Okay so… I am a trans person so this is coming from the other side and mostly from friends who are both not married and who do pass better but one of the things I have noticed about some gay men is that they do not want us in their spaces. If they decide you are cute and come over… Well at some point if the flirtation progresses past a point we as trans people have a consent problem on our hands because anybody who gets with us shouldn’t be surprised about what downstairs situation we got going and when during an interaction to have that conversation is kind of… Never great. Some gay guys react to trans men with the same volitile disgust straight guys do towards trans women. It’s a reaction like we cheated them by wasting their effort.

Also a lot of gay guys, hate to say it, are kind of misogynistic. They get treated as ‘not man enough’ by straights and turn that around on other targets. I am very lucky to have gay buddies who if the club doesn’t want me there will just pick a different club but we’ve definitely been spooked out of some places.

Okay… There’s a whole issue with setting yourself in between someone’s expression of frustration at something sucky they experience and the problem itself. One of the things that helps is learning to temporarily shelve your priorities. Listen to people as if you were a complete outsider. Someone is telling you about their feelings and that often isn’t intended to be in competition with your feelings… Until somebody makes it a competition. The minute you try and make it a competition you have demonstrated to that person that you aren’t listening to their concerns. In doing that you make everything about your own priorities and that person who was frustrated isn’t in a place where they have reserves of energy to be kind and you just stepped inside the radius of a problem that you yourself were before only tangential to because you shut them down. Effectively you’ve said “Whatever, let’s talk about my needs.”

This move intended or not sucks all the oxygen in the room that could be devoted to making things better into addressing your problem if some one is empathetic to you or as an extention of the inertia behind addressing problem. Neither is good.

Let’s take an example. Say I go to my boss with a problem. Say it’s a matter of policy and it’s impacting my life negatively. Now my boss maybe didn’t write the rule which created the problem but they’ve enforced it in the past. As I am expressing how this policy effects me the boss starts acting huffy and going “Oh you must think I’m such a bad boss. How could you think that? Don’t you know how much I care about the people in my employ?” All of a sudden as an employee I now have a whole new problem to deal with because this person isn’t going to address my problem, they just became a new problem for me to deal with. Now you have a frustrated employee who isn’t in a position to solve the policy problem either having to console their boss or try and correct them back on course to realizing that the policy problem… Hasn’t changed. Nobody in a place to do better has acknowledged it even exists.

What would you think about the actions of that boss in the employee’s shoes?

I don’t feel like digging through JKR’s body of work to find perfect quoted examples but if you feel inclined go back over Hermione’s advocacy yourself she is framed by author as “smuggly” shaking her collecting tin, cornering people in house common spaces until people acquiesce just to get her to go away. Every time her protest is brought up it is usually paired with some kind of value judgement device where the reader is made aware of the apathy of her friends or the people she’s advocating to or the annoyance she is on people in her space.

What Hermione does is a reasonable response for a person her age. What the author creates around that is a atmosphere of hopelessness where Hermione feels personally fufilled by the virtue of the cause but everything in the narrative conspires to make sure you know she’s tilting at windmills.

“By and large the system works” under most circumstances the system (elvish slavery) functions as intended/ without victims.

Probably not vaccinated for e coli. There’s very few options and most only work very short term. This smacks of reckless child endangerment.

I mean Cholera is kind of not the issue here. This creek has habitually tested high for e coli. An e coli infection makes cholera seem tame. You treat cholera it’s got a mortality rate of less than 1%… E coli infection has a mortality rate around 17% slightly less than one in five people who get hit die from renal failure. Those odds go up significantly for kids…

This idiot brought his grandkids to splash in this e coli laced stream. I am without words.

I mean when you look at Harry Potter through a magnifying glass it’s actually very pro status quo with a lot of issues breaking down to “the wrong people in charge” a lot of gestures made towards the sort of social problems of the society… Like look at house elves. We meet Dobby and everyone agrees that slave holding situation isn’t ideal but once we meet more house elves we learn that Dobby is kind of a weirdo and that they are effectively a sentient slave race with only exceptions like Dobby taking issue with being bound. Hermione sees this as a legitimate issue as any potential elf could be a Dobby but then great detail is placed about how annoying and virtually pointless her advocacy is but the rest of her society and the framing effectively informs the reader - “don’t think about house elves. Dobby is fine. It’s not your problem and shouldn’t be.” It’s framed as a problem to be solved on a small scale interpersonal basis because by and large the system works.

It’s generally difficult for people to critically read a narrative that throws up that many hairpin bends particularly when the set ups are made in the book that these things are social problems… but then never paid off. That it happens a fair amount innthe books is a fairly confusing yarnball. It feels progressive in the same way a company mission statement that is not being enacted in any real way feels progressive.

Neoliberalism is very specifically a breed of political thought that came about with the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter that seeks to create new markets out of previously held government bodies in the name of austerity or protectionist principles and cuts help for disadvantaged people. Think privatization of government service, liquidation of government assets under the guise of saving taxpayer money, removing restrictions/protections on the consumer market and manufacturing sector and dissolving the welfare state or services that soften the blow of being unemployed or unable to work.

Neoliberalism is often used by people on the right to describe the “Progressivish Liberal identifying party of the hour” but it is inaccurate. While Democrats flirt with Neoliberalism under the guise of courting people who like tax cuts Republicans are straight up Neoliberals. Basically old school liberalism believes in a body of rights, a reasonably unrestricted market and a democratic system of governance. Neoliberalism believes first and foremost the market will sort everything out (or is a scam so that people in government can sell it off peicemeal for personal kickbacks.)

Neoliberalism is incompatible and kind of the exact opposite of socialism which seeks to expand sectors of public protections and publicly held wealth.

I mean dude, love the energy but this isn’t a protest to those laws… that’s just going out for enough time in public to need to use a public restroom as a trans man.

Trans men getting arrested by police for ‘causing a disturbance’ by being forced to use the women’s bathroom isn’t a bug, it’s a transphobic feature. They want to make being trans as uncomfortable as possible because they think that if they can ratchet up the discomfort level less people will attempt to transition. Trans men who pass on average are massively uncomfortable using the ladies room because it’s a great way to get arrested by cops, hastled by security, banned from private property, assaulted by women, yelled at and abused because everyone assumes you are a cis male creep, they want you to suffer for being trans or they just don’t care.

Like trans women are generally the forefront of the conversation but when it comes to trans men this isn’t “malicious compliance.” it’s either compliance compliance or stealthily breaking the law and hoping nobody notices. The trans deterrent system is operating as intended.

Well the good news is that AI has zero ability to make value judgements on normalacy of veiws or interpret novel data. It’s just fancy statistics that you can manually set parameters on what to favour or rules to follow.

Just cuz it gets more of something doesn’t mean it starts picking sides. People are paid to fine tune it’s reactions and conclusions manually.

Very individualized as per need. Non-binary is an umbrella term for a whole bunch of different situations so what feels right is going to be very different for someone who feels like say a mix of masculine and feminine versus someone who has dysphoric reactions to any and all gender markers. It’s going to be different for someone whose identity is more static than say someone who fluidly bounces between extremes.

If you know someone who is non-binary that’s essentially just the tip of the iceberg of a whole discussion about how they personally interact with their body or the culture of gender. A lot of people seem to treat it as a full stop third category which can actually be a disservice to a non-binary person because it oftentimes just leads to a lot of new assumptions and frames out some of the ways they could be better treated than just as automatically genderless. I’ve heard of mixes of Mom/Dad for bigender people, just Mom or Dad for trans masc/femme folk, Completely new words that do not have cultural baggage, or just “my parent”. It’s not a one size fits all situation.

I’ve heard “Mawpaw” for a bigender person before which sounds kind of delightfully southern.

There’s a pernicious bit of socialization where women are often stymied from being directly assertive. Often they are rewarded for concensus seeking behaviour - euphemism, gentle value neutral phrasing, permission seeking, not interrupting and ceeding the floor. This socialization pattern rewards quiet and service in favour of other people’s emotions often at the direct cost of one’s own.

It’s not a good thing because it trains women to conveniently fade into the background, never center themselves publicly and builds in an instant hesitation every time they speak that takes years of work to undo. It’s effectively the female version of the socialization of men to never express their emotional needs except through anger. In this version one is denied anger or any form of strong self advocacy instead limiting women to a toolbox of subtle manipulations. It fucks women up.

If that is what was intended by this person it’s a very shitty standard to hold women to and they are a misogynistic prick. You are better off without that baggage.

People are going to feel what they feel. As a trans person I recognize that this isn’t for me. It’s a call to action to get cis people to step up and perform heroics. It’s a saviour trope with all the baggage attached.

It’s not a bad message but it also isn’t flattering to be depicted as the battered rat barely standing. It’s art. Art is going to strike you differently depending on where you stand. Both takes are valid because it’s subjective but the real pernicious bit here is somebody from a group featured in that art is telling people here how that art makes them feel and the immediate reaction is to tell them they are wrong to feel that way. That isn’t kind. It’s not empathetic. It is demanding unconditional gratitude from someone you feel owes it without reservation of quality of help recieved.

Sadly it’s true right now we as a community don’t really have the luxury of picking between good and bad allyship, we need all we can get… But it’s still kinda a shitty.

Interesting. Really hedging their bets on oil, gas and coal remaining a dominant industry over the long term huh? Not exactly a bet I would personally take but if they wanna go it’s their funeral.

I dunno about that. This status quo was created because America came out of WWII smelling like roses. All of Europe was rebuilding and so American prosperity of the time was basically like being the one only slightly scorched house on a bombed block. It’s been long enough that the countries in question aren’t in need of leaning on the one stable currency.

This could be the push needed to equalize the world stage and break off of old habits. Like take Canada for example. Food self sufficiency in Canada was always a concern. That’s why there was a tarriff on US Dairy, because Canada wanted to retain domestic self sufficiency in one of it’s food production spheres. That issue persisted through other sectors but there wasn’t a strong political motive to make that shift. The government wasn’t called to protect and incentivize strong domestic production to a great extent because the US generally has a better growing year in the south. To not have food security however is a weakness in Canadian’s self determination if things go bad. Now that things have gone bad structure will be put in place and protected meaning a semi-permanent loss of market for American interests.

What Trump has proven is American volitillity in it’s government structure and voting block and nobody will want to tie a shoddy investment around their ankles. In fact some might take it as the opportunity to cut loose a problematic ally.

It’s the case that the entire premise of popular elections is kind of flawed system. Actual leadership and technical aptitude and the ability to play to a crowd are not really the same skills at all but we treat them like they are. It is a way to select someone who will make a bunch of promises that give them popular directives… But they aren’t beholden to those promises at all.

Having a balance between groups which are hired and fired based on their technical ability to follow the directives and achieve the objectives set by elected bodies is crucial. That they persist through different governments means a continuity of service and the ability to commit to long term planning.

Honestly what most people don’t seem to get is that any actual improvement made by a government takes almost a decade to pay off. Half the time they are dissatisfied with “broken promises” it is that those initiatives haven’t had time to work because elections aren’t that far apart. There’s a certain amount of technical fleshing out, research before the fact, wrangling of contracts and trial and error in execution before anything does what it’s supposed to do which often means an elected party is praised or damned by the actions of their predecessors.

Gods, had this conversation with a bunch of Americans recently. They were trying to defend Elected judges and I just can’t fathom why. Like why would I want someone who is less trained in the law adjudicating the process of the law? I would much rather have a system where you prove you understand and can carry out the code written into law by being selected by people who actually understand the function and process of the law otherwise lawyers are going to be able to pull all manner of fast ones and the judges won’t recognize it as perversions of justice.

Elected judges always run on a “tough on crime” platform which creates incentives to throw more people in jail, make police worse and that system never, ever de-escalates. Not everything is made fairer by letting the public vote. Whenever a specialized knowledge set is in play the public is more of a nuisance when they try and put their oar in because they wouldn’t understand enough to make an informed decision if they did nothing but study for a year. It would be like taking out a public vote on what medical surgerical proceedures for specific conditions should be the norm.

We need to collectively start understanding and championing the value of administrative branches of government, departments and agencies. Without experts in their fields being invested with reasonable powers our collective gooses will be cooked.

It really isn’t that simple. The north didn’t have as much strict segregation but in a way it was because they didn’t have to. Economic pressure reinforced by subversive hiring practices, prejudice in housing and hostile attitudes kept black communities tight knit and localized which meant you didn’t have to have specific “Colored schools” because they were created by these forces squeezing folks together into controllable blocks of population.

In the South the fall of segregation had a number of nasty fallouts which harmed black communities as well. When they merged the systems there was a historicly significant loss of black teachers. People got up in arms over really stupid questions like “What if my menstruating daughter had a black male teacher” and that prejudice ensured that a lot of the teachers who understood the challenges of being black in America were no longer in a position to help students.

This meant that effectively in the North segregated schooling continued to be a thing in practice but not in name while in the South it wiped out infrastructure that was helping black students succeed. It was handled incredibly poorly and was not unambiguously good but it did change a lot of the legal categorizations and is considered a win.

Technically that was a calculated movement of it’s time. They wanted a black character in a role that spoke to an easy childhood concept of authority to imply that power dynamically having black people in a dominant respected role in social spaces is a normal thing one doesn’t need to get upset over. Hence the whole friendly cop thing.

They were aware through the gay black actor they had in the role that police was something minority communities had issues with but the hope at the time was that more diversity in the force would be a solve. It’s naive from a modern standpoint but they did try.

It was sad that they purposefully kept the gay part of the actor’s identity under wraps. They knew they were asking him to do something harmful by keeping his private life strictly secret but the actor agreed that he was doing something he deemed worth the sacrifice.