The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => Discussion => Topic started by: Cmdr_King on January 05, 2019, 07:27:20 PM
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Y’know what? I’m feeling like sticking all the politics in a 2016 thread is just bad vibes. New Congress, new feel!
https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/california-first-state-recognize-nonbinary-gender/
Wait the States have been on top of this? Well shit! I glanced at the law wording and it looks like fairly robust self-ID, which is pretty great? I’d want to see some analysis and local response but on paper this is kinda just a good approach for a national model.
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9 p.m. tonight. I can't wait to see this shit show go down.
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https://twitter.com/stormydaniels/status/1082745074474237953?s=21
This? I mean more power to you but that’s not especially political..
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every time I see the word "daughter-fu" in the thread title, in my mind there's a kung-fu movie where an old man is lifting up his daughter and swinging her around while she kicks mooks in the head and stuff. I mean, there must be a kung-fu movie where that happens, right?
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https://www.out.com/news-opinion/2019/1/11/will-2020-hopeful-kamala-harris-address-past-hostility-sex-workers?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=news-opinion&utm_content=repro
So I've made mention that Harris is not well liked on the left and some folks were baffled. This is a pretty good summary.
I mean there's already worse candidates in the pool (Tulsi Gabbard can fuck herself) but all indications are she thinks these things were good and will be stuff she's still down for as president, so the tenacity with which people are already desperate for her to be a frontrunner is disheartening.
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https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1087501051392081922
Following that up with a long twitter thread from a trans woman who campaigned for Harris as AG in 2010. Harris and Warren are primary nonstarters to me because of these issues and their support for FOSTA/SESTA.
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https://www.girlboss.com/identity/sex-workers-social-media-sesta-fosta-affects
Dropping random stuff here out of lack of other places to put it.
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Old by news standards but useful as a resource reference: "An Anti-racist Syllabus for Governor Ralph Northam": https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/antiracist-syllabus-governor-ralph-northam/582580/.
"This anti-racist syllabus is for people realizing they were never taught how to be anti-racist. How to treat all the racial groups as equals. How to look at the racial inequity all around and look for the racist policies producing it, and the racist ideas veiling it. This list is for people beginning their anti-racist journey after a lifetime of defensively saying, “I’m not a racist” or “I can’t be a racist.” Beginning after a lifetime of assuring themselves only bad people can be racist."
A short warning that it is not, in fact, formatted as a syllabus but more as a bibliography. Of his recommendations, I agree especially with:
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider
Dr. Berry, Their Price for The Pound of Flesh
Eric Foner, Reconstruction
Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
I've never read White Fragility. It was published in 2018. Instead, I highly recommend Richard Dyer's White: Essays on Race and Culture from 1997, and Eric Foner's Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction is also a jewel.
I don't consider any of these resources teaching ways of anti-racism, but at least it provides textured backgrounds into significant moments of the US's racial history. Op-eds have surpassed long-form and researched texts. Both are vital together, but, texts are not forced to sacrifice substance in lieu of a quicker presentation of opinion/fact/questions/etc. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a perfect example of authorship that, while informed and argued well to varying degrees, still skirts substantial information. Yes, texts have equal measures of risky information or are plodding, clunky, uninteresting. The greatest difference for me is that printed texts are subjected far more consistently to peer review than anything else in publishing, and though peer review is its own closed system it still provides more ways to manage vetted and false information.
Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider was republished sometime recently. I forget when, but it's more accessible and affordable than ever. UT Austin's Dr. Berry's text deals specifically with the economics of white-led race-based chattel slavery. Eric Foner is just an OG historian whose fidelity to archival information is stellar and enviable, a sign of what kinds of historical accounts could occur when academia doesn't rush you. Taylor's text is simply a solid elaboration of the recent phenomena of political rhetoric were one to try to piece together everything they remembered since seeing Black men brutalized once again in mainstream media. But black liberation itself goes far back and is tied explicitly to the Black church and Black Marxism, and that requires a totally different course of study. Dyer's White is a pre-21st century account of whiteness, which was a growing field of cultural and racial theory in academia during the age of multiculturalism in the 90s, and has a lot of staying power as a classic to discuss race and sexuality without always invoking "blackness" as a binary evil.
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https://twitter.com/igd_news/status/1101424830224592901?s=21
Further news story in the tweet.
You find these stories on the weekly, at all levels of law enforcement. Because it’s not individual, it’s that the training and reputation of law enforcement, at least in the US, attracts those prone to fascism and sympathetic to white nationalists, and encourages those attitudes to crystalize.
This is why all cops are bad: all cops will favor “good citizens” (the white, the wealthy, the connected) over the marginalized. The law as tools of oppressors, not as safeguards for the marginalized.
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https://www.dailydot.com/irl/helen-joyce-economist-transphobia/
Moreso a reminder to myself to read it fully later, but I caught the original headline that sparked looking deeper aaaaaaand I feel pretty confident calling The Economist useless garbage.
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https://theslot.jezebel.com/elizabeth-warren-has-a-plan-1834120275
Yes, I know it's early. But I find it difficult to compare message campaigns when everything's jacked in full gear. At the vary least, I appreciate being able to spend time with policy ideas in writing. While I am fine with supporting a different candidate, it is no secret that I am still #Warren2020 right now. The links in this article are pretty useful.
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https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/28/18629833/climate-change-2019-green-new-deal
In part leaving this here for later.
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"I don’t even care if you work on an oil rig. In some parts of the country, those are the only jobs that pay enough for you to feed your family. And I don’t blame workers for that. I blame their employers. I blame the industry that is choking us all, and the government that is letting them do it."
So much this. To be honest, so much everything in that article.
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https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1148309540116582402?s=21
Need to watch this later
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https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/452662-meghan-mccain-defends-pelosi-she-deserves-respect-from-younger
I feel like once you got McCain and Trump himself sticking up for you, the fact you’re being a tool (and probably racist) becomes self-evident.
Whether Pelosi herself or liberals generally agree... who the fuck knows I guess. I am YoRHa trash.
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Replicating link everywhere so as to remind myself to do things: https://telegra.ph/Guardians-of-Hong-Kong-Statement-911-Lest-we-forget-09-11
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Wanted to reconstruct some Brexit stuff, so if I stay on this kick will edit articles into this post:
https://www.ft.com/content/fac8b53e-d840-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482
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Crossposting from FB because heck, why not.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-christian-right-is-helping-drive-liberals-away-from-religion/
I think there's an aspect of this not touched on in the article.
Conservative evangelicalism has done a great deal to make itself the defacto face of Christianity in the US. Even churches nominally not belonging to the methodists and southern baptists traditions that brewed our current version of evangelicalism tend to get material like guest preachers, sunday school programs, and the "Christian" branded entertainment from those regions, which has both made Christianity less distinct from region to region and created the illusion that evangelicalism is universal.
This becomes an issue because evangelicalism is in complete opposition to liberal values like equity, diversity, and stewardship of the Earth and humanity in general. So for a liberal, the choice seems to be between being a "Christian" and being a good, moral person... and people want to be (or at least be thought of as) good, moral people.
Coupled with evangelicalism being an isolating force within communities and improvements in communication technology making forming long-distance community far more practical than in generations past, and the split of liberals from faith was inevitable.
But flipping that around, this only holds true *because* evangelicalism worked so hard to displace Christianity. The loss of faith amongst US citizens was engineered by the very people whose nominal cause is protecting the faith.
I'm a little sad that doesn't surprise me.
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https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/09/the-catholic-church-holds-a-lesson-for-progressives/
How convenient, i was gonna respond on fb but didn't get around to it. Link is something to chew over all re: all this. And not a direct response but I'd be remiss not to plug unitarian universalism here.
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That has been interesting to watch unfold. A significant chunk of conservative catholics basically want to keep their particular holy days and church practice but otherwise just be evangelicals instead of christians, and Francis for the most part is trying to split the difference between keeping them around without completely alienating more liberal churches by emphasizing duty to charity and stewardship while saying yes, fine, we can still hate women and the gays.
Unitarians are one of several groups that have motivated me to talk about evangelicals without calling them Christians, if you ever wondered if I paid attention. Funny enough my sister affiliates with a local Unitarian church from time to time, but says to the effect of "they're a little too active for me to keep up with all the time", which I took to mean active in the political sense of going to marches, letter writing campaigns, and the like.
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Seems to be a study linked in this, hopefully will remember to look at it later
https://www.growkudos.com/publications/10.1080%25252F19361653.2019.1665610/reader
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Well, Elizabeth Warren has now had polls of her leading in Iowa, New Hampshire, and California (California now being a Super Tuesday state so that's actually kind of important).
She was someone I wanted to get big nationally for years, cause when she nails it she really nails it, Like when she grills the Wells Fargo CEO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJhkX74D10M)
I wanted her to get big enough to be a contender, and early in the primary it looked uphill (Bernie, Biden, and even Beto O'Rourke had more name recognition for a long time) but she's sliding into more of a frontrunner position now; and that means that there's a lot more dirt getting dug up about her. Am I still feeling good about her?
Mmm...mostly? Attacks being thrown at her...the one with actual genuine substance, that's worse than I thought it was is claiming native american heritage. a 1986 Texas Bar registry card surfaced where she handwrote herself as American Indian surfaced this year (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/elizabeth-warren-native-american-texas-bar-form-apology.html). And...yeah, that's...quite a bit worse than the stuff we knew before.
Is it a dealbreaker? Ehhhhh.... Nobody who has 40+ years of stuff in the political record books looks completely clean on racial issues for their entire career. Joe Biden campaigned as pro-segregation back in the day, and Bernie used the N-word in his 1997 book. The perfect candidate doesn't exist. Well...no that's a lie. The perfect candidate does exist, but she's 29 right now, so can't run for president until 2028. But enough about AOC....
Other attacks on Warren seem really mild; like she took PAC money as a senator; I checked Open Secrets, and yeah...like...5% of her campaign donations was PAC money, mostly from PACs that support women candidates and from labour union PACs.
The one part about Warren I find a bit strange, and I can confirm this both from interviews I've seen with people at her rallies and with coworkers of mine who lean more moderate is that while her politics lean relatively far left (usually aligned with Bernie Sanders) a lot of her supporters seem more moderate, with a lot of her supporters being to the right of her. So like...that's interesting. Although I'd certainly prefer that the moderate wing of the party flocks to her rather than Biden (Biden is a big old bucket of problems).
Other candidates...Bernie's very clearly third in the latest polling. I think he has a lot of lasting power though; he's raised more money than any other candidate (spread among more donors than any other candidate). He's got a lot of very loyal followers, who are increasingly mistrustful of...any non-Bernie candidate that polls above 2%. Bernie's still fine, but he could work on messaging. Like...Warren put forth a wealth tax bill, and that got a lot of media attention cause it turns out "tax multimillionaires and give stuff back to the public" is popular among most people who aren't multi millionaires. That said, it's not like Bernie's never had this idea; he's proposed a wealth tax in the past, it just wasn't part of his 2020 campaign yet. So...in the past week he released his own wealth tax proposal, and news companies are picking it up like "oh he's copying warren". (Which...is kind-of not great reporting on their part, but on the other hand, I can't blame them for not knowing about pre-2016 Bernie policies when he was very fringe).
Biden is noticeably bad. Like...to the right of me sure, but is just flubbing stuff. Answers in debates where he rambles about record players.
Andrew Yang...I mean, I can't help but like him on a personal level; his campaign slogan is MATH, and he makes dad jokes during debates, and he used to play Starcraft II. Much like Bernie I don't think he's going away--his fanbase really loves him. Actually, I see Yang mentioned on my twitter feed more than any other candidate, which is weird for someone who's mostly polling at 2%. Honestly...he reminds me of Ron Paul in some ways. (UBI is popular on the right and the left; popular among libertarians who are like "let's just cut back on welfare and do UBI instead". His version of UBI is a lot closer to the libertarian version). Which I mean...being to 2020 what Ron Paul was to 2008...dirty secret but I kind of liked Ron Paul in 2008, disagreed with him on a lot of issues, but he was refreshing being effectively a third party, and I like third parties; they just bring under-debated subjects to the debate table.
Beto surprised me and kind-of caught my attention in the latest debate with some of his answers on, for instance gun control and reparations. In debate 1 and 2 he had really forgettable answers where he did the politician thing (not really answer the question). Suddenly in the third debate he's speaking confidently on some really risquee political positions. So points for that I guess.
Underwhelmed by the people who did give non-committal politian answers (Butigeg, Harris, Booker etc). Maybe they'll actually do something to get my attention in debate #4.
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The one part about Warren I find a bit strange, and I can confirm this both from interviews I've seen with people at her rallies and with coworkers of mine who lean more moderate is that while her politics lean relatively far left (usually aligned with Bernie Sanders) a lot of her supporters seem more moderate, with a lot of her supporters being to the right of her. So like...that's interesting. Although I'd certainly prefer that the moderate wing of the party flocks to her rather than Biden (Biden is a big old bucket of problems).
I wrote up a response to this, and of course the forums ate it, but the short version is... really? That's surprising. I'm not complaining if we end up with nominee Warren, of course, but that's a bit of the reverse of the conventional wisdom - that she might have problems with the low-information "swing" voters who aren't really moderates, but do vote based on charisma / temperament / do-I-want-to-share-a-beer-with-you, and swung heavily for Trump over Clinton in 2016. Idiots, in other words.
The 2018 Ohio Governor's race is not very calming evidence, since Richard Cordray ran on a very similar platform with a very similar temperament to Warren (he was her protege, after all!), and lost in a heavily Democratic year. Apparently Ohio's voters weren't buying what he was selling, even when it would be objectively good for them.
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Who the heck wouldn't want a beer (/extremely girly wine) with Liz Warren?!
Edit: actually I do have a more substantial thought here. I don't remember how much Cordray emphasized specifically going after the rich? But I think Warren's open call for getting more out of the wealthiest of the wealthy has *very* broad appeal, and the uninformed voter is much more likely to believe the President can follow through with it than the Governor.
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https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/10/01/transphobia-philosophy/
This feels like the start of a bigger idea, but not coherent enough at the moment to suss it out.
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*Three Years Later*
Well, about what you expect from a second waver.
https://www.out.com/transgender/2019/10/14/hillary-clinton-says-we-must-be-sensitive-transphobia
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Edited response to be a bit more specific: I don't really agree with the article's slant that this is a reversal/change of Clinton's position. It's an expansive reading of one comment that implies that because Clinton talked about the difficulties of her generation accepting transgender people, she also doesn't think it's an issue worth fighting - which is a big leap. Especially since in the very same interview Chelsea vocally was speaking up for transgender rights, and the two were being interviewed as a pair, so it's reasonable that the elder Clinton felt that topic was already covered.
Original comment (that Sir Alex responds to below), which is phrased a bit more stridently:
That is a hostile and unfair take on one line about something perfectly obvious that everyone can agree with - that old people of that generation aren't always comfortable with transgender issues, and it will take time to turn them around and/or a straight-up passing of the guard (read: old people dying). It's the journalist who is writing silly things and presenting this as "trying to take the middle ground on the issue." For context, this is with Clinton putting a transgender person as a hero to be admired in her book and, as referenced in the article, vocal support both in word and deed earlier for transgender issues (which you've been linked to before by NotMiki & myself). And Chelsea was vocally supporting trans people in this very same interview. But clearly H. Clinton changed her mind because she acknowledged that some old people are anti-trans, and it's a tough problem??? I have no idea where the writer is getting this as an about-face on the issue, but I presume it's just clickbait outrage journalism.
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..... yikes, dude. Reread what you just wrote there a few times, putting yourself in the shoes of trans people being smugly told by cis people "well you need to just suck it up and accept that people hate you and you'll never have rights, and that's a difficult problem and even your 'good' politicians have to kowtow to those people, and I just think that's perfectly okay, deal with it, nothing to be outraged about."
Then hopefully you will see where the outrage comes from. The world can be better. Things are written in context and in perspective, especially things posted on out dot com slash transgender.
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To back up for a second, let me be clear that I personally am entirely in favor of trans rights, and I certainly do NOT think trans people should just suck it up and wait it out. And cis people have a moral duty to help make a fairer society on this topic, too. So no, I absolutely do not think there should be kowtowing to old-fashioned dinosaurs, they can either join the winning team or suck it up.
If - and this is a big if - the message included "(old people being skeptical of trans people) that's perfectly okay, deal with it," then sure, that's reason to get mad / be disappointed. Not contesting that. I don't feel that this sentiment is actually in the original interview, though! Ergo it is the journalist doing a misreading of the interview, not the actual statement expressed by Clinton. The alt-right has made it so that sometimes you need to read weird coded messages into seemingly neutral things, but that only applies when there's not a lot of information to go on. There IS information to go on here - that of Clinton vocally supporting transgender people & rights in the past, while in power ( https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-2016-transgender-rights-passport-policy-state-department-lgbt-equality-214007 ), and right now, in the very same interview and in her recently published book. I doubt this was some kind of coded "eh, old people are trouble, let's give up" message, especially since Chelsea in the very same dual interview was vocally speaking up on the issue, with the two being a pair. I think it's much more reasonable to just read it as talking about the difficulty in the struggle here.
Put things another way, let's flip this case around. Take a politician with a long-documented hostility toward LGBT rights - Mike Pence, say. Let's say they have an interview where they say something that could possibly be taken as neutral, middle-groundy - both sides have a lot of concerns, and we need to listen to what everybody says. Is this cause to assume they've changed their mind? Hell, even if hypothetical Pence had softened his position, why don't he say just say so more explicitly?
And I'll add that I do agree there are parts of the Democratic party that would sell LGBT rights down the river in a second, so I'm not asking for blind loyalty or the like to any Dem politician. I think that directing that claim at Hillary Clinton in particular is the wrong target, at least without something a lot more explicit.
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For context, the original snark was that in 2016 when I first ran across that story, I thought "y'know, this seems calculated to look impressive on paper but also be completely inaccessible to the majority of trans people. I wonder if Clinton's staff did this with minimal input and Clinton herself is vaguely TERFy given her second wave roots" and welp, spot on there.
It's not a change of her position, just an illustration of how weak her position was.
If we are going to be serious business about it...
This comment centers the irrational worry of bigots over the material needs of the marginalized, which is the pattern of literally every aspect of society and the core, singular reason society rarely improves beyond raw technology.
More than that it's the seed of that bigotry itself. You're using a nominally true fact ("trans women to not experience certain forms of misogyny as cis women do"), using it as proxy to imply outright bigotry without admitting to it ("therefore trans women are not women"), then excluding people from their rights/necessary services based on that bigotry-disguised-as-fact.
Clinton, being a liberal, knows that bigotry is bad and that you should accept people, so she's papered over that with making surface level "concessions" to the notion of gender identity. But because she has not challenged her underlying bigotry, those concessions are based in pity rather than acceptance, and only embracing the most clear-cut, obvious examples. The logical extrapolation of her comment is, in order to "qualify" as your gender, you'd have to achieve high levels of medical and legal transition... which due to the fact society is by and large even more bigoted than that, is something only a minority of trans people can achieve. Start to finish, it costs $200-300K and around 5 years to "properly" transition, including a full course of hormone therapy (not that this stops after that period, but that's the length to get the full effects), top/bottom surgery, and any facial work. At present less than half of trans people make that *lifetime*.
And here's the thing, it's not a big deal if Clinton is like that. She's a semi-retired politician, and even if she were active she has a history of letting others put forth proposals on areas of policy she doesn't feel fully qualified in. But that this set of beliefs is pretty well at the *forefront* of liberal thought on the subject is utterly damning of everyone else.
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The logical extrapolation of her comment is, in order to "qualify" as your gender, you'd have to achieve high levels of medical and legal transition... which due to the fact society is by and large even more bigoted than that, is something only a minority of trans people can achieve. Start to finish, it costs $200-300K and around 5 years to "properly" transition, including a full course of hormone therapy (not that this stops after that period, but that's the length to get the full effects), top/bottom surgery, and any facial work. At present less than half of trans people make that *lifetime*.
Preach.
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I was responding (originally) to the article, which I find to be the kind of source that could be used to claim anything about anyone. The linked article is based off an article in The Daily Mail, a famously tabloidy, unreliable, and awful British newspaper. They enjoy shit-stirring and generally making anything look like a conflict. The Daily Mail article was writing about a paywall'd interview, which the blog author admits to not reading. So this is secondhand filtered through a very unreliable source (and if you check the original Daily Mail article, it looks like the writer thinks the more scandalous part is Chelsea affirming women can have a penis). And - even given that - the blog author is still spinning the comments in a very specific way. I don't think it's clear at all that Clinton meant these statements at all in the way the writer took them. Certainly, if you take away the nameplate and have it be solely comments from Person XYZ - there's nothing shocking here. "Old people are bigots", and it's entirely reasonable that the speaker is calling for "sensitivity" for trans people. Or that calling for sensitivity for old bigots just means telling them they're wrong politely.
Essentially, a source like that is too weak. If you are already inclined to distrust the speaker, then sure, it confirms your dark suspicions. If you are inclined to trust the speaker, this means nothing, since it's essentially reading a coded message in that goes counter to what everything else in this interview and this book are saying. What raised my eyebrows originally was the fact that the article itself, and I presumed CK at first (but I was clearly wrong on this), took it as a switcheroo - that the speaker was good, but based on a weird coded interpretation of a phrase, now they're bad. In my defense, this is the slant the article itself has! It notes Clinton's strong history on the subject recently. But if such claims were accepted as reasonable for any sort of change in opinion, that's just a formula to get played by Russian trolls. If Fox News runs a story saying "Bernie Sanders caught admitting that capitalism is awesome, abandons socialist principles in interview," just accepting this as true isn't wise, even if Fox dug up some quotes that might indicate this. (And yeah, Daily Mail & Fox News are about the same level.)
Now, to toss this all aside for a moment - obviously, there were names in the article, not a talk about Mysterious Person XYZ. So, if you already do not trust Hillary Clinton on this issue, if you previously thought she was TERFy or the like, I actually don't have too much to say, that's a different discussion (and again, this was not obvious by the article itself). If we start with the hostile outlook, it's like if an old-school Southern politician who supports actually racist policies is caught saying something maybe explicitly racist: if it confirms what everybody suspected anyway, sure, no benefit of the doubt. (Although, even then, I'd argue the "gotcha" gaffe is less important than the actually bad policies to begin with.) I'm merely saying that from a neutral or positive starting perspective - it's, at best, not convincing this was actually a change in policy to begin with, that this was meant as a retreat from trans rights or anything like that. It is just an indication that the interviewer asked about the topic.
I will say that the Clintons (Chelsea, but endorsed by her mom) explicitly affirmed that trans women are women in the interview, though, with regard to your other comments, and did not condition this on finishing a medical transition.
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Dude. We are using it as a springboard to talk about Hillary's comments themselves, not that one article. If you are hung up on it then here are some more.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hillary-clinton-chelsea-interview-8j33c8vt5 (the original interview, paywalled)
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/10/14/hillary-clinton-chelsea-trans-identity-sunday-times-interview/
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/hillary-clinton-calling-transgender-people-new-difficult-ignores-history (good read)
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/10/hillary-clinton-compared-staying-bill-sex-scandal-raising-transgender-child/ Not even the only time she's said uncomfortable things on the subject this month.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/hillary-clinton-isnt-woke-enough-anymore
https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2019/10/14/promoting-book-praising-transgender-woman-hillary-chelsea-asked-can-woman-male-genitals/ ... And here are a couple of pieces slanted way in the other direction, from pro-TERF authors defending Hillary and mocking people who condemn her remarks. The reason I am coming off strong here is that this is what it sounds like you are siding with here, Snowfire.
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https://www.teenvogue.com/story/hillary-clinton-calling-transgender-people-new-difficult-ignores-history (good read)
Yeah, this doesn't include as much of her original quote in the article itself, but it raises a bunch of other surrounding context and is much less charged in its wording.
But to be clear, my original conclusion is drawn solely from Clinton's direct quote and my own knowledge of TERFs, second wave feminism, and trans issues. That sort of "but it's haaaaard" language is exactly how TERFs looking to recruit or conservatives drafting anti-trans legislation get the uninformed on their side.
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Sir Alex: That is not at all what I was saying. RedState's slant is happily accepting the idea that Clinton backstabbed LGBT rights, but said doing so is not actually bad. I was questioning whether such a backstab happened at all in the first place, based off CK's article, and saying that at the very least, even if this happened, the original article didn't make its case. Maybe there are reasons to distrust Clinton on the topic; that's a separate discussion that I'm not trying to argue about, and I will read your other links.
My attempt at analogies has clearly failed, but for my perspective before you posted those other links: imagine if someone you highly respect is attacked by a rando on Twitter for something - could be anything (harassment claims, bad politics, crime, whatever). And what if that original Twitter comment is uncorroborated, or based off of a RedState article, or a Daily Mail article, or comes across as overly conspiracy theory minded. Even if the claims turn out to be true, it's still okay to be skeptical of the original tweet - fine, maybe, but let's see something more direct. It doesn't mean to excuse the behavior if it happened, it's backing up and starting with "did this really happen."
EDIT: Also, apparently Clinton said some other stupid stuff recently, so I'll concede that point. That said, to be clear, I was 90% responding to that one article, and the general springboard to discussion about Clinton was only relevant as far as preconceptions / benefit of the doubt, but not the main point of contention.
CK: Fair enough.
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So... this goes into sufficient detail for a crime report, discretion advised.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/10/rosario-dawson-sued-allegedly-attacking-trans-man/?fbclid=IwAR1zeT6JaCmpBZim4HFdYFi2j1brrJ8AMspINzH0Ndk3TnrnTnJhcxc3bVQ
I can’t help but think it won’t even be a blip.
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So are the comments on that site always so ... antagonistic?
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Can't say I'm familiar enough with them to say.
Seems likely the answer is "they are when it's to do with trans folk".
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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/so-about-that-buttigieg-surge/
Normal content for 538 at this particular time, but there's a poll towards the end that jumped out at me.
"What types of candidates would Americans NOT vote for?"
And it falls about the way you'd expect... except "Independents" are notably less likely to vote for a Jewish candidate than either Democrats or Republicans (9% vs 5% for both other groups.) It's not a large enough gap to necessarily be anything suggestive, and could just have to do with how the sample is weighted, but it's about the only true "huh" moment there.
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A difference of 4% may not be statistically significant, depending on the sample size.
Thaaat said, assuming the result reflects reality, it... doesn't actually surprise me. Independents include the delightful tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist who is likely to believe such things as Jews Control Everything.
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Additionally both democrats and republicans do have concrete platform reasons to downplay any biases they have (saying you're against Jews as a Democrat is a fast way to get side-eye, while there's a whole complicated interplay between conservative Jewish groups, support for Israel, and evangelicalism.)
Like it's perfectly explicable, just... weird.
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Not strictly politics, but this feels important and I hopefully I can expand on that thought later.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/10/david-letterman-conversation-with-nell-scovell
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https://twitter.com/gwensnyderphl/status/1191413271271739392?s=21
If you wanted a nuanced take on Boomers
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I'm not sure if "really long list of grievances about specific people" counts as a nuanced understanding of a generation. "Boomers! A lot of them were bad therefore woe betide anyone who takes issue with a generalized attack on all of them!" Please.
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Dozens of anecdotes that fit neatly into both the mindset of hundreds if not thousands of pieces of writing and the broad socio-political outcomes of most of the years in which said generation were the decisive voting block in power are in no way suggestive of common/dominant mindsets for people with a shared set of historical and cultural experiences? That's a stretch.
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The question is whether a common or dominant mindset in a group entitles you to treat them all like garbage. That's not a question you can answer just by priming your anger for them with a breathless list of indictments.
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Yeah calling an entire generation trash seems immensely unhelpful unless your goal is to alienate potential allies.
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"Ok boomer" refers to a very specific generational mindset- almost always white and middle class- that's about resenting younger folks for not worshipping boomers for co-existing with the civil rights movement or entertaining their fantasy of being geniuses who saved the world.
In movement work, the boomer mentality has shown up as a refusal to make room for new leaders by training them, creating openings in operational leadership, and encouraging the succeeding generation to creatively lead in new ways.
The transition to statesmanship/movement elder status is super-important not only because it makes room, but because it creates a cohort of elders (advisors) who are respected and listened to for their wisdom.
As long as boomers stay operational leaders, they're peers.
The entire thread was about how it's not universal, and how the mindset being describe specifically makes someone useless as an ally. And that's the people trying to do right.
I mean, in my personal experience I've yet to meet these hypothetical American Adults Over 60 who aren't Trumpian garbage people, but I see them on the internet and TV so clearly they exist.
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Put another way, if I were in a casual setting (chat, conversation, so on) and said "The Straights Are Not Okay" in response to some really outlandish news story (oh hey wait, I have a good example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/28/woman-killed-by-shrapnel-gender-reveal-party-explosion-iowa/ ), would you honestly, truly read that as a condemnation of 95% of the population and not a shorthand for how neurotically uptight people are about sexuality and gender roles?
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I wrote a bunch of stuff about sociolinguistics and generational historical introspection but I'm tired of defending myself so you get this instead:
We've reached "ok boomer" because we have tried conversation and empathy and personalization, and been met with a variegated "you don't know what you're talking about so I'll talk louder." (I don't think that's a controversial take since that's exactly how she wraps up her Twitter thread anyway.)
You can Not All Boomers all you want but as with Not All Men or any other "hey but -" response to a general call it's preeeeeeeetty likely to come across as apologism and get appropriately canned.
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Interesting companion piece, Gen Xer breaking down her own generation: https://twitter.com/naima/status/1191784298766049285?s=21
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I think that's mostly bullshit but on the subject of boundary-pushing, Gen Xers sure do have a lot to answer for, don't we? Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey, the worst of the tech boom, the ultimate degradation of privacy and individuality, the disgusting surveillance state that the world lives in. That's mostly us, and we do precious little to stop it. We'll tell our grandkids that we only used Facebook and Twitter out of necessity, that it was too big for us to do anything about, that the evil Gen Xers aren't us, don't represent us. Do you think they'll buy that? That'll be a bunch of #NotAllGenXers to them.
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(https://i.imgur.com/uBIkkjH.png)
If it isn't obvious: I echo everything Ashley said in her post re: trying to reach a dialogue.
Trying to adhere to some supposed "notallx" makes sense when there is some reasonable semblance of hope the other side will give ground or make room to consider your views. This is decisively not the case. The generational bashing has been unequivocal and gone on forever. We got here because we have no other choice. I feel the same way about American politics after a decade of roughshod being run over by the other side and every attempt at moderation/middle groundism was flagrantly ignored or taken advantage of.
At some point you stand and fight, because it's the only recourse left to you.
EDIT: When I say the general sentiment that "men are dangerous and the main perpetrators of rape culture/misogyny/the patriarchy", my male friends don't assume I'm talking about them or singling them out or trying to make them feel bad for their gender. This is why we rightfully mock #NotAllMen. The people who understand the pertinent issues at hand that plague us and need progress know that it is a broad issue that requires broad declarations and statements for it to have actual meaningful impact. I don't need to go out of my way and hold every man's hand to reassure them that, no, you're not one of the bad ones. I really don't see how this is much of a stretch of logic for Boomers. The Boomers that understand the dynamics that exist now that make generational values so at conflict with each other don't need to be reassured that when we lambast them not to take it personally. The ones who don't get this, at this point, aren't worth the energy trying to talk about it. Because we tried for a long time. That is the point being made.
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I think that's mostly bullshit but on the subject of boundary-pushing, Gen Xers sure do have a lot to answer for, don't we? Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey, the worst of the tech boom, the ultimate degradation of privacy and individuality, the disgusting surveillance state that the world lives in. That's mostly us, and we do precious little to stop it. We'll tell our grandkids that we only used Facebook and Twitter out of necessity, that it was too big for us to do anything about, that the evil Gen Xers aren't us, don't represent us. Do you think they'll buy that? That'll be a bunch of #NotAllGenXers to them.
Nah, Zuckerberg, like the vast majority of the DL, is a millennial.
In that light, some of what he has done does reflect on the quirks of millennials as a generation. There is a mercenary cynicism in everything he does, and a lot of what’s wrong with Facebook as a thing stems to its very beginnings, because Zuckerberg is basically an incel stalker who conned everyone into giving him the information.
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(https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/74624198_2694810320550560_2793405884179415040_n.png?_nc_cat=110&_nc_oc=AQndL4Ia84rgC99oa-YdEZiObT8uNacWYAaakejcBZPkBpBC1jSmS42ITRjzkGYGT0c&_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&oh=3a6537c60236818d21f814f390cce352&oe=5E58CC12)
memes for d a y s.
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WaPo can put out some trash nonsense when it comes to, say, taxation but they’re still well ahead of the curve:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-beware-impeachment-hearings-will-be-the-trickiest-test-of-covering-trump/2019/11/08/1f2b0aac-0239-11ea-8501-2a7123a38c58_story.html
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Ah, now that Hillary has given her blessing, it’s masks off for anti-trans liberals I see.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/15/virginia-should-reject-era/
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Are you implying that everything WaPo publishes is secretly the opinion of liberals? Cause this guy is clearly a conservative - his other wapo piece is defending george mason naming its law school for scalia, and he's got work published in the daily caller, plus fox news speaking gigs.
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Do I believe that WaPo editorial endorses the position “enshrining women’s rights in law is dangerous if they also support trans rights”? Not especially.
Do I take WaPo editorial publishing said bigotry as advancing a “legitimate concerns” narrative so obviously that it’s hard to believe WaPo editorial does not believe said narrative? Extremely yes.
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Building on previous “Brexit is a scam by billionaires to privatize British assets” comments: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/27/jeremy-corbyn-reveals-dossier-proving-nhs-up-for-sale
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https://www.cracked.com/blog/why-corporations-love-making-movies-about-evil-corporations/