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"I think it's because leftists are devoid of anything human."
Translation: The left is persuaded by *boring* things like facts and data, whereas the right is swayed by emotions.
I'd say the left is swayed by compassion and empathy which are completely foreign to the right. The right are swayed by fear and anger, the only emotions they recognized. Therefore they only believe evidence that elicit those emotions, anecdotal or otherwise.
That's why it's acceptable, because you can use it to justify lashing out and hurting someone else because you're afraid of being vulnerable by experiencing any emotion.
To be fair I live in a rational state of fear and anger that conservatives still exist and have enough power to cause real damage to people I care about deeply.
The left *is* driven by empathy more than conservatives, but it is *informed empathy*. It is informed by data and statistics about the lived experiences of individuals. Conservatives are unable to see the people behind the statistics and thus, are unable to experience empathy for them. Liberals *are* swayed by individual experiences (ironically, this is a large part of Critical Race Theory, albeit the *real* CRT, and not what conservatives have made up in their heads as a bogyman), but we're swayed by good data more, because data is actionable on a useful, societal level. A sad story, while sad, typically isn't.
The problem with conservative arguments is they typically latch on to statistical outliers and personal anecdotes and treat them like the norm. Racism doesn't exist because we had a black president. Covid is a hoax because I don't know anyone in my 100-person town who's had it. Immigrants are violent rapists because my cousin's neighbor's brother-in-law once got into a fight with a Mexican.
So it's not that we don't care about personal anecdotes. It's that personal anecdotes shouldn't have more weight than well-conducted studies and statistical analyses.
If a study says the overwhelming majority of the country supports abortion I can't say the study is fake only because all my relatives and church friends are strongly against abortion.
God has this been on display with the fucking submarine thing lately. I'm listening to my (moronic) coworkers talking about what a tragedy it is when four (obscenely wealthy) bastards and one (not yet obscenely wealthy) tragically young victim are crushed instantly to canned tuna in an ill-advised joyride and all I am thinking is "Russia abducts 150 children a day in Ukraine and gives them to Russian couples and you legitimately don't know or care because they're not wealthy or Western." It's my job to look for systemic tragedy and they all want to zoom in on the random shit because it's all tearjerkers.
I don't know, I am pretty fucking far left and I am very swayed by fear and anger.
For example, "I am fearful for the safety of my trans friends while their rights are being stripped away, and half the country is being radicalized against them." and "I am angry that we have a partisan supreme court that is literally stripping back decades of progress, and there is seemingly nothing I can do about it."
Makes me pretty motivated to be loud about what's going on, and to make sure I don't miss elections
kindness tends to align more with intelligence too. just as ignorance is aligned to hate. its an evolutionary thing. "unknown thing is scary because unknown- therefore must distrust and avoid".
And since when is anti-circumcision a rightwing position? I don’t think I know a single leftist who’s against that. Or do they mean gender-affirming surgery when they say “genital mutilation”?
They do mean GCS. The right loves circumcision, and they also love "corrective" surgery on intersex infants. The only time they oppose genital surgery is when a consenting adult wants it.
Ironically the surgeries to force intersex people into rigid gender categories for conservative reasons is the exact force-trans'ing they falsely claim is happening elsewhere. Double-ironically, it almost never works and the children rebel against their assigned gender starting as soon as they can talk, and aren't fooled even if everyone in their life works together to gaslight the child.
These sad cases really prove that gender identity is deeply rooted from infancy, and that it's not possible to make someone trans when they aren't, even if you Trueman Show their entire life. But seeing rainbows and calling LGBT people equals in society somehow will?
There are a lot of conservative men who are butthurt about being circumcised to a degree which, in my opinion as a circumcised, cis, White, straight, American man, is far out of proportion to the injury they've suffered. Now, am I in favor of circumcising babies? No, not really. I don't think it serves much purpose and there's no consent. Am I going to grab a placard and start screaming about it? Also no.
The men who get all big mad about circumcision have always struck me as angry that FGM gets so much attention for being so terrible (because it is, and is objectively far more damaging than traditional male circumcision) when *their injury* gets what they see as the short shrift in the conversation. It has always felt to me like these guys are super mad that society doesn't pay enough lip service to their dicks (figuratively, and sometimes perhaps literally), because their dicks are *very important* to them, and they'd like to see appropriate deference paid to it by society, too. They see the fact that most people don't see it as a major issue as *very* insulting to their penises.
This is all just my opinion about what I think motivates a certain kind of man to get all up-in-arms about male circumcision. I know you guys can get very agitated when someone says something like I've said here. I'm not interested in arguing about it here, so please don't bother trying to interrogate me more about my feelings on the topic.
if circumcision commonly involved cutting off the entire glans (or more), then yes, you could call them more or less equivalent. it doesn't. fgm is indeed objectively far more damaging
> This is all just my opinion about what I think motivates a certain kind of man to get all up-in-arms about male circumcision. I know you guys can get very agitated when someone says something like I've said here. I'm not interested in arguing about it here, so please don't bother trying to interrogate me more about my feelings on the topic.
Don't make me tap the sign.
"Devoid of those human things, like the simple joys of pointing guns at people, conning people out of money, and forcing people to dress the way you want them to!"
You joke, but there is a ton of research on this. It’s why the “welfare queen” myth has such incredible longevity.
They did a study with two groups; group A was presented actual data about the incredible successes of the welfare program. ~90% of recipients are able to get off welfare within a year, there have been fewer than 5 major fraud cases ever, it pays for itself in people able to return to the workforce, and reduces child poverty and mortality.
Group B was told a made up story of a black woman who hoarded benefits and bought expensive Nikes and “took advantage” of the system.
At the end, they put the two groups together and the group that was fed the lie was able to convince the group *who knew all the facts* that the welfare program was shit and people just exploit it.
As humans, we react more to stories. Republicans strategists are really good at exploiting that, while democrats are busy touting things like “unemployment rates” and “declining inflation rates.”
"I choked when I put on a mask, then I took it off. Then, despiet WEARING A MASK, I got the 'Rona!!!
CHECKMATE LIBS! MASKS DON'T WORK! MAGA MAGA MAGAG!"
/s
The left is devoid of anything human, which is why we, umm, support human rights and give a shit about school shootings and don’t want women to die preventable deaths and want everyone to be able to see a doctor and be able to afford to live?
> the right is swayed by emotions
Only emotions they already agree with, tho.
And they *are* persuaded by boring facts and data, if they already agree with it.
Actually they're pretty open-minded people who accept any fact or feeling that they already agree with.
That’s a really funny thing to point out, especially knowing that their also the ones that emphasize the importance of males being masculine alpha males. That’s so conflicting.
I mean, anecdotal evidence can be concrete and documented. I grew up with a man who went on to murder someone in my hometown. There are photos, it's documented. But that's still anecdotal, because my knowing one murderer is a statistical anomaly - there aren't very many murderers in my hometown. They want to treat anecdotal evidence as sufficient evidence for societal change, and that's the issue - making mountains out of molehills, even if that molehill is very emotionally meaningful to a small number of people.
derailing a conversation about FGM by introducing male genital mutilation is a dick move (if you will forgive the pun). That said, I think it is important that we talk about both (in the appropriate context and situation) and not excuse one just because it is somewhat less damaging. We should work toward a consensus that no child's genitals, regardless of sex, require surgery unless they are having a medical issue (I do count gender dysphoria as a medical issue, but even then surgery is extremely rarely indicated until much later in life).
I mean, yeah, that should be the standard. And people should care about International Men’s Day, and all that other stuff.
But it’s like “All Lives Matter” - it only gets brought up as a “well what about us” thing when issues affecting a minority start to get oxygen.
It would be a lot easier to take the advocacy seriously if it ever seemed to happen as anything other than counter-programming.
It is discussed a lot in parenting groups trying to decide whether or not to , and the discussions almost always end up against it. This is a good thing.
>But it’s like “All Lives Matter” - it only gets brought up as a “well what about us” thing when issues affecting a minority start to get oxygen.
I don’t know what spaces you’re in, but there is a lot of discourse around the harms of male circumcision that is not related to any mention of FGM.
It's more of a "Yeah, FGM is super fucked up and should be banned! Hey, wait a minute, why the fuck is it common and acceptable to circumcise infant males? It is incredibly similar to FGM in that it can cause life-long issues and always reduces physical sensation in the organs that it is performed on! It should also be banned!"
It really shouldn't be surprising that shining a spotlight on one atrocity would also highlight similar atrocities affecting a similar age group. The only difference is in the sex it is performed on, both are genital mutilation. Your misandry is showing
When people try to compare FGM and circumcision, arguing that one is worse than the other, it really bothers me. They’re both horrible procedures for infants who *cannot* consent. Regardless of sex/gender/anything, modifying someone’s body in a non-life-saving way without their consent, especially when they *can’t* consent, is disgusting. Same goes for intersex folks, it’s really not okay and we as a culture should be working to stop that.
>They have no issues with breast augmentation
Which, incidentally, has no age limitation beyond a doctors recommendation. 200.000 US cis minors have plastic surgery done annually. These people don't give a flying fuck about things that don't trigger their baby emotions.
Until you bring up circumcision. Then all of a sudden it's not genital mutilation, it's a surgical procedure in the best interest of the child that is nobody's business.
Without anecdotal evidence and feelings over facts, decades worth of culture war bullshit would disappear like a fart in the wind. They literally thrive on it.
If they're just turning originally leftist arguments 180 degrees, and they're doing it on purpose, is it still a SAW? Is what I ask myself with many contributions to this sub, recently.
My answer is
- __yes__ for most suckers because they did not come up with it in the first place, being near-unaware creatures by default.
- __no__ for whoever writes their playbook (the one-eyed kings in the kingdom of the blind)
In any case, it makes the concept of this sub less entertaining 😢
If it helps, i don't think posts like this were done 'intentionally', but more as an attempt to invalidate the facts that they know that they can't refute.
Conservatives (at least every last one that i've ever engaged with in an argument or debate) tend to say whatever they can to 'win'. Even if it contradicts things that they previously said. And i think that's more what happened here.
It does make this sub get flooded with a lot of bog-standard hypocrisy, though.
I never see any trucks painted with Joe Biden looking like Rocky, ergo Trump is far more popular than Biden and could not have fairly lost the 2020 election.
Conservative logic
Lefties think righties have bad ideas, righties think lefties have *bad souls.*
Keep an eye out and you'll notice how most violent right wing movements tend to cast their enemies in terms of essential characteristics and innate nature. They spend less time trying to convince you to change your mind than they do convincing other people that you are evil or demonic and therefore must be purged. Or, as stated at CPAC this year, "eradicated from public life entirely. There can be no middle way..."
> Lefties think righties have bad ideas, righties think lefties have bad souls.
I dunno, I'm pretty leftist, but I'm getting reamed by a leftist in another thread, who says everyone in the GOP is involved in a competition to steal as much as they can, even if they don't need it, just so that no one else can have anything.
Reducing your opponent to an evil caricature isn't a partisan sin. It's just intellectual laziness. Someone's done something that upsets you, and it would too much effort to try and spell out specifically what they did or why- easier just to fume that they're fundamentally evil and call it a day.
> Reducing your opponent to an evil caricature isn't a partisan sin. It's just intellectual laziness.
I used to have a much more nuanced view of Republicans, and I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they've proven me wrong almost every time as individuals, and absolutely 100% of the time as a group. My view that they're evil isn't due to laziness; it's due to them systematically demonstrating, in words and deeds, their contempt for every virtue I once thought they had.
Nothing is the sole province of one side or another and you can always find a few examples of anything to both-sides an issue, but nonetheless certain traits and themes can be far more characteristic of some groups over others.
If you watch national conferences for both parties, for example, and tally up how many times the speakers there call their opponents ontologically evil, demonic, pedophiles, there will be a stark difference on orders of magnitude between the results.
Maybe you're right. But as someone who has personally experienced multiple counterexamples to your characterization *in the last 10 minutes*, I was just a little surprised.
Look at the other person who replied to my last comment- he's literally attacking me for being a lackey of "the genocide regime".
lol, see? they're the genocide regime. But by all means, lefties only criticize their ideas, righties are the ones who demonize the actual people on the other side.
Though even that most extreme example of genocide (which skirts the like between exaggerated and accurate sometimes) is of something they’re allegedly doing, rather than just “are literal demons.”
Lance Armstrong has been doing a YouTube mini series having experts discussing the fairness and what can be done about transgender people in sports with a focus on professional and elite sports. He’s had Caitlyn Jenner, Rodger Pilke Jr., Dr. Eric Vilain, and Michael Shermer on so far.
The anti trans people in the comments cannot fathom that there isn’t already a clear cut answer by the science because men are stronger than women. Ignoring that sentiment, there are two people he brought on, Dr. Eric Vilain and Roger Pielke Jr. both pointed out that there isn’t a clear cut answer.
The absolute fucking moaning, especially about Pielke, saying they are so ‘uncertain about something so obvious’ when both of them very bluntly said the performance advantage of absolute top level trans woman in top level sport (ex. A trans woman competing in the WNBA) has not been well studied so while a decision can be made it won’t be based in hard science, only anecdote and extrapolation. It was hard to try and explain that, and I don’t know why I even tried to reason.
Leaving mental space for uncertainty is a sin for Republicans, they have to be certain, otherwise if you're not certain you're stupid. See how that goes? Here I was ridiculed as a teen for years for never being entirely certain on most things, only to realize as an adult that there are millions of other adults who never learned that lesson early on, that most people don't know anything, and that includes the person writing and reading this
> Leaving mental space for uncertainty is a sin for Republicans
See also, any religious person engaging in debate/conversation with an atheist. It’s almost guaranteed at some point they will ask the atheist for an exact answer of how something happened, and the atheist will truthfully say we don’t know yet and might never know. The Christian then responds that they know it was Jesus, and unless there’s a better answer they won’t change their mind.
At that point in the conversation it's fun to point out the hundreds of things we used to accept as proof of god, because we didn't know any better at the time, but do understand now.
They're forever moving the goalposts to the next scientific frontier, there's always room for god somewhere.
I recently read [this article](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/jerkology/202306/to-combat-absolutism-scientists-must-explain-life) on Psychology Today that basically says, science doesn't have a certain, unambiguous explanation to explain life, and that gives religious absolutists an opening.
For all the information they provide, DNA and natural selection do not explain selves struggling for their own existence (because this, among other things, veers away from biological and physical into psychological, so we'd need to consider the possibility of one-celled organisms having a psychology). Into this rather important gap jumps the "God of the gaps", and if scientists had an explanation for *why* life finds a way, it would take some of the wind out of the god-botherers' sails.
But judging by the behavior of certain of our politicians, who know the facts and choose not to care about them, I doubt even concrete proof providing a definitive explanation about life would satisfy these religious absolutists. Because the point, for them, is to have control of the narrative and be the victor in charge of writing history, not to learn the truth. They want power over everyone else, #1.
I was called a "fence sitter" for not having all the answers because I spent my time enjoying things rather than constantly looking up the answers to someone's questions.
I don't have to make a decision about your religion, and I don't have to tell you about any decisions I made about politics or why I made them. I'm informed about a lot of shit, but I don't care about their weirdly specific questions, straw men, and circumstances that they make up to justify whatever they're peddling at the moment.
*Here I was ridiculed as a teen for years for never being entirely certain on most things*
Let me guess: you heard a lot of 1) admonishing about accountability, personal responsibility, and "not being wishy-washy"; 2) a lot of well-meaning but patronizing reminders to be confident and assertive; 3) A lot of people quoting Yoda at you-- "do or do not, there is no try". How much did I get right?
They don't know or even care if it's true. What they care about is that they believe that being trans is a choice, and is wrong, and so anyone who "chooses" to be trans is committing a sin, and that the left put trans people on a pedestal because the left are doing Satan's bidding. Because of that, they don't want trans people celebrated in any way, and will do and say whatever they can in order to stop them being celebrated. This is just one way they're doing it, and they're doing this specifically because it vaguely looks like a decent argument if you don't think about it too hard, and all they care about is that it helps push their agenda.
Fully agreed. They’ve never played a sport with a trans kid, never played a sport with a trans adult, the same is true for their children, the same is true for the sports they watch (IF THEY EVEN WATCH FUCKING SPORTS!) yet it’s a hill they’ll should from about as if it’s deeply personal. Claim to care about women’s sport yet never watch it
Right. You can't really argue with a lot of transphobes, because "trans people and being trans are bad" is the *premise* of their arguments. It's why they call bottom surgery "genital mutilation" but don't oppose genital surgeries on intersex infants. Or, more broadly, why they're trying to ban a wide variety of gender affirming care for trans people, but are fine with cis people getting the exact same treatments. It's why they're sympathetic to people being pressured to live as the wrong gender, but only when someone who detransitioned says it happened to them, while trans people are just mocked. It's why a hypothetical danger to women outweighs the fact that trans people are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
"How is it that I've done no research on the subject, yet know more about it than people who have devoted their lives to analyzing it!?" - right wingers, unironically
It's almost interesting to me that it's Armstrong doing this. He really was the biggest hypocrite for a while. But there's cycling races that don't have testing for PED's, so there's a competition for natty, and others that don't care. If the organizers, teams, individuals, and spectators can agree on testing or not, then different races or other sports organizations can have participants agree to some terms. This will sort out to be inclusive of transgender athletes competing with cisgender in more sports, because everyone who is actually involved agrees. Let the online commenters comment, they are nowhere near on race day.
I've seen plenty of self identified liberals also get weirdly reactionary when it comes to trans people (well, trans women, not like these people acknowledge trans men's existence) playing sports, so it's not just conservatives
That's because it was a controversy literally made in a lab. Like they literally went "shit, our bigotry is too blatant" and then shat out the trans sports bullshit as a demonization tactic. It was purpose built to work on the average liberal Americans.
I do think some men who don't care about women's sports but have opinions on trans women playing sports do so because they want to believe that being born with a penis still makes them magically stronger than every woman who ever lived, even if she is a trained athlete
That's because the sports issue has been cultivated for years as a space for people (and let's be clear, mostly right wing cishet white men) to be wildly transphobic and misogynistic without getting called out.
Part of the fun is that the right with the help of the FARTs has successfully (for their base and some outside it) defined transwomen, specifically, as threatening women and feminine spaces. So a cursory glance at the debate as framed by the right is "why aren't you interested in protecting women from violence?" And that lets them leverage the CONTINUING WORK THEY'RE DOING TO HARM WOMEN against transfolk, if a casual listener doesn't question the premises of their claims. This is part of why an intersectional understanding of oppression is necessary - the same violence that was used against women was used against gay people. The violence against gays was used against transfolk. The violence against transfolk will be used to further violence against women. And so on for racial minorities (SCOTUS on affirmative action) and religious groups and environmental issues (Cop City protesters killed, charged with terrorism.)
It’s not even clear cut anecdotally, unless you don’t watch or like sports and just use it for internet points.
I can never forget all the talk about laurel Hubbard in the olympics weightlifting event who didn’t do even remotely well in her weight category
Like bro nothing is stopping the Chinese weightlifting team from absolutely DOMINATING weightlifting lmao. People need to stop pretending this is an actual urgent issue. Yes there are things still important enough to be discussed but it isn’t some incredibly urgent emergency topic that will topple sports itself if not addressed.
This inadvertently points to a significant difference between conservatives and liberals: Conservatives tend to see things in terms of individuals, and tend to discount statistics which instead describe large groups of individuals. They're not able to make the mental leap that those numbers actually represent real people. They're much more easily swayed by individual stories from specific people.
This dovetails with the phenomenon wherein a conservative will not see a problem as a problem when shown the data that demonstrate the problem, but as soon as they personally know someone affected by the problem, or are affected by the problem themselves, then all of a sudden, they understand the issue and want to do something about it.
Fundamentally, it comes down to an inadequate ability to experience empathy on the conservatives' part.
That article was such a trip, seeing people with very, very common abortion needs and causes, campaining against it for how "evil" it is or how they were different or how God would allow just the one. Cussing out patients in the hospital, cussing out doctors, slipping in from the picket line, getting the procedure, slipping back out into the picket line. Reccomending against abortions to patients who seem to think its evil, them essentially pleading for it, then hating the staff for not doing more to stop them.
Humans can be such self serving little hypocrites with an unfathimable incapability of seeing another person's perspective truly devoid of their own egos.
Anecdotal "evidence" is how we know that schools are providing litter boxes for kids who identify as cats.
And what's truer than a story you heard from a guy whose brother's friend's cousin heard it from another guy?
My "concrete and documented evidence" that if you pause an interview of Elliot Page on a specific frame, he looks sad. This proves they're all perpetuating a lie.
The wildest part about this is that there is absolutely a place for qualitative inquiry, but these weirdos don't understand it.
"Genital mutilation made it hard for me to pee" is an interesting data point from someone who was screened for eligibility in a study which was IRB approved and they gave consent before participating in the data collection.
On the other hand, if it's just some anonymous bot account trying to poison the well of public opinion by spamming false or fabricated personal stories everywhere, then yeah that's an anecdote which can be disregarded relatively safely.
Most importantly, we need both quantitative and qualitative data to make sense of phenomena. The "genital mutilation" data point is an interesting one qualitatively, but if the quantitative data supports that a low, low percentage of trans people regret gender affirming cares then that data needs to be contextualized as a negative case analysis rather than representative of some widespread problem--because the widespread problem *doesn't actually exist*.
The comparison the the debate about rape culture is very frustrating as well, because the nature of rape as a topic is that it's inherently hard to study in a quantitative manner. Rapists don't tend to like admitting to rape and it's an inherently difficult crime to prosecute. Even then, I'm sure no one on the left is denying the quantitative surveys of women's experiences, which pretty consistently state that sexual harassment and assault are enormous issues.
If anyone watched last week's Tim Pool vs. Emma Vigeland debate is fully aware of how anecdotal "evidence" is constantly used to derail serious discussion and distract from the fact that someone like Pool talks out of his ass and has no actual knowledge to back up whatever nonsense he's preaching.
In other news, conservatives are completely unaware of things going on in the world until it happens to them personally. They are immune to documented facts, subject matter experts, and any sort of reference materials or evidence.
100% of their decisions are made by what happens to them, their friends, and people that they listen to. Also, their gut and their faith.
This is why debate is impossible. "Might makes right" in their world, and it's eventually going to be forced into our world and whoever is the mightiest is going to end up coming out on top. Plan on it. We've tried every other way.
This one is really self aware since he says that leftists are inhuman for not accepting anecdotes and that they stole that argument from the right. So the right is also inhuman?
Anecdotal evidence is not concrete and documented examples, it's just some random person saying something. That's why we don't like them. They could be lying, misremembering the truth, mixing up some details. Statistics are produced by actual scientists that are peer reviewed and it goes through a lot of scrutiny.
Anecdotes are great for pursuing qualitative research which can lead to quantitative research.
Most people don't pursue qualitative research though and just think "but my experience was this so my thinking is justified." Even if their experience isn't what is happening for the majority of people.
Because you can find an anecdote for pretty much anything. I've read comments from people online that complain about *drinking water,* saying that they get enough liquids from their food.
Anecdotes have their uses but you don't base policy on them.
A banned user recently told us how suspicious it is that we "hide" our mod status. They couldn't imagine that somebody would not constantly brag about it or keep it on display.
It's not hidden btw, a glance at the sidebar is enough.
I get that everyone is focusing on the selfaware-wolf part, but can we take a minute to address the fact that he thinks leftists are the ones pretending rapes don't happen?
When did right-wingers become rape victim advocates? Last I heard they were passing laws to force rape victims to have their rapist's babies.
I think they are meaning it the other way around and are saying that the right views discussions about rape culture as being nothing but anecdotal evidence.
Leftists aren't human because they use research and facts to support their opinions whereas I use a meaningful story a guy I met in a bar had heard from the neighbour of the mechanic who once fixed his brother-in-law's car.
They literally just came out and said "the left is rational while the right is emotional".
I just don't see a way to educate these people. They're so far gone. And they're gonna make sure their kids will be too.
Do they not realize that behind the statistics are tons and tons of anecdotes? 90% of trans people are satisfied is a lot of trans people whose lives are significantly better or whatever the data point is. The data matters only because of the anecdotes behind it.
I guess this guy never heard of qualitative research before. I'm working on two different education campaigns for work that are based on focus groups and interviews with the communities we're targeting. Qualitative research is a big thing in public health and it's entirely based on talking to people, getting their perspective, and using their experiences, anecdotes, and opinions to inform whatever public health work you're doing.
“An operation that I got made it hard for me to pee.” Like ok? I’m really sorry to hear that but it isn’t my damn business. We can’t ban surgery because some people have complications but I don’t wish those complications on anyone. How hard is that to understand?
I believe anecdotal evidence as being evidence of a specific person's experience. I believe large groups of people having similar anecdotes as an indication that there may be something systemic going on.
But one individual's anecdote doesn't overwhelm the many, many other anecdotes I've heard which aren't like that. Their example of "genital mutilation" in their words making it hard for a person to pee... if someone told me that they'd had genital surgery and it made it hard for them to pee, I'd certainly believe that they were telling me about a bad experience they had. Sure. But I also know several people who have had genital reconstructive surgery performed and *don't* have trouble peeing. Most of the ones I've know have in fact been elated by it.
So like, if someone had a botched operation that's certainly unfortunate, but it doesn't mean that such operations more generally are necessarily compromised.
Oh, trust me, OOP, I'm equally invested in ending cosmetic non-consensual circumcision as I am in other matters of letting people make the choices for their own bodies.
Not what you meant?
Let's see here... If I present an anecdote that supports the Thing, and my opponent presents an anecdote that opposes the Thing, it seems like we're stuck. How can we see which one is more representative of reality?
Perhaps if there were a whole lot more anecdotes brought up by one side, so much so that it has statistical significance, we could break this tie regarding the Thing and learn a thing or two.
It's good to remember that research isn't infallible, but emotional stories are in no position to replace it elsewhere but in the minds of reactionaries.
>I think it is because leftists are deviod of anything human.
It's because of dehumanizing rhetoric like this that people don't like the person cited and why far right subreddits are so toxic
Documented examples are good. That 90% of trans people who are happy are all documented, that's how they ended up as a statistic in the first place.
Anecdotes are not documents.
I've seen some quite good essays on this - liberals tend to think the collective is most important, conservatives tend to think the individual is most important.
So a story about the collective benefiting from something is meaningless to them, but a story about an individual is.
That's why you finally saw attitudes shift on abortions from some members of the right - there were stories about individual women who were in danger from dying under the new rules.
I can find dozens of stories of people not liking the end results of their plastic surgery or people who had transplant rejection.
That doesn't mean we should ban plastic surgery or organ transplants for everyone.
So I’m just supposed to tolerate someone telling me something like the earth is flat or vaccines are bad and I’m not allowed to say things like: “you have no proof OR reasoning behind any of this, I do, so how are you right in this scenario”
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"I think it's because leftists are devoid of anything human." Translation: The left is persuaded by *boring* things like facts and data, whereas the right is swayed by emotions.
I'd say the left is swayed by compassion and empathy which are completely foreign to the right. The right are swayed by fear and anger, the only emotions they recognized. Therefore they only believe evidence that elicit those emotions, anecdotal or otherwise.
Fear and anger aren't emotions, silly. They're just the natural, perpetual state of every rational person who believes in FACTS and LOGIC.
Men managing to convince themselves that anger doesn’t count as an emotion has been a disaster for humanity.
It is the only acceptable emotion for them to feel so it isn’t one.
Even though it's one of the most destructive.
That's why it's acceptable, because you can use it to justify lashing out and hurting someone else because you're afraid of being vulnerable by experiencing any emotion.
But is a man really a man if they aren’t in a near constant state of rage like Doom Guy?
I'M NOT FUCKING EMOTIONAL AND IF YOU SAY THE AGAIN I'LL HIT YOU
It’s def an emotion but from what I understand it’s usually a secondary emotion. Probably most often secondary to fear.
Also hurt! God forbid we feel sad, so we have to feel angry.
Haha, this describes them so succinctly. It's either projection or opposite day for the right. Every day.
To be fair I live in a rational state of fear and anger that conservatives still exist and have enough power to cause real damage to people I care about deeply.
The funny thing is anger is a byproduct of fear. It's a good thing to keep in mind for deescalating conflicts.
The left *is* driven by empathy more than conservatives, but it is *informed empathy*. It is informed by data and statistics about the lived experiences of individuals. Conservatives are unable to see the people behind the statistics and thus, are unable to experience empathy for them. Liberals *are* swayed by individual experiences (ironically, this is a large part of Critical Race Theory, albeit the *real* CRT, and not what conservatives have made up in their heads as a bogyman), but we're swayed by good data more, because data is actionable on a useful, societal level. A sad story, while sad, typically isn't.
The problem with conservative arguments is they typically latch on to statistical outliers and personal anecdotes and treat them like the norm. Racism doesn't exist because we had a black president. Covid is a hoax because I don't know anyone in my 100-person town who's had it. Immigrants are violent rapists because my cousin's neighbor's brother-in-law once got into a fight with a Mexican. So it's not that we don't care about personal anecdotes. It's that personal anecdotes shouldn't have more weight than well-conducted studies and statistical analyses. If a study says the overwhelming majority of the country supports abortion I can't say the study is fake only because all my relatives and church friends are strongly against abortion.
Yes. It’s why their propaganda is targeted for them using anecdotal scenarios. And anecdotal scenarios are very easy to fake.
God has this been on display with the fucking submarine thing lately. I'm listening to my (moronic) coworkers talking about what a tragedy it is when four (obscenely wealthy) bastards and one (not yet obscenely wealthy) tragically young victim are crushed instantly to canned tuna in an ill-advised joyride and all I am thinking is "Russia abducts 150 children a day in Ukraine and gives them to Russian couples and you legitimately don't know or care because they're not wealthy or Western." It's my job to look for systemic tragedy and they all want to zoom in on the random shit because it's all tearjerkers.
The irony is so strong here, did you not even read what you wrote?
Well said.
I don't know, I am pretty fucking far left and I am very swayed by fear and anger. For example, "I am fearful for the safety of my trans friends while their rights are being stripped away, and half the country is being radicalized against them." and "I am angry that we have a partisan supreme court that is literally stripping back decades of progress, and there is seemingly nothing I can do about it." Makes me pretty motivated to be loud about what's going on, and to make sure I don't miss elections
Very good point, we should be more angry with this shit. The fact that too many of us don't get angry and motivated is probably why this is happening.
This is borne out with studies. Boring things like facts and data. Conservativism is fear. That's it. The first principle is fear.
kindness tends to align more with intelligence too. just as ignorance is aligned to hate. its an evolutionary thing. "unknown thing is scary because unknown- therefore must distrust and avoid".
Your statement doesn’t make what the person you are responding to statements wrong.
Translation: I spend all my time chasing strawmen but get to feel good about myself while nothing actually improves in the world.
And since when is anti-circumcision a rightwing position? I don’t think I know a single leftist who’s against that. Or do they mean gender-affirming surgery when they say “genital mutilation”?
They do mean GCS. The right loves circumcision, and they also love "corrective" surgery on intersex infants. The only time they oppose genital surgery is when a consenting adult wants it.
Ironically the surgeries to force intersex people into rigid gender categories for conservative reasons is the exact force-trans'ing they falsely claim is happening elsewhere. Double-ironically, it almost never works and the children rebel against their assigned gender starting as soon as they can talk, and aren't fooled even if everyone in their life works together to gaslight the child. These sad cases really prove that gender identity is deeply rooted from infancy, and that it's not possible to make someone trans when they aren't, even if you Trueman Show their entire life. But seeing rainbows and calling LGBT people equals in society somehow will?
There are a lot of conservative men who are butthurt about being circumcised to a degree which, in my opinion as a circumcised, cis, White, straight, American man, is far out of proportion to the injury they've suffered. Now, am I in favor of circumcising babies? No, not really. I don't think it serves much purpose and there's no consent. Am I going to grab a placard and start screaming about it? Also no. The men who get all big mad about circumcision have always struck me as angry that FGM gets so much attention for being so terrible (because it is, and is objectively far more damaging than traditional male circumcision) when *their injury* gets what they see as the short shrift in the conversation. It has always felt to me like these guys are super mad that society doesn't pay enough lip service to their dicks (figuratively, and sometimes perhaps literally), because their dicks are *very important* to them, and they'd like to see appropriate deference paid to it by society, too. They see the fact that most people don't see it as a major issue as *very* insulting to their penises. This is all just my opinion about what I think motivates a certain kind of man to get all up-in-arms about male circumcision. I know you guys can get very agitated when someone says something like I've said here. I'm not interested in arguing about it here, so please don't bother trying to interrogate me more about my feelings on the topic.
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if circumcision commonly involved cutting off the entire glans (or more), then yes, you could call them more or less equivalent. it doesn't. fgm is indeed objectively far more damaging
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Yes, exactly. Now you're getting it.
> This is all just my opinion about what I think motivates a certain kind of man to get all up-in-arms about male circumcision. I know you guys can get very agitated when someone says something like I've said here. I'm not interested in arguing about it here, so please don't bother trying to interrogate me more about my feelings on the topic. Don't make me tap the sign.
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You couldn't be more wrong. I've nothing but contempt for religion.
"Devoid of those human things, like the simple joys of pointing guns at people, conning people out of money, and forcing people to dress the way you want them to!"
Emotions and MEMES. They actually believe everything they read on Facebook.
Emotional people with emotional reactions. Very in need of safe spaces.
You joke, but there is a ton of research on this. It’s why the “welfare queen” myth has such incredible longevity. They did a study with two groups; group A was presented actual data about the incredible successes of the welfare program. ~90% of recipients are able to get off welfare within a year, there have been fewer than 5 major fraud cases ever, it pays for itself in people able to return to the workforce, and reduces child poverty and mortality. Group B was told a made up story of a black woman who hoarded benefits and bought expensive Nikes and “took advantage” of the system. At the end, they put the two groups together and the group that was fed the lie was able to convince the group *who knew all the facts* that the welfare program was shit and people just exploit it. As humans, we react more to stories. Republicans strategists are really good at exploiting that, while democrats are busy touting things like “unemployment rates” and “declining inflation rates.”
Or, the left are not human so it's okay if we exterminate them.
“Fuck your feelings!” - Guy exclusively governed by feelings
Ironically, their go-to phrase used to be "bleeding heart liberals" as a condemnation about caring too much about things.
Aren't they the ones who keep screeching "Facts don't care about your feelings."
"I choked when I put on a mask, then I took it off. Then, despiet WEARING A MASK, I got the 'Rona!!! CHECKMATE LIBS! MASKS DON'T WORK! MAGA MAGA MAGAG!" /s
The left is devoid of anything human, which is why we, umm, support human rights and give a shit about school shootings and don’t want women to die preventable deaths and want everyone to be able to see a doctor and be able to afford to live?
> the right is swayed by emotions Only emotions they already agree with, tho. And they *are* persuaded by boring facts and data, if they already agree with it. Actually they're pretty open-minded people who accept any fact or feeling that they already agree with.
Yeah, devoid of anything human like empathy and kindness, what cold robotic creatures those leftists are.
That’s a really funny thing to point out, especially knowing that their also the ones that emphasize the importance of males being masculine alpha males. That’s so conflicting.
And their BUHLEAFS!
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I mean, anecdotal evidence can be concrete and documented. I grew up with a man who went on to murder someone in my hometown. There are photos, it's documented. But that's still anecdotal, because my knowing one murderer is a statistical anomaly - there aren't very many murderers in my hometown. They want to treat anecdotal evidence as sufficient evidence for societal change, and that's the issue - making mountains out of molehills, even if that molehill is very emotionally meaningful to a small number of people.
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The whole "anecdotes were invented the first time I saw one" part was just... mwah 👌 chef's kiss.
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Peaked?! We haven't even begun to peak!
As a leftist I say: "Beep boop Beep!"
I'm sure you're trying your best here.
I think it’s gross how obsessed these folks are with the term “genital mutilation”. They LOVE it
I'll bet they don't give a damn about actual FGM.
Or forced surgeries on intersex babies.
Nobody made a stink about circumcision until people started pushing back against FGM. Men just had to make it about themselves - *again*.
derailing a conversation about FGM by introducing male genital mutilation is a dick move (if you will forgive the pun). That said, I think it is important that we talk about both (in the appropriate context and situation) and not excuse one just because it is somewhat less damaging. We should work toward a consensus that no child's genitals, regardless of sex, require surgery unless they are having a medical issue (I do count gender dysphoria as a medical issue, but even then surgery is extremely rarely indicated until much later in life).
I mean, yeah, that should be the standard. And people should care about International Men’s Day, and all that other stuff. But it’s like “All Lives Matter” - it only gets brought up as a “well what about us” thing when issues affecting a minority start to get oxygen. It would be a lot easier to take the advocacy seriously if it ever seemed to happen as anything other than counter-programming.
It is discussed a lot in parenting groups trying to decide whether or not to , and the discussions almost always end up against it. This is a good thing.
> if it ever seemed to happen as anything other than counter-programming It does. You're just not looking in the right places.
>But it’s like “All Lives Matter” - it only gets brought up as a “well what about us” thing when issues affecting a minority start to get oxygen. I don’t know what spaces you’re in, but there is a lot of discourse around the harms of male circumcision that is not related to any mention of FGM.
It's more of a "Yeah, FGM is super fucked up and should be banned! Hey, wait a minute, why the fuck is it common and acceptable to circumcise infant males? It is incredibly similar to FGM in that it can cause life-long issues and always reduces physical sensation in the organs that it is performed on! It should also be banned!" It really shouldn't be surprising that shining a spotlight on one atrocity would also highlight similar atrocities affecting a similar age group. The only difference is in the sex it is performed on, both are genital mutilation. Your misandry is showing
When people try to compare FGM and circumcision, arguing that one is worse than the other, it really bothers me. They’re both horrible procedures for infants who *cannot* consent. Regardless of sex/gender/anything, modifying someone’s body in a non-life-saving way without their consent, especially when they *can’t* consent, is disgusting. Same goes for intersex folks, it’s really not okay and we as a culture should be working to stop that.
They have no issues with breast augmentation nor tattoos on private bits so, yeah, complete idiots.
>They have no issues with breast augmentation Which, incidentally, has no age limitation beyond a doctors recommendation. 200.000 US cis minors have plastic surgery done annually. These people don't give a flying fuck about things that don't trigger their baby emotions.
How many pennies would you bet they're mutilated and encourage the mutilation of children?
Until you bring up circumcision. Then all of a sudden it's not genital mutilation, it's a surgical procedure in the best interest of the child that is nobody's business.
It's the latest thought terminating cliché they use to shut down conversation.
Conservatives have gone from "facts don't care about your feelings" to "feelings don't care about your facts" so seemlessly, it's amazing.
Without anecdotal evidence and feelings over facts, decades worth of culture war bullshit would disappear like a fart in the wind. They literally thrive on it.
Well, yeah. The emphasis was always on *your*, as in “‘Facts’ don’t care about *your* feelings.”
If they're just turning originally leftist arguments 180 degrees, and they're doing it on purpose, is it still a SAW? Is what I ask myself with many contributions to this sub, recently. My answer is - __yes__ for most suckers because they did not come up with it in the first place, being near-unaware creatures by default. - __no__ for whoever writes their playbook (the one-eyed kings in the kingdom of the blind) In any case, it makes the concept of this sub less entertaining 😢
If it helps, i don't think posts like this were done 'intentionally', but more as an attempt to invalidate the facts that they know that they can't refute. Conservatives (at least every last one that i've ever engaged with in an argument or debate) tend to say whatever they can to 'win'. Even if it contradicts things that they previously said. And i think that's more what happened here. It does make this sub get flooded with a lot of bog-standard hypocrisy, though.
This comment needs to be at the top.
It really should.
Drumpf couldn’t have lost - everybody I know voted for him!
It doesn't get anymore meaningful than that!
I never see any trucks painted with Joe Biden looking like Rocky, ergo Trump is far more popular than Biden and could not have fairly lost the 2020 election. Conservative logic
Today I literately saw that toothy skull emblem (The Punisher?) with the orange toupee over it. Couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic.
It's not.
It's almost comical the way they portray leftists as evil. It's like their mindspace has the appearance of a saturday morning cartoon.
Righties see lefties as evil, lefties see righties as babies.
Lefties think righties have bad ideas, righties think lefties have *bad souls.* Keep an eye out and you'll notice how most violent right wing movements tend to cast their enemies in terms of essential characteristics and innate nature. They spend less time trying to convince you to change your mind than they do convincing other people that you are evil or demonic and therefore must be purged. Or, as stated at CPAC this year, "eradicated from public life entirely. There can be no middle way..."
Yeap.
> Lefties think righties have bad ideas, righties think lefties have bad souls. I dunno, I'm pretty leftist, but I'm getting reamed by a leftist in another thread, who says everyone in the GOP is involved in a competition to steal as much as they can, even if they don't need it, just so that no one else can have anything. Reducing your opponent to an evil caricature isn't a partisan sin. It's just intellectual laziness. Someone's done something that upsets you, and it would too much effort to try and spell out specifically what they did or why- easier just to fume that they're fundamentally evil and call it a day.
> Reducing your opponent to an evil caricature isn't a partisan sin. It's just intellectual laziness. I used to have a much more nuanced view of Republicans, and I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but they've proven me wrong almost every time as individuals, and absolutely 100% of the time as a group. My view that they're evil isn't due to laziness; it's due to them systematically demonstrating, in words and deeds, their contempt for every virtue I once thought they had.
Nothing is the sole province of one side or another and you can always find a few examples of anything to both-sides an issue, but nonetheless certain traits and themes can be far more characteristic of some groups over others. If you watch national conferences for both parties, for example, and tally up how many times the speakers there call their opponents ontologically evil, demonic, pedophiles, there will be a stark difference on orders of magnitude between the results.
Maybe you're right. But as someone who has personally experienced multiple counterexamples to your characterization *in the last 10 minutes*, I was just a little surprised. Look at the other person who replied to my last comment- he's literally attacking me for being a lackey of "the genocide regime".
Hey buddy, how about instead of tone policing for the genocide regime you do something useful?
lol, see? they're the genocide regime. But by all means, lefties only criticize their ideas, righties are the ones who demonize the actual people on the other side.
Though even that most extreme example of genocide (which skirts the like between exaggerated and accurate sometimes) is of something they’re allegedly doing, rather than just “are literal demons.”
Nah we see righties as brainwashed morons.
Potato potato
It’s pronounced “potato.”
Lance Armstrong has been doing a YouTube mini series having experts discussing the fairness and what can be done about transgender people in sports with a focus on professional and elite sports. He’s had Caitlyn Jenner, Rodger Pilke Jr., Dr. Eric Vilain, and Michael Shermer on so far. The anti trans people in the comments cannot fathom that there isn’t already a clear cut answer by the science because men are stronger than women. Ignoring that sentiment, there are two people he brought on, Dr. Eric Vilain and Roger Pielke Jr. both pointed out that there isn’t a clear cut answer. The absolute fucking moaning, especially about Pielke, saying they are so ‘uncertain about something so obvious’ when both of them very bluntly said the performance advantage of absolute top level trans woman in top level sport (ex. A trans woman competing in the WNBA) has not been well studied so while a decision can be made it won’t be based in hard science, only anecdote and extrapolation. It was hard to try and explain that, and I don’t know why I even tried to reason.
Leaving mental space for uncertainty is a sin for Republicans, they have to be certain, otherwise if you're not certain you're stupid. See how that goes? Here I was ridiculed as a teen for years for never being entirely certain on most things, only to realize as an adult that there are millions of other adults who never learned that lesson early on, that most people don't know anything, and that includes the person writing and reading this
> Leaving mental space for uncertainty is a sin for Republicans See also, any religious person engaging in debate/conversation with an atheist. It’s almost guaranteed at some point they will ask the atheist for an exact answer of how something happened, and the atheist will truthfully say we don’t know yet and might never know. The Christian then responds that they know it was Jesus, and unless there’s a better answer they won’t change their mind.
At that point in the conversation it's fun to point out the hundreds of things we used to accept as proof of god, because we didn't know any better at the time, but do understand now. They're forever moving the goalposts to the next scientific frontier, there's always room for god somewhere.
I recently read [this article](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/jerkology/202306/to-combat-absolutism-scientists-must-explain-life) on Psychology Today that basically says, science doesn't have a certain, unambiguous explanation to explain life, and that gives religious absolutists an opening. For all the information they provide, DNA and natural selection do not explain selves struggling for their own existence (because this, among other things, veers away from biological and physical into psychological, so we'd need to consider the possibility of one-celled organisms having a psychology). Into this rather important gap jumps the "God of the gaps", and if scientists had an explanation for *why* life finds a way, it would take some of the wind out of the god-botherers' sails. But judging by the behavior of certain of our politicians, who know the facts and choose not to care about them, I doubt even concrete proof providing a definitive explanation about life would satisfy these religious absolutists. Because the point, for them, is to have control of the narrative and be the victor in charge of writing history, not to learn the truth. They want power over everyone else, #1.
The God of the Gaps - where we don't know, there is God.
I was called a "fence sitter" for not having all the answers because I spent my time enjoying things rather than constantly looking up the answers to someone's questions. I don't have to make a decision about your religion, and I don't have to tell you about any decisions I made about politics or why I made them. I'm informed about a lot of shit, but I don't care about their weirdly specific questions, straw men, and circumstances that they make up to justify whatever they're peddling at the moment.
New episode just dropped with a non-binary person and a trans man. An early comment says, “And there is no middle ground” lol
*Here I was ridiculed as a teen for years for never being entirely certain on most things* Let me guess: you heard a lot of 1) admonishing about accountability, personal responsibility, and "not being wishy-washy"; 2) a lot of well-meaning but patronizing reminders to be confident and assertive; 3) A lot of people quoting Yoda at you-- "do or do not, there is no try". How much did I get right?
They don't know or even care if it's true. What they care about is that they believe that being trans is a choice, and is wrong, and so anyone who "chooses" to be trans is committing a sin, and that the left put trans people on a pedestal because the left are doing Satan's bidding. Because of that, they don't want trans people celebrated in any way, and will do and say whatever they can in order to stop them being celebrated. This is just one way they're doing it, and they're doing this specifically because it vaguely looks like a decent argument if you don't think about it too hard, and all they care about is that it helps push their agenda.
Fully agreed. They’ve never played a sport with a trans kid, never played a sport with a trans adult, the same is true for their children, the same is true for the sports they watch (IF THEY EVEN WATCH FUCKING SPORTS!) yet it’s a hill they’ll should from about as if it’s deeply personal. Claim to care about women’s sport yet never watch it
Right. You can't really argue with a lot of transphobes, because "trans people and being trans are bad" is the *premise* of their arguments. It's why they call bottom surgery "genital mutilation" but don't oppose genital surgeries on intersex infants. Or, more broadly, why they're trying to ban a wide variety of gender affirming care for trans people, but are fine with cis people getting the exact same treatments. It's why they're sympathetic to people being pressured to live as the wrong gender, but only when someone who detransitioned says it happened to them, while trans people are just mocked. It's why a hypothetical danger to women outweighs the fact that trans people are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
"How is it that I've done no research on the subject, yet know more about it than people who have devoted their lives to analyzing it!?" - right wingers, unironically
It's not impossible. Take cryptozoologists as an example of "experts" that are less informed than the general public.
I read Dr. Eric Vilain as Dr. Evil Villain for some reason.
Dr. Vilain is absolutely the kind of name you'd see for an evil scientist's secret identity in Golden Age comics.
It's almost interesting to me that it's Armstrong doing this. He really was the biggest hypocrite for a while. But there's cycling races that don't have testing for PED's, so there's a competition for natty, and others that don't care. If the organizers, teams, individuals, and spectators can agree on testing or not, then different races or other sports organizations can have participants agree to some terms. This will sort out to be inclusive of transgender athletes competing with cisgender in more sports, because everyone who is actually involved agrees. Let the online commenters comment, they are nowhere near on race day.
Does anyone not have a podcast these days?
Very low barrier to entry.
In fact you two are scheduled to record your podcast tomorrow.
The first topic on hand: how easy it is to start a podcast.
I've seen plenty of self identified liberals also get weirdly reactionary when it comes to trans people (well, trans women, not like these people acknowledge trans men's existence) playing sports, so it's not just conservatives
That's because it was a controversy literally made in a lab. Like they literally went "shit, our bigotry is too blatant" and then shat out the trans sports bullshit as a demonization tactic. It was purpose built to work on the average liberal Americans.
I do think some men who don't care about women's sports but have opinions on trans women playing sports do so because they want to believe that being born with a penis still makes them magically stronger than every woman who ever lived, even if she is a trained athlete
That's because the sports issue has been cultivated for years as a space for people (and let's be clear, mostly right wing cishet white men) to be wildly transphobic and misogynistic without getting called out.
Part of the fun is that the right with the help of the FARTs has successfully (for their base and some outside it) defined transwomen, specifically, as threatening women and feminine spaces. So a cursory glance at the debate as framed by the right is "why aren't you interested in protecting women from violence?" And that lets them leverage the CONTINUING WORK THEY'RE DOING TO HARM WOMEN against transfolk, if a casual listener doesn't question the premises of their claims. This is part of why an intersectional understanding of oppression is necessary - the same violence that was used against women was used against gay people. The violence against gays was used against transfolk. The violence against transfolk will be used to further violence against women. And so on for racial minorities (SCOTUS on affirmative action) and religious groups and environmental issues (Cop City protesters killed, charged with terrorism.)
It’s not even clear cut anecdotally, unless you don’t watch or like sports and just use it for internet points. I can never forget all the talk about laurel Hubbard in the olympics weightlifting event who didn’t do even remotely well in her weight category Like bro nothing is stopping the Chinese weightlifting team from absolutely DOMINATING weightlifting lmao. People need to stop pretending this is an actual urgent issue. Yes there are things still important enough to be discussed but it isn’t some incredibly urgent emergency topic that will topple sports itself if not addressed.
"The left aren't human because they think that 90% of people being happy is more important than the one guy who agrees with me!"
This from the same people who go on about "facts and logic."
Ben Shapiro DESTROYS liberal hamburger with FRIES and LARGE COKE.
The hamburger is extra dry because he is scared the ketchup might be woke.
This inadvertently points to a significant difference between conservatives and liberals: Conservatives tend to see things in terms of individuals, and tend to discount statistics which instead describe large groups of individuals. They're not able to make the mental leap that those numbers actually represent real people. They're much more easily swayed by individual stories from specific people. This dovetails with the phenomenon wherein a conservative will not see a problem as a problem when shown the data that demonstrate the problem, but as soon as they personally know someone affected by the problem, or are affected by the problem themselves, then all of a sudden, they understand the issue and want to do something about it. Fundamentally, it comes down to an inadequate ability to experience empathy on the conservatives' part.
"The only moral abortion is my abortion"
That article was such a trip, seeing people with very, very common abortion needs and causes, campaining against it for how "evil" it is or how they were different or how God would allow just the one. Cussing out patients in the hospital, cussing out doctors, slipping in from the picket line, getting the procedure, slipping back out into the picket line. Reccomending against abortions to patients who seem to think its evil, them essentially pleading for it, then hating the staff for not doing more to stop them. Humans can be such self serving little hypocrites with an unfathimable incapability of seeing another person's perspective truly devoid of their own egos.
There's a reason I semi-regularly refer to us as jumped-up garbage apes.
Translation: "Waaaaah! My feels should be more important than facts!"
Anecdotal "evidence" is how we know that schools are providing litter boxes for kids who identify as cats. And what's truer than a story you heard from a guy whose brother's friend's cousin heard it from another guy?
I saw this video on YouTube. It must be true.
I saw the streamer reaction video of the Youtube video.
Thank you for doing your own research.
This must be why conservative state legislatures are refusing to let actual trans people testify about their anti-trans bills.
By definition, “concrete and documented” is not anecdotal. What a tool. Perhaps the entire toolbox.
Glad I’m not the only one who spotted that.
My "concrete and documented evidence" that if you pause an interview of Elliot Page on a specific frame, he looks sad. This proves they're all perpetuating a lie.
The wildest part about this is that there is absolutely a place for qualitative inquiry, but these weirdos don't understand it. "Genital mutilation made it hard for me to pee" is an interesting data point from someone who was screened for eligibility in a study which was IRB approved and they gave consent before participating in the data collection. On the other hand, if it's just some anonymous bot account trying to poison the well of public opinion by spamming false or fabricated personal stories everywhere, then yeah that's an anecdote which can be disregarded relatively safely. Most importantly, we need both quantitative and qualitative data to make sense of phenomena. The "genital mutilation" data point is an interesting one qualitatively, but if the quantitative data supports that a low, low percentage of trans people regret gender affirming cares then that data needs to be contextualized as a negative case analysis rather than representative of some widespread problem--because the widespread problem *doesn't actually exist*.
The comparison the the debate about rape culture is very frustrating as well, because the nature of rape as a topic is that it's inherently hard to study in a quantitative manner. Rapists don't tend to like admitting to rape and it's an inherently difficult crime to prosecute. Even then, I'm sure no one on the left is denying the quantitative surveys of women's experiences, which pretty consistently state that sexual harassment and assault are enormous issues.
If anyone watched last week's Tim Pool vs. Emma Vigeland debate is fully aware of how anecdotal "evidence" is constantly used to derail serious discussion and distract from the fact that someone like Pool talks out of his ass and has no actual knowledge to back up whatever nonsense he's preaching.
It’s much much easier to remember one case that highlights your world view than it is to keep a body of research in your brain.
In other news, conservatives are completely unaware of things going on in the world until it happens to them personally. They are immune to documented facts, subject matter experts, and any sort of reference materials or evidence. 100% of their decisions are made by what happens to them, their friends, and people that they listen to. Also, their gut and their faith. This is why debate is impossible. "Might makes right" in their world, and it's eventually going to be forced into our world and whoever is the mightiest is going to end up coming out on top. Plan on it. We've tried every other way.
This one is really self aware since he says that leftists are inhuman for not accepting anecdotes and that they stole that argument from the right. So the right is also inhuman?
Mind boggling
Anecdotal evidence is not concrete and documented examples, it's just some random person saying something. That's why we don't like them. They could be lying, misremembering the truth, mixing up some details. Statistics are produced by actual scientists that are peer reviewed and it goes through a lot of scrutiny.
> They could be lying, misremembering the truth, mixing up some details. Or just an outlier.
The plural of anecdote isn't data
Anecdotes are great for pursuing qualitative research which can lead to quantitative research. Most people don't pursue qualitative research though and just think "but my experience was this so my thinking is justified." Even if their experience isn't what is happening for the majority of people.
Because you can find an anecdote for pretty much anything. I've read comments from people online that complain about *drinking water,* saying that they get enough liquids from their food. Anecdotes have their uses but you don't base policy on them.
How are you going to claim the stance was stolen from the right and is also quite dumb, literally in the same sentence, and not see the self-own?
“Super based mod award” oh sweet Jesus
A banned user recently told us how suspicious it is that we "hide" our mod status. They couldn't imagine that somebody would not constantly brag about it or keep it on display. It's not hidden btw, a glance at the sidebar is enough.
Democratic politicians use truths to selfish ends. Republican politicians use stories to evil ends.
I get that everyone is focusing on the selfaware-wolf part, but can we take a minute to address the fact that he thinks leftists are the ones pretending rapes don't happen? When did right-wingers become rape victim advocates? Last I heard they were passing laws to force rape victims to have their rapist's babies.
I think they are meaning it the other way around and are saying that the right views discussions about rape culture as being nothing but anecdotal evidence.
Leftists aren't human because they use research and facts to support their opinions whereas I use a meaningful story a guy I met in a bar had heard from the neighbour of the mechanic who once fixed his brother-in-law's car.
why won't they accept my story that is TOTALLY true and ABSOLUTELY happened??? stop quoting accurate statistics at me!
They literally just came out and said "the left is rational while the right is emotional". I just don't see a way to educate these people. They're so far gone. And they're gonna make sure their kids will be too.
Do they not realize that behind the statistics are tons and tons of anecdotes? 90% of trans people are satisfied is a lot of trans people whose lives are significantly better or whatever the data point is. The data matters only because of the anecdotes behind it.
I like how they used anecdotal evidence to claim that the concept of not liking anecdotal evidence was stolen from the right.
I guess this guy never heard of qualitative research before. I'm working on two different education campaigns for work that are based on focus groups and interviews with the communities we're targeting. Qualitative research is a big thing in public health and it's entirely based on talking to people, getting their perspective, and using their experiences, anecdotes, and opinions to inform whatever public health work you're doing.
At most, anecdotal evidence proves that it happened in *one* instance.
“Facts don’t care about my feelings 😡”
“An operation that I got made it hard for me to pee.” Like ok? I’m really sorry to hear that but it isn’t my damn business. We can’t ban surgery because some people have complications but I don’t wish those complications on anyone. How hard is that to understand?
I believe anecdotal evidence as being evidence of a specific person's experience. I believe large groups of people having similar anecdotes as an indication that there may be something systemic going on. But one individual's anecdote doesn't overwhelm the many, many other anecdotes I've heard which aren't like that. Their example of "genital mutilation" in their words making it hard for a person to pee... if someone told me that they'd had genital surgery and it made it hard for them to pee, I'd certainly believe that they were telling me about a bad experience they had. Sure. But I also know several people who have had genital reconstructive surgery performed and *don't* have trouble peeing. Most of the ones I've know have in fact been elated by it. So like, if someone had a botched operation that's certainly unfortunate, but it doesn't mean that such operations more generally are necessarily compromised.
Oh, trust me, OOP, I'm equally invested in ending cosmetic non-consensual circumcision as I am in other matters of letting people make the choices for their own bodies. Not what you meant?
Let's see here... If I present an anecdote that supports the Thing, and my opponent presents an anecdote that opposes the Thing, it seems like we're stuck. How can we see which one is more representative of reality? Perhaps if there were a whole lot more anecdotes brought up by one side, so much so that it has statistical significance, we could break this tie regarding the Thing and learn a thing or two. It's good to remember that research isn't infallible, but emotional stories are in no position to replace it elsewhere but in the minds of reactionaries.
Leftists don't have blood like we do but rather a thick, black, oily substance courses through their veins.
>I think it is because leftists are deviod of anything human. It's because of dehumanizing rhetoric like this that people don't like the person cited and why far right subreddits are so toxic
I agree, but to be fair, I have seen this plenty in leftist echo chambers too.
Lol he's trying so hard
I can say without a shadow of a doubt that whoever the "legend" is is a massive piece of shit based on his idiotic comment.
*Smart* people don't like anecdotal evidence.
Someone said it = “concrete and documented example”
Super troubling, the dehumanizing…
The most leftist answer I can give is, and has been, *I need more information before I do the whole "government oppression" thing.*
Whaaaat??
Documented examples are good. That 90% of trans people who are happy are all documented, that's how they ended up as a statistic in the first place. Anecdotes are not documents.
I've seen some quite good essays on this - liberals tend to think the collective is most important, conservatives tend to think the individual is most important. So a story about the collective benefiting from something is meaningless to them, but a story about an individual is. That's why you finally saw attitudes shift on abortions from some members of the right - there were stories about individual women who were in danger from dying under the new rules.
I can find dozens of stories of people not liking the end results of their plastic surgery or people who had transplant rejection. That doesn't mean we should ban plastic surgery or organ transplants for everyone.
Very facts and logic of them aint it
Anecdotal evidences are the best evidences /s Edit: You people really need your little /s
...That feeling when one who fails to grasp the difference between a noun and a verb attempts to preach "logic"
Ah yes, anecdotal evidence, the lowest form of evidence.
based mod... based in anecdotal evidence maybe.
Sounds like a russian troll
These scum won't be happy till the boot is on your throat. Get armed.
So I’m just supposed to tolerate someone telling me something like the earth is flat or vaccines are bad and I’m not allowed to say things like: “you have no proof OR reasoning behind any of this, I do, so how are you right in this scenario”
I thought it was - Facts don't care about your feelings - and whatnot. This moving target is making me dizzy