atomicdevils
No bio...
User ID: 1770
atomicdevils
1yr ago
I disagree with what I think the thrust of your post is, namely that social pressures are artificially "restricting" or "repressing" female sexuality. I think it's pretty much entirely biological.
I would hazard to guess that in an imaginary society where female sexuality was completely unfettered and unstigmatized...that female humans would still want sex less than male humans, and would still be choosier in their partners than males. In every mammalian species this dynamic exists, especially for placental mammals - because the investment necessary during pregnancy is so high. Female humans have particularly invasive placentas, very risky pregnancy and birth because of head size, and particularly helpless young that demand an extreme amount of care relative to other mammalian young (even other great apes). It is not surprising, therefore, that female humans have been selected to be discerning rather than horny.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
A few weeks ago I got sick and stayed home for a few days. So many of my friends asked me if my covid test was positive - just assuming I'd been testing. They were appalled when I said I hadn't bothered, and that in fact I have never tested myself for covid. If the diagnostic result does not change/inform treatment, then what use is it? If I were sick enough to need hospitalization, they'd test me for various things at that point and treat accordingly. If I'm not sick enough to be hospitalized, what good does knowing exactly what bug I have do? We know Paxlovid has only ever been tested in unvaccinated individuals and appears to have no value in vaccinated people (and perhaps a downside of helping covid evolve to escape it when over-used in those who do not need it). So I did what we all did pre-covid, I stayed home and rested until I felt better. Maybe I had covid. Maybe I didn't. I don't really care.
I think you're right that people have begun to view the test as some kind of treatment, or at least somehow a responsibility as if the knowledge of which bug is making them slightly ill is of grave importance to society.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
For young males, the risk of myocarditis after the 2nd dose of mRNA vaccine is higher than with covid infection. This should be taken into account in all vaccine recommendations, unfortunately in the USA we've chosen a "one size fits all" approach that groups 80 year old women with 19 year old men.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Vaccines have to be more good than bad. Almost all of them are. The covid vaccines get a wee bit murky in that regard when you get to younger age cohorts - especially younger male cohorts. There's a lot of good evidence that for young males in particular the virus carries fewer side effects than the mRNA vaccines, especially the 2nd dose of said vaccines. For older age groups I think you'd have to show pretty awful side effects for vaccination not to be worth it - so, for instance with over 65s you'd have to really have some bad frequency of side effects since they're so vulnerable to covid.
The other issue at hand here is efficacy, however. If the bivalent booster has risks but doesn't ultimately protect anyone any better than the 2x shots they already had (or 3x with the original booster) then there's really no good argument for them. The FDA lost two of its most experienced vaccine regulators over the Biden admin's "boosters for all" push, which wasn't based on any data whatsoever - we don't have any data showing that a 30 year old vaccinated woman will have further reduced mortality and morbidity with a booster shot or a bivalent booster. Most other countries, where their medical systems are more tuned towards cost and efficacy, have only authorized boosters for elderly people and those with severe immunocompromise (cancer patients). The US chose to push a one-size-fits-all policy with boosters, with zero evidence, and so...when a safety signal like this bubbles up it looks even worse than it would have if they'd pursued more evidence based recommendations.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Since we know that puberty is required to mature the brain to its adult capability, and since we know that cognitive abilities that deal with understanding long term consequences only develop with puberty, and since we know that puberty blockers permanently retard brain development - how can we argue for their use? How can a minor without the capability to understand long term consequences consent to a procedure that will permanently retard their ability to understand long term consequences?
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Linguistically dividing a politically useful/necessary class into constituent parts ("menstruator" "pregnant people" "people with vaginas") could be argued to reduce class cohesion - essentially, if "women" don't exist then it's harder for "women" to band together and advocate for their rights.
Medically there are language barrier issues as well, if you use "cervix-havers need pap smears" instead of "women need pap smears" you will necessarily fail to address a number of the female individuals you seek to alert.
The last argument I have against such language, beyond its awkwardness and ugliness in prose, is that changing the words will not affect reality in the long term. So, while such language is disjointed, ugly, atomizing etc now...over time "menstruator" and "afab" will just replace "women" in people's minds and will be as inclusive/exclusive as those words are now. Humans are very good at recognizing another individual's sex, very few trans people pass and those that do are mostly trans men...no one will be fooled by linguistic games in the long run, just like if we started calling cats "undogs" it'd be weird and people would misunderstand it for a while but in the end it wouldn't change anything material.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
If you wish people to understand current events they must understand the events that preceded them. It's really that simple. How can one understand what's happening in Ukraine without at least a little knowledge of WWI and WWII and Soviet Russia?
I put forth that understanding current events, at least a little bit, is important in democracies (but not dictatorships) because citizens must decide on representatives who will vote on many things having to do with current events - if they understand nothing of the context, they can't understand the issue, they can't make an informed vote, and democracy becomes more superficial.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Teen girls are particularly vulnerable to social contagion - it's how anorexia, bulimia, cutting etc have come in waves among teenage girls.
Adults are vulnerable too (in the '80s or '60s perhaps you would have interpreted whatever mental states lead you to feel trans as an indication of some mental disorder that was popular at the time - in the late '80s and early '90s maybe you would have thought your feelings had to do with repressed memories of abuse), but not nearly as much.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
A very general overview of adolescent cognition
puberty blockers cause IQ drop https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00044/full#B6
and "According to the results obtained through the cognitive evaluations, the patient presented a decrease in their overall intellectual performance after the onset of pubertal block, pointing to immaturity in her cognitive development (Table (Table11)."
atomicdevils
1yr ago
I would put money on social contagion accounting for the vast majority of adolescent female trans identification. With adolescent males I think it's more complicated - very effeminate gay males may face discrimination to the point that transition is easier, males may be motivated by AGP etc. Suffice it to say that I think there are more reasons that a male of any age may choose transition, and fewer that a female may.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Lower IQ isn't associated with less cognitive ability?
atomicdevils
1yr ago
The vast and insurmountable difference in physical strength between human males and females is the driving force behind concerns about trans identified males in female prisons, and other female-only spaces where females are vulnerable. Male humans account for the vast majority of perpetrators of violent crime and sexual assault.
Males and females are different, humans have sexual dimorphism and only magical thinking erases that. I'd go so far as to say that some parts of modern gender ideology are implicitly creationist.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Is walking difficult? It is slow, but seems pretty easy to me. Do people really find walking to be difficult?
atomicdevils
1yr ago
Physical activity did collapse, though. Combine high caloric intake with very low physical activity and voila, everyone is fat.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
If men were not as vulnerable to memes as women, the US military would not spend any money on advertising to teenage males.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
I work on campus, I just ignore it. Even when people introduce themselves with pronouns and ask mine I give my name and don't answer the pronoun question. I leave them wondering if I didn't hear them or if I'm purposefully ignoring the question, and I don't care.
atomicdevils
1yr ago
The problem is that "prostitution" is as worthless of a word as "homeless" because they can be used to describe a vast spectrum of behaviors and situations. A single mom who gets fired in an economic downturn and thus can't pay rent and is evicted is not the same as a 25 year old man with a fent habit who lives in a tent for easy access to his dealer and things to boost to pay for his habit - and yet both would be "homeless"
Similarly, the vast majority of women who sell sex in the US are not like Aella they are like the street walkers you'll find in the shitty parts of any city. These women tend to be addicts, tend to have a fraught relationship with "consent" (is it really consent if their pimps beat them for not making enough money?) and live sad lives of poverty. One could argue that full legalization would solve this issue and balance the scales more towards Aella-types...but many studies have shown legalization increases human trafficking (a supply and demand problem that will exist forever - very few women wish to be prostitutes compared to the number of men who wish to use prostitute's services).
So, even basic questions of policy in this debate are difficult and highly depend on what one values more in society. Prostitution and porn are "questions" that cannot be answered with data because data cannot tell us what we ought to value more than something else. That's going to depend on the individual's moral palette. Let's assume that the data show that violent porn does not lead to violent tendencies in men who view it regularly - that wouldn't convince someone who believes violent depictions of women are inherently wrong. If it was shown that watching child pornography does not lead to pedophilic abuse in men who view it regularly many people would still feel that child pornography was wrong - even if it was drawn/rendered and not real. Even if it was shown that viewing realistic rendered child porn decreased pedophile offending rates (this is unlikely, some studies show that consumption of this kind of pornography makes offending more likely - but we just don't know), many people would still consider the production of such images wrong, perhaps even criminal.
atomicdevils
9mo ago
instead of blaming it on social contagion and the media, perhaps you should first see if they have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, polycystic ovarian syndrome, or abnormal testosterone levels; there’s a high chance that’s the case.
What's the likelihood that these conditions arise in a friend-group of middle school girls all at once?
Social contagion among adolescent females is a huge, huge thing. The Salem Witch Trials? Social contagion among adolescent females.
atomicdevils
9mo ago
I actually wish that I had done a bit more to try to prevent spread of the disease.
The only thing your increased caution may have accomplished is slightly delaying the date you became infected with covid. You couldn't have prevented covid from spreading.
There was never any chance that this thing would be controlled with quarantines or even far more effective vaccines if we had them - since covid infects non-human animals and now has undoubtably many natural reservoirs, we could never eradicate it like we did with smallpox (only infects humans). It's also insanely contagious - we'd all have needed new, fit-tested n95s for every time we went out and goggles to boot (your eyes are connected to your nose and throat - aerosols that land on them/in them can travel downwards and voila, covid infection).
For adults 18-45 covid was more like a bad influenza strain, if you look at deaths by age group it becomes very apparent that it was really a disease of the old with some obese younger adults thrown in. Look at this age stratification https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254488/us-share-of-total-covid-deaths-by-age-group/
2% (85+) of the US population made up 27% of the deaths!
atomicdevils
9mo ago
It was a very deadly pandemic for very old people. It is sad they died, and especially that many died alone due to horrible/cruel hospital policies. But this was not a particularly deadly pandemic for younger adults.
Look at this age stratification https://www.statista.com/statistics/1254488/us-share-of-total-covid-deaths-by-age-group/
atomicdevils
8mo ago
I disagree. Lots of people are poor, very few are meth/fent addicts. Normal people don't end up living in a tent on the sidewalk and doing fent if they lose their job or have difficulty with housing - they rely on their friends/relatives or services available. Methfent addicts do not do this, because they've systematically burnt every bridge they've ever had through stealing and abuse and none of their former friends or relatives will lift a finger to help them anymore - in other words, the addiction came before the financial troubles and exacerbated them.
atomicdevils
8mo ago
get free opioids in a super boring and lame way that ensures no one will ever do it for fun.
But that's exactly why street dealers would still be popular.
atomicdevils
7mo ago
It is incredibly rare to be at the center of so many successful companies (paypal, tesla, space x, starlink...). Regardless of his other traits, he's most certainly good at picking winners.
atomicdevils
6mo ago
The allies did terrible things in WWII, firebombing Dresden and killing many, many civilians. Does that mean that the Axis and the Allies were morally equivalent sides?
Hamas hides their bases inside hospitals and schools and apartment buildings. Israel cannot just let Hamas continue to fire rockets at them - so they retaliate, but because Hamas hides in civilian areas those civilians become casualties of war. This is very different from IDF soldiers going into Gaza, raping and killing Palestinian women and then parading their bodies around to cheers of "god is great" from fellow Israelis - which is what Hamas has video'd itself doing. Hamas is an islamist organization that wants to help build a global caliphate and genocide all Jews everywhere. It's easy to "pick a side"
I would have thought that Apple giving the appearance of sticking it to Musk would have resulted in more cheerleading from those who'd like Musk to fail (or think he already is). I wonder if the relative lack of praise, from my perspective anyway, has to do with the rather nasty bit of news concerning Apple restricting air drop functionality for their Chinese consumers (one would think, at the behest of the CCP).
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