#ope one more politics post but tags only so its easier to go by

[kingxfmischief]

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[glimmering-brainfamily]

hgfhgf ok this was all supposed to just sit politely in the tags but apparently tumblr has a tag limit so it's going under a readmore instead I'm really sorry

jewblog criticises op for centering their own experiences so I hope adding mine in the tags is alright. but I do think they are illustrative of jewblog's point

I'm an atheist (agnostic. its complicated), and my parents very deliberately raised me to be atheist. They'd both had christian upbringings themselves but neither of them were very pious, and my dad in particular was a staunch exchristian athiest. so growing up I was not put into a catholic school (despite those being cheaper and easier to access, and often being held to a higher standard of education than secular public schools in australia)

Even then, the secular public school had a 'religious studies' class that needed a parent's note to opt out of (which mine did). This class was pretty much just bible studies taught by a pastor. Only xtianity (specifically catholic xtianity but who's counting?).

Basically the point I'm driving home here is that my parents did e v e r y t h i n g in their power to raise me atheist. They fought the System tooth and nail. Buuut. School holidays each year revolve mainly around easter and christmas. The families of other kids all had christmas trees in their homes, and organised easter egg hunts in their backyards, so of course my parents had to do the same thing otherwise they'd feel like barbarians.

And obviously while I never had to go to church I knew what a church is. A lot of literature and media would talk about religion (xtianity) or had religious (xtian) themes, a lot of nonreligious people use religious (xtian) language and themes as a way to express really big or profound feelings or ideas... I really couldn't help but absorb a lot of it through cultural osmosis. Which is how you get to the kind of culturally christian atheist headspace where you're like, 'well even I know that cain killed abel with a rock because cain was jealous that abel gave god a better offering, everyone knows that', 'yeah abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son isaac and was gonna go through with it before being stopped by an angel. everyone knows that one'

I didn't read any of that in a bible or get taught it in school! I just know it because the entire world has been built in such a way that it's really hard not to know at least some of it!!! and you know what??? this fully does not apply to any religion other than christianity. did you know that I only just learned TODAY what a rabbi actually does??? I always thought a rabbi was roughly analogous to a pastor or priest. it wasn't until I saw a post, I think by vaspider, where it was exasperatedly but politely explained that a rabbi is more like... a professor or teacher of jewish laws. like an expert to consult about stuff you're unsure about or make sure important events adhere to jewish law. and that's it!!! they're not ordained by god to have special prayer powers or whatever, this block of tags has gotten so so so long lmao sorry well it's not tags anymore but im still sorry

but you gotta understand when people talk about cultural christianity, they're not precisely talking about you- well they sort of are but only in the sense that you exist and are part of the world, like. cultural christianity is 100% a societal thing. and the society for humans is THE WORLD. IT'S THE WORLD!!! TURN YOUR HEAD THERE'S JUST MORE WORLD TO LOOK AT!!! YOU CAN'T BLOCK IT OUT IT'S THE FUCKEN WORLD!!!!!!

and yeah it's not the whole world but unless I uproot my whole life and move to a country that doesn't speak english it's going to be MY whole world for the rest of my life. so. yeah.

it's wild because you don't start really seeing it until after you've been quietly listening to your jewish friends for a while and you realise you're living in the culturally christian matrix

Things I would prefer to be called rather than “culturally christian”

+ Raised christian

+ Has a christian background

+ Exchristian

These still acknowledge a person’s history with christianity while also respecting the fact that they have left it. Hope this helps!

[headspacedad]

hey new tumblr users

Welcome!

So - you’re starting to settle in to your new tumblr home but the landscape is still pretty wild and you’re not sure entirely what’s going on outside your window.  Since my first post about reblogs kind of blew up a bit and it had a couple of questions showing up in the comments, I figured I’d make another post in case that helps anyone.

Today let’s talk about communicating.

no, no, come back here.  It’s gonna be okay.  This is something you only have to do if you want to.

You can go your entire tumblr existence just reblogging posts and enjoying the people you’re following.  That’s cool.  But I see a lot of new arrivals want to be interactive too and that makes sense considering this is a social media site.  In fact, tumblr can be VERY social given half the chance.  This post here puts it wonderfully.

So, you’re on tumblr.  You’ve picked out an icon for your blog.  You’re reblogging posts you enjoy (sharing the cool rocks you found with the people hanging with you) and you’re ready to get a bit more interactive.  Its kind of daunting though because tumblr seems to have a lot of ways to interact and some unspoken rules on how to do it.  Let’s break this down.

First and easiest is to respond to posts.  You see something you want to comment on, an interesting post about sharing rocks for example.  There are three ways you can interact directly with the post.  

1.  When you hit ‘reblog’ there’s a spot for you to add comments (gifs, etc) of your own.  This is great for things you don’t mind everyone and their cousin getting to see.  A quip, adding a fact, telling a related story, politely disagreeing or providing another viewpoint, bouncing off their idea and expanding with one of your own, adding to the story idea they’ve presented, throwing in a relevant gif,  etc.  This is the space for things you don’t mind the entirety of tumblr getting to read.  You’ll notice a lot of posts are chained comments like this with multiple people contributing to the post by the time it reaches you.  There really isn’t any rule about not doing this but general consensus is to make it, somehow, apply to the original post and to not be a butt about whatever your reply is going to be.  Someone posting about fighting depression by making themselves stop and enjoy the way roses smell probably doesn’t need you replying by talking about how rotten roses are and how life is pain, highness.  Start a new post of your own if you want to express that.

2. tags!  Tags are the #tags part of a post when you hit reblog.  A lot of people use these for their original purpose, which is to *cough* make it easier to find things using tumblr’s search engine (tumblr’s search engine is pretty wack).  Still, tags are sometimes useful.  They can, theoretically, help you or people on your blog look up posts quickly.  They can help people doing a general search of tumblr tags find posts on subjects they’re interested in.  I regularly search ‘bunblr’ for instance (highly recommended).  BUT tags have a secondary use that a lot of people have adopted as well.  Tags can be used for a kind of ‘aside conversation’.  This is where you can write comments when you don’t necessarily want to add them to the body of the reblogged post.  It isn’t meant to be shared with tumblr as a whole.  It’s for the people following you.  Sometimes one of your followers will paste your tags to the post itself and you’ll see comments like ‘how could you leave these in the tags?!’  That’s a good thing and usually means you hit a cord but most of the time tags are just for aside conversations and not derailing the post itself.

3.  Reply.  That little speech bubble at the bottom of a post?  Click on that and you get the little ‘reply’ section.  Here’s where you interact with the original poster (OP) directly.  You can ask a question, add a short story, give encouragement, etc.  There’s a character limit on it so you can’t get crazy verbose but its a good way to add a short bit to a post and - hopefully - get a reply from the poster.  Be aware though, people like me are pretty forgetful and don’t always check their notifications.  That little lightning mark at the top of my dash is always at 99+ and pretty roundly ignored on the daily.  Still, other people can also read the reply part and sometimes you’ll get entire discussions in there as people respond.

Be aware that all three of these methods are viewable to everyone.  Anyone who sees the post can click on the notes and the tags, comments and replys will pop up for them.  These aren’t for private conversations.  They’re three ways to interact with posts publicly.

Private communication will be for another post.  So - you ready to test it out?  Use this post as your free trial and get some social interaction practice going on!  Once you’re comfortable you can branch out and there you go.  Social times for everyone (that wants it)!

[nymerias-heart]

Okay, so, here we go again. Firstly, when I was making that post I intended to tag you but forgot and when I noticed later that I forgot, I didn't edit it cause I assumed you would find the post anyway, which you did. But sorry for that, next time I will tag you straight away.

I don't know who you are referring to, because my posts are all still there. I didn't delete anything. I took screenshots and just answered you in a new post because I don't like that in the notes you have a limit as to how much you can write in a paragraph. I prefer answering this way. I don't mind debating or having a conversation but this is the third post I made and I feel like I'm just repeating myself. You can take screenshots I don't mind, I myself find it easier. Once again I intended to tag you but forgot, sorry.

As I have said numerous times, I do think a character can have parallels with more than one other character. You missed the point of my first post. It wasn't about sansa and Lyanna, it was about the 'parallels' they used. I don't mind sansa/Lyanna having parallels but the ones that were used were not Canon and something op just made up.

Again, I have said continuously that a character can have parallels with more than one other character. My first post wasn't about 'a character can only have parallels with one other character' it was about the 'parallels' the op used.

Lyanna/Arya and lysa/Arya do not 'easily have the Same amount of parallels'. In your answer you give the parallels of Arya fleeing Kingslanding and other one I can't remember right now. And I answered in the last post, why they were sansa/Lysa parallels then Arya/Lysa. So I'm not repeating myself just go read that one. Anyways, it wasn't about Arya not being able to have parallels with lysa. Just like I said in the other posts, it's was about the parallels that were used. You want to make a arya/Lysa post go ahead, I don't mind. But when you do, use parallels that are actually from the books. So, yes, you could use the fled from Kingslanding one and the other one whatever it was. The whole point of any of these posts was about stansas twisting Lyannas character until it fit what they wanted. We have a very vague description of Lyanna. But what we do have does in no way make sansa, Lyanna reborn.

Saying Lyanna might have had a softer side which could parallel sansa, is something I hate when stansas do. Why? Whenever I see a lyanna/arya/sansa parallel post it's usually about sansa and Arya being the two sides of Lyanna. Arya being the wild, will full, tomboy side while Sansa is the beautiful, romance side. This is probably one of the stupidest things I have heard in this fandom. And I'm sorry if it annoys me when stansas claim that Arya could never be loved because she is ugly, a psychopath, or unladylike. And like you said Lyanna 'might' have had a softer side. So, I'm sorry are you saying that Arya doesn't have a softer side? In my opinion Lyanna is the wilder version of Arya. For example compare the scenes where Lyanna is fighting benjen and sansa and Arya have a snow fight. When benjen falls, Lyanna straight away shouts at him to stop crying and tells him he is stupid. In the snow fight when sansa falls, the first thing Arya does is go and check if she's okay, then she throws snow at her. Lyannas reaction was slightly more aggressive than aryas, where in Arya's first instinct was to see if sansa was okay. If you meant softer side as in love and romance and crying. The first time we hear about Arya in this story is when cat tells ned about the children and the pups. The first thing we hear about Arya is that 'she is already in love'. In Arya's first chapter she runs away crying. Whether stansas like to admit it or not. Arya will have romance in her story. Whether it's with gendry or Jon or whoever you ship her with. It will not suddenly become the most important aspect of her story but it will be there. Back to Lyanna. When she 'sniffled', not cried mind you, benjen made fun of her. If this was sansa crying would bran make fun of her? No. Why?, because it would be ordinary for sansa to cry at a song. It wasn't for Lyanna. Look at how she reacted. Do you really think sansa would pour wine on his head? No. Would Arya? Yes. We have seen her throw things at people in Canon. Like when gendry was being rude and she threw an apple of his head. Pouring wine would definitely be something I could see Arya do. My point is, I don't think what happened at harrenhal should be romantized. Lyanna was a realist, why would she run away with a married man? In your last answer, you said Lyanna was the most adored character. But I have to disagree. Somebody made a similar post about it the other day. And in the notes, all anyone had to say about Lyanna was how selfish she was. I remind you the whole lyanna/rhaegar romance isn't Canon in the book. For all we know he took her against her will. Lyanna was 14, rhaegar was 26, I think. She was a child. He was a grown ass man. This story has an equal chance of being either a romance or a rape. We don't know what happened, so the whole Lyanna was a romantic is based on 'maybe'. Which was the whole point of my first post. It wasn't about who was being paralleled but rather about what the actual parallels were.

The parallels between Lyanna/sansa would not weaken the lyanna/Arya parallels. When they are used though its to prove that Arya is too far gone to ever love. Or Arya doesn't like dresses so noone could love her. The whole Lyannas softer side being the parallel with sansa is something I hate. Because for sansa to be this other side of Lyanna, it would mean that Arya herself doesn't have a 'soft side'. Arya cries, Arya laughs, Arya loves, she wears dresses, she is capable of having polite conversations (ned dayne is an example). She isn't this emotionless killing machine that so many people make her out to be. Which is why the parallels to Lyanna are important. They are there to show that you do not have to be a certain way to be loved or valued. Arya has spent her life being made to feel ugly and less. When ned tells her she looks like Lyanna she is shocked. Because no one ever told her anything like that. Her father and Jon told her she was pretty, sometimes. Her own mother never did. In a society that values looks so much, Arya felt like she was less. She still remembers that. She has really low self esteem regarding her looks and her value. When on the run, she had dirty feet and her hair was a mess, she was convinced that because of that her mother wouldn't want her. Jon was the only person, who's love for her she didn't doubt.

When did I say sansa was the mirror image of lysa?? I said she had actual parallels with lysa and that if op wanted to compare sansa to one of her aunts, it should have been lysa. I have actually already said, numerous times that I do not think parallels equal to being the same and having the same fate. The thing is though, in my opinion the parallels to Lysa are side shadowing. Side shadowing is when you foreshadow something that could have happened if the character took a different route or made a different choice. For example lysa/wed Arryn heir, sansa could end up marrying Harry the heir but I doubt that. Lysa is fat/sansa is one of the characters who is most associated with sweets. Her love of lemon cakes is continuously mentioned. Both are/were manipulated by baelish. My point is, I think the whole point of the lysa/sansa parallels Is to sideshadow how sansa could have ended up if she continues to live under the influence of baelish. I think she will kill baelish and break away from him. And that All the parallels like their weird ass relationships with sweetrobin are there to sideshadow what could have happened if she continued to let baelish control and manipulate her.

I have said so many times already that characters can parallel other characters. The whole point was that the lyanna/sansa parallels were complete bullshit. If ye were to make one again and not twist Lyannas character then I wouldn't have a problem.

@tyranossaurusbex, I can't find you for some reason, so I'm not sure if this will show up for you

Editing to see if I can tag you now, it wouldn't work earlier. @tyranossaurusbex

Edit: I still can't tag you. @tyranossaurusbex

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Last week, Twitter tried something new. When President Trump tweeted that “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” Twitter appended this message to Trump’s tweet: “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” — which in turn, linked to a page with the headline: “Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud.”

Given the dangers misinformation poses to both democracy and public health, many believe social media platforms have a responsibility to monitor and correct misinformation before it spreads. But can corrections like this even work? And what role should social media platforms play in combating misinformation?

Well, it turns out there is evidence that fact checks do work. Numerous studies have demonstrated that when confronted with a correction, a significant share of people do, in fact, update their beliefs.

Political scientists Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood conducted an exhaustive battery of surveys on fact-checking, across more than 10,000 participants and 13 studies that covered a range of political, economic and scientific topics. They found that 60 percent of respondents gave accurate answers when presented with a correction, while just 32 percent of respondents who were not given a correction expressed accurate beliefs. That’s pretty solid proof that fact-checking can work.

But Porter and Wood have found, alongside many other fact-checking researchers, some methods of fact-checking are more effective than others. Broadly speaking, the most effective fact checks have this in common:

They are from highly credible sources (with extra credit for those that are also surprising, like Republicans contradicting other Republicans or Democrats contradicting other Democrats).

They offer a new frame for thinking about the issue (that is, they don’t simply dismiss a claim as “wrong” or “unsubstantiated”).

They don’t directly challenge one’s worldview and identity.

They happen early, before a false narrative gains traction.

So despite a few studies suggesting that fact checks may make misinformation more prevalent (most prominently a widely-cited paper from political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in 2010, which popularized the concept of the “backfire effect”), the overwhelming majority of studies have found that fact checks do work — or at the very least, do no harm. Still, some pieces of misinformation are harder to fight than others. And this episode involving Trump has several qualities that may make Twitter’s “get the facts” approach not exactly effective.

First, there’s the source: Donald Trump. Trust him or doubt him, chances are you have an opinion of the president. And if you already trust him, who are you going to trust more in this particular disagreement? Trump? Or CNN and the Washington Post (the two sources Twitter listed in its fact check)?

But given Trump’s notoriety, his misstatements may just be harder to combat. In one of Porter and Wood’s experiments, they took an op-ed by Trump and issued a correction on two versions of the piece: one (correctly) attributed to Trump and one attributed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The authors found that the fact-check of McConnell moved significantly more respondents toward the accurate position than did the fact check of Trump.1

Next, there’s the fact that Twitter referenced articles from CNN and the Washington Post to correct the record. Research shows that an unlikely, surprising source for debunking misinformation, like a fellow Republican criticizing Trump, is just much more effective at making a correction stick than a more predictable and unsurprising source (like CNN or the Washington Post, both of which Trump has also cast as his enemies).

A Trump-supporting reader might take a closer look if told that Republican state officials in Idaho and Washington had complete confidence in the security of voting by mail, or that an exhaustive 17-month law enforcement inquiry into voter fraud in Florida, a state governed by fellow Republican Ron DeSantis, found no evidence of wrongdoing. This combination of surprise and credibility, in theory, would activate a closer look — the kind of attention required for mental updating.

And although Republicans en masse did not criticize Trump’s tweet that equated voting by mail with voter fraud, one recent example of a surprising debunk (and therefore, perhaps a maybe more effective fact check) is the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board’s take down of Trump’s allegation that cable news host Joe Scarborough was responsible for the death of a female staffer while he was a Republican congressman in Florida. The WSJ editorial board wrote that Trump’s suggestion “that the talk-show host is implicated in the woman’s death isn’t political hardball. It’s a smear.”

But fact-checking Trump is also further complicated by the fact that he is just really good at making memorable — if misleading or completely baseless — allegations. Remember Trump’s bizarre assertion that the hacker who released the DNC’s emails was not someone in Russia but instead “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds?” You probably do. It was a memorable, specific image, and catchy enough that “400poundhacker” briefly trended on Twitter. And as a memory expert will tell you, the more specific and outrageous the image, the more likely you are to remember it. This latest tweet was no exception. And this makes refuting Trump’s claim by simply dismissing it as “not true” especially ineffective. Political scientist Emily Thorson calls this phenomenon a “belief echo,” or the phenomenon that even when an idea is rejected as false, it can still continue to shape attitudes.

Think about someone like President Nixon saying “I’m not a crook” in response to the allegations that he oversaw a break-in at the Watergate Hotel to wiretap his political opponents. By refuting the allegation, he’s also repeating it, and therefore, making it more memorable. And the more evocative and colorful the original claim, the stronger the echo, Thorson finds, if the rejection also repeats the claim. “Unfortunately, this means that the times when we are most tempted to repeat misinformation — a horrifyingly inaccurate graph, an offensive comment in a debate — are also the times when it is most likely to create belief echoes,” Thorson wrote.

Rather than simply saying there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that voting by mail will lead to widespread voter fraud, an effective fact check might offer an alternate explanation for why voting by mail doesn’t cause voter fraud. For instance, a good fact check could explain that many governors support voting-by-mail to protect vulnerable family members from getting sick from the coronavirus, not because they think it will benefit their party politically. Or it could detail all the specific measures governors are taking to ensure a secure process, like signature matching and ballot tracing.

But this brings us to perhaps the trickiest obstacles regarding effective corrections in this situation: partisanship and worldview. Research shows that people can easily incorporate new information — even if it’s inaccurate — as long as it fits in an existing worldview. Take Trump’s misstatement on voting by mail causing voter fraud. Even though there isn’t evidence to support this, it already fits within a preexisting narrative that many Republicans believe — that voter fraud is widespread and Democrats help perpetuate it. This is what makes the problem of combating misinformation so challenging.

When premises are familiar (e.g., Democrats perpetuate voter fraud), it’s easier to incorporate new information uncritically, especially when partisanship is involved. Partisans are typically much more receptive to any facts that make their side look good and any facts that make the other side look bad. Likewise, they’re likely to reject facts that make their side look bad and make the other side look good.

Practically, this has meant that as Democrats and Republicans have cocooned themselves in separate information streams, they’ve increasingly incorporated not only different worldviews, but also different sets of facts to support those worldviews. The more partisanship itself becomes an identity, the more intense this motivated reasoning has become.

But there is one thing that might make this particular correction effective: It was issued simultaneously with the misstatement. And research has shown that the most effective corrections are immediate responses. A team of researchers led by Nyhan recently found that “disputed” tags, like the one Twitter issued, successfully reduce belief in false stories on social media.

There’s a very real question, though, of how much these tech platforms should be controlling what we do — and don’t — see. Facebook, for instance, has taken a different approach than Twitter so far. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Twitter’s new policy, saying that, “I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.” Twitter and Facebook are also two of the very few places that both Democrats and Republicans turn to for news, even if their feeds rarely overlap.

Finally, even an effective fact check might not make the difference that policymakers are hoping for in political attitudes. While it’s possible for fact checks to shift beliefs, attitudes are much harder to change and much more resilient to fact checks.

In other words, even if some Twitter users now know that voting by mail doesn’t cause voter fraud, it’s unlikely that their attitudes about Trump will change, let alone their attitudes about voting by mail (they might find other reasons to oppose it, or still be concerned about the possibility of fraud, even if they don’t think it is widespread). After all, in our two-party system, it is still a tremendous leap for a Trump supporter to defect to voting for a Democrat. Fact-checking can help with updating and correcting prior knowledge, but breaking the hyper-partisanship that nurtures misinformation in the first place will require a whole lot more work.

But the more aggressively Twitter combats misinformation coming from Trump, the more it risks both the ire of the Trump administration and a potential loss of angered Republican users. A more comprehensive corrections department that fact checks all public figures (not just Trump) might allay some criticisms from the right that Twitter is biased against conservatives. But it would also cost money to employ more fact-checkers, and it might still disproportionately correct conservative voices if they do share more misleading information than liberals. If so, the information echo-chambers may fracture further, with liberals and conservatives seeking out their own platforms even more. That could make fact-checking even harder.

Social media companies will have to balance competing demands in deciding exactly how — and how much — they want to correct misinformation. The good news is that fact-checking does work. But the bad news is that it’s going to take a lot of concerted fact-checking efforts to make any difference — and even that might not be enough.

[transmedicalism-saves-lives]

I am pretty sure I was blocked by the OP of this post, so. 

tervenwitch

the brain sex theory is inherently misogynistic and was debunked years ago. Try reading Cordelia Fine for a change instead on blindly clinging to the delusions of misogynists

@tervenwitch You mean the feminist philosopher? Why would I get any information on neurology from her, she’s not a neurologist? Studying the philosophy of science does not equate to studying science itself.

Also, we’re a sexually dimorphic species. Down to a cellular level, our organs are different between males and females. As a transsexual I am extremely aware of the female-ness of my body, it’s in my vocal chords, my fat distribution, and the size and thickness of many body parts. Why is acknowledging that one of the things that’s bigger in males is the brain stem “misogyny”? Brain sex isn’t about how smart you are, or whether you’re naturally emotional, or anything of the sort- it’s just about the physical differences between the physical organs, and there are several of those. I’ve compiled a list of sources for this claim, and if you’d like to read what actual neuroscientists, not philosophers, have to say on the topic of brain sex, feel free to give it a look.  

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives Firstly its not possibly to be “neurologically a woman” because there is literally no such thing as a “female brain”. Brains are not gendered. The only human organs that are gender are sexual reproductive organs. The idea of “lady and gentlemen brains” is antiquated Neurosexism akin to eugenics or phrenology. So just stop that nonsense.

I can’t tag her, unfortunately, so apologies for that. I’m not sure you understand that, as stated above, we are a sexually dimorphic species. Voices, for example, aren’t at all related to the reproductive system and yet, in males, vocal chords are thicker than in females. Most organs have a differentiation between sexes. Now, maybe when you think “brain” you think “intellect,” but that’s only a small part of what brains do, how they function. The brain is a physical organ, and there are many small differences between male and female brains. It’s been shown, in transsexuals, that our brains are the same as those of the opposite sex. Here’s my list of vetted sources again. 

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives Women’s historic and continued subordination has not arisen because some members of our species choose to identify with an inferior social role (and it would be an act of egregious victim-blaming to suggest that it has). It has emerged as a means by which males can dominate that half of the species that is capable of gestating children, and exploit their sexual and reproductive labour. This is why Title IX protections exist.

No, it’s got a lot to do with the fact that testosterone makes you a lot more physically strong and in less advanced societies that matters quite a bit. However, in the current first world countries, women are absolutely not oppressed. Women graduate every level of education at higher rates than men, are imprisoned far less frequently for the same crimes, are more likely to be hired, and have every legal right that a man has, plus a few that men don’t have, such as the right to refuse genital mutilation, and human rights that are not contingent on signing up for the selective service. As a matter of fact, most Title IX violations this year have been all-female groups that don’t allow men in. Ohio State was sued this year for discriminating against men, and Title IX was the reason. 

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives The term “terf” is a manipulation intended to reframe feminist ideas and activism as “exclusionary”, rather than foundational to the woman’s liberation movement. In other words it as an attack on women centered political organizing and the basic theory that underpins feminist analysis of patriarchy.

What “feminist ideas,” exactly? Because first off, y’all never actually proved patriarchy theory, so if we’re going after antiquated theories here... 

But I digress. What exactly would you call yourself? You have an entire blog dedicated to the exclusion of a small minority of people. You seem obsessed with trans people, and our exclusion from your group (well, at least, trans womens, I’m not sure your thoughts on me, but it’d be a bit funny if it was only the straight guy you found to be acceptable, all things considered). Why do you put so much time and effort into excluding trans women, and then get upset when people point that out? It’s ridiculous to me. 

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives ‘Cis’ is a term that has been hijacked from the field of chemistry. It basically refers to isomers of the same molecule on the same side of a plane. This term was never meant to be used to erase the differences between biological women and biological men who want to be biological women, whether from a dysphoria or anything else.

No, it hasn’t been hijacked. It’s a prefix. It’s Latin for “this side of,” and the opposite of the prefix “trans,” which means “across” in Latin. “Transsexual” means “crossing sexes,” whereas “cissexual” means “remaining on the same side of sex.” It’s not altogether that deep. 

Also, believe me, we’re aware of the differences. We wouldn’t go through all the trouble of getting surgery and taking hormones for the rest of our lives if we weren’t very much aware of the differences. However, those differences can be altered to a pretty dramatic effect, and ignoring that seems dishonest at best. I highly doubt you’d look at me, for example, and think “woman,” and I haven’t lived socially as a woman for years. There’s also the fact that my brain is physically male, but we’ve already covered that... 

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives No one – women, men, children, or transgendered persons – should be subjected to any form of exploitation or targeted for discrimination. Transsexual and transgendered persons are entitled to the same human and civil rights as others.

Thanks, I agree. Everyone should have human and civil rights, no matter what, and I believe everyone should be as kind as possible to everyone else. That includes you. 

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives Recognizing these rights, however, does not mean that we must accept that hormones and surgery transform men into women and women into men; or that persons who self-identify as members of the opposite sex are what they subjectively claim to be. So stop suicide baiting.

Where did I suicide bait? I’m sorry if that seemed to be apparent in anything I said, but I’m very much against any kind of suicide or self-harm. If you’re feeling suicidal, I’d recommend calling a mental health hotline: 1-800-273-8255 is the number for the American National Suicide Hotline. 

That said, HRT and surgery aren’t completely perfect, but they can get us pretty far- by the end of transition, I’ll be closer to biologically male than biologically female, for example. Not entirely biologically male- I’m still going to have a lot of sexual difficulties, and to have biological children will require an invasive surgery involving bone marrow- but closer. 

realwomenarewomen said: @transmedicalism-saves-lives “Cis” implies that women—lesbians, call center workers, single mothers—have an inherent privilege over trans people. Again, let’s not forget that trans is an umbrella term. A gender non conforming male is not more ‘oppressed’ than a lesbian. The cis/trans dichotomy obscures that and allows men to shout ‘oppressor’ at women. Sex change is impossible and unnecessary. Stop using trans activism to perpetuate your misogynistic internalized homophobia.

I don’t believe any group has an inherent privilege over any other group. Being a member of certain groups might change your probabilities of experiencing specific forms of oppression, but no group is entirely full of oppressed people, and no group has no oppressed members- except, perhaps, the billionaire class. When it comes down to it, privilege is based in money, and there are people of every race, sex, sexuality, and religion living in poverty, and people of every race, sex, sexuality, and religion in the ruling class too. The percentages, however, are a bit different.

So no, being trans doesn’t make someone oppressed, and being cis doesn’t make someone not oppressed. However, being trans does increase chances of oppression, particularly being a trans woman, as they’ve almost all been forced into sex work up until the late eighties to early nineties, which is closely associated with poverty and low quality of life in countries where it’s not regulated legally, such as America. 

And for the record- transsexual is not an “umbrella term.” Don’t lump us in with drag queens or GNC people in general. Trans means someone suffering from gender dysphoria, nothing else. 

Sex change is not impossible, and it’s absolutely necessary for trans people to have any quality of life at all. We have a serious neurological disease. We cannot physically change our brains yet. I’d love to be able to be a normal female woman, that would be a great thing for me, it’d be a lot easier than this, and to be honest, I made a damn pretty girl, life is very easy for pretty girls. Unfortunately, my chest tissue makes me so dysphoric that I’ve taken a knife to it multiple times, can’t concentrate if I don’t bind, and as for my genitalia, well, let’s just say that I really wish that was in a better order because being a teenager with a sex drive and dysphoria is extremely, unendingly frustrating. 

As for internalized homophobia on my part- I genuinely thought I was bisexual until I started taking HRT. I didn’t even know I only liked women before. Maybe I didn’t. Who knows? But yeah, if you actually believe I’m a lesbian, or that I’ll be a lesbian next year... well. Have fun with that. 

Have a nice day!

[arotechno]

The Origins of Aspec Discourse: History and Reflection

Disclaimer: If you’re an exclusionist, just block me. Don’t reblog this post or come into my inbox with your unwarranted opinion, because I will just block you instantly. This is an intracommunity post so aspecs can know our own history, and it is not about you or what you have to say about aspec people. We are beyond the point of civil discussion.

Disclaimer 2: I’m an aro blog but my asexuality is really going to come through on this post more than anything. I don’t have much info here about aros specifically. Given the amount of aro erasure that exists, this should not be a surprise.

On the Arocalypse server, we’ve been having a lot of discussions lately about the discourse, its origins, and its implications. As someone who found the aspec community before the discourse started and watched it tear my community--and myself--apart over the last few years, I feel the need to put all of these puzzle pieces together so that we, as a community, can know where we’ve been, and hopefully determine where it is we’re headed.

History and Origins of the Discourse

Because of the way tumblr’s search function works or has worked in the past, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact origin of the discourse. The earliest usage of the tag that tumblr will show me comes from 2014, and the post in question (which I will not link as I do not have the OP’s permission; you can find it yourself if you’re that curious) alludes to intracommunity discussion, nothing about the discourse as it is referred to today. The earliest instance of that comes from 2015, which lines up pretty precisely with my own personal recollection of when things really went to shit.

But it didn’t start then, not even close.

Courtesy of unofficial aspec historian @aphobephobe, here are a few accounts of the history of ace discourse, so I don’t have to restate it all myself (this should go without saying, but warning for aphobia throughout the links below):

(1) How the ace discourse stemmed from and evolved alongside other types of LGBTQ+/queer discourse

(2) A rough timeline/how the discourse escalated on both sides

(3) A history of the terms used to refer to non-aspec people

All of this is speculation, but the spark that truly ignited the first wave of ace discourse as we know it today may have been The Trevor Project’s addition of asexuality to its training materials and the firestorm that erupted from there. Aphobes and TERFs like galesofnovember were outraged that the Project would create suicide hotlines for ace people, and tried to convince them not to. Rightfully, aces and aros were horrified, and that is likely what ignited tensions beyond the existing invalidation and arguing.

Interestingly, I don’t remember seeing any of this in 2013 when I joined tumblr, or in 2014 when I first discovered asexuality and aromanticism. Most of the people who were involved in 2010-2012 era discourse aren’t involved anymore, often due to burnout. The second wave, the one we’re living in right now, is the one I remember kicking off in 2015. This wave was likely sparked by the #GiveItBack campaign. After GLAAD insinuated that the A in the LGBTQ+ acronym stood for ally, aspecs pushed back against this and campaigned for GLAAD to correct its mistake. The organization listened, and this may have been the catalyst for renewed hostility between aspecs and non-aspecs. The rest is history (detailed recollections of how anti-aspec arguments evolved can be found in link 1 above).

Reflection

Over the last four years, I have watched ye olde discourse come back with a vengeance seemingly out of nowhere and take what I knew to be a welcoming community on the rise and eat it for breakfast. We talk about the Aro Renaissance and us coming back from the dead, but the truth is there’s been a target on our backs from the beginning. The arguments have just devolved, worsened in hostility, become circular. While 2010-2012 era discourse reads to me as less organized and less widespread, 2015-present era discourse comes across as the same systematic, formulaic discourse that tumblr is famous for; there is no nuance, and everyone involved is left feeling emptier than they did going in.

That’s not to discount its profound impact, especially on young or questioning aspecs; on the contrary, the discourse seems to have actually worsened over the years. I don’t know when dealing with this became an everyday struggle for aspecs, but no matter how hard we try to pretend we’re pushing through it, it always seems to come back down on us, harder.

The arguments involved in the ace discourse have devolved so much and become so repetitive that all potential for reasonable discussion was thrown out the window ages ago. I don’t mean to imply that the discourse was ever well-intentioned, but in the beginning there could have been some kind of mutual understanding. But those days are long behind us now.

Over time, the discourse has spread beyond tumblr. It isn’t just about tumblr drama anymore, and even the language we use to describe the discourse has changed over time to reflect that. In fact, if tumblr’s search function is to be believed, the earliest usage of #ace discourse wasn’t until 2014-2015. Tumblr has a tendency to wrap these kinds of conflicts up into neat and tidy bows, where someone could ask you for your opinions on x, y, and z discourse and you could be expected to have an answer. In 2015-2016 or so, no one even used the terms exclusionist or inclusionist, at least not as widely as they’re used now. We called people who were arguing against aspecs “ace discoursers”. Now, the exclusionist/inclusionist dichotomy, to me, suggests several things.

(1) The argument has devolved into a never-ending debate over whether or not aspecs, by virtue of being aspec, are part of the LGBTQ+ community. When you ask somebody about ace discourse, that is what they’re going to think of. But that angle destroys all of the nuance and ignores the seven or eight years of baggage that this “debate” carries with it. The discourse has never been just about who’s LGBTQ+ and who’s not. It has roots in prejudices that go so much deeper than that. It’s based in arguments that go so much deeper and get so much nastier than that.

(2) It turns the ace discourse into a piece of identity politics that you can be expected to have a stance on, regardless of your involvement. A lot of aspecs don’t want to come anywhere near the discourse or call ourselves inclusionists because it reduces our struggle to just exist in peace without being mocked, scrutinized, erased, and harassed at every possible moment to an opinion that can be changed if you debate with us enough.

(3) It makes it easier to treat the two sides of the discourse as equal. Most people involved in the discourse now weren’t involved in 2010-2012. Exclusionists are able to assert their cause as a noble one by presenting us as being on equal footing and claiming their goal is to protect the LGBTQ+ community while ignoring both the community’s history and the history of the complex and long-running discourse that they have stumbled into, one based explicitly in TERF rhetoric. Going back to my first two points, this isn’t a simple cut-and-dry “debate” between two equal sides. There is a history here that the exclusionist/inclusionist dichotomy sweeps under the rug in order to package it as something either more trivial (so aspecs are easier to mock) or as something more digestible for the uninitiated (so the discourse continues to spread beyond tumblr).

Sometimes I wonder how much of our collective aspec history got lost in the mix. I wonder if we became so focused on defending ourselves that we forgot how to make ourselves better. Sometimes I fear that somewhere along the way we lost some aspect of our radical and unapologetic origins in order to seem unimposing. There are a lot of discussions that get started now that would have been resolved years ago had none of this happened and put our community development on hold. Imagine where we could have been by now. I can only hope that, with the knowledge of how we got to this point, we can make it to wherever it was we were going.

I was reluctant to make this post, as staying quiet has always felt safer than speaking my mind. But I have been silent for four years, and I could not watch this go on anymore without saying something. Perhaps I needed the closure.

Making a change takes courage and it takes solidarity, and I think that might be what the aspec community needs most of all right now.

If anyone else has further documentation to contribute to the cause, especially if you were around 2010-2012, I’d really appreciate that. For now, I’m going to retreat back into the shadows and go back to not touching the discourse with a 10-foot pole.

[sherylmcintosh]

One Belt, One Baloney? PRC's Silk Road Revival Doubts

Over the weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted an elaborate event in Beijing concerning the PRC's idea of reviving the historical Silk Road. Spanning much of Asia and the Middle East besides, this trade route epitomized many of the things China wants to be today: (1) at the center of world trade, (2) involved in infrastructure, and (3) a prime mover of international relations. This, of course, stands in contrast to the retrograde "America First" stylings of the racist-protectionist-isolationist American president, Donald Trump. Some hackles were raised about the invitation being extended to North Korea, of all nations, but certainly we'd rather have it peacefully trading with the rest of us than firing missiles to draw attention to itself? More to the point, though, how realistic is this plan? A few months ago, an op-ed appeared in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (usually a Communist Party-friendly outlet) placing the "One Belt, One Road" project's viability in question by way of Japan's example from only a few years back of doing something similar: using infrastructural might to extend not only diplomacy but also trade with its neighbors:

Facing a deep slowdown after years of investment-fuelled growth that culminated in a huge property and stock market bubble, the leaders of Asia’s largest economy [China] come up with a cunning plan. By launching an initiative to fund and construct infrastructure projects across Asia, they will kill four birds with one stone. They will generate enough demand abroad to keep their excess steel mills, cement plants and construction companies in business, so preserving jobs at home. They will tie neighbouring countries more closely into their own economic orbit, so enhancing both their hard and soft power around the region. They will further their long term plan to promote their own currency as an international alternative to the US dollar. And to finance it all, they will set up a new multi-lateral infrastructure bank, which will undermine the influence of the existing Washington-based institutions, with all their tedious insistence on transparency and best practice, by making more “culturally sensitive” soft loans. The result will be the regional hegemony they regard as their right as Asia’s leading economic and political power.

However, the author Tom Holland delivers the punch line that, actually, the Japanese tried all this stuff before and failed:

[I]t’s actually a description of a strikingly similar plan rolled out by Japanese prime minister Keizo Obuchi in the 1990s. That too promised to provide work for Japan’s recession-hit construction sector by building Japanese-funded infrastructure projects around Asia. And it even included a proposal – never realised – to establish an Asian Monetary Fund to lend to regional governments on easier terms than either the IMF or World Bank. Unfortunately for Beijing, the precedent is hardly encouraging. From the start the scheme was plagued by bickering over conditions and allegations of corruption. A handful of infrastructure projects did get built, but the reality fell woefully short of Tokyo’s grandiose dreams. Far from cementing Japan’s economic ascendancy across Asia, the project left a legacy of bad blood, and marked the beginning of a financial retreat from around the region that Japan has only recently begun to reverse.

The rest of the editorial notes that rampant corruption elsewhere siphoned funds away from projects, and those bits that actually did get built ended up as "white elephant" projects: transport initiatives that cost so much to maintain that they could not be sustained and were eventually shelved. Certainly, the OBOR and New Silk Road tags characterize some grandiose initiative. (See the map pabove.) Whether the Chinese have the actual sense to scale these to reality-based bits is another question since linking the Middle East all the way to the Far East is not a vision based on modesty.  Scaling it appropriately to meet local needs of the countries involved is key. That is, participating countries will plump for maintaining infrastructure built (with Chinese support) insofar as they can benefit from it going forward. However, if benefits are not evident--or mainly serve the purpose of transit through a country instead of serving the citizens of the countries in question first and foremost--the Japanese example provides ample cautions. first seen on International Political Economy Zone http://ipezone.blogspot.com/2017/05/one-belt-one-baloney-prcs-silk-road.html