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So I've done my best recently to avoid being subjected to personalized social media feed. So my lurking on mastodon without account saw that something happened over at Bluesky and people were leaving to go to the fediverse instead. It turns out it is classical Culture War stuff. Bluesky is apparently imploding because of "Waffles".
So this is not a "boo outgroup" post, my observation is that bluesky is resisting its best of becoming an "ideological monoculture", failing at that though. It is as uninteresting because of the monoculture for me as getting an actual account mastodon instance or truth.social and gab due to the ideological alignment of majority of their users.
It seems that it is hard to make large scale "microblogging" platform that caters to heterodox political culture and I'm a little curious if there is any insight for why it is hard to make one?
Beautiful way to describe a progressive Jewish New Yorker journalist who questions youth gender transition. He's 99% on their side, so he's basically the reincarnation of Hitler to him. The moral purity and rigid adherence to a narrow set of approved beliefs is amazing with this crowd.
Reading Iris's about us page, my impression is this is likely a transgender person, both from the pic and the picture-perfect set of male hobbies, any one of which I know women who are into them, but put together is pretty strong evidence of not being a natal woman... and of course, "most of my recent focus has been on transgender rights, especially in the workplace." (Read: I came out as transgender recently and now that's my pet cause.)
Either that or the most masculine woman I have ever heard of in my entire life. So, in that connection, "trans woman in tech is extremely progressive and doesn't like transphobes," isn't exactly a wild outlier. They believe this is an existential fight for them; I'd probably call my enemies fascists too if I believed as they do. As it is, I just find their intensity of feeling a little silly, and so it's easy for me to shrug it off.
But really I have a more specific pronoun problem with the website. I find it hard to take the website of a professional seriously when all of the pronouns are "we", and it's obviously just one person's consultancy. Just say "I," please. Don't pretend to be plural. (Wait.......)
(EDIT: Also, there's a publication "Published under my deadname.")
Without even clicking the link, the name alone is enough of a tell.
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You say 99% on their side, and yet his discussion of trans issues is way more than 1% of his output. IOW if you don't talk much about the other 99% of your issue positions how much do you really hold them?
99%, of course. People don't have a responsibility to talk about their opinions in order to hold them.
One can criticize the likes of Singal for being tactically incompetent in terms of how talking about the 1% difference aids the "other side" more than they ought to, or whatever, of course. But that's a separate question than whether or not he holds these opinions, with its own various dimensions, such as the fact that someone like Singal can reasonably (and very possibly correctly) believe that disproportionately focusing his speech on that 1% where he disagrees with his "side" is actually beneficial for his "side" and harmful to the "other side."
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Imagine you are a dyed in the wool red triber. You agree with 99% of everything Trump is doing. Then one day, Trump decides we should all cut off our dicks. And suddenly you start seeing all your friends at church cutting their dicks off. They're cutting the dicks off their kids too! You might make it your singular purpose to try to lead your tribe, with whom you agree on 99% of all other issues, back to the land of sanity.
I don't envy Jesse Singal. He seems to honestly believe this is a mistake and not a conflict. He honestly thinks he can convince Democratic politicians and policy makers to reverse course, even 20%. If only those damned Republicans weren't also on his side of this issue, making his side all crazy, and doubling down on all the dick chopping.
Wait, I think I mixed up my metaphors there at the end...
Oh wait no, I'm good.
On the contrary, I believe that it is the fact that dicks don't actually need to be cut off that is the cause of the modern trans movements problems. Autogynephiliacs like Andrea Long Chu get to pretend they're one of the girls while openly discussing how much they want their dicks to be shoved into lesbians. The celebration of the dicked in the realm of the dickless is the precise shear point that drives many LGB and ACTUAL T people away from the Queer+ crowd.
As such I openly proclaim myself an obligate trans maximalist. Are you trans? Great! Heres some painkillers and a knife. Chop it off and live your life as the woman your dysphoria say you are! It is a costless exercise for dysphorics because the penis is a reminder of their eternal trauma for being in the wrong body, PER THEIR OWN STATEMENTS.
A man wants to be socialized and go into girls spaces? Then fucking BE a 'social girl'. Be the girliest fucking femboy, giggling at boys and wearing thigh highs and spreading bussy to get topped by Chad. But don't pretend singing Golden from memory and dreaming of eat pray loving through your dissatisfied thirties means you get the womens-reserved corner spot. Game devs in the west exploded in female representation, but only because men got to pretend to be women without needing any effort other than growing hair long.
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It took me way too long to realize cutting your dicks off wasn't all that contrived.
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For those of us who don't even recognize the name except as "Some Guy that the Motte talks about now and then", would you be willing to give some background on those accusations?
Background
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