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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)
Comments
Beyoncé
Cifoncé
Degoné
Eetoncé
eFoncé
Gimoncé
etc.
[/completely useless wordplay]
Also, I'm kind of surprised that stuff you posted was in France, they seem to be on a different level in terms of socjus shizzle. (Mostly "is it fine or not to fiddle kids".)
Well, it seems like at some level all the SJWs take guidance from the US.
I genuinely thought the nonce capital of Europe was Germany though.
I thought this was some sort of silly way to say that they're stupid, but apparently this word means something like "ad hoc and only once"?
the story (so far) of a father of a trans daughter
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/24075581/housing-conversions-stripmalls-affordable-supply
"his prejudice"
I'm not glad that the comfort of female students is secondary to providing this one guy affirmation.
Honestly, this whole article is basically a religious tract, but if that works for you, cool.
I genuinely avoid posting the (weekly) PITT stories I get in my inbox here because I know it wouldn't help anything and merely cause a fight, so maybe we could try and uphold that sort of truce unless something really important happens.
I will say, however, that it's always assumed that the hard time students that identify as trans comes from the people around them and not internal psychological stresses.
Obviously, I don't condone other students making literal threats of sexual assault, and I'm in no way happy for anybody to have to go through that, but the sheer amount of turmoil that followed seems deeper than what's presented.
In addition, a boy (who as you can see there, is as tall as his father) that wasn't on hormone therapy at the time this story occurred (and even now, I mean, he's already well into puberty) in the girls' bathroom also presents his own unique threat to basically every female in that bathroom, regardless of how he actually is or presents himself.
Also gosh, that headline.
For three days.
I'm not glad that people are so damned antsy about bathroom gender separation in the first place.
> providing this one guy affirmation
The article is about him, but the obviously more important character in the actual situation is his daughter.
On the other hand, if you're referring to his daughter as "him", then...no, just no.
I'm not sure what PITT is, but I'm...also not particularly interested in some sort of truce. I'd also like to point out that a bunch of people left IJBM, and have given me flak over the years due to my being the mod here, for not outright booting you from this forum years ago over your transphobia, but being nice enough to simply continue arguing with you. But, after all, this forum was originally meant for arguing about whatever, so yeah, arguing it is.
Threats of sexual assault and such are kind of a big deal. Even for adults, and even more so for minors.
The most you might be able to reasonably argue is that gender dysphoria is related to other "internal psychological stresses", but it's quite clear that schoolkids can get really frickin' nasty in their bullying, looking at both the experiences of trans students as well as the experiences of cis students in a variety of other situations for which they get bullied.
It's hard to overstate how much difference a supportive vs. abusive social environment can make for a person.
Wow, is this like, bingo or something? There's the misgendering, and then there's the neglecting the existence of tall women, including tall cis women, who by the way get flak for being tall for that matter, and then there's the literally applying a bad stereotype about men.
Are you trying to say that that's no big deal?
Because it...kinda is a big deal. Suspensions are generally only used for serious behavioral problems at school. Like, "getting into fights" level of serious. Next step after suspensions (which are by their nature temporary, and also already counterproductive to educational goals) is outright expulsion.
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/12/1244316874/florida-blocks-heat-protections-for-workers-right-before-summer
Edit: Clarity.
I would guess so, but at this point, no news from the USA is surprising me anymore.
And, uh, by the way, I guess it's an odd place to say it, but, welcome to IJBM? (Or is it a new account of someone I really should recognize?)
If this is a hill you want to die on, I can't stop you, but that doesn't make it any better.
---
Regarding personal policy, some thoughts, some of which I've probably posted before:
My prior policy was "pronoun gender shouldn't matter, so people shouldn't care about whichever one is used for them, as long as it's clear". And, with regards to the linguistics, I had also held that "singular they is wrong but I can put up with it" and "English ought to have a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun" (by this I mean one that uses the third-person singular verb conjugation, of course).
But I then realized that, if I think pronoun choice shouldn't matter to other people, then it ought not matter to me, either, and so that consequently means I should be open to using for any given person whatever gender identifier they communicate to me. And it'd simply be courteous to do so. I mean, I didn't ask for proof of genitalia when I got corrected by cis people for misgendering them many years back, long before the notion of gender identity was in the public discourse. I just sorta was shocked for a bit, then moved on.
Linguistically speaking, I still chafe at "singular they", because it takes different verb conjugations from he/she/it, but I'll use it, because basically everyone was already using it (including myself!), just that it generally wasn't used to refer to specific known referents before and always was awkward even when referring to singular unknown referents. On the other hand, meanwhile, given that singular "they" is more socially acceptable these days, that does mean I can get away with using a gender-neutral term more often. Which is nice, even if the conjugation still sounds weird to me.
If I had my way, the singular form would be "ey" or " 'ey", basically a shortened form of "they". And "ey is". But I don't get my way in language. That said, if verb conjugation instead changed the third-person singular conjugations to match third person plurals, i.e. if we used "he are" instead of "he is", that would also solve the problem, ironically.
Beyond linguistics, if someone I think is a guy tells me they're a girl (or vice versa), I might find that revelation odd, but it's certainly not worth checking their genitalia and/or going to war over. The oddest thing that has happened has been if I get to know a person and then they later come out as trans (or enby or whatever) after I've already known them; I'd still remember who they are based on my past interactions with them, which makes it feel weird to think of them through a substantively new social profile. This is particularly awkward when people take pains to avoid being seen as their old social profile, and frown upon such things as "deadnames", because that's likely how I'd have known them and the resulting break from past memories is jarring. I can understand why they might want to disconnect from their past profile, but from my perspective, having the continuity can help me to adapt to their new profile if they're someone I already know.
Also I've already read your pronoun spiel several times and I'm not doing it again.
That said I had a feeling I'd posted it before. Well, I guess there's at least a slightly different audience this time.
I mean, I understand why it's so sensitive. Because there really are a lot of jerks out there who will use deadnames to harass people.
But I think ideally it'd be okay to refer to old names for reference so there'd be more continuity in knowing who's who. This would be more helpful for those of us who aren't intimately familiar with people whose names have changed.
A similar comment applies to other name changes, e.g. women who change their surnames to match their husbands', though in that case at least their given name usually doesn't change.
Yzak Rabin? (I'm 100% sure that he didn't share a first name with a Gundam SEED character).
GMH, that happened the year I was born.
What about Jewish people who openly identify as Zionists? What about Israel the country separately from it's government?
The opinion of wanting to clear the land of Palestinians remains distinct from any religious affiliation. While some Jews support/advocate for this idea (most notably the ones in charge of the Israeli government), it's quite definitely not all and nowhere near all of them.
The idea can be condemned without condemning the religion.
And a similar thing can be said about the opinion of wanting to clear the land of Israelis/Jews; while some Muslims support/advocate for this idea (most notably various terrorist groups), it's quite definitely not all and nowhere near all of them.
Israel as a country has as much right to exist as Palestine does -- or, frankly speaking, as much right as any other country, does.
Meanwhile, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by posting that (or for that matter, your statement about Rabin being assassinated the year you were born; you do this every so often where you post something cryptic and I'm confused as to exactly what position you're arguing for), but if your argument is that Palestinians voted for anti-Jewish sentiment, I'd point out that pushing people to the brink with a literally existential threat to their homeland is precisely what encourages extremism and radicalization. Hamas, being a more extreme political group, benefits politically from this marginalization of the Palestinian people, and in turn, the violence and extremism that they engage in lends support among the Israeli public for hardliners like Bibi and his allies, so much so that it's no surprise that they have a relationship. (And unfortunately the part of this article that mentions the Israeli government's work to disadvantage more reasonable Palestinian civil groups is paywalled.)
I did just genuinely mean you said "a while back" and it was like 28 years ago.
I don't think that's what Zionism is.
Anyways, my opinion of this whole thing is:
*Below: "Everything"
i doubt this can be as easily memoryholed as the somehow still respectable Iraq War cheerleaders