AutomatedPossum [she/her]

The main reason econ and poli sci majors are so obsessed with Sun Tzu and especially Macchiavelli is that the actual good sources on realpolitik are Mao and Lenin and that’s considered too dangerous for them, so they get the safe stuff, the utterly nihilistic and immoral Borghia bootlicker and the “archers are kinda good for killing at a distance” drivel instead of having State and Revolution on their reading list.

How can you be an anthropology and Asian studies professor, see these frilly edges and the ornamentation and the fact that it is made from fucking jade and think “yeah, the ancestors of the evil Chinese CeeCeePee absolutely used these to behead people”?

the new and exciting economic system, crabitalism

Some people are completely fine with all possible uses and combinations and you can just use whatever you feel like. Some are kinda fine with both, but actually do have a preference and view the second pronoun as a compromise that’s ok-ish when they’re around random cis people they don’t want to give a ted talk about the complexities of their gender to. Some will want you to use both sets of pronouns alternatingly (“she asked me to come over, but i was busy, so i asked them if we could postpone”). Some (especially genderfluid) people will have a preference that varies over time and may have markers like a pronoun pin or clothing choice to signal which pronouns they go with at a given time, like she / her when in drag and he / him when in masc-coded casual clothes.

The tl;dr is that you really can’t generalize what something like she / they means in practice and that you should just ask the person.

Edit: Also when people are out just recently, it’s possible they’re trying out which pronouns work best for them. In that case, it may be a good thing to help them get a feel for both by using both pronouns in different situations and, if you’re close enough, asking them after a while if they’re still using both sets of pronouns. A lot of people make the experience of introducing themselves with, say “they / he” and everybody just he / hims them 100% of the time, and in that case particularly, i’d ask how that person feels about this when some time has passed and there’s a good opportunity. Such choices do not always work out as intended, and people can and do change their minds about the fine print when exploring their gender.

I’m a cis white male. I believe in dignity and respect for all people

gets banned for transphobia 8 minutes later

LMAO cis shits btfo

If you were trans, i’d strongly recommend to cut contact ASAP, it never goes well in these cases. As it is, you may be able to influence him, but these particular brainworms tend to bury deeply. If we’re not just talking about the sadly normallized amount of structural transphobia you’ll run into everywhere (“gatekeeping is necessary to save people from making mistakes with permanent consequences”, “trans women in sports are a complicated issue”, “there’s a conflict between trans rights and women’s rights”), but the really dedicated, terminally online transphobes that have no other hobbies than harassing trans people, these are among the most unhinged, most radicalized bigots. They’re about as far gone as hardcore elders of zion antisemites.

Haven’t seen the Netflix adaptation, but portraying the red guards during the cultural revolution as anti-science goons that beat up physics professors for teaching Einstein is already in the book, and that view of them is in fact the official party line under Dengism. The cultural revolution was at its core a struggle session between the left and the right wing of the party about whether to exterminate any and all vestiges of reactionary thought in the PRC or whether to search a policy of equidistance between the USSR and the USA and then open up the economy and integrate the country into capitalist world trade to develop its productive forces. As we see today, the faction that the Gang of Four referred to as “capitalist roaders” won and their decisions have completely reshaped how China is today.

I’m not saying any of this to be sectarian, as i am torn on the subject myself, ideologically siding with the left wing of the CPC, but also seeing the success of Deng’s reforms in the realm of realpolitik and productive development. I particularly invite everybody who is better versed on the history of the CPC than i am to correct mistakes in this post, and if anybody can compare changes in how the scene is shown in the book vs how it is adapted for western audiences by Netflix, this would also be a welcome addition. Just saying that this isn’t an idea that’s new to the Netflix version, and that the original version isn’t a Western “communism hates science”, but a Dengist “ultras hate science”.

Sure, but almost everybody else in the pyramid thinks that driving an EV transforms you into literally Pete Buttigieg, which is hardly surprising given that these people operate in a media bubble largely bankrolled by oil billionaire families. My only explanation for this so far is that the particular geek fascists behind this are raging Musk fanboi techbros.

Honestly wouldn’t exclude trans men from that. I see that kind of verbage that specifically singles out cis men a lot in trans, lesbian and feminist spaces, i’ve talked and thought like that in the past as well and i’ve found that practically all transmascs that i know personally or that i at least regularly interact with online find it extremely othering and belittling when women pretend that trans dudes are somehow the better men, and it is a gender essentialist notion at its core. I mean, they openly call it transphobic, i’m just being diplomatic here.

Yes, transmascs have lived experience with misogyny in almost all cases, they can fall back on that experience while they settle into living in a masculine gender role fulltime, but being the better men everybody believes them to be by default takes work on their part. Many put in that work, but it’s a pain in the ass. It isn’t realistic to believe they will automatically keep in mind what it’s like growing up as somebody who’s viewed as a girl in a patriarchal society. And when i hear from the shit early-transition or poorly passing transmascs have to put up with, how often their masculinity is called into doubt, how hard they have to prove themselves, i absolutely find they do go through the exact kind of shit that produces fragile masculinity, toxic masculinity, or just tacit support of misogynist power structures in cis men. There’s an entire propaganda apparatus out there specifically targetting men that struggle to look like

And unfortunately, there’s transmascs out there that are just awful, shitty people. Trans men are men. Criticizing men should always include them, and they need to do self crit like every other dude.

The feddit.de thread on this is, as usual for that cursed instance, fucking gross, has a user named luxuslurch@feddit.de who pulls off shit like calling Jews antisemites for being against zionism, misgenders a user in the process, then calls the user whiny when being called out for the transphobia, then doubles down on that in the most ridiculous, privileged, ignorant manner possible. Hardcore transphobic brainworms at play there, that human dog turd outright refuses to use they / them pronouns in any context.

I’m not gonna make a feddit account to bully this fascist piece of shit, but if anybody has one, please report this fuckhead for repeated transphobia.