US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5146

On August 09 2025 04:53 LightSpectra wrote:
Percentage of the population that's trans: <1%

Things that are a higher percentage of the population: Holocaust denialism (15% in the Americas), functional illiteracy of adults (21%), children without health insurance (5% as of 2021, is projected to skyrocket after the BBB Medicaid cuts are enacted), hungry children (17.9%), police officers who have admitted to domestic abuse ("actually 28%").

But sure, it's the first thing here that's a national crisis.



That's actually amazing, I participate in local queer rights organizations and protests and I don't know that many. Statistically speaking if you know 100 random people then between zero to one of them is likely to be transgender (see above). Are you stalking nonbinary people or something?

On August 09 2025 05:17 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


In before Republican headlines read: "Democrats insist on nobody being a Dick... or a Richard... in fact, Democrats think all men's names should be replaced with women's names!"

On August 09 2025 05:21 BlackJack wrote:


That's really a dumb way to look at things. Diabetes kills more black people than the police by a factor of 100(?). I guess the BLM movement is inordinately obsessed over the wrong things?

Also your number is completely off. "About 5% of young adults in the U.S. say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth"

The share of U.S. adults who are transgender is particularly high among adults younger than 25. In this age group, 3.1% are a trans man or a trans woman. Can you explain the discrepancy in your belief that <1% are trans although 3.1% identify as trans and another 2% as non-binary? By your number and some quick maths, the majority of them are not actually trans, which would be an incredibly offensive claim.

On August 09 2025 05:21 BlackJack wrote:


That's really a dumb way to look at things. Diabetes kills more black people than the police by a factor of 100(?). I guess the BLM movement is inordinately obsessed over the wrong things?

Also your number is completely off. "About 5% of young adults in the U.S. say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth"

The share of U.S. adults who are transgender is particularly high among adults younger than 25. In this age group, 3.1% are a trans man or a trans woman. Can you explain the discrepancy in your belief that <1% are trans although 3.1% identify as trans and another 2% as non-binary? By your number and some quick maths, the majority of them are not actually trans, which would be an incredibly offensive claim.

On August 09 2025 01:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


I don't even know if there is a Goldilocks zone anymore, because the goalposts move so frequently and because the most extreme "woke" takes are generally fabricated by Republicans anyway. For example, BlackJack just made up a ridiculous list of things and projected them onto Democrats, and apparently also found some Reddit users who are mad at Sydney Sweeney. Neat. On the other hand, there are actual conservative talking heads with millions of followers, like Ben Shapiro, flipping out about how woke Superman is. Extremely-devoutly-Jewish Ben Shapiro is flipping out about the Nazi-fighting superhero. I don't know if there is room for a Goldilocks zone or a sweet-spot or a "middle" in between being for or against Nazis, or being for or against fighting for people's rights. Even if you found some non-committal non-opinion on something that's worth taking a stance for, the opposition will just make up a stance for you. And when all else fails, they'll just paint/photoshop "MS13" on your knuckles or claim that immigrants are eating your dogs, so it's not like trying to take a measured stance on "being woke" is even possible*.

*I also still maintain the fact that being woke means being aware, educated, and compassionate, and Republicans who mock people for being woke are actually conceding their own shortcomings.

I think charismatic and believable platforming that appeals to both the left-wing progressives and the moderate Democrats needs to happen, and not all issues will necessarily be as important in courting those votes or finding useful overlap. For example, I think economic issues and taxes are relatively universal to discuss, and some strong platforms that help the working and middle classes could resonate with a large number of voters. On the other hand, I don't think that Kamala Harris would have magically won the popular vote if she had talked about trans issues even 1% as much as Trump did. (Hating trans people may have mobilized some MAGA voters, so demonizing trans people might have been a good move for Trump, but I don't know how galvanizing or tie-breaking of an issue being pro-trans is for non-voters who lean Democrat, so I think it was a fine decision for Harris to stay pretty quiet on that issue too.)

On August 09 2025 06:06 Dan HH wrote:

There's no discrepancy, he cited population overall, you cited the under 25 segment of it. You wouldn't be wrong in thinking it's the most relevant segment but the way you framed that entire post is just weird.

Also get real, you haven't met dozens of people that asked you to call them ze/zir, you're confusing the outrage porn you doomscroll with reality.

On August 09 2025 05:33 LightSpectra wrote:
So you're really not gonna attempt to explain how you know "dozens" of nonbinary people with exotic pronouns, huh? Did you become obsessed with talking shit about trans people because you're a chaser and ashamed of it? Or you're bitter for being turned down by a trans person? It's really fucking weird and I wanna hear why, don't leave us hanging!

On August 09 2025 06:06 Dan HH wrote:

There's no discrepancy, he cited population overall, you cited the under 25 segment of it. You wouldn't be wrong in thinking it's the most relevant segment but the way you framed that entire post is just weird.

Also get real, you haven't met dozens of people that asked you to call them ze/zir, you're confusing the outrage porn you doomscroll with reality.

“Engagement went from great convos on many topics, to agree with me or you are a nazi fascist,” Cuban wrote. “We are forcing posts to X.”

“Even if you agree with 95% of what a person is saying on a topic, if there is one point that you might call out as being more of a gray area, they will call you a fascist etc.,” said Cuban

"I lost some good friends, like, I mean, they're just, they won't talk to me,"

"They're done and, you know, I appreciate they felt hurt. They felt that point of view was, you know, somehow diminishing," Newsom added.

On August 09 2025 07:01 Hat Trick of Today wrote:
I’ve played Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, both hobbies with a larger than usual player population of queer and trans individuals.

I can assure you that trans people don’t give a fuck if you accidentally misgender them and I have literally never seen anyone use any pronoun more unusual than they/them. They do fuck around with people who are openly malicious towards them.

Maybe Blackjack needs to hang with people who aren’t yanking his chain or hide his disgust for trans people better because it sounds like they're giving him shit.

On August 09 2025 07:45 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I teach at a high school with 1250 students. While I didn't know all of them last year, I have a pretty good overview, and I knew of 2 trans and 1 non-binary. I imagine the number could be twice as high but there are definitely fewer than 10 trans+non binary. The non-binary didn't care what pronouns you use, one trans cared but wasn't upset by accidental mishaps and the other I saw give off a resigned sigh when an older teacher called her him (not conscious).

When I google 'how many norwegians are trans' (in Norwegian), I get wildly different results. A trustworthy source near the top says 'between 20000 and 260000' - or between 0.4% and 5% of the population. International studies from different countries seem to land at 'between 0.1% and 2.7%'. The biggest study, from England and Wales from 2021, saw 0.5% of 45 million respondents say that their gender identity differed from the gender they were assigned at birth.

Anyway - it seems like different countries and different age groups give wildly different answers to the question of gender incongruity. I'm going to assume that biologically, it's probably about the same everywhere (or epigenetics? I have no idea) - so the answer is probably something else.

Then, possible explanations I've heard are -
increased acceptance makes people who previously hid their gender dysphoria be willing to be open about it
This one to me, seems like it's pretty obviously true - and it works to explain why younger generations report significantly higher prevalence than older generations. However, it does not explain why American young adults in particular seem to report more gender dysphoria than young adults in other western countries. I really don't have the impression that the US - as a whole - is more accepting than Norway - as a whole - (although, there also seem to be pockets in the US that are more accepting than any similar pockets in European countries).

'Social contagion' - who knows, maybe it's a factor. I think perhaps it is for people who first report feelings of gender dysphoria during puberty but not during childhood. This could explain regional differences, but then maybe not, with how the young adults in all western countries live their lives on the internet and are thus subject to much the same social media influence anyway.

The questions are phrased differently in different studies - yeah, seems like this is most certainly the case, and if gender dysphoria exists on a spectrum rather than being a binary thing (which I believe is also the case), you could get very different results based on where you place the cutoff.

Additionally, I'm fond of the idea that it's also influenced by how rigid the existing gender roles are. In a country with more rigid norms for how a boy/man/girl/woman should act, more people will experience dysphoria than in a country where the gender roles are more fluid and accepting in the first place. This one- I believe - can explain why it seems like more americans are experiencing gender dysphoria than citizens of European countries that are actually more accepting of trans people, because it's also my impression that being a feminine boy or masculine girl are more accepted here.

Anyway not to detract from the whole are neopronouns real discussion but I don't really care about that one. I am, however, genuinely curious about how many people are actually trans. Is it somewhere around 0.5%, or will complete acceptance result in 3-5% of the population not identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth? (For the record, I'd be totally fine with that, obviously).

On August 09 2025 08:04 Razyda wrote:
This is massive win for Trump:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/guaranteeing-fair-banking-for-all-americans/

"Within 180 days of the date of this order, each appropriate Federal banking regulator shall, to the greatest extent permitted by law, remove the use of reputation risk or equivalent concepts that could result in politicized or unlawful debanking, as well as any other considerations that could be used to engage in such debanking, from their guidance documents, manuals, and other materials (other than existing regulations or other materials requiring notice-and-comment rulemaking) used to regulate or examine financial institutions over which they have jurisdiction."

On August 08 2025 10:47 WombaT wrote:
Why does Zambrah have to do necessarily do anything?

Trump didn’t ascend to his throne in the aftermath of some abortive attempt at socialism, he did so versus status quo, centrist politics as usual.

If one has faith in those said same institutions to redress this state of affairs, after some demonstrable failures, shouldn’t there be as much onus on one to have a detailed plan of what’ll be different this time?

Like I’d maybe hold the Mayor from Jaws to a higher degree of scrutiny on his ‘shark attack’ policies after a bunch of shark attacks, than x concerned citizen who warned about sharks incessantly (deleted scene I presume). They mightn’t have any kind of plan whatsoever, but they were kinda right on the shark bit