neuracnu @ neuracnu @lemmy.blahaj.zone

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I’ve been deeply frustrated by the progressive stance on trans people in professional sports.

Anyone who began medical transitioning after puberty will have reasonably notable physical differences from cisgender people in their appropriately gendered sport. It’s similar to doping, but something their body was doing naturally with incorrect hormones that didn’t reflect their gender.

I certainly don’t feel good about it, but I do think there is a very viable argument to disqualify those kinds of trans people (who medically transitioned after puberty) from competition. The debate becomes much more nuanced as you consider different sports where physical differences between gender matter less. Rugby, weightlifting; trans folks are out. Target shooting, chess, darts; no problem. It’s a debate to be had sport by sport, league by league. The whole issue should have been messaged that way from the beginning.

Queer advocacy groups taking a broad “all or nothing” civil rights stance on this was a HUGE mistake. It’s an argument they were destined to lose, only affected a minuscule number of athletes, and wasted so much time and effort that could have been spent on other battles for trans rights. US Democrats take their cues on queer issues from those queer advocacy groups, so they rolled with it and got trampled.

I really want to have a conversation with queer strategists and Democrat policy leaders to understand why this was the hill they decided to make trans rights die on.

Vote with your wallets, people.

🎯

I think there is some deeply cynical logic, or a horrifying game of chicken, being played by Democratic leaders here.

Let's say Jack Smith is given the go-ahead to investigate and prosecute Trump as fast as he possibly could (while building a bullet-proof case for conviction). With all the legal resources (not to mention Republican-friendly judges) available for Trump to leverage, it's safe to say that Smith certainly would not have been able to complete a full trial and secure a conviction before the 2024 election. But perhaps one could have been under-way.

A Trump trial for election interference in the middle of 2024 would have been a galvanizing force for his base, and likely cause his popularity among like-minded folks to surge and likely help his polling numbers. After all, conservatives love their persecution complexes and already live in a hazy fantasy world where their guy can do no wrong. So this doesn't help Democrats.

If Trump were to be acquitted, this would obviously be credibility kryptonite for Democrats, so that's a bad outcome. And if Trump were to be convicted, I believe there is genuine concern among top Democrats that all the armed crazies (including those in the police, government positions and military) might do a real insurrection this time as opposed to the world's shittiest flash mob.

So what's a cynical Democratic operator to do? Have Smith slow-walk the investigation and take his time to make it immaculate. Have the election without using litigation to get in Trump's way and hope that people don't make a shitty choice. If they do, they'll get what they paid for: another four years of ridiculous chaos. These would represent setbacks and lost ground for Democratic causes, but their patrons will figure out how to make it profitable in the meantime and be there to fund a comeback when the American people become exhausted by the bullshit. Let him burn himself out in the spotlight, further expose himself as a corrupt fool, letting his support curdle naturally rather than fighting him and his supporters at their strongest.

This scenario presumes several deeply horrifying and risky ideas:

1. No one who matters will get hurt in the next four years. Are you rich? Are you a middle-class cis-het-white person? Do you not live in Palestine, Ukraine or Taiwan? You'll ride this out. The poor and the queers have nowhere else to turn, so they'll eat shit and be right back on the Democrat's side next time around (unless they have money, of course).
2. Trump and his cronies will be too inept to dismantle American democracy before the next election.

I'm no card player, but this all seems like a terrible gamble to me.

Call him ‘Daddy’. Everyone calls him Daddy.

https://youtu.be/XQjzt-c6Jy0

Don’t forget about all the breathless coverage they’ve provided about how trans rights are poison for the Democratic platform.

Fuck The Atlantic.

So long, and thanks for all the cheese.

I CAN FEEL IT

https://archive.ph/J5N5S

To be fair, SB1 addresses medical function. Kids would be allowed to receive puberty blockers to address medical diagnosis of precocious puberty, but not to address gender dysphoria. The foundation of the state's argument is that precocious puberty is a legitimate medical condition and gender dysphoria (which they repeatedly and dismissively refer to as "psychological stress") is not.

Never mind that neither lawmakers or "the democratic process" is qualified to, or should be in the business of, determining what is and is not a legitimate medical condition.

I listened to the oral arguments on U.S. v. Skrmetti this morning.

I couldn't express how deeply disappointed I was when Justice Kavanaugh verbally fretted about the "risks" of unintended outcomes as a result of the court's ruling (either way) and the petitioners didn't drill deeply into that concern.

If the court strikes down Tennessee's SB1 law banning gender affirming care for children, there is a risk that a child could receive puberty blockers and later regret it... AFTER specifically requesting it... AFTER getting the consent of their parents... AFTER receiving psychological assessments to ensure that they're aware of the risks and effects... and AFTER finding a medical doctor or endocrinologist willing to prescribe the medication.

If the court upholds the Tennessee law, there is a risk that EVERY child seeking gender affirming care in the state will be prevented from doing so, categorically, with ZERO recourse, regardless of their own wishes, the wishes of their parents, medical care team, and disregards the preponderance of non-biased research on the matter (the Cass Report doesn't count, and the author even argues FOR puberty blockers) that points to overwhelming positive medical outcomes.

These degrees of risk are NOWHERE CLOSE to being equivalent and it's ridiculous to have allowed that reasoning to slide by unaddressed.

If your employer requires you to have a phone for official use, keep it separate from your personal phone; different device, different number, different networks if possible (ie: only let it join your home's guest network). Don't do personal things on your work devices, including logging into personal services, social networks or communication tools.

Bathroom design advice: don’t hang mirrors facing toilets.

There was that whole Duck Tales episode about inflation as well…

https://youtu.be/t_LWQQrpSc4

Ahh the New York Times, never missing an opportunity to throw trans folks under the bus.

Gov. Beshear talks a big game about vetoing anti-LGBTQ legislation, but the article they even link to about it points out (in the headline no less) that every one of those vetoes were overruled (and that doing so is trivial in Kentucky). He is describing a pantomime of concern for the queer community, wrapped in dog-whistle language (“all children are children of God”), while functionally doing as little as possible to actually help them.

This is a lesson for despondent Democrats in how they can softly give up on protecting a persecuted community to get what they want.

As a trans person, I agree the Democratic party’s messaging on trans issues has been lackluster and easy to counter.

The kids sports talking point was so effective because is brought up a good point that blanket trans acceptance hadn’t considered. Testosterone is literally a performance enhancing drug, so maybe going through male puberty makes someone ineligible to compete on a women’s team. That sucks, but in the same way that it sucks that other medical conditions would also keep you off the team. Being trans is not a disability, but the disqualification can be a point of disappointment as opposed to actual injustice.

I’m a late-transitioning trans lady, and I’m willing to concede that. These are the kinds of discussions that I’ve had with conservative family members that are very compelling, but they get bulldozed by broad, non-nuanced talking points that the media slaps against one another.

I’m also not a politician or an expert communicator. It is so frustrating that the people I literally rely on to do those jobs for my benefit are doing this so poorly.

Curious.

I keep a close eye on the job listings posted to Mozilla's job board. They don't post new job openings very often, so I always want to be tuned in when new listing pop up. All of a sudden, a lot of new job openings have appeared for a company that just laid off 36 people...

Oct 30 2024:

• Senior Product Manager, Sync Ecosystem
• Staff Software Engineer - Credential Management

Oct 31 2024:

• Fixed Term PR/Communications Manager

Nov 1 2024:

• Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Gen AI
• Senior Software Engineer, Services
• Staff Test Engineer
• Senior Director of Product, Firefox Growth
• Senior Product Manager, Sync Ecosystem
• Staff Software Engineer, OS Integrations
• Senior Data Engineer
• Client Analytics Manager
• Senior Machine Learning Engineer, øDin GenAI Bug Bounty
• Staff Desktop Systems Specialist
• Staff Fullstack Engineer, Anonym
• Senior Staff Software Engineer, Ads
• Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Fakespot
• Staff Mobile Product Manager

Nov 4 2024:

• Senior Staff Fullstack Engineer, Solo
• Senior Software Engineer
• Senior Staff Product Manager, Search
• Principal Product Manager, Generative AI
• Senior Front-End Engineer, Firefox

Nov 5 2024:

• Staff Technical Program Manager, Firefox Enhancements

Historical blessings from the internet of yore.

I chatted with Boeing strikers about this.

The contract proposal was announced on Halloween, with the strikers getting contract details in a conference call that night (while many were either out trick or treating with their kids or otherwise having fun). The vote was scheduled for Monday, the day before a massively monumental election.

They didn’t get the pensions they wanted most. This entire thing was timed for maximum anxiety and distraction.