crosswind [they/them]

As your sources say gossip as a tool can protect women. Gossip as a term, or potentially as the name for a community, can be used to oppress women. While it would be great for this site to play a role in strengthening the tool and weakening the term, it shouldn’t be taken as a given that the users who are affected by this are comfortable taking on the fight of reclaiming the word, or that they think this change is effective in doing so.

I appreciate how seriously you are taking the harm of the racist term. I don’t appreciate how, at least from the outside, it looks like the position you are in of needing to defend the mods has led you to downplay the harm of misogyny to create a comparison.

Through all that’s happened, I’ve been repeatedly encouraged by how quickly and nearly unanimously the whole community agreed that the tank names needed to be changed. The dunk tank had been around for years, but once the harm was pointed out, it was time to for it to go.

Seeing the staunch defense of the name “gossip” when quite a few people immediately say they find it offensive makes me think that was a special case, and not the sign of the strength of the community I had hoped it was.

It’s fine for some decisions to be made by mods only, but keeping it quiet and rolling the changes out all at once when the decision is final seems to cause nothing but problems. It means the mods and admins are caught off guard when the users have strong objections, and have to scramble and backtrack to deal with the backlash. A heads-up about what changes were being discussed would have let the mods be aware of what complaints would be made while they were still in the decision making process. Then when the changes are made, they could already have measures ready to address the concerns, or at least consistent explanations of why the changes where necessary. Instead they had to quickly throw out multiple conflicting justifications, and added to the confusion.

If you’re surprised the users saw this as more than a tiny change, an announcement that a discussion was happening could have given a warning of what to expect.

When this was announced, they were arguing that closing the comms wasn’t a problem because people could just post on similar communities in other instances. But that was after they tried to get those other communities shut down too?

I think that’s my mistake. I had assumed they understood that tool was only for white people to lecture other white people into voting for genocide. I shouldn’t be surprised when some of them actually use it to feel morally superior to people who are directly affected.

That part makes enough sense to me on its own, but what do they mean by not caring about “fellow Muslims”, and what connection are they trying to make between those ideas? It’s clear enough that it’s some racist bullshit, but I’m trying to figure out what it’s supposed to mean to other liberals, and it still just sounds like stringing words together. Maybe I’m expecting too much from liberals but I figured there would be something specific that prompted this.

I seriously can’t understand what the quoted tweet is supposed to mean. It seems like they’re just randomly mashing ideas together? I tried to read the article, but the tweet was deleted, and the account you can see in the screenshot is a content firehose, so I couldn’t find what this is about. Are they actually trying to apply the “Trump would kill n+1 Gazans” argument as a way to shame muslims, and then pinning that on homophobia based on nothing? Even for racist scratched liberals, this seems like incoherent nonsense. Am I missing something, or are they already panicking that badly

I’m glad Mr. Sanders understands that getting on a bus is like voting. You absolutely need to get on the bus that’s doing a little less genocide. If you get turned around, you can always tell which bus that is because it’s the one with Dick Cheney on it.

If you’re trying to flip it instead of pick it up, you only have to lift half the weight, so maybe a strong one could, if the forks could handle all the weight being on the end. Sawed off forklift maybe?

Does it really help much for your house to have power for an hour if you’re counting on a cybertruck owner to act as an electrician and not fry your wiring and then leave his truck dead, blocking your driveway?

Why would a vertical crane cast a shadow in a different direction than an angled crane? Shadows always point in the same direction, obviously. The sneaky ccp must be up to something…

If you take the test after seeing this post, that was a reaction. It’s too late for you, regardless of the result.

TRUMP kevlar ear covers now available folks, I wear them, they’re the best. People said I shouldn’t wear these, they showed me a diagram of a plane with all these red dots on it, and they told me I couldn’t put armor where the dots are, can you believe that? They said you can’t put armor on the red dots because people might get offended. Well folks I don’t care what they say I’m putting the armor where the bullets go.

My theory is that deplorables is based on outrage, and was part of the 2016 strategy of the dems making a show of how shocked they were at all the norms trump was breaking, which was completely ineffective. Weird has an air of just pointing out the obvious, and can be done in a detached way when appropriate, and that’s spreading much better.

And I think 3 is a big part of it. Not that the chuds weren’t unhinged in 2016, but at the time the moment they were having was getting to say the extreme parts of standard conservatism out loud. What was a fringe position then still generally had a short pathway back to well worn conservative talking points if it got too much attention. But they’ve been chasing the feeling of taking the presidency for eight years, and they’ve spun themselves out into positions that they really can’t explain to anyone who didn’t go on that journey with them, so weird works now in a way it wouldn’t have then.

Yeah, I think this is a topic that has room for and is worth a lot of discussion. With this issue, what someone means by ‘using guilt’ can be anything from explaining the consequences of someone’s actions and letting them draw their own conclusions, to ‘bringing down a mountain of Divine Shame’. And sometime people will argue those back and forth as if they’re talking about the same thing.

I wanted to defend the post as having a good point, while definitely having to be incomplete to fit into a short tumblr post. I was glad to be a part of expanding on it in this thread.

I think the emphasis on “keep it in proportion” is trying to acknowledge that there’s a deeper discussion to be had there without getting too sidetracked from the main point of the post. To get in to that discussion, I would say that shame is not a tool to be used, but effectively handling a situation where a child has caused significant harm (maybe not swearing, but something more serious) is going to involve some amount of guilt or shame.

Sometimes children misbehave because they have to, but often it’s because they don’t understand why what they did is wrong, or that there’s a better way to act. If someone can explain these things, a small, appropriate amount of guilt can make the lesson much more memorable.

This takes a lot of skill, and understanding of the situation the kid is in, how they are feeling, and how they are reacting. Many people don’t follow this, and they can cause more harm doing it badly. But trying to educate someone after they’ve done something wrong while avoiding causing them any guilt at all is not going to be very effective. And reserving shame or guilt only for people you’ve declared to be lost causes is not a healthy approach.

Every day he doesn’t drop out strengthens the argument of “it’s too late, it would cause too much chaos” so he would be stupid not to string everyone along as long as he can

Overhearing someone at a loud party describing what a pride flag is, and then designing my homophobe pride shirt

And it turns out you’re not Show more

I thought I was Show more

Biden, and the democratic party more broadly have two roles to play (outside of maintaining capitalism).

1. Oppose Trump and the republican party
2. Crush, discredit, or co-opt any other organizations that could threaten their monopoly on opposition to the republican party.

When it’s time to fulfill role 1. the party always hedges, because they fear that taking any strong actions will alienate centrist voters, or more importantly donors. This means that on many issues, any progress made is not enough to undo the damage done under a republican government. On other issues the situation declines under either party. There are very few significant issues where the democrats are actually able to overcome the republicans long term.

All of this is very disappointing, but on its own it would still be preferable to republicans ruling completely unopposed.

The problem is when you factor in role 2. The republicans are not an unstoppable force of highly competent and well liked people. A party that was dedicated to taking serious actions to improve the lives of the average voter could easily beat the republicans electorally, if they wouldn’t also have to take on the democratic party and all of their media influence. When the democrats pursue role 2. they have no reason to hold back. Their continued existence relies on giving it their full effort. They will try to prevent any organization from accumulating enough power to push them left, while actively pushing the republicans to the far right to strengthen their own position.

Having to choose between two terrible candidates isn’t something that’s happened on accident. It’s the result of the ongoing actions of the democratic party.

At this point, with the ticking clocks of climate change and rising fascism, a democrat in the white house is not remotely adequate to make a difference. We’re headed to multiple simultaneous catastrophes either way. The only thing voting for Biden accomplishes is supporting the party that brought us here in clinging to power until their last breath.

Right now there is no ‘realistic’ alternative outside of the two party electoral system. I don’t know if there will be one in the future, but there’s certainly no hope in helping to reinforce it.