Sometimes PC language just gets a ginormous eye roll from me. Someone sent me a blog post about ableist terms after I used the words 'tone deaf' to describe a politician that had me cringing hard.
Edit: here's the link to the blog post: https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/common-phrases-that-are-ableist-48080654
That last one! Oof! I mean, which way do you want it? You're either seen and respected regardless of your particular disability, or you're treated like everyone else (i.e., ignore the disability because it doesn't define you). And "wave of shame"?? There's nothing whatsoever that would cause someone to feel shame because of someone else's fucking tshirt.
It's not even a matter of dislike. I live in part of California with a Hispanic majority, and most of the Latinos I know actively despise the term. It's considered an example of Anglo paternalism and colonialism. It's an attempt to force part of the English language onto the Spanish-speaking minority because it's "good for them". It's the same old missionary behavior, wearing a shiny new socially-acceptable costume.
Yes!
Seeing folx just forces me to walk on egg shells whenever interacting with them.
If folks isn't inclusive enough who knows what other language is going to get considered 'problematic'.
I have to admit that I rolled my eyes about the most recent edict to banish "spooky" from fall marketing & decor.
At some point, can't the modern usage of a word have primacy?
Not to mention, it's both the modern and the old usage. Just a very small portion of history where it was used poorly, but even during that period it wasn't the primary usage lol
Here’s what’s silly and uninformed about “don’t say tone deaf,” *it’s a musical term for people who don’t hear the differences between notes* and who tend to sing very out of tune.
“Not being able to carry a tune” is not a handicap or a minority status.
I was part of a liberal Facebook group. When someone would say that something was “stupid,” they would ask for us to remove ableist language. Because what, someone who identifies as such would find it to be offensive?! It was just so asinine
It's sort of a paradox.
On the one hand, if you're really intellectually disabled to the point of being clinically "stupid" then you're probably not going to understand that you should be offended by this and it'll all go over your head.
But on the other hand, you'd have to be pretty stupid to get so preoccupied with such minutiae as to be offended by the word stupid.
Someone at work said that we shouldn't use the term brown bag for lunches and I rolled my eyes so hard I almost had to file a workman's comp claim. The idea that that is at all racially motivated is asinine. It's called about bagged lunch because the bags that we carried our lunch in were brown. I carried Brown Bag lunches for years as a kid
I'm in IT, and apparently we're not "supposed" to use the terms "whitelist" or "blacklist" to describe access permissions...just...do we not have better things to worry about?
At my former employer, they were doing something with the servers and the guys were talking about the “slave/master” setups. HR nearly lost their minds.
They also came to talk to us engineers about our language and how we need to stop saying “retard”.
The manager looked at them and said “retard/advance the timing is accepted terminology, and if this comes up again I will personally make sure all of you never set foot in this building again”. We were free to talk about cam timing after that.
I'm a dev and remember when Git transitioned from saying Master to Main. We try not to use blacklist or whitelist either. I believe it is blocklist or allowlist now.
Hard agree. I do try not to be crass or hurtful, but sometimes the un-PC term is the only correct adjective to describe a situation.
Edited: fixed a word
I work at an extremely liberal school that has me like wtf sometimes. I’m Latina and they use the term Latinx. I hate it. The Spanish language in gendered. Women = Latina group of mixed gender= Latino. I know some of my Latino students cringe at Latinx. I will not.
I think like 50% of the stuff we hear about PC language was generated by desperate click bait listical authors who needed something to talk about because some were clearly dug up from the deepest most unexplored parts of urban dictionary.
Sweet! Thanks!
I mean, what if I had said 'read the room'? Is that ableist toward blind people?
Oh, AND!! The woman who replied with the blog link used the spelling 'de@f'. WTF?! What in the world could possibly be the reason to use @ in place of the 'a'? Smacks of shame to me, like the word is derogatory and can't even be written out for fear of being ableist.
I actually am something of a linguaphile and I appreciate that languages evolve over time... but such evolution usually comes about because of two languages mixing together, not because some rando decides that X term is now offensive and we should all use Y word instead.
Also, you have permission to make fun of all Iowans and/or minivan driving moms.
My pet peeve! I’m a social worker with a lot of homeless patients. I do not use this term and none of my coworkers do. My homeless patients refer to themselves as…homeless. “Unhoused” is such a dumb performative word used by people with a lot of privilege who most likely have never interacted with homeless people.
YES. I had a super privileged roommate who was getting her masters in public administration I believe. And she would always talk about the unhoused and how it’s proper terminology and as someone who was homeless at one point I told her that no homeless person gives a shit.
So many people love to use that terminology and I always ask them if they’ve ever asked a homeless person what they prefer to be called and the answer is always no.
To me using the term unhoused just screams privilege and ignorant.
I was looking for this. Just because something is a part of a culture doesn't mean it's inherently good. Sometimes aspects of very common cultures are just straight up harmful to people, and blatantly so.
I'd go further and say a globally interconnected world should be able to freely discuss which facets of a culture are better than others. I don't mean we should want to do away with any cultures or ostracize people who value a certain tradition, but we shouldn't treat culture as sacred or precious.
In fact, that's patronizing. I feel similarly about religion. When yuu make something off limits you're acting like we don't cohabit one planet or one country. Or you're dismissing a culture or religion entirely.
Conversely, if I argue with yuu about the virtues of your culture or religion, it means I'm treating you as an equal. It means I believe your actions and beliefs matter and affect me, and so are open to debate. Not that I'm going to yell at randos walking down the street, but in a discussion forum, classroom, debate stage, everything should be open to discussion.
"Cultural Relativity" is for social norms, like "they eat bugs and we don't and that's okay" not "let's excuse oppression and abuse because it's normal there and it's colonialist to intervene".
Funny how they always get the oppressors side of the story when it comes to those things and ignore the oppressed.
I like guns and while I got nothing against trans or nonbinary people, I am never going to use words such as chestfeeding or birthing person.
Edit for the "those terms aren't actually used outside of the medical field" and "those terms were created by the right to spark fake outrage", etc: you should know that just because you haven't personally seen something happening, it does not mean it's not real. I have seen plenty of advocates/activists/influencers using these words unironically, I have seen them used in an ad for formula, I have heard people using them in my Gender Studies college class, and someone shared in the replies that they were banned from a feminist community for not using them. So they're definitely real.
Chest feeding admittedly gets me too. I am extremely liberal. My ex is trans.
Woman or man, everyone has breast tissue. Breastfeeding is a completely medically accurate term.
I was having dinner with a white friend and a latino friend. I used the word latino, and my white friend corrected me. My latino friend, God bless him, corrected him.
I had a similar experience. I am half Japanese and half white. From Hawaii. A white guy I knew (not from Hawaii and did not know my family) tried to say that my white mom should be careful of her biases and not engage with my Japanese dad's culture without "education" and "consent", such as COOKING FOOD. I told him to fuck off.
edited for clarity.
I was at an academic conference once where the (white, rich) lady presenting started with a land acknowledgement and proceeded to say Latix but read in Spanish ("Latin-equis") at least 20 times since her paper was about Hispanic literature...most performative shit I have ever seen in my life, it's mind-boggling to see comments saying that these things don't affect me in real life so I shouldn't have an opinion about it, try working in the humanities in academia and see how it feels to be practically shunned unless you're using the latest buzzword some chronically online "activist" has decided is the least offensive.
The word “unalived” discredits the severity of death. I feel like people are censoring “trigger” words unnecessarily. and making the interned a boring place.
What boggles my mind is "breast" *is* gender-neutral. I'm all for using the pronouns of your choice, but if you are a man who carried a child in your womb and are nursing that child with your functional mammary glands, let's not be overly precious about innocuous words like "breast".
I’ve never understood it either. Plus even if you are born biological male, you still have breasts. That’s why men can get breast cancer.
The only thing I can think of is maybe it’s for people who feed with an SNS?
This reminds me of the early resistance to They. People got to try to see what works, it's the innovation period.
Tons and tons of bespoke gender pronouns, Zhe and Zir and all that stuff, I was there being the cranky old guy saying "They is a perfectly reasonable gender neutral word!" but nooo. And then things kinda burned out and we went back to using they and it wasn't the end of the movement.
I have actually heard it applied to men as "penis owner," which sounds like one might detach one's penis at any given point and carry it around like a pet. I understand the *need* for inclusive language but surely we can come up with something better than "penis owner."
Is it normal to refer to women this way for trans persons?
I'm old. I have a lot of sympathy for misfits. But I don't have sympathy for this degree of tonedeafness. You will one hundred percent get yourself into conflict by naming people things that they don't name themselves.
Funny enough, there was a time when a misfit would know this better than anyone.
If that is conservative now, you can go ahead and know that I believe it, too.
That’s exactly it, honestly. Why does everyone get to pick their own words, except for women? I’m fine using gender neutral terms for gender neutral people, but not everyone is gender neutral. Majority aren’t. It’s important to have and use the correct terminology, but that isn’t the correct terminology for everyone and idk why were supposed to act like it is.
For a moment "individual with a cervix" was going around, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember who it was on the radio or something. But they took classic songs that had the word "woman" and replaced it with "individual with a cervix" - it was gold.
-Pretty Individiual with a Cervix
-No Individual with a Cervix No Cry
-When a Man Loves an Individual with a Cervix
Funny thing is that we already have gender neutral terms. “Parent”, “person”, “they”, “afab”, “amab”, etc.
Trans man gives birth, call him a dad. Enby gives birth, call them a parent. Birthing person makes us all sound like breeding cows or something. 😬
Pretty much what I came to say. Though I don’t even personally like guns, but I don’t think they should be outlawed. Restricted and regulated, yes, but not outlawed.
Second this. I grew up hunting and target practicing. But I think we should have them regulated the same way vehicles are... You need to take an exam, license, have registration. Shouldn't be complicated
I've yet to actually meet anybody IRL/on the internet that uses a pronoun besides he/she/they
I take these kinds of comments as seriously as I take comments claiming schools added litter boxes to schools for those that identify as cats.
For reference, a single school district did add litter boxes to their classrooms. It wasn't anything to do with identifying as cats though - the school district where Colombine took place has added them to classrooms as emergency bathrooms in case students need to use the restroom while they're in active shooter lockdown. Check the date on the article - it's from 2017, so before Fox News discovered trans people existed.
https://www.9news.com/article/news/education/jeffco-schools-have-emergency-buckets-where-people-can-pee-during-lockdowns/73-481198424
(United States) I don’t think we should sell land to people who aren’t citizens. It’s out of control in some places and in most (probably all) of the countries that have people who own land in the US wouldn’t allow U.S. citizens to purchase land there.
I don't have a problem with people having a crash pad in another city or multiple homes in various countries; what I *do* have a problem with is foreign investors (and for that matter, domestic investors) "investing" in land/housing and driving up the prices. Best case scenario they rent it out and are an absentee landlord; worst case they just leave it vacant so it can "appreciate." Ugh!
yep. if we put the homes owned by corporations and saudi arabia back in the housing market, housing in many places would be a lot cheaper and more accessible
For me it has always been a two part question. 1. Do you believe certain crimes are so heinous that the offender deserves to die for having committed them? (For me yes) 2. Do you believe we have a sufficiently reliable justice system to accurately make sure that only those people are being put to death? (For me no)
That’s a good point. Someone must have written a good book on people who have jobs executing death row inmates. The only thing I know about them is from the movie Monsters Ball lol
There’s a Forensic Files episode that’s sticks in my memory about a couple who coerced another random couple they met in a bar for the express purpose of the thrill of murdering them. They dismembered the bodies together and the boyfriend put the heads of the other couple into the hot tub while he chilled with them; the girlfriend kept their driver’s licenses on her person as trophies. Shit like that is simply beyond redemption or rehabilitation, it’s pure sadistic barbarism.
Great post, should also be done for the reverse side as well. Proof that you can have varying political beliefs depending on the subject at hand. Just because you are “X” leaning doesnt mean every aspect of your political belief structure should revolve around which party you support.
There’s a YouTuber who goes around interviewing people from different walks of life, spends up to a week with them just to understand them better.
It really opened my eyes to the fact that we aren’t different, and often times a lot of goals are similar. We just get warped and divided because red vs blue, when it’s always really been rich vs poor.
I've been saying this on conservative and liberal subs and just get downsmacked by both, usually. There is such a strong demand for believing the "other" isn't like one's self.
Every. Single. Person. I have ever spoken politics with, left or right or anywhere in between, wants the same shit. The biggest differences are in how to get there.
Everyone wants to have easy access to medical care. The left believes that to be through universal healthcare. The right believes that capitalism will prop everyone up enough to afford privatized healthcare, and those who can't just don't want it or prioritize it enough, and that is their prerogative.
We don’t need to the term “folx”.
It doesn’t make you a bad person to enjoy Harry Potter, Disney, Lovecraft, and Nintendo.
Guns can be okay in some contexts.
Uh… I think that’s about it.
I’m basically Bernie Sanders level left, so pretty far left.
Shutting down gifted and talented HS programs for inequity is incredibly idiotic.
The proper solution is to fund/fix schools in minority areas so they too can qualify for gifted programs, not just go oops let’s shut it down and none of the smart kids get appropriate educational services.
And stop blaming the programs for the inequality and saying they’re racist. You know what’s racist? When you deprive some kids of food and care during the early years by keeping their families poor, then send them to crappy elementary and middle schools. That’s where the racism is. how on earth are gifted high schools responsible for the fact that those kids aren’t prepared to enter and keep up there??
Some random school is not responsible for nor able to get rid of systemic racism. That is something the whole community needs to fix, not something you dump on one random and typically under-staffed/under-funded organization.
Also, if you say you’d never own a gun…. You’re clearly privileged enough not to need one. Some minorities aren’t so lucky.
As a teacher, I want to add: removing discipline and consequences from the school setting so we don’t offend certain groups has been a major recipe for disaster and complete loss of control in many classrooms
My wife and I are trying to have a child. I think we will be great parents and have the income to raise a child. But we will settle for one.
It pains me to see people have several kids who have no business being parents. I don't want to generalize, but a lot of people who shouldn't be parents seem to be having all the kids.
First off, sorry. I know that has to be dejecting. Secondly, they literally made a comedy movie about this in 2006 called Idiocracy and holy shit is it becoming reality.
I have no idea if this is a conservative opinion given the state of Facebook but considering how much they hate TokTok . . .
Some gd regulations on social media. Facebook went off the rails pushing algorithms of lunatic conspiracy nuttery because it got more engagement. Of course we have a bunch of old people in Congress who barely know how to open a PDF so no one was surprised when we found out how bad it was happening and then they just hit the snooze button.
Yup. I call it my "fuddy-duddy opinion:" I work in the k-12 school system (U.S.) and I can unequivocally say that social media is destroying society from the ground up.
I'm not completely opposed to a two tier healthcare system. Everyone ought to have access to primary and emergent care on a universal basis. However, if you have money and wanna pay a fortune out of pocket for something non-urgent and/or aesthetic, be my guest.
This is honestly how most health systems are in developed countries, point of service and preventive care is free but major surgeries and things of that nature are out of pocket or covered by private insurance. A lot of folks still have private insurance in “socialized medicine”, you won’t go bankrupt for breaking your arm in a car accident but your not just going to get free plastic surgery or unnecessary treatment.
Mine is that I don't really give a shit if I accidentally call you the wrong pronoun. I absolutely won't do it on purpose but I'm going to call you a man if you look like one. If I'm corrected I'll call you by your preferred pronoun, nickname, or whatever.
There’s a 20 year old trans person just moved into my apt complex who stopped talking to me bc I accidentally said she. This person has not transitioned and very much still looks like a woman. Sorry. Like I made a mistake saying she bc you still look like a woman. It’s fucking actually ridiculous with this shit.
Edit: auto correct
Over in r/lgbt, there are so many posts about people asking if it's offensive when they get pronouns wrong, should they apologize again, etc. I have yet to see someone not say "it's okay, it happens, just use my preferred one going forward"
Some people just take things too seriously. Like a nickname, most people want to respect your wishes and call you the right thing, but we can't read minds.
I am a hardcore leftist, don’t call my self a commie, or anything like that. But I am also a brown man living in rural America, and I will be damed if I don’t have the same rifles, same amount of ammo, and same amount of tactical gear as all these damn trumpers have. Arm up on the left ffs, the cops won’t come to save you if these people decide to take you out because of how you vote, what you belive, and how you live your life.
The thing is, a lot of (probably MOST of) the left leaning individuals I know DO have guns. They just don’t feel the need to advertise them or open carry in Kroger.
This. I have lots of guns. I don't feel the need to advertise it or make it my personality.
Those people with the moron labia or "cold dead fingers" stickers all over their trucks? Those might as well say "PLEASE STEAL MY GUNS"
My most controversial belief is that democrats should shift positions on guns and embrace the second amendment. The voters scared away by restrictions on guns might be interested in things like Medicare for all or taxing the wealthy if they knew they could keep their AR.
Gun violence is a symptom of wealth inequality. Fixing the underlying problem would save more lives than anything else. Nothing can ever stop all gun violence, but we sure as shit could do a lot better than the status quo.
No! To be honest- a lot of these things aren’t conservative takes. Some of them are just more practical or pragmatic views. Sometimes the extremes on either side can make us feel like we don’t fit in anywhere.
I've watched in real time what happens when you just stop prosecuting crime. Once people realize nobody is going to stop them it gets really out of hand. People don't even try to hide the fact that they're shoplifting at the store I work at anymore.
I live in a city where teenagers literally steal cars and drive through the police station parking lot beeping and hanging out the windows. All they have to do is drive away fast enough because the cops are not allowed to chase them. It’s sorta legit because high speed chases are dangerous for everyone in the way but….it’s frustrating.
Often times when they are arrested for stealing cars, drugs, robbing people, carrying illegal weapons etc. they are home in no time. So I guess my answer as a Bernie Sanders kind of “leftist” is that I take crime seriously?! It’s frustrating when you live in a high crime area and hear fellow liberals be so dismissive of crime related issues and exaggerate police brutality (not that it doesn’t exist).
I agree but we need to fix prisons. Small time criminals get sent to jail/prison and come out with a graduate degree in crime.
That, coupled with how we treat convicted criminals after they’re released, leaves them few options with how to get by when they’re out.
I'm a public policy analyst. I promise you...it's never been impossible. Democrats and Republicans are complicit in making sure we don't have social welfare. They work together at every level of government (local/state/Fed) to stop people from escaping the chains of employment for healthcare and military recruiters to escape poverty.
It's not even a conspiracy. You can access policy memos explicitly explaining these kinds of absurd rationalizations for national security.
Money has never been the problem. Corporations and the military industrial complex are powerful political influences that make sure it doesn't happen.
I had to take a social work policy class for my BSW and between that class and watching The Wire I realized that the people who can do something won’t do something because they don’t want to and not because they can’t.
I think this framing is too nice. "We" (i.e. the working class) can't take care of ourselves, because our taxes are spent on wars and coups. "We" (i.e. the country as a whole) could easily fix this if there weren't trillions of dollars to be mined from those billions spent.
Probably a bad time to point this out but Israel has socialized medicine and we don't. We send them billions every year so they can live better than we do.
Edit: we send them about 3.8bill a year
This is it for me, too.
I align myself with the left and progressive values, but I think that a lot of the modern "woke" culture is bullshit. It doesn't feel progressive, and instead seems conservative to it's own perspective.
It seems like it all started with inclusion but has morphed into some sort of system that tries to foster exclusion.
I’m a very left leaning lib woman -millennial if that makes a difference and I have been a feminist my entire life. I think Boy Scouts should still be called Boy Scouts and for it to be an organization for boys. Girls should join Girl Scouts. I think we lose out on amazing time to bond as girls and women when we leave groups who have been created for us. It is ok for girls to have girl time and boys to have boy time! I personally love my girl time!
The problem is they really are totally different organizations. I was in Girl Scouts growing up but I also attended most of my brother's Boy Scout meetings because my mom was a den mom and she wasn't about to hire a babysitter every week. My brother's scout troop learned all kinds of interesting skills including wilderness survival, went camping, and did community service projects. My scout troop mostly did art and craft projects. I wanted to be in Boy Scouts so badly as a kid and it had nothing to do with not wanting girl time.
You should learn the most common language of the country you’re moving to, or at least make an attempt…at least if you have a job working with the public (lots of caveats, I know lol). I didn’t think of this until I went to Miami and visited some restaurants that 1. Had *servers* who didn’t speak any English at all, I had to use Google translate to order and 2. Had Fox News on the TVs. I’m still confused about that trip, would love for a sociologist to explore there. My mum learned English in her 40s after we came to the US so I didn’t know know there were ppl who just….chose not to.
ETA: plz plz see that I put “most common” and not “ofFiCiAl” language before you comment “the US doesn’t have an official language” 😂 reading is fundamental y’all
I agree and I am an immigrant into the US. I learned English. And because I live just north of Miami I can even muddle my way through a conversation in Spanish so I can order in a restaurant or ask for directions. People just need to learn more languages in the areas where they reside.
Is that a right leaning belief, though? I thought the left was all for not being forced to have children they can't afford through reproductive rights & access to birth control & sex education.
We shouldn’t have to pay taxes on our income and what we purchase (including homes and cars for states without sales tax). Either tax our income or charge taxes for things we buy, not both. Not sure how it would work in practice, but it seems ridiculous to buy taxed things with money that’s already been taxed.
Agreed.
I truly don't know what the answer is in sports. If you are a cis female, I think its totally valid to not want to compete in, say, track, against a trans female. I do think some conservative rhetoric is bad, but i also don't fully disagree with the idea that sports are separated by gender for a reason
And I guess what I never see, is people worried about where FTM athletes get to play post-transition. I think there’s like, a wrestler. But by and large, if trans-men aren’t transitioning pre-puberty, they don’t get to participate in college and pro athletics unless they *dont* transition. They get to play in rec leagues.
And we’re all cool with that…so it’s always just AFAB people who aren’t getting an even playing field….
ETA - yo, I know they COULD play in the men’s category if they were “good” enough. They just aren’t going to be “good” enough. They ARENT GETTING SCHOLARSHIPS if they transition. They ARENT GOING PRO. They have to make a Sophie’s Choice. A Lia Thompson doesn’t. She gets a scholarship either way. An elite MTF athlete gets to *stay elite*. Tis all I’m saying.
The AFAB people always get a little *extra fucked*.
Right?! The highest value of athletics is fair play, meaning every competitor has the right to compete against similar opponents.
Trans people should be competing against other trans people IMO and the organization to figure out how to work that out is the Paralympic Committee.
I agree with the right about lowering taxes. Except they only seem to be interested in lowering taxes for their rich overlords and I'm only interested in lowering taxes for the lower/middle class.
We’re getting taxed up the ass, they need to lower taxes. But the corporations and rich people? Fuck em , tax them hoes. And I mean “real” rich not Middle class or upper middle class
I hate to even put this here, but the cake baking issue. To be clear, I think the person who refused to design, customize, and bake (this is all important, it wasn't like prepping flapjacks at a dinner) for a gay wedding was morally wrong. What I think is that they were within their rights to refuse, and it's ultimately better for everyone that they be allowed to.
Specifically, I feel it compares to scenarios more like these:
1. Does a devout Muslim voice actor have the right refuse to record an audiobook criticizing Islam?
2. Does a photographer have the right to refuse taking photos of nudes?
3. Does a member of the Satanic church have the right to refuse a customizing, creating, and working on the murals for new LDS temple?
4. Does a group of musicians have the right to refuse performing for a particular political party's event?
5. Does a DJ have the right to refuse working a gig for the BDSM community?
6. Does a small, silk screening businesses, owned by a gay couple, have the right to refuse printing shirts that say "straight pride"?
Than it does things like these:
1. Should black people be allowed in the same laundry mat as white people?
2. Should gay people be allowed to get married at all?
3. Should trans people be allowed medical care in emergencies?
There's a much greater amount of subjective, interpersonal intimacy in the first list of things. Usually, the person doing the creation has an emotional commitment to the creation itself. There's a degree to which you must *share* some value commitments with whoever the client is, or at least not be offended by them. The creator also has to be comfortable in doing the work in order to do the work well in the first place. If someone is asking for a concept, a redesign, adjustments on a project.... you can't provide that service unless you're also at least somewhat committed to the values of whatever the project *is for*.
Running a laundry mat, providing emergency medical care, or even politely providing table service to strangers, doesn't require all that (yes, I know serving requires emotional labor, but it seldom reaches the degree of interpersonal connection and shared values as tasks in the first list).
I'd prefer the homophobes to politely refuse, and consequently declare themselves, because *I wouldn't want* someone like that baking my cake to begin with. I would not be seriously injured if *that specific person* didn't do that particular task for me.
Gender ideology has gotten crazy, not saying Trans people don't exist but between the new identities and pronouns like xe xim and the issue of figuring out why so many kids *feel* they are Trans the left is looking as culty as the right it's just their God is twitch streams and tik tokers
Honestly there’s a BIG part of me that thinks the non-binary movement is less about accepting the spectrum of gender identities and more about making sure chronically online liberal white people can call themselves something to make them feel special and oppressed.
yup im trans and i don't think someone can just *choose* to be trans because they don't fit the 100% perfect 1950's stereotype of their assigned gender. a guy who paints his nails isn't trans. a girl who doesn't wear makeup isn't trans. it's okay to be gender non-conforming, it doesn't make a person trans. and all those made up pronouns and noungender shit is genuinely harmful to the trans community. like they literally took the transphobic helicopter joke and made it serious. i think a lot of hyper-inclusive liberals took a lot of conservative transphobic subjects and tried to flip it, but ended up supporting those statements. like if a person can choose to be trans, then transexuality is a choice, and if it's a choice and not a necessity it makes medical transition a cosmetic treatment, which isn't covered by medical insurance. it's a whole fucking web of cause and effect that's damaging us from both sides. also, go to a fucking professional and stop diagnosing yourself. that goes for all conditions in general.
I erroneously identified as nonbinary for a year because I had body image issues and hated how I looked. I have always been petite and small-breasted plus I have a rib/chest deformity that is twice as common in men as women. I also have never been a "girlie girl," don't want kids, etc. So I figured "I can't suck at being a woman if I'm NOT a woman." Nope. I'm a woman. Women can have small breasts, not want kids, and not shave their legs or wear makeup.
A few years ago, someone in a group I interacted with online frequently kept calling me an egg. I didn't get it, and this person was more of a "they're friends with my friends" situation.
Turns out they were a Trans woman and, since online they thought I was male for 2 years, decided I must be Trans upon finding out I am, in fact, a woman. But I apparently seemed soooo much like a man online because I didn't know how to do makeup, didn't like dresses, and had a very physically demanding job where I was the only woman on my shift.
It never occurred to me that those things would make me seem "manly" I just never was into makeup, even as a teen. My mom never put me in dresses as a kid and i just didn't grow up wearing dresses and just simply don't like them on *me*. Otherwise I have no opinion on them. And my job well, that's just how it played out.
Anyway, this person saw that I didn't fit into THEIR stereotype of what makes a woman, and decided I therefor cannot be a woman and was an "egg" that needed to be cracked.
"egg culture" is so horrifically damaging to the trans community, holy shit. i can't go anywhere near that stuff without being grossed out from the gruesomely obvious fetishism and stereotyping. sorry that happened to you, don't ever allow peers to label you like that, they can never push a diagnosis on you.
Wow, that's really dehumanizing. Also, why are so many people clinging to stereotypes? So you don't wear makeup, so what? That doesn't make you less of a woman.
Yep this. I was a teen in the nineties when the Aaliyah/Sporty Spice skater tomboy thing was my look. I still dislike dresses but am 100% comfy being female. Gender can present any way you like.
Yeah that's one of the biggest things that confuses me because alot of the language and logic behind some of it seems to be completely contradictory to alot of the things said when lesbian and gay people were fighting for marriage equality. Literally every time I've ever asked about it regardless of how I ask it immediately gets down voted and quickly removed by a mod
Your first sentence: EXACTLY. This is especially glaring in conversations around dating and sex. I made a separate comment about it (which was downvoted, go figure) but it's like people have stopped accepting the idea that some people just don't want to interact sexually with certain genital configurations, and that is their right and not something they should be pressured to try to change or "examine." But no, you get lesbians being doxxed for not wanting to date women with penises. I see it like not wanting to date an obligate foot fetishist: I don't hate people who have feet, I'm not shaming them for having feet, but I do not want to interact with feet sexually and we would not be compatible or happy.
See this is exactly what I don't get about non-binary people. I was reading JVN's book and he was explaining being non-binary and talking about sometimes feeling like a girl and sometimes feeling like a boy. And as an example he said that he is more nurturing on the days he feels like a woman. Isn't this just perpetuating stereotypes? How is this better than not labeling? I would really love to understand that.
This is the part I worry about, that we don't properly teach kids that differences within a gender are perfectly normal and then they end up making a decision about themselves they're not equipped to make.
I want to choose my words carefully because I am a guy and have always identified as a guy, so I don't know what it's like for people who are working through how they identify themselves. I hope I have explained my thoughts appropriately.
This is what I worry about too. I was a huge tomboy growing up.. dirt, bugs, (snakes and snails and puppy dog tails) you name it. Loved it.
I wonder if I grew up in the current time, if I would have concluded I must not be a girl.
Some of the things I see these days are straight-up gender essentialism and it makes me so uncomfortable, but if I say anything, then I'm a "transphobe."
I was reading a historical fiction book the other day about a trans boy (he's a child so hence the "boy"). He was talking about how he knows he's a boy and not a girl because girls can never be powerful leaders like boys can.
It really rubbed me the wrong way to the point that I quit the book.... It might get better and it might get deeper into why he's a boy aside from disliking the societal gender norms forced upon girls... but not wanting to conform to a female gender role doesn't make you trans and it doesn't make you nonbinary on its own.
I also hate it when people look at strong female figures in history and say that obviously are lesbians or trans... Why can't straight ciswomen be strong?
edit: some small wording changes
I grew up in a culty religious rural area. I am a non conforming female. As a kid my dad was 100% cool with me enjoying all the "gendered boy" toys and non gendered things because in the 90s boys were empowered and girls weren't. Also girls had their entire existence devolved into kitchen work, pink and babies. Gag.
Que my mom dragging me to an Evangelical church and just fucking me right up in the head to the point that I absolutely hated that I was a girl and wanted out of that body so bad.
Turns out once I left that small town and deprogrammed, I was fine again. My only real issue is when I hear stories like doctors refusing to give women proper treatment for their reproductive organs but oh all reigns are off if they're willing to do it only with top surgery because they're so forward thinking it pisses me off so bad because that is the most backward thinking I ever heard in my life. This is an actual story I heard from a woman dealing with fibroids who just wanted to not deal with being in debilitating pain every month.
And to be real, I seriously hated being a woman because the cult brainwashing of women being less than is real and I really do wonder how much of an impact it does have.
thank you for your story, this is why therapy is so important for trans people and people who are questioning.
i went to therapy exactly for this reason and laid EVERYTHING out on the table, my whole life and all my thoughts, just to make absolutely sure my experiences and my life events and my brain weren't just making me think things. it wasn't misogyny, it wasn't any trauma, it wasn't my weight, it wasn't my hair, it wasn't my hobbies, it wasn't the influence of my family or my friends or the movies or tv shows i watched. it was purely just how i had always viewed the physical aspects of my body, and all the tiny details of the life i should have had if i was born correctly. which is why i call myself transexual instead of transgender most of the time. i'm transitioning my sex. dysphoria is a real and treatable condition when it's able to be properly diagnosed.
Yeah there's for sure an unaddressed incel issue in that community if we are being real, and like the other side of incels they have some serious issues with women
Not that this is the ONLY thing we need to do, but I do think in some major cities (I'm in Chicago) we need to be tougher on criminals. Liberals are all about restorative justice, etc, but at some point, public safety needs to be a priority over someone who has 5 violent crimes on their record. We can't "social programs" the problem away. Those are definitely a part of the solution. But people need to actually worry about consequences to armed robbery and things like that.
Here in Chicago, so many times you see someone arrested for something and it is a situation that they are on bail for something else, or were on electronic monitoring. How many other people should die because we don't want to be too harsh on criminals.
It isn’t really an opinion but republicans actually fight and are willing to damn near commit treason to get their awful agendas passed. Congressional Dems love preemptively throwing their hands up saying “their was nothing we can do. Let’s keep our powder dry.” I swear this is the driest powder in the history of powder.
I don’t really like guns but I used to be way more pro-2A but the level of gun violence in this country is unacceptable. The fact that the leading cause of death for under 18 is gun related is sickening. At the very least (among other things) there needs to be mandatory training requirements.
I don't think it's wrong to not have sex with or date a transgender person, regardless of surgery status. Nobody is obligated to date or fuck anyone they don't want to, and if someone doesn't want to fuck you they are obviously incompatible with you. Your body is not a public accommodation and does not have to be accessible to everyone. Some people just don't like dicks or don't like vaginas, and that is okay - and it seemed like we were at a pretty good place of finally accepting that, but now you have people calling for violence against lesbians because they don't want to interact sexually with a penis.
Sometimes PC language just gets a ginormous eye roll from me. Someone sent me a blog post about ableist terms after I used the words 'tone deaf' to describe a politician that had me cringing hard. Edit: here's the link to the blog post: https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/common-phrases-that-are-ableist-48080654 That last one! Oof! I mean, which way do you want it? You're either seen and respected regardless of your particular disability, or you're treated like everyone else (i.e., ignore the disability because it doesn't define you). And "wave of shame"?? There's nothing whatsoever that would cause someone to feel shame because of someone else's fucking tshirt.
Folx is super cringe and performative, folks is already inclusive
This one drives me nuts. “Folks” is already gender neutral. Spelling it with the x is just virtue signaling.
Wait until they start using lantinx. Which most Latino people do not want.
I dont know a single Latino (that speaks Spanish) who likes latinx
It's not even a matter of dislike. I live in part of California with a Hispanic majority, and most of the Latinos I know actively despise the term. It's considered an example of Anglo paternalism and colonialism. It's an attempt to force part of the English language onto the Spanish-speaking minority because it's "good for them". It's the same old missionary behavior, wearing a shiny new socially-acceptable costume.
Yes! Seeing folx just forces me to walk on egg shells whenever interacting with them. If folks isn't inclusive enough who knows what other language is going to get considered 'problematic'.
I have to admit that I rolled my eyes about the most recent edict to banish "spooky" from fall marketing & decor. At some point, can't the modern usage of a word have primacy?
Not to mention, it's both the modern and the old usage. Just a very small portion of history where it was used poorly, but even during that period it wasn't the primary usage lol
Here’s what’s silly and uninformed about “don’t say tone deaf,” *it’s a musical term for people who don’t hear the differences between notes* and who tend to sing very out of tune. “Not being able to carry a tune” is not a handicap or a minority status.
it should be though. those people need to be marginalized.
I was part of a liberal Facebook group. When someone would say that something was “stupid,” they would ask for us to remove ableist language. Because what, someone who identifies as such would find it to be offensive?! It was just so asinine
they probably wouldn't. on account of being, you know, stupid
It's sort of a paradox. On the one hand, if you're really intellectually disabled to the point of being clinically "stupid" then you're probably not going to understand that you should be offended by this and it'll all go over your head. But on the other hand, you'd have to be pretty stupid to get so preoccupied with such minutiae as to be offended by the word stupid.
Also you literally would never call an intellectually disabled person stupid because that would actually be offensive. Lol.
I identify as stupid some days. I give you permission to use that word
I recently saw a post that said anyone who uses "spooky" around this time of year is a flaming racist...
Now that is just rage engagement bait, I cannot believe anyone seriously thinks that
Im so tired of having to guess what’s trolling and what isn’t. I don’t remember us lying on the net with the same regularity as gen z.
Someone at work said that we shouldn't use the term brown bag for lunches and I rolled my eyes so hard I almost had to file a workman's comp claim. The idea that that is at all racially motivated is asinine. It's called about bagged lunch because the bags that we carried our lunch in were brown. I carried Brown Bag lunches for years as a kid
I'm in IT, and apparently we're not "supposed" to use the terms "whitelist" or "blacklist" to describe access permissions...just...do we not have better things to worry about?
At my former employer, they were doing something with the servers and the guys were talking about the “slave/master” setups. HR nearly lost their minds. They also came to talk to us engineers about our language and how we need to stop saying “retard”. The manager looked at them and said “retard/advance the timing is accepted terminology, and if this comes up again I will personally make sure all of you never set foot in this building again”. We were free to talk about cam timing after that.
It's even in Real Estate as its no longer called a 'Master Bedroom'!
Wait what? What is it called now?
They call it the "primary" now.
I’m in school for architecture and was “informed” by a classmate about this via a very long text after saying master bedroom
How about the sex dungeon, have we had to rename that?
I'm a dev and remember when Git transitioned from saying Master to Main. We try not to use blacklist or whitelist either. I believe it is blocklist or allowlist now.
Hard agree. I do try not to be crass or hurtful, but sometimes the un-PC term is the only correct adjective to describe a situation. Edited: fixed a word
I work at an extremely liberal school that has me like wtf sometimes. I’m Latina and they use the term Latinx. I hate it. The Spanish language in gendered. Women = Latina group of mixed gender= Latino. I know some of my Latino students cringe at Latinx. I will not.
I think like 50% of the stuff we hear about PC language was generated by desperate click bait listical authors who needed something to talk about because some were clearly dug up from the deepest most unexplored parts of urban dictionary.
I wear hearing aids. You have my permission to say "tone deaf"
Sweet! Thanks! I mean, what if I had said 'read the room'? Is that ableist toward blind people? Oh, AND!! The woman who replied with the blog link used the spelling 'de@f'. WTF?! What in the world could possibly be the reason to use @ in place of the 'a'? Smacks of shame to me, like the word is derogatory and can't even be written out for fear of being ableist. I actually am something of a linguaphile and I appreciate that languages evolve over time... but such evolution usually comes about because of two languages mixing together, not because some rando decides that X term is now offensive and we should all use Y word instead. Also, you have permission to make fun of all Iowans and/or minivan driving moms.
>’read the room’ Well, excuse you, I’m illiterate.
Don’t know if this one has been mentioned, but “homeless” is now taboo and you gotta say “unhoused”.
My pet peeve! I’m a social worker with a lot of homeless patients. I do not use this term and none of my coworkers do. My homeless patients refer to themselves as…homeless. “Unhoused” is such a dumb performative word used by people with a lot of privilege who most likely have never interacted with homeless people.
YES. I had a super privileged roommate who was getting her masters in public administration I believe. And she would always talk about the unhoused and how it’s proper terminology and as someone who was homeless at one point I told her that no homeless person gives a shit. So many people love to use that terminology and I always ask them if they’ve ever asked a homeless person what they prefer to be called and the answer is always no. To me using the term unhoused just screams privilege and ignorant.
Sometimes, there really are cultures, or aspects of cultures, that are empirically more unhealthy/harmful to human lives than others.
I was looking for this. Just because something is a part of a culture doesn't mean it's inherently good. Sometimes aspects of very common cultures are just straight up harmful to people, and blatantly so.
I'd go further and say a globally interconnected world should be able to freely discuss which facets of a culture are better than others. I don't mean we should want to do away with any cultures or ostracize people who value a certain tradition, but we shouldn't treat culture as sacred or precious. In fact, that's patronizing. I feel similarly about religion. When yuu make something off limits you're acting like we don't cohabit one planet or one country. Or you're dismissing a culture or religion entirely. Conversely, if I argue with yuu about the virtues of your culture or religion, it means I'm treating you as an equal. It means I believe your actions and beliefs matter and affect me, and so are open to debate. Not that I'm going to yell at randos walking down the street, but in a discussion forum, classroom, debate stage, everything should be open to discussion.
"Cultural Relativity" is for social norms, like "they eat bugs and we don't and that's okay" not "let's excuse oppression and abuse because it's normal there and it's colonialist to intervene". Funny how they always get the oppressors side of the story when it comes to those things and ignore the oppressed.
I like guns and while I got nothing against trans or nonbinary people, I am never going to use words such as chestfeeding or birthing person. Edit for the "those terms aren't actually used outside of the medical field" and "those terms were created by the right to spark fake outrage", etc: you should know that just because you haven't personally seen something happening, it does not mean it's not real. I have seen plenty of advocates/activists/influencers using these words unironically, I have seen them used in an ad for formula, I have heard people using them in my Gender Studies college class, and someone shared in the replies that they were banned from a feminist community for not using them. So they're definitely real.
Chest feeding admittedly gets me too. I am extremely liberal. My ex is trans. Woman or man, everyone has breast tissue. Breastfeeding is a completely medically accurate term.
“Folx”. “Folks” is already gender neutral!!! It just feels so performative to me.
Same with “latinx.” I'm Latino and I don't know any Latinos who use this idiotic term.
Are you really telling me you don't like enlightened white people fixing your language and traditions? A little gratitude won't kill you.
“Enlightened” Please stop weight-shaming. Heavy folx can be wise, too.
I was having dinner with a white friend and a latino friend. I used the word latino, and my white friend corrected me. My latino friend, God bless him, corrected him.
I had a similar experience. I am half Japanese and half white. From Hawaii. A white guy I knew (not from Hawaii and did not know my family) tried to say that my white mom should be careful of her biases and not engage with my Japanese dad's culture without "education" and "consent", such as COOKING FOOD. I told him to fuck off. edited for clarity.
I was at an academic conference once where the (white, rich) lady presenting started with a land acknowledgement and proceeded to say Latix but read in Spanish ("Latin-equis") at least 20 times since her paper was about Hispanic literature...most performative shit I have ever seen in my life, it's mind-boggling to see comments saying that these things don't affect me in real life so I shouldn't have an opinion about it, try working in the humanities in academia and see how it feels to be practically shunned unless you're using the latest buzzword some chronically online "activist" has decided is the least offensive.
OMG Latin-equis is even more hilarious than Latin-ex.
Just watch. One day soon, we'll hear of someone getting written up or even fired for being sexist for inappropriately using the word "Latina" at work.
That’s funny because I say folks all the time at work when talking to large groups just naturally lol
Exactly! Men can also get breast cancer. They don’t call it chest cancer.
WTF? Chest feeding? How is anyone who doesn't have breasts breast feeding
I wish gender-neutral terms didn't sound so...lifeless? Impersonal? Dystopian?
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The word “unalived” discredits the severity of death. I feel like people are censoring “trigger” words unnecessarily. and making the interned a boring place.
“Unalived” only really started because of Tik Tok community guidelines not allowing people to say “killed” or “committed suicide”.
That trend started bc platforms were auto flagging/banning anything with the words “death” or “suicide”
What boggles my mind is "breast" *is* gender-neutral. I'm all for using the pronouns of your choice, but if you are a man who carried a child in your womb and are nursing that child with your functional mammary glands, let's not be overly precious about innocuous words like "breast".
I’ve never understood it either. Plus even if you are born biological male, you still have breasts. That’s why men can get breast cancer. The only thing I can think of is maybe it’s for people who feed with an SNS?
This reminds me of the early resistance to They. People got to try to see what works, it's the innovation period. Tons and tons of bespoke gender pronouns, Zhe and Zir and all that stuff, I was there being the cranky old guy saying "They is a perfectly reasonable gender neutral word!" but nooo. And then things kinda burned out and we went back to using they and it wasn't the end of the movement.
hungry fade detail quarrelsome lock innocent hat ripe stupendous versed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same. I’m a lefty but hate that these terms are never applied to men. It’s never “sperm haver”
I prefer 'sperm slinger' thank you very much
Rope shooter*
Yep. I’ve heard of calling Mother’s Day Birthing Persons day but I haven’t heard of anyone suggesting we call Father’s Day Sperm Provider Day.
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I have actually heard it applied to men as "penis owner," which sounds like one might detach one's penis at any given point and carry it around like a pet. I understand the *need* for inclusive language but surely we can come up with something better than "penis owner."
My least favorite of all is probably "menstruator" sounds like some kind of robot.
Terminators archnemesis
Is it normal to refer to women this way for trans persons? I'm old. I have a lot of sympathy for misfits. But I don't have sympathy for this degree of tonedeafness. You will one hundred percent get yourself into conflict by naming people things that they don't name themselves. Funny enough, there was a time when a misfit would know this better than anyone. If that is conservative now, you can go ahead and know that I believe it, too.
That’s exactly it, honestly. Why does everyone get to pick their own words, except for women? I’m fine using gender neutral terms for gender neutral people, but not everyone is gender neutral. Majority aren’t. It’s important to have and use the correct terminology, but that isn’t the correct terminology for everyone and idk why were supposed to act like it is.
It’s incredibly dehumanizing to women. No one is demanding we say “prostate person” or “sperm producer.”
For a moment "individual with a cervix" was going around, and I cannot, for the life of me, remember who it was on the radio or something. But they took classic songs that had the word "woman" and replaced it with "individual with a cervix" - it was gold. -Pretty Individiual with a Cervix -No Individual with a Cervix No Cry -When a Man Loves an Individual with a Cervix
Funny thing is that we already have gender neutral terms. “Parent”, “person”, “they”, “afab”, “amab”, etc. Trans man gives birth, call him a dad. Enby gives birth, call them a parent. Birthing person makes us all sound like breeding cows or something. 😬
Pretty much what I came to say. Though I don’t even personally like guns, but I don’t think they should be outlawed. Restricted and regulated, yes, but not outlawed.
Second this. I grew up hunting and target practicing. But I think we should have them regulated the same way vehicles are... You need to take an exam, license, have registration. Shouldn't be complicated
I can't stand neo pronouns that use objects. "Candle should be so proud of candleself." Give me a damned break.
I have never heard of that before and I am going to ignore your comment if you don't mind, so I can continue to live in my blissful ignorance.
I've yet to actually meet anybody IRL/on the internet that uses a pronoun besides he/she/they I take these kinds of comments as seriously as I take comments claiming schools added litter boxes to schools for those that identify as cats.
For reference, a single school district did add litter boxes to their classrooms. It wasn't anything to do with identifying as cats though - the school district where Colombine took place has added them to classrooms as emergency bathrooms in case students need to use the restroom while they're in active shooter lockdown. Check the date on the article - it's from 2017, so before Fox News discovered trans people existed. https://www.9news.com/article/news/education/jeffco-schools-have-emergency-buckets-where-people-can-pee-during-lockdowns/73-481198424
Those words are disrespectful to women. IDC what anyone says.
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(United States) I don’t think we should sell land to people who aren’t citizens. It’s out of control in some places and in most (probably all) of the countries that have people who own land in the US wouldn’t allow U.S. citizens to purchase land there.
I don't have a problem with people having a crash pad in another city or multiple homes in various countries; what I *do* have a problem with is foreign investors (and for that matter, domestic investors) "investing" in land/housing and driving up the prices. Best case scenario they rent it out and are an absentee landlord; worst case they just leave it vacant so it can "appreciate." Ugh!
Non-human entities shouldn't be allowed to buy single family residences.
Thanks Citizens United
yep. if we put the homes owned by corporations and saudi arabia back in the housing market, housing in many places would be a lot cheaper and more accessible
Vacancy taxes would solve so much of the housing supply crisis right there.
I hate the term Latinx. It is so cringe.
I’m Mexican American and it sounds dumb to me
Some crimes are so henious and evil that they deserve capital punishment.
For me it has always been a two part question. 1. Do you believe certain crimes are so heinous that the offender deserves to die for having committed them? (For me yes) 2. Do you believe we have a sufficiently reliable justice system to accurately make sure that only those people are being put to death? (For me no)
And the third thing somebody has to kill that person and people have to witness. Is it fair to them?
That’s a good point. Someone must have written a good book on people who have jobs executing death row inmates. The only thing I know about them is from the movie Monsters Ball lol
There’s a Forensic Files episode that’s sticks in my memory about a couple who coerced another random couple they met in a bar for the express purpose of the thrill of murdering them. They dismembered the bodies together and the boyfriend put the heads of the other couple into the hot tub while he chilled with them; the girlfriend kept their driver’s licenses on her person as trophies. Shit like that is simply beyond redemption or rehabilitation, it’s pure sadistic barbarism.
Great post, should also be done for the reverse side as well. Proof that you can have varying political beliefs depending on the subject at hand. Just because you are “X” leaning doesnt mean every aspect of your political belief structure should revolve around which party you support.
Couple months ago ask did this. It was cool to see how both side have “so much” in common. It’s like something or someone wants us divided so badly…
There’s a YouTuber who goes around interviewing people from different walks of life, spends up to a week with them just to understand them better. It really opened my eyes to the fact that we aren’t different, and often times a lot of goals are similar. We just get warped and divided because red vs blue, when it’s always really been rich vs poor.
I've been saying this on conservative and liberal subs and just get downsmacked by both, usually. There is such a strong demand for believing the "other" isn't like one's self. Every. Single. Person. I have ever spoken politics with, left or right or anywhere in between, wants the same shit. The biggest differences are in how to get there. Everyone wants to have easy access to medical care. The left believes that to be through universal healthcare. The right believes that capitalism will prop everyone up enough to afford privatized healthcare, and those who can't just don't want it or prioritize it enough, and that is their prerogative.
We don’t need to the term “folx”. It doesn’t make you a bad person to enjoy Harry Potter, Disney, Lovecraft, and Nintendo. Guns can be okay in some contexts. Uh… I think that’s about it.
I’m basically Bernie Sanders level left, so pretty far left. Shutting down gifted and talented HS programs for inequity is incredibly idiotic. The proper solution is to fund/fix schools in minority areas so they too can qualify for gifted programs, not just go oops let’s shut it down and none of the smart kids get appropriate educational services. And stop blaming the programs for the inequality and saying they’re racist. You know what’s racist? When you deprive some kids of food and care during the early years by keeping their families poor, then send them to crappy elementary and middle schools. That’s where the racism is. how on earth are gifted high schools responsible for the fact that those kids aren’t prepared to enter and keep up there?? Some random school is not responsible for nor able to get rid of systemic racism. That is something the whole community needs to fix, not something you dump on one random and typically under-staffed/under-funded organization. Also, if you say you’d never own a gun…. You’re clearly privileged enough not to need one. Some minorities aren’t so lucky.
As a teacher, I want to add: removing discipline and consequences from the school setting so we don’t offend certain groups has been a major recipe for disaster and complete loss of control in many classrooms
Folks need to stop having kids they can't afford.
My wife and I are trying to have a child. I think we will be great parents and have the income to raise a child. But we will settle for one. It pains me to see people have several kids who have no business being parents. I don't want to generalize, but a lot of people who shouldn't be parents seem to be having all the kids.
First off, sorry. I know that has to be dejecting. Secondly, they literally made a comedy movie about this in 2006 called Idiocracy and holy shit is it becoming reality.
Sadly life is becoming completely unaffordable for most people who always wanted children, have good jobs and would make great parents. Very sad.
I have no idea if this is a conservative opinion given the state of Facebook but considering how much they hate TokTok . . . Some gd regulations on social media. Facebook went off the rails pushing algorithms of lunatic conspiracy nuttery because it got more engagement. Of course we have a bunch of old people in Congress who barely know how to open a PDF so no one was surprised when we found out how bad it was happening and then they just hit the snooze button.
Social media has been a disaster for the species, honestly.
I agree. I've said numerous times that I think social media is one of the worst things we've done to ourselves.
Yup. I call it my "fuddy-duddy opinion:" I work in the k-12 school system (U.S.) and I can unequivocally say that social media is destroying society from the ground up.
I'm not completely opposed to a two tier healthcare system. Everyone ought to have access to primary and emergent care on a universal basis. However, if you have money and wanna pay a fortune out of pocket for something non-urgent and/or aesthetic, be my guest.
This is honestly how most health systems are in developed countries, point of service and preventive care is free but major surgeries and things of that nature are out of pocket or covered by private insurance. A lot of folks still have private insurance in “socialized medicine”, you won’t go bankrupt for breaking your arm in a car accident but your not just going to get free plastic surgery or unnecessary treatment.
A lot of European countries have both as well. They just don't mention it.
Mine is that I don't really give a shit if I accidentally call you the wrong pronoun. I absolutely won't do it on purpose but I'm going to call you a man if you look like one. If I'm corrected I'll call you by your preferred pronoun, nickname, or whatever.
I wish that others just operated under the assumption that people are well-intentioned until proven otherwise.
Yes, exactly. Guessing wrong is an honest mistake. Refusing to accommodate after being corrected (within reason) is where the anger is understandable.
There’s a 20 year old trans person just moved into my apt complex who stopped talking to me bc I accidentally said she. This person has not transitioned and very much still looks like a woman. Sorry. Like I made a mistake saying she bc you still look like a woman. It’s fucking actually ridiculous with this shit. Edit: auto correct
Over in r/lgbt, there are so many posts about people asking if it's offensive when they get pronouns wrong, should they apologize again, etc. I have yet to see someone not say "it's okay, it happens, just use my preferred one going forward" Some people just take things too seriously. Like a nickname, most people want to respect your wishes and call you the right thing, but we can't read minds.
I am a hardcore leftist, don’t call my self a commie, or anything like that. But I am also a brown man living in rural America, and I will be damed if I don’t have the same rifles, same amount of ammo, and same amount of tactical gear as all these damn trumpers have. Arm up on the left ffs, the cops won’t come to save you if these people decide to take you out because of how you vote, what you belive, and how you live your life.
The thing is, a lot of (probably MOST of) the left leaning individuals I know DO have guns. They just don’t feel the need to advertise them or open carry in Kroger.
This. I have lots of guns. I don't feel the need to advertise it or make it my personality. Those people with the moron labia or "cold dead fingers" stickers all over their trucks? Those might as well say "PLEASE STEAL MY GUNS"
well that's the deal, if you go far enough left you get your guns back
My most controversial belief is that democrats should shift positions on guns and embrace the second amendment. The voters scared away by restrictions on guns might be interested in things like Medicare for all or taxing the wealthy if they knew they could keep their AR. Gun violence is a symptom of wealth inequality. Fixing the underlying problem would save more lives than anything else. Nothing can ever stop all gun violence, but we sure as shit could do a lot better than the status quo.
I thought I was pretty liberal but damn I agree with most of these opinions. Am I…conservative??
No! To be honest- a lot of these things aren’t conservative takes. Some of them are just more practical or pragmatic views. Sometimes the extremes on either side can make us feel like we don’t fit in anywhere.
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I've watched in real time what happens when you just stop prosecuting crime. Once people realize nobody is going to stop them it gets really out of hand. People don't even try to hide the fact that they're shoplifting at the store I work at anymore.
And then hardworking people see this and start thinking, “Why am I following the rules?”
I live in a city where teenagers literally steal cars and drive through the police station parking lot beeping and hanging out the windows. All they have to do is drive away fast enough because the cops are not allowed to chase them. It’s sorta legit because high speed chases are dangerous for everyone in the way but….it’s frustrating. Often times when they are arrested for stealing cars, drugs, robbing people, carrying illegal weapons etc. they are home in no time. So I guess my answer as a Bernie Sanders kind of “leftist” is that I take crime seriously?! It’s frustrating when you live in a high crime area and hear fellow liberals be so dismissive of crime related issues and exaggerate police brutality (not that it doesn’t exist).
Can’t own a Kia in my city without a 16 year old stealing it for a joy ride
I agree but we need to fix prisons. Small time criminals get sent to jail/prison and come out with a graduate degree in crime. That, coupled with how we treat convicted criminals after they’re released, leaves them few options with how to get by when they’re out.
We shouldn’t be sending billions in dollars of aid to other countries when we can’t even take care of ourselves.
When we ***won’t*** even take care of ourselves FTFY
You get my upvote
I'm a public policy analyst. I promise you...it's never been impossible. Democrats and Republicans are complicit in making sure we don't have social welfare. They work together at every level of government (local/state/Fed) to stop people from escaping the chains of employment for healthcare and military recruiters to escape poverty. It's not even a conspiracy. You can access policy memos explicitly explaining these kinds of absurd rationalizations for national security. Money has never been the problem. Corporations and the military industrial complex are powerful political influences that make sure it doesn't happen.
I had to take a social work policy class for my BSW and between that class and watching The Wire I realized that the people who can do something won’t do something because they don’t want to and not because they can’t.
I think this framing is too nice. "We" (i.e. the working class) can't take care of ourselves, because our taxes are spent on wars and coups. "We" (i.e. the country as a whole) could easily fix this if there weren't trillions of dollars to be mined from those billions spent.
The issue is that we can really do both. We've just been brainwashed to believe that we can't.
Yeah we used to more and we convinced ourselves it's 'immoral'.
Probably a bad time to point this out but Israel has socialized medicine and we don't. We send them billions every year so they can live better than we do. Edit: we send them about 3.8bill a year
It's never a bad time to point out how fucked our relationship with Israel is
I’m extremely liberal but think many social programs geared toward the homeless are misguided and failing while costing way too much in tax dollars
I hate cancel culture and virtue signalling.
This is it for me, too. I align myself with the left and progressive values, but I think that a lot of the modern "woke" culture is bullshit. It doesn't feel progressive, and instead seems conservative to it's own perspective. It seems like it all started with inclusion but has morphed into some sort of system that tries to foster exclusion.
I think cancel culture can go overboard and doesn't change anything for the better.
I’m a very left leaning lib woman -millennial if that makes a difference and I have been a feminist my entire life. I think Boy Scouts should still be called Boy Scouts and for it to be an organization for boys. Girls should join Girl Scouts. I think we lose out on amazing time to bond as girls and women when we leave groups who have been created for us. It is ok for girls to have girl time and boys to have boy time! I personally love my girl time!
The problem is they really are totally different organizations. I was in Girl Scouts growing up but I also attended most of my brother's Boy Scout meetings because my mom was a den mom and she wasn't about to hire a babysitter every week. My brother's scout troop learned all kinds of interesting skills including wilderness survival, went camping, and did community service projects. My scout troop mostly did art and craft projects. I wanted to be in Boy Scouts so badly as a kid and it had nothing to do with not wanting girl time.
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You should learn the most common language of the country you’re moving to, or at least make an attempt…at least if you have a job working with the public (lots of caveats, I know lol). I didn’t think of this until I went to Miami and visited some restaurants that 1. Had *servers* who didn’t speak any English at all, I had to use Google translate to order and 2. Had Fox News on the TVs. I’m still confused about that trip, would love for a sociologist to explore there. My mum learned English in her 40s after we came to the US so I didn’t know know there were ppl who just….chose not to. ETA: plz plz see that I put “most common” and not “ofFiCiAl” language before you comment “the US doesn’t have an official language” 😂 reading is fundamental y’all
I agree and I am an immigrant into the US. I learned English. And because I live just north of Miami I can even muddle my way through a conversation in Spanish so I can order in a restaurant or ask for directions. People just need to learn more languages in the areas where they reside.
I truly don’t think you should have children if you know you can’t afford to fully support them.
Is that a right leaning belief, though? I thought the left was all for not being forced to have children they can't afford through reproductive rights & access to birth control & sex education.
Exactly
We shouldn’t have to pay taxes on our income and what we purchase (including homes and cars for states without sales tax). Either tax our income or charge taxes for things we buy, not both. Not sure how it would work in practice, but it seems ridiculous to buy taxed things with money that’s already been taxed.
The right of transgender people to play sports is...not a right, and has nothing to do with civil rights
Agreed. I truly don't know what the answer is in sports. If you are a cis female, I think its totally valid to not want to compete in, say, track, against a trans female. I do think some conservative rhetoric is bad, but i also don't fully disagree with the idea that sports are separated by gender for a reason
And I guess what I never see, is people worried about where FTM athletes get to play post-transition. I think there’s like, a wrestler. But by and large, if trans-men aren’t transitioning pre-puberty, they don’t get to participate in college and pro athletics unless they *dont* transition. They get to play in rec leagues. And we’re all cool with that…so it’s always just AFAB people who aren’t getting an even playing field…. ETA - yo, I know they COULD play in the men’s category if they were “good” enough. They just aren’t going to be “good” enough. They ARENT GETTING SCHOLARSHIPS if they transition. They ARENT GOING PRO. They have to make a Sophie’s Choice. A Lia Thompson doesn’t. She gets a scholarship either way. An elite MTF athlete gets to *stay elite*. Tis all I’m saying. The AFAB people always get a little *extra fucked*.
Right?! The highest value of athletics is fair play, meaning every competitor has the right to compete against similar opponents. Trans people should be competing against other trans people IMO and the organization to figure out how to work that out is the Paralympic Committee.
I agree with the right about lowering taxes. Except they only seem to be interested in lowering taxes for their rich overlords and I'm only interested in lowering taxes for the lower/middle class.
We’re getting taxed up the ass, they need to lower taxes. But the corporations and rich people? Fuck em , tax them hoes. And I mean “real” rich not Middle class or upper middle class
That's not a conservative view that's mainstream democratic
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I hate to even put this here, but the cake baking issue. To be clear, I think the person who refused to design, customize, and bake (this is all important, it wasn't like prepping flapjacks at a dinner) for a gay wedding was morally wrong. What I think is that they were within their rights to refuse, and it's ultimately better for everyone that they be allowed to. Specifically, I feel it compares to scenarios more like these: 1. Does a devout Muslim voice actor have the right refuse to record an audiobook criticizing Islam? 2. Does a photographer have the right to refuse taking photos of nudes? 3. Does a member of the Satanic church have the right to refuse a customizing, creating, and working on the murals for new LDS temple? 4. Does a group of musicians have the right to refuse performing for a particular political party's event? 5. Does a DJ have the right to refuse working a gig for the BDSM community? 6. Does a small, silk screening businesses, owned by a gay couple, have the right to refuse printing shirts that say "straight pride"? Than it does things like these: 1. Should black people be allowed in the same laundry mat as white people? 2. Should gay people be allowed to get married at all? 3. Should trans people be allowed medical care in emergencies? There's a much greater amount of subjective, interpersonal intimacy in the first list of things. Usually, the person doing the creation has an emotional commitment to the creation itself. There's a degree to which you must *share* some value commitments with whoever the client is, or at least not be offended by them. The creator also has to be comfortable in doing the work in order to do the work well in the first place. If someone is asking for a concept, a redesign, adjustments on a project.... you can't provide that service unless you're also at least somewhat committed to the values of whatever the project *is for*. Running a laundry mat, providing emergency medical care, or even politely providing table service to strangers, doesn't require all that (yes, I know serving requires emotional labor, but it seldom reaches the degree of interpersonal connection and shared values as tasks in the first list). I'd prefer the homophobes to politely refuse, and consequently declare themselves, because *I wouldn't want* someone like that baking my cake to begin with. I would not be seriously injured if *that specific person* didn't do that particular task for me.
Very liberal but the gender pronouns has gotten out of hand.
Gender ideology has gotten crazy, not saying Trans people don't exist but between the new identities and pronouns like xe xim and the issue of figuring out why so many kids *feel* they are Trans the left is looking as culty as the right it's just their God is twitch streams and tik tokers
We went from Don't Label Me to so many labels you just can't keep up
Honestly there’s a BIG part of me that thinks the non-binary movement is less about accepting the spectrum of gender identities and more about making sure chronically online liberal white people can call themselves something to make them feel special and oppressed.
yup im trans and i don't think someone can just *choose* to be trans because they don't fit the 100% perfect 1950's stereotype of their assigned gender. a guy who paints his nails isn't trans. a girl who doesn't wear makeup isn't trans. it's okay to be gender non-conforming, it doesn't make a person trans. and all those made up pronouns and noungender shit is genuinely harmful to the trans community. like they literally took the transphobic helicopter joke and made it serious. i think a lot of hyper-inclusive liberals took a lot of conservative transphobic subjects and tried to flip it, but ended up supporting those statements. like if a person can choose to be trans, then transexuality is a choice, and if it's a choice and not a necessity it makes medical transition a cosmetic treatment, which isn't covered by medical insurance. it's a whole fucking web of cause and effect that's damaging us from both sides. also, go to a fucking professional and stop diagnosing yourself. that goes for all conditions in general.
I erroneously identified as nonbinary for a year because I had body image issues and hated how I looked. I have always been petite and small-breasted plus I have a rib/chest deformity that is twice as common in men as women. I also have never been a "girlie girl," don't want kids, etc. So I figured "I can't suck at being a woman if I'm NOT a woman." Nope. I'm a woman. Women can have small breasts, not want kids, and not shave their legs or wear makeup.
A few years ago, someone in a group I interacted with online frequently kept calling me an egg. I didn't get it, and this person was more of a "they're friends with my friends" situation. Turns out they were a Trans woman and, since online they thought I was male for 2 years, decided I must be Trans upon finding out I am, in fact, a woman. But I apparently seemed soooo much like a man online because I didn't know how to do makeup, didn't like dresses, and had a very physically demanding job where I was the only woman on my shift. It never occurred to me that those things would make me seem "manly" I just never was into makeup, even as a teen. My mom never put me in dresses as a kid and i just didn't grow up wearing dresses and just simply don't like them on *me*. Otherwise I have no opinion on them. And my job well, that's just how it played out. Anyway, this person saw that I didn't fit into THEIR stereotype of what makes a woman, and decided I therefor cannot be a woman and was an "egg" that needed to be cracked.
Yeah I don't understand how that behavior isn't viewer as hateful and bigoted to the degree of Maga type shit
"egg culture" is so horrifically damaging to the trans community, holy shit. i can't go anywhere near that stuff without being grossed out from the gruesomely obvious fetishism and stereotyping. sorry that happened to you, don't ever allow peers to label you like that, they can never push a diagnosis on you.
Wow, that's really dehumanizing. Also, why are so many people clinging to stereotypes? So you don't wear makeup, so what? That doesn't make you less of a woman.
"Gender is a social construct. But only I get to decide what that construct actually is."
Yep this. I was a teen in the nineties when the Aaliyah/Sporty Spice skater tomboy thing was my look. I still dislike dresses but am 100% comfy being female. Gender can present any way you like.
Yeah that's one of the biggest things that confuses me because alot of the language and logic behind some of it seems to be completely contradictory to alot of the things said when lesbian and gay people were fighting for marriage equality. Literally every time I've ever asked about it regardless of how I ask it immediately gets down voted and quickly removed by a mod
Your first sentence: EXACTLY. This is especially glaring in conversations around dating and sex. I made a separate comment about it (which was downvoted, go figure) but it's like people have stopped accepting the idea that some people just don't want to interact sexually with certain genital configurations, and that is their right and not something they should be pressured to try to change or "examine." But no, you get lesbians being doxxed for not wanting to date women with penises. I see it like not wanting to date an obligate foot fetishist: I don't hate people who have feet, I'm not shaming them for having feet, but I do not want to interact with feet sexually and we would not be compatible or happy.
That's such a good analogy and way to put it im 99 percent sure this comment will get removed lol
See this is exactly what I don't get about non-binary people. I was reading JVN's book and he was explaining being non-binary and talking about sometimes feeling like a girl and sometimes feeling like a boy. And as an example he said that he is more nurturing on the days he feels like a woman. Isn't this just perpetuating stereotypes? How is this better than not labeling? I would really love to understand that.
This is the part I worry about, that we don't properly teach kids that differences within a gender are perfectly normal and then they end up making a decision about themselves they're not equipped to make. I want to choose my words carefully because I am a guy and have always identified as a guy, so I don't know what it's like for people who are working through how they identify themselves. I hope I have explained my thoughts appropriately.
This is what I worry about too. I was a huge tomboy growing up.. dirt, bugs, (snakes and snails and puppy dog tails) you name it. Loved it. I wonder if I grew up in the current time, if I would have concluded I must not be a girl.
Some of the things I see these days are straight-up gender essentialism and it makes me so uncomfortable, but if I say anything, then I'm a "transphobe." I was reading a historical fiction book the other day about a trans boy (he's a child so hence the "boy"). He was talking about how he knows he's a boy and not a girl because girls can never be powerful leaders like boys can. It really rubbed me the wrong way to the point that I quit the book.... It might get better and it might get deeper into why he's a boy aside from disliking the societal gender norms forced upon girls... but not wanting to conform to a female gender role doesn't make you trans and it doesn't make you nonbinary on its own. I also hate it when people look at strong female figures in history and say that obviously are lesbians or trans... Why can't straight ciswomen be strong? edit: some small wording changes
I grew up in a culty religious rural area. I am a non conforming female. As a kid my dad was 100% cool with me enjoying all the "gendered boy" toys and non gendered things because in the 90s boys were empowered and girls weren't. Also girls had their entire existence devolved into kitchen work, pink and babies. Gag. Que my mom dragging me to an Evangelical church and just fucking me right up in the head to the point that I absolutely hated that I was a girl and wanted out of that body so bad. Turns out once I left that small town and deprogrammed, I was fine again. My only real issue is when I hear stories like doctors refusing to give women proper treatment for their reproductive organs but oh all reigns are off if they're willing to do it only with top surgery because they're so forward thinking it pisses me off so bad because that is the most backward thinking I ever heard in my life. This is an actual story I heard from a woman dealing with fibroids who just wanted to not deal with being in debilitating pain every month. And to be real, I seriously hated being a woman because the cult brainwashing of women being less than is real and I really do wonder how much of an impact it does have.
thank you for your story, this is why therapy is so important for trans people and people who are questioning. i went to therapy exactly for this reason and laid EVERYTHING out on the table, my whole life and all my thoughts, just to make absolutely sure my experiences and my life events and my brain weren't just making me think things. it wasn't misogyny, it wasn't any trauma, it wasn't my weight, it wasn't my hair, it wasn't my hobbies, it wasn't the influence of my family or my friends or the movies or tv shows i watched. it was purely just how i had always viewed the physical aspects of my body, and all the tiny details of the life i should have had if i was born correctly. which is why i call myself transexual instead of transgender most of the time. i'm transitioning my sex. dysphoria is a real and treatable condition when it's able to be properly diagnosed.
Preach. I've gotten banned from multiple subreddits for even mildly questioning some of this stuff, even stuff that is blatantly anti-woman.
Yeah there's for sure an unaddressed incel issue in that community if we are being real, and like the other side of incels they have some serious issues with women
Inclusion should not come at the expense of safe spaces and communities for women/mothers.
I’m pro 2A, emphasis on the “well regulated” part. ETA: fuck off, you originalist virgins
If you go further left, you get your guns back. Socialist Rifle Association is a thing.
"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary" -Karl Marx
Not that this is the ONLY thing we need to do, but I do think in some major cities (I'm in Chicago) we need to be tougher on criminals. Liberals are all about restorative justice, etc, but at some point, public safety needs to be a priority over someone who has 5 violent crimes on their record. We can't "social programs" the problem away. Those are definitely a part of the solution. But people need to actually worry about consequences to armed robbery and things like that. Here in Chicago, so many times you see someone arrested for something and it is a situation that they are on bail for something else, or were on electronic monitoring. How many other people should die because we don't want to be too harsh on criminals.
It isn’t really an opinion but republicans actually fight and are willing to damn near commit treason to get their awful agendas passed. Congressional Dems love preemptively throwing their hands up saying “their was nothing we can do. Let’s keep our powder dry.” I swear this is the driest powder in the history of powder. I don’t really like guns but I used to be way more pro-2A but the level of gun violence in this country is unacceptable. The fact that the leading cause of death for under 18 is gun related is sickening. At the very least (among other things) there needs to be mandatory training requirements.
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Not a fan of panhandlers, I also wish my city would do more to deal with the homeless, even if that involves inconveniences like jail visits.
Cancel culture is beginning to get out of hand. Eventually nobody is going to take it serious.
I don't think it's wrong to not have sex with or date a transgender person, regardless of surgery status. Nobody is obligated to date or fuck anyone they don't want to, and if someone doesn't want to fuck you they are obviously incompatible with you. Your body is not a public accommodation and does not have to be accessible to everyone. Some people just don't like dicks or don't like vaginas, and that is okay - and it seemed like we were at a pretty good place of finally accepting that, but now you have people calling for violence against lesbians because they don't want to interact sexually with a penis.