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Posts
4
Comments
15
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • That's a good question. In fact, I think just yesterday on reddit the front page had a photo of a sign at a public bath in China saying something along the lines of "No homosexual men allowed", with top comments hypothesizing it was probably more about banning unwanted or public sex acts than homophobia itself.

    I assert that this kind of gender segregation is usually about deterring sexualization (and even sexual violence). This is the case for spas, locker rooms, toilets, or even more general places like gyms. My basic position is that being able to deter unwanted sexualization is a useful goal for many reasons, but that's a rudimentary attempt to solve it. At best, I'd say it's a coping mechanism which should be understood as such. So I don't believe they must immediately be abolished, that might be utopian, we need to begin mainstreaming a culture that would enable these sexist institutions to be abolished.

    But ultimately:

    • They're a product of heteronormativity. Obviously there are plenty of people attracted to the same gender who won't be deterred by this.
    • They're a product of normalized sexual abuse in culture. There's a "common sense" that if you put men and women in the same room in a state of undress, then abuse will happen. But we know that's not some ultimate "human nature"! It's a result of culture and social structure. Consider nudist groups and nudist society as a direct counterpoint to the cultural sexualization of nudity.
  • >Of course, we do support this LGBT movement. That is, 'Let's Go Bomb Tel-Aviv.'

  • I've heard on other forums that left-gamergate actually pulled in a few people from the pipeline. ggrevolt rings a bell, but I was never interested in the gg drama.

  • My politics could be summed up as “leave me alone” like a lot of young men and no one would just leave him alone.

    Sounds like perhaps your politics was "leave each other alone", and I think that's a huge difference. (Or am I projecting?)

  • I was in the orbit for a while, came close at times, but never quite there. I was very much into transgressive and edgy humor, all the bad stuff, but it just gradually fades away when one realizes that these topics are serious, that the people making these jokes believe them and aren't just being ridiculous and absurd. At the end of the day, I grew up with egalitarian beliefs and love, I was simply ignorant of political news and struggle until adulthood.

    Luckily for me, I wasn't very interested in gaming, could not care less about GG and ignored almost everything about it. By the way, there are still active GG discussion groups way out in the trash heaps of the internet. What a waste of human life.

    Got caught in a few reddit potholes in the early teens. Subreddits like /r/sjwhate and /r/fatpeoplehate. Plus the /r/nofap broscience, which was easier to fall into because I coincidentally had a medical condition that impacted my sexuality. After a while I managed to abstain for three and four months to see if it would help (spoiler: it didn't). I also had a look into pick-up communities during high school, like /r/seduction, but never got into any of the anti-feminism and grifter stuff.

    4chan during teen years, mainly hobby boards (some art boards had a reputation for being more left-leaning than the rest of the site), more-or-less left the site around 2017. I probably still have a rare Pepe saved from 2013, and grew tired of them before they started being mentioned at high school. I even spent some time on a few select feels threads on the robot board, but was what they label a 'cyborg' - didn't quite fit in with normal people, nor with the bitter incel crowd. Not completely alienated.

    In fact I was in a few 8ch communities. None of the /pol/shit, and wasn't interested in /leftypol/ at the time. But apart from the occasional /pol/vangelist spammer and some screeching anti-SJW idiots on /tech/ (the whole Covenant Code of Conduct drama, and general crying about trans developers and Indian people), there wasn't anything alt-right about my experience there. And I was mature enough by then to see the anti-SJW drama nerds and bigots for the clowns they are, I just ignored or laughed at them. Luckily I eventually shifted over to Lainchan, who (at least at the time) banned people who spilled the soykaf. (no, I still haven't watched SEL)

    That was around the time I got a full-time professional job near 2020, /r/worldnews had a lot of Bernie fans talking about socialism, /r/latestagecapitalism was a part of my on-ramp. I also got into /r/conspiracy for a few months, but that dried up as it became more and more dominated by nonsense like pizzagate and absolute nonsense theories. Their list of confirmed conspiracies was interesting and may still hold up (I haven't checked), included things like MKULTRA and Western military history of testing nuclear and chemical weapons on civilians and in range of civilian infrastructure, wasn't just right wing trash.

    Joined an edgy 4chan-adjacent online art group just as most of the remaining members were pulling each other out of the alt-pipeline and becoming socialists and communists. As fascinating (and prolific) as their story was, I'm sworn to secrecy; we have an extensive history of stalkers.

    I had near misses but I came away mostly fine and with a good set of friends. One of my co-workers, on the other hand, had a former-friend at school try to groom them into fascism, they got close to the edge before seeing what the future holds for those freaks and gtfo'd of the pipeline.

  • Now I find the ideas are more important than the visuals, so even when visuals are involved it’s more about the scene or idea than just the visuals.

    So, what you're definitely definitely definitely saying is men should send unsolicited pictures of a warmly-lit room sprinkled with drinks and candles instead of their naked crotch.

  • Thanks for the fast and detailed reply!

    I think we can’t choose to be binary or non-binary, just like cis people can’t choose to suddenly be the opposite sex and be trans.

    I think it's a bit more complex. I agree that there's clearly a deep-seated aspect of identity below consciousness that can't simply be changed through conversion.

    On the other hand, I fit neatly into one of the two main sexes and most of my behavior comfortably fits the gender associated with it. Most people would consider me a plain old cis, so people don't ask me about my gender. I casually identify as non-binary but this is ultimately political or philosophical, I don't feel uncomfortable with the gender imposed on me by society, but nor does it feel validating or "right". I just see the gender binary and its two genders as a factually incorrect model. If someone misgendered me, I'd only be offended if it was meant as an insult. If I crossdress, I don't feel right or wrong. (I might be nervous that some idiot on the street will be offended and bother/attack me, but that's external, that's a society issue, not a me issue.)

    And I wonder if this is a social product of my family and friends (relatively progressive, less traditional/religious, laid-back) or if, like you suggested, there's a biological element to this which just isn't strong in me, like how some asexual people are missing the sexual drive that most people have, perhaps I'm missing some gender link that is 'normal'.

    So, maybe my own experience leads me to be ignorant about experiences like yours, where gender identity is affirming.

    While I can see there are many problems with gender, I don’t think trans people should feel primarily responsible for those problems.

    I agree, certainly not! I hope I didn't come of as suggesting binary identity was a horrible sin. I admit I'm being particular and nitpicky, even idealistic with this question. And exactly as you said we should grant trans people space in their struggle, which is in many cases a struggle for survival.

  • Are there any self-identities which you would consider invalid? Transracial identity? Otherkin? Insincere trans identity, such as the recent case of Liebich, a transphobic neo-Nazi who legally identified as a trans woman seemingly just to avoid men's prison? Which of these should be contested and which should be validated?

    I personally think transracial identity is particularly interesting when one considers that race is a fluid social concept rather than an objective concept like genetics (see how in the US and Europe different peoples have historically changed from being considered 'black' to being considered 'white' over time, see how a person can be considered a race in one society and a different race in another society, such as "mixed-race" people or people with ancestry from the edges of continents). Unfortunately most of the examples of transracialism I'm aware of are cases where deception or fame played a large part in compounding criticism, such as Dolezal and Korla Pandit, leading to claims of their transracial identity being exploitation.

  • To what degree do you believe is binary transgender identity appropriate? Does it validate the false gender dichotomy of the common mainstream binary model of gender (and sex)?

    Is it unfair to see it as unfortunate and ignorant, or to see it as a realist mechanism to adapt gender transgression to a binary society? (e.g. where a society doesn't have any real recognition of non-binary identity, or where it's just easier for 99% of people to understand "M->F/F->M" over non-binary identity)

  • I am friends with the captains of these teams and the people running these events. I'm not talking about big 1000-person things. These are groups of a dozen people who get no money or monetizable data from it.

  • I always ended up ban after a fews days because of “suspicious activities” (probably because of VPN or PiHole)

    I remember trying to make a fake account with friends for fun many years ago when we I learned about thispersondoesnotexist. Got ID-blocked within a few hours for sus acts, probably less because of the VPN and more because we started friend requesting dozens of strangers and set our birthplace to a food court.

  • but you do have to provide your phone number.

    I managed to used a non-KYC SMS service to register a FB account, only took 2 tries and they refund the failed one. If I'm lucky, I won't get pinged after a few days like @borokov did.

  • Just out of interest: what’s on FB messenger

    It's the first line of the post ;)

  • use alternatives, like Signal, [Fedi alteratives], Matrix, etc

    I do. There are some social situations I want to be a part of where that's just not possible to demand.

  • if you sign-up using a VPN

    If this is the case for FB, I can try a public WiFi for signup and hopefully it won't bother me if I switch to a VPN after (it will already be obvious which city I live in from the people and events I interact with, the VPN would just be for a small extra layer of isolation)

    I assume fake AI-gen faces won't work?

  • Privacy @lemmy.ml

    Want to sign up to Facebook/Meta Messenger, how can I mitigate the privacy invasion as much as possible?

  • AskTransgender @lemmy.blahaj.zone

    What are some other names for the LGBTQIA+ community/movement?

  • Privacy @lemmy.ml

    I use VPNs, can I still make a throwaway on Reddit?