1·
9 months ago“Speech code” lol. Calm down, Mary.
skweetis
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023
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Here’s something you may not know: When you are gay, you have to come out constantly. That’s why famous people “announce” that they are gay. And let me assure you, gay people do not want to be the constant subject of public debate. We are the constant subject of public debate because people hate us and want us to die. And because people who maybe don’t hate us or want us to die are really obsessed with making sure that those people have platforms on social media and other mainstream media platforms. So, if it’s really wearing you down to hear about all these different kinds of people, maybe go yell at some bigots and the people who platform them?
Really wish we could stop with the “openly gay”. If you know somebody is gay, then they are out. If they aren’t out, you shouldn’t call them gay - with an exception for anti-gay bigots who should be called “probably gay bigot”. It’s minor thing, but I feel like this terminology fuels the right wing propaganda that gay people could just not exist if we weren’t so stubborn.
2·10 months agoIt’s sounds like we’re fundamentally in agreement, but I don’t even see the big deal if every once in a while there is one trans girl playing in a competitive youth league. Sure you could argue that there’s only so many spots on the team, so maybe some cis girl who would have made it loses out. But if you’re the 20th best player and you get cut because there’s one trans girl? I mean, you’re the 20th best player, you’re probably not going to be at the top of the recruiters list. I just feel like this time is so fraught for trans people. There are so many powerful forces literally trying to destroy them, I really don’t think we need to worry about hypothetical potential future slippery slopes in kids athletics. Once trans people feel safe, and ideologues aren’t using sports as a wedge issue to promote anti-trans panic, I’m sure we can come up with equitable solutions for these edge cases.
In competitive youth swimming, which I did as a child, the age groups are like 11-12, 13-14, 15-16. So, it was possible for someone who was 12 a week ago to swim against someone who turns 15 next week - a HUGE difference in terms of physical development. And if your birthday happens to fall in the weeks before the big championship meet every year, you are always at the bottom or middle of your age bracket for your entire childhood, never at the top. But the specifics don’t even matter. Age groups and grade classifications are to try to make things a little more fair so that little kids aren’t swimming against basically adults. But it’s not in any way perfectly fair. And also, it doesn’t matter! Let kids play sports and get the benefits of that activity. Your kid’s team winning - or losing - some sports game in 10th grade doesn’t matter. Keeping this girl from playing volleyball isn’t fixing any problem. In Utah they made a ban and there were literally 4 trans athletes in the entire state. It’s culture war bullshit. And people who start quoting bone density studies or whatever are either falling for it or willingly participating in it.
What is the distribution of athletic performance in volleyball between 14 year olds and an 18 year olds? In high school volleyball, it’s perfectly possible for a team made of all 18 year olds who are 6 feet tall to play a team that is all 14 year olds that are 5 feet tall. The idea that without the participation of trans girls, high school volleyball is completely equitable is ridiculous. High school sports are for fun, learning teamwork and discipline, and fitness. Who wins a high school volleyball game is not important. Certainly it’s not more important than the health and safety of trans girls - and non-gender-conforming cis girls who have been and will continued to be tortured by laws like this.
131·10 months agoWe all know what to call you.
I just happened to be in that Ballard target for the first time last week to get my Covid booster and it was weird. Besides the pharmacy, there were basically no employees. No cashiers, one person who ushered you over to the self-checkout, and two greeters (aka loss prevention). It’s just anecdotal observation, but there was no visible sign of, you know, crime problem, i.e. nobody camped out on the sidewalk. But there were also zero customers. That store is tiny for a Target and seemed to have basically the same amount of inventory as a Bartells. For example, we bought a laundry basket while we were there and they just had one style and color (ugly as fuck!). And there is a CVS and a Walgreens basically a block away. And the Target has paid parking. So, I feel pretty confident that this Target was a loser due to bad business decisions.
What the actual fuck?! When I read this story a month ago I was furious because they claimed he was out of the car and lunging at them with a knife when they shot him through a closed car window. Mistaking someone for being out of the car and lunging at you when they are inside the car with the window rolled up is not the same as (claiming to) think a knife is a gun. So, you get to lie about what you were scared about and then revise your lie to something more plausible later on? So much fucking bullshit.
Also, it should be noted that the police only “walked back” the statement about him being out of the car when the family went door to door and found ring cam footage that he was in the car. And they had to do this because the police wouldn’t share body camera footage with the family.
Why would the cops get to decide how quickly people have to leave the stadium? Do you think there is a law that the stadium must be empty exactly 23 minutes after the game? Do you think the cops are experts that were trained on the amount of time that people can safely linger in a stadium after a game? The cops wanted to go home so they abused their authority and then violently assaulted a school band director in front of a bunch of kids.
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It’s a record of birth that you use to verify your identity. Gender doesn’t need to be on there at all - “Oh, it says on this birth certificate that you’re a boy, so I guess we know for sure that you are indeed Steve Smith!” But if it’s on there, it should match the gender that the adult identifies/presents as. There’s no reason the DMV needs to know what your genitals were (or, really, what the doctor thought your genitals looked like) when you were born. Imagine any other private information about your physical body being a public record - “We’ll start processing your home loan now, Mr. Smith, sorry that you were born without nipples. That’s gotta be rough!” It’s stupid. And, of course, it’s also cruel. But you seem pretty unbothered by that part.
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Capitalism is the problem because it incentivizes these behaviors and allows “capital” (i.e. rich people) to control the political process. The people who are pushing the anti-trans agenda - just like the gay marriage scare of the past - are doing so to manipulate people into voting against their own interests to elect politicians who are loudly subservient to capital. It’s not a coincidence that the same people, i.e. Republicans, have been pushing for trickle-down economics and privatizing social security for decades. Democrats aren’t much better. In some part because Citizens United (a Republican gift to the rich) declared that money = speech, and so it’s hard to compete electorally without caving in to the demands of capital. So, they do dumb shit like propose privatizing the water supply:
And this doesn’t even get into the real nasty part of capitalism which is the plunder and exploitation of the global south that has gone on for centuries to build today’s capitalist society.
If you have actions you plan to take that will get your elected representatives to stop doing things that makes the ultrawealthy richer and start doing things that improve the lives of everyone else (UBI, universal healthcare, equality for all) under the capitalist system we have, then go ahead and get on it. People pointing out the flaws in capitalism is not the reason you have thus far been unsuccessful. And when you call for everyone to stop criticizing capitalism, as if it is some universal equilibrium that is undeniably correct, you are carrying water for the very people you want to oppose.
This is one example of how the current criminal justice system prioritizes capitalism over public safety. People who live paycheck to paycheck don’t have resources to remove themselves from situations where they know they are in danger. Most people are murdered by people they know, not strangers. This is especially true in terms of women’s pay inequality, where this systemic failure makes it harder for women to separate themselves from abusive partners, who often end up killing them. If you want to reduce murders, you need some wealth distribution, not more policing.
293·1 year agoNo, this is not cool. Louis C.K. and South Park were wrong, actually. There are a couple of things wrong with it.
If you’re yelling fag at a straight person, nobody thinks you’re yelling “Hey straight guy, you literally have sex with men!” because that wouldn’t make any sense. What you’re yelling is “You are something bad. You know, like gay people are bad.” That’s why you never hear anyone say, “Hey you cut me off, supermodel!” or “You spilled your drink on me, fireman!” because it’s not a random word after that comma, it’s an insult. So, yelling fag at people who aren’t (necessarily) gay is of course not being homophobic…to the straight person you’re yelling at. It’s being homophobic to the gay people who may or may not have heard it.
Second, the whole premise that you can use slurs and it is up to the target of the slur to figure out if you mean it in the hateful way or the “fun” way is dumb. That’s not how the world works. You can’t go up to a guy in a bar and say, “Your girlfriend is ugly and your mom’s a slut” and then get mad when they take it as an insult. It is not other people’s job to look into your soul and realize that when you’re saying something insulting that you don’t mean it that way. I’m sure you think “it’s just words”, but you probably don’t know what it’s like to be on a public bus and hear murmuring of “faggot” from the seat behind you. Maybe you’re a tough guy and wouldn’t have worried about it, but I had a long thought about what my plan would be if this guy attacked me for being gay. He didn’t, but that fear was still real.
If it makes you feel any better, this is not something that only straight people have to abide by. There’s a great Dead Milkmen song called “Instant Club Hit” that I love. It’s a funny song from the 80s that makes fun of goth culture, but there’s a part where it says “art fag” over and over again. Now I know those guys are cool. When I saw them live in Portland they asked people to donate to a group called Safe Pride PDX. One of the members is gay. Anyway, I scolded my husband once for putting that song on the jukebox at a bar. Not because I think the song is really homophobic, but because some gay guy who doesn’t know this band could be in the bar and all of sudden realize “Oh fuck, the song playing in this bar is saying fag over and over again!” and get nervous that they aren’t safe. So we don’t play that song on the jukebox anymore. And you can think of another thing to yell at people who cut you off in traffic.
I love the line about "we have 30 tools for [preventing this thing that keeps happening from happening] ". It’s marketing-speak all the way down. Like, wow! Thirty tools!