"Teach rapists not to rape" should apply equally here to women who make dumb or awful decisions, that you're not gonna be able to improve their dumb decisions, unless we take the claim that women in general are expected to have more agency as true and thus improving stupid women's ability to stay away from abusers is more effective than improving abusive men.
magicalkittycat
2d ago
It has been made clear enough that he's terrible; the question currently discussed is not how to reform such men, but how to reform such women.
But if the men can't be reformed why should we expect that the women can unless we're saying women have higher agency?
magicalkittycat
2d ago
I find it really quite interesting in that a story about a really terrible abusive man, the question posed is "what is wrong with women?" for her mistake of being with him. Should we just treat guys like they don't have any agency or something, and it's all up to the women to treat men like dangerous wild animals? And it's the women's failure when they don't treat men like apes incapable of change?
Like yes, it's obviously a dumb thing to do but if we were to blame the entire categories for the behavior of one person in them, why can't we blame men equally for his abusive behavior as you do women for her dumb behavior?
Imane Khelif isn't trans, they are at worst intersex. Someone like her, raised as a girl since birth in a trans hostile country, would have also been seen as such throughout basically all of history. It is in fact a modern idea to privilege genes and chromosomes (only discovered in the last century) over outer genitalia among intersex individuals in determining if they're men or women. There are plenty examples of intersex individuals being regarded as female at birth like this, and it is only until recently, because genetics itself is a recent field, where a case like Semenya or Khelif would have been contested as not being truly female.
Trans athletes aren't rare.
In the Olympics there has only been one. There have been various intersex athletes, but only one who is traditionally trans, and also who came in last place too funnily enough.
One big issue is the difference between the, for lack of better labels, the meaningfully transsexual transgender person, and the the "trender" transgender person.
The meaningfully transexual trans person, who has typically had their feelings since they were young despite lack of input, maintain their desires to transition over long spans of time and put effort into presenting themselves in the world as their identified gender are rare. Like really really rare.
The recent Kansas decision to pull changed drivers licenses actually gave us some workable numbers on it. Apparently 1700 people are impacted by the decision, and chatgpt pulls up "Active driver’s licenses (most recent full year reported): 2,099,927 licenses."
That makes for less than one tenth of a percent of trans people who had the gender marker changed (assuming there wasn't even any data input false positives which at such rarity I wouldn't be surprised if errors was a significant number of them). Of course not every meaningfully trans person will have had a changed license, and perhaps many of them would have left Kansas before this anyway so there could be a selection effect but even if we doubled or tripled, it's an incredibly small number of people who actually meaningfully transition in that way.
The people who "find their identity" on Tiktok or Instagram or whatever and dye their hair weird colors and also tend to fake being DID/Autistic/tourettes/etc and are just generally "omg I'm so quirky" types seem to be in much greater abundance. Those types definitely seem to be more disproportionately the former explanation, that wanting to disconnect from negative associations with their sex can be a primary motivator for them. It's not the only one, after all they're "teehee I'm so quirky" types trying to stand out and be special in other ways, but it sure does seem to be true of many.
Ideological disclaimer: as a catholic I believe there are only two genders, fixed at birth, but as a transhumanist also I'm in favor of letting anyone, including children, do whatever they want to their own bodies.
I don't really think the debate about gender is even that useful. As Ymeskhout wrote about the transgender sticker fallacy and Scott Alexander has wrote about before in categories were made for man, while the world might come from a divine power, words and labels don't. I have no issue acknowledging trans people as their identified gender so long as they are living generally within that space. Words and labels also can shift depending on context. In the context of giving birth, trans women are not women, but in the context of what section of the store they buy their clothes or what gender roles they try to match in society, they are. This applies to cis women as well, a woman born without a uterus is not a woman in the context of giving birth either, as it does not apply to them. Another way to look at it would be like a sticker of a door on a plastic car. In the context of opening and closing it as an entrance into the toy vehicle, it's not a door. In the context of appearances it is a door. Vice versa, a secret passage in a bookshelf is a door for the context of being an opening and closing entrance, but not a door in the context of appearance.
We see this right now with the Olympics banning people with the SRY gene. While it's definitely been touted in the media and online as a ban on trans people, the real world effect will almost entirely fall on the intersex competitors given the rarity of trans athletes at the Olympics (one in ~twenty years). Someone like Imane Khelif who for basically her whole life has lived in the context of being a woman, in a country that is very hostile and violent towards trans people too, is now considered not woman in the context of the Olympics and among many activists pushing for the ban. So Imane Khelif is in a state of flux, she's a woman according to one of the most trans hostile countries on the planet and has been that her whole life, and yet considered a man for the Olympics.
And chromosome arguments fall flat trying to reconcile this, because the idea of man and woman in society existed far before genetics and chromosomes were ever known about. A case like Khelif is not just considered a woman by Algeria, she would have been considered a woman by basically everyone in history before (at the very earliest) the 1900s when sex chromosomes were discovered. It can be argued that Khelif should count as a man in the context of the Olympics, but expanding that much further is actually against the traditional usage of these terms.
Regardless I agree with the end point, I think people (including children) should be allowed essentially maximal freedom to themselves (as long as it is of course, to themselves and not others) and if someone makes a mistake or fuckup then that is the price of freedom. Allowing the notion that big government has any moral claim to speak over me and my decisions and my autonomy is something I will not ever do. If someone gets addicted to drugs and dies, that is their fault. If someone overeats, that is their fault. If someone takes hormones or puberty blockers and then regrets it later, that is their fault. And when I do things I regret, that is my fault. If someone is too intellectually retarded to be held responsible for their own decisions, then they should be held in a mental hospital or the like. If paying privately, the most a doctor should really have to do is a consent form so it's known that the patient made their own choice and assurances against fraud (not providing the agreed upon treatments) and negligence. If paid by insurance then they meet the insurance standards too.
First and foremost, this doesn't seem to follow geo politically. It seems to be a phenomenon that's unique to specific societies, like the US, and this "progress" is not uniform nor takes place everywhere.
I'd say it's taking place in most places. Outside of like the hardest of Muslim countries, women wearing pants and showing skin is basically the default now. Things like rock music/hip-hop/etc are listened to around the world. A lot of the examples I gave apply worldwide. Not every country is going to have equal "progress" on everything. That Japan still widely shuns tattoos in a way the US doesn't anymore, does not mean they aren't still warming up to them and becoming more lax on the topic.
Most of east Asia is much more "racist" & "sexist" than the west. China is insanely oppressive and controlling, they are not democratic in the slightest. Out of wedlock births are few and are stigmatized in those societies, they do not allow gay marriage.
It's true they don't allow gay marriage, but that's not the only thing related to homosexuality to begin with. They decriminalized it a few decades ago for instance. And polling seems to suggest same sex marriage is also getting more widely accepted too.
Results show that about half of the respondents agreed that same-sex couples can be capable parents (48%), should be able to marry (52%), and that they would personally attend a same-sex wedding (46%). An additional 37% somewhat agreed with each positive attitude toward same-sex families.
So even this is still changed in a way that just a few decades ago would be considered insanely subversive in China.
Ukraine is currently "losing" its war with Russia.
That Ukraine has been able to put up this incredible fight against Russia, long considered one of the world's superpowers that was in intense competition with the US, for years on end is by itself an accomplishment is it not? I remember how it was expected Kyiv would fall in days.
What would be the morally correct position on the Israel-Palestine conflict? Can we say that history is bending towards Palestine, Israel, or a 2 state solution?
The Taliban taking over in Afghanistan
Again, that it doesn't apply to every conflict and country at all times equally doesn't stop it being generally true that things are a lot more "progressive" than the past on a lot of different topics worldwide.
The long arc of morality doesn't mean for every topic, but in general progressive movements do tend to win out over more conservative ones. They win out so strong that you don't even think about it much anymore, at least for these examples of the US.
Women wear pants and show skin above the knee, they work in leadership roles, and marital rape is illegal nationwide.
Universal suffrage is the default of democracy around the world now, even the pretend democracies of Russia or North Korea often act as if everyone can meaningfully vote instead of just property owners.
Left handed people are not only left unbeaten, but left handed products are readily available to buy for anyone who needs them.
Barely anyone cares about interracial marriage or gay marriage anymore. There is a small movement to try to shift the needle but it's not mainstream.
Tattoos are now widely accepted (within reason) and tons of people have them without much societal pushback or shame anymore.
The Catholics are just considered a normal form of Christianity now (our VP is a Catholic even!) Jews/Italians/Irish/etc are now considered an ordinary form of white instead of as foreign criminals and scum. Most blue laws go essentially unenforced nowadays, with alcohol as the only meaningful vestigial exception in some states.
Casual clothing is now commonplace in many work environments, with people even wearing branded tshirts and the like.
Jazz/rock/hip-hop/metal/etc are just considered normal forms of music instead of the work of Satan corrupting our kids.
There are a ton of things like this, victories that are either so absolute no one even considers going back (like women in pants, oppressing the Irish, or opposing rock music) or have opposition that is niche and opposed even within "traditional values" groups.
It's the same way the comment before me pointed out, even religion has changed. They're more accepting that the earth is round, heliocentrism, that germ theory exists, that changelings and witches aren't commonplace in the world. Many religions are even accepting of (or at least softer in opposing) the ideas of evolution and the earth being billions of years old. Many believe in no fault divorce, Trump himself has been married three times. And like the other example I gave above, left handed people aren't oppressed. We have a Republican presidency where one of the main advisors and figures in it (Elon Musk) was an unashamed fornicator who barely disguises his atheism, and no one cared. The average American Christian today is a sinful heretic to someone a thousand years ago.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
While sea mines are not land mines, they are both indiscriminate area denial weapons that have significant risks of civilian casualties that can last long after the end of the conflict that caused their emplacement.
I don't know what type of mines they're using, but it's quite possible they are discriminate. The concept of remote controlled mines has been around since the 1800s. Depending on the mine you can turn them off, order them to self destruct, program them to pursue certain ships, etc.
I doubt Iran is using the highest tech mines available, but it's also not that much of a complex technology either that it's possible they have some way to deal with it later.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
Especially important to note that most shutdowns and closures were state/local government decisions to begin with, it wasn't the president deciding things, it was your state legislatures and your local mayor/city council. Heck Biden was even trying to get schools to reopen right after inauguration but it didn't really matter much because school lockdowns are and were mostly a local government decision. Not to mention the staffing shortages, sometimes even schools that had previously reopened had to go back to remote because they just didn't have the people. Some states were even mobilizing their national guard because of staffing issues.
Polling from the early time period also suggest that the lockdowns were widely popular too. Even four years later, public support for closures and mandatory masking in public during the pandemic were popular among the majority of Americans looking back.
So not only do you not have control over the lockdowns from a federal perspective, but you're also dealing with most Americans wanting them at the time to begin with!
magicalkittycat
11d ago
I think it is a fair baseline that COVID must follow the laws of physics and therefore spreads through some kind of physical means. And thus if that physical means wasn't possible (either through blocking it enough, distance, or other factors), it would not be able to spread.
That a full lockdown is impractical, comes with severe downsides, and isn't worth the costs doesn't change that.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
China actually did succeed pretty well for quite a while, and we can know this by looking at the surge that happened after they ended lockdowns.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
It's unlikely for a driver to do that unless they are malicious, drunk, or distracted
Drunk or distracted alone is terrifyingly common, but even if the statistics aren't that bad the psychological effect of being right next to cars zooming by you still exists and it's why I would never go out riding like that.
magicalkittycat
11d ago
There's not really way to ask this without sounding condescending, but are you old enough to remember the Obama administration?
I do remember it but way too young to really pay much attention to or understand politics much. Regardless I don't find it a strong argument to point at how the Dems fuck up here. Yeah, maybe they are soft on Russia. That's not a good reason to be soft on Russia too, they are our enemy. They're a freedom hating west despising dictatorship.
"Other people kiss up to America's enemies so we should as well' just means more kissing up to our enemies!
magicalkittycat
11d ago
Lockdowns are not the same thing as "people avoid interaction". There is no evidence that full lockdowns would "obviously" control the spread,
The evidence of a full lockdowns is extremely obvious, virus particles are not magic and there must be some level of barrier that if consistently maintained would prevent their spread.
The issue is that going full lockdown is basically impossible.
starting with the problem that the lockdowns we had don't even correlate with reducing it let alone eliminating.
Which is the entire point being made in my comment, there are some things where half measures don't work. Non full lockdowns are a bucket with a hole at the bottom of it, maybe if you have enough bucket bottom you can slow the leak but all the water will get out eventually. So if you want to carry a bunch of water with you (prevent the spread in this analogy), you need the full bucket (full secure uber authoritarian lockdown).
COVID lockdowns were a beautiful example of the most important thing in modern democracy, compromise. The lockdowns in many western nations were strong enough to be annoying at best and oppressive at their worst, while also not being nearly good enough to actually contain virus spread much. In fact due to political pressure, governments would run completely hypocritical programs at the same time like the eat out to help out campaign. Government lockdowns hurt restaurants, so the government subsidized not locking down and instead going into restaurants. Genius!
Full lockdowns are obviously successful in controlling spread. Virus particles aren't magic, they don't teleport from person to person. If people avoid interaction and have physical barriers and disinfectant, it will work. Even masks seem to work quite well ... except for the pesky issue that people aren't perfect. They don't wear it properly, it's not fit to their face, they take it off cause they're sweaty, they forget, they remove it to eat (ah yes, just like Eat Out To Help Out, it's nice of viruses to not spread when you're hungry), etc. So in actuality, masks weren't actually that useful.
Full authoritarian enforcement could in theory work, but instead we went with half measures that are the worst of both worlds. We lost time with our families and our friends and our loved ones, while also still spreading the virus around cause there was too many holes in the lockdowns.
Another example of bad results from compromise I always like to use here is bike lanes. There's all sorts of ways to do them and some are way better than others. The common "compromise" solution is the shoulder, bike lane or buffered bike lane methods in that image. But those suck for bikers, they're terrifying to use. The whole time you're scared of a car side swipping you because there's giant machines going 40 mph zooming past your frail human body. I would never use those. Meanwhile when I vacationed in Hilton Head, I rented a bike and was happy to use it to get around to the store and beach near my rental house. At least where I was staying they were seperated from the road and felt safe but those are more expensive and take up a lot more room to do so you either have to be a vacation area like Hilton Head (and even then, the main parts of the city still seemed mostly car centric) or have a strong biker culture. Otherwise you get the shitty compromise solutions at best where drivers lose space and would be bikers still don't feel safe to bike.
Rent control is another example I love to use. City politicians are stuck between the stereotypical NIMBY homeowners who want their property value to go up (but also no property tax increases!!) and no more development, while renters don't want their rent to surge up every year and want stable places to live. The renter class is also typically blind to why rents are going up so while there's political pressure to "do something", it's not necessarily pressure to upzone and allow development. Still at the end of the day it's is impossible to make both happy, but they're still both gonna be voting. So what do many politicians opt for instead? Rent control. You make the current tenants happy while not having to upset the homeowner NIMBYs, and the long term political and economic costs are abstract enough that only the weird policy wanks and nerds will oppose you.
Compromise is often pretty great though and I don't think we should be down on it just because there are flaws. Allowing people to have some wins with peace makes them unlikely to turn violent, and it forcibly moderates the idealogues and extremists to match closer to the center. I prefer our compromise society to any dictatorship. We really do get the best of both worlds in most cases. But sometimes, like with COVID or bike lanes or housing supply, half measures are actually worse than either.
magicalkittycat
12d ago
It is a boring local war to which US has committed tiny portion of its force, oil takes 3 months from well to tank so any shortages and price rises are artificial right now.
Markets are forward looking and predicted shortages in the future lead to buying surges and demand increases now by people and companies trying to get ahead of it. This increased demand means even currently normal supply conditions can result in shortages, all because everyone is predicting tough times in the future.
Think of it like how a grocery store is emptied out when a major storm is coming up, or some of the shortages during COVID like with toilet paper. People are worried they won't have enough so they buy extra, which leaves less for others so they buy extra too.
With Venezuela secured - chances of physical shortages for the US is low - IIRC the US has capacity in this type of heavy oil.
Unless we want to export ban all the companies from selling abroad, oil shortages worldwide impact the US too. They'll need oil so they'll pay the big bucks for it and the corporations wanting profit will sell off to them, forcing domestic buyers to pony up more in response.
The 1980's called. They want their foreign policy back
Has any of "Russia hates the US, the west, and democracy" changed, or are you trying to say that foreign policy going forward should be against those traditional American beliefs and against ourselves?
Because it certainly doesn't seem like they've changed much. While the UK, Germany and Ukraine have taken the top three of Russian enemies, the US still has a significant amount of hate towards it from the Russian people and the only reason they don't hate us more is because Donald Trump is very friendly to the country that threaten our allies, threatens to nuke Elon Musk and is currently providing Iran with intelligence to hit American targets. And we all know their elections are about as fair as North Korea, just great campaigning by Putin and fortune that all his critics end up insane or falling out of windows or dying to rare dart frog poisons.
Should 2020's American foreign policy be cheering this on?
molten ranting at Obama and Hilary Clinton
Didn't realize they were the current president and were cozying up to Putin right now.
magicalkittycat
13d ago
He was friendly far below the "friendliness" that the Obama and Biden administrations had with Ukraine.
Russia is an enemy nation that hates the US, the west, and democracy. They have been our opposition for decades and decades.
Ukraine while definitely not perfect is an ally of the west, a democracy, and have not been our enemy for decades and decades.
Can you not tell a difference here?
magicalkittycat
13d ago
There was no smoking gun of active collusion, even after the most exhaustive investigation since Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance.
"No smoking gun" doesn't mean something didn't happen, it could of course be hidden successfully. Controlling parents not finding the birth control their daughter put in her sock drawer doesn't mean she's not out having sex.
The act of a coverup suggests that something might have happened. Tons of encrypted messages, deleted communications and other roadblocks to knowing the truth makes the picture murky in both ways. It's harder to show guilt, but it's also harder to suggest innocence. From a legal perspective where they have to prove guilt, that works well. From a casual perspective where we can ask "what's with all the deleted messages?", it doesn't work as well.
I'm apparently the only "Epstein skeptic" here, I discussed it in an earlier CW thread. Regardless, there could be a deceptively simple explanation here as well: there is simply no exit strategy here.
There was an easy exit strategy! They could have just released the files as they promised to do multiple times before and during the election season. The only reason why Epstein is even a fiasco for them now is because they completely pivoted so hard from "we're gonna reveal this coverup" to "nothing to see here, ignore everything we said before".
Who cares about "exit strategy" when they never even had to make it into such a topic to begin with if they just did what they said! It is perfectly reasonable to wonder why they pivoted so hard, and that reason is pretty likely related to either people in the admin itself or a powerful third party who they wish to protect. The strategy is to not enter the burning building to begin with if you don't have a plan to get out.
I don't think there would be much direct collusion between the Trump campaign (at least, not multiple high level staffers) to begin with just because there's not too much need for it. It's simple to just stay working in parallel with the same goal in mind than risk communicating too much. That being said, I take it by default that there was Russian influence in the 2016 election, but I also assume there was foreign influence of basically any kind. Point to any modern middle income or above country and they're most likely engaged in a bunch of spycraft, cyber warfare, bot networks, etc. The US does it to other countries too!
The Mueller report is mostly meaningful to me in just how much obstruction there was from the Trump 1 admin. That's the suspicious part to me, trying to hide Russian operations suggests there might have been something deeper that was left undiscovered. Similar to how the continued attempts to slow walk and hide the Epstein files continues to suggest something deeper. I'm a big fan of privacy from government and don't buy the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" argument for mass surveillance, but that's on individual rights and personal privacy. It is in fact suspicious when done with the government itself.
But realistically it doesn't even change anything. We already know that Trump is extremely friendly towards Putin and Russia! We don't need any proof of campaign coordination to know how much they get along, he's pretty blatant in this!
Speaking of Trump's reaction btw, incredible how much material This You is getting from it. also boy there is an old Kirk tweet for everything at this point.
There's 14 minutes of video of him trying to sexually humiliate her.
The amount of time or "sexual humiliation" doesn't necessarily matter that much. Again, people throw out words like slut and whore casually as insults already. "You're a fucking whore slut who'd sleep with anyone" said for an hour over and over again as an insult would still likely not cross the bar from insulting a person to defamation. In fact we can look at another case of diss raps where the accusations was even worse with Kendrick vs Drake, pedophile and sex rings, and the defamation case fell through there too.
One big question is would reasonable people actually take this as serious allegations? Just like Kendrick v Drake, music is an art and the average listener does not listen to diss tracks expecting thoughtful well researched factual news. Putting a claim in a diss track vs presenting it as serious fact can make a significant difference in a defamation case, because the context it exists in takes away from how serious a reasonable person would take the claim. People generally understand songs are not meant as expressions of truthful information.
Separately from that, what about this from my OP? I'm positive I'd be found liable if I did this to a barista.
It depends on the exact circumstances of how you do it, but most likely not. Defamation cases succeeding in the US are not that common, it's a very high bar. It's especially high when criticizing authority figures, so there is a possibility that it might apply to the barista but not to say, a cop or the town's mayor. But even without that, I would not be surprised at all to find a defamation case from the barista fall through in similar circumstances as again, the medium of music, especially diss tracks, is not generally taken by the average person as intended factual information to begin with.
One casual check we could do is to ask if anyone in her life actually believed she was secretly a lesbian going around licking pussies thanks to the song? Not in a "did they tease her about the song" way, but in an actual belief way. Doesn't seem like there is if she didn't present any.
magicalkittycat
14d ago
Or... everyone is just media literate enough now to find all of this funny? Rural Ohio juror grandmas watching the three strippers laying on his counter with their legs up, then the video of her actress having sex with him? "Yep, seems like non-defamatory free speech".
They don't have to find it funny, lots of insults aren't funny or entertaining. They just have to find it not defamatory. Like one important question is would people who watched actually believe this was a serious accusation as opposed to making fun of her as an insult, like just calling someone a slut or a whore as many angry people do to women?
FIRE at least believes Afroman was within his rights here and they aren't motivated by cop hating.
- The repairs cost $20k, not a single cent of which was paid by the officers, who also kept $400 of his cash
Good ol civil asset forfeiture, allowing cops to just steal from innocent people without any evidence for decades.
Cops will steal your money, they'll steal your RV, they'll steal the computers at your computer shop, they'll steal the funds for your medical clinic, they'll steal a teen's phone and sell it at one of those kiosks, they'll steal your horses even.
Fulton County, Georgia, seized seven horses from Brandon "Brannu" Fulton in 2017 after he was charged with animal cruelty. (The identical last name here is an unfortunate coincidence for the sake of clarity, but we will persevere.) Those charges were later dropped. But the government still declined to return the animals to Fulton—long ago dubbed Atlanta's Urban Cowboy after his affinity for riding into town on horseback—nor would it compensate him for their value. One of those horses, he said, is worth $35,000.
Law enforcement are thieves, because of course they are when you not only allow the theft but incentivize it by allowing them or the departments to keep the shit they take. Luckily many of those cases do eventually get ruled against, but "eventually you might get your money that was stolen back after paying a lot to fight in court" is a bit of a cold comfort. And that's not even guaranteed.
magicalkittycat
16d ago
Yeah I've never bought the "bullshit jobs" sort of idea. If people are willing to pay to have you do something, then clearly they must think you are bringing them value somehow. Not every single individual job is necessarily worth it, businesses are run by people who make mistakes and miscalculations too but overall there must be some sort of value somewhere or else why would they pay? I doubt the modern job is actually just corporate charity to the employees.
I think this sentiment is more that our work has become so abstract and intangible that it's harder for us to measure. This probably does increase the error rate a bit, but it also means people don't realize how they're being productive in the same way.
Why some women do? Sure, but bit of a motte and bailey to go from gender war "why are women so dumb" discourse (without acknowledging the same logic used on men would imply they're all brutes) to "this is just about understanding why some abuse victims fall into the abuse"
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