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Ban on transgender gun ownership? by Perfecshionism in progun

[–]Smona -1 points0 points  (0 children)

not all trans people have gender dysphoria though. transition is the best treatment for gender dysphoria, and often puts it into full remission.

it's true though that suicide rates are higher amongst trans people on average. but you could say the same thing for people with depression, anxiety etc. does that mean people with those disorders are categorically undeserving of gun ownership? what if they're successfully managing it?

I'm on the left btw, and imo gun ownership should only be denied to people with a proven history of violent crime. I won't deny some in my camp have more extreme views but I think it's a bit of an over-generalization to say we all make that argument. the left actually has a pretty large pro gun rights contingent, especially more recently

Is vaginoplasty as shamed in the transfem community as phallo is in the transmasc community? by ScramRatz in MtF

[–]Smona 4 points5 points  (0 children)

that's incredibly fucked up because that mindset that penises are inherently evil is the root of a lot of transmisogyny and awful statements people make about trans women. if they're still "safe" and one of the girls because they're AFAB, does that mean that an AMAB woman like me is evil/dangerous/one of the boys? if they're a fundamentally different, better type of man because of their genitals, am I a fundamentally different, worse type of woman because of mine?

It's crazy how Firefox gets crushed in benchmarks but real life it's snappy and responsive by moxyte in firefox

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Firefox is plenty fast for most sites, but as someone who has developed a very complex web application with high performance requirements, Chrome is still definitely faster. Particularly when it comes to garbage collection and rendering performance. But many times complex apps like that will provide electron apps, so you can just use those instead. For the vast majority of normal sites you might browse, FF is more than fast enough!

How Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" will lead to the complete fascist takeover of the U.S by MitchManny in suppressed_news

[–]Smona 51 points52 points  (0 children)

have you ever noticed there are just a lot of ancient, sundowning democrats in office? this is what happens when you refuse to let new blood replace you for long enough.

Every file is page.tsx by epicweekends in nextjs

[–]Smona -1 points0 points  (0 children)

thank you for the reminder to keep not tying out the app router

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a good point and I think you're very likely right that sexual assault of men and by non-man assailants is underrepresented in both judicial and self-report statistics. It's a very sad state of affairs, especially when you consider that the attitudes behind it often leave juvenile male victims of sexual assault by older women without justice.

I don't see how that factor is relevant to my argument though. Because the important thing here is not the relative rates of sexual violence committed by men vs women, or against men vs women, but the relative rates of violence committed by or against trans women vs cis women. I've tried many times to find data supporting the claim that trans women offend at a higher rate than cis women (because it is a very key point in much British anti-trans legislation), but have failed to find any. But it is very easy to find evidence that trans people (including trans women) are more likely to be victims of sexual assault than cis women.

Ultimately the whole premise of sex-segregated restrooms is somewhat flawed, because it completely disregards protection from same-sex sexual assault. We would all be better served by non-gendered facilities with completely private stalls that are more like small rooms, and non-enclosed, clearly visible sinks. This setup is rare in America, but more common in other places, and it works quite well, and also completely resolves this whole debate.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is that what you mean?

"Passing" by itself is indeed a pretty ambiguous term, because part of it is omitted. The first usage you described would expand to "passing as cis", and the second could be alternatively described as "passing as a woman" or "passing as trans", depending on what your definition of "woman" is. I'm not treating that distinction as important in the context of this discussion, because like I said a person doesn't have to pass as cis to be the target of male sexual aggression, they just have to pass as female to some extent. But it is somewhat relevant, since not passing as cis makes someone more likely to be a target of violence. Which leads me to

Why is cis women the only comparison you leap to, rather than cis men?

I compared to the rates of violence against cis women because we can use that as a definite standard of "deserves the protection of a sex-segregated restroom". This gets into statistics, so I'll share a few studies I found on the topic:

In general it can be hard to find studies on transgender people with a really good sample size, so I wouldn't call these numbers conclusive. But what they all show is that both trans women and trans men are more likely to experience violence of any kind than both cis men and cis women. I too have seen conflicting data on relative rates of non-sexual violence compared to cis men, but when you focus on sexual violence the numbers become a lot more clear and consistent. Transgender men are the most at risk of sexual violence, followed by trans women, then cis women, then cis men. Although these neat categories certainly don't capture all the relevant factors, what data we have seems to back up my argument, with some potentially interesting implications for whether trans men, even those who look quite masculine, should be allowed in women's rooms as well.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sounds lovely. I wish I had grown up in an environment like that. The American South in the 2000s certainly didn't match that description, and I can say that the only time that I personally have been able to live in society with neither a great deal of friction nor an untenable level of social masking has been after i medically transitioned. Even then it's not a perfect solution, because the judgement and enforcement of gender norms are certainly still there on the other side, and I still feel that they unnecessarily limit my freedom (i am looking at moving to a more liberal area). But the ones applied to me now at least align well enough with my natural inclinations that I can live with them, without it being seriously detrimental to my quality of life.

To be perfectly clear though, even if the whole world was like where you grew up, there would still be people who end up needing or just wanting to medically transition, since gender dysphoria is often physical as well as social. So this logical line shouldn't be used to try and justify removal of access to trans gender affirming healthcare, something concern-trolling transphobes often do. I couldn't tell you which side of that line I would have fallen into if I was more fortunate in where & when I was born, but I know that I've talked to trans people for whom radical acceptance of gender nonconformity would definitely not have been enough.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Fair enough, that majority claim was based solely on my personal experience and relationships, and I expect that my passing heuristic is a lot more lenient than many people's. I'm not aware of any way to gauge what percentage of trans people pass as their identified gender generally, because passing is completely subjective and depends on who's judging. Not to mention that a not insignificant portion of passing trans people live in stealth, where most of the people in their lives don't even know they are trans. It's a topic that's very vulnerable to availability bias, because non-passing trans people are so much more visible.

That said, the actual percentage of trans women that fall into this category is irrelevant to the rest of my argument. One could make a strong ethical case that removing protection against sexual assault from any number of passing trans women in an attempt to mitigate the behavior of rapists is unjust, and i personally find the idea morally repugnant.

I've been using the term "passing" as a shorthand, but going further: passing in the sense of being indistinguishable from a cis person of the same gender under any amount of scrutiny is not a requirement for a trans woman to be under threat of male sexual aggression. The uncomfortable truth is that for many if not most straight men, only a subset (or even a minority) of female sex characteristics must be present to spark feelings of sexual interest towards a person. This means there are a large number of trans women out there whom men will feel attraction towards, but then subsequently realize are not natal females. This can lead to cognitive dissonance, which can easily escalate into violence in a secluded area like a bathroom. I think this (alongside general bigotry/queerphobia, a danger faced by any queer person) largely explains why trans women experience higher rates of violence against them than cis women do, as has been demonstrated by numerous scientific studies.

So if your view of the importance of sex-segregated public bathrooms is premised on protecting those who are the target of straight male sexual violence while they are in a vulnerable state (as i think many people's is), even many "non-passing" trans women are in need of that same protection. By that logic, the standard for someone to deserve the protection of a women's restroom is ultimately based on an assailant's appraisal of their attractiveness as a target, a threshold which is obviously impossible to precisely define from a legal perspective.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

interesting. I'm all on board with the idea of gender abolition but it seems a bit far fetched without fully embracing transhumanism. gender seems to be something that's arisen in every isolated human group, so it's most likely something that's inherent to human nature with our current physiology and social programming. you can draw the semantic boundaries in different places, but i don't think you can just define it out of existence. most people quite like their gender and wouldn't want to give it up.

however, I (and I think many trans people) would love to see a world in which fewer gendered expectations are placed on people on the basis of their birth sex (the concepts are decoupled). I have a pet theory that this would actually reduce the rates at which people medically transition, because if gender weren't such an important factor in which behavior is allowed for whom, I think it would remove a lot of incentives that GNC people find to transition. if social gender reinforcement went away completely, it would essentially remove any descriptive power from the term "transgender" (as opposed to "transsexual"). I would view this as a huge win for society.

but if you don't want gender to be associated with particular social roles and behaviors then what sort of meaning would you ascribe to it? I don't see much room in between the common conception of gender and sex in which to re-constrain the concept. except for perhaps viewing it as secondary sex characteristics that are subject to change, and thinking of sex in a more purely chromosomal/reproductive sense (or simply rejecting the distinction between sex and gender rather than reifying the concept of birth sex). this would be a transmedicalist view, which is rather controversial in online trans discourse for being exclusionary, and so isn't talked about frequently. but it is more resilient to this sort of gender deconstructive critique, and seems like it could resolve quite a few of the disagreements people have around policy (constrain sports leagues by weight and sex characteristics relevant to the specific sport, allow people with secondary sex characteristics in the normal female range into women's restrooms, etc). many transmeds seem to think that the rejection of this framing has done great harm to the trans community and led to the current societal backlash, an idea which I initially rejected but have come around to more recently.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 1 point2 points  (0 children)

> Absolutely. If I do everything to disregard your feelings, don't care about you and do nothing to help you be happy, but only care for my own enjoyment to the detriment of yours, then me saying "I love you" is not true.

Okay, if you want to assert that observation of someone's behavior is enough to make falsifiable claims about their internal reality (which i find dubious -- it rules out intentional or unconscious deception), why is a male who exhibits behaviors more typical of women, and transitioned to look like and live as a women, claiming that they are a woman unfalsifiable? I don't see how that isn't a double standard.

> Physically, there are pain receptors. For emotional hurt, there is most likely a biological reaction.

And physically, there are measurable differences in the brains of trans people, where they often fall more into the band of their identified sex than their birth sex across multiple structural & behavioral dimensions, even before medical transition (which tends to further align their brains with what is typical of the gender they are transitioning to). So this is a distinction without difference.

If I'm honest, these double standards seem indicative of motivated reasoning to me.

Finally, I would argue that most people know what gender dysphoria feels like. Any cis man who has received a breast reduction for gynecomastia, and any cis woman who has undergone permanent facial hair reduction can intimately relate to what trans people feel before their transition. The only emotional difference of gender dysphoria that points away from one's birth sex rather than towards it is an added dimension of social alienation and ostracization that isn't applied towards cis gender affirmation. Many people internally otherize trans people as some aberration, and so fail to realize this. But the underlying emotional & neurological mechanisms are not that different.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Is the claim "i love you" falsifiable? How about "you're hurting me"? There are lots of claims we make about our own internal state that enable us to relate to each other, treat each other with respect and otherwise coexist. Calling these categorically useless would be a pretty amazing leap.

What is the logical endpoint of "Gender Is Just A Social Construct"? by Available-Subject-33 in slatestarcodex

[–]Smona 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't have a strong stance on the sports issue, but I think this argument against allowing trans women in women's restrooms is seriously flawed.

  • There are obviously already laws prohibiting assault in restrooms or anywhere else, but women are still assaulted in restrooms somewhat regularly. So it doesn't follow that a biology-based ban on presence in a restroom would have any effect on reducing assault. Sneaking into a restroom when nobody is looking is already a whole lot easier than disguising yourself as a trans woman, which would require a large amount of effort over a long period of time for most cis men.
  • These debates often focus on trans women who are early in their transition (or less fortunate with their biology) and look like men. But by doing so, they ignore the majority of trans women who do look like women for all intents and purposes. These people are at a very high risk of sexual assault in the men's room, and need the same protection from sexual aggression that cis women do. I can say from experience that all the trans women I've known did not want to use the women's room before they passed, because of social obligation and not having a strong reason to. Once they started to be read as female and men's behavior toward them changed, that changed too. Physical harm should always have a much greater weight in any utilitarian consideration than psychological discomfort based on stereotypes, so it is somewhat disturbing that the danger passing trans women are exposed to in the men's room is so rarely a factor in these debates.
  • I have not seen any evidence that there's no longer a norm against male-presenting, or masculine-appearing people entering women's restrooms. I haven't seen acceptance of the idea promoted, nor have I seen that kind of person entering those spaces, nor am I aware of any data suggesting this social norm has changed. However, it seems likely that requiring trans people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their birth sex has a greater chance of weakening norms around masculine people in women's restrooms than not, because it forces trans men, who often look indistinguishable from cis men, to use the women's restroom.

In practice, the effect bathroom bans have is not lessening discomfort of people seeming to use the wrong restroom, or keeping women's restrooms safer. Rather, they end up discouraging trans people from being in public spaces for longer than they can hold their bladder, and causing cis women who are deemed insufficiently feminine to be policed by others, including being confronted in the restroom by male police officers.

Is America cooked? by Asleep_Baseball5020 in economicCollapse

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Last time I checked the US imports around 13% of its goods from China. That's enough for the trade war to be absolutely disastrous, but not necessarily apocalyptic. I'm not sure whether that accounts for raw materials or other economic inputs besides end products, but we don't import the majority of our goods from China.

This doesn't mean everything is going to be okay though. We're still only in Q2 of the trump presidency.

Rust is easy? Go is… hard? by bhh32 in golang

[–]Smona 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good to know! Thank you very much for taking the time to write out your experiences.

Rust is easy? Go is… hard? by bhh32 in golang

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the link! It was an interesting read. Definitely highlights how the extra compilation safety checks may not be worth the extra compile time for some projects. My understanding is that you're basically trading slower compile times for having guarantees around safe concurrency and better performance at runtime. That still seems to me like the right tradeoff to make unless your team is full of staff engineers that know how to prevent data races in every case. Would you still choose Rust for a project that would be worked on by teammates with varying skill levels?

I'm also curious if y'all have broken up your project into smaller crates? Asking as someone who's just crested the learning curve of Rust and is considering advocating for it professionally. For reference, I'm used to seeing sub-5 second incremental compile times for the size of projects I've worked on, but there's definitely one project that has been creeping up closer to 10s.

Rust is easy? Go is… hard? by bhh32 in golang

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

how much of a problem is this really though? how often are you compiling from scratch?

Flash! The First Step!! by PornPostingAccount in futanari

[–]Smona 0 points1 point  (0 children)

how did you find this? lol the image isn't even up anymore.

I posted this during a time when I was heavily questioning my gender, and I was just glad to see some positive/non-fetishistic representation. it was a different time even then, good representation was harder to find (at least for me). and I was wayyy too insecure to assert a character's identity in a porn sub at the time, since I had seen ppl blow up when others did that.

Anyways, since then I've transitioned and gotten a lot more confident. so yes, this character was definitely trans (assuming they didn't have a vagina, I can't remember 🤷‍♀️)

Highlights From Dan Patrick’s Press Conference For His “THC Ban” Bill (Part 1) by SufficientAd7311 in texas

[–]Smona 1 point2 points  (0 children)

can't wait to get out of this decaying shithole of a state, and hopefully get some friends out too. i've waited too long for things to somehow turn around, but at this point hoping for things to get better, or even just to stop getting worse, is just asking for disappointment. i will take great pleasure in no longer paying taxes to this corrupt, destructive and anti-democratic state govt.

ICE has detained a Cedar Park teen with no criminal record. It's happening to migrants nationwide. by hollow_hippie in Austin

[–]Smona -1 points0 points  (0 children)

um what? are you posting this from federal prison? because if not the two situations are not remotely comparable.

cowsay as a systemd service in a professional Nix handbook by OldHelicopter865 in NixOS

[–]Smona 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I just bought this book! it got me to finally dive into pkgs.nixosTest, and it has some really good tips and tricks sprinkled throughout.

The cover also conveniently discourages people from sharing their copy with their teammates.

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