The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZAbKU-JzE

My problem is with associating it with feminism, it’s offensive to me and factually inaccurate. TERF talking points are usually gender essentializing in a way that is contrary with radical feminist viewpoints, for example, and lots of TERFs now distance themselves from feminism intentionally as they coalition with the right-wing. “Gender critical feminism” is not feminism at all, and better characterized as fundamentally anti-trans rather than fundamentally feminist.

Oh, sorry - it was hard for me to follow your comment as well, but here’s my understanding:

We read about OP sharing nudes with a friend.

TERF warns OP that they are sharing nudes not with a fellow woman, but with a man (TERF is assuming friend was a trans woman, assumes OP is a cis woman).

We expect OP to reveal they are actually a trans woman, but instead we learn OP and his friend are cis men.

Does this seem right?

Sorry, these moments make me feel like I must be autistic or something, lol

I’m not sure I understand what the transphobe is saying (I don’t want to call these people radical feminists, they’re not).

She sees an exchange where two people talk about exchanging nudes, and she assumes they were both trans women, so she thinks she’s exposing them as men because they aren’t acting like women (who would never share nude photos of themselves)?

It’s honestly confusing to me (lots of cis women share nude photos, though not usually to their friends AFAIK).

Have you considered that your anger can have consequences for people on the other side, and that this can even be harmful - and that if you feel disgusted or upset about something it doesn’t always give you the right to express that anger directly at someone?

I mean, I want to be sympathetic, I get how a corporate and sanitized internet can feel wrong and changes the kinds of community that are possible, e.g. young boys on Xbox live were known for saying vile things and riling one another up (as boys commonly do), but as someone who was also present in that culture at the time, not everyone felt at home or comfortable in that environment, and the bullying and culture often made me feel like I couldn’t enjoy those games.

Sometimes tolerance and civility is a small price to pay in exchange for making spaces accessible to other people. That said, I’m not sure every space needs to be like this - so again, I want to be sympathetic here.

Why do you feel entitled to express anger or hatred toward people?

I see propublica, I upvote

I think it’s important to clarify what is left or right because that’s how people talk and think - a lot of political language is warped or difficult to clarify. When I explain what liberals are to people in the U.S. they simply refuse to believe me. They think “liberal” can only mean “the left” and this has a whole set of assumptions built into it. When I ask them about the Liberal party in Australia they legitimately don’t understand it, and it seems like people are extremely stubborn around political topics and unwilling to believe you when you say something so against their understanding.

I think whether a “communist” or “socialist” is left-wing depends on a few things, I don’t consider Marxist-Leninism a left-wing movement or ideology for example.

I also tend to be skeptical that ideology is relevant to political movements, and that most of the time politics is reduced to the struggle of different constituents who pragmatically use ideology to manipulate people into supporting that constituency. Much like racism was leveraged to get the agrarian, southern whites in the U.S. to vote for the interests of wealthy landowners in that region, I think ideological promises or affiliations are often used to whip up support and then dropped once elected in favor of whatever is needed to get things done.

Sometimes I think ideology applies, it’s hard to understand the particular flavor of George W. Bush’s imperialism without understanding the Christian motivation to wage a religious war, but even that is ultimately more about civilizational struggle" than it is about any particular religious or theological belief.

Anyway, I just mean to say that most political language sabotages political understanding, and that maybe understanding is a tricky endeavor.

I don’t really see what is wrong with authentically egalitarian politics, so I’m inclined to think the “center” is just a euphemism for right-wing.

If a left wing movement fails in its egalitarianism, like when the USSR had slave camps, then I think we should not think of that movement as left wing at all, it just fails the definition of being left wing.

The common response to this is that it is a form of no true scotsman fallacy, which I think could be a legitimate concern since you might define a left wing ideal as the definition and anything failing to live up to the perfection of that ideal is not “left”. But on the other hand, I don’t know how else to consider some politics authentically egalitarian and worth supporting and others inauthentic or corrupt and embodying hierarchical or right-wing tendencies. Maybe there is no bright line we can draw or reduce to a logical equation, but I would like to think there is still some value in evaluating which politics to support (i.e. which politics are furthering egalitarian means or ends).

yeah, definitions are hard, but in general I tend to think of the right as promoting traditional hierarchy and the left as being egalitarian.

I think being afraid early ballots won’t be counted is just playing into their hand because it prevents you from voting early - they probably want as many people to wait for election day as possible so people will bail on extremely long lines, they can try to shut down polling locations, they probably hope that people have emergencies or other issues that prevent them from voting, etc.

This is just classic voter suppression.

EDIT: I also wanted to point out that Republicans are pushing early voting this year, so they are unlikely to throw out early ballots as a strategy (whereas that seemed like a strategy they were trying to pull in the past, hence the flip-flopping on whether to vote early when in the past they encouraged only voting on election day).

Either way: please, please guarantee your vote is counted, do not risk it.

let’s keep it that way, the right-wing should be unwelcome everywhere

Who did she vote for?

Yes, lots of trans people live in Texas and Florida, that’s exactly what is terrifying about these laws - there are real victims.

If you’re in a swing state I encourage you to find a way to vote early, waiting for election day is an unnecessary risk. (A lot of places have in-person early voting, for example.)

If you’re not in a swing state, admittedly it matters a lot less what you do.

I’m in one of the worst states, I’m scared about where things are going …

FYI Texas has been marked as a “do not travel” state on Erin Reed’s trans risk map: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/final-pre-election-2024-anti-trans

Can confirm, I’m a woman who points and laughs every time I see a cybertruck IRL

thank you!!

pleasantly surprised myself