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"You're typically quoting someone else's words when you use imageboard quoting. What other meaning could be "implied" by a direct quote done with imageboard quoting that isn't implied by a direct quote done "the proper way"?"
Doesn't the use of arrows also designate that the author is drawing out a implication from the words of the person they are replying to?
For instance, I say "The black dude was murdered", and someone replying to me goes:
>implying niggas are humans
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"A preface: Holy shit, dude, please stop using "smart" quotes and apostrophes."
I thought I stopped. The Notes app, which I'm writing my replies on before copying them on U18, on MacOS has smart shit turned on as a default, so I had to go through each line painstakingly and change smart quotes to dumb quotes.
Are you getting weird ass symbols in my last post even after I edited it? I no longer see any.
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"Yeah, here's the thing: Making a movie is a gigantic financial risk. The typical Hollywood film has to make at least twice its production budget to be profitable (and even that's no guarantee thanks to Hollywood Accounting). Studios are generally risk-averse; releasing movies that don't offer a chance of at least breaking even is a huge risk.
Right now, general audiences seem to want a greater diversity in stories told by movies. But until "diverse" films are regular successes at the box office - and not just domestically, but internationally, which is where a good chunk of Hollywood dosh is coming from lately - they're still a risk most studios will take only after doing heavy calculations about when to release them, where to release them, and how to market them."
Then the reason for the lack of diversity in Hollywood big blockbusters has not so much to do with homogenous thinking or reliance on empirical data as to the return on investment for casting nontraditional leads, but everything to do with trying to make as much profit as possible. It seems like you're saying that your traditional lead still results in higher grossing movies than nontraditional leads even going by objective statistics and not just groupthink and hearsay.
Getting rid of homogenous thinking isn't going to result in more diverse casting if the objective statistics suggest that traditional casting rakes in more money. If diversity in casting is the goal, risk taking should be encouraged in studios, even at the expense of less profits, and audiences should be encouraged to reward braver casting choices with more money.
Also, that claim that movies must make twice as much as they cost to produce, are you sure about that? That's a ridiculously high profit margin, 100% return on investment.
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"And if I assume someone is hetero and I'm proven wrong, I'd look a fool."
To quote the Wiki:
"An earlier report published in April 2011 by the Williams Institute estimated that 3.8 percent of Americans identified as gay/lesbian, bisexual, or transgender: 1.7 percent as lesbian or gay, 1.8 percent as bisexual, and 0.3 percent as transgender."
It's such a vanishingly small percentage, 98.3% confidence interval? I don't even think the FDA requires such high standards in ensuring food safety. So if you're not you're going to be similarly agnostic about whether or not the next salad you eat is going to poison you, you ought to also not be agnostic about whether that normal looking dude you met is gay or straight, because the odds are really in favor of him being straight.
So if you operate off of that guess and are proven wrong, it is false that you ought to be faulted for that mistake, because you would have had good reason for guessing the way you did. I mean, you shouldn't be faulted unless you learn that the guy is really into fashion, loves to dance, and speaks and dresses effeminately, then it's your fault for not picking up on all those indicators.
At the very least, if you get someone's orientation wrong, there is no grounds for that person to get pissy at you, so they ought not to. Just correct the mistake and move on.
"No, LGBT people generally don't want you relying on stereotypes to "guess" about someone's sexuality. Someone who dresses or talks in a stereotypically "gay" manner could be straight, but your assumption would be that they're gay based on those stereotypes."
If you were 98.5% sure that snapping your fingers would result in terrible pain, you would never snap your fingers again. Yet when it comes to issues of gender and sex, it's suddenly taboo to operate off of statistics.
Stereotypes exist for a reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uNPpFZLelE
They're just cruder, less precise statistics. If you care so much about not having your sexual orientation mistaken, it is your burden to make a point of indicating as such in your interactions, maybe go "Hi, my name is so and so, and I'm gay!"
It's not on the majority to accommodate the tiny minority when we're just talking about matters of convenience, one extra line from one side or the other inquiring about identity or clarifying. Homosexuals don't want to be inconvenienced by being mistaken for heterosexuals, the majority of people don't want to be inconvenienced by asking awkward questions about one's sexual orientation, or withholding inferences when they are so natural to make, and it's quite unclear which side is right. At that point, it comes down to the majoritarian principle, since all other ethical principles used to discern who's right and who's wrong fail in this case, and there are far more people that get bothered asking weird questions or refraining from stereotyping than there are homosexuals that get bothered by having their orientation mistaken.
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"especially when opponents of trans rights are pushing their opposition practically based on pure emotion?"
"You put far too much faith in "rationality" and "logic"."
"I haven't seen a single "logical" justification for anti-trans laws like HB2 that can't be waved off by statistics about assaults/rapes in areas with trans-inclusive non-discrimination laws."
You're using logic and reason to defeat anti trans arguments. That's how discourse and debate ought to be conducted, for when it comes to disputes, what else do we have to resolve disagreements but reason and logic?
Let me clarify what I meant when I said "Toss out logic and reason and demand a change in society because of feelings."
The author of the locker article talks about how she fears that she will be harassed and assaulted if she goes into a locker room, but then in the next breath, says that such fears "don't follow the rules of logic", which means there's nothing about being trans makes you more likely to be harmed in a locker room than non-trans people, so her demands that society make locker rooms more inclusive or whatever the term you guys use is, i.e. safer for trans people is not based on grounds of actual danger, but on grounds of perceived danger.
You seem to suggest, when you write "And what if a fear of being attacked is a fear backed up by stories of trans people being harassed/attacked in public bathrooms and locker rooms?" suggest that there is actually an increased risk of trans people being attacked if they are unable to use the bathroom of their identified gender and are forced to use the bathroom of their birth sex, in which case I'd like some proof. If you're right, then that's a totally legitimate argument against such anti-trans bathroom laws.
So of course I think assault against anyone, much less against trans persons, is horrid. But the issue of violent crime is a much broader issue than the bathroom issue, and if we're talking specifically about hate crimes motivated solely out of hatred against transgender people, defeating these bathroom bills isn't going to put a dent in the rates of violence. The attack the author of your article cites occurred to a trans woman in the woman's bathroom in McDonalds.
If there is a drop in violence occurring to trans people in bathrooms, it'll only be because you've avoided your would be assailant. This is like young women refusing to go out at night to town because it's crawling with rapists. Sure, you'll prevent rape that way, but the rapists are still out there. What you need is better law enforcement to nail those assholes, societal and economic reforms so your society don't produce kids that turn into those assholes in the first place, and outreach with those who distrust trans people to educate them on trans issues.
The arguments I'm hearing the trans side make against such bathroom laws accomplish none of these ends. Most of them boil down to grounds of "discomfort" like what you write here:
"What if it's backed up by stories of trans people being told to go use some out-of-the-way restroom so they don't make others "uncomfortable"?"
"Trans people argue for access to the bathroom that matches their gender identity because it helps ease dysphoria."
Most read these arguments as "my feelings as a trans person overrules your feelings as a cis person, so even though you may feel really uncomfortable with me using your restrooms, it's more important that I don't feel uncomfortable. My rights trump yours"
This isn't discourse that arrives at common understanding based off of ethical principles. This is politics, one group trying to assert power over another in this facet of life, no different than when a wife and husband argue over whether the toilet seat should be up or down.
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"The biggest cause of suffering and misery in re: LGBT people is non-LGBT people acting like assholes towards LGBT people. Or is that too "emotional" a conclusion for you?'
Too vague, and yes, too emotional.
"But LGBT groups built their sociopolitical capital on addressing civil rights inequalities plaguing the LGBT demographics - inequalities that, if addressed and "fixed", can have positive effects on the economic status of LGBT people. (The whole "not being fired for being LGBT" thing is one such inequality.)"
The owners of Wal Mart and other big employers refusing to pay a living wage to its employees could be described as non-LGBT people being assholes towards LGBT people, but they don't target LGBT people specifically, so if you could magic away all LGBT hate and discrimination, the owners class will still act like assholes to everyone not an owner, the size of both groups will remain the same, and the size of the poor and working class will remain the same. All that will be different is that they'll be more LGBT people in the owners class, and less in the poor and working class.
So take for instance why being fired is such bad thing for anyone, not just LGBT people. Because the ownership class has such market dominance over the hiring of labor that they have created an oligophsony, a situation where there's only very few buyers and lots of sellers, i.e. what your low skilled labor market looks like. There's also jack shit in the US for a social safety net compared to other OECD countries, the Nordic one's especially, so if you lose your job, you are shit out of luck, and your quality of life is going to suck balls.
Have you ever been poor or homeless, or spoken at length with poor or homeless people about what their lives are like?
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"Economic woes being placated will not protect LGBT people from the vile hatred of those who think LGBT people are "perverts" at best and "worthy of execution" at the absolute worst, regardless of your faith in "logic" and "reason"."
So long as these people do not act on their hatred in violent way, this is an unfortunate but not pressing issue.
"So being treated as a maligned "out group" in society, being assaulted simply for existing in a certain way, and being denied civil rights protections afforded to other people are "trifiling" issues for trans people?"
Assault is a an issue of law enforcement and economics (your violent criminals are invariably poor), I'm also demanding civil rights, except of the economic sort (robust proportional minimum wage laws, healthcare and basic necessities provided as a public good, universal basic income) and I will unapologetically declare that economic rights that would lift hundreds of millions in the US alone out of poverty and onto a path of flourishing matter a HELL of a lot more than the right of 0.3 percent of the population to use some goddamned bathroom of their choice.
And finally, being maligned as an out group? Some random assholes you don't know disliking you for something is really a pressing issue? Guess we furries should start pressing our rights to be liked by all as equal in importance to the abolition of poverty.
"hat's what you seem to be implying here - that the only issue trans people should be working to "fix" is the economy,"
"if such a complex issue with multiple sociopolitical and economic factors can be "solved", everything else will just "fall into place" because "reason" and "logic" and "empiricism"."
Yes to both. Name me one social ill that does not have roots in economic deprivation. Poverty and the lack of a robust social safety net which causes undue stress on all wage slaves, or a vibrant economy with plentiful opportunities for good jobs that pay well and are not stressful is like the cancer that leads to the growth of the tumors of violence, irrational hatred at minorities and out groups as they are scapegoated for the poor worker's economic woes (that garbage about how the moral decay brought by LGBT exposure is causing America's economy to go to shit), divorce, crime, poor education, just name it and it has something to do with the inability to provide oneself and one's family with the basic necessities of life, i.e. economics.
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"Trans people being faced with assault and harassment for using "the wrong bathroom" is hardly what I would call an annoyance. Just because I don't have to face that problem doesn't mean the problem isn't real or isn't important to those who do have to face it."
You conflated the bathroom issue with the assault and violence issue. The two are, if not separate, tangentially related.
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"Sociopolitical issues are not even remotely equivalent to injuries and medical traumas."
What? I am saying they are analogous to medical traumas, and if you're trying to save the patient in medicine, you deal with the most pressing problems first before moving on to the less pressing ones.
The activist, like you and I, are like the doctors of the body politic, of society at large. We have the obligation to focus our efforts first at the most pressing issues, and economic deprivation is one of them.
"According to US government statistics, some 2.45 million Americans died in 2000. Thus, the researchers’ estimate means that social deprivation was responsible for some 36 percent of total US deaths that year, a staggering total.
There is no reason to believe, after a decade that has seen sustained attacks on social programs and consistently high unemployment rates, that the social mortality rate has declined. On the contrary, it has likely risen.
The social causes considered by the research team surpass in their deadly consequences heart disease and lung cancer, accidents and factors often categorized as lifestyle-related, such as smoking and obesity (which, of course, in many cases, are also associated with social conditions)."
[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/07/pove-j13.html]
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Try understanding their reality and their life experience - in other words, having a sense of empathy - instead of writing off their concerns as "trifling" because they're issues you never have to think about."
Are you trans? Have you experienced the injustice of not being able to piss where you want?
If not, then why have you come to the conclusion that trans issues deserve so much of your time and energy, and not another group, the working class (pretty much everyone) or the poor? Presumably you put yourself in the shoes of a poor person and then in those of a trans person, and decided that nah, the trans person has it worse off? A person like Caitlyn Jenner, totally oppressed, with her killing a dude with her car and practically getting away with it due to her celebrity and ability to pay for a hell of a lawyer? A person like her has it way worse off than a dude panhandling for pennies in clothes that he's worn for years, dumpster diving for food?
Accusing me of lacking empathy is about the most infuriatingly patronizing thing you could have said. How do you think I came to my conclusions about which issues are most pressing? It was through empathy, through me imagining myself in the shoes of a poor person and those of a trans person, and deciding that your poor person has it worse off.
I can do you better than empathy, I've actually spoken and make a habit of interacting with the homeless that congregate so much in my downtown, and I see and hear the despair and hopelessness and resignation in their voices, and learn about their daily lives. I then read your article of the poor trans person and her phobia of gym lockers, and decided that latter's concerns were trivial compared to the formers.
For crying out loud, the homeless alone account for 0.17 of America's population, compare to the 0.34 of trans people, 0.34 which includes the likes of Caitlyn fucking Jenner.
I'll end with this: how do you decide which trans issues you ought to devote your time on and which you ought to ignore? Why is it that the last address Dr. King gave (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/628.html) started with the woes facing Black Americans, but ended with the call to end poverty for all, not just for Blacks?
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