"If so, then why does a person assigned at birth as a male but who identifies as a female need to remove the penis? Why does a person assigned at birth as a female but who identifies as a male need to add a penis? If a “woman” or a “man” is whatever anyone claims as their identity based on internal beliefs and feelings instead of external equipment—as one online influencer told Walsh, “Some people are boys, some people are girls, some are both, some are neither. Gender is all about how you feel on the inside and how you express yourself.”—then why would anyone put themselves through the ordeal of transitioning?"

what a lack of understanding of the motivations behind transitioning, of the concept of dysphoria / struggling with the stark contrast between self-perception and appearances / the way you're treated. why would a skinny teen with dreams of becoming a bodybuilder ever want to exercise and build muscle? why would a married woman who wants to have an affair take off her wedding ring at a bar? this is the crucial misunderstanding that so many people fail to even realize they're making - to be a woman is to be treated like a woman, to be a man is to be treated like a man. we define what it is to be a particular gender through our behavior and our expectations, not through some collection of meat. why is a graceful ship on the water called she? why is a deeply pitched computer generated voice perceived as a man's? because we associate these characteristics to them. why is a mother-in-law a go-to person that comedians joke about not wanting to talk to? all it is is the mother of your spouse, there's nothing inherently bad about that, right?

the entire trans "debate" relies on the confusion between what is real and what is bestowed on real things by our behavior. sure, you can say that a woman is a vaginahaver and a man is a penishaver - but are you gonna say to little David "hold on, sport, let's see your cock before you can go play with the boys"? no - you hear the name, you see the clothes, you perceive all the things that we associate with the category "boy", and you let him play and live his life

but not for long! if these trannytrackers win the """"debate"""", soon we will all be reduced to meat

i think that jokes about a discriminated minority should primarily be funny to that minority more than any general audience. i think that jokes about a discriminated minority that are designed to be funny to a general audience, but not to that minority, are not jokes that work.

trans people take these jokes seriously because they aren't funny to trans people. it's hard to not take something seriously when it's not funny to you. i want to repeat that i'm not insulted by the jokes in the special, they just make me sad. i think that these kinds of jokes don't help the community and just add onto the pile of cultural messaging against trans people. i think that this is the new battlefield of the culture war, and that trans people who react negatively to this special will continue to become targets. when you say "why is it being taken so seriously," this is why. comedy doesn't just float in the air - comedy is powerful. comedy can be used to reinforce certain attitudes, or undermine them. comedy and politics are connected to each other. you can be a carlin-type of comedian and use comedy to show how society is rigged for the powerful, or you can be the kind of comedian that uses comedy to reinforce existing stereotypes. i do not feel liberated by chappelle's humor about trans people. i do not welcome his takes on trans people. again, if i was to get up on stage and postulate about The Black Experience In America, i would fully expect to be reamed for it because i don't know what i'm talking about. when i hear dave's jokes about trans people, it is very clear that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

i don't want to censor comedy. i don't want to "cancel" anybody. it's very clear that the trans community at large is unable to cancel anybody, given that chappelle and ricky gervais and the like all still have careers. they can continue to make hacky jokes at my expense for as long as they want to for all i care. i just don't see why i have to pretend that it's all in good fun, and to lighten up - it's the standup comedian version of "boys will be boys" - he snapped your bra strap in front of your friends, but it's because he likes you, so just let him do it - it was just a joke

i will never be a model minority that puts up with being mocked, no matter whether you think that makes me a killjoy.

then i think your first priority should be to attract people to the site and not fiddle around with the deck chairs on the titanic so to speak

sometimes i question why I'm here now that pabs is gone and galen never posts anymore, spoons is gone, SBG is mostly gone - my cohort on the site is gone and when i come on here there are fewer and fewer people i feel like i can relate to

i think the problem of muting and moderation has sucked up too much oxygen on here when both can be solved with a larger userbase and the current system of filtering/mutes

like.little hubble bubbles on the spokes of the hubwheel fibonacci hootenanny, small communities lead to segregation and less friction

i don't know, i just know that the community is why I'm here and not the features of the site and i don't feel like i fit in with the users here

and maybe that's just on me

who gives a shit about edam applesauce or any magazine or newspaper in the year 2020

there are about two things in the world that don't suck and eggs is one of them, ok, eggs sustain me

i will eat an egg whoever or however puts it in front of me

when i make eggs for myself i will only ever do it one way

i fry them in butter until the white is mostly set and the yolk is runny, then i salt and pepper them

this is the only way i cook eggs when eggs aren't just a single component in something

i know exactly how long it takes and how hot the nburner should be and how.much butter because i only do it one way

who needs a recipe for an omelet eggs are like the cheapest food ever and even when they get all fucked up they're still at least edible

people who write recipes or guides for eggs are stupid motherfuckers almost universally

just cook the egg until it's the way you want it to be

i will punch anybody! don't fight me! I'll cry!

the year has begun wonderfully

now going by new name and pronouns openly (with the only people not knowing are the ones it hasn't come up yet around them with): parents also like the new name (my mum and i teared up together talking about it) and trying their darndest to use em - it's amazing how much weight is off my back already

3 days into the new semester and I'm feeling good about academics so far, things are more interesting so far at least so we'll see how it goes

i went on a bountiful shopping trip and finally found some comfy tank tops among other purdy things

gonna start hitting the gym again this weekend / upon getting a feel for how the flow of each week will go / when the january crowd eases slightly

also gonna make a bunch of phone calls for haircut / piercing / therapy appointments to get the ball rolling on all of that

updates pending

i am:

in college

making friends + meeting people

doing well in classes

feeling happy and confident, about myself and the things i'm doing

i have:

gone on a date with somebody (verdict: just friends)

gone to my first futbawl game (verdict: the student section is fun, but standing for 3 hours on concrete makes my feet hurt)

got invited to a linguistics research lab thing by a professor (verdict: very excited - first meeting on friday)

Thoughts

This is the happiest (and most consistently happy) that I can remember being, if not ever, then for a long time. I see no reason for things to get worse, and a lot of reasons for things to get better in the next little bit / the future.

(it's amazing how much easier things are when you consistently have energy and don't hate yourself)

Life is goodski.

baseball is the most zen of sports - not "Zen" in caps, but zen all lowercase

you go to a baseball game because you want to sit outside for a couple hours and enjoy the weather / think about nothing in particular, and sometimes something mildly interesting happens and you get to participate in the group happiness of a stadium full of people entertained by a home run or a clever bunt or something

baseball is the game you take your kids and your grandkids to to eat some popcorn or peanuts or a hot dog or something, and get ice cream after the game

you can enjoy baseball on any level of understanding of it from "jack shit" to "nate silver", and that's okay, because actually going out to see a baseball game is not really about the game

that's why there are 10 thousand games per season and they play through the summer is because baseball is about slowing way down and enjoying little things in the moment you experience them

the "exciting" part of baseball is in the playoffs so if that's your goal just wait until then

there's an unaffiliated minor league about a half hour away from here with 4 teams and one stadium - they have a little plaza with food vendors and a playground, and there's a grass hill in the outfield that you can sit on and watch from, and they have little gimmicks to get people there like fireworks and a dog that gets the bats, and there's beauty in that experience that's really important

there's baseball happening in the middle there but the important part is everything on the edges

i was thinking a few seconds ago and i'm going to call these people "thought daddies"

a thought daddy is some guy (they're almost always guys) aged >30 with a college education, generally white (or off-brand white) - they can be gay, but they aren't normally, and the crucial part is that they're all writers or scientists. if they're a scientist, their specialization basically doesn't matter at all

because all thought daddies have big thoughts about the whole world, and they write so many books, and they know why everything sucks so much (there are no optimist thought daddies)

and science fetishists cluster around these people because they're just opinionated turbonerds with power, as opposed to them (the powerless ones)

i don't understand why cynicism means you have to take people at face value when they say they have all the answers - when somebody tells you "i'm the rational, right one and the people that disagree aren't logical," doesn't that set off some alarms? why are these people exempt from questioning? just because they say they're right? because they confirm the beliefs you already have? i'll never understand that

was freud right all along? is it a father figure thing - they fit the dad mold so well, they're so comforting with the answers, sometimes they have beards

i guess it doesn't matter too much in the end

"don't report on it, it encourages them" is the "just ignore it and they'll stop bullying you" of the gun control world, and it's a reddit comments section-tier analysis of the situation

i wish i could spit on an opinion

There are two problems.

I like to call the first one (since right now, when I made it up) CONTROVERSY-AS-DISCUSSION. CONTROVERSY-AS-DISCUSSION (CAD) is what you do when you have no news, but you have to write about something otherwise you don't make any money. Here's how it works:

1. Take any divisive social issue (race)

2. Find someone who has an opinion about it (megawhitey)

3. Feed the opinion into the media ouroboros

4. KEEP FEEDING

5. Success!

You can write articles debunking the original opinion, articles debunking other articles, hot takes, thinkpieces about thinkpieces --- going on forever. Nobody would care about what this guy had to say if it wasn't used as ammunition by these people. They're pretending to report on something that they made up out of thin air. Internet journalists are the agents of controversy (megawhitey knows this too), so this story gets picked up by the right-wing sites instantly - but I'll get there.

Look at some of the titles these articles have around the time this started to take off:

Google employee's leaked anti-diversity memo sparks evaluation of tech culture

Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

Right away, it gets called a manifesto. This random guy's craziness is a manifesto? Is it that important? Fuck you.

SECOND PROBLEM: It's not really crazy. It's pretty mild. It's not really right, either, but that's not the point. When things like this get drawn into the culture war, they immediately get painted as extreme.

(here on hubski, we're smart, we're moderates, we don't buy into the system, man, we know that this guy isn't a nazi)

But now this guy is hanging out with a lot of wannabe nazis smart scientific gentlemen. Dangerously/occasionally reasonable-sounding gentlemen. I'm assuming this guy wasn't a crypto-fascist, but maybe just a regular (friendly) conservamoderate? You know - the kind that shakes his head at how dumb these kids can be about race and sex, but doesn't quite tip over the edge into being alt-right?

(he'd have to be alt-right because he's too young to be rightright)

Now he's been driven into the arms of these people. Because he probably thinks he's right, right? He probably thinks all he was doing was making a reasonable point, with !!science!! and !!analysis!!, and he's getting shouted at by ev-er-y-body with a blog/twatter/"journalistic position" on the internet. Except for the fine fellows at

The Daily Wire

Breitbart

Jordan Peterologist the Canadian Psychologist, INC

n'all that. Because they're taking him seriously, and not shouting at him, and calling his critics crazy liberals obsessed with political correctness. Which is what he was talking about in the first place.

SECRET THIRD PROBLEM:

Could we talk about diversity without sparks like this setting everything off, almost like we care?

I didn't use my CAD abbreviation at all after I defined it, too. That could be the fourth problem here. The fourth problem might be this comment as a whole.

Meh.

A significant percentage of people here identify as feminists or, ynno, are female. Or Black, or LGBT, or whatever. Hubski is a place generally free from Men's rights activists or Gamergaters or Stormfront brigades or much of the rest. It's a popular opinion here that organizations devoted to being "anti-SJW" end up as vectors of hate. Isn't it funny how you're using "social justice" as an insult, a term that represents equality between genders, sexualities, and races?

Free speech is the right to say what you want, not the right to be free from criticism. More to the point, it's the right to say what you want and not being censored by the government, not private individuals or websites. Calling "free speech!" as a defence is saying that the good thing about your argument is that it's technically not illegal to express. That argument is mocked because it doesn't make sense.

All that doesn't mean you can't stay. But you shouldn't expect a MRA circlejerk, and you shouldn't expect to be able to pass without a good argument.

In the first comment:

Yes, there have been many times throughout the course of history when the consensus has been incorrect - the earth revolving around the sun, for example. However, Just because we have examples of Consensus being incorrect, does not mean we should continually dismiss it as being incorrect.

The important thing to remember is that consensus is not enough. Consensus has to be something that you use as a first step, but can then back up with evidence. If the evidence doesn't match up, the Consensus is wrong, but this also depends on what evidence the consensus had to go on at the time. New evidence will change the consensus.

I think it is better to say "There is no such thing as science by consensus" rather than "There is no such thing as Consensus Science".

In the second comment:

Well that depends on what someone is trying to use his argument to say. If one is trying to say "Consensus isn't enough", then of course I agree. If someone is trying to say "Disagree just because it's the consensus", then I have to disagree, because that doesn't follow Crichton's argument.

If someone is saying "There's no such thing as a scientific consensus", then I also have to disagree because that's not really the point of what Crichton is saying. What he is saying, fundamentally is that "Just because something is a consensus doesn't mean it's correct, and so using consensus alone is insufficient evidence." Furthermore, he goes on to say that one person with verifiable evidence can "overrule" a consensus opinion. He's not wrong, but as they say "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The reality is that this very rarely happens, and it is even rarer for new evidence to be found to actually be in contradiction of the consensus. Consensus changes very little in science because it is based on evidence.

There's your argument. It's a different interpretation of the quote. I'm going to make an assumption here (because you haven't made an argument of your own) and say that you're using the quote to say something like "Consensus in science doesn't work and should never be trusted". The gist of what I think coffeesp00ns is arguing is something like "Consensus science shouldn't always be trusted, but also not always be distrusted."

How's that?

Experimenting with formatting here. These are example sentences from a translation help guide, unchanged in text but reordered.

The sun shines.

Sugar tastes sweet.

The streets are filled with people.

The sun shines.

These oranges are juicy.

I am very happy.

The sun has been shining.

We should eat more slowly.

Have all the leaves fallen from the tree?

The sun shone.

Can you come tomorrow?

Bring your friends with you.

It's raining.

Does the robin sing in the rain?

I shall stay at home if it rains.

It's raining.

Henry's dog is lost.

I have lost my blanket.

The rain came down.

How wide is the river?

We could see ourselves in the water.

I hope the rain stops soon.

A company of soldiers marched over the hill and across the meadow.

They popped corn, and then sat around the fire and ate it.

I usually sleep soundly.

The little girl's doll is broken.

The little girl seemed lonely.

The sound of the drums grew louder and louder.

I awoke early, dressed hastily, and went down to breakfast.

They heard the warning too late.

Once wild animals lived here.

The fire feels hot.

Are you warm enough now?

The rain has stopped.

Slowly she looked around.

Does the sky look blue or gray?

The sun is rising now.

The sun is shining again.

I am tired, but very happy.

Why is that? It was very funny.