thegayrabbi
1yr ago
I don't particularly love most trans activism, and I'm deeply troubled by a lot of the medical interventionism on the youth.
However, there is a sense that certain factions or cultures of conservative men (of varying races and ethnicities) have created defensive silos of culture against the encroachment of gender non-conforming men. These places could be certain gyms, certain sales teams, certain blue collar unions, or certain bars. The shared sentiment is that there's enough spaces for gay or trans people (these men can't tell the difference) and so they need to batten down the hatches and keep their exclusionary spaces free from the taint of homo (no pun intended).
I think that there's a good proportion of younger straight men who are very into this, a la the andrew tate fans, and there's another group of younger straight men who are completely over it, and don't want to engage in long or endless discussions of masculinity and how important it is to pick a side.
If i were to entertain the idea of corporate advertisement as culture war, I'd say the point of this ad might be to demonstrate how hateful conservatives actually are against gay and trans people, no matter how much they pretend its about protecting children and women's sports. The liberals could be seen as responding to this "it's just about protecting children and women" rhetoric by saying "okay, here's a drag queen in her proper place, advertising beer in a funny commercial, joking about not knowing what March madness is"
Then the conservative men start literally shooting cases of beer, and it becomes apparent that it's not really about protecting women and children, it's about establishing cultural silos of hatred towards gay and trans people.
It's a good tactic for uniting the gay and trans factions that have started to schism lately. At the risk of being snide, I think the QT BIPOCS realize the white gay tops aren't coming to the club if they keep calling them "the nazis of the LGBT community" for going to the gym. Also that white wealthy gay men are the ones with the social capital and mental fortitude to penetrate these conservative cultural silos.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Bud light is a beer, not a religion or political party. I think that's my point, that people who are aligned along political, religious, or politico-religious lines try to establish non-political and non-religious entities like a beer brand as off limits to their political or religious opponents.
The comparison between making one commercial for bud light with a trans woman celebrity and putting a statue of George Bush on the largest mosque in Portland is kind of silly to me. They're not similar.
Corporate brands aren't anyone's territory other than their boards' or shareholders'.
I think it looks like a triumphalist blue flag to you because you experience trans and gay inclusion as a loss. This situation reminds gay and trans people that their existence, without accounting political speech, is experienced as political speech, whereas the opposite is not true. A conservative man can go to a pride parade, just like in the blog post you linked, and not be threatened. To experience hostility and attention, he needs to do something political, like wear a police uniform, or hold a TERFy sign.
You can say both sides are doing the same thing, retiring conformance in certain spaces, but the degree to which the conformance required invades someone's identity is different. That's what's being demonstrated. We have all seen conservative speakers accosted on college campuses or shoved at pride events, but these people were trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible. This is the other side, where conservatives are literally shooting cases of beer in effigy because a trans woman took a bubble bath with a bud light.
To you it looks like a sly tactic in a culture war. To me it's a reminder that people like you might see my existence as a tactic first and a personality second. There's a degree to which you think a republican drinking bud light in a garage is more authentic than a trans woman drinking one in a bubble bath.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
You're continuing to demonstrate my point. A conservative has to display specific political speech in liberal spaces to have his presence politicized. However, gay and trans people just need to display their personal identities to have their presence politicized.
They're not equivalent. Conservatives engage in hatred based on identity, and liberals engage in hatred based on beliefs.
This ad campaign is just a reminder that conservatives still view being trans or gay as a political choice first, and a personal characteristic second.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
The difference is not meaningless. If you would murder someone from another tribe regardless of their personal beliefs, then you're murdering based on identity. If you would murder someone from your own tribe based on their beliefs, you're murdering based on belief. The existence of green doesnt mean blue and yellow aren't different.
The trend is obvious. Liberals will frequently eat their own based on failures of belief regardless of identity, like with Al Franken. Conservatives will frequently support their own based on identity and regardless of belief, like Donald Trump and his history of cheating on his wife with a porn star.
Liberals will support someone like the current Pope, intrinsically conservative in identity, for expressing more liberal beliefs on gay people than previous Popes. Conservatives will shoot a case of their favorite beer, or applaud such a shooting, because they made one commercial with a trans woman. The trans woman doesn't express political views in the commercial, in fact, she actually says "whatever team you love, I love too" but conservatives hate her based on her identity.
Regarding this:
So these hypothetical conservatives consider gays/transgender types to be repugnant because they perceive them as making an incorrect political choice, not because they perceive it to be an immutable characteristic? This seems to undermine the argument you made in the very line above.
Conservatives would like to pretend they are hating people for their beliefs, rather than their immutable characteristics, so they recast immutable characteristics as political beliefs so they can justify their identity based hatred.
This is evident in one of the other replies to me that claims that blue collar hostility towards gay men is justified because gay men are intrinsically likely to sexually harass straight men. The poster linked an identity, being gay, with an inevitanle political action, sexual harassment, to justify the hatred of gay men.
They're smart enough to pretend that it's just harmful beliefs and actions from gay and trans people that they object to, like drag shows for children, surgery for children, and men in women's sports.
This commercial cleverly displays that this is just a facade designed to persuade moderate liberals such as myself that they are looking for any compelling reason to attack gay and trans people because their hatred is based on identity.
This whole website is based on the idea that it's better to object on ideological rather than tribal lines, even if tribalism is powerful. Conservatives are clearly the side of power through tribalism, and liberals are clearly the side of power through persuasive ideology.
The other two posters here are arguing with me. Because they think I'm gay and they think that is deviancy, or morally inferior. Maybe you are too. I'm arguing with them because I disagree with their comments. I don't hate them based on perceived identity.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Sure, everything is political, because everything can be framed in terms of power. But some things are more political, because they exert more power, and some things are less. Dylan Mulvaney making a beer ad is less political than the reaction to it, which is more political. It's not "the most politicized speech it is possibly to make". It's a man, or a woman, in a dress, or a bubble bath, drinking a Bud Light. There are many many things far more political. The essence of politics is the control of the state and its exclusive claim to legitimate violence in the enforcement of the law and its sovereignty. Miss Mulvaney's bubble bath is not near to any of those things.
I'm kind of surprised at people who think Bud Light is some sort of exclusively Republican domain. It's Bud Light, not the NRA.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Bud Light is a beer, not a class marker. I certainly don't want to read, let alone re-read, anything that discusses the "Red Tribe" and the "Blue Tribe".
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Here's a question that I have about that handmaid's tale maternity photo shoot that you linked. Is this gay couple going to include that woman in the child's life as the child's mother? If not, is this weird picture going to be something that the child gets to look at in their lonely moments wondering who the woman was who gave birth to them, and what it would have been like to have her as a mother? Did this couple think any of these things at all themselves?
My biggest problem with surrogacy, as I stated in another comment, is that the child is left being forced to embrace parents who paid their biological mother and gestating mother to go away forever so that they could assume a full parental role.
It seems like that child is sort of compelled from birth to ignore the psychological and emotional implications of having two male parents who paid their mom to go away because they wanted to feel normal. That's why it's not the same as adoption, because the new family that you're supposed to embrace did not contractually obligate your biological parents to give you up.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
I don't read the Christian Bible just to "get up to speed with what people are talking about". I'm not going to read the biblical writings of this place either.
I'm happy to be impractically ignorant of The Motte's jargon.
It's evident from context what people are talking about. I don't need a milquetoast unfunny blog to explain it.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
I've just started seriously studying machine learning, and I think the languages models are just the tip of the iceberg, and most of the powerful modern AI is hidden behind NDAs and less noticeable technologies. Many things quietly occurred without too many people noticing, for example:
Google tagged everyone's photos in Google photos with their contents. I have Google randomly displaying photos on my home screen when it's plugged in, and it knows not to show anything NSFW, and generally picks interesting photos. Google knows exactly what's in my thousands of photos.
Social media moderation also perfected AI filtering of NSFW content to any degree of precision the platform wants.
Every large marketing company or department has started to calculate someone called a "lifetime customer value" using machine learning to discovery and target the groups of customers predicted to spend the most over a lifetime. New marketing interventions will be measured for effectiveness in influencing consumer behavior. Eventually ad campaigns could be individualized and AI generated to a shocking degree, without even seeming personalized, because we don't look at each other's phones. It's possible in the future no one will ever see the same ad twice, or even be able to tell the difference between an AI generated advertisement and human generated content. The difference might even cease to be semantically intelligible. If it's trivial for an AI to generate an excellent exercise video with a small mention of a wellness product, is that an ad or a helpful wellness video?
What happens when AI can generate a new marvel movie just for you, subtly based on your consumer preferences and sense of humor? The experience of everyone seeing the same movie could disappear the same way the experience of everyone watching something like the seinfeld series finale at the same time did.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
To me it looks like the woman acting as s surrogate here gets a lot of social support and validation from being a surrogate. However, so do many prostitutes, and so would people paid to donate a lobe of their liver or a kidney. I think it should be the same thing. You can have sex for free, you can donate an organ, and you should be able to donate the act of surrogacy, but you shouldn't be able to do any of these things as a paid service because that's bad for society. And yes, for me that does include pornography where the actors are paid to have sex with each other on camera. Commercial pornography is causing a lot of problems. Labor laws (no pun intended) exist to prevent the rich from exploiting the working class beyond what is tolerable or humane, and requires society to create non-exploitive forms of work to continue functioning.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
You could try going to more presentations, either in person or online, where you think the presenter might trigger this reaction in you. In a presentation, you're not usually in a position to act on this mood and you're not likely to say something dismissive and make someone feel bad. Then try to consciously observe how you feel these emotions, have this reactionary judgment response, and then also observe how a few minutes later the response might disappear as you return to the present moment. The more you can observe that these emotional reactions are temporary, and more about your and your past than the person in front of you, the more you can ignore them and let them come and go without affecting the rest of your behavior.
You might even make a worksheet where your mark the time of the reaction, make a note of your feelings, and then later mark the time when the feelings have faded. This can help keep you in an observational mode.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Identity is the perceived membership of particular in-groups and out-groups. It's a factor of human psycho-social dynamics, not biology. As we have seen here, conservatives seem to view their political alignment as an identity. They also seem to be eager to ascribe other people's political alignments as an identity, as you and the other two people replying to me have all eventually accused me of being on the side of liberals and making assumptions about my political affiliation. Liberals engage in that to a lesser degree, which is why there are so many different liberal factions that spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do conservatives. They couldn't even successfully elect Hillary Clinton because of ideological differences, which is an extreme weakness of the liberal movement.
Justin Trudeau wore brownface once as a high schooler. It is well within the ability of most liberals to understand the idea of doing something stupid and ignorant when in high school. Conservatives try to use that to weaken his political influence, and liberal don't let it work. It's too weak of a transgression, and he's too strong of a political force for liberalism otherwise.
There are obviously going to be counterexamples of these tendencies on both sides, but I'm talking about general trends and the behavior of the plurality, if not the majority. In a democratic system like ours, the tendencies of the plurality determine who is elected to political power.
This isn't about good or bad, or mean and virtuous, and I didn't use any of those words. Those are value statements you read into my opinions because apparently that's where you center your discourse. I might say the liberal tendency to eat their own is very bad, because it resulted in failing to elect Hillary Clinton. I might say the conservative ability to support each other in an identity based way is good because it enabled them to achieve political goals liberals thought were impossible, like repealing Roe v. Wade. Liberals frequently use ideological purity tests to be cruel to each other, and that probably leads to higher levels of anxiety in liberals. Conservatives will extend each other a great deal of kindness and community, which can lead to more prosocial behavior in conservative circles.
Generally though, I'd rather be a conservative at a pride parade than a trans woman in a men's locker room. Liberals are generally more tolerant of dissent and while a few might become aggressive, you have a distinct possibility of others defending the conservative's right to free speech. If one man in a locker room decides to be aggressive towards another for being gay or trans, the other men will not intervene, even if they disagree, because they will immediately be targeted as well.
Straight men absolutely do harass each other far more than any gay man harasses straight me. Straight men say crude and sexually demeaning things to each other all the time, especially in male only contexts. It is not reasonable to assume gay men are more likely to sexually harass straight men than that straight men are likely to sexually harass each other. I actually think the real disruption that gay men create in straight male dynamics is that straight men cannot safely sexually harass them, or just generally engage aggressively with them, the same way they feel safe engaging with other straight men. The same sexual jokes they can make with other straight men suddenly are recontextualized, and that makes them uncomfortable and uneasy. Gay men don't have a lot of choice but to learn to live with straight men to at least some degree, but many straight men, however, have trouble with the threat that a gay man can pose to the social dynamics of a straight male dominated context. If a straight man is too nice to the gay man, will the other men call him gay? If he's too mean, will the other men call him gay? If he imagines the gay man having sex with other men, does that mean he's gay? Straight men who exist in cultures with hostility towards gay men aren't worried about being harassed by gay men, and the idea that they are is laughable. They are worried about being harassed by other straight men regarding the way they choose to interact with the gay men. They don't know the rules.
You can see this right now with Bud Light. According to them, a gay man, Dylan Mulvaney, is drinking Bud Light, and has entered their social context. No one is worried about Dylan Mulvaney's harassment or reaction to them choosing to continue drinking Bud Light or not. All of these conservative men are performing for each other, lest they be harassed themselves for an improper reaction to this gay male encroachment on their beer. Some feel the need to make a video shooting bud light. Some make videos of themselves throwing away bud light. I'd bet a lot of conservative men don't care about it, but are worried about buying bud light in front of their friends in case their friends use that to harass them.
Straight men are not afraid of gay men, they are afraid of other straight men.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
I see another clear difference between these two situations in regards to the child's experience. If a mother gives her baby up for adoption, for whatever reason, the child must accept that his or her mother was not in a position to raise them, and find solace in the fact that another family was. This is just a sad fact of life that is part of the child's experience.
However, in the case of surrogacy, the child must understand that its parents wanted the position of sole parenthood so much that they compensated the child's actual birth mother in order to make her go away forever. And that is a weird twisted possessive experience that the child is left with in relation to its family that it will be growing up with.
So the child is trapped trying to establish normal familial relations with someone who saw it more as a possession than another human being who has a right to a relationship with a mother. And this is especially the case for gay male couples, who have unilaterally decided that their child can and will be happy enough to grow up without a mother just because they want to feel more normal and like they haven't lost out on any important American suburban experiences by embracing their gay lifestyle.
This is similar for lesbian couples, but not quite, given the number of men who seem happy to donate their sperm for a little bit of cash and don't seem bothered by the idea that they have children out there who they'll never know or care for. That is more analogous to the adoption where the child just understands that their father wasn't interested, but they do have parents who are.
The act of gestating a child and giving birth almost always, if not completely always, changes a woman's body forever, and is traumatic, and takes a lifelong toll, which is supposedly compensated for by a lifelong benefit of having a child to care for. I don't see how any one-time payment can be equivalent. I would be interested in hearing from a surrogate who really felt like it was.
My apologies for mixing up all the pronouns when referring to the child.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Maybe it would be helpful if you shared a specific story example of this happening. I understand if you'd prefer not to.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
To give you a quick hit, bad for society is when your therapist can mention surrogacy as a legal way out of your poverty.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
I have been offered propranolol but exercise and dance are very important to me, and I'm worried about a medication that literally doesn't allow my heart to beat fast enough. Did your doctor tell you anything about exercising while on that drug?
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Let's discuss the difference between a personal identity and a political belief then. A personal identity is about how you try to relate to other people. A political belief is about how you think the state should use it's claim to legitimate violence in order to enforce its law. So if you're just being trans, you're existing a personal identity. If you're saying trans people shouldn't be allowed to use women's bathrooms according to the law, you're engaging in a political belief.
All trans people have a similar identity, but they can have a very wide range of political beliefs.
Conservatives do not share any particular identity, but possibly they might share some political beliefs. Honestly, they don't really seem to share any political beliefs, but that's a different discussion. Regardless, conservatives are conservative because of one or more political beliefs they hold, not their identities.
I don't feel the need to respond to your other questions because they address claims I didn't make and opinions I did not state.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
This website is named for the motte and bailey fallacy, right? I believe that's relevant to this discussion, where you started by expressing anger that a beer company picked a trans woman for one commercial and expressing glee at the violent and angry responses from conservatives, and now are asking me to find a way for a political pundit to express gay and trans hatred at a pride parade to prove... something.
My original point stands. The bud light ad with Dylan Mulvaney and the response to it demonstrate to gay and trans people that conservatives require to be allowed to exclude them, with violence if possible. It's a smart way to demonstrate that conservatives don't care about women and children as much as they just hate gender nonconforming men and women. They have gone from seeking out gay and trans people to victimize, to creating silos in which they feel justified in victimizing any gay or trans people who dare to enter, but the urge to react to gay and trans people with violence is unchanged.
Conservatives were making headway with their concern for trans children and women's sports, but they took the bait and started shooting cases of beer because a trans woman drank a bud light.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
A gay bar is not equivalent exchange for being unwelcome at your nearest health centers, entire professions, or the most well paying department at your corporation.
Are you saying that straight men have more to fear in regards to harassment from gay men than gay men have to fear from straight men? Because I think that's demonstrably false based on the history of gay men being beaten, sometimes to death, by groups of straight men, and the opposite never occurring at all.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
I see IVF as different because the child isn't denied a mother and the child's mother still gives birth to them, even if she's not the genetic mother. I'm not that worried about the perversion of nature, sacred or not.
I would not apply the same standard to women who use sperm banks or have absentee fathers. I don't see why you would think i would.
Giving up an egg or giving up sperm so a woman can gestate and give birth to a baby she will parent is not similar to being paid to go through the entire birth process and then leave forever.
Other users have made an excellent point as well, which is that every argument you can make for surrogacy can be made for legalizing selling your kidney, or a lobe of your liver, and kidneys aren't sentient, and your liver will eventually grow back. I'd appreciate if you could explain if you think people should be allowed to sell a kidney or a lobe of their liver if you think a woman should be able to rent out her womb.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Wow, I never could have guessed this obvious and simplistic summation of American politics from the context. Wait, no, what I mean is: this obvious and simplistic summation of American politics is incredibly evident from context and I learned nothing from this quotation.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
No your assertions are false. At least you prove that your republican bitter reddit reject echo chamber is the same as the others: Fragile, insular, based primarily on a cult of personality and self-delusional double standards, and full of losers who don't go outside.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
There's other places to learn basic sociology than a blog no one's heard of.
thegayrabbi
1yr ago
Maybe they'll show you ads for competitors, or content you enjoy with subtle product placement, like a cute dog with oreos in the background.
Did you try using the search function in the Google photos app?
Is the rapid advancement in Machine Learning good or bad for society?
For the purposes of this comment, I will try to define good as "improving the quality of life for many people without decreasing the quality of life for another similarly sized group" an vice versa.
I enjoy trying to answer this question because the political discourse around it is too new to have widely accepted answers disseminated by the two American political parties being used to signify affiliation like many questions. However, any discussion of whether something is good or bad for society belongs in a Culture War threat because, even here on The Motte, most people will try to reduce every discussion to one along clear conservative/liberal lines because most people here are salty conservatives who were kicked out of reddit by liberals one way or another.
Now on to the question: Maybe the best way to discover if Machine learning is good or bad for society is to say what makes it essentially different from previous computing? The key difference in Machine Learning is that it changes computing from a process where you tell the computer what to do with data, and turns it into a process where you just tell the computer what you want it to be able to do. before machine learning, you would tell the computer specifically how to scan an image and decide if it is a picture of a dog. Whether the computer was good at identifying pictures of dogs relied on how good your instructions were. With machine learning, you give the computer millions of pictures of dogs and tell it to figure out how to determine if there's a dog in a picture.
So what can be essentialized from that difference? Well before Machine Learning, the owners of the biggest computers still had to be clever enough to use them to manipulate data properly, but with Machine Learning, the owners of the biggest computers can now simply specify a goal and get what they want. It seems therefore that Machine Learning will work as a tool for those with more capital to find ways to gain more capital. It will allow people with the money to create companies that can enhance the ability to make decisions purely based on profit potential, and remove the human element even more from the equation.
How about a few examples:
Recently a machine learning model was approved by the FDA to be used to identify cavities on X-rays. Eventually your dental insurance company will require a machine learning model to read your X-rays and report that you need a procedure in order for them to cover treatment from your dentist. The justification will be that the Machine Learning model is more accurate. It probably will be more accurate. Dentists will require subscriptions to a Machine Learning model to accept insurance, and perhaps dental treatment will become more expensive, but maybe not. It's hard to say for sure if this will be a bad or a good thing.
Machine learning models are getting very good at writing human text. This is currently reducing the value of human writers at a quick pace. Presumably with more advanced models, it will replace commercial human writing all together. Every current limitation of the leading natural language models will be removed in time, and they will become objectively superior to human writers. This also might be a good thing, or a bad thing. It's hard to say.
I think it's actually very hard to predict if Machine Learning will be good or bad for society. Certain industries might be disrupted, but the long term effects are hard to predict.
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