If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.

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Cake day: April 30th, 2024

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  • So what you’re saying is that the reality isn’t bad enough so we need to make shit up and exaggerate everything? Because I disagree with that. I think things are bad enough that you can just be truthful about it, and lying is actually counterproductive because it discredits legitimate criticism.

    Like if you want to talk about concentration camps, we’ve already got them for undocumented migrants.



  • In the US, things have improved a lot and there are informed consent clinics where you can go to a clinic and sign a document saying you know what you’re doing and get a prescription for estradiol (not sure about T). Obviously things are very dicey politically, and some doctors are still shitty, but generally the medical/scientific consensus is on our side, and recognizes that it’s better for people to get meds through a legitimate doctor/pharmacy as opposed to more sketchy online stuff.

    I only say this because I hesitated to look into it because I’d heard horror storirs about medical gatekeeping, but when I actually looked into it it was much easier than expected.


  • I’m not an anarchist but I’d like to elaborate on your question.

    In a competitive economy (big disclaimer), especially in the case of plumbing which has a low barrier to entry, you and the plumber don’t have a significant power differential. You need a plumber, but you don’t need that specific plumber, and the plumber needs customers but they don’t need you specifically. If a bunch of plumbers got together and said they won’t work for you, it wouldn’t be too hard for someone to learn the trade and break the monopoly, in the same way, you could try to boycott the plumber, but they could just find other customers.

    But that’s in the theoretical case of like, the free market actually working. There are lots of ways in which it can go wrong. If the barriers to entry are higher, then it’s easier to form a monopoly, and in some industries that barrier is naturally higher (say, microchip production), and it’s also possible to raise the barrier of entry if an entity gets powerful enough to influence policy - for example, if you had to obtain an expensive license to be allowed to practice plumbing. So it’s really two questions: is trade inherently explotative, and is trade potentially exploitative?

    Boycotts are sometimes idolized as a way to prevent bad behavior without the involvement of the state. But this is problematic for two reasons. The first being that boycotts are difficult to organize and only sometimes effective. The second is that to the extent that they are effective, they’re not always used to do good things. To use an example, we can look at the Jim Crow South. If I own a business in a town full of racists, and I try to run my business in a non-racist way, then I’m alienating a bunch of my racist customers and racist businesses may refuse to serve or do business with me, until I go bankrupt or am forced out of town. This problem was only solved through federal intervention through the Civil Rights Act.

    Under those circumstances, it’s difficult for me to imagine how anarchism could work. As a trans person from the southern US, decentralization and giving power back to local communities sounds nice on paper, but like, have you seen these communities? Have you looked at what they’ve done historically when federal authority was looser? Who is poised to take power in those regions in the event of the abolition of the federal government?

    That doesn’t mean that anarchism is fundamentally unworkable everywhere, though. It just means that you have to evaluate the actually existing material and social conditions and figure out what can be done where based on that.



  • Partially true. I didn’t vote for Stein (I voted PSL), but the Green party is ideologically closer to leftists than the major parties. It’s kind of the same on the other side for the Libertarian party, there are more Republicans and non-voters with Libertarian beliefs than there are people who vote Libertarian. Stein herself does seem like something of an opportunist, but she doesn’t rely on the same kind of niche cult of personality that Tulsi has built for herself. Most people just know of Stein through the Green party, which does represent various legitimate beliefs.

    The policies that we on the left advocate for have the potential to reach a wider audience than just people who are already ideologically committed. By running on a platform that would materially benefit people, it’s easier to make the case that people should support the left, regardless of who they are or how they view themselves politically. You’re free to write off people like me, but it’s not as if we’re the only ones who like having healthcare, for instance.

    Tulsi is one of countless odious personalities that carve out one specific sliver of the population and speak to them exclusively, and fixate on tiny bits of information that support a narrative that’s completely out of line with the broader truth. “If you’re anti-war, you should vote Republican. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, calling for ever more exorbitant military spending, saber-rattling with everyone, conducting assassinations and bombing campaigns. And pay no attention to the fact that I myself was on Fox News attacking Obama from the right for not being aggressive enough in the War on Terror, and literally described myself as a hawk regarding it.”

    She is part of a pipeline that takes people with valid, left-leaning criticisms of the Democratic party and convinces them to accept the Republicans as an alternative, despite them being worse in every respect. She’s absolute scum, and she discredits people like me, who actually are anti-war, not just when it means criticizing the Democrats. I will always call out her and her ridiculous little fanclub, who have clearly never read an actual goddamn book in their lives. And the same goes for people like Jimmy Dore and Jackson Hinkle too.