All slavers were huge pieces of shit. There’s nothing inherently different about the past, humans are humans. If a human can cause the cries and screams of other humans and not feel their pain and fear, they’re a huge piece of shit, no matter their environment or upbringing.

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The patriarchy is “some men.” The term is literally describing what you want. The subset of men who are in power.

You are not the patriarchy. You should be fighting the patriarchy.

How would I react if you described the matriarchy? What matriarchy? What world do you live in that there is a social heirarchy dominated by women in power?

Please answer the question about white moderates. Was it wrong to refer to them as white? Was that “toxic”?

Kinda funky how many of them are just stabbed straight through the skull. That would be no easy feat. Anyway, #5. A solid axe swing.

Try not to stress too much about it while you’re away! If nothing can be done, nothing can be done. Solarpunks need to be resilient to things like this anyway. Community over convenience.

I mean, in both cases it’s because the LLM and interpreter do things you wouldn’t expect.

Men had a lot more power and influence than women, and men continue to have a lot more power and influence. That isn’t applying blame. That is indisputable fact. Men as a group are more responsible for gender inequality than women, because men hold more power than women. Again, indisputable fact.

Men hold most of the highest offices of the most powerful nations in the world, and most of those nations still have severe gender disparities that they are not addressing, or addressing terribly slowly. Again, indisputable fact.

The only way to help people see that women do not have an equal amount of power and influence in the modern day is to talk about it. Gender-neutral terms are not always helpful towards that end, because it is not a gender-neutral topic.

The patriarchy isn’t harmful gendered language the way “man up” is. Nobody is harmed by the term patriarchy. It is not a weapon used to put men down, it is a term used to describe an unequal power balance between groups of people.

Why, exactly, are you offended by a term that doesn’t describe you?

Martin Luther King Jr. described “white moderates” as a major barrier to civil rights. Was he wrong to refer to them by the color of their skin? Did he harm white progressives by doing so?

Should he have used race-neutral terms? Should he have just said “moderates,” as if that would hold any of the same power or meaning? Should white progressives have been offended by his description of white moderates?

Are women truly wrong to refer to the vast majority of the people who hold power over them as “men”, when it is indisputable fact?

It’s also a story about how feuds are largely arbitrary, and holding grudges against entire families/bloodlines is just tragically pointless eye-for-an-eye behavior that eventually leads to your children being so blind that they commit suicide for basically no reason.

It’s a bunch of themes in a trench coat!

Thank the electoral college. There’s a lot of additional reasons, but they all ultimately come back to the fact that Americans are not equally or fairly represented by their “representative democracy”.

First Past the Post, the structure of the Senate, the capped House, and the electoral college… they all lead to some voters having more say than others.

I’ve seen things you Kerbals wouldn’t believe. Kraken ships break down off the islands of Laythe. I watched MechJeb sail in the dark through the Tannhauser Strait. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

🎶History rhymes, history rhymes

Bad things wait 'til we forget the bad times…

History rhymes, history rhymes

Don’t you blink or you’ll miss the same crimes… 🎶

Absolutely. Psychogically you can “know” that you’re okay, and people seem to like you for who you are, the same way someone with OCD can “know” they don’t have to do that thing over and over again. That doesn’t necessarily change the compulsion or address the anxiety.

A) They have every right to complain about their treatment. In fact, that is what we are doing by complaining about the Patriarchy. You should complain too.

Again, the patriarchy hurts men. They are victims of the lasting damage caused by outdated gender norms that originated from men in power and are perpetuated by men who are still in power. Not all men. Not even all men in power. Specifically, men in power who perpetuate the problem.

B) Individual women can play just as big a role as individual men in perpetuating the gender norms that favor patriarchal heirarchy. By pointing out that men are victims of patriarchy, we are specifically pointing out that most of them do not have an individual hand in its creation. If you are not in power, you are not the Patriarchy, and thus you are not the origin of the problem, though you can be perpetuating the problem, regardless of your gender.

C) We all have a burden to undo the lasting damage caused by our society’s historical failures. We all have a moral responsibility to improve ourselves as individuals and as a society, regardless of our gender.

D) refer back to (B)

E) refer back to ©

F) refer back to (A)

Again, the Patriarchy is not a description of men, or a homogenization of a group. It is a description of a social heirarchy. “The Patriarchy” =/= “all men”. I don’t know how much more clear I can make that.

Individual men are no more responsible for the Patriarchy than individual citizens are responsible for the oppressive behaviors of their governments, unless they support, perpetuate, or refuse to acknowledge it.

There are many, many more men still in power than women. Your last point is laughable.

Again. As I said. Those individual women in power can be responsible too. I absolutely agree with that. They can be responsible for perpetuating the Patriarchy. God knows plenty of literal Queens have done so throughout history.

But if you seriously believe that women as a group hold as much power as men as a group, then this conversation is a waste of time.

And if you seriously believe that men in power throughout history haven’t left a mark on today’s society, or that it’s insulting to men to even talk about that history by giving it a name, then I refer you back to ©. You absolutely have a moral burden to be better than the humans who came before you, and choosing to be offended by that is just burying your head in the sand.

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Aw, thanks! Gosh, that would certainly be much more wholesome than spending my time filled with rage against the machine.

A children’s book like this would probably win a world record any% speedrun for banned/burned books. . . but I’d be damn proud of that.

Alright, literal 5 year old, I’ll give it a shot. Fair warning, most kids get these lessons in pieces over time, because attention spans. I don’t know what your metaphorical 5 year old has learned so far though, so, sorry for the wall of text, but I think we have to start from the beginning:

Well, kid, you know how your parents always tell you that it’s what’s on the inside that counts? And that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up? And that it’s fun to do things different sometimes?

And you know how some children are boys, and some children are girls?

Well, in very special cases, when a baby is born… sometimes we only think they’re a boy. They might even look like a boy.

But later, when that baby grows up, and learns how to talk, and tells us how they feel… it turns out that “boy” was really a girl on the inside all along!

And sometimes we think they’re a girl, but they were really a boy on the inside all along!

And sometimes they don’t really feel like a boy or a girl on the inside! Just remember that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Whatever they look like on the outside, it’s what they feel like that matters most.

Sometimes, when we call someone a boy, but they don’t feel like a boy, that can upset them. If you know it makes them upset, then it’s not nice to do that. It’s not nice to call them names they don’t like, even if you think you’re right.

Well, there aren’t a lot of children like that. They’re very rare. Most boys feel like boys on the inside, and most girls feel like girls, and they grow up to be what we always thought they were. That’s great for them!

But because they’re so rare, most people have never met a special kid like that. Most people have never seen a child grow up to surprise everybody like that. And sometimes… sometimes adults don’t like surprises.

You know how sometimes you’re afraid of the dark? And sometimes you think there’s a monster hiding in the closet? But you come find us, and we turn on the lights, and we check your closet together, and we show you there’s nothing to be afraid of?

Well, adults can be scared too. They can be scared by what they don’t understand. Sometimes, when they get surprised and confused, they see monsters where there aren’t any, and that upsets them. And they get upset at those children, even though the child did nothing wrong.

That doesn’t always make them bad people! Sometimes they never learn, but sometimes it just takes time for that poor kid to turn on the lights and help them see there’s nothing to be scared of.

But sometimes, there are mean people who play tricks on those adults. They make scary noises and trick those adults into really believing in the monsters. They make those adults think that it’s what’s on the outside that counts, and that those special kids are like the monsters in the dark. But that’s not nice.

It’s not nice to scare people… but not everyone is nice all the time. Sometimes people are mean. Sometimes people like to lie, and cheat, and steal, and that’s not nice. We don’t do those things, because we don’t like it when people do those things to us.

You know the boy who cried wolf?

Sometimes, those mean people make those scary noises and pretend the monsters are real, and they cry wolf, even when there are no wolves… and it works. Those confused, scared adults come running, because they don’t know any better.

The story hasn’t ended yet, and they don’t know that there is no wolf, and so they keep running to chase it away, because they don’t know it’s all a trick by those mean people.

They can’t see what’s on the inside, and so they think those boys and girls are the ones being tricked, and they get angry and scared and they do all the wrong things because they think they’re the ones who are right.

It’s messy, and confusing, because sometimes things are messy and confusing.

But what you need to know, more than anything, is that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. There is no wolf to be afraid of when people are different or surprising. We can’t see what’s on the inside, so the best we can do is listen when someone tries to tell us how they feel, and do our best to be kind, and make them feel happy.

We don’t need to change everything we say just because neonazis try to take it. That’s literally letting them succeed in coopting the month and the term.

It’s just Pride Month, and nazis can get fucked.

FYI,

Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men.

[…] Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the social, legal, political, religious, and economic organization of a range of different cultures. Most contemporary societies are, in practice, patriarchal, unless the criteria of complete exclusion of women in authority is applied.

Partiarchy is not a description of masculinity, toxic or otherwise. Patriarchy is a description of a social heirarchy.

Patriarchy is in large part to blame for toxic masculinity because historically and currently, men with power enforced social rule by men, and therefore enforced social elevation by their own subjective idea of what masculinity should be.

Patriarchy is not much different from (and intrinsically linked to) the idea of a King’s divine right to rule - if you were in power, you deserved to be in power, and the qualities of the people in power were therefore the qualities of the people who deserved to be in power. Thus, their ideas of masculinity became long-lasting cultural norms.

Pointing out that the history of patriarchy enforced toxic masculinity is not accusing men themselves of enforcing it on an individual level, or dismissing rhe role that women played in enforcing these gender divisions.

The same can be said for pointing out that the history of Feudalism enforced horrrible class stratification that still impacts Western culture today. Modern day Knights like the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Sir Elton John would agree with that, because individuals can be distanced from and even directly challenge a system that they benefit from, much like men have a moral right and responsibility to challenge the role that the Patriarchy has played in enforcing these outdated gender divisions.

Put your cart back when you’re done shopping

OP didn’t make a blanket statement that “anyone who does X is a piece of shit.”

He said an unwritten rule, like your own statement:

Don’t be stupid

Which is significantly closer to ableism than the shopping carts, with the implication that anyone who is stupid is a piece of shit.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying “don’t be stupid,” for the record, but in case you weren’t aware, people with brain damage are included under “anyone.”

You’ve picked a bizarrely specific hill to die on.

You’re absolutely correct, but lol this is really weird given your other comments in this post.

Why didn’t you clarify about edge cases, like disabilities?