AI can’t even tell how many Rs are in strawberry. I have seen the code AI makes, and it is not almost there. It is quite far away. Give AI 10 years, and it will be “almost there”, and even then it will still be incredibly shit code.

Should’ve cut to an insurance agent denying coverage based on the actuarial table.

Imagine saying “They basically want me dead.” and then wearing your child as a human shield. Father of the year.

It sucks way worse for all those people born in 1488.

Because they’re dead.

where does one determine where to draw the line?

Short answer: By what the experts say, and they say transgender people should be treated as the gender they identify as. Period.

Long answer: A lot of PhDs did a fuckload of research over a century plus and showed that, yeah, gender is super fucking complicated and doesn’t map out to male/female based on your genitals at birth (let alone for the reason that, you know, maybe you might be born with a penis AND a vagina or ovaries AND testes or female chromosomes AND male genetalia, etc.), and if people get some simple gender affirmation, they live better and happier lives, and that applies to cisgender people, as well.

Easy answer: You can claim to be fucking anything you want. Who actually gives a shit? Let people be themselves if it don’t hurt anyone. What’s the problem with being a transgirl or a transboy? Why do we even have multiple bathrooms? That just seems to punish all sorts of people for no reason.

If you WANT to say transracial or transspecies or transnational is a thing, by all means do some research and prove it through studies and peer review. Until then, it is unlikely to be recognized the same way that transgender has because it has a lot of supporting evidence.

Idk, I think it’s VERY SPECIFICALLY about trans rights, but I just can put my finger on why…

LGBTQ is surprisingly unaccepting towards bigots. And I find that pretty accepting because I am not a bigot.

Russia started the war in Ukraine, so it seems like it is entirely Russia’s fault and Russia should end it, no?

Can you tell me how it is harmful to tell a child that being a girl or boy is more about whether you feel like you are a girl or boy than how you look?

Can you tell me how it is harmful to tell a child that some people have two moms or two dads?

Can you tell me how it is harmful to tell children not to make judgments about a person based on how they physically look, even if that judgment is something small like what gender they are?

This is what gender identity and sexual orientation lessons look like for young children, and I am really confused as to how these lessons are harnful to the youth.

What you’re saying is that–FOR YOU–sex and gender is easy. You do not speak for all cisgender people, buddy. Some cisgender people ALSO struggle with their identity, and thus teaching children at a young age about gender identity and sex to allow them the freedom to explore their identities is helpful.

Your argument boils down to: People are too afraid and confused too talk about sex and gender… which is why we should stop talking about sex and gender.

Additionally, I called him childish because he was mocking others, and I pointed that out to him with his own quote.

He was not arguing in good faith, and to believe otherwise is to, frankly, underestimate him.

Hey, yo, I got one! I once argued with FS about something where he continuously attempted to goad me, argued disingenuously, and acted childishly, and when I rightfully called him out on all of that, he removed my comment. It was a rather small abuse of power, but I have seen him act righteously indignant, especially when he is called out for acting like a child. He does not differentiate this from a personal attack, especially when he was very much responsible for escalating several interactions he has with others.

But it was an issue before. And it’s an issue now. So the phrase isn’t really the issue. It’s an excuse to do nothing because you aren’t the problem, whereas before the excuse to do nothing was that you didn’t know about the problem. And if they say “Some men are rapists” to make you feel better, fuck if it isn’t an excuse to do nothing because you’re not one of them.

It is the responsibility of all people (and thus all men) to stop sexual assaults, and to blame people that are far more likely to be the victims of those assaults for making rhetoric that is extreme in response is to expect a perfect victim that did, does, and will do nothing wrong.

If you would like to use the AIDS epidemic as an example, it would be to treat the gay men as wrong when they said they should seize control of the FDA. It’s, technically speaking, not helpful, and there were many working in the public health sector trying their hardest to help those affected by AIDS… But, like, you understand why they said that, right? There were definitely protests before that where nothing happened, where their issues were ignored, and their were people in the government who were to blame.

I think men treating women like sex objects happened long before anyone said “All men are rapists” seriously. How does anyone address the historical (and current) context of subjugation and oppression women face under men (who do hold a large majority of positions of power)? I think reducing the conversation to what you said is, frankly, the tactic of the right, and it’s really easy to give up on learning that context if one takes a victim complex, like when anyone attacks white people or Christians or straight people or cis people or cops, and ignore everything related to why those groups might have that hate towards them.

How can you address that context if you say “Not all men” and then do nothing to address the original critiques in the first place? If you pretend like the conversation starts and stops at the logical disproving of “All men are rapists,” then will you simply ignore that marital rape exists? Will you ignore that women do have higher rates of being sexually assaulted and that we make it hard to do anything about those assaults?

I, sadly, think of “All men are rapists” as a defensive mantra. That we, as a society, have to teach girls and women to fear men because we failed at multiple other points. It isn’t true, and it probably isn’t a great attitude to take, but I don’t know that I can fault anyone for having that view.

Then your issue isn’t with ENM. It’s with men (I should also note that this equally applies to women and nonbinary people, but we’ll ignore them for now) staying in an ENM relationship that they clearly do not want. Why are they staying in that relationship? It’s worth exploring that.

Is it loneliness? Is it dependency? Is it a fear of not being able to find another partner? These are issues that we don’t often explore and try to help in men.

I definitely am sexist, likely in ways I don’t even know. I am working to fix those biases as I encounter them. It is tough, though in this particular situation, I don’t see those biases, so I’m trying not to be inconsiderate. I think I am holding men, women, and non-binary people to the same standard in this case.

But you are directly holding women responsible for ENM relationships when they didn’t really do anything wrong. If a man did the same thing, would you have an issue with it? If you want a harem and tell everyone in the harem about it, what’s the problem?

I did ask because I wanted to know. I just thought they were reasons to come to a different conclusion. Societal and cultural pressures on men aren’t dealt with to the same level as women, and we do leave men to fend for themselves because many men learned a set of behaviors that were tolerated until they weren’t. And that change can feel unfair. I think we can express masculinity in a positive way, allow us to focus on positive character traits and not physical ones.

There was a sentiment that you were hurt by someone who was ENM, and whether that was because you tried ENM and didn’t like it or whatever, it did seem to be tacked onto your perception of women. I just thought I’d try and give another view of it, in the off-chance that you or someone else reading this needed some more perspective.

Gonna be honest with you, these all mostly sounds like toxic masculinity, which isn’t really dealt with well by conservatives, mostly because they don’t like critical thinking and all that.

a lot of “ethically non monogamous” relationships that are basically a woman gaslighting their partner into letting them cheat on them

Um, I actually think it’s the opposite? It’s not cheating if all partners consent. If you don’t want to date someone who is ENM, then… don’t? Most ENM people don’t want to date monogamous people! That’s why you tell everyone before you do it (that’s the ethical part.)

women are highly encouraged to support other women regardless of circumstances. A failure to do so is implied to be sexist.

I don’t see the problem here? Is it bad to support women, or is it that they somehow support bad women? Do men not do similar?

In general there is this default assumption that a man is nefarious, usually with some reference to true crime or “the implication”.

This has some truth to it, and while I understand that this is, indeed, a sexist take, it’s one that is perpetuated by a patriarchal culture. Men have unreasonable standards thrust upon them the same way women do, but the standards are not necessarily equal in how they affect us, even on an individial level. Men are indeed seen as more violent as a whole, just as women are seen as sex objects as a whole, and working to change those societal pressures to conform to them is the point of pointing to “toxic masculinity.” There are good aspects to masculinity to admire, that we can try to positively adopt those, the same way that women try to adopt positive aspects of feminimity!

I actually see this the worst among conservative men and women. Conservative men and women tell you to “man up”, that “men don’t cry”, that you need to “take it with your own hands”, the idea of “alpha and beta males”. Very aggressive, and that’s a toxic mindset. The hard part about those cultural aspects is that they DO affect us all! Part of feminism is undersranding these biases within yourself and actively working to change them.

The first thing I do when I meet a woman I don’t know in a social setting is to somehow work in that I have a girlfriend in a way that feels organic, and a good amount of times I can see their body language shift

This actually goes both ways, too. Women very often have to tell men they aren’t interested, trying to tell them gently that they are taken. (There is the joke of “I have a boyfriend.” out of the blue to the most innocuous things.) This is a consequence of a society that pushes men to be the active pursuer of relationships. It is, frankly, stressful to have every interaction possibly be taken as a signal that you want a relationship. It is easy for me to understand their perspective because it feels like how my PTSD manifested. Trauma is hard to deal with, and being understanding and accomodating can also be hard, too.

There are a lot of single women I know that are very much architects of their own misery. They have super shallow dating standards, unrealistic expectations, and this mentality that if a man is attractive enough red flags are just misunderstanding.

Very much applies to anyone of any gender, so I’m not sure of the issue. I have seen this in cis-men, cis-women, trans-men, trans-women, enbies, gay men, lesbian women, and so on. This is not exclusive to women, and never will be.

• There are multi hundred member Facebook groups of women in every city that gossip about the men they date. This is obviously toxic, but the organizers frame it as a #metoo thing so it’s widely considered acceptable.

Okay? Don’t date them? I don’t see the issue, but discussing your partners isn’t particularly weird, and men do this too, and if it bothers you, well, don’t date anyone who does it.

• Basically everything I mentioned would be considered absolutely unacceptable if genders were reversed, but if you bring this up then you’ll get a pseudo academic lecture about historical oppression and the patriarchy that basically boils down to “it’s different when I do it”.

There’s some truth to that. Women are, ostensibly, an oppressed group, having less rights than men do, as well as being the one responsible when they get pregnant. They maintain a level of risk that most men do not have to face (though you could consider it a different type of risk, since men also face their own adversities that women typically do not.)

However, that’s irrelevant because none of the things you listed were women-exclusive behaviors, but I figured I would explain why it might be important just in case.

• This isn’t a big deal at all, but it’s sort of ridiculous that most women I meet both consider themselves feminist but will get peeved if men don’t pay for the date.

Don’t date them, then? I mean, I get it. I like when my dates offer to split, and I do judge them if they don’t. But it’s definitely silly to bring up as though they aren’t a feminist for engaging in that behavior. Progress is made incrementally, and sometimes we aren’t aware lf our own biases.

I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment.

Hey man, monogamy is a dating choice, just like ENM. No one makes you have to be one or the other. It is okay to be monogamous, but no one has ever oppressed monogamous people.

I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.

It is really weird to me that you thought calling people weird for legitimately fascist behavior as a way of denormalizing that behavior was somehow a step too far, but the behavior that provoked it wasn’t, as if they hadn’t attempted to call the behavior out beforehand and were ignored.

If that was gonna dissuade you, then I think you might have bigger problems.

What behaviors do you mean and how does that correlate to being conservative?

You are making a silly argument that is flawed. The Witcher includes sexual themes because the book it is based on also includes these themes.

BG3 includes optional romantic themes because the game it is based on can include optional romantic themes. The game is about your involvement in the story, about how you navigate the world and its people because it attempts to mimic DnD. You can do a lot of “I seduce the dragon” and BG3 was designed to be fairly accomodating to a variety of tables.

To suggest the game would be better if it contained no romance when you haven’t played it is… bizarre? Especially with it being optional. But, that is perhaps the epitome of my argument. A lot of content in BG3 is optional. To remove any of it would be to make a game about options lesser.

I think romance is included in a lot of stories because it is a very common component in life. We have so many experiences around love, and exploring that in a fictional environment at the same time we do battle against demons is fun for many people.

TTRPGs cater to you choosing your own story. To remove the romance from this story is to say that some choices in this story cannot be made.

Also, there’s mods to remove the romance. It would be a loss to have them gone at the onset.