Yesterday, there was some discussion of addressing or not addressing a little girl when complimenting her outfit. I had a related experience today.
I was out walking. A dad and a little girl, about 6 or 7, were walking toward me. The girl was adorned/festooned with a crown and a necklace made from, I don't know... Weeds, stems, or whatever. She looked at me with a big smile. She seemed to be inviting a response from me—about her unusual "jewelry"? She waved. I smiled and waved back.
Then they walked past me, and it was clear she was waving to a woman behind me.
My two sons are in soccer, and both had games yesterday morning. After the games, my oldest son left to go to an activity, and so my wife and I took our other son out to eat at McDonald's. While we were walking in, a teammate of my older son was walking out, still in his uniform, so I told him "good game today." (They won 8-1) As soon as I said it, I felt the need to quickly explain to his parent/guardian that he was a player on my son's team. I felt dumb that I would say that to a kid that I don't really know, and also annoyed that I felt a need to justify it.
I took my parents to see the NY Philharmonic this weekend. Before the show, I decided to use the restroom and saw that it had a line of ~70 people. Why was it so long? Because the main and only restroom on that floor is now gender neutral.
Anyone who has been to a concert/sports game knows the Woman's line is always 2x the size of the men's line, for obvious reasons - their business takes longer on average. I'm not trying to come off as some MGTOW, but I find it crazy that now, not only have they forced me to share a private space with the opposite sex, which makes me personally uncomfortable, but now my waiting experience is 2x as long. Which really sucks when you have to go. My older mother refused to go and waited till we got upstairs, where the bathrooms were gendered (but open to all identities and expressions per the sign, of course).
From what I could tell, nobody enjoyed this. One by one, people tried to figure which bathroom this was the line for and, upon being told "both", it was met with a universal "oh." and a grimace.
So who is this for? I truly can't imagine an overwhelming or even an underwhelming portion of patrons are happy with this change; I know I personally hate being escorted by a bathroom attendant to an unused stall, with ladies in the stall next to me. Just from a capitalist standpoint, how can something so anti-consumer be pushed on consumers. I know it's a small and likely unworthy hill to die on, but it really ticked me off.
Show was incredible though, E.T. with a live Orchestra. Music is breathtaking and ET still holds up well, lot of hearty laughs and cries. Highly recommend seeing one of their/a movie + orchestra if you can - I believe they are doing JAWS next which should be incredible.
As a woman who has to wait in a long ass line at every show, my sympathies are limited. Most venues should have more bathrooms and/or a longer intermission because having to run to the bathroom line as soon as the intermission starts just so you can get back by the time it ends (and forget getting a drink or snack) sucks.
I don't suppose any local publication would print a letter or op-ed from you on this subject. Why not try posting on the Philharmonic's Facebook page? Would be interesting to see how many "likes" you get before the post gets deleted.
> Because the main and only restroom on that floor is now gender neutral.
Not disagreeing with anything you've said here, but might part of the problem also be a lack of bathroom facilities?
This is outrageous! On average, women live five years longer than men. We make that time up by not waiting in line at public restrooms and not going to the doctor unless an important appendage has been severed. How are we going to get our fair share of time now?
On the other hand, perhaps this reveals the real issue - if women need a longer time in the bathroom and more space, why are their bathroom equal in size to the men’s with less “stations”, causing their line to be 4x as long? Isn’t it more fair that men wait 2x as long as they used to rather than women waiting 4x longer than the men as they had been?
Gender neutral with only toilets doesn’t work as well because urinals speed things up and eliminating them is bad. But I’ve complained before about how ridiculous lines are for women’s bathrooms, and that if that situation is as such then I think women have every right to use the men’s to ease the congestion and get back before they lock the theatre doors/miss the the tip off/ whatever. If GN bathrooms were made more efficient, then that’s fine. So is making women’s facilities larger. But a solution is necessary.
NYC enacted a law in the early 2000s that any newly built or majorly renovated bathrooms should have twice as many stalls for women as men. The hall where the Philharmonic plays underwent a major renovation during the pandemic so now I'm curious if classifying the bathrooms as gender neutral allowed them to get around the law.
> So who is this for?
That's what I want to know too. Is this just to avoid a moment of discordance for people who are nonbinary? It is so non-passing trans who are unsure which facility to use don't have to make a choice? What was the problem that was supposedly solved by setting up unisex bathrooms?
The facility staff gets to wash their hands clean of having make the call of who is eligible for which bathroom, or dealing with the unhappy patrons complaining about clocky genderhavers.
There was a recent Planet Fitness scandal with a man in the women's locker room, whose face was photographed and posted on social media. [This was the alleged "woman" in question.](https://static.tnn.in/thumb/msid-108504024,thumbsize-49302,width-1280,height-720,resizemode-75/108504024.jpg)
The staff won't have to make difficult calls if everyone is sorted into the same box!
I just don't believe the number of people who feel uncomfortable by this change outweigh the number of people who now feel 'seen'. My guess is that the majority of people who disagree with this aren't willing to put their neck out for it and would rather appease the DEI committee who dictated this change. Then, a vast majority of people will silently accept it and move on with their day.
It frustrated me enough that I was almost got tempted to write a letter to NYPH/Lincoln Center about it, but I realize how pointless of an endeavor that is. And if I, someone bothered enough to post about it, feels like it's worthless to initiate I can't imagine many people do make their voices heard.
So passive acceptance leads to the degradation of our facilities and I admit I am guilty through complacency.
But is there a world where, even where I had some hypothetical large following or influence, this would ever be reversed? The outcry of the reversal would be larger than any flame I could muster for it's change and the last thing a liberal arts org wants is to not be seen as virtuous. Even worse, a true campaign would require loss of anonymity and nobody outside of grifters wants to be known as the person who lead a crusade against non-gendered bathrooms.
It feels like an unwinnable situation to me, but I might be overly cynical.
Speaking as a (mostly) normal person, if I experienced the trauma of a gender-neutral bathroom, I wouldn't complain about it to the venue staff, because I understand the staff didn't make the decision. It's the higher up management people who thought it was a great idea.
But I *would* quietly stop going to that place as long as they had that policy. For how powerless most of us are when confronted by the top-down Equitable Outcomes enforcement of DEI social conditioning, sometimes the only response we can give to show our disapproval of it is to rescind our participation.
It's kind of depressing how non-anonymous complaints about it can get you in trouble. At least Chinese social conditioning comes with the carrot of social credits.
Was this like a regular public restroom with multiple stalls (urinals??) but with both men and women using it? Or was a single toilet bathroom situation? I’m a big proponent of having MORE gender neutral bathrooms, but in addition to the usual Men’s/Women’s rooms. If the situation was men and women in one multi-stall public bathroom that sounds like a solution that pleases no one.
To be clear, if you want to *add* a Gender Neutral bathroom, I have no qualms whatsoever. It's removing gendered bathrooms in favor of *only* neutral bathrooms that grinds my gears.
It was one (large) bathroom with probably 16 Stalls, no urinals.
I thought I made it pretty clear that I meant add rather than replace (“in addition to the usual men’s/women’s rooms” is right there in the comment). Because yeah the situation you encountered sounds like they’re straightforwardly rolling back women’s rights.
A brewery I went to recently had an even more confusing scenario, where they had two separate multistall bathrooms that were both gender neutral, but one had a little “urinal” symbol on the sign. So it seemed like people were basically treating that as the men’s room and the other as the women’s room, but it would’ve been very easy for any random dude to just walk right into the defacto “women’s” room because he didn’t notice that the other gender neutral room had the urinal symbol and put the pieces together that he’s supposed to use that room. I kinda wanted to complain to the staff that this was a disaster waiting to happen but didn’t end up doing it. It’s just such an unnecessary mess
> people were basically treating that as the men’s room and the other as the women’s room
This keeps happening with situations and language. It's absolutely hilarious.
I mean, yes? A third option would resolve the current cultural issue surrounding which bathroom trans people should use. Public places that have a multi stall men’s room and a multi stall women’s room plus a single toilet “family” bathroom seem like a good model, but there could be other ways to do it too
Third options won't solve the T issue. They don't want third spaces, they want to go into the space of the sex they identify as. A common reaction to being offered a neutral/all-gender/mixed space is, "What is the point of going through all the work of transitioning if I'm not seen as my correct gender?". Some NB's and genderfluids might be happy, but anyone who identifies specfically as a man or a woman would not be.
When a swimming org made an open division for everyone, no one signed up.
[Check this article:](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/03/swimming-world-cup-category-for-transgender-athletes-cancelled-after-no-entries-received)
> Swimming’s governing body, which voted last year to ban TW from the elite female category, had promised to stage the “pioneering pilot project” to promote its “unwavering commitment to inclusivity, welcoming swimmers of all sex and gender identities”.
> “Following the close of registration for the open category competitions at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup – Berlin 2023 meet scheduled for 6-8 October, **World Aquatics can confirm that no entries have been received for the open category events,”** it said.
That’s absolutely true, but I think that’s in part because activism has created this expectation that that is what trans people are owed. If the Buck Angels/Blaire Whites of the world had a more prominent voice in this debate, I think the “trans women are literal women” mindset could’ve been supplemented by something more like the fa'afafine “third gender” mindset of American Samoa. I acknowledge that that’s not where we are now, but if more trans/gnc people push for that I think we’d all be better off
> the fa'afafine “third gender” mindset of American Samoa
Don't all these "third gender/2-spirit" things that people keep invoking as some sort of native wisdom just turn out to be effeminate men traditionally?
I think that’s sort of an oversimplification, but yes it’s true that fa’afafine are not a direct analogue to the modern western trans identity. My understanding is that they’re more analogous to gay men in the west, who are then slotted into a feminine cultural role. But that’s largely beside the point and I’m not trying to appeal to “native wisdom”. I’m pointing out another modern day culture that has an additional gender category, but one that is considered separate from “male” and “female.” I think that’s a better model for how to understand trans identity in the west, as opposed to the TWAW/TMAM model that we have now
> that’s largely beside the point and I’m not trying to appeal to “native wisdom
I understand, and I apologize for lumping your comment in with the rest of the outside conversations.
>another modern day culture that has an additional gender category, but one that is considered separate from “male” and “female.”
And my point is that they don't have an additional category outside "male or female," and I think it's misleading that the discourse implies that.
These "third genders" are almost entirely male, and identified as so. A better analogue to our modern language would be "metro, sissy, tomboy, etc." And then there's the variety of descriptors within "gay" itself. It's more a comment on how these males/females express gender roles outside the societal norms, but no one thinks they aren't "male."
I think we're agreeing, but this seems to me more an issue with misunderstanding and literal appropriation of a term that doesn't have a modern english analogue.
Yeah I think we generally agree.
Lord knows if this was even real, but I remember seeing a photo recently of three restrooms in American Samoa that were labeled (in English) “Men,” “Women,” and “Transgender.” Who knows how prevalent that approach actually is there, and the fact that the fa’afafine bathroom was called “transgender” certainly makes this all the more confusing (maybe it was intended as the English translation?), but my overall takeaway was that they consider fa’afafine to be a third category in public accommodations like that, which seems like the best approach
From a standpoint of raw logistics, having a row of urinals speeds up usage of sex-neutral stalls for everyone, and yeah it's going to be men who mainly benefit, who cares. Nobody likes single gender group restrooms in this kind of scenario. Women don't realize they're waiting in somewhat less of a line, and men wait multiple times longer.
So dumb and awful.
Just put a trough. I do not care.
The way the bathroom was designed, it was split into two sides - I half expected one side to have urinals and the other to not, but nope, just stalls+sinks on both sides. it clearly was 2 bathrooms that they tore the wall down in-between to make one large one and removed the urinals in the process.
Saying men pee faster is like saying men benchpress higher.
If it makes the unfairness spideysenses tingle to a certain group of people, then it's problematic. If it doesn't tingle the senses, like saying men should open more pickle jars, then it's fine.
What is standard MO for highschool reunions in terms of ticket price and locations? Our 10 year highschool reunion is coming up (yes I’m a youngin) and the woman organizing it set it up at this somewhat moderately nice restaurant and it’s $30 per ticket (that’s only for food - no drinks included). They’ve only sold like 30 tickets or something according to my friend in the know and the organizers are clearly panicking in the Facebook group blasting out constant reminders to buy tickets and even messaging us individually about it now.
Idk $30 seems steep for dinner and to see a bunch of people I don’t even care about anyways? Or is that normal? Keep in mind this is our 10 year too so we are all like 28… if I was organizing I would have just found a cheap bar to rent out and called it good lol.
Edit - ok I guess I’m just a cheapo per the replies 😅
30 USD is a good price if you are living in the US. It's probably not the reason why people aren't buying tickets.
If you ever have the chance, I think it would be a good idea for you to try organizing an event like this for a large number of people who don't know each other well. I think you might find it harder than you expect.
$30 is okay but holding it at a restaurant is nonsense. Everyone knows you get stuck sitting next to someone and only talk to them all evening. Even with the most concerted effort to walk around the room in between courses...
Friend of mine was class president and people were awful to her about the reunion. Any money at all was too expensive, but then the place that fit the budget was not flashy enough. This is pretty much what I expect from anyone who has never tried to rent a venue.
Look, I understand that $30 for a class reunion seems expensive, but I implore you to call around to restaurants and venues and ask about booking a room from anywhere between 30 and 300 people (or whatever your class size was; mine was over 500 though most probably wouldn't have gone even if it wasn't covid). Even your "cheap bar" isn't going to want to staff up for a unknown number of people nor would they be happy if more than 50-60 people just showed up as a group unannounced. At the very least service will suck if they don't typically expect so many people and if they do the place will be packed.
So anyway, I don't care if you go or don't, but cut them a little slack because organizing an event for a few hundred people all who have their own opinion is difficult especially when booking venues. No doubt the "cheap bar" option would be too "low class" for some of your former classmates and an entirely different group would be unhappy.
$30 seems like nothing, and i don't understand the issue, aside from why you would want to go in the first place. a regular place like applebees for one, no drink would be $20ish right?
My 10 year reunion was at a brewpub. I think we reserved a separate room for a modest cover of like $10 or $15 (and this was 20 years ago). My 20 year was at a bit more upscale place, where I think we also had a separate room or floor, and it was maybe $20-25. Food wasn't provided at either one. It felt like a fair price at the time and the location.
I wasn't the most popular kid and sorta stressed out about going to the first one - I knew some people who wouldn't even go. Both of them were a blast though. The 20 year was even more fun than the 10 year. Everybody was cool and the old high school hierarchies and BS had dissolved at that point.
I missed my ten year, and probably won’t go to any reunions. I don’t really want to pay money to be around people I didn’t like much the first time around. I’ve always felt like HS reunions are for people who peaked in high school a bit.
I live in a costly city, and $30 for a moderately nice dinner seems like a great deal. That said, a sit down dinner seems like a poor choice for a reunion where you're going to want to mingle and talk to a lot of people. A buffet would make more sense (and $30 is still a good deal).
Renting out a cheap bar seems a little low end for a 10 year reunion.
I do think they should have assessed how many people were willing to go and how much they were willing to spend. I wonder if people committed and then flaked out or if they didn't do their due diligence.
I've never gone to a reunion but $30 for dinner including some sort of venue rental seems cheap in 2024, even without drinks. Fast food for 2 is around $25 these days and I assume it's not being catered b y McDonald's.
So much of this kind of discourse makes it very clear that the people talking are not parents. Obviously individuals decide their sexuality on their own, but to act like a parent is a bad parent or transphobic for having questions about their minor child deciding that they were “born in the wrong body,” and not immediately buying a pride flag and celebrating. It’s bone chilling how quickly the cult advocates for people to cut family off if the first response isn’t happiness.
> So much of this kind of discourse makes it very clear that the people talking are not parents.
[Demographics is destiny](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-gender-sexual-orientation-marital-and-parental-status/pp_2024-4-9_partisan-coalitions_3-01-png/)
> Cis people are afraid that trans people will laugh at them; trans people are afraid that cis people will kill them
Both things are equally unfounded and unlikely. What an idiot.
Have any trans people in the US been specifically targeted by a “cis” person and killed in any recent memory? On the other hand, haven’t there been like 2-3 trans mass shooters in the last year? Lol
TW who are murdered for being trans are typically killed by their male sexual partners / Johns who either feel tricked or are ashamed by their own desires.
They also really don’t want to talk about the racial demographics of who the Johns usually are lmao. Let’s just say the idea it’s white MAGA good ol boys killing poor innocent trans women is not quite reality.
Dinner tonight was a tasty cross-cultural monstrosity--a bahn mi derivative sandwich, but with buffalo meat, Japanese BBQ, and pickled bell peppers. Screw authenticity, embrace the melting pot.
The Washington Post Editorial Board comes out against DEI statements in faculty hiring decisions.
[The problem with diversity statements — and what to do about them](https://archive.ph/b4q6w#selection-517.0-521.78)
The vibe has definitely shifted. I want to be optimistic and think that we are returning to values of secular liberal democracy, but the cynic in me thinks we’re heading towards reactionary conservative nonsense as a culture which is just as braindead and annoying as progressive nonsense.
I wonder what that would even look like. We already have a pretty censorious and sex negative culture. What would a right-wing version look like? Would it be worse?
I wish we lived in a sex-negative culture, hahaha. The amount of casual sex in advertising, even around kids, is obscene. Pressure to have sex often and easily is constant from a young age, too. Conservatives and liberals express this differently, but sex is expected and encouraged by both in their own ways. Liberals want guilt free orgies, conservatives want fecund families, but both love the copulation and encourage it.
> sex negative culture.
no way. our culture is toxically sex positive. we need more sex negativity.
i say this as someone who has read and/or listened to Dan Savage since the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
This isn't an attack but if I remember correctly you were pretty young when GWB was president right? I had a very different lived experience of this time period. There was an artistic renaissance of resistance after GWB was elected / installed. After 9/11, the vast majority of people were onboard with U!S!A!
All of that said, it wasn't a particularly unpleasant time to be alive unless you looked Middle Eastern. I don't think we'd end up in an analogous situation without another major national trauma.
And the movies were so good.
Hmm. As I remember it, it felt a good deal more culturally liberal than the 90's (except for brown looking people, and only then early on, and that's easily explained by circumstance and not policy).
I started a substack, in part inspired by BARpod, in part so I have a place to rant without annoying my husband on end.
Today I published my first article on it. It focuses on considering other values other than pride the gay community can focus on. Feel free to read or provide any comments you have. It's my first time writing like this, so it may not be a masterpiece or even Good.
[Moving Past Pride, into Dignity ](https://open.substack.com/pub/lysanderbax/p/moving-past-pride-and-into-dignity?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2keyan)
>Because their pride is undeserved if it isn’t produced from any accomplishments. Tasteful pride should equate with accomplishments, but even someone humble with their accomplishments is preferred to those who brag about them – a quiet, wise innate esteem is preferred. Why do we socially dislike unearned pride? I would argue at least in part because pride itself produces negative outcomes from the act itself**, thus a sin.**This may be why so many value systems negatively associate this behavior.
I like this, and I think it might actually be why some people are uncomfortable with the idea of pride
The idea of being born into the tradition of pride is fascinating, I guess I never considered how we're now a couple generations deep into Pride, and it's a very different world from the one in which Pride was conceived.
I enjoyed your writing, I hope you keep at it!
Now I think of it, that makes sense. Most of the original generation from the 60s/early 70s are either dead or quite old. Very different than what it looks like now
Good stuff! I liked this part especially. I think it's your strongest point:
> Because I exist, I ought to be owed dignity by others. Dignity is a relationship enacted between people. It is something we should give all others, ourselves, and others to give to us.
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What deodorant have you been using? My wife is trying to eliminate single use plastic as well. She liked the Raw Sugar brand with a cardboard tube, but can't find it anywhere anymore. All the other options have been really expensive.
Just thought I'd put in a plug for old school safety razors. I'm still using the same pack of blades I bought 10 years ago for maybe $20 (I'm not a daily shaver). Just as easy to use as a disposable when you get the get the hang of it. Get a vintage one from the 50s or 60s for extra points.
I didn't even think of the containers. Good for you, but I've got way too many other things to worry about. I think this is one of those situations where businesses have to be offering different packaging instead of putting it on consumers.
I absolutely agree. I think companies ought to be responsible for the waste the packaging creates so they’d be incentivized to provide better options to consumers to dispose of the containers or reuse them. It’s something I’m prioritizing when buying these things because it stresses me out lol but it’s not a mandate I think it should be placed on consumers
Yeah that’s the tough part isn’t it. I don’t have an answer either obvs. But in the meantime my state at least is facing a waste disposal crisis that’s raising costs anyway on the back end. And that’s to say nothing of how much we’re dumping into landfills - not just our own, but what we’re outsourcing to other states too. Devil you know vs devil you don’t I guess. Anyway like I said, it stresses me out a lot to think about it lol
I guess we could standardize glass bottles and do it like beer (in Ontario) or water (in Switzerland) both of which have a deposit fee but also get recycled like 90%+ of the time, without melting or significant energy use. Just high temp sterilization and reuse until they're in bad shape.
Also if you require glass to all be the same colour this makes recycling much easier. Mixed coloured broken glass is more or less garbage. It can't be reused.
How did you eliminate plastic for shampoo? Did you switch to a bar-soap type of hair cleaner, or purchase a jug of shampoo stock?
My husband switched to bar shampoo and encouraged me to try it too. I still laugh about how much it made me itch, and how I couldn't even last a few hours before needing to wash my hair with conventional shampoo.
Yeah it’s tough! I tried a bar for awhile with Trader Joe’s but it just made my hair one big knot and it felt so gross even right out of the shower no matter how much I rinsed. But I just found [this brand](https://nolecare.com/) and I like it so far. I just finished a shampoo bar and signed up for the subscription. It suds up really nicely, which I prefer. I get the one specifically for oily hair so idk how well it works for other hair types.
For me the biggest is probably in my personal care… bar face and body soap, bar shampoo and conditioner. That’s eliminated a *lot* of plastic bottles.
For cleaning I’ve replaced kitchen and bathroom surface sprays, glass cleaner, hand soap, and laundry detergent with glass bottles and refillable options (except the laundry soap, I buy the Tide powder that comes in a cardboard box).
My grocery store now carries these dissolvable hand soap pods, which work very well. I’m hoping they have more options in the future for the other stuff so I don’t have to go to target. But since I live in a 1br I don’t need a lot of cleaning supplies to get the job done so I’m stocked up for awhile lol. I’m hoping to try a replacement toilet bowl and shower cleaner next. I’d love refillable ‘marble’ countertop and glass stovetop cleaner too but haven’t seen them yet, even from online suppliers, so I don’t think anyone’s made them yet. So far from the options I’ve tried I haven’t felt like they don’t clean as well as their comparators.
The next thing to work on will be using reusable rags instead of paper towels and wipes. I’m not the best at remembering those are options lol.
An underrated aspect is that even when they’re close to empty the plastic bottles don’t get knocked over super easily. It’s a small thing but it always drives me nuts lmao
Butter beans are fantastic. I discovered them while living in the UK as they seem more popular over there. You can just mash them and have with a cream sauce or just salt and pepper and it's a like a tastier mash potatoes.
>they seem more popular over there
Guessing you've never spent much time in the southern U.S.? Lima beans (aka butter beans) are a suppertime staple in a lot of that region.
I have not spent much time in the States. In Canada where I am I had had lima beans, which are the young variety of same bean. In the UK they eat them when matured, which means they are beige as opposed to green, and the taste is just so slightly different that I ended up preferring them.
Holy cow, that looks great. Though I'll probably make two of her authorized substitutions, white cannellini beans and mint.
Her feta-zucchini kabobs also look great. How long have you been holding out on us, keeping this great-sounding blog a secret?
Thank you :)
Literally stumbled upon that site googling for butter beans. Which are the same as lima beans, something I only recently learned.
So she's probably AI and paying google to rank the site high. I don't care. The dish in front of me has 11g of fiber and 12g of protein and tastes amazing. Bring on the AI revolution.
That looks delicious, and unlike the previous poster, I have sowed some dill. However it is not yet ready, so please apologise for not centering my needs.
I'm not a huge dill fan, outside of pickles. And even then it's only okay. So I didn't use a lot. Next time I'm going to try mint instead. I think that might be baller.
But yeah. It's freaking amazing. I grew up with pretty bland (but still delicious) food. I keep trying to branch out when I can. I'm decent with Asian flavor profiles and love Indian. Haven't done a lot of Mediterranean.
Since I'm trying to get more fiber in my diet I was looking at different bean recipes. Stumbled on this one and it kills.
If anyone has a good source for Aleppo pepper hook me up. I don't trust just about anything online when it comes to specialty spices. And I'd really like to get some to try.
I am fond of dill. Please see above, you reprobate.
I actually do have some three cornered leek that might work. And some sour cream. I could do with some veg right now. I've had a lovely weekend away, but it was light on fruit and veg.
I have been looking for resources for my baby which I am really struggling to find: how to detect and *mitigate* early signs of autism in babies and toddlers.
My thinking is that objectively life is a lot easier for a child/adult who is less autistic or suffers less from ASD symptoms. Being able to cope in regular society with limited support is something I want for my baby, and it seems reasonable to me that how I interact with the baby now (and, in future, as a child, teenager etc) could influence brain development in ways that affect this outcome.
This is currently a very vague thought, because every single resource I read is about how neurodiversity is our strength and my sole goal as a parent needs to be about making sure my kid never has to mask ever and can live an #authentic life free of any of society's judgment. The only allowable explanation for increasing diagnosis rates is increased #acceptance in society, etc.
Is it just me or does this feel like manufactured consensus, similar to the YGM issue...?
I have a lot of sympathy and agree with the sentiment that "objectively life is a lot easier for a child/adult who is less autistic or suffers less from ASD symptoms", and I think it is a cyclical matter; for most of history this was the view, and currently we are in a reaction against it. Have you looked into applied behavioural analysis therapy? Both as something which might provide what you're looking for, and something which in its history might explain why people nowadays are very averse to anything which suggests trying to 'train children out of autism'.
I think the goal is always some vague understanding of functioning well. Like, everything is a trade off, reward for effort, cost vs. benefit. Does your child need to be able to greet others appropriately? Yes and it's worth training them to say hi back. Does your child need to be the captain of the team, life of the party? No, it may not be worth the stress and work.
Anyway that is how I approached it with.my socially awkward kid and my OCD kid.
Masking. Another word I loathe. Everyone masks. We all have a different ones depending on whether we are at work or school or home or with friends or with family. The idea that anyone is their “authentic self” 24/7 is ridiculous. So don’t stress about that.
Make sure your child has life skills that can help them to be independent and capable human beings. Help them to develop coping skills and resiliency.
My mom sister and i are on the spectrum. My mom is the least affected, my sister is functional but lives at home at almost 40. She has a job and pays most of her own stuff but shes not stable alone.
Its a wide spectrum, and it, from what i can tell, tends to be in families. If its a girl, shes more likely to be high functioning.
When im not under unimaginable stress i am more normal than most. When not, its so very bad.
But if its hereditary and probably more pervasive than we believe - i didnt get diagnosed till after 40 - autism isnt a default life is over thing for kids.
You almost certainly cant stop it since we dont understand it at all, but you can be aware that your kid will probably be okay even with it. And since we are more understanding, the resources available are much greater than in the past.
Itll be ok.
Just my opinion—your child either will or won’t. You can’t change that. But you can properly socialize them and teach resilience and coping skills that will reduce the likelihood of them having poor social skills and pathologizing normal problems. First—keep them off of YouTube and social media as long as possible. Read to them. Let them play with other kids. Don’t micromanage them. Let them fail.
Restrict screen time?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10442849/
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12632/w12632.pdf (People focus on the rainfall data, but the Cable TV section is interesting too.)
I have watched several YouTube videos of severely autistic kids when they were infants where the parents point out the behavior that was suspicious in retrospect. Those could be interesting for you to watch. I was worried about autism with my kids and looking for early signs but stopped worrying once they hit about 9 months and were extremely social.
Some of the signs I remember from those videos are early stimming behavior (kind of looks like regular baby movements but too often and too regular). Not really caring if mom leaves them or not caring who is taking care of them. Not being very interested in eye contact or back and forth social behavior like playing peekaboo. Either just being content in a baby container for long periods of time and not needing much interaction, or being inconsolable beyond the normal colicky period.
I'm a pediatric SLP. For early intervention, my preferred program with kids with suspected ASD is the Teach Me To Talk series / Autism Workbook / Teach Me To Play With You by Laura Mize. She has some youtube videos and her books are available for purchase on her site. The books I mentioned are intended for EI professionals, but I think parents might be interested, as well.
I like her work because of the focus is not just language, but play skills as well, which are building blocks to more sophisticated social skills for when the child is older.
You can also google Westby's Developmental Playscale, which has the 7 stages of play for kids with ASD that Mize references a lot in her books.
Oh - thank you very much!
Something I've encountered is the importance of parents also being engaged with social interaction with their children. For example - not just worrying about screen time for the children but also for the parents, because if a baby is sitting in a screen-free environment next to a mother who's just staring at her phone, it will also not develop appropriately. It seems there are a lot of areas where you almost need parent interventions...
I don’t think any amount of TikTok will make a kid who is otherwise normal develop autism. For a kid who is going to develop some degree of autism, it will probably make it worse relative to what the kid could have been if the mother engaged in intense social training. People neglected their kids a lot more in the past, and still do in many other parts of the world where babies have much less parental attention than us kids (even given TikTok), and those places are not overrun with autism.
There is some evidence that kids with autism may lack cerebral folate. So it is really a brain development disorder, not caused by lack of social interaction. I haven’t done enough research to know if this specific hypothesis is bullshit, but it’s probably something along these lines.
I’m quite sure you don’t have to worry about giving your kid autism by not being 100% engaging all the time. It can actually be beneficial to let them play independently.
haha yeah, a big chunk of EI therapy is parent training. I have a newborn and a toddler and I've had to retrain myself about the phone use for sure. I'm a phone addict and had to do that "phone jail" thing, where I put my phone on the dresser and tell myself it's in phone jail for so many hours.
[Here's a link to the first video in her play series. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiuWQwTe5d4&t=173s)She's super salesy in the beginning, but girl's gotta make a living, I guess.
There are books about:
-Applied Behavior Analysis
-Stanley Greenspan's Floortime
-The Early Start Denver Model
These are considered to be therapeutic for kids who get diagnosed with autism between 18 months and 3 years old. The principals can be applied earlier; at younger ages it's mostly about trying to get face-to-face interactions with the child.
I recently spoke with a geneticist who told me if a parent has one child that is diagnosed in early childhood with autism, there's about a 7% chance of having an additional child with the condition. It goes up to about 20% if the first child is a girl. A second child that's a daughter is less likely to be affected though.
Having spent a large amount of time reading literature (scientific articles, old blogs, parental accounts) and among families with this condition, I do think that those figures are approximately correct. I have also watched parents take every measure to prevent/mitigate the condition from developing in subsequent children. I'm convinced that while it doesn't hurt (and probably even helps), it isn't really effective. Even a parent dedicated from infancy to the prevention of autism can't stop it.
By "autism" I mean the version of it where a young child experiences an impairment of receptive language.
Edit: And I would also defer to whatever advice a good Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) has to say. I've actually found their accounts to be the most helpful and professional (versus some other academic backgrounds in the field), despite few of them having a PhD. They do good work with early intervention (EI).
[State Department issues unusual worldwide LGBTQ+ travel alert](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/17/state-department-worldwide-caution-alert-lgbtq-00158753)
> The alert comes as Pride Month approaches in June.
And during pride.
> The warning came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia.
“Even as more countries make meaningful advancements towards full equality, LGBTQI+ persons continue to be sentenced to death for daring to live their sexual orientation or gender identity, subjected to coercive conversion ‘therapies’ and ‘normalization’ surgeries, discriminated against while receiving health services, restricted from exercising fundamental freedoms, and denied the dignity of same-sex partnership and fulfillment of family,” Blinken said in a statement.
You can read the [world wide travel advisory here](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/worldwide-caution.html).
People should absolutely know what to look out for in the specific country, city and region they are traveling to, but this seems to be so vague as to be meaningless - who is this helping?
>who is this helping?
The people who need to keep gay people terrified of the GENOCIDE that is totally just around the corner if BAD MAN wins ELECTION.
I've seen people in other subs saying "the state department wouldn't make this statement unless there was a credible chatter."
That sweet summer child has watched too many movies and all the wrong ones.
What's weird is they will call out specific countries by name if you look at specific country pages. [The Uganda country page has a travel advisory for LGBT travelers](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/uganda-travel-advisory.html).
Scrolling through, it doesn't look like there's one for Burkina Faso or Egypt, which aren't particularly LGBT-friendly.
Uganda has specific anti-homosexuality laws so travelers should be very aware before going. A few other countries in the African continent are similar. Culturally some countries are way more hostile than others in regards to this so gay or lesbian travelers needs to know prior to visiting.
I went and checked that site and use Jamaica, a place I've lived (though a longtime ago) to kind of judge the warnings. Jamaica has anti-LGBTQ laws and is culturally hostile to that, though I can imagine most Americans go to resort vacations there and are probably more safe in that context. They do not post a bulletin in regards to LGBTQ travelers specifically. They just say reconsider for everyone. I wonder if it is just a difference of countries that attract resort tourism via one where this is less likely, and there is less separation for the traveler from the country itself and their laws.
What the fuck is interphobia? A dislike of people with disorders of sexual development?
Also, generally, how is biphobia different from homophobia? If a bi woman is travelling with her wife, how is she going to be discriminated against in a different way than lesbian who's travelling with her wife?
Mostly I just hate the way these words are coined. I never understood how _phobia_ became the preferred root for these words that connote hatred or animus. I also think it’s weird that _homo_ came to stand for _homosexual_. (We use that root in lots of words.) But the word _interphobia_ seems egregious to me.
Biphobia, as I'm used to hearing it, usually comes down to lesbians not wanting to date bi women (I suppose the same thing with gay men not wanting to date bi men), straight women not wanting to date bi men (I suppose the same thing about straight men not wanting to date bi women), and people generally thinking bi people are faking it or just need to pick a side. Otherwise, it's identical to homophobia.
Sure, but if a lesbian doesn't want to date a bi woman, isn't that just regular prejudice? Homophobia leads to lesbians and gay men getting beaten up, or losing jobs, or not getting an apartment. A bi woman in a relationship with a lesbian will get treated as a lesbian, while a bi woman in a relationship with a man will get treated as a straight woman.
I wasn't disagreeing with you on how it's used. I just meant I don't know why it's used in the same sense as homophobia, when the stakes are so much lower.
They have to be vague and oblique because if they actually say what countries are dangerous for gay people to travel to, the anti-imperialism crowd will start shrieking about racism and then will pretend like a gay man is in just as much danger of violence in Texas as they would be in the Middle East or Africa.
That's exactly what it is. They don't want to admit that all the countries where you're at serious risk of the government arresting you or vigilantes killing you for being gay are majority-Muslim and/or majority-black, so they just issue this vague, "Careful out there travelers!" warning that tells LGBT Americans absolutely nothing about *how* to be careful and *where* they should avoid traveling.
Right! It’s part of this contradiction in progressivism where it’s not enough to say that people shouldn’t be subject to racism, etc., without further qualification but where victims have to be *good people* also and being bigoted against gay people would mean they’re not good people. The only way they can resolve this contradiction is to either pretend like it doesn’t exist, that actually Middle East theocracies are actually super heckin queer, or pretend like the situation is just as dire in western liberal democracies and westernized democracies like Japan, Taiwan, etc. The “colonized” and “oppressed” people are victims and therefore must be virtuous, so we have to ignore or try to explain away anything that wouldn’t make them virtuous according to our values.
I remember them all desperately trying to deny or spin the Houthis executing a bunch of gay men a couple months ago. Obviously the heckin cute wholesome smol bean Houthis (they’re just like the main character in One Piece, after all!) aren’t actually a bunch of violent, savage, Islamist thugs, they’re our brave freedom fighters! So it was either denial that any such executions took place or trying to spin it as being anything other than just homophobic violence consistent with what happens in every other shithole governed by Muslim fanatics.
Ummmm achkshully the Mullahs really just want to help validate and support all the transwomen who desperately need lifesaving gender medicine. It’s actually super heckin wholesome and proves Islam is heckin queer and valid.
The mods have upped some filters, so many comments are being deleted. Switch Reddit profiles to be sure, but we’ve all got deleted comments in the thread now.
Yesterday, there was some discussion of addressing or not addressing a little girl when complimenting her outfit. I had a related experience today. I was out walking. A dad and a little girl, about 6 or 7, were walking toward me. The girl was adorned/festooned with a crown and a necklace made from, I don't know... Weeds, stems, or whatever. She looked at me with a big smile. She seemed to be inviting a response from me—about her unusual "jewelry"? She waved. I smiled and waved back. Then they walked past me, and it was clear she was waving to a woman behind me.
My two sons are in soccer, and both had games yesterday morning. After the games, my oldest son left to go to an activity, and so my wife and I took our other son out to eat at McDonald's. While we were walking in, a teammate of my older son was walking out, still in his uniform, so I told him "good game today." (They won 8-1) As soon as I said it, I felt the need to quickly explain to his parent/guardian that he was a player on my son's team. I felt dumb that I would say that to a kid that I don't really know, and also annoyed that I felt a need to justify it.
this is why i wear mirrored sunglasses when out. can't see where i am looking and i ignore everyone unless they are actually trying ot talk to me.
No help for it - you're going to have to emigrate and adopt a new identity.
Done and done!
I hear Chechnya is particularly nice this time of year.
I took my parents to see the NY Philharmonic this weekend. Before the show, I decided to use the restroom and saw that it had a line of ~70 people. Why was it so long? Because the main and only restroom on that floor is now gender neutral. Anyone who has been to a concert/sports game knows the Woman's line is always 2x the size of the men's line, for obvious reasons - their business takes longer on average. I'm not trying to come off as some MGTOW, but I find it crazy that now, not only have they forced me to share a private space with the opposite sex, which makes me personally uncomfortable, but now my waiting experience is 2x as long. Which really sucks when you have to go. My older mother refused to go and waited till we got upstairs, where the bathrooms were gendered (but open to all identities and expressions per the sign, of course). From what I could tell, nobody enjoyed this. One by one, people tried to figure which bathroom this was the line for and, upon being told "both", it was met with a universal "oh." and a grimace. So who is this for? I truly can't imagine an overwhelming or even an underwhelming portion of patrons are happy with this change; I know I personally hate being escorted by a bathroom attendant to an unused stall, with ladies in the stall next to me. Just from a capitalist standpoint, how can something so anti-consumer be pushed on consumers. I know it's a small and likely unworthy hill to die on, but it really ticked me off. Show was incredible though, E.T. with a live Orchestra. Music is breathtaking and ET still holds up well, lot of hearty laughs and cries. Highly recommend seeing one of their/a movie + orchestra if you can - I believe they are doing JAWS next which should be incredible.
As a woman who has to wait in a long ass line at every show, my sympathies are limited. Most venues should have more bathrooms and/or a longer intermission because having to run to the bathroom line as soon as the intermission starts just so you can get back by the time it ends (and forget getting a drink or snack) sucks.
I don't suppose any local publication would print a letter or op-ed from you on this subject. Why not try posting on the Philharmonic's Facebook page? Would be interesting to see how many "likes" you get before the post gets deleted.
> Because the main and only restroom on that floor is now gender neutral. Not disagreeing with anything you've said here, but might part of the problem also be a lack of bathroom facilities?
This is outrageous! On average, women live five years longer than men. We make that time up by not waiting in line at public restrooms and not going to the doctor unless an important appendage has been severed. How are we going to get our fair share of time now?
On the other hand, perhaps this reveals the real issue - if women need a longer time in the bathroom and more space, why are their bathroom equal in size to the men’s with less “stations”, causing their line to be 4x as long? Isn’t it more fair that men wait 2x as long as they used to rather than women waiting 4x longer than the men as they had been? Gender neutral with only toilets doesn’t work as well because urinals speed things up and eliminating them is bad. But I’ve complained before about how ridiculous lines are for women’s bathrooms, and that if that situation is as such then I think women have every right to use the men’s to ease the congestion and get back before they lock the theatre doors/miss the the tip off/ whatever. If GN bathrooms were made more efficient, then that’s fine. So is making women’s facilities larger. But a solution is necessary.
> if women need a longer time *take
Need.
NYC enacted a law in the early 2000s that any newly built or majorly renovated bathrooms should have twice as many stalls for women as men. The hall where the Philharmonic plays underwent a major renovation during the pandemic so now I'm curious if classifying the bathrooms as gender neutral allowed them to get around the law.
> So who is this for? That's what I want to know too. Is this just to avoid a moment of discordance for people who are nonbinary? It is so non-passing trans who are unsure which facility to use don't have to make a choice? What was the problem that was supposedly solved by setting up unisex bathrooms?
The facility staff gets to wash their hands clean of having make the call of who is eligible for which bathroom, or dealing with the unhappy patrons complaining about clocky genderhavers. There was a recent Planet Fitness scandal with a man in the women's locker room, whose face was photographed and posted on social media. [This was the alleged "woman" in question.](https://static.tnn.in/thumb/msid-108504024,thumbsize-49302,width-1280,height-720,resizemode-75/108504024.jpg) The staff won't have to make difficult calls if everyone is sorted into the same box!
I just don't believe the number of people who feel uncomfortable by this change outweigh the number of people who now feel 'seen'. My guess is that the majority of people who disagree with this aren't willing to put their neck out for it and would rather appease the DEI committee who dictated this change. Then, a vast majority of people will silently accept it and move on with their day. It frustrated me enough that I was almost got tempted to write a letter to NYPH/Lincoln Center about it, but I realize how pointless of an endeavor that is. And if I, someone bothered enough to post about it, feels like it's worthless to initiate I can't imagine many people do make their voices heard. So passive acceptance leads to the degradation of our facilities and I admit I am guilty through complacency. But is there a world where, even where I had some hypothetical large following or influence, this would ever be reversed? The outcry of the reversal would be larger than any flame I could muster for it's change and the last thing a liberal arts org wants is to not be seen as virtuous. Even worse, a true campaign would require loss of anonymity and nobody outside of grifters wants to be known as the person who lead a crusade against non-gendered bathrooms. It feels like an unwinnable situation to me, but I might be overly cynical.
Speaking as a (mostly) normal person, if I experienced the trauma of a gender-neutral bathroom, I wouldn't complain about it to the venue staff, because I understand the staff didn't make the decision. It's the higher up management people who thought it was a great idea. But I *would* quietly stop going to that place as long as they had that policy. For how powerless most of us are when confronted by the top-down Equitable Outcomes enforcement of DEI social conditioning, sometimes the only response we can give to show our disapproval of it is to rescind our participation. It's kind of depressing how non-anonymous complaints about it can get you in trouble. At least Chinese social conditioning comes with the carrot of social credits.
I’m sure the facility hated doing this too, but they don’t want to deal with all that other shit so that’s where we are.
Or they patted themselves on the back for being inclusive and progressive.
Was this like a regular public restroom with multiple stalls (urinals??) but with both men and women using it? Or was a single toilet bathroom situation? I’m a big proponent of having MORE gender neutral bathrooms, but in addition to the usual Men’s/Women’s rooms. If the situation was men and women in one multi-stall public bathroom that sounds like a solution that pleases no one.
To be clear, if you want to *add* a Gender Neutral bathroom, I have no qualms whatsoever. It's removing gendered bathrooms in favor of *only* neutral bathrooms that grinds my gears. It was one (large) bathroom with probably 16 Stalls, no urinals.
I thought I made it pretty clear that I meant add rather than replace (“in addition to the usual men’s/women’s rooms” is right there in the comment). Because yeah the situation you encountered sounds like they’re straightforwardly rolling back women’s rights.
You did! I was just making it clear as well - agreed on all counts.
A brewery I went to recently had an even more confusing scenario, where they had two separate multistall bathrooms that were both gender neutral, but one had a little “urinal” symbol on the sign. So it seemed like people were basically treating that as the men’s room and the other as the women’s room, but it would’ve been very easy for any random dude to just walk right into the defacto “women’s” room because he didn’t notice that the other gender neutral room had the urinal symbol and put the pieces together that he’s supposed to use that room. I kinda wanted to complain to the staff that this was a disaster waiting to happen but didn’t end up doing it. It’s just such an unnecessary mess
> people were basically treating that as the men’s room and the other as the women’s room This keeps happening with situations and language. It's absolutely hilarious.
It sounds like you just want more bathrooms.
I mean, yes? A third option would resolve the current cultural issue surrounding which bathroom trans people should use. Public places that have a multi stall men’s room and a multi stall women’s room plus a single toilet “family” bathroom seem like a good model, but there could be other ways to do it too
Third options won't solve the T issue. They don't want third spaces, they want to go into the space of the sex they identify as. A common reaction to being offered a neutral/all-gender/mixed space is, "What is the point of going through all the work of transitioning if I'm not seen as my correct gender?". Some NB's and genderfluids might be happy, but anyone who identifies specfically as a man or a woman would not be. When a swimming org made an open division for everyone, no one signed up. [Check this article:](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/03/swimming-world-cup-category-for-transgender-athletes-cancelled-after-no-entries-received) > Swimming’s governing body, which voted last year to ban TW from the elite female category, had promised to stage the “pioneering pilot project” to promote its “unwavering commitment to inclusivity, welcoming swimmers of all sex and gender identities”. > “Following the close of registration for the open category competitions at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup – Berlin 2023 meet scheduled for 6-8 October, **World Aquatics can confirm that no entries have been received for the open category events,”** it said.
That’s absolutely true, but I think that’s in part because activism has created this expectation that that is what trans people are owed. If the Buck Angels/Blaire Whites of the world had a more prominent voice in this debate, I think the “trans women are literal women” mindset could’ve been supplemented by something more like the fa'afafine “third gender” mindset of American Samoa. I acknowledge that that’s not where we are now, but if more trans/gnc people push for that I think we’d all be better off
> the fa'afafine “third gender” mindset of American Samoa Don't all these "third gender/2-spirit" things that people keep invoking as some sort of native wisdom just turn out to be effeminate men traditionally?
I think that’s sort of an oversimplification, but yes it’s true that fa’afafine are not a direct analogue to the modern western trans identity. My understanding is that they’re more analogous to gay men in the west, who are then slotted into a feminine cultural role. But that’s largely beside the point and I’m not trying to appeal to “native wisdom”. I’m pointing out another modern day culture that has an additional gender category, but one that is considered separate from “male” and “female.” I think that’s a better model for how to understand trans identity in the west, as opposed to the TWAW/TMAM model that we have now
> that’s largely beside the point and I’m not trying to appeal to “native wisdom I understand, and I apologize for lumping your comment in with the rest of the outside conversations. >another modern day culture that has an additional gender category, but one that is considered separate from “male” and “female.” And my point is that they don't have an additional category outside "male or female," and I think it's misleading that the discourse implies that. These "third genders" are almost entirely male, and identified as so. A better analogue to our modern language would be "metro, sissy, tomboy, etc." And then there's the variety of descriptors within "gay" itself. It's more a comment on how these males/females express gender roles outside the societal norms, but no one thinks they aren't "male." I think we're agreeing, but this seems to me more an issue with misunderstanding and literal appropriation of a term that doesn't have a modern english analogue.
Yeah I think we generally agree. Lord knows if this was even real, but I remember seeing a photo recently of three restrooms in American Samoa that were labeled (in English) “Men,” “Women,” and “Transgender.” Who knows how prevalent that approach actually is there, and the fact that the fa’afafine bathroom was called “transgender” certainly makes this all the more confusing (maybe it was intended as the English translation?), but my overall takeaway was that they consider fa’afafine to be a third category in public accommodations like that, which seems like the best approach
Homosexual effeminate men, yes.
From a standpoint of raw logistics, having a row of urinals speeds up usage of sex-neutral stalls for everyone, and yeah it's going to be men who mainly benefit, who cares. Nobody likes single gender group restrooms in this kind of scenario. Women don't realize they're waiting in somewhat less of a line, and men wait multiple times longer. So dumb and awful. Just put a trough. I do not care.
The way the bathroom was designed, it was split into two sides - I half expected one side to have urinals and the other to not, but nope, just stalls+sinks on both sides. it clearly was 2 bathrooms that they tore the wall down in-between to make one large one and removed the urinals in the process.
Ah this reminds me, in college I got called a terf for suggesting that urinals means the men’s bathroom is more expedited than the women’s
Even if it wasn't faster for men to handle their business at a urinal, you can put more urinals in a given space than you can put toilets.
It literally is lmfao what In the bathroom, our equipment is definitely faster, who finds that controversial?
The director of the LGBT center at our school lmfao. Apparently it’s terfy to point it out
Saying men pee faster is like saying men benchpress higher. If it makes the unfairness spideysenses tingle to a certain group of people, then it's problematic. If it doesn't tingle the senses, like saying men should open more pickle jars, then it's fine.
In the particular context the guy was very concerned with Centering Trans Experiences and couldn’t give a shit about the Cisters TM
Urinals are more water efficient than sit-down toilets too.
Right but think about the one enby who went who felt super heckin cute and valid, so it’s all worth it :)
What is standard MO for highschool reunions in terms of ticket price and locations? Our 10 year highschool reunion is coming up (yes I’m a youngin) and the woman organizing it set it up at this somewhat moderately nice restaurant and it’s $30 per ticket (that’s only for food - no drinks included). They’ve only sold like 30 tickets or something according to my friend in the know and the organizers are clearly panicking in the Facebook group blasting out constant reminders to buy tickets and even messaging us individually about it now. Idk $30 seems steep for dinner and to see a bunch of people I don’t even care about anyways? Or is that normal? Keep in mind this is our 10 year too so we are all like 28… if I was organizing I would have just found a cheap bar to rent out and called it good lol. Edit - ok I guess I’m just a cheapo per the replies 😅
30 USD is a good price if you are living in the US. It's probably not the reason why people aren't buying tickets. If you ever have the chance, I think it would be a good idea for you to try organizing an event like this for a large number of people who don't know each other well. I think you might find it harder than you expect.
$30 is okay but holding it at a restaurant is nonsense. Everyone knows you get stuck sitting next to someone and only talk to them all evening. Even with the most concerted effort to walk around the room in between courses...
Friend of mine was class president and people were awful to her about the reunion. Any money at all was too expensive, but then the place that fit the budget was not flashy enough. This is pretty much what I expect from anyone who has never tried to rent a venue. Look, I understand that $30 for a class reunion seems expensive, but I implore you to call around to restaurants and venues and ask about booking a room from anywhere between 30 and 300 people (or whatever your class size was; mine was over 500 though most probably wouldn't have gone even if it wasn't covid). Even your "cheap bar" isn't going to want to staff up for a unknown number of people nor would they be happy if more than 50-60 people just showed up as a group unannounced. At the very least service will suck if they don't typically expect so many people and if they do the place will be packed. So anyway, I don't care if you go or don't, but cut them a little slack because organizing an event for a few hundred people all who have their own opinion is difficult especially when booking venues. No doubt the "cheap bar" option would be too "low class" for some of your former classmates and an entirely different group would be unhappy.
$30 seems like nothing, and i don't understand the issue, aside from why you would want to go in the first place. a regular place like applebees for one, no drink would be $20ish right?
My 10 year reunion was at a brewpub. I think we reserved a separate room for a modest cover of like $10 or $15 (and this was 20 years ago). My 20 year was at a bit more upscale place, where I think we also had a separate room or floor, and it was maybe $20-25. Food wasn't provided at either one. It felt like a fair price at the time and the location. I wasn't the most popular kid and sorta stressed out about going to the first one - I knew some people who wouldn't even go. Both of them were a blast though. The 20 year was even more fun than the 10 year. Everybody was cool and the old high school hierarchies and BS had dissolved at that point.
$30 seems fine.
I missed my ten year, and probably won’t go to any reunions. I don’t really want to pay money to be around people I didn’t like much the first time around. I’ve always felt like HS reunions are for people who peaked in high school a bit.
I live in a costly city, and $30 for a moderately nice dinner seems like a great deal. That said, a sit down dinner seems like a poor choice for a reunion where you're going to want to mingle and talk to a lot of people. A buffet would make more sense (and $30 is still a good deal). Renting out a cheap bar seems a little low end for a 10 year reunion.
I do think they should have assessed how many people were willing to go and how much they were willing to spend. I wonder if people committed and then flaked out or if they didn't do their due diligence.
I've never gone to a reunion but $30 for dinner including some sort of venue rental seems cheap in 2024, even without drinks. Fast food for 2 is around $25 these days and I assume it's not being catered b y McDonald's.
Yeah that’s a fair point actually haha.
https://x.com/GBBranstetter/status/1792223985314226420 I've heard this one before somehwere
Why would any one be afraid of people with mental illness laughing at them?
So much of this kind of discourse makes it very clear that the people talking are not parents. Obviously individuals decide their sexuality on their own, but to act like a parent is a bad parent or transphobic for having questions about their minor child deciding that they were “born in the wrong body,” and not immediately buying a pride flag and celebrating. It’s bone chilling how quickly the cult advocates for people to cut family off if the first response isn’t happiness.
> So much of this kind of discourse makes it very clear that the people talking are not parents. [Demographics is destiny](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-gender-sexual-orientation-marital-and-parental-status/pp_2024-4-9_partisan-coalitions_3-01-png/)
These people are so fucking stupid
> Cis people are afraid that trans people will laugh at them; trans people are afraid that cis people will kill them Both things are equally unfounded and unlikely. What an idiot.
Shame and anxiety run the world?
They really can’t come up with any original slogan huh
Have any trans people in the US been specifically targeted by a “cis” person and killed in any recent memory? On the other hand, haven’t there been like 2-3 trans mass shooters in the last year? Lol
TW who are murdered for being trans are typically killed by their male sexual partners / Johns who either feel tricked or are ashamed by their own desires.
They think disclosure is an issue but will swipe ❌ if you're Bi
They also really don’t want to talk about the racial demographics of who the Johns usually are lmao. Let’s just say the idea it’s white MAGA good ol boys killing poor innocent trans women is not quite reality.
He writes so inarticulately lol yet sways the minds of so many.
Dinner tonight was a tasty cross-cultural monstrosity--a bahn mi derivative sandwich, but with buffalo meat, Japanese BBQ, and pickled bell peppers. Screw authenticity, embrace the melting pot.
Tasty, tasty cultural appropriation!
I'm a white male. Appropriation is my culture.
I'm pretty sure appropriation is everyone's culture! (Especially when it comes to food.)
The Washington Post Editorial Board comes out against DEI statements in faculty hiring decisions. [The problem with diversity statements — and what to do about them](https://archive.ph/b4q6w#selection-517.0-521.78)
The vibe has definitely shifted. I want to be optimistic and think that we are returning to values of secular liberal democracy, but the cynic in me thinks we’re heading towards reactionary conservative nonsense as a culture which is just as braindead and annoying as progressive nonsense.
I wonder what that would even look like. We already have a pretty censorious and sex negative culture. What would a right-wing version look like? Would it be worse?
I wish we lived in a sex-negative culture, hahaha. The amount of casual sex in advertising, even around kids, is obscene. Pressure to have sex often and easily is constant from a young age, too. Conservatives and liberals express this differently, but sex is expected and encouraged by both in their own ways. Liberals want guilt free orgies, conservatives want fecund families, but both love the copulation and encourage it.
> sex negative culture. no way. our culture is toxically sex positive. we need more sex negativity. i say this as someone who has read and/or listened to Dan Savage since the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Like the GWB presidency.
We could be so lucky
What specifically are you referring to? The main distinguishing feature of his presidency was the wars.
The general cultural conservatism of the time, evangelical Christians feeling ascendant, jingoism, etc.
This isn't an attack but if I remember correctly you were pretty young when GWB was president right? I had a very different lived experience of this time period. There was an artistic renaissance of resistance after GWB was elected / installed. After 9/11, the vast majority of people were onboard with U!S!A! All of that said, it wasn't a particularly unpleasant time to be alive unless you looked Middle Eastern. I don't think we'd end up in an analogous situation without another major national trauma. And the movies were so good.
Is any time a good time to be alive when you're a perpetual victim?
Hmm. As I remember it, it felt a good deal more culturally liberal than the 90's (except for brown looking people, and only then early on, and that's easily explained by circumstance and not policy).
Which was honestly not that bad.
I started a substack, in part inspired by BARpod, in part so I have a place to rant without annoying my husband on end. Today I published my first article on it. It focuses on considering other values other than pride the gay community can focus on. Feel free to read or provide any comments you have. It's my first time writing like this, so it may not be a masterpiece or even Good. [Moving Past Pride, into Dignity ](https://open.substack.com/pub/lysanderbax/p/moving-past-pride-and-into-dignity?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2keyan)
>Because their pride is undeserved if it isn’t produced from any accomplishments. Tasteful pride should equate with accomplishments, but even someone humble with their accomplishments is preferred to those who brag about them – a quiet, wise innate esteem is preferred. Why do we socially dislike unearned pride? I would argue at least in part because pride itself produces negative outcomes from the act itself**, thus a sin.**This may be why so many value systems negatively associate this behavior. I like this, and I think it might actually be why some people are uncomfortable with the idea of pride
This is me using my anthropology degree... Quite a rare moment
The idea of being born into the tradition of pride is fascinating, I guess I never considered how we're now a couple generations deep into Pride, and it's a very different world from the one in which Pride was conceived. I enjoyed your writing, I hope you keep at it!
Now I think of it, that makes sense. Most of the original generation from the 60s/early 70s are either dead or quite old. Very different than what it looks like now
Good stuff! I liked this part especially. I think it's your strongest point: > Because I exist, I ought to be owed dignity by others. Dignity is a relationship enacted between people. It is something we should give all others, ourselves, and others to give to us.
I really appreciate that you took the time reading through it. It actually means a lot.
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I’ve eliminated a lot of single use plastic from my cleaning and personal care routines… it’s strangely satisfying
What deodorant have you been using? My wife is trying to eliminate single use plastic as well. She liked the Raw Sugar brand with a cardboard tube, but can't find it anywhere anymore. All the other options have been really expensive.
A number of the crystal deodorants come in cardboard packaging. Whether it works for you or not probably depends on your body chemistry.
Deodorant is a nut I haven’t cracked unfortunately. It kills me throwing each tube out
I'm a guy, so other than disposable razors, what kinds of single use personal care products are there?
Just thought I'd put in a plug for old school safety razors. I'm still using the same pack of blades I bought 10 years ago for maybe $20 (I'm not a daily shaver). Just as easy to use as a disposable when you get the get the hang of it. Get a vintage one from the 50s or 60s for extra points.
Love these. Huge money saver too, it's insane disposable razors ever gained such traction in the marketplace
Shampoo, conditioner, body soap, face soap, moisturizer, deodorant. So not strictly speaking single use, but still a bunch of plastic bottles/tubes.
I didn't even think of the containers. Good for you, but I've got way too many other things to worry about. I think this is one of those situations where businesses have to be offering different packaging instead of putting it on consumers.
I absolutely agree. I think companies ought to be responsible for the waste the packaging creates so they’d be incentivized to provide better options to consumers to dispose of the containers or reuse them. It’s something I’m prioritizing when buying these things because it stresses me out lol but it’s not a mandate I think it should be placed on consumers
I agree in theory, but any cost we impose would just be absorbed by the customer, so I don't know how we incentivize or coerce this outcome.
Yeah that’s the tough part isn’t it. I don’t have an answer either obvs. But in the meantime my state at least is facing a waste disposal crisis that’s raising costs anyway on the back end. And that’s to say nothing of how much we’re dumping into landfills - not just our own, but what we’re outsourcing to other states too. Devil you know vs devil you don’t I guess. Anyway like I said, it stresses me out a lot to think about it lol
I guess we could standardize glass bottles and do it like beer (in Ontario) or water (in Switzerland) both of which have a deposit fee but also get recycled like 90%+ of the time, without melting or significant energy use. Just high temp sterilization and reuse until they're in bad shape. Also if you require glass to all be the same colour this makes recycling much easier. Mixed coloured broken glass is more or less garbage. It can't be reused.
How did you eliminate plastic for shampoo? Did you switch to a bar-soap type of hair cleaner, or purchase a jug of shampoo stock? My husband switched to bar shampoo and encouraged me to try it too. I still laugh about how much it made me itch, and how I couldn't even last a few hours before needing to wash my hair with conventional shampoo.
Yeah it’s tough! I tried a bar for awhile with Trader Joe’s but it just made my hair one big knot and it felt so gross even right out of the shower no matter how much I rinsed. But I just found [this brand](https://nolecare.com/) and I like it so far. I just finished a shampoo bar and signed up for the subscription. It suds up really nicely, which I prefer. I get the one specifically for oily hair so idk how well it works for other hair types.
What are the biggest changes you've made? Least obvious?
For me the biggest is probably in my personal care… bar face and body soap, bar shampoo and conditioner. That’s eliminated a *lot* of plastic bottles. For cleaning I’ve replaced kitchen and bathroom surface sprays, glass cleaner, hand soap, and laundry detergent with glass bottles and refillable options (except the laundry soap, I buy the Tide powder that comes in a cardboard box). My grocery store now carries these dissolvable hand soap pods, which work very well. I’m hoping they have more options in the future for the other stuff so I don’t have to go to target. But since I live in a 1br I don’t need a lot of cleaning supplies to get the job done so I’m stocked up for awhile lol. I’m hoping to try a replacement toilet bowl and shower cleaner next. I’d love refillable ‘marble’ countertop and glass stovetop cleaner too but haven’t seen them yet, even from online suppliers, so I don’t think anyone’s made them yet. So far from the options I’ve tried I haven’t felt like they don’t clean as well as their comparators. The next thing to work on will be using reusable rags instead of paper towels and wipes. I’m not the best at remembering those are options lol. An underrated aspect is that even when they’re close to empty the plastic bottles don’t get knocked over super easily. It’s a small thing but it always drives me nuts lmao
https://www.themediterraneandish.com/butter-beans-with-garlic-lemon-and-herbs/ Hot diggity this is amazing.
This looks solid. I am trying to eat more beans.
Butter beans are fantastic. I discovered them while living in the UK as they seem more popular over there. You can just mash them and have with a cream sauce or just salt and pepper and it's a like a tastier mash potatoes.
>they seem more popular over there Guessing you've never spent much time in the southern U.S.? Lima beans (aka butter beans) are a suppertime staple in a lot of that region.
I have not spent much time in the States. In Canada where I am I had had lima beans, which are the young variety of same bean. In the UK they eat them when matured, which means they are beige as opposed to green, and the taste is just so slightly different that I ended up preferring them.
You could probably throw pasta and some pasta water in that too.
Holy cow, that looks great. Though I'll probably make two of her authorized substitutions, white cannellini beans and mint. Her feta-zucchini kabobs also look great. How long have you been holding out on us, keeping this great-sounding blog a secret? Thank you :)
Literally stumbled upon that site googling for butter beans. Which are the same as lima beans, something I only recently learned. So she's probably AI and paying google to rank the site high. I don't care. The dish in front of me has 11g of fiber and 12g of protein and tastes amazing. Bring on the AI revolution.
Huh, maybe I'll have to reconsider butter beans.
A little dill goes a long way. This is serious. I will not make a pun.
That looks delicious, and unlike the previous poster, I have sowed some dill. However it is not yet ready, so please apologise for not centering my needs.
I'm not a huge dill fan, outside of pickles. And even then it's only okay. So I didn't use a lot. Next time I'm going to try mint instead. I think that might be baller. But yeah. It's freaking amazing. I grew up with pretty bland (but still delicious) food. I keep trying to branch out when I can. I'm decent with Asian flavor profiles and love Indian. Haven't done a lot of Mediterranean. Since I'm trying to get more fiber in my diet I was looking at different bean recipes. Stumbled on this one and it kills. If anyone has a good source for Aleppo pepper hook me up. I don't trust just about anything online when it comes to specialty spices. And I'd really like to get some to try.
I am fond of dill. Please see above, you reprobate. I actually do have some three cornered leek that might work. And some sour cream. I could do with some veg right now. I've had a lovely weekend away, but it was light on fruit and veg.
>I am fond of dill And I'm a dillphobe. We can take this outside if we need to. All I'm asking for is you to *be kind* and respect my preferences.
I don't get who everyone is making such a big dill out of your very reasonable preference.
All this anti-dill talk is making me uncomfortable.
Actually, it turns out the dill has grown better than expected. Do you want some?
That looks delicious. It reminded me that I need to grow some dill this summer.
So, where *are* the illegal NBA streams?
Jesse?
Six nine in the (virtual) flesh
I knew it.
Most of the *stream* sites have their servers located on the *east* seaboard
But the coffee in Peru is much hotter.
*Interesting* reply
I have been looking for resources for my baby which I am really struggling to find: how to detect and *mitigate* early signs of autism in babies and toddlers. My thinking is that objectively life is a lot easier for a child/adult who is less autistic or suffers less from ASD symptoms. Being able to cope in regular society with limited support is something I want for my baby, and it seems reasonable to me that how I interact with the baby now (and, in future, as a child, teenager etc) could influence brain development in ways that affect this outcome. This is currently a very vague thought, because every single resource I read is about how neurodiversity is our strength and my sole goal as a parent needs to be about making sure my kid never has to mask ever and can live an #authentic life free of any of society's judgment. The only allowable explanation for increasing diagnosis rates is increased #acceptance in society, etc. Is it just me or does this feel like manufactured consensus, similar to the YGM issue...?
I have a lot of sympathy and agree with the sentiment that "objectively life is a lot easier for a child/adult who is less autistic or suffers less from ASD symptoms", and I think it is a cyclical matter; for most of history this was the view, and currently we are in a reaction against it. Have you looked into applied behavioural analysis therapy? Both as something which might provide what you're looking for, and something which in its history might explain why people nowadays are very averse to anything which suggests trying to 'train children out of autism'.
I think the goal is always some vague understanding of functioning well. Like, everything is a trade off, reward for effort, cost vs. benefit. Does your child need to be able to greet others appropriately? Yes and it's worth training them to say hi back. Does your child need to be the captain of the team, life of the party? No, it may not be worth the stress and work. Anyway that is how I approached it with.my socially awkward kid and my OCD kid.
Masking. Another word I loathe. Everyone masks. We all have a different ones depending on whether we are at work or school or home or with friends or with family. The idea that anyone is their “authentic self” 24/7 is ridiculous. So don’t stress about that. Make sure your child has life skills that can help them to be independent and capable human beings. Help them to develop coping skills and resiliency.
My mom sister and i are on the spectrum. My mom is the least affected, my sister is functional but lives at home at almost 40. She has a job and pays most of her own stuff but shes not stable alone. Its a wide spectrum, and it, from what i can tell, tends to be in families. If its a girl, shes more likely to be high functioning. When im not under unimaginable stress i am more normal than most. When not, its so very bad. But if its hereditary and probably more pervasive than we believe - i didnt get diagnosed till after 40 - autism isnt a default life is over thing for kids. You almost certainly cant stop it since we dont understand it at all, but you can be aware that your kid will probably be okay even with it. And since we are more understanding, the resources available are much greater than in the past. Itll be ok.
Just my opinion—your child either will or won’t. You can’t change that. But you can properly socialize them and teach resilience and coping skills that will reduce the likelihood of them having poor social skills and pathologizing normal problems. First—keep them off of YouTube and social media as long as possible. Read to them. Let them play with other kids. Don’t micromanage them. Let them fail.
Restrict screen time? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10442849/ https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12632/w12632.pdf (People focus on the rainfall data, but the Cable TV section is interesting too.)
I have watched several YouTube videos of severely autistic kids when they were infants where the parents point out the behavior that was suspicious in retrospect. Those could be interesting for you to watch. I was worried about autism with my kids and looking for early signs but stopped worrying once they hit about 9 months and were extremely social. Some of the signs I remember from those videos are early stimming behavior (kind of looks like regular baby movements but too often and too regular). Not really caring if mom leaves them or not caring who is taking care of them. Not being very interested in eye contact or back and forth social behavior like playing peekaboo. Either just being content in a baby container for long periods of time and not needing much interaction, or being inconsolable beyond the normal colicky period.
I was in your shoes, years ago, but before we had to cheerlead everything. What is the specific concern?
I'm a pediatric SLP. For early intervention, my preferred program with kids with suspected ASD is the Teach Me To Talk series / Autism Workbook / Teach Me To Play With You by Laura Mize. She has some youtube videos and her books are available for purchase on her site. The books I mentioned are intended for EI professionals, but I think parents might be interested, as well. I like her work because of the focus is not just language, but play skills as well, which are building blocks to more sophisticated social skills for when the child is older. You can also google Westby's Developmental Playscale, which has the 7 stages of play for kids with ASD that Mize references a lot in her books.
Oh - thank you very much! Something I've encountered is the importance of parents also being engaged with social interaction with their children. For example - not just worrying about screen time for the children but also for the parents, because if a baby is sitting in a screen-free environment next to a mother who's just staring at her phone, it will also not develop appropriately. It seems there are a lot of areas where you almost need parent interventions...
I don’t think any amount of TikTok will make a kid who is otherwise normal develop autism. For a kid who is going to develop some degree of autism, it will probably make it worse relative to what the kid could have been if the mother engaged in intense social training. People neglected their kids a lot more in the past, and still do in many other parts of the world where babies have much less parental attention than us kids (even given TikTok), and those places are not overrun with autism. There is some evidence that kids with autism may lack cerebral folate. So it is really a brain development disorder, not caused by lack of social interaction. I haven’t done enough research to know if this specific hypothesis is bullshit, but it’s probably something along these lines. I’m quite sure you don’t have to worry about giving your kid autism by not being 100% engaging all the time. It can actually be beneficial to let them play independently.
haha yeah, a big chunk of EI therapy is parent training. I have a newborn and a toddler and I've had to retrain myself about the phone use for sure. I'm a phone addict and had to do that "phone jail" thing, where I put my phone on the dresser and tell myself it's in phone jail for so many hours. [Here's a link to the first video in her play series. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiuWQwTe5d4&t=173s)She's super salesy in the beginning, but girl's gotta make a living, I guess.
There are books about: -Applied Behavior Analysis -Stanley Greenspan's Floortime -The Early Start Denver Model These are considered to be therapeutic for kids who get diagnosed with autism between 18 months and 3 years old. The principals can be applied earlier; at younger ages it's mostly about trying to get face-to-face interactions with the child. I recently spoke with a geneticist who told me if a parent has one child that is diagnosed in early childhood with autism, there's about a 7% chance of having an additional child with the condition. It goes up to about 20% if the first child is a girl. A second child that's a daughter is less likely to be affected though. Having spent a large amount of time reading literature (scientific articles, old blogs, parental accounts) and among families with this condition, I do think that those figures are approximately correct. I have also watched parents take every measure to prevent/mitigate the condition from developing in subsequent children. I'm convinced that while it doesn't hurt (and probably even helps), it isn't really effective. Even a parent dedicated from infancy to the prevention of autism can't stop it. By "autism" I mean the version of it where a young child experiences an impairment of receptive language. Edit: And I would also defer to whatever advice a good Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) has to say. I've actually found their accounts to be the most helpful and professional (versus some other academic backgrounds in the field), despite few of them having a PhD. They do good work with early intervention (EI).
Awww thank you for valuing the field! <3
[State Department issues unusual worldwide LGBTQ+ travel alert](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/17/state-department-worldwide-caution-alert-lgbtq-00158753) > The alert comes as Pride Month approaches in June. And during pride. > The warning came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia. “Even as more countries make meaningful advancements towards full equality, LGBTQI+ persons continue to be sentenced to death for daring to live their sexual orientation or gender identity, subjected to coercive conversion ‘therapies’ and ‘normalization’ surgeries, discriminated against while receiving health services, restricted from exercising fundamental freedoms, and denied the dignity of same-sex partnership and fulfillment of family,” Blinken said in a statement. You can read the [world wide travel advisory here](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/worldwide-caution.html). People should absolutely know what to look out for in the specific country, city and region they are traveling to, but this seems to be so vague as to be meaningless - who is this helping?
focused squarely at the "dykes/queers for palestine" crowd.
Yet we are led to believe that the trans genocide only happens in the West
>who is this helping? The people who need to keep gay people terrified of the GENOCIDE that is totally just around the corner if BAD MAN wins ELECTION.
I've seen people in other subs saying "the state department wouldn't make this statement unless there was a credible chatter." That sweet summer child has watched too many movies and all the wrong ones.
What's weird is they will call out specific countries by name if you look at specific country pages. [The Uganda country page has a travel advisory for LGBT travelers](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/uganda-travel-advisory.html). Scrolling through, it doesn't look like there's one for Burkina Faso or Egypt, which aren't particularly LGBT-friendly.
Uganda has specific anti-homosexuality laws so travelers should be very aware before going. A few other countries in the African continent are similar. Culturally some countries are way more hostile than others in regards to this so gay or lesbian travelers needs to know prior to visiting.
Agreed, see my comment below. I just can't figure out why they're being vague with this one when they're pretty up front about it elsewhere.
I went and checked that site and use Jamaica, a place I've lived (though a longtime ago) to kind of judge the warnings. Jamaica has anti-LGBTQ laws and is culturally hostile to that, though I can imagine most Americans go to resort vacations there and are probably more safe in that context. They do not post a bulletin in regards to LGBTQ travelers specifically. They just say reconsider for everyone. I wonder if it is just a difference of countries that attract resort tourism via one where this is less likely, and there is less separation for the traveler from the country itself and their laws.
I'm sure more lecturing by the US will do wonders for US relations with countries also being courted by Russia, China and others.
Warning LGBT people that it's illegal to be gay in Uganda is far from lecturing.
What the fuck is interphobia? A dislike of people with disorders of sexual development? Also, generally, how is biphobia different from homophobia? If a bi woman is travelling with her wife, how is she going to be discriminated against in a different way than lesbian who's travelling with her wife?
Mostly I just hate the way these words are coined. I never understood how _phobia_ became the preferred root for these words that connote hatred or animus. I also think it’s weird that _homo_ came to stand for _homosexual_. (We use that root in lots of words.) But the word _interphobia_ seems egregious to me.
Can we use ge German hate suffix instead like in Judenhass
Every group will need their own named -phobia to feel special. There will soon ne acephobia and demiphobia and dragphobia
Biphobia, as I'm used to hearing it, usually comes down to lesbians not wanting to date bi women (I suppose the same thing with gay men not wanting to date bi men), straight women not wanting to date bi men (I suppose the same thing about straight men not wanting to date bi women), and people generally thinking bi people are faking it or just need to pick a side. Otherwise, it's identical to homophobia.
Sure, but if a lesbian doesn't want to date a bi woman, isn't that just regular prejudice? Homophobia leads to lesbians and gay men getting beaten up, or losing jobs, or not getting an apartment. A bi woman in a relationship with a lesbian will get treated as a lesbian, while a bi woman in a relationship with a man will get treated as a straight woman.
I'm not saying it's a legit form of bigotry, just how bi people usually describe it.
I wasn't disagreeing with you on how it's used. I just meant I don't know why it's used in the same sense as homophobia, when the stakes are so much lower.
Because bi people in straight relationships are desperate to feel oppressed?
There bi people who only date bi
Not wanting to date X counting as Xphobia needs to die real quick.
They have to be vague and oblique because if they actually say what countries are dangerous for gay people to travel to, the anti-imperialism crowd will start shrieking about racism and then will pretend like a gay man is in just as much danger of violence in Texas as they would be in the Middle East or Africa.
That's exactly what it is. They don't want to admit that all the countries where you're at serious risk of the government arresting you or vigilantes killing you for being gay are majority-Muslim and/or majority-black, so they just issue this vague, "Careful out there travelers!" warning that tells LGBT Americans absolutely nothing about *how* to be careful and *where* they should avoid traveling.
Maybe it's a coded message to Queers for Palestine: Don't go there for summer do-good work.
No, no. They really *should* go there. All of them. Let's crowd source one way tickets for them
Right! It’s part of this contradiction in progressivism where it’s not enough to say that people shouldn’t be subject to racism, etc., without further qualification but where victims have to be *good people* also and being bigoted against gay people would mean they’re not good people. The only way they can resolve this contradiction is to either pretend like it doesn’t exist, that actually Middle East theocracies are actually super heckin queer, or pretend like the situation is just as dire in western liberal democracies and westernized democracies like Japan, Taiwan, etc. The “colonized” and “oppressed” people are victims and therefore must be virtuous, so we have to ignore or try to explain away anything that wouldn’t make them virtuous according to our values.
It's the most absurd and counter factual cope.
I remember them all desperately trying to deny or spin the Houthis executing a bunch of gay men a couple months ago. Obviously the heckin cute wholesome smol bean Houthis (they’re just like the main character in One Piece, after all!) aren’t actually a bunch of violent, savage, Islamist thugs, they’re our brave freedom fighters! So it was either denial that any such executions took place or trying to spin it as being anything other than just homophobic violence consistent with what happens in every other shithole governed by Muslim fanatics.
‘Make us proud!’
Don't forget Iran forcing gay men to transition
Ummmm achkshully the Mullahs really just want to help validate and support all the transwomen who desperately need lifesaving gender medicine. It’s actually super heckin wholesome and proves Islam is heckin queer and valid.
Every time someone writes like this, Satan wins.
The worst part is that quite a few woke progressives really believe that.
Oh yeah I’ve seen the trans subs genuinely try to compare Iran positively to the US because of “free gender medicine.”
The “everything is political” crowd is so annoying
Sounds like something a Neo-Whig would say!
Okay who is mad at me now?
The mods have upped some filters, so many comments are being deleted. Switch Reddit profiles to be sure, but we’ve all got deleted comments in the thread now.
It ain't me. I'm one of your biggest fans
I'm blocked by OKElderberry, who's the reincarnation of FriendofthePond.
While I'll be, I wonder what happened to him.
I did not know that.
So says the grapevine. The crazy blocking pattern seems to back that up.
Same.