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Can I just quickly remind everyone that the word "biotruths" pretty much only refers to evolutionary psychology (which is near as dammit pseudoscience) - it doesn't invalidate established psychology/neuropsych (for instance, the finding that children have inherently worse decision-making skills is actually a good argument for age of consent laws etc.)

It's only tangentially related to the thread but I feel like I should point it out anyway.

Sucker refers to an unweaned mammal that still sucks on its mother's teats. It, and it's use to refer to someone naive, long predates any notion of "suck" meaning fellatio.

But there is no connection between "heretic" and "homosexual" - at least as it relates to the word faggot etymologically. Read near the end of this page:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=faggot&allowed_in_frame=0

[Spoilers in case anyone is planning on reading HPMOR]

I have to say that you're badly misrepresenting that part of the story. It's not 'later' shown to be an illustration of how magical britain is a completely fucked up society, it's immediately shown as such. Draco explains his plan, and the very next line is:

> A cold chill was coming over Harry, a chill that came with instructions to keep his voice and face normal. Note to self: Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience.

On learning how Magical Britain is well and truly a rape culture, he immediately resolves to overthrow it entirely. He then ensures that Draco will not carry out the plan by saying he wants to marry Luna one day, which is just about the only way to stop Draco without losing his trust, which is something he needs to get things done, since Draco is potentially so powerful. But he thinks "all I've just bought is time, and not too much of it... For one girl. Not for others.". He doesn't make friends with Draco, he works to reform him, eventually breaking his belief in 'blood purism', hence stopping him from growing into a racist rapist demagogue like the Heir of Slytherin is expected to be.

Harry, the hero of the story, responds not with your "What the fuck..", but with "I am going to tear apart your pathetic little magical remnant of the Dark Ages into pieces smaller than its constituent atoms.". And then he sets about actually doing it. His position is exactly like SRS, except concerned not with pointing out the problem but with actually fixing it.

I suggest people read the chapter itself before passing judgement.

Well, kind of, if you consider the construction of the term. It's often used to characterize beliefs/behaviors that are harmful to women. But if you look at the origin of the term, it literally meant one who hates women.

If you treat that sense as the only definition, it really is used figuratively in a lot of applications -- a lot of behavior we'd call misogynistic is motivated not by literal hatred of women, but by ignorance and selfishness and general societal conditioning.

But here, they really do seem to openly and explicitly hate women.

Sad part: internet jerk Aaroned a writer's father in an attempt to make her feel bad about feeling good about herself.

Sadder part: writer receives so much abuse daily that it's a part of the background noise of her life.

Redeeming part: writer gets a job at GQ, trolls were unsuccessful.

Lindy West is a braver person than I am.

Oh geez, it seems that way. I looked at their etymologies, though, and they appear to be unrelated.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ninny&allowed_in_frame=0

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=piccaninny&allowed_in_frame=0

>There are girls downloading Lulu, and with gusto: After an invitation-only launch held for both Florida State University and the University of Florida, 60,000 female students had the app

Indeed.

Disclaimer: I'm a dude, so there's that.

I've noticed it a bit. I think the Repub-hate is strong with the election. It will come roaring back. It's already making a comeback as we speak. Funny enough, demographic maps and exit polls show that reddit should have got it's hate boner on for white men. Too bad that didn't happen.

White redditors are always more sympathetic to overtly racist messages right after a racially charged crime takes place. Hate groups like Stormfront are aware of this and seize the opportunity to flood Reddit with hateful messages. Take a look at their Swormfront forum, if you can stomache it (TW: nazi propgananda). If you look around in there you will actually see them encouraging each other to share some of the same images and videos that have been on Reddit's front page this week.

Majromax is spot-on about the problems as a currency. I do think there is one thing that's very good about Bitcoin — in order to create it, the original author had to solve an important problem that hadn't really been solved before:

> To elaborate: Bitcoin isn't just a currency but an elegant universal solution to the Byzantine Generals' Problem, one of the core problems of reaching consensus in Distributed Systems. Until recently it was thought to not be practically solvable at all, much less on a global scale.

and

> "I agree with Andreessen that Bitcoin is the first practical, large-scale mechanism to deal with the problem of decentralizing trust—no parties need know each other nor trust each other for transactions to complete successfully, verifiably, and irrevocably. I also agree completely with Andreessen that Bitcoin can be used for an enormous number of non-currency related purposes in which permanent, irreversible proofs of transactions are required."

After seeing the responses in these posts, I think I'll give it a pass. It isn't any better than reddit in regards to trans* issues.

And "fool" isn't ableist?

Better watch yourself, a lot of insults used to refer to the mentally handicapped in the past.

>late 13c., "silly or stupid person," from O.Fr. fol "madman, insane person; idiot; rogue; jester," also "blacksmith's bellows," also an adj. meaning "mad, insane" (12c., Mod.Fr. fou), from L. follis "bellows, leather bag"

Believe it or not, Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations," is a pretty good place to start. Since he is known as the father of capitalism he is generally assumed to be a complete free market, lassiez faire kind of guy. However, this is generally overstated as today he would be more in line with left leaning capitalism as opposed to far right capitalism. His description of basic market transactions was really just a description of how the average person reacts to one another when trading and I have found to be true in 90% of all transactions.

They probably didn't cheat on their spouses, at least not through that site. If almost all of of the real accounts were men and if most users were straight then... maybe they met a sex worker on the site or something but probably did not successfully have an affair.

According to this about 85% the accounts were men. But if we discount the site's own bait accounts, sex workers making accounts to meet clients and women / divorce lawyers signing up to check if men are on there, I bet the fraction of actual users who were women seeking affairs was insignificant.

It's like those 'meet hot singles in [city geolocation]' ads. Because tons of attractive young women are just dying for random NSA sex with what ever middle aged men happen to be nearby, and they have to resort to the internet to find them...

It was a scam playing on people's fears, optimism and overestimation of their sexual prospects. Scams like this will probably always work because hope springs eternal.

Feeble

Fee·ble   [fee-buhl] Show IPA adjective, -bler, -blest. 1. physically weak, as from age or sickness; frail. 2. weak intellectually or morally: a feeble mind.

Feeble can be both Ableist and ageist.

>Don't say "buttsmear". It's not becoming. Say...

"asshole" or "dickwad".

~TankGirl

Wouldn't your go to of jackass be dehumanizing to a person? Looking at the second definition, it appears to abelist as well. And isn't dehumanization fall in line with the concept of microagressions?

Why does this distinction matter at all? If we care about intent, then either way we have the intent to kill innocent people. If we only care about consequences, then either way we have dead innocent people. Why does it matter in the slightest whether killing the family members was her goal? It does not matter. The collateral damage defense doesn't hold water. It is just a supposed way to justify any and all killing.

But it turns out that this irrelevant distinction isn't even real. Hillary Clinton personally authorized the assassination of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the son of Anwar al-Awlaki. He was killed by a missile launched at the cafe he was eating at. This is the targeted killing of a family member of a designated terrorist.

That's a very narrow definition of "hard."

But it is interesting that you chose dominantly-male professions to be the definition of "hard."

Also, soldier, police officer, and fire fighter are nowhere near the most dangerous jobs when defined as you have, by workplace deaths. In 2011 in the U.S., one percent of workplace fatalities were police officers, one percent were armed forces, and three percent were fire fighters.

It is actually much more dangerous to be a fisher, logger, airline pilot or garbage collector. Those are the professions with the highest workplace fatality rate.

By your definition, fisher, pilot, logger, or garbage collector is a much, much harder job than police officer or fire fighter.

Well, it's originally from the word "wacky," which I feel runs more along the lines of "eccentric," though "crazy" is also a meaning. According to the internet, however, the word wacky comes from "whacky," which meant a fool—

>probably ultimately from whack, "a blow, stroke," from the notion of being whacked on the head one too many times.

So, yeah, that actually sounds kind of problematic. Even if it hasn't been used in a slur-y way for the past hundred years, it sounds like it started rather cruelly.

> Actor was the term originally for someone who acts. But then when women joined, they decided they needed an alternate phrase to differentiate (which I think is dumb but they did it).

'Man' originally meant 'person'; if you wanted to specify that you refering to a female person in Old English you said 'wifman', which eventually became 'woman'. So that etymology is exactly analoguous to the generic 'man', though not the generic 'he'; Old English actually had a neuter form of 'he' ('hit').

I think the argument for the male role is simple; men have to be part of the solution, since they are the problem. Feminism isn't something that can be done to men; they have to accept it and be part of it for it to achieve it's aims.

Does this have to be a strict academically styled paper? I wrote my recent dissertation in a personal, flowing prose style to fit the subject matter. I found that much more flexible in tackling difficult subject matter where point of view is important.

I had a prologue which was purely first person narrative, to set the scene for the rest of the writing, and an epilogue which was the same to tie things up. The two chapters acting as 'book-ends'. Each middle chapter took a theme and an argument, using examples or talking points from a succession of connected personal experiences, forming a story. Similar to the structure of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where the narrator goes on a motorcycle trip with his son, explaining points of philosophy to him along the way, as a way of telling the reader about philosophy in a more personal and enjoyable way.

I got a distinction (highest grade) for it which I was v happy about :)

Here's the whole paper on Google Docs. It also includes an analysis of radical feminist critiques of (and common defenses of) BDSM. BIG DISCLAIMER: I wrote this a couple years ago, for a college course, so it reeks to high heaven of "undergraduate who thinks she knows everything."

I was actually just being snarky about the way in which he/she worded it. My major problem with the whole premise is that it's predicated on bad data. MRI studies on the brain can help us pin down what areas of the brain get excited during sex/arousal/moments of love etc. The point I want him/her to try and figure the fuck out on his/her own is that this 1960's mentality of how men and women's arousal and responses of love works is inaccurate and outdated. We can actually see that the same areas of the brain get excited in both men and women when 'love' is felt - and ironically? It's the same area that lights up when you get rewarded with money for something. "Love" is a reward system for both genders, not moreso women than men, BOTH GENDERS.

So getting all into how men and women fundamentally process emotion differently is inaccurate and outdated nonsense.

The difference in IQ variance between genders could account for some of the over representation of males in STEM fields. There is a theory supported by some evidence (here is one example: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886906000420) that has shown that the variance in male IQs is higher, which means at both the high and low end of IQs there will be a higher ratio of men than women. In fields like hard STEM that can require significant intelligence to succeed, the gender ratios of people with IQs over 130 or 140 could be a contributing factor to the ratios seen in these areas.

Did you know that Black students who are asked to identify their race before taking a test actually perform worse than those who are not asked to do this? It's called stereotype threat.

Amazing how popular all of this recycled Daniel Patrick Moynihan, pathologizing Black culture (such a slippery concept), Dinesh D'Souza explanations are. Wouldn't it be wonderfully convenient for White Americans if all the undeniable inequality, exclusion, and oppression actually wound up being Black people's fault? Apparently.

Your overall point is good, but just to make a minor nitpick for complete accuracy, Japanese doesn't have gendered pronouns, at least not in the sense that you are implying. The same speaker will use the same words whether they are referring to a man or a woman (there is no switch from "him" to "her" as in English).

The Japanese language is (mildly) gendered in a totally different way. Though the gender of the people being talked about doesn't matter, the gender of the speaker does matter (not just the gender, but also the relative social standing between the speaker and listener in addition to a whole other host of factors alter word choice and conjugation patterns in Japanese). Women tend to use more "polite" or "formal" speech patterns and pronouns, while men tend to use "rough" or "arrogant" speech patterns and words.

So while it is true that there are male and female variants of the pronoun I or me, the only way to translate a distinction between he and she into Japanese would be to use phrases like that man and that woman, because the pronouns themselves are gender neutral for the topic being spoken of.

I dont have a definite answer for you, but there's a book called The Shock Doctrine that goes into a lot of details, with a left leaning bias, about free market principles and how international corporation involvement in development nations completely fucks the local's economy and inflicts massive social damage.

It's not correcting you on your opinion; it's correcting you on the definition of the term "pro-life," which is as follows:

> Advocating the legal protection of human embyos and fetuses, especially by favoring the outlawing of abortion on the ground that it is the taking of a human life.

It is inherently about legal rights. "Pro-choice" and "pro-life" are binary terms that refer to an opinion about the legalization of abortion. If you would not have an abortion personally but believe you and other women have he right to make that choice, you are by definition not pro-life. It's very simple, but also very important - using the terms incorrectly, which is common, encourages a misunderstanding of the issue (which is not an issue of whether abortion is a good thing or not).

It's not an attack - it's just that words have meanings, and you can't decide on your own to use a term however you like. It's the same as people who say, "I'm a humanist" to say they believe in equal rights for men and women or as a counterpoint to feminism, when actually a humanist is "a secularist" or "someone interested in literature, history, art, philosophy, etc." It's just not what it means, and pointing out you used a term incorrectly is not an attack on your opinion.

I'm just following your logic here based on your choice to not use body shaming words, but then you tell a person they're not even human, "<strong>A male donkey or ass is called a jack, a female a jenny</strong> or jennet;[3][4][5] a young donkey is a foal.[5] Jack donkeys are often used to produce mules. Like the word bitch for a woman you're calling her a dog used for breeding.

> I believe you're mistaken about the digit ratio.

Sorry I couldn't get you an open access citation, but the finding is indeed that transwomen have digit ratios comparable to ciswomen rather than cismen. If you're curious, I could send you a pdf tomorrow when I'm on campus.

I'm not suggesting that we're presently capable of sequencing a genome and reporting whether its owner is trans (although there do appear to be several alleles that we can directly implicate, and others whose involvement we could infer through their effects in gross neuroanatomical development). By comparison, we are unable to identify any "definitively distinguishable" genetic test for "tallness" without doubting that tallness is heritable. I don't think there's much doubt about the broad outlines of the claim that transgender identity is at least highly predisposed by confluence of genetic and developmental factors. I only bring up the example of transfolk in order to point out the implausibility of the view that gender is purely socially constructed: even when sex and gender don't line up, they are most often reversed in ways that are consilient with genetics and dev bio.

> As for turner syndrome, I am given to understand 75% of inactivated X chromosomes are paternal in origin, which seems to indicate that there is selection advantage towards maternal X chromosomes in females(since they are not inactivated in genetically normal males)

Does this cast doubt on the view that maternal Xs should be "optimized" for sons? All David Skuse's theory requires, I think, is an unopposed X in males, and X-inactivation in females. Selection pressure need not be large in order to exert an effect.

It was recently pointed out to me that "fool" has ableist roots.

>late 13c., &quot;silly or stupid person,&quot; from O.Fr. fol &quot;madman, insane person; idiot; rogue; jester,&quot; also &quot;blacksmith's bellows,&quot; also an adj. meaning &quot;mad, insane&quot; (12c., Mod.Fr. fou), from L. follis &quot;bellows, leather bag&quot; (see follicle); in V.L. used with a sense of &quot;windbag, empty-headed person.&quot; Cf. also Skt. vatula- &quot;insane,&quot; lit. &quot;windy, inflated with wind.&quot;

is this the complete study?

I might read it tomorrow, but considering you summarized it for me, maybe not lol.

I'm talking about the fact that instead of there being conventional border controls between Gaza and Israel, there's military checkpoints and the only way to cross them is to either be a journalist or have the approval of the Israeli government. Also interestingly enough Gaza is without a functional airport with it having been carpet-bombed into the ground on several occasions!

Feeling rather confused about this exchange, I decided to take a look at the definitions of <em>normal</em> on the dictionary.

> Please explain how your logic differs from: > > "He's not being transphobic. He's just saying some people a cisgendered, which he just happened to call normal."

The meaning of normal in the context of your example is this:

> adj. 2. Biology Functioning or occurring in a natural way; lacking observable abnormalities or deficiencies.

On the other hand, I think the meaning of normal in the context of the original comment is this:

> n. 2. The usual or expected state, form, amount, or degree.

I am still convinced that this is all just a misunderstanding.

edit: formatting

My point is that it's not a strawman to say that many people think that man is solely responsible for rape even when both parties are intoxicated, and the man could even be convicted of rape in that scenario. That's not always the case but it can happen.

No precise information, but:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=politically+correct&amp;allowed_in_frame=0

This lists the first textual citation, though of course it's clear from the form that the term was in use before that.

The tactic I was referring to was telling a person with Asperger's traits to obey a rule that doesn't exist. I am not aware of a typo in my post. I thought the second "that" clearly referred back to the prior sentence. And, even though you didn't address it in your response, I really am dead serious about Rule IX being a huge potential trigger for people who have been bullied as children. I can't understand how a feminist space would tolerate joking like that about stalking someone and using coercion and physical violence and humiliation against them.

It's clear from your response that you don't really have any solid understanding about what Asperger's is, or how Asperger's-type traits can affect social communication. Here are some links to help you out with that. I can tell you that if you are interacting on the internet, where there is a higher-than-average density of people with Asperger's, the great majority of them male (because Asperger's affects males disproportionately), and you don't have an understanding of this, you are going to feel like a lot of men are being disrespectful and argumentative when that is not always what is going on at all.

I understand that there is probably nothing that can be done to fix this particular conversation at this point. But please, do try to be more aware of what reasonable and unreasonable expectations are for communication when dealing with people who let you know that they have possible Asperger's or autism spectrum issues. Otherwise you will both end up frustrated and angry with each other.

I now wonder whether you wrote any of your original post...

I clearly distinguished between arrest and incarceration (two different things). Please read this in order to understand the distinction.

When I wrote arrested, I meant arrested. Then I switched to incarceration rates, which are even more biased against black juveniles.

Please re-read my post when you're finished being offended and realize that nearly every point I make supports your original (first paragraphs) assertions, just not as bad as it is made out to be.

No, listen.

That symbol is like a slur to me because of it's horrid history, but it was stolen. It was flat out appropriated from other cultures. We, as a society, don't get to decide how others from those cultural backgrounds use that symbol. It would be my wish that someone from a culture where it has religious connotations would be cognizant of it's history in the west and act accordingly, but it's not my place to put that on them.

It's not equal if you, from the west, go wearing a hypothetical symbol that's been similarly appropriated because of India's history under British rule

(I apologize for the weakish source. If you're interested I may be able to locate a print one)

>he also wrote the poker scene, which is nothing short of brilliant.

I think that scene is a real stinker. There are plenty of good reasons not to use the word faggot that don't rely on some hokey false etymology.

Laissez faire capitalism aka neoliberalism does lead to that outcome.

I lean towards Friedman's view of capitalism that he laid out in Capitalism and Freedom. The role of government should be to regulate negative externalities of free markets, not to run the markets. Our current system is a shitty blend of that and neoliberalism with one foot in both camps and the benefits of neither.

I have always kind of went back and forth with the same thing. I recently moved from a larger city to a small southern Illinois town and it's insane the amount of racism that stems from a very large, uneducated and poor population. I feel bad that it comes from a long lineage of just being ignorant and passing it along to family but that's also not really an excuse. I've known plenty of people who come from a racist background and even people who grew up very poor and they made the conscious decision to be different and compassionate towards all people.

You should read "Hillbilly Elegy" (link here ) the author grew up in what most call "white trash" household - poor, uneducated, drug use etc. he made the decision to change his future and end up differently and he went to Yale and became a lawyer ( and also a liberal) The book is good too because it goes into depth into that demographic of poor, uneducated and racists, how it all started and how it keeps continuing (and probably will continue forever, unfortunately).

I would also check out Why Parties? by Jonathan Aldrich. It's been a long time since I read it, so I don't feel comfortable summarizing it at the time, but it's supposedly one of the better books out there to explain how political parties came about.