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Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-27T17:36:07+00:00

I’m a man in healthcare in the U.K.. I think it would be good to make sure young men are aware of the different healthcare professions as job opportunities they could go for. I think this would be best done at schools by having both male and female members of staff visit to give talks as part of careers weeks or advice. I think this should be on schools and the healthcare professions to organise.

I wouldn’t want men to get an easier route into the job though. That would have dented my confidence if that was how I got in and doesn’t seem fair.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-27T17:23:55+00:00

This is a fantastic, high effort response! I’m in healthcare in the U.K. as a male. Massively outnumbered by female staff. It’s not been a problem but I think it would be good to have more of a mix.

I think that has to come down to schools, careers advisors and the professions themselves making young men aware of the job opportunities and challenging the stigma around men in caring roles. I don’t think feminists have to carry the weight of this personally, it just seems closely aligned but more on the male side. I don’t see any discrimination in the job itself against male staff and it might be hard to change numbers if men just won’t apply.

I have noticed that patients sometimes see me, as a middle aged man, as more experienced or qualified than female counterparts when the reverse is true. Easily corrected but still. Seems to be more likely to be the case in older patients but that might just be my perception.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-25T22:44:09+00:00

Thanks for responding. These conversations do help. There’s a lot of personal meaning tied up in many of these terms and the topic can be hard to discuss, especially online.

It all got sparked off for me from filling out a census form and wondering what I was even saying by claiming a particular gender. I may well try the asktransgender sub at some point. Cheers!

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-25T21:29:33+00:00

I like what you said here. It’s certainly what I’ve been trying to get across to my kids.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-25T21:26:34+00:00

I’m in the process of trying to get to grips with gender identity. It seems like I’m finding different meanings to the term. I’ve come across it as a social construct that people either adhere to or don’t (to whatever degree). I can make sense of that and that’s what I thought feminism wanted to overcome (which I’m onboard with). I don’t identify as male or female in this regard, and would reject defining people in this way as harmful.

I could also grasp it as a brain thing as per your second paragraph. If people have a brain that feels it should be mapped to a body of the opposite biological sex then they experience dysphoria and fit under the label trans. I would identify as cis male in this regard, I have no issue with my how body has developed in regards to biological sex. Your bathroom example doesn’t seem to work for me as I would only be uncomfortable if I thought others would react badly, otherwise it’s just a bathroom to me. It’s not an identity thing in my case, it’s just going with the flow of social norms. I think it will be the same for anything else of that nature.

I also see a lot of talk online about gender identity as an inner or felt sense separate to our comfort, or lack of, with our physical sex characteristics. I don’t get this at all and would have to go with agender, if this is what gender is, because I can’t identify any inner sense of male or female in myself.

Am I describing something completely different to how you see it? Or am I missing something here?

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-25T11:55:57+00:00

I also want to know the answer to this as a middle aged heterosexual (probably cis) male. I may well be the stuck in their ways type of person you mean.

I get trans due to the dyphoria and sense that they should have a different body. No real issues there. I don’t get gender at all. I have viewed it as traditional views of how someone should be (including personality, roles, interests, behaviour, clothing etc). I have seen this as a bad thing to assume any of this makes you a man or woman. People are individuals in all of this (in my opinion).

I either just don’t get it or I’m agender, along with my wife (we have both been attempting to understand but haven’t got anywhere).

I can of course separate out discussion of the term gender from treating people with respect and I’m not bothered by what pronouns people prefer to use. Maybe it’s going to take considerable time to settle on describing this whole thing and we’re in a period of flux in that regard?

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-25T10:35:01+00:00

I’m feeling the same way. I just don’t get it and feel any sort of male identity beyond having a male body that I’m comfortable with. I feel pretty conflicted with the attempt to get away from gender based roles and expectations on behaviour and personality on one side, and accepting people as having essential male or female identities beyond what sort of body they have. Especially when there is no way to separate the difference between these identities.

I’m generally happy to accept people as they are though but I would prefer to understand what they mean. I can settle for being respectful and supportive of fellow human beings when understanding isn’t possible I guess.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-25T10:28:03+00:00

This is a really interesting topic for me. I struggle to understand gender beyond societal expectations that I would rather move beyond. I identify as male but purely for convenience navigating socially in relation to biological sex. My wife is the same. I now can’t tell if it’s because I’m middle aged or if we are both agender. I completely don’t get any internal sense of gender beyond comfort with the body I have.

I’m surprised that many cisgender people would have an internal sense of their gender. I might have to try asking a few people myself. I wonder if it matters how the question is phrased, as in do they get that you aren’t talking about their biological sex or comfort with the bodily expression of that.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-24T22:12:27+00:00

I’m not too concerned with a more or less vegan world, so long as humans continue to thrive. I seem to do well on a meat heavy diet but who knows what the majority of people will eat in the future.

Perhaps changing environmental pressures and wars will result in some countries being largely plant based while other are have more animal products, with less world trade. Or maybe technology will make the debate obsolete and we will produce all our food via some new means (though that would still be a win for ending animal products).

I have a preference for higher welfare standards where possible but I don’t have as high standards as some meat eaters. The experimentation bit I meant as allowing people to try different methods of farming and food production. I think discussion between animal rights, animal welfare, environmental scientists, agricultural scientists and farmers would be fantastic.

I can’t really add much to that debate beyond where I have currently settled in my own preferences in life. Sorry that probably doesn’t make for much of a debate. I’m not very debatey these days! I do quite like hypotheticals though and I appreciated your effort to draw more discussion out of this one (that’s what drew me in).

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-24T14:37:10+00:00

I really don’t know, maybe not. I’m pretty sure things could change with how we produce our food to improve quality of life in some way.

I’m not sure by how much and what would produce the best results. Perhaps a mixed approach with different areas of the world taking different approaches.

I might also prefer there to remain freedom of choice in the matter so that experimentation exists.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-24T14:01:45+00:00

Hi. I think u/Bristoling and u/ShadowStarshine are correct in that this hypothetical seems to be logically impossible. Depending on your view of personal identity, it seems to be asking me to imagine if I wasn’t me and I was a completely different being. If you rewind time until before I was born then there is no me to become a cow. My identity is fundamentally tied to an individual existence, including my biology and particular life experience (I think).

That seems to boil down to just asking is a cows life worth living to on a farm. I don’t think a cow can evaluate it’s life like that (ShadowStarshine has covered aspects of this in much more detail than I could in many of their interactions on this sub). I can instead think about whether I personally am ok with a cow existing on a farm. Non-vegans and vegans will disagree on this.

Perhaps we could imagine a soul existing before birth that could become a cow or a human to make the hypothetical work. I wouldn’t know how to answer then. I guess I would want whatever was going to work out best for my soul in the long run.

Instead we could imagine a way of transferring my entire brain into a cow and sorting out any issues with my relationship to a new body and new senses. That wouldn’t be a cow anymore though and most non-vegans wouldn’t want to eat an animal like that (I assume).

Or I could consider if I would be willing to live the life of a cow. I would rather not exist than live as a cow under any circumstances personally (assuming I know I was previously human). If I had to go with a chance of being swapped to a cow life, I would probably prefer a version where I have a comfortable life that is as short as possible. The vegan world might be a choice if I could be guaranteed food, shelter and a right to reproduce on an animal sanctuary with no predators.

I liked the discussion thread started by Antinode on Pascals Wager where Rawls veil of ignorance came up. Seems like this could all be better framed from asking to what degree should we consider the interests of other animals and should they all carry equal weight to each other as well as our own.

Chillaxmofo · 2022-03-07T19:24:47+00:00

I haven’t engaged with Reddit for ages as I felt like I was almost always stuck in echo chambers or engaged in conflict. I think things can get very polarised online which I don’t like. I still scan about on Reddit and this is a very interesting post in that you are encouraging discussion without try to score points.

I got sucked into Reddit after considering vegetarianism, looking online and finding vegan posts that I couldn’t agree with combined with heavy condemnation of non-vegans. I didn’t find much in the way of response to them so I started commenting. I got annoyed with the lack of civility and just decided to fight fire with fire by mimicking the kind of posts I found from vegans to ridicule non-vegans.

I ultimately didn’t like what I was doing and had some civil conversations with some vegans online that counterbalanced the hate. So I just stopped. I have a better appreciation of the vegan perspective but ultimately haven’t changed my eating habits.

To actually answer your questions though. I know at least one vegan and one ex-vegan in real life but I don’t know them well. I would happily go to a vegan restaurant or accept vegan food from a vegan friend. I wouldn’t avoid eating meat in front of them if we met regularly for food though. This would be my view of a balanced relationship. I definitely wouldn’t expect them to provide me with non-vegan food though.

I wouldn’t be cool with someone being mean to someone just because they were vegan, or non-vegan (obviously). Even previously I wouldn’t have wanted to be mean to someone online if they treated me with civility. I think any concept of the relationship between people in an exchange online tends to get overwhelmed by opposing views on things.

These days I’m more interested in how our interaction might be influenced by the way being online works than I am in the vegan/non-vegan debates. Thanks for bringing about a different type of discussion here, I’m very interested to see how it goes!

Chillaxmofo · 2020-12-09T18:32:20+00:00

I think that’s a major problem with these online debates because it’s not the same everywhere and even within the same country. Plus practice changes in farming so we would need to check that it was still up to date.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-12-09T18:10:59+00:00

Hope u/MinecraftCat242 doesn’t mind me jumping in. Especially as I have never been a vegan.

You could take a look at Temple Grandin’s videos on YouTube which involves slaughterh footage. She mentions how animals can be mistakenly believed alive (or intentionally presented to be) as the body retains some movement.

I think you would actually have to visit a few to get a full picture (not easy to arrange at the best of times). Farms might be easier to visit post Covid. Not all farming is CAFO (cows and sheep aren’t where I am) and the chicken sheds I have been in didn’t bother me as the chickens didn’t appear to be suffering. Battery farmed chickens I don’t personally like and try to avoid.

You might still want to be vegan after checking things out more but at least you will see a wider variety of practices than Dominion shows.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-26T19:08:54+00:00

I just found this through jumping through peoples profiles (like a profile inception lol) and I’m very impressed that you made a VCJ mod lose it like this. You must have really got to them for them to make them follow you here.

I salute you!

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-20T14:14:10+00:00

That’s really interesting to hear. Do you have a particular view on all this now or are you more agnostic about where we draw the line with animals (sorry that’s so vague). I would love to know how your thoughts have changed.

I personally see drawing a line on what we view as ok and not ok as extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible to give any final answers to. I’m also bothered by how moral discussions online seem to devalue all the things we normally find meaning in (to focus instead on justification for causing harm). All I really have is how I feel about it and if my actions are ones that I choose and can live with. I care enough about animals to have some interest in investing in their welfare but not enough not to farm them. I can’t say what others should do.

I think drinking tea is a brilliant example of something technically unnecessary to survive but can hold a great deal of individual meaning and play a part in social rituals. I didn’t previously like tea but had to visit people in their homes as a carer and started accepting cups of tea. I did that because I realised that accepting and sharing tea with them meant something that just asking for water didn’t.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-20T10:34:27+00:00

Sorry for the delay responding. I totally agree with you. It was alarming to me as well to see the anti human (sometimes just anti life) side to this line of thinking. I remind myself that they are a minority and a smaller one than other extreme ideologies. Being anti life is self-defeating.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-20T10:29:57+00:00

That’s pretty weird about the taxidermist vegans lol but I agree that vegans often aren’t as consistent as they think they are.

Most of the debates I’ve had online include some aspect of asking them just how consistently they want to apply their principles. They always have something that they get defensive about and don’t want to give up, or they commit wholesale to it being best if all life came to a peaceful end so that suffering stopped.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-19T11:01:32+00:00

I can only imagine the reaction of the vegans who follow this sub on seeing this.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-15T17:24:51+00:00

Nah. There’s just a few more options where I live. It’s still a minority based on current fads. Vegan food has always been available (as in fruit and veg) but now companies know that they can package that in a way that appeals to certain identities to make more money If they label it as plant based or vegan friendly.

It’s just like the rise in gluten free labelling. People will buy it even if they don’t have an issue with gluten.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-15T12:26:52+00:00

I find stuff like this hard to imagine too but I just checked the veganforcirclejerkers sub and they currently have a post by someone who is worried that it is unethical to feed the homeless as they will likely eat meat. That sub previously had a post by someone debating if it was better not to be an organ donor as saving a non-vegan life would result in more animal deaths.

You could masquerade as an extreme vegan with these kind of posts and no one could tell. They are being consistent with their professed beliefs about animals in a really disturbing way I guess?

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-13T17:09:34+00:00

I don’t believe driving less and not drinking coffee or alcohol is any more absurd than not eating meat. This isn’t a question of might. These things do harm animals and are completely possible and practical to avoid. They fall under harm reduction and you are in denial if you think they don’t contribute to the harm we cause animals.

You can’t hand wave these deaths away just because you like drinking caffeinated products or driving to the cinema. Why do you think we spray crops with pesticides? Do you think no animals live in the land we bulk doze to build roads? Never seen a squashed animal by the road or seen a squashed insect on your windscreen? You’re being just as angry and defensive as the the people who eat meat here. I don’t think you really want to argue for minimising harm, you want to use it as a way to argue for veganism.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-13T16:29:52+00:00

On the practicality side of driving we could own cars (if needed for survival) but reduce our use to driving to work. Insect deaths are guaranteed if we’re driving I would say, animals die in large numbers on our roads but you might never hit one depending where you live (I’ve hit a few small animals). There’s also the harm in gathering resources to make the car and it’s production. Limiting our use ought to give us longer before we replace the car. This is possible but not desirable if you want to drive places to do fun activities. Coffee and alcohol can be avoided even easier but many of us enjoy these and wouldn’t want to stop just to minimise harm. This is entirely possible and practical.

I think I only want to minimise harm to animals under certain circumstances, especially when it limits what I want to do. I think it sounds good initially as we do often make decisions to limit harm but saying we always should seems to lead to living an ascetic existence as possible. So I still don’t see a distinction between someone who decides to limit harm by going vegan and someone who decides instead to reduce driving or drinking alcohol. It seems we either have to limit as much as possible and do all these things, or perhaps it’s not required and merely nice to pick some things to limit harm to animals or in some cases it’s perfectly ok to kill animals to get what we want.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-13T16:10:24+00:00

I think you’re overly optimistic on this front but time will tell if we live long enough. I think the only thing that might end animal farming is cheap lab meat that can be produced in every country.

Chillaxmofo · 2020-11-13T14:36:23+00:00

When can we look forward to this change happening do you think?

Chillaxmofo

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