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On October 21 2018 08:00 Danglars wrote: I'll add one quick note on the kind of IAmTheDave sentiment on divisiveness and fear. If your politics are driven by fear of David Duke and Alex Jones and stuff you see on facebook, of course these things will terrify you.
It isn't. But I'm not going to act as if those extreme elements don't exist or are an irrelevance because it's inconvenient for you.
And I'm not interested in PMing you. There's nothing I feel a need to say to you in private that I'm unwilling to say publically. Because I'm charitable, I'll assume that wasn't a thinly veiled attempt at goading me into getting modded by GH, given how your every word in that post directed to me is incredibly condescending.
You could start by asking me to clarify my feelings on matters instead of assuming you know and being wrong almost every time in almost every way.
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If GH wanted to get wealthy real fast, he should brand himself as a former radical progressive who saw the light and is now a Trump support, and then go on a speaking junket. If he did it right, he'd get promotion from the likes of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, which would create an audience for him virtually over night.
Unfortunately for me I have this pesky thing people tell me is a conscience that reminds me that's a horrific thing to do, sometimes I do envy people who appear not to have that voice.
That's not a jab at Republican politics though, I feel pretty much the same way about Democrats (though it's much more competitive there)
Joy Reid and Jonathan Capehart came up big for shitting on Bernie at every opportunity including blatantly lying on national TV and in Capehart's writing. But they are both reasonably intelligent people, Republicans spotlighted a dimwitted sheriff simply because he was a Black guy who agreed with them.
As to the general argument I just think nationalism is a generally simple and shortsighted perspective that the overwhelming majority of US citizens wouldn't support if we were economically and militarily inferior to the nation claiming their international politics will always put themselves ahead of the rest of the population of the planet.
It seems completely oblivious in my view to live in the wealthiest and one of the most wasteful countries on the planet and not follow how selfish and impractical it is to have an "America First" attitude while innocent hard working people starve and die from lack of access to clean water.
Besides that I have a hard time grasping how people really think Trump doesn't prioritize himself over the nation, like what are people referencing in their minds to draw that conclusion?
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On October 21 2018 08:51 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2018 08:00 Danglars wrote: I'll add one quick note on the kind of IAmTheDave sentiment on divisiveness and fear. If your politics are driven by fear of David Duke and Alex Jones and stuff you see on facebook, of course these things will terrify you.
It isn't. But I'm not going to act as if those extreme elements don't exist or are an irrelevance because it's inconvenient for you. And I'm not interested in PMing you. There's nothing I feel a need to say to you in private that I'm unwilling to say publically. Because I'm charitable, I'll assume that wasn't a thinly veiled attempt at goading me into getting modded by GH, given how your every word in that post directed to me is incredibly condescending. You could start by asking me to clarify my feelings on matters instead of assuming you know and being wrong almost every time in almost every way. The only thing I was trying to goad you into was an admission that the feigned or real shock you exhibit constantly is counterproductive and marks you as unserious. Maybe you can’t believe someone would think something about America First or race relations, but you have been here long enough to know America conservatives think very VERY different than you in this thread. It makes it look more like a schtick and the subtext is ... we think the EXACT same thing about your posts (How can iamthedave seriously believe the bullshit he spouts?) but have the grace to not repeat it.
I’ve never heard a serious attempt from you to claim I assumed something wrongly. You may not like the logical consequences of your stances, so attack the logic I use to connect things you said and left unsaid to the conclusions I draw. And speak up. I don’t want to see you moderated, I want to see you leave the “you can’t possibly believe or think ... you’re too smart for this” in the other forum where it belongs. It’s insulting.
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What's your all's take on the "Make America Great Again" slogan? In my view it is inherently divisive. It may conjure up nostalgia for a mythical idyllic past for certain elderly white people, but for many women, POC, LGBT people, etc. it sounds like a call for regression to a time when such groups were subject to strict social control and violence (even more so than today).
Why not just leave it at Make America Great?
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On October 21 2018 12:32 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2018 08:51 iamthedave wrote:On October 21 2018 08:00 Danglars wrote: I'll add one quick note on the kind of IAmTheDave sentiment on divisiveness and fear. If your politics are driven by fear of David Duke and Alex Jones and stuff you see on facebook, of course these things will terrify you.
It isn't. But I'm not going to act as if those extreme elements don't exist or are an irrelevance because it's inconvenient for you. And I'm not interested in PMing you. There's nothing I feel a need to say to you in private that I'm unwilling to say publically. Because I'm charitable, I'll assume that wasn't a thinly veiled attempt at goading me into getting modded by GH, given how your every word in that post directed to me is incredibly condescending. You could start by asking me to clarify my feelings on matters instead of assuming you know and being wrong almost every time in almost every way. The only thing I was trying to goad you into was an admission that the feigned or real shock you exhibit constantly is counterproductive and marks you as unserious. Maybe you can’t believe someone would think something about America First or race relations, but you have been here long enough to know America conservatives think very VERY different than you in this thread. It makes it look more like a schtick and the subtext is ... we think the EXACT same thing about your posts (How can iamthedave seriously believe the bullshit he spouts?) but have the grace to not repeat it. I’ve never heard a serious attempt from you to claim I assumed something wrongly. You may not like the logical consequences of your stances, so attack the logic I use to connect things you said and left unsaid to the conclusions I draw. And speak up. I don’t want to see you moderated, I want to see you leave the “you can’t possibly believe or think ... you’re too smart for this” in the other forum where it belongs. It’s insulting.
I don't consider my post about America First to be political, it's just basic logic. Is it really, REALLY such a stretch to assume that intelligent people can understand that an intentionally vague slogan like 'America First' has different meanings to different people? If I'm being the wrong for assuming that, let me know.
Just clarify that.
Ditto for MAGA, as mercy posts above.
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On October 21 2018 06:39 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2018 05:41 xDaunt wrote:On October 21 2018 03:19 iamthedave wrote: The fuck it is. Did you actually type that with a straight face? You telling me that the Puerto Rico debacle - American citizens remember - is evidence of 'inclusive by design'?
I mean. Come on, Daunt. You're not dumb. You know full well that 'America First' is not inclusive by design, at all, because 'America First' means completely different things to different people. You reckon all the racists and xenophobic shitheads who run around wearing MAGA hats think GH belongs in their vision of America First?
Let alone the fact that again, by design, it excludes literally everyone who isn't American. By definition, this excludes anyone who likes getting along with the rest of the world.
'America First' doesn't even pass the first, most basic checks for inclusivity. Here's my face: : | Is that straight enough? Let me let you in on a little secret about the MAGA crowd and conservatives in general. We really don't give a shit about race. You progressives like to pretend that we all wear white hoods at night, but there isn't a basis for it. If anything, too many conservatives go out of their way to "prove" to liberals that they're not racists. Just look at how much support black personalities who support conservatives receive, whether it be Candace Owens or Kanye West. If GH wanted to get wealthy real fast, he should brand himself as a former radical progressive who saw the light and is now a Trump support, and then go on a speaking junket. If he did it right, he'd get promotion from the likes of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, which would create an audience for him virtually over night. Here's what America First means to conservatives: the setting aside of all personal and societal differences to support the nation first and foremost. It's nationalism. We don't want to build a wall because we hate Mexicans. We want a wall because secure borders is sane policy. Literally any American can be a part of the national tribe. That's why it is inclusive. Compare that to all of the luminaries on the left who have decided that the white male is the single greatest evil to befall the world. There's nothing inclusive about that. It's merely the projection of a mental disorder. As I have written about previously, the worst aspect of identity politics is that it is inherently divisive. Tearing down the ties that bind us together is a horrible idea and never leads to good things. There must be a glue that binds society together. I have always said that nationalism was the best one, because it supersedes race, religion, and virtually every other dividing line. That's what it means TO YOU. And that's fine. But you can't speak for all Conservatives. That's the entire problem with the phrase, and why it speaks equally to you, x conservative, and David Duke, y conservative and also former leader of the Klan.
I am more than happy to speak for the vast majority of conservatives and am quite comfortable in that regard. I assure you that I know who conservatives are a helluva lot better than you do.
Let me let YOU in on a little secret. We 'progressives' don't think all Conservatives wear white hoods at night. But we KNOW that SOME of you do. And so do you, or you're simply choosing not to see what's been demonstrated in black and white multiple times in recent years. This is the exact problem GH pointed out a few posts back, where the language you use ends up defending people that I'm pretty sure you consider to be awful. I'm pretty sure of that.
If you really didn't think that we wear hoods, you wouldn't be emphasizing the fact that "SOME" conservatives wear hoods despite the fact that the KKK is politically irrelevant and constitutes an inconsequentially small percentage of the population. Or maybe you are willing to admit the truth: you, like all liberals, simply like to grossly over-exaggerate the KKK and other racist elements in the GOP as a means of tarnishing the brand. I'll let you decide which it is. I think it goes without saying that you would find it quite objectionable if I relentlessly juxtaposed all Democrats with liberal "luminaries" like Linda Sarsour or even elected officials like Maxine Waters.
But 'all conservatives' interpret America First to mean setting aside personal and societal differences? Nonsense. Arrant nonsense. Not all conservatives mean that. The alt-right definitely doesn't, given that the alt-right broadly embraces white nationalism, which is - I think we can agree - a little bit exclusive. The alt-right also love Donald Trump and embrace America First. But they have a vision of America that is - again, I'm guessing - very different to yours.
See, you don't even know who you're describing here. Conservatives are very different from the Alt-Right. In fact, the two are quite mutually exclusive. The Alt-Right wants nothing to do with conservatism, and most conservatives don't even know what the Alt-Right is. That you don't understand this proves quite conclusively that you don't know who the various players on the right are, much less who conservatives are and what they believe. Stated another way, it would do you quite well to shut up and learn from me. As Sun Tzu says, "know your enemy."
There are plenty of people right now, wearing their MAGA hats, who want every Mexican or person of colour kicked out of the country, because they think being American also means being white. Some of them will include African-Americans, but not Mexican Americans. Some will include those two groups and exclude another. Don't listen to me, go on facebook. The facebook of your fellow Conserative Americans. You'll find plenty of them saying mean things about their fellow Americans of colour. Not the big kumbaya you're suggesting here. Better yet, go on reddit. There's several pure, unfiltered areas where conservatives get to hang out with their conservative buddies and generally be confident of agreement and support. People let it all hang out there. Have a look see what they have to say. You won't have to look long before you find some people who don't quite interpret the phrase the way you've done.
So here we are back to you pretending that all conservatives wear hoods. How quaint.
Don't worry. I know exactly what conservatives are saying and why. What matters to the conservative is not the race of the individual. What matters is what they perceive to be the good of the country, without regard to the disparate impact of a given policy on race. For example, conservatives don't have a problem with Mexicans. They have a problem with illegal immigration. Conservatives simply have the courage to promote the policy without regard to whether it may be "offensive" to some people. Liberals decidedly do not, and instead make the issue about identity politics rather than discuss idea on the merits. Your specific perception of conservatives is the direct result of how you have been conditioned to think by liberals.
The trouble with the phrase 'America First' is that it is fundamentally meaningless. It doesn't 'mean' anything at all. It isn't fundamentally inclusive, not in the least bit. Just as a thought experiment, I figured, let's do the easy test: I'll google it. The first definition I got wasn't anything you just said. In fact, nothing you said appeared anywhere in that definition. In fact all it really talked about was non-intervention in warfare and economic isolationism/nationalism. And by that metric you've already failed to follow it because Syria is a thing. Didn't Alex Jones break down on air and scream and cry because America going to get involved in that is the opposite of his interpretation of America First?
There's nothing meaningless about it at all. Conservatives know exactly what "America First" means. It's obvious. It means that Trump is going to put the interests of the United States above the interests of any other country or entity. It's blindingly obvious. And it is also blindingly obvious that Trump has been doing just that, whether it be with his trade negotiations or his speeches to the UN. He's practicing what he preaches in a way that is uncommon among politicians.
I agree that Syria and Afghanistan stand out as gross deviations of America First policy. However, it is quite clear that Trump doesn't want to be in either country. It is also clear that the DoD (or someone else) has given Trump a fairly compelling explanation for why the US needs to stay there for the time being. I can only guess as to what that might be. However, I'm certainly not willing to say that America First is a sham solely on the basis of those two messes that Trump inherited when he has relentlessly pursued the policy otherwise.
As GH pointed out, I was brusque in my response, but that's not a dismissal of the phrase, just your overly optimistic and subjective interpretation of what a phrase means that has a lot of meanings to a lot of other people in your own country. If you believe what you said, you must also believe there's a serious messaging failure going on, because there's a lot of Americans who don't find 'America First' comforting in the least. Are these people thereby unAmerican? I think not. And how do you address the way Puerto Rico was treated during the recent disaster? There's tons of evidence that it received far less support and assistance than Texas did in a similar situation. Seems a bit 'barrier-esque' to me there, a bit of 'one group in America getting better treatment than another'. You might, being cynical, call it 'divisive'. Now that's not America First, is it?
I don't think that there's a messaging failure at all when it comes to America First or MAGA. Both have been quite successful, which is why Trump is president. I can give you a lot of reason for why people do not see those terms as conservatives do. It depends upon which group that you want to talk about, but at the root of all is progressive loathing for their own country, which comes part and parcel with the divisiveness of identity politics. Identity politics don't work if you leave the national glue in place.
I don't deny that identity politics is divisive. It involves an awful lot of confrontation of inherent biases people don't really want to think about. Potentially it involves upending the social order. For example, giving rights to black people was a really big deal. Those identity politics were really divisive. Martin Luther King and that Malcolm X guy said some provocative things that forced people in power to reexamine how the world worked. When women started the suffragettes movement, that was really divisive. It was, honest. But I think we're better off for those things having happened.
Here's the rub. The "injustices" that exist today are very different from the injustices that existed during the Civil Rights era. To be quite blunt, they are far lesser. Yet the identity politics being deployed today are, in some respects, worse than what was being used back then. As just one example, the demonization of the white male has become fashionable. How is that a good thing?
The same is true of the gay rights movement. Now you'd argue I think that nothing happening today is even faintly comparable. In terms of scale, you'd be right. But just because the broad strokes of the argument have been settled - and the identity politics side won every time, by the way - doesn't mean the entire thing is done. And even if every American embraced 'America First', that wouldn't mean those marginalised groups felt included. They'd feel just as ignored and forgotten as they already do.
Identity politics emerges from making the attempt - often clumsy and futile, but the attempt - to actually listen to those groups and try to bend to their needs, instead of pretending that they either don't exist or don't have needs in the first place.
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage.
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+ Show Spoiler +On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2018 06:39 iamthedave wrote:On October 21 2018 05:41 xDaunt wrote:On October 21 2018 03:19 iamthedave wrote: The fuck it is. Did you actually type that with a straight face? You telling me that the Puerto Rico debacle - American citizens remember - is evidence of 'inclusive by design'?
I mean. Come on, Daunt. You're not dumb. You know full well that 'America First' is not inclusive by design, at all, because 'America First' means completely different things to different people. You reckon all the racists and xenophobic shitheads who run around wearing MAGA hats think GH belongs in their vision of America First?
Let alone the fact that again, by design, it excludes literally everyone who isn't American. By definition, this excludes anyone who likes getting along with the rest of the world.
'America First' doesn't even pass the first, most basic checks for inclusivity. Here's my face: : | Is that straight enough? Let me let you in on a little secret about the MAGA crowd and conservatives in general. We really don't give a shit about race. You progressives like to pretend that we all wear white hoods at night, but there isn't a basis for it. If anything, too many conservatives go out of their way to "prove" to liberals that they're not racists. Just look at how much support black personalities who support conservatives receive, whether it be Candace Owens or Kanye West. If GH wanted to get wealthy real fast, he should brand himself as a former radical progressive who saw the light and is now a Trump support, and then go on a speaking junket. If he did it right, he'd get promotion from the likes of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, which would create an audience for him virtually over night. Here's what America First means to conservatives: the setting aside of all personal and societal differences to support the nation first and foremost. It's nationalism. We don't want to build a wall because we hate Mexicans. We want a wall because secure borders is sane policy. Literally any American can be a part of the national tribe. That's why it is inclusive. Compare that to all of the luminaries on the left who have decided that the white male is the single greatest evil to befall the world. There's nothing inclusive about that. It's merely the projection of a mental disorder. As I have written about previously, the worst aspect of identity politics is that it is inherently divisive. Tearing down the ties that bind us together is a horrible idea and never leads to good things. There must be a glue that binds society together. I have always said that nationalism was the best one, because it supersedes race, religion, and virtually every other dividing line. That's what it means TO YOU. And that's fine. But you can't speak for all Conservatives. That's the entire problem with the phrase, and why it speaks equally to you, x conservative, and David Duke, y conservative and also former leader of the Klan. I am more than happy to speak for the vast majority of conservatives and am quite comfortable in that regard. I assure you that I know who conservatives are a helluva lot better than you do. Show nested quote +Let me let YOU in on a little secret. We 'progressives' don't think all Conservatives wear white hoods at night. But we KNOW that SOME of you do. And so do you, or you're simply choosing not to see what's been demonstrated in black and white multiple times in recent years. This is the exact problem GH pointed out a few posts back, where the language you use ends up defending people that I'm pretty sure you consider to be awful. I'm pretty sure of that. If you really didn't think that we wear hoods, you wouldn't be emphasizing the fact that "SOME" conservatives wear hoods despite the fact that the KKK is politically irrelevant and constitutes an inconsequentially small percentage of the population. Or maybe you are willing to admit the truth: you, like all liberals, simply like to grossly over-exaggerate the KKK and other racist elements in the GOP as a means of tarnishing the brand. I'll let you decide which it is. I think it goes without saying that you would find it quite objectionable if I relentlessly juxtaposed all Democrats with liberal "luminaries" like Linda Sarsour or even elected officials like Maxine Waters. Show nested quote +But 'all conservatives' interpret America First to mean setting aside personal and societal differences? Nonsense. Arrant nonsense. Not all conservatives mean that. The alt-right definitely doesn't, given that the alt-right broadly embraces white nationalism, which is - I think we can agree - a little bit exclusive. The alt-right also love Donald Trump and embrace America First. But they have a vision of America that is - again, I'm guessing - very different to yours. See, you don't even know who you're describing here. Conservatives are very different from the Alt-Right. In fact, the two are quite mutually exclusive. The Alt-Right wants nothing to do with conservatism, and most conservatives don't even know what the Alt-Right is. That you don't understand this proves quite conclusively that you don't know who the various players on the right are, much less who conservatives are and what they believe. Stated another way, it would do you quite well to shut up and learn from me. As Sun Tzu says, "know your enemy." Show nested quote +There are plenty of people right now, wearing their MAGA hats, who want every Mexican or person of colour kicked out of the country, because they think being American also means being white. Some of them will include African-Americans, but not Mexican Americans. Some will include those two groups and exclude another. Don't listen to me, go on facebook. The facebook of your fellow Conserative Americans. You'll find plenty of them saying mean things about their fellow Americans of colour. Not the big kumbaya you're suggesting here. Better yet, go on reddit. There's several pure, unfiltered areas where conservatives get to hang out with their conservative buddies and generally be confident of agreement and support. People let it all hang out there. Have a look see what they have to say. You won't have to look long before you find some people who don't quite interpret the phrase the way you've done. So here we are back to you pretending that all conservatives wear hoods. How quaint. Don't worry. I know exactly what conservatives are saying and why. What matters to the conservative is not the race of the individual. What matters is what they perceive to be the good of the country, without regard to the disparate impact of a given policy on race. For example, conservatives don't have a problem with Mexicans. They have a problem with illegal immigration. Conservatives simply have the courage to promote the policy without regard to whether it may be "offensive" to some people. Liberals decidedly do not, and instead make the issue about identity politics rather than discuss idea on the merits. Your specific perception of conservatives is the direct result of how you have been conditioned to think by liberals. Show nested quote +The trouble with the phrase 'America First' is that it is fundamentally meaningless. It doesn't 'mean' anything at all. It isn't fundamentally inclusive, not in the least bit. Just as a thought experiment, I figured, let's do the easy test: I'll google it. The first definition I got wasn't anything you just said. In fact, nothing you said appeared anywhere in that definition. In fact all it really talked about was non-intervention in warfare and economic isolationism/nationalism. And by that metric you've already failed to follow it because Syria is a thing. Didn't Alex Jones break down on air and scream and cry because America going to get involved in that is the opposite of his interpretation of America First? There's nothing meaningless about it at all. Conservatives know exactly what "America First" means. It's obvious. It means that Trump is going to put the interests of the United States above the interests of any other country or entity. It's blindingly obvious. And it is also blindingly obvious that Trump has been doing just that, whether it be with his trade negotiations or his speeches to the UN. He's practicing what he preaches in a way that is uncommon among politicians. I agree that Syria and Afghanistan stand out as gross deviations of America First policy. However, it is quite clear that Trump doesn't want to be in either country. It is also clear that the DoD (or someone else) has given Trump a fairly compelling explanation for why the US needs to stay there for the time being. I can only guess as to what that might be. However, I'm certainly not willing to say that America First is a sham solely on the basis of those two messes that Trump inherited when he has relentlessly pursued the policy otherwise. Show nested quote +As GH pointed out, I was brusque in my response, but that's not a dismissal of the phrase, just your overly optimistic and subjective interpretation of what a phrase means that has a lot of meanings to a lot of other people in your own country. If you believe what you said, you must also believe there's a serious messaging failure going on, because there's a lot of Americans who don't find 'America First' comforting in the least. Are these people thereby unAmerican? I think not. And how do you address the way Puerto Rico was treated during the recent disaster? There's tons of evidence that it received far less support and assistance than Texas did in a similar situation. Seems a bit 'barrier-esque' to me there, a bit of 'one group in America getting better treatment than another'. You might, being cynical, call it 'divisive'. Now that's not America First, is it? I don't think that there's a messaging failure at all when it comes to America First or MAGA. Both have been quite successful, which is why Trump is president. I can give you a lot of reason for why people do not see those terms as conservatives do. It depends upon which group that you want to talk about, but at the root of all is progressive loathing for their own country, which comes part and parcel with the divisiveness of identity politics. Identity politics don't work if you leave the national glue in place. Show nested quote +I don't deny that identity politics is divisive. It involves an awful lot of confrontation of inherent biases people don't really want to think about. Potentially it involves upending the social order. For example, giving rights to black people was a really big deal. Those identity politics were really divisive. Martin Luther King and that Malcolm X guy said some provocative things that forced people in power to reexamine how the world worked. When women started the suffragettes movement, that was really divisive. It was, honest. But I think we're better off for those things having happened. Here's the rub. The "injustices" that exist today are very different from the injustices that existed during the Civil Rights era. To be quite blunt, they are far lesser. Yet the identity politics being deployed today are, in some respects, worse than what was being used back then. As just one example, the demonization of the white male has become fashionable. How is that a good thing? Show nested quote +The same is true of the gay rights movement. Now you'd argue I think that nothing happening today is even faintly comparable. In terms of scale, you'd be right. But just because the broad strokes of the argument have been settled - and the identity politics side won every time, by the way - doesn't mean the entire thing is done. And even if every American embraced 'America First', that wouldn't mean those marginalised groups felt included. They'd feel just as ignored and forgotten as they already do.
Identity politics emerges from making the attempt - often clumsy and futile, but the attempt - to actually listen to those groups and try to bend to their needs, instead of pretending that they either don't exist or don't have needs in the first place. Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage.
<Mod Hat>: I appreciate responses like this even if I disagree with pretty much all of what is in there but I realize we may need to get some working list of political terms for referential purposes. Conservative, Alt-Right, Republican, The right, Liberal, The left, far-left, Democrat, Democratic Socialist, socialist, communist, and so on.
I want to try to keep things focused on the substance of the critiques and less on the labels. Basically the more we can agree on a reasonable understanding of what terms we want to use for political grouping shorthand purposes the less we have to deal with the "That's not this group" stuff we've hashed out so far.
I feel going into 2020 this is going to be increasingly troublesome with the kinda rhetoric already going around and factions of the various political crowds. I'm already watching "the mobs" screaming at Pelosi that she's a radical communist and I'm at a bit of a loss. She's a lot of things, but the word has lost all meaning if people believe you can apply the label of "communist" to Pelosi.
Going to need all posters to help out on this issue. Hopefully we can find some mutual ground organically as we just work through it, but if we don't all put in the work I'll end up just having to come up with some arbitrary bullshit to keep the shit flinging to a minimum during the 2020 season.
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This Florida Governor debate doesn't bode well for Democrats. Gillum should be able to squeeze one out in Florida but Nelson might be gone if Gillum loses too much progressive support running towards the center so fast.
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Here’s a definition of Alt-Right that you can use if you want to create a dictionary for the thread: a post-constitutional, identitarian political philosophy that holds that genetics and race determine political choice.
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On October 22 2018 11:35 xDaunt wrote: Here’s a definition of Alt-Right that you can use if you want to create a dictionary for the thread: a post-constitutional, identitarian political philosophy that holds that genetics and race determine political choice.
I don't really use that particular term so I'm of limited use on this one but presumably we want to have definitions that someone that self-identified as such would at least begrudgingly compromise on. Are you under the impression that the definition you provided would be reasonably accepted in a group of self-identifying alt-right folks?
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On October 22 2018 11:47 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 11:35 xDaunt wrote: Here’s a definition of Alt-Right that you can use if you want to create a dictionary for the thread: a post-constitutional, identitarian political philosophy that holds that genetics and race determine political choice. I don't really use that particular term so I'm of limited use on this one but presumably we want to have definitions that someone that self-identified as such would at least begrudgingly compromise on. Are you under the impression that the definition you provided would be reasonably accepted in a group of self-identifying alt-right folks? Yep. The defining attribute of the Alt-Right is the idea that politics flow from race. The Alt Right tends to be post-constitutional in that, unlike conservatives, it affords no special status to the Constitution and, depending upon the specific segment of the Alt-Right that you are talking about, sees the Constitution as an obstacle to implementing sound policy.
I haven’t seen any true Alt Right posters on TL, so I doubt that you are going to get a definition from the horse’s mouth on this one.
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On October 22 2018 11:55 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 11:47 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 22 2018 11:35 xDaunt wrote: Here’s a definition of Alt-Right that you can use if you want to create a dictionary for the thread: a post-constitutional, identitarian political philosophy that holds that genetics and race determine political choice. I don't really use that particular term so I'm of limited use on this one but presumably we want to have definitions that someone that self-identified as such would at least begrudgingly compromise on. Are you under the impression that the definition you provided would be reasonably accepted in a group of self-identifying alt-right folks? Yep. The defining attribute of the Alt-Right is the idea that politics flow from race. The Alt Right tends to be post-constitutional in that, unlike conservatives, it affords no special status to the Constitution and, depending upon the specific segment of the Alt-Right that you are talking about, sees the Constitution as an obstacle to implementing sound policy. I haven’t seen any true Alt Right posters on TL, so I doubt that you are going to get a definition from the horse’s mouth on this one.
I figured they wouldn't last long in TL politics if there were anyway, this wouldn't be a very fun place for them either. I think we can all appreciate how the broad generalizing of particular political factions' particular views can be frustrating when attempted to be applied to one's own perspective by someone that may not really understand either beyond a popular caricature.
I think it's fair to say anyone can and likely has done this to someone at some point, some people more often or crudely than others, and sometimes we can all suppress a little cognitive dissonance in order to win or withdraw from a political discussion here and otherwise.
I hope we can all do a little more to keep this in mind and try to balance out our more antagonistic tendencies with some sincere (rather than passive aggressive) attempts to better understand each other even if we're ultimately not going to arrive at the same conclusions.
Ultimately we share a country and planet and we have more than enough capabilities to do much better as a species to provide better for the least of us and love our neighbors (regardless of distance) as we love ourselves and frankly we're passing the ages where this stops being the fault of our elders and we bear full responsibility for the history we leave future generations.
There wasn't a candidate in either primary I would sincerely be proud to call my leader sans the threat of the alternatives and that's simply a tragedy we create for ourselves and I sincerely believe it's a cycle we can help break. But it's going to take holding ourselves to a higher standard than we could "get away with" and recognizing that consequences can long outlive their perpetrators.
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its not a great political environment for academic candidates
i wonder if a democratic general would be a viable candidate
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On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage.
The transgender debate is a weird one. I agree that it shouldn't be the majority's responsibility to defer to the minority, but when it comes to gender the right simply doesn't seem to know what they are talking about at all, or haven't thought about it all that much and are just resisting change.
The idea that gender can vary from biology in a minority of cases is something that society should embrace, and it saddens me that people are holding on to outdated, discredited notions of gender being identical to biological sex. Not only that, but conservative lines of thought on the issue are frankly obsessed with genitals to quite a creepy degree, all in the service of trying to proliferate the idea that transgenderism isn't 'real', its just some psychological problem. That isn't true at all, its very well documented that there are many cases of gender varying from biological sex, and given that gender is simply a socially defined series of behaviours, relationships and interactions, a generation of people are well within their rights to redefine that if it makes people better off.
And no, having a transgender person use the 'wrong' bathroom doesn't matter, compared to that person being marginalized and told they do not exist. In the UK trans exclusionary types have extended the bathroom debate to women's only shelters, but there aren't any cases of these being abused by transgender people. Its a made up infringement of rights that don't exist. The rights of the majority that you are trying to protect, in this case, don't matter at all compared to the essential rights that the minority need to survive.
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On October 22 2018 16:14 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage. The transgender debate is a weird one. I agree that it shouldn't be the majority's responsibility to defer to the minority, but when it comes to gender the right simply doesn't seem to know what they are talking about at all, or haven't thought about it all that much and are just resisting change. The idea that gender can vary from biology in a minority of cases is something that society should embrace, and it saddens me that people are holding on to outdated, discredited notions of gender being identical to biological sex. Not only that, but conservative lines of thought on the issue are frankly obsessed with genitals to quite a creepy degree, all in the service of trying to proliferate the idea that transgenderism isn't 'real', its just some psychological problem. That isn't true at all, its very well documented that there are many cases of gender varying from biological sex, and given that gender is simply a socially defined series of behaviours, relationships and interactions, a generation of people are well within their rights to redefine that if it makes people better off. And no, having a transgender person use the 'wrong' bathroom doesn't matter, compared to that person being marginalized and told they do not exist. In the UK trans exclusionary types have extended the bathroom debate to women's only shelters, but there aren't any cases of these being abused by transgender people. Its a made up infringement of rights that don't exist. The rights of the majority that you are trying to protect, in this case, don't matter at all compared to the essential rights that the minority need to survive.
Moreover it turns out we've known for a while that not only gender but biological sex is actually a spectrum as well. They just dumped it into "two genders" to make various research easier to do/present. Nowadays we have medications so nuanced that it's actually important to know what someone's sex chromosome makeup in order to accurately prescribe some medications.
My issue with the transgender conversation is that I view it as submitting/promoting gendering in general which I personally think is pointless. I understand genetic considerations when it comes to things like sports where the genetic trends can significantly alter things like testosterone production and the related biological effects but nowadays most of the issues revolve around gender stereo-types (lots of which came about in the last 50-100 years from marketing corps), and lingering Victorian age understandings of sexual morality.
But simply as a matter of fact the concept that there are only two discrete* sexes is scientifically inaccurate and strictly a social construction based off remarkably ignorant (though typical of their contemporaries) medical understandings. So regardless of how conservatives feel about people where this is primarily an identity issue, there have been men with vagina's and women with penises using bathrooms since long before this was something we remotely understood let alone discussed outside of the medical community (in the west).
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I'll go paragraph by paragraph, XDaunt, because I'm no good at chopping up big posts into blocks. Besides, the blog's not exactly so busy that the original will be buried by the time you read this so it lacks context.
1. I'm not sure you do, given your naivete on the subject. To paraphrase what you said: "I, XDaunt, know the minds of more than 100 million people and can accurately speak on their behalf!" To which I say; "Bullshit." I wouldn't make the same claim for liberals, nor should anyone. But it's very interesting that you feel so confident saying you can for conservatives. (Well, maybe not 100 million, but millions and millions for sure)
2. No, I don't think that. I'm not sure how much more clearly I can say it. And it's neither of your self-serving, inaccurate options. Some liberals definitely do think you're all closet racists. Me personally, I bring it up because people like you pretend it's a statistically irrelevant part of the platform, despite us being about three years off the birther conspiracy, an overtly racist conspiracy theory accepted whole-heartedly by many US Conservatives that really dragged the dark side of your platform out into the open during Obama's tenure. You have a racism problem, and it won't go away until you do something about it. Same as Labour needs to be reminded about their anti-semitism problem. Unless you want to argue that the entirety of the political leadership is divorced from your personal Conservative views, so that all visible Republican awfulness has no bearing on your politics, which is fine. You're free to say that, and I'll accept it.
3. Cool. Are you going to shut up and learn from me, as Sun Tzu's older, cooler brother used to say? Because it's clear you don't know what you're talking about when you talk about liberals. I'm aware that the alt-right is different from Conservativism in general, but all I see here is sub-dividing groups of Right Wing Guys until you can say 'well I'm not a racist, so there's no problem'. In addition, you should be well aware - given how much you think you know - that as I'm from the UK 'Conservative' is an umbrella term for 'right wing people'. But go ahead, you tell me exactly which sub-divisions of American Conservatives are racist asshats, since you're in the know. I'm willing to be educated.
4. No, that isn't what I was saying. How quaint of you to assume otherwise.
You're telling me all of the explicitly racist talk that Conservatives indulge in - some Conservatives yes, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen - is some sort of deep, brave philosophical discussion about how immigration policy is a necessity for the country? What next? Do you have the bravery to proudly say 'yes, I am a racist'? You know, if you'd just admit that this is a problem and this is a thing, it'd be over. I'm not asking you to fall down on your knees and beat your chest and tear your hair. I'm not going to jump up and down and cheer. I'll just see that you're a reasonable person and move on to another topic. You're an intellectual of some stripe, and that's great. Less intelligent people than you aren't thinking about immigration policy in great detail, they're saying blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote because they tend to vote Democrat, or cops are right to shoot black people immediately because 'all them niggers have guns anyway'. And yes, that's a quote. From a random spod, yes, but a quote nonetheless. And you can pull random quotes from crazy liberals, and I'll admit that the left has those elements, because it does. Your dig-heels-in, refusal to admit that Conservativism has its dark side is the problem here. Not everyone politically aligned with you has the exact same views. That's just not how the world works. And I'm afraid it's the idiots who put your politicians into power, not the smart ones. Oh yeah, and the GOP explicitly courted the racist idiots for about 30 years. So that didn't help.
5. Except that not all right wing people - let's use that since you find Conservatives so offensive - interpret it the same way. indeed, when you yourself explained it, you used a bunch of terms that don't appear in the proper definition of the term. Funny, that.
6. The messages were very good at inspiring people, but they worked because they're vague. Your assumption that everyone lockstep agrees with your interpretation of them is indicative of the problem. It's exactly the same as Obama's 'Yes we can'. Great slogan. Utterly meaningless. You can project anything you want onto it. When some people on the right hear Make America Great Again, they hear 'God wasn't it great when black people were slaves?' and others think 'God wasn't it great when the economy was strong and all Americans of every stripe could thrive and prosper?' It's a vague, empty phrase that both of these extremely different viewpoints can coexist within it without the slightest bit of conflict. America First is the exact same thing.
7. The demonisation of the white male is enormously problematic, no question. Of course, the other hand is that it's invariably white men claiming there's nothing to see here and minimising these issues (case in point: YOU), making them the literal enemy of people trying to improve the lot of these minorities, so there's a chicken-and-egg thing happening there. You demonise liberals constantly. Can you really complain when they do it back? The language is nastier now, yes, but the entirety of political discourse is nastier now so... what do you expect? You can't complain about that at this point given how full-throatedly you endorse Trump-era right wing politics. The hideous language being used is part-and-parcel of the thing. People in society use the language of the time. Also, you're a little off. The injustices aren't lesser they're more localised. For example, it isn't 'lesser' when a trans person gets beaten to death because they're trans, which does happen, and regularly. But there are much fewer trans people so it's nowhere near as big a thing. Yet also, ironically, a bigger thing, because each death is more statistically significant. Plus they do have more basic rights than African Americans did so aside from the extreme moments their day to day existence is better. But I don't think 'beaten to death by a group of angry white guys' has changed much now compared to then.
8. So in other words you don't support Transgender rights at all? What you literally just said was 'they can have a job but they don't have the right to actually exist'. The foundational cornerstone of being transgender is not being the gender you were assigned at birth. This is why the bathroom thing is such a big deal for them as a community. So yes, they're being very entitled by asking for their existence to be recognised. What you described isn't tolerance, it's sneering contempt.
Just an FYI; they aren't the same thing.
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United Kingdom10443 Posts
The Trump administration is considering narrowing the definition of gender which would undermine the rights and protections of Transgender people.
I don't want to get into any debate on the issue, however I consider this move really backward thinking and hateful towards transgender people. If you feel the same way then consider donating to a good cause.
https://www.translifeline.org/
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On October 22 2018 16:41 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 16:14 Jockmcplop wrote:On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage. The transgender debate is a weird one. I agree that it shouldn't be the majority's responsibility to defer to the minority, but when it comes to gender the right simply doesn't seem to know what they are talking about at all, or haven't thought about it all that much and are just resisting change. The idea that gender can vary from biology in a minority of cases is something that society should embrace, and it saddens me that people are holding on to outdated, discredited notions of gender being identical to biological sex. Not only that, but conservative lines of thought on the issue are frankly obsessed with genitals to quite a creepy degree, all in the service of trying to proliferate the idea that transgenderism isn't 'real', its just some psychological problem. That isn't true at all, its very well documented that there are many cases of gender varying from biological sex, and given that gender is simply a socially defined series of behaviours, relationships and interactions, a generation of people are well within their rights to redefine that if it makes people better off. And no, having a transgender person use the 'wrong' bathroom doesn't matter, compared to that person being marginalized and told they do not exist. In the UK trans exclusionary types have extended the bathroom debate to women's only shelters, but there aren't any cases of these being abused by transgender people. Its a made up infringement of rights that don't exist. The rights of the majority that you are trying to protect, in this case, don't matter at all compared to the essential rights that the minority need to survive. Moreover it turns out we've known for a while that not only gender but biological sex is actually a spectrum as well. They just dumped it into "two genders" to make various research easier to do/present. Nowadays we have medications so nuanced that it's actually important to know what someone's sex chromosome makeup in order to accurately prescribe some medications. My issue with the transgender conversation is that I view it as submitting/promoting gendering in general which I personally think is pointless. I understand genetic considerations when it comes to things like sports where the genetic trends can significantly alter things like testosterone production and the related biological effects but nowadays most of the issues revolve around gender stereo-types (lots of which came about in the last 50-100 years from marketing corps), and lingering Victorian age understandings of sexual morality. But simply as a matter of fact the concept that there are only two discrete* sexes is scientifically inaccurate and strictly a social construction based off remarkably ignorant (though typical of their contemporaries) medical understandings. So regardless of how conservatives feel about people where this is primarily an identity issue, there have been men with vagina's and women with penises using bathrooms since long before this was something we remotely understood let alone discussed outside of the medical community (in the west).
I have my own issue with the push toward transgender rights, but mine settle mostly on the mindset of the LGBTalphabet movement in pushing for them, where I think they're actually setting the cause back by years with the assumption that the discussion is 'basically the same' as the push for gay rights, when it isn't because trans people raise an entirely different set of questions that modern society hasn't even pretended to grapple with until now. And that's without going into the linguistic problems they've raised.
But in fairness to them the community pushes for a ton of different gender identities outside male and female, it's just that those are never going to have mainstream traction. Quite a lot of trans people never transition because they don't feel like they're men or women, but something else, so whatever form they've got is fine. But the ones who transition make for better media darlings because of the... well... freakshow aspect. I hate to put it like that but it's the exact reason why. Someone like Ruby Rose - despite being in the community - makes a poor spokeswoman for it because she's so easily pigeonholed as something else.
For me it comes down to this: African Americans wanted to be treated the same as white people. This is a fairly reasonable request given how very similar a guy and a black guy are when you take skin colour out of the equation. It's also, at the fundament, not a big ask.
Gay people wanted people to let them marry and stop giving a shit about what they do in their own time in their bedrooms. Again, a fairly reasonable request. 'Stop going out of your way to pay attention to this thing that doesn't involve you' isn't a huge ask. Marriage was a slightly bigger issue because it involves legal stuff, but again, not a huge ask.
Trans people want everyone in society to completely upend their accepted views of gender in order to accept their existence, try to wrap their heads around the idea of body dysmorphia (itself a weird condition most people know nothing about), and oh, maybe reconsider the entire way the english language handles gendering while we're at it (via the preferred pronouns debate). That's a whole heap of complicated and difficult questions that need to be properly discussed by society at large. The LGBT movement largely assumes the debate's over because they had it behind closed doors and are going with the 'everyone who didn't get the minutes - that we didn't write - of those meetings is now a bigot' approach.
Leaving a lot of people on the left and right looking around in bleary-eyed confusion and asking 'Who, how, what? What's a trans? Why am I a bigot now? Okay, I'll just go back to bed'.
Of course, I'm also aware of the counter point that you've expressed in other contexts that politeness in activism doesn't actually tend to work, so maybe they're going about it exactly the right way. I just feel it's stifling the discussion because they don't feel they need to have it in the first place.
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On October 22 2018 21:35 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 16:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 22 2018 16:14 Jockmcplop wrote:On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage. The transgender debate is a weird one. I agree that it shouldn't be the majority's responsibility to defer to the minority, but when it comes to gender the right simply doesn't seem to know what they are talking about at all, or haven't thought about it all that much and are just resisting change. The idea that gender can vary from biology in a minority of cases is something that society should embrace, and it saddens me that people are holding on to outdated, discredited notions of gender being identical to biological sex. Not only that, but conservative lines of thought on the issue are frankly obsessed with genitals to quite a creepy degree, all in the service of trying to proliferate the idea that transgenderism isn't 'real', its just some psychological problem. That isn't true at all, its very well documented that there are many cases of gender varying from biological sex, and given that gender is simply a socially defined series of behaviours, relationships and interactions, a generation of people are well within their rights to redefine that if it makes people better off. And no, having a transgender person use the 'wrong' bathroom doesn't matter, compared to that person being marginalized and told they do not exist. In the UK trans exclusionary types have extended the bathroom debate to women's only shelters, but there aren't any cases of these being abused by transgender people. Its a made up infringement of rights that don't exist. The rights of the majority that you are trying to protect, in this case, don't matter at all compared to the essential rights that the minority need to survive. Moreover it turns out we've known for a while that not only gender but biological sex is actually a spectrum as well. They just dumped it into "two genders" to make various research easier to do/present. Nowadays we have medications so nuanced that it's actually important to know what someone's sex chromosome makeup in order to accurately prescribe some medications. My issue with the transgender conversation is that I view it as submitting/promoting gendering in general which I personally think is pointless. I understand genetic considerations when it comes to things like sports where the genetic trends can significantly alter things like testosterone production and the related biological effects but nowadays most of the issues revolve around gender stereo-types (lots of which came about in the last 50-100 years from marketing corps), and lingering Victorian age understandings of sexual morality. But simply as a matter of fact the concept that there are only two discrete* sexes is scientifically inaccurate and strictly a social construction based off remarkably ignorant (though typical of their contemporaries) medical understandings. So regardless of how conservatives feel about people where this is primarily an identity issue, there have been men with vagina's and women with penises using bathrooms since long before this was something we remotely understood let alone discussed outside of the medical community (in the west). I have my own issue with the push toward transgender rights, but mine settle mostly on the mindset of the LGBTalphabet movement in pushing for them, where I think they're actually setting the cause back by years with the assumption that the discussion is 'basically the same' as the push for gay rights, when it isn't because trans people raise an entirely different set of questions that modern society hasn't even pretended to grapple with until now. And that's without going into the linguistic problems they've raised. But in fairness to them the community pushes for a ton of different gender identities outside male and female, it's just that those are never going to have mainstream traction. Quite a lot of trans people never transition because they don't feel like they're men or women, but something else, so whatever form they've got is fine. But the ones who transition make for better media darlings because of the... well... freakshow aspect. I hate to put it like that but it's the exact reason why. Someone like Ruby Rose - despite being in the community - makes a poor spokeswoman for it because she's so easily pigeonholed as something else.
I mostly just view gender sorta like race in that the whole having to fit into a box makes it so I don't try to break out a DNA results test to identify my race, it's something society decides. I can signal things to them to make some of the nuance more clear but it's not really up to me whether people identify me as Black or any of the other ethnicities in my family tree. I'd love for society to destroy both concepts and let people be people but in that way I empathize with those that choose to signal where they want people to shove them when they have to comply with societies gender boxes. Surgery (both bottom and a variety of race related ones), skin bleaching, and some the other more dangerous/harmful aspects around transitioning I find concerning but I also exist in the US as a Black man so I get the motivation.
I don't look at it as a personal failing, but that a society that has convinced people that these things are necessary to for everyone to exist has failed in such a terrible way it's hard to put in words. I suppose my concern comes from situations where in an effort to be supportive and not condemn people for dealing with the world in a way that doesn't harm others we are not just allowing (which I can understand) but encouraging people to do risky things that can permanently alter their bodies and minds in ways we don't understand and may not even be necessary in 30-50 years.
I know it's not everyone but I do wonder how many trans people, if having endured a "normal" life in a society that simply didn't care if a child with a penis came to school in a pink dress with long hair and painted nails (or whatever the situation was), so long as they came to learn and help their classmates (or whatever). I suspect it'd mostly just be intersex/DSD people (the terminology is fluxuating and differentiating so I may be unintentionally conflating groups) that wanted more pleasurable sexual experiences (completely reasonable), and other medical reasons.
I understand the complexity of shifting society back to a time where genitals and nipples didn't freak us out but that's most of humanity for most of time and I think our frontal lobes and documented history should be enough to prevent us from turning into a society where rape and sexual assault gets worse and all civilization breaks down because someone with a penis uses a toilet in a womens bathroom or a locker room has a variety of genital expressions that could potentially be encountered.
That said I don't expect it to happen overnight or for everyone to immediately hop on board but I would think most reasonable people wouldn't still be clinging to outdated concepts of masculinity and femininity that think blending the behaviors or appearances of them or not properly applying them to your assigned genitals is evil or destructive to society. When by most accounts that both a rather brief and recent phenomena that didn't come from or bring with it anything indispensable from/for society.
I suppose/imagine that last part is a particularly important point of contention among more conservative minded people, but I think it's also rather plain for a lot of folks that have known people that already existed outside the established gender norms and seen them lead perfectly functional and contented lives (as much as anyone else anyway) outside the folks who find it problematic to coexist with those outside of "traditional" relationships or gender/sex expressions.
EDIT: you added more but I wanted to address this specifically
I just feel it's stifling the discussion because they don't feel they need to have it in the first place.
It's true, society should have figured this shit out a long time ago. It's like school shootings or homeless veterans. Sure a homeless veteran that's piss drunk shooting heroine on your buildings stoop telling you to eat shit and die is "stifling the discussion" about proper mental healthcare for people we send to war, but that's our bad, not the vet's.
It's through this "but they're convincing me wrong" line of argument people justify doing what they know is wrong.
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On October 22 2018 16:14 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage. The transgender debate is a weird one. I agree that it shouldn't be the majority's responsibility to defer to the minority, but when it comes to gender the right simply doesn't seem to know what they are talking about at all, or haven't thought about it all that much and are just resisting change. The idea that gender can vary from biology in a minority of cases is something that society should embrace, and it saddens me that people are holding on to outdated, discredited notions of gender being identical to biological sex. Not only that, but conservative lines of thought on the issue are frankly obsessed with genitals to quite a creepy degree, all in the service of trying to proliferate the idea that transgenderism isn't 'real', its just some psychological problem. That isn't true at all, its very well documented that there are many cases of gender varying from biological sex, and given that gender is simply a socially defined series of behaviours, relationships and interactions, a generation of people are well within their rights to redefine that if it makes people better off. And no, having a transgender person use the 'wrong' bathroom doesn't matter, compared to that person being marginalized and told they do not exist. In the UK trans exclusionary types have extended the bathroom debate to women's only shelters, but there aren't any cases of these being abused by transgender people. Its a made up infringement of rights that don't exist. The rights of the majority that you are trying to protect, in this case, don't matter at all compared to the essential rights that the minority need to survive.
There's nothing wrong with the obsession with genitals. It provides a clear, bright line, and manageable rule for policy. For example, you can't put in a spectrum of restrooms at the airport. Maintaining the binary classification of gender also largely reflects reality. A fraction of a percent of the US population identifies as transgender. We aren't talking about a large class of people, much less a large class of disenfranchised people. Moreover, I question the need for any action by the majority to accommodate transgenderism beyond affording them basic Title VII anti-discrimination protections. Again, it is not incumbent upon the majority to accept as normal transgenderism. Even accepting the argument that transgendered individuals don't choose who they are, that still is an insufficient basis for the use force of government to compel societal thought. Conservatives don't hate transgendered people. They simply don't view it as normal (which it statistically is not) and don't want to have to explain that shit to their children. Forcing conservatives to do so will not lead to a good result.
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On October 22 2018 22:22 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2018 21:35 iamthedave wrote:On October 22 2018 16:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 22 2018 16:14 Jockmcplop wrote:On October 22 2018 07:17 xDaunt wrote:
Frankly, I think that the various minority groups have an unfounded and misplaced sense of entitlement. For example, while I'm fine with the idea that we should not discriminate against transgendered people, particularly when it comes to things like employment, I do not believe that we should be forced to accept transgenderism as being something that is normal by doing things like allowing them to pick whatever bathroom that they want based upon laughable concepts of self-identity. Stated another way, minority rights advocates jumped the shark when they made the goal "acceptance" rather than just "tolerance." The majority has rights and interests, too. I wholly disagree with the idea that it is always incumbent upon the majority to defer to the minority, which is certainly the current proposition being repeatedly floated by the left on pretty much every issue ranging from illegal immigration to bathroom usage. The transgender debate is a weird one. I agree that it shouldn't be the majority's responsibility to defer to the minority, but when it comes to gender the right simply doesn't seem to know what they are talking about at all, or haven't thought about it all that much and are just resisting change. The idea that gender can vary from biology in a minority of cases is something that society should embrace, and it saddens me that people are holding on to outdated, discredited notions of gender being identical to biological sex. Not only that, but conservative lines of thought on the issue are frankly obsessed with genitals to quite a creepy degree, all in the service of trying to proliferate the idea that transgenderism isn't 'real', its just some psychological problem. That isn't true at all, its very well documented that there are many cases of gender varying from biological sex, and given that gender is simply a socially defined series of behaviours, relationships and interactions, a generation of people are well within their rights to redefine that if it makes people better off. And no, having a transgender person use the 'wrong' bathroom doesn't matter, compared to that person being marginalized and told they do not exist. In the UK trans exclusionary types have extended the bathroom debate to women's only shelters, but there aren't any cases of these being abused by transgender people. Its a made up infringement of rights that don't exist. The rights of the majority that you are trying to protect, in this case, don't matter at all compared to the essential rights that the minority need to survive. Moreover it turns out we've known for a while that not only gender but biological sex is actually a spectrum as well. They just dumped it into "two genders" to make various research easier to do/present. Nowadays we have medications so nuanced that it's actually important to know what someone's sex chromosome makeup in order to accurately prescribe some medications. My issue with the transgender conversation is that I view it as submitting/promoting gendering in general which I personally think is pointless. I understand genetic considerations when it comes to things like sports where the genetic trends can significantly alter things like testosterone production and the related biological effects but nowadays most of the issues revolve around gender stereo-types (lots of which came about in the last 50-100 years from marketing corps), and lingering Victorian age understandings of sexual morality. But simply as a matter of fact the concept that there are only two discrete* sexes is scientifically inaccurate and strictly a social construction based off remarkably ignorant (though typical of their contemporaries) medical understandings. So regardless of how conservatives feel about people where this is primarily an identity issue, there have been men with vagina's and women with penises using bathrooms since long before this was something we remotely understood let alone discussed outside of the medical community (in the west). I have my own issue with the push toward transgender rights, but mine settle mostly on the mindset of the LGBTalphabet movement in pushing for them, where I think they're actually setting the cause back by years with the assumption that the discussion is 'basically the same' as the push for gay rights, when it isn't because trans people raise an entirely different set of questions that modern society hasn't even pretended to grapple with until now. And that's without going into the linguistic problems they've raised. But in fairness to them the community pushes for a ton of different gender identities outside male and female, it's just that those are never going to have mainstream traction. Quite a lot of trans people never transition because they don't feel like they're men or women, but something else, so whatever form they've got is fine. But the ones who transition make for better media darlings because of the... well... freakshow aspect. I hate to put it like that but it's the exact reason why. Someone like Ruby Rose - despite being in the community - makes a poor spokeswoman for it because she's so easily pigeonholed as something else. I mostly just view gender sorta like race in that the whole having to fit into a box makes it so I don't try to break out a DNA results test to identify my race, it's something society decides. I can signal things to them to make some of the nuance more clear but it's not really up to me whether people identify me as Black or any of the other ethnicities in my family tree. I'd love for society to destroy both concepts and let people be people but in that way I empathize with those that choose to signal where they want people to shove them when they have to comply with societies gender boxes. Surgery (both bottom and a variety of race related ones), skin bleaching, and some the other more dangerous/harmful aspects around transitioning I find concerning but I also exist in the US as a Black man so I get the motivation. I don't look at it as a personal failing, but that a society that has convinced people that these things are necessary to for everyone to exist has failed in such a terrible way it's hard to put in words. I suppose my concern comes from situations where in an effort to be supportive and not condemn people for dealing with the world in a way that doesn't harm others we are not just allowing (which I can understand) but encouraging people to do risky things that can permanently alter their bodies and minds in ways we don't understand and may not even be necessary in 30-50 years. I know it's not everyone but I do wonder how many trans people, if having endured a "normal" life in a society that simply didn't care if a child with a penis came to school in a pink dress with long hair and painted nails (or whatever the situation was), so long as they came to learn and help their classmates (or whatever). I suspect it'd mostly just be intersex/DSD people (the terminology is fluxuating and differentiating so I may be unintentionally conflating groups) that wanted more pleasurable sexual experiences (completely reasonable), and other medical reasons. I understand the complexity of shifting society back to a time where genitals and nipples didn't freak us out but that's most of humanity for most of time and I think our frontal lobes and documented history should be enough to prevent us from turning into a society where rape and sexual assault gets worse and all civilization breaks down because someone with a penis uses a toilet in a womens bathroom or a locker room has a variety of genital expressions that could potentially be encountered. That said I don't expect it to happen overnight or for everyone to immediately hop on board but I would think most reasonable people wouldn't still be clinging to outdated concepts of masculinity and femininity that think blending the behaviors or appearances of them or not properly applying them to your assigned genitals is evil or destructive to society. When by most accounts that both a rather brief and recent phenomena that didn't come from or bring with it anything indispensable from/for society. I suppose/imagine that last part is a particularly important point of contention among more conservative minded people, but I think it's also rather plain for a lot of folks that have known people that already existed outside the established gender norms and seen them lead perfectly functional and contented lives (as much as anyone else anyway) outside the folks who find it problematic to coexist with those outside of "traditional" relationships or gender/sex expressions. EDIT: you added more but I wanted to address this specifically Show nested quote + I just feel it's stifling the discussion because they don't feel they need to have it in the first place. It's true, society should have figured this shit out a long time ago. It's like school shootings or homeless veterans. Sure a homeless veteran that's piss drunk shooting heroine on your buildings stoop telling you to eat shit and die is "stifling the discussion" about proper mental healthcare for people we send to war, but that's our bad, not the vet's. It's through this "but they're convincing me wrong" line of argument people justify doing what they know is wrong.
I 100% agree with your last sentiment. My stance is, however, that society is like your racist drunk uncle; it doesn't get out much and it doesn't think too hard. We should have figured this stuff out, but we didn't, so we do need to have the discussion, no matter how tedious it is.
Besides, it's the only way to achieve the result they want (acceptance). People can't accept a trans person without first knowing what one is. And again, it's a more complicated issue than blacks, gays or women. A black guy is a guy like me, who is black (fundamentally, not trying to pretend there aren't deeper differences as well). A gay guy is a guy like me, who likes other guys. A women is the other gender, but is functionally the same as me. A trans person has a whole list of issues that I simply cannot understand because they're spectacularly outside any frame of reference I can use to understand them. I'm lucky in having known several trans people for years who don't become rationally (I say rationally because, to quote them 'You have no idea how many times I've had this conversation') enraged when given 'the quiz' and having a trans friend whose facebook provides me an insight into the shit they go through constantly above and beyond 'society hates me'. For her that's only the start of her problems.
Accordingly, I'll pass on what insights they've passed on to me concerning some of these issues from their perspective. And yes, at the risk of being in the position of 'well I've got this black friend', not to mention that you might well know all of this already. I'll do my best not to stray far from what I've strictly heard from them in conversations.
A lot of the people who undergo transitioning literally feel they are the wrong gender. They hate seeing themselves in mirrors because they feel like they're not even looking at their own face, for example. They're well aware of the risks, they know the physical troubles it causes (my friend has had several ribs removed as part of her transition and it causes her constant problems), but they find those to be minor compared to what it's like to have a whole functioning body that literally freaks them out if they ever become 'aware' of it. One of my patient acquaintances said that he always wore gloves, because he couldn't handle seeing his hands, so for a long time he walked like a robot, head craned up a bit so the natural pace of walking didn't bring his hands into view. He got lucky, his transition's been relatively painless, but the way he talked about it compared to before, it was like listening to someone recounting their time in a POW camp.
Related to that, though, because they're usually aware from a very young age that they aren't the gender identity their own family assumes they are (my friend says she knew she was wrong from her very earliest memories, the others had various times of realisation, the latest being in their early 20s), finding an identity to be is a big deal for them, and why they can often be very particular about pronouns, if they go that route.
For them, society doesn't decide, they do, and the act of self-definition is one of the most important events in their lives (true across all trans people i've known). So while I agree it'd be nice to be without those concepts, for them, the existence of those concepts is important to their identity as they felt they didn't even have one until then. One of them described it like an anchor; without it they felt utterly listless and lost, and once they had it they were able to actually plant their feet and start building an actual liveable life. Without it they were just confused and afraid pretty much all the time, because they didn't know how to deal with their own body or the life they had to live in it.
So maybe there's some similarity to black people skin bleaching? I admit I don't know too much about the phenomenon beyond Michael Jackson doing too damn much of it.
Regardless, they don't see it as signalling the box for people to put them into, but claiming territory for their own benefit. even if they're sharing it with someone else, they tend to see it through the eyes of reclamation, like they were denied their birthright by society. Which now I phrase it that way is pretty spot on. My friend was told she was a boy from day one. The first day of the rest of her life was when she said 'no, I'm actually a girl'.
Does that make sense? None of them see this as an imposition from society, but something inside them that they needed to grapple with. Though my friend's got plenty to say about the gendered messaging from society as well, of course :D
As for genitals and nipples freaking people out: Fuckin' Victorians. I genuinely blame us English people for this. The super prudish vision of sex that seems nearly omnipresent in our culture now really does seem to begin in Victorian England.
Moving out of 'stuff I've heard' and into 'stuff I've gleaned from long rambling discussions' and my own thoughts, I don't know how much certain groups on the right consider trans people to be a genuine threat. The idea of being able to redefine your gender does seem to challenge their ideas of masculinity and femininity, and for some reason those ideas do seem to be very important to them. I mean, look at how many rightish mini-movements there are whose sole focus is 'making men be MEN again', and how firmly and directly they push back at trans-activist language.
Seems to me like we're setting the ground for the pushback when we reach full transhumanism, and people start using technology to really fuck with ideas of the self and consciousness. If we ever get there, of course. It's a shame I won't be alive to see how it goes.
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