gemmaem
1yr ago
In the tumblr context, I read these people as closer to "intersectional feminist" than anything else. Specifically, I read them as "intersectional" because they are not just narrowly interested in male/female as the single axis of oppression. They're trying to take other complications into account. As such, this critique of yours is honestly pretty fair:
And even these quotes you bring up only seem to half care about the fact that this has been going on forever because of the implication it has on trans people. Like seriously? It took the implication that demonizing people like me would imply demonizing another group for you to think maybe it's a shitty tactic?
There's a whole category of semi-nuanced intersectional thinking that falls into this category. Intersectionality forces people to see that societal oppression is complicated and takes place across multiple axes that interfere with each other in weird and sometimes counterintuitive ways. Follow that thought sincerely enough and open-mindedly enough for long enough and you'll eventually see places where the thing you're critiquing is a side effect of a central unjustified criticism of a group that you didn't think was oppressed at all. Which is better than not seeing those things, but is still going to come across as half-baked at best to someone who was worried about the central unjustified criticism to begin with, yeah.
gemmaem
1yr ago
One could, but the government is not a university system, so this is a hypothetical Sam Brinton rather than a real one.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Hm, but why does "drawing engagement" make up for the unpleasantness of reading a post defending religious orthodoxy, for you? To be clear, I'm not implying that I know the answer to this question, but I think it's worth examining. If, for example, you feel a serious sense of grievance towards organised religion, and engagement on that grievance is a way to have your feelings acknowledged, then I can see why you would want that engagement, but this may not be the best way to manage feelings of threat and injury from someone else's ideology. Alternatively, if drawing engagement makes you feel less threatened because it means you know you've succeeded in retaliating for the unpleasantness you experienced by reading them in the first place, then I think you should not give in to that desire for retaliation; don't treat this place like a battleground.
Another thing worth examining is what kind of engagement you want. After all, you're replying to someone who says that condescension makes them less likely to engage. Personally, I have found that I often get more engagement from writing in a more measured tone and/or from developing relationships with posters who then learn that I am likely to actually listen to their replies.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Is there actually a significant contingent of people who want to talk to elementary school children about anal sex? I don't know of any examples, myself. I am inclined to think that this would be very unusual.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Concealing material information from parents is pedagogical malpractice.
... If a child is confused about sex or sexuality, that is not the government's business to decide how to address that. By making it the government's business, Democrats are actively grooming children.
Don't be ridiculous. You're seriously trying to say that it's "grooming" if someone believes that a teacher doesn't have to tell a kid's homophobic parents that their kid is gay? You want to call keeping a secret from someone who will hurt their kid if they know the same as deliberately trying to make it easier for someone to sexually abuse a kid? That is absurd.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Okay, fine, I read it. I really am doing my best, here, to see what you are trying to refer to. I think the only statement that seems like it might be saying something of that nature is this one:
As Buckingham notes, contemporary ‘mainstream’ media literacy education ‘seeks to begin with ... students ... existing tastes and pleasures, rather than assuming that these are merely invalid or “ideological”’ (2008, 14). While sexuality education targeting adults (particularly same-sex-attracted men) currently takes this approach to pornography, education targeting heterosexual young people does not.
This then leads into the concluding paragraphs, which you quoted above, and which are suggesting directions for "[f]uture research (and practical inquiry) into pornography and/as sex education." I think the strongest interpretation I could make of this would be something like "maybe porn literacy classes for young people should start with (and accept) their existing porn tastes instead of trying to prescribe the correct ideological responses."
From what I can see, however, the article is not actually proposing that the rules around not being allowed to show porn to young people should be changed.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Your first quote sounds like it is saying "children sometimes access porn and use it for sex education." I don't read it as saying that children should access porn and use it for sex education.
Your second quote is about "media literacy" in the context of teaching people who already have access to porn to be more critical of it.
gemmaem
1yr ago
To answer your first question, the "trans" in "non-binary trans femme" is using "trans" as an umbrella term, with "non-binary" as a subset of that.
gemmaem
1yr ago
I'm really glad you commented, because I think you're right. There shouldn't be a specific thing that "we fight against" here, unless it's heat over light and the difficulty of finding places to usefully talk with people you disagree with.
I see why you would say this, but even with your edits you're still wrong. Your interpretation of why the mods do what they do should not be used as a basis for trying to define what "we fight against" here. One of the major things that "we" want is a diverse group of posters. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another. Don't claim it for anyone.
Edit: In particular, note that your reasoning here implies that the move from reddit means that we now all have values that mean we would fight against people who support "race swapping in .. remakes." Do you not want this to be a place where you can exchange views on equal terms with people who disagree with you on that issue, for example?
gemmaem
8mo ago
gemmaem
8mo ago
There's no need to escalate this to "requiring explicit consent for any type of physical social interaction." I'm sure a congratulatory pat on the back would have been fine. Even a hug.
gemmaem
8mo ago
The former would be an example of explicitly defending a call to violence, while the latter would be an example of "bending over backwards" which is what I originally called it.
In the comment to which I was responding, your exact phrasing was "you can openly call for murdering people based on their race, and the "paper of record" will come to your defense." Like I said, precision matters.
You can, of course, say that the explicit denial of serious intent isn't relevant; that's a judgment you're allowed to make. Personally, while I still think that "wink wink" versions of such things are very bad, I would nevertheless make the distinction. I'm not a fan of dark humour on such subjects, for example, and I think it can give cover for more serious versions, but it's not the same as openly meaning it. I don't know enough about the South African context to judge actual intent, so the best I can do is to be as factual as I can.
gemmaem
9mo ago
Like @raggedy_anthem, I do not believe you intended to sound Black. Because AAVE is an alternate dialect with different pronunciations and rules of grammar, and because it is primarily spoken by members of a socially disadvantaged class, the stereotypical “idiot” pronunciation has sometimes shifted towards that (actually fairly complicated and internal-rule-abiding) dialect. This isn’t on me or on you. It’s on the pre-existing history of seeing Black Americans as social inferiors.
Given the surrounding social environment here, I don’t expect to gain points for wokeness. I do think that it’s useful to avoid normalising racial caricature, even unintentionally.
gemmaem
9mo ago
Interesting! I was reasoning by analogy with "driving a pickup truck is correlated with being male and rural which is correlated with worse life expectancy." In that situation, all else being equal, the pickup truck itself is not a concern. Similarly, if it were just a matter of personal promiscuity and the community effects weren't salient, then homosexuality itself would not be a concern.
gemmaem
9mo ago
Obviously I can't speak for @Doubletree1, but the answers to your questions seem fairly obvious. The correlative cause, when it comes to spreading disease, is (a) having a lot of sex with a lot of different people and/or (b) having sex with people who are part of a community that has a lot of sex with a lot of different people (even if your own behaviour doesn't fall within that category).
The former is a "pickup truck" level of causality: homosexuality is correlated with promiscuity which is correlated with disease transmission. The latter may not be, in that men who have sex with men form a somewhat more dangerous community to have sex with even if you are, yourself, quite careful.
Since I would not have had reason to think this distinction through without @Doubletree1's comment, I think it's fair to say that they have made a useful contribution to the discussion and should not be getting downvoted. Perhaps you were already thinking in terms of (b)? If so, I guess I can understand why you wouldn't see the point of their analogy. Still, I appreciated it.
gemmaem
10mo ago
Thank you for your explanation of 1 Corinthians 7. I’d probably respect it more if it did make a distinction between inspiration and personal best judgment, but I can see how the text supports your interpretation. Agnostically speaking, I probably shouldn’t hold it against Paul in the event that he either truly always speaks with inspiration or honestly believes that he does.
I’m having trouble squaring some of the statistics in your link with broader statistics in the USA. In particular, their survey would have it that 71% of Americans, in 2021, believed that the Bible was the inspired word of God in some sense (even if it might contain errors). But in 2021, only 63% of Americans said they were Christian.
So is the discrepancy all made up of Jews and Muslims? Are there “unaffiliated” people who nevertheless believe the Bible to be inspired by God? It would be helpful to know how the responses in the American Bible Society survey split up by stated religious affiliation, honestly.
In any case, this certainly supports the idea that a large percentage of Christians think the Bible “has no errors” (even if many say some of it is “symbolic and not literal.”) Still, as an outsider, I think I’m still most inclined to define “Christian” to mean people who believe in the divinity of Christ. I don’t think that someone who believes that Paul believed in an imminent apocalypse and writes with reference to that view is somehow “not Christian” if they still think that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and will someday return to judge us all, for example.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Just because a distinction doesn't matter to you, that doesn't mean it couldn't possibly matter to anyone on a forum like this, where we aim for breadth of worldviews. Accuracy matters. I like to know exactly what I am commenting on.
With that said, I was unaware that this post had in fact been officially linked to, and have therefore apologised for jumping to an unflattering conclusion. I'll be posting a longer reaction to the substance of the matter at hand in a bit, now that I've been able to get the details I needed.
gemmaem
1yr ago
gemmaem
1yr ago
Numerous or popular or respected would suffice. Any one of those; you don't need all three. "I saw a joke about it one time and will not be giving context or details" is not very helpful to me in understanding what you are talking about, by contrast.
gemmaem
1yr ago
We certainly can discuss this. Do you need to call other posters "groomers" if they disagree with you about which aspects of gender theory are and are not appropriate for elementary school, in order to have that conversation? I don't see why you would. Even if you think the description is accurate and you want to convey that, you could just as easily say something like "Teaching this will make children more vulnerable to sexual abuse" or "Teaching this is abusive in itself, because [explanation]," without needing to call people names to make your point.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Most people who suffer gender dysphoria desist but the study on those on puberty blockers showed that nearly everyone persisted in the new identity.
This is comparing apples to oranges. Studies showing high levels of desistance often include children who are "subthreshold" for diagnosis. By contrast, children who actually go on puberty blockers are subject to stronger constraints on access.
gemmaem
1yr ago
Depends what kind of concentration issues you're talking about. I don't use stimulants, but I have a number of coping mechanisms, myself. Listening to music helps if I am becoming distracted due to boredom because I'm at a stage that doesn't require much thought. Breaking the task down so far that every step is stupidly easy helps if I need to reach a stage that doesn't require much thought. Shortcuts are useful for getting between tasks -- I miss having an "Open Terminal Here" extension on my code editor because I do sometimes get distracted on the way to navigating to the right folder; I should probably put that back in on my new machine. Writing down my thoughts helps stop me from forgetting what I was doing in the middle of it.
None of these is foolproof. I take it for granted that there will be good days and bad days, and that I do better when I've had some warm-up time to get my head in the right space. But I also think it's okay to just bring my own unmedicated human capabilities to the job. I do what I can; sometimes that turns out to be quite a lot.
Dase has made his opinion of women very clear, on multiple occasions. He thinks we are liars. He thinks we are mean. He thinks we habitually act in bad faith.
The style of sneering at female commenters personally that he is employing in this thread is very obviously coloured by his broader opinions.
I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be allowed. I decided not to let it -- and the sneering alongside it -- go unchallenged.
I meant it, sincerely. Good faith works best as a two way street. That's just a fact of human interaction.
I've been on the Motte since it was the Culture War Thread. I'm one of the left-most people here. I've never flamed out. I've garnered two mod notes over six years; never a ban. I stay for the charity, when I can get it; I stay to be challenged and to see views I wouldn't otherwise see. Sometimes, I admit, I stay for the fight. But I always argue in good faith, even when it leaves me vulnerable. If you can't access that side of me, you're not trying very hard.
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