286437714's recent activity

  1. Comment on The book that predicted Pete Hegseth’s failures in ~society

    286437714
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    I wanted to post this months ago, but I was too sad. With a little spark of hope, here are some quotes from the article, which I'd recommend if you're seeking to understand what has happened to...

    I wanted to post this months ago, but I was too sad. With a little spark of hope, here are some quotes from the article, which I'd recommend if you're seeking to understand what has happened to the US armed forces under Hegseth's wilful malice:

    On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, by British psychologist Norman F. Dixon, has long been considered a must-read, even within U.S. military circles that relentlessly cull their own reading lists. Dixon sought to answer a question that had long bedeviled the British military, most especially in the wake of World War I: Why are lions always seemingly led by donkeys?

    By and large, the (British) military shunned innovation; prized physical prowess and sporting achievements over book smarts (“lethal warrior” mentality); cherished tradition, spit-and-polish, regulations, and petty rules that all come under what Dixon defines as “bullshit.” Soldiers that had those traits to a great degree naturally advanced to higher ranks, eventually the highest, precisely to positions where those characteristics were either useless or catastrophic.

    Another characteristic Dixon found in decades of military dysfunction was an ingrained fear of “effeminacy,” producing a combination of homophobia and misogyny that translated into a crusade against anything feminine, especially women potentially doing military jobs previously done only by men. “Anti-effeminacy” even extended to battlefield behavior, Dixon suggests, including a previous disdain for taking cover, wearing protective gear, or even running protective convoys to shepherd merchant shipping during wartime.

    Most of Dixon’s book focuses on generals. But Pete Hegseth is not a general. He topped out as a major in the National Guard, after serving tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he has managed to carry his junior officer’s mindset into the office of the secretary of defense in a way that clearly echoes much of what Dixon lamented about wartime leadership in the British military.

    Take Dixon’s euphemistic “bull,” the bane of button-polishing, parade-ground existence, even if it has a role in fostering discipline, uniformity, and an esprit de corps. “The phenomenon involves ritualistic observance of the dominance-submission relationships of the military hierarchy, extreme orderliness and a preoccupation with outward appearances,” Dixon notes.

    In my experience, these types of people did not make it to staff roles at the Pentagon, let alone to senior military command roles or (like Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin) ex-military leaders with civilian supremacy over the military branches.

    Dixon’s belief that fears about masculinity drive some senior leaders’ behavior finds expression both in “bull” and in personnel and force structure decisions. Dixon cites “[t]he importance attached to such outward signs of sex-role identification as hair-length,” and a “deeply rooted prejudice toward women who try to adopt traditionally male roles.”

    One doesn’t have to look far to find Hegseth mandating testosterone tests (and possible injections) for U.S. “warfighters,” or a systematic bias against the promotion of female officers or the expansion of female combat troops.

    “Authoritarians will be less likely to understand enemy intentions,” Dixon wrote, as well as have a tendency to underestimate the enemy’s ability. He was thinking of the disastrous Allied battle plan in the spring of 1940, but today it reads as if he was writing about the Pentagon’s failure to prepare for Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, despite the scenario being war-gamed out for decades beforehand.

    Dixon’s book is dated, both in its martial case studies and much of its science. Even the notion that Britain’s generals were “donkeys,” especially in World War I, has given way to more recent scholarship suggesting a nearly competent class of officers struggling with a whole new way of war.

    Yet it is still a fascinating glimpse at why the very things that make the military work most of the time tend to act against best performance at the most crucial of times. Creativity, openness to new ideas and dissent, overcoming petty conventions and regulations, promoting the best and brightest, and embracing the unconventional are among the traits Dixon identified in successful commanders.

    Those are qualities that the U.S. military has sometimes sought—but under Hegseth, it’s far more important to be white, male, and clean-shaven.

    I'm taking a bit of a Tildes break, but my commentary on the above is: the US Armed Forces were culturally almost unrecognisable from the late-Obama cultural and doctrinal reform era compared to now. Then, they were a group of organizations that prized innovation. They underwent massive cultural reform in regards to de-emphasizing being white, male, and masculine, and selecting leaders that had diversity of background, intellectual thought, and demonstrated proven innovative thinking.

    As incremental as the progress was, the establishment and embedding of Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response cells in the Pentagon, each combatant command, and in every operation went a long way to curbing the worst excesses of the forever wars. The US was genuinely trying, in my view, especially with more financial commitment and personnel commitment to the UN Department of Peacekeeping's Women, Peace and Security initiative. Both were cut by Hegseth, resulting in well-known tragedy.

    Under Trump 1, these cultural reforms seemed to continue, and the Branches were largely left alone. Until Covid - I'd say CAPT Brett Crozier's quelling of a near-mutiny to save the health of his sailors ran straight into Trump's Covid-denial agenda, and put the military's independence in the firing line. GEN Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during 2020, made some horrible mistakes under pressure no Chairman had been under before.

    But, he also put duty before his position and worked diligently with the tools that he had to make sure a catastrophe was averted. I think an instructive counter-factual intellectual exercize is, 'What may have happened on January 6th if Mark Milley was not still in his position?'

    During Biden's term, the US Armed Forces went back to 'normal'. Nothing significant to report here. It was nice to be able to discuss certain topics openly again, and I heard many stories of how professional officers kept their people safe and sheltered them from the political acid being poured on them by the executive branch from 2016 to late 2021.

    Then Hegseth. The cowardly, craven, dishonorable, Christian Nationalist news anchor, who was such a failure as a soldier he was flagged as an insider threat to due to his far-right wing ideology and alcoholism, and barred from even parading with the DC National Guard. That man was not allowed access to a service rifle, and now has the whole US military under his control.

    The article explains the impact that has on the US's ability to use its military for strategic ends better than I can. I know there is very little hope that Hegseth ends up at the Hague, due to Bush's Hague Invasion Act. Hegseth deserves to be tried for war crimes at the ICC, as do those supported him, and those who were complicit by breaking their oaths and their legal obligations by knowingly following illegal orders.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
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    That's been my reading of it. I can't really understand thinking it's an accusation being levelled, unless you don't engage with any of the articles or content. And a lot of the 'I hate the...

    If you're referring specifically to the use of #AllMen, my understanding is that the message is that all men have a responsibility to help make spaces safer, not that all men are guilty of causing harm.

    That's been my reading of it. I can't really understand thinking it's an accusation being levelled, unless you don't engage with any of the articles or content. And a lot of the 'I hate the framing of #YesAllMen! It's clickbait!' people are also saying, 'of course, I didn't watch the video.'

    I think the misunderstanding is similar to #BlackLivesMatter. The people who were opposed thought it was an accusation and countered with a ridiculous #AllLivesMatter campaign to argue racism wasn't happening.

    The people who immediately jump to thinking they're being accused of something just do not make sense to me. Especially when they admit 'I didn't read it/I'm not watching that video with that title' etc.

    Engaging with the content for a small amount of time would clarify that the thesis is, as you said, all men are responsible for increasing safety, not that all men are ticking time bombs of violence and harassment.

    11 votes

  4. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
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    The way I've been trying to solve this is asking myself, 'I have a real question about something I don't understand. If I ask someone in a particularly exhausted minority group, that might add to...
    • Exemplary

    The way I've been trying to solve this is asking myself, 'I have a real question about something I don't understand. If I ask someone in a particularly exhausted minority group, that might add to their fatigue and frustration. Can I find the answer in a book, in a journal article, or from a published article from a member of that community?'

    Nine times out of ten, yes. I started doing it around 2020 during the American BLM protests. A lot of black people in the US were saying they were sick of explaining racism to white people, so I read some chapter excerpts about things I'd never heard of: Jim Crow, reconstruction, the origins of America's multi-tiered system of law enforcement coming out of slave catching.

    I could have asked an American black friend, but it seemed pretty obvious that the information was out there, and the overwhelming message was 'please just learn and listen', so I tried.

    That approach has gone pretty well. The only adjustment I've made as the world has swung drastically to the far-right over the past three years is, if I can't find an answer, and I have a friend/colleague/acquaintance who could answer, I ask a different question. If I need to ask a well-intentioned question, I first ask, 'Do you have the capacity to answer a question that might be really ignorant right now?'

    Especially with things that are really far outside my life experience but I want to learn about, this has been really useful. I'd say it's about half 'no, but thank you for asking' and half 'sure, what's up?'

    I think it's fundamentally just about manners and, boiling it down to its essence, consent.

    To try and use a metaphor from my own life: I know a lot about a very small subsection of how the world is supposed to work versus how it's actually playing out right now, specifically regarding conflict and war.

    When a family member approaches me at a party and gives their opinion or starts asking me uninformed questions, it's exhausting. I spend my career doing this stuff and I'm not there to be a professional ask-an-expert, I'm there to commune, recharge, and chill.

    And at work, if a group of people like me are relaxing at lunch, and someone from some random other trade comes up to us with an unsolicited opinion or a question, however well intentioned, it does grate on me. We're generally all collectively recharging after a new tragedy or a new report that shows things aren't going well, so when you get the (well intentioned) 'Have you guys thought about [something that's obvious because we're living it]?', it's extremely frustrating, even if the person is nice.

    My brothers and sisters have always been really good at texting me and saying 'Something has happened in the world that I don't understand. Do you have a minute, and do you feel up to talking about it?', so I'm just following their lead.

    It might not be a perfect model or metaphor to use for how to learn about the oppression that women, intersex people, non-binary people, LGBTQIA+ people, and non-white people are experiencing in 2026, but it's the best I've been able to come up with so far.

    18 votes

  5. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
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    I received a goodbye PM and the person didn't choose to post publicly, so I'm interpreting that to mean they'd rather not be named. Even if that means me looking like a dick and withholding pretty...

    I received a goodbye PM and the person didn't choose to post publicly, so I'm interpreting that to mean they'd rather not be named. Even if that means me looking like a dick and withholding pretty harmless information, I'd rather err towards what (I think) they wanted

    Sorry Nukeman

    19 votes

  6. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
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    An English person once told me a joke about the elephant catcher which I'm not sure is well known or obscure. A little kid was walking down the street and saw someone standing with a large net....

    Though I suppose non-participation is invisible, and perfect compliance is impossible, so it's always the ones who do (participate) that sticks out. Not sure what to do about this..

    An English person once told me a joke about the elephant catcher which I'm not sure is well known or obscure.

    A little kid was walking down the street and saw someone standing with a large net.

    'Who are you?' the kid asked.

    'I'm the neighborhood elephant catcher,' the person replied.

    'But I haven't seen any elephants around,' said the kid.

    'Exactly!' said the elephant catcher.

    I think there's no answer to what to do. All we can do is show my appreciation for those who choose restraint when we do come across it.

    So, thank you for your restraint, and thank you for appreciating me not going out of my way to make your day worse or ruin your talks.

    Manners are free! And making the choice to be kind is always worthy of praise, especially - as you say - it's often unrewarded or unseen.

    22 votes

  7. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
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    I remember it well. And my ask wasn't for full consensus for people staying in their lane, because Tildes has a ethos-based rules system. That's why I tried framing this request as one of manners...

    So youre just never going to get full consensus on people staying in their lane, even of 95% of us are fine with just unsubscribing from the groups we dont belong in. Because some people fundamentally disagree with the concept of being able to opt out of these discussions.

    I remember it well. And my ask wasn't for full consensus for people staying in their lane, because Tildes has a ethos-based rules system.

    That's why I tried framing this request as one of manners and respect, and didn't request the creation of safe spaces - a term I didn't use in my post.

    From that thread, I installed @Creesch's user blocking script for one particularly persistent user who (to me) continuously acts like an asshole.

    I don't believe I am in a bubble, I just don't have to see their objectionable garbage anymore, which improves my engagement with the site. I don't have the patience or the emotional energy to 'debate' this individual every time they're 'just asking questions' about one specific topic, over and over.

    And like Creesch said in their post, if someone is reading this and actually worried if it's you that I've blocked, it's definitely not.

    19 votes

  8. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
    Link Parent
    Thank you, you wonderous knopsvane

    Thank you, you wonderous knopsvane

    7 votes

  9. Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes

    286437714
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    I messed up the title. Should have been 'Non-queer men of Tildes', apologies.

    I messed up the title. Should have been 'Non-queer men of Tildes', apologies.

    5 votes

  10. Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue.

    ~tildes Ask
    This is not a request for new rules, as Deimos has made it clear that is not going to happen. This is not a callout post for any individual, including our esteemed admin, or any one user. This is...

    This is not a request for new rules, as Deimos has made it clear that is not going to happen. This is not a callout post for any individual, including our esteemed admin, or any one user.

    This is an honest, earnest plea. I like to joke on Tildes, so this is quite hard to write.

    I've been on Tildes for a few years now, under various usernames. This site has consistently lost great users because people come into ~life.women and ~lgbt to say versions of 'I haven't seen that', 'that's not my experience', or 'I don't think this is a big issue.'

    We lost another user today over this issue. People aren't aware of it, because by the time people are so disgusted they leave, it's usually just a PM notification to their closer contacts who tend to be in a similar headspace, not a dramatic announcement on the front page.

    Tildes is for discussion. It is not for 'let me tell you why you are wrong', no matter what wording you use. This type of action is explicitly against the core ethos of the site.

    If you are struggling to imagine ways in which you can hold back from bringing negativity to a space you are not welcome, here are two examples from my experience of using the site. The following are two things many users care passionately about:

      1. AI. I do not believe the conversation about it is interesting. Sometimes, the way it's talked about makes me actively angry. But many users of this site find conversation about AI enriching and enjoyable. Instead of me following my instant reaction and commenting to say 'I think this is boring, and this never impacts my life', I filter the posts, or do not read them.
      1. I don't know what it's like to be a programmer. The plight of programmers is foreign to me. From the outside, looking in, I could make a bunch of assumptions about the hardships experienced by programmers, or system adminstrators, or software engineers are often saying they are experiencing on this site. Instead of saying 'have you tried finding another job?' or 'Well, I've never seen that', to call into question your experiences, I do not comment, because I know nothing about it.

    The experiences of women, who are a minority on this site, are things that the vast majority of users do not have first-hand insight into. The same goes with gay users, asexual users, intersex users, gender non-conforming users, and users who are queer in a way I may never have come across before.

    The pile-ons in these two groups are persistent, ongoing, and I have observed them for enough time to know it's generally not intentional, and it is relatively user-churn agnostic. This site attracts more cisgendered heterosexual men than it does women or queer people. That's how it is.

    I am not asking for a verification system where you have to prove your bona fides before commenting. I am not asking for these groups to be quarantined off, because that further marginalizes minority groups on the site.

    I am asking for users who are not women, or identify as queer, to think very carefully before posting comments that (regardless of the intention) are perceived time and again as invalidating the real experiences of people you do not know, and cannot experience yourself.

    I am very sad that a lot of the people I have made close connections to on Tildes have left due to the prevalence of this issue. We know now that the site is feature-complete. You either try and set the culture, or you end up with one.

    I would like us to set a culture that is more respective of the spaces intended for women and queer people to discuss issues pertaining to their lives. I am very upset that this continuously is a challenge, especially for members who post, comment, and lurk in those groups.

    If you constantly feel the need to 'challenge' or 'dispute' articles and posts made in those groups, please examine why. This cycle of members of these groups having to explain sexism and oppression to people who have not experienced it in the same way women and queer people do is exhausting, and puts the emotional labor on the minority groups on this site.

    The majority of the site is very welcoming to heterosexual men. Regardless of your intention, please do not 'just ask questions' or feel the need to say 'You know, I've never seen that!' or 'This reminds me of when my Project Manager called me out at a scrum unfairly.'

    We are losing valuable intellectual, cultural, and gender diversity over the persistence of the issues outlined above. If you don't care about this, that sucks, but it makes Tildes a much better place for me and many others who are sadly no longer here.

    TL;DR: If you're inserting yourself into Tildes groups about women's lives and the discussion of LGBT issues without being a member of either group in your actual life, please think twice before posting quick reactions to content that may have made you defensive, or content that you (for whatever reason) feel the need to disprove.

    Assuming good faith, your unsolicited opinion about a topic you have not experienced personally is consistently not welcomed by the contributors, commenters, and lurkers who use those groups to discuss issues impacting them directly.

    If you find the content annoying or feel the need to debate its veracity constantly, simply unsubscribe. It is not hard. It is the base level of respect this community relies on to survive.

    I am sorry if this is coming across as aggressive, mean-spirited, or me taking on airs above the station of a normal user. That's not my intention, but I hope these words perhaps help other men on Tildes to think about the issues raised here in a different way.

    I am a user, asking others like me to be kind and thoughtful. If you need help in how to unsubscribe from groups, or how to set up topic tag filters, please ask in this thread and many users will be able to assist you. It is a system I didn't initially find intuitive and am still learning about.

    Thanks.

    135 votes

  11. Comment on Men in tech #YesAllMen in ~life.women

    286437714
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    You say in few words what I spend many words trying to say. Good wrods. Edit. I didn't notice that typo and it was unintentional. I am leaving that there as it's a great encapsulation of me...

    Perhaps people got trained up to spot butt slaps and rape kit gifts and fuck you you whore messages, and they become blind to any other kinds of harrassment. They don't see it. They get angry when people suggest they couldn't see a different kind of gorilla.

    You say in few words what I spend many words trying to say. Good wrods.

    Edit. I didn't notice that typo and it was unintentional. I am leaving that there as it's a great encapsulation of me talking/writing naturally, versus going to great effort to trying to get my thoughts together.

    Never forget, dear @Chocobean, I am far closer to 'good wrods' than I am to eloquent prose in reality. 😂

    15 votes

  12. Comment on Men in tech #YesAllMen in ~life.women

    286437714
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    Especially as one of the posts mentioned South Korea. Not as a comparison, but 'we'd be saying South Korean men!' It implies that the Anglosphere is some kind of extreme outlier in harassment and...

    Especially as one of the posts mentioned South Korea. Not as a comparison, but 'we'd be saying South Korean men!'

    It implies that the Anglosphere is some kind of extreme outlier in harassment and gendered violence. South Korea is one of the least gender equitable societies in the world, and throwing it out there as an example of how to be more precise just seems like Orientalism to me.

    My broader point which I think you're making is, if you're going to come into ~life.women saying 'actually, this isn't a problem in my experience', provide qualitative or quantitative data before hitting post. Or even reconsider whether chiming in to say 'this article/video/whatever isn't Logical and Reasonable' will help the conversation, or just turn it into men telling women their experiences are fake again, often through ignorance of how these comments are perceived.

    After being on Tildes long enough and seeing the user churn, ignorance isn't an excuse for me. This is one of the two groups where people from without casually post their thoughts on things instead of considering that They Are What The Thing Posted Is About.

    I'm tired of seeing twenty comments only for the poster to reluctantly say 'well, I didn't know that' after a bunch of other people have gone to the emotional labor of educating them.

    This happens over and over and over again.

    17 votes