, they all have the same basic equipment. Pick a decent one, wherever you find her, and get on with your life. I assume it’s a hold-over from slavery, or something.
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I came over from Eastern Europe before the wall fell. I still remember the visual shock of it to this day, and I was a little kid.
The blandness and grayness, dirtiness, and sameness of communism was contrasted so sharply with the pleasing colours of shiny new cars and advertisements and clean streets and beautiful storefronts. It was unreal, as if your entire life had been lived under overcast skies and today was your first day in the sunshine.
To further Alte’s point, millions of East Germans had fled to the West even before the wall fell. The men all ran away because what’s the point of working your ass off if you can’t improve your social status? Women always rank men by social status, and in a culture of enforced sameness, only the “natural” alphas and the sleazes at the top of the Party get any poking done. And enforced the sameness had to be – the border was there to keep the Easterners in, not the foreigners out. A massive spy network of 150,000 paid informants run by 90,000 employees spied on a population of only 16 million.
East Germany was also tops in suicide: (from a Time article back when the Western World was sane)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,828913,00.html
If anyone wants an illustration of what Alte’s talking about, rent “The Lives of Others” or “Goodbye, Lenin” in the foreign movie section of video store near you.
To sum up: East Germany was a neat illustration of the depths of depravity that were necessary to undo the natural gender roles of men and women – and even then, as pointed out above, the country was ruled by men anyway!
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I guess the solution found by German men was not lost on our womans studies professors, hence IMBRA.
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The feminists have been pushing such laws in Germany, as well, but the men (including the Muslim men) aren’t having it.
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Thank you, Peter. Yes, I completely agree with everything you wrote. Goodbye Lenin! was a cute movie, but it was definitely an Ostalgie film.
Many of our relatives came over, both before and after the fall, and they had a similar experience to you. They said it was like entering a fairy land where anything seemed possible. We are Sudetenländer (Bohemia), so our family is very dispersed across the various borders.
West Germany was great and East Germany was crap. There is a reason why it went bankrupt, after all. People used to know that, but how quickly they forget.
I consider myself blessed by God to have been born in the BRD, where women were valued. This woman is a complete fool who would have German women turn themselves into materialistic, communist sluts. As if the world didn’t already have enough of those already. The Russians don’t know what to do with all of theirs. Perhaps we should just import them, as they seem to be in surplus over there.
She knows herself that it is a completely unappetizing prospect for most women, which is why German woman are constantly being told they have to go to work “for the economy” and so that they can “pay taxes”. Good little worker bees. What next, a Mutterkreuz?
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Americans aren’t that worldly.
We assume everyone is like us.
We’re also extremely idealistic and easily swayed by pop culture.
German’s better appreciate the HARD COLD FACTS of a situation.
Let me tell ya Alte, the loyalty is very much on the wane here.
There’s a significant under-current of dissent brewing among men.
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The East Germans did not live in hovels. I remember the Soviet Union quite well and, yes, we were very poor but it was never like a third world country, and Eastern Germany was much better (the wall fell at the point when the economy had totally disintegrated but it was more stable before that). Yes, life was very hard and it still is, but it has never been a “grimey hell hole”. What sucks the most about Eastern Europe is not the lack of material comfort, but the lack of equality (the Gini index is terrible), lack of tolerance between people and a lack of gentle Western type of men.
Sure, the people were shocked to see the full Western stores, but they had had no freedom of movement, it is only a natural reaction of surprise. It is unethical to ridicule that.
The sex imbalance is exactly the reason why Eastern European women are not self-confident (btw, the ratio applies to older generations, not the young ones). Western women have a much higher self image and they are much less humble. Every time I go to the West my confidence goes up immediately because I’m treated as much more valuable as a woman. It is a tremendous confidence boost, imagine living in an environment like that every day. Eastern women are not more confident, maybe they’re just more bold because they have to be.
Ok, put the wall back up, but then let all the Western companies move out of the East as well. It has been very lucrative for them here.
Why such pathological hatred against Eastern European women? For what? For the fact that we have to work because there is no other choice? Your hysterically condescending attitude is really out of place.
German men do marry EE women. German men love and marry Polish women and others because they look more feminine than the West German women. A friend of mine is married to a nice German beta and he treats her like a princess. The German boys that come here really love us.
The low birthrate is caused by the fact that the women are overburdened. They have to pull it all, and there is little help, hence no children are being born. It is merely a practical consideration and has nothing to do with being married or not. But Western women don’t have kids either, Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.
German men have to marry outside because there is a surplus of men there. German women are doing just fine. It is very obvious. When you look at those foreign marriages they are pretty balanced between the sexes.
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This article isn’t very accurate, but the comparisons are interesting. The EE women simply aren’t as “spoiled” or well treated as Western women, that’s why they had to build their independence extra hard. My American friends always wonder about how “tough” the people here are.
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1. When I worked in Frankfurt in the mid 90s as a lawyer, I worked with mostly German lawyers in the firm. Out of nine German male colleagues who were involved with women, only 2 were involved with German women. 2. The rest? Eastern Europe wasn’t quite the craze then that it is now, due to being so soon after the changes, but the women were from a wide range of countries, including France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Argentina, Brazil … basically “anywhere but Germany”. And no, this wasn’t because of a lack of German women. There was, however, a strong preference they had for non-German women — they would say as much openly if you asked them as well. It’s not a new trend in Germany, but it’s been going on for 20+ years now. And having lived in Germany twice, I can understand why.
2. The first time I lived in Germany was in divided Berlin in the mid 1980s. I’ve been in communist East Berlin probably 20 times, and in other parts of the GDR during the communist era as well. The place sucked donkey’s balls. They burned brown coal for heat and had no pollution controls for their crappy little cars, and so the place literally stank. The air was full of garbage, the buildings were sooty. The food often tasted of sawdust. It was not a nice place. But, East Germany did have it better than the rest of Eastern Europe, as I saw when I traveled to what was then “Czechoslovakia” (particularly outside of Prague) and Hungary. The situation in the East was terrible, and it wasn’t simply a matter of the West having more to buy. The East was a polluted, environmentally degraded, chemical and coal-smelling place — almost a throwback to what it must have been like during the height of the 19th century industrial revolution without the productivity. I revisited many of the places in the former GDR the second time I lived in Germany in the 1990s, and found them to be only slowly recovering. More recently, things are better, because whole areas were basically bulldozed and rebuilt, and the entire infrastructure was brought up to contemporary standards — making it, among other things, much cleaner.
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I am not able to copy-paste from the book. But read the intro to this short story “The Case of the Blackmailed Beauty” from “Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye” to get an idea how German men function in matters of the heart:
http://books.google.se/books?id=Z3YhiZnyPD4C&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=%22bangkok+private+eye%22+%22seem+to+have+as+many%22&source=bl&ots=Pr7_w6Q6pN&sig=nRnBHTgPbxmlwD9UpxVBXqLH6Bg&hl=sv&ei=iZOvTLmZBIKJ4Qabou3sBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Strange. Where I lived in the Soviet Union, it was quite green and clean. Yes, the infrastructure was run down and we were poor (and my Dad had to buy his Black Sabbath records in the black market), but it was nothing like what you describe, novaseeker. Besides, the day care, health care and education were free. I’m not nostalgic at all, but it was not what you’re painting. I guess everyone has their own individual experience.
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juxtaposed with…
To naive and dim to connect the dots…you’re out of your league here sweetums. Best not to comment on most things, really. ?? ????? Arche!
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You know what I meant. I simply replied to them saying that the buildings were so terrible (which they weren’t even that bad), yes, the streets were in a rather bad condition, but the day care, etc., was for free. Yes, many things sucked, but it was nowhere near the hell they are painting. But I guess it makes you feel better to spread lies about Eastern Europeans and demonize them.
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Skadi,
I was talking specifically about East German women, not Eastern European women overall (although that sucked, as well). The Czech and Polish women are much better than the East German women, for example.
Now be silent and let the adults continue with their conversation.
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Novaseeker,
East Germany was definitely better off than Czechoslovakia or Hungary, from what I remember. But definitely much worse off than West Germany. Hungary was okay, if you stayed near Lake Balaton. You could live like a king there, for a pittance. And they had the best food. Prag was okay, but Plze? was so ugly with all of those communist-block buildings. We stayed at the best hotel there, but it was a joke by western standards.
My mother’s family is from near Mariánské Lázn?, which is gorgeous now, but the communists sorely neglected it. They really did only keep up the fronts. And the stench! All of those smelly cars and chimneys.
I was mostly in rural Bohemia, but I remember the buildings crumbled down and the impassable roads. My mother cut a big check for her town’s church to be rebuilt. The villagers had used the bricks for their homes, and it had turned into a ruin.
But my strongest memory was the hookers. Lined up for miles. I’d never seen anything like that in my life. It has mostly gone away, though.
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Sorry, but the Soviet Bloc sucked compared to the West. That was pretty obvious to any Westerner who visited it during the Cold War era. Things have improved greatly since then — I have traveled fairly extensively in Poland, the Czech Rep, Hungary, Russia and a couple of other CIS countries over the past 10-15 years and things have certainly improved. But suggesting that the Soviet Bloc was mot a decrepit mess before the fall is really misleading.
I will say that I was never in the Baltics, and it could very well be that the Baltics were in a better state than many of the other Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries. It could be — I don’t know. But East Germany was a depressing pit during the Cold War — cold, grey, flavorless, and pollution-ridden. And the other Eastern European capitals I visited were not very much better. Things have improved, but there’s no need to reinvent history.
How old were you in 1989, anyway, Skadi? I’m guessing it’s under 7 years old.
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You flatter her, Nova, just like the woman who carded me at the grocery store today.
Given that her dad was a Sabbath fan in the 70s (roughly the same age as my mom in that case and metal fandom suggests he reproduced young), I’d guess she was about 15 when the Berlin Wall went down, and is currently looking up at the big Four-O.
BTW, I visited the Baltic region of the USSR in ’87, and the one thing I remember at my very young age was barely conscious drunks stumbling around. One Estonian was so drunk that he was pissing in the ashtrays in the hotel lobby, shouting something that sounded like “Milkah!” I distinctly remember thinking that even the hard-drinking Irish in my family would be deeply ashamed by such displays.
Stop lying. Take a map, search the places where the birth rate is still high. Do you dear to say you are more ovwerburdened, than the women of the third world?
All your conclusions are like this one.
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Yes, but peolple who were here thirty years ago and are here now, can make a difference. I don’t want to defend the socialist system, it was not productive.
But, to be honest, i’ve never seen homeless people living on the streets. Now they are everywhere. This is the othe side of the coin.
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No it was not. Honecker was an old school stalinist tyrant, that defined everything.
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I mean East Germany- with Romania, Soviet Union, Bulgaria – were hard dictatures, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were “soft” dictatures, and Poland was somewhere between them.
Remember the Stasi- everyone reported on everyone else. The DDR would collapse quickly without Stasi.
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nova, I never denied that the Soviet bloc sucked compared to the West! That goes without saying. There was no free speech or free enterprise. There were things that sucked more than not having the colorful candy bars. But it wasn’t a “third world country”.
And, btw, we already got all the Western music in the 70s, so it wasn’t even that bad, as we were able to enjoy (the best) parts of the Western culture already back then.
The Baltics were always in a better shape than other Soviet states. The Russians still often remind us of that.
Just one more thing Alte – you advertise your Christianity in every other comment, yet you talk in a condescending manner of people who used to be poor (against their own will) and you ridicule people who have a high working ethic. Don’t you remember how Christ lived, what Christ said? Only a pseudo Christian can write such arrogant comments, full of hubris, such as yours above. Think about it the next time you have an opinion about “working, blond EE women”. Blond is good, btw. Living in the conservative classes in Germany, you should have noticed that. Btw, some of the stuff you wrote about the German society is totally unrealistic, Germany, in general, with the exception of a few tiny ultra conservative islands, is a very liberal society, very equalist, very open and non-judgmental towards women, contrary to what you’re saying. Many German women are unwed and have children out of wedlock and I have yet to see any mainstream stereotyping of them. The men are completely in line with this, as they don’t even seem to care anymore. Maybe couples live in partnerships without marriage and nobody has made a big deal about it for decades now. Maybe you live in some isolated, super protected upper middle class environment or are much older and don’t really connect with what is happening in the modern society, but I’ve noticed that several things you said do not correspond to reality at all. I mean… we have many German acquaintances, lovers and colleagues, we have traveled there a lot and actually lived there and we don’t see the kind of stuff you are talking about. Sometimes you appear as if you are living in a completely different reality.
And Eastern German women are just fine, there is nothing wrong with them.
Besides, the stuff you talk here is like 20 years old. We only had the really tough times in the very early 90s. Today some of us have a very high living standard. It is really weird, but lately I hear a lot of Western folks say how much they like it here and some of them want to move here.
I think EE women learned from the stuff their mothers had to go through in 90s. Today I don’t see a big difference between EE and WE women when it comes to working habits and lifestyle. The only differences are in appearence sometimes (EE dress up more and are thinner, also not as loud as some Western nationalities), and the fact that Western women can afford to be pickier about men. They don’t fully appreciate what they have. For instance, I’m almost identical with my Finnish girlfriend in terms of how we were raised and what our priorities are in life. The only difference is she has access to a welfare state and her men are more accepting of her.
Thehermit, you know damn well that I’m talking about the birthrate of white European populations, there is no point comparing to other civilizations. Might as well take everything into account then, incl.how their man fulfill their duties. The reason for the low birthrate in EE is exactly the lack of family friendly infrastructure and the fact that women have a double burden. It’s been researched. By the same token, Norway has the highest birthrate because women have it much easier there and the men are supportive.
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Well, I have yet some time to go until the “big 4o”, but that’s not the point.
And, btw, the carding in the States is exaggerated. It seems they card everyone, even the adults. I was carded several times in the States this year. They are much stricter than in Europe.
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And for the sake of objectivity about the Soviet system.. there were many things that weren’t there back then.. such as prostitution. Yes, it existed, but it was very very limited and very hidden. There was also less promiscuity – sure there were many divorces, but the people just weren’t able to fuck around like they do now, older guys have told me this. And my parents of course never fucked around. The were less abortions than now and more kids were born. There was in fact a baby boom in the 80s. There was a “childless” tax.
No, there were no homeless people or extreme poverty (I guess anyone who wanted to bed in the street instead of work in a factory was send to the mental asylums along with the free thinking artists). And above all – there was no usury.
I would never want to go back to the Soviet system, but one has to be objective.
The real problem is that the REAL Western system was never adopted here, the real Western style of capitalism with the progressive tax and the welfare state. That’s why it got so screwed eventually.
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“Thehermit, you know damn well that I’m talking about the birthrate of white European populations, there is no point comparing to other civilizations. Might as well take everything into account then, incl.how their man fulfill their duties. The reason for the low birthrate in EE is exactly the lack of family friendly infrastructure and the fact that women have a double burden. It’s been researched. By the same token, Norway has the highest birthrate because women have it much easier there and the men are supportive.”
Blah blah, the good old lies again. There’s no country in europe, what reproduces itself. No Norway, no Sweden, nope. Plus, they have significant immagrant population, with higher birth rates.
Others wrote it well before me, just to repeat: in case you kill family (what happens now), you keep birth rates down as well. Men have no motivation to start a family, under the actual conditions. They can only lose.
Anything else is BS.
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Most women have no real value beyond sex and child-rearing, so it’s easy to see why the communist system of forced equality is appealing to many of them.
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“Most women have no real value beyond sex and child-rearing”
Marriage is a contract. It have lost its original value long ago. For men, it was valueable until wives were real- and the strongest- allies of their husbands.
What they have to offer today? Sex? That i can get without signing the contract.
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That’s both disgusting and terrifying that this is getting mass print and web exposure. How any German could glorify Communist rule is beyond me.
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the hermit, what are you doing here?
Please, come back to Odin and Perun. Don’t listen to this bs.
Come back to us, sweety.
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And I just want to know – why the fuck am I getting carded?
Why the fuck am I getting carded in America? It wasn’t like that just a couple of years ago.
I don’t fucking like that.
America is the land of the free. Please. make sure that America is free again, because I don’t like this mf bullshit when the Americans/Europeans have to watch out. Can you guys take care of it? Send the mf terrorists out. Please, boys, tell these mfkrs to leave, because they are really disrupting our lifestyle. Please, I want the old America back, I’m sick and tired of this. We don’t have to put up with this bs.
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