Your delusional insistence that trans people support adults having sexual contact with children is part and parcel of the extremism I'm talking about. One of my oldest childhood friends is a trans man and I have accordingly interacted with many trans individuals. Not a single one has expressed anything but revulsion at that idea, and if you believe that's false then I'm sorry but you're buying into a political narrative whose purpose is to erase people like my friend. And the kicker: you'd seek to make a law forcing my friend to use the women's facilities, and then freak out if you saw them following that law. Because guess what! They look like a man - certainly more traditionally masculine than a few of the pundits pushing these vile narratives that I could name.
Despite your insistence to the contrary, nobody I'd associate with wants anyone to be getting sexual gratification by leering at others in dressing rooms. Because believe it or not, we're good people who don't tolerate sex pests. That has nothing at all to do with gender or sexual orientation and everything to do with not being a shitty person.
Sadly, it's beyond obvious that the right's performative outrage over men in women's dressing rooms never really had anything to do with protecting women, and everything to do with ostracizing trans folks. I'll leave you with a quote from a guy recently welcomed back to Twitter by Musk himself:
"I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And, therefore, I’m inspecting it. I’m inspecting it. I want to make sure everything is good."
He went on, as if he was in the dressing room, "'Is everyone okay?' You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that."
> It was quite clear from your uninsightful previous comment that you don't give a shit about women's rights, there's no need to further affirm this via such a cringeworthy effort at sarcasm.
I appreciate your gentle feedback on my relationship to women's rights, as well as your your heartfelt stand against bullying. Although I struggle to see how my uninsightful previous comment had anything to do with that topic, I can only assume you've identified something in me to which I've been blinded by my unfortunate grandfathered affection for a living, breathing trans human being.
My tragic lack of self-awareness is perhaps because I personally witnessed years of merciless bullying during our shared childhood in one of the most conservative areas of Texas. You see, when I compare my memory of that poorly fitted kid to the successful, kind, and well-loved person they are today, when I consider their deeply personal, hard-fought struggle towards self-acceptance that I myself witnessed, it is easy to miss just how insidiously they are, in fact, perverting our society to its certain doom. So subtle is this agenda of destruction that one might be forgiven for thinking it doesn't even exist at all.
Going forward I will do my best to defend women's rights by demanding that my friend accept upon h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ herself the mantle of traditional femininity, no matter what h̶e̶ she may think about that or how cruelly it will be received by the sort of people who tormented h̶i̶m̶ her in our formative years. You've truly made a difference today.
Openly mocking trans people, saying their desire to be referred to by pronouns that match their gender is a "woke mind virus" that will "destroy society" (this from a guy who named his child "X Æ A-12" mind you), amplifying the current LGBTQ == pedophile/groomer propaganda push, retweeting conspiracy bullshit about Paul Pelosi's sexuality, blaming him for his own assault while the man was still in the hospital... if these seem middle of the road to you, then perhaps it is the perception you have of your own views that is skewed.
But that's going to be the narrative. The actual reality doesn't matter, just like the endless gloating these days about the so-called "Russia hoax" - where there was a bunch of shady goings-on between the Trump campaign and the RU gov't who was quite explicit in their desire to work with and assist his campaign. But because it didn't achieve the nigh-impossible feat of a successful impeachment vote by his own party, they act as if the whole thing was a ridiculous put-on when in fact they'd be frothing at the mouth if it was Joe Biden and the CCP.
Narrative is the only thing that matters, especially to these folks, and unfortunately that's why our society is fucked. Because they are definitely going to win that battle. They're already claiming that Biden, as a private citizen, was an agent of the "deep state" violating the 1st amendment with his shadowy cabal and it's just going to go downhill from here.
That's because you're a right wing troll, no? You're exactly the target demographic Musk is rolling out the red carpet for, so it stands to reason you're having a great time with it. This clearly doesn't refute the OP though.
Will certainly be interesting to see if there are enough of y'all willing to shell out $8/mo to have your speech boosted above the free variety to make up for the lost ad spend of the Pinochet-helicopter-meme-adverse.
You quite literally stated that Political Twitter was isolated to "Extreme left authoritarian political opinions" prior to Musk's takeover. Which is of course both demonstratively false and a ridiculous claim on its face.
If anything, the person responding to you gave you the benefit of the doubt, presuming you may have meant that views outside the "extreme authoritarian left" were systematically de-emphasized by the recommendation algorithm. Which is also false but at least not a mindbogglingly stupid thing to actually believe.
Someone interested in an actual discussion might have taken the opportunity to clarify their initial statement. But abrasiveness and the "read what I meant, not what I wrote" approach also works I guess.
Do you honestly believe that everyone is born with the same inherent abilities and talents? Or that lacking the ability to achieve at a high level is some sort of choice or moral failing?
No disagreement with the main thrust of your comment, it's a very good one and imo goes to the heart of the seemingly intractable divide between the logician's approach to truth and that of damn near everyone else - which tends to leave the logician reasoning into the void, doing not a bit of good for anyone.
However I myself would probably label the statement "Bob is an idiot" (or perhaps less abrasively, "Bob has often been wrong in the past in easily verifiable ways") not as evidence that he's wrong per se, but as a signal, possibly a rather strong signal, that he is likely also incorrect in the current matter.
A minor semantic quibble, but in my own experience I've found that conceiving of it as such helps frame the situation as a "sensor fusion of individually unreliable data sources" type of problem, as opposed to one of "collecting experimental results in a logbook and deriving conclusions from them."
The latter of which can lead pretty seamlessly to a towering edifice of belief built upon some ultimately pretty shaky foundations. Ask me how I know ;)
> If someone doesn’t want to wear a mask that is their choice. Your choice is to avoid situations where you might be in contact with people who don’t wear masks.
Do you also believe this about laws prohibiting drunk driving, or regulating seatbelt wearing and the side of the road you're allowed to drive on? OSHA rules around workplace safety, hardhats, fall protection? I'll wait to see if the anti-mask crowd crusades against the infringement of their "right" to drive intoxicated. Otherwise, I'll continue to see it for what it is: Political virtue signaling and contrarianism sans empathy.
It should be (and is) perfectly possible to legally avoid wearing a mask in places with mask regulations. You may do this by avoiding public places.
> It’s not to force everyone into your beliefs.
Strange how selectively this idea is applied by some in this country.
> But then you also go into this fantasy where most criticism of Trump is the sober assessment of dispassionate intellectuals with no conflicts of interest
I used sarcasm to make a point, yes. Here, you have claimed I've said something completely outside of the content of my post.
I base my criticism of Donald Trump solely on his actions and his words. They are indelible, and a clear-eyed person needs nothing beyond them to understand who his is and what he represents.