Someone crashing a plane on purpose doesn't amount to terrorism - there would need to be a political motivation as well.
Edit: Also the post says up to 20 years .. not sure why you've become fixated on it being simply 20. People dropping planes out of the sky for likes need to be made an example of imo, and I personally would be happy to see him locked up for life as a deterrent to others. The lengths people are going to for likes is frightening.
Deterrence doesn't work, if it did, there would be no drug use (or insert any other crime really, you should see our incarceration statistics) in the US. Why do people still think this?
The biggest problem with deterrence is it relies on people not thinking they won't get caught. Everyone thinks they won't get caught.
I just hope you have absolutely no power in this world. You shouldnt have with your total lack of empathy and common sense. Locking an annoying guy away for life for a stupid prank... Nobody got hurt. And you're not even alone and don't even get downvoted like crazy. American society sure is fucked up.
My empathy is with the people who have their lives destroyed by reckless idiots pulling these "stupid prank"s for likes.. common sense says society doesn't appreciate this nonsense so deterrent is the only way to deal with it - but if you have as better idea I'm sure myself and the world are listening.
Nobody had their life destroyed, except maybe the idiot youtuber. He already paid with all the ridicule he's getting. That is deterrent enough. It's not like "faking plane crashes for likes" is common at all. You're really not making any sense.
Well, his plane is broken too. Again, there has not been any damage to anyone. Of course his pilot license should be revoked. But jail time? I'm pretty sure he won't repeat that stupidity, so why lock him away. People in jail cost money. And if they get out they are more likely to go back due to stigmatization and questionable connections made in jail. You're not even doing yourself a favor.
By that logic, we should shoot on sight for over speeding a car or drunk driving. I hope you know how many people die in automobile accident every day.
A lot of the inflation on food is increasingly feeling like businesses cashing in. For instance my old go to brand of breed increased by over 50% months ago.
I'm having trouble understanding how much of food shrinkflation is down to actual costs going up versus exploiting the current market dynamics to squeeze more profit.
I understand it's probably a mix of both, but it's hard to tell the relative proportion as a consumer.
They didn't have the pricing power/their customers didn't have the tolerance for rising prices/coordinated action and corporate consolidation means prices are going up and it doesn't matter what your choices are.
Circumstances materially changed over the last few years, and inflation is a great time for profit taking as we're seeing, which reinforces the inflation. In a competitive environment the excess profit-taking should start pulling back eventually, but in the meantime the prices are going to the moon.
I don't think there was a magical point in consolidation that let them increase the price of eggs ad hoc. Or a magic 'greed' button that they refused to hit before now. Why not just make it $30 an egg?
> They didn't have the pricing power/their customers didn't have the tolerance for rising prices/
Just for everyone's sanity, it's WAY easier to believe that there are underlying market conditions that should be addressed and not worry too much about retailers. They are just doing marginal pricing. If there is a shortage on eggs, it's better for everyone that they price eggs so they stay on the shelves than to price them as if nothing is happening and then people panic because they can never find them anymore.
The profits may be up, but the revenue is still down overall.
The linked study didn't really make that claim. All it really showed was that only a small portion of inflation was returned in the form of wages. It didn't really attempt to figure out the reasons for the profits.
I don't know why people get so hung up on this though: If you have less stuff to sell, and fewer employees to sell it, your profit margins are going to be higher! That doesn't mean though that you are maximizing your revenue potential. Which is probably why despite all of these reports of "record profits" you are not seeing exploding stock evaluations.
Also, it doesn't hurt that inflation is always going to be favorable to retailers. You buy inventory at the pre-inflation price and sell it at the post-inflation price. Even if you just price to keep up with inflation, you are going to report "record profits" every quarter just by nature of inflation.
>I don't think there was a magical point in consolidation that let them increase the price of eggs ad hoc. Or a magic 'greed' button that they refused to hit before now. Why not just make it $30 an egg?
I'm not sure this can be approached from a rational examination of economic premises alone. You raise good questions. However political economy also should be considered.
Let us imagine for a moment that this narrative is being advanced to deflect from government largess in the economy. Under this scenario court economists have an interest in protecting the regime, while the regime and academic institutions generally have a symbiotic relationship. If these incentives make sense, the narrative can be better understood in this political context.
Unfortunately this hypothesis suggests that there is very little we can say here without this discussion devolving into the regular flames we see on this topic.
This is exactly it. Companies will actually go quite into the red on particular products to avoid a price increase "before everyone else" if they can survive else wise.
There cannot be anyway Arizona Ice Tea is making the same profit today on their .99 cans that they were in 1992.
And at some point that has to break unless they become a charity subsidizing aluminum-clad tea.
When "the break" happens they almost always overshoot; it's easier to offer a 'discount' later if necessary.
Long story short: they reduce costs (thinner cans, no need for heavy marketing because fixed price is the marketing) and aren't greedy, playing the long game.
Free market economics means that if absurd profits are being had, then new people coming to the game will offer slightly cheaper prices.
A price were willing occur until surviving companies are making minimal amount of profits.
Related is if someone figures out how to produce the same amount for less effort/cost.
If someone is making absurd profits for long periods, then usually some major factor such as government regulations is preventing new players from entering the market.
> Free market economics means that if absurd profits are being had, then new people coming to the game will offer slightly cheaper prices.
Supermarkets are expensive but still not expensive enough for someone to bootstrap an operation to elbow themselves into the market as a new player and expect to still make profit.
> A price were willing occur until surviving companies are making minimal amount of profits.
> Related is if someone figures out how to produce the same amount for less effort/cost.
Existing supermarket chains have massive delivery networks and associated efficiency, already have
- the real estate and
- all the internals of a retail store and
- the associated warehousing set up,
- all the personnel who know their way around the store and where everything goes (which is a huge part of the efficiency of distributing the wares in the store),
- "brand" recognition of the store (Aldi, Tesco, Walmart, ...)
which means the new competitors would very likely have to massively loss-lead at a time when the already-established market participants are making more profit than before.
> If someone is making absurd profits for long periods, then usually some major factor such as government regulations is preventing new players from entering the market.
Selling foodstuffs especially is an area of business where a huge chunk of regulations are absolutely justified and it's not like all of the food singled out because of expired shelf life ("MHD"/"Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum") is getting thrown into the garbage (at least here in Germany).
I currently work in a supermarket and have done so in a different chain before this one and from what I know most damaged or "expired" food is getting written off and then either set aside in the appropriate temperature store-room for the "Tafel" (food bank) OR if it's really unfit/unsafe for consumption (moldy, completely interrupted cold chain [1] or obvious signs of spoilage like bloated food packaging) it gets thrown into the garbage.
Raving about "free markets" from ones ivory tower is all well and good but the reality is that because of corporate consolidations and necessity-for-living many economic sectors are effectively locked down by (implicit) cartels, either because it's cost-prohibitive to even enter - let alone succeed in - that market or because the actual necessary infrastructure has been divied up between the current market participants (think USA and their local mono-/duopolies of ISPs).
[1]: For example when we find items which should be kept cool or frozen in other areas of the market having been taken and left there by customers who obviously don't care (like that one time I found fresh fish with its plastic bag bloated to bursting in a warm section of the market during summer time, thankfully the packaging wasn't damaged or it wouldn't have been pretty).
Mass inflation is a convenient excuse for profiteering. Similar shit happened in Germany with the DM => EUR switchover, yielding the nickname "Teuro" ("expensive euro").
The core problem is that Western countries have collectively decided to dial back anti-trust enforcement that could have stepped in.
One hypothesis I have is that as food and labor costs have increased, people eat out less and generate more store traffic. Those shoppers are stuck with the decision to cook and their demand on a per store basis is more inelastic.
At least where I am this is the case. Milk and milk products are at record highs, with some products nearly double what they were at the beginning of last year. Yet the milk companies actually cut how much they pay producers. Prices for energy and fuel are around the same as the end of 2021.
Energy price in EU is at pre-war levels, as far as I know, for some months now. It definitely must be something else. I live in a country where everybody eats bread every day, and the price increase has been around ~80% over the span of a year. The price of flour has risen by around ~15-20% with all the "Ukraine is a major grain exporter" uncertainty since the beginning of the war. Corporate profits are unprecedented, so it cannot be anything else but pure greed.
I've switched to buying the bargain bin discounter stuff. It's such a transparent pretense to raise prices while raking in profits that I don't want to give it to them.
Probably not; if the disks exist they're almost thirty years old, and probably best kept running in some corner of my memory.
I came across an old box of 3.5 discs a few years back that I had stored away since the early 90's. I recovered them using ddrescue to create images using a cheap USB floppy drive.. was great fun.
Absolutely, barring any environmental issues (moisture or heat), they will probably image just fine. But please note that Amiga formatted disks won’t be possible to read in a standard PC floppy drive. You’ll either need to use an Amiga with some kind of transfer software, or custom hardware for disk imaging.
Edit: I just noticed that they are discussing this very thing a little further down the thread, with lots of concrete options.
Without age related death people would be terrified to experience anything incase it lead to their death.. crossing the road would be an incredibly high risk activity in such a future.
As a parent I have no idea what you are trying to say with this idea of pushing "heteronormativity" - I don't and don't know any parents that push anything sexual let alone encouraging kids to explore sexuality .. they are kids and will be kids until they mature and begin to feel the urge to explore. This normalising of sexualising of children is abhorrent.
Edit: the voting on this comment is crazy.. the number of HN users that feel sexualisation of children isn't bad is utterly shameful.
Gender identity and sexual orientation are different concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as exploring sexuality. Children are constantly exploring identity, as I'm sure you have observed. For instance, I am a straight man, but when I was a child I sometimes stole my mother's lipstick and tried to put it on, or I would play with Barbie dolls. I saw that other people incorporated these activities in their identities, and I wanted to try it. This was no more sexual than when I play acted as a soldier or decided I liked to wear cargo pants; I was experimenting with who I was or could become, because that is what children do.
This is a convenient segue to heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is the societal pressure to conform to the traditional gender roles of men and women who pursue heterosexual relationships. My parents didn't like me playing with Barbie dolls; they explicitly told me that it wasn't something boys did. This transmits a set of expectations about how I should behave, based on my gender. Notice that their telling me it was wrong to play with dolls was no more sexual than if they had allowed me to play with the dolls.
If your dad has acetylene torches around and your mom has axes around the house you’re going to play with them.
It does not mean or imply or predict that you want to burn the house down or you want to become a butcher or axe murderer. You’re not exploring being a pyromaniac or a murderer. You’re just playing, that’s it.
Same with high heels, smoking pipes, hunting rifles or lipstick. Kids don’t know their meaning yet (context of usage).
> Gender identity and sexual orientation are different concepts. Exploring gender identity is not the same as exploring sexuality.
While true, to be fair GP was responding to this:
>>> "For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to *heteronormativity*. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their *sexuality*." [emphasis mine]
To muddy the distinction further, there is a small minority of men whose sexual kink is to be perceived as women. These seem to be the people who are making the most trouble for trans women who just want to quietly go about living as women without fuss.
Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can get turned on by literally anything. https://xkcd.com/468/ This doesn't really muddy the waters; the concepts remain distinct, and people making it a kink to conflate them is kinda like how a joke isn't true but is only funny if you know the truth it refers to.
Heteronormativity conflates gender and sexuality; I'd guess (while acknowledging I don't know the content of anyone else's mind) that is what is responsible for their confusion, because they have been raised in a heteronormative society, the distinction doesn't exist in their mind.
> Kinks are impossible to pin down or fence in, people can get turned on by literally anything.
While a true statement it's also a non-sequitur. Anglosphere society is roiled with social turmoil about trans-gender identity. One faction would like society to recognize that some people's gender does not fit their sex, and to normalize accommodating these people's gender expression without intrusive and oppressive questioning. Another faction, perhaps motivated by genuine concern, or perhaps by simple hatred of difference and change, throw a spanner into the works by asking hard questions about bathrooms and prisons and athletics and such. If the only people interested in entering women's bathrooms and prisons were genuinely only women who happened to be born in a male body, then everything would be clear and unmuddied. However, the existence of some fraction of men who would happily identify as women in order to gain easier sexual access to women does complicate the simple distinction. Is a trans woman lesbian with a penis really trans, or a predatory man with a kink? Ignoring or dismissing the muddy implications of the question will not make the second faction go away.
This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare out, trans people are not assaulting people in bathrooms, and what you're describing is really using the way our society is built to be hostile to people who do not fit into gender norms as a way to justify further hostility. It's saying, oh look, we built bathrooms and prisons in a way that reinforces these norms, well, I guess we're stuck with them.
> This narrative of predatory trans people does not bare out...
I didn't say predatory trans people. I said predatory men. Have you met men? Some men will put on a dress, call themselves trans, and fondle themselves in a women's locker room.
Again, pretending this is about trans people is disingenuous. This is about (some) men.
And, again, whether you genuinely dismiss the concern because you genuinely disbelieve that any man ever would take advantage of the situation, the faction that bring it up do genuinely believe that some men will take advantage of it. This faction will not go away. So, probably best to at least acknowledge their concerns so that trans people can get on with the business of doing their business.
I have heard some men say things about women when they weren't around that I find appalling; I've had to work on eliminating misogyny from my own thinking, and it is a work in progress; I'm well aware of men and the toxicity that often goes along with them.
The narrative you have presented is frequently weaponized, specifically by the adherents to the ideology of Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism, to argue that trans women are "men in dresses" who's real goal is to infiltrate women's spaces in order to assault them (or, in the example you gave, violate their privacy and dignity). In practice this a widespread phenomenon. TERF activists use this narrative to attempt to enact legislation barring trans people from the bathroom of their gender - forcing trans women into men's bathrooms, and I'm sure that, as someone concerned about problematic men and bathrooms, that won't sound like a good prospect to you. I take you at your word this was context you weren't aware of; now that I've brought it to your attention, I hope you'll consider it and see if it alters your thinking.
> The narrative you have presented is frequently weaponized...
Indeed. This is both true, and a non-sequitur. Bad-faith arguers exist. Let us acknowledge the fact that some people will reprehensibly refer to every trans woman as a "man in a dress". Let's assume the best about each other.
If you're trying to say that everyone is a TERF who points out that some men (again, not trans women) will take advantage, or that only bad people point this out, then you're not addressing the concern, but dismissing it. Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep bad men out.
Anyway, you and I won't litigate this here, so if you have more to add, know that I'll read whatever you have to say but might not reply. Be well.
> [Y]ou're not addressing the concern, but dismissing it.
You're right, I should have done better there. To me, until this comment where you described this as "reprehensible", it sounded like you were employing "just asking questions" rhetoric, because you were asking all the same questions as TERFs, and to me it appeared you were only holding back the transphobic conclusions. However, that I should have done a better job assuming good faith on your part, and I apologize.
> This is both true, and a non-sequitur.
It isn't a non-sequitur though, I'm explaining to you what my issue is. If you were aware of the context around this narrative the whole time, you could addressed it instead of implying I was being disingenuous; the best-faith interpretation I could see was that you didn't understand my objection, so I added more detail. I would like to engage with you presuming the best, but can you see how saying I'm being disingenuous and that my points are non-sequitur (when it seems like you do understand what TERFs are, what bathroom bills are, and what it was I was getting at and how it relates to our discussion) made that difficult for me?
> Addressing and empathizing with the actual concern will get trans people into their preferred bathrooms and keep bad men out.
Happy to listen to what you may propose, but I don't have any thoughts. I certainly empathize with women's feeling of unsafety and the desire to create spaces without men, to the extent I can as a man. But I understand if you are done with this conversation, I myself need to log off for a few hours to attend to things, and of course you don't owe me any of your time.
Most people are like me: sincerely caring, well-disposed to trans people, understand that trans rights are human rights, bear absolutely zero ill-will and will happily use preferred pronouns. Would be terribly frightened for a trans-woman to be placed in a man's prison, for instance. And, nevertheless, would simply like straight-forward policy proposals to answer those specific concerns.
So far, the only policy proposals that address those concerns have been from conservatives, which are not ideal to say the least, either. From liberals, sadly, have come answers along the lines of "Asking questions like that is TERF territory. You don't want to be a TERF, do you?" Which is clearly not an answer, and concedes the entire policy platform to conservatives.
I mean, it could be that the liberal response is, essentially "Times are changing and the exceedingly minuscule chance of creepy men in womens' locker rooms and women's prisons is a small price to pay for human rights" but that's unconvincing, to be honest. Creepy men who have a right to be in womens' locker rooms and prisons will become a problem unless it's actually addressed in advance. That's nothing to do with trans women. It is, unfortunately, a problem with men.
But no, I don't have answers, here. Before, it seemed to be "Be discreet and make good-faith efforts to pass as your preferred gender and people will generally leave you alone." The "passing" part is not ideal, but at least serves as some kind of costly social signal that this person is really trying to blend in and not make waves. Without that, not sure.
This is a meaningless concern. Any man who would put on a dress to come assault you in the bathroom could skip the dress part and just come in the bathroom and assault you. It's like saying some rapists have red hair. It's true but its not meaningful because no fruitful thing can be derived from the fact nor strategy obtained.
There are millions of trans people in the world but presumably few rapists in dresses. The spurious focus on pointless concerns suggests we ought to harm the dignity of millions for a fictional advantage.
Unfortunately, this is not an answer, and so, you are conceding public policy to people who do have answers that you will not like.
What do you propose to do about a creepy man who hears that all he has to do is self-identify as a woman and now has a right to expose his penis to women? This is not a trans woman, but a man who just will not leave his penis alone in a women's locker room. Women avert their eyes, but he shakes it around, puts tassels on it, gets excited by the turmoil. "This is not a thing that will ever happen" is an answer, sure, but when it does happen, your conservative opposition will use the exceedingly rare incident to exclude trans women from locker rooms. So, what is a better answer that actually addresses the concern?
We shouldn't make actual rules based on fictional situations. In a situation like this it would be trivial to exclude the obvious troublemaker for disruptive harassing behavior. You act as if managers,cops, and judges aren't capable of exercising basic judgement. If you did this tomorrow you would find out that this isn't true. It's a waste of my time and yours.
> My parents didn't like me playing with Barbie dolls; they explicitly told me that it wasn't something boys did.
Same with me, but let me ask you a question. Were you the sort of kid that actually listens to their parents? Because i didn't, and most of my peers didn't, either.
No, I was stubborn like mule. I wore my parents down until they caved. That doesn't mean it didn't have an impact though, I certainly picked up what they were putting down.
Now, the reaction of my friends when they came over and looked at me funny when I tried to show them my awesome Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders doll (it had wings and could fly if you pulled a ripcord! That's objectively cool. Also, dangerous, especially to taller adults in the area.), that was painful.
If it's your parents and your peers and virtually all popular media, it's massively naive to think that isn't going to have a normalizing effect on people.
To be clear, I'm making a descriptive and not a prescriptive statement. I'm not saying that people should conform to societal norms, just that right now they do (and that doesn't seem like a trivial thing to change).
For instance, I am a straight man, but when I was a child I sometimes stole my mother's lipstick and tried to put it on, or I would play with Barbie dolls.
I wouldn't see trying on lipstick or playing with Barbie dolls as "exploring a gender identity" as neither of those are exclusive to one gender, even in a heteronormative world.
I think you might be missing the forest for the trees. Barbies and lipstick are not exclusive to one gender, but they are associated with one gender. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that people in general will respond differently to a little boy who likes playing with lipstick and barbie dolls compared to a little girl.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but in the culture of my household, my school, and the people I had contact with as a child, this was seen as strange and something to be discouraged, because these things were seen as gendered.
I think these things were much more gendered at the time, as well. It is crazy for me to look back and remember how there was a time when I hadn't made up my mind about whether gay marriage was okay or not. Things have changed a lot over the past 20 years or so.
I dunno. My social set would never discourage a child from this at all. However, of those of us who had children, only one (out of, like 50+ children in our extended set) was gender non-conforming boy at 3 and liked to wear girl's clothes and play with dolls.
1. This is not a good faith representation of what trans people are arguing for; no one is saying that playing with dolls makes you trans.
2. Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery. Surgeries are not performed for people under the age of 18. Trans healthcare for kids largely involves letting them choose what clothes they wear, pronouns they use, perhaps changing their name. The most that might happen is that they take puberty blockers, a reversible and safe treatment.
3. I can see why people would be upset by your straw man, were it the reality, but trans people are not an abomination, and directing dehumanizing language towards a group of people who are frequently targeted for violence is profoundly not okay. It's been less than 3 weeks since a terrorist entered an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs and opened fire, and this has happened more times than anyone can count; don't contribute to this. And your straw man is just that.
That's a rather extreme claim, don't you think? There's been a significant shift in recent years from "gender fluid" behavior being considered a matter of expression, to it being regarded as an almost mandatory matter of identity - either as a sign of identifying with the opposite gender, or as being "non binary".
> Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery.
The heavy medicalization of "trans healthcare" creates a rigid path from "affirmation" of the supposedly expressed gender, to puberty blockers/hormones, to surgical reassignment. There are significant social drawbacks for those who choose to stray, since 'community' support is conditional on picking the "right" choices at any given step.
> I can see why people would be upset by your straw man, were it the reality, but trans people are not an abomination
The latter is not something I ever said, of course. You might be pattern-matching my comment with things that are just not there. I agree that most trans people just want to live their lives and not be at risk for violence, but this much is obvious. In general, the most extreme "activism" on either side gets a lot of visibility while being unrepresentative of what real people think.
> There's been a significant shift in recent years from "gender fluid" behavior being considered a matter of expression, to it being regarded as an almost mandatory
Who exactly is arguing that it is mandatory to be gender fluid? I've never heard such a thing.
What I do hear trans people arguing for is that they have a right to exist, that they are under threat of violence, and that the require awareness of their condition and protection under the law as a matter of survival.
> The heavy medicalization of "trans healthcare" creates a rigid path from "affirmation" of the supposedly expressed gender, to puberty blockers/hormones, to surgical reassignment. There are significant social drawbacks for those who choose to stray, since 'community' support is conditional on picking the "right" choices at any given step.
You're just kinda putting quotes on things to make them sound scary. Do you object to surgery, or surgery being performed on children? If teenagers go on puberty blockers, and they decide they don't want to pursue surgery when they become adults - no worries, no surgery was performed. If they become adults, having considered the decision for a long time at this point - by what you were saying before now, that would seem to be okay; you were saying it was an unacceptable to impose a surgery on children, are you now saying that this isn't a choice you're ever okay with? I'm starting to get the feeling maybe you just feel trans people are unacceptable in general and that, whatever they did, you would disapprove of it.
I'm not deeply involved with the LGBTQ community, but I'm confident none of the people I know would bully someone who decided against transitioning. And none of the LGBTQ communities I've ever intersected with have been stingy or withholding of their support; they're happy to discuss my feelings about gender with me, for example, though I'm a straight man with a "by the book" gender presentation (and I have my frustrations with my gender and the expectations that come with it all the same, which I'm sure many men can relate to).
I'm sure there are toxic personalities within these communities, but it is certainly not the norm or generally tolerated, as bullying exists in virtually all communities but generally is not tolerated.
If I can responsibly say to "object" to anything it's people being rushed on a path to gender transition, given the heavy costs that this involves in practice and the fact that some steps are irreversible (including male hormones for those AFAB - though admittedly this might also make it more justifiably salient for someone AMAB to seek to delay their puberty).
This applies to kids the most (they of course aren't at risk for surgery, but the usual notion of a fixed "gender identity" is also least sensibly applied to them), but people in young adulthood should also be a bit concerned. Research seems to show that, by and large, those who transition in middle-age are the happiest post-transition. I'm not sure how that squares with your feeling that someone with my views might just find "trans people unacceptable in general"; my concerns are derived from real-world practicality.
There's no rush, but they're also under no obligation to respect your timetable. People make up their own minds about these things, there isn't a conspiracy to trans the kids as fast as possible, as you make it sound.
I'm not setting a fixed timetable, but the medical establishment sure has their own opinions as to how fast people should transition. The "conspiracy" is out in the open - and these opinions aren't always comprehensively informed by research about good outcomes.
> Trans healthcare for kids does not involve surgery. Surgeries are not performed for people under the age of 18.
Unfortunately that is not true.
There are surgeons who perform 'gender affirming' double mastectomies on girls as young as 13. This is documented in the medical literature.
The former CEO of Mermaids, a UK-based charity for children who identify as transgender, had her child castrated and given a penile inversion at the age of 16, by a surgeon who specializes in constructing 'neovaginas'.
I get it that this stuff is confusing and can be hard to make sense of at first, but gender identity and sexuality are completely different things.
Also I'm not accusing anyone of pushing this on their kids, rather, our society does it in massive doses. Watch most children's TV shows or movies and heteronormativity is abundant.
For a pretty clean example of this check out the movie Up by Pixar. The first 10 minutes of the movie are devoted to Carl & Ellie's relationship and the loss of that relationship serves as a major driver for the movie.
Also there's nothing wrong with showing children this kind of content. It helps them make sense of the world. However, there is an issue with representation. When it's all they see then it constrains their minds as to what is possible.
> With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality.
Emphasis mine. The comment is not, in fact, about letting children explore their sexuality, but people. (When you consider the parent of that comment, that still does not add context implying that we're talking about kids.)
The only part of the comment which discusses children is this:
> For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity.
To read this as sexualizing children is misunderstanding the term heteronormativity, but regardless, this is the behavior that is being criticized, not championed.
You chopped the one statement into different "parts". Here is the comment in question:
> For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality.
In a maximally generous interpretation, you could say that the "kids" in the first half and the "people" in the second half of the statement are completely different subjects. I think that is a bit of a stretch, though.
"For years I have been pruning the tomato plants in my garden. Now, I just let the _plants_ grow".
Anyone reading that would assume "plants" refers to the aforementioned tomato plants, not cucumbers.
They are different subjects, or if you prefer, the same subject at different times in their life. They're asserting that societal pressure experienced during childhood has an effect on how sexuality is expressed during adulthood. I chopped it into different parts in order to dissect and analyze it; I ultimately included the entire comment (except a sentence neither of us found relevant and you yourself didn't include), and I was not hiding anything; the entire comment was always available to be inspected, the structure and content of the comment was not in dispute, only it's interpretation.
Consider that, in the example sentence you came up with, you are referring to the same subject, at different times.
Terms like “heteronormativity” and “cisgender” are just ways they attempt to marginalize normal people and their normal sexual development. These people who use these terms are objectively and statistically outliers in society. And since they can’t convince anyone to accept their abnormality, they instead try to change language to remove the idea of there being a standard/normal baseline.
They think that because you’re not trying to make them “explore their gender identity” while teaching them ABCs that you are pushing something. It’s absolute projection. I support all people to live their lives how they see fit, but I refuse to use their newspeak or pretend like there is not a natural normal.
Interestingly, newspeak was about removing words from language so that certain ideas couldn't be expressed. It was explicitly not about adding words to the language, and certainly not about adding words to convey additional nuance and precision where there was previously none.
It seems to me like you're actually arguing to try and remove words that people have introduced to the language, and to erase the nuances they convey, because you don't find it to be "normal" or "natural". What is normal or natural is entirely subjective, and varies across cultures and across time, and in any case we don't generally yoke ourselves to what is natural (we are, after all, speaking through an artificial medium because we find it advantageous, and though we weren't born with wings we often find it advantageous to fly.)
It might be interesting to give 1984 another read.
I know it’s from 1984, but it’s considered a word itself as far as I can tell. I was using it as “Deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public.” Heterosexuality is the norm, it is the default. Heteronormativity is some nonsense phrase that is used in place of “normal” to try and draw a false equivalency between normal and abnormal. It is intended to muddy the waters and mislead like most contemporary “woke” language.
There's nothing ambiguous or misleading, what you're actually objecting to is the concrete and specific use of language to describe ideas you don't like and which you don't want to see proliferate. You aren't objecting to people being mislead, you're objecting to people understanding. Do give 1984 a read, I think you'll find the irony that you are appropriating a term used in that book in order to invert it's meaning and to take the very actions that the book is criticizing quite amusing, and then we can be in on the joke together.
Heterosexuality doesn't have to be the default, and indeed, that era is ending. The evidence for it is right here; you feel compelled to go to bat for the notion, not something you'd need to do if it really were mystically natural and inextricably true. Heterosexuality is promulgated as a default because it is key to a power structure called the patriarchy. The patriarchy works by assigning certain gender roles to men and women; these roles allow men to subjugate women, and also allow men to be subjugated by other men. The patriarchy's strength lies in the rigidity of those gender roles, and as the gender roles are loosened the patriarchy gets weaker. Lots of power within our society is expressed through patriarchy, for instance, the idea that men express their agency through violence instead of through emotion and that they should readily throw their lives away in service of a cause is useful for recruiting men as soldiers and police, and soldiers and police are useful in upholding many other power structures (like state power or the power of the rich). So over the last few millenia, many different power structures have come to rely on the existence of patriarchy, and it's been woven into our mythology and the fabric of our society. The fluidity of gender roles is a direct challenge to patriarchy, and people with nonconforming identities have been forced into the closet through violence and social reprisal.
This was a natural series of events in the sense that all of history took place in the context of the natural world, sure. But cancer is natural, we don't have to accept it. In the same way, I reject your heteronormativity. I think it sucks. I don't think people are "naturally" any particular gender, it's a role we learn to play as we're socialized. That doesn't make it bad, there's nothing wrong with being a man or a woman, there's nothing wrong with embracing very traditional views of what that means if that's what makes you happy. I live my life as a pretty traditional man. But that isn't all there is to life, and that's not all it should mean to be human.
Heterosexuality being prevalent within the population (note that I purposefully avoid idioms like "X is the norm" as ambiguous, especially in this context) is merely the flip side of LGBTQIA+ folks being a minority. Now, a minority can have a robust subculture - and one can certainly make that claim about LGBTQ identity today - but that doesn't somehow make it into not-a-minority.
Social and cultural norms are beside the point here; in fact, the most traditional societies are those that tend to feature the most salient spaces for same-sex quasi-romantic affection and emotionality, with such things as compadrazgo and sworn brotherhood/sisterhood. So it's just not clear how "heteronormativity" is supposed to be an internally coherent concept.
You're conflating heterosexuality and heteronormativity. You could have a society where heterosexuality is prevalent, without having heteronormativity. Heteronormativity encompasses both heterosexuality and a specific set of gender roles for men and women; so it is not enough for heterosexuality to be prevalent. You need to conflate these genders with heterosexuality, prescribe them, and marginalize sexual and gender identities that do not conform to this.
Heteronormativity isn't an epistemology, there's no burden for it to be consistent. It's a set of beliefs and attitudes, and a label that allows you to critique them. Why would we expect that to be any more consistent than the human behavior it describes (which is to say, only somewhat)? Will this label break down and stop making sense as society changes? Yes, I imagine it will. Will it become unwieldy and eventually fail altogether if we employ it in an analysis spanning cultures with very different conceptions of gender? Absolutely. But you might as well ask whether the concept of pop music is consistent and relate it to the works of Beethoven, if you think that's useful in your analysis than go for it, but if it doesn't work in that circumstance it isn't a condemnation of the idea. The only burden on heteronormativity is to be useful in describing real world behavior, which it clearly is.
If you want to know whether heteronormativity is a real phenomenon, you need look no further than the comment I criticized. It doesn't say, heterosexuality is prevalent; it says, heterosexuality is total, that it is "natural" and "normal", that it is inseparable from gender, and that people living as (or even describing) other gender and sexual identities are doing it to trick you.
> you need look no further than the comment I criticized. It doesn't say, heterosexuality is prevalent; it says, heterosexuality is total
That comment actually said "heterosexuality is normal", which is of course ambiguous - it could mean either of "prevalent" or "not merely prevalent but standard, with deviations from it being seen as undesirable". Heteronormativity might be a description of the latter claim, but to deny that heterosexuality is especially common would be mere wishful thinking.
The claim that gender and sexual orientation are linked would've been quite recognizable to ancient cultures including classical Greece and Rome, where heterosexual behavior was not normative and other sexual arrangements were often celebrated (though their dark, exploitive side, linked to the ubiquity of rape culture as purposeful male domination, was not unrecognized either; and this later fed into Christian condemnation of such practices). So it makes little sense to view that as "heteronormative" either.
It isn't ambiguous if you consider the entire comment, where they go on to clarify what they mean by invoking a naturalism fallacy and contrasting it with other identities (which they clearly describe in pejorative terms as "abnormal" and "misleading" with an overall tone of derision). Of course I acknowledge that most people are heterosexual, that's such misrepresentation of what I'm saying (including that I've directly acknowledged this point already) I can't suspend my disbelief it isn't willful. I've provided definitions for all of this, you're choosing not to engage with them.
I make no claims about heteronormativity in Greece or Rome (I do say that the patriarchy is several millennia old, so this could be read as an implicit claim that patriarchy existed in Greece and Rome [and I wouldn't take issue with that claim], but I don't think you'd find this disagreeable, given the "rape culture as purposeful male domination" you reference, and that the definition of patiarchy I provided specifically calls out the domination of men), and gender and sexual identities certainly are linked in the sense that certain combinations are more common than others - they just aren't synonyms. As I noted, there is no burden for this concept to translate to other cultures and time periods in order for us to accept it as a useful model for the purposes of our discussion; I've not seen a counterargument from you on this, so I don't see why I would accept these observations of Greece and Rome as being deleterious to my point, anyway.
But what I'm taking issue with is merely your claim of heteronormativity as a "set of beliefs and attitudes" that one can ascertain in anything like a consistent way. If compadrazgo and sworn brotherhood are too exotic for you, consider contemporary "bro" subculture; is it heteronormative? Some people might certainly claim as much, calling it especially misogynistic. Yet it also reportedly involves a lot of emotional affection and bonding among males. By and large, it just doesn't square with what you've been supposing in your earlier comments.
If you'd like to explain why we should demand that a label describing a set of human behaviors be entirely consistent in order to be considered, when the human behaviors we're describing are frequently inconsistent and contradictory (but still real and worth discussing), then I'm happy to respond. I don't see anything wrong with your examples, I'm not familiar with compadrazgo or sworn brotherhood but I'd be willing to learn more (and until such a time as I read up on them am willing to take what you say about them on face value), I think bro culture is a super interesting thread to tug on and an incisive choice on your part, but if you repeat your argument without engaging with mine, I don't see what you expect me to do other than repeat myself (which I respectfully decline to do).
I've seen that I expressed myself in a confusing way when I said "heterosexuality doesn't have to be the default, and that era is ending", I don't mean, LGBTQ identities will become the majority, what I meant was, the assumption of heterosexuality will no longer be made. In the same way you shouldn't assume people's handedness because, though you know most people are right-hand dominant, you also expect that any group of people of a significant size will contain many left handed people.
> Heteronormativity encompasses both heterosexuality and a specific set of gender roles for men and women
Heteronormativity is just heterosexuality as a normative element of social structures (not merely prevalent in society, but where deviation from it is viewed as transgressive.) In modern societies, it is typically tied to patriarchy (a particular normatige structure of gender roles, in which social power is attached to male roles), cisnormativity, and, in particular societies, it may be attached to things like White supremacy that are superficially farther from sex/gender dynamics, but these are nevertheless distinct if linked elements of the cultures they appear in.
> where deviation from it is viewed as transgressive
Note that by this standard, much of LGBTQ+ culture might well be described as heteronormative, since glorifying social transgression as such (not merely inasmuch as it might inevitably follow from having a non-majority gender or sexual orientation) has long been a staple of that particular identity.
Hmm, pardon, where is it we differ? The word "just" makes me think this is a correction, but I agree with all of that, and I feel like if you that if you take all of that to be true, you get the sentence of mine you've quoted.
I don’t see it as a strong disagreement, but there is a slight but sometimes important difference between heteronormativity including, e.g., cisnormativity and patriarchy, versus heteronormativity being distinct from them but frequently co-occurring with them.
But we certainly agree that heteronormativity is different than society having a majority heterosexual orientation.
For sure, I can see how I elided some concepts there; I think my definition was appropriate to the context of this conversation, but I appreciate you keeping me honest.
It’s pretty simple. I grew up with the social expectation I would be some special attraction to girls beyond friendship. There were some people shamefully attracted to boys.
I’m neither of these. I’ve never experienced sexual attraction to anyone. Every relationship I have is happily platonic. I have several good, close friends, so I capable of deep emotional bonds to people of any gender.
This would have been fine if I didn’t have a high sex drive. But I do. You’re not supposed to have a high sex drive while being completely uninterested.
I’ve wondered most of my life why I was broken. It was extremely isolating to be constantly surrounded by messages telling me there is something wrong with me.
Then I found out what asexuality is. That’s what I am. Romantic attraction can be completely devoid of sexual attraction. Someone’s sex drive can be independent of a person’s sexuality.
It hasn’t been any less isolating, but at least I know there is nothing wrong with me as a person.
I have no skin in the overall debate but it's clear that a prince and princess running off together in a Disney film is heteronormative, while most people wouldn't consider it to be abhorrently sexualising for children to watch those films.
I mean, heterosexuality is the predominant form of sexuality in humans?
Humans come in all forms. Most humans have two legs, but not all. Some are born missing a leg and some lose them from injuries. If we only show two legged characters in Disney films does that mean it's some sinister message of "bipedalnormativity"?
I never said it was sinister. I just made a statement of fact that it shows a heterosexual relationship, but doesn't significantly sexualise children. If anything, my comment could be construed as defending that sort of film rather than attacking it.
The assumption that this is inherently sex related is where the issue starts. This is why the discussion shifted from talking about sexuality to talking about gender nearly 20 years ago. Ideas like boys cannot wear skirts or play with barbies are present from a young age, yet we don't accuse people opposed to boys with skirts/barbies of thinking about said boys future sexuality.
> The assumption that this is inherently sex related is where the issue starts. This is why the discussion shifted from talking about sexuality to talking about gender nearly 20 years ago.
Well it was the parent comment that was linking this to sexuality - Hetronormativity is inherently about sexuality (i.e. Hetro-Normativity - Hetro -> Heterosexual: of, pertaining to, or being a heterosexual person).
I think "pushing heteronormativity" doesn't need to be a conscious, deliberate act and it doesn't need to be anything related to sex. It can be as simple as a parent buying their son a toy truck for their birthday while buying a barbie doll for their daughter: a reinforcement of socially acceptable gender roles
It ties into a larger concept of gender roles (which is probably more applicable to discussion of trans folks than sexuality, "heteronormativity" was probably not the best word choice)
It's not sinister in the slightest, but people should understand the larger picture.
Where do those preferences come from? I've seen first hand the impact that media, advertising, and social pressures at school have had on my children's preferences.
> Where do those preferences come from? I've seen first hand the impact that media, advertising, and social pressures at school have had on my children's preferences.
Sure, but why is that a problem? Our preferences are of course sculpted by our environment, and that's not a problem as long the people who fall outside of those norms aren't punished for it. Assuming those norms aren't harmful of course, eg. not good to normalize psychopathy.
It's basically inevitable that children are going to exposed to some normative behaviour, particularly around gender. I think the important part is that we're not so quick to denounce and suppress any messaging that exposes children to the existence of behaviour outside of those gender norms, that's when it goes from just existing in a society where gender norms exist to maintaining and enforcing those gender norms.
I don't and don't know any parents that push anything sexual let alone encouraging kids to explore sexuality
I definitely learned before age 13 that being gay/lesbian was bad (I'm bisexual and in my mid 40s). I definitely learned that I was expected to grow up and get married and have kids and if I worked, it was really to help the spouse. I remember my parents suddenly getting upset that I had male friends and didn't want me spending time with them the same way (this was around age 10). No one talked to me about attraction and if they did, never explained that I might feel that way about women as well as men. This is what heteronormativity is. This is pushing sexual preferences on youth.
Exploring sexuality isn't about actual sex acts, but more about learning who you are and who you are attracted to. You know, the sorts of folks you'd like to date and eventually, the sorts of folks you want to spend your life with. This sort of thing is most definitely encouraged, but sometimes the only acceptable option presented is the hetronormativity - you know, "biblical" monogamous relationships that produce children, and if you are female and don't want children, you are broken.
Have you never asked or seen others ask your boy(s) what girl(s) they prefer at school, or vice versa?
Have you never seen anyone upset if their boys are playing with dolls or their girls are playing with toy swords?
How do you think most parents would react if someone bought a pink dress as a present for for their 6 month old boy, or blue pants for their 6 month old girl?
How would most parents react even today to a children's cartoon featuring two little boys holding hands and kissing on the cheek, or a story about prince charming saving and marrying another prince charming?
Pretending heteronormativity is just some sex related thing that no one actually talks about is absurd.
How many Disney movies has your child watched? Heteronormativity is 100% prevalent in nearly all media.
You don't even have to single out Disney, 99% of popular media will present heterosexual relationships as the norm, and children's media that shows something as benign as a same sex couple holding hands or hugging is viewed as mildly transgressive or at least newsworthy.
Gender non-comforming behaviour is 100% absent outside of maybe a "tomboy" female character (and even that seems less present than it used to be).
it's not the parents, it's everyone around us. i can buy gender neutral toys, clothing and encourage the children to explore everything and not just gender conform activities as much as i want.
but when almost every other friend, relative, other kindergarten/school parents teachers push their own ideas of what is appropriate for girls or boys, my influence ends up being rather small.
i can't push my own ideas here. i can only encourage and protect the diverse interests that my kids develop on their own.
That distinction goes back to decisions made by a few department store managers around WWII. It’s nothing but a cultural norm reinforced everywhere so pervasively most of us aren’t even aware of the pressure.
Yes and me and my wife laugh about it but there is an obvious distinctive preference for kids male and female which will play into sales .. no one is forcing anyone to buy anything and even back in the 80s growing up I knew kids that would buy toys you'd associate with the other gender.
A societal pressure doesn't mean it's forced. Most societal pressures aren't. Instead, they are strong expectations and in occasions, frowning upon behavior that deviates from the expectation. This creates tremendous pressure. Just look at teenager social dynamics, lots of "unenforced" expectations become critical for them.
And before that color was too expensive. But one wouldn’t say that gender roles did not exist. Color is nothing but an added expression like lipstick or horsehair wigs.
For some today black is the macho color, for others it’s the artistic color.
My only point is that because of the color switch we can see that certain concepts of gender identity preference, "color", are social constructs that influence society.
That just says that gender norms are malleable, not that they don't exist. Both in the 1800s and today there were strong expectations in terms of "expected" roles for different genders.
heteronormativity include sexual behavior, but mostly contains other behavior. Like the way you dress, talk or present yourself, the activities or kind of play you do or like.
Parent comment is mostly talking about non-sexual heteronormativity, which is often presented as the norm. An obvious example would be an adult insisting that pink is for girl and blue for boys, and shaming a kid for liking what's not the (hetero-)norm.
They literally do not say "kids are empowered to explore their sexuality."
Kids grow up into adults.
xd is the one that brought up sexualizing children. No reasonable person here would assume anyone is talking about sexualizing children unless they explicitly said as much.
Somehow you and xd are thinking "people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality" explicitly means "kids" in this context. Why you are thinking that, I don't know.
"For the last several decades society put massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity. With these pressures lessening more and more people are feeling empowered to explore their sexuality."
He talks about society putting pressure on kids to be straight and then talks about people and sexuality in the same damn paragraph; are you being purposefully obtuse?
I think the downvotes are coming because you’re insisting on treating this as a question of sexualization. Gender is distinct and it’s reinforced early on - my son is 5 and most of his classmates have had things like “pink and skirts and dolls are for girls”, “trucks and blue and guns are for boys” established as the norm for years. That’s not perfectly reliable - we know more sparkly princesses who climb trees and drive race cars than I did at his age - but it’s _everywhere_, and the religious conservatives who call any acknowledgment of LGBTQ people “grooming” would 100% be locking and loading if even 10% of that reinforcement energy was going into LGBTQ acceptance.
Also note that none of this is about having sex: it’s about telling kids which archetypes are available for them as grownups. If we want to talk about sex, however, look at the degree to which girl’s clothing mimics the styles of adult women even at the expense of practicality for the things kids actually do and how many stories even for young children revolve around the major life goal being an exclusive relationship with a man. Again, the stuff people are complaining about now is an order of magnitude less than what kids are already getting to reinforce traditional gender norms.
Parental controls are now the default on (most?) UK mobile providers, so a lot of archive/user-driven sites get blocked if you don't login to your provider's portal to tick the "I'm over 18" box. IIRC this has been the case since David Cameron's government made threatening noises about bringing in legislation to force it.
Honestly, I think that's one good thing. I believe that isp's should provide more content controls and allow fine grained controls for account owners to block content in categories. And they should have at least adult content blocked by default with an opt out.
It's insane to me that parents have to be network admins to be able to make even do basic content filtering for their children in the US.
When I bought a throwaway GiffGaff SIM while I was waiting months for BT to set up my broadband, it had content blocking on by default.
They wanted me to send a picture of my driver's license to lift the restrictions.
I'm not sure what I'm more disgusted by: the fact I need to give away my identity to have unfiltered (except the outright blocked stuff) access to the internet, or that I caved and gave it to them anyway.
I guess I should be happy proof of identity wasn't required to buy or activate the SIM in the first place.
I'm admittedly pretty cynical about these things, but i think blocking adult content by default is mostly to help pedophiles and predators. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, why else would you want to make it look safer, while leaving the real dangers (people) in place?
Kids shouldn't have unsupervised access to the internet. This has become a controversial statement, mostly due to a false sense of security brought on through censorship.
Edit: Also the post says up to 20 years .. not sure why you've become fixated on it being simply 20. People dropping planes out of the sky for likes need to be made an example of imo, and I personally would be happy to see him locked up for life as a deterrent to others. The lengths people are going to for likes is frightening.