TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/24/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these on the Sidebar every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Given the lack of teeth the last time Congress tried to clamp down on its own insider trading, it will be fascinating to watch this play out.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.htmlReport
Hard to regulate a perq of the job; next we’ll be decrying the revolving door and sinecures.
I mean, I agree with you that it’s preposterous that Legislators can trade on material non-public information… and you’d think it would be fairly easy to require blind or index fund type holdings plus consanguinity scrutiny of Member plus One Degree. But, as you say, the way Congress does this is keep any teeth securely locked away.
We probably ‘agree divergently’ on broader issues like what to do with daughters who are CEO’s of prominent business sectors in your state or what to do with family holdings (e.g. actual businesses, not inherited fungible stocks) or what to do with elected officials who decide their next career move is better served by (legally) voting their future personal interests.Report
EVs Fall Short of EPA Estimates by a Much Larger Margin Than Gas Cars in Our Real-World Highway Testing
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a43657072/evs-fall-short-epa-estimates-sae-article/
“Tesla, meanwhile, pursues an impressive figure for its window stickers, and ends up returning real-world results that are on average two times as far off the label value as most EVs.”Report
The EPA definitely whiffed setting that one up.Report
NOTE: I KNOW THIS IS A FIRST WORLD PROBLEM.
I do have one post-Pandemic change that I dislike and I figure here would be a good place for a cranky rant about it. Before the pandemic, most wineries in Napa and Sonoma would let you do tastings for anywhere between 10 to 25 dollars and the fee would be waived with the purchase of a bottle of wine or two. This was true for all but the most expensive wineries. Plus you could generally just walk-in.
Since the pandemic, they have all switched to making it more expensive in a range of anywhere between 35 to 150 dollars and much more of an experience or “experience.” Reservations in advance always required, sometimes they have decided OpenTable is not good enough and they want you e-mail or call for a request for a tasting. Plus purchasing wine no longer waives the fee.
This is a super first world problem but there is something about it which also strikes me as being very anti-democratic in the small-d sense of the word and I am perplexed about how they all seemingly decided a more expensive and exclusive wine tasting was better because it feels like anti-competitive agreement. This feels like the tyranny of the gram.Report
Money divided by headaches.
Maybe they’re making less money overall, but they’re getting a lot fewer headaches.Report
I had that First World Problem back in 2017 … I think it pre-dates the Pandemic, but maybe has accelerated from there?
Wife and I honeymooned in Napa in 1996… walked in to Silver Oak (and others) in Sept. just as they were releasing the famous 1994 vintages. Lawyers and Doctors behaving badly to get allocations. But entire valley was open for walk-in tastings — FREE, or maybe a nominal $5. Other than a few ‘showcase’ wineries most were distinctly agricultural road-stops with single-room tasting areas often staffed by assistant (or actual) winemakers.
Couldn’t get back for our 20th, but piggy-backed on a work-trip in 2017 for our 21st Anniversary. A whole new world. Appointment only and minimum fees were, as you say. ~$25. Our Nostalgia visit to (rebuilt) Silver Oak was indeed $150 but included tastings of ’97, ’98 plus some random teen vintage and the current 2015 as well as a ‘tour’ of, well, not the actual wine making facility but what is basically a convention meeting center with old photo’s and a very California architectural vibe.
The obvious observation was that in the intervening 20-yrs, the main road real-estate had become GOLD and the agricultural type tasing rooms were on rented property that had long-ago sold out for the next generation of investment. There were, however, many more and better restaurants this second time around. Back in the mid-90s there were a few, but they were more like destinations (French Laundry being the pinnacle)… Napa and surrounding areas were decidedly low key and not ‘foodie’ at all. Of course, 1996 is the early-/mid- phases of the Tech boom too… so obvious money chases obvious money and changes things…
Buddy in the wine industry set-up a private tasting at Stoney Hill which is quite a ways off the beaten path (as seen in the picture) … was ‘free’ but definitely an expectation that we’d buy something – which, of course, we did.
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Silver Oak is one of the more expensive ones along with Stag’s Leap (not to be confused with Stags’ Leap) that were able to charge the premiums earlier. Others needed to wait until the pandemic to do so.Report
Yeah, Clos Pegase was expensive and hard to get in to in ’96 and ’17… consistent at least.
We did Sterling in ’96 for the tourist ride… but didn’t like the wine then and still don’t. Is it expensive now?
On the one hand, as newlyweds it was fun to wander up and down the Valley and stop wherever and whenever we wanted. But as maturelyweds, we appreciated the planning and scheduled appointments. Even as we lamented the naked commercialization and corporatization and lack of any sort of interaction with the ‘budding’ winemakers.Report
Similar things going on in the Willamette Valley, although the prices demanded are not quite so dramatic as I’d expect at, say, Opus One. A tasting flight here is still going to be $25 on average and you need a reservation. However, a decent number of wineries are on OpenTable.
What this does is take wine tasting as a weekend hobby off the table. In my 20’s, I could drive up from L.A. to the Santa Ynez Valley or out to Temecula in about 90 minutes or so, spend a couple hours tasting, and credibly be home by bedtime, for pretty much the cost of gas and a decent dinner. Made for a great date, or if not a date, a fun thing to do with a friend. It was sort of democratized — if you were interested in it, you could do it, and cost was not a significant barrier to learning how to taste and appreciate wine.
Assembling a decent library of wine was also not completely out of reach for the young or starter wine drinker, when a good bottle of something you liked could be bought direct from the winery’s tasting room for a price point around $20. I can accept that the price point for that wine would rise over time to $30, just as at the low end, Two-Buck-Chuck became Three-Buck-Chuck because Two-Buck-Chuck was often good enough for people who didn’t drink wine that often, but as I’ve written elsewhere today, inputs to production inevitably rise over time.
But the wine that twenty years ago cost $20 today costs $50, and that too puts it out of reach for the middle-class consumer as anything but an occasionally indulgence. And the experience of a pleasant day in the countryside with stops at two or three tasting rooms is now a downright elite experience.
Wine itself is more barricaded by money than it needed to be. It didn’t have to be this way, but the industry’s leaders chose this path. Presumably it maximizes their profits?Report
I’m certain you know nothing about the bioterrorism. If you did, you might not complain so much about increasing prices.
California wineries are dying.Report
Why anti-anti Trump conservatives need Ron DeSantis
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/why-the-anti-anti-trumpers-need-ron-desantis
“Others, such as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, are urging him to run. One reason is that, for a subset of conservatives, Ron DeSantis is more than just a politician. He’s a symbol of the Republican party they wish existed—a policy-oriented, culture-warring governing coalition, not a populist, conspiracy-theorizing cult of personality. In particular, DeSantis defeating Trump would show how conservatives who recognized some problems with the former president’s character and conduct in office, but stuck with the party in support of him anyway, were right.
A DeSantis flop, however, would suggest one of the worst things they can imagine: the possibility that people they don’t like maybe kind of had a point.”Report
You know it’s the strangest thing but I had never heard DeSantis speak until yesterday when they played some clip of him on the local news. His voice has the most disconcerting, high, nasally quality to it, almost like he’s some kind of Seinfeld character (“Have you ever met someone whose voice just doesn’t match their appearance?”). I immediately said to my wife Trump is going to clean this guy’s clock with Republican primary voters. Any faith in him in a soundbyte 20 second attention span world that conservative intellectuals have in him is completely misplaced. It is a mask for utter desperation.Report
The only hope the GOP has – at least the part in Saul’s link – is that by the Primary Trump is on trial in three jurisdictions, if not convicted in at least one. Its the only way Trump is not the nominee.Report
Really? Nasal and tweedy? I looked up his victory speech and I feel you’re being overly critical but I agree that he is really borderline so that voice could probably veer into that zone.Report
Maybe it was just a really unflattering clip? Now I will say he has a passing resemblance to a person I used to work with who had an almost strangely deep voice and a Lumbergh from Office Space kind of cadence. In my mind I’ve always imagined DeSantis sounding like that guy, which made it all the more jarring.
Either way it struck me as just a terrible sound and presence especially for a guy who is supposed to bridge the populist and traditional conservative divide. Obviously I’m not part of that constituency but now when I try to put myself in the head space of a Republican open to voting for Trump the first thing I think of is how annoying DeSantis must sound.Report
I certainly hope you’re right.Report
Our media pundit class just can’t handle it that 2024 is almost certainly going to be another round of Biden and Trump: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/21/opinions/biden-2024-democratic-announce-reelection-axelrod/index.htmlReport
Not real fond of the idea myself, TBQH, but we have to live in reality.Report
Tucker Carlson and Fox News have agreed to part ways.
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Holy Canoli Batman . . . . Fox must be shedding all these folks ahead of Smartmatic so that nothing further damaging comes out and so they can say they are no longer platforming the liars.Report
This is apparently the last bit of the last segment on Friday night:
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If they aired the final segment before he left – you really have to wonder what shoe they expect to drop.Report
Maybe none. It’s possible they decided that he has become too much of a liability and were waiting for the Dominion settlement to cut bait.Report
There was a very recent lawsuit from a booker at Fox claiming a metric craptop of harassment there. Plenty by tucky. That has to play a part.Report
Shoes . . .
Gravity . . . .
Something, something, falling . . . .Report
Interesting; the tell is that the final program has already aired prior to the announcement.
My meta-bending replacement pick would be OG Colbert…Report
Please welcome our newest Fox News anchor, Cat Turd 2!Report
Please, it’s Catturd Deuce.Report
Wait, maybe it’s got less to do with Tucker himself and it’s a sign that the Lizard People are shifting into a new phase:
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Sort of saw that one coming though – he was on the outs with CNN weeks ago.Report
The theory I saw was that CNN saw the Tucker news and said “We’re not going to get a better window than this one.”Report
The quintessential expression of CNN: I had no reason to expect something that every other person on earth could perceive. Well, at least it gives him a chance to leave feeling insulted.Report
Carlson and Lemon. Well, tv’s IQ has nowhere to go but up.Report
I wish I could believe that, but their replacements are likely to be even worse.Report
I’m seeing reports that it was (seriously) Tucker talking shit about upper management behind their backs, which was only revealed (or perhaps more accurately, “noticed”) in Dominion’s pretrial exhibits.Report
Yeah, that’s what I’m suspecting.
Fox News can put up with almost any behavior in their staff, because, as I’ve mentioned before, if a crime is just a fine, it’s not a crime for rich people, (And likewise if lawsuits are just settlements with no public facts or admitting wrongdoing, those behaviors are legal for rich people.) and Fox News is pretty much the definition of that, being funded by rich people who don’t give a damn what people cost them if those people spew the right words.
Granted, the Dominion thing was more cost than they wanted, but it also wasn’t really Tucker’s doing at all…he was doing exactly what the network wanted during all that. I’m not saying they aren’t hypocritical and couldn’t have come down hard on him for stuff they asked him to do, but it doesn’t feel right here.
What they do care about is someone insulting them repeatedly.Report
I hadn’t considered that the Tuck would be so unceremoniously canned. I’m amused at how strong the schaudenfreud is for me even though I don’t try and get exercised about Fox at all.
I hear Lemon got canned to and my reaction, along with everyone else on the left’s reaction was “umm who?”Report
I’m not rejoicing at this news. OANN is. They can probably afford Carlson, and Carlson would be fantastic for their market share. And they will do less than FOX News did to restrain Carlson’s, shall we say, less savory impulses.
Who’s taking over the prime time spot on FOX’s evening parade of bloviation? Carlson’s show was the #1 rated program on all of cable news. Right now it’s just a rotating panel, but someone will come out on top. It’s got to be either Hannity in that time slot again, or Laura effing Ingraham, right? It’s not like someone’s going to say, “Hey, how about we give that plum time slot to Jesse Watters!” And it’s not going to become “Tyrus Time!” or “The Dooce! With Steve Doocy.” It’s going to be either Hannity or Ingraham.Report
Boss of Bud Light marketing exec is ALSO placed on leave after backlash over partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12007579/Second-Bud-Light-marketing-executive-placed-leave-Dylan-Mulvaney-debacle.html
Apparently the initial set of firings was not sufficient….
I wonder if this fiasco will be added to the history books.Report
I wonder if the Anti-Trans “beer” bashers (since Bud light is not really beer) will next go after Coors or Miller or any of the dozen or so other Mainstream American beers who have done remarkably similar marketing in recent years?Report
Is this a cancellation? Cancellation attempt?Report
I don’t think it qualifies as an “attempt” at this point in the process.
I’m sort of confused at the firing given the weak-sauce statement released last week.
I mean, it makes sense if the statement was something like “Hoo boy. Did we screw up or what? Anyway, the people in charge of that ad campaign have been sacked. Let’s get back to watching baseball and enjoying a cold one at the end of the day.”
To fire without fanfare? That’s just weird.
I’m not sure that the best comparison is to that guy who got fired for the OK hand signal, though.
I’d more compare to Justine Sacco.Report
If you don’t understand that the market for bud lite is dudes that want to get chicks, not dudes that want to be chicks, then you are probably not a good fit for the job, irrespective of what reactionary or curmudgeonly sentiments were expressed by the great unwashed.Report
I absolutely understand firing the person who gave a speech about how Bud Lite customers are fratty.
I absolutely understand firing the person who didn’t tell the first person to shut up and keep her head down (or worse, may even have told her “good job!”).
I don’t understand firing them quietly.Report
I agree with what InMD said, and I don’t think you caught the meaning. It’s not a ceremonial firing of the kind of person who would complain about Bud Lite customers being fratty. It’s the practical firing of the kind of person who would allow this particular mistake to happen (whether due to ideology or simple mismanagement).Report
I don’t know how fair it is — you never really know what’s going to go viral. I’d be interested to see how many times this could potentially have happened before (i.e. a company working with an influencer to grow the market with one group that could have a backlash effect with another group) but just didn’t, because the stars didn’t align the right way.
But yes, no one should be surprised that the people in charge of this would be held responsible for the bad outcome, whether it could’ve been fairly anticipated or not — that’s just the way the world works.Report
Like many beer brands, Bud Light has done prior Pride promotions for years. None – at least that I can find – resulted in people reacting this way. If that holds – and I’m happy to entertain evidence I missed something – then one can argue this response wasn’t actually something to be expected.Report
Dylan Mulvaney is a uniquely pathetic figure. There’s nothing charismatic about him. You look at him and the only question is whether this is a fetish or a delusion. He’s the poster boy for “this has gone too far”. It’s like the difference between Drew Carey and Alex Jones as a spokesman.Report
Same could be said for Kid Rock . . . and lovely of you to misgender Dylan as well. I’m assuming that was intentional. Transphobic too come to think of it.Report
It didn’t even occur to me to call him “her”. It wouldn’t occur to anyone. That’s at the heart of what makes him so pathetic, the lack of artifice. The viewer can’t engage with anything other than “here’s a male calling himself female”.Report
You want me to call you Pinky. I want you to call me Philip. Dylan wants you to call her “her/she.” Seems straight forward, and it’s not for you or anyone else to dispute. Intentionally misgendering transwomen is a real insult and frighteningly common among transphobes.Report
Pinky is an alias. Philip is or may be a proper noun. Her and she are pronouns. Aliases and proper nouns don’t have genders, but pronouns can.
ETA: Also, this is headed toward being the conversation I avoided having with Kazzy. I don’t want to have it because it’s dumb.Report
And Dylan uses “she.”
My point is you tell us what to call you. I tell you what I want to be called. Dylan tells us what she wants to be called. If for no other reason then simple human respect you and I should both observe that guidance.Report
It’s not about why it failed or whether it is just in some cosmic sense. It’s about the fact that it is their job to sell beer, and this did not help sell beer.
To wit:
https://youtu.be/4394VCS7POEReport
Dylan probably drinks IPA…Report
so does anyone wanting to actually drink beer . . .Report
Right, everyone other than your Bud Lite market.Report
I resent this. There are certain days in spring where a hefeweizen suits me, and evenings in late fall where a stout hits the spot, but generally speaking there is nothing wrong with a regular ol’ ‘Murican beer out the can.Report
Hey, that’s Bud or PBR unless you’re at Wrigley, then it’s Old Style*. The lite beers are 80s yuppie beers.
*Let the regional beer wars begin.Report
I’d link to some ancient Natty Boh commercials but they almost certainly violate OT commenting policy.Report
I have had Natty Bo at softball games. Its not half bad as American pilsners go, but lets be real – a “light” pilsner is still an insult to pilsners. Ditto “light” lagers.Report
Technically I don’t think it qualifies as light. Just cheap.Report
Natty? yes its cheap but decent for softball games in DC in August.
Bud Lite? Coors Lite? Michelob Ultra? All insults to actual beer – even cheap beer.Report
Begin let the regional beer wars.Report
The city where I live has more craft breweries than I can possibly keep up with. Fortunately — I guess — some of them specialize in styles that I don’t care for :^)
ETA: There are at least seven within a 30-minute bicycle ride of my home.Report
Is this true though?
Isn’t Bud Light also pitching itself as the beer for dudes who are married; Chicks who want to get dudes; Dudes who want to get dudes; Chicks who want to get chicks; Dudes who were born chicks but are now dudes and want to get chicks and well, you get the idea.
Unlike something like Axe Body Spray, the Bud family of products are mass marketed to every demographic which is why it’s scorned because it ultimately is the beer for people who don’t really care for beer but need something cold and wet and vaguely beer-like.Report
Res ipsa loquitur.Report
Budlight is near bear.Report
And there’s that gay thing again…Report
Such a shame that cancel culture has run so rampant and ruined all these people’s lives merely for having unpopular (with some) opinions.Report
It isn’t Cancel Culture(TM) unless you agree with the person cancelled.Report
In this case, we’ve got people whose jobs it was to sell beer. Ideally more beer, but holding steady with current numbers would probably have been okay for a few years what with the craft beer revolution and all.
I totally get thinking outside of the box and saying “how can we expand our customer base… influencers!”
That said, this marketing exec did that AND disparaged the current base resulting in a boycott.
The boycott was the “cancellation”.
The firing is merely what happens when one has a sufficiently large blunder at work.Report
Somewhat serious thought on an unserious question.
It depends on whether they get rehired somewhere as visionaries for an unworthy brand or whether the stink of their failure is recognized as stink worthy.
It’s the Stink that makes it a cancellation rather than a miscalculation. My initial suspicion is that it won’t hurt their future endeavors, though it may be a (temporary) career set-back. Or maybe not a set-back at all. Only time will tell.Report
I still think “cancellation” implies being blamed for something that’s outside your job. I don’t even think the word “boycott” is correct because that typically implies coordination, as well as terms for resolution.Report
I don’t think that’s a sufficient definition… could be a contributing factor though. There are three basic outcomes:
1. She’s rehired no-harm/no-foul (just a mistake; maybe not even a mistake, but a courageous gamble)
2. She’s NOT rehired because the mistake was Professional… ie professionals see the campaign as failing knowable things a professional wouldn’t fail to see.
3. She’s NOT rehired because the mistake was a moral transgression.
#1 is obviously not cancellation.
#2 isn’t cancellation though it may feel like it.
#3 is the only real ‘cancellation’ factor.
What makes cancellation a bigger issue for the Right than the Left is that the Left defines public Morality as it applies to Corporate Workplaces – the places where all the lucrative good jobs are.Report
I think it is very likely she will work again. This feels like a ‘nothing personal, just business’ kind of thing. Now if she makes a habit of getting these calls wrong in the future….Report
Yep, my initial hunch as well.Report
Given that everyone everywhere finds work eventually, this would suggest that no person anywhere has ever been cancelled.
The real takeaway here is that this has been a branding exercise.
As in, the conservatives have further built their brand identity as the group marked by bigotry and intolerance.
They refuse to share a brand, or civic space with LGBTQ people.Report
Justine Sacco got work again.Report
jinx!Report
Yes? What’s the conclusion drawn?
1. What she said wasn’t morally wrong?
2. What she said was professionally a mistake?
3. What she said was courageous truth that people mis-understood.
If we’re serious about Social Media mobs and cancellation as a real issue, maybe we also make further distinctions about whether someone was Mobbed into a job loss (temporary set-back) or whether they trigger a new taboo that makes their rehiring impossible because of the new taboo that person publicly personified.
There are lots of things happening with Social Media that are real, new, dynamic, and undefined… that’s part of the factor of what make ‘Cancellation’ something that happens and yet has no rhyme, reason or clearly defined rules.Report
Justine Sacco got hired by one of those sports gambling sites.
I imagine that these two will land on their feet. Maybe White Claw is hiring.Report
So, it was a cancellation.
Well, then, we should be decrying the cancellers!
I mean, I actually DRINK Bud (Bud Heavy is my preference though). And I was really excited to drink Bud products while watching videos of Dylan Mulvaney drinking Bud products. I’m now being denied that opportunity because people are so man about what is or isn’t between Dylan Mulvaney’s legs that they went after an innocent beer company.
MY RIGHTS HAVE BEEN VIOLATED!Report
Expressing surprise that the opposite team is playing by the new rules?
I suspect that we now have a new normal.Report
This is actually the old normal, and the old rules everyone on all sides has played by since time immemorial. Cancel Culture (TM) and Political Correctness (TM) are just branding exercises for the same old same old.Report
I’m not expressing surprise that conservatives tried to silence and demonize a transwoman.
I’m surprised that folks who rail constantly against Cancel Culture are suddenly all, “Well, you have to understand…”
You do realize whose words I’m satirizing here, right?
Hint: It’s you.Report
Kazzy, I’m fully in “this is the way it works now” territory. Do I think it sucks? Yep, still do.
If you don’t like the way it is, I’m sure you see why I was complaining about what it was turning into back then. (Though I understand that there are people who argue that it has always been like this. So maybe nothing has changed.)
But I don’t think that Mulvaney got cancelled out of this. From what I understand, she picked up a new contract for makeup over the weekend.
The people who got cancelled are the people who got fired… and we’re all pretty much sure that those guys will land on their feet. (The VP? I have no doubt that he got a golden parachute.)Report
“The people who got cancelled are the people who got fired… and we’re all pretty much sure that those guys will land on their feet.”
So the next time someone towards the right side of the aisle “gets cancelled,” you’ll chime in to remind everyone who is up in arms that they shouldn’t be because they’ll probably land on their feet?
COOL!Report
I’d call it “pissing off your customer base”, a base you spent years and lots of $ branding to…and you pissed it all away.Report
Only because a part of that customer base is a series of fear addled snowflakes who can’t deal with reality.Report
Yeah, those customers sucked anyway. Bud Lite should be glad to be rid of them.Report
Doesn’t matter whether they sucked or not. They didn’t own bud lite. But they drank it. Bud lite wanted more customers across a broad spectrum. They couldn’t handle “those people” drinking “their beer.” Fear addled snowflakes is the nicest thing I can call them.Report
The only one who looks good out of all of this is Dylan Mulvaney. She just did what she does. (Before this whole “woke Bud” fracas, I had no earthly idea who Dylan Mulvaney was.)Report
Which means that Bud lite didn’t REALLY understand their customer base, or didn’t care. Neither of which is good for the existing business. Now, if Bud lite, decided that they wanted to give up on this demographic and go after a different one, that’d be different, but that’s highly doubtful.Report
Given that their customer base is not just straight white conservative men (the one’s throwing the temper tantrums) I’m not seeing the error. Apparently the Pride flags in prior years were ok with Bud Lite drinkers, so the company naturally concluded they do a promotion campaign with an actual human those flags represent.
I think the better question to ask is why the snowflakes fear gay men, lesbian women, and transgendered persons so much.Report
Interestingly, to the extent something can be objectively offensive, which I’m not entirely sure it can be, I’d say those most justifiably offended would be the women Mulvaney’s performance art seems geared towards mocking or trivializing. Like imagine if some stereotypical meat head dude did his own year of becoming a girl, then focused on these highly frivolous things that tend to paint women as ineffectual airheads. How would we look at that? My bet is it would not be the same.
All of this of course goes well beyond the basic issue of success or failure in marketing beer.Report
Wow.
Just Wow.
Dripping in the transphobia today are we?Report
This is a minor point, but I don’t see anyone being afraid of those who identify as trans. I simply reject the claim. I’m not speaking for InMD in general, but he apparently rejects the claim specifically about Mulvaney. Accusing people of fear is ineffective when they’re not afraid.Report
I don’t necessarily reject it I just also don’t feel a moral obligation to wholeheartedly believe everything or any particular thing I see on the the internet (or TV, or wherever).
To me this is common sense, not bigotry.Report
You’re both assuming that someone is asking for your judgement.
Like, imagine for a moment that you go to work and find yourself working alongside a trans person, having to interact with them daily.
How would you behave toward them?Report
Someone performing on a TikTok or in a video online is not asking to be judged? Really? Isn’t that the whole point of putting it out there?
As for me I treat people I work with professionally, of course. It’s the right thing to do and anyway I’d imagine I’d be out of a job sooner or later if I didn’t.Report
“Someone performing on a TikTok or in a video online is not asking to be judged?”
It’s done for the likes, the attention, and the affirmation. I doubt the “haters” who post negative comments are even read.Report
Well there you go.
All trans people are asking for is to be treated with respect and dignity and to be accepted as equals in society.
Yet, for the people throwing a temper tantrum over Bud Light, apparently this is too much for them to bear.Report
IF White Conservative Allegedly Christian Men didn’t fear trans people and gay men and lesbians, they wouldn’t be reacting in an aggressive manner to minor things like a Pride-based marketing campaign. The over top run over the beer with a truck reaction is a fear based reaction – as if continuing to drink that beer will make you into something you don’t want to be.
Just like assaulting black kids during desegregation – requiring the U.S. Marshals or National Guard to intervene was a fear based aggressive response.
You do not react that way to people or things you respect or people or things that you see no threat in.
So what is it about gay men, lesbian women and transgendered persons that causes Heterosexual white conservative Allegedly Christian men to react this way?Report
I’m concerned for society, but I’m not afraid of anyone.Report
I saw this thought mentioned a few times by people I feel are generally reasonable and I was curious about it too — I didn’t take the time to watch any of Mulvaney’s pics or videos myself but would definitely be interested to hear the opinion of people more knowledgeable in this area about whether Mulvaney strikes them as being genuine or more a performer.Report
I had never heard of Mulvaney prior to this, but as I understand it prior to the pandemic Mulvaney was living as a gay man performing in minor roles on broadway, including in some major productions like the Book of Mormon. Now, it’s totally possible to reinvent oneself and it’s also totally possible Mulvaney has always been/wanted to be trans. But I’m not entirely sure why we would feel like we have no choice but to take the particulars of this case at face value. Regardless of Mulvaney’s true identity what we see in TikToks and commercials is most certainly always a performance. I mean, do we really think Ken Griffey Jr. was eating his wheaties for breakfast every day, and that the endorsement was an authentic expression of his true self?Report
InMD, where exactly do you think trans people come from? Just, thin air with no history?
We are at the point where _kids_ can’t be trans, because they don’t know anything about sex, and _teens_ can’t be trans because that’s just social contagion and doing anything then would ‘sterilize’ them and nonsense like that, and _adults_ can’t be trans because they never were before.
It’s really nice how everyone has been excluded from ‘really’ being trans.
—
And just FYI: People realizing they were trans during the pandemic, entering as one gender and leaving as another, is literally a trope in the queer community, it was a thing that was _incredibly_ common. Because a hell of a lot of trans people got to stop pretending to be the gender everyone assumed they were during that, along with having the same amount of downtime that everyone else got to think about their live, maybe they even had glimpse of their mortality and how they were spending their life. And also they were able to experiment without getting questioned by people who…well..by people like you, I guess.
I feel I need to start putting these PS on all sorts of posts I make, where cishets here end up missing, or reinventing, stuff that basically all queer people know. ‘Things you would already know if you had any interaction with the queer community’. They need a catchy name though.Report
“Dumb Ways to ‘phobe?”Report
The pandemic was a period of psychological trauma caused by fear, loss, and isolation, and it messed up a lot of people. You’re making the case that the trans movement is a mental health crisis.Report
There is no “movement” except for Trans people demanding to be treated as . . . checks notes . . . people. Period end of story. That you still insist in believing that transgender humans are somehow damaged, or deficient or the product of grooming or experiencing some other form of crisis speaks volumes about your transphobia – which is fear based.
Tell us – what about transgender people scares you so much?Report
No, that’s not true, and you’ve acknowledged as much. They expect to be treated as the sex that they’re not. So the first half of this comment contradicts your previous comments, and the second half I’ve already addressed.Report
Even IF that was true, that’s still part of them being human. Never mind that being transgender means the “sex” they are (which is badly intentionally misuing terms) isn’t something you get to force on them. COntinuing to do so means you are intentionally willing to do them mental and emotional harm – which in this case a person managed to move away from during the poandemic.
What about Transgender persons and their humanity scares you so much?Report
OK, one more time. You and I know that men aren’t women. If I see two people, one of whom is speaking what he knows to be the truth, and the other one is saying something he knows isn’t true, I’m going to assume the second one is afraid, not the first.Report
Transgendered persons are speaking truth as they know it. Dylan Mulvaney is a woman as far as she is concerned. Ditto our resident Trans folks. Since you think they are lying, that’s a you issue, not a them issue.Report
I don’t say that they’re lying, and I didn’t say “lying”. I said “saying something he knows isn’t true”, and I was thinking of your side. I don’t know the psychological state of people who claim not to know if they’re male or female, but when people who used to know that men aren’t women have lost the willingness to say so, that sounds more like a fearful reaction than the people who still say so.Report
Ah the old when men were men defense. You know how I know a man is man? I ask him. Then I believe him when he answers. I don’t go “looking under the hood.” And I certainly don’t go accusing him of having a mental breakdown just because his assertions of maleness don’t match my assessment of his appearance.
What I don’t do is try to inflict my definition of what a man is on anyone but myself. I don’t support laws mandating what is and is not “being male.” In other words, I meet people where they are, I take them at their words, and I support their right to live as they are, not as I want them to be.
Kind of like Christ, come to think of it.
What is it about transgender people that scares you so?Report
So you’re asserting that coming out as trans is a _coping mechanism_ for this psychological trauma? So let’s look at the of trauma. Here’s one from Psychology Today about the psychological impact of the pandemic:
stress, depression, anxiety, feelings of panic, feelings of hopelessness, frustration, feelings of desperation, and struggles with suicidal ideation and behavior, insomnia, irritability, emotional exhaustion, grief, and traumatic stress symptoms.
Now, are any of these solved by someone who is not trans (Which, as far as I understand, you think is everyone) deciding they are a different gender? It really doesn’t look like it.
In what way would that make their isolation better? It would give them a new hobby, maybe? It not only seems like a lot of work for a hobby, but it seems like something that they’d do _privately_ and not do in public. Like, maybe a bunch of people took up crossdressing for fun, but…that’s not the same as coming out as trans at the end of it.
Because coming out as trans, which they did by definition at the end of this because that’s who we’re talking about, has long been known to _cause_ stress, anxiety, and feelings of panic, things like that, due to social pressure.
Your premise is basically ‘This pandemic is causing mental health issues, and thus as a response a bunch of people said that they will make things harder on themself their entire life’.
Which…is not how mental health works, people pick bad coping mechanisms because they do, in fact, _help them cope_ in the short term. How does ‘picking a different gender’ help non-trans people cope with anything?
Meanwhile, the things that have stopped people from coming out as queer are pretty well known, and the very very first one stopping them is social rejection…which pretty much went entirely away during the pandemic. Even when people went out, they weren’t hanging out with people they knew, and social expectations were vastly relaxed in general.Report
Sorry for clicking “report” instead of “reply”.
You misunderstand my position; I’m saying that they’re failing to cope, and identity confusion is a sign of their breakdowns.Report
“identity confusion” is not any sort of mental health crisis.
In fact, confusion about your own identity vs. roles you have to play is an important part of development. It’s actually the adolescence stage of Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Development: https://www.webmd.com/children/what-to-know-eriksons-8-stages-development
Failure to actually finish that is why many of trans people who haven’t realized they are trans have a lot of problems with the _next_ stage of development, ‘Establish intimacy and relationships with others’, and it’s probably also why a lot of trans people who realize who they are feel they are restarting their life over again, restarting their adulthood.
It’s because they originally failed to figure out who they were and instead slipped into roles society built for them. And it’s only once they actually do find themselves can they continue forward.
So, congratulation, you have managed to come to the entire correct conclusion, except for the part where you think ‘Realizing you don’t know who you truly are as a person vs. the expectations of everyone and figuring that out for yourself’ is a mental health crisis instead of a normal part of human development.Report
Wow – way to insult regulars around here sideways AND exhibit classic transphobia. Coming out as Trans is usually a part of their individual healing – forcing them to remain who you think they were (but not really) is what leads to the breakdowns.
What is it about transgendered people that scares you so much?Report
Are you familiar with the ability to look at someone and say “that person is an egg”?Report
The translation for cishet people: An egg is a trans person who has not figured it out. Usually it’s someone who wandering around ‘wishing’ they were the opposite gender, or often even wishing they were trans, and doesn’t quite realize that actually just makes them trans to start with. Them figuring it out is called ‘their egg cracking’.
And…this is sort of the same thing as gaydar…it’s fine when it’s not important, people in communities just…talk sometimes. It’s hard not to see it, to see people going through exactly the same sort of thing as a huge chunk of people who already figured it out, and people to resist commenting on it.
But a lot of times, that sort of thing is used to attack people, and…no.Report
So it’s something that actually exists?Report
Wait, what are you asking? Are you asking if someone being an egg exists, or if someone else _knowing_ they are egg exists?
The second exists in the same way ‘gaydar’ does…in that people sometimes can successfully guess things about other people, and sometimes can’t. Asking if those exists is like asking if ‘good guesses’ exist. Uh, sure?
Now, the egg guess is often based on the ‘very suspicious’ things people say that they don’t seem to know they are saying, so it’s often more reliable than ‘gaydar’. Seriously, trans eggs are often at the level that would be like if a straight man constantly talked about how he wanted to have sex with men and hates that with women, and didn’t seem to realize what that meant, and all the gay men are just sorta looking at each other in disbelief that he hasn’t figure out the ‘gay’ thing yet. It’s less ‘gaydar’ than ‘You probably need to sit down and piece some things together.’
As for the first…the term ‘egg’ just means ‘a person who has not figured out they are trans’, and if you believe trans people exist at all, you sorta have to believe ‘eggs’ exist. I mean, what’s the alternative, that trans people instantly magically become trans when their thought ‘I am trans’ completes the first time? No, they were presumably were trans before that point, and, thus, an egg.Report
I’m asking if someone else _KNOWING_ that a particular person is an egg exists.
So we’ve hammered out that that’s the case (and called it a “good guess”).
Does it work in the other direction?Report
Okay, I had to rewrite this like three times because it’s not only based on a pretty silly assumption, but that assumption _itself_ is based on a silly assumption.
First post, to answer this: As I said, what we’re talking about here is guesses, there is no actual superpower here. The question is not ‘Is this possible?’, like it’s some objective thing, but ‘How good is each person at this, and what groups generally are the best?’ Or even ‘What makes someone good at this?’
And the people who are best at it are…the people who have actually experienced this, who have though about it and understand it. Now, it seems like it would be possible to argue ‘and thus cis people are best at recognizing cis people’, but two things: a) most cis people have never actually thought about this in any way, and have not ‘experienced’ being cis as much as just been handed a default gender and it seemed fine, and b) y’all are objectively _horrifically_ bad at figuring this out, like the track record is astonishingly bad.Report
But now the actual post: But now we need to sorta pause here and backtrack into the assumptions. The first assumption is that people pretend to be trans, which is…not a true thing. There might occassionally be some weird one-off stunt that someone does, which is why I added a ‘For a month’ test to the comment I made elsewhere, but outside of that, no.
But that assumption is also based on an assumption: That queer people actually do think people belong in gender categories and could even hypothetically be lying about what category they are really in.
But that’s not how it works, over here. None of that.
Gender is a social construct. People put themselves in categories because that is where they feel they best belong, that’s pretty much up to them, and I don’t even need to know those categories, generally speaking. (I do need to know pronouns, but pronouns are not gender.)
The entire concept of a spectrum is that trying to pick some specific point (Which could shift and move as people find themselves, or even just…move by itself.) and labelling it is very silly. People still sorta roughly pick a label because people need to be to be able to communicate in some vague manner, but we don’t pretend it’s some sort of objective truth, it’s just…’that seems to work for me currently in describing myself’.Report
This misconstrues what I said back at the beginning. But that aside the question really boils down to whether being trans arises from a diagnosable medical or psychological condition or whether it is merely a kind of self expression. You’re all in on self expression here, but there are other times in these debates it’s described as a condition requiring major psychological and medical interventions. Either way is fine by me, but it really can’t be both.
If it’s the former, that means reasonsble accommodations are required but it also means there’s gatekeeping and close scrutiny for certainty, repeatability, etc. If it’s self expression that’s fine too. The great thing about America and the 1st Amendment is that we can freely express ourselves. But it also means it isn’t owed any particular deference or accomodation that any other form of self expression isn’t. The state can’t stop it in the realm of private life but no one else is under any obligation to feel or act any particular way with regard to the self expression of others.
So is Mulvaney’s transness something that can be objectively verified? Don’t know. Is it an act to entertain those into it and make a little scratch? Also don’t know. Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too.Report
Is there anything wrong with people looking at Senator Lindsey Graham and “knowing” that he is gay, and treating him accordingly? Constantly referring to him in print as “Closeted Homosexual Lindsey Graham today said…”
Or for that matter, looking at any cis male and “knowing” he is actually a female trapped in a woman’s body, regardless of how he self-identifies?
See, this is where the “egg” comment only serves to refute bigotry.
In a liberal society when a trans or gay person says they think another person is an “egg” or is closeted, it is considered abhorrent to just overrule their self-expression. Just as, when a person decides they are speaking with an invisible sky god, it is considered rude to mock and ridicule them.
So even if you and Jaybird have private thoughts about Dylan Mulvaney, it is just good manners to afford her her own expression.Report
I have no idea what you’re saying here. I understand there have been rumors forever about Lindsey Graham but at a certain point either he has sex and/or romantic relationships with other men or he doesn’t. Whether or not that actually has or hasn’t happened is a fact that could at least in theory be verified, and isn’t contingent on what he says about himself or what others say or believe about him.
Beyond that all I can say is that you’re entitled to go to whatever church you want, but you’re not entitled to other people’s amen.Report
I’m saying that in a liberal society, we afford each other the maximum freedom and acceptance that we can muster.
And in traditional etiquette, it was considered good manners to make other people feel comfortable in our presence.
That doesn’t mean we actually believe the tenets of other people’s religion or understand someone’s gender identity, we just accept them graciously.
What is so difficult with accepting Dylan Mulvaney as she is, and keeping our personal thoughts to ourselves?
As I mentioned upthread, she isn’t asking for your opinion, just your acceptance.Report
If that were true she would not be on TikTok or accepting big checks from big companies.Report
Hah.
That’s funny. Because the GOP and its acolytes – even here – want to mandate as a matter of LAW what church and what amens LGBTQIA+ persons are allowed to select. Just read Pinky’s comments above.Report
I can’t speak for Pinky and I think he and I’s views diverge in some important ways, even if there is also overlap that maybe leads us to some similar kinds of conclusions on public policy.
As for me I’ve never been interested in or seen a point in trying to prohibit under law an individual from mere engaging in self expression. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, the 1st Amendment says I can’t.Report
Eh, go ahead. I couldn’t think of a response to this last comment anyway.Report
Someone’s identity of self is not ‘self-expression’, it is who a person _is_, at a psychological level. The fact that people often aren’t great at determining or stating that, and labeling themselves requires poorly-fitting social constructions that sometimes are vague and change around, does not change that fact.
And just to get it on the record, your idea of ‘major psychological intervention’ is, in fact, _therapy_, aka, someone talking about how they feel with someone else who listens to what they say. Because that’s the ‘psychological’ thing you’ve repeated objected to providing trans kids. You don’t seem to _know_ it’s just therapy, but I’m not actually sure why.
In the real world, using the term ‘major psychological intervention’ would probably be things like specific very specific drug regiments to affect their mind, which is…which is not generally a thing that has anything to do with being trans.
And I don’t actually know how to explain this, but psychological harming someone by deliberately disrespecting them every time you and literally everyone else talk to them until they are suicidal is not actually a psychological problem caused by what they are being bullied for. It’s a psychological problem caused by the bullying.
This is clear when you swap in literally anyone but trans people. For example, suicides among Black youth have been increasing for two decades, pretty much entirely due to what is euphemistically called ‘political polarization’ and is actually ‘white kids of newly-empowered racists don’t know how to be subtlety racist in public and often blatantly bully Black kids in very racist ways’. (And schools stopped providing any sort of ‘Let’s not be racist’ education that they had in the 80s and 90s, which is probably now all classified as DEI or something.) Being Black, weirdly, is not a mental disorder and does not require major psychological intervention, and doesn’t cause suicide…what causes suicide is how Black children are treated by their peers.
What _can_ require medical intervention is gender dysphoria, which is not the same being trans. (And technically speaking it doesn’t even require being trans, just being treated as the wrong gender or having traits of the wrong gender. Chloe Sevigny, a cis woman, managed to get it when filming as a trans woman due to a prosthetic penis.)
But I don’t even care to explain that, but this is where you are fundamentally broken in your concept of this: What is ‘required’ is not actually meaningful here. It applies to children, sure, we want to limit any sort of medical changes while they are growing to what is absolutely necessary (and we do) but adults actually have bodily autonomy and can do things that are not ‘required’, and perhaps more to the point, don’t have to actually be able to explain why they _are_ required to your satisfaction.
No one needs your permission to be trans, which fundamentally is the actual dispute here, and has pretty much always been.
Fun experiment: Pretend that entire paragraph is talking about someone’s religion, something that everyone agrees is 100% a choice. (And also, incidentally, often part of someone’s identity.)
Which I guess means they not only should have no accommodations whatsoever, but also that a bunch of people are wandering baffled as to why their constant attacks on a specific religion generates social pushback, and why people in position of authority who repeatedly express religious bigotry towards the people they are in charge of tend to get fired. Surely they have the right to say those things!
Oh, but wait, maybe religion _is_ the former, we have decided we want accommodations for it, after all. I’m not sure that really works under your logic, because religion doesn’t appear to be a ‘diagnosable medical or psychological condition’, but let’s pretend. So…we should…have a bunch of people gatekeeping it, apparently. Deciding who and who isn’t members not only of their own religion, but _other_ religions? And only _then_ do they get rights with regard to it?
…which way are you going there? Are we gatekeeping people’s religious identities to make sure they are somehow truly that religion, or are we asserting that is just how people _think_ about themselves and don’t get any accommodations from it? (And at some point we probably need to address the fact that religious belief _also_ isn’t neatly categorized and people can move around and identify in different ways.)
Now, here’s a question: Can you admit that gender is at least as important to people as their religion?Report
Are there any other conditions in the DSM for which surgery is considered treatment?Report
There are many DSM conditions for which there is little to no treatment. Which sucks.
There aren’t really any diagnosis’s people get to decide how other people treated. So why here?Report
Parents get to decide how their children are treated. The FDA and private and public insurance carries a lot of weight on the treatment for many conditions.Report
True. But has nothing to do with the question. Everybodies health care if through some insurance. So what?
FDA doesn’t effect the DSM only certain trt’s.Report
Really? Tell that to parents in Texas where their governor calls them child abusers for seeking therapy for their trans kids. Or for that matter in Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia where it is now largely illegal for any treatment to be offered to transgendered children and teens EVEN WITH PARENTAL APPROVAL AND SUPPORT.
You all on the Right need to decide if you want to indoctrinate kids or make sacred parental rights – you can’t have it both ways.Report
Um, pretty much any condition that is caused by problems that can be solved by surgery has doctor’s considering surgery as a possible treatment.
For example, depression and schizophrenia can be caused by brain tumors pushing on parts of the brain. And the treatment for that, believe it or not, is just ‘get rid of the brain tumors so they stop doing that’.
Sleep apnea is also there, and also is often treated with surgery. Various forms of erectile disorder can be treated with surgery. That’s just me looking down the general list, I’m not a doctor, I have no idea what other conditions on this list can indicate surgery.
Your question really just indicates you don’t know what’s in the DSM. _Homelessness_ is in the DSM…which admittedly is not fixable with surgery, but probably not fixable with medication or therapy either. _Physical abuse_ is in the DSM.Report
It’s true; I don’t read the DSM, so I asked.Report
So the possibility that a flamboyant theater kid discovers that he could make a lot of money pretending to be a prepubescent girl is just not something that could ever happen and even questioning whether it could happen is to be making an error in the first place?Report
I have no idea where the word ‘prepubescent’ came from there, and I feel you’re referring to something specific there. You do understand pretending to be someone specific in order dupe people is not the same as someone asserting they are trans, right? Con men don’t actually use their own identity. That’s sorta the premise of being a con man.
It also seem a bit noticeable you asserted ‘prepubescent girl’ instead of prepubescent _trans_ girl. Was this person pretending to be trans at all, or were they just pretending to be a different gender?
So the question there is not actually ‘Could people detect this person isn’t trans?’, it’s ‘Could people _clock_ this person for not being their assigned gender at birth?’, which is completely different question.
And, yes, trans people tend to be better at that just from experience. Would they then assume the person was trans? Normally, probably, but…probably not if they were pretending to be an entirely different underaged person!Report
Have you seen any of Mulvaney’s videos? He claims to be a girl.Report
Have considered that she is?Report
Pssst: Trans adult women have just as much right to call themselves ‘girl’ as cis adult women do, without people pretending they mean they’re actually children. It’s pretty common slang. This is a stupid thing for me to even _try_ to explain…you know we have a superhero named ‘Supergirl’, right? Who’s an adult woman, and has always been?
In fact, there’s this whole other discussion about the level this is done, much more with woman than men being ‘boys’, and how it’s used to infantile them. (And certain men, Black men, being called ‘boys’ for exactly the same reason.) But that’s talking about other people, not how you refer to themselves or your own group.
And is your premise here is that she was pretending to be a child _while holding a beer_? Or, in fact, when she made a joke about celebrating March Madness with a Bud Light, which was the actual reason that Bud Light sent her that can.Report
What’s interesting about this entire discussion is how revealing it is about how so many a priori assumptions are just accepted without question.
Like when someone holds conversations with invisible beings, we all agree they need psychiatric treatment.
Unless their invisible friend is called “God” in which case its ok because well, it just is so shut up.
Or that Abigail Smith gets married, and everyone just happily starts calling her Abigail Jones.
And its considered a shocking breach of social etiquette to refuse to indulge either one of these people their preferred delusions and indeed if California refused to change Ms. Smith’s name, this would end up in front of the Supreme Court where Justice Coney would write the ruling.Report
Wait, a second, are you referring to Dylan Mulvaney as prepubescent because _’he’ came out while ‘he’ didn’t have breasts_? This video:
https://www.tiktok.com/@dylanmulvaney/video/7073982716328283434?is_from_webapp=1&web_id=7178899073012958762
Is that how it works in your brain?
Let me guess: If ‘he’ had used fake breasts, we’d be talking about how ‘he’ is ‘fake’ and ‘thinks looking like a woman makes him a woman’. If ‘he’ hadn’t talked about how ‘he’ had know this since ‘he’ was a kid, we’d be talking about how ‘he’ _suddenly_ decided that he was trans…oh, wait, we’re somehow talking about that anyway.
Yeah, I’m about to say some stuff that would get me banned from this site permanently, so I’m going to leave for today.Report
You know, let me just say one thing here, and then I’m kinda done with this conversation, because this conversation is absurd:
So, utmost honestly, I’ve seen queer people that I’m not 100% sure about. Which is a bad thing, gatekeeping is actually very harmful to people trying to figure out who they are.
The very first step is the hardest one, and demanding that people be ‘at least this queer to start mentally calling themselves [insert label here]’ is very good way to keep them out…in fact, it’s _literally the point_ of it. It’s rules and judgements by cis people, but disguised as ‘We don’t want fake queer people’ instead of the actual thing ‘We don’t want queer people’. It’s the whole InMD’s thing of ‘People have to prove they are trans’, and the entire point is to stop people from even trying, by making sure if they are not ‘really’ trans.
When, of course, literally every single queer person is unsure about themselves at first. Because it’s very easy to build a threshold in your mind and think you do not hit it, because that threshold keeps you from unpacking any baggage. I did that for _over a decade_.
So I try to stop myself from gatekeeping, but I do something in my head. But I keep it to myself.
—
And now, with all that said, with me being completely honest about how that works: HOLY CRAP. You people are HORRIFICALLY bad at this. I’m standing here and you giving _every_ possible best intention, assuming you are honestly concerned about this, and pretending there is something we need to be judging…but the idea you think THIS PERSON is a faker is amazing.
I watched that video, and _I_ saw someone making a very heartfelt confession about how she had always felt, in fact recounting a history that was _exactly_ what people seem to think ‘should’ be the history of trans people. She put on a dress, makeup, perhaps in the not the most skillful way, she pinned her hair back, and she talked about how she had always felt she was a woman no matter how hard she denied.
I don’t know how you _think_ trans people come out, but, if you’re not willing to accept that story, you’re not willing to accept _anything_.
—
And, um, more to the point, there isn’t as much difference between these categorizes as you are thinking, it’s not actually startling in the least to see a ‘feminine gay man’ slide into trans woman. I know you keep being told those are different things, that assuming they are the same thing is bad…and the assumption is bad, but they aren’t unlinked.
So I’ve actually spent the last few days writing something. I originally was sorta aiming for it as an article here, but…it’s actually getting too long for that, and I think I’m only about halfway done. I think. It’s a cishet people trying to metaphysically sort LGBT people into LGBT categories and almost immediately start running into problems because categories do not actually function over a spectrum.
Honestly, that’s a lot of the problem here. You have very specific categories, and rules about how people fit in those categories, and that basically is not how it functions.Report
No, I wanna say that it was this one:
https://www.tiktok.com/@dylanmulvaney/video/7098392494387334442
There was a particular line of attack that I recall from Elementary/Middle School that goes something vaguely like this:
“This is you. Duh Duh Duh.”
Ideally, this attack involves stuff like rolling ones eyes and waving ones arms around.
I’m mostly struck by how Dylann’s enjoyment of being a woman is a variant of the “This is what you people are like… duh duh duh” attack.
Now if we want to get into the weeds of the ding-an-sich of gender and how much of it is performative in the first place versus how much of it is an existential inhabiting of a mental/emotional space, I’m sure we could.
But how it works in my brain is that I see Dylann’s performance of femininity and think “that’s a flamboyant theater kid doing a variant of the good old ‘this is you’ joke.”Report
Which, I suppose, would not surprise DavidTC one bit.Report
I imagine not given that DavidTC came out and said:
I imagine the criticism will not be “you should not do that something in your head” but something more like “you should keep that to yourself”.
Though with a hard pivot away from talking about Mulvaney and into talking about transpeople in general and talking about a general principle instead of this very specific instance.Report
Sounds about right.Report
Just to clear things up here: If Mulvaney says she is a trans woman, she is one. There’s not a test, there is not any gatekeeping.
I know that really doesn’t jib with what a lot of people have been taught their entire life, that there are a bunch of requirements, but they were taught that by, wait for…cis gatekeepers who desperately tried to keep as few people from being allowed to be trans as they wanted.
But the actual community does not gatekeep.
Hell, there’s actually less requirements than _saying it_. If you want to be trans…you are sorta are already trans, even if you don’t say it. (It kinda depends.)
“But what if someone is doing it as a bit?” I hear people ask. “Or what if they’re faking?”
That’s…usually mostly obvious, but if you need some sort of absolute line…if someone persistently says they’re trans over a month or so.
If someone is comfortable publicly ‘faking’ being trans for a long period of time…maybe they should start asking themselves some hard questions about how they actually relate to their current gender.Report
This is what I refer to in the national divorce thread.
Conservatives are outraged that Dylan Mulvaney is dressing in a manner they don’t approve of, living her life they way they don’t approve of.
It isn’t even that Dylan is asking for their approval- They are outraged by her freedom and refuse to share a civic space with her, or regard her as an equal.Report
What’s that you’re saying? Gender is performance?
Congratulations, you’re about 10% of the way to understanding any of this!
What if we used the general misogyny of society that forces women into specific behaviors such as obsessing about their appearance and then attacks them for doing so…to _also_ justify being transphobic? Huh? What then? Checkmate, libs.
But congrats on independently reinventing the concept of transmisogyny…if only to say it would be a good thing for some reason. You honestly do not know just how funny that is.Report
There’s nothing wrong with giving up on one demographic and going after another. If the new demographic is more fashionable or has more money or what have you, it could even be smart!
But if you give up the old demographic without picking up the new demographic, you’ve miscalculated.
Here’s Newsweek:
I’m not thrilled with the framing of “Conservatives react to X!” rather than whether or not X actually happened… but what can you do. Ad Age is behind a wall and the New York Post is the paper that has the paragraph that says:
But that’s the New York Post. They’re a tabloid.
Anyway, if you run a promotion to get a new customer base by getting rid of your old customer base first and it doesn’t work? That’s malpractice.Report
Exactly. Sure Bud Lite has a variety of customers, but, and I have no facts to back this up, but I doubt that the largest groups are NOT straight white dudes of a certain income located in certain areas.Report
They won’t lose any customers.
The LGBTQ people who drink Bud Light will continue to drink it, the straights who drink it will continue to drink it.
Bud Light became a mammoth brand because it is cheap, available everywhere bland and can be guzzled without making you feel bloated.
Lefties know this, that fighting a huge brand is really really hard for the very reasons it became a huge brand.
Pride parades, gay bars, and drag venues will continue to stock Bud products and Budweiser will continue to sponsor them as they’ve been doing for 20 years.
Again, it’s that whole “go where the money is” thing.Report
One of the many downstream impacts of Fed policy is that it will likely leave the economy too cool to account for stuff like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/economy/manufacturing-layoffs-backlogs/index.htmlReport
Marshall thinks the various reasons for getting rid of Tucker are BS: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/all-these-carlson-canning-explanations-look-like-bsReport
Couldn’t figure out what he’s getting at? There’s a secret bigger thing that’s coming out? Bigger than significantly contributing to your employer having to settle a lawsuit for $787M?
That’s straddling the border between prescient and prurient.Report
Probably. Fox has settled a LOT of lawsuits over the years for far less. Few people have been fired as a result. Fewer someone with his audience and standing. There’s another shoe coming.Report
O’Reilly was fired from the same slot and had a similar audience draw. Sex scandal involving Carlson?Report
You can dodge bad news for conservatives by complaining about the sex habits of pandas.
You can make a mockery of the network by complaining about losing your sexual attraction to candy.
You can cultivate an online personality of white supremacism admixed with a blank, open-mouthed stare reminiscent of cattle watching trains pass in the night whenever someone says something you disagree with in the slightest.
You can foment an insurrection against the U.S. government, as long as the insurrection is in favor of the right person.
You can go on the air and knowingly lie about things. Big, important things. You can even knowingly lie about things that cost the company $787,000,000.
Yes, you can do all of those things, as long as you bring in ratings numbers. But you’d better not talk shit about your boss buddy.Report
Fauci points out an uncomfortable truth:
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I’m just going to say this again. He admitted he lied and he did it intentionally. A public health employee knowingly lied.Report
Mm Hmm.
Florida surgeon general altered key findings in study on Covid-19 vaccine safety
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/24/florida-surgeon-general-covid-vaccine-00093510Report
From your link: “The surgeon general, a well-known Covid-19 vaccine skeptic, ”
Fauci can in no way be considered a vax skeptic. And frankly, a federal guy lying holds more impact than some minor state guy–but I wouldn’t trust Joseph Ladapo either.Report
He is the THE state public health guy for Florida. Which given its population size is not some minor state.Report
“A public health employee knowingly lied.”
Which part of this statement — YOUR statement — applies to Fauci and not the Florida Surgeon General?Report
Didn’t read the article. Did he admit to lying? If he did, I’d put him right along Fauci.Report
Let me see the data. that’s all I want. 20 million people did a survey. Give me the data and I”LL analyze it.
Until then, until you give me the data, I’m gonna assume you’re all liars and cheats, deliberately obfuscating data by REMOVING IT from the public eye.
You took probable outcomes and moved them into “open text” in order to prevent me from accessing them. This was deliberate, and after the first screen, which had a LOT MORE checkboxes.
I know how to deidentify data. Give me the data, and I’ll deidentify it. I’ll sit down with an IRB and run DEID. Voila! Oh, you won’t give me the data, even though I have a program to deidentify it?
LIARS.Report
And how many times did Donald Trump lie knowingly and intentionally? About Covid?
This isn’t the flex you think it is.Report
I EXPECT politicians to lie. I don’t expect federal employees, allegedly charged with the public good to lie. You may, after weighing all the evidence, CHOOSE to trust him. I never will.Report
over a single statement? Man your tolerance is really, really low then. Which you do you, but understand that it means you will be depressingly let down by humans for the rest of your life.
Especially since all his other statement – true statements – were backed up by multiple sources and given in some form or another by multiple people.Report
It’s one thing to give people advice/advocating something and realize later that you were wrong when new evidence comes up. This was a straight up lie. He knew the truth, he made a conscious decision to lie. You can argue he was doing it for a good reason or not, but he intentionally lied. Far as I’m concerned, he’s no longer trustworthy.
As to the rest of the population, they aren’t charged with the public interest are they? In my working environment, intentional lying is fraud, and the gov’t punishes that quite harshly. In fact, I am LEGALLY required to disclose/resolve fraud and other actions that I come across in my daily work. If I don’t I am legally liable. You lower your standard if you like.Report
I’m willing to forgive a white lie, which I believe his was. Fraud would involve lying about something material, to use your example.Report
Really, telling the Americana public that masks weren’t effective and there was no need to wear them? That’s your level of white lie? Because that’s what he did, and he admitted it. As I said, you could argue it was justified. I reject that argument.
As to my second paragraph–lying on your timecard (saying you worked 10 hours on project X and you didn’t) IS fraud, because the Federal Gov’t is paying for your work. Penalties incurred can be: termination, fines, disbarment from future work, etc. All my past and current employers have taken the position that ANY employee who becomes aware of POTENTIAL fraud MUST report it or take action to resolve it. Failure to do so results in the same consequences the original violator receives.Report
You don’t think you’re being unfair?
Maybe he just wasn’t aware of the law.
It’s not like he is a Supreme Court Justice or something.Report
He’s a public facing federal employee-he’s not some back office drone. He’s given plenty of interviews before and, I’m sure, testified to Congress.Report
Mistakes, they were made.Report
Harry Bellafonte has died. He was 96 and had a legendary run: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/arts/music/harry-belafonte-dead.htmlReport
“High Jump” jokes will be deleted.
Report
Another bank crashing? This is probably bad.
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Economically bad? Not really.
Regulatorialy bad – well the regionals lobbied hard to get out from under Dodd-Frank, which was weak sauce to begin with. Something something reaping what you sow something something …Report
Florida grows more disgusting by the minute:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/politics/florida-bans-teaching-gender-identity-sexual-orientation/index.htmlReport
Conservatives: People under 18 are too young to hear about sexuality.
Also conservatives: Its fine for 12 year olds to get married and work around dangerous machinery and chemicals.
Query: Can 12 year old girls work as porn actresses?
Why, or why not?Report
So can we call this the “Don’t Say Gay” law?Report
I believe so, though as ruling of the Board of education its more a regulation then a law.Report
Yes horrible. Also f’n hilarious that they think this won’t make them looks like jerks. Like kids haven’t been hearing all those forbidden words. Most like or know LBG people and see how silly it is. It’s like Footloose came back as farce.
If the FLA Dem’s weren’t trash they could have a shot at the Gov. The best response is mockery.
And of course mocking all the Free Speech Warriors who won’t give a crap about this.Report
They.
Do.
Not.
Care.
Mostly because they do not believe they look like jerks to the people who keep voting for them.
They.
Do.
Not.
Care.
Mockery only works on people subject to shame. The GOP is no longer such a group because in their view they are about to cement the permanent minority rule they seek.
As for the “Free Speech” Warriors? They operate form the We are protected but not bound by the law perspective that walks hand in hand with all this. NONE of them will post here, for instance, decrying this, because it’s aimed squarely at hurting people they either don’t care about hurting or actively want to hurt.Report
The twitters are reporting that Erdogan has had a heart attack and that Putin is being rushed to the Kremlin despite it being in the middle of the night there.
The boss points out:
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Maybe someone should verify who some accounts are who they say they are. Could use a check mark of some color. But hey, it’s not like anybody could foresee any problems.Report
Verification means nothing. “This is *REALLY* Russian Times!” gives you no more information after reading the article than you had before reading it.Report
Everybody was freaking out that CGTN America (China Global Television Network) reported that Erdogan had a myocardial infarction and I was going to link to that but they deleted the tweet and are now reporting:
Report
Just because I feel like throwing some fuel on the fire above: in Montana we have a Tennessee-Three-Meets-Transphobia Tempest!
https://www.wbtv.com/2023/04/26/montana-transgender-lawmaker-faces-crucial-vote-by-legislature/
Rep. Zephyr will be able to cast votes for matters on the floor of the State House, however, but must do so by remote means.Report
From what I heard, the motion to expel was titled “Outreach to the Youth Vote 2023”.Report
Cancel Culture:
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That’s not cancel culture just the overreaching hand of France.Report
At least they didn’t use it for target practice.Report
They aren’t allowed but I’m sure they would if they could. Here the issue is inflation. Before you know it the cost of a case of beer and a box of ammo will exceed the average American’s weekly earnings.Report
That’s a novel way to argue for an increase to minimum wage, but hey why not?Report
To rally support for the change we want to see we have to meet the people where they are.Report
Home brewing kits are the Levis for the coming gold rush.Report
To be fair, Miller High Life really probably should be known as the ‘Sparkling Wine of Beers’.Report
Come quickly, I am tasting gas giants!Report
Now i’m suddlenly amazed no county in Wisc or Penn hasn’t named themselves Beer County just for the marketing win.Report
There was a story a bit ago about an housed person who attacked a fire commissioner with a metal bat. It turns out the SF Commissioner might have had a history of just going out to bear spray homeless people and one of them eventually fought back: https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/who-is-don-carmignani-the-ex-sf-fire-commissioner-accused-of-bear-spraying-homeless-people/Report
it is a source of amusement to me that you tried really hard to say “unhoused” instead of “homeless” but you could do it neither correctly nor consistently.Report
Homelessness is a serious, multifaceted social and economic problem.
Unhoused is what happens when your wife kicks you out for staying at the bar too late and consorting with that other woman from up the road.Report
“Temporarily experiencing dog-housedness.”Report
“Move over lil’ dog, big ol’ temporarily unhoused dog is movin’ in…”Report
Jerry Springer is dead: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/arts/television/jerry-springer-dead.htmlReport
Well there’s something we shouldn’t see any day, much less every day:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/politics/mike-pence-grand-jury-testimony/index.htmlReport
Lesson learned – hide your lies:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/28/politics/desantis-open-records-laws/index.htmlReport
I think chances are getting lower by the day that DeSantis actually declares he’s running, regardless of what happens with Florida law on the issue while still in office. Whether that’s a good or bad thing for Biden’s fortunes is hard to say.Report
The legislature has already passed a bill saying he doesn’t have to resign as governor if he runs. He and they would not have wasted time and effort on that if he wasn’t expecting to run. Plus, if I read another story correctly he does have an exploratory committee going.Report
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Report
Now that I think about it, Emma Lazarus should have said “people temporarily experiencing houselessness”.Report
Wait a sec? So the she doesn’t want the migrants in her town, but it’s ok for them to be in Texas? Ok then….
When’s the sympathy? Clearly the Pres needs to call her and explain the situation.Report
Meanwhile, in news made by non-sociopaths…
California is offering free immigration legal services for community college students
https://edsource.org/2023/california-is-offering-free-immigration-legal-services-for-community-college-students/689135Report
Is “LA Mag” one of those right-wing magazines?
Newsom Warns CA Will ‘Break’ Under Migrant Influx as Title 42 Expires.
Quite honestly, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Nobody migrates here to get free services. That’s a conspiracy theory. It doesn’t make any sense.Report
You’ve convinced me.
The federal government must do more to take help resettle and process new immigrants.Report
Biden should run on that! “We want to bring immigrants into communities that, historically, haven’t had that, recently, haven’t had that many.”
He could quote the poem!Report
The view from Potterville, chapter umpteenth.
Virtually everything conservatives say is uttered with a curled lip and sneer of sarcasm, predicated on the idea that people are universally cruel and callous.
I can’t summon up an argument against conservatism more damning than simply quoting them.Report
“I can’t believe that they said ‘run with that!’ to my performative suggestion! How awful they are.”Report
Chip,
You’ve convinced me.
The federal government must do more to take help resettle and process new immigrants.
you say this and then you snot about “everything conservatives say is uttered with a curled lip and sneer of sarcasm”
like
I know you roll on “the moving finger types and having typed moves on” but this was literally just two comments apartReport
Am I wrong in my characterization of conservatism as a curled lip sneer?
That when it comes to immigrants, refugees, those who are poor or marginalized, the conservative reacts with a shrug of indifference at best, or open hostility?
I keep coming back to “What can we learn from conservatives?” and the answer each and every time is “Not a damn thing”.
You guys can chortle at Biden and Lightfoot and Newsom but your argument really boils down to “See I told you! People are all just as depraved as we are!”
So…what can we learn from conservatives?
Not a damn thing.Report
I don’t think that it’s “depravity” as much as pointing out that you very much want the benefits but not the costs.
It’s fine for other people to pay the costs. Look at these great benefits!, you can say. I don’t know why those people are complaining about not having enough bandwidth! I hold my lamp beside the golden door!
But when the time comes for you to pay the costs, it becomes a much more nuanced and complex situation. Hey, we only have but so much bandwidth. There is a burden created and up to a certain point is good and fine and desirable but there is a second point beyond that first point where the burden is too heavy to bear and it’s not particularly hypocritical to point out that we’re at the second point and not the first one.
“What about when other people were complaining about the burden?”
“They’re racist.”Report
Newsom is expressing worry that we won’t be able to resettle the sudden group of immigrants.
And you guy have no other reaction than to chortle and smirk.
There exists no such thing as a conservative proposal for how to handle immigrants, other than to inflict pain and cruelty, where cruelty is the point.
This is true in general for conservatism across the board.
The hallmarks of modern American conservatism are resentment and grievance. A depraved indifference at best, when it isn’t open glee at the suffering of others.
So, what can we learn from conservatives?
Not a damn thing.Report
Being a Good Person is not enough.
You also need Good Policies.
There are actually *PLENTY*. We’ve discussed them in the past. I’m not surprised that you don’t remember, though.
Part of the problem is that there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs.
And if you don’t want to make trade-offs, you can criticize others for not having a solution for you.
“Well, you can make this trade-off, this other trade-off, or that trade-off.”
“YOU HAVE NO SOLUTIONS BUT TO CHORTLE AND SMIRK!!!”
“*snort*”
“SEE?!??”Report
“Am I wrong in my characterization of conservatism as a curled lip sneer?”
I think my question is why your lip curls the same way and your sneer could be a mime of theirs.
“You guys can chortle at Biden and Lightfoot and Newsom but your argument really boils down to “See I told you! People are all just as depraved as we are!””
This is the very typical modern liberal complaint of “yeah sure maybe I’m exactly the bastard you say I am, but you’re a bastard for saying it!“Report
Morality as Politeness.Report
That poem has caused more trouble than it is worth…Report