#there's no research to support that specific claim in either

[totalspiffage]

People will be like oh I hate misinformation and then not challenge their existing beliefs when presented with evidence.

[sugar-konpeito]

kogoro is one of my favorite characters, but i never post about him because i never have thoughts about him. i just like him

[kyra45]

What is a pet donation scam?

While I have explained the basics of how to spot a pet donation scam, I will also explain what a pet donation scam is for those who have yet to see one or have not yet heard about them. These scams are extremely common on tumblr, but it is understandable that some users may have not yet learned what they are. This explanation is simplified and should be easily understood since it will give an idea on what these are.

A pet donation scam is when a user goes into Facebook/GoFundMe/etc and looks at the fundraisers listed for cats and dogs. They will then find a photograph that looks suitable and save it to their computer/phone where it will be edited slightly sometimes so reverse image search won’t locate it. Often these images are from a private source which also makes locating it difficult.

Once the photograph is saved, alongside vet bills sometimes, the user will then either copy the story they had obtained from the legitimate fundraiser or simply make up a new story which will then be edited to use a fake cat/dog name while rarely bothering to match what their photographs claim. The fake story is always changing! The pay date will not state a specific month and be as vague as possible.

The user will then reblog multiple posts across their blog and generally use them from trending tags. Sometimes these posts are all from OP and have no tags while being shared rapidly minutes apart. After about 20 posts, they will then make their fake fundraiser post using stolen photographs and a story either stolen from the real fundraiser page or a fake story they made up and have reused across multiple accounts with the cat/dog name changed and the date varying.

Eventually, the account will then start sending asks that request being answered privately. The address to support them is usually a name they’ve stolen from a real person in order to look more legitimate but closer inspection would reveal the country doesn’t match the currency or vet bill. The account however banks on no one looking up anything and to share the post without doing a bit of research first.

In closing, a pet donation scam is when a user uses the content of a stolen fundraiser in order to get funds for an animal that doesn’t belong to them. Any updates they have are generally stolen off Facebook. Unfortunately due to the method the scammers use for payments, those who attempt to help will rarely ever get their money back. No funds given will actually reach the real animal.

Please make sure to always be careful of asks sent that request private answers and come from accounts that have no prior interactions. They are, generally and most commonly, a scammer trying to get your money or your followers money.

[howtofightwrite]

So happy you're back after all this time! I have a question, do you happen to know how people fought in ancient rome? Particularly gladiators and soldiers? Sorry if this isn't the blog for this question tho!

I think we've covered both of these questions independently over the years.

Gladiators were a performance sport. It was more about glorifying the Roman Empire and its victories, than a conventional fight. As a result, most Gladiators were armed with specific variant, “loadouts,” designed to cosplay as various enemies that The Empire had conquered, and they only fought against specific countering variants. Specifically, the variants would be matched in such a way that it would be difficult for either combatant to have a decisive advantage over the other, with an eye towards creating situations that would result in a lot of visible injuries, without serious harm to either participant.

In case it needs to be said, gladiators were a significant financial investment, and they weren't casually killed in the arena. The point was for visible injuries, and a bloody spectacle, not a slaughter. Sometimes someone would die, but having them die on the field wasn't the intention, and they generated a lot of money, and on the rare cases when they were killed, it was meant to be a climactic moment, not someone taking a blade to the gut and collapsing mid-fight.

Obviously, I'm barely scratching the surface here, because it gets a lot deeper, but the simple answer is that in the vast majority of cases, gladiators were armed with weapons that were designed to make seriously harming their foe difficult to impossible. Also, the gladiators were something that evolved and became more complicated over time. When they first started in the Republic, it was a much more stripped down structure with prisoners of war being given a sword and shield and forced to face off against one another.

As for the Roman Legions. I'm not sure I've ever seen a comprehensive description of their training techniques. The Testudo, (or Tortoise) is one of the more famous examples of their specific combat style. Legionaries would create a shield wall, and the soldiers behind the front line would raise their shields to cover the formation against attacks from above (usually arrow fire, or thrown spears.) While being able to strike with javelins. In practice, the formation had issues, including being vulnerable to siege fire, and mounted archers were able to easily flank the formation. It's a neat story, but the formation had serious limitations.

One thing we haven't talked about before (I think) was the Roman's use of biological warfare. During sieges, they would load (locally sourced, I assume) corpses onto catapults, and then launch them into the besieged city.

Beyond, the major thing about the Legions was the extremely disciplined and orderly combat formations, with a lot of attention paid to managing battlefield movement. It wasn't so much about exceptional individual performance, so much as their ability to operate as a unit. This isn't a particularly mind blowing concept today, but in an era when professional soldiers were the exception, or limited to the elite forces, it had slightly more impact.

Regarding the details of their training, I've never seen any of that come up. Now, granted, I've really tried to research that degree of Roman history. So, if you're asking, “how, exactly, did they swing the gladius?” I don't know, and I don't remember ever seeing anyone credibly claim they had that insight. As far as I know, the only surviving Roman training manual was De Re Militari, (there's around 200 surviving Latin copies) which is far more concerned with overall strategic planning and command. If you're trying to write Roman era military fiction, it's probably worth reading. So, I'm not sure this is exactly what you were looking for, but I do hope it helps.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

[sixseasonsofodestawithatardis]

Explaining PIP, the reforms and how YOU can help!

Recently, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Mel Stride announced measures to reform PIP (Personal Independence Payment). It's a benefit given to disabled people, whether they are employed or not, to help provide support for the extra costs incurred due to being disabled. PIP can be paid on anything you need, such as a carer, adaptions, your bills or a night out (yes, disabled people are entitled to a social life I'm NOT arguing with anyone about this!) On top of the changes to sick notes, the announced reforms are an assault on disabled people to desperately cling to power!

Below is an explanation of PIP and the reforms so people can answer the open consultations, call for evidence, and sign a petition. We need as many people in the UK as possible to answer both to try to stop these reforms from happening.

What is PIP?

The Tories are saying PIP is a one-size-fits-all benefit, which again is a lie as PIP is designed to look at how your disability affects your daily life and how difficult it makes it for you to participate in society, not whether you have this specific disability so it only affects you in these ways! It doesn't matter whether you're diagnosed or not, either. There are two categories they look at throughout, known as the 'Daily Living Component' and the 'Mobility component' The process involves 50 pages you have to fill out (link to Turn2US for proof https://www.turn2us.org.uk/get-support/information-for-your-situation/claiming-personal-independence-payment-pip/fill-in-the-personal-independence-payment-pip-form#:~:text=You%20usually%20get%20the%20paper,it%20is%2050%20pages%20long.)

With hundreds of letters from Doctors as proof of your condition! And then an assessment in which you will answer all sorts of demeaning questions, give in-depth answers that you don't feel comfortable sharing, and hope the assessor has understood how it affects your life and written it down properly and that you'll get the right amount of money at the end of this assessment or re-assessment.

To get the standard rate in both components, you need 8 points; to get the enhanced rate, you need 12 points.

They'll then give you two, three, five, or ten years (10 years is known as a fixed-term award and a light-touch review) to undergo the terror of the PIP assessment again.

The reforms proposed and why they're terrifying!

The reforms they've suggested so far are

One-off grants for aids and appliances

receipts to then be claimed back at a later date

the changing of eligibility for PIP or the category 'Long Term sickness'

Vouchers instead of cash payments

If you've read those four options and thought they were cruel, infantilising and impossible to make work, then you'd be right.

As a disabled person, bills don't magically disappear. You still have council tax and rent to pay or a carer. Will landlords and councils accept these vouchers? A one-off grant won't work here either. The vouchers also signal that we can't be trusted to pay for our own needs and aren't responsible—which is far from the truth!

Aids and treatments are already covered by the NHS, so this is redundant and will be futile, especially when you consider the long waiting lists for mental health treatment (and just generally) on the NHS—and even if they aren't, we do know that and will use PIP to save up for it, etc. It's easier and more economical to give us cash payments.

To have the receipts to claim back expenses, we need to have the money to spend on said expenses.

Changing the eligibility will (much like these other suggestions) put more disabled people at risk. If you want mental health to improve: Fix the NHS, wages, sort out the cost of living crisis and fund the research/support for Long Covid sufferers.

How you can help! - UK-based people, plz sign everyone else. Please reblog & signal boost!

If you live in the UK, there are currently two consultations open ( the sick note one closes on 8 July 2024, and the PIP one closes on 22 July 2024). Ideally, the responses will be used to decide whether these reforms go ahead.

Here are links to the two reforms for PIP and changes to the sick note process.

Please note that the PIP consultation ( the first link) is 6 pages long and must be completed in one go. It's also filled with typos, repeated questions, and very difficult wording in many places, so be on the lookout for that! People are rightfully complaining about its accessibility, so the link and end date may change. I will update this post if this happens. I also know answering stuff like this is overwhelming, so here is a thread by PeachyInWales on Twitter about how they approached the consultation. If I see any samples by any disability activists or organisations, I will post them here, too!

This second link is the second consultation or call to evidence. Which GPs are being stripped of the ability to sign sicknotes for people on benefits, which is again ridiculous!

And the last link is a petition from SCOPE to stop the government from demonising disabled people further.

Ultimately, we're trying to stop a benefit that is difficult to get and barely covers costs for many applicants from getting worse.

If I've missed anything then let me know! I'm sorry the post was so long, but it's a lot to go through! Again, UK-based people, please share your thoughts if you can and sign the petition! If you are not currently living in the UK, please share these links or the post so other UK-based users can see this and try to help.

Thank you!

[evidence-based-activism]

Is male circumcision as harmful as female circumcision? I have had multiple discussions about this, but someone said that certain types of FGM are equally or less invasive than MGM

Hi! No, no it is not.

Male circumcision

So, the big question about male circumcisions is if it's ethical or not. A while ago, I would have said, no definitely not, since it's a violation of bodily autonomy. However, someone has since pointed out to me that we do a lot of things to infants (and children) that are technically violations of bodily autonomy.

We consider this morally acceptable because we are providing some intervention that they (the children) are not capable of either requesting or refusing on the basis of it's benefits outweighing the harms. The best example of this, in my opinion, is vaccines. We give children a lot of vaccines because we know that they have (and do) substantially lower the chance of the child getting sick and/or dying from a preventable disease. In this case, the minor violation of bodily autonomy (vaccination of a child) is permitted because waiting until they are able to give their consent would introduce a substantially larger risk of harm.

How does this relate to male circumcision? Given this framework, we could accept male circumcision if (1) there are benefits to the procedure, (2) the benefits outweigh any risk of harm, (3) waiting until the child is able to consent to the procedure is not feasible (i.e., some significant portion of the benefits would be lost).

There is some mixed evidence for these three claims. Evidence in favor includes:

There are a number of reviews [1-3] by the same team that provide support for all three points. In particular this review [3] directly reviews the evidence of "arguments opposing male circumcision", debunking each one in detail. However, the fact that they are all by the same team is less encouraging. The evidence here is substantial, but there's a potential for bias.

That being said, the American Academy of Pediatric [4] also concludes that the "health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks".

This Cochrane Review (essentially the highest quality evidence) [5] found male circumcision substantially reduces acquisition risk of HIV by heterosexual men and that incidence of adverse events is very low.

And this review and meta-analysis [6] found the same reduction for HPV.

Evidence against:

This review [7] suggests the benefits of male circumcision may not apply in North American countries

This article [8] claims the same for developed countries in general

This commentary [9] claims the same, suggesting that "from the perspective of the individual boy, there is no medical justification for performing a circumcision prior to an age that he can ... choose to give or withhold informed consent himself"

That being said these papers have also been challenged by advocates for male circumcision [10] and even opponents [9, 11] recognize that the rates of complications are very low, and the rates of serious complications even lower. In addition to that, complication rate was greater for older children [11], which provides support for the third point I highlighted above (i.e., waiting until they are older may introduce more harms than benefits).

And all of that being said, if the procedure is done, it should absolutely be done with some form of pain relief. Thankfully, it appears that the vast majority are performed in this fashion [11].

In the end, there is strong evidence supporting male circumcision for infants in developing countries. There are research gaps concerning if these benefits apply to developed countries (i.e., little work has examined this population specifically), which indicates a need for such research. That being said, with the extremely low complication rate and moderate evidence of benefits, there also isn't a strong argument against the procedure.

---

Female Genital Mutilation

Comparing this to female genital mutilation (FGM) will highlight just how egregious such equivalencies are.

First, a brief detour into biology. Men and women have various embryological precursors that develop into either male or female sex organs. These are called biological homologues, and they are roughly (although not perfectly) comparable. For example, an embryo has the gonad which, during sex differentiation, develops into the ovary in women and the testicle in men [12].

This framework allows us to make some rough comparisons between male circumcision and FGM. For example, it's likely that the "less invasive" form of FGM you were referred to is type 1A [13]. In this type, only the clitoral hood is removed. Both the clitoral hood and the foreskin develop from the prepuce, as they are homologous structures. Notably, even here, male circumcision and FGM type 1A would still only be homologous if (1) FGM type 1A has a similarly low risk profile as male circumcision and (2) male circumcision actually provides no benefits to the infant.

For the first point, we have little to no data on the complication rate of type 1A FGM, specifically because it is essentially never performed in isolation [14]. This is – almost entirely – a theoretical form of FGM. Despite this, even if it were more common it doesn't necessarily follow that the procedures would have a similar adverse effect profile. In fact, one of the most common arguments against male circumcision involves the numerous nerve endings in the glans (head of the) penis, generally in reference to how the foreskin "protects" the penis head or "preserves sensitization" (neither of which are proven assertions). But while the glans penis and glans clitoris have a similar number of nerve endings in absolute terms, the clitoral head is much smaller and therefore much more densely innervated [15]. As a result, it would be much more likely for the removal of the clitoral hood to result in irritation than the removal of the foreskin.

And for the second point, I've discussed the mixed literature on the topic in developed countries. However, most FGM is performed in developing countries (although certainly not exclusively so) [14], and in this context there is strong evidence of a health benefit to male circumcision and absolutely no health benefit to FGM.

To complete the comparisons between FGM and male circumcision in terms of homologous structures [12, 13]:

Type 1B involves the removal of the clitoris with the prepuce (clitoridectomy). This, anatomically speaking, would be similar to removal of (minimally) the penis head.*

Type 2 involves partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora. This would be roughly comparable to the removal of the penis head, mutilation/cutting/removal of penile raphe (underside of the penis) with or without mutilation/cutting/removal of the scrotum.*

Type 3 is infibulation, or the narrowing of the vaginal orifice with creation of a covering seal by cutting and apposition the labia minora and/or the labia majora, with or without excision of the clitoris. There is no direct comparison for men, as they do not have a vaginal orifice or any similar structure.

Type 4 is all other mutilation/anything that cannot be categorized as above.

*Note: these comparisons aren't perfect due to differences in how the homologous structures are arranged. For example, removal of the penis head would also impact the urethra, whereas removal of the clitoris would not. That being said, these comparisons are far more accurate than between FGM types 1B - 4 and male circumcision.

To further drive home the differences, FGM results in substantial, severe health complications (unlike male circumcision) and has absolutely no known health benefits (possibly unlike male circumcision). These articles [16-21] go into great detail on this; the complications range from: infection, incontinence, infertility, severe and sometimes chronic pain, pregnancy complications, PTSD and post-traumatic symptoms, other psychiatric disorders, greater risk of STDs, and death.

There is no evidence of any benefits.

---

Conclusion

Hopefully, it's clear that male circumcision and female genital mutilation are in no way comparable.

The opponents of male circumcision often suggest that any violation of the bodily autonomy of infants is morally wrong, but this fails to consider the nuanced situation inherent to infant-hood and early childhood. They are physically and mentally unable of consenting to or refusing any medical procedure, which is why we have a – generally recognized – moral caveat to this principle that allows caregivers to act in the best interests of the child, particularly when waiting for the child to grow older before allowing any intervention would increase the risk of harm. (Childhood vaccinations and, really, any other medical procedure done on children, are other examples of this.)

It's possible that future research may indicate that male circumcision is not associated with benefits in developed countries. (This would remove male circumcision from the category of procedures described above.) Even then, however, it would not be comparable to FGM due to the vastly different complication rates.

I hope this helps you!

References under the cut:

Morris, B. J., & Krieger, J. N. (2013). Does male circumcision affect sexual function, sensitivity, or satisfaction?—a systematic review. The journal of sexual medicine, 10(11), 2644-2657.

Morris, B. J., Kennedy, S. E., Wodak, A. D., Mindel, A., Golovsky, D., Schrieber, L., ... & Ziegler, J. B. (2017). Early infant male circumcision: systematic review, risk-benefit analysis, and progress in policy. World journal of clinical pediatrics, 6(1), 89.

Morris, B. J., Moreton, S., & Krieger, J. N. (2019). Critical evaluation of arguments opposing male circumcision: A systematic review. Journal of Evidence‐based Medicine, 12(4), 263-290.

Task Force on Circumcision, Blank, S., Brady, M., Buerk, E., Carlo, W., Diekema, D., ... & Wegner, S. (2012). Male circumcision. Pediatrics, 130(3), e756-e785.

Siegfried, N., Muller, M., Deeks, J. J., & Volmink, J. (2009). Male circumcision for prevention of heterosexual acquisition of HIV in men. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (2).

Shapiro, S. B., Laurie, C., El-Zein, M., & Franco, E. L. (2023). Association between male circumcision and human papillomavirus infection in males and females: a systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 29(8), 968-978.

Bossio, J. A., Pukall, C. F., & Steele, S. (2014). A review of the current state of the male circumcision literature. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 11(12), 2847-2864.

Frisch, M., & Earp, B. D. (2018). Circumcision of male infants and children as a public health measure in developed countries: a critical assessment of recent evidence. Global public health, 13(5), 626-641.

Deacon, M., & Muir, G. (2023). What is the medical evidence on non-therapeutic child circumcision?. International journal of impotence research, 35(3), 256-263.

Moreton, S., Cox, G., Sheldon, M., Bailis, S. A., Klausner, J. D., & Morris, B. J. (2023). Comments by opponents on the British Medical Association’s guidance on non-therapeutic male circumcision of children seem one-sided and may undermine public health. World Journal of Clinical Pediatrics, 12(5), 244.

Shabanzadeh, D. M., Clausen, S., Maigaard, K., & Fode, M. (2021). Male circumcision complications–a systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression. Urology, 152, 25-34.

26: The Reproductive System . (n.d.). In Anatomy and Physiology (Boundless) . LibreTexts. https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Anatomy_and_Physiology_(Boundless)/26%3A_The_Reproductive_System

Abdulcadir, J., Catania, L., Hindin, M. J., Say, L., Petignat, P., & Abdulcadir, O. (2016). Female genital mutilation: a visual reference and learning tool for health care professionals. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 128(5), 958-963.

WHO, U. O. (2008). Eliminating female genital mutilation: An interagency statement. World Health Organization.

Shih, C., Cold, C. J., & Yang, C. C. (2013). Cutaneous corpuscular receptors of the human glans clitoris: descriptive characteristics and comparison with the glans penis. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 10(7), 1783-1789.

Utz-Billing, I., & Kentenich, H. (2008). Female genital mutilation: an injury, physical and mental harm. Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics & Gynecology, 29(4), 225-229.

Klein, E., Helzner, E., Shayowitz, M., Kohlhoff, S., & Smith-Norowitz, T. A. (2018). Female genital mutilation: health consequences and complications—a short literature review. Obstetrics and gynecology international, 2018(1), 7365715.

Iavazzo, C., Sardi, T. A., & Gkegkes, I. D. (2013). Female genital mutilation and infections: a systematic review of the clinical evidence. Archives of gynecology and obstetrics, 287, 1137-1149.

Berg, R. C., & Underland, V. (2018). Immediate Health Consequences of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C).

Sarayloo, K., Roudsari, R. L., & Elhadi, A. (2019). Health consequences of the female genital mutilation: a systematic review. Galen medical journal, 8, e1336.

Reisel, D., & Creighton, S. M. (2015). Long term health consequences of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Maturitas, 80(1), 48-51.

[bioethicists]

responding to this with my shitty redaction because i'm not comfortable posting obvious bait with people's names in them (particularly dead names) but i just wanted to point out the ways in which this ask is prototypical bait written to purposefully generate drama or controversy (idk if this is in a kiwifarms trolling with right wing motives sense or an 'i love drama' person) by trying to appeal to online leftist culture/the fear of being 'problematic'. i see ppl fall for this constantly + i need people to start learning to recognize the signs instead of either engaging or using this as evidence that leftists are stupid/petty/hypocritical (which many of us are, but in much less amusing ways, unfortunately)

the implication that there is a single founder of the "neurodiversity movement" + that evoking this movement at all (which i don't do + i think it's actually pretty evident that my politics are distinct from the much more bioessentialist politics of those who prefer that term, which is part of what led me to conclude that this is a copypasta) is supporting the founder. tracing a broad social concept to a single individual, then disparaging that individual as morally unsound (by evoking other explosive, petty pieces of discourse, like baeddalism + transandrophobia) in order to provoke doubt, fear or anger. demonstrates a hope that leftists will flinch away from anything associated with anyone 'problematic' without applying any critical thinking.

misrepresenting complex events (or fabricating them entirely- idk if these things happened + i simply couldn't care enough to find out) in a way that hits the pressure points of performative activism (she's being mean to an autistic person! other people of color agree with me! this other person is anti physically disabled people!) while also betraying reactionary opinions through language use/implications (claiming to care about 'transandrophobia' yet deadnaming someone? claiming to care about specific events at specific autism conferences but using terms like "severely autistic"? saying you have spoken to "Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians" lmao did you type this out based on census checkboxes from the 70s?). the author of this ask is clearly not a member of the activist communities they claim to be from because they accidentally slip into the speech conventions + opinions of a kiwifarms/4chan loser who does a lot of hatereading. this one did a good job of hitting the bingo card of divisive intracommunity issues rn- great research skills, bud! put them to better use <3

reframing reactionary beliefs using leftist concepts. this works because many of us do not have a foundational politic outside of "well, i want to be good, so I'm going to support the things that other people i trust say are good". which doesn't make you bad (there is no good or bad! learn this now + quick, if you really want to play a part in building a better world) but it makes you easy to manipulate + unlikely to be capable of meaningful change. notice that the claims this ask is asserting are, at their core, "people make up microaggressions to cause problems when really they could easily suck it up" + "people fake disabilities and being trans for attention". these are reactionary concerns, no matter how artfully they are dressed in social justice language. kiwifarms in particular was very, very good at this- they loved finding the people they stalked to be racist, homophobic, ableist, etc, not because they thought those things were wrong (it was their hobby to be these things!) but because they delighted in identifying hypocrisy, stirring up drama, + destroying people's reputations.

this is hard to explain bcuz i blacked out the names, but if you have a passing familiarity with fascist/reactionary online spaces, particularly the history of kiwifarms, you will know that reactionaries have their own 'pet leftists', just like we have our 'pet fascists' (shapiro, alex jones, tucker carlson, etc). that is, ppl they obsessively follow, harass, + scrutinize + come to believe are representative of everything that we believe. these ppl are rarely ppl who are actually prominent in our online spaces but online reactionaries often believe we are just as obsessed with these people as they are, but as unquestioned paragons of virtue + brilliance. namedropping these ppl is often an accidental tip of the hat, particularly when the ppl aren't on tumblr, haven't been a topic of community discussion for quite some time, or run in a different circle than us (reactionaries don't understand that there are actually thousands of leftist social groups which have very little overlap with some others- pronouns in bio does not mean someone knows or cares about contrapoints, for instance)

tl;dr this ask is a fantastic example of the rhetorical features bait that someone might actually take seriously.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for telling my sister that she doesn't have OCD?

I (17n) share a room with my sister (15f). She's been a "neat freak" her whole life and is absolutely anal about certain things. She used to have a lot more of those fixations and got anxious enough about them that she would burst into tears if they weren't fulfilled, but I'm fairly sure she doesn't anymore. For example, she used to have anxiety around not being on time to get places, but now she always severely underestimates the time it will take her to get ready for something and makes us all late, and doesn't seem to care all that much. What's more, she yells at me frequently for leaving my stuff out around our room because it isn't "tidy", but she leaves her dirty clothes and makeup out all the time and doesn't put them away for days.

Now, here's the thing. For as long as I can remember, she's been blaming these behaviors on "OCD". She has never been diagnosed with it, though she did once try to claim that the counselor she saw when she was younger diagnosed her (this is obviously false as school counselors don't have the authority to diagnose you with anything, at least not in my country). Now, I support informed self-diagnosis, but A) she's been claiming OCD since long before she had access to the Internet or any other resources to research it, so her only exposure to it at that point would have been pop culture, which is notoriously inaccurate, and B) when I asked her why she thought she had OCD, she said it was because she felt an urge to make things neat all the time, which, while I'm sure it could be a manifestation of OCD, is more in line with the stereotype than with common presentations of the disorder, nor does she seem to have any of the characteristic anxiety of the disorder anymore. Even her urges to make things clean seem entirely focused on me and my stuff, and she's completely okay with leaving her own things out wherever and whenever she wants. So while normally I would never fakeclaim anyone, I really don't think she actually has OCD.

I don't know if she is genuinely self-diagnosed with OCD or if she just uses the label as an excuse to be controlling, but either way, I'm sick of it. She did it again yesterday: I had put a folded-up blanket on my beanbag chair in our shared room, and she told me I had to move it because it "didn't look nice" and was triggering her alleged OCD. WIBTA if I told her she doesn't have OCD and can't use it as an excuse to be pushy about where I put my things?

I might be TA because: fakeclaiming is wrong, and it's possible she does happen to have anxiety about the specific things she gets anal about, since mental illness isn't always rational.

I might not be TA because: she has none of the symptoms of actual OCD and doesn't seem to understand what they are, she uses it as an excuse to harass and scream at me

What are these acronyms?

[rederiswrites]

So after annoyance-quitting Mind Over Medicine, I read Cured, by Jeffrey Rediger, MD. In a way it was about the same things--calming your nervous system, supporting your immune system, etc. But it was an entirely better book. Cured is about the author's extensive research and collection of case studies of radical remission--cases where a person had a documented diagnosis almost certain to lead to near-term death, who then went on to either entirely reverse the condition or live healthy lives despite it for many years.

To be clear, at no point does he claim that doing as these people have done will save you from brain cancer, although some of them did exactly that. It was more a matter of him becoming interested in learning what these cases might have to teach us. Sometimes, that was about diet and lifestyle changes, sometimes it got downright weird and he agrees completely. There ends up being a lot of discussion of personal transformation as an engine for healing.

Despite a seminary degree, at no point does Rediger himself claim that a higher power had anything to do with it. Faith is a key feature for some of the case studies, but he examines it as the power of the faith, or belief, itself, rather than any specific religious belief.

It ends up being an engrossing, moving, fascinating, and potentially transformative investigation of the power the mind has over the body, poking into corners that double blind studies can't really go, without ever actually sounding like his conclusions are unsupported by or in defiance of the available science.

[qsycomplainsalot]

Lindybeige is Either an Idiot or an Asshole

Most Likely Both

--There could be more flattering ways to put it, but he's never once given us that favor so why should I. His videos are wildly speculative and often based in cherry-picked British sources, when they come with any sources at all - see his masturbatory piece about the Bren vs the “Spandau”.

--There are two videos that I absolutely loathe at the edges of my youtube recommendations, both just filled to the brim with misinformation and logical contrivances. Videos that neckbeards will endlessly quote at me without question, taking a frustratingly long amount of time to untangle by which point they'd have usually lost interest already. The first one is Shadiversity's video about boob armor, the other is Lindybeige's video about the French Resistance.

--This video will have you believe that the French Resistance on its own did nothing of worth, based in great part on the fact that De Gaulle glamorized its contribution to the war for political status. I cannot stress this enough, just because De Gaulle used the general idea of the Resistance to smooth over a lot of Vichy war crimes and restore national unity does not mean the Resistance did not exist as a capable fighting force. --The very first more specific argument he offers to support his view -if you ignore “ME AND ME PA FOUND THAT VERY FONNY”- is that most of the French armor was American-made and provided through the lend-lease policy, making French people less deserving of credit in winning World War 2. I assume that in his mind that would diminish the contribution of the French Resistance to war efforts, even though these tanks and armored fighting vehicles were used by the Free French Army, not the Resistance at any point of its existence, making the point moot while also conveniently ignoring that the United Kingdom received ten times the aid France did through that same program.

--The image is from War Thunder because it makes for a better glamor shot than having it stand behind a museum fence or in black and white.

--His next argument implies that De Gaulle was "allowed" to walk in the liberated Paris ahead of Allied troops to give a speech that solidified the myth of the Resistance I mentioned. Again, in this passing, deceptive comment, Lindybeige implies that De Gaulle walked in after the fact and that Allied forces did the heavy lifting, only allowing him to do his speech a their convenience. Even a cursory amount of research will tell you that Paris was in fact liberated by the FFI, the Parisian people themselves and Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division composed of Metropolitan and Colonial French with Spanish elements, supported only on the very last day by the US 4th Infantry Division and a special British unit sent to gather intelligence. --Following this, he quotes the speech De Gaulle delivered in front of the town hall the day the German garrison surrendered, but cuts it short of the part in said speech mentioning “the help of our dear and admirable Allies” to then call De Gaulle ungrateful, which I have a hard time believing could be anything but intentionally deceptive. He then goes on to claim that the French Resistance was not organized by De Gaulle but by the British, justifying the ludicrous claim with 'they didn’t tell him because French intelligence services were bad and would have leaked all of it’. This is of course ignoring the fact that De Gaulle had personally sent Jean Moulin back to France for the exact purpose of organizing the five big Resistance movements into one organization, which he did, creating the Council for National Resistance that played a major role in the liberation of Paris. How the British would have any hand in this may be explained by his further comments, where he goes on to say that agents of the organization preceding the MI6 had been infiltrated in the Resistance to organize it, which begs the question of who's responsible for it being a non-effective combat force if it had been the case. He then gives us a voice in a sarcastic tone by saying, “of course you and your British bias would say that !” but does not really address it. Because honestly yeah, you and your British bias would say that.

--After quickly rambling that there were too many people in France and not enough bushes for all people to join the Resistance, which I have to admit is an extremely pointed and pertinent thing to say in a video downplaying the efforts and suffering of thousands of people fighting back against Nazi occupation under constant threat of torture and execution if caught, he mentions that the German forced labor system had severely depleted France’s manpower of fighting age. He says that by 1944, only teenagers and decrepit middle aged men were left to fight in the Resistance, to the great disappointment of the British agents he mentioned earlier. According to him, this meant France lacked the manpower and the communication capability required to pull the Resistance off, which is again contradicted by the actions of Jean Moulin, who had seemingly managed to access both before his death.

--There are a few problems with that argument. The Service de Travail Obligatoire, STO for short, was a system put in place by Vichy France to supply Germany with civilian manpower to make up for their own shortfalls due to the Eastern front. Because Vichy had negotiated a relative independence compared to other occupied country, its own government was responsible for the order, although it was in almost every point similar to forced labor orders in Denmark or the Netherlands. Now the STO did deprive France of over six hundred thousand young men, many of them skilled workers. However as an incentive given by the Nazis, every three forced laborer sent to Germany would lead to the release of one French POW, meaning that as far as manpower was concerned, France pretty much lost only four hundred thousand men and received qualified military personnel for its trouble. Not only is it hardly the manpower drain pictured by Lindybeige, it also ignores that many of these forced laborers, my grandfather included, immediately skipped work and joined either the Resistance or Allied military regulars after operation Overlord, as they were not as tightly surveilled as POWs and minorities in concentration/death camps. It also bears mentioning that it was teenagers, dismissed by Lindybeige as a negligible quantity, that acted as reconnaissance troops for the Free French using their motorbikes to scout and guide the way to the German Kommandantur. In any case, most members of the FFI integrated the regular French army after the liberation of Paris, meaning they were definitely of fighting age. Of course that whole argument is dropped as soon as he brings in British involvement, at which point he finally points out how the Resistance disabled most of the railway network and stopped the famously lightning-fast German army from facing the Allied invasion properly. For their role in this sabotage, a hundred fifty Resistance members working for the French national railway company were shot and another five hundred deported.

--To put it simply, Lindybeige dismisses the Resistance as a useless, wasteful and infighting group of functional morons, while every successful operation they carried out, every display of good mobility and coordination is attributed to British uniformed soldiers overseeing it. In reality most of that effort was done by either agents of the French government in exile or the Allied command under Eisenhower, with no account mentioning any significant autonomous British involvement which stands to reason as De Gaulle and Churchill could not stand one another. In fact Lindybeige tries to pass off operation Jedburgh as a purely British operation while it was specifically a joint one with American, British, French, Belgian and Dutch operatives all along the Atlantic coast.

--The next part is baffling. Lindybeige points at the Allies stopping their shipments of weapons to the French Resistance after July 44 and justifies it by saying the various cells were fighting each other and were uncoordinated. Thank god the Brits stopped sending arms or there would have been a civil war between these silly French Resistance members. Of course what happened in August was the liberation of Paris followed by the integration of the FFI into the new French army, which would go on to liberate the rest of the country. But Lindybeige pushes this civil war angle pretty hard, calling at this point of the video both Vichy France and the Resistance to be pro French in a way and underlining the conflicts between the two as a reason why the weapon shipments stopped coming, with examples such as Resistance members exacting reprisals against Nazi collaborators, which is a completely moot point because Vichy France and collaborators had nothing to do with the Resistance and were in fact, at this point of time, recognized as the enemy by all Allied forces, meaning acts of resistance against them would in no way prompt Allied command to stop supporting the French Resistance. Lindybeige goes so far as to say that the OSS and British secret service stopping the weapon shipments in August 1944 legitimately prevented an outright civil war between the different cells of the French Resistance, which was in actuality pretty unified in its support to De Gaulle at this point thanks to the efforts of Jean Moulin as discussed previously. This hardly gels with the events following August 1944, where the members of the Resistance and FFI were enlisted in the Free French Army and were therefore issued American military equipment and training to function as regular troops. Now stop me if I'm wrong but it appears that in Lindybeige's mind all French people were ready to tear each other apart until the British stopped sending them pipe guns, after which the Americans sent them tanks which obviously disabled their ability to start a civil war.

--Two French colonial soldiers using a blend of Allied gear during the winter of 1944-45. They are presumably thinking of killing each other.

--Much like the Phantom Menace review this is addressing a piece of media were essentially everything is wrong, hence the length of this post. Lindybeige has obviously researched the topic to great length, then ignored half of it to record 17mn of vague, dismissive and unsubstantiated claim that each take an equal amount of time to debunk. He present the facts as if everything that happened on British soil was under British orders so as to make the French Resistance only effective on their accord, all the while disregarding the French government in exile and slandering the efforts of French people but also inadvertently of the Americans. It is my honest belief that this sad excuse of an historian is either profoundly lacking in literacy or actively trying to justify his xenophobia by bending WW2 historiography around his bias, and whatever it may be he should be deplatformed to avoid spreading more harmful and disrespectful lies about a group of brave men and women who fought to liberate their country from fascism.

[synchodai]

do i prefer the book or show version of this character?

Just based on how much I personally enjoy them. Please note since Fire and Blood is written as a history book, most characters don't really have a lot of arcs or development, so the show theoretically should have a leg up since it's not just a series of events told in chronological order.

AEGON II [HOTD]

Book!Aegon is lustful and a drunk but it's not specifically because of any underlying neglect or trauma — that's just how most men acted in Westeros. His usual habits turn to addictions as the war progresses where he spirals into alcoholism, but before that he didn't have much going on to draw you to him compared to show!Aegon. Still think introducing show!Aegon as a rapist was unnecessary overkill though.

ALICENT [HOTD]

The religious guilt and trauma of being a child bride isn't in the books.

AEMOND [FAB]

Book!Aemond's deal is pretty easy to understand as a character in the books. He's vengeful, impulsive, and extremely prideful — like a lot of edgy teens but this one is given access to a nuke. He's supposed to be book!Daemon but if book!Daemon was still a teenager and maimed as a child. As for show!Aemond, I don't really know what his deal is or I'm confused about his motivations.

CRISTON [FAB]

Love that show!Criston is Dornish. Not loving that they're downplaying his impact as Kingmaker and the intentional "Jaime Lannister but the opposite" aspects of his character.

HELAENA [HOTD]

Helaena doesn't have much of a personality in the book.

OTTO [HOTD]

Show!Otto and book!Otto aren't that different in my mind, so this goes to the version which is acted by Rhys Ifans.

LARYS [HOTD]

Same as Otto.

TYLAND [FAB]

Show!Tyland is basically an NPC.

RHAENYRA [FAB]

This woman literally spent 3 months catatonic in the book and she's still more active in her own story than her show counterpart.

DAEMON [FAB]

They basically gave book!Aemond's personality and Harrenhal plot to show!Daemon, which doesn't make sense for an experienced commander, war hero, and scholar of Valyrian history who spent time is Essos to research his heritage.

JACAERYS [FAB]

This one was a hard one because it could have gone either way. I like show!Jace's perfect prince persona and being made to parent his parent. But I prefer book!Jace's political savvy and willingness to get his hands dirty. Book!Jace was the person who spearheaded the Red Sowing where he sent a call that anyone who can claim a dragon would have wealth, titles, and fly with the prince. This resulted in hundreds of deaths of their own men, but netted them 4 dragons which eventually turned the tides of war in their favor. It was both smart (+4 nukes) and dumb (giving nukes to unreliable people) and showed Jace as empathetic to the smallfolk (was the only one who saw it as an option to have non-Targs ride dragons) and still ultimately saw them as expendable.

CORLYS [FAB]

Just had a more active role in book. All Show!Corlys does is stand by the docks.

RHAENYS [FAB]

I preferred her when she was eager for war because it makes sense given her history. She regrets not pressing her and her son's claim so she's super gungho about it now so she can right the injustices she faced in the past. Book!Rhaenys also possibly doesn't know that Rhaenyra's sons are bastards and never suspected her killing Laenor, so her support makes more sense than show!Rhaenys's.

BAELA [FAB]

Has a personality in the book.

RHAENA [HOTD]

I think her book and show versions are pretty much the same.

MYSARIA [HOTD]

Show!Mysaria is given a personal agenda and more backstory than book!Mysaria.

TOTALS

Greens - HOTD: 5, FAB: 3

Blacks - HOTD: 2, FAB: 6

In conclusion, the greens are more developed on the show while the blacks, in my opinion, were flattened compared to their book counterparts.

[gothhabiba]

here's one that's even more bonkers that I didn't report on. it involves writers over at Haaretz being very incompetent.

on the age of chickpea cultivation in Palestine, people variously say 10,000 BC, 8400 BC, 8000 BC, 7000 BC &c. as if at random.

foodtimeline.org (which supposedly provides sources to the researcher but has betrayed me many, many times) cites: Food in the Ancient World From A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge: London] 2003 (p. 84).

Dalby says:

Chickpea, one of the oldest cultivated pulses in the Near East. Chickpeas were grown in Palestine by 8000 BC.

this book is actually useless from a research perspective and belongs to what I like to call the "just some guy saying something" approach to making claims. none of the works cited at the end of the page on chickpeas (yes! none of the claims are associated with a particular work! there are no footnotes! so if you want to trace a particular claim, you've gotta look in each work mentioned! lol!) are scholarly works either, all of them also belong to the "some guy saying something" school of thought, and, most dizzyingly, none of them contain the 8000 BC claim!

okay, let's take another tack. wikipedia says:

"The earliest well-preserved archaeobotanical evidence of chickpea outside its wild progenitor's natural distribution area comes from the site of Tell el-Kerkh, in modern Syria, dating back to the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic period around (c.8400BCE). [12]"

[12] turns out to be an article titled "The Strange Origin Story of the Chickpea" on Haaretz (ugh), which is hardly a scholarly source, but perhaps it cites one! Haaretz says:

The question addressed in a new paper published in May in the journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution is historic: how the domestic chickpea arose and spread, first apparently to the Middle East – signs of chickpea domestication were identified in el-Kerkh, Syria, that may be as old as the 10th millennium B.C.E. – and onwards, the western Mediterranean and to Asia, and to eastern Africa (specifically, Ethiopia).

the particularly sharp-eyed among you may notice that "10th millennium BC" (10,000 to 9,001 BC) is a different claim from "8400 BC," but, oh well, let's click that link.

it's a paper titled "Historical Routes for Diversification of Domesticated Chickpea Inferred from Landrace Genomics." it contains no references to the finds in el-Kerkh, or to a 10th millennium BC claim, or a 9th century BC (which the year 8400 belongs to) claim; it's more about developing a model to trace spread, rather than attesting evidence for any particular date. the author of this article must have just added the information about the site in Syria from, idk, their own background knowledge? lol.

but let's keep pushing this. elsewhere in the same article, a paper titled "Draft genome sequence of Cicer reticulatum L., the wild progenitor of chickpea provides a resource for agronomic trait improvement" is linked. this paper contains in its introduction the claim:

Chickpea was domesticated with wheat, barley, peas and lentil as a member of West Asian Neolithic crops during the origin of agriculture around 10,000 years ago with the oldest archaeological evidence from 7500 B.C.4,5 

also a very different claim from both "8400" and "10th millennium BC", but okay, let's try to trace this one.

citation 4 is a paper titled "Evolution of cultivated chickpea: four bottlenecks limit diversity and constrain adaptation," and it also has to do with something completely different from archaeological evidence for chickpea cultivation. in reference to the claim it is cited to support, it contains only the sentence:

Chickpea is [...] associated with the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent some 10000 years ago.

for this rather vague claim, they themselves cite two other sources: 2000, Lev-Yadun et al. "The cradle of agriculture," Science 288, 1602-1603; and 1999, Zohary D, Hoph M "Monophyletic vs. polyphyletic origin of the crops on which agriculture was founded in the Near East," Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 46, 133-142.

citation 5 is Harlan J. R. 1971, "Agricultural origins: centers and noncenters," Science, 174, 468–474. this one says, summarizing other research, that in the "Near East" (bleucgh)

barley, einkorn, emmer, peas, lentils, flax, vetch, and chickpeas appear to have been domesticated, together with sheep, goats, pigs, and possibly cattle.

the source for this sentence is G. Wright and A. Gordus, Amler. J. Archaeol. 73, 75 (1969).

okay, well, this is starting to get obviously silly; trying to trace these claims further and further back until a primary report of an actual archaeology site is found is clearly pointless, especially since at this rate the find would be from like 1954 and almost certainly new evidence has come to light since then.

let's try something else. despite the fact that Haaretz's "signs of chickpea domestication were identified in el-Kerkh, Syria, that may be as old as the 10th millennium B.C.E" claim didn't actually come from the source that they cited, surely it must have come from somewhere?

I find two papers describing the finds in el-Kerkh, written by the same team. "The origins of cultivation of Cicer arietinum L. and Vicia faba L.: early finds from Tell el-Kerkh, north-west Syria, late 10th millennium B.P." is the one that deals specifically with the chickpea findings.

aha! here, perhaps, is the source of the "10th millennium BC" claim! I suspect someone misread the title of this article, and read nothing else!!

the trouble is twofold: 1. "10th millennium BP" is given as the age of the site, not specifically of the cultivated chickpeas that were found; and 2:

"BP" is not "BC"!!!

"BP" is a metric of time used in carbon dating. it means "before present." the "present" is set to the year 1950, since this is close to when carbon dating was introduced. 10,000 years before 1950 is 8050 BC, and this is the absolute oldest date allowable based on just the title of the paper.

however, if we actually read the paper (or, I mean, skim it for a date, lol), we finally find something concerned with dating a particular site rather than making a genetic model; still better, we find this beautiful, readily comprehensible table shewing us "Archaeobotanical records for C. arietinum [...] in the early Neolithic periods", citing a specific site, the number of beans found there, the estimated date BP of those beans based on carbon dating, and a reference to the paper that details each find:

the "this paper" reference based on the Tell el-Kerkh site gives the date

9350-9165 B.P.! that's 7400-7215 BC! we have a date range at last!

other papers in this chart give estimates that are more recent (e.g. 9320 - 9175 BP), based on papers from the 80s and 90s.

so, if this paper is more recent that any other citation I found during this whole journey (2006), and it claims to have pushed the date on the earliest piece of archaeological evidence for cultivation of the chickpea back (note that archaeological is different than evidence based on literature, genetics, &c.), then where on earth are "8000 BC" and "8400 BC" coming from? I still don't know.

tl;dr: a lot of people say that wikipedia, research blogs online, popular news publications, and things of that ilk are not sources on their own, but that they can be a good starting point to help you find sources. I no longer believe that to be the case. you are better off just starting in jstor or google scholar &c. and ignoring everything else. the claims you find in the latter way may, however, still be wild goose chases even if they are published in scholarly journals. the citation webs in academic journals are dizzying and people rarely trace a claim back to its actual origin, instead content to cite a source that cites a source that cites a source that cites a source........

anyway. I share my humble stories simply for entertainment purposes only.

[thoughtlessarse]

By the time people grow into adulthood, they have a pretty good idea of their political affiliation. A twenty-year-old might not be particularly articulate in voicing their political views, but they will nevertheless have some political inclinations that support a certain ideology or political attitude. The question is: how do people develop this? Why do some people lean more liberal while others lean more conservative? Many factors determine how people participate in their civil rights and what political parties they support. Foremost among these is, by a wide margin, family — specifically the parents who might shape the ideological beliefs of their children during their formative years either directly (e.g., through political discussion) or indirectly (e.g., through modeling). Then you have things like gender, religion, race and ethnicity. However, a new study would like to point out an often-overlooked factor in this discussion, one that goes beyond upbringing. Researchers have found that both IQ scores and genetic markers associated with intelligence can have a significant role in shaping our political affiliations. The researchers at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities found that “intelligence is correlated with a range of left-wing and liberal political beliefs. The background of a curious trend Researchers have proposed various theories about how political beliefs and intelligence interact. For instance, some studies suggest that individuals with conservative ideologies might, on average, have lower intelligence. Conservatives generally value tradition, respect for authority, and social order, and tend to be skeptical of innovation and change. Meanwhile, liberals typically prioritize values such as equality, social justice, and the protection of civil liberties. They are often more open to change and innovation. [...] If you’re a conservative, reading this might make you understandably mad. However, the subject is indeed complex and not fully understood — so take all these claims with a grain of salt.

continue reading

That explains MAGA, and their distaste for education and the educated.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Joseph Figliolia and Leor Sapir

Published: May 14, 2024

Ted Hudacko’s fate was sealed when his son’s court-appointed counsel, Daniel Harkins, wrote in his notes, “[t]hese parents have a choice, they can either continue to believe that they should be in total control of their child’s life or they can come to an understanding that those days are past . . . and give their children some independence and the ability to make some of their own decisions.”

The decisions in question? Whether to start Hudacko’s trans-identified 16-year-old son on a puberty-blocker regimen, followed by a course of estrogen.

As Abigail Shrier recounted in a 2022 City Journal investigative report, shortly after returning from a trip to New York with their two sons, Hudacko’s wife, Christine, told him that she wanted a divorce—and that their oldest son identified as transgender. During divorce proceedings, the presiding judge, Joni Hiramoto, granted Hudacko shared legal and physical custody of his youngest, but stripped him of all custody of his trans-identified son. Hudacko was concerned about administering experimental drugs and preferred to wait and see if his son’s gender issues might resolve on their own, as usually happens in such cases. To the California judge, this confirmed his unfitness as a father.

Hiramoto’s view is shared by a growing social movement bent on deeming parents “abusive” for declining to “affirm” their child’s “gender identity.” The idea that failing to endorse a child’s identity constitutes psychological abuse has spread across major American institutions and power centers and is reflected in recent court precedent, school “social transition” policies, journal publications, and several proposed state laws. Illinois’s House Bill 4876, for example, would redefine child abuse to include denying minors “necessary medical . . . gender-affirming services,” meaning parents who take a more cautious approach to their child’s dysphoria—an approach endorsed by a growing number of European countries—could become targets of investigation by the Illinois Department of Children and Families, with some even losing custody.

The Biden administration is seeking to entrench this redefinition of “abuse” with its recently published foster-care regulations. Guided by misleading characterizations and omissions of existing research, the new rules from the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) enshrine activist talking points about what constitutes a child’s “best interest,” with dire implications for foster children and parents alike.

Under the new rules, state agencies must follow specific protocols when placing “LGBTQI+” foster children in residential settings. Given what the ACF describes as the “specific needs” of these children, the agency requires federally funded providers to qualify as “Designated Placements” to serve such youth. To obtain this designation, providers must undergo specialized gender-identity and sexual-orientation training, facilitate access to “age- or developmentally appropriate resources, services, and activities that support the [child’s] health and well-being,” and “commit to establishing an environment that supports the child’s LGBTQI+ status or identity.” State foster agencies, to get federal funds, must develop and submit to the ACF case plans that ensure each child is placed in the most “appropriate setting available.”

Repeating popular activist talking points, the ACF claims that refusing to use a child’s chosen name and pronouns is linked with poor mental-health outcomes. The agency then follows a familiar pattern of citing self-reported survey data to show a supposed connection between “gender affirmation” and positive mental-health outcomes in trans-identifying kids. Surveys of this kind, however, cannot support the ACF’s conclusion that “significant mental health disparities” facing “LGBTQI+” youth “result from experiences of stigma and discrimination.”

One of the ACF’s sources, a research brief from the Trevor Project, claims that “LGBTQ youth” who say they have been in foster care had nearly three times greater odds than non-foster youth of reporting a past-year suicide attempt (notably, the final rules incorrectly cite the wrong Trevor Project survey for this claim instead of the correct survey cited in the proposed rules). The agency’s purpose in citing this study is to imply that youth suicidality is driven by how foster parents deal with the “gender identity” of those in their care. But the correlation has an alternative explanation: Youth who enter the foster system have more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) than do non-foster children, a fact linked to increased suicidality. It’s possible that foster youth with more ACEs and higher suicidality are also more likely to adopt a transgender identity as a maladaptive coping mechanism. This makes sense, given the weakness of the “minority stress” hypothesis and the mounting evidence of elevated rates of co-occurring, suicidality-linked conditions in trans-identified populations that predate their trans-identification.

The U.K.’s recent Cass report bolsters this view. In that review, foster youth were overrepresented in the first clinical cohort seen at the nation’s gender-identity clinic, with nearly a quarter of referrals having spent time in foster care. A systematic review cited in the report found that among children referred to gender clinics, maternal mental illness (53 percent) and substance abuse (49 percent), paternal mental illness (38 percent) and substance use (38 percent), and combined neglect and abuse (11 percent to 67 percent), were very common—meaning that kids at the clinic likely had a higher-than-average number of ACEs, and may have identified as transgender as a coping mechanism.

A different survey question in the same ACF-cited brief tries to establish that trans-identified foster youth are “kicked out, abandoned, or run away” at disproportionate rates because of their “gender identity.” The survey question, though, conflates running away with being kicked out or abandoned; the actual reason for running away is not specified, and the results are not reported separately for each item. The group even disclaimed that its “data isn’t [sic] able to establish whether youth were kicked out, abandoned, or ran away prior to, during, or after being in foster care.” All we can conclude from this survey is that youth in foster care, who, for whatever reason, experience dissociation from their bodies or their sex are more likely to report negative family experiences compared with their peers.

Apparently unphased by these issues, the ACF used another Trevor Project survey to justify the agency’s claim that living in supportive homes results in fewer suicide attempts among trans-identified youth. Significantly, though, the Trevor Project report does not define the term “support,” effectively leaving it up to the child respondents to define it for themselves. Based on the most common ways youth in a separate item self-reported feeling supported—having parents use the correct names and pronouns, and supporting their gender expression—however, it seems reasonable to conclude that the respondents often conceive of “support” as affirming their identity. “Un-supportive” parents could therefore refer to anything—parents who are actually neglectful, or those who refuse to use their children’s preferred pronouns, or even those who do something as banal as not letting their children buy cell phones. Given the muddled inputs, the data are unpersuasive. Elsewhere in the document, the authors disclose that the self-reported suicide-attempt rate didn’t change much between youth who reported living in an a “gender-affirming” home (14 percent) compared to those who lived in a “not gender-affirming” home (20 percent).

Further, a child’s perceptions of “support” may be conditioned by his mental-health history, independent of his trans-identification status. A study by the Family Acceptance Project, for example, concedes that, “Independent of levels of family acceptance, transgender young adults reported lower social support and general health.” This is one weakness of the “minority stress” theory and the associated research, as noted by J. Michael Bailey: it never empirically tests for the possibility that the group in question has greater sensitivity to stressors to begin with, trading on the classic correlation/causation confusion. It is possible, therefore, that youth with more severe psychiatric issues are both more likely to identify as trans and to perceive and report familial situations as unsupportive.

The ACF later asserts that “research consistently shows that when LGBTQI+ youth experience supportive environments and services, they experience the same positive mental health outcomes as other youth.” It cites a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) report to justify this claim.

The citations SAMHSA uses to support its view that “access to gender affirmation can reduce gender dysphoria and improve mental and physical health outcomes among transgender and gender diverse people,” however, are two “conceptual framework” papers, not rigorous empirical studies. These documents cannot possibly provide the required evidence. Meantime, so-called social transition—publicly recognizing a trans-identifying child’s chosen identity, a practice the SAMSHA report endorses—has not been shown to be necessary in improving mental health in high-quality research. A 2023 study from the U.K., for example, found “no significant effects of social transition or name change on mental health status.” That finding is corroborated by a new systematic assessment published as part of the final Cass Review, which found no credible evidence that social transition is either helpful or harmful. Other emerging evidence suggests that “social transition” may interfere with the natural resolution of gender dysphoria and greatly increase the chances that a passing phase becomes the basis for lifelong and potentially harmful medical interventions.

The Cass Review alludes to this possibility, emphasizing that social transition is “an active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning and longer-term outcomes.” The Review recommends consulting a clinician when deciding whether or how to facilitate social transition for children. The Biden administration’s ACF, in contrast, instructs state recipients to ensure social transition on demand, no clinical input required.

The SAMHSA report—which, as mentioned, also endorses social transition—claims that “[e]xtensive research indicates that even just one supportive adult, such as a family member, teacher, or mental health provider, can have a positive impact on the mental health of youth of diverse sexual orientation and/or gender identity; such support can reduce adverse mental health impacts including suicide.” However, the research SAMHSA cites in support of this claim looked only at acceptance of sexual orientation, not of “gender identity.”

This points to another concern about social transition: the most common outcome of dysphoria is not a transgender identity, but homosexuality. As the DSM-5 observes, among childhood “desisters”—people who once identified as transgender or experienced dysphoria but later revert to identifying as their biological sex or cease having dysphoria—63 percent to 100 percent of natal males and 32 percent to 50 percent of natal females turn out to be gay.

The ACF guidance compares objections to child gender transition with “conversion practices” and claims that multiple professional organizations agree that gender-identity conversion efforts have been “rejected as harmful.” This comparison is spurious, however, and has been addressed by psychologist James Cantor in response to an American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement on “gender-affirming care,” which made the same argument. Cantor said that the AAP’s claim about “conversion” practices “struck me as odd because there are no studies of conversion therapy for gender identity. Studies of conversion therapy have been limited to sexual orientation, and, moreover, to the sexual orientation of adults, not to gender identity and not of children in any case.” He added, “it simply makes no sense to refer to externally induced conversion. The majority of children ‘convert’ to cisgender or ‘desist’ from transgender regardless of any attempt to change them.”

The ACF’s rules treat “LGBTQI+” youth as a monolith. They assume that research done on gay and lesbian youth applies seamlessly to youth who identify as transgender. This is a well-known strategy of transgender activism: to exploit the ignorance of well-meaning Americans about the differences between sexual orientation and gender dysphoria. 

The finalized rules also fail to address the actual problems in the U.S. foster system. Data on foster-care capacity show a critical shortage of available homes. State foster systems remain generally underfunded, and the average annual turnover rate at U.S. child welfare agencies is almost 30 percent. The ACF could have endeavored to solve these problems.

Instead, the Biden administration seeks to use federal policy to cajole foster families and agencies into affirming a child’s mistaken gender identity, entrenching the idea that failing to do so constitutes abuse. The policy will compound the challenges facing some of the nation’s most vulnerable children.

[naiad-lagoon]

nanowrimo has recently released a statement about the use of ai which is incredibly disappointing and beyond frustrating. the article itself can be found here.

they state that they do not "explicitly support any specific approach to writing, nor does it condemn any approach, including ai." regardless of whether or not they endorse ai, including it in a space carved out for writers is a slap in the face to anyone who takes on the challenge of 50k words in one month, or simply of writing in general. ai is not an "approach to writing" because you are not writing when you are using ai. yes, this applies in any part of the writing process, including editing, brainstorming, and beta-reading.

the three issues listed for this neutral stance on ai are: classism, ableism, and general access issues. i'd like to touch on the classism claim briefly, and provide alternative resources.

their explanation for classism and its relation to ai usage is that not all writers have the financial means to hire additional human help for certain parts in the writing process. this is true - i am writers in this situation. i am one of the many people who cannot afford to hire people to edit or beta-read my work. this is not an excuse to utilize ai. as nanowrimo itself preaches, the writing community is absolutely massive and full of people who want to support other writers! so what can we use instead of ai? here's some options:

edit your own work! i personally find editing one of the most enjoyable parts of writing, and often prefer to edit my own work; however, i recognize editing is not something that everyone enjoys or has time to do, and there is merit in getting another pair of eyes to look at your work. so here's some more options:

friends and family - very common suggestion, but it is pretty darn effective at getting someone to read your work for free. if you are mortified by someone you know reading your writing (same), there are other ways.

critique match is not a program i've used, but i have heard good things about. it helps you match up with a free critique partner, and provides resources if you are looking to hire an editor.

there are so so many reddit communities where you can post asking for beta-readers and people will often be willing to help. a big ones is r/betareaders. you can also find a subreddit for your specific genre and ask for help.

there are discord communities too! partners in ink is a small discord server where you can connect with beta-readers or critique partners

if you are a college student, i cannot emphasize this enough, take advantage of the damn resources they give you. many many colleges have online resources with information about editing your work - albeit it is typically from an academic standpoint. many also have writing centers! traditionally they are for essay review, but very often they are willing to look over creative writing pieces as well.

engage! with! other! writers! you are on tumblr. be friendly, reblog, chat, make mutuals. ask people for help and offer help to others. no one is going to bite you i promise. heck, shoot me a dm with your work and chances are i will at least look it over.

these are all resources i have gathered from either pre-existing knowledge or quite literally 30 minutes of research. you have options, and you have a community.

[evidence-based-activism]

I have seen claims by misogynists that outcomes for children raised by single fathers are better than for children raised by single mothers, even when controlling for the income of the parent. Is there any actual evidence to support this?

Hi Anon!

I have found some interesting information about this topic, but I want to preface this by acknowledging how difficult it is it research this topic. Why? Because the vast majority of single parents are women/mothers, and even when men are single fathers their demographics are so substantially different from single mothers. As a result most of the research on this topic runs into issues with both getting a large enough sample for single-fathers and with "comparing apples and oranges" when a sample is gathered.

For example, according to Pew Research Center in 2017, only 29% of single parents are fathers, and this was a notable increase from the 12% in 1968 [1]. This disparity makes it incredibly difficult to get "matched samples" (i.e., where other traits/aspects are held constant) for single mothers and single fathers.

In addition, this 2020 study [2] showed that almost half of single mothers are in either the at-risk or in-crisis poverty categories compared to less than a quarter of single fathers. This pattern is long-standing, as this 2001 study shows [3]

This is a pretty crucial compounding factor given past evidence of the effect of socioeconomic status on child outcome. Specifically, it's fairly well established that children from single-parent households do worse than children two-parent households [3]. However, "econometric tests using a variety of background controls ... show little evidence that a parent's presence during childhood affects economic well being in adulthood" [3]. This indicates that it's some other factor (e.g., poverty, peer relations) that is driving the negative outcomes of children from single-parent homes.

All of that being said, there is some research that provides some preliminary information:

---

A Literature Review

First up is this 2015 review of research on single fathers [4]. Reviews attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the current research, and this one looked at all research between 1970-2013.

Their demographic findings:

"friends and family regularly complimented fathers and offered them more help and social invitations ... Mothers, in contrast, did not receive the same level of kudos and aid"

"in terms of income, education, and poverty, single fathers are generally less well-off than married fathers, but they are better off than single mothers"

"single fathers are ... more likely to have other adults in the household" (i.e., cohabitating with a partner, but still considered single as they are not married)

single fathers also "tend to have custody of a smaller number of children" and have custody of "older children" on average

Parental involvement:

"unpartnered single mothers rated higher on involvement than single dads on all 10 measures [of involvement]"

"single fathers spend slightly less time caring for children than single mothers, but more time than married fathers"

"single fathers are less close to and less involved with their children's friends and school, and monitor and supervise their children less than single mothers do"

"Compared to single mothers and two-parent families, single fathers had the lowest [parental] supervision score"

Child outcomes:

"no differences in the likelihood of teen marriage, teen birth, premarital birth, or marital disruption between youths in single-mother households and youths in single-father households"

"for internalizing behaviors ... and academic performance ... outcomes for children from single-father and single-mother households are similar" (internalizing behaviors include things like depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem)

but children of single fathers show higher levels of "externalizing behavior (e.g.,antisocial and violent behavior) and substance use"

"alcohol and drug behaviors, as well as delinquency rates, were highest in single-father homes"

"teachers judged youths raised in a single-father household as less successful at getting along with others and putting forth effort" and there "were no significant differences on self-concept or relationships with peers"

"controlling for socioeconomic resources, children from single-father families had slightly lower standardized test scores"

In summary, the review indicates that (1) single fathers have economic and social advantages over single mothers, (2) single mothers are equally or more involved with their children, depending on the measurement, and (3) children in single mother homes have either equal or superior outcomes to children in single father homes.

---

Other Research

I did find another more recent (2019) study [5, emphasis mine] that found "children living with divorced single mothers performed as well as children from intact families, whereas children living with divorced single fathers and stepparents were disadvantaged in academic performance and subjective wellbeing" in China. I include this study because (1) all the other research I presented is very western-centric and (2) the data source is a nationwide, representative, longitudinal study of mainland China, which are all factors that make the data high quality. That being said, I'd want to see replication of these findings before drawing too many conclusions from them.

There's also this interesting study [6] examined the effects of single-mother and single-father families on youth crime in aggregate. In other words, they looked at the community concentration of single-mother families and single-father families on crime statistics in that community. I include this study mostly because they have excellent literature review at the beginning, but I'll also address their own findings.

They found that the concentration of single-mother families was associated with more youth crime on an aggregate level. This finding is has several important caveats, however, which I'll list below. (And the researcher actually did an excellent job explaining these! It's just still a likely source of confusion.)

"In most cases a correlation at the aggregate level cannot be used to prove the corresponding correlation at the individual or household level." -> This means that their findings are an interesting examination of community trends (e.g., "lower level of social control in the community increases youth crime") but not evidence of outcomes for the single-mother/single-father/dual-parent children themselves.

The average single-father family concentration was ~3% compared to the average single-mother family concentration of 12%. -> This greatly limits the conclusions that can be drawn here (and links back to the two issues I prefaced this post with). For example, it's possible that single-father family concentration was not linked to aggregate crime statistics purely because no community concentration reached the threshold necessary to exert an effect.

There are other confounding factors that cannot be eliminated using an aggregate approach.

The important aspect of this study is that it suggests that it may not be single-parenthood itself that results in disadvantaged outcomes for the children (as is also suggested by [3]); instead it may be a community-level effect where higher density of single-parents is correlated with other socioeconomic factors that is then correlated with disadvantaged outcomes. (They even note this in the study, indicating that single-mother households "has been used as an indicator of community poverty, economic deprivation or economic disadvantage in numerous studies, and it has been shown that the variable correlates well with other indicators such as low income, poverty, low education, unemployment, public assistance and rental housing".)

---

Same-sex Parents

To preempt any unfortunate interpretations of this post (re: the need for two parents/biological parents/a mother and a father) I also want to explicitly indicate that children raised by same-sex parents do just as well as children raised by different-sex parents.

This international review [7] found that "after adjusting for socioeconomic factors such as income and education, no significant differences are discernible in health and development between children of same-sex couples versus children of different-sex couples." They also found that "children of same-sex couples outperform their peers on matters of education and civic engagement."

This meta-analysis [8] of 19 studies found the "results confirm previous studies in this current body of literature, suggesting that children raised by same-sex parents fare equally well to children raised by heterosexual parents."

This study [9] used a longitudinal dataset to find that any academic differences between children of same-sex and different-sex parents was "nonsignificant net of family transitions" (e.g., divorce).

This large, longitudinal, representative study from the Netherlands [10] found "children raised by same-sex parents from birth perform better than children raised by different-sex parents in both primary and secondary education."

This large, population-based US survey [11] found "children of lesbian and gay parents did not differ from children of heterosexual parents in emotional and mental health difficulties" and higher levels reported by bisexual parents was eliminated after "adjusting for parental psychological distress".

Another large, representative sample [12] from the Netherlands found "no significant disadvantages for children with same-sex parents compared to different-sex parents" in "children’s behavioral outcomes"

This article [13] addresses one of the major challenges to the no differences hypothesis, describing the "major deficiencies" in the paper arguing against the no differences hypothesis.

A number of other reviews/commentaries (e.g., [14-15]) point out that there are methodological limitations (e.g., limited sample size, cross-sectional study design) for most of the research on this topic, but still acknowledge that almost all the current, peer-reviewed, research supports the "no differences" hypothesis. (Also, some of these concerns have since been partially addressed.)

All of this indicates that having same-sex parents is not harmful to children. Whatever factor drives the poorer outcomes associated with single-parent families (e.g., lower economic status), it is not the mere-absence of the other-sex parent.

---

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, children in single-mother families are as-well-off or better-off than children in single father families. Both groups of children tend to have poorer outcomes than children in two-parent (different or same-sex) families. However, controlling for related socioeconomic factors (e.g., income, death in the family, etc.) ameliorates this difference.

I hope this helps you, Anon!

References under the cut:

Livingston, Gretchen. “The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents.” Pew Research Center, 25 Apr. 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents/.

Lu, Y. C., Walker, R., Richard, P., & Younis, M. (2020). Inequalities in poverty and income between single mothers and fathers. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(1), 135.

Lang, K., & Zagorsky, J. L. (2001). Does growing up with a parent absent really hurt?. Journal of human Resources, 253-273.

Coles, R. L. (2015). Single‐father families: A review of the literature. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 7(2), 144-166.

Zhang, C. (2020). Are children from divorced single-parent families disadvantaged? New evidence from the China family panel studies. Chinese Sociological Review, 52(1), 84-114.

Wong, S. K. (2017). The effects of single-mother and single-father families on youth crime: Examining five gender-related hypotheses. International journal of law, crime and justice, 50, 46-60.

McNamara, K. (2019, March). The advantages of gay parents: Examining the outcomes of children of same and different-sex parents. In Undergraduate Research Conference Proceedings (Vol. 13, No. 1).

Crowl, A., Ahn, S., & Baker, J. (2008). A meta-analysis of developmental outcomes for children of same-sex and heterosexual parents. Journal of GLBT family studies, 4(3), 385-407.

Potter, D. (2012). Same‐sex parent families and children's academic achievement. Journal of Marriage and Family, 74(3), 556-571.

Mazrekaj, D., De Witte, K., & Cabus, S. (2020). School outcomes of children raised by same-sex parents: Evidence from administrative panel data. American Sociological Review, 85(5), 830-856.

Calzo, J. P., Mays, V. M., Björkenstam, C., Björkenstam, E., Kosidou, K., & Cochran, S. D. (2019). Parental sexual orientation and children's psychological well‐being: 2013–2015 National Health Interview Survey. Child development, 90(4), 1097-1108.

Mazrekaj, D., Fischer, M. M., & Bos, H. M. (2022). Behavioral outcomes of children with same-sex parents in the Netherlands. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(10), 5922.

Perrin, A. J., Cohen, P. N., & Caren, N. (2013). Are children of parents who had same-sex relationships disadvantaged? A scientific evaluation of the no-differences hypothesis. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 17(3), 327-336.

Schumm, W. R. (2016). A review and critique of research on same-sex parenting and adoption. Psychological Reports, 119(3), 641-760.

Mazrekaj, D., & Jin, Y. (2023). Mental health of children with gender and sexual minority parents: a review and future directions. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1), 1-6.