ForestBoard

This took me less time to fix the black market issue this time. Now I can rest assured that the economy is somewhat back to normal.

We finished the last match of Matchday 3!
Qualified teams were revealed now!
Those are:
The Champions League, Novian Republics, Apabeossie & Aberdoom joining:

Walfo, Arklanda, Einswenn, Solsevara, Saralonia, Indusse, Cuillin & Ukotrium.

Not to forget the best third positioned teams who advanced based on the criteria from the ranking table. In which we mention:
Islamic holy sites, New skandenivia, Othenhiem & Nardin!

Knockout stage will start on June 21st at 15:00 GMT+1
I'll publish the matchups and other informations about the Knockout stage tomorrow.

For the disqualified teams, i thank you and appreciate your participation in this tournament and we greet you for the great performance you made!

I'm so sorry for mentioning you guys a lot.

For the latest results:
page=dispatch/id=1559976

Daarwyrth wrote:

I think that everything you have written makes a lot of sense, and it puts my own thoughts on the matter into perspective. Of course, situations like the example with the alley should absolutely have no place in our society. A woman should not be afraid to walk the street alone, or to pass through a dark alley. Yet you are correct that society has the idea of a binary gender system so deeply ingrained that it will come up or be brought up sooner or later. I mean, corporations still try to brand and sale products specifically catered to men and women, while all that's different about the product is the packaging. I will never forget how a guy in high school was utterly gobsmacked that men don't have to use "for men" shower stuff and deodorants. "But does it even work then?" was his question, which was amusing at the time, but a little sad if you think about it.

Yet thank you for sharing your thoughts on the matter, they've been a very valuable addition to the discussion, I think.

Thank you. I cannot help but think about these issues and feel resentment at the foregrounding of one's gender, especially if one is female.

This is going to be somewhat random, but not unrelated to the issue at hand.

I recently bought a skirt. A nice, summer-y midi skirt with sunflowers printed on it. I quite like it!

You may wonder what is notable about that. I'll tell you why it is important: I haven't voluntarily worn a skirt since when I was 10 or so, except as part of a compulsory school uniform. After the 9th grade, my high school even allowed girls to wear black pants instead of gray skirts as a school uniform, and that's when I stopped wearing a skirt altogether.

Except for the occasionally light-fabric dresses I wore at the beach in summer, I was a woman who always wore pants.

Funnily enough, since our idea of clothing is strongly gendered, some people could have called me a 'tomboy' on the basis of my repulsion towards skirts. (Never mind the hunky Scottish 'highlanders' that run around in kilts and reek of unadulterated masculinity, according to a certain genre of romance novels that I have obviously never read but uhm, overheard while friends were talking.)

The truth is, I did not like skirts because the society shamed me for wearing them. I could only wear them in a "certain way," and if I wasn't willing to do that, I could not wear skirts without disapproval.

I remember a time by the seaside in my hometown, I was 9 or 10, it was summer and I was wearing a dress. I happened to meet a very extroverted classmate of mine. She was not a particularly close friend, but she was very chatty, and came up to us (me, my mom and my grandma) and talked with my mom and grandma enthusiastically, like a chirping bird. Incidentally, she was wearing a denim mini skirt.

Anyways.

At that age too, I was essentially a free-spirited girl who acted however she wanted, and didn't give a darn what the people thought of her. And honestly, I didn't know much about the full scope of what society thought about girls and what "decent" behaviors it expected from them. In my own sheltered world, I hadn't gotten a taste of women's oppression yet, I believe.

So while we sat there and listened to the birdy girl chirp about her preteen life, I sat there in a cross-legged position. I didn't think anything was wrong with it. Until my classmate left and went to her parents. This is when my mother turned to me and scolded me for not sitting in a "proper" way. It turns out if you sit in a cross-legged position while wearing a dress, people can see your panties, and this is a no-no. Only whores do that.

I was shocked. Remember, I was still a preteen, very much unaware of my gender, blissfully ignorant of the consequences of having the labels 'male' or 'female' perpetually attached to your identity. If you asked me, I'd say if was "funny" if someone's underwear was visible, perhaps. I wouldn't find it "improper" or "immoral." And I could not, for the life of me, comprehend why anyone would like to look at the panties of a little girl, and why I was supposed to take charge of guarding myself by hiding my panties from everyone's sight. It's not that I was displaying intentionally (I mean, LOL) but I didn't understand why I should pay extra attention to never even let people catch a glimpse of it accidentally. My mom said "Look at your friend, she knows how to wear a skirt. You are reckless about these things." It hurt. Not because I recognized being wrong. On the contrary, because I knew deep down I was right and I resented my rightness not being acknowledged. This was an important moment for me to recognize something that would haunt me forever - a first encounter with the chains and shackles of being a woman. Such a seemingly insignificant memory that lived in my brain to this day. I don't think I will ever forget it.

If a man is interested in peering at a preteen girl's underwear, he is sick, plain and simple. And the appropriate behavior for this man would be to just turn his head if he happened to catch a glimpse of that, if the girl happened to accidentally show her underwear. But it is never the man's fault. The assumption is that men will look. They want to look at you. They want to grope you. And they want to rape you if they get the chance. This is the normal(!) way of things. It is your responsibility to guard your honor (!) as a woman. Hence the interminable 'What were you wearing?' question asked to rape victims.

If you are a man, the phrase 'dress code' means probably something very different to you. Have you ever felt judged and humiliated for the way you wore your pants, your shirts, your shoes?

As a woman, you do.

I had to choose. I would either wear skirts/dresses and subscribe to the rules that govern how to wear them (e.g., don't bend at your hips to pick up something you dropped, lest a man sees your panties for a second; instead bend at your knees, crouch to the floor, pick it up, rise again; etc.) or I would wear pants like a man and walk and move as freely as men do.

You know the choice I made.

What changed now? Why did I buy a skirt?

I guess I am just slowly trying to make peace with the little girl inside me, to whom being a girly girl was so unbearable she didn't really allow herself to be a girly girl. She'd rather be badass and independent. Not a girl who walked in gingerly steps to guard her skirt, but a girl who walked in big strides, opening her legs like a pair of compass.

I find myself in a different context now (leaving Turkey & my family surely helps!) and somehow feel that I can be both girly AND badass... maybe my decision to purchase a skirt is a reflection of that. I also bought a cute dress, though I haven't had an occasion to wear it yet. More girly stuff to come to my wardrobe in the near future. Stay tuned.

Thanks for all the congratulations for sitting around doing nothing!

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

And if I had been a cisman, I'd probably think of my sex and gender identity even less, because the fvcked-up society would consider me as the "default" anyway.

I completely agreed with everything you said (and said very well) up until this final sentence. I'm not taking issue with the fundamentally sexist nature of society, but men are also presented with a stereotype to which we're supposed to conform, and not conforming can be hard.

I've never for a moment questioned my masculinity but just as you described I have no idea what it means to "feel like a man." I have no aptitude for or interest in football, engines and tools. I can cook and as a parent I was always determined that once breastfeeding had ended there should be no fundamental difference between the mum role and the dad role. In many settings I gravitate towards female company because I can't really take part in "manly" conversation. Most of the time this doesn't bother me, but there have certainly been times when it has made me something of an oddity or an outsider, and especially when I was younger that could be difficult. If something was broken and I couldn't fix it, or in financial difficulties when I struggled to provide for the material needs of the family unit, it felt more of a failing for me than it would have been for a woman, as did my inability to simply stoically cope. Internalising that pressure became a contributing factor to my anxiety and depression.

In my country suicide is the second greatest cause of death in men under 40, behind road accidents. The majority of those completed suicides are totally out of the blue for the people left behind - they don't follow therapy, medication or a visible struggle. For many men admitting that they aren't managing is literally worse than death. Culturally, that's just bizarre.

I think a society that pressurises people of any gender to conform to arbitrary standards hurts all of us. Forcing girls and women to behave like princesses is an obvious form of oppression but in your example of the visible underwear it was your mother and grandmother who were enforcing it. Many obnoxious males are driven not so much by an inherent desire to subjugate women as a need to appear to conform to the masculine "ideal." There will be no winners in this until everyone can leave peer pressure in the playground and simply be the person that they are. My feeling is that things are changing, but slowly.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

I completely agreed with everything you said (and said very well) up until this final sentence. I'm not taking issue with the fundamentally sexist nature of society, but men are also presented with a stereotype to which we're supposed to conform, and not conforming can be hard.

Fair enough. Apologies for that, I didn't mean to invalidate anyone's feelings or to say that men aren't harmed by toxic masculinity.

But expectations about gender roles are a separate issue from my point about 'defaultness' of the male gender. (I realize that the place in my post where I made this I would not be aware of my gender if I was a cisman comment has obscured the intended connection of that statement to this issue. At any rate, I expressed multiple gender-based resentments all at once.)

Essentially, male privilege goes unnoticed, precisely because men are seen as the default gender. For example, in my example about walking down a dark alley at night, a man would not be made aware of his gender, unlike a woman. There are many situations like that. For example, a woman applying for a job may be asked about her plans to get married and get pregnant (even though this probably violates an anti-discrimination law depending on which country you live in) but a prospective male employee would not face the same question, because, well, taking care of the kids is the woman's problem.

Each time someone tells us that we cannot or should not do something, because we are women; we are unnecessarily reminded of our gender. Men can occasionally hear similar admonishments (e.g., "You are not supposed to cry, you need to stay strong, you're a MAN!"), but I think on average there are fewer instances like that.

And geez, even facing the bitter reality of buying your first bra in your early teens is quite something. All of a sudden you learn that even your nipples are sexualized and they cannot just be seen by people.

Just a long laundry list of things to do or not do, just because you were born as a woman. If there are any sane women in the world, it is actually a miracle. I don't know how we can keep going despite all this, to be honest.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

In my country suicide is the second greatest cause of death in men under 40, behind road accidents. The majority of those completed suicides are totally out of the blue for the people left behind - they don't follow therapy, medication or a visible struggle. For many men admitting that they aren't managing is literally worse than death. Culturally, that's just bizarre.

I know you are definitely the expert on this thanks to your job being related to it, so I won't contest anything here. There may be (or indeed, must be) ongoing research about the precise causes of these suicides, but I am unfamiliar with that line of work. Gendered expectations could play a role in depression, but also in men's tendency to not seek help. (Actually, probably more in the latter than in the former, because I think it would be bizarre for men to be overall more depressed about sexist expectations than women are. But I would totally expect them to face more pressure regarding externalizing their feelings compared to women.)

Uan aa Boa wrote:

Forcing girls and women to behave like princesses is an obvious form of oppression but in your example of the visible underwear it was your mother and grandmother who were enforcing it.

They were following the "right" way of doing things according to what the society dictated to them. To be fair, I am unable to offer a male perspective on the issue here, because I grew up without a father. What would my father's attitude have been if he had been there on that day? Would he have disapproved of my underwear showing? If he did, would he speak to me about it?

My third-party observations about this suggest to me that men choose to be silent about these female issues even if they disapprove, but may use women as 'go-betweens' to enforce these rules. So if I did something that my father found improper, he could go to my mom and say to her "tell your daughter not to do X like a whore!" and she would have passed the message on to me. At least this is what I imagine it would have been like to have a conservative father around.

Ruinenlust wrote:

snap

I wanted to add something but everything you wrote is just really good, especially that last paragraph of the FuF response. Your experience with make up and hair sounds a bit similar to mine, so that part hit home too.

However, now that I know that you have both long hair and a beard, I'll have to imagine you as the stereotypical western version of jesus from now on.

The new dynasty wrote:

Good guess, but I live in a bumf*ck overseas territory — and I think I am the only person who plays NationStates here.

(Hint: We are not part of Argentina, no matter how much this fact makes them mad.)

Once my main nation reached 100, its economy has never gone down — even when confronted with the same issues and choosing the same options that severely decrease the economy on my alt nations.

Yo that is cool I never met someone from the Falklands

What a topic. Joy to read. Here come my 5 cents on this men-women thingy:

In my life, I historically stick to more "female circles" and fewer, random, pretty much educated/cultured "male circles" (school, university, job, etc) I have never really faced all this toxic masculinity issue around me and my world since there, in said world, weren't any clear and open cases of discrimination of women. I've heard stories here and there online but didn't see the scale of the problem. And then the new chapter of life began where my daily outfit consisted purely of a military uniform. I lived with conscripts from all over the nation and they were of all the [dare I say] classes and education levels, from relatively ignorant villagers to fancy gurus of style from the capital city. And that was the time when I faced toxic masculinity in action.

Most of the clear discriminative [yet verbal-only] cases happened during the rest time when the squads were watching music TV channels which, as y'all probably know, promote all those "sexualisation of women" issues. Observing young men hungrily looking at semi-naked girls on the screen and discussing related things out loud felt quite disgusting, no less. Women were seen just as flesh for sexual needs satisfaction. I am pretty sure many of those "brave machos" are way less successful in their sexual life in civilian mode than they've been trying to display among the fellow soldiers, however, they displayed another message for me: it was normal to have such conversations, commentary and overall take on women. They all could discuss it as if it was essential part of daily agenda, as if it was a regular routine topic for them, and as if they have been living in such mindset out there in civilian world.

This is related not only to sexualisation machine of the music industry but also to daily life of the mentioned folks. Their current, ex, or future girlfriends and wives were pictured in an absolutely unequal way of coexistence. In many, way too many different talks and conversations these guys expressed their life views that are more than just outdated and medieval. And this was worrisome for me. I sometimes asked them questions about why do they have this attitude, and how about some respect and equality in families; or how about just treating your girlfriends with respect and love instead of toxic masculinity and clear division of housework obligations. Some of them didn't get my questions, and some of them just couldn't find a proper answer (apart from "that's how it has to work in normal families").

A lot of opinions about girls (well, and gays as well: any male group living together for long time cannot avoid this topic either, especially in such socially undeveloped country as mine) were what I call scripted. Nothing original, sometimes their opinions were just repeated word-by-word phrases from the bible of stereotypes. I am pretty sure such book exists otherwise how does this wast majority of people cite each other with such impressive accuracy. Whichever scene happening on the screen in the soldiers' entertainment room there is one, always-the-same reaction, be it a topless girl ("woof, I'd had her hard"), gay couple ("lol f**s, [insert scripted opinion of what should be done with them]"), new stylish dance of a popular singer ("cool one, gotta learn these arms moves and repeat it till the next trendy dance happens") etc etc. This all is like mantra, they tell it to themselves and to the people around, and if you don't react the scripted way then others get to look at you with suspicion or simply condemn you or make fun of you. I was secured from being made fun of due to my physical age (way older than all of them) and, in some seasons of the service, my higher position in the hierarchy; but this didn't save me from seeing and hearing all this dritt.

Apart from treating girls like just a flesh, the toxic masculinity was expressed in displaying some "masculine habits" and commentary on things. A super basic "contest of coolness" in a male-only group which, however, was cooled down a bit by strict military rules of life. Also it was fun to see female seniors to bring the most vocal machos back on earth when the latter played muscles too hard; the opposite case when fake surface masculinity was getting completely destroyed by women.

///

And then I ended my service and got back to civilian life, back to normal equal communities (including my workplace where there wasn't any kind of discrimination both for men and women) and my circles of people where one's personality goes above one's gender.

Nation of ecologists wrote:

Like Uan said, I've never "felt like a man", more or less I was just born as one and I don't really have a problem with that.)

Initially I started my previous post with commenting on this too:

Uan aa Boa wrote:

I've never for a moment questioned my masculinity //

...but eventually deleted that part. However, now am convinced to add this nonetheless: I myself don't recall questioning my masculinity either, there was no need in that. Really, being cis-man is one of the easiest way to survive in this swamp of such rudiments as social gender stereotypes, just like Frieden-und Freudenland highlighted earlier. While also being able to hack the life with this tool:

Ruinenlust wrote:

Incidentally, in light of what Uan and I said, I feel like I'm lucky to be gay. My different feeling towards men than most guys have has enabled me to break out of the barriers and to reject many of the stereotypes of "toxic masculinity." Nobody's going to insult me by saying I'm not masculine enough; I'll laugh at them and own it. And I've mastered the [necessary] art of being warm and outgoing without indicating any sort of interest. /// I wouldn't trade in being gay for the world, despite the challenges that come with it. It's...wonderful, honestly, in many ways. It's been a bit of a struggle, but sometimes, I feel radiant like the sun.[/spoiler]

Einswenn wrote:

This took me less time to fix the black market issue this time. Now I can rest assured that the economy is somewhat back to normal.

What did you do to cause the boom/bust like that? I've had spikes before but never that drastic. I mean your economy suddenly became 20% underground, and then again crushed the 15% remaining underground?

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

If a man is interested in peering at a preteen girl's underwear, he is sick, plain and simple. And the appropriate behavior for this man would be to just turn his head if he happened to catch a glimpse of that, if the girl happened to accidentally show her underwear.

Exactly! Good God, why is the default response "it's women's responsibility to not be slutty", and not "it's men's responsibility to not be a fvckin' creep"? (rhetorical, ik the reason...)

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

I guess I am just slowly trying to make peace with the little girl inside me, to whom being a girly girl was so unbearable she didn't really allow herself to be a girly girl.

I've dealt with this from the opposite side of the spectrum. I was rather nonconfrontational/pacifistic as a kid, and (for a number of reasons) I associated 'masculinity' with violence and anger, so I avoided 'traditionally masc' things like sports for years, (but growing up on the internet (I could write a whole other essay about how the internet can really easily fvck kids up) I also kinda internalized "you will get bullied for being fem as a guy", so I wouldn't commit to hanging out w/ the girls in my class), and I'm still trying to fix that little mental block.

Einswenn wrote:

Two of my latest (and largest) black market explosions were caused by… site update. They do tweak census there time by time and it affects me that heavily for some reason. And in the last case, after such boom occurred, I made a couple of wrong decisions in issues and let the BM grow again and again until the right issue with right decision came, at last.

My black market exploded (more than x10) after a site update. I think it was mainly fixed by a re-update, but I still haven't quite recovered yet. I never get the right issues, instead having seemingly identical 'Option 1: Cut environment, Option 2: Cut Civil Rights, Option 3: Become capitalist, Option 4: Destroy political freedoms'. My stats are suffering.

Einswenn wrote:

Option 3 sounds good though. Similar to what has fixed my situation: there was an issue to ease all those draconian restrictions on business in Einswenn which has dropped the black market down with no mercy while other stats didn’t get damaged much. All the affected departments are being slowly repaired with new issues while black market continues to go down. Most of the times.

Yes, but socialism is such a crucial RP and nationbuilding idea in Garbelia, it would only achieve the destruction of everything I've worked for and created. I'd have to change my beautiful flag!