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Azuma Hazuki (5086)

Azuma Hazuki
(email not shown publicly)

Sapphic, sword-swinging schoolgirl seeking spacetime-sliding sister

Journal of Azuma Hazuki (5086)

The Fine Print: The following are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Monday March 05, 18
09:49 PM
/dev/random

This one is probably going to catch me a lot of heat from both the extremes, as it touches on that most sensitive and landmine-laden of topics: gender identity and the expressions thereof.

First, the parts which are going to piss the TERFs off: I am a proudly cisgender, XX-chromosome-having ("womyn-born-womyn" as they'd say) lesbian, with a strict policy of dating only other lesbians (after some bad experiences with bisexual women)...and I am also trans-inclusive. This is going to draw the usual predictable howls of outrage, and might even get me called "traitor to the lesbian race."

*Again.*

Because yes, that is a thing that happened once. Satire sometimes writes itself.

Incidentally, if someone knows where the lesbian race lives, please by all means send me a couple of plane tickets; I'm getting married soon and would love to have the reception there. Hopefully it's somewhere with nice beaches!

And now the parts which are going to annoy non-TERFs: some of the TERF arguments hold more water than their detractors give them credit for. In particular:

1) There are biological differences between the sexes. Note that this does *not* mean I believe transwomen and transmen are deluded or faking their lived experiences; it means that gender is not purely a "social construct," that one's brain structure and hormones play heavily into it. Incidentally, this is *not* an anti-trans argument. If anything, this is the reason I support trans* people in their transitions. Nature screwed up somewhere and put the wrong sort of mind/brain in the wrong sort of body. I can't imagine what that's like, but I can take their word for it, and having seen the real, positive changes in trans* friends of mine once they started hormones only cements this support.

Again: not being a gender essentialist here, and certainly not committing that stupid "physical sex and/or chromosome cohort *is* gender" fallacy. I'm on your side, I'm just not going to fall for the stupid, mush-headed "thinking" that attempts to reduce something as complex as gender to "just a social construct." Real data has borne out that this is not the case.

2) Trans* people do not have the lived experiences of cisgender people of the sex they are attempting to pass as. Transwomen: you do not bleed, you did not go through female puberty as a child/young teenager, you will never be pregnant, and you were not seen by society at large--this is different from "not seen by molesters and paedophiles!"--as potentially and primarily objects of convenience, sexual and otherwise, for men.

3) Expanding on 2 above, I support cisgender-women-only spaces. This does not mean I don't view you, transwomen, as "real women." Your experiences are your own, and if you feel so badly mismatched to your body that you want to change it, to me, that is enough to qualify you as "real women." Just...not cisgender women. Again, different life experiences.

So please, if some of us want *some* space that's not dealing with trans* issues, please, please, give us that. You can be in the inclusive spaces, and even start transwomen-only spaces; I will not intrude on those, because I do not have your lived experiences, and can't imagine what you've been through. I only ask that you extend us the same courtesy.

4) Having a genital preference does not make you anti-trans* or transmisogynist. I am a lesbian. I like ladybits. This means I'm not going to date a pre-operative MtF, no matter how well she passes otherwise. We can be friends, but we're never going to have sex. Of course, this one is a moot point *anyway* since I'm already taken, but even hypothetically, it's not going to happen. It's not personal, but it's also not negotiable.

5) Surgery does not change your chromosomes or your lived experiences. This is actually not anywhere near as important as TERFs make it out to be, since at least to my mind, most of gender and gender identity is performative anyway. I'm also not saying to feel invalid or less of a human because of who and what you are. But at the same time, understand that history is history, and it can't be retroactively changed.

Just understand that the social transition is going to be bigger than the physical one for you. We can spot otherwise well-passing early-stage transitioning MtFs very well based not on any physical cues, but based on behavior. It takes time to lose that male privilege, and understandably, some of you are going to be reluctant to let it go. It sucks on this side of the gender divide sometimes.

6) Please understand that much of the backlash from the TERF camp is because women have always, always, always been marginalized and shoved aside for mens' interests, and some of us feel that men are intruding *even as they become women.* There's hardly any discussion of FtM people compared to MtF, and I don't hear hardly anything about FtMs having trouble integrating into groups composed of cisgender men the way MtFs tend to kind of stomp all over womens' spaces sometimes (in my observation, mostly early in transition).

The reasons for this are probably complicated. They likely have something to do with male being the "default," so FtMs are basically going from other and different to default, if not "normal." And the MtF friends i have, both of them, both told me there was a tremendous backlash against them for abandoning being male, mostly backed up by "WHY would you want to be a chick?!" with the unspoken corollary being "womens' lives suck."

I am, again, not a TERF, and I will defend you against them in all arenas. In return, please keep the above in mind.

This all sounds reasonable enough, right? In the end, doesn't it just boil down to the golden rule, treating others as they want to be treated, taking their basic humanity (a level well below gender expression, mind you!) into account? But I'm sure this is going to catch me more flames than a California wildfire. So be it; I'm wearing my asbestos nightie. Have at it.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @11:24PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @11:24PM (#648251)

    My niece is post-operative mtF trans (she's five years or so out from surgery). She's happier than she's ever been and is also getting married soon (BTW, congratulations on your own upcoming nuptials!).

    When she was a boy, and then a young man, she was awkward, insecure and pretty unhappy. By the time she was sixteen or so (she's 31 now), she knew why she was so miserable.

    It took the better part of ten years for her to accept who she really was, start her transition and complete the process. Along the way, there was much in the way of self-doubt and fear. Most of that fear was that those she loved (especially her parents) would reject her.

    Her parents did have a hard time with this for several years (especially her mother who I love dearly, but was more concerned about how her friends and neighbors would react than her own child's happines...Grrr!), but they came to understand that she was, in fact, the woman she wanted^W needed to be.

    She was very lucky, in that she had a sister and seven female cousins, all of whom supported her and helped her to adjust. In fact, my whole family was really supportive (I have a wonderful family!) who love her for *who* she is, not what private parts she has.

    AFAIK (and thankfully so!), she was never subjected to derision/bullying/violence/discrimination when she began living as a woman openly. I'm curious now (and will ask her) whether she experienced a shift in how others treated her (vis a vis male/female) and/or how her attitudes shifted as she transitioned.

    Thanks for this journal entry. It gives a lot of food for thought.

    I wonder if our resident mtF (KurenaiTsubasa) and noted TERF hater will chime in. I hope so.

    Oh, and I just *had* to use that subject line, as I didn't want you to feel your asbestos garments were going to waste. :)

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:27AM (#648269)

      My nephew is post-operative MtF tranny (he's five years or so out from mutilation). He's happier than he's ever been and is also getting married soon (BTW, congratulations on your own upcoming nuptials!).

      When he was a normal boy, and then a normal young man, he was awkward, insecure and pretty unhappy. By the time he was sixteen or so (he's 31 now), he thought he knew why he was so miserable.

      It took the better part of ten years for him to accept who he felt he really was, start his transition and complete the process. Along the way, there was much in the way of self-doubt and fear. Most of that fear was that those he loved (especially his parents) would reject him.

      His parents did have a hard time with this for several years (especially his mother who I love dearly, but was more concerned about how her friends and neighbors would react than her own child's happiness... Grrr!), but they came to understand that he was, in fact, a MtF tranny.

      He was very lucky, in that he had a sister and seven female cousins, all of whom supported him and helped him to adjust. In fact, my whole family was really supportive (I have a wonderful family!) who love him for *who* he is, not what private parts he mutilated.

      AFAIK (and thankfully so!), he was never subjected to derision/bullying/violence/discrimination when he began openly pretending to be a woman. I'm curious now (and will ask him) whether he experienced a shift in how others treated him (vis a vis male/female) and/or how his attitudes shifted as he transitioned.

  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Snow on Monday March 05 2018, @11:30PM (44 children)

    by Snow (1601) on Monday March 05 2018, @11:30PM (#648252) Journal

    I've never heard of a TERF before. For the others like me: Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

    I'm from Canada, and here we have First Nations ( or Indians ) people. These people have been oppressed severely in the past. Their kids were taken away and put in boarding schools and stripped of their heritage and physically and mentally abused. Before that, Europeans exploited them and stole their land (we all know the history...). It's a terrible past, but you know what pisses me off. EVERY time some native person is on the radio/TV EVERYTHING is a racist issue.

    Some crappy town in, quite literally, the middle of nowhere is squalid and has no clean water? It's racist. Did a jury, in due process, find a man that shot a native protecting their family innocent? It's a racist court system. Do we want to put an overseer to monitor how bands spend their money because of a long history of corruption and wasteful spending? Racist. A native cannot appear in a public forum without dropping the race card. YES, we get it, your people were wronged, but at some point you need to move on and accept your own fate instead of whining about things that happened in the past.

    The feminist movement is very similar: "It sucks on this side of the gender divide sometimes.", "unspoken corollary being "womens' lives suck.", "male privilege", etc... These poor, oppressed powerless women (sorry... womyn). What is so damn terrible about being a woman? (I assume you live in a western country, if not, you have valid complaints.)

    The Wage Gap is a lie. Are you tired of being hit on constantly? Try being completely invisible unless you are needed to assist with something. Sexual Assault? Sure, that terrible, but now all us men are walking on egg shells every day. OOHHHH did I just eye-rape her?

    I've dated a few feminists. Guess how many of them offered to split the bill to be equal? 0. Feminists piss me off because they don't care about equality. They just want to advance the agenda of women (fair) while also oppressing men (not fair).

    (BTW, this isn't a personal attack. I quite like you and your views. It's just I think the feminism movement has gone too far. It's no longer about equality).

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday March 05 2018, @11:44PM (5 children)

      I've dated a few feminists. Guess how many of them offered to split the bill to be equal? 0. Feminists piss me off because they don't care about equality. They just want to advance the agenda of women (fair) while also oppressing men (not fair).

      I disagree. If that's your experience, then, while you've dated feminists, you've also dated selfish people.

      The feminists I know personally are generally decent, fair-minded people who want/need/have the right to demand equal opportunity, equal treatment in the public sphere, and recognition of their right to agency and control of their bodies.

      I've known and dated women who both did and didn't consider themselves to be feminists, and I found that those who didn't were often more about themselves and what they wanted than were the feminists.

      I guess we all have different experiences. Perhaps you might consider judging individuals by their words and actions, rather than painting a broad, diverse group with the same, broad brush. Just a thought.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:21AM (4 children)

        by Snow (1601) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:21AM (#648313) Journal

        You're right; I'm sorry. I'm tired and sexually frustrated and in a bad mood.

        • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:00PM (3 children)

          You're right; I'm sorry. I'm tired and sexually frustrated and in a bad mood.

          No worries. It's easy to paint folks with a broad brush when you're trying to make a general point.

          I've done the same many times myself.

          Thank you for not assuming that my reply was a personal attack on you. It wasn't intended to be so.

          I hope you get some rest, some sex and some happy news.

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
          • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:29PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:29PM (#648578)

            i have to admit I dont get this sexual frustration thing. i always saw this as poor impulse control, and why women in other countries are covered up because their education system doesn't teach men to behave civilly.

            i admire hot chicks too, but i dont get frustrated about it. i keep thinking the guys that say they are frustrated are like that dog that hangs out with that bulldog Spike in the cartoons. that little dog is destined to accept getting whatever is left, assuming something is left that Spike (or the jocks or whatever alpha is blamed) didnt want. but he barks excitedly about stuff all the time

            ive never known a woman to deliberately set out to frustrate a guy sexually. its always been the guy expected too much or was way too unreasonable in regards to his ego and what it could achieve.

            but i may just be wrong here. i did say i dont get it. maybe i just dont meet the same types of women you guys do.

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:49AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:49AM (#648855)

              i have to admit I dont get this sexual frustration thing.

              I'll explain and I'll use small words so you'll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon:

              Me want sex. Me masturbate, but me long for touch of MOTAS [urbandictionary.com]. Me no happy when MOTAS don't touch me. Me feel frustrated.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:53AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:53AM (#648886)

                "Get your paws off me, you stinking ape!" In your best Charleston Heston voice, si vou plait.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:39AM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <{takyon} {at} {soylentnews.org}> on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:39AM (#648272) Journal

      I've never heard of a TERF before.

      Paging kurenai.tsubasa (5227) [soylentnews.org]...

      Paging kurenai.tsubasa (5227) [soylentnews.org]...

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @01:21AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @01:21AM (#648281)

      Did a jury, in due process, find a man that shot a native protecting their family innocent?

      I don't get it, Snow, why would shooting a native while that native was protecting their native family be any less worse than if they were not? Sounds like you may be a NEWF, a Native Exclusionary NewFie. But then, I have never understood Snow.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @01:43AM (20 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @01:43AM (#648294)

      "The Wage Gap is a lie"
      Not entirely, but it is often exaggerated. There are glass ceilings (as well as glass floors) and study after study shows discrepancies in offered pay and call-back rate for identical resumes with male or female sounding names.

      "Are you tired of being hit on constantly? Try being completely invisible unless you are needed to assist with something."
      Those problems aren't equal and that is a beautiful/ugly division (how visible are ugly women).

      "Sexual Assault? Sure, that terrible, but now all us men are walking on egg shells every day. OOHHHH did I just eye-rape her?"
      Those problems are very far from being equal.

      • (Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:38AM (19 children)

        by Snow (1601) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:38AM (#648322) Journal

        Wage Gap - Agree 100% The glass ceilings need to go. Everything should be merit based.

        Getting hit on - OKCupid did an analysis on how men and women rated attractiveness in each other: https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0f1561e [okcupid.com]
        Basically, 80% of men are below average looking. I would love some of the attention that a woman gets, but that's not how it works. There are some areas where men and women are not equal.

        Sexual Assault - No, definitely not equal. I'm not advocating sexual assault, but I do think there should be due process. A woman accusing someone on twitter with no proof shouldn't ruin a man. If it's true, that's one thing, but making a false accusation and literally ruining a man's life is not cool either. Society needs to strike a fair balance, and that's going to be a tough problem to solve.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:55AM (11 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:55AM (#648331)

          Society needs to strike a fair balance,

          So you're saying you're a feminist?

          • (Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:34AM (2 children)

            by Snow (1601) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:34AM (#648348) Journal

            I'm saying we should all work together and reach a fair compromise instead of being beat into submission by their one-sided agenda. Men need someone at the table fighting for our rights too (ie. right to forfeit an unborn child, more equal access to children during divorce, equitable wealth redistribution after divorce). This shouldn't be a one-sided debate. It affects us all.

            • (Score: 4, Interesting) by coolgopher on Tuesday March 06 2018, @04:42AM (1 child)

              by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @04:42AM (#648362)

              I fear that ages of male dominance has by now made actual equality impossible to reach, without the pendulum first swinging back hard in the other direction. Only when both sides can see each others' issues will there be a chance to reach a good middle ground, as far as I can see. I'd be most happy to be proven wrong on this though.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:30PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:30PM (#649050) Journal

                I fear that ages of male dominance has by now made actual equality impossible to reach, without the pendulum first swinging back hard in the other direction.

                Sounds like a lot of people here don't share your fear.

                Only when both sides can see each others' issues will there be a chance to reach a good middle ground, as far as I can see.

                Which has nothing to do with any pendulums swinging back hard.

                I'd be most happy to be proven wrong on this though.

                Already happened in religion. Most people no longer care what you believe.

          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:55AM (7 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:55AM (#648388)

            No, he's saying he is confused. I, for one, am starting to suspect that Snow is not polyamorous, but actually a pre-op TERF. He's showing all the signs. He needs our support!

            • (Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:54PM (2 children)

              by Snow (1601) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:54PM (#648533) Journal

              Sometimes I just want to feel pretty...

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:22PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:22PM (#648707)

                Sometimes I just want to feel pretty...

                "Oh so pretty! So pretty, and happy, and gay!" (_West Side Story_, correct?)

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @01:57PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @01:57PM (#648985)

                You can try, but he might take out an avo on you

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:04PM (3 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:04PM (#648557)

              No, he's saying he is confused. I, for one, am starting to suspect that Snow is not polyamorous, but actually a pre-op TERF. He's showing all the signs. He needs our support!

              I realize you're being humorous, but you do realize that bolded section above is a contradiction in terms, yes?

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:23PM (2 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:23PM (#648711)

                This bothers you? Tell us more. What was your relation with your mother like? Have you ever mistook yourself for a mango?

                • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @02:30AM (1 child)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @02:30AM (#648831)

                  Yes. Reading nonsense is painful.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:54AM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:54AM (#648889)

                    Yes, you have confused yourself for a mango, or yes, this bothers you? There is a Buckaroo Banzai riff on this.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:20AM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:20AM (#648380)

          80% of men are below average looking. I would love some of the attention that a woman gets, but that's not how it works. There are some areas where men and women are not equal

          An online dating site is not very representative of real life (IIRC men outnumber women and demonstrate a greater willingness to pursue by a large margin).

          Western society largely experts men to make the first move (it's not easy to face rejection), but it is at least something more under your control. Things are changing, but women are largely expected to just be attractive and send passive signals that they want to be approached (it's not easy to be ignored or just judged based on looks).

          If it's true, that's one thing, but making a false accusation and literally ruining a man's life is not cool either. Society needs to strike a fair balance, and that's going to be a tough problem to solve

          There are at least two different problems: public opinion and official action.

          For the first problem, there's been a stacked deck against women for a very long time (e.g. assault being tolerated, ignored, covered up and victims being blamed, being accused of fabricating stories, being shunned) and there is still a lot that hasn't changed enough. The false accusation rate is very low while the false denial rate is apparently very high, so who do you think society will believe? It's not fair to the victims on either side, but one side has a disproportionately large number on its side.

          For the second problem, there's been a severe lack of justice for victims of sexual assault and this will continue to be the case as long as evidence is difficult to obtain. One of my favored approaches to help address this is the use of "information escrows" or "allegation escrows" (link below for more details). Briefly, a system could be set up where allegations and evidence of sexual assault are privately held until reaching a threshold of accumulated evidence (e.g. multiple independent allegations) to warrant some action. Such a system could help with underreporting and would catch serial perpetrators (who account for the majority of cases).

          https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol111/iss2/1/ [umich.edu]

          • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:34PM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @06:34PM (#648606)

            The false accusation rate is very low while the false denial rate is apparently very high

            How do we know this? And how do we know that the false accusation rate won't increase if an accusation becomes good enough (it pretty much already is) to destroy someone's life?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:02PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:02PM (#648653)

              In the US, rape and sexual assault is only reported in about 35% of cases. The false accusation rate of reported sexual assault cases is approximately 5%.

              Public opinion has never been fair and has a much lower standard of "proof", so do you really think that society won't take the side of the victims that are truthful in ~95% of cases?

              https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5111 [bjs.gov]
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estimates_of_prevalence [wikipedia.org]

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @09:30PM (#649184)

                In the US, rape and sexual assault is only reported in about 35% of cases.

                The false accusation rate of reported sexual assault cases is approximately 5%.

                How do we know either of these things? How can we truly measure them? Even those links acknowledge that it's very difficult to measure, for various reasons.

                Public opinion has never been fair and has a much lower standard of "proof", so do you really think that society won't take the side of the victims that are truthful in ~95% of cases?

                If I don't know either individual (if I knew them then I might have some idea of how truthful they are) and no real evidence is presented, then I simply say, "I don't know." I think this is more rational than destroying people's lives.

                The question is, does punishing people over accusations like we're seeing in Title IX cases in colleges and universities give more incentive to malicious actors to make false accusations? Possibly, but again, I don't know how it could be measured.

                Perhaps more concerning than malicious false accusations is when someone was indeed sexually assaulted but accidentally accuses the wrong person.

                • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @01:08AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @01:08AM (#649257)

                  I modded your previous post underrated because I didn't think you were trolling, but perhaps I was wrong or you've already made up your mind and won't respond to evidence.

                  How do we know either of these things? How can we truly measure them?

                  If you're looking for a perfect solution (nirvana fallacy) or insist on perfect knowledge, then you should probably read up on the relativity of wrongness and Bayesian reasoning.

                  If I don't know either individual (if I knew them then I might have some idea of how truthful they are) and no real evidence is presented, then I simply say, "I don't know." I think this is more rational

                  As I said, public opinion is not fair. You can insist that the public should be fair and rational until you're blue in the face, but the moment you expect them to be is the moment you've let your idealism overcome your own rationality (and enter into straw Vulcan territory).

                  punishing people over accusations like we're seeing in Title IX cases in colleges

                  Unfortunately, the current "preponderance of evidence" standard used by many universities does not seem proportionate to the punishments they impose. This is one of the reasons I like the "allegation escrow" approach, since it basically defaults to a higher standard of evidence while working against underreporting and making it easier to stop repeat offenders.

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy [wikipedia.org]
                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relativity_of_Wrong#Title_essay [wikipedia.org]
                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference [wikipedia.org]
                  http://lesswrong.com/lw/90n/summary_of_the_straw_vulcan/ [lesswrong.com]

        • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:18AM (1 child)

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:18AM (#648397) Homepage Journal

          So true. I've been saying it for a long, long time. Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:07PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:07PM (#648561)

            So true. I've been saying it for a long, long time. Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new.

            You left out the "some are borrowed and some are blue." bit. You're slipping Trumplestilskin.

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:04PM (2 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:04PM (#648615) Journal

      I've never heard of a TERF before. For the others like me: Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. I've never heard of a TERF before.

      Are there actually enough of those folks to warrant an acronym?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:12PM (#649077)

      That was me. "Dafuq's a TERF?" Ehh, these people are so immersed in their own little bubbles that they need their own vocabulary.

    • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday March 10 2018, @07:00PM (2 children)

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Saturday March 10 2018, @07:00PM (#650601) Journal

      Takyon and that AC invoked name magick to summon me here, and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to say since I mostly agree with Azuma. Cisgendered women clearly need their own spaces, though it's annoying that Azuma feels she needs to justify this with menstruation. I doubt anybody will be throwing cisgendered women who do not menstruate out of the menstrual huts. I just wish they would be honest about it.

      However, I believe that there is no such thing as a TERF. The “TERF” is the no true Scotsman of feminism. There are feminists, and there are trans feminists. And I simply do not understand trans feminists. I see no reason to go groveling before a feminist gatekeeper for the right to be female. I was born with a female brain, and no amount of mental gymnastics can change that.

      Additionally, feminists presume to speak for all women when they absolutely do not. Many cisgendered women are not feminists. And they sure as fuck do not speak for me.

      I also wanted to pick this part out for special ridicule:

      Having a genital preference does not make you anti-trans* or transmisogynist. I am a lesbian. I like ladybits. This means I'm not going to date a pre-operative MtF, no matter how well she passes otherwise.

      He we see the bog-standard feminist presumption that all those assigned the male gender at birth (a legal construct that mostly overlaps with biology but not always) must be attracted to womyn-born-womyn. What a bunch of shit. This is why we saw gobs of homophobia come out during #antigamergate and the Misogynerd Narrative. Feminism believes that male homosexuality is evil, plain and simple. Feminists believe that being assigned the male gender at birth assigns one to an inferior caste in some caste system, and they believe that the inferior caste has no other purpose for existence other than being a sexual-financial object to womyn-born-womyn.

      I find it absolutely repulsive and repugnant that Azuma assumes that gender transition is some clever means of dating a lesbian. Guys understand that one needs to do a bit more than put one's genitals on display to have sex with somebody.

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 14 2018, @07:59PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday March 14 2018, @07:59PM (#652565) Journal

        What the shit, HOW the HELL does saying "I like girlbits and if you don't have them we're not dating" equate to "All transwomen are just men trying to date gay women?" What the hell? Please explain your thought process to me as to how you got from point A to point B. And shove that bullshit about "feminists think men are inferior beings who serve only as sperm banks and open wallets" up your ass; you'll find not one in a hundred of us thinks that, if even that many.

        And, do I need to say this again? I would be open to the idea of dating an MtF, *if* she was completely transitioned including bottom surgery and had her shit together. It's just a hypothetical since I'm already taken, but isn't that enough?

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bobs on Friday March 16 2018, @08:19PM

        by Bobs (1462) on Friday March 16 2018, @08:19PM (#653775)

        If you are referring to groups of people based upon arbitrary physical characteristics, or labels, you are doing it wrong.

        ex. "All men/women/feminists/Democrats/indians/blonds/Jews/Christians/whites/blacks/trans/homos/CIS/martians/morons/..."

        Just about every statement that uses those for boundary conditions is demonstrably wrong as there are clearly exceptions in every case.

        How about avoiding all of "this arbitrary group are bad," and instead focusing on specific actions, or individuals?

        And instead talk about what you think or want rather than creating a straw-man to argue against?

        By using overly broad groupings your statements are inherently weaker, and suspect because they are demonstrably false. Personally, what I immediately do upon seeing a statement like that is think of a specific person or individual that contradicts the statement, then I blow off the rest of it because the initial boundary condition is false. If you can't get that right why would anyone believe anything else you say?

        P.S. Except Scientologists: Those people are all wacko.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:13AM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:13AM (#648394) Homepage Journal

    Sex is tremendous, one of the best things in life. But it's OK to just watch sometimes. And for that, lesbians are THE BEST. As everybody knows. And trans are so interesting. Can we call them trans? Why not? But VERY EXPENSIVE. When they get the surgery, it costs them a lot. You hire them, you pay a higher rate. Because they have big expenses to cover. Our military can't afford that. We start letting in the trans, we start paying their medical, very soon we're paying MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. We need new planes, new ships, new bombs, new missiles. And we did the biggest Tax Cut in history. Something has to give. Something very soft and moist. We need to make big cuts, folks. Not the kind of cuts that Doctors do. The kind that accountants do. So I made our military into a cisgender space. And maybe we can have some units that are all women. Why not? We had so many that were all men, that worked tremendously, right? And we had some that were all African American men, all Japanese American men, those were tremendous too. Great guys. Very LOYAL, big surprise. Nobody expected that. AMAZING!

  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 06 2018, @11:41AM (9 children)

    Sounds to me like you're saying something along the lines of "Do whatever you like and I'll support your right to do so but please don't shove it in everyone's face at every possible opportunity just to be an asshole."

    We agree on the basic sentiment then, if not what constitutes assholitude.

    Now hormone therapy/surgery for children? Fuuuuuuuck that. Anyone prescribing or administering such needs to go to pound-you-in-the-ass prison. Forever. Children have no sexual identity to speak of before puberty. They quite simply are not sexual beings at that point. And teenagers have shit hard enough without anyone confusing the poor fuckers even further. Neither age group are capable of making a rational decision about something that will physically affect the rest of their life. We don't even let them get tattoos for this very reason. Fucking with their heads to the point that they decide elective major surgery and/or massively changing the chemical content of their body would be fun is no questions asked child abuse.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:11PM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:11PM (#648564)

      Children have no sexual identity to speak of before puberty. They quite simply are not sexual beings at that point.

      That's not true. Children are generally too immature and lacking in experience, understanding and brain development to give any sort of meaningful consent WRT sexual activity.

      However, to say they aren't sexual beings ignores millenia of history, numerous studies and countless anecdotal accounts.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:24PM (7 children)

        How many pre-teen girls do you know that think boys are anything but gross? How many pre-teen boys do you know that aren't convinced girls have cooties? How often in your life have you seen a pair of pre-teens passionately kissing? Quit talking stupid shit you know to be false then.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @11:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @11:13PM (#648773)

          How many pre-teen girls do you know that think boys are anything but gross? How many pre-teen boys do you know that aren't convinced girls have cooties? How often in your life have you seen a pair of pre-teens passionately kissing? Quit talking stupid shit you know to be false then.

          You're so full of shit your eyes are brown. Case in point, the links below are the first five results in a search for "sexuality in children." I didn't cherry pick them. They were just the first five links.

          Each and every one of them makes it clear that you're talking out of your ass.

          http://hopehealgrow.org/children-with-sexual-behavior-problems-what-is-normal-and-what-is-not/ [hopehealgrow.org]
          https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/development.html [kidshealth.org]
          https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/preschool/Pages/Sexual-Behaviors-Young-Children.aspx [healthychildren.org]
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexuality [wikipedia.org]
          http://hopehealgrow.org/children-with-sexual-behavior-problems-what-is-normal-and-what-is-not/ [hopehealgrow.org]

          A child's sexuality is not sexualization of children, nor is it sex with children. The former is part of normal human development, the latter two are pathology. Don't get them confused.

          Oh, and for the record, I *always* liked girls. For as long as I can remember (back to age four or five I guess).

        • (Score: 2) by dry on Friday March 09 2018, @04:53AM (5 children)

          by dry (223) on Friday March 09 2018, @04:53AM (#649858) Journal

          Lots of pre-teen girls were quite happy to play doctor, even suggesting it perhaps half the time, with myself as a pre-teen. Shit, I've had a couple of 10 year old girls playing with my 10 year old cock at the same time. They were quite interested in my foreskin.
          Always liked girls and was always kinda sexually curious and enough girls were interested in boys and curious too. It wasn't the same passionate feeling that happened after puberty but to claim the average kid has no interest in the opposite sex including or perhaps especially how they're built is wrong in my experience.

          To me it is quite believable that the people who claim that they knew they were gay or in the wrong body at an early age are telling the truth.

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:02AM (4 children)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:02AM (#650310) Homepage Journal

            You really don't see a difference between curiosity and actual desire? You need help.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:55AM (3 children)

              by dry (223) on Saturday March 10 2018, @12:55AM (#650320) Journal

              You don't remember your childhood? Never had crushes on girls your age? While you're right that it was mostly curiosity, there was still a lot of interest in girls rather then grossness.

              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 10 2018, @01:41AM (2 children)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday March 10 2018, @01:41AM (#650332) Homepage Journal

                Again, it's a matter of scope. Thinking "Wow, she's really pretty," is a world of different from pondering your boat engine impersonation. I think the misunderstanding here is that I'm not saying children aren't sexed beings, I'm saying they overwhelmingly are not sexual beings prior to puberty. It's the difference between thinking boobs are interesting because you're not supposed to get to see them and not being able to get the mental image of them wrapped around your cock while you empty your nuts on her face out of your head.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:06PM (9 children)

    by VLM (445) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:06PM (#648517)

    But I'm sure this is going to catch me more flames than a California wildfire. So be it; I'm wearing my asbestos nightie. Have at it.

    Amusing how similar we are in outlook despite minor variations on themes in politics. The "asbestos nightie" concept is hilarious, if some 1950s pinup art doesn't exist, it should.

    where the lesbian race lives

    The lesbian race ethnostate, I love it. I also love the idea of the Jewish ethnostate (move them all there so they stop getting progrom's and holocaust'd, because millennia of experience proves they can't live with any other social group) and especially I like the white ethnostate. Where is the white ethnostate again, BTW?

    I support cisgender-women-only spaces.

    I like straight white male only places. The world ran better, better for everyone BTW not just SWMs, when those were the military, politics, and workplaces.

    Nature screwed up somewhere and put the wrong sort of mind/brain

    FtMs having trouble

    mostly backed up by "WHY would you want to be a chick?!" with the unspoken corollary being "womens' lives suck."

    Being trans is essentially having a mental health issue. The analogy with "OCD hand washing" is critical to understanding how the right views trans issues. Imagine if a fraction of one percent of the population has debilitating "OCD hand washing" problem such that the skin on their hands is getting literally rubbed off via unstoppable hand washing and infected and paranoia about germs and stuff. Now the way we treat this today is to fix the OCD.

    The analogy with trans today is we'd get the entire media to declare its allegiance with OCD hand washers, declaring it incredibly brave (because they have the unified support of the entire nations legacy propaganda organs, its brave?) and make a couple of them celebrities, much like how making school shooters celebrities results in more school shooters with the same exact purpose... OCD is upgraded from a condition to an identity, you can give up your ethnicity, for example, and become an officially identified OCD person, perhaps. Then get the government to change the laws such that we need bathroom sinks in every room in every building in the entire nation to support OCD hand washers as a handicap, and the government can destroy any small business that doesn't want to sell cakes celebrating the glorious joyous superiority of having hand washing OCD disease. And trust me, we get it, the people with the mental illness of OCD handwashing are, aside from the hand washing, nice normal people who really truly and devoutly believe in their hearts they must wash their hands 10 times per waking hour of the germs will contaminate their precious bodily fluids, we're not accusing them of lying or being inhuman, merely pointing out they're mentally ill. The next step is for the media to normalize it as much as possible, why its perfectly normal to have OCD handwashing illness, every reality TV show has someone standing at a sink for hours, every soap opera, every TV drama even the weird cop shows have a plot revolving around hand washing continuously, etc. "I'm very brave, I don't see handwashers and non-handwashers, I only see the human race" Then comes the axe... it would be wrong to convince hand washers to stop, but its OK to chop their hands off, after all not having hands means they're not washing them combined with intense propaganda that the problem was entirely contained in the bits, and having chopped them off means they're indistinguishable from people without OCD, right? It becomes a major left wing social mistake to claim they're in any way different now from natural non-insane people who didn't get recently chopped. Then mentally ill parents desperate for attention start posting to twitter that they somehow knew their little newborn was born to be an OCD handwasher so they chopped their newborn kids hands off, and the media outpouring of support universally describes that as incredibly brave. And anyone who suggests that maybe a pill or two and a couple months or years of therapy would be better for 99% of folks with OCD handwashing than chopping off hands is of course a Nazi and any problem that OCD victims have in society related to being insane or having chopped off hands is of course solely and exclusively due to Nazis and/or secret Russian Spy interference.

    Its rather stereotypically politically correct that given someone with OCD disease wanting to chop their hands off and normies recoiling in horror, with the "unspoken corollary being" that normies who don't have a cool identity like "OCD" suck or normies hate people with OCD and its all about non-OCD privilege and giving up handedness privilege which we should all strive to eliminate to be good people, or at least good for five minutes until the next leftist madness sweeps in to ruin more lives.

    Imagine the above being rewritten for hoarders, rapists, or drunk drivers. The problem with "trans as a contemporary issue" isn't the trans person or the illness or the treatment, its the weird way its being handled in society. Not on a wise path, not at all.

    Having a genital preference does not make you anti-trans* or transmisogynist.

    Ditto for race/culture, for example.

    the way MtFs tend to kind of stomp all over womens' spaces sometimes

    Its a human nature thing the same way recent religious converts or recent basic military training grads or recent college grads are incredibly annoying extremists compared to the pool of people they're entering. And a side dish of that human nature is they calm down after awhile.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:41PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @05:41PM (#648583)

      the few people with OCD that I know would happily take 2 pills a day for the rest of their lives to cure or greatly diminish their OCD. Some would even opt for surgery if a method was known to fix the problem.

      is there maybe another example that could be more appropriate? debilitating illnesses and nazis and russian spies really only mix when you include repetitive religious rituals with no real meaning in there as well.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @07:58PM (#648650)

        > the few people with OCD that I know would happily take 2 pills a day for the rest of their lives to cure or greatly diminish their OCD.

        Just make sure it's always exactly two pills. Don't change the dosage!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:53PM (6 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @08:53PM (#648680) Journal

      I had no idea that amount of self-serving horseshit could exist in one place without collapsing on itself into an anus-shaped naked singularity of utter shitheadery.

      As it is written: "I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul." As it is also written: "That is not only not right, it is not even wrong."

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:09PM (4 children)

        by VLM (445) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:09PM (#648693)

        Paraphrasing that as "You're correct, but I don't like it, so I'll change the topic by saying you suck", not an A+ on the debating team, but you write it creatively and entertainingly.

        • (Score: 4, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:46AM (3 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:46AM (#648854) Journal

          Okay, first of all...do not, DO NOT, EVER attempt to place me on a level with you, you inbred sack of caiman shit. You have to look up to see an earthworm's belly from where you're standing, and you'd damn well better salute and call it "sir" when you do.

          Second: the strawmen, false analogies, and plain old outright non-sequiturs in that post of yours are competing for attention so hard I don't even know which to address first or how. It's like one of those cartoon "ball of violence" sequences, except it's all bullshit.

          Where to even begin with that pile?

          Okay, let's start here: you're combining a false analogy ("rapists, hoarders, drunk drivers...") with a slippery slope argument ("butbutbut if we accept THEM, what NEXT? Cats and dogs living together! Lookit me I'm an Apache copter hurr hurr brrrt!"). Just curious, do you you think I as a cisgender but homosexual woman am also "essentially suffering from mental illness," and in what way is this comparable to people who MAKE A DELIBERATE CHOICE TO RAPE OR DRIVE DRUNK?! Fucking asshole!

          You also conflate OCD with, based on your example of cutting a hand off, some sort of body dysmorphic disorder. The two aren't even close. Interestingly, though, I recently read that there may be a link between gender dysphoria and bodily integrity disorders...which, pay attention here, are organic and caused by malfunctions in the brain, NOT some kind of "lifestyle choice."

          So far none of what you've said is coherent. Worse, it appears to have been said with the specific intent of making a point that can't actually be made when the premises are examined closely; in other words, you've Dunning-Kruger-bukkake'd all over yet *another* thread, showing once again not only your complete lack of understanding and cognitive ability but your utter poverty of basic human decency as well. Do you think you're clever or something? Do you really think this kind of clumsy misshapen bluster is going to win anyone over to your side who wasn't already on it?

          Good Lord, I don't actually think there's even anything else to analyze in there. It seems like you didn't even make this up out of whole cloth, just copy-pasted a bunch of thought-terminating cliches from 8chan and called it a day's work. This wasn't even a coherent troll attempt. What were you trying to do?

          I take it back about mercy on your soul: you can piss right off to hell with this crap.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:58AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:58AM (#648861)

            Don't hold back, Azuma.

            Tell us how you really feel!

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:57AM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday March 07 2018, @04:57AM (#648890) Journal

            you inbred sack of caiman shit.

            Entire journal worth it just for this one line. VLM, that's got to leave a mark, if you were not just a blob of amorphous racist jelly.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:32PM (#649086)

        collapsing on itself into an anus-shaped naked singularity of utter shitheadery

        You've cloned yourself?

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:41PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @09:41PM (#648722)

    Young people today are so sophisticated. I hardly understood a word of that.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by http on Wednesday March 07 2018, @01:51AM (2 children)

    by http (1920) on Wednesday March 07 2018, @01:51AM (#648818)

    Look really closely at point #3. You're saying that you've got to be born with a vagina to participate. As near as I can tell, that's being exactly the gender essentialist you're attempting to excuse yourself from being called in point #1.

    Intersectionality posits that women's experiences are not identical for a shitload of different reasons - the most visible, for purposes of illustration, being race. The experiences of a minority woman are radically different from the experiences of a non-minority woman. But as feminists they have commonalities and cause to work together. Women belonging to a dominant group seeking change that excludes women in minorities isn't feminism. Yet you seem to think it's OK for cis women to exclude trans women.

    I'm not outraged, should I be? Just trying to be clear on the definitions. While academic feminists as a whole might have made great strides in precision of expression, the tendancy to overload word definitions makes C++ look simple.

    --
    I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:53AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday March 07 2018, @03:53AM (#648858) Journal

      You got an actual out-loud laugh out of me with the bit about making C++ operator overloading look simple :)

      Well...yeah, I can see how some of this looks TERF-y. To be clear, I'm not saying exclude transwomen from feminism, not at all. I'm just asking them to remember that we're different types of women, and if the smaller subtypes want a little space to themselves, please respect that.

      I'm actually all for the creation of transwomen-only spaces, and would never intrude on those spaces, for the same reason: I don't have that kind of lived experience and could not possibly understand what horrible things they've gone through. Trying to imagine going through the *wrong* puberty, or a lifetime of being bullied or worse by a peer group and not even understanding why, is horrifying. So being in that space would be anywhere from unhelpful to outright damaging to them, and out of respect for that, I will not intrude.

      So I think we should have mostly intersectional spaces, but we also need smaller "think tank" like spaces for specific subsets, and we can mix and match. For example, one that's only black feminists, but trans-inclusive, can work on the problems women of all types face through the lens of racial and specifically black issues. Another could be transwomen only, but cut across racial lines, and deal with the specific problems faced by transwomen that cut across racial boundaries.

      Intersectionality--thank you for mentioning the word, by the way!--is super-important to me, hence the trans-inclusiveness. All I'm saying is, these are two different categories that need to relate intersectionally. These groups can split and merge and flow as necessary. It's just plain old right of association, isn't it?

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:39PM (#649089)

        little space to themselves

        Not happening. We are already working on a huge phallus shaped rocket, to spray sperm on women everywhere. You get no space to yourself. What, you thought chemtrails were a waste? Wait until the sperm find you.

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 10 2018, @11:39AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday March 10 2018, @11:39AM (#650495) Homepage Journal

    Congrats on breaking into the top ten most commented journal entries. This comment should put you tied for eighth place.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Virindi on Friday March 23 2018, @07:40AM

    by Virindi (3484) on Friday March 23 2018, @07:40AM (#657045)

    I really don't understand the concept of "spaces". I guess it comes from some desire to "be with one's own tribe", but it seems counterproductive. The concept of a "space" is wholly based on the concept that it is psychologically difficult to be around people who aren't just like you...perpetuating an "everyone against us" tribal attitude.

    Two things really bother me about "spaces": that they are counterproductive to the goal, and that they perpetuate division.

    If I am feeling distressed by how I am being treated by society and I want comfort, I go and be with friends. There is of course no segregation of different types of genitalia, experiences, or whatever; what I want are friends who have a personality which meshes well with my own. Several are men, and they are just as good for this as the women. Choosing members of this group based on such factors would make no sense; I simply find little correlation at all between someone's gender and how well our personalities work together. The "comfort" people would get in a tribal setting is not the same type of comfort you would get from friends, but rather, the raah-raah that you would get by going to the local sports bar and proclaiming your love for the local team. Perhaps it is just that this type of raah-raah just instinctively bothers the hell out of me. But, I think people would be better served by friends.

    Of course, being part of that tribe mentality is also negative because it makes you feel alienated from those not in "your tribe". It makes people more likely to, for instance, reject or be unfair to potential friends and acquaintances based solely on factors which are not actually important. It encourages a society where people are judged based on things beyond their control rather than by their own actions. I want to live in a society where what matters are my choices, not factors beyond my control. I know most (honest) feminists, sjw, etc, would agree with that, but most do not seem to realize how they are working counter to their own goal.

(1)