In case you don't realize it, your behavior in this thread is patronizing (telling people how they should behave), degrading (not directly talking to the commenter), and from a clear place of closed-mindedness (writing as if teaching truths to an AI, not discussing).
Your lack of empathy makes me assume you haven't been through similar experiences as the commenter you're "replying", either because you're not visibly far off "normal", or lucky enough to have grown up in an environment which was supportive of you.
Any case, the earlier commenter is not assuming cis people are terrible and transphobic and whatever. It is a matter of trust and risk. You can generally trust other LGBT people to be accepting since they've been through the same problems as you, and of course, because they share the same differences.
So it makes sense to group together, it's safer in groups, and sometimes mentally healthier than falling in to a pit of depression feeling forced to behave or a appear a different way to how you want to.
You'll be making constant calculations on whether it's safe to show public displays of affection with your partner, or simply appear an act like you want to.
The fears are exaggerated of course (we are all creatures of caution), but not unfounded, depending on where you live.
So yes, short-term, it's nice to escape to a place where you don't have to do that. Long-term, it's healthier to not autosegregate, both for the queer and non-queer person. It helps normalise things. But I won't put that on every queer person, to each their own.
Thank you. The way they are talking as if to someone else about me while pretending to reply is really patronizing, and I appreciate you pointing that out.
Also this person has assumed I’m trying to fully isolate and that’s not even true. I’m out on social media and I have many cis followers.
Everyone needs to have a refuge and I share who I am when I want to. But I also want people who see me without needing an explanation.
> Any case, the earlier commenter is not assuming cis people are terrible and transphobic and whatever.
It's worse than that. It assumes x people, by virtue of belonging to x group, actively perpetuate x-group-favouring-biases.
Otherwise, your comment is reasonable.
> degrading
I disagree with the degrading, as I am talking directly to the commenter by showing them how I react to what they commented. Did you miss a "hello dear x, (...), best, ominous"?
> patronizing (telling people how they should behave), (...), and from a clear place of closed-mindedness
I see what you mean, but I have no problems with that. I am not advocating that one is patronizing nor close-minded, nor do I consider myself as such. But if the reaction to "whites together are oppressors excluding the oppressed and perpetuating a status quo that favours whites" cannot be patronizing, what reaction do you allow?
It won't surprise you that from the countless impressions this "signal" for progressivism made on my screens, I reply to very little. This Sunday morning I took some time to do it. You read it, and start to focus on the form of it, the timing, what it may mean, etc, as if you saw me engaging this all the time.
The poster I replied to, on the other hand, is like that full time. Read this bit [0]. The user is educated in these matters, backed by scholarship. It's a whole worldview. It's not the intuitively "You'll be making constant calculations on whether it's safe to show public displays of affection with your partner, or simply appear an act like you want to. The fears are exaggerated of course (we are all creatures of caution), but not unfounded, depending on where you live." that creatures of caution have, but rather a whole domain of knowledge that accumulates justifications for behaviours.
It isn't a scared person hiding in the comfort of a safe space. It is a culture learning to hate.
> So yes, short-term, it's nice to escape to a place where you don't have to do that. Long-term, it's healthier to not autosegregate, both for the queer and non-queer person. It helps normalise things.
Why are you writing this way? You’re in what is now an extended conversation with a person who is sharing their perspective with you, and you’re coming at it like you’re trying to humiliate them in front of an audience.
You’re not jousting in some epic debate chamber, you’re in the replies of a message board. Calm down.
A great book because "every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something". If you think it was a conversation to start with, you are simply wrong. It's closer to the delusions of someone who hypnotized themselves into their current worldview.
It amuses me to engage in this way. I am very calm.
I don't know if this is too off topic, so it might get deleted, but I would like to ask you to think about your situation for a moment.
It is clear that trolling amuses you, and while you would never admit it, replying to another poster while pretending to talk about them like you are narrating an old-time documentary about "savages" or the like, is obviously trolling.
These documentaries are mostly seen as racist in our current time, and rightly so, as the staggering amount of condescension automatically implies that the narrator and the audience are seen as inherently superior than the subject of the documentary.
You might have enough plausible deniability to not get banned, but not much more. I don't ask you to stop because you might get banned, I am just suggesting you consider whether the joy you gain from treating strangers badly on the internet might not just as easily come from a more ethical source if you were to spend some time on thinking about it.
> You might have enough plausible deniability to not get banned, but not much more. I don't ask you to stop because you might get banned, I am just suggesting you consider whether the joy you gain from treating strangers badly on the internet might not just as easily come from a more ethical source if you were to spend some time on thinking about it.
So you suggest I do not callout "cis and whites are oppressors and ought not to gather" in an amusing way, and rather find some sugar or dopamine elsewhere? When do you want to call it out?
There is an important piece missing from your analysis that has led you astray.
There is this concept of the oppressor and the oppressed. In a patriarchy men as a whole oppress women. Individual men should not be judged by this but women will tend to stick together to avoid the high probability that men will mistreat them.
In a white supremacist society white people as a whole oppress people of color. Again people of color will want to stick together to find a break from the constant mistreatment by the white oppressor.
But there is a difference between white people wanting to stick together and people of color wanting to stick together in a white supremacist society. In this case the white people stick together to maintain their oppression and exclusion, and the people of color stick together to find freedom and respite from their mistreatment.
One of these is good and okay, and one of these is meant to perpetuate oppression. The oppressed wanting space from the oppressor is okay. The oppressor wanting to exclude the oppressed is not okay.
Because of this you cannot simply reverse the roles and say “see replace cis people with women/blacks and it sounds terrible”. Because what you have done is replace the dominant class with the oppressed class. You’ve changed the whole meaning of the thing.
In a cis heteronormative society the status quo is maintained by cis people constantly reinforcing gender and sexual norms. There is a long list of behaviors we are all taught as children that reinforce this, and we repeat those behaviors as adults to keep the system going. We do this unconsciously.
Trans people find that exhausting to be around. We have been around that our entire lives and many people we know have died trying to fight it. Finally we found the courage to push back and be ourselves.
We find it much less exhausting to be around people who have at least accepted our ways. And we find it positively rewarding to be around people that understand all the difficulties we are going through.
These are all things that cis people aren’t really going to understand.
Look - Imagine you’re a struggling writer. Your partner is a successful engineer. They don’t really understand what it’s like to be a struggling writer so when you talk to them about it their advice isn’t very good. You don’t feel any sense of relief from talking to them. Finally you end up at a bar and you bump in to another struggling writer who has recently regained some direction. You swap stories and feel positively encouraged!
If they told you about a writers group that would help, wouldn’t you want to join it? That’s not excluding others, that’s finding community! Everyone needs that.
> Because of this you cannot simply reverse the roles and say “see replace cis people with women/blacks and it sounds terrible”. Because what you have done is replace the dominant class with the oppressed class. You’ve changed the whole meaning of the thing.
I think the point they are making is that cis and trans don't work in this sort of class analysis, as the two groups are in themselves too diverse. They have to be further divided into subgroups for this to make any sense.
For example, take the most controversial subset of the transgendered: transwomen, i.e. males who identify as women. Then compare to actual female women ("cis women") - it is obvious that this maps onto the existing feminist analysis of sex class, with males being the dominant class and females the oppressed class.
Which is what makes it so problematic when these males try to impose themselves upon the spaces of actual female women, as they're engaging in male dominance behaviour that wouldn't be considered acceptable by any other man. But because we have this false cis-trans oppression hierarchy being presented to defend this, it pulls the wool over many people's eyes to what is really happening.
williamvds|3 years ago
Your lack of empathy makes me assume you haven't been through similar experiences as the commenter you're "replying", either because you're not visibly far off "normal", or lucky enough to have grown up in an environment which was supportive of you.
Any case, the earlier commenter is not assuming cis people are terrible and transphobic and whatever. It is a matter of trust and risk. You can generally trust other LGBT people to be accepting since they've been through the same problems as you, and of course, because they share the same differences.
So it makes sense to group together, it's safer in groups, and sometimes mentally healthier than falling in to a pit of depression feeling forced to behave or a appear a different way to how you want to.
You'll be making constant calculations on whether it's safe to show public displays of affection with your partner, or simply appear an act like you want to. The fears are exaggerated of course (we are all creatures of caution), but not unfounded, depending on where you live.
So yes, short-term, it's nice to escape to a place where you don't have to do that. Long-term, it's healthier to not autosegregate, both for the queer and non-queer person. It helps normalise things. But I won't put that on every queer person, to each their own.
TaylorAlexander|3 years ago
Also this person has assumed I’m trying to fully isolate and that’s not even true. I’m out on social media and I have many cis followers.
Everyone needs to have a refuge and I share who I am when I want to. But I also want people who see me without needing an explanation.
Anyway I appreciate your support.
ominous|3 years ago
It's worse than that. It assumes x people, by virtue of belonging to x group, actively perpetuate x-group-favouring-biases.
Otherwise, your comment is reasonable.
> degrading
I disagree with the degrading, as I am talking directly to the commenter by showing them how I react to what they commented. Did you miss a "hello dear x, (...), best, ominous"?
> patronizing (telling people how they should behave), (...), and from a clear place of closed-mindedness
I see what you mean, but I have no problems with that. I am not advocating that one is patronizing nor close-minded, nor do I consider myself as such. But if the reaction to "whites together are oppressors excluding the oppressed and perpetuating a status quo that favours whites" cannot be patronizing, what reaction do you allow?
It won't surprise you that from the countless impressions this "signal" for progressivism made on my screens, I reply to very little. This Sunday morning I took some time to do it. You read it, and start to focus on the form of it, the timing, what it may mean, etc, as if you saw me engaging this all the time. The poster I replied to, on the other hand, is like that full time. Read this bit [0]. The user is educated in these matters, backed by scholarship. It's a whole worldview. It's not the intuitively "You'll be making constant calculations on whether it's safe to show public displays of affection with your partner, or simply appear an act like you want to. The fears are exaggerated of course (we are all creatures of caution), but not unfounded, depending on where you live." that creatures of caution have, but rather a whole domain of knowledge that accumulates justifications for behaviours.
It isn't a scared person hiding in the comfort of a safe space. It is a culture learning to hate.
> So yes, short-term, it's nice to escape to a place where you don't have to do that. Long-term, it's healthier to not autosegregate, both for the queer and non-queer person. It helps normalise things.
I agree.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34856039
DonHopkins|3 years ago
[deleted]
brynjolf|3 years ago
You ask for empathy and compassion where you offer none.
I don't think you understood what is being written, and went for wiritbg a comment attacking rather than exploring.
jna_sh|3 years ago
Why are you writing this way? You’re in what is now an extended conversation with a person who is sharing their perspective with you, and you’re coming at it like you’re trying to humiliate them in front of an audience.
You’re not jousting in some epic debate chamber, you’re in the replies of a message board. Calm down.
ominous|3 years ago
> Sounds like a great book.
A great book because "every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something". If you think it was a conversation to start with, you are simply wrong. It's closer to the delusions of someone who hypnotized themselves into their current worldview.
It amuses me to engage in this way. I am very calm.
fnordian_slip|3 years ago
It is clear that trolling amuses you, and while you would never admit it, replying to another poster while pretending to talk about them like you are narrating an old-time documentary about "savages" or the like, is obviously trolling.
These documentaries are mostly seen as racist in our current time, and rightly so, as the staggering amount of condescension automatically implies that the narrator and the audience are seen as inherently superior than the subject of the documentary.
You might have enough plausible deniability to not get banned, but not much more. I don't ask you to stop because you might get banned, I am just suggesting you consider whether the joy you gain from treating strangers badly on the internet might not just as easily come from a more ethical source if you were to spend some time on thinking about it.
ominous|3 years ago
So you suggest I do not callout "cis and whites are oppressors and ought not to gather" in an amusing way, and rather find some sugar or dopamine elsewhere? When do you want to call it out?
After we find out if the slope is slippery?
TaylorAlexander|3 years ago
There is this concept of the oppressor and the oppressed. In a patriarchy men as a whole oppress women. Individual men should not be judged by this but women will tend to stick together to avoid the high probability that men will mistreat them.
In a white supremacist society white people as a whole oppress people of color. Again people of color will want to stick together to find a break from the constant mistreatment by the white oppressor.
But there is a difference between white people wanting to stick together and people of color wanting to stick together in a white supremacist society. In this case the white people stick together to maintain their oppression and exclusion, and the people of color stick together to find freedom and respite from their mistreatment.
One of these is good and okay, and one of these is meant to perpetuate oppression. The oppressed wanting space from the oppressor is okay. The oppressor wanting to exclude the oppressed is not okay.
Because of this you cannot simply reverse the roles and say “see replace cis people with women/blacks and it sounds terrible”. Because what you have done is replace the dominant class with the oppressed class. You’ve changed the whole meaning of the thing.
In a cis heteronormative society the status quo is maintained by cis people constantly reinforcing gender and sexual norms. There is a long list of behaviors we are all taught as children that reinforce this, and we repeat those behaviors as adults to keep the system going. We do this unconsciously.
Trans people find that exhausting to be around. We have been around that our entire lives and many people we know have died trying to fight it. Finally we found the courage to push back and be ourselves.
We find it much less exhausting to be around people who have at least accepted our ways. And we find it positively rewarding to be around people that understand all the difficulties we are going through.
These are all things that cis people aren’t really going to understand.
Look - Imagine you’re a struggling writer. Your partner is a successful engineer. They don’t really understand what it’s like to be a struggling writer so when you talk to them about it their advice isn’t very good. You don’t feel any sense of relief from talking to them. Finally you end up at a bar and you bump in to another struggling writer who has recently regained some direction. You swap stories and feel positively encouraged!
If they told you about a writers group that would help, wouldn’t you want to join it? That’s not excluding others, that’s finding community! Everyone needs that.
fogmourn|3 years ago
I think the point they are making is that cis and trans don't work in this sort of class analysis, as the two groups are in themselves too diverse. They have to be further divided into subgroups for this to make any sense.
For example, take the most controversial subset of the transgendered: transwomen, i.e. males who identify as women. Then compare to actual female women ("cis women") - it is obvious that this maps onto the existing feminist analysis of sex class, with males being the dominant class and females the oppressed class.
Which is what makes it so problematic when these males try to impose themselves upon the spaces of actual female women, as they're engaging in male dominance behaviour that wouldn't be considered acceptable by any other man. But because we have this false cis-trans oppression hierarchy being presented to defend this, it pulls the wool over many people's eyes to what is really happening.
ominous|3 years ago
[deleted]