If you are unhappy here I assure you there are others to choose from. However I have no particular desire to delve on someone else’s behalf particularly since when so many say “freedom of speech” the term so often boils down to just wanting to say slurs or phobic commentary. Either this place is good enough to use with the design of etiquette the people who came before you set or it’s worth accepting the inconvenience of moving on and finding something better on your own.

I wish you luck in your hunt.

See I don’t think the “tribe” is the trouble when one is given the option and space to choose or abandon their tribes freely with no cost. If this particular culture isn’t your jam there’s plenty of others that do similar that might be to your taste.

Applying the trauma of racism, religious persecution and so on to a digital place that is one of many… Doesn’t feel genuine. I have a lot of feelings about places becoming toxic through allowing racist/phobic stuff to thrive but it’s not like the people booted from spaces who hold those views are shut out in the absolute cold. There are spaces where their veiws and comfort is centered it just doesn’t nessisarily overlap with where I am.

Saying we must accept absolutely everything because “tribes are bad” seems to apply some axiomatic principle to the lowest of low stakes social clubs. The Internet is a string of endless bars next to each other, if you don’t like what one place is serving there’s another one down the road.

On the topic of echo chambers - At what point did we decide that a bunch of people over a wide geographical area with similar interests and a common code of standards/preferences of civility… Is a bad thing?

It’s kind of how social clubs exist irl.

Eh, I have seen enough of what happens to places that favour so called “freedom of speech” or no moderation over valuing comfort of vulnerable users. There’s plenty of places that exist that have “freedom of speech”. Rather than making this place just like those places why not just go to a pre-existing one or start your own?

As a gay trans guy who grew up in the 90’s trying to sort out the toxic masculinity/internalized misogyny while fully closeted and being unaware that other trans men exist is a trip. Like doing all that “I have no emotions and refuse anything remotely girl-coded” song and dance kind of made me into what looked from the outside like a “pick-me” for years and I was relentlessly pursued romantically by people I just wanted to hang out and drink beer with. It was isolating and fucked up even if the behaviour soothed the dysphoria.

Had to address the internalized misogyny thing first, realize that was not motivating the trans portion of the issue and then had to work on getting off the toxic sauce that felt so darkly affirming and actually spend time with cis men who had properly deconstructed their own masculinity. Now I’m generally way better off and have a bunch of folk whom I brunch with who gas each other up over cocktails.

And trans men, don’t forget about us!

Real bloody fun to be arrested by police srripped and humiliated or run out by security guards or assaulted by patrons all while being treated like perverts for following idiot laws to the letter by peeing in the “correct” bathroom…

Cis folk… Are you doing okay? We of the trans community are getting concerned for you.

This is a very America centric veiw and even if it is a steel man it deserves a counterpoint.

After WWII most of the nations who were old empire builders were decimated. The general feeling was even those on the winning side didn’t feel like they’d won. The rebuilding was slow and economic austerity lasted for decades.

The American prosperity of the 1950’s and 60’s wasn’t “normal”. America didn’t have international competition it otherwise would have and that power gave them bargaining rights which made them both culturally dominant as they projected a sense of prosperity and politically powerful due to the resources at their disposal. Opposition to America was potentially disastrous and America threw their weight around like crazy. They expanded their military with these resources and established bases in countries too weak to oppose them.

America came out of the war with something of a Big Damn Hero complex. Communism, for all it’s perceived threat was also a handy excuse to pursue expansion and in keeping American supremacy in place. Whether countries wantes to be “protected” or not really has a lot of across the board nuance. A lot of American political will was coercive and a lot of the things done in the fight for “democracy” were disproportionate and horrific.

Really a lot of the American supremacy at bottom was might makes right. With the world finally recovering economically and now able to speak as equals the US is using measures that demand a return to that economic supremacy and stranglehold. The larger sore points are growing. The world doesn’t need one big power in charge. They don’t need a king with a standing army. They want to make their own choices and have freedoms to not conform to whatever America wants and the attitudes Americans show to disregard that will is garnering response.

Her last name is Wilson… Is there some really terrible Wilson I don’t know about?

The short answer is it’s not books. It’s mostly licencing deals in the form of video games and merchandise… However HBO is about to put forward a new series that JKR will have executive control and an executive sized pay check for.

It’s the “well it already exists and licencing deals are already paid, might as well watch it/play it/own it” that keeps the whole engine rolling on. Every time there’s a little bit of advocacy to disengage from the fandom it is always spun as “too late” or focuses on the books or death of the author… But all that’s really required is ambivalence.

Inevitably the new HP thing will come out and whether or not trans people mention anything people will drag up the controversy, use the reminder to brigade the spaces trans people connect online, try and goad their trans coworker for a commentary and set off yet another flurry of right wing backlash that makes elevating the franchise a patriotic duty to “stick it to the moralizing trans people to show them who is boss”. All of this causes more cultural pressure on a population already underwater with being chased out of the public sphere but it will be framed as a just retaliation for a perceived slight.

It’s a song and dance that will continue ad infinitum as long as it’s profitable because appearantly nostalgia is worth turning a blind eye to the where the money goes.

Your premise seems to have little regard for scale. Yes people are shitty but how they allocate the resources given to them matters.

Your argument here is nebulous fictional supposed evil people are probably doing bad things which allows you the comfort of not figuring out who is doing little harm vs a lot of harm because under your framework it doesn’t matter. As long as any actors real or imaginary in the system are bad you are absolved from participating in trying to alter market forces in your own small way.

To others on here there’s a difference between someone who did a shitty thing or has a shitty belief and one whom is tied into a direct political action block they are funding off of the proceeds they get from licencing their intellectual property to video-games and HBO series they are producing right now. This isn’t really about reading the books you already own or the DVDs you already have. It’s about killing the public interest that is keeping the author relevant and making her megaphone louder and the lawyers she funds to fight Supreme Court cases to disenfranchise trans people richer.

Scale is the main consideration.

Statement wise “I don’t want the government to tell me what to eat” or variations could mean basically anything. Most of the time it’s posturing on behalf of the idea that a lack of government regulation is a good thing which ignores a rather bloody history of food suppliers adulterating food with harmful substances in the name of preservation / cheapening production cost or using production practices that cause the likelihood of contamination of food.

Once you scratch the surface of the argument you can usually figure out more exactly what they mean and it often isn’t things like government subsidy programs publishing food pyramids based on shady science and economics rather than in the interest of health.

Often it’s based out of perceived personal inconvenience or the appearance of moral judgement such as when there’s some sort of health labelling initiative.

In Canada there are a lot of things that are not considered legal additives for food that are used in the US and the difference in strictness is in part because the Health care system in Canada is funded publicly. Producers of foodstuffs cost the government money directly if whatever they put in it has no nutritional value and causes known health problems. Rather than let companies create messes and tragedies which the government is on the hook to clean up when people’s health fails they remove the issue at it’s source. In the US there’s less incentive as these costs become scattered in the form of individual medical bills and oftentimes the savings are from food being shelf stable for longer. Shrugging one’s shoulders at the fallout or claiming its an exercise of “freedom” is in service to those who make money hand over fist.

Hey, Non-binary trans masc person in trades here.

I can tell you how I perceive different types of co-worker if it helps you want to dial in what it’s like on the other side of the experience. There’s layers to the whole situation and as non-binary folks we understand what we are asking for isn’t automatically going to click and requires people to figure us out.

First up : Most of us end of day aren’t going to rock the boat for anything less than fully agregious behaviour so calls to report other people for being mildly offensive are probably not actually going to go anywhere. Most of us are scared of being labelled “a problem” so we just take the hits when they come. If you are a boss and notice a non-binary person sticking closer to specific people and avoiding others there’s a good chance that they’ve found the people who are safe and avoiding ones who aren’t. A great accommodation that can invisibly help is just to recognize this strata and if a task nessesitates putting people together try and pair along these lines. A lot of co-workers wait until other people aren’t around to let their nastier behaviour shine.

Now to co-worker types. Aside from the full on transphobe or problem persons there’s a range of different stages of cool people.

The “I don’t really get it” Co-worker pays lip service to the polite aspects of using pronouns. They are the type to introduce you to others by misgendering you and then flap their hands and go “Oh no sorry ‘they’”. We know they don’t get it or don’t really care. The misgendering still hurts but they are fairly benign. They make these accidents non maliciously and are afforded grace. If they step in it we basically disregard because they aren’t really worth the effort of getting too comfortable around. We make these accommodations for strangers daily. Annoying but nessisary.

The “in training” co-worker is one whom is encountering their very first trans person. They want you to be their Obi wan and their enthusiasm is a bit of a double edged sword at times. It’s tiring to teach people to dance when they keep stepping on your feet but the job needs doing. Some of us veiw this as our own brand of service to the cause of normalizing ourselves more widely. Some of us just don’t want to be bothered. Either way, just wanting to learn is heaps better than ambivalence. If you fuck up something, don’t make a big deal about it. It’s not that you’re a terrible person and should have known better. Our stuff takes practice and we know it’s not intuitive.

The “A little too up in our shit” co-worker is excited to know the real you but looks at you as a beautiful creature in need of preservation. They might seek to advocate on your behalf or behind your back but the attempt is clumsy and often at odds with a non-binary person’s desire to just get through the workday as a regular human and not make waves. Good enthusiasm sure, we’re probably friends but for the love of God we’re adults and we can sort out our own shit if need be.

The “Understands the Assignment” co-worker is just comfortable to be around. They don’t have to be the most tuned in to all the nuance about our specific needs in ways we require more out of partners, family and friends but they treat our basic requirements as no big deal, maybe they occasionally ask questions to check in if they catch us struggling or reacting but aren’t going to narc to the boss on our behalf. They either avoid all stereotypes associated with sex or in the case of trans mascs/trans femmes they treat us like one of the boys/girls. Gold standard.

Hey, enby here. While I definitely benefit from they being a default I have enough binary trans friends who have this experience. What the person you are replying to is giving you is something referred to as nuance. A solve put forward by a well meaning cis person doesn’t automatically work just because it seems like it should to you. Sometimes it causes new problems and when someone tells you about them it’s a good idea to not assume it’s them trying to be a dick or difficult about something but actually explaining why that solve isn’t always a good thing.

If your intention is to make a trans person actually comfortable instead of getting defensive then listening when these things come up instead of telling them they are trying to be trouble on purpose is the play.

Not everything works for every trans person and inside the trans community there is something sometimes referred to as “the coward’s they”. It’s a well known phenomenon where a physical transition gets to a certain point the brain stops easily registering and sorting someone as being their birth sex because they seemlessly look and act as their gender so the automatic neurological system of assigning them a sex value flips fully to the new and desired setting. You see it on conservative media sometimes where they slip up and use the actual correct pronouns and have to correct themselves back over to using the wrong pronouns… Problem being is it causes the same mental redirect issues for a Conservative actively dodging the automatic reaction as learning to use Non-binary pronouns so as a compromise these people use “they” instead because it is easier to trick the sorter and strand themselves in the safe neutral ground where they can identify a person as “not actually a woman/man” without triggering their audience by using correct pronouns for a trans person.

When you use they/them pronouns for a binary trans person it’s interpreted by the brain of the trans person as you seeing and reacting to all the aspects of their body that makes them visibly trans and your brain’s automatic sex recognition system sorting them into this “not enough” category. It’s effectively less hurtful than full misgendering… But it still pings the bit of the brain that is seeing their own body through your perception via your words. It causes they same dysphoric reaction where their mind picks over all the parts of their body that would cause you to react by misgendering or degendering them. The whole point of preferred pronouns is to help us stop that mental reaction from happening as much.

It is perfectly safe to use they/them pronouns for cis people who do not have dysphoric reactions at all and for non-binary people who actively use those pronouns but if someone rocks up looking like they are trying to project a full binary situation it’s worth going for the full binary pronoun option because they are specifically putting in the work to be as obvious as possible so that people know that’s what they want.

I think you are placing the bar for facism a bit high friend. You don’t have to be in government or influential in any way to be a fascist. You can be a homeless person who hasn’t spoken to another person in a year and still be a fascist. You can also be a fascist without believing that you are…

Fascism is both a set of beliefs taken to an extreme and actions wittingly or not done that furthers the power or reach of an organized group who holds those beliefs. More or less it means facism can be something you do rather than something you believe strongly in. Your rank and file facist is tricked into the position.

Joe Rogan is either a facist or a puppet/ tool of facists that serves as a algorithm kidnapper into their pipeline to normalize their veiw points. Whether Rogan himself holds these beliefs personally is kind of irrelevant. It is the use to which he has been put and the damage is done.

Absolutely. I belong to a non cheating group. It’s just seems completely unfathomable that it could happen. Most of us are in 15+ year relationships and are friends with everyone. It’s not just a “the women are friends with the women, the men are friends with the men” situation. We got a blend of genders all participating in the same hobbies. There would be so much social cost to cheating it would be kind of insane.

Where I work though there’s a decent amount of drama in that regard though and I have noticed that one common factor is that the relationships are atomized. They either keep their old friends going in and there’s almost zero expectation of their partners integrating into each other’s friendships or there’s just this expectation that men and women are fundamentally different creatures. That whole men are from Mars women from Venus shtick. From the outside it seems like emotional distance where people look at each other like they aren’t targets of empathy - more like they play by a book as if they can just put the right inputs in they will get the desired outputs.

I know this is entirely anedotal and that anybody could theoretically cheat for any number of reasons… It’s just something that I noticed about the groups of cheats that I am aware of.

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.

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.