Amadan
I will be here longer than you
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I'm not sure what about this reply made you think I would want to get you fired/cancelled. Could you elaborate? I already said I was against siccing HR on people who used the wrong pronouns for me at work, so that seems like a pretty big disconnect
Sorry, I misunderstood that part about "I could make things uncomfortable for you." But as I said, I would not intentionally misgender you. I wouldn't tell you "I believe trans women are men" (even if it wouldn't bring HR down on me). I would, however, assume you have a certain set of beliefs and attitudes that make it very risky to draw attention to oneself as potentially not trans-affirming. I realize this might be unfair, but that's how things work nowadays.
Oh, I found that super weird when I was growing up. Quite a few guys discovered I was not comfortable with that, and would go out of their way to make me uncomfortable. But no one seems to want to do anything about that. So... again, why is it okay to expect little boys to handle this, but grown women can't?
Sounds like bullying, and those guys were assholes, and in an ideal world it wouldn't happen, but in the real world kids have to put up with a lot of shit they shouldn't have to. We mostly expect kids to grow out of that behavior, and adults not to have to put up with it.
Presumably we should treat that person like a criminal? Sure, it's a hard problem, but so are the bad actors who want to show their penis to little boys. We still let gay people use the bathroom, though.
But the problem is we don't treat trans women who wave their penises around in locker rooms as criminals. Unless they're literally committing assault, someone who does that, even if very blatantly doing it as a display of dominance and exhibitionism, mostly can't be restricted in any way.
A man who goes out of his way to show his penis to a little boy in a locker room might not technically commit a crime, but ya know, people would know and recognize what is happening and definitely take action. Because he's a bad actor and we can identify bad actors. But we are not supposed to identify trans people as being bad actors even when it's pretty obvious that's what they are. The trans woman strutting around with her cock on full display in the women's locker room is doing it to make women uncomfortable, and women who have reported feeling uncomfortable have been told they have no grievance (or even been kicked out themselves).
This isn't comparable to inadvertently getting a glimpse of your neighbor's dick while standing at a trough urinal.
... okay? What's your point? People feel uncomfortable when I use the men's room, for exactly that reason. If my trans-masc friends show up in the women's room, it makes people SUPER uncomfortable. If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you want more of it?
I don't, and I think generally speaking people should be able to use the restroom they "identify" with, and yeah, that means maybe some people are uncomfortable seeing someone who doesn't clock as the "right" sex in their restroom. My point was that I think this woman was being a bad actor (in a very small way). I believe she wanted to make me and other men uncomfortable to make some sort of point. I could be uncharitable in my interpretation of the situation (there are other explanations - she genuinely identifies as male or non-binary, she didn't know which restroom she walked into and she really had to go, she thinks gender is stupid and genuinely thinks no one should care about that, etc.) but it made me think that was a tiny sample of what a woman would feel like if someone with a dick wanted to make sure she saw it in the women's room. I just didn't understand why she didn't use the women's room.
I mean, presumably we have methods for handling violent rapists in prison? I'm sure there's at least one lesbian violent rapist out there.
There is probably at least one. But come on, are you not seeing the same news reports I have? How many women getting assaulted/impregnated by a trans woman would be enough to make it a problem? (And yes, ideally there should be zero sexual assaults in prison regardless of sex, but I don't see why we should make an already bad situation even more exploitable by predators.)
If you're willing to bite the bullet and say "anyone with a vagina is female"... I mean, I could still quibble and debate, but I'd honestly consider you more of an ally than an enemy in today's political climate.
I would not agree that having vaginoplasty makes you female (I will still consider them a male who had surgery, sorry), but I would consider it enough of a commitment to living as a woman that women's prison would be more appropriate.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Thank you for the response. Apologies if I don't cover every response (a lengthy quote-and-respond chain can get very lengthy), but let me address a few points where I think we either disagree or you misunderstood my objections.
I think a lot of people are more open-minded than you think.
I will take your word and your lived experience for it on this, but my own impression is that (a) most trans women think they pass much better than they do (because most people are polite and aren't going to go out of their way to tell you they know you're trans), and (b) most people are open minded, but you probably think "Accepts my identification and agrees with me when I talk about trans rights means they really think I'm a woman." You might be disappointed if you knew what everyone really thinks. I don't really know, any more than you do, how many people who say TWAW really, truly believe it - neither of us can read minds or hearts. But my own suspicion is that it's less than would admit it.
About trans women athletes: I haven't studied the issue enough to produce statistics, and trans women are sufficiently rare that there probably aren't conclusive statistics yet. We all know the high profile cases like Rachel McKinnon and Lia Thomas and Laurel Hubbard, et al - the cases of mediocre male athletes who suddenly blow away their competition after transitioning are pretty numerous at this point. The response from trans rights activists is always similar to yours: "Trans women don't win every competition they enter!" And what seems to me like a lot of handwaving to deny that having a male-sized, male-muscled body with testosterone (even if reduced post-transition) is a major advantage in pretty much every athletic competition. I mean, if 10 years from now we have solid evidence that trans women do not, on average, perform at a higher level than women of similar age and experience, that would be interesting, but I have to say from the small sample sizes we can see now, I am very skeptical. Certainly every time I see a trans woman standing next to women in a rugby or a boxing match, I cannot understand how anyone can claim there isn't an obvious problem there.
Look at the other direction of transition: If someone is taking testosterone, and performs in the male athletic range, do you really want to keep them in the women's league just because they were born with a uterus?
I think as a matter of legality, it would have all go the same way, one way or the other: either trans women compete with women and trans men compete with men, or everyone competes with their birth/biological sex.
I am not aware of any trans men who after taking testosterone have become competitive in a men's sport. Are you?
The fact that (a) we don't see a lot of trans men trying to join men's teams and it hasn't been an issue because (b) any trans men in a men's league would be crushed and everyone knows it, is evidence of my point, that biologically, you are still going to compete with the body you were (mostly) born with.
About locker rooms: look, I agree that in theory, if we had a more open culture around nudity, maybe this would be less of an issue, but my problem is not that I think teenage girls will be traumatized by seeing a penis. (Nowadays, they've probably seen one about five minutes after they first got a smartphone.) My problem is explicitly the bad actors who want to show their penis to women in a locker room, knowing that it will make women uncomfortable. They are, to put it bluntly, exhibitionists if not worse, and saying "Well, if we were all just more comfortable about nudity" is missing the point. Again, I know these trans women are a minority, but I have read enough stories to know they aren't singular incidents either; there is a very small but very aggressive minority of trans women who really seem to get their jollies by making women (and girls) feel uncomfortable in female spaces. Whether it's because they think this is some sort of sitting-at-the-lunch-counter stand for trans civil rights, or just garden variety harassment and exhibitionism, it is definitely doing nothing to convince me they are acting in good faith. And I can't say I am impressed by an argument like this:
You've got a row of men showing off their penises at the urinal in the men's room. If seeing a penis is so horrible, why are you so comfortable making people endure that?
Dude (I say with tongue somewhat in cheek), as a penis-haver (past and/or present), you know damn well that we don't "show off our penises" at the urinals. You have to kind of go out of your way to see another guy's junk in the bathroom, unless he's waving it around.
Which is also unfortunately the pattern I have heard from these penis-in-the-women's-locker-room stories. Men and women will both walk around naked in the locker room, but generally speaking, they don't like... display themselves, or go so far as to stand in front of another person giving them a belligerent full-frontal display. How often have you seen that, honestly? If someone walked up to you buck naked in the locker room and just stood there trying to engage you in conversation from an arm's length away while letting it all hang out and no effort to cover anything up, would you not consider that... strange? Especially if they are a stranger? Come on now.
I simply don't get the idea that women are UNIQUELY scandalized by penises, but guys should all be totally okay with it.
I mean, leaving aside the whole sexual assault survivor thing (some women probably genuinely are freaked out by seeing a penis in what is supposed to be a woman's space), I can say I was at a convention recently that decided (because everyone there is super-woke) that all the bathrooms would be "agender." Most people, of course, still used the "men's" and "women's" rooms as appropriate for their equipment, but while I was standing at the urinal, one woman (who I happen to know is one of those super-woke people and probably calls herself non-binary or something) walked out of a stall and past me. And you know what? I felt uncomfortable. Not threatened or anything, just -- neither of the bathrooms were crowded, so she decided to use the men's room to make a point. And it annoyed me.
Aww c'mon, that's heat, not light.
Well... I will cop to being a little snarky there, but honestly, Admiral Rachel Levine really does strike me as someone who is cosplaying a fetish. Maybe she really, truly does identify as a woman and has always felt female, but I am pretty skeptical, because her entire presentation is that of a man who knows she looks like a man and wants everyone to know it and dares you to say something about it.
As for Rowling and Imane Khalifa, I honestly don't know enough about Khalifa's status to pass judgment. To my knowledge, Rowling didn't say she was trans, she said she was a man. Which may or may not be true, either biologically or legally. I have defended Rowling in the past because I think a lot of the attacks on her are made in bad faith, but I think Khalifa's case is, at the very least, complicated and she probably spent the first part of her life believing she's a girl, which makes me less hasty to call her a man myself and I wish Rowling had reserved judgment as well. But I'm not a famous billionaire who's made this my personal cause (nor been subjected to attacks over it for years). I think someone who is (most likely) an intersex person with chromosomal abnormalities who grew up as a girl is a pretty edge case and a distraction from central trans issues.
I think this really depends on where we are in the world. There's plenty of countries that make my existence illegal, so I think overall trans people are in a lot more danger than you are. If you meet me on my home turf, I've probably got some ability to make things awkward for you, but I really doubt I could get you fired or cancelled or anything.
I live in the US so that's where I am talking about, not someplace where you could be killed for being trans or gay. I can't say I find it reassuring that you basically say "Well, I probably couldn't actually threaten you" but it seems like you would if you could.
"Rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization in the previous 6 months were highest for female inmates (212 per 1,000), more than four times higher than male rates (43 per 1,000)." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2438589/
If someone wants to be put in with the more dangerous group, I'm not really clear what the controversy is?
Okay, I skimmed this paper - can't say I read it in detail, but it sure doesn't make it easy to separate out sexual victimization by staff compared to sexual vicitimization by other inmates. Let's say that women do prey on other women in prison at a higher rate than men prey on other men. I can think of a number of explanations besides "Actually, women are the more dangerous group," but it definitely doesn't suggest that a trans woman being put in a woman's prison is in more danger from the other female inmates than she is to them. Especially if said trans woman used to be a violent rapist and has undergone no physical transition. Yeah, I saw that Orange is the New Black episode where Laverne Cox gets jumped by a bunch of other women. Let's say I was not persuaded of its verisimilitude.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I think the main argument against this is that it transfers the risk from the cyclists to the pedestrians. Bikes on the road have to be careful to avoid being hit by cars. Put the bikes on sidewalks, and it's mostly pedestrians who have to be careful to avoid being hit by bikes. (Collisions with pedestrians can also hurt the cyclist, but the main danger is to the pedestrians.) And pedestrians would include children, old people, handicapped people, etc.
Realistically, cyclists on sidewalks would probably be at least as, if not more, contemptuous of pedestrian safety as drivers are of cyclist safety.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Hello, welcome to the Motte.
Putting cards on the table here, I was a little suspicious of you (not many people just independently "discover" us, and announcing yourself with a username guaranteed to set off a lot of folks here is a little suspicious), but I appreciate the discussion you have generated so far, and I will go with my presumption of good faith. Genuinely, I would like to see more posters like you.
So as you have probably figured out by now, the majority of people here are... not very friendly to trans identities. This ranges from "Thinks trans women are men but don't feel a need to start fights over it" to "Believes trans women are all AGP perverts who should be mocked and shunned and they really want you to know it."
Our rules require everyone to be treated civilly, so no is allowed to directly insult you just for being trans or advancing trans views, but nonetheless you probably will receive some vigorous challenges, so I hope you are prepared for that and have a thick skin. I am being sincere here - I would like you to be able to stick around despite what you will probably perceive as an adversarial environment. Because this is also one of the few places on the Internet where people are allowed to say "Trans women are men" without being banned.
Which, bringing this around to my point, is part of the reason even many more moderate folks like myself have become, if not radicalized, then rather more hostile to trans people than we once were. Putting cards on the table again, my own personal opinion is that gender dysphoria is real and I think people should be allowed to live and identify as they wish, but they shouldn't be able to force other people to accept their internal identification as biological reality. More concretely, I think people should address you as "Ma'am" out of politeness and people who go out of their way to "misgender" you are being hostile assholes. But most people don't really believe you're a woman and you shouldn't expect them to feel obligated to update their mental model on demand, nor should you try to sniff out signs of heresy (i.e., clues that they don't actually think of you as a woman, for which you would then try to socially punish them). I am not saying you do this - but many trans people do do this, and that is the cause of the much of the present hostility towards trans people.
In my opinion, until a decade or so ago, most people (at least on the liberal side) were much more accepting of trans identity because trans people sold themselves the way gay people did - "We just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace." Which is no doubt true of most trans people! But then we started seeing increasing pressure not just to accept, but to validate. Increasing demands to proactively affirm that we really, really see you as a woman, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a hateful bigot. Then came trans women who used to be mediocre middle aged male athletes suddenly joining a woman's sports league and crushing lifetime competitors. Trans women who were men until five minutes after their conviction for a violent sex felony, whereupon they discovered their female identity and a need to be housed in women's prisons. Trans women who really want to show off their erections in women's locker rooms and force low-wage immigrant women to wax their female balls. Trans women who transition after a lifetime of being a husband and a father and dress like minimal-effort clowns while representing the US government. Trans women who want you to be fired if you won't put pronouns in your email signature.
These are undoubtedly a tiny minority of trans people. But it doesn't take very many bad actors to cause a lot of disturbance and distress, and more importantly, the reaction from the trans community has been largely, not acknowledgment that there are bad actors and maybe it's appropriate to not assume "good faith" on the part of every single man who suddenly realizes he's a woman in his 50s. Not to allow us to apply some... gatekeeping and to acknowledge that biological sex is a thing and you can let trans women live as women and be polite to them without letting them compete against women in the Olympics. But instead, to double down on all these issues and say "No, a trans woman is a real biological woman and should be able to show off their female penis in front of teenage girls, should be able to beat up women in sports, should be able to share a cell with women in a prison."
And that... is why I personally have lost a lot of my sympathy for the trans movement. I still am polite to trans people I know personally. I would use your preferred name and pronouns in person. Even though I would not actually think of you as a woman. And I would treat you as a very dangerous person to interact with, socially and professionally, on the assumption that a slip on my part would result in you trying to bring down sanctions upon me.
I am interested in your thoughts on this. Do you think the trans community has "gone too far"? Or do you think this is an exaggeration and we just see the worst and most extreme outliers? Do you think people should be required to actually think of you as a woman (to the degree that you can police someone's thoughts)? I won't demand you defend trans women in women's sports or prisons, though I am kind of interested in that, but that's a very familiar discussion we've had before (albeit rarely with trans people actually participating).
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Well, that's nice, but I can assure you if a "lib" posted here about "the enemy" we'd get a bunch of reports, and accusations of being lib-subverted if we didn't mod them. We already get that just for letting leftists post.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Stop waging culture war.
Yes, that means that besides avoiding casually derogatory sneers like "libbest" and "nlm" (which usually we'd probably let go if not stacked with a bunch of other antagonism), I am flatly telling you not to call people "The Enemy" when referring to your outgroup, because your outgroup posts here too.
Every time you want to say something about how much you hate your "enemy", ask yourself the following question:
If one of them posted here saying the same thing about me, would I be pissed off, and moreso if the mods let it pass?
Now making an argument that people who post "In this house" signs are not "normies" but are in fact political extremists is fine; you can say that if you think so. But you really need to knock it off with the low-effort sneerposting.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
So we can't post links to well thought out articles without wasting time regurgitating parts of it in our own words or adding pointless takes
You cannot post bare links. If you feel it is a waste of your time to be asked to tell people why you are posting something and why you think it's worth discussing, then this is not the place to post those links.
but we can just randomly showerthought now?
You can post things that you think are relevant and interesting. It is possible someone else will think it is a "random showerthought," but they will be expected to respond to you with civility.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
On the flip side, the enthusiasm for Harris is genuinely hard to understand. I accept that the firmware update worked as intended and people really mean it, but it is genuinely puzzling to me what they're seeing that they're excited about. The answer is apparently as simple as the fact that she's 60 and lucid rather than 80 and comatose, which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't really get me to understanding excitement.
From what I have seen, in my very blue bubble, it's 90% the euphoria of believing you were doomed and suddenly realizing you have a good chance of winning. Immediately after the attempted assassination of Trump, the mood among Democrats was bleak indeed. Pretty much everyone believed the election was basically Trump's to lose, and Biden gave little reason to hope.
The DNC had no real mechanism to force Biden to withdraw, and I was pretty convinced he would never do so voluntarily. Even if he did, I thought they would have to have an emergency primary, with the unappetizing choice of Harris (who until five minutes ago was considered an even worse candidate than Biden) or equally bad prospects like Gavin Newsom.
That the Democrats actually pulled off (1) getting Biden to withdraw, (2) instituting Harris in his place as a fate accompli, and (3) making it seem like a smooth transition, was actually a pretty impressive bit of political maneuvering. Republicans spent a little while trying to generate crocodile tears about the undemocratic nature of the process, but not only did this not stick, but the whole thing basically pushed Trump's post-shooting boost right out of the news cycle.
Now it's increasingly looking like Harris's race to lose. All the stuff being thrown at her and Walz look like cheap shots that aren't landing. Of course the Democrats are ecstatic. I was personally convinced Trump was going to win, and now if I had to place money, I'd bet on Harris. I think she will have to screw up hugely, or Trump will have to pull a hat trick of the type that is not really his forte, for her to lose. Any October surprises or sudden catastrophes will only help her.
To be clear, I absolutely agree there is nothing about Kamala Harris personally to inspire excitement. She's a political nothing (like most VPs, to be fair). But the fact that she's basically a generic Democrat with nothing terrible in her closets (as far as we know) and will be the first (POC) woman president is enough to make Blue tribe giddy at the prospect of the Revenge of Hillary Clinton.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
This is all personal attack and booing your outgroup.
Even if your uncharitable reading of @netstack and his "affiliation and interests" (as @theory only slightly less obnoxiously put it) was correct, people are allowed to post about "vibes" and impressions and opinions they have about what's going on in politics. Indeed, that makes up a large share of the posts here. If you think his reading is off, or what he perceives is because he's biased and in a bubble, you can say that. You cannot say "Shut up and go away, we don't want your kind or your opinions here."
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Okay, this is literally insane to me. I'm just genuinely so boggled I don't know where to go from here.
We disagree, is all I can say.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Ok cool, that's way more than most would offer, but it also needs to be the case where the pregnancy is a true accident, and all other cases sans the truly exotic. Not only in the most egregious and difficult to prove case.
Wait, so if she is on birth control but gets pregnant anyway and decides not to have an abortion, I should still hate her?
You shouldn't sympathize with her at all
Why? Why is it so important to you that we make this a black and white issue where she is pure evil and deserves no compassion at all? I think wanting a baby and going to deceitful lengths to get one is bad, but it's also the sort of dumb decision people make, because you know, biological imperatives are pretty primal. I'd tell her (if she asked me) that what she did was selfish and irresponsible, but I would not get a hard-on in solidarity with all my wronged brothers by screaming "Fuck you!" in her face.
This bad faith interpretation of my words can talk to my hand. You're welcome to bring a real objection to my position forward if you'd like.
I am trying to understand your position. You keep changing the terms, and my interpretation might have been incorrect, but it's not bad faith. You really do seem to basically want to punish women for having the final say in reproductive decisions.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Okay? What's your point? I am aware other countries are more restrictive than the US.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Any time a woman in a marriage decides to go and have a baby without mutual consent.
Okay. If you're talking about a woman who deliberately goes off birth control despite knowing her husband doesn't want a baby, I agree, that sucks, and he's be justified in considering that a betrayal and leaving her (but he's still responsible for the child - that's the deal when you get married). I would certainly sympathize with him more than with her in that case, though I wouldn't join in the public shaming and stoning you seem to want.
Let's keep things on rails: I said that the broader reaction to it is a cultural problem, which is anything but an "edge case". Not the anomalous event itself.
But other than anomalous edge cases, you haven't described a "cultural problem" other than that you think it's unfair that men can't either force or forbid women to have abortions.
I disagree that this is a problem, and I disagree that the reasons are a double standard.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
By "abuse of power" are you talking about a woman who baby-traps an unwilling man with a surprise pregnancy, or just a woman who changes her mind about wanting children? Because if it's the latter, that's honestly insane to me that you want me to scream at her about how much she sucks.
As for your edge cases, no, the most extreme and unlikely scenarios you can imagine are not societal problems. Just how many female-rapist babies do you think there are, anyway?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I can't say I have seen your scenario often enough to say who's right about frequency of reactions, but my opinion if an otherwise stable marriage ended because she suddenly decided she wants a child and he doesn't would be "I'm sorry, that sucks" to both parties.
As for risk and choice, it's obviously a risk for both parties.
(And if "he said no to the sex" - are you talking about a man being raped by a woman and having to pay child support? I guess that has happened a time or two. About as often as a woman having a rapist's baby and having to share custody, perhaps.)
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I don't think people do actually have much sympathy for a woman whose partner leaves her because she wants a(nother) child and he doesn't. It's just an unfortunate irreconcilable difference.
(I also don't think husbands leaving their wives because they don't want any more children is very common.)
He's still financially responsible for any children he produces, though. That's an ever-present potential consequence of having sex that both parties have to live with.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Not sure what you mean. The person I was responding to is complaining that the DNC characterized it that way.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
From what I have seen, most normal people believe all such decisions should be mutual, while very tribalized people always tell a narrative that emphasizes the most selfish and abusive individual stories from the other side while claiming that the selfish and abusive cases on their side are exaggerated. Thus conservatives emphasize selfish women making childbirth choices without giving their partner any say, and claiming that men actually being controlling and abusive is just a story women tell themselves. While leftists emphasize women in controlling and abusive situations and imply women lack agency or responsibility for anything, while excusing truly selfish and irresponsible behavior by women.
"This should be a joint decision, but the person whose body is at issue has the final vote if they can't reach an agreement" is where we are at.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Well yes, and in some countries women cannot get abortions.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
This was not always true. I personally know a couple where the wife had to sign paperwork in order for her husband to legally get a vasectomy.
In the US? What state? Genuinely curious, because I have never heard of this. I've heard of doctors refusing to sterilize young people requesting it, claiming they might change their minds later, but I have never heard of a spouse needing to give permission.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
And a woman can have her tubes tied without her husbands consent. So here women and men have equal rights, but with abortion what is destroyed is inherently a product of two people, unlike fallopian tubes or vas deferens. A woman who never interacted with a man has nothing to abort, but she has fallopian tube.
So? Men can't get pregnant. This is not a convincing argument unless you're pro-life, in which case "It's not fair that the woman has the deciding vote" is not your actual objection. If you object to abortion on principle, that's fine - we don't agree, but you'd still be against abortion even if we made it a law that the mother and father both have to agree to it. If you'd be pro-choice if the father gets a veto, that would be interesting. Is that your position?
Yes, when women couldn't vote this was realized, but I am talking about today. Of contemporary political affiliations, only anti-suffragists (Edit: and those who hand around them) are familiar with the argument that women had political power, even if the vote was denied to them.
No, this isn't some secret knowledge that women, even in highly patriarchal and oppressive societies, have always been able to influence their husbands.
I don't think even Amanda Marcotte believes that women had literally zero influence or agency prior to the 19th Amendment. The argument is that having some "influence" exactly to the degree that your husband allows it isn't the same as having autonomy. If your argument is that women shouldn't have autonomy, fine, I understand that argument. But not being able to vote in a democracy is absolutely a lack of autonomy.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Okay, good clarification. I largely agree with this. However, I think the unwillingness to deal with violent Islamists has gone hand in hand with an unwillingness to be "racist." Muslims quickly figured out that they could get away with things that normal citizens could not.
As for a movement of seething, dissatisfied young men becoming radicalized - possible, I guess. Discontented young men are always a recipe for instability, but for all the raging about feminism from the manosphere, I don't actually think Western men are that disadvantaged or that hard up.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
3mo ago
I've said before that I think evpsych is broadly, generally correct about a lot of things, but I also think it's frequently overfitted to a particular answer that someone wants (e.g., "Why women shouldn't be allowed to vote"). Even if we accept that women are farther on the bell curve towards the neurotic and conformist axes, that's not enough to convince me they are unfit to make political decisions or have personal autonomy.
The argument also has to account for the fact that men have been the primary political and military leaders for literal millennia, and almost NO societies anywhere in history were governed by females.
Sure, but also not really a convincing argument. We didn't have democracy for literal millennia, therefore democracy is bad! (Insert all the yeschad.jpgs you like.) More seriously, political power today is not the same as political power in an era of tyrants and might makes right being the only governing philosophy.
This is not to say I believe in "government by females." But you have to do more than spin some evpsych arguments to convince me that Dread Jim or Islam is Right About Women.
The U.S. didn't recognize the right of women to vote for the majority of its history. Most of the pro-female policy changes in this country were enacted post-WWII, and mostly since the '60's.
Surely it would only take like 1 generation at most to revert back, if there were an organized movement for it?
Perhaps, but as we've seen, it's a lot harder to remove a right than to grant one. I don't see any movement that doesn't involve what would essentially be some sort of coup or radical (probably violent) transformation of our political system stripping away anyone's voting rights. So "Could we undergo a Cultural Revolution" or the equivalent? Yes, but that seems much worse to me than women being allowed to vote.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
3mo ago
Try harder.
I was not claiming either @faceh or @doglatine made that argument. I was referring to the "4chan greentext" @doglatine originally cited, and the arguments @faceh referred to, when @faceh asked me what arguments I have seen.
Mostly because the left is pro-Ukraine. With a bit of support for Putin because he is anti-LGBTQ. It's not much deeper than that.
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