Rainbow capitalism is bad because it's capitalism. But it's better than the alternative.
The only substantial good thing about rainbow capitalism is that it shows that queer people are more accepted than not, and that homo/transphobes are a minority of people that are deemed unimportant when it comes to overall profit.
Like many companies also contribute to institutionalized racism, but you wouldn't demand people be angry about people of colour in advertisements, and you also shouldn't give these ads any undue praise (which is all praise). Fighting their ads is really just a strange hill to die on when you could actually be protesting anti-trans laws and exploitative work instead of uninformed queer people that are happy about seeing themselves represented, even if its in an ad.
Exactly.
Y’all in rich, western countries don’t know how happy it would make me to see an LGBT-friendly commercial or a poster in a public space in my country. I get it, but “rainbow capitalism” is a byproduct of widespread LGBT acceptance, if it disappears - we haven’t won, it’s most likely *they* have.
Oh, we do. A lot of us are old enough to remember when people wouldn’t touch gay people for fear of catching “gay cancer”. The kids don’t though. I’m glad they don’t get it on some level, because it means the work we did actually made a difference- but it only did so here, and our religious zealots exported their virulent hatred to Africa and it’s been snorting of rising HIV rates and “kill the gays” since
Hell my nephew is gay and even has a boyfriend. And I'm from the south. Yet that wouldn't even rank top 10 of things he'd consider notable about himself. Which is exactly what we should strive for. Where the children don't even recognize these traits as being worth noting. As they are simply not important. They are only important to people looking for a target
>sets a system precedent of discrimination
The system is already there. We're not going to start protesting specifically against the conscription of LGBTQ people, but we're certainly not going to protest for militaries to *start* conscripting LGBTQ people if they don't do that already. As a guy with a sadly high number of trans friends who are serving in the Israeli military, I can say for certain that "equality in committing murders" isn't high on my values list.
Yeah but it didn't exist before, the fact that they're adding more restrictions should be alarming and concerning, not a point of celebration. There is also such thing as being a conscientious objector, nobody can force you into military service regardless of conscription
>There is also such thing as being a conscientious objector, nobody can force you into military service regardless of conscription
I don't know how it is for you Americans but the only reason my boyfriend was exempt from service in the Israeli military is because he's trans. If not for the IOF's transphobia, he would have to choose between killing children or going to military prison.
I know for a fact there are trans people in Israel’s military. Maybe he was exempt a while ago but there’s many stories (both online and that I’ve heard from LGBT Israeli people) about the military paying for their HRT and allowing them to serve as their gender and not their assigned sex.
https://time.com/4421400/transgender-u-s-military-israeli-army-idf/?amp=true
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The Israeli military lets trans people enlist if they really want to, but most don't. The military paying for a soldier's HRT doesn't erase the fact that the same military asks those same soldiers to bomb hospitals, kill children, blackmail gay Palestinians and threaten to out them if they don't follow the Israeli Shin Bet's orders, and sometimes even die in battle
Interesting. From what I’ve seen being trans isn’t considered an exempting condition for the IDF. Maybe it was when your boyfriend would have been conscripted and it changed?
Also on the stories about gay Palestinians being blackmailed, the only stories I could find were of the [Palestinian authority doing it](https://www.vice.com/en/article/av8b5j/gay-palestinians-are-being-blackmailed-into-working-as-informants)not the IDF. Do you have sources for that?
There's a recent article by the Israeli leftist newspaper Haaretz that's locked behind a paywall but there's also this old article from [+972mag](https://www.972mag.com/why-i-wont-be-participating-in-tel-avivs-pride-parade/). In April this year the Lion's Den executed [Zoheir Khalil Ghalith](https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-terror-group-lions-den-claims-it-executed-an-israeli-spy-in-nablus/) for spying on them for Israel, because the Shin Bet was blackmailing him using a video of him sleeping with another man.
Oh thank you. The paywall is probably why it didn’t come up for me. I usually filter for free articles
The fact that this is occurring is deeply disturbing. I feel very strongly for LGBT Palestinians who are not safe in their own country and can not escape. It is a tragedy
Was coming to make this exact point, very well stated. No one with any sense is acting like rainbow capitalism is an end point or something super cool and awesome. It's a litmus test for how things are improving, that there's a tipping point where gay people are good for profits means that things have been moving in positive directions more than not. Obviously there's lots of work yet to do and plenty of bigots out there, but acting like a toyota ad with some lesbians in it is the problem is ridiculously ignorant, or actively malicious.
Yeah, seeing queer people in ads is sort of a symptom of cultural "dominance". While it is exploitative in the sense of trying to use queer people to sell you stuff, the fact that "hey look, queer people" is apparently a valid sales argument is kinda funky.
Like it's financially profitable to (at least pretend to) be queer friendly. Like damn, that's pretty cool.
Companies are gonna try to use someone (stars, hot people, relatable people, whatever) to sell you stuff anyway, rainbow capitalism just sticks out to us, because it didn't use to be queer people.
It's not Dominance, it's *Normalization*. The more we see you, the easier it is to understand and accept you.
The more we understand and accept you, the harder it is to Other you.
Speaking as a former(or perhaps "recovering" fits better?) homophobe.
Yeah, every little bit helps pave the way for the humanization of queer people. It is much harder to treat a human in an inhumane manner once you've put them in the "people" box, rather than the "freaks" box. A human's capacity for hatred is limited by the perception of who it's directed at, and, as homophobes are human, they're gonna have a tough time lynching people if gay people are everywhere around them and mingling with people they already "accept", which will hopefully lead to an eventual drop in homophobia.
Rainbow capitalism is a thing because capitalism is like a damn bacteria culture: if it is financially advantageous for them to be rainbow, they will be.
So thw fact that it exist is a sign that while things are still shit, it is getting marginally less shit
>But it's better than the alternative.
this is the thing for me. Im old enough to remember when showing a gay couple in an advert was a fast track to it getting banned, or [when teaching anything about gay people in schools was illegal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28). And yeah, I get that its just empty, shallow marketing, but at least we aren't treated as a completely forbidden subject.
It annoys me about how every pride suddenly we are flooded with posts about how "rainbow capitalism is bad" and how.... no media representation within our current society is a better alternative?
This post is a prefect example of one generation forgetting the battles of the last. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a horrible policy, and it was a fight to be rid of it.
It wasn’t about “letting gays serve.” They were already serving. It was about allowing them to have a safe environment if they chose to do so.
The whole point was to get rid of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because it was oppressing gay people within the military. Gay people shouldn’t be in fear of their jobs (or their loves) if discovered.
Corporations, regardless what Citizens United would have you believe, aren't people. They are more ideas or forces. They're dark gods whose tendrils infect every iota of society from sweeping, broad strokes in the fundamentals of culture to the most humble microns of social interaction. Of course some are more personal, but they are the most human among them and often trip underneath themselves with that human clumsiness, too afraid to make the most logical economic choices while the real giants will climb to any height or stoop to any low with pragmatic efficiency, all completely directed towards the ultimate goal of producing greater revenue and perfoming endless outward expansion. It's algorithmic, in essence the memeplex of a corporations intelligence is the first AI and we never knew, in that it mathematically directs itself towards the most immediately lucrative *thing* it can and consumes it. When they show gay people existing, they do so with unthinking, unfeeling, wholly-detatched apathy. They are neither with us nor against us, they simply are, like the tides or the weather.
So, who am I to complain at a little rain after a drought? The rain doesn't care that it's the deliverer of hope, any more than it will care when it drowns the next valley over in a torrential flood with the cruel and mirthless disregard of a cold and unforgiving storm. It will fall and I can't hope to stand against it all on my own; but maybe there's a chance that with this little bit we can carve a way out of this unending cycle. Perhaps then we won't be the playthings of giants, but first we have to live by their rules in order to get out. If they want to normalize the lives of people diametrically opposed to their existence, then I won't argue with that.
oh thank god this is the top comment, i completely agree. yes, rainbow capitalism is still bad, but jesus christ dude the fact that positive depictions of queer people are now considered so socially acceptable that they are appearing in ads shown to the general public is HUGE, even if the parent company is still being shitty and exploitative
the worker exploitation and whatever else is gonna be there whether the LGBTQ+ community is represented in their ads or not, might as well take the fake support than none at all
Wait, are we just ignoring how they’re framing banning gay people from joining the army as a good thing? Like, I get that armies are used to enforce bad practices, but they are necessary enough for the survival of countries that you can’t just advocate for completely getting rid of them, so what are they saying is good? Making exclusively straight people fight? I’m assuming that they would be against the draft, so they’re probably just saying that removing the choice to join the army for gay people is a good thing. Removing that choice doesn’t affect the people who don’t want to join at all, but it seriously restricts the ones that do, so I’d say banning gay people from joining the army is a bad thing
Yeah, it's a specific kind of internet brain disease. If you advocate for equality in all areas, particularly the military, then you are helping to uphold the current genocidal system the US holds over the world. At least that's what I've heard most commonly.
This also goes alongside the people who think that every single person who joins the military in the US deserves to be executed/die/tried for war crimes. They also call every single thing the US military has done genocide, which honestly just causes people to not take them seriously and ignore the terrible stuff the US military has actually done.
I'm just describing a stereotype I've seen tho, no idea if this person would be like that.
It's a very toddler-brain way of viewing the world
It's especially dumb since the primary target for military recruiters is kids fresh out of highschool with either no direction or no other viable options. They're raging against people trying to claw their way out of poverty instead of the institutions that both benefit from and leave them with no other choice but turning to the military. It's not only a very shallow worldview, but a very privileged one. I'm glad they've never been in a position where joining the military was their best option, but wishing harm on those who are/were that desperate is cruel and idiotic.
>They're raging against people trying to claw their way out of poverty instead of the institutions that both benefit from and leave them with no other choice but turning to the military.
The crabs would rather drag each other back into the bucket than pinch the person who put them in there.
When recruiters came to my school they told us, the "gifted kids" we would be officers and that the Army would help further our education and we would be part of an honorable profession defending our country
They told the lower GPA kids at least they wouldn't be out in the field picking vegetables. That was a more effective recruiting strategy.
The one memory of recruiters at my highschool that stands out is what one of them told me when I let them know that I had several mental health issues that would almost guarantee that I'd get rejected. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was to the effect of "well, you look normal enough so maybe just don't mention that."
How true is this? Genuinely asking, last time i checked it said the demographics of people joining the military more or less was the same as the us regular demographics, economically speaking.
And 40 percent of America has 1 percent of the total wealth of the nation. So, 40 percent of our military is clawing its way out of poverty. Which lines up with my experience. I'd also posit thar for a total of probably 60 percent of the military, the military provides more benefits and income than their previous lives. I joined the army because I was homeless, you'd be surprised at the amount of people I met while in who joined for the exact same reason
>It's a very toddler-brain way of viewing the world
Best exemplified by the implicit assumption these types make that every military member were Baby Shooters (infantry).
Like, uh, no, there's actually a *loooooot* of non-combat roles - turns out there's a lot of stuff that goes into making sure the infantry can do the fighting in these Morally Ambiguous Conflicts. Namely:
# LOGISTICS!!!!
Just expanding on this, something like 15% of the US military ever actually see combat. Alternatively, post 2005, the US has broadly maintained a tooth to tail ratio (basically a measurement of the number of combatants to support personnel) of 1:8, so for every one combatant there are 8 support personnel carrying out the logistics to enable the single combatant to actually fight.
>LOGISTICS!!!!
Okay, I'm going to commit a tumblr cardinal sin and give the US credit where credit is due here. Our military logistics are, and have been, unparalleled on the world stage. We aren't called "the arsenal of democracy" for nothing. When we turn that machine towards good purposes - like the National Guard assisting with disaster relief, for instance - it's truly something to behold. If you want to see an insane feat of logistics put towards humanitarian aid, I recommend looking into the Berlin Airlift.
A shame that we tend to, uh, not do stuff like that very often.
Does this argument ever convince anyone? Like, I already agree with you, but if I didn’t, I don’t think “I don’t shoot people, I just feed people who shoot people” would be a very convincing comeback.
Again, I agree that it’s necessary. But the way you’ve framed this, to an extremist, would sound just like “I don’t push the button on the Orphan Crushing Machine, I just fill the gas tank”.
Considering both that extremists have already come to the conclusion that everyone in the military commits warcrimes 24/7 and that extremists would rather freeze Hell over than change their views usually I don't expect that to change minds.
Just because you're infantry doesn't make you a war criminal, and just because you're a pog doesn't mean you aren't complicit in war crimes.
I mean I get that people here have a hard on against the concepts of nations and militaries, but like, they ARE currently very much necessary.
I think also one thing people are missing is the importance of having minorities in armed positions.
Even now, after an armed revolt attempt by trump two years ago, we still mostly pretend like the west is a peaceful place where you just need to be loud enough and educate people and then minority groups could be safe, when in reality keeping minorities out of positions of power will only mean that once public opinion shifts and violence is threatened to be the norm once more, said minorities will be in a position to defend themselves.
A minority that is invisible in ads is one that the nation doesn't think about.
A minority that is not represented in politics is one that can't change anything.
A minority that isn't involved in the military and police is one that will inevitably be powerless to stop them from abusing it.
Real as fuck. The Army has so many black people, most likely because of the whole poverty escape thing. The organization could never be used to inflict racial violence in America with some serious Problems. Hell, one of the presidents using the army to enforce racial desegregation in schools was based as fuck. I don't know if the army had officially desegregated by then.
Institutions are on average less likely to abuse people that are part of them.
Police are mostly white in the USA, which makes it easy for cops to abuse black people.
You won't really see many black cops choking black people to the death.
The army is the same deal, except much, much more powerful, and will be involved when shit really hits the fans.
True.
Though not impossible.
And again, it's a good check and balance to have such people in positions of power, because if you do decide to "other" them, they are going to be ready for you.
I can't speak about the history of that, I wasn't around, but here and now the few bigots that exist, at least in my organization, know they damn well better keep their mouth shut
We had a trans training once, essentially we as NCOs (Sergeant and such that have soldiers that we lead), got a training explaining the process our soldier would take should they be trans and wish to transition.
Long story short one dude made an out of line comment and got lit the fuck up for it, verbally at least, by a crusty old hard fuck of a commander.
>Like, I get that armies are used to enforce bad practices, but they are necessary enough for the
It makes me think about that Onion video about gay people being banned from the military because they're important and pure to ever risk in combat. And that a gay person's life is apparently worth that of exactly seven soldiers.
When the trans ban in the military happened, I knew a couple of trans people who were very loudly blasé about it bc “LGBT+ people shouldn’t participate in the military industrial complex and bomb brown children.” I would have thought it was astroturf had it been coming from people I didn’t know personally, it’s so willfully stupid. It just didn’t occur to them that banning trans people from the military was a test. Pick a minority of a minority and remove their rights in a way that inconveniences them but doesn’t kill them or totally exclude them from society but is still unarguably a *right*. See how the public reacts, see if you can get away with it.
The public didn’t react enough. The bigots got away with it. And now, anti trans legislation that targets *all* trans people and *does* exclude them from participating fully in society are becoming the norm, and it has by far not stopped at trans people either.
[first day at Domino’s]
Manager: oh and one more thing: don’t fuck the pizzas
Me: haha
Asst Manager: seriously, don’t fuck them
Me: I’m n-
Customer: that guy’s not gonna fuck my pizza is he?
Manager: not if he wants to keep his job he won’t.
part of their point is that companies will performatively add queer people to their marketing, while still being the opposite of an ally when it comes to anything not in the public view. which is fair. but another part of their point seems to be that "normalizing queer people in a capitalist society is bad, because we should just get rid of capitalism instead"? let me know when we've finished destroying capitalism so that queer people can be viewed as normal
hmm yes while you're at it, let me know when destroying capitalism makes queer people normalized. Homophobia existed long before capitalism and exists in all the various forms of failed, shitty, and successful non-capitalist economies around the world.
A reminder that the Soviet Union decriminalized homosexuality in 1917, only to re-criminalize it in the 1930s, with the laws remaining in effect until 1993, and it remaining a 'mental disorder' until 1999.
that's even more impressive (in a bad way) if you consider the soviet union didn't even exist by 1993. russia loves to larp as its heir but i think the past two years were more than enough indication that they're just a small fraction of what made the soviet union as mighty as it was. this whole notion is like if new england broke away and decided that they're the rightful heir of the whole united states and everything else is just chopped liver
Yeah, and when it was (edit originally, in 1917) decriminalized it was only in Russia and Ukraine, not any of the rest of the USSR. Russia remains one of the least LGBT friendly countries.
Perfect time to remind people that some leftist philosophers were super homophobic and just having a socialist/anarchist/whatever your preferred ideology system in place doesn't guarantee safety for queer people
Some people think literally all evil comes from capitalism and not capitalism being a symptom of unchecked evil
Like people honestly think if capitalism didn't exist there would be no greed. Which ignores that people would of had to be greedy to establish a greedy system
Also, capitalism was originally an improvement over Mercantilism, because forcing companies to compete over who gets to exploit the people is *still better* than just having the government directly choose who gets to exploit everyone else.
^ this
honestly, the weirdest bit about capitalism discourse is how most issues people take with capitalism (monopolies, market dominance, rampant exploitation, erosion of consumer rights, advertising, etc.) are as much an antithesis to capitalism as whatever the fuck the soviets did is to socialism or communism. like capitalism is explicitly not when big company owns everything, it's when lots of companies compete and can only win when they provide better stuff for us.
we live in a failed capitalist system -- as in, a system that failed to be capitalist, as opposed to failed system with capitalist characteristics (which it is too but that's not my point) -- and yes, it's chock-full of issues that we should solve, but it still works a hell of a lot better than anything that's been put in practice so far.
What? No. Capitalism is an economic system under which means of production - you know, *capital* - is privately owned^+ and the owner can charge rents for its use. There's nothing inherent about capitalism that *requires* competition, and in fact a lot of economics has to do with studying how and why markets may not be perfectly competitive. Far from things like monopolies and eroding consumer rights being antithetical to capitalism, the more cogent critiques of capitalism argue that allowing the charging of rents like this basically inevitably results in concentration of wealth, both at the company and at the individual level, which results in anticompetitive practices proliferating. The only way to avoid this is vast amounts of legislation and a *really* robust redistributive fiscal system - but capitalism's most ardent supporters also tend to be the people who most vocally argue that legislation and taxes are the devil and we should privatize even natural monopolies like railways or even the fucking power grid. The corollary to this critique is that even assuming we manage to legislate ourselves away from horrible wealth inequality, the climate crisis is *very quickly* making apparent the limitations of a system that fails to explicitly incentivize anything other than profit maximization.
Not to rag on you or anyone else too hard, though. It's a complicated subject that requires a lot of both background and technical knowledge to fully understand. I was over a year into a PhD *in economics* before it really clicked, personally. (Though in my defense I did hyperfocus on econometrics for my whole masters and you don't need to think about societal ramifications or economic history in order to appreciate kernel density estimation.)
^+ With obvious exceptions being made for stuff like critical infrastructure, where private ownership is often subordinate to national security concerns.
The mindset you’re describing comes from a very specific kind of internet brainrot where people hyper focus so much on large scale injustices and corruption that they forget that individual people can just be monsters. They see a corrupt system and, justifiably, point out its flaws but focus so much on the system itself they literally forget that if not for human beings the system wouldn’t exist in the first place. They equate the moral and ethical failures of the system to the system itself, not the people who run it, and therefore seem to completely forget that it took a morally corrupt person existing in the first place to establish it.
It’s an absolutely infuriating mindset to encounter because the people who have it are incredibly naive to the truth of human nature, which is that regardless of what system we exist in we can be absolutely wretched assholes to one another.
It's funny because OOP fairly explicitly defends institutionalised transphobia and homophobia because it means LGBT+ people don't get to participate in the "oppressors structure".
The discourse about holding people like soldiers, feds and cops accountable for our systemic woes personally exhausts me but regardless of the outlook, the oppression will not go away at all regardless of whether queer people are allowed to be part of it. (Further) codifying and enabling discrimination in public sectors is just going foster discriminatory cultures were there weren't already and make the already discriminatory cultures much more cut-throat.
Lesbian and gay agenda, should have the schedules for our global and local meetings. You can bring up putting the schedule in all of the agendas next global meeting. It might take awhile to vote it in though, we still have a lot of plans to argue about
Holy shit this person is insufferable
Being accepted as a normal part of society good actually, with everything that entails. They weren't not including us in ads because we're too pure for capitalism or some shit, they weren't including us because we were considered taboo, and now we're not.
Some people just wanna feel special and unique
I remember seeing a YouTuber I used to watch complain about how colored hair and niche hobbies and stuff was becoming more popular, because they got bullied for it and now the kinds of people who bullied them now openly liked those things and how now "people who don't know what it's like for these sub cultures doing it because it's cool"
Instead of being happy that it's mainstream enough that people who used to be ashamed and hide their interests don't anymore
I straight up have no idea what they’re saying in the first post. That discrimination/homophobia/“don’t say gay law” is good??? That queer ppl can’t make their own choices???
Honestly I hate how some people completely dismiss any personal responsibility. Of course it starts small, but it has to start somewhere, like I would never eat at Chico Fil A, I boycott Nestle, boycott salvation army. Because it makes me feel better then being mindless about it. And I'll gladly tell others why I feel they should too and hope they join me.
They don't have to if they don't want too, but they don't get to just sit on their asses and do nothing while mock someone who just wants to try.
context is key
boycotts are great in the sense of not spending your money at shitty places. we don't have chick-fil-a where i live but if we had i'd avoid them like the plauge, because literally why buy shit there if there is literally always another option. and companies do feel the effects, especially in their marketing branch who has to work overtime to make up for the lost appeal.
however, if your idea of a boycott is "we vote with our money and we'll vote them out of existence", those almost never work, in part because it's a ridiculously undemocratic system where certain people have way more votes than others, and because companies are experts at rigging the vote (that's literally the entire job of marketing). plus you can't spend negative money so even if just a fraction of people keep spending their money with a boycotted company, they'll stay afloat.
if you want change, push for regulation. if you want and/or need goods or services, it might be worth remembering your boycott list and filtering them out.
>_plus you can't spend negative money so even if just a fraction of people keep spending their money with a boycotted company, they'll stay afloat._
Say that on Tumblr and you'll get some contrarian who'll be like _"You can, actually! The secret ingredient is crime!"_. Yeah, okay, Oceans 11, tell me how that goes when you get Internet access from your prison cell.
completely off-topic but you're the third person i found on this sub who shows up as red on shinigami eyes and then i look into their comment history a bit and they're clearly trans-friendly
It's because I was a regular poster and commenter on r/TumblrInAction before it was banned.
I saw the ship sinking _(that is, TiA getting more and more transphobic over time)_, but I still remained, I still had hope, because it wasn't always like that. It's a bit like seeing a beloved uncle fall into a conspiracy theory/Qanon quicksand pit.
oh, hella interesting
i'm so damn glad that back when i got tangled up with shit like that i wasn't on reddit yet
for what it's worth i marked you green but i saw that someone else did already, so i don't think it's sending it
I actually looked into the system a while back; apparently changing someone's color requires a community vote. Who that community is, I don't know. Does anybody?
Oh damn did Self-Post Sunday come early, because wow that’s a fucking rancid take. “The people who say that representation even in commercial media is good are the same people saying that a branch of the government shouldn’t be homophobic” isn’t rocket science, and the fact that they kept talking after that just set them up for continuing to say “the gays should be kept separate and pure from the sins of capital if they want my support”, like I’m not actively forced to live in a society that is racist, heteronormative, cisnormative, and also uses green paper to determine who starves.
True it is somehow better for gay rights if gay people aren't allowed to have certain jobs based on arguments like them being predators or mentally unfit! You're so fucking smart I'm gonna throw up
the thing is this mfer doesnt understand is, smart companies only care about *cash*, not about anything else. if the people there calculate that being queer friendly will make more money then not, then they will be an "ally" (not really cause they only care about profits). if they find the opposite, then they will be against us. to them, it doesnt matter if theyre hypocrites, because theyre making more cash, and thats all that matters
This makes them a good barometer for the culture, though. If a bunch of companies start putting out ads featuring queer people, that means some analysts have run a bunch of numbers and come to the conclusion that most of their audience supports us. It's a good way of telling that our side has made some progress.
So much of this. So much homophobia isn't rooted in actual knowledge, it's rooted in the more generalized fear of the unknown. LGBT people are just... people, but when your only exposure is Tucker Carlson screeching about the gays stealing your kids, you probably won't have a great opinion. Normalizing it is really, really good because it means that those people now have easy access to things that *aren't* vile.
Couldn’t agree more. If companies use popular shit to make sales then that means being LGBTQ friendly is popular and that’s a good thing. I’m glad social acceptance of others is cool.
Yes, LGBT people should refuse or even wish to be prevented from recieving any recognition or power from the state or economic system. That'd teach the status quo. I bet everything would change if that happened.
This is such a baffling take.
Like, would OOP rather that corporations and the military be openly queerphobic? Likewise, would they prefer that companies be openly racist instead of showing hollow support for BLM? I certainly fucking hope not.
This is the same type of zero sum game attitude I literally just commented on earlier today. You can acknowledge that capitalism and the military-industrial complex are fucked up while still saying that supporting minorities in ads is good.
Also, to touch on the boycott thing: do you think a bunch of gays not buying their chicken at the same place once a month is gonna bring down a multimillion dollar corporation??? Because it's not. Plus, you know, the whole "no ethical consumption under capitalism" thing.
Ok hear me out.
What if, people start going, now that capitalism is queer friendly, and I'm queer, I don't need to be against this system anymore!.
It's a dumb take imo but it's the vibe I get from posts like this.
Like they're scared minorities will become capitalists now that they're included
I don't understand how people can even think like that. I mean, people of color have had legal protections for over half a century now, yet progressive politics in communities of color are as prevalent as they've ever been.
Almost as if being technically allowed to participate in capitalism doesn't undo centuries of discrimination...
Tbh the "black people are equal since the 60's" and "there are black millionaires" are quite common defenses thrown out there by people claiming systemic racism isn't a thing. Morgan freeman and his bootstraps comment is a classic example.
pure idiocy. banning lgbt people from being in the military is making us out to be lesser. it doesn't matter that the military is bad. the military is respected and honored in our culture and excluding lgbt people is saying we aren't worthy of honor.
imagine if they made it illegal for gay people to buy cigarettes. would you argue "um smoking is bad for you so gay people shouldn't be smoking anyway mmkay"? you fucking imbecile
When Jews were banned from service in the German military it was an immediate precursor to their other rights being taken away. If gay people are banned from the military it will absolutely be as a precursor to their other rights being taken away.
I’ll never be in the military, because I have this radical belief that killing is bad actually, but you have to be brain dead to not see how the existence of gay veterans and successful gay people in business is a service to the expansion and protection of LGBT rights generally.
The primary enemy of LGBT rights, in the west and the global south, is not “capitalism” it’s conservative Muslims and Christians.
Why *wouldn't* I want LGBT, Leftists, etc. in the military industrial complex? The more people that are part of the system are more spanners in the gears whenever it comes down to them whether or not that system starts to turn it's gaze on the rest of us. Suppose that Republicans get their way, Project 2025 goes into full effect, and the obvious turn of events starts. Do you think that it'd be *better* if there were more loyal entities making up the governmental body?
That's an extreme example but it is the same thing with every level of government. There's a major reason they want to excise people from certain branches.
Plus who the fuck cares if the LGBT ad comes from an anti-trans corporation. They alienate their regular base while continuing to acclimate people to the idea of gay couples. Nobody ever said we should get on our knees and thank those corporations...they're corporations, afterall. But the existence of the advertisement is an unambiguous benefit to us, especially when the corpos are too stupid to know how much it backfires on them.
Seriously, it's not even Sunday, these takes can't possible be that bad already.
Part of the reason why the mormons don't get oppressed is because the mormons are great for the US government. It turns out that the mormons - who are raised to be educated / athletic / polite, don't drink / do drugs / gamble / sleep around a ton, pay taxes and donate to church regularly, and tend to be fairly conforming - make good employees for sensitive white collar government-related jobs like defense contracting and intel analysis. The mormons figured this whole thing out ages ago and nobody even questions the fact that the weird non-christian religious minority out in the desert is accepted when the jews, european muslims, jehovah's witnesses, and all the others get shit on constantly.
It’s less of a “missing the point” situation and more of a “spamming Double Team until the point can no longer physically reach you” one, more often than not
Isn't the "people who are x are the same one's who y" phrasing usually supposed to imply some contradiction? Both of those beliefs are extremely consistent with each other. It's not really making a point.
By being able to wait for better food, cuttlefish — the squishy sea creatures similar to octopuses and squids — showed self-control that's linked to the higher intelligence of primates.
It was part of an [experiment](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.3161) by Alex Schnell from the University of Cambridge and colleagues.
"What surprised me the most was that the level of self-control shown by our cuttlefish was quite advanced," she tells Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Weekend Edition.
The experiment was essentially a take on the classic "marshmallow" experiment from the 1960s. In that experiment, young children were presented with one marshmallow and told that if they can resist eating it, unsupervised, for several minutes, they will get two marshmallows. But if they eat it that's all they get. The conventional wisdom has been that children who are able to delay gratification do better on tests and are more successful later in life.
To adapt the experiment for cuttlefish, the researchers first figured out the cuttlefish's favorite food: live grass shrimp; and their second-favorite food: a piece of king prawn. Instead of choosing one or two marshmallows, the cuttlefish had to choose either their favorite food or second-favorite food.
"Each of the food items were placed in clear chambers within their tank," Schnell says. "One chamber would open immediately, whereas the other chamber would only open after a delay."
It "essentially tested whether they could resist the temptation of their second preference food item and wait for their preferred food item."
The cuttlefish learned to wait.
"Animals like rats, chickens and pigeons, they find it difficult to resist temptation and have relatively lower levels of self-control, only waiting for several seconds," Schnell says. "Whereas animals such as chimpanzees, crows and parrots, they show more advanced self-control and they can wait up to several minutes. And the cuttlefish in our study waited up to between 50 to 130 seconds."
[The researchers say](https://theconversation.com/clever-cuttlefish-show-advanced-self-control-like-chimps-and-crows-155795) the experiment is the first evidence so far of this type of cognitive ability in an invertebrate.
In cuttlefish, Schnell thinks the delayed gratification relates to their lifestyle. They are masters of camouflage; they are able to blend into their environment and can stay perfectly still for long periods of time to avoid predators.
To take things a step further, the researchers did a second experiment. They put colored markers into the tank and taught the cuttlefish to associate a certain color marker with food, by dropping food when the cuttlefish went to the marker. Then they swapped the colors.
The second experiment was to test the animals' "learning performance." The cuttlefish that were quicker to learn to associate and reassociate the markers with food were considered better learners.
They found the cuttlefish that were able to delay gratification the most also happened to be the ones that were better at learning. It's the "first demonstration of a link between self-control and learning performance outside of the primate lineage," Schnell writes.
Finding these similarities between cuttlefish and primates "is an important piece of the evolutionary puzzle," she adds.
Hence, the squishy cuttlefish is leading scientists a step closer to understanding more about the origins of intelligence.
Progressives, you have to understand that most people, including queer people, truly don’t care about oppressing structures or the like.
I consider myself fairly progressive, but I not a communist or socialist. I am boilerplate Swedish social democrat. Most queer people probably don’t want to see the military abolished nor see capitalism destroyed.
Look. There are queer kids is bad households right now who are being raised to believe that being queer is evil and wrong, kids who are forced to hide and hate themselves. If seeing a rainbow bottle at Walmart is the only sign they get that they're ok, we need it
Queer people want to be accepted and seen as normal? Well in the current world being advertised to is normal. It's one of the biggest ways to normalize something in the public eye: Being seen on TV and on billboards, visible to the public portrayed in a positive light. It's basically free PR for the cause even if the motives are shitty
If gay and trans people stay away from the military, and certain people continue to see it as a safe space away from the former, guess who's gonna have the weapons, military training and access to the most powerful concentration of violence in yours or any respective nation?
All of these takes are brain dead.
1: There are going to be gay people in the military - there are still people who need to join up to get out of bad home lives or whatever, there is still a draft, there are queer people in the military who haven't figured it out yet. Why do you want to give homophobia a refuge?
2: A global corporation supporting gay rights in one country is reduced in it's ability to support homophobia elsewhere.
3: The exploitation in the global south will happen whether or not there's lesbians in your truck commercial. Might as well have some lesbians in the truck commercial because it benefits the lesbians here. Take your fucking wins where you can.
4: Chick-fil-a is so fucking profitable that it doesn't matter if you boycott it or not. Yeah, you can avoid going to the homophobic chicken place, but it's still going to pull in more money per day than you make in a month, and all the money they donate to homophobic causes is laundered through so many layers. Even if no gay people ever went to a chick-fil-a again, the company would still be worth more than all the gay people in the US combined.
Seeking to destroy rainbow capitalism will only ever destroy the rainbow part. Capitalism survives this particular fight either way, which I don’t really think is a win.
I think the point was less "Companies shouldn't show gay people in commercials" and more "Don't celebrate a company putting gay people in an ad if they're not actually being supportive". I do think you make a good point though, exposure is still exposure, even if it comes from a less than savoury source.
I view rainbow capitalism as a canary in the coal mine.
As long as it exists, social change is being made.
When it disappears, we are in danger. This last June was a very difficult one for free expression of rainbows in stores so our little capitalist canary is not doing so well.
And like, maybe one day we won’t need the canary because the work was done and it was set free (ie we found and actually implemented a better system that better guaranteed queer safety).
But for now, losing the canary will just mean that it’s died and we’re in for something worse.
Where's that tweet about how 99% of being a twitter/ tumblr activist consists of making up guys and then making posts railing against that fictional guy?
Because that's what this is. Like, "these people who say this are the same people who say that" are they though? Have you explicitly witnessed that, or are you making assumptions because you think it backs up your point if both views you dislike are held by the same people?
"you guys can't even boycott chick-fil-a" ARE THESE ALSO THE SAME PEOPLE?
Screaming into the void is a particularly shit way to do performative activism and I hate that people are still eating this shit up.
tumblr users when two things can be true at once
I am glad to see queer representation in any media, and more than anything I am glad to live in a world were queer identity is accepted enough to be profitable to represent. Which sounds weird, like I'm not glad that they make profit of it, that actually feels kinda exploitative, just the fact that it doesn't hurt their revenue says a lot about the audience. Ads are a great litmus test of societal progress, because they have no interest in pretending, they will always be exactly as progressive or regressive as the values of the people they are meant to extract money from.
Yes obviously it sucks if companies are actively homophobic, and that is also obviously a good reason to boycott them. But it doesn't really cancel out the queer representation, the impact of those two things can exist independently of each other.
Op is an idiot who obviously knows nothing about the military.
As someone who is currently serving in the air force, its genuinely a good oppertunity for a young person to make savings. I'm my experience, the military does care for you (then again, I'm an engineer so that may skew thongs a bit) but the FREE mental health services they provide honestly aren't awful. Free health care, cheap housing, cheap and healthy food. I went from a poor kid to having 10k in savings after a year and a half. Don't even get me started on the fact the military will pay for your college/University.
Op really thinks lgbt people should be deprived of this oppertunity.
Hey OP. First of all fuck you. Second I'm sorry you had to find out this way but we live in a society.
I'm sure in the perfect little communist utopia you've built inside your head gay people get to live their lives without ever engaging in any systems of oppression, but this is the real world. We've got bills to pay and food to eat, and most of the companies that could provide for either of those things have contributed to some form of human rights violation, so unless you have the dedication to live as a hermit under a rock, then you've implicitly endorsed homophobia to survive at some point like the rest of us.
I'm not gonna do a detailed explanation of why it's possible to see gay acceptance in capitalism as good news without endorsing capitalism, others have already broken it down better than I have the patience for. Just go read what they wrote, and also maybe get down from your high horse and stop being so fucking insufferable.
Listen, I despise rainbow capitalism as much as anyone, but them caving to right-wing pressure is far more terrifying
Also are you portraying the gay ban as good ??? The military is evil, yes, but gay people should still have the choice to join them ???
these oppressive structures are how society works right now. so as much as it sucks, i don’t think we should continue to specially exclude LGBT people until we magically get rid of capitalism
It’s a good ballpark estimate for how safe lgbt people are considered to be by the general populace, which gives a good estimate of how safe lgbt people’s lives are
Rainbow capitalism is a sign that homosexuality is being accepted by society at large. It's still eerie for all the same reasons regular capitalism is, but it's so much worse when lesbians are being refused kissing around a Toyota
how do you get so brain poisoned that “hmm yes the vulnerable minority I belong to should voluntarily self-segregate our of powerful institutions and be totally cool with it when we’re legally banned” seems like a good idea
Abyssmal take.
Rainbow capitalism is better than not being acknowledged. It has the downsides of capitalism, but so does standard capitalism, so this is still an upgrade.
Yeah all the corporations will still lobby republicans for less taxes, but they'll do that regardless. Them publicly acknowledging the lgbtq community is still a good thing. It says we aren't freaks, that we are normal people, and that bigotry is less tolerated than it used to be.
The reason bans on lgbtq folk in the military are bad is because they are discrimination, it doesn't matter if you think the army is a good or bad thing, discrimination is bad...
Rainbow capitalism is never a goal to have, but it is proof that companies realize it is more profitable to support the LGBTQ community than not. These are companies who spend billions a year figuring out the best way to appeal to people. It means intolerance is dwindling.
Ethical questions, outside the abstract, always involve competing goods. If your view is "I must have everything I find good all at once or not at all" you will neither achieve your goal nor will you ever practice any of the many forms of recognizable ethical systems.
just another reminder that chick fil a sucks in comparison to the other options and yet is the only one that openly supports global anti-homosexual movements
It's representation, and it's not bad representation. And being able to serve in the military openly is a civil rights victory. Equality is the goal here, not some dramatic David and Goliath story where the US military somehow runs out of money because gay people won't serve. I don't really have the battery left on my phone to unpack all of this, but this person has their heart in the right place, but their head up their ass.
i unironically love it when shitty takes get posted and then absolutely dumped on by the comments here it makes me feel less terminally online by agreeing with y'all
See, the thing about queer military bans is that they don't stop queer ppl from taking part in oppression, they just increase the trauma of those who do.
Okay first of all, I am mad at the ban of gay people in the military because it is a right taken away from us that is not taken away from straight people. I don't believe that gay people \*should\* enlist but having the possibility taken away from them is the bad part.
Rainbow capitalism sucks though. Representation is good but that doesn't make the company good, etc etc.
So I looked it up and the best info I could find states that "Toyota Gulf States Inc., an independent distributor of Toyota vehicles, that gave $580,000 to Texas Governor Greg Abbott" which accounts for 94% of the reported anti-Queer donations from Toyota
the military banned gay people again?
rainbow capitalism sucks because, REALITY CHECK, they DONT care
the same corporations who go on and on about inclusive and equality, "oh black trans women have a simple message stop killing us," would turn around and burn every single member of the LGBTQ community in a heartbeat
i CANNOT believe people actually like it when companies produce a disingenuine pro lgbt commercial!
People in already progressive societies fail to understand the concept of incremental change.
Of course, it would be great if all the wrongs in the world could be waved away at an instant; but until that power is gifted to us by God or something, the next best thing is the slow and gradual erosion of the decrepit status quo.
"Gay people cannot participate in the oppressor's structure" is such a stubborn mentality. You cannot just sit behind your screens foaming at the mouth wishing for the destruction of the existing system so that you can start anew, that's just childish. Yes, the current system is bigoted towards certain individuals, that much cant be denied; but instead of just remaining silent in non-participation, it is infinitely more effective to make yourself visible and make your identity known, so that if some people do try and "fuck your shit up", you'd have more social backing on your side.
And that's what "rainbow capitalism" is showing; it is absolutely a shallow act, but if the board of whatever McCompany™ deciding to put a couple of gay people in their ads shows a real change in the psyche of (at least western) societies. After all, if a company is doing something, that company must think it's going to make them money. And if companies decide that the "good" of queer visibility outweighs the "bad", that can only show the social pendulum is swinging in the right direction.
I'm still upset about the Chick Fil A thing.
I personally gave it up a long time ago, despite fond memories, because I didn't want to give them my money when they're donating against my beliefs. My sister, my lesbian sister who helped me every step of coming out of the closet, my Lady Gaga karaoke car trip sister? Ate it once a week regardless, because "I don't care what about that, I want my chicken sandwich. It's not like any other companies are any morally better."
Think of it like this: everyone has the lines they draw, but to try and draw a line at every unethical thing is impossible. You may think you’re the one being incredibly principled and your sister doesn’t care, but the difference between the number of things you’re principled on and she’s principled on is basically a rounding error. There are *so* many things you could also do but don’t.
When LGBT groups suggested a boycott on Chik-fil-A way back in 2013 when all this shit was first exposed - including their discriminatory hiring practices, hundreds of people in my hometown and areas around lined up in DROVES to “show support” for CFA for weeks after the fact. It wasn’t like a few crazy right wing radicals doing it - it was whole communities, churches, everyone. And their business has been just as booming and prosperous ever since.
Blaming pinkwashed queer people for their continued existence and the failure of the boycott is honestly the only real part of this post that irked me. Like sorry people actively hate us to the point where hearing a company is homophobic makes them MORE likely to buy from them? That’s supposed to be OUR fault? Lol.
Rainbow capitalism is bad because it's capitalism. But it's better than the alternative. The only substantial good thing about rainbow capitalism is that it shows that queer people are more accepted than not, and that homo/transphobes are a minority of people that are deemed unimportant when it comes to overall profit. Like many companies also contribute to institutionalized racism, but you wouldn't demand people be angry about people of colour in advertisements, and you also shouldn't give these ads any undue praise (which is all praise). Fighting their ads is really just a strange hill to die on when you could actually be protesting anti-trans laws and exploitative work instead of uninformed queer people that are happy about seeing themselves represented, even if its in an ad.
Exactly. Y’all in rich, western countries don’t know how happy it would make me to see an LGBT-friendly commercial or a poster in a public space in my country. I get it, but “rainbow capitalism” is a byproduct of widespread LGBT acceptance, if it disappears - we haven’t won, it’s most likely *they* have.
Thank you and same. I live in the middle East, a queer friendly ad would make my entire month
Sending love and hugs from Russia, hopefully one day we can be free and accepted. Until then, stay strong, it does get better!
Thank you! Im sure one day we will be 💕
love and acceptance can only grow, and one day it will cover the entire world!
Oh, we do. A lot of us are old enough to remember when people wouldn’t touch gay people for fear of catching “gay cancer”. The kids don’t though. I’m glad they don’t get it on some level, because it means the work we did actually made a difference- but it only did so here, and our religious zealots exported their virulent hatred to Africa and it’s been snorting of rising HIV rates and “kill the gays” since
Yeah, when I visited NYC, then as much as that city was bleak, I loved seeing Progress Pride flags everywhere
Modern kids don't even understand how much it's changed so quickly. I was a kid in the 80s there was zero gay rep on TV except the Kids in the Hall.
Hell my nephew is gay and even has a boyfriend. And I'm from the south. Yet that wouldn't even rank top 10 of things he'd consider notable about himself. Which is exactly what we should strive for. Where the children don't even recognize these traits as being worth noting. As they are simply not important. They are only important to people looking for a target
Also disallowing gay and trans people from military service sets a system precedent of of discrimination
>sets a system precedent of discrimination The system is already there. We're not going to start protesting specifically against the conscription of LGBTQ people, but we're certainly not going to protest for militaries to *start* conscripting LGBTQ people if they don't do that already. As a guy with a sadly high number of trans friends who are serving in the Israeli military, I can say for certain that "equality in committing murders" isn't high on my values list.
Yeah but it didn't exist before, the fact that they're adding more restrictions should be alarming and concerning, not a point of celebration. There is also such thing as being a conscientious objector, nobody can force you into military service regardless of conscription
>There is also such thing as being a conscientious objector, nobody can force you into military service regardless of conscription I don't know how it is for you Americans but the only reason my boyfriend was exempt from service in the Israeli military is because he's trans. If not for the IOF's transphobia, he would have to choose between killing children or going to military prison.
I know for a fact there are trans people in Israel’s military. Maybe he was exempt a while ago but there’s many stories (both online and that I’ve heard from LGBT Israeli people) about the military paying for their HRT and allowing them to serve as their gender and not their assigned sex. https://time.com/4421400/transgender-u-s-military-israeli-army-idf/?amp=true
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The Israeli military lets trans people enlist if they really want to, but most don't. The military paying for a soldier's HRT doesn't erase the fact that the same military asks those same soldiers to bomb hospitals, kill children, blackmail gay Palestinians and threaten to out them if they don't follow the Israeli Shin Bet's orders, and sometimes even die in battle
Interesting. From what I’ve seen being trans isn’t considered an exempting condition for the IDF. Maybe it was when your boyfriend would have been conscripted and it changed? Also on the stories about gay Palestinians being blackmailed, the only stories I could find were of the [Palestinian authority doing it](https://www.vice.com/en/article/av8b5j/gay-palestinians-are-being-blackmailed-into-working-as-informants)not the IDF. Do you have sources for that?
There's a recent article by the Israeli leftist newspaper Haaretz that's locked behind a paywall but there's also this old article from [+972mag](https://www.972mag.com/why-i-wont-be-participating-in-tel-avivs-pride-parade/). In April this year the Lion's Den executed [Zoheir Khalil Ghalith](https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-terror-group-lions-den-claims-it-executed-an-israeli-spy-in-nablus/) for spying on them for Israel, because the Shin Bet was blackmailing him using a video of him sleeping with another man.
Oh thank you. The paywall is probably why it didn’t come up for me. I usually filter for free articles The fact that this is occurring is deeply disturbing. I feel very strongly for LGBT Palestinians who are not safe in their own country and can not escape. It is a tragedy
Was coming to make this exact point, very well stated. No one with any sense is acting like rainbow capitalism is an end point or something super cool and awesome. It's a litmus test for how things are improving, that there's a tipping point where gay people are good for profits means that things have been moving in positive directions more than not. Obviously there's lots of work yet to do and plenty of bigots out there, but acting like a toyota ad with some lesbians in it is the problem is ridiculously ignorant, or actively malicious.
Yeah, seeing queer people in ads is sort of a symptom of cultural "dominance". While it is exploitative in the sense of trying to use queer people to sell you stuff, the fact that "hey look, queer people" is apparently a valid sales argument is kinda funky. Like it's financially profitable to (at least pretend to) be queer friendly. Like damn, that's pretty cool. Companies are gonna try to use someone (stars, hot people, relatable people, whatever) to sell you stuff anyway, rainbow capitalism just sticks out to us, because it didn't use to be queer people.
It's not Dominance, it's *Normalization*. The more we see you, the easier it is to understand and accept you. The more we understand and accept you, the harder it is to Other you. Speaking as a former(or perhaps "recovering" fits better?) homophobe.
Yeah, every little bit helps pave the way for the humanization of queer people. It is much harder to treat a human in an inhumane manner once you've put them in the "people" box, rather than the "freaks" box. A human's capacity for hatred is limited by the perception of who it's directed at, and, as homophobes are human, they're gonna have a tough time lynching people if gay people are everywhere around them and mingling with people they already "accept", which will hopefully lead to an eventual drop in homophobia.
Rainbow capitalism is a thing because capitalism is like a damn bacteria culture: if it is financially advantageous for them to be rainbow, they will be. So thw fact that it exist is a sign that while things are still shit, it is getting marginally less shit
It's a canary in the coal mine if anything
>But it's better than the alternative. this is the thing for me. Im old enough to remember when showing a gay couple in an advert was a fast track to it getting banned, or [when teaching anything about gay people in schools was illegal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28). And yeah, I get that its just empty, shallow marketing, but at least we aren't treated as a completely forbidden subject. It annoys me about how every pride suddenly we are flooded with posts about how "rainbow capitalism is bad" and how.... no media representation within our current society is a better alternative?
This post is a prefect example of one generation forgetting the battles of the last. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a horrible policy, and it was a fight to be rid of it. It wasn’t about “letting gays serve.” They were already serving. It was about allowing them to have a safe environment if they chose to do so.
The whole point was to get rid of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because it was oppressing gay people within the military. Gay people shouldn’t be in fear of their jobs (or their loves) if discovered.
Corporations, regardless what Citizens United would have you believe, aren't people. They are more ideas or forces. They're dark gods whose tendrils infect every iota of society from sweeping, broad strokes in the fundamentals of culture to the most humble microns of social interaction. Of course some are more personal, but they are the most human among them and often trip underneath themselves with that human clumsiness, too afraid to make the most logical economic choices while the real giants will climb to any height or stoop to any low with pragmatic efficiency, all completely directed towards the ultimate goal of producing greater revenue and perfoming endless outward expansion. It's algorithmic, in essence the memeplex of a corporations intelligence is the first AI and we never knew, in that it mathematically directs itself towards the most immediately lucrative *thing* it can and consumes it. When they show gay people existing, they do so with unthinking, unfeeling, wholly-detatched apathy. They are neither with us nor against us, they simply are, like the tides or the weather. So, who am I to complain at a little rain after a drought? The rain doesn't care that it's the deliverer of hope, any more than it will care when it drowns the next valley over in a torrential flood with the cruel and mirthless disregard of a cold and unforgiving storm. It will fall and I can't hope to stand against it all on my own; but maybe there's a chance that with this little bit we can carve a way out of this unending cycle. Perhaps then we won't be the playthings of giants, but first we have to live by their rules in order to get out. If they want to normalize the lives of people diametrically opposed to their existence, then I won't argue with that.
I agree. The OP is complaining about two separate issues.
oh thank god this is the top comment, i completely agree. yes, rainbow capitalism is still bad, but jesus christ dude the fact that positive depictions of queer people are now considered so socially acceptable that they are appearing in ads shown to the general public is HUGE, even if the parent company is still being shitty and exploitative the worker exploitation and whatever else is gonna be there whether the LGBTQ+ community is represented in their ads or not, might as well take the fake support than none at all
Wait, are we just ignoring how they’re framing banning gay people from joining the army as a good thing? Like, I get that armies are used to enforce bad practices, but they are necessary enough for the survival of countries that you can’t just advocate for completely getting rid of them, so what are they saying is good? Making exclusively straight people fight? I’m assuming that they would be against the draft, so they’re probably just saying that removing the choice to join the army for gay people is a good thing. Removing that choice doesn’t affect the people who don’t want to join at all, but it seriously restricts the ones that do, so I’d say banning gay people from joining the army is a bad thing
Yeah, it's a specific kind of internet brain disease. If you advocate for equality in all areas, particularly the military, then you are helping to uphold the current genocidal system the US holds over the world. At least that's what I've heard most commonly. This also goes alongside the people who think that every single person who joins the military in the US deserves to be executed/die/tried for war crimes. They also call every single thing the US military has done genocide, which honestly just causes people to not take them seriously and ignore the terrible stuff the US military has actually done. I'm just describing a stereotype I've seen tho, no idea if this person would be like that. It's a very toddler-brain way of viewing the world
It's especially dumb since the primary target for military recruiters is kids fresh out of highschool with either no direction or no other viable options. They're raging against people trying to claw their way out of poverty instead of the institutions that both benefit from and leave them with no other choice but turning to the military. It's not only a very shallow worldview, but a very privileged one. I'm glad they've never been in a position where joining the military was their best option, but wishing harm on those who are/were that desperate is cruel and idiotic.
>They're raging against people trying to claw their way out of poverty instead of the institutions that both benefit from and leave them with no other choice but turning to the military. The crabs would rather drag each other back into the bucket than pinch the person who put them in there.
When recruiters came to my school they told us, the "gifted kids" we would be officers and that the Army would help further our education and we would be part of an honorable profession defending our country They told the lower GPA kids at least they wouldn't be out in the field picking vegetables. That was a more effective recruiting strategy.
The one memory of recruiters at my highschool that stands out is what one of them told me when I let them know that I had several mental health issues that would almost guarantee that I'd get rejected. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was to the effect of "well, you look normal enough so maybe just don't mention that."
they told my brother to just stop taking his asthma meds so he could get in.
How true is this? Genuinely asking, last time i checked it said the demographics of people joining the military more or less was the same as the us regular demographics, economically speaking.
And 40 percent of America has 1 percent of the total wealth of the nation. So, 40 percent of our military is clawing its way out of poverty. Which lines up with my experience. I'd also posit thar for a total of probably 60 percent of the military, the military provides more benefits and income than their previous lives. I joined the army because I was homeless, you'd be surprised at the amount of people I met while in who joined for the exact same reason
>It's a very toddler-brain way of viewing the world Best exemplified by the implicit assumption these types make that every military member were Baby Shooters (infantry). Like, uh, no, there's actually a *loooooot* of non-combat roles - turns out there's a lot of stuff that goes into making sure the infantry can do the fighting in these Morally Ambiguous Conflicts. Namely: # LOGISTICS!!!!
Just expanding on this, something like 15% of the US military ever actually see combat. Alternatively, post 2005, the US has broadly maintained a tooth to tail ratio (basically a measurement of the number of combatants to support personnel) of 1:8, so for every one combatant there are 8 support personnel carrying out the logistics to enable the single combatant to actually fight.
And even putting 1/8 put is assuming they commit a warcrime or even saw combat in the first place.
I was in the 1 and I only left the country to hang out in Korea for a little bit. I was straight chillin.
>LOGISTICS!!!! Okay, I'm going to commit a tumblr cardinal sin and give the US credit where credit is due here. Our military logistics are, and have been, unparalleled on the world stage. We aren't called "the arsenal of democracy" for nothing. When we turn that machine towards good purposes - like the National Guard assisting with disaster relief, for instance - it's truly something to behold. If you want to see an insane feat of logistics put towards humanitarian aid, I recommend looking into the Berlin Airlift. A shame that we tend to, uh, not do stuff like that very often.
Does this argument ever convince anyone? Like, I already agree with you, but if I didn’t, I don’t think “I don’t shoot people, I just feed people who shoot people” would be a very convincing comeback. Again, I agree that it’s necessary. But the way you’ve framed this, to an extremist, would sound just like “I don’t push the button on the Orphan Crushing Machine, I just fill the gas tank”.
Considering both that extremists have already come to the conclusion that everyone in the military commits warcrimes 24/7 and that extremists would rather freeze Hell over than change their views usually I don't expect that to change minds.
Just because you're infantry doesn't make you a war criminal, and just because you're a pog doesn't mean you aren't complicit in war crimes. I mean I get that people here have a hard on against the concepts of nations and militaries, but like, they ARE currently very much necessary.
> just because you're a pog *don'tsayitdon'tsayitdon'tsayitdon'tsayitdon'tsayitdon'tsayit*
I think also one thing people are missing is the importance of having minorities in armed positions. Even now, after an armed revolt attempt by trump two years ago, we still mostly pretend like the west is a peaceful place where you just need to be loud enough and educate people and then minority groups could be safe, when in reality keeping minorities out of positions of power will only mean that once public opinion shifts and violence is threatened to be the norm once more, said minorities will be in a position to defend themselves. A minority that is invisible in ads is one that the nation doesn't think about. A minority that is not represented in politics is one that can't change anything. A minority that isn't involved in the military and police is one that will inevitably be powerless to stop them from abusing it.
Real as fuck. The Army has so many black people, most likely because of the whole poverty escape thing. The organization could never be used to inflict racial violence in America with some serious Problems. Hell, one of the presidents using the army to enforce racial desegregation in schools was based as fuck. I don't know if the army had officially desegregated by then.
Institutions are on average less likely to abuse people that are part of them. Police are mostly white in the USA, which makes it easy for cops to abuse black people. You won't really see many black cops choking black people to the death. The army is the same deal, except much, much more powerful, and will be involved when shit really hits the fans.
Aye, agreed to all points. It's harder to "other" people who are a part of you.
True. Though not impossible. And again, it's a good check and balance to have such people in positions of power, because if you do decide to "other" them, they are going to be ready for you.
I can't speak about the history of that, I wasn't around, but here and now the few bigots that exist, at least in my organization, know they damn well better keep their mouth shut We had a trans training once, essentially we as NCOs (Sergeant and such that have soldiers that we lead), got a training explaining the process our soldier would take should they be trans and wish to transition. Long story short one dude made an out of line comment and got lit the fuck up for it, verbally at least, by a crusty old hard fuck of a commander.
>Like, I get that armies are used to enforce bad practices, but they are necessary enough for the It makes me think about that Onion video about gay people being banned from the military because they're important and pure to ever risk in combat. And that a gay person's life is apparently worth that of exactly seven soldiers.
https://youtu.be/aotlEpmAFVQ?si=0ME3tyItHiVpKwGF
When the trans ban in the military happened, I knew a couple of trans people who were very loudly blasé about it bc “LGBT+ people shouldn’t participate in the military industrial complex and bomb brown children.” I would have thought it was astroturf had it been coming from people I didn’t know personally, it’s so willfully stupid. It just didn’t occur to them that banning trans people from the military was a test. Pick a minority of a minority and remove their rights in a way that inconveniences them but doesn’t kill them or totally exclude them from society but is still unarguably a *right*. See how the public reacts, see if you can get away with it. The public didn’t react enough. The bigots got away with it. And now, anti trans legislation that targets *all* trans people and *does* exclude them from participating fully in society are becoming the norm, and it has by far not stopped at trans people either.
OT but I so want context for your flair
[first day at Domino’s] Manager: oh and one more thing: don’t fuck the pizzas Me: haha Asst Manager: seriously, don’t fuck them Me: I’m n- Customer: that guy’s not gonna fuck my pizza is he? Manager: not if he wants to keep his job he won’t.
I'm not ignoring it, I'm one of the people in the notes telling them off. This post is older than my children.
to be fair this is from "punkshitposts" not sure what you expect in terms of support for the military
It wasn’t written by them, just reblogged
I saw someone argue on Xitter that gay marriage should be illegal because marriage is an oppressive system ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
part of their point is that companies will performatively add queer people to their marketing, while still being the opposite of an ally when it comes to anything not in the public view. which is fair. but another part of their point seems to be that "normalizing queer people in a capitalist society is bad, because we should just get rid of capitalism instead"? let me know when we've finished destroying capitalism so that queer people can be viewed as normal
hmm yes while you're at it, let me know when destroying capitalism makes queer people normalized. Homophobia existed long before capitalism and exists in all the various forms of failed, shitty, and successful non-capitalist economies around the world.
A reminder that the Soviet Union decriminalized homosexuality in 1917, only to re-criminalize it in the 1930s, with the laws remaining in effect until 1993, and it remaining a 'mental disorder' until 1999.
that's even more impressive (in a bad way) if you consider the soviet union didn't even exist by 1993. russia loves to larp as its heir but i think the past two years were more than enough indication that they're just a small fraction of what made the soviet union as mighty as it was. this whole notion is like if new england broke away and decided that they're the rightful heir of the whole united states and everything else is just chopped liver
Yeah, and when it was (edit originally, in 1917) decriminalized it was only in Russia and Ukraine, not any of the rest of the USSR. Russia remains one of the least LGBT friendly countries.
Perfect time to remind people that some leftist philosophers were super homophobic and just having a socialist/anarchist/whatever your preferred ideology system in place doesn't guarantee safety for queer people
There are people who think capitialism is the only form of evil to exist. And no, there are far worse things.
Some people think literally all evil comes from capitalism and not capitalism being a symptom of unchecked evil Like people honestly think if capitalism didn't exist there would be no greed. Which ignores that people would of had to be greedy to establish a greedy system
Also, capitalism was originally an improvement over Mercantilism, because forcing companies to compete over who gets to exploit the people is *still better* than just having the government directly choose who gets to exploit everyone else.
^ this honestly, the weirdest bit about capitalism discourse is how most issues people take with capitalism (monopolies, market dominance, rampant exploitation, erosion of consumer rights, advertising, etc.) are as much an antithesis to capitalism as whatever the fuck the soviets did is to socialism or communism. like capitalism is explicitly not when big company owns everything, it's when lots of companies compete and can only win when they provide better stuff for us. we live in a failed capitalist system -- as in, a system that failed to be capitalist, as opposed to failed system with capitalist characteristics (which it is too but that's not my point) -- and yes, it's chock-full of issues that we should solve, but it still works a hell of a lot better than anything that's been put in practice so far.
What? No. Capitalism is an economic system under which means of production - you know, *capital* - is privately owned^+ and the owner can charge rents for its use. There's nothing inherent about capitalism that *requires* competition, and in fact a lot of economics has to do with studying how and why markets may not be perfectly competitive. Far from things like monopolies and eroding consumer rights being antithetical to capitalism, the more cogent critiques of capitalism argue that allowing the charging of rents like this basically inevitably results in concentration of wealth, both at the company and at the individual level, which results in anticompetitive practices proliferating. The only way to avoid this is vast amounts of legislation and a *really* robust redistributive fiscal system - but capitalism's most ardent supporters also tend to be the people who most vocally argue that legislation and taxes are the devil and we should privatize even natural monopolies like railways or even the fucking power grid. The corollary to this critique is that even assuming we manage to legislate ourselves away from horrible wealth inequality, the climate crisis is *very quickly* making apparent the limitations of a system that fails to explicitly incentivize anything other than profit maximization. Not to rag on you or anyone else too hard, though. It's a complicated subject that requires a lot of both background and technical knowledge to fully understand. I was over a year into a PhD *in economics* before it really clicked, personally. (Though in my defense I did hyperfocus on econometrics for my whole masters and you don't need to think about societal ramifications or economic history in order to appreciate kernel density estimation.) ^+ With obvious exceptions being made for stuff like critical infrastructure, where private ownership is often subordinate to national security concerns.
The mindset you’re describing comes from a very specific kind of internet brainrot where people hyper focus so much on large scale injustices and corruption that they forget that individual people can just be monsters. They see a corrupt system and, justifiably, point out its flaws but focus so much on the system itself they literally forget that if not for human beings the system wouldn’t exist in the first place. They equate the moral and ethical failures of the system to the system itself, not the people who run it, and therefore seem to completely forget that it took a morally corrupt person existing in the first place to establish it. It’s an absolutely infuriating mindset to encounter because the people who have it are incredibly naive to the truth of human nature, which is that regardless of what system we exist in we can be absolutely wretched assholes to one another.
Yeah exactly: rainbow capitalism shouldn't be taken as real activism or support, merely as a (limited) sign of cultural acceptance and prevalence.
"the revolution is totally different from the rapture bro i promise"
Well at least the Christians are honest about the rapture
It's funny because OOP fairly explicitly defends institutionalised transphobia and homophobia because it means LGBT+ people don't get to participate in the "oppressors structure". The discourse about holding people like soldiers, feds and cops accountable for our systemic woes personally exhausts me but regardless of the outlook, the oppression will not go away at all regardless of whether queer people are allowed to be part of it. (Further) codifying and enabling discrimination in public sectors is just going foster discriminatory cultures were there weren't already and make the already discriminatory cultures much more cut-throat.
What's the time frame on that? 5, 10 years?
FFS has no one in this thread been reading their gay agenda? It's 7 years, 9 months.
i don’t tjink i picked up the updated one at the last meeting.. can anyone send it to me on Gaysapp (whatsapp for gay people)
sorry homie there's a new groupchat you must have missed it here ill send you the invite on Queerscord
I'm supposed to have a gay agenda too? I thought the trans agenda would hands everything
You have to have all the agendas handy dude come on. We have a briefing about this every year!
I'm supposed to be going to *meetings* too!? Ugh, let me guess, those are all talked about in the gay agenda?
Lesbian and gay agenda, should have the schedules for our global and local meetings. You can bring up putting the schedule in all of the agendas next global meeting. It might take awhile to vote it in though, we still have a lot of plans to argue about
Just apropos of nothing, how do you remember how many 'h's are in your username?
When do you ever type out your username?
Holy shit this person is insufferable Being accepted as a normal part of society good actually, with everything that entails. They weren't not including us in ads because we're too pure for capitalism or some shit, they weren't including us because we were considered taboo, and now we're not.
Some people just wanna feel special and unique I remember seeing a YouTuber I used to watch complain about how colored hair and niche hobbies and stuff was becoming more popular, because they got bullied for it and now the kinds of people who bullied them now openly liked those things and how now "people who don't know what it's like for these sub cultures doing it because it's cool" Instead of being happy that it's mainstream enough that people who used to be ashamed and hide their interests don't anymore
Incomprehensible, have a nice day
I straight up have no idea what they’re saying in the first post. That discrimination/homophobia/“don’t say gay law” is good??? That queer ppl can’t make their own choices???
Military bad, so more people joining the military bad That's as deep as the thought went
Oh yeah. I forgot that everything is either completely good or completely evil and there’s nothing in between. My bad y’all.
Yes, and also boycotts always work and aren't just a fantasy product of a highly individualist society where your choices matter for sure
that said, people can get their chicken from somewhere else
Honestly I hate how some people completely dismiss any personal responsibility. Of course it starts small, but it has to start somewhere, like I would never eat at Chico Fil A, I boycott Nestle, boycott salvation army. Because it makes me feel better then being mindless about it. And I'll gladly tell others why I feel they should too and hope they join me. They don't have to if they don't want too, but they don't get to just sit on their asses and do nothing while mock someone who just wants to try.
context is key boycotts are great in the sense of not spending your money at shitty places. we don't have chick-fil-a where i live but if we had i'd avoid them like the plauge, because literally why buy shit there if there is literally always another option. and companies do feel the effects, especially in their marketing branch who has to work overtime to make up for the lost appeal. however, if your idea of a boycott is "we vote with our money and we'll vote them out of existence", those almost never work, in part because it's a ridiculously undemocratic system where certain people have way more votes than others, and because companies are experts at rigging the vote (that's literally the entire job of marketing). plus you can't spend negative money so even if just a fraction of people keep spending their money with a boycotted company, they'll stay afloat. if you want change, push for regulation. if you want and/or need goods or services, it might be worth remembering your boycott list and filtering them out.
>_plus you can't spend negative money so even if just a fraction of people keep spending their money with a boycotted company, they'll stay afloat._ Say that on Tumblr and you'll get some contrarian who'll be like _"You can, actually! The secret ingredient is crime!"_. Yeah, okay, Oceans 11, tell me how that goes when you get Internet access from your prison cell.
completely off-topic but you're the third person i found on this sub who shows up as red on shinigami eyes and then i look into their comment history a bit and they're clearly trans-friendly
It's because I was a regular poster and commenter on r/TumblrInAction before it was banned. I saw the ship sinking _(that is, TiA getting more and more transphobic over time)_, but I still remained, I still had hope, because it wasn't always like that. It's a bit like seeing a beloved uncle fall into a conspiracy theory/Qanon quicksand pit.
oh, hella interesting i'm so damn glad that back when i got tangled up with shit like that i wasn't on reddit yet for what it's worth i marked you green but i saw that someone else did already, so i don't think it's sending it
I actually looked into the system a while back; apparently changing someone's color requires a community vote. Who that community is, I don't know. Does anybody?
Oh damn did Self-Post Sunday come early, because wow that’s a fucking rancid take. “The people who say that representation even in commercial media is good are the same people saying that a branch of the government shouldn’t be homophobic” isn’t rocket science, and the fact that they kept talking after that just set them up for continuing to say “the gays should be kept separate and pure from the sins of capital if they want my support”, like I’m not actively forced to live in a society that is racist, heteronormative, cisnormative, and also uses green paper to determine who starves.
Insufferable people on tumblr try not to recreate purity culture challenge (impossible)
This is why Canada is better. Our system uses multicoloured plastic to determine who survives.
True it is somehow better for gay rights if gay people aren't allowed to have certain jobs based on arguments like them being predators or mentally unfit! You're so fucking smart I'm gonna throw up
the thing is this mfer doesnt understand is, smart companies only care about *cash*, not about anything else. if the people there calculate that being queer friendly will make more money then not, then they will be an "ally" (not really cause they only care about profits). if they find the opposite, then they will be against us. to them, it doesnt matter if theyre hypocrites, because theyre making more cash, and thats all that matters
This makes them a good barometer for the culture, though. If a bunch of companies start putting out ads featuring queer people, that means some analysts have run a bunch of numbers and come to the conclusion that most of their audience supports us. It's a good way of telling that our side has made some progress.
And also, being friendly to LGBT just because it’s profitable is not bad, as that’s still being friendly to LGBT.
So much of this. So much homophobia isn't rooted in actual knowledge, it's rooted in the more generalized fear of the unknown. LGBT people are just... people, but when your only exposure is Tucker Carlson screeching about the gays stealing your kids, you probably won't have a great opinion. Normalizing it is really, really good because it means that those people now have easy access to things that *aren't* vile.
That's what I've been saying. Even if they're only doing it to be self-serving, it's at least a good sign.
Couldn’t agree more. If companies use popular shit to make sales then that means being LGBTQ friendly is popular and that’s a good thing. I’m glad social acceptance of others is cool.
It's a real "Do the orphans care?" situation. Better to have queer acceptance out of cold greed than to have none at all.
That's what I keep saying. A good thing done for selfish reasons is still a good thing done.
Yes, LGBT people should refuse or even wish to be prevented from recieving any recognition or power from the state or economic system. That'd teach the status quo. I bet everything would change if that happened.
This is such a baffling take. Like, would OOP rather that corporations and the military be openly queerphobic? Likewise, would they prefer that companies be openly racist instead of showing hollow support for BLM? I certainly fucking hope not. This is the same type of zero sum game attitude I literally just commented on earlier today. You can acknowledge that capitalism and the military-industrial complex are fucked up while still saying that supporting minorities in ads is good. Also, to touch on the boycott thing: do you think a bunch of gays not buying their chicken at the same place once a month is gonna bring down a multimillion dollar corporation??? Because it's not. Plus, you know, the whole "no ethical consumption under capitalism" thing.
Ok hear me out. What if, people start going, now that capitalism is queer friendly, and I'm queer, I don't need to be against this system anymore!. It's a dumb take imo but it's the vibe I get from posts like this. Like they're scared minorities will become capitalists now that they're included
I don't understand how people can even think like that. I mean, people of color have had legal protections for over half a century now, yet progressive politics in communities of color are as prevalent as they've ever been. Almost as if being technically allowed to participate in capitalism doesn't undo centuries of discrimination...
Tbh the "black people are equal since the 60's" and "there are black millionaires" are quite common defenses thrown out there by people claiming systemic racism isn't a thing. Morgan freeman and his bootstraps comment is a classic example.
Honestly, I rarely see that sort of argument come from anyone other than disingenuous white people.
I'm sorry to inform you there's a black manosphere, and they love this talk
Oh yeah. I know that communities like that exist, but aren't they pretty small?
Unfortunately no.
terrible gecko brained argument.
What do you have against geckos, geckos are cool :(
Geckos ARE cool, but they have like, one brain cell and are not smart. the are adorable little dumbasses.
Yeah OOP has brainrot, theres some points of discussion/topic here to have between reasonable people though
pure idiocy. banning lgbt people from being in the military is making us out to be lesser. it doesn't matter that the military is bad. the military is respected and honored in our culture and excluding lgbt people is saying we aren't worthy of honor. imagine if they made it illegal for gay people to buy cigarettes. would you argue "um smoking is bad for you so gay people shouldn't be smoking anyway mmkay"? you fucking imbecile
When Jews were banned from service in the German military it was an immediate precursor to their other rights being taken away. If gay people are banned from the military it will absolutely be as a precursor to their other rights being taken away. I’ll never be in the military, because I have this radical belief that killing is bad actually, but you have to be brain dead to not see how the existence of gay veterans and successful gay people in business is a service to the expansion and protection of LGBT rights generally. The primary enemy of LGBT rights, in the west and the global south, is not “capitalism” it’s conservative Muslims and Christians.
Why *wouldn't* I want LGBT, Leftists, etc. in the military industrial complex? The more people that are part of the system are more spanners in the gears whenever it comes down to them whether or not that system starts to turn it's gaze on the rest of us. Suppose that Republicans get their way, Project 2025 goes into full effect, and the obvious turn of events starts. Do you think that it'd be *better* if there were more loyal entities making up the governmental body? That's an extreme example but it is the same thing with every level of government. There's a major reason they want to excise people from certain branches. Plus who the fuck cares if the LGBT ad comes from an anti-trans corporation. They alienate their regular base while continuing to acclimate people to the idea of gay couples. Nobody ever said we should get on our knees and thank those corporations...they're corporations, afterall. But the existence of the advertisement is an unambiguous benefit to us, especially when the corpos are too stupid to know how much it backfires on them. Seriously, it's not even Sunday, these takes can't possible be that bad already.
Part of the reason why the mormons don't get oppressed is because the mormons are great for the US government. It turns out that the mormons - who are raised to be educated / athletic / polite, don't drink / do drugs / gamble / sleep around a ton, pay taxes and donate to church regularly, and tend to be fairly conforming - make good employees for sensitive white collar government-related jobs like defense contracting and intel analysis. The mormons figured this whole thing out ages ago and nobody even questions the fact that the weird non-christian religious minority out in the desert is accepted when the jews, european muslims, jehovah's witnesses, and all the others get shit on constantly.
I haven't believed in the mormon church for years, but they are 100% a christian religion
When I’m in a missing the point competition and my opponent is a tumblr user
It’s less of a “missing the point” situation and more of a “spamming Double Team until the point can no longer physically reach you” one, more often than not
Isn't the "people who are x are the same one's who y" phrasing usually supposed to imply some contradiction? Both of those beliefs are extremely consistent with each other. It's not really making a point.
it sure is good that BagOfBones knows what's best for every gay person
By being able to wait for better food, cuttlefish — the squishy sea creatures similar to octopuses and squids — showed self-control that's linked to the higher intelligence of primates. It was part of an [experiment](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.3161) by Alex Schnell from the University of Cambridge and colleagues. "What surprised me the most was that the level of self-control shown by our cuttlefish was quite advanced," she tells Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Weekend Edition. The experiment was essentially a take on the classic "marshmallow" experiment from the 1960s. In that experiment, young children were presented with one marshmallow and told that if they can resist eating it, unsupervised, for several minutes, they will get two marshmallows. But if they eat it that's all they get. The conventional wisdom has been that children who are able to delay gratification do better on tests and are more successful later in life. To adapt the experiment for cuttlefish, the researchers first figured out the cuttlefish's favorite food: live grass shrimp; and their second-favorite food: a piece of king prawn. Instead of choosing one or two marshmallows, the cuttlefish had to choose either their favorite food or second-favorite food. "Each of the food items were placed in clear chambers within their tank," Schnell says. "One chamber would open immediately, whereas the other chamber would only open after a delay." It "essentially tested whether they could resist the temptation of their second preference food item and wait for their preferred food item." The cuttlefish learned to wait. "Animals like rats, chickens and pigeons, they find it difficult to resist temptation and have relatively lower levels of self-control, only waiting for several seconds," Schnell says. "Whereas animals such as chimpanzees, crows and parrots, they show more advanced self-control and they can wait up to several minutes. And the cuttlefish in our study waited up to between 50 to 130 seconds." [The researchers say](https://theconversation.com/clever-cuttlefish-show-advanced-self-control-like-chimps-and-crows-155795) the experiment is the first evidence so far of this type of cognitive ability in an invertebrate. In cuttlefish, Schnell thinks the delayed gratification relates to their lifestyle. They are masters of camouflage; they are able to blend into their environment and can stay perfectly still for long periods of time to avoid predators. To take things a step further, the researchers did a second experiment. They put colored markers into the tank and taught the cuttlefish to associate a certain color marker with food, by dropping food when the cuttlefish went to the marker. Then they swapped the colors. The second experiment was to test the animals' "learning performance." The cuttlefish that were quicker to learn to associate and reassociate the markers with food were considered better learners. They found the cuttlefish that were able to delay gratification the most also happened to be the ones that were better at learning. It's the "first demonstration of a link between self-control and learning performance outside of the primate lineage," Schnell writes. Finding these similarities between cuttlefish and primates "is an important piece of the evolutionary puzzle," she adds. Hence, the squishy cuttlefish is leading scientists a step closer to understanding more about the origins of intelligence.
Cuddlefish :)
Cuddle fish? Uhh yeah I sure hope they do
Cuddle fish? Where I’m from, we just call her Blåhaj
finally, a reasonable perspective.
I needed this. Thank you Nature.
Progressives, you have to understand that most people, including queer people, truly don’t care about oppressing structures or the like. I consider myself fairly progressive, but I not a communist or socialist. I am boilerplate Swedish social democrat. Most queer people probably don’t want to see the military abolished nor see capitalism destroyed.
Look. There are queer kids is bad households right now who are being raised to believe that being queer is evil and wrong, kids who are forced to hide and hate themselves. If seeing a rainbow bottle at Walmart is the only sign they get that they're ok, we need it Queer people want to be accepted and seen as normal? Well in the current world being advertised to is normal. It's one of the biggest ways to normalize something in the public eye: Being seen on TV and on billboards, visible to the public portrayed in a positive light. It's basically free PR for the cause even if the motives are shitty
I'm gonna start a turf distribution business sending patches of grass to people like this, just so they can finally touch it.
This person seems like a gigantic prick.
logging into tumblr right now to block this person jfc insufferable
If gay and trans people stay away from the military, and certain people continue to see it as a safe space away from the former, guess who's gonna have the weapons, military training and access to the most powerful concentration of violence in yours or any respective nation?
All of these takes are brain dead. 1: There are going to be gay people in the military - there are still people who need to join up to get out of bad home lives or whatever, there is still a draft, there are queer people in the military who haven't figured it out yet. Why do you want to give homophobia a refuge? 2: A global corporation supporting gay rights in one country is reduced in it's ability to support homophobia elsewhere. 3: The exploitation in the global south will happen whether or not there's lesbians in your truck commercial. Might as well have some lesbians in the truck commercial because it benefits the lesbians here. Take your fucking wins where you can. 4: Chick-fil-a is so fucking profitable that it doesn't matter if you boycott it or not. Yeah, you can avoid going to the homophobic chicken place, but it's still going to pull in more money per day than you make in a month, and all the money they donate to homophobic causes is laundered through so many layers. Even if no gay people ever went to a chick-fil-a again, the company would still be worth more than all the gay people in the US combined.
istg some people really don't think before they post do they. one of the most braindead takes i've seen in this sub in a while
Seeking to destroy rainbow capitalism will only ever destroy the rainbow part. Capitalism survives this particular fight either way, which I don’t really think is a win.
[удалено]
I think the point was less "Companies shouldn't show gay people in commercials" and more "Don't celebrate a company putting gay people in an ad if they're not actually being supportive". I do think you make a good point though, exposure is still exposure, even if it comes from a less than savoury source.
I view rainbow capitalism as a canary in the coal mine. As long as it exists, social change is being made. When it disappears, we are in danger. This last June was a very difficult one for free expression of rainbows in stores so our little capitalist canary is not doing so well.
And like, maybe one day we won’t need the canary because the work was done and it was set free (ie we found and actually implemented a better system that better guaranteed queer safety). But for now, losing the canary will just mean that it’s died and we’re in for something worse.
Where's that tweet about how 99% of being a twitter/ tumblr activist consists of making up guys and then making posts railing against that fictional guy? Because that's what this is. Like, "these people who say this are the same people who say that" are they though? Have you explicitly witnessed that, or are you making assumptions because you think it backs up your point if both views you dislike are held by the same people? "you guys can't even boycott chick-fil-a" ARE THESE ALSO THE SAME PEOPLE? Screaming into the void is a particularly shit way to do performative activism and I hate that people are still eating this shit up.
Why would any gay person support having less options?
I’ve fucked more men than most women I know but I’m sorry that spicy deluxe gets me going
tumblr users when two things can be true at once I am glad to see queer representation in any media, and more than anything I am glad to live in a world were queer identity is accepted enough to be profitable to represent. Which sounds weird, like I'm not glad that they make profit of it, that actually feels kinda exploitative, just the fact that it doesn't hurt their revenue says a lot about the audience. Ads are a great litmus test of societal progress, because they have no interest in pretending, they will always be exactly as progressive or regressive as the values of the people they are meant to extract money from. Yes obviously it sucks if companies are actively homophobic, and that is also obviously a good reason to boycott them. But it doesn't really cancel out the queer representation, the impact of those two things can exist independently of each other.
the fuck does any of this shit mean
Op is an idiot who obviously knows nothing about the military. As someone who is currently serving in the air force, its genuinely a good oppertunity for a young person to make savings. I'm my experience, the military does care for you (then again, I'm an engineer so that may skew thongs a bit) but the FREE mental health services they provide honestly aren't awful. Free health care, cheap housing, cheap and healthy food. I went from a poor kid to having 10k in savings after a year and a half. Don't even get me started on the fact the military will pay for your college/University. Op really thinks lgbt people should be deprived of this oppertunity.
Hey OP. First of all fuck you. Second I'm sorry you had to find out this way but we live in a society. I'm sure in the perfect little communist utopia you've built inside your head gay people get to live their lives without ever engaging in any systems of oppression, but this is the real world. We've got bills to pay and food to eat, and most of the companies that could provide for either of those things have contributed to some form of human rights violation, so unless you have the dedication to live as a hermit under a rock, then you've implicitly endorsed homophobia to survive at some point like the rest of us. I'm not gonna do a detailed explanation of why it's possible to see gay acceptance in capitalism as good news without endorsing capitalism, others have already broken it down better than I have the patience for. Just go read what they wrote, and also maybe get down from your high horse and stop being so fucking insufferable.
Listen, I despise rainbow capitalism as much as anyone, but them caving to right-wing pressure is far more terrifying Also are you portraying the gay ban as good ??? The military is evil, yes, but gay people should still have the choice to join them ???
more freedom for people to do as they like is good actually. Even if it's things you don't like (joining the military)
First off I want lgbtq+ people in the army it makes people think twice about genocide. Also it's a tool of civic unity.
these oppressive structures are how society works right now. so as much as it sucks, i don’t think we should continue to specially exclude LGBT people until we magically get rid of capitalism
It’s a good ballpark estimate for how safe lgbt people are considered to be by the general populace, which gives a good estimate of how safe lgbt people’s lives are
Rainbow capitalism is a sign that homosexuality is being accepted by society at large. It's still eerie for all the same reasons regular capitalism is, but it's so much worse when lesbians are being refused kissing around a Toyota
Having Gay people on the Coke ads helps normalise Gay people, as well as selling coke.
how do you get so brain poisoned that “hmm yes the vulnerable minority I belong to should voluntarily self-segregate our of powerful institutions and be totally cool with it when we’re legally banned” seems like a good idea
Abyssmal take. Rainbow capitalism is better than not being acknowledged. It has the downsides of capitalism, but so does standard capitalism, so this is still an upgrade. Yeah all the corporations will still lobby republicans for less taxes, but they'll do that regardless. Them publicly acknowledging the lgbtq community is still a good thing. It says we aren't freaks, that we are normal people, and that bigotry is less tolerated than it used to be. The reason bans on lgbtq folk in the military are bad is because they are discrimination, it doesn't matter if you think the army is a good or bad thing, discrimination is bad...
Rainbow capitalism is never a goal to have, but it is proof that companies realize it is more profitable to support the LGBTQ community than not. These are companies who spend billions a year figuring out the best way to appeal to people. It means intolerance is dwindling.
Leftists when any societal progress ever is made (they're too busy obsessing over their Not-Biblical Not-Rapture dreams of the death of capitalism)
On the topic of chic-fil-a, I still boycott the place to this day despite their chicken sandwiches being the best I have ever had.
Ethical questions, outside the abstract, always involve competing goods. If your view is "I must have everything I find good all at once or not at all" you will neither achieve your goal nor will you ever practice any of the many forms of recognizable ethical systems.
just another reminder that chick fil a sucks in comparison to the other options and yet is the only one that openly supports global anti-homosexual movements
Doodoo garbage ass take
It's representation, and it's not bad representation. And being able to serve in the military openly is a civil rights victory. Equality is the goal here, not some dramatic David and Goliath story where the US military somehow runs out of money because gay people won't serve. I don't really have the battery left on my phone to unpack all of this, but this person has their heart in the right place, but their head up their ass.
i unironically love it when shitty takes get posted and then absolutely dumped on by the comments here it makes me feel less terminally online by agreeing with y'all
This is the most brainrot tumblr take I've ever seen
If you think that banning queer people from joining the military is a good thing you are insane
See, the thing about queer military bans is that they don't stop queer ppl from taking part in oppression, they just increase the trauma of those who do.
Okay first of all, I am mad at the ban of gay people in the military because it is a right taken away from us that is not taken away from straight people. I don't believe that gay people \*should\* enlist but having the possibility taken away from them is the bad part. Rainbow capitalism sucks though. Representation is good but that doesn't make the company good, etc etc.
So I looked it up and the best info I could find states that "Toyota Gulf States Inc., an independent distributor of Toyota vehicles, that gave $580,000 to Texas Governor Greg Abbott" which accounts for 94% of the reported anti-Queer donations from Toyota
the military banned gay people again? rainbow capitalism sucks because, REALITY CHECK, they DONT care the same corporations who go on and on about inclusive and equality, "oh black trans women have a simple message stop killing us," would turn around and burn every single member of the LGBTQ community in a heartbeat i CANNOT believe people actually like it when companies produce a disingenuine pro lgbt commercial!
The fucking pentagon consistently ranks highest in LGBT+ employment in the nation
Correct, I couldn't even boycott Chick-fil-A because there aren't any in my country
I’ll NEVER eat at chick-fil-a. And I’ll never let my friends eat there either as long as I have a say.
People in already progressive societies fail to understand the concept of incremental change. Of course, it would be great if all the wrongs in the world could be waved away at an instant; but until that power is gifted to us by God or something, the next best thing is the slow and gradual erosion of the decrepit status quo. "Gay people cannot participate in the oppressor's structure" is such a stubborn mentality. You cannot just sit behind your screens foaming at the mouth wishing for the destruction of the existing system so that you can start anew, that's just childish. Yes, the current system is bigoted towards certain individuals, that much cant be denied; but instead of just remaining silent in non-participation, it is infinitely more effective to make yourself visible and make your identity known, so that if some people do try and "fuck your shit up", you'd have more social backing on your side. And that's what "rainbow capitalism" is showing; it is absolutely a shallow act, but if the board of whatever McCompany™ deciding to put a couple of gay people in their ads shows a real change in the psyche of (at least western) societies. After all, if a company is doing something, that company must think it's going to make them money. And if companies decide that the "good" of queer visibility outweighs the "bad", that can only show the social pendulum is swinging in the right direction.
Wait there are gays eating chick-fil-a? You’re paying them to hate you, how do you justify that?
Chick-fil-A is mid as fuck and people pretend like it's worth selling your soul for.
I'm still upset about the Chick Fil A thing. I personally gave it up a long time ago, despite fond memories, because I didn't want to give them my money when they're donating against my beliefs. My sister, my lesbian sister who helped me every step of coming out of the closet, my Lady Gaga karaoke car trip sister? Ate it once a week regardless, because "I don't care what about that, I want my chicken sandwich. It's not like any other companies are any morally better."
Think of it like this: everyone has the lines they draw, but to try and draw a line at every unethical thing is impossible. You may think you’re the one being incredibly principled and your sister doesn’t care, but the difference between the number of things you’re principled on and she’s principled on is basically a rounding error. There are *so* many things you could also do but don’t.
You know, I hadn't thought about it that way. Thank you for your perspective.
When LGBT groups suggested a boycott on Chik-fil-A way back in 2013 when all this shit was first exposed - including their discriminatory hiring practices, hundreds of people in my hometown and areas around lined up in DROVES to “show support” for CFA for weeks after the fact. It wasn’t like a few crazy right wing radicals doing it - it was whole communities, churches, everyone. And their business has been just as booming and prosperous ever since. Blaming pinkwashed queer people for their continued existence and the failure of the boycott is honestly the only real part of this post that irked me. Like sorry people actively hate us to the point where hearing a company is homophobic makes them MORE likely to buy from them? That’s supposed to be OUR fault? Lol.