I mean, just reading that question as one long run on sentence certainly didn’t make me think of you as an adult.

Also, might be a language thing, but buddy has almost no age connotations and is used pretty frequently across age groups.

I don’t have the app (well, for main facebook. Still have messenger as a friend group uses that as the primary communication medium) but do have a few friends who live elsewhere on there so keep it around. It’s also my yelling into the virtual void place but with feedback from folks I know.

API issue made me leave, AI scraping posts and forcing ads made me stay away.

Dressing in drag had been a staple ofEnglish comedy for decades if not much, much longer In the first world war guys were doing it for concert troupes (essentially, vaudeville acts by and for the soldiers.)

I fully excuse folks who are really struggling. Though given thrift shops are a dime a dozen, I don’t entirely think it’s a free pass.

Sorry, this one just bugs me. I absolutely hate that our culture has this huge blind spot to the very real exploitation that so many people engage in but we’ll simultaneously get furious about sins that are, in comparison, fairly minor.

Investing in something evil is reprehensible but I put it on about the same realm as buying an expensive slave made product. At least for the investment, maybe it’s for your kids or something rather than looking cool.

Really appreciate the reasoned response though!

You can invest money for your childrens future and still be struggling. Many people choose to forego a lot for their children but know investing for their education etc is a sacrifice they’ll make.

*yawn

But there are non slave alternatives all over. For the price conscious, there are thrift shops, facebook marketplace etc. Otherwise, there’s tons of ethical clothing available online and if you live in a city, probably in some stores near You.

Not 100% of clothes directly benefit slave labour. For the price conscious, there are thrift shops/second hand clothes almost everywhere and ethical clothes available online for a bit more (but generally less than brand name stuff that’s expensive and still made by child slaves.)

In a culture where almost everyone is wearing clothes made by children working 14 hour days who occasionally burn to death because fire exits would cost too much, this seems to me, an odd line to draw.

Might just be me but I’m not sure I see much of a difference between slave investor and wearing slave labour.

I have no idea but I’ve saved this thread and hope to find out!

Thanks for sharing!

Edit: Holy shit, was curious about why Alred was getting singled out. Because he said he didn’t support trans women playing sports with the other women? If that’s the most anti trans Democrat candidate ever and your next move is “What else could she do, outlaw trans people?!?” you need to give your head a shake. No wonder we lose to a man who has more orange makeup than brains.

are you going to engage with these responses or what?

I mean, your comic made the same basic point that Oliver did. Which I already responded to. In depth.

Above all, I don’t think that trans issues are edgy and unpopular at all. Until a couple years ago it was a strictly medical thing

You could, uhhh, look back at the Pew research I already shared.

At this point people who take anti-trans propaganda seriously are lost causes to me

I love your argument is simultaneously “we can win them over with enough messaging! The DNC didn’t put enough into trans messaging to overcome propaganda! Also, those people we can win over are lost causes!” Pick a lane!

and I don’t care about Democrats ratings. I rather see that the extreme left everywhere dials up the pro-trans issues and organize defense and survival programs.

I guess that’s the difference. I’ve met some of the people who will be affected by climate change and seen the communities that will be destroyed. They aren’t abstract. It’s very easy to figure winning these elections doesn’t matter when you know damn well it really doesn’t affect you. I just find that view reprehensible as I think it’s throwing the most vulnerable people under the bus so you can feel good about being on the right side.

Life in large, pluralistic society is full of uncomfortable compromises. Most moral progress is made because enough people with old Conservative views have died and the median voter is ready to move forward, not because we screamed at people. (Though, frustratingly, the Left seems to have either lost the messaging game or taken such silly positions that we are no longer dominating the youth vote so we may have, through our evangelizing, set progress back much farther than needs be. How fucking annoying are we such that people would prefer trump to us?)

borders too closely to sealioning and concern trolling

Are you sure you know what those terms mean? This seems like when you had no idea what Utilitarianism was.

Sea lioning doesn’t just refer to disagreeing with someone, here’s the original sea lion comic:

https://wondermark.com/c/1062/

I’m hard pressed to see how, relatively politely, responding to the comments you keep leaving on my original response to someone else’s question fits that at all.

As I hope you’re true to your word and done with this, have a good weekend.

Are you misunderstanding how a hypothetical sistuation works? Or how analogies work?

The basic idea is that it is difficult to picture an important movement, like the abolition movement, succeeding if they had expanded their mandate to include all groups, even if it would have been the right thing to do.

Similarly, while the Left has the moral highground, not all of society is with the Left yet. And so, we’re being painted as wacky folks trying to do some crazy shit and we keep losing elections.

Why do you think almost every Far Right leader rallies against Woke? From Bolsanaro, Orban, La Pen, Meloni to trump, it’s been a winning issue with a majority of voters. I’m old enough to understand that elections have serious consequences and that winning them matters. If a common thread that seems to win majority support across the world keeps coming up, heck, maybe it’s time to look at it.

I adore that your sources were: Yourself, a comic strip and a paraphrasing of a (solid) late night comedian.

Because I don’t watch many late night comedians I’m absorbing the wrong sources? Jesus fuck.

Admittedly, I did watch Stewart’s take and it was pretty silly. The essence was that because Harris said things, the Right should’ve listened. Which is as dumb as people on the Right saying that “trump said he respects and loves women so I don’t get how the libs think he’s anti woman.”

Oliver’s point is similar, Harris was quiet on trans stuff. Which okay but being quiet on an issue just means the other side gets to paint you howver they want on it. Which is EXACTLY what the trump campaign did by running this vile, but effective ad (which I believe was their most frequently run ad in the last few weeks of the campaign) to ZERO pushback from Harris (again, no way to rebut it without alienating our progressive wing, so we just take the L on this.) You might also read this PBS article where a journalist points out that, of the money they tracked, the trump campaign spent more on anti trans ads than on housing, immigration and the economy combined.

To say that trans issues weren’t a thing this election because your side didn’t talk about then is absurd.

And frankly, you are compromising the human rights of a group, it’s the poor billions who will suffer the effects of climate change. I get that neither you, nor anyone you know will be affected. And that the suffering of those who live elsewhere isn’t really a trendy cause so easily forgettable but personally, I think they should be included in our moral calculus.

then you might have been listening to other sources that make the matter unpalatable, like “biological males in female sports” and what have you.

I mean, before this thread I hadn’t thought about it much but damn, the sport thing would be such an easy bone to throw moderates with almost no real world costs (apologies to the handful of high level trans athletes.) Given that it’s an issue that some 70% of America disagrees with us on it does seem like an easy way to demonstrate we aren’t the crazy party.

And if the public doesn’t go along, we just keep killing the planet and billions of the poorest and most vulnerable folks so we can feel good about ourselves?

That seems pretty damned privileged to me.

And yes, it’s a silly hypothetical to illustrate a point, that’s what hypotheticals are. It’s not like we tie people to train tracks and see what trolley drivers do.

Just seems wild to me that you assume everyone is down with what we believe to be right. It’s easy to say you are dragging society forward when the consequences of not winning elections are fairly mild for you while the people at risk live elsewhere and are desperately poor.

And yet again, I don’t actually believe there’s a way for the Left to pitch trans issues in a way that A) wins broad support and B) doesn’t alienate our progressive base, so it’s kind of a moot point. (Even throwing it back to states, which mostly works for Dems as we have the biggest states etc and there’s still freedom of movement probably wouldn’t be enough.)

I mean, Byron had to flee England for fear of lynching and Oscar Wilde spent two years in prison for homosexuality.

And the abolitionists weren’t wildly popular but they were popular enough to win a broad base of support in the North.

And I’m sure folks a couple hundred years ago could multi task.

How is it a false equivalence though? The basic notion is that there are things you can be morally right on that may cause more actual harm.

Meanwhile, I only ever started this to answer someone’s question. As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t think it’s an effective tactic as you’d split the progressive vote.

That being said, culture war shit and immigration is what the Right is running and winning on.

If you want to reign in the rich and corporations on climate change, it ain’t going to come from the Right. So, we need to win elections.

So, again, I’ll ask a fairly simple question.

Say the abolitionists had included gay rights but back in the 1800s. Unless you have a wild perspective of history, it’s pretty safe to assume they wouldn’t have won nearly as much popular support as they did. So, how much longer would you have allowed slavery in order to be morally right but unable to help either slaves or homosexuals?

Edit: Becaude its not just trans folks at risk, it is the billions of poor people who will die from climate catastrophes. They don’t have our privilege of knowing that even if the climate goes bad, we’ll be basically okay.

We have two vulnerable groups to protect, one is much larger than the other, by orders of magnitude.

Plus the idea that trans rights lost Democrats the election is ridiculous. There were zero trans speakers in the DNC, and Harris did cater to transphobes by saying she will go with state laws.

You think republicans were watching the DNC or are listening to Harris on trans rights?

There is a reason that one of the ads the trump campaign ran most heavily was about trans issues and casting Harris as too liberal on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3BXYjoAzq0&ab_channel=TheJimHeathChannel (it’s a horrific ad, so uhh, trigger warning but you can see what they’re doing.)

How many conservatives do you know socially and how many of them didn’t say this was a victory against woke?

so the question remains, who else are you willing to throw under the bus because you think that their rights are too edgy?

I mean, I just answered the logic of the question. I’m not sure what the answer is, nor am I confident abandoning part of the Dem coalition works as we’d split the progressive vote which is death in a 2 party system.

BUT. If the Far Right keeps winning elections, which they generally seem to do by killing the Left on culture issues (this keeps playing out across the world) this will doom billions of the poorest on Earth.

I’d ask you a similar question. Forget trans rights, say the abolitionists had included gay rights but back in the 1800s. Unless you have a wild perspective of history, it’s pretty safe to assume they wouldn’t have won nearly as much popular support as they did. So, how much longer would you have allowed slavery in order to be morally right but unable to help either slaves or homosexuals?

Do I wish the world were better? Absolutely! But, we live in the world that is, not the world we wish it was.

Finally, this is exactly what utilitarianism is. Utilitarianism is trying to promote the maximum good for the maximum number of people. The chief criticisms are generally around situations much like this, where the philosophy implies you are willing to inflict unfair suffering on a small number of people to maximize the collective gain of everyone else (technically including the small number.) What do you think Utilitarianism is?

I think the logic is essentially right wingers keep winning elections. Their supporters tend to argue first and foremost it’s a win against “woke” while the money/interests behind it tend to be “let’s burn this planet down and get ALL the oil.” If the Left conceded on say trans issues or whatever, maybe we’d win, whixh would undoubtedly benefit the billions who may die because of climate change issues.

(Unsure if this would work or if it’d just split the left etc myself but I think that’s the logic.)

An analogy a friend made while making this argument was that the Civil War was essential for Black emancipation etc and we can all agree it was a good thing. BUT, especially in those days, if abolitionists had also demanded trans recognition or whatever, maybe fewer states would’ve joined the Union or maybe the movement would’ve never gotten off the ground and there’s a possible future wherein Black people might still be slaves because, even with the best intentions, we didn’t pick our battles.

It’s a utilitarian answer to a Sophie’s choice.

I don’t encounter a lot of ads but I was just listening to the Economist talk about this one which the trump campaign played over and over again and it struck me as a small window of an answer to your question.

The ad strikes me as cruel but the thrust (and I imagine there’s a blend of fact and fiction) is that Harris used tax money to pay for a woman’s sex change after being convicted of first degree murder and serving life in prison. They also have Harris saying she was using her power to “push forward the movement and the agenda.”

Even for supporters of trans rights, I imagine not everyone loves having to defend using tax money to pay for expensive gender surgery, especially on criminals.

So I could see people, who might otherwise be supportive of trans folks in their own lives, being “against trans people” on an issue framed like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3BXYjoAzq0&ab_channel=TheJimHeathChannel