TokenTransGirl
No bio...
User ID: 3226
TokenTransGirl
3hr ago
Some schools secretly socially transition children.
Can you provide a source for the claim that schools are forcing uninterested, non-consenting children into transition? Or are you just searching for the maximally inflammatory way to say "some kids don't trust their parents not to disown them"?
Some locales will take children out of parents' custody if they fail to support transition.
Really? "Fail to support" transition, or "try to block their kid from accessing the relevant medical treatments"?
This is not all right wing paranoia.
Neither of those is an example of "mutilation"
TokenTransGirl
8hr ago
There is a political party that is pro child mutilation
No major politician or political party supports this, unless you're talking about religious stuff like Jewish circumcision.
TokenTransGirl
8hr ago
How exactly do men wanting to breastfeed cause a problem here? Are they doing big group lactation sessions and don't want men to see their breasts? Is it a budgetary issue? The article just assumes this is Clearly A Bad Thing because Men, but it never actually articulates any specific objections.
TokenTransGirl
8hr ago
Even the trans community has been somewhat bothered by the "pronouns in bio/email" stuff, so I'm not surprised to see it fading. There were a lot of complaints that, in practice, it just drew attention to the least gender conforming people in the office - plus it's not a fun question when you're still in the closet (do you lie? are you comfortable lying?)
TokenTransGirl
8hr ago
We already live in a world where Democrats sanctioned (...) putting them on a path towards mutilation and sterilization.
I really doubt you can find anything from a major politician that supports that claim. This isn't even "making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike", it's just plain making things up.
TokenTransGirl
8hr ago
I mean, the original claim from token_progressive was "anti-gay-marriage party", which seems true?
But your claim was that Trump is pro-gay, not merely an absence of anti-gay.
TokenTransGirl
11hr ago
You claimed that Covid is more lethal than AIDS, but this is obviously untrue
I feel like "killed twice as many people" is pretty obviously "more lethal"? This is just basic words-having-meanings stuff. From the person who is so gung-ho about "female" only having one meaning, you sure seem eager to redefine words all of the sudden.
But eh, that's pedantry.
Straight up, the important question: do you really think Covid would have had the same death toll if we had never imposed any restrictions, never asked anyone to mask up, etc.? To me, it feels really obvious that it would have gone up. Maybe we're talking 5%. Maybe we're talking 50%. But can you acknowledge the very basic idea that at least one (1) extra person would have died? I'm looking for a simple "yes" or "no" here.
If "yes", I'd love to hear more details - do you think masking helped? Do you think lockdowns helped? How much?
TokenTransGirl
14hr ago
of the 2,000+ cases in my files that date back to 1566
Ahhh, I had thought you meant "women are prone to hysteria", not "hysteria, an extremely rare phenomena that mostly only happens in women."
Honestly, I hadn't realized how incredibly rare it was! That's, what, 4 cases per year? So, what, one in a billion women? I feel okay not knowing the details of such an incredibly rare phenomena - you'd need to be pretty autistic to care about something that obscure :)
TokenTransGirl
14hr ago
To some degree - but the ability to sway popular opinion and thus affect the outcome of a vote is pure Democracy.
TokenTransGirl
1d ago
It's called what it is because women are much more prone to it than men, and always have been.
Citation? You're making a factual claim that it's significantly more common in one sex here, not about how masculine/feminine the behavior is
TokenTransGirl
1d ago
You also have no recourse in a democracy
There's a huge difference between tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of an actual tyrant. For one thing, the tyranny of the majority requires the majority of people to actually want these things. For another thing, it's a lot easier to change public opinion than it is to change one person's mind.
There's also, you know, a large number of legal systems that do ostensibly prevent Trump from just killing everyone who is gay - if he gave that order on his first day of office, I think people would just laugh nervously. Conversely, when Hitler said it, the Germans built concentration camps.
Even if people are pro Gay-o-Caust, a lot of them are going to be less enthusiastic about "dismantle our entire system of legal protections and install a dictator."
But supposing that we do get to the point that all of that happens... then I'm not living in a democracy. The worst possible failure state of a democracy is simply that we vote to stop having one. Maybe it's not quite so formal, but realistically the Gay-o-Caust can't happen until we're already living in a dictatorship.
TokenTransGirl
1d ago
Trump is pro-gay marriage
Citation needed. Trump says all sorts of contradictory things - what actual concrete actions did he take as president to protect/benefit LGBTQ people?
TokenTransGirl
1d ago
The mores of Slashdot
I was so excited when I found out this place uses meta-moderation ala Slashdot. That site was incredible
TokenTransGirl
1d ago
are you seriously proposing that Australia ought to have kept its borders shut to immigrants and tourists permanently?
The claim was "COVID was too infectious to be controlled", and here we have a very clear example of controlling it.
More generally, my point was that it's absurd to say conservative policies had nothing to do with the death toll from COVID, which @FCfromSSC seems to be rather rigorously denying ("I don't think Conservative behavior had any significantly disproportional impact on spreading the Covid plague.")
It's impossible to discuss trade-offs if one side refuses to acknowledge that there was any actual price. We can absolutely discuss freedom -vs- death! But you have to acknowledge that it's an actual tradeoff, and not just freedom for free.
The vaccines were very effective at preventing serious illness, but practically useless at preventing transmission.
Fair enough, but that's a radically different claim from the broader "the vaccine wasn't very effective."
From what I understand, the initial vaccine approval didn't require any testing for preventing transmission, but later testing did in fact reveal that there was a significant drop in transmission: https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/preventing-transmission-never-required-covid-vaccines-initial-approval-pfizer-2024-02-12/
Can you provide a source for a near-zero effectiveness there?
Thus your comparison fails from a QALY perspective.
First off, I don't think people really reason via QALY that much. If elderly lives are worth radically less, why does murdering someone in their 80s carry the same penalty? Why do people spend so much money buying a year or two of life when they get cancer?
Second, AIDS largely killed people that took voluntary risks that exposed them to infection, whereas COVID was a routine workplace risk that people were forced to endure.
Third, AIDS hit in an area where our medical and communication technology was vastly worse - it took a year just to work out that it was sexually transmitted, and you couldn't just post that information on a website because the internet didn't really exist. Conversely, for COVID, we had a vaccine available to the public in like a year and a half!
"the actions taken to spread the disease were straightforwardly more objectionable" (FCfromSSC)
With AIDS, avoiding it would have required not having any relationships for the next decade or two, because we had no clue how it was transmitted or when it would end. Failure to do so only risked your own health.
With COVID, you were asked to wear a mask and avoid big parties for a few months. Failure to do so placed everyone around you at risk.
TokenTransGirl
14d ago
human culture is not in any way enriched
I'm just curious - what does it mean to "enrich" human culture? Do you have examples of modern works that have enriched human culture?
To me, it seems like it's useful to have that stuff around, just as a canary test that free speech is really working.
TokenTransGirl
14d ago
Where's that rule when we're talking about liberals? :P
TokenTransGirl
14d ago
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
"They consider felons and illegals more legitimate constituents" is pretty obviously a generalization - you're not seriously claiming you have proof that 75 million people actually explicitly support this position, are you?
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!'
The topic was "Biden said people were garbage" and none of those links has anything to do with that topic - you could plausibly drop those as a separate thread, but they're clearly just "Boo outgroup" in this context.
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
Link #1: The FBI has been putting people on watchlists for decades, and I don't think you can make any sort of solid case that it's a partisan issue. This is pure "Boo, outgroup!" Both sides are guilty and you're just cherry-picking a random example. If you really need me to drop a dozen "FBI harasses liberals" links to counter you, I can, but I'm going to think a lot less of your research skills if you really need your hand held.
Link #2: "Defending yourself" sure is a weird way to say "killed someone" - if you can't even come out and say what the guy did, I'm already questioning how well you can defend this one. I don't even know what your point with this one is? The guy killed someone and he's being held for trial. That seems pretty normal to me. Maybe there's a different version of the story, but your actual link fails to bring up politics at all. What does this have to do with anything?
Link #3: "For example, basic social norms in grocery stores, parks or any shared space in the city are non-existent. It's things as simple as five or six immigrants standing in an aisle at the grocery store and not moving aside respectfully to allow others to pass." - Yeah, I've had old white guys do that to me plenty of times. I assume we're going to have a frank and honest conversation about these damn white people and how much they're disrupting the community? Would you like a dozen links discussing how black communities got ruined by white people?
Like, c'mon, that's really the best you can do? You're already ignoring the topic and just picking whatever links you want, and the best you can come up with is "Democrats won't listen to how terrible it is having someone blocking the aisle in the grocery store"?
TokenTransGirl
24d ago
being a woman whose career seems to have mostly advanced by blowing the right men
Got any sort of source for that? I'll admit I live in a liberal bubble, but that's a new one on me.
TokenTransGirl
24d ago
Approximately no one dates based on politics.
A quick Google search will reveal that "couples who support different political parties" is in the 25-30% range, and I've seen as low as 5% for a straight "Republican/Democrat" couple.
Basically everyone LGBT is going to care about politics, for fairly obvious reasons. Only 5% of the population, sure, but I think a smart person could reasonably extrapolate how "someone I can have a pleasant time with" might turn on politics in both directions.
COVID was too infectious to be controlled
Alright, let's take a simple example: Australia.
2020, the year COVID hit: 906 deaths
2021: 1,355 deaths
2022, when the conservative government ended lockdowns: 10,301 deaths
(source: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/covid-19-mortality-australia-deaths-registered-until-31-january-2024)
It seems kinda baffling to say conservative policy didn't cause anyone to die when their policy decision caused the death rate to go 10x.
I think we can reasonably extrapolate from Australia to other nations: maybe not as extreme, but you can tell when conservative policies won out again and again, because each time there's suddenly a bunch more dead people. You can perhaps argue about tradeoffs, but that's not what you said. You said "I don't think Conservative behavior had any significantly disproportional impact on spreading the Covid plague". I dare say policy decisions are a Conservative behavior
the vaccines were not terribly effective
I don't think I've ever seen a source that listed less than 90% immunity from the vaccine - what exactly is your standard here?
had side effects
... are you really being intellectually rigorous here? If we take that 90% immunity figure at face value, it saved millions of lives. What side effects, exactly, are so severe as to compare to "millions of lives saved"?
I am pointing out that the gay community was the actual epicenter of a much worse disease than COVID
7 million Covid deaths in 4 years VS 42 million AIDS death in 40 years. So Covid is twice as lethal per year. That's not factoring in the fact that we had 40 years of medical advancements to help us combat Covid, whereas we had absolutely no clue what AIDS was for the first two years. That is an absolutely huge difference in our technology and ability to respond - I imagine if we'd had the AIDS vaccine 2 years in, the story would be vastly different
(Also not factoring in that the US has been below-average for AIDS for decades, or that the worst-hit region for AIDS is Africa)
TokenTransGirl
1mo ago
Further, my understanding is that some gay men intentionally spread it as much as possible
It really seems like you're focusing on the worst possible examples. This feels like blaming all conservatives for the tiny minority involved in school shootings. Do you really think you're learning useful things about the world by focusing on the worst 1% of a group? Do you feel that other groups should be held to a similar standard, even one's that you're a part of?
Just taking a quick look at an actual timeline here (https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline#year-1982)
May 31, 1982: The Los Angeles Times publishes the first front-page story on AIDS in the mainstream press: “Mysterious Fever Now an Epidemic.”
June 27, 1982: A gay activist group in San Francisco publishes the first pamphlet on “safer sex” and distributes 16,000 copies at the International Lesbian & Gay Freedom Day Parade.
Does that really sound like a group that's trying to spread AIDS and opposed to restrictions on homosexual activity?
March 4, 1983: The report suggests that AIDS may be caused by an infectious agent that is transmitted sexually
9 months AFTER that safer sex pamphlet, science is finally confident that it might be sexually transmitted
October 24, 1986: CDC reports that AIDS cases are disproportionately affecting African Americans and Latinos.
Are you comfortable saying the same things about these groups as you are about homosexuals?
Going to another source: https://www.aidsmemorial.org/interactive-aids-quilt
Does the AIDS memorial quilt really suggest a group that doesn't care about the consequences of their actions?
The contrast between the treatment of those opposed to lockdowns or vaccine mandates for COVID, and those who for selfish reasons actively spread an extremely lethal plague as widely as possible is my whole point here.
I don't get it - you seem opposed to lockdowns for spreading an airborne pandemic that threatens everyone near you, but you also seem to be advocating for lockdowns against a pandemic which only threatens sexual partners? What sort of quarantine actions were you expecting for AIDS? Do you really think "make gay sex illegal" is a reasonable policy position, and would you have also supported "ban all sex during COVID"?
For that matter, weren't there plenty of people selfishly spreading COVID? People who went to major events and caught flights, despite knowing they were feeling sick? Isn't that selfish behavior that we should want to punish?
TokenTransGirl
1mo ago
Christians have traditionally believed that marriage is permanent bond between a man and woman for the purpose of forming a household and raising children*, where the duties of the man and woman are asymmetrical.
Furthermore, the male-female union is a core building block of civilization and therefore deserves special recognition by the state and by the church. It deserves to be considered normative.
Are you saying your own Christian model deserves special recognition, or just the male-female union? In the latter case, couldn't we just as easily say "parental unions are the core building block of civilization", and focus on marriage as a parenting arrangement instead?
"change the basic way every child is taught about the basic institutions and building blocks of life."
How were you planning to handle people from other countries? With the internet, your kid is going to be watching gay YouTubers and gay European TV shows - clearly you have to explain this concept to them at a fairly young age regardless of whether it's legal here?
There is furthermore the argument that homoerotic behavior is a vice, a sin.
What does this have to do with marriage? Gay people can have as much sex as they want with or without marriage. I'd be shocked if getting gay married makes promiscuity go UP.
TokenTransGirl
1mo ago
Do you have any actual source for that? The research I've seen from OKCupid seems pretty solid, since they've got actual back-end data from a platform that didn't encourage users to self-censor. That data all says that while there's a tiny percentage of rampantly promiscuous gays, 98% of homosexuals are within normal bounds: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/19/gay-men-promiscuous-myth
TokenTransGirl
1mo ago
Would you consider conservatives dangerous, due to their behavior in spreading the Covid plague?
Have you considered that part of why AIDS was so dangerous, was because we didn't really have the concept of "AIDS" back then?
Rabies kills 70,000 people per year, with a 100% lethality rate. Does that make rabies worse than the black plague (a pathetic 30-50% lethality)? If you could trade rabies for a new black plague, do you think that would be a good deal? Would you rather 70 thousand people die of rabies, or 30 million people die of the black plague?
I do understand the difference between absolute lethality and lethality percent. But despite what you say, they are both valid measures. The really vicious stuff with 100% lethality tends to burn itself out. The lower the lethality, the higher the transmissibility, because dead people are terrible vectors. That means the most damage is done somewhere in the middle, where a disease has a bunch of hosts to help it spread
And you don't find it all odd that your proposed policy is 100% benefit, 0% cost? Do you think I'm arguing that we should just leave money on the table?
Did you read the article you linked? It's really not that supportive of your case. The 0.2% is just lockdowns. They go on to say: "The study did give partial credit to policies that shut down “non-essential” businesses — which they concluded could bring down COVID death rates by as much as 10 per cent." Then there's the bit about which studies got excluded, etc.. Also the bit about it being done by economists with major political ties. But even if we take it at face value, it's saying there's easily a 10% difference to be made here.
To say nothing of, again, Australia: which managed a very clear 90% reduction in deaths the first two years.
I mean, it's pretty obnoxious having someone try to engage me in a cost-benefit analysis and then refuse to acknowledge the "cost" half of that equation. It's one thing to say "70 deaths is nothing to the 487 suicides" - we can have a conversation there. But if your stance is really "there is absolutely nothing anyone in the entire world could possibly have done that could have reduced Covid deaths in any way", then obviously I can't argue with that, because there is no argument for leaving free money on the table.
Heck, your link did a decent job convincing me that lockdowns were probably a bad policy: 0.2% is a real number, unlike zero. But again, the article also discusses how closing bars and restaurants probably cut deaths by 10%. That's an intervention worth talking about! How does the suicide rate compare to that? If we had just focused on the interventions that worked, wouldn't the suicide rate have been much lower?
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