I think it’s a lot more black and white being trans than people realize and I have my own pet theories about what gender euphoria /dysphoria is that I observe as being two independent factors.

Half of the problem I think in reaching people is that the vast majority of cis people don’t have an observed internal gender preference. We are trying to build empathy with something we as trans people assume they have too - but maybe only a small minority of cis people experience it. I don’t think we actually understand cis people, we just assume a bunch of things about them using trans people as a false opposite.

Thing is… If I am correct, the assumed massive earth shaking regret of what would happen if a cis person went through gender reassignment… Is they might just adapt and be fine.

I have pointed out to people before that trans women athletes in practice tend to not outperform all women in the sport. The data we have puts them as no more competitive as women with naturally high testosterone and depending on sport can actually be at a disadvantage…

But there’s another underlying assumption. You assume your athlete went through masculinizing puberty first and then a female puberty second. If you skip that first step then you don’t see major differences of frame, weight distribution or muscle mass.

Where this stings is that laws are forcing people to go through that first puberty regardless of the wishes of the paitent, the patients families, the paitents doctors and the concensus of the medical associations of those doctors… And then the government sits back and demonizes those people based on their physicality as a logistical social problem for the rest of their lives and ostracizes them based on this logic.

Athletes squew young. If you allowed through trans athletes who went through the transition process young enough or looked at sport with trans populations and statistically assessed whether any excessive advantage was afforded and allow in those instances where none was found you could solve for any statistical stand out issues within a decade…

But no, we are having this inane conversation because it suits some government parties to make people feel that trans people are a threat or a problem that must be stopped and that there is zero reasonable inclusion policies.

It isn’t that there’s tons of trans athletes… It’s that even at fairly low levels of sport there are currently more options available to people with disabilities to participate then there are of people of intersex and trans backgrounds. In a lot of cases tracking performances of trans athletes they aren’t dominating. There’s stories of transfem athletes who regularly sit around getting 15th place but after coming in first one time the entire sporting becomes hostile to trans people.

In civil rights discussions there’s a concept of rights of participation. The concept being that being barred from social, political or recreational spheres creates outsized harms on the ability to make the advantageous connections others are given free access to and creates classes of segregation.

There’s also a catch 22 situation. If someone opts to go through a trans puberty instead of a natal one there is no meaningful difference to speak of between the physicality of trans athletes and cis ones. If forced to stay inside their original sex segregated sport not only are trans people being being told in no uncertain terms that society does not accept their new status regardless of parity, they essentially become isolated inside the sporting body. Either you have someone whose body is feminine placed in a sport with only cis males to be compared to or you have a masculine body placed inside a group with all cis women and both will be framed out of being taken at all seriously inside the entire body of that sport. A lot of trans people can’t participate in sport not because they aim to be picked for any of the social leg ups excellence in sport provides… But for any of the regular benefits of just participating.

It creates a fair sting to have a government force your choice of initial puberty that neither you or your doctors and parents thought was a good idea… and then sit back and watch the rest of society constantly punish and isolate you for going through that puberty by then treating you as a logistical social problem for the rest of your life.

Segregated sports based on a demographic like that isn’t as trans affirming as you would think… My gut reaction as a trans person is about the same aversion I imagine a person of color would experience if a white person tried to put forward a “People of Color sport league”.

Ditching us all into a new category like we’re quarantined in sport away from other athletes because we’re implicitly not cis… Isn’t something I would appreciate.

You are halfway there. Those examples you gave define constructs but a lot of these things are not what philosophy uses to define social constructs. Scientific taxonomy constructs and linguistic constructs are things but they are fairly useless in discussion surrounding social constructs because while different cultures might draw the line differently around what exactly constitutes a “chair” vs say a “stool” or some such that’s more of just a linguistic boundry. Its basically always a thing you sit on.

Philosophy uses a bunch of different ideas labeled as different forms of construct to break down the idea of how different types of categorization or subjection happen… but when they start talking about “social” constructs they are specifically talking about categories of human interactions with something that have incredibly variable different potential contexts based on culture. It also requires things which are included or excluded from those category for not entirely practical reasons. Philosophy uses this to talk about how social categories are subjective creating or allieving tension between different cultural groups.

Food is actually a good example. There are a lot of things culturally considered food and non food items despite those items all having nutritional value and being safe to consume. In our increasingly cosmopolitan world a lot of expansion has happened to increase the size of the category. Like raw fish was not considered a food item by a lot of people when and where I was growing up. Now sashimi is everywhere and no one bats an eye. Digging for another example mice are technically edible but even raised and slaughtered cleanly very few would consider them valid as food. Whether what I put on your plate is deemed an disgusting insult or a delicious delicacy is really in the eye of the beholder and has caused a number of historical diplomatic and cultural issues around other cultures veiwing each other as inferior.

Just because something is a construct does not automatically make it a social construct.

Food is a social construct. For a social construct to exist you have to have a social category with shifting goalposts based on different context and cultural factors that are not rigidly defined. Like “Fat” - what is considered fat for a person is based on context. A supermodel is fat for being 5’9 and 145lbs but we would call a constructiom labourer skinny as fuck at those same dimensions. Each culture constructs it’s own version of what defines “fat” which is different and distinct from something than the medical guidelines for obesity or an expectation of reasonable health. “Fat” is in the eye of the beholder and represents overlapping cultural circles with varying degrees of consideration of what is excluded from the category.

The scientific concept of nutritional substance is not how we always define “food”. Culturally people contest what is considered food vs non food items based on cultural factors. Like eating mice for instance does have nutritional value but there are a lot of people who would contest them as being a valid food item even if they were raised in clean conditions due to cultural adversions. “That isn’t food.” has been uttered in all sincerity by people encountering strange delicacies that their culture has taboos against eating beliving it dangerous, unpleasant or just categorically not something intended to be eaten. Thus “food” would be in part a sociologically constructed category.

Canadian here, we don’t do that either. Primaries is one of the many additional structural barriers to representive voting being adopted in the US and a step away from having more than two parties in their system. It also increases the campaign costs for candidates and exacerbates the issues with first past the post voting meaning running people becomes an exclusive exercise for the wealthy or people with wealthy patrons who make handshake agreements.

As I understand it, Instead of having parties internally figure out who they are running on the docket as party head like sane people they open it up to basically a second first past the post election of internal candidates. You register as a member of those parties when you register to vote to participate (or not) in the election before the actual election. Personally to one outside that system that just seems like an additional bundle of problems to deal with by doubling down an already outdated voting system that creates further issues of populism but some Americans are very fond of archaic systems. You know something something founders of our nation blah blah can’t change anything our fathers who art in 6ft of dirt didn’t personally come up with blah.

Forgive my glibness. Being a neighbour is hard sometimes.

Yay for the social sanctity minding one’s own beeswax!

Well I mean… Not exactly limited to girls. Who doesn’t like a nice shiny rock? Nobody, that’s who. Show me one person who claims to not have at least one good rock somewhere in their house. Can’t do it can yeh? Didn’t think so.

There are actually different models of talking about sexuallity. The one most common that you know where there’s stuff like gay, lesbian, bi… But when you have trans folks that doesn’t nessisarily give much credence to genital preferences. It’s more a reference to the cultural gender expectations. A cis man and a pre-medical trans man is still gay where a cis man and a trans woman in the same situation is straight… But when you are non-binary this model doesn’t serve because if I am culturally neither male or female is me liking a specific presentation gay or straight? If you’re defaulting to what my body type is then neither is correct. I am not pan or bi because I don’t like both and I am not straight or gay because those things frame relationships between physical sexes not fitting neatly into the changing cultural landscape of gender.

The other less used model just describes what someone finds sexy. A gynophile is attracted to feminine presentation, androphiles like the masculine, Skoliophiles are into non-binary people and ambiphiles like all.

It is a little 4D chess but it’s easier to pick up when you don’t have to account for old rules.

The difference between liberal and left is not fully capitalism dependant. It has more to do with lateral vs horizontal power structures. Liberal rhetoric tends to focus very much on personal property rights which means it basically is a machine to enable unchecked capitalism because it resists anything that would enable seizure or social checks on acquisition or regulation. It reinforces heirachy by legitimizing and protecting wealth and ensuring it snowballs creating greater inequity over time. Any check on what is considered personal property is anti-liberal to some extent.

There are actually liberal and social attitudes towards capitalism. Anti-trust measures, stock restrictions, union organization, reabsorbing privately held services and property into public trusts and services. These things exist as social counter measures to unchecked capitalism but not an attempt to explicitly remove the basic idea of investment capital existing in some form or another. The focus on decentralization of wealth agrigation and empowering labor still makes it nominally left of center.

I recommend it. Experiencing that kind of temporality made me realize how much the mass adoption of clocks impacts our experiences. I never expected the degree to which I would pay more attention to the people around me.

It very much was! There were construction projects, games tournaments, arts… You’d think that the absence of clocks meant that people would be habitually miss things but I don’t think people did more than usual.

Yup, the ancients loved stars. It was strangely common for multiple cultures to create these weird observatories that were mostly for observation of a single star associated with different seasons.

Mechanical options were usually used by people trying for some form of efficiency either social or to mark distance. Marking time on ships was very important for accurate mapping for instance.

As for most of society meeting up at a given time just took longer as everything was more of a rough estimate. Some of the accounts have been guessed at as people didn’t write details about how they approached time down. It’s been hazarded that the day marked your doing productive stuff period and you set out your routine for days in advance so people knew where to find you if not exactly when you’d be doing it. Evening was your social planning time where you’d meet up and share details of your to do list with the people who needed to know.

I once spent a week with a whole bunch of people camping on a big property for a Medieval recreation event where we had volunteer work to do on the property and agreed to attempt to explore time as our ancestors knew it. We all ditched our watches for two weeks. It was actually generally fairly relaxing? Everything moved a little slower but not by that much. There wasn’t any way to have much anxiety about not being precise so you just got used to people showing up during a wider span. If there was somewhere people needed to be around a specific time the person hosting the event just dispatched some runners to the places you knew people were going to be and people became more conversational as they passed along info. Actually very basic conversation had a lot more interest because passing along knowledge of what you knew was happening elsewhere became an actual topic of combined mutual interest instead of very boring comparisons of time tables.

Yeah I don’t think upsetting those people who are fence sitting into opinions that make them more likely to further solidify their support for conservatives is worth it for cartoon penises personally.

They are hard enough to try and reach for serious mind changing heart to hearts without them feeling like the world is falling to general moral bankruptcy.

Mysogyny is the belief that women and the passtimes associated with cultural womanhood are less valuable, capable, worthy of resources and/or should have culturally different expectations or additional restrictions than men. Anything that places phenotypic female bodies or cultural “woman related stuff” on a heirachy beneath what is afforded to men is basic misogyny.

In practice a lot of mysogyny doesn’t look like active hatred. It can be internalized by women themselves who don’t on their face hate being female but still see womanly passtimes as being lesser. If are a woman who hates the women who wear pink, wear makeup and enjoy flirting with boys because you think their choice of expression of femininity is silly and purile… You are buying in to a heirachy based on cultural gendered lines that places the more feminine centric expressions as being lesser.

The targets aren’t always women. Misogyny for instance can be seen when a gay or non-gender conforming person is riddiculed for being lesser for wanting to express the feminine as the underlying assumption is that the trappings of femininity is not a choice between two equally vaild options but choosing an option which is lower than what they should want. Meanwhile women emulating the masculine is not usually commented on because when the masculine is aspirational and the feminine is silly, trite garbage for inferior people it makes logical sense to ditch it.

Misogyny exists in our use of language. Examine for instance the word “pussy” which equates the female genetalia with cowardly behavior and “unmannly” inferiority. You are acting as a woman which is supposed to be insulting because women are not just categorically different but equal… They are implied to be an inferior state of being.

Furthermore some misogyny can be “benevolent” - CRITICALLY this does not mean it is good. Benevolent misogyny is harmful - but it means that the misogyny comes from a place of misplaced pity and assumption of inferiority. Treating a person as weaker, more delicate, in need of help and unable to make their own decisions or utilize their own capacity for handling things is also misogyny. Being treated as though you are a child who will never grow up will drive people to bite through solid steel levels of frustration and madness or worse injure their self worth, sense of independence and empower learned helplessness.

The companion peice to misogyny is misandry. The idea that men are all to some degree inherently violent, sex motivated and unsafe for women and children to be around and the idea that any choice of a man to express the feminine is abhorant limiting the options of men to participate in society in ways not outlined by traditional masculine expectations.

Unlearning misogyny is not an easy thing. It is a process of dismantling behavior based out of something you may not have given much consideration. Our society is generally kind of misogynist by default so reaching in and recognizing misogyny and choosing to leave it behind takes a lot of effort and willingness to honestly self critique.

Yeah the ethics of Japanese game shows and reality tv more generally particularly in the 1990’s is a fraught topic. Some of them were quite cruel.

Nope, did not realize… But tell me that even my nice progressive Canada wouldn’t have hordes of parents flipping the fuck out about little kids being exposed to cartoon porn and I wouldn’t believe you.

To be clear it’s not like I think there’s any moral issue with an emoji set of genitals. I just don’t think anybody wants to court that much bother for something already served by a cultural understanding about the eggplant emoji that already exists. In a vaccum of sex and penis innuendos an innuendo will always emerge. Even when we have the option to be explicit sometimes we opt for innuendo. I just don’t see there being a lot of value particularly in a cartoon penis. Like okay, you have a cartoon penis, there’s a moral outcry. Conservatives get mad and in the end… what exactly has been improved really?

The juice just doesn’t seem worth the squeeze.

I would countee that wouldn’t any single depiction of a penis set an unreasonable standard? Color, size, circumsized vs not etc? At least with a euphemism it is fairly abstract. I don’t think anyone looks at an eggplant as a goal.

I suppose there are worse things to insert but an eggplant, particularly the type being depicted in the emoji doesn’t seem like a particularly prime candidate. Seems like a good way to end up in hospital looking for a manual extraction.