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I have no problem with people feeling pride about their immutable characteristics. Scottish and proud? Excellent, go put on a kilt and throw one of those giant poles; looks fun! I have a problem when “pride” is used to organize people against a vulnerable minority. So sure, enjoy your super straight free beer with a bar full of other totally straight cis men and talk about… Idk sports or something. However, given the current political climate it seems to me like this is likely a way to gather people resentful of LGBT pride’s efforts to claim equal rights. So it isn’t a gathering of proud straight men, it is likely a gathering of bitter hateful men.

LGBT pride exists to fight for equal rights and representation that cis-hetero people enjoy by default; it isn’t meant to gain an upper hand or displace cis-hetero people. Far-right extremists like to paint the movement’s goals as a way to erase white straight cis culture, but this is just reactionary propaganda to mobilize people against this minority group.

They think that first amendment rights mean that they get to be minor tyrants over their class? It is the right to speech, not the right to a fiefdom.

For real. It really is a statement about the quality of that school of their philosophy professors can’t understand the non-agression principle, or bodily autonomy, or where one persons rights ends and the other’s begins… Apparently don’t send your kids to school in Texas.

Agree. When I was in University professors took the stance that we are paying for this so if we want to skip what we are paying for, that’s our problem. We were adults and responsible for our own time management.

Most professors were researchers first and educators second so they didn’t really want to be there either…

I thought he was a “free speech absolutist”

What about as a political statement? Isn’t that still protected speech? You republicans made masking/not masking a political act, don’t blame me.

Not all trans women pass. It takes a combination of the genetic lottery, a lot of money, time, and work to pass. Not everyone has that luck nor those resources. Nonbinary folks are also put in a no-win situation.

This has nothing to do with bathrooms, privacy, or “protecting women.” The entire intent of laws like these is to attack trans people and make it effectively illegal to be trans in public. Fascists need a minority enemy in order to maintain power and we are their latest favourite punching bag.

EV weight is a legitimate concern both in terms of road and tire wear. However, this is a problem more generally given the current market trend towards driving a siege tower around to go grab some groceries.

If he cared about the grid he’d put solar panels up.

Hybrids: am I a joke to you?

Birth control, education and empowerment of women, and secularization. Not genocide. We either do that or we continue on thoughtlessly growing our population until we exceed what the earth can support at our given technological level. Then people will starve, thus decreasing the population with maximum suffering.

It’s just capitalism. Longer work hours. So-called “news” agencies that profit off of fearmongering and division make us mistrust our neighbors and strangers. Streaming, TV, and gaming companies make money from us spending time at home looking at a screen. Our modern economy forces many people to leave their he towns to find employment. No support network for parents so parents become incredibly isolated and burnt out by having to do everything themselves whereas preindustrial people had a whole tribe to raise the youth.

Logging in on the weekend reinforces this norm. If people see you are online, it lessens any cognitive dissonance they have with the voice in the back of their head saying “this is some bullshit, this is my day off.”

Either:

Embryos are people and they should never be destroyed, so IVF and abortion should be illegal.

OR

Embryos are not people and your right to choose what happens to your body is paramount. Therefore, abortions and IVF should be legal.

Which is it?

A “fun” game when reading quotes from bigots is to swap out “gender ideology” with “bodily autonomy” to realize how absurd, hateful, and fascist the message really is. That’s really what we’re talking about; being trans isn’t a choice but expressing your true gender is somewhat* a choice you make with your body and aesthetic. Fascists don’t want people to have freedom, they want to have power over you for power’s sake. The pushback against “gender ideology” isn’t the reasoned philosophic debate that they want it to sound like, it’s a war against already-marginalized people. It’s “a boot stamping on a human face” because power is both the means and the ends for these fucks. Anyone supporting these assholes should ask themselves what happens if they finally succeed to stamp out the queer menace. Fascists’ continued existence requires another group to persecute and if history is any guide it will be religious minorities, racial minorities, political rivals, etc. until the world is empty and there is no “fruitful ‘tension” that Pope Franky states that he values so much aside from the powerful and those that they decided to keep as slaves.

*somewhat because for many the choice is transition or suicide

Did you even read this article? Frank made his stance very clear that he is making trans people his enemy.

Yes, this. I wore makeup and spent all day in the wood shop yesterday. We better burn down society so that isn’t allowed. Never mind that the world is literally burning and homelessness is rampant even in the richest cities. Don’t look at that, look over here at the queer person!

“today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences”

Well I’m glad he said the misogynistic part out loud. In a religion in which only men can hold power, blurring the lines between who can be a man undermines their power structure. They see women as inferior chattel and the strict gender binary allows them to enforce their hegemony. I suppose the pope thinks that LGBT* people around the world being murdered and persecuted is a good thing as long as the cis white straight men get to stay in power.

Your position is a joke, and everyone with 2 brain cells can tell that it can only exist by enslaving half of the population and trying to murder another 2%. Like any good tiny dictator, you don’t inspire respect for people to follow you, you reach for the cudgel of violence, and make no mistake, your words inspire violence just as much as if you lit the torches yourself. Your god will judge you accordingly.

The current car market is due for a shakeup. I think new cars are WAY too big, have lots of spyware, and are too expensive. If I go EV, I’ll probably do a conversion for my old compact car, there are starting to be a few crate motors out there.