This isn’t anticapitalist, in fact the person speaking says he considers lack of distribution less bad than we have good, but it really puts things into perspective, especially what I’ve been talking about with Jeff Bezos.
The most important part in my opinion is CEO pay and how out of whack it is with actual effort.
So I’m a phlebotomist. And sometimes, I work at a site that is directly adjacent to an endocrinologist. Which means I see and take blood from a lot of folks that are trans, or nonbinary, or gender nonconforming.
Do you have any fucking idea how easy it is, in customer-service speak, to respect someone’s gender?
I mean, I’ve had super awkward situations where I have to say things like ‘I’m sorry, that name isn’t coming up in our system. Is there another name…“ And without fail they provide their deadname and I plug it in and I say ‘Ok, that came up, do you want me to fix that in our system?” And they say ‘Yes’ and then I ADD IT AS A SYNOMYMOUS NAME. Same as I would for someone recently married or divorced. The end.
I have never experienced a situation in which I have felt motivated to ask someone’s pronouns.
I have had situations in which I have thought to myself ‘I have no idea if this person is ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ and instead have gone ‘Next patient please?’ or ‘I can help who’s next’ or ‘I can help you now’ while looking directly at them.
I have had situations where I’ve gone ‘I’m like 90% certain that I’ve been given a record with this person’s deadname because this name does not match at all the gender presentation of the person I’m looking at’ And I say ‘Ok, can you spell your last name for me? Ok, spell your first name? And your date of birth?’
and then I quietly write ‘preferred name [the name they just spelled] on the top of thier record.
THIS IS NOT HARD.
And if this is not hard for me, as a person working in medicine who has to make certain that the person I’m talking to is the same person on the medical record that I’m looking up, how much easier must it be for, say, a barista who doesn’t give half a fuck who you are? I’ve BEEN a barista in the past. If a Barista is asking your pronouns, that person is an asshole.
Things like this are why “always ask pronouns” doesn’t sit right with me.
There are communities where it makes sense to ask. I’m not saying there aren’t!
But there are also lots of environments where asking doesn’t come off as “yeah so I think it’s totally fine for trans ladies to rock beards <3” but rather comes off as “I’ve clocked you and I want everyone in earshot to know this.”
Would most Americans have a problem with this, though?
I mean, at this point? Really?
Honestly. No, I wouldn’t have a problem with this.
Same. Totally not a problem with me at this point. Anything has to be better than the present.
At least The Queen doesn’t go mental on Twitter.
BRING BACK THE EMPIRE!
Not to mention that sweet healthcare and education deal!
PLUS PLUS PLUS!!!! Everyone on this continent could be in Hogwarts HP movies cause we’d all be BRITISH!!!! JACKPOT!!!!
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, we need to oppress Harry Potter fans so they don’t say dumb shit like “monarchy is good” and “bring back the empire”
A: Monarchy IS good.
B: The Empire SHOULD be brought back.
C: Donald Trump is not a bad president.
D: Prince Harry probably won’t ever be king, and neither will his children, so it’s a moot point.
english human pet mans have no say in this discussion
Why not?
(also, I’m not English)
YOU ARENT?
Fuckin what
I was born in England, but many of my family is Scottish, and I’ve lived most of my life in Scotland.
the reason why publications like the NYT put out these weird profile pieces on white supremacists and drone on and on about how they are just “regular run of the mill average” people is because it’s actually fascinating to these always-white and always-liberal journalists that these nazis can be so shockingly like them. they’re obsessed with why people who are so similar to them in every way (i.e. middle class, well-educated, typical household-of-america) would choose to promote so much violence against racialized people.
every one of those articles scream “i’m not like this…so why are you?” because these pretentious, clueless Ivy league brats are so befuddled why white people so identical to them could be so hateful.
it’s never surprising to anyone living a life of marginalization that the nazi next door likes typical shit like Friends or onion rings but these journalists obsess over it. their assumption is always that nazis and white supremacists and racists are these clear-cut monsters that they have nothing in common with, and their main concern is the ability to feel safe about being different from them.
no matter how educated they are, white people literally cannot fathom white supremacy as a constant, everlasting component in the organizational fibre of eurocentric societies – it’s always “fringe” or some other distant ideology they have nothing to do with – “those guys over there are the problem”
so when they’re confronted with this truth that, actually, white supremacists have always been their uncles, husbands, girlfriends and cousins, it feels like a 100% novel discovery to them and that’s why they write those fucking essays about Nate the white supremacist like they’ve just unearthed some new and riveting truth about humankind
Speaking as a middle-class white person, I think a big reason for this attitude is that it enables a lack of self-examination. The second you accept that white supremacists are ‘like you’ you have to acknowledge that you could be like them, and specifically that the beliefs you’ve been defending in yourself and your loved ones as harmless are actually toxic.
I grew up with people who have utterly poisonous evil beliefs, and because of where and how I was raised, some of them are people I care about, people who’ve helped me out innumerable times. It’s a hard thing to mature and realise that these people you love believe horrible things. It’s much easier to tell yourself that the people who actually do damage are different, they’re monsters, and therefore just because your auntie won’t shop somewhere because “it’s full of Pakis” that doesn’t mean she’s doing harm or a bad person. She’s not like those monsters. How can she be when she treats me well?
It was easier for me (even as a middle class rural white person surrounded by only other white people) because I’m queer. I saw how homophobic some of these people are because it’s something I’m looking for, so I’d had my illusions shattered. But if you don’t have any reason to look for prejudice in the people around you, it’s very very very easy to let yourself believe that it’s not there.
It’s a natural tendency among all groups I think to tell ourselves that people who do evil are in some way different, special and identifiable because realising they’re just like us means realising that maybe they are us. It’s just that most groups have their realisations in private, while middle-class white people do it in national newspapers.
“From the way in which they organized their settlements, even the very clothes they wore, it’s painfully obvious that they were indeed huge a–holes,” said lead researcher Janice Maytawashing.
Note: Most of this was a reply to a separate thread (here). But I want it to have its own place in my archive.
My mother was a newspaper reporter for several small-town papers for a
few years before she died,* and, through her, I learned that the
Headline department of a newspaper is almost completely separate from
the reporting.
At the papers she worked for, reporters had no
control over what the ultimate headline at the top of their story would
be.
…And yet, the reporters would get blamed for biased, inaccurate
journalism, when people would read the headline and not what the
reporters themselves had actually written.
She loved reporting; she said it was the best job in the world (”It’s great!” she said. “You get to go to all the most important and interesting events, and talk to all the most interesting people. And then, you tell everyone else about it!”).
But the headline writers brought her no end of frustration.
You know… Just something to keep in mind when parsing stuff on the Internet: read beyond the headline. And if you’re going to accuse someone of “fake news,” make sure it’s the right people.
*(this
was when the era of small-town papers was coming to an end, and several
of her employers went into bankruptcy in quick succession)
My biological father was also in journalism, but as the editor/publisher, he was probably one of the bastards slapping biased, inaccurate headlines on otherwise-solid reporting.
My condolences…
Mother did say that while it may be that most reporters tend to be liberal, most publishers tend to be conservative. So the end result is that the news we get is usually more politically centrist than either side is usually willing to admit.
And also: if people on both sides of an issue complained that her reporting was biased in favor of the other side (which, being a small town newspaper reporter, people coming up to her and telling her what they thought of her story, the day after it came out, was fairly common), she probably came as close to “the truth” as was possible for one person.
People being at risk of institutionalization thanks to home care funding cuts is not a new thing at all here, BTW. There’s also been enough squabbling over what social care local authorities and the NHS are supposed to be responsible for to begin with, as all the budgets continue getting slashed. The situation just keeps putting more people in danger, though.
That particular article sounded like it was a much more recent problem, rather than a continuing and accelerating one thanks to the austerity rubbish.
(Not even adding some of the ranting I want to right now. Because Sanity Watchers Points.)
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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