If you are against a child taking a puberty suppressing drug they want to take at age 10, but are ok with tearing off the genitals (not circumcision, the whole thing) of a day old baby, you aren’t against transition, you are against children’s autonomy.
They’re also ok with child marriage.
Are you talking about intersex babies?
Yes
Probably circumcision
Y’know, the part where they say “not circumcision” leads me to believe you are wrong
But circumcision is also something Republicans are okay with and should not be.
Lol
Inb4 they reply and say “still probably circumcision”
Whoops. Should not use social media when tired, I glossed right over that.
I have few good things to say about the man, but I appreciate that Trump is using his campaign to highlight this administrations accomplishments.
I just had a disagreement with someone on Lemmy a couple days ago who said Biden did nothing for the LGBTQ+ community. Maybe we just need more Trump headlines to educate people? Y’know, since they don’t read headlines about Biden
Lemmy is infested with right wing trolls pretending to be leftists.
They’re using the classic Republican move of encouraging abstaining from voting by highlighting Biden’s poor decisions. Trump’s supporters will vote him in if enough abstain. Inaction is action.
It’s like half of the general population supports him, and the other half supports Biden. Who would have thought different opinions on the topic would arise in a public forum.
It’s like half of the general population supports him, and the other half supports Biden.
Less than a quarter support Trump.
The bigger problem is that almost thalf of the population doesn’t vote at all.
How can the polls show trump ahead and only a quarter support Trump? Are you saying most democrats don’t vote and only Republicans do?
Yes, also polls call landlines. What demographic of people have landlines and will sit in the phone answering questions.
Okay fine. I’ll accept that. How do you know that he has 25% of the vote? Is there some other method other than polls to determine support? Genuinely curious what your logic behind the numbers are and where 25% comes from. I just feel like both sides are so entrenched in their opinions on their party that they can’t possibly think there are people who would support the other.
You need to reelect Trump in order to stop electing people like him in the future
No, I just need to post a shit ton of article about him on Lemmy lol
You need to keep posting it before every election, effectively elevating the other candidate.
Nah, I think Republicans are so deranged that they would be convinced any shortcomings are some deep state, woke, FBI, Democrat sabotage.
my enemies are my enemies because they are dumb
Stop that narrative. It will lead you nowhere
I mean, I speak from experience. I personally know a lot of Republicans (all boomers) and they would genuinely believe that. At every opportunity they are talking about the deep state, some woke shit and how corrupt the FBI is, and how there’s this massive conspiracy to assassinate trump. They all have a nearly religious view of him saying that if he dies, he’d be a “martyr” for Republicans, so that the “silent majority” will finally take a stand.
When it comes to Trump it’s literally only naive, stupid or evil that are possible explanations. All are bad.
…because there won’t be elections after him
Why would you need one if you already have the genius as a present?
Edit: obviously /s, should’ve set it earlier
It’s not obvious when you are encouraging people to vote for trump like a huge moron.
Yep, my bad
I think this is something I’ve come to realize about every candidate, even trump, when we get to the polls.Through 4 years - unless something specific stands out(like how Bush got to ride 9-11 sympathy 3 years later for reelection) most of their accomplishments and failures (especially the ones in the first 2 years) are hard to remember and require a primer before November.
“What did turnip do that was so bad in his first 2 years? Shit can’t remember, but he fucked up covid real bad and that’s enough to vote biden”
So yes its nice that he is refreshing us all on what actually had been accomplished to ensure we are all informed voting. Even if he is trying to be an ass about it.
It doesn’t matter. Cognitive dissonance is a lifestyle for these people. Which is why they’re the perfect tools for fascists
Biden did a lot of good shit. People saying he’s the same or even worse than Trump have completely lost the plot or are just RuZZian bots / useful idiots parroting RuZZian propaganda.
He certainly has passed a lot of pork and convinced low information voters that it’s something to celebrate, yeah.
Low information voters
Oh, the irony
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Americans and their stupid word salads…
I can translate you you need: the legislation that he passed has nice names but in reality each bill is filled with spending for corporations and special interests (colloquially known as ‘pork barrel spending’).
For example his climate change bill has subsidies and payouts for the coal industry, his CHIPs Act had no oversight or specification about how the money should be spent etc. Biden has approved more oil and drilling contracts than even Trump.
Many Democratic voters get their information from big corporate media outlets, who have a vested interest in protecting corporate interests themselves. These voters end up recieving very little factual information to base their decisions on, and instead end up thinking Biden has “Done a lot of good” because they were given a vague feeling that he has by the corporate media.
You are clearly not well informed. Are you not American?
Presidents don’t make legislation. They don’t introduce bills and except in unusual circumstances are expected to sign them. They can’t modify them.
Secondly, your claims that there is a bill that subsidizes the coal industry is without a source. Please provide a reference to this bill as “climate change bill” is to vague for me to know which you mean.
Thirdly, your claim that the CHIPs Act has no oversight is incorrect. Here’s a helpful quote from a helpful FAQ provided by the Congressional Research Service:
Congress may wish to exercise its oversight authority with respect to implementation of the programs and policies in the act and their effectiveness in addressing U.S. economic and national security concerns. Among other potential oversight issues: the allocation of incentive funding among various types of chip manufacturing (e.g., logic chips and memory chips, mature chips and leading-edge chips); the adequacy of funding to meet the act’s objectives; and the effectiveness of guardrails established in the act to prevent the use of incentive funding from enabling further investments in countries of concern or from being used for stock buybacks or dividends.
My suggestion, for future reference, is that if you are going to make claims you source them. They will be much more forceful and factual and you won’t sound like you have vague feelings about something.
The president does have the ability to block legislation, it’s why you often hear it referred to the president signing various items into law.
My suggestion, for future reference, is that if you are going to make claims you source them. They will be much more forceful and factual and you won’t sound like you have vague feelings about something.
That has very little to do with my statement. I’m very much aware of Biden’s shortcomings, I’m just not as delusional to think that Trump would be the better, let alone a good option here. And if we look at it historically he’s still, for what it’s worth, one of the better US presidents too.
The climate topic is just a mess anyway, because ultimately neither politicians, CEO’s, nor voters actually want actual climate action being taken, because of how it would affect them. It’s simply too late at this point to have sufficient climate action without major repercussions, so people rather live out their remaining comfy life and blend out what it means for younger people (who are, small minority aside, just as deluded on that topic) and future generations.
Yes it’s kind of mind-boggling. People pushed for decades and decades and decades for marriage equality. The Obama administration had no intention of tackling it at all. Until Joe Biden spoke. He’s literally one of the reasons we already have marriage equality. For however long we might keep it. Not to mention the nlrb union busting decision. Or the recent FTC abolishment of non-compete contracts for most people. There is no question that Biden is an outdated crusty old dumbass. Who may be far less Progressive or left-leaning than most of us would like. But he’s also ironically one of the most positively consequential presidents of the last 50 to 70 years since FDR.
The reason most people have no idea about all this. Is because they were all victories against the ownership / capital class. The ones who own all the major media. They may make a low-key passing mention of these victories. Then never bring it up again ever. But they will harp for days months and years about how some policy hurts businesses or “wealthy” americans. Manufacturing consent for their owners. It’s all by design. No one should get their information from publicly traded companies.
What? The land of the free?
My son is trans. Please vote for Joe Biden so he can have the protections he needs and I don’t have to stay up at night worrying about him.
People don’t realize (and some people just outright refuse to admit) that we are in the middle of a genocide of trans people. Trump will make that so much worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_genocide#United_States
I wish your son, my daughter’s best friend who is trans, and all the other trans people in this country the best life. That won’t happen if Trump gets in.
I am very good friends with a trans women who I worked with for a number of years. She is seriously considering leaving the US because of this bullshit. So yes, please vote for Biden.
Also, I hope you son is doing well! It’s a hell of a process.
I want to leave the US but I honestly don’t know how. I have no idea if I have any skills that’d let me get hired by a non-us company, which is kinda what’s necessary to immigrate to another country, right?
Level of strictness and skill depends on the country. Start researching so you know what’s needed.
there’s also the idea that you go to a college, possibly a community college, and then transfer to an out of country college for the degree, which I have heard is a great way to be able to live in a country, acclimate, and work from there
You can leave the US, open entrepreneurship in the other country, and have a remote contract between this legal entity and a US company.
My best friend is trans and he’s considering doing the same. It’s so bullshit that he has to leave an entire life behind because the conservatwats are so hateful.
It’s slightly comforting to think that after they’ve forced every group out of the country with their hatred and vitriol, they’ll eventually start eating themselves.
But not before they had their feast on everyone who cant/wont leave
Most people are unable to flee the U.S. Most countries will not simply accept someone without meeting specific criteria.
I wouldn’t be shocked, though, if at least one or two countries would accept trans asylum seekers.
I just hope it’d be more like trans krakoa and less like trans genosha
But they are both the same
- some asshole
Friendly reminder that everyone who believes in accelerationist BS is privileged af.
Looking at you, Hexbear… and Lemmy.ml people who deleted my comments yesterday calling out Hexbear as tankies
Sadly, the behavior isn’t limited to certain instances though
“accelerationist”? Pardon my ignorance, but what’s that?
The idea that we cannot have real change without some for of revolution, so we should make things go to their extreme, and cause some kind of cultural revolution.
No, it’s people who think accelerating the country into a hyper capitalist fascist hellhole will lead to the accelerated collapse of the capitalist system. Then revolution will bring the promised land to them. Of course they don’t realize that collapse isn’t necessarily guaranteed.
I see. I understand that as a path, but that seems like the “option of last resort” to me, and these guys want to make it the proposed one?
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Those are just nihilist. Actual anarchist generally aren’t the fuck shit up kind. Those are generally angsty young teens with very little understanding.
You are however 100% right about lemmy.ml. hexbear and Lemmygrad. They are all Marxist leninist. Which was an ill-conceived transitory authoritarian style anti communist government that was supposed to facilitate the build up to and transition to communism. But not communist itself. Which has failed everywhere it’s ever been tried. Much like capitalism if you go by it’s stated goals and ideals.
They love to blather on and on and on about communism and how great and wonderful it would be. And it would be. But everything they do is actually in opposition to it so they are very much fake/ performatory communists.
I hate that “Marxism-Leninism” refers to the brand of communism and socialism that Stalin practiced. It should be called “Stalinism”. From the little I know about Marx and Lenin is that Marx had some good ideas and while Lenin had some bad policies, he also had a genuine interest in trying to do what was best for Russia. Meanwhile Stalin let millions starve.
Also Marxist-Leninism is doomed to fail imo. I believe that in order for socialism to truly succeed, you must ensure that the world’s leading countries practice socialism; or at least ensure that your country is capable of fulfilling every step in the supply chain for any given good for now and the future, either by itself or via allies. Attempting to do it on your own like Marxist-Leninism suggests, is a road to failure because capitalism will attempt to starve you (and likely succeed at doing so).
Capitalism is inherently opposed to socialism because the true end game of capitalism is for an individual, or group of individuals, to own everything. However, they can’t own everything if a country’s culture is opposed to that form of selfishness. Additionally, the capitalist’s peasants might get funny ideas if they see a country based on mutual goodwill succeeding. Stalin played right into the hands of capitalists. He deserves to have the inherently flawed and doomed-to-fail ideology named after him.
Fuck, I barely got any sleep last night and I can’t tell if I’m being coherent or not. Additionally, now I have a conspiracy theory that this was all intentional. Tying a form of socialism that was oppressive and doomed to fail to Marx and Lenin was an intentional move by capitalists to conflate Stalin’s garbage with a legitimate desire and attempt to create a better world. By doing so, you create the belief that even Lenin and Marx supported oppression and that oppression is therefore inherently a part of socialism and communism. As such, by calling themselves Marxist-Leninists, they are falling into a trap created by capitalists to defame such ideologies like communism and socialism.
Also I wanted to make a comment about how capitalism is like economic heroin or something: extremely enticing and addictive; but I’ve got no clue where to put it.
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Someone who thinks we should have the worst right now and get it over with.
Hey not everyone from ml is a dipshit. Some of us just stumbled into ml because it was a stable and popular instance when we joined.
Hexbear on the other hand? I don’t think you would just accidentally join that place, at least not without getting banned the first time you say something against their pro fascist hive mind.
I just had another comment on ml deleted today for saying some people on ml are bootlickers. Becoming less and less of a fan lately
I’ve been a trans woman for 10 years and an immigrant for much longer. This is one of the worst existential threats I’ve faced. I have had to sit down and discuss serious contingency plans with my partner if he wins because there is no chance I’m sticking around.
I just want to exist dammit. I’m tired of being persecuted for simply existing.
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Here we go again and again on this repeat episode of Hold Your Nose And Vote For Joe Where as Joe is enacting and upholding protections for the LGBTQ community, Trump is only too happy to repeal that shit so fast. Not only that, but big boi Trump also has alluded to glassing Iran, which is way further than Biden has escalated towards. Biden is sadly, our current cold comfort here. We’re stuck between a rock and a slightly more malleable corrupt WW3 causing dipshit rock
Trump is only too happy to repeal that shit so fast. Not only that, but big boi Trump also has alluded to glassing Iran
I’m convinced that he really doesn’t care one way or another. He only cares about telling his base whatever he thinks will get them worked up.
He wants power, and will tell people whatever he thinks will cause them to give it to them.
The more people vote for the left, the further left their position will become. It’s a well established component of political theory called the Overton window.
Thank you for the reference! Learnt something new. As far as I’ve read, the Overton window is not just that, but describes a general window of acceptable ideas or propositions. Of course, influenced by possible (public) majorities.
It does describe a window, yes.
But the implication is that if you think of the political spectrum between left and right, then the largest 2 parties will always align themselves immediately to the left and the right of the median - the centre point of contemporary politics.
Move that point (through voting) and you move the policies.
This sounds like a fantasy.
I’ve voted Democrat my whole life, yet the dems keep moving to the right, and the overton window keeps moving to the right along with them.
Sure mate. You understand that your one vote doesn’t mean much right ?
Yes of course, but that’s not really relevant to the broader point here.
Democrats have won more elections than Republicans, yet they have moved to the right. So what will it take to move them left?
The person I replied to suggested that voting can move the Dems left, but I disagree. At a national level, the Dems have been captured by corporate money.
They understand the best way to get votes is through advertising dollars, and the best way to get dollars is corporate fundraising. Other countries call this corruption, but here we call it free speech.
Democrats have won more elections than Republicans, yet they have moved to the right. So what will it take to move them left?
They haven’t won enough. If people like Bernie are still losing primaries because “commies won’t win general elections” and Dems still have to go for the “middle-of-the-road” candidate while Republicans can prop up the literal antichrist, that means they still haven’t won enough to cause a shift.
Once they get enough wins (possibly in a row) that Republicans are the ones forced to go for a “middle-of-the-road” candidate, that’s when Dems will actually have to act as a left wing party to get votes.
EDIT: also, unless I miscounted, Dems actually have less wins than Republicans post-FDR.
The more people vote for the left,
LOL!
What left?
Where is this “left” that you assume exists within the US’s formal political establishment?
SAY THE LINE BART
In the primaries
For fuck sake that was literally the point of their comment you fool. At least look up what the Overton Window is before coming in this hot because you look like an idiot.
Oh look… another liberal has shown up to loudly display their political incompetence and expecting to be rewarded for it.
Yawn.
I’m not a liberal. Learn what words mean. You’re confidently arguing about things you are clearly ignorant of
I’m not a liberal.
Good thing you told me - otherwise I might have been fooled by your liberal blathering, eh?
Read real careful-like, (supposed) “non-liberal” - you cannot - I repeat cannot - move the Overton window left by voting for right-wingers.
That shouldn’t be too hard for a “non-liberal” to understand, should it?
You’re brain has been so broken by the bullshit “liberal/conservative” dichotomy fed to you by cable news that you don’t even know what words mean.
Liberals are center right conservatives. Calling a progressive a liberal is an insult.
I seriously implore you to try to inform yourself as to what these words mean. Calling someone who is borderline socialist a “liberal” immediately betrays your ignorance about politics.
you cannot - I repeat cannot - move the Overton window left by voting for right-wingers.
Yes you can. You can lower the temperature of something by pouring over it something hot, but less hot than what you’re trying to cool down.
In the same way, voting for a right-winger over a far right-winger will shift the Overton window to the left. Because left and right are relative terms, like the other guy was trying to say.
If you instead compare then on a morality scale, right now we have slightly evil vs. very evil. But there is no good.
But there is no good.
Duh. That’s why the term “left” does not apply to anything in establishment politics - and any attempts to pretend that it does is pure propaganda.
You seem to have missed my point entirely.
The left I’m referring to is obviously the democrats. They may not seem very “left”, but they are left compared to the GOP.
My point is, the more people vote for them, the further left the entire spectrum will shift.
You seem to have missed my point entirely.
No liberal - I haven’t. Your attempt to pretend that there’s anything that can be called “left” in the US political establishment is just that… a pretension. Trump is “left” of Hitler - you want to pretend that Trump is (somehow) “left” now, too?
If you are going to talk about the Dems, do so without attempts at misleading people over what the Dems really are - the “good cop” in the little anti-democratic gaslighting game that US formal politics has always been. There is nothing “left” about them and never has been.
You’ve either misunderstood me, are willfully ignorant, or not very bright.
The term left is by it’s very nature, relative. Any person with two hands will have a left-most and a right-most hand. We omit “most” from left-most because it’s superfluous. Just because a person is standing to your right, does not mean that one of their two hands is not their left-most hand. If that person moves to your left, the inverse is also true.
If the “center” of the political spectrum is too far to the right for your liking, then you can drag it back closer to what you would like by voting for the left-most major party.
If you’re driving a car and it’s drifting into the ditch on the right side of the road you haul on the left side of the steering wheel. Imagine giving up saying “well I can turn left or right but that seems pointless because I really want to be over there. Instead I’ll just pout and roll into the ditch.”
You’ve either misunderstood me, are willfully ignorant, or not very bright.
Try “all of the above”.
I forgot “or a bot” but maybe that’s included in wilfully ignorant.
It works better with more parties.
You can only get more parties by ditching first past the post voting, and pushing for something better like ranked choice voting.
And don’t you know that voting third party for president solves that problem? /s
Ranked choice would actually let people pick both an independent as first choice together with the safe choice as second (and the bad choice dead last)
I agree. Voting third party for president does not solve this problem.
Yeah only it doesn’t at all stop saying this in jrst Republicans are stupid
I can’t make any sense of what you just typed out.
Yes, but if that’s not possible…
The problem is that there isn’t a left to vote for, you either vote for right or far-right. That’s why the ratchet effect exists, both parties are right wing, just separated in how extreme they are, with the Reps being overt fascists.
Actual leftist change is not going to come from voting for liberals. Absolutely vote for Biden if you wish, this isn’t an argument against voting for him. However, if you think voting for a right winger will shift the overton window to the left, you don’t understand the nuances of the overton window.
Actual leftist change comes from direct action and organizing. Strikes, mutual aid, canvassing, raising class awareness, spreading leftist theory, protesting, actual outside pressure is what changes the overton window.
If there’s a spectrum between left and right, then there’s a point on that spectrum in the center of how the populace feels. If you have two major parties they will naturally arrange themselves immediately to the left and the right of that point. They have to in order to gather up as many undecideds as possible - they will naturally win everyone further left or further right who is not an idiot.
Voting moves this center point along the spectrum. The ratchet effect pulls to the right only because that’s the trajectory over the last few decades. If the trajectory was to the left in recent decades the inverse would be true.
Direct action and organising might also move the center point along the spectrum, but not as much as voting, and only if voting reflects the results of direct action.
None of that is actual analysis, it’s all vibes-based. The parties will serve those that fund them.
Actually it’s well established and well understood political science, ironically you’re just rejecting it as “vibes-based” because you don’t like the vibe.
Yes political donations are a problem, but the inescapable fact is, the more people that vote for the dems, the more they will move to the left.
Sadly, your position is precisely that which conservative proponents would have you adopt. Well done.
No, the Dems will never become Socialist, as they would lose funding and thus power. It takes a lot to run a party, after all.
Leftist change has always happened thanks to outside pressure.
I’m not telling you not to vote, I’m telling you voting will never be enough.
Well… it’s true that the dems “will never become socialist” due to voting but it’s also true that America will never become socialist due to activism.
Socialism to any meaningful extent is not achievable in the foreseeable.
Voting is the most efficacious method by which to effect meaningful change.
The problem is that there isn’t a left to vote for
In the current American political spectrum, there isn’t really anything that most other countries would recognize as “left”.
But given the current binary reality, whatever the Democrats are is viewed as left of the GOP rightwingnuts.
Please reread my comment. The Democrats are less right wing than the Republicans, yes, but voting for them signals more liberalism, not more leftism.
I don’t get it. Well I do. But I’ve yet to have a satisfactory conservative response to the following :
Intersex people exist. That is, at least 1 out of every 1,750 babies are born with both sexual organs. Therefore by their existence we know that there is a blurred line between genders and those people exist there. Even if I go along with them that transgender behavior is a mental illness (it’s not, this is just a thought experiment), what exactly do they propose we do about intersex individuals who are literally neither male nor female?
1 out of 1,750 would put the intersex population in the United States at approximately 194,000 individuals. For reference, that would be about 10% of the population of Nebraska or Idaho. That’s how many people I am discussing and who seem to always be left out of the conversation.
They don’t actually care about “the children” or people in general and the concept of nuance is non-existent in their worldview.
They literally don’t care how many folks are hurt by these laws. Ethics? They’ve never heard the word before. Its sad, scary and infuriating.
Oh, they include it in the bills that ban trans care: continue forcing “corrective” surgery on intersex people. That kind of surgery on the genitals of children is always exempted from the trans care bans.
That seems so cruel, I don’t get it at all. Sorry you triggered another rant, I’m not shouting at you I’m just shouting, lol.
Using conservative logic, should the babies, made by God, not be left as He made them?
It also seems cruel to mutilate a child born between genders before they have the opportunity to come of age and know who they are. I’ve heard multiple accounts of intersex people, who the doctor removed one of their sexual organs then become suicidal when they reach adulthood because they essentially feel like a castrated man, or the female equivalent.
Just imagine you were born and had your sexual organs removed as a baby, how would you feel? Pause and imagine living life castrated. If I invest 3 seconds of thought into that, I conclude, “Nah, best not risk doing that to someone, if I was born that way I’d certainly prefer a choice. Let’s let them grow up first.”
Does being conservative simply require a lack of imagination about these things? It seems so obvious.
conservative logic
These two words do not go together. There is your problem.
Circumcisioning infants is pretty fucked up in my book too.
Saw myself naked on DMT in a mirror. The nerves remember that shit.
Imagine, first thing you coming to the world and your parents have part of you cut off. We treat infants this way everyday in the U.S.
Yet, zero moral panic from the Right. Because this is about stoking the fires of prejudice. And not saving children or whatever other bullshit the latest demogogue uses to target transpeople.
They just want yet another group to stick their boots into. The reasons don’t matter at all.
Exactly. Being able to blame their problems on ‘other people’ is the basis of their identity.
You’ll never get one, because it’s not a logical position. It’s just hateful.
Well do I have exactly the brand new 1h37min queer video essay for you!
TL;DW: The modern concept of gender as separate from sex was not (originally) a progressive move. It was conservatives’ reaction to the medical discoveries of the nebulous nature of biological sex, to justify imposing the gender binary on trans people and especially intersex children.
Conservatives claim to care a lot about protecting trans kids from “radical decisions”, but the places that enact legislation to prevent teenagers from using puberty blockers are the same places that still allow and encourage mutilating surgeries on intersex babies.
It is not an accident. It is ideologically consistent with conservatives’ drive to impose their religious and cultural vision of the binary gender as a completely fixed universal truth, and they’ll use extreme violence to ensure it remains binary, fixed and universal.To them once one of either sex has been chosen then the baby is a boy or a girl and that’s it.
Yeah, that is scary. Chosen by whom? I’d imagine if anyone reading this paused and thought, “If I was that baby, who would I want to make that choice?” I think everyone would pick themselves. Men reading this would wanna pick male and women reading this would wanna pick female.
Anyway it’s fun to think about. But I’m done thinking.
I’m really stoned and ranty. Bed time.
Thanks for the chat!
They just think about intersex as disabled individuals.
Or at the rate they’re going, as subhuman filth to be sent to extermination camps.
Great. Now he’s telling them trans people don’t count. They were already acting viciously. Now Dear Leader has officially endorsed them. Fucker.
And Caitlyn Jenner will STILL brag about how amazing he is and how much she loves him
I really wish people would stop taking her seriously
So…I’m a Christian and still can’t for the life of me understand the appeal of these vicious, hateful positions.
I’m even pretty direct-to-the-bible in my theology, thus the ideas that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and that God doesn’t make mistakes, lead me to believe that choosing a different gender than you were born with is probably missing out on God’s best for us.
Yet despite some common ground with the “religious right”, I’m still to this day completely at a loss as to how you would get from literally anything you find in the bible to encouraging or applauding the removal of protections for very at-risk persons.
I promise, you can not read the Bible as a serious undertaking and arrive where these people have.
I disagree with you about the bible stuff, but I have great respect for how you handle it.
You might disagree with trans people’s interpretation of their bodies, but it sounds like you hold more highly their rights to be kept safe. Even if they may be doing something you may disagree with, we agree that vulnerable people should be protected, especially when they’re not harming others.
It’s almost like there’s no asterisk after “Love thy neighbour”!
I’m sure as a result you do not wear glasses, refuse medical care, etc right? God doesn’t make mistakes, right???
I have news for you, every bigot thinks their theology is direct to the Bible. They’re right, it’s a despicable book full of vile conduct, most of which is supported by the ugly nonexistent tetragrammaton tyrant you worship.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one…
- Galatians 3:28
This is one of the few sentiments that’s both in the earliest primary source documents of Jesus and the apocrypha:
“…when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female…”
- Gospel of Thomas 22
When Salome inquired when the things concerning which she asked should be known, the Lord said: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, and when the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.
- Lost Gospel of the Egyptians via Clement
At the time Jesus was actually alive, the interpretation of Genesis 1:27’s “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” was widely thought to mean that there was a hermaphroditic original ‘Adam.’ This was widely discussed just a few decades after the time of Jesus among the Egyptian Jews in Alexandria, particularly Philio, contemporary to Paul.
As well, at the time he was alive there was a very brutal form of forced hormone alteration by castrating prepubescent boys to leave them more feminine. Only a few decades after Jesus’s crucifixion the emperor of Rome even married someone this was done to (just a few years before the extant gospel of Mark is finalized, talking about marriage only being between a man and a woman).
The ways in which a historical Jesus would have been thinking about the notions of gender or sexuality may be different than you might think back then.
In my mind, the historical people at the center of the tradition has always been more important than the echo of them leftover in books confirmably marred by edits, revisions, and omissions. For both the old book and the new.
And I think the historical Jesus might have agreed.
His disciples said to him, “Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke of you.”
He said to them, “You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence, and have spoken of the dead.” […]
Jesus said, “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.”
The people who had a version of Jesus saying this also thought he was talking about matter being made up of indivisible parts, something only proven to be true beyond any doubt around a century ago.
It’s easy for false prophets to cast weeds among the wheat, but it’s very hard to plant seeds that mature well with the times. To do that takes true foresight. Eventually as the years drag on, what was wheat and what was weeds inevitably becomes clearer as each grows - it’s an inescapable separator between truth and fiction.
The Old Testament is flat out wrong when Elihu claims in Job that “why it rains and where snow comes from is beyond human understanding.” This knowledge had even become known in Jesus’s time, in the same Roman book published just 50 years before he was born in the Roman empire which also talked about Greek atomism and survival of the fittest.
The church, in an age where people were still peeing on their hands to clean them, appointed itself an arbiter of what was wheat and what was weeds and proceeded to uproot anything it declared a weed.
TL;DR: Having blind faith in those who have even more blind faith sounds a bit like the blind leading the blind to me. Maybe one would be less in danger of blaspheming the holy spirit and the notion of divine revelation if avoiding declaring anything absolutely true or false for sure until having sufficient confirmable information to evaluate it.
That “wait and watch” approach is even the methodology of how the aforementioned book 50 years before Jesus got all that other stuff right about evolution and atoms. A book sharing word for word similarities with one of Jesus’s most famous parables, about how only what survived to reproduce multiplied. Also the only parable in the earliest written canonized gospel which has a “secret explanation” for what was a clearly public telling of the parable itself to thousands.
God doesn’t make mistakes
I’m not going to get into all of my many healthcare issues, but I’ll just let you read about atypical trigeminal neuralgia.
If your god doesn’t make mistakes, fuck your god. I didn’t deserve that.
I suggest you make a more thorough reading of the Bible. The vitriol and hatred of what you call the “religious right” isn’t too far off if you compare it to the pettiness of Yaweh through the Old Testament, often killing hundreds or thousands of people, when not provoking absolute catastrophes, just to punish the deeds of one person or a few, or even simply due to his fragile ego.
You sound like a person with much better moral values, however. It would just be strange to me that you’d choose to worship that character when you’re clearly more inclined towards tolerance, provided you’re familiar enough with Christianism.
Deuteronomy 23:1: English Standard Version “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.
Maybe let’s not base any ideas of morality or law on the bible full stop.
Yeah, doesn’t the bible say not to judge, and to leave judgement up to the all-knowing God who is infinitely more experienced than his followers? I assume you agree with that. I wish most Christians would put that into practice and focus on being good to one another. I’m glad that you recognize the anti-trans hate and cruelty when you see it.
I’m so tired of cis people telling trans people that trans people are immoral, or that trans people don’t deserve equal rights, or don’t deserve to exist in society, or are lesser than cis people. And then cis people have the audacity to pass laws that vilify trans existence, restrict trans rights and strip them of their autonomy.
None of these people have read the bible, probably never even opened one. Their beliefs are the culmination of their echo chamber of ignorance - what their social peers have told them is ‘in the bible’.
If god doesn’t make mistakes then the existence of trans people is not a mistake but rather a test of basic regard and compassion or something of the sorts.
There’s one word in what you said that’s the lynchpin: “choice”. Trans people don’t choose to be trans. Who the fuck would choose to be dysphoric.
Yeah exactly, trans people don’t choose to be trans; they choose to treat their dysphoria. When they don’t, they often die.
The medically proven effective and successful ways to do that include transitioning, hormone treatment, etc…
Medically proven ineffective ways are what republicans push for and is what’s happening all across the US: conversion therapy, denying gender dysphoria exists at all, public shame and ridicule, exclusion from society by eliminating housing, employment, and other non-discrimination protections, painting trans people as delusional/dangerous, denial of healthcare, having the state take trans children away from their parents, claiming “transness” is a social contagion, trying to criminalize being trans in schools and in public by banning dressing in a way that’s not stereotypical or traditional for one’s sex/gender, and mocking the 40% suicide rate among trans people that are denied care and lack social support.
I’m sorry but this logic doesn’t make sense to me. If everyone is perfect the way they are, then Trump is also perfect the way he is, and he is a monster in disguise, far from remotely acceptable.
He is perfect. What you need to realise to see that is that his purpose in life is to be a warning example to others. Actually, about 100% of humans are supposed to be that but most of us not to Trumpian degrees.
If he remembers, bless his forgetful little head.
Sadly, if he doesn’t, his many fascist benefactors will. The transgender community exists in an existential horror where a genocidal fascist movement slowly builds itself against us, but it’s being led by some of the most idiotic repugnant people who have ever lived. One Google search can immediately dismantle 99% of the nonsense they say about us, but it doesn’t matter because no one who supports them cares.
I think it’s time for a crusade
Wow, what a man of the people… Truly a candidate who has the best interests of every American at heart.
Any time trump says ‘the American people’, what he actually means is himself.
The only person this guy likes is himself.
Dunno, he really seems to be into his daughter.
He wishes.
You’re so rude! He also loves whichever human lavished him with the most praise in the past 24 hours (he doesn’t have the memory to recall more than that)
Just one more example of why voting for Trump would be a big step backwards for the USA. Even if you think Biden is bad, Trump would be far worse.
And if you don’t like the notion of voting for either “Bad” or “Worse” then you should move because that’s how elections work here.
I moved here from reddit because I feel like every time you try to open your mouth there about how important it is to vote, you get absolutely mobbed by so-called leftists who “just can’t reconcile their values with voting for biden” as if they are helping the world and their brave stance is going to help people.
Seriously, between this issue and the “bear VS men” debate, I just can’t anymore, I can’t deal with people, I have no idea what super-villain has irradiated the population with a density-ray, but people right now seem almost surreally ignorant, like I always knew it was bad, but I’m beginning to finally see after four and a half decades how bad it really is out there. And it’s far, far worse than any of us ever imagined.
I had a terse argument with someone in RL the other day who didn’t know what lava was. Like, the molten rock that comes out of volcanos? They never in their lives questioned what a volcano was, and just assumed all the “red goo” that comes out just has to get cleaned up after it cools, and that the government should try to plug volcanoes. It turned into an argument because he didn’t believe my “mainstream science” explanation.
It’s okay to be dumb out there, dumb is actually good, dumb can be fixed. What’s terrifying me for our future is the doubling-down on ignorance, the weird pride in “choosing your own truths.”
Trump may get elected again and this fact alone should terrify all of us. Not just for what Trump will do in office, but what it means for our population that there are enough people who have chosen an entirely separate set of axioms and truths about the world, and just fukkin discard actual, verifiable facts. Now we have AI exploding into the world and distorting things worse. We’re in a lot of trouble.
You know what terrifies me? Even if I vote for “Bad” it just takes a few thousand people in some other state to completely negate me doing the right thing and we get “Worse.” And then we’re just supposed to accept the results. Because them’s the rules. Oh well…
It’s a stupid system of government and I don’t blame people for checking out. I wish I could just ignore it, too.
My point isn’t that people shouldn’t vote - because clearly Worse is worse than Bad - but that we don’t get to vote for Better. For that we need to protest and agitate and get our skulls cracked in by thugs and possibly killed. Our history proves that nothing improves in America without violence.
This feels like semantics. There is “bad”, and there is an option that is “better”. I don’t know why folks feel like they need to use “bad” and “worse”, other than to build pessimism. The things people are upset about can’t easily fixed by presidents anyway - we need a large base of like minded representatives to do things like housing policy and universal healthcare and education reform and climate change. It’s a lot easier to break things than to improve peoples lives, which is why it’s critical not to elect people intent on breaking things.
I don’t need to build pessimism. I’ve been aware of politics since the late 80s, and voting since 2000. I’m plenty pessimistic already.
You’ve hit the nail on the spot with the pride thing - it’s a weird trend! Maybe as humans evolve some part of brains are turning into “red goo”
Going on YouTube taught me that a huge chunk of Americans don’t just support Trump and people like him, they adore him sand encourage and cheer his awful behavior
He’s got a cult of personality to the tune of about 50 million. He just needs to convince another 20 or so to show up (or 20 of the opposition to sit home) to get the electors he needs for the presidency.
