FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
15hr ago
I was considering submitting my review of Rejection, but I decided it's probably not the sort of thing that would appeal to SSC readers, so I just went ahead and published it. If I think of something else I might give it a go, but at the moment I have no plan for a specific book to review. My not-a-book review got a fairly positive reception in spite of not making the finalists, which I was pleased with.
Incidentally if you'd like me to read over your draft and offer feedback, I'd be more than happy to.
FtttG
16hr ago
Just copying the past
As big as it is and as awkward as it is to play, it probably isn't actually very heavy, by virtue of being hollow.
FtttG
16hr ago
Now I have to go back through your comment history to see if you've written anything to piss me off that I've forgotten about it.
FtttG
1d ago
Everything about the visual aesthetic screams "annoying gimmick band" (they seriously replaced the volume and tone pots with dice? really?), but I can't deny this is a lot of fun, while still being math-y enough for the "count the time signatures" crowd.
My God, that double-necked guitar/bass must weigh a fucking ton though.
FtttG
1d ago
I think the TERF treatment of HSTS is unnecessarily harsh
How so? In my experience, most TERFs are far more sympathetic to homosexual trans-identified men than they are to AGPs.
Blanchard’s theory is true in the sense that AGP and HSTS populations exist, but it’s overly reductive in the sense that they’re not the only categories of trans people out there.
I agree that the "autistic, nerdy, often terminally online kind" of trans person is in a category of its own compared to homosexual males or archetypal AGPs. I also think the etiology behind trans-identification in females is completely different from that behind trans identification in males. "Gender dysphoria" isn't a condition like "lung cancer" or "depression" which affects males and females in the same way, and diagnosing males and females with the same condition hides more than it illuminates.
maybe those individuals would have been celibate monks or nuns in the past, when monastery life and asceticism was a viable alternative to the normal life script.
I've been thinking about this a lot. As much as people criticise Catholic institutions, they were a very effective Chesterton's fence for a particular kind of person who felt uncomfortable in their own skin and wasn't terribly interested in forming romantic relationships. It makes me sad thinking about all the young women who've gotten double mastectomies they'll likely regret, who would've been perfectly happy as nuns if they'd been born a couple of generations earlier.
FtttG
2d ago
Yes, I was tempted to mention something about how some of the most prominent American lesbians are joyless, humorless scolds (Rapinoe in particular). There's nothing fun or sexy about being told off or urged to check one's privilege.
Hypothesis: greater visibility of openly gay women has made the lesbian fantasy seem less appealing.
I believe lesbian porn is still being produced at the same rate as always. It usually stars heterosexual women, many of whom also shoot boy/girl scenes, and who look just as conventionally feminine as you would expect any heterosexual female porn star to look. (I once saw a YouTube clip in which actual lesbians watched lesbian porn intended to appeal to a heterosexual male audience and ridiculed how silly it was: for obvious reasons, no actual lesbian has long fingernails.) For heterosexual males, the essence of the lesbian fantasy lies in watching two hot, conventionally feminine women with high sex drives have sex with one another. No straight man wants "realistic" lesbian porn i.e. two butch women with crew- or pixie-cuts, both dressed like lumberjacks, neither wearing any makeup, having sex less frequently than even straight couples do.
In the past, when homosexuality was more stigmatised, a typical straight man might legitimately not know any out lesbians (sure, he knew tomboys, but he probably just assumed they were all straight, as indeed most of them probably were). With no real life examples to compare it to, he was free to imagine the lesbian fantasy as he wished, and perhaps even believed that the modal lesbian couple really did consist of two conventionally feminine women in a relationship with one another. (This even makes sense from an experiential perspective: if you've been told that lesbians are just like every other woman with the idiosyncrasy that they are exclusively attracted to other women, it's reasonable to assume that lesbians look and behave like the modal woman, this idiosyncrasy aside.) Outside of porn, this belief might have been reinforced by representations of lesbianism in popular culture: the depiction of a lesbian wedding in Friends was seen as groundbreaking at the time, but nowadays they'd probably catch flak for casting two straight women in these roles (both of whom were attractive in very conventionally feminine ways). Thus, when the typical straight male in the 90s heard about two women having sex with one another, he would either picture a) two average straight women; or (depending how much of a fantasist he was) b) two very attractive, conventionally feminine women. Either way, this mental image is going to be very far removed from what the typical lesbian relationship really looks like, and a lot more appealing to the modal straight man.
But with the greater visibility of out lesbians in popular culture, even a straight man who doesn't personally have any lesbian friends is far better acquainted with what the typical lesbian looks and behaves like than his equivalent in the 90s would be, which is bound to colour the fantasy. A straight man in the 90s would hear about two women having sex with each other, envision two attractive, conventionally feminine women having sex, and think "wow, hot". A straight man in 2026 hears about two women having sex with each other, his brain immediately goes to Ellen DeGeneres or Megan Rapinoe, and he thinks "ew". Knowing what the real thing looks like destroys the fantasy.
I completed XCOM 2: War of the Chosen on Commander difficulty, and almost immediately began trying to beat the base game on Commander difficulty with Ironman enabled. Much like playing the first game with these settings, it takes awhile to get out of the "one of my soldiers was killed, I'll just reload and try again" headspace. Generally the first few missions will be fairly smooth sailing, then I'll hit a wall and all my soldiers will get killed; rinse and repeat. Wish me luck.
FtttG
3d ago
A joke I tell whenever I walk past a particular restaurant.
What did the Vietnamese guy say about a friend of his who was getting on his nerves?
"Pho Kim."
FtttG
3d ago
But if you're posting on TheMotte, you almost definitely don't have to worry about this case.
hey bro not cool
That doesn't answer my question. I assume you mean that "discriminating against" someone on the basis of their claimed gender identity means doing something to them that they don't want. (I note that this isn't what the word "discriminate" literally means, but let's park that for now.) What does it mean to "draw a social distinction" between two people on the basis of their gender identities?
(Incidentally I have never seen that film so I have no idea what happened to Rodriguez on the basis of their claimed gender identity.)
FtttG
3d ago
Okay, so what is the difference between:
- "discriminating" against/in favour of male people who identify as women (which, according to you is a trait just as innate as race or sex) compared to male people who do not identify as women
- drawing a "social distinction" between male people who identify as women (which, according to you is a trait just as innate as race or sex) compared to male people who do not identify as women
?
(substitute "female", "men" in the examples above as necessary)
FtttG
3d ago
FtttG
3d ago
FtttG
3d ago
As mentioned earlier this week, I want to A/B test my opening paragraph to see if it's an improvement. I've created a Google Forms survey. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. The combined word count of the two paragraphs is ~400 words, so it shouldn't take more than five minutes of your time.
FtttG
3d ago
Later on:
Unfortunately, Congress did not like the decisions in Sutton and Toyota, and overrode them in The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008. In determining who is disabled, the law now says institutions cannot consider mitigating measures that one might take. So this counts not only people who are in wheelchairs, but also alcoholics, sufferers of just about any recognized mental condition, and yes, those who need glasses. Congress even struck from the record the finding of 43 million Americans being disabled in 1990, on the grounds that it was too limiting. No numerical benchmark was set, which meant that Congress was implicitly endorsing the Supreme Court’s counterfactual in Sutton in which a majority of the country might be considered disabled.
I misspoke, it would be more accurate to say that Congress considers a majority of Americans disabled.
FtttG
3d ago
Disability and unemployment schemes expanding until they encompass basically everyone.
Richard Hanania pointed out that, according to certain Supreme Court rulings, a majority of Americans could already be considered disabled. And this isn't me doing the "haha Americans are fat" thing: the Court was categorising any American who requires the use of glasses as disabled (i.e. 160 million Americans, or 57% of the population at the time of the ruling). And that's in addition to all those who are amputees, wheelchair-bound etc.
I don't know if we read a different edition or something, but I read Blindsight recently and IIRC it mentioned the sleepwalking thing a lot.
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