zompist bboard

there is at least one well-known biological cause for asexuality, although the exat mechanism isn't known yet afaik

in other news, we are well into the seven months out of the year when i am confined to the indoors. i hope i get that remote job so i can move to fucking alaska.

(i should've gone to med school. apparently they throw enormous amounts of money at you if you agree to spend a few years in places like anchorage. enough money that you'd be able to retire within twenty years at most.)

Nortaneous wrote:we are well into the seven months out of the year when i am confined to the indoors.

The reason being?


JAL

Wut? Can I get a link to that?

You can but it's an article about asexuality day with like 500+ comments in Spanish so I doubt you want it. 99% of the commenters are mentally retarded - you get it all, the asexuals being superhumans, praising of celibacy, "fun" remarks about omg sex is awesome amirite, denial, calling ace youth attention whores, tagging all as bitter virgins, bashing of appearance choice, explaining it away as a hormonal deficit, as a result of trauma [they're definitely not treated as trauma victims are, though xD] etc. Just ask again and I'll look for the link.

there is at least one well-known biological cause for asexuality, although the exat mechanism isn't known yet afaik

You mean the neuro findings thing about the straight (giggity) gyrus? Because I'd say the opposite - we may've found a mechanism, but not the cause (as with, maybe, homosexuality and the hypothalamic centers, tho we need more studies on that too - and better insight, in my own opinion, we should study androphilic tendencies / male homosexuality as a separate phenomenon from gynephilic tendencies / female homosexuality, and as that, tendencies and not monosexual, monolithic and monogenic orientations. There's most likely more than one way for an a brain to arrive at an "orientation" and way less monosexuality we think there is).

(i should've gone to med school. apparently they throw enormous amounts of money at you if you agree to spend a few years in places like anchorage. enough money that you'd be able to retire within twenty years at most.)

Plus disease it's fun! Provided you don't have it. Is it to late for you to enter now?

Have a gratuitous hypopyon:

My current stance on same-sex marriage is: I really wish that it would all get sorted out and stop being an issue. I don't care what the outcome is, since it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I just want the discussions to go away, cos they're not interesting.

It's not even a discussion... it's a struggle. you have the people who want it, pointing out that muh freedom and muh equality and muh justice, and you have the people who don't want it frothing at the mouth about muh book and muh god and muh nature.

don't get me wrong, give 'em the marriage and the adoption and all of it, if you ask me, but it's just not any sort of discussion: It's just people take time to go from " ew homos r groase " to " okay, whatever " to " yeah, why not i guess ". and politicians cater to their sides by fighting over it: they appear all conservative in front of their conservatice constituencies, and they appear all liberal fighting for it in front of their liberal constituencies.

and they won't stop, more generally... once the inevitable happens and homosexuals can wed it'll be the next thing, liberal politicians will need to assert their liberalness and ask for homosexual adoption, or trans bathroom stuff, or something about ace folks or whatever else. and the objections will be the same: muh jaysis plus ew dats groase.

KathAveara wrote:My current stance on same-sex marriage is: I really wish that it would all get sorted out and stop being an issue. I don't care what the outcome is, since it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I just want the discussions to go away, cos they're not interesting.

If you care about human rights and social equality, you WOULD care about the outcomes. It would be a problem if the oppressors succeeded in continuing further social inequality.

KathAveara wrote:My current stance on same-sex marriage is: I really wish that it would all get sorted out and stop being an issue. I don't care what the outcome is, since it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I just want the discussions to go away, cos they're not interesting.

That's how I feel about abortion.

linguoboy wrote:That's how I feel about abortion.

And for that as well, we can quote this:

احمک ارش-ھجنو wrote:If you care about human rights and social equality, you WOULD care about the outcomes. It would be a problem if the oppressors succeeded in continuing further social inequality.

JAL

احمک ارش-ھجنو wrote:

KathAveara wrote:My current stance on same-sex marriage is: I really wish that it would all get sorted out and stop being an issue. I don't care what the outcome is, since it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I just want the discussions to go away, cos they're not interesting.

If you care about human rights and social equality, you WOULD care about the outcomes. It would be a problem if the oppressors succeeded in continuing further social inequality.

But it has no bearing on my life. It is not relevant. I'm not at all interested by it. Is this really such a difficult concept for you to grasp?

KathAveara wrote:But it has no bearing on my life. It is not relevant. I'm not at all interested by it. Is this really such a difficult concept for you to grasp?

It's a human rights issue. Saying you don't care is like saying you don't care about racism because you're caucasian and thus has no bearing on your life. I could say that feminism has no bearing on my life, and I don't care that doing the same job, I earn more than you, and presenting the same arguments, people will believe me more than you, and so on and so forth. The fact is though, that we could all be discriminated against for some reason or another. Discrimination is wrong, and state-sponsored discrimination is the wrongest. That's why you should care about social equality, even if the specific type of equality is not applicable to your situation.


JAL

KathAveara wrote:

احمک ارش-ھجنو wrote:

KathAveara wrote:My current stance on same-sex marriage is: I really wish that it would all get sorted out and stop being an issue. I don't care what the outcome is, since it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I just want the discussions to go away, cos they're not interesting.

If you care about human rights and social equality, you WOULD care about the outcomes. It would be a problem if the oppressors succeeded in continuing further social inequality.

But it has no bearing on my life. It is not relevant. I'm not at all interested by it. Is this really such a difficult concept for you to grasp?

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

jal wrote:

linguoboy wrote:That's how I feel about abortion.

And for that as well, we can quote this:

احمک ارش-ھجنو wrote:If you care about human rights and social equality, you WOULD care about the outcomes. It would be a problem if the oppressors succeeded in continuing further social inequality.

Congratulations on grasping the very point I was trying to make.

jal wrote:

KathAveara wrote:But it has no bearing on my life. It is not relevant. I'm not at all interested by it. Is this really such a difficult concept for you to grasp?

It's a human rights issue. Saying you don't care is like saying you don't care about racism because you're caucasian and thus has no bearing on your life. I could say that feminism has no bearing on my life, and I don't care that doing the same job, I earn more than you, and presenting the same arguments, people will believe me more than you, and so on and so forth. The fact is though, that we could all be discriminated against for some reason or another. Discrimination is wrong, and state-sponsored discrimination is the wrongest. That's why you should care about social equality, even if the specific type of equality is not applicable to your situation.


JAL

Um, what? Being caucasian means that you are part of the racist half of the population, and must therefore make every effort to not be racist. Ditto for being male wrt feminism.

That said, is marriage really a human right? Seems more like a civil right to me.

KathAveara wrote:Um, what? Being caucasian means that you are part of the racist half of the population, and must therefore make every effort to not be racist. Ditto for being male wrt feminism.

Good job at missing the point.

Just because one has not discriminated against anyone ever does not mean that one is not the recipient of privilege which one has benefited from as a result of one's race/ethnic background, sex/gender, sexual orientation, class/social position, etc., even if one is not personally aware of it. This does not require one to be racist, sexist, classist, etc. but rather is a result of benefiting from others' racism, sexism, classism, etc. relative to other individuals (and in the case of social position, from more direct benefits as well). (Note that I do not believe that this results in any sort of collective responsibility, being opposed to the concept as a whole.)

KathAveara wrote:That said, is marriage really a human right? Seems more like a civil right to me.

People have been getting married well before there have been states. And even if it were a civil right, that does not mean that this right should be arbitrarily given to one portion of the populace and denied to a portion of the populace based purely on their sexual orientation.

KathAveara, sure, I get you - it's boring because you're not gay or maybe not interested in marriage, and you don't empathize. I could feel the same for abortion, marriage indeed (because it has no bearing on my life either), racism and feminism, and all kinds of social struggle stemming from religious and ethnocentric bigotry; I just happen not to. Everyone has different priorities and scopes of view. It's true that it's harder to empathize with things one does not directly deal with, personally or through a person who's close - sometimes the very magnitude of the thing cannot be correctly perceived and viscerally felt.

Realize, however, that your opinion on a social "debate" (that as Torco points out is actually a struggle for many people's quality of life) being a nuisance to you because you can't give it the time of the day is akin to a foreign kid trying to call Brazilian Carnival off because it's his naptime and Brazil is too noisy for him. And while you're free to voice it... well, what reaction do you expect? The only feelings you can provoke on people for whom it matters range from pity to anger, and you give off a slightly narcissistic vibe. That being your stance; remember it's just not about you. As for me personally, things I don't care for - I just don't comment on them.

Just remember, nobody really wishes for a disagreement to happen, they just want different things, and it happens. We all wish the debate would go away, just with the sensible outcome.

"Civil rights" vs. "human rights" seems like a spurious distinction to me. What rights could someone possibly be entitled to that weren't entailed by their humanity? Sure marriage as it exists in the U.S. today is something very intertwined with the government which doesn't "naturally" exist, but the things people demand from their governments are only demanded because they're second order rights derived from the first order rights people [believe that they] have by the fact that they are people, such as the right to freely and consensually start and continue relationships with other people. The state says you cannot visit people in the hospital or live with them in certain configurations (among other things) and these regulations significantly complicate people's ability to fulfill the previously mentioned right without good reason, and thus these regulations should not exist. But they should not exist by virtue of what people are free to do based on their humanity. So I don't see how that distinction exists at all, or at least how it's relevant to this conversation.

Travis B. wrote:Just because one has not discriminated against anyone ever does not mean that one is not the recipient of privilege which one has benefited from as a result of one's race/ethnic background, sex/gender, sexual orientation, class/social position, etc., even if one is not personally aware of it. This does not require one to be racist, sexist, classist, etc. but rather is a result of benefiting from others' racism, sexism, classism, etc. relative to other individuals (and in the case of social position, from more direct benefits as well). (Note that I do not believe that this results in any sort of collective responsibility, being opposed to the concept as a whole.)

I'm struggling to understand what the point of this paragraph is. It sounds like you're trying to explain priviledge to me; I know full well I'm priviledged, and I don't need you to tell me so.

Thry wrote:Realize, however, that your opinion on a social "debate" (that as Torco points out is actually a struggle for many people's quality of life) being a nuisance to you because you can't give it the time of the day is akin to a foreign kid trying to call Brazilian Carnival off because it's his naptime and Brazil is too noisy for him. And while you're free to voice it... well, what reaction do you expect? The only feelings you can provoke on people for whom it matters range from pity to anger, and you give off a slightly narcissistic vibe. That being your stance; remember it's just not about you. As for me personally, things I don't care for - I just don't comment on them.

No, I think people giving me flak is not because I want the issue to go away, but because I'm not bothered over the outcome. It's a given now that same-sex marriage will eventually be legalised everywhere, and I don't really care. I just wish it'd hurry up and finish.

KathAveara wrote:

Travis B. wrote:Just because one has not discriminated against anyone ever does not mean that one is not the recipient of privilege which one has benefited from as a result of one's race/ethnic background, sex/gender, sexual orientation, class/social position, etc., even if one is not personally aware of it. This does not require one to be racist, sexist, classist, etc. but rather is a result of benefiting from others' racism, sexism, classism, etc. relative to other individuals (and in the case of social position, from more direct benefits as well). (Note that I do not believe that this results in any sort of collective responsibility, being opposed to the concept as a whole.)

I'm struggling to understand what the point of this paragraph is. It sounds like you're trying to explain priviledge to me; I know full well I'm priviledged, and I don't need you to tell me so.

I was responding to this:

KathAveara wrote:Um, what? Being caucasian means that you are part of the racist half of the population, and must therefore make every effort to not be racist. Ditto for being male wrt feminism.

where you were essentially claiming that we were effectively holding you collectively responsible for racism, sexism, etc.

Travis B. wrote:I was responding to this:

KathAveara wrote:Um, what? Being caucasian means that you are part of the racist half of the population, and must therefore make every effort to not be racist. Ditto for being male wrt feminism.

where you were essentially claiming that we were effectively holding you collectively responsible for racism, sexism, etc.

That is not what I meant there; my intended point was that racism is an issue for all white people, not just those being intentionally racist, and that sexism is an issue for all men, not just those being intentionally sexist. Same-sex marriage, on the other hand, is not my problem. I am neither in a position to enforce nor refute it, nor would I choose to take a side.

And before I get flak about that, too: My present situation is, "People are telling me my religion says it's wrong; other people are telling me my religion is wrong; afaict my religion is rather vague on the matter, but elsewhere it's clear that I'm not to get involved, so I won't." With all the conflicting information, it's rather hard to make an informed choice on the matter. I'm leaning more and more towards "It doesn't say anything specifically on this matter", which gives me even more reason to abstain from making a choice.

Abortion, on the other hand, is not my problem. I am neither in a position to enforce nor refute it, nor would I choose to take a side.

Access to contraception, on the other hand, is not my problem. I am neither in a position to enforce nor refute it, nor would I choose to take a side.

Equal pay for equal work, on the other hand, is not my problem. I am neither in a position to enforce nor refute it, nor would I choose to take a side.

Etc.

Ok, so I worded that really badly. What else is new? I feel you do kind of know what I'm trying to say, though.

KathAveara wrote:Ok, so I worded that really badly. What else is new? I feel you do kind of know what I'm trying to say, though.

Yup. "I got mine, so screw you."

KathAveara wrote:Ok, so I worded that really badly. What else is new? I feel you do kind of know what I'm trying to say, though.

Unfortunately, you've made it a little too clear. When you say

racism is an issue for all white people, not just those being intentionally racist, and that sexism is an issue for all men, not just those being intentionally sexist.

you recognize that justice is for everyone— whites and men shouldn't dismiss it by saying "It's not my problem". Then you explicitly go on to say that homophobia isn't your problem. So gays and lesbians deserve some justice (I'm certainly not hearing that you disapprove of them) but not as much as people of color or women.

If the bit about religion refers to Christianity, I understand that it's weird to get conflicting messages from different groups you repect. I'd suggest to you, though, that homophobia is much more cultural than religious in origin. I wrote a bit about this years ago. (Long enough ago that the political situation has dramatically changed, but the religious bits are still relevant.) Plus, there were Christians who were just as sure that sexism and racism were actually mandated by God.

I just had a highly unproductive Reddit argument with a smug jackass that ended with him stopping the conversation all of a sudden, calling me a pedo, and then patronizingly wishing that I had the common sense to get treatment before I boink a kid (never mind that I don't want to boink kids in the first place). Unfortunately this being Reddit I can't really do much about it besides just tell him to stop slandering me for no good reason.

Chagen wrote:I just had a highly unproductive Reddit argument with a smug jackass that ended with him stopping the conversation all of a sudden, calling me a pedo, and then patronizingly wishing that I had the common sense to get treatment before I boink a kid (never mind that I don't want to boink kids in the first place). Unfortunately this being Reddit I can't really do much about it besides just tell him to stop slandering me for no good reason.

Reddit is pure evil.