This is way late, but it needs to be said. Jenny from Forrest Gump. She gets so much goddamn flak from people who have seen the movie. It’s like they tuned out completely at the normal human experience just because they think Forrest is adorable. Jenny didn’t think she was in love with Forrest because she thought she was taking advantage of him the same way her father molested her. For fucks sake, Forrest is retarded. Jenny, out of everyone who’s ever met him, knows this best of all. She knows that her closest friend and only loved one is a fucking idiot. Imagine that. Imagine for one second that the only person who was always kind to you was someone who didn’t know any better. Everyone in the world who knew about your father looked at you either as a victim or as something disgusting, but that one man doesn’t. And it’s because he’s retarded. Jenny doesn’t think that way at the start. As a kid, she just thinks he’s different and is just glad to have a friend. But as she gets older, especially as a teenager, she realizes that her closest friend will never mature like she does. He loves her like he would anything and everything else, so long as its nice or cuddly, like a pet or a sibling, at least in her mind. Her father treated her like shit, and there was no way in hell others didn’t do the same when they found out she was molested. She would have wanted to feel loved. That’s where she gets the abusive relationship crap. She wants so much to be loved that she doesn’t understand that they are taking advantage of her. She thinks that as long as they aren’t forcing her to have sex, that’s normal. Getting beat on, pressured to drug addiction, and dragged around into whatever dangerously extreme political bands they’re into is just fine, as long as they don’t rape her. That’s why she’s so shocked when Forrest defends her from harm. Why would anyone do that if what they’re doing to her is normal? She keeps leaving Forrest behind because she convinces herself that he doesn’t really love her. She convinces herself that his affections are shallow, since he would never be able to really understand love either. I mean really, how many of you honestly think someone who is that mentally challenged could understand the complexities and nuances of love? There’s no way they could. What they have is something simple, and Jenny doesn’t think that could be real. And even IF she believed he could, even IF she got out of that abusive cycle, she knows better. FFS, if that scene with Forrest and her in her college dormroom had the genders reversed, people would be so fucking uncomfortable about that scene because it’d be inching so close to rape. Jenny knows that. She realizes that. That is why she shuts off her feelings for Forrest, above any other reasons to stay away: she thinks she is molesting him. She saw how uncomfortable he was when she did that and thought holy fuck, what the hell am I doing? Can you imagine how twisted you must feel after realizing in that moment that you turned into the father who molested you? How the fuck can you love yourself after doing that to your best friend, when you know what that’s like? Would you ever let yourself get close to them again if you really cared about them? So Jenny kept running away. Every time Forrest gets close and saves her, she runs off before she falters. She won’t let herself get near him, and as the movie goes on, she fails a little more each time. First she blows him off after the strip club, telling him to stay away. Then she walks with him in DC, but still leaves with her boyfriend. Then she stays with him in his house and finally sleeps with him, after that one critical moment. When he tells her he does know what love is, and asks her why she doesn’t love him. She finally gives in and does sleep with him, but can you imagine thinking afterwards? Would you, in her shoes, with absolute and unwavering certainty, think you did the right thing? Or would you be afraid that you did exactly what you had been avoiding because you do actually care that much about him? So she runs away. She hides her child from him, because she thinks he shouldn’t have to worry or pay for something he can’t handle. She thinks she’s wronged him, and the least she could do is set things right by raising a good child, without dragging him down. And then she gets sick. Doctors don’t know what it is, but she’s going to die. Her kid is only a few years old. Can you imagine struggling with that decision to tell your victim that they have a kid and now they have to take care of it because you’re going to die? That’s what she struggles with before coming to terms with the fact that she’s happy with him, and he’s happy with her, and that’s what love actually is. It’s something simple and unconditional, and even Forrest can understand it. It takes her her whole goddamn life to figure out that love is just that simple, and she dies months afterwards. She realized she had been running away from what made her happy, and it isn’t wrong, and she only gets so much time together before it’s over. And instead of realizing that narrative even exists in the story, people just bitch about how Jenny is such a slut, but she won’t even love the only person who cares about her. Jenny always loved Forrest, during the whole fucking movie. She loved him so much, she thought she was taking advantage of him and ran away for his sake. She didn’t realize she was wrong until it was almost too late. Fuck, that’s depressing.
I never saw it like that, but damn you’re spot on. She was running from Forrest because he could never understand love, but in reality it was her who didn’t understand
Jenny from Forrest Gump. She gets so much goddamn flak from people who have seen the movie. It’s like they tuned out completely at the normal human experience just because they think Forrest is adorable.
Jenny didn’t think she was in love with Forrest because she thought she was taking advantage of him the same way her father molested her.
For fucks sake, Forrest is retarded. Jenny, out of everyone who’s ever met him, knows this best of all. She knows that her closest friend and only loved one is a fucking idiot. Imagine that. Imagine for one second that the only person who was always kind to you was someone who didn’t know any better. Everyone in the world who knew about your father looked at you either as a victim or as something disgusting, but that one man doesn’t.
And it’s because he’s retarded.
Jenny doesn’t think that way at the start. As a kid, she just thinks he’s different and is just glad to have a friend. But as she gets older, especially as a teenager, she realizes that her closest friend will never mature like she does. He loves her like he would anything and everything else, so long as its nice or cuddly, like a pet or a sibling, at least in her mind. Her father treated her like shit, and there was no way in hell others didn’t do the same when they found out she was molested. She would have wanted to feel loved.
That’s where she gets the abusive relationship crap. She wants so much to be loved that she doesn’t understand that they are taking advantage of her. She thinks that as long as they aren’t forcing her to have sex, that’s normal. Getting beat on, pressured to drug addiction, and dragged around into whatever dangerously extreme political bands they’re into is just fine, as long as they don’t rape her. That’s why she’s so shocked when Forrest defends her from harm. Why would anyone do that if what they’re doing to her is normal?
She keeps leaving Forrest behind because she convinces herself that he doesn’t really love her. She convinces herself that his affections are shallow, since he would never be able to really understand love either. I mean really, how many of you honestly think someone who is that mentally challenged could understand the complexities and nuances of love? There’s no way they could. What they have is something simple, and Jenny doesn’t think that could be real.
And even IF she believed he could, even IF she got out of that abusive cycle, she knows better. FFS, if that scene with Forrest and her in her college dormroom had the genders reversed, people would be so fucking uncomfortable about that scene because it’d be inching so close to rape. Jenny knows that. She realizes that. That is why she shuts off her feelings for Forrest, above any other reasons to stay away: she thinks she is molesting him. She saw how uncomfortable he was when she did that and thought holy fuck, what the hell am I doing?
Can you imagine how twisted you must feel after realizing in that moment that you turned into the father who molested you? How the fuck can you love yourself after doing that to your best friend, when you know what that’s like? Would you ever let yourself get close to them again if you really cared about them?
So Jenny kept running away. Every time Forrest gets close and saves her, she runs off before she falters. She won’t let herself get near him, and as the movie goes on, she fails a little more each time. First she blows him off after the strip club, telling him to stay away. Then she walks with him in DC, but still leaves with her boyfriend. Then she stays with him in his house and finally sleeps with him, after that one critical moment.
When he tells her he does know what love is, and asks her why she doesn’t love him.
She finally gives in and does sleep with him, but can you imagine thinking afterwards? Would you, in her shoes, with absolute and unwavering certainty, think you did the right thing? Or would you be afraid that you did exactly what you had been avoiding because you do actually care that much about him?
So she runs away. She hides her child from him, because she thinks he shouldn’t have to worry or pay for something he can’t handle. She thinks she’s wronged him, and the least she could do is set things right by raising a good child, without dragging him down.
And then she gets sick. Doctors don’t know what it is, but she’s going to die. Her kid is only a few years old. Can you imagine struggling with that decision to tell your victim that they have a kid and now they have to take care of it because you’re going to die? That’s what she struggles with before coming to terms with the fact that she’s happy with him, and he’s happy with her, and that’s what love actually is. It’s something simple and unconditional, and even Forrest can understand it.
It takes her her whole goddamn life to figure out that love is just that simple, and she dies months afterwards. She realized she had been running away from what made her happy, and it isn’t wrong, and she only gets so much time together before it’s over.
And instead of realizing that narrative even exists in the story, people just bitch about how Jenny is such a slut, but she won’t even love the only person who cares about her. Jenny always loved Forrest, during the whole fucking movie. She loved him so much, she thought she was taking advantage of him and ran away for his sake. She didn’t realize she was wrong until it was almost too late.
Fuck, that’s depressing.
EDIT: Obligatory gushing, but actually I just wanted to add a TL;DR:
TL;DR: Jenny thought she was molesting Forrest because he couldn’t understand what love is, so she either suppressed her feelings or ran away.
Second EDIT: I want to make things clear, I in no way am the author of this post. I am not op, I copied this from someone on Reddit who copied it from another user on Reddit.
I’m cis. I’m a cis man with a exclusive sexual interest in cis women. I find the term very helpful to express very clearly who I am and what I want. I can’t imagine being so delicate as to lose my shit over being called cis.
I find the word as displeasing as some people find ‘moist’, but I’m entitled to an opinion. Am I going to wave a sign around and demonstrate over it despite thinking it was promoted for its potential to upset the victim? Of course not: it’s just a stupid name and I’ve been called far worse by better drill sergeants. There’s a lot of room in there between disliking something and “losing my shit over” it, and it will help respecting others if you understand that.
You think it’s reasonable to be offended by the words “moist” and “cis”?
People who are offended by being called “cis” are often the same people who have spent their lives labelling everyone else because of a misguided sense of superiority. Being called “cis” bursts that bubble of, “you can’t label me because I one of us, not one of them.” Those people need to get the fuck over themselves.
When someone uses the words f-ggot or d-ke or tr-nny or the words cis or breeder or the N word or bloodmouth or carnist or corpsemuncher or any one of the other words that fanatics or extremists use I know exactly what they are and I stop giving the first fuck about anything they say.
EdIT: Do you know why this comment is being downvoted? It’s because the members of the fanatical groups that I listed in my last paragraph resent being lumped in with the members of the other fanatical groups I listed. Each one of them believes that they are morally pure and supperior and that the others are not. They can’t see that they are making the exact same intellectual error in believing that they are pure and superior and that everything they say and do is justified. Anti-LBGTQ extremists and pro-LGBTQ absolutists are the same. Different beliefs and targets but the intellectual mistake that they make is exactly the same.
They didn’t even say he found it offending. Just that they found it displeasing.
They then spent the rest of the comment talking about how they keep it to themself and doesn’t attack or act otherwise negatively to people who use them. The way a healthy person handles such things.
Meanwhile you’re the one actually flying off the handle and getting offended by this. I would suggest some introspection as to why you’re so bothered by a random comment on the internet like that.
What part of, “I’m a cis man who has a preference for cis women” sounds fragile to you? I am very clearly comfortable in my own identity and very clear in what I like.
People who are offended by being called "cis" are often the same people who have spent their lives labelling everyone else because of a misguided sense of superiority.
I’m cis. I’m a cis man with a exclusive sexual interest in cis women.
Here. Unless you know for certainty that you can 100 percent correctly identify every person you meet as cis or trans, you wouldn’t have the knowledge to confidently make that statement.
I have very clearly stated that I am exclusively interested in cis women. Are you suggesting that a trans person would ignore my very clearly stated preference and lie to me in order to have sex with me?
I very clearly stated my preference. You’re trying to use pedantic arguments to invalidate my clearly stated preference. Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t be allowed to have a preference or that people who don’t like that preference or don’t think I should have that preference should be allowed to simply ignore my preference?
I think that your “preference” is based on very sloppy thinking rooted in ambient transphobia. I think you are also confusing a desire for precision of thought with being pedantic.
I think you’re trying to imply that preferences are neutral facts. I think you should consider how you’d react to someone saying “I am only attracted to white women” or “I am only attracted to 18 y/o women”. Do you think their preference is a neutral fact or an expression of something?
Oh, also, expression of “preference” is different than having a preference. Ask why you felt the need to say it in this thread.
At minimum keep it to yourself. Ask yourself what the utility of saying it is. Because what I read is “I support trans people but I still find them gross personally because if I don’t say that people will think I’m a f*g”
So you’re telling me that I should stay in the closet because you don’t like my chosen lifestyle?
Do you hear what you’re saying?
Ask yourself what the utility of saying it is.
The meme was about people who use “cis” as an insult and the people who find it insulting. My comment completely disarms the fanatics who use “cis” as a slur by embracing the word the way that it was originally intended to be used AND by using it in a way that those fanatics don’t like.
This is an utterly ridiculous straw man. Literally worthy of ridicule. These are bad arguments and you should be ashamed to have made them.
Yeah, let me just page up all the trans and feminist academics writing on stigma theory as it relates to misogyny and transmisogyny and let them know that they are wrong, that cis men are never afraid of being tainted by an association with women or queer people
Or maybe you’re just wrong and defensive, which is 1000 times worse than just being wrong and learning from being wrong, which is a normal human thing.
When your online ego isn’t on the line I’d suggest reading Sexed Up by Julie Serano.
Well read on transmisogyny? How do you want me to point out to you that you’re incorrect? Like, earnestly, what is the right way to point out to someone that they’re being bigoted when they don’t know they’re being bigoted?
I know more on this than you
on a personal level- plenty of men hit on me and then when I speak in my non-passing voice to let them know I’m a lesbian react with disgust. Men who say they’d never be attracted to a trans woman have had no problem aggressively hitting on me
On an academic level- I’ve read a lot of feminist works on misogyny, and works on how transmisogyny operates.
You haven’t done enough study on the topic to have an opinion that you should personally stand by.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak?
What do you mean by my preferences? I am annoyed when people spout bullshit that they don’t understand is bullshit and then get defensive when you tell them they’re wrong, stop playing the victim.
Could you possibly be any more egotistical? You are really full of yourself.
I understand completely that I am a cis man and that my sexual preference is for cis women. Why are you trying to force your beliefs down my throat? What defect of personality is it that makes you think that you should decide what I’m allowed to like?
I’m not being defensive. I don’t give the first fuck what you think I should like. I’m just trying to help you to understand how utterly toxic you are.
Yeah, I’m the egotistical one, not the cis guy trying to explain why it isn’t actually transmisogyny to a trans woman who has studied and experienced this specific form of transmisogyny.
You aren’t some static being where people attempting to change your mind about something you haven’t investigated is some violation. If that is what it feels like to you maybe you need to do some self reflection, because what I am describing to you is literally just the process of learning.
Edit: also men like you love to force your preference on me. Do you know how many times I’ve been cornered (because some men like to do that when hitting on someone) and had to be there for a man’s significant emotional event after realizing he was attracted to a trans woman? This is me being proactive so some trans woman doesn’t have to deal with your freak out if you end up hitting on a trans woman.
Are lesbians bad because they don’t want to suck cock
I know plenty of cis and trans lesbians who love to suck cock. Just not men’s cocks.
And I am equally suspicious of lesbians who are like “trans men are an exception” because they generally either treat trans men like shit or realize they’re bi but only interested in dating and fucking other queer folks.
Yes, it is you who is egotistical because you believe that you should be able to dictate to me what I should like.
Not dictating to you what you should like, pointing out that what you’re saying doesn’t actually make sense when it comes to interacting with women in real life and not just looking up porn categories.
Yeah, I’m defective for having experienced your “preferences” in other men resulting in men being really scary to me upon those men being rejected, and wanting to explain to you that men making sweeping claims about attraction to trans women can put trans women in danger when reality doesn’t match up so neatly.
Plus all the connection to stigma culture that reinforces transphobia but that is less acute.
Yeah, I’m defective for having experienced your “preferences” in other men resulting in men being really scary to me upon being rejected, and wanting to explain to you that men making sweeping claims about attraction to trans women can put trans women in danger when reality doesn’t match up so neatly.
You have never experience, “my preferences” because we have never met. You’re lumping me in with the men that you’ve had bad experiences with which is unfair. I am very much a friend to the LGBTQ+ community. I am perfectly comfortable to say, “I’m flattered but I’m not interested” and I have done so more than once. For me, that’s the end of it. No drama. Given the very diverse community I run in (I wrote in another comment that, “my wife is bisexual, my sister is bisexual, my daughter is a lesbian, my son and daughter both have non-binary and trans friends who I regularly spend time with, I have gay friends and lesbian friends, I was a member of the wedding party at a same sex wedding, I am friends with a local transmasc, and I’ve had a pair of transfem friends for more than 50 years.”) I find it very useful to be able to say, “Here is who I am and here is who I’m interested in.” The people around me seem to appreciate that rather than resent it. Why would you want to pursue someone who said that they weren’t interested in you? I don’t try to talk lesbians into be interested in me, that would be the height of arrogance on my part.
Plus all the connection to stigma culture that reinforces transphobia but that is less acute.
I am not transphobic. Labelling anyone who doesn’t agree with your world view as transphobic really devalues anything else you have to say. I like redheads. I like big butts. I like small boobs. That doesn’t mean that I’m brunettephobic or blondephobic or small bottom or big boob phobic.
I’ve seen you around before and know you’re acting in good faith, and I believe you’re an ally, or at least a potential ally, to the trans community.
I’m chiming in here because I replied to OurToothbrush earlier to give her a cis-het male ally’s perspective, and suggest that she might have more success with a less confrontational strategy.
She suggested I might have better luck explaining her objection to you, or at least that she would appreciate me trying to help you understand her point.
Both your comments are coming fast and furious so I’m trying to respond to your latest.
So here goes:
Your basic point was that you’re exclusively interested in cis-women, and that this is a preference you have, everyone is entitled to preferences so what’s the big deal. It doesn’t mean you’re not an ally.
Life is complex. Just as there’s nobody that’s purely “racially white” (race isn’t real, but that’s beside the point, or maybe it is the point…), there’s nobody that’s purely female or male. Obviously most people’s bodies develop either testicles or ovaries not both, but: there is a sizable portion of the population where it’s not so clear cut. Ultimately: Every person has mutations in their DNA that skew their body towards and away from what’s considered masculine/feminine.
While sexual orientation towards masculine/feminine people doesn’t seem to be strongly influenced by culture (ie I don’t think you can raise a kid to be gay), what a person perceives to be masculine/feminine/trans IS strongly a product of their culture and conditioning.
Viewing sexuality and gender through the framework I laid out above and considering her experiences may help you understand why OurToothbrush sees transphobia where you see sexual preference.
OurToothbrush’s experience seems to be that lots of ‘cis-het-men’ say they aren’t attracted to trans-women, but are in fact attracted to trans-women like her. When they discover that she is a trans-woman they have very negative reactions. Since the (former) suitors were attracted to her until they guessed she was assigned male at birth, but before they had learned the status of her genitalia, how can she conclude anything other than transphobia? Do you see how their reaction is basically the same as your statement?
I pointed out to her that transphobia and homophobia are beaten into men/boys and if they have a negative reaction to learning that a women that they’re attracted to was assigned male at birth, it doesn’t mean they aren’t allies, just that they haven’t unlearned that phobic conditioning. It’s a type of internalized latent transphobia that has infected me too. I don’t dwell on it because as a person in a committed monogamous relationship for over half of my life, it is unlikely to matter, and I suspect it would be a monumental undertaking to unlearn. The effort is better spent healing rifts between allies.
Can you understand why when someone says “I’m exclusively interested in cis-women” a person with OurToothbrush’s experiences might hear “trans-women are gross”.
Tldr; I think I see where you’re both coming from. We cis-het-men are notoriously fragile, especially when our allyship is questioned. I think it will be more effective for people trying to point out people’s latent transphobia to take an educational/ collaborative tone at first, and it’s something I’m going to try to do a better job of helping people understand.
Honestly, thank you two for having this spat so that I could map it out in my head better, I’m not sure I’ve done the best job typing it out though. You’re both welcome to tell me to fuck off.
Thanks for taking the time to write. I wrote in a different thread here that I do not find male bodies attractive and that I had never met a transfem whose body I found attractive. I am a big fan of a full, curvy female body. I am absolutely not interested in penises and I have no interest in masculine faces or bodies. Saying that I am exclisively interested in cis women is a good starting point. I’m not interested in the heroin chic supermodel look with no hips and chiseled faces. Scarlett Johansson and Anna Kendrick are both absolutely gorgeous. I like Scarlett Johansson’s body but I don’t like Anna Kendricks’. I find Jamie Clayton very pretty but I’m not sexually attracted to her body. I don’t hate trans women and I don’t fear trans women. My limited experience (friends with two transfems for over 50 years and one transmasc for over 10 years) and interactions with several trans coworkers and adjacent people has reinforced that I have no sexual attraction to any of the trans women I have encountered. I wouldn’t react violently to a proposition from a trans woman any more than I would from a gay man. I would, and have several times said, “I’m flattered but I’m not interested.” then I go on as though nothing had happened. I don’t discount the idea that a trans woman with a feminine face, a curvy feminine body with wide hips, natural breasts, good mental health, and a great personality could catch my eye and end up in a relationship but I have never seen that combination in a transfem.
Labelling someone who is so obviously an ally a transphobe does not help the cause of understanding.
Yes saying that you’re exclusively attracted to cis women is an easy short hand.
I think OurToothbrush is frustrated with the erasure of transwomen that you fail to identify as trans.
I think when you said:
I had never met a transfem whose body I found attractive.
You don’t actually know if you’ve ever found a trans-woman attractive because you don’t know the birth details of every women you’ve ever found attractive. Some of them could be trans.
It’s not something I was particularly cognizant of either before seeing OurToothbrush’s reaction.
I think I would have trouble getting it up for a blow job from a smoking hot women after I learned she had a penis. I’m willing to concede that that is technically transphobic. I don’t think it changes the fact that I am an ally of the trans rights movement.
Just say you’re a cis-het male ally and I think everyone will know what you mean. It’s too bad this has been sick an ugly experience, it’s still a hell of a lot easier than gender dysphoria.
Sorry for butting in, and I fully understand if I’m completely out of line here, but can you expand on this statement?
I think I would have trouble getting it up for a blow job from a smoking hot women after I learned she had a penis. I’m willing to concede that that is technically transphobic.
Is it phobic to not be attracted to every aspect of a person? Is it racists if fiery red hair is a turn off? Is it hateful to dislike piercings? Is it so bad to not be down bad for blue eyes?
I can see how less obvious trait could lead to a frustrating situation and an appartent change in opinion, like being turned off by a dorky laugh, or a tattoo, or violent behaviour, but is it somehow hateful to not be attracted to everything about someone?
I feel like telling people that something about themselves is inherently bad isn’t any better. Maybe someone doesn’t like the colour red because they just really hate Canadians, and perhaps they would be fine with red otherwise, but are they being hateful by buying a blue blanket? What about people who just like blue? It would be great if no one hated a colour because they hate the people represeted by a flag, but forcing everybody to buy red blankets doesn’t help anything, you know?
I think the idea I’m circling here is that attractions aren’t fair, and trying to make them fair is worse. Conflating that with transphobia seems ironic. Does that make sense?
Sorry that it has taken me a long time to respond, I’ve been at the cabin, away from my phone.
Yeah the problem is that because of the history of discrimination we don’t have words for relatively harmless discriminatory tendencies. So if I were to say
I have racist tendencies
it sounds like I’m admitting to being a “capital R” racist, when what I mean is,
I was taught incorrect stereotypes by media as a child, and sometimes despite my best efforts to be egalitarian, these biases cause me to make bad judgements. I try to notice when this happens, to make sure I treat people fairly.
Yeah I’m not saying anyone is a jerk for having sexual interest only with feminine people with vaginas and boobs, I’m just saying that it’s kinda trans-erasure (and therefore technically transphobic) to say
I’m exclusively attracted to cis-women
Because a person doesn’t know the assigned birth sex of every woman they’ve ever been attracted to.
Ah, so then you’re using transphobic to mean any discrimination against a trans person, no matter how reasonable? Fair enough. I had taken it to mean discrimination primarily on the basis of being trans, rather than a basis of incompatability or circumstance despite intent; but even if the intent is good, if it causes harm it should be called out eh?
Also, good point about being attracted to some traits of a person instead of the whole. It would be very tiring and extremely odd to never be attracted to anyone unless you knew very intimate details of their life.
I think we need another word. Transphobic suggests fear or hate. I neither fear not rate trans people as I’ve made clear multiple times. If I’m not interested in having sex with men am I androphobic? I’m just not interested in trans people sexually. I’m transdisinterested, not transphobic.
I’ve been chewing on this. I have a question. It’s a bit of a thought experiment.
If you’re a man (biological male) and I’m not at all interested in having sex with you and you decide to transition to a woman at what point along that transition am I a transphobe if I still don’t want to have sex with you?
On the continuum from a raging, murderous transphobe to the perfect ally where is the point where you can label someone a transphobe?
I’ve already told you that I have had a pair of transfem friends for 50 years, a transmasc friend for 10 years, my kids have non-binary and trans friends who I treat with the same dignity and respect that I treat everyone else in my life is the simple fact that I’m interested in cis women enough to get me labelled a transphobe? What if I’m that raging, murderous transphobe but I have sex with trans women? Is being a transphobe like a scorecard, you can have a perfect score but a single wrong answer and you’re a transphobe?
I’m not being an ass or trolling. I genuinely want to understand your perspective on these questions to inform further discussion.
I asked a longtime lesbian friend whose partner is a retired human rights lawyer who specialized in LGBTQ+ rights law about this conversation and the partner mentioned absolutism (which I mentioned in another part of this discussion.) I just wonder if that’s what’s going on here.
I’m off to a maker fair with my family today so I probably won’t get back to this until late this evening. I hope you have a good day.
Sorry that it has taken me a long time to respond, I’ve been at the cabin, away from my phone.
Yeah the problem is that because of the history of discrimination we don’t have words for relatively harmless discriminatory tendencies. So if I were to say
I have racist tendencies
it sounds like I’m admitting to being a “capital R” racist, when what I mean is,
I was taught incorrect stereotypes by media as a child, and sometimes despite my best efforts to be egalitarian, these biases cause me to make bad judgements. I try to notice when this happens, to make sure I treat people fairly.
Yeah I’m not saying anyone is a jerk for having sexual interest only with feminine people with vaginas and boobs, I’m just saying that it’s kinda trans-erasure (and therefore technically transphobic) to say
I’m exclusively attracted to cis-women
Because a person doesn’t know the assigned birth sex of every woman they’ve ever been attracted to.
OurToothbrush was offended because she is a transwoman and attracts men that think they’re exclusively attracted to cis-women. She’s on the front line of transphobia, and searching for a partner puts her at a too real risk of being murdered by a transphobe.
Yeah it sounds like absolution is a relevant term. People like to think that there are only biological males and biological females and that’s that. It’s not that simple. People like to think that there are racists and non-racists and that’s that. It’s not that simple. People like to think that there are transphobes and non-transphobes and that’s that. It’s not that simple. To me, being an ally is is about supporting a community to defeat unfair discrimination. Imo supporting individuals with friendship isn’t exactly the same but it’s better than nothing.
We all have lives. I sometimes remember that I was discussing something with someone weeks later.
In the end my trans friends, LGBTQ friends, my lesbian daughter, and my son and daughter’s LGBTQ, non-binary, and trans friends and everyone who knows me knows that I’m not a transphobe. They know that I’m an ally. They know that they can count on me for support and that I will actively protect them.
Being labelled a transphobe by someone who doesn’t know me and obviously has rather extreme views is less than meaningless to me. I engaged in the coversation to try to help her to understand my position and that labelling anyone who wasn’t interested in having sex with her, no matter how much of an ally they really were, was counterproductive. I did my best. I’m going to keep doing my best to be an ally no matter how much people who demand thought perfection label me. That’s just who I am.
It’s also important to remember that “perfect” is the enemy of “good”. There will never be a perfect ally, because allies don’t have the same lived experience. But (I think) that allyship is still a good thing.
Are you nitpicking an ally for using “exclusive” instead of “principal”?
MapleEngineer doesn’t actually know for sure that he has never been attracted to a trans woman. So it’s important to correct him when he says he has an exclusive sexual interest in cis-women.
Is that your point? That failing to acknowledge the nuance that sexuality exists on a spectrum must be addressed confrontationally because it’s erasure?
Transphobia and homophobia are too often literally (yes, I mean literally) beaten into men. We have to work to unlearn it. If an ally says he wouldn’t be able to keep it up if he learned the woman he was courting was assigned male at birth, believe him, but don’t discount him as an ally. Imo your efforts are better spent combating active transphobia than policing your allies. If their terminology hurts you, suggest better ways to articulate their points but do it collaboratively instead of confrontationally.
Having read about your experiences (elsewhere in the thread, you hadn’t posted them when I started my prior comment) I understand your reaction better.
If someone says they’re not interested in dating Republicans, it doesn’t mean they are any better than the average person at picking one out from a crowd.
Attraction can change as you learn more about a person. There’s plenty of people on tinder who looked hot in their pictures but their bio then went on to turn me off.
I don’t see such a statement in this comment chain. Closest thing is “exclusive sexual interest”, which isn’t as broad as “experiencing attraction” and also doesn’t imply a magical way of filtering out anyone he believes is in that group but isn’t.
So in this metaphor trans people are AI, cartoons, and wax figures, and cis people are human?
Or, on a less confrontational tact, do you only experience attraction once you’ve confirmed that the person is cis? How does that work, do you ask for medical records before having an initial impression of people?
It kinda feels like people who don’t believe trans women and cis women are interchangeable should be the ones pushing the word, those who say ‘trans women are women’ surely don’t want the slogan to be made meaningless by having cis women as the established term.
Hi! I know this might just be the wrong context at this point as you are already getting flak, but I was curious and wanted to ask why you have exclusive sexual interest in cis women?
For example I would imagine some heterosexual cis men would have a hard time dating a trans woman who haven’t had bottom surgery or who are early in their transition (in which case sometimes the sexual preference is phrased as a genital preference rather than about exclusively dating cis people).
Some women who for various reasons pass well as cis are not distinguishable from cis women, and in that case I assume based on your statement you still would have a hard time dating that person if you found out they were trans.
For example, based on your statement I assume you wouldn’t date or be attracted to Nava Mau.
I understand if you don’t want to answer, it’s not like this is the best context and it is a vulnerable topic - just wanted to extend an olive branch in case you wanted to talk and think about it with less judgement.
Hi. I’m happy to talk to someone who wants to have a reasonable conversation.
Just some context. My wife is bisexual, my sister is bisexual, my daughter is a lesbian, my son and daughter both have non-binary and trans friends who I regularly spend time with, I have gay friends and lesbian friends, I was a member of the wedding party at a same sex wedding, I am friends with a local transmasc, and I’ve had a pair of transfem friends for more than 50 years. I am very much an ally to the LGBTQ+ community.
I have always been straight and have always been interested in women. My experience with my two long time transfem friends colors my preference. Both have very serious mental health issues. One is post-surgical, the other will never be able to get surgery. I do not find Nava Manu attractive but that is strictly a funcion of what I see as vary sharp facial features. She reminds me of Theodora Elphaba. Jaime Clayton, on the other hand, I find very attractive. I’m not completely closed to the idea of a relationship with a trans woman but in my fairly broad experience with trans women I have never encountered anyone who I would be at all interested in having a relationship with. Thus, my preference is for cis women.
Interesting. Well, first - thanks for being an ally!!
It does seem like trans folks have a pretty rough road in most societies, and predictably that leads to poor mental health outcomes. The statistics about how well a trans person does post-transition has a lot to do with whether they are accepted by their family and friends. (Mental health issues are also common before transition while closeted, or not-yet aware of being trans, which might have biological as well as social / psychological reasons behind it.)
It also makes sense you might not personally know trans women you are attracted to as there are far fewer trans folks compared to cis folks; though, it sounds like you were even able to list a trans woman you do find attractive.
Digging into that more, if there were someone who had the right personality and looked like Jaime Clayton, would being trans be a deal-breaker for pursuing a relationship with that person? I guess I wonder if it’s really being trans that is the problem for you, or if this is just a short-hand for a bunch of other traits that in practice just make you less likely to be attracted.
I ask because at this point it sounds like you would be pretty open to dating trans women who you find attractive (personality and looks wise), but that it is more practical reality that you just aren’t attracted to most trans women (probably for a variety of reasons).
The question for me has always been, are my friends mentally ill because of how they were treated as a result of being trans or is being trans a manifestation of their mental illness.
The friend I am closest to grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family and she was horribly sexually abused as a child. I wonder if she didn’t reject her maleness as a result of that sexual abuse.
For me, personality is far more important than looks. I have often been attracted to women who were not classically attractive.
I can imagine myself being attracted to a trans woman with the right combaintion of looks, mental health, and personality. I haven’t encountered anyone who fit the bill but it might happen. Another issue is that I don’t like plastic at all. Fake boobs, cosmetic surgery, lip injectoions and fillers turn me off. I find Janie Clayton very pretty but I’m not keen on her body. I don’t find narrow hips attractive and her boobs just aren’t for me. The same is true for cis women. I don’t find narrow hips or fake boobs attrative on a cis woman.
There has been plenty of research into the etiology of gender dysphoria, but the current science considers gender identity as fixed and biological, which makes sense of why conversion therapies have been so unsuccessful (otherwise the conservative medical establishment would be more likely to recommend conversion therapy to solve the “problem” of trans people, as talk therapy is much less intervention, much cheaper, and much more socially acceptable than medical transition).
It’s behind a paywall, but that can be circumvented if you know how.
More interesting than whether mental illness is more common in trans people because of how they are treated by society (which seems almost obvious, though worth confirming empirically) is whether mental illness might be more common for trans people because of the biology, such as from having the “wrong” sex hormones in their body.
Gay men who were forced to take estrogen in the UK experienced symptoms like depression and suicidal ideation, and lots of the same things trans people report (there is speculation whether Alan Turing being forced to take estrogen may have contributed to his suicide).
There is also the famous case of David Reimer whose penis was accidentally amputated during circumcision as a baby. Under the direction of the psychologist John Money, who believed gender was entirely determined by environment / social programming, was raised as a girl. Reimer consistently struggled being raised as a girl, eventually decided he was a man, and struggled immensely with mental health struggles before his suicide.
Suicide seems to be a common thread among those suffering from gender dysphoria, with over 40% of trans people reporting having previously attempted suicide and over 80% having considered attempting suicide (source), and it’s not surprising cis people when forced to take cross-sex hormones also seem more likely to commit suicide (though we don’t have as much evidence about this in particular, so take that as speculation on my part).
All this to say, religious trauma and sexual abuse certainly can and do complicate someone trying to figure out whether they are suffering symptoms of gender dysphoria or not, but the current evidence points to gender dysphoria not being caused by environmental factors (like sexual abuse) and likewise not being reversible with any kind of known treatment other than transitioning.
Furthermore, there have been autopsies of trans and cis brains that have found parts of the hypothalamus in trans women match cis women’s, even if not taking hormones. Here is a relatively accessible overview by neuro-endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky about those autopsy studies which were high quality and confirmed with follow up studies several times: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ
Being trans cannot be adequately theorized in merely biological terms, so please don’t mistake me for implying there are no social aspects to being trans, but I do think there is sufficient evidence that gender identity and dysphoria have biological components that aren’t influenced by environment.
Regarding trans women and plastic surgery: many trans women transition before puberty and thus look and sound pretty much like cis women, i.e. they develop as cis women would. Obviously even in those cases some trans women opt for surgeries, and while neo-vaginas have some differences, they are more like natal vaginas than most people realize (both in look and function).
In that sense, it doesn’t sound like being trans is what you don’t like in a woman, but rather certain body features that might be more common in trans women who have transitioned as adults (breast augmentation, facial feminization surgeries, narrow hips, etc. are more common in trans women who went through male puberty). But there is a huge variety of trans women, even those who transition as adults don’t necessarily get breast augmentation or facial feminization surgery, though narrow hips are obviously more common still.
Perhaps this seems like nitpicking or like I am making an irrelevant or theoretical distinction, after all if most trans women you know look a certain way, is it that wrong to generalize this way. The problems of stereotyping aside, part of the problem is that trans people in general are under a lot of pressure to conform to cis-sexual norms, and those who can go “stealth” typically do. That means, a bit like sexual minorities, it can be an invisible identity, but where a subset of adult trans folks especially early transition are more likely to stand out as trans. What we think of as a paradigmatic “trans woman” is someone who doesn’t conform that much to our cis-normative notions of a “woman”, and that is because of that unintentional sampling bias.
I acknowledge this is a lot, so let me stop here and see what you think so far.
This is very interesting. I don’t doubt that gender identity is biological. I agree with the current thinking that gender dysphoria is not mental illness. It is just apparent to me in my very small sample size of three (two transfem for more than 50 years and one transmasc for 10 years) that mental illness and gender dysphoria are, at least in my sample, adjacent to each other in 100% of trans people I know. I am also of the mind that mental illness is a biological issue so having biological gender dysphoria and biological mental illness adjacent to each other raises questions.
I have been thinking as I’ve been puttering around this evening and you just hit the nail on the head. It is the secondary sexual characteristics of cis women that I find attractive. I like a feminine face, natural breasts, and wide hips. I have a copy of The Big Butt Book 3D that a friend gave me in my nightstand. I don’t find men’s bodies attractive. When I look at a fit man I think, that’s a great body but I don’t feel any attration to him. I just appreciate that it is a good body. I have never encountered a transfem whose body I found attractive. In all cases I found their faces and bodies masculine which I don’t find attractive. To be honest, I don’t find supermodels attractive, either. They’re too skinny, with no behinds and often very chiseled, masculine faces. I think Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous and I find her body very attractive. I think Anna Kendrick if stunning but I don’t find her body attractive. She’s too light in the pants for my tastes. I don’t find most social media personalities at all attractive because I don’t like heavy makeup and fakeness. I like no makeup, hair pulled up into a ponytail, and … I dunno, plain?
Saying that I have an exclusive sexual preference for cis women is a very good starting point. I’m not interested in penises at all and every single person that I’ve ever been attracted to sexually has been a cis woman with the secondary sexual characterists of a cis woman. I don’t hate or fear trans women, I’m just never been attracted to any that I’ve met.
He seemed to casually ignore that at the end of the tunnel was still the concept of an offramp with a 25mph street that everyone was funneling to.
Of course he never planned on building it anyway. It was all just to distract from California High Speed Rail, because that directly gets in his way of selling more cars.
because that directly gets in his way of selling more cars.
Which is stupid in itself, because the entire goal of the CA HSR project is to link long distance corridors, not putzing around town like most do with a Tesla.
In fact I think there’s a missed opportunity for EVs to partner with long distance public transit.
The main limitations of electric cars is distance, but if people knew they could go across the state or several states comfortably without their car, they might be more willing to take a electric car for city driving.
We have ferries. What if we could combine the efficiency of train and the convenience of ferries? People could just drive their own car on a train car of some kind and be shuttled to a destination and then drive off?
Without looking deeper it’s probably cost prohibitive. Looking at long train rides cost a thousand dollars and takes 3-4 days, might as well just fly at that point.
Yeah putting cars on trains is the opposite of a solution lol. All that cargo space used on a car probably just ends up driving the cost of the train ticket up for everyone. If you really need a car, rent one at your destination, like you would when flying.
Just to be pedantic, the dumb car tunnels (or Loop), are the weird thing elon “invented” to “solve” traffic and reduce competition for his cars for urban transport. This eventually became one tunnel in LA to get between elon’s house and office, and the dumb taxi tunnel in Las Vegas.
The hyperloop, where elon “invented” the vacuum train, is a separate thing that exists to distract from CAHSR, and elon didn’t want to work on himself because “he’s too busy”, and not because it’s effectively just a scam and won’t work, and most of the companies that started up to develop it have since gone bust.
I recently watched a video about autonomous car and the dude argue the tech isn’t here yet, but it will work if we build a lane just for autonomous car and put every autonomous car on that lane.
Everyone in the comment basically calling him out for reinventing the train lol.
Crypto-whatsit? Is that something from one of Bobby’s vid’ya games?
It’s a new form of money, Hank. VIRTUAL MONEY.
Well, excuse me, Dale, but here where I live, in the REAL WORLD, we already have a perfectly fine money. It’s called AMERICAN DOLLARS and it works just fine, I tell ya h’wat.
You say that now, Hank, but wait until the cyber-swarm-uprising of 2034 comes and replaces your precious “real world” with a virtualsphere so indiscernible from what you think you know as real! Wake up and see what’s coming on the horizon!
I 100% did this on Reddit. And I do it here too. Most news websites are garbage and loaded with advertisements. Get halfway through the story and a full page ad pops up or a video starts playing. Honestly, does anybody stop reading to watch those videos???
Or, you go into the comments and see the summary, or the full article, or quotes of the most important parts with discussions. If I feel I have questions, only then will I open the website.
You must be the last person on Lemmy still looking at these sites the way they’re displayed by default. Firefox, adblock, no script, pi hole, etc makes all that go away pretty painlessly.
iOS. I use Firefox normally, but the app just loads the in app web browser, which I doesn’t seem to block ads. Not sure if safari extensions would work with the in app browser… might try it.
I’ll say it again and again, decentralization needs to be something the end user doesn’t notice, signing up to Lemmy should be like signing up to a centralized service with the servers running things being decentralized and the info redundant so servers can go down without having any effect on the service.
Let the admins decide if they don’t want to host content from certain communities, let the users decide if they want to block communities and users.
You’re still dependent on a single point of failure, what I’m talking about is doing like any other website but instead of using a provider like AWS, you’ve got a bunch of people all over the world providing storage space and bandwidth and all data is stored on three servers in different locations at all times so there’s basically no reason for the website to ever crash.
If you were to access Lemmy from a web browser you would need to remember what server you’re signed up to because that’s the website you would need to go to, you wouldn’t be going to “Lemmy.com” or whatever.
I don’t think that’d work, with Lemmy being a federated model, not a fully decentralized one.
How do you handle the actual login? Does that mean every server has access to your password hash? Or do you overhaul the account system to use something like a private and public key, with the user needing to store and transfer the private key to every device they use?
And what happens if two people register with the same username on two instances that aren’t federating? Do they somehow need to still communicate with all other instances in the network they operate in, to prevent that from happening? Because the alternative I see is the login being random in some way or tied to the instance, in which case you still lose the impression of a single service.
If I’m not mistaken, right now anybody could host a non-federating Lemmy instance, if they just wanted a small private community in this style. To my understanding, that’s the idea behind federation, and a founding concept of Lemmy - it’s not a giant service distributed across trusted servers, but a network of smaller communities that communicate with limited trust.
There are no instances anymore with this system, it’s the data hosting that’s decentralized, the front-end looks like a centralized website so you would go to Lemmy.com instead of whatever instance you signed up on.
Imagine Reddit but there’s no central authority and instead of using a service like AWS it’s just people providing storage space and bandwidth and they can decide not to host content from certain communities on their server, but from the user’s point of view they wouldn’t know where they’re pulling the data from.
So no, you couldn’t have two users with the same username. The user database could easily be shared by all storage providers or the database could be randomly split and you would have to mention what part of the database your info is stored on when logging in. When creating your account (where it checks for doubles on the whole username list hosted on all servers) you’re given a random third credential that you need to mention when logging in so the service knows which servers host that part of the user database (all info including the database would have triple redundancy).
Right now a website’s data might not be stored on a single server so that’s already how things work, the difference is that all the different servers are owned by the same company (like Amazon or Google). In the backend the servers communicate together to provide the data to the users so it feels like everything is hosted in the same place.
TL;DR: The best way to fix things is to make it work like it does for any other websites but to only decentralize the hosting instead of also decentralizing the communities.
It also raises some pretty big issues, like who gets to moderate communities? Right now you make a community on a specific instance, you follow that instance’s rules, so the instance host has authority over the community. If you disagree with the instance’s rules, or with the way the community is ran, you can make a community on another instance, or even make your own instance with your own rules.
And from the other side, there need to be people with the authority to remove communities, and remove people/posts across different communities. Right now that’s the responsibility of the instance hosts, to my understanding - content is hosted on a primary instance, and stored through federating instances, so the primary instance has a responsibility to keep it clean of illegal material. Who would have this power and responsibility if instances aren’t differentiated? Sounds like the best case is giving trustworthy people an excessive amount of power, and the worst case is the entire network being shut down due to distributing illegal content and being effectively impossible to moderate.
You also didn’t address the issue of passwords - currently it’s a pretty big deal when hashed+salted passwords leak, considering those passwords compromised… The comparison with AWS is flawed - when using AWS, you’re trusting them, because it’s a big company with a reputation to keep. The situation seems very different when it’s random enthusiasts with highly differing views, and without a central authority to verify them (though there are probably too many to verify anyways)
And you propose that anybody can join the network and receive users’ passwords? On top of that, you’re proposing that you need to also know the “server” your data is stored on and supply that with logging in? Sounds like a really annoying friction point for the user.
I really feel like you’re approaching this from the wrong direction, suggesting Lemmy should abolish the very structure it’s built on for one you’d like more, but I think it could be possible to make the experience nicer without going to those extremes.
Maybe it’d be possible to let multiple instances have authority over an account, without changing its home instance, so that if your original instance goes down, you can keep the same account. And to reduce friction from communities being made across multiple instances, some way for communities themselves to federate/combine would be nice, and is probably being considered by people smarter than me.
I know it’s not how Lemmy works, what I’m saying is “There’s a big issue with how Lemmy works, here’s how I think decentralization should be approached instead.” Having terabytes of information possibly disappearing because one person gets in a car accident on their way to work isn’t an improvement vs a centralized system hosted on AWS.
Communities would be moderated by their creator, server admins could decide not to host content from any communities they don’t want to host, if no server admin wants to host your community then you’re free to host it on your own server or to fix the problems with it.
There’s illegal content on Lemmy right now, even instances that don’t want to host it need to clean up their images folder because of it, so it’s not as if the way it works right now is any better for that and it’s not as if there’s no instance admin ready to host that content.
User credentials can be stored securely. Do you think your instance admin has a text file with your password written in plain characters?
The third credential I was suggesting is just one solution so not all servers have to have a “master database” with all user info stored, split the database and let the users know they need to remember they confirm their login through database X or Y. I’m sure much more intelligent people could come up with another solution.
“There’s a big issue with how Lemmy works, here’s how I think decentralization should be approached instead.”
Again, I feel like you’re making the wrong point in the wrong place. My understanding is that you came to a project designed with the ideals of federation, and you complain that it shouldn’t be federated. That should probably be done as a fork of Lemmy, or an independent competitor.
It seems to me like you’re in ideological conflict with Lemmy’s developers, where you see no value in what Lemmy seeks to create. That’s completely fine, of course, but I really feel like you’re making your case in the wrong place.
Having terabytes of information possibly disappearing because one person gets in a car accident on their way to work isn’t an improvement vs a centralized system hosted on AWS.
Federation does not mean terabytes of information disappearing - to my understanding, posts, comments and votes are already duplicated across the instances. What would be lost is ownership of communities/posts, and accounts created on that instance, as well as things like image posts where the images are stored on one instance.
However, if images weren’t stored as links in those posts, accounts could be fully migrated, and communities could be migrated or even just federated with other communities, nothing would have to be lost.
Communities would be moderated by their creator, server admins could decide not to host content from any communities they don’t want to host, if no server admin wants to host your community then you’re free to host it on your own server or to fix the problems with it.
I feel like that structure wouldn’t work, just looking at how much defederation is happening, server owners wouldn’t want to be affiliated with certain content at all. It did also remind me of the fact that ActivityPub is not just Lemmy - you can also interact with mastodon and kbin on Lemmy, which is rooted in the federated approach.
There’s illegal content on Lemmy right now, even instances that don’t want to host it need to clean up their images folder because of it, so it’s not as if the way it works right now is any better for that and it’s not as if there’s no instance admin ready to host that content.
True, I feel like the issue only gets worse as you blur the line between different instances more, but I have no data to back that up.
User credentials can be stored securely. Do you think your instance admin has a text file with your password written in plain characters?
I feel like you failed to address my point, that with the current security standard, data leaks are still considered a threat to your password security. Even in the best case, getting access to hashed passwords means being able to brute force it without any rate limits. Maybe I’m wrong, but you’d need to either prove that password hashes leaking are not an issue at all, or figure out a way to provide trusted decentralized authentication server architecture, or figure out a way to store the passwords where leaks are not an issue… Or give up on using passwords and require a different authentication method, like public key authentication.
The third credential I was suggesting is just one solution […]. I’m sure much more intelligent people could come up with another solution.
It’s a bit hypocritical of me, since I mentioned smarter people than me working on something, but I feel like if you’re strongly suggesting Lemmy should be majorly reworked in this way, there’s some expectation for you to provide a solution, not just say that somebody will figure it out.
How does what I’m talking about prevents federation? Lemmy is federated with kbin and mastodon even though they don’t work the same way…
I never said I see no value in what Lemmy created, I’m saying that the way they went about it might not have been the right one because now that there’s a lot of users and many instances were created, we can see that one major flaw in the system is that the instance’s admin can just decide they’re done with Lemmy and all content hosted on their instance just vanishes.
If your instance crashed I wouldn’t be able to see your messages until your instance was back online, that’s why when you copy a permalink to a comment it’s the address of their instance that you see, instances host the content posted by their own user no matter where it’s posted, instances communicate between themselves to share that info so their users see what other instances users post, that’s also why you might still see posts on communities of instances you’re defederated from, they’re posts by people from your own instance.
On the password thing, it’s no worse than what’s going with the current system, you’re trusting the instance admins not to leak anything… Heck, splitting up the lists could be even more secure since it could be equally divided between hosts instead of having a couple of instances hosting what amounts to over 50% of all credentials… What happens if lemmy.world’s admin leaks everything?
And I’m suggesting solutions, I don’t have the expertise to implement them. Do you believe that all tech is developed by the person who came up with an idea? Because I sure would love to meet the person that developed my cars seats, computer, engine and suspension, that single person must be one hell of a genius!
You’re right, but there’s more to appreciate about needing to choose an instance.
It’s like email. All email services work with all others, but the end user still needs to choose a good one. There are more than one "good one"s, and part of the decision is about personal taste.
And sometimes you have to leave a bad provider for a better one. Look at my account, it’s brand new. Because lemm.ee has had one too many federation issues for my taste.
Ok, so your argument is basically “Look at this unrelated service, that’s how it works too, so nothing wrong with the current service except that I had to do the thing that proves that what you’re talking about would be better.”
Eliminate the central authorities altogether, let people curate their feed so they don’t have to worry about someone else making choices about their experience.
Someone could join Lemmy today and have no idea they’re missing out on a big part of the available content because they joined the wrong instance, they would then turn around and just go back to Reddit where they know everything is available and they’re in control of what they’re subscribed to and what users they want to block.
I could shame OP for falling for the crypto hype but I think the more important lesson here is to never ever mix family and finances.
Even if you know for 100% fact that you have a slam dunk investment, it’s not worth it. Money corrupts.
Never loan money, even if you don’t expect it to get paid back. It creates a power imbalance. Envy and resentment for you having money is better than creating any financial ties.
Never go into business with family.
Don’t mix finances and family. Family is more important than money.
Yes, times a thousand. But I would go even further.
Never give investment advice. You might explain what investments you have made and why you made them, but never give advice and never urge or prompt someone to invest. You should also end every conversation with "but that's not advice and I'm not an expert." It is too easy for either the investment to not work out, or for them to do it wrong (wrong timing, panic sale, misunderstood the options, etc).
The last thing you want on your conscience is someone investing a life changing amount of money just for it to go down in flames. I might invest $1000 in something that I think might pay off, tell someone they should invest, and next thing you know they drop in $40k and panic sell on a dip in two weeks, when I was planning to hold for five years. You never know.
Honestly, this kind of goes for everything that’s more complicated than average people can understand. (By “average” I mean “anyone not familiar with this particular knowledge.” I have in depth IT knowledge but very weak automobile maintenance knowledge, for example. This makes me “average” when it comes to automobile maintenance.)
I don’t give out IT advice for the most part, because the number of people who will come hounding you because they misunderstood, did something wrong, or missed several steps, is too damn high. Doesn’t matter that they made the choice to take initiative to do it on their own, now it’s your fault for suggesting it when their PC blows up in their face.
Disclaimer: not financial advice, also the stuff mentioned here is specific to a certain country and to my mom’s situation.
I’ll share a slightly uplifting story I guess? My mom has asked me for advice after she asked me what I was doing with my money and found out I was doing well with it. It wasn’t unsolicited advice so that probably helps. I don’t have some crazy life hack or some crypto scheme. I just presented her the facts that stock market indexes (NASDAQ specifically) tend to avg around 10% YoY and it’s an ok investment if you don’t need the money for the next 5 to 10 years at least. I also disclosed risks and suggested bonds if it’s too risky or at least open a high interest savings account with an insured bank (FDIC or CDIC).
I helped her set up a bank account with a bank that offered competitive high interest savings account and she agreed to the risk so we dumped the rest of her extra money into index funds. She’s up 20% since she started so she’s happy.
Honestly in my other comment I said never give investing advice, but as far as it goes, recommending investment in indexed funds is probably there exception with the caveat that it is a multi-year investment and there are dips.
Right. Which gets us full circle, to never give investment advice, lol. That being said, at some point someone may sincerely look too you for guidance and you need to make a call as to whether you want to take that risk, what advice you give, and are you sure it is good advice.
I used to mentor student employees years ago, and when they wanted advice I always told them to max out workplace matches first, and then after that if they can save more, put it in tax advantaged savings programs that let you buy into indexed funds and never sell. In those cases you usually can't even sell unless certain conditions are met and you sign disclosures, unlike most brokerages. Now, students you are giving them advice for the rest of there life and they likely don't have $40k to panic sell/buy/sell to zero.
Lmao. Yeah you have to be careful to make sure they understand the risks. They need to understand 10% average YoY is not the same as 10% every year. I’ve no background in finance so I don’t know if I know enough to make sure I gave her the best advice but it was based on my understanding and prior experience.
Also, I think a friend of hers was trying to get her to do covered calls. While well intentioned and technically low risk, it’s complex. If you screw anything up setting up the covered calls it can end disastrous. Also it will complicate your taxes.
This interpretation is valid. But I recently learned to see it a different way.
If you’ll humor me, please consider this. Since Santa knows if you’ve been “bad or good,” he knows the other reindeer have been bullies to poor Rudolph. And, while a red glowing nose is cool, it’s not a useful fog light. It’s just not.
So Santa “uh oh!” had an emergency where, for the first time ever, the fog was going to be too thick all over the world to deliver presents?
Nope, he set up Rudolph in a position to “lead” his peers in a situation that maybe needed a little help but was not, in any way, a true, worldwide magic-assed Santa emergency. Santa knew how to guide his reindeer to accept each other. The story of Rudolph was not about Rudolph doing something to prove himself. It was about recognizing a Rudolph in need and helping him rise to the occasion to bring him closer to his peers in a way that could heal division.
Rudolph isn’t about how to triumph as a Rudolph. It’s about how to be a good Santa.
(Edit: For everyone who already thought this was obvious in the story, thanks for letting this Rudolph have his epiphany anyway.)
Angry upvote. I’ve been holding onto the interpretation that Santa was an asshole for knowing nasty shit was going down under his nose, but not doing anything about it until there was something in it for him.
So I’d like to add to the chorus of those who appreciate this wholesome take.
If Santa didn’t give us the opportunity to choose to do good or choose to do bad, how would we earn the chance to live in heaven with Santa for eternity? Santa never gives us more than we can bear, and he works in mysterious ways. Yes, we can come to Santa with our earnest request, but sometimes the answer is no. Remember the abominable snowman is always on the prowl for boys and girls whose faith is weak
I imagine he’s like Ghost Rider and can tell with a glance if someone is guilty or not by seeing their soul. If the entity has a soul, then he knows. Goldfish? Probably not. Sapient reindeer? Definitely.
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