Arshan's recent activity
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
Arshan Link ParentYeah, men's issues groups do tend conservative/anti-feminist, which bums me out. I do feel like progressives have just completely given up the space without attempting to counter it at all. I...Yeah, men's issues groups do tend conservative/anti-feminist, which bums me out. I do feel like progressives have just completely given up the space without attempting to counter it at all.
I disagree that it should be required to acknowledge that women have very real issues every time someone wants to talk about men's issues. It makes sense in some spaces and conversations, but it can be kinda degrading to make it necessary. Men are allowed to just talk about their problems.
I wouldn't say non-binary issues have a lot of support, but are allowed to be framed as real and significant problems in the wider discourse. That definetely doesn't mean its given the care and support it deserves. My central experience of talking about men's issues to progressives is the response that it simply doesn't exist. The other response is that Patriarchy hurts men too, which I agree is true, but then the conversation ends there. There's no discussion of what that actually means or how to actually help men.
Your tone's fine! I also get unsure how I come across in text, so I feel you.
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
Arshan Link ParentI feel like we're talking past each other a bit. My original point was against the pop-feminist trope that women have only ever been functionally slaves across history; my point is that a woman,...I feel like we're talking past each other a bit. My original point was against the pop-feminist trope that women have only ever been functionally slaves across history; my point is that a woman, compared to her male peer has less, but not 0 power in most societies. I'm definitely not saying that women didn't have unique problems or that those problems are insignificant. I would counter that pop-feminists are feminists and pop-feminism is the brand of feminism that has the most formal power in society at large. I do generally agree with and like more "serious" (I can't think of a better word) feminists, but I feel like its bad faith to claim they're the only "real" feminists. I'm fucking terrible with names, but I'm thinking of the woman who coined the concept of "mansplaining" and the woman who wrote about doing a personal privilege audit as being examples of fairly mainstream feminists I agreed with. To be clear, I identify as pro-feminist, mainly because men who talk a lot about being feminists usually aren't particularly feminist in practice. That and I don't personally want to wade into the culture war over which branch of feminism owns the term "feminism".
We probably move in different circles, but I usually see men starting every conversation about men's issue with an explict statement about how they know women and non-binary people have it worse then men. I'm coming from a place were its, rightfully, taken as a given women have bad, real and significant problems and men's issues gets largely ignored and erased. I'll be honest, I don't think I've ever even heard of any progressive group taking men's issues more seriously then women's or non-binary peoples, let alone seen it in real life. I personally feel the need to be more vocal about men's issues because women's and non-binary people's issues have far more significant groups supporting them.
My historical argument is purely from the fact that we have no direct accounts from the lower 90% of pretty much every culture in history, irregardless of their gender. My understanding of your argument is that that you're suggesting that one the elites in the vast majority of cultures are unambigiously patriarchal and that two, once we start having direct accounts from the lower class, they also exhibit at least some patriarchial elements as well. I know I'm extrapolating a far bit from what you wrote, but that's the sense I got. If I am largely correct in my understanding of your point, then I agree with it, I'm simply neurotic about couching every educated guess in asterisks and caveats.
For specific statistics on historical maternal mortality, This article from Cambridge puts the Lifetime maternal mortality risk in 17th century England at 5.6 percent and the article contexualizes that normal Yearly mortality was about the same rate. I'm not certain how much maternal mortality changed between cultures and through time, but my guess would be that it doesn't vary by enormous amounts. I completely agree that its impossible to produce an average risk for generic combat across history, but my source was this Acoup blog post that put it at 10% per battle for ancient Greek hoplites, which is significantly higher then lifetime maternal mortality.
As to the original post, I mostly noticed it because it refrenced a blog I also like a lot and I wasn't reading it for its implications. I completely agree that the risks of childbirth exclusively fall on women. As to other comments here and Tildes in general, I can only say that due to my bad habit of trawling dumpster subreddits my calibration for iffy stuff is set to deranged rants.
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
Arshan Link ParentI'd say my point, which I should have clear about, is that often feminists say women had it worse then men while never actually comparing a woman to an equivalent man in any one culture. At most a...I'd say my point, which I should have clear about, is that often feminists say women had it worse then men while never actually comparing a woman to an equivalent man in any one culture.
At most a real negative thing about the female gender role will be stated and nothing said about the male role.
For example, childbirth will be brought up as a dangerous thing that only effects women, which is true.
But the natural male counterpart is soldiering.
Its just about as gendered as childbirth and its far more lethal then childbirth, which balances out its reduced occurrence.
Men also have just as much choice in being soldier as women do in being a mother, often less.
Soldiers were usually either conscripted or explicitly raised to be a warrior since they were 5.
Again I agree women have and had many terrible norms forced onto them, but that says nothing about the male role.
Men don't need to have it good for women to have it bad.Yes, women had strict gender roles, but so did men.
Was the gender role forced onto women worse then the role forced onto men?
I think that's a very complicated question that is deeply subjective.
It depends on the particulars of the society and the particulars of each person.
I don't consider someone who sincerely enjoys their gender role oppressed, but I understand that some will disagree with me.
An uncritical statement that its better to be a man then a woman always feels patriarchal to me.My knowledge of gender in Japanese literature was only in relation to a similarity in North-Western Europe, so you have me beat there.
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
Arshan Link ParentMuslim and Roman women could initiate divorce and maintain their property. At least in South Carolina, white women were the buyer and/or seller in 40% of slave sales. In late medieval and early...Muslim and Roman women could initiate divorce and maintain their property. At least in South Carolina, white women were the buyer and/or seller in 40% of slave sales. In late medieval and early modern England, young peasant women could move to the cities alone to make money to increase the dowry she brought to the marriage. Widows in medieval Europe were able to run the businesses of their dead spouses, and in some areas, were included in worker's guilds. In late medieval Spain, widows directly owned their dowry and husbands were often required to pay into the dowry; women usually married men that were 10-15 years older, so being a widow was quite common. Arranged marriages varied a lot in the particulars, but usually involved the mothers as much or more as the fathers. Spinster means a never married women who historically lived off selling the thread and fabric she made; its meant that since the 1500s. The reason that names like Smith and Miller are common is because jobs were usually patrilinearly inherited; women, whether through marriage or birth, would often been involved with the household business. In England and Japan, literacy moved from the upper-class through middle-class women to the rest of society.
My point isn't that women had it great, they definetely didn't, but that it varied a lot in time and place. And broad stroke claims about women's role and treatment in society only further muddies the real issue, gender discrimination in societies today. There is and was no universal standard for women's role in any one society at any one point in time.
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Comment on Fix your hearts or die: The path to liberation for lonely men is feminism in ~life
Arshan LinkArticles like these just make me so existentially tired. I don't disagree that the very specific group, loud misogynists online, they are talking about sucks and are terrible. I completely agree!...Do the work. Be a man.
Articles like these just make me so existentially tired. I don't disagree that the very specific group, loud misogynists online, they are talking about sucks and are terrible. I completely agree! But none of those people are reading their article, and I am pretty sure they know that. And even if they did read it, I can't imagine it would change their mind, or more importantly, that the author believes it would change their mind. Its written by a liberal feminist for other liberal feminists. That's not an intrinsic problem for me, but then textually its explictly written as if the audience is those loud misogynists. I find it baffling.
The thing that pisses me off is that it continues the dumb, sexist canard that people are lonely because their bad people. I very much disagree, partly because I've always been a loner but also because I think its gross and wrong. I'm lonely because I had a childhood that taught me people are untrustworthy and will constantly lie about how good they are in the relationship. I've never been in a romantic relationship because I sincerely believed I was fundamentally undesirable for most of my life and now I feel its too late to start. Neither of those things have anything to do with a desire to dominate women or having that desire but being robbed of the opportunity to fufill it.
The actual path to liberation for lonely men is feminism.
Do they really believe that there aren't lonely feminists? Like what? I don't know if the author knows this, but conservatives are capable of making friends and dating each other. Most lonely people are lonely for mundane reasons, not their political beliefs. They're lonely because they have crippling social anxiety or have no free time to meet new people. Or they had bad experiences in the past and nopped out. Or they don't know where to meet people that are actually like them. They also acknowledge many women are lonely, but is feminism and "Be a man" also the solution for them? If not, why is loneliness a real problem for women and not men?
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Comment on Passing question about LLMs and the Tech Singularity in ~tech
Arshan LinkI would bet far more money then I have that LLMs are truly incapable of anything close to AGI let alone a super-intelligent god. Firstly, they need more memory and more layers of memory. Models...I would bet far more money then I have that LLMs are truly incapable of anything close to AGI let alone a super-intelligent god. Firstly, they need more memory and more layers of memory. Models are frozen windows into their training data; I can't imagine a General Intelligence that is incapable of adapting its world-view with new data. I'm also knowledgable enough about LLMs to be pretty certain its impossible for them to do so. Secondly, real-world intelligence is far messier then stories about AGI generally engage with and way more then LLM companies engage with. Thirdly, I suspect that hardware is a hard blocking problem for reaching anything close to AGI, and no, I don't think a trillion dollars of datacenters is going to solve that problem.
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Comment on Some people can't see mental images. The consequences are profound. in ~health.mental
Arshan LinkHuh, I didn't really think I could be surprised by my aphantasia, but I definetely was. Both by the article and all the comments here. From the article, I realized that when talk about memory then...Huh, I didn't really think I could be surprised by my aphantasia, but I definetely was. Both by the article and all the comments here.
From the article, I realized that when talk about memory then mean a literal re-experience of some event. Seems obvious know, but wow is that not me. Saying that my memory is purely factual sounds kinda pompous logic bro, but thats the best description I have. I just know the one of my childhood cats was grey and white.
I have no problems recognizing people's faces, but I also can't describe them at all.
On a heavier side, I've always had a weak sense of self; honestly, all the elements of the final section are thoughts I've had. The idea that "The Self" is memories feels real weird to me, not that I can really define what My Self is. I'm also not a "thing" that's existed throughout my life. I'm the liquid in a leaky bucket that sometimes gets refilled and eventually I'm simply different.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech
Arshan Link ParentFrom those links, the quoted board member responds with some more info. Mainly that those quotes are out of context, quite old and about specific issues not a general problem. Honestly, it makes...From those links, the quoted board member responds with some more info. Mainly that those quotes are out of context, quite old and about specific issues not a general problem. Honestly, it makes Eric seem like an ass and not arguing in good faith.
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Comment on How Bill Gates is reframing the climate change debate in ~enviro
Arshan Link ParentI'm blanking on the term in sociology, but its pretty well established that humans are good at regulating birth rates without needing external controls. There's a bit of lag when modern medical...I'm blanking on the term in sociology, but its pretty well established that humans are good at regulating birth rates without needing external controls. There's a bit of lag when modern medical technology diffuses into a population, but after that it balances out around replacement rates.
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Comment on Death in D&D 5e, the various revival spells, and their impact on the game in ~games.tabletop
Arshan LinkDeath in TTRPGs are as interesting as you make them, you being both the DM and players. Your whole party gets TPK by a dumb trap, have them play as a rival group that was trying to achieve the...Death in TTRPGs are as interesting as you make them, you being both the DM and players. Your whole party gets TPK by a dumb trap, have them play as a rival group that was trying to achieve the same group. Or have them play as friends and family trying to recover their bodies. Or allow whatever bad thing they were trying to stop happen and play a new group 50 years in the future.
Same thing with resurrection magic. Revivify could have a chance that a different soul returns to the body. It could be more occult, forcing you to give up something valuable to save the character. You could have a spell that moves their soul into another person or animal's body. Revivify sucks (for me) is because its so boring; it just solves a big problem with no fanfare or pizzazz.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione wants death penalty count tossed in US CEO murder case in ~news
Arshan Link ParentI have no opinion on the specific conspiracy here, but I'd push back on the idea that the US government can't pull off a conspiracy. Firstly, the US federal government isn't actually a single...I have no opinion on the specific conspiracy here, but I'd push back on the idea that the US government can't pull off a conspiracy. Firstly, the US federal government isn't actually a single entity, its a loosely connected collection of agencies and bureaus. Some of those agencies are extremely competent and have run long running conspiracies with no significant repercussions. See the CIA's drug running, the FBI's assisted assassinations and the NSA's many surveillance operations. Secondly, I doubt it would be anyone public facing actually doing the work of it. The chucklefucks only need to ask to be rid of some troublesome dissident.
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Comment on I am angry at Google and wanted to share (rant) in ~tech
Arshan Link ParentI've used Fastmail for years at this point and I've never had a problem. $5 dollars a month (US pricing) isn't cheap cheap, but its not terrible for a solid service.I've used Fastmail for years at this point and I've never had a problem. $5 dollars a month (US pricing) isn't cheap cheap, but its not terrible for a solid service.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
Arshan Link ParentYes, Roman became an ethnic group in the Eastern half eventually. My main counterpoints are firstly that the shift to Roman as ethnicity vs Roman as citizenship/cultural-symbol quite far into the...Yes, Roman became an ethnic group in the Eastern half eventually. My main counterpoints are firstly that the shift to Roman as ethnicity vs Roman as citizenship/cultural-symbol quite far into the split. Second, Roman continued to be a fairly inclusive to new groups relative to there cultures. There were Armenians and Georgians who did become ethnic Romans, in a way that didn't happen in many other contemporary cultures. Also, the Roman ethnicity was created from a multi-ethnic Roman citizenship body.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
Arshan Link ParentOh yeah, the "Byzantines" were as Roman as you could be, but I disagree that Roman was ever an ethnic group. I also agree with all the stuff after roughly 1000CE. Roman was always a multi-ethnic...Oh yeah, the "Byzantines" were as Roman as you could be, but I disagree that Roman was ever an ethnic group. I also agree with all the stuff after roughly 1000CE. Roman was always a multi-ethnic concept, especially by late antiquity. Most Gauls had been Roman for centuries. There were ethnically Frankish Roman Emperors; a lot of Roman Emperors weren't even from Italy let alone Rome itself. I just get grumpy when people act like all of Roman culture and peoples was deleted from Europe after the "Fall" of the Western Roman Empire.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
Arshan Link ParentI think its wild how many distinct groups of people tried to cosplay as "Romans". There's Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Emperors explicitly have popes crown them as Roman Emperors. Both Kaiser,...I think its wild how many distinct groups of people tried to cosplay as "Romans". There's Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Emperors explicitly have popes crown them as Roman Emperors. Both Kaiser, from the German/Prussian Empire, and Czar, from the Russian Empire, are based of the term Caesar. Even modern posh British people still learn Latin, or more specifically memorize particular Latin phrases. to play on this trope. Hell, I took 4 years of Latin in high school, but that's just because my parents are hyper-conservative Catholics. Anyway, I think that Carthage must be destroyed.
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Comment on What common misunderstanding do you want to clear up? in ~talk
Arshan Link ParentConstantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium; there's a direct line of continuity. For a modern example, Brazil moved its capital from Rio de Janerio to Brasilia in 1960 and it...Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium; there's a direct line of continuity. For a modern example, Brazil moved its capital from Rio de Janerio to Brasilia in 1960 and it clearly stayed the same country.
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Comment on I tried to protect my kids from the internet. Here’s what happened. in ~tech
Arshan Link ParentI agree that we can do more then where currently doing and that it could involve government regulation, but I'd say its a capital H Hard problem. Obviously the current version of just ask if your...I agree that we can do more then where currently doing and that it could involve government regulation, but I'd say its a capital H Hard problem. Obviously the current version of just ask if your 18 is literally nothing, but getting to something that is a meaningful constraint is a massive jump up. If its based of government IDs, well kids can steal their parent's IDs and use them; fake ids have also existed forever. The technical expertise to run a more robust system is also outside of the ability of most governments; a lot of governments have already been out-sourcing their digital infrastructure to Big Tech. Any technical solution can only increase the difficulty and maybe that's enough or maybe its not.
Personally, I think the only long-term solution requires kids' to actually trust their caregivers, so that if/when something sketchy starts happening the kid feels safe checking with them. I get that's hard, especially given how much time most parents have, but I don't see any technical solutions being more then a moderate improvement.
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Comment on My experience suddenly being very pretty in ~lgbt
Arshan LinkI really feel like pretty privilege is a good indicator for the messiness of all privileges. Clearly being considered attractive provides benefits with the most obviously being romantic...I really feel like pretty privilege is a good indicator for the messiness of all privileges. Clearly being considered attractive provides benefits with the most obviously being romantic opportunities, but also just general social life. But its not only benefits, its also an impossible standard to maintain forever, preferably "effortlessly", and it changes how people perceive you in often inscrutable ways. Oh, you happen to seen as unapproachable, so I hope you have a lot of social confidence; oh your seen as approachable, I hope you are comfortable rejecting people. Do the benefits outweigh the negatives? Sometimes, sure, but a lot of the time its just different. Is it better to be hit on when you don't want to be or to never be hit on? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Comment on The evidence that AI is destroying jobs for young people just got stronger in ~tech
Arshan Link ParentI don't disagree with anything you've written. My hope is that the workers themselves, especially tech workers, get more class consciousness, not that executive's learn common sense.I don't disagree with anything you've written. My hope is that the workers themselves, especially tech workers, get more class consciousness, not that executive's learn common sense.
I'd say there's a difference between it being a personal standard and it being a general rule. As a personal standard, it seems perfectly fucking fair to me; you do what keeps you safe. But as a general rule, it just sets a much higher standard for discussing men's issues then other groups have. Men have real problems that are unique to them; the way people talk about them doesn't change that. Feminist discourse, whatever your opinion on it is, is given a lot of latitude in talking negatively about men, and in my experience, it often crosses the line into bigotry. I can understand #killallmen isn't meant literally and I can still think its gross. I'd personally prefer that all groups be held to a higher standard of care when talking in public spaces.