smoontjes's recent activity

  1. Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    It certainly was a disappointment but I didn't feel it all of it was bad

    It certainly was a disappointment but I didn't feel it all of it was bad

    2 votes

  2. Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv

    smoontjes
    Link
    Can't recall when I last posted in these so here's just some ratings of stuff I watched the past few months. Your Friends & Neighbours - 6/10 Pluribus - 7/10 Peacemaker - 5/10 Patriot - 7/10 Steal...

    Can't recall when I last posted in these so here's just some ratings of stuff I watched the past few months.

    Your Friends & Neighbours - 6/10

    Pluribus - 7/10

    Peacemaker - 5/10

    Patriot - 7/10

    Steal - 7/10

    Halt and Catch Fire - 8/10

    The Night Manager season 2 - 5/10 (season 1 - 8/10)

    Veneno - 8/10

    A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - 7/10

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Lindsay Ellis - Is there still a very special place in hell for Matt Stone and Trey Parker? in ~tv

  4. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

  5. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Alright so I don't disagree that there are structural issues, that there has historically been unacceptable things done to Greenlanders by Danish systems, or that there are still lingering very...

    Alright so I don't disagree that there are structural issues, that there has historically been unacceptable things done to Greenlanders by Danish systems, or that there are still lingering very valid tensions towards Denmark by Greenland.

    However I don't agree about current times in regards to children being removed from Greenlanders who are living in Denmark. Mistakes are made for sure, and it's highly questionable how those could happen, but I would like to repeat the first thing I said yesterday: 6% of children in Greenland itself are removed. 1% in Denmark overall. So when Greenlanders migrate to Denmark and have their children removed in similar numbers as they do where they come from - that is not surprising. What would be surprising is if the numbers about those people suddenly decreased to where they now live. But they won't, because the extreme levels of trauma among Greenlanders don't disappear just because they emigrate. Rates of alcoholism and abuse are skyhigh there. It's just so obvious to me that victims of growing up in such homes are left with longlasting mental health problems as Keira herself admitted to having. And obviously someone with mental health problems is a lot more likely to be a bad parent. It has nothing to do with them being Greenlandic and while I won't dismiss that some subconscious racism still exists, that's not the main issue here. The main issue is generational inherited trauma and there are plenty of Danes with those background too - and those Danes have their children removed as well on the same grounds.

    As for the testing, yeah psychologists unable to pass them themselves is problematic and it's good that they have now been changed. But that is not even close to the only thing that informs the decision to remove a child.

    For the last part, Greenlanders are indigenous to Greenland, Danes are indigenous to Denmark - Greenlanders are not indigenous to Denmark. So yes, of course someone from a different part of the world is expected to integrate if they move to somewhere else in the world. Any immigrant in most countries would be expected to learn the local language. Especially after being here for years and years. Besides, she may well claim that she has difficulty with the language but from the interviews I've seen she speaks Danish fluently and barely even has an accent. She nitpicks at singular reasons why the child was removed while dismissing the core issues. So the only play she has left is the racism card.

    I don't think it's racist to remove a child from someone that is clearly incapable of passing the simplest of testing several times over again across years. It's tough, and it's not her fault that she has traumas, or that she is mentally ill, or maybe Greenlanders face more scrutiny during these screenings and further testings.. but that's not racism. That's probably just looking at the trends from that country they are from and seeing that they are already 6 times more likely to have a child removed. And I'd assume they already know that if a mother has trauma from her own abusive childhood, the numbers speak for themself about the likelihood of those issues persisting into the next generation as well.

    So to go all the way back to the initial question:

    Doesn't Denmark also treat its Greenlander citizens as lesser and demand they "integrate" as well?

    I don't believe so, no. Not lesser than any other immigrant at least.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    Seems like we are talking about different things, seems that you are ignoring almost all of what I said, and it even seems that you think you know how my country works from across an ocean better...

    Seems like we are talking about different things, seems that you are ignoring almost all of what I said, and it even seems that you think you know how my country works from across an ocean better than I do?

    5 votes

  7. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    Seems like you are making an argument against me agreeing with you.

    Seems like you are making an argument against me agreeing with you.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    First of all, 6 times as many children are removed in Greenland itself compared to Denmark. Greenland also has much more widespread social problems. A fifth of Greenlanders have been sexually...

    First of all, 6 times as many children are removed in Greenland itself compared to Denmark. Greenland also has much more widespread social problems. A fifth of Greenlanders have been sexually abused and a third of them have been neglected. The percentage of removals staying the same for emigrating Greenlanders is not surprising.

    The one from the article called Keira was reported about here too. Your second link says it black on white that she failed the most basic of testing like this example in the article of having to look your child in the eye, her excuse being she has never played with dolls. Her new baby was removed years and years after her other children too, but she still fails the tests again. It's also reported that "She has massive emotional difficulties and severely inadequate abilities to ensure stable conditions and offer her child a secure attachment and development, according to the assessment. The municipality also emphasized that the child's father did not want to participate in parenting." (deepl translation) So I'm just not convinced at all that this is some kind of structural or systematic racism, at least not in this particular case. We are also mostly getting her side of the story because the municipality and people involved in making the decision to remove her children cannot comment. Her argument essentially boils down to cultural differences, which to me it's pretty clear that's not even close to make up for all the other problems.

    I will grant you that maybe some of testing mentioned in the third link was designed with Danes in mind, not Greenlanders, and those may be a forgotten leftover and discriminatory and inconsiderate of others, and that is of course also problematic that it took until last year to change it but I don't think it holds up to scrutiny overall because I had similar questions when I had to have my IQ measured at the psych ward and that staircase example reminded me of similar questions I was given that I thought were weird.

    So while it might look like racial profiling to take them through testing, it is evidently per the third link only happening when there is already "welfare concerns" in which case it's a trigger to do further testing, which I feel is valid methodology? It's not just IQ testing either, it's "interviews with psychologists, meetings with social workers".

    During my psychology classes some years back, one of the courses was about child neglect and we saw in class how the system actually works and trust me, it is extremely thorough and it truly takes a lot to take children away from their biological parents. Like, I remember thinking it was unfathomable how far it had to go for that to happen.

    All of this said I am glad they are reviewing decisions made in the past, there's no reason to not do that and it's great that someone had her child returned to her.

    5 votes

  9. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    Not sure what you are referring to? Unless you are talking past tense historically because yeah of course Denmark was like any other colonizing country.

    Not sure what you are referring to? Unless you are talking past tense historically because yeah of course Denmark was like any other colonizing country.

    4 votes

  10. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    That idea is not entirely true - they are definitely given more leeway purely for being white, but Americans here very much do get looked down on if they have been here for a while and still don't...

    That idea is not entirely true - they are definitely given more leeway purely for being white, but Americans here very much do get looked down on if they have been here for a while and still don't speak Danish or are not even trying to. I know several who went to classes and despite being well intentioned they later stopped trying because basically everyone can speak English so they think it's not a problem. However we cannot speak other languages except maybe small percentages of Swedish and German speakers.

    Also Middle Eastern culture and American culture is nowhere near the same degree of difference compared to Danish culture. The entire western world regardless of country is very culturally similar, like all of Danish pop culture is basically American. So their barrier to entry starting point to integrate is very low.

    I one hundred percent agree about the politicians part though. And again, the fact that one of the requirements to be labeled a ghetto is that those people are from brown or black countries is of course also racist.

    8 votes

  11. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    I assume those friends of yours are in Copenhagen or at least another major city. Regarding your middle paragraphs, I don't necesarily think it's a bad thing either. You have immigrants accepting...

    I assume those friends of yours are in Copenhagen or at least another major city.

    Regarding your middle paragraphs, I don't necesarily think it's a bad thing either. You have immigrants accepting next to nothing and you have immigrants leaving everything behind when they go to another country. I know that the US very much embraces cultural differences to a very high extent but here, that is not at all what is expected. It's of course only the fringe would want to erase identities and deport all foreigners etc. But the mainstream opinion is also to mostly assimilate - cultural differences are fine, but if your values don't match the generally progressive values of the country.. why come here?

    That last part is why I wanted to comment in the first place actually - agreed fully. Like I said, it does not have those connotations here at all which is a bit telling that the author doesn't mention that difference at all? A professor of migration at a Danish university no less.

    9 votes

  12. Comment on What the troubling use of the term ‘ghettos’ reveals about Denmark's attitude towards immigration in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link
    In general, Danes definitely do have a harsh attitude towards immigration. It's either or. For the average voter, there's no real halfway. Assimilate and integrate or you're gonna have a bad time....

    In general, Danes definitely do have a harsh attitude towards immigration. It's either or. For the average voter, there's no real halfway. Assimilate and integrate or you're gonna have a bad time.

    However the word ghetto on its own doesn't really have any problematic connotations in that sense. I believe the concept of labeling areas with a lot of foreigners a ghetto that is racist to be sure. But changing the term to parrallel society is even worse I feel. So there's been jokes that rich suburbs are also parallel societies.

    13 votes

  13. Comment on The right in the US is coming for same-sex marriage with an insidious new campaign in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    Well the most infamous pieces of evidence of large scale abusing is 1) Catholic church and 2) Epstein clients. It could be argued the latter is apolitical but I don't really know. However In...

    Well the most infamous pieces of evidence of large scale abusing is 1) Catholic church and 2) Epstein clients. It could be argued the latter is apolitical but I don't really know. However In comparison I don't know if I've ever heard of any organized abuse in left wing or lgbt+ groups. Not that they haven't or don't exist - they might - but it's not something I've heard of. So like another comment said, paraphrasing here: conservatism and religious extremism = patriarchal values = men in power abusing their power. So yeah, if that logic holds, that would indeed mean there's more propensity for being abusers there.

    6 votes

  14. Comment on The right in the US is coming for same-sex marriage with an insidious new campaign in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    By "they" I am referring to the group of people that the article is talking about, "the right is coming for [...]" And yeah about other comment, files = Epstein files. The right are very present...

    By "they" I am referring to the group of people that the article is talking about, "the right is coming for [...]"

    And yeah about other comment, files = Epstein files. The right are very present in them all the way to the top more than anyone else.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on The right in the US is coming for same-sex marriage with an insidious new campaign in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    How many gay men are in the files? How many straight men are in the files?

    How many gay men are in the files?

    How many straight men are in the files?

    3 votes

  16. Comment on The right in the US is coming for same-sex marriage with an insidious new campaign in ~society

    smoontjes
    Link
    So in other words, this is just them saying gay people are predators? My mind is consistently blown by these attacks. I cannot find the words for how outrageous it is to time and time again that...

    So in other words, this is just them saying gay people are predators?

    My mind is consistently blown by these attacks. I cannot find the words for how outrageous it is to time and time again that there is evidence that it's them and not the lgbt+ community that is the predators. And yet they still go with this rhetoric. These people are so extremely propagandized as to basically live in a separate reality from the rest of the world.

    The worst is it's not limited to the US. These points of views are spilling over to my country too.

    14 votes

  17. Comment on Olivia Colman: “I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man” in ~lgbt

    smoontjes
    Link Parent
    Warmed my heart to see it too! That's exactly how I had thought of myself as well for many years, just with the genders switched.

    Warmed my heart to see it too! That's exactly how I had thought of myself as well for many years, just with the genders switched.

    10 votes

  18. Comment on Olivia Colman: “I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man” in ~lgbt

    smoontjes
    Link

    I think it’s a community that I love being welcomed into. I find the most loving and the most beautiful stories are from that community. And I feel really honored to be welcomed.

    Throughout my whole life, I’ve had arguments with people where I've always felt sort of nonbinary. Don’t make that a big sort of title! But I’ve never felt massively feminine in my being female. I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man. And he goes, “Yeah, I get that.”

    So I do feel at home and at ease. I feel like I have a foot in various camps. I know many people who do. I don’t really spend an awful lot of time with people who are very staunchly heterosexual…. The men I know and love are very in touch with all sides of themselves.

    11 votes

  20. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news