captainlezbian

I'd be more prone to pushing Obama to be more aggressive, especially with the courts. Some harsh conversations with the dnc in 2010 could do a lot

Fascism is often a pipeline. Not everyone who votes for the far right is fully on board with everything they wish to do quite yet. They're really good at making you think that the people more than a step or two right of you aren't that big of a deal. They see the people waving swastikas as not a big group or a particularly influential one. Similar to how the center left sees the people waving black and red flags. I'd even go so far as to say that on both sides a decent chunk of political propaganda is pointing at the other side's cranks and far [side] members.

The difference is aside from the crux of the ideology and inherent morality contained within that, that the far right has a lot of power over the right, while the left is routinely bending over to centrists of both the left and right. However, people are idiots. If they weren't we wouldn't be in this mess.

In 2017 in Charlottesville North Carolina, the American fascist movement made a bad call. In an attempt to shift the overton window to their acceptance, demonstrate power, and create a unified movement they organized a rally to unite the right. Images of swastikas, fasches, and angry young men in business casual clothing carrying tiki torches and chanting antisemitic slogans alongside a dead young woman who protested against them became the image of the far right for a time. Short attention spans, a global pandemic, the economic crisis caused by that, and sustained propaganda from the right (especially regarding left wing protests against police brutality) led to people slowly stopping thinking about it.

Right now America is a bit too divided and radicalized for this to impact us. But other countries are seeing this and us torpedoing international relationships and making clearly stupid choices and they're asking themselves if they want to be associated with people who support the politics of Adolf Hitler and don't believe in regulating food safety.

Plenty of French did. France was divided before the war, fought against Germany, and then had a government of the fascists instilled. If the UK had fallen something similar would've happened

The ERA was made controversial. Any future amendment will likely be the product of catastrophe. I imagine if one happens it will be because we manage to get out of this current situation and need to prevent it in the future

Yeah unfortunately your experience was common. Transition used to be seen like how some Christians see abortion "necessary in some circumstances but to be dissuaded as much as possible and only done when absolutely necessary." Many straight and gender conforming trans people were stopped in some way from transitioning and stories of bi and gay trans people lying our asses off to doctors in order to transition were common enough to eventually contribute to the removal of orientation from the diagnostic criteria.

The fact is I transitioned at a unique time. I started hormones in 2015, I was 20 and people far braver and more self aware than me had set up the ground work for me. I had old ideas that I'd picked up as a teenager in my "am I, no I can't be, but am I" waffling. I was brave to tell my therapist I'm a lesbian, but if I got a no I'd've probably just done DIY. Same for if RLE was demanded of me. I was on a downward spiral from puberty to that point and I'd waited until it was transition or die, like I'd been told to do by other trans people. And of course that was the advice back in the day, they put you through hell to transition.

I like to think I might have been more like Susan Stryker back in the day, but it took seeing someone like me be trans to accept myself. Sometimes self preservation looks like digging in your heels, baring your teeth, and telling the world to try and stop you, but so often it's doing what you did, accepting a wound and going back to hiding for some time. Self preservation is a virtue.

I hate that this works

Reminder that march 15 is coming up.

And part of the reason I'm pro government assistance is that they pull this shit regardless so it may as well help some people sometimes

Yeah keep it to Canon ones like William Shakespear or Elizabeth Tudor or Sir Frances Draque

Philosophytube is excellent and for anyone who doesn't know that quote is a reference to a more famous quote by youtuber contrapoints: "I look inside myself and ask, do I feel like a man, or a woman, and the answer is that I feel like shit." And I love this inversion because both approach philosophy wildly differently.

Contra is someone who needs to know more, and to pursue truth even when it is self destructive. Her transition wasn't the turning point towards happiness (though her accepting she's a lesbian and an addict may have been), but it was an act of deep personal honesty.

Philosophytube routinely approaches topics as tools to improve your understanding and life, and if Kant can't improve your life that's ok, you don't need to deal with his ideas if they don't, but aren't they still interesting and a good foundation to other ideas… Her transition was clearly both a turning point and a culmination of a progression towards happiness, and you can see it in her face in her videos.

I like that duality because I've met people like both of them and in both cases the end result is an increase in both happiness and truth.

I wish you too all the healing you can find. Mental health is hard and healing can be long and slow, but practicing healing does pay off

I would assume that's the case, especially when you account for the changes to what counts as trans ober the past century. You used to have to lie your ass off to get hormones if you were anything short of perfectly gender conforming and straight. When I started a decade ago there were still people who would deny you hormones for just the wildest shit, like a friend got told she had to wear a dress and makeup to therapist appointments to get approved, and it wasn't like an old person who said that, it was the therapist.

Hell I know people who transitioned in the 90s and back then the question was if you told your friends and family or just moved to a different city and start a new life. So like yeah of course a lot of people would see that and decide that what amounted to treating depression wasn't worth that.

And it should be noted, those people didn't have great outcomes. They weren't "made right handed" they were made barely able to write with either hand. To a certain degree these people were disabled by being forced to accommodate cultural norms.

It's fitting to then look at the data for LGBT people and see the same thing play out.