Broadly speaking, you probably agree with the large majority of the views commonly attributed to whichever group you identify with - what are the exceptions? Something that if you mention without a caveat immediately makes people jump to conclusions or even attack you?
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Bigotry and prejudice is always bad, even if it’s not against a “protected class”. Hating on white people, straight people, cis people, men, or anyone else for the way they were born, what their ancestors did makes the world a worse place. Heck, “white” itself is a nebulous concept that changes over time and is different depending on which racist you’re talking to. Just because someone resembles your oppressor does not make them your enemy.
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Kind of related, but I don’t broadly judge categories of things. I was at a party recently and someone asked me if I liked anime, and I responded that I like some anime. Most of it I don’t like, but that’s not specific to anime. In my experience, roughly 80-90% of all media is somewhere between “garbage” and “mediocre”, and it’s the 10-20% at the top that I look for. A lot of my favorite bands happen to be metal, but I’m not going to like every band that uses distorted guitars.
Perhaps another way of phrasing it is that I usually find that the parameters which define genre are often separate from the parameters that determine my personal enjoyment.
My theory is that most people are more concerned with the social groups around media than the media itself.
what did they say after you said you liked anime?
Something along the lines of “well I actually don’t like anime!”. And started talking about how people expect him to be an anime fan, and how he lived in Japan for a while and liked manga a lot but not so much anime.
It was a a party with a lot of “alternative” people, most of whom probably would just say “yeah I like anime”. I think the guy was expecting me to say that so that he could that he could then subvert expectations, but my more neutral response kind of derailed things.
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I keep getting downvoted because I advocate always voting left. Even if currently the democrats aren’t left wing, they are more left than Republicans. And if you keep voting for the most left candidate then over time they’ll keep shifting more and more left. Republicans will learn they’ll never win unless they start moving left so they’ll move left, then the Democrats will move more left.
Letting republicans win because the current democrat isn’t left enough is, IMHO, stupid.
Thank God…. I hate the edgy leftists who think they’re being morally righteous by not voting or wasting their votes voting 3rd party. These people also never work on voting reform either which is essential in escaping our 2 party systems.
That having a better education is directly tied to income levels, so talking down to ‘idiots’ is actually some bougie bullshit.
Lemmy is a website full of people who are left-populists on paper, but hate the population.
The average Lemmite should never be in charge of anything that their IT degree doesn’t qualify them for.
Lemmy wants the baby without the labor pains.
“Destroy Capitalism!”
“But what about the millions who will die in the ensuing chaos!?!”
“Well dont do it that way!”
“Which way then?”
“DESTROY CAPITALISM!”
Yeah the system is fucked and definitely needs change, but its either gradual or violent and as someone who came up with rough crowds in rough places. Most people arent cut out for when the actual violence starts.
practical and pragmatic reforms are boring. good policy making is boring.
hence why nobody gets excited by it. it’s much more exciting to sit around daydream about the revolution than get involved in community or political groups or read public policy white papers that report the cause and effect of policies in a complex manner.
I used to work in public policy. It was really cool, until you realize nobody gives a fuck about making the world better. especially the politicans. all they can about is riling people up emotionally.
all they can about is riling people up emotionally.
Damn, this shit goes all the way to the places where people signed up for boring policy work and can make a difference?
no, the policy nerds just want to to do good work. but good work isn’t politically viable. they also typically aren’t ideological because they are evidence-driven.
the politicians don’t care about it, all they want is soundbytes to ragebait their voters. they want the ‘evidence’ to proof D is good, R is bad. or vice versa.
IT degree
From my experience, that’s giving the average lemmite way to much credit.
You’re not entirely wrong but their are outliers like me! I graduated top of my class from a boogie High School (the most expensive in CT) I dropped out of college and now work as a dishwasher, its the most fun I’ve had in my past decade of employment from various companies, and the best paying? Why does that happen? I’m being paid $18/hr to wash dishes, its my dream job (no customer interactions) I studied CS in college and I’m very literate in all computer related tech (Fuck AI)
throwing away opportunity is a lot easier than having none at all.
One of the things people constantly disagree with me about is children. Specifically how hard it really is to raise one, and that everyone isn’t meant to have them.
Many people don’t understand that where children begin, you end. There isn’t going to be time for things you used to do on your own time, at your own leisure. There are no natural born parents, people that can function on little sleep and overwhelming circumstances. You give up peace, money, autonomy and you don’t stop parenting until you’re gone. There are a large number of people who feel like one day, they’ll become a parent and that will be their identity. Some people start their journey in parenthood wholeheartedly believing their child is an extension of themselves; not a developing, unique person that may or may not be completely different- like no one else in the family.
Having children is the most important job that you will ever have. You don’t get to quit when you realize that maybe you aren’t cut out for it. That’s why it’s important to know yourself, and work on your trauma and shortcomings before they bleed into your children. If you aren’t prepared to make sure they have the absolute best you can provide them in all aspects of life; why are you having them? If you aren’t ready to let your priorities fall to the wayside while you guide a tiny human into themselves, you aren’t prepared.
I don’t like neopronouns
Drag is disappointed in you. Drag likes to be referred to as Drag.
neopronouns
never heard this term until today. Thanks.
A neopronoun is any gendered pronoun that isn’t she, he, or they! The history of neopronouns in English goes back a couple hundred years- though the term “neopronoun” itself wasn’t coined until recently- and they can range from pre-existing terms like “it” to something made up for one’s own personal use. The more you know!
I"m just glad i got out of school before people started throwing protests about being called ‘xe’
That Lemmy can be just as bigoted, hostile, and close-minded as the sites it set out to replace; it drives out views which aren’t in line with the gestalt majority. This thread, then, mostly gets answers which are on the mildest end because those who actually hold opinions out of step with the majority know damn well not to speak up, or, well… be immediately othered.
Turns out that people are assholes regardless of platform
in my experience that’s especially true of certain instances, but not others. mostly along ideological lines.
Yeahs and people are on good behavior in posts like this. The “lemmy” doesn’t come out as much.
This thread, then, mostly gets answers which are on the mildest end because those who actually hold opinions out of step with the majority know damn well not to speak up, or, well… be immediately othered
Bigotry against the bigoted isn’t bigotry.
Care to provide specific examples? I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just curious as to what things about this place that you consider to be “bigoted”. Because my experience has been that the opinions that aren’t tolerated here are themselves the bigoted opinions.
Look back on my profile at the recent comment where I mentioned Johnny Depp being a disgusting drunk rapist who groomed a woman half his age and sued her for defaming him when she spoke about the backlash she received for speaking out against his domestic abuse.
Lol what?? So they’re bigoted against what in this case?
women. its called misogyny and its everywhere
Because my experience has been that the opinions that aren’t tolerated here are themselves the bigoted opinions.
This is a tautology. All you are saying here is ‘anything i declared bigoted shouldn’t be tolerated’.
other people may not agree with your interpretation of bigoted. I see all sorts of hateful bigoted crap on here, it’s just about what group it’s targeting. I got banned from Autism community because I pointed out their bigoted hatred of ‘normies’ was messed up and many members there had a weird superiority complex about autism.
All you are saying here is ‘anything i declared bigoted shouldn’t be tolerated’.
Yep. Basically this. And to bring it back around to OP’s question:
[Opinions] you mention without a caveat immediately makes people jump to conclusions or even attack you?
…well, it feels like this is a great example. Suggest that the fediverse has a bit of a bigotry problem, and you immediately get hit with an implication that no, everything is fine, if you’re not happy then you must actually be the bigot!
Oh man, to test this, just go somewhere and defend women. You’ll be destroyed.
gender war bullshit is bullshit.
lemmy is full of anti-men threads. there was a massive one a few days ago with 100s of comments. is that pro-woman?
I don’t know, personally I’m against anti-whatever nonsense. I’m not in any camp, but I will point out my gendered life experiences, because the often go against the popular grain of gender essentialism that many people are conceptual wedded to.
That we should renationalise all public services here in the UK. I genuinely believe that. I’m essentially a left of centre capitalist, but I believe private companies using shared national infrastructure for shareholder profit under the lie of ‘competition’ is bullshit.
Thames water was a clusterfuck
In America its still not ok to be an atheist. Truly weird that it is ok to be part of several different mutually exclusive cults who all believe things that if they were not connected to a proper religion would get you laughed at but if you don’t have a cult its not ok.
on the coasts nobody cares. you must be talking about the south. the majority of the population in cities in atheist or non-practicing.
This honestly just isn’t true 70% of the pop is still Christian.
I think that gender dysphoria is a mental illness, as it causes mental distress if not alleviated with transition, but that it’s not shameful to have it any more than it’s shameful to have autism, conversion therapy has been scientifically proven not to work, and just as people with diabetes manage their condition with insulin, transition is the best way to manage it so people with it can live happy lives.
As a trans person yes, absolutely the anguish we feel for not being comfortable in our bodies is 100% mental illness. And people get upset because we see mental illness as a bad thing, a personal failure, instead of a condition to be treated.
Doctors have decided that transitioning, while it doesn’t fix the problem of people not being born as their preferred gender, is much healthier treatment for the individual and society so that we can try to live happier lives where we get to feel as comfortable as cis people naturally feel.
yeah it’s a body dysphoria. there are lots of types of them.
gender dysphoria is a mental illness
I think that’s the general consensus.
I seem to constantly interact with people decrying the ‘transmedicalist perspective’
That people take issue with this point of view speaks to a general stigma around ‘mental illness’ as a category. Some strides have been made but we’re still not where I’d like us to be.
Yes, gender dysphoria is a psychological condition. Yes, in many cases acceptance of identified gender and medical transition can reduce the suffering caused by the condition. It’s not like there’s been resounding success/better ‘patient’ outcomes for the alternatives.
It’s just such an obvious line of reasoning to me that I have a hard time understanding how some people don’t grok it, unless they’ve been poisoned by shitty preachers.
I’m a Democrat who values the 2nd amendment and doesn’t think we should just ban guns in the U.S. Stronger regulations and safety measures? Sure, absolutely. But I do think people should have the right to own and use firearms for recreation, hunting, personal protection, etc.
I think you’ll find that most people by a wide margin agree that prohibition of anything generally doesn’t work, and what they are looking for is regulations and enforcement.
There are a lot of vocal anti gun nuts out there though.
Where I live, mentioning you own, or would like to own a gun, gets you labeled as a fascist Nazi/proto murderer. That’s regardless of all your other beliefs or political positions.
And there’s a fair amount of 2a absolutists out there too.
I had someone straight-faced say that Jeff Bezos should be able to buy a nuke (you can imagine the trajectory of the conversation that led to this, it wasn’t a non-sequitor).
I know plenty of people on the Left who want to ban guns, European-style. They think anyone who owns one is partially psychopathic and have a fetish about killing things. You’re right, they’re probably in the minority, but I question by just how much. I don’t think they’re as fringe as some people would like to believe.
Personal firearms ownership is legal in Europe.
My understanding was that it’s only legal under highly restricted conditions. If you’re just Joe Schmoe, you’re not going to be able to get a firearm just because you have no criminal history and no evidence of mental illness.
Yes but if you’re looking for a total firearms ban, Europe is a bad example. They have a long history of participation in hunting and shooting sports.
I agree up to the point where the amendment is pointed at as disallowing reasonable regulation. If that’s the case, end 2A. But my goal is regulation, not abolishment. If 2A folks (mainly the Supreme Court here) can accept regulation existing in parallel with 2A, then I’m happy.
I’m mainly thinking about preventing school shootings and domestic violence and murder, so restrictions of some sort on mental health / violent history.
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Well I guess it’s that I have a difficult time understanding trans folk. My belief is that we should be working towards accepting and loving our bodies regardless of how they are formed, with all of their flaws intact. I feel complicated towards cosmetic surgery as a result of this belief.
Obligatory caveat: I still love trans people, you’re ALL valid and I continue to learn from you.I would expand that to body modification in general. Tattoos, piercings, hair loss/removal treatments, shoe lifts, fake nails. Heck, you could even expand it to clothing and fashion.
For me it comes down to cost-benefit analysis. For me personally I find it pretty easy to change my mind, so that’s usually “cheaper” than trying to change my body. Or you could say that I don’t see much “benefit” to such changes to my appearance. To let go of my desire to appear a certain way, to stop caring about how others see me. Some might call that cis privelege, but I would argue it’s something most cis people (at least in the US) struggle with too.
With the people I hang out with, i’m usually the only one without piercings to tattoos. Often I’m the only person with naturally colored hair (I do hope I go grey before losing it because it would be pretty cool to look like an old wizard, but if I lose my hair first I’ll just embrace it).
At the same time, you could extend the conversation the other way to things like prosthetics. I just saw a meme on Lemmy yesterday about a closeted trans person who had a car accident with a moose and needed extensive surgery afterwords. So rather than restoring how they used to look they took the opportunity to fully transition. From my perspective, the opportunity cost of transitioning was lowered in that case.
I want to see humanity continue to pursue technology to reduce these costs though. People have been writing fiction for centuries about gender-swapping, even just for a couple of days. If there really was some magical pill that could swap your gender for a day or two, or was easily reversible, or if you could just transfer your brain between artificial bodies, I could see that leading to a lot more empathy in the world.
People that live as their chosen gender are happier. People who don’t are much more likely to kill themselves. Hard to argue with that.
I mean yeah, hard agree, but Trans people ain’t a monolith and I would like to learn more about them.
the thing is you won’t/don’t notice most trans people. they are living their lives not bothering anyone.
it’s just the extremist nutbags that get attention and kind of paint a poor picture of trans folks. i’ve known some very miserable and shitty trans people who are hard to forget, but i met a lot more i odn’t even remember because they never got in my face and bothered me or said crazy shit. but they are the same as any extremist/nutbag of any persuasion or identity who thinks anyone different than them is subhuman and they are the model for some master race.
I don’t hate AI. It’s fine. I don’t love it either, but it’s neat and often useful.
Just gonna vent a little, don’t mind me. I don’t hate AI. I hate how it’s being used. In a vacuum, AI is fine. But we don’t live in a vacuum, we live in a capitalist hellscape where everyone saw how AI was going to be abused even before corporations started jumping on every chance they got to do so. Now we’re stuck in the timeline where the public consensus is that using AI for any reason at all is seen as fundamentally unethical. People are zealously anti-AI and the nail is only getting pounded in further with new reasons to hate it appearing every other day. And it didn’t have to be this way. Photography didn’t try to pass itself off as painting, it had time to develop into its own art form. But AI didn’t. Out the gate, it was being used deceptively, and continuously became worse. People want to abolish AI as a whole, but it isn’t the problem. The problems run way deeper. Our world is a sinking boat and AI is showing us where all the leaks are. Lack of education, lack of access to mental health professionals, those in power using every chance they get to screw over the working class by cutting every corner. Any new technology in any form that can be used to exploit people, WILL be used to exploit people. The hate on AI may be justified but it’s too generalized and unfocused to bring about any meaningful change. There needs to be regulation, but I fear that any laws that are passed will only benefit the rich and horrible.
You’re fine with companies stealing other people’s work?
As far as I know, the jury is still out on whether that is infringing (not stealing). Based on my understanding, AI is transformative and would fall under fair use. That being said, claiming fair use and then selling the output is problematic to me.
Every single model should be open weights and uncensored. I wouldn’t have any issue with companies adding value or supplying the compute to run the model.
As far as I know, the jury is still out on whether that is infringing (not stealing).
They don’t even have to sell it, company valuation increases alone are evidence of piracy
In this particular case I’m okay with it but I don’t see it as stealing. Human artists are influenced by the art of other artists the same way. It’s only stealing if you’re selling copies of the original piece as your own. I wouldn’t have any problem with someone copying my entire photography portfolio to train an AI to generate pictures with my style because it takes nothing away from me. Just sell them as your own then instead of claiming they were taken by me.
I get why the whole “colorblind” thing ended, but what we replaced it with is even worse.
Isolationism. I completely reject the idea that my country’s (the US) military interventionism is in any way driven by benevolence, or makes life better either for Americans (outside of war profiteers) or for the people of the country we’re fucking with.
This is really controversial on here, for some reason. The fact that I want to leave other countries alone and focus on investing in schools and hospitals and public transit instead of bombs and tanks (I don’t even really care if it’s being spent domestically or abroad, so long as it’s being spent on good things instead of bad things) causes a bunch of people to call me a “tankie” and say that I’m just as bad as a fascist. All because I say shit like, that I don’t want to start shit with North Korea. I don’t even give a shit about North Korea. Like, I just watched how Afghanistan played out and went, “You know, we probably shouldn’t do shit like that again,” and supposedly left-leaning people really, really hate me for it. It’s genuinely bizarre. I even got attacked once for defending Biden pulling out of Afghanistan! People just love sticking our nose in other countries’ business, for reasons I can’t even begin to understand.
Probably being an absolutist instead of considering case-by-case leaves room for criticism.
In your example, Biden pulling out of Afghanistan. Was it wrong to intervene in the first place, probably? But pulling out at that point caused the deaths of western allies and handed victory to the Taliban, causing millions to suffer eg. women can’t get jobs and single-mother families starve to death… and it was entirely foreseeable.
I would argue that Humanitarian Intervention should be excluded, and certain UN-led actions (although the bureaucracy has certainly led to interventions occurring after mass deaths, unfortunately).
But pulling out at that point caused the deaths of western allies and handed victory to the Taliban, causing millions to suffer eg. women can’t get jobs and single-mother families starve to death… and it was entirely foreseeable.
That’s a completely ridiculous and absurd position. They did not “hand victory to the Taliban,” the Taliban won victory over 20 years of fighting and the withdrawal merely acknowledged that fact, a fact which Americans seem to have deluded themselves into thinking was anything but inevitable, and they really didn’t like their delusions being shattered. The embargo, not the withdrawal, is what’s caused most of the suffering. As the band Flobots said in 2007, “We already lost the wars they keep waging.” Somehow, in spite of over another decade of accomplishing absolutely nothing, people seem, if anything, more willing to keep fighting the pointless, hopeless battle.
What is the alternative to the withdrawal? Please, provide an answer to that question. Do you think if we stayed there another 20 years, then we could leave and our puppet regime wouldn’t instantly collapse? Or should we have just stayed there inevitably, even sending our grandchildren to go fight in that stupid pointless war?
The only thing that you said that’s correct is that on day 1 of the war, we should not have gone in. But on day 2, we also should’ve left. On day 3 we should have left. On day 300 we should’ve left. On day, what was it even, 7000? On day 7000, we absolutely, 10000% should’ve left. What possible reason could you use to justify delaying it further? What could we do in another 300 days that we couldn’t do in 7000? At that point, you’re just arguing for making it a permanent war of conquest.
Your problem, and the problem of everyone who thinks like you, is that you’re incapable of facing reality and accepting that sometimes good decisions are painful. When an alcoholic decides to go clean, what do you think that first day is like? Is it pleasant? Of course not. They may be irritable, they may have to have awkward conversations or confrontations with their drinking buddies, they may even lose friendships over it! But it’s still the right decision, the important thing is that they stopped. This is the same way. Yes, the immediate effects of pulling out may have been unpleasant, but you have to be very short-sighted to not recognize it as an obviously correct and necessary decision. Y’all just see the unpleasantness and say, “Everything’s been shitty since I decided to quit, I should just have another drink.”
Even the government we propped up told us to leave! How can you possibly justify continuing the occupation? And how can I possibly view you as anything but a warmongering imperialist for taking that stance? You’re talking about murdering people! Do you even realize that?
Yawn.
If a Taliban victory was inevitable, this is yeah totally true. The “rip off the bandaid” approach.
The question of how long it takes to peacefully handover power in a colony is an interesting one. It can be an absurd amount of time, may never be 100%, or it may never be peaceful, if resentment persists. I think it is possible, but we may differ there.
It’s certainly hard to justify the long-term cost to American life, expenditure, energy and focus to attempt beneficial cultural change on the other side of the world.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, some things are actually better in Afghanistan, since 2021. Definite evidence that war is in fact, worse, generally, than even a very dickish government. Looking at the data, I might come down on your side, it’s tough.
WHO Health data overview for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
Oh, I absolutely support “attempting beneficial cultural change on the other side of the world.” Go write a book, sing a song, make a movie, you can still do that, right now, nothing’s stopping you!
What I oppose is drone striking weddings halfway across the globe, kicking in doors and screaming at people in a language they don’t speak, classifying every “military aged male” as an enemy combatant even if they’re just a bystander to falsify your casualty reports, abducting innocent people indefinitely to secret torture dungeons without charge or trial, and that sort of thing. You know, things like, “forced rectal feeding without medical necessity.”
Like, have you looked into what the war actually, physically looked like for people? “Attempting beneficial cultural change,” what the hell are you talking about? Even if it wasn’t an extreme whitewashing of the situation, you don’t impose “beneficial” cultural change as an occupying force, at gunpoint! The only thing we did was make them hate us more.
By the way, do you know how we finally got bin Laden? It was by using a fake vaccination campaign to collect blood samples in Pakistan. You wanna talk about humanitarianism, do you have any idea how many people could die, how many preventable diseases we could fail to eradicate, if people in developing countries mistrust vaccination drives because the CIA uses them as cover? But you know, at least our lust for revenge was satisfied. (Speaking of, the US also promoted anti-vax conspiracy theories in the Philippines, during COVID, to keep them from relying on Chinese vaccines.)
We Americans used to at least try not to look for “foreign monsters abroad”. I was raised on that sort of old fashioned idea. Do you ever feel like an impossible person from a land that never existed?
I remember growing up in the 90’s and it being fairly common to think that there were no real enemies out in the world, that all the conflicts were over. “The end of history,” gets mocked a lot, but the idea of putting conflict behind us and working together towards a common cause of advancing together is something I really miss.
But if that period of relative peace had continued, then people would’ve started asking questions about why we’re still dumping more money into our military than the next 9 countries combined when the USSR no longer exists (to quote Terminator 2, “They’re our friends now”) and China such a big trading partner that nobody would dream of rocking the boat. And if people started asking those questions, it’d be real bad news for the war profiteers who make bank off that spending. And so it all went out the window, starting with the “war on terror,” and now the government’s trying to make us see everybody as a threat.
And so we can’t have nice things, like healthcare, we all have to tighten our belts so that we can make more tanks. I remember when that was seen as right-wing.
It still is a right wing position, but the trouble is not right or left specifically, it’s that the empire is overextended with its military obligations, the dollar has been badly debased, the US pays more in debt than its GDP, and despite all our spending, the US couldn’t possibly meet all of its military obligations if more than one big thing happened at a time. The dollar is still the world reserve currency, but only because there’s not yet a credible replacement.
The sad fact is that instead of minding our business, America wanted to be an empire - and empires have a pretty standard lifecycle. I don’t think it’s a question of if, but when, it goes the way of Spain and GB.
Having children is borderline unethical given the capitalist hellscape they will be born into, the relatively high likelihood that they will not be able to live to old age due to risk of large parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable with climate change, and considering that reduced birth rates is the most ethical path to a lower population on the planet, which, though technically not a strict requirement of a greener future, certainly makes it a lot easier.
No shade for any kids living today or parents who choose to have them despite the above. I understand why people do it and I don’t blame anyone for it. But it is worth pointing out that current birth rates in most countries are not sustainable, and the seemingly constant fearmongering about falling birthrates in places where it’s low needs to go away. Yes, it’s bad for the economy if the new generation is smaller than their parents. That’s a problem with the system and its design (one of many), and not at all a rationale for having kids.
I will be honest, I held this same view for many years and still agree with it on the face of it but there were two things that people said to me that softened my view.
- We need good people to make more good people. (Apparently my friends think I’m a good person. Weird)
- There be dragons in our society but what good are dragons without dragon slayers?
Obviously these weren’t the only factors but they both really resonated with me. My first dragon slayers is due this month
The trick here I think is parenting in a way that passes along whatever good you may have to your child. Unfortunately (or fortunately, in some cases) the moral compass and general ethics of the parents don’t always translate to the kid. How to do that effectively is a whole other psychological debate. Either way, congrats and best of luck!
The trouble is, if all the considerate people who don’t want kids don’t have kids, the only people left will be the kids of the kids that did want kids.
Mostly agree with you. I think the parents that agree with you should feel some regret though.
