knightly the Sneptaur

90% of folks can’t be trained to kill.

Half of the remainder would rather frag their own commanding officers than some poor foreign kid.

Inseperability. Codependence. A lack of notable distinction.

Y’know, like how our “two” major parties are the opposite faces of the same capitalist coin.

What does that have to do with anything?

It disproves your BS.

He’s a member of the right-wing monoparty, isn’t he?

He was an independent, switching his allegiance to the monoparty didn’t help him win any federal elections.

You can’t be an independent if there are no parties to be independent from.

You seem to have very suddenly switched from accepting the reality of the American monoparty to suggesting that no parties exist at all. Are you sure you’re arguing in good faith?

Why is Bernie Sanders such an ultra-capitalist far-right Republican?

He isn’t, that’s why he’s not president right now.

I would like an explanation for this because I didn’t realize he was, but your own logic says he is.

You’ve never discussed my logic, you jumped straight from “American political parties only pretend to be separate entities” to “America’s most famous center-left social democrat is actually a right-wing ultraconservative” as if making the latter claim would disprove the former.

There’s a reason why the Democrat superdelegates refused to nominate the most popular American politician in 2015.

What goalposts?

America has a capitalist monoparty that only pretends to be two parties so as to maintain the illusion of choice.

But you have to admit that RBG didn’t step down during Obama’s term, that they let Republicans keep Merrick Garland out of the SC and gave them that seat, that they didn’t put Roe v. Wade into law during any of the chances they had to do so.

Admit that they were excited about Cheney and Bush’s kids giving an endorsement and never even bothered putting Sanders on stage at a campaign rally.

Admit that their presidential candidate underperformed the abortion-legalizing state ballot measures in every state that had one.

If we’re talking about a distinction without a difference then we can admit that America is a one-party state that only pretends to be a two-party system.

Yeah, I didn’t think the Dems could screw it up regardless of how badly they’re cosplaying right-wing nutjobs from 2004.

Either Americans oppose genocide more than I hoped, or they’re more bigoted than I feared. Dunno whether I’m too cynical or not cynical enough.

Right?

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

That was already the case, remember when Harris was excited to get Republican endorsements and promised to put one on her cabinet?

Also, most of those machinists have second jobs because Boeing had been letting their purchasing power slide for so long.

Who are you talking about that is insisting there can be no deviation from the norm?

Right-wingers, the only people who have ever had a problem with diversity.

Banning words and discussions is absolutely the wrong way to go.

I’m confused about what you mean, because the only people doing that are the “Don’t Say Gay” Florida Republicans.

And my point is very simple. Don’t ban words.

I get the feeling that you’re going to be angry when I point out that the only people banning words are the ones who want to make it illegal to teach kids that people like me exist.

Have open discussions. Don’t support censorship of opinions or words.

Make up your mind, do you want to censor Nazis so that we can actually have open discussions or do you think that avoiding censorship of the “opinions and words” of discriminatory groups is more important than the presence of the groups they discriminate against?

Stop trying to control what people should think, and stop trying to teach them what you think is right.

…

What do you think “teaching” is?

But I think instead of trying to change words and ban conversations, maybe it’s better to teach people to accept and even enjoy more variations?

This is naive.

How are we supposed to teach people to accept variation when they insist that there can be no deviation from the norm?

Because right now it’s a bit ridiculous. We are told to ignore obvious differences between people so nobody feels marginalized.

I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make here. Just a moment ago you were complaining that the language we use to talk about this topic was a problem, now we’re supposedly telling people not to talk about it? Pick a lane!

Only 4 years?

I’ve known this was coming since the DNC first shafted Bernie and promoted Trump as an “easy target” for Clinton in 2015.

I think it’s fine that everyone gets to say what their gender is, as long as the archetypal roles stay the same - man or female.

But otherwise, sure, people can define their gender how they like.

I’m noticing a contradiction here.

Gender can be a word for how people define themselves, as long as we instead use “archetypal roles” to define what our physical body looks like.

And for those of us who don’t fit those archetypes?

I think what is frustrating is when people start to say that we shouldn’t include our physical body type at all in discussions. That’s taking it too far in my opinion.

Generally, it is considered impolite to talk to strangers about one’s genitals.

Going to the doctor and not telling what body type you are makes diagnosis impossible in same cases.

The medical setting is one of the few contexts where talking about one’s anatomy isn’t considered a faux pas.

And for what reason? That part doesn’t make any sense to me.

Do you want the historical explanation of how puritainism affected our culture?

Race, body type, and other things are important to know in many cases.

They’re relevant a lot less often than you’d think.

I’ll take this as a good faith question, and the short answer is that gender is a lot more complicated than that.

Yes there are two archetypal roles involved in sexual reproduction, but even that isn’t so simple. There isn’t just one feature that defines male or female, but a combination of traits including chromosomes, gametes, anatomy, hormones, etc. In the real world, some folks are born with features that don’t all agree with one or another archetype. Intersex people aren’t common, about 1 in 2,000, but their existence proves that sex isn’t just a binary. There’s diversity to sex that requires a more complicated scheme to account for everybody.

Gender, likewise, doesn’t follow the one-or-the-other model. Most folks are cisgender, but some folks have a gender that doesn’t agree with what people assume their sex is, or no gender at all, or a gender that doesn’t fit into the man/woman spectrum. It gets complicated quickly because gender is where sex and society intersect. Some cultures have different expectations based on gender, and some even have more than two recognized genders. That’s why we say “gender is a social construct”, because we all get to define for ourselves what it means to be a man, woman, or otherwise.

Precisely.

Gender isn’t binary, there is no such thing as a male or female nipple. That distinction is something that Humans made up.

The fetus was nonviable, it might be tragic but it was not and could never have been a person.

Of course you don’t, hence the bigotry.

Are you kidding? Election day is a week away and an election clerk in San Antonio already got punched for telling somebody to take off his MAGA hat. I’m surprised nobody’s been shot already.