Gaywallet's recent activity

  1. Comment on US Democrats win enough seats nationwide to (potentially) end Electoral College via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in ~society

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    It seems like you should oppose the electoral college because the whole reason we're in the situation we are right now is because of gerrymandering, which is objectively not fair play. You know...

    I think fair play matters more.

    It seems like you should oppose the electoral college because the whole reason we're in the situation we are right now is because of gerrymandering, which is objectively not fair play.

    beware people trying to convince you that the thing that happens to benefit them is a moral imperative.

    You know there's plenty of logical and emotional arguments for abolishing the EC that have nothing to do with morals, right?

    At first you talked about it being a "bad political move", then about mattering whether someone stood to benefit from it (of which I'm also curious... if it stands to benefit the average person, but neither party wishes to do it... is that also a bad thing which shouldn't be pushed for?), and now you're talking about morality and proselytizing. I'm not here to tell you what's right and what's wrong here, but maybe you should reflect more about this because the shifting ground seems to suggest it's either an emotional issue to you or you haven't figured out quite what about it is bugging you yet.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on US Democrats win enough seats nationwide to (potentially) end Electoral College via the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in ~society

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    While you're completely correct and I generally have an extremely low opinion of the supreme court, I don't think it's an easy 6-3 or even a 5-4. Gorsuch is a staunch man of the letter of the law,...

    While you're completely correct and I generally have an extremely low opinion of the supreme court, I don't think it's an easy 6-3 or even a 5-4.

    Gorsuch is a staunch man of the letter of the law, and has always been pro states rights. The constitution is pretty darn clear that the states govern federal elections and he's previously ruled on the side of letting the states govern their own elections. In DNC vs. Wisconsin, for example, he said that the legislature had the right to extend mail-in voting on account of COVID, which was arguably a liberal stance. The other two I can think of involved gerrymandering which is a republican stance, so it's hard to use them as evidence that he cares more about the letter of the law than partisan politics. And also, to be fair, he has in a few instances detracted from his textualist interpretations, typically on behalf of what isn't written, but in at least 2 cases that come to mind (Fischer vs. US and NFIB vs. OSHA) he seemed to clearly ignore it (or "creatively" interpret it) in order to support not prosecuting Jan 6. rioters (which the ruling is pretty hyper specific about) and about the administrative state, which he isn't a fan of. I still believe, despite this, that he'd be pro a textualist reading of a very unequivocal delegation of election power to state legislatures.

    Barrett is the other vote that I'm thinking could swing textualist in this case, as she has detracted from her conservative group on some issues over textualist interpretations. She split from the conservative block on Fischer vs. US for textualist reasons where Gorsuch did not in a surprise ruling and she also upheld textualist readings for administrative government cases like San Francisco vs. EPA and Ohio vs. EPA. Perhaps of note, sometimes textualists split from the literal reading to try and justify things through the lens of 'how things were like in the 1770s' and she's previously chided both Thomas and Gorsuch for rulings in which they used this convenient framing to ignore the literal text.

    Ultimately, however, it's probably for the best to not push it for now (not that it could even feasibly move through the various state legislatures that fast) and wait until we can get a better handle on the court before moving forward.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on A stunning rebuke of anti-trans US politics: Republicans spent $200 million attacking trans people and lost everything in ~lgbt

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I think the right way to thread this particular needle is to redirect to the economy, the tangible day to day problems people have, and the fact that billionaires are buying our government and...

    I think the right way to thread this particular needle is to redirect to the economy, the tangible day to day problems people have, and the fact that billionaires are buying our government and call any focus on identity politics as "weird". You can push for rights by voting on bills in office and signaling open support without letting identity take the limelight. State your position that all people deserve rights and don't let them single out a specific group. Sam Forstag in Montana is an excellent example of threading this particular needle - his messaging was very "protect everyone" and "government needs to get out of our personal lives". This is exactly the kind of messaging that will appeal to both sides of the aisle and redirect to issues that effect everyone and not just a few folks. You can still be pro-identity politics by simply stating that everyone deserves protection from predators.

    19 votes

  5. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    They don't have to be analogous for them to fit the same logical structure.

    They don't have to be analogous for them to fit the same logical structure.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I am not particularly interested in spending a bunch of time itemizing explicitly how the superset of statements all differ. The nuance of some of the differences are explored in my responses -...

    I am not particularly interested in spending a bunch of time itemizing explicitly how the superset of statements all differ. The nuance of some of the differences are explored in my responses - for example in some cases these all x are y are based entirely in hate (racism, sexism, and so on). In other cases they are criticisms of the systems that contribute to these issues (such as the video this thread is referencing). Sometimes they are "punching up" and in other cases they are "punching down". You shouldn't treat any of the examples as analogous - I never made the claim nor implied they are the same, I used them to examine the structure and a specific response pathway.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I'm not placing a value judgement on fragility at all, just explaining that it comes from a place of fragility. Personally, I think not being fragile is a more resilient way of living and we...

    It comes across like you're saying it's bad to be fragile, but everyone has something they're fragile over in the way you frame it.

    I'm not placing a value judgement on fragility at all, just explaining that it comes from a place of fragility. Personally, I think not being fragile is a more resilient way of living and we should strive to be confident and secure in ourselves, but you're absolutely right that most of us are fragile about something.

    I could say all artists are a bunch of lazy slobs

    Well, now we're touching on more than just fragility. Now we're talking about the downstream effects of the statement itself. And you're right, people spreading a bad stereotype is bad for the group in question and bad for anyone who gets stereotyped. It's important to fight this kind of messaging.

    But we also have to be careful about overextending this analogy to the one brought up by the original video. In the case of the original video, while the statement was also inflammatory and negative about the group, there were explicitly strong negative outcomes of this behavior, and the criticism was on the social institutions we have created and support under the patriarchy. The outcome of bad men in tech being sexist to women is that women don't want to be in tech, they get sexually harassed, and worse. These are important enough factors for an open criticism to be necessary, even if it harms some people in the process. We can spend time debating about the "best" way to do this, but I think we'd all find we have vastly differing opinions of what is "best". Realistically the answer is most likely that we need to talk about it in different forums, at differing levels of "offensive" to all groups present in the discussion because the diversity of thought and opinion needs to be openly discussed so people can learn the bounds of acceptable behavior as well as the various opinions present.

    What's lost in this is that not everyone within those groups is actually up.

    You're right that we should keep intersectionality in mind, but I think part of the reason this is a problem is fragility. We'd spend a lot less time wringing our hands about "the right way" to say things if we were all a tad more resilient and not taking everything as a personal offense when people are explicitly talking about systems and the effects thereof. The focus of the conversation is not on the individual - we need to stop getting so caught up on the individual.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Not at all. All women are sluts is not analogous to the specific kind of all x are y present here, nor is the reaction pathway to have a negative reaction likely one of fragility.

    Not at all. All women are sluts is not analogous to the specific kind of all x are y present here, nor is the reaction pathway to have a negative reaction likely one of fragility.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    To be clear, I wasn't trying to weigh in at all about whether it's the right way to do anything. I'm simply exposing that fragility drives the explicit situation detailed here. There's plenty of...

    To be clear, I wasn't trying to weigh in at all about whether it's the right way to do anything. I'm simply exposing that fragility drives the explicit situation detailed here. There's plenty of nuance to unpack in a larger discussion about how to reach the problematic men in tech highlighted by the original video, but that wasn't the point of this reply.

    5 votes

  10. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I'm specifically responding to what the poster here said, which was the following: I'm not speaking about other groups here. I'm also not particularly interested in discussing the merits of...

    I think assuming fragility on behalf of someone who responds to bait is making a pretty big assumption.

    I'm specifically responding to what the poster here said, which was the following:

    But at the same time, saying that "all men" are the problem does put a lot of people in a position where they can either look around and say "yeah, I can see that this is happening, thanks for pointing it out", or they can look around and say "I don't see this". There are people who are legitimately in the latter group, and there are people who are wilfully ignorant and place themselves in that group.

    When they place "blame" on people in the latter group, it will immediately make them defensive, because they're being accused of either being a terrible person, or enabling terrible people, and both of those have been deemed by the speaker to be basically the same.

    I'm not speaking about other groups here. I'm also not particularly interested in discussing the merits of whether this helps or drives people away. I simply wanted to point out that making the logical leaps I detailed is explicitly fragility, and it's what drives a fair share of the gut emotional reaction kind of responses that these discussions are often fraught with.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Perfect! Then you're not the person I'm describing here. You didn't make the jumps in logic necessary to end up in the incorrect place. You're clearly not fragile, as you're confident enough in...

    I am confident enough about my own irl behavior that an accusation from an online rando who lives on the opposite side of the planet usually doesn't directly affect me, but I still care about it and will respond because I think it's bad for society to say things like that and it only serves to make cultural conflicts worse.

    Perfect! Then you're not the person I'm describing here. You didn't make the jumps in logic necessary to end up in the incorrect place. You're clearly not fragile, as you're confident enough in yourself and your behavior to understand when a blanket statement about a group you belong to doesn't mean it's an accusation about you.

    I'm not sure if I understand your "all women are sluts" example

    I condensed a complicated subject down to a very short explanation. In short I essentially broke down a statement about men, turned it into it's logical structure "all x are y", then disassembled what the statement truly means and gave examples of other "all x are y" statements. Because I was talking about the group of all of these statements, I threw in some examples which were sit on the various edges (local extremes) to explain the limits of this statement. To be clear, these other examples are not meant to be stand-ins or analogous to a statement such as "all men in tech are misogynist" (which to be clear the woman in the video never stated) which I was trying to explain here. My goal was not to provide an analogous statement here so much as it was to break down the general logic of a statement like this, explain why a gut emotional response of defense is not necessary because it is a misunderstanding of the statement itself.

    Does that help explain it? I'm not sure I've the energy or time to go into this in more detail, but hopefully a high level explanation of the train of thought here helps.

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I'm talking about and introducing the idea of fragility and I'm doing so by injecting some helpful advice right up front (don't immediately assume "all x are y" means you are y if you are a part...

    I'm talking about and introducing the idea of fragility and I'm doing so by injecting some helpful advice right up front (don't immediately assume "all x are y" means you are y if you are a part of group x). If the mere use of the word "fragility" as a concept applied to help explain why people often exhibit a particular behavior is enough to scare someone off from reading about fragility, then they aren't ready for the topic anyway.

    I'm not particularly interested in debating semantics of "best wording" to get people to do things. That way lies madness. I'm simply introducing the concept here because it's relevant and might help at least one person.

    7 votes

  13. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    What I'm talking about is to help people who have a gut reaction to any "all x are y" statements where they share group x. The goal here is to interrupt the fast emotional response that fragile...

    If that's a person's immediate reaction to the slogan, then it's undermining itself before anyone has heard its message.

    What I'm talking about is to help people who have a gut reaction to any "all x are y" statements where they share group x. The goal here is to interrupt the fast emotional response that fragile people tend to have, where their thought process is essentially:

    1. They said all men are rapists.
    2. I'm a man.
    3. Therefore they are accusing me of being a rapist.
    4. But wait, I'm not a rapist!
    5. I must defend myself

    This is fragility, for the reasons I outlined. The deeper point of whether they are a man who is contributing to rape culture has yet to be explored and cannot be determined at that point because either they are the problem and lying to themselves, or they have not been exposed to the information which informs them of a new perspective, insight, or knowledge that explains how they are contributing to the problem.

    So in that sense I disagree - it's not undermining itself before the message has been heard. It's a true statement at that point in time to the listener. It may not be an objectively true statement, but the goal here is to get someone to listen rather than getting defensive, so we probably shouldn't quibble over the semantics of the exact wording here (especially when the statement "all men are rapists" also suffers from the same issue of semantics).

    6 votes

  14. Comment on Proposal: For sensitive topics, if a thread is intended for a particular demographic, there needs another thread open for everyone to discuss without having to join the targeted thread in ~tildes

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    No, this is fragility. When someone says "all women are sluts", I recognize immediately two things: They aren't talking about literally every woman. If you stop and press them and ask them if...

    When they place "blame" on people in the latter group, it will immediately make them defensive, because they're being accused of either being a terrible person, or enabling terrible people, and both of those have been deemed by the speaker to be basically the same.

    No, this is fragility.

    When someone says "all women are sluts", I recognize immediately two things:

    1. They aren't talking about literally every woman. If you stop and press them and ask them if their mom is a slut? Their sister? Their wife? Saint Mary? There will always be at least one exception
    2. They aren't talking about me. Doesn't matter if it's women and sluts, men and rapists, cops are bad, black people and thievery, romani people being untrustworthy, or whatever combination of <group> and <characteristic> where I happen to be a part of <group>. It's a generalization, sometimes based in hate, sometimes based in experience. Sometimes its legitimately a problem with society or a group that needs to be raised. Other times it's based in hate or hurt. Regardless, the statement is never literally true (it can't be with 8 billion people) - it's a statement meant to start a conversation about what lies beneath - the pattern or experience or symptom that corrupts what they perceive to be as enough of the group to constitute "all".

    Taking it literally means you either haven't stopped and thought about these kinds of statements for long enough to recognize that they aren't literal (most speech isn't, by the way... food for thought) or that you are fragile enough to think it applies to you even when there's evidence it doesn't (stop defending male rapists if you're a man when someone says this. it's not necessary). As an aside, if anyone reading this hasn't read the book White Fragility by Dr. Robin DiAngelo, I would recommend picking up this book to explore the concept of fragility more.

    7 votes

  15. 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

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    Honestly it had never occurred to me, this is a great perspective.

    Honestly it had never occurred to me, this is a great perspective.

    9 votes

  16. Comment on #YesAllMen #NotAllMen #MaybeSomeMen How to be better? in ~life.men

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    This and every thread in a nutshell, sadly.

    This is also why I didn't watch the video

    This and every thread in a nutshell, sadly.

    15 votes

  17. Comment on #YesAllMen #NotAllMen #MaybeSomeMen How to be better? in ~life.men

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    I really don't think her talk was aimed at the folks who are causing the problem, but rather for folks who are already allies looking for tangible ways they can effect things. There's different...

    I think we get so wrapped up in the message we forget that the people who need to hear it don’t want to hear it.

    I really don't think her talk was aimed at the folks who are causing the problem, but rather for folks who are already allies looking for tangible ways they can effect things.

    There's different audiences for every talk - the folks who need to hear this sort of stuff to change their behavior likely need to hear it from a conservative man that they already look up to (the Joe Rogans and such of the world) and needs to be spoon fed to them so as to avoid triggering their fragility.

    12 votes

  18. 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

    Gaywallet
    Link Parent
    For what it's worth, I think it's entirely appropriate for 1-2 comment trees to exist that are simply along the lines of 'hey, I'm not the group being discussed here, but I read/watched what was...

    For what it's worth, I think it's entirely appropriate for 1-2 comment trees to exist that are simply along the lines of 'hey, I'm not the group being discussed here, but I read/watched what was posted here and just want to share my sympathy'. I think it's also reasonable to ask yourself the hard questions when you see these - introspect a little about whether you're contributing to or alleviating the problem on a societal level (don't allow yourself the cop-out of 'no-effect', really consider whether it's on one side or the other) and how you can continue to move in the direction of improvement... think about a time where you did contribute to the problem or alleviate it.

    Sharing these experiences and reflecting I think is fine, so long as you're paying attention to not trying to dominate the conversation. Keep it in a single comment thread or wait to post it if none of the affected folks have chimed in it or enough time has passed since it was posted.

    Finally, if you see men doing the behavior described in this post - step in right away. Take that off the affected minority's plate and call out the toxic behavior for what it is. Don't necessarily engage in "debating" them so much as judging them negatively and sharing what they're doing in a contextual level. Ask them to read the room and tell them you are disappointed in their behavior, help them understand how it's contributing to the problem, but also don't engage so much that it takes up the whole convo.

    Oh yeah, and in case it isn't clear - thanks for posting this. It's nice to see friendly voices chiming in asking how they can help.

    17 votes

  19. 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

    Gaywallet
    Link
    I hate to beat this drum literally every time the wheel completes another cycle, but this exact problem (although not just limited to women, I saw it happen with other minorities especially poc...

    I hate to beat this drum literally every time the wheel completes another cycle, but this exact problem (although not just limited to women, I saw it happen with other minorities especially poc and trans) has never been resolved on Tildes, and is unfortunately just going to continue to happen without any sort of moderation which Deimos made extremely clear isn't going to happen.

    For what it's worth, I agree with you and wish people would be more mindful, but we shouldn't expect more out of this website - that's a path that leads to disappointment or a really long temporary ban for causing too much trouble, lol.

    24 votes

  20. Comment on Best way to setup email forwarding for a domain I own? in ~tech

    Gaywallet
    Link
    Mxroute runs promotional lifetime 5gb total space with unlimited email creation from time to time. I have that set up with my custom domain. I use my custom email boxes primarily for...

    Mxroute runs promotional lifetime 5gb total space with unlimited email creation from time to time. I have that set up with my custom domain. I use my custom email boxes primarily for spam/signup/single accounts so space isn't a huge deal to me.