u/Database-Error

This is an argument I see with fakers and it drives me insane. ''I know myself better than a psychologist'' but do you know psychology better than a psychologist? Reading symptoms of a list isn't the same as actually understanding and being able to recognize what a disorder actually looks like. Most people recognize themselves in the list of symptoms for a whole lot of disorders, not because they have them, but because a lot of symptoms can also be normal behavior, it is often more like poison. Poison is about dose, water can be fatal in a too large dose. Liking when things are neat and orderly isn't OCD, and it isn't necessarily disordered, to be disordered it has to cause significant damage.

And also.. we as humans are actually not particularly good at knowing ourselves. Especially when it comes to mental conditions due to the very nature of msot mental conditions. Because the whole deal with mental conditions is that they often skew our perspectives in specific ways. A narcissist doesn't experience themselves as taking credit for other people's work, or having a too large ego etc, because the very nature of narcissism is that it skews this perception.

So I was talking to this guy about male priviledge and whether or not trans men get it after transition and whether trans men are betraying some femenist cause by transitioning. And he said something like ''transition can grant unearned social ease in certain circumstances, such as being listened to and taken more seriously.'' ??? Unearned??? Excuse me? Fellas. Does a person need to earn -checks notes- being listened to and taken seriously? Have trans men not earned this? When we transition do we get access to it by a way other than earning it? Or is it a baseline of respect that no one needs to earn, but that unfortunately doesn't get granted to certain groups? I think the latter. But I wonder if this idea that you have to ''earn it'' is something that is prevalentwhen it comes to talks about priviledge. That priviledge is a sort of extra thing that you get as a special treat, rather than what it is in my view, a baseline that everyone should have but some don't.

In my view. When we transition, and we get access to things like being treated with basic deceny. then that's just us getting access to what we should have always had. It is often not a 0 sum game either where we having it actively takes it from someone else. And that our transitioning does not prevent us from giving this baseline of respect to others, which is really the only power most of us have when it comes to doing our part in preventing other people from being denied this. We don't have to forgo our transition, we only have to treat others equally.

Edit: this post isn't about whether trans men have male priviledge or not, it is about semantics.

Idk if anyone else has come across this but I've come across this argument a few times. it goes like this ''This person has XY chromosomes, which in my worldview makes thme a man, but they are trying to force me to use she/her pronouns for them, so they're forcing their worldview onto me. I have to call them a woman because in their worldview they are, even though they're not in mine. That's not right.''

And it's so obviously stupid I don't even know who made it or why it spreads. But the obvious thing is... Uno reverse. When you use he/him pronouns for this transwoman, *you* are forcing your worldview onto her.

And I say to them. ''Consider this. A school class of 6th graders. One of the boys, a fully cis boy who uses he/him prnonouns and identifies as fully male, has dancing as his hobby and passion. The school bullies make fun of him and call him a girl. This hurts the boys feelings. The bullies say that it is fine for them to call him that, because in their world view anyone who likes to dance is a girl, and he can't force their world view on them. Who's side are you on? The bullies? or the boys?''

Now this works in my country, I understand in some countries there are men who would actually agree that dancing makes you a girl, but replace dancing literally whatever. Now they have to either support the bullies, or, as they sometimes do claim that ''well, he actually is a boy because he's cis, so the bullies are wrong'' having to fully abandon their ''right to worldview'' bullshit. Because it is, and show it for what it really is. Not that they're concerned about everyone's right to their own world view that others can't force, but exactly the opposite, that only their worldview is right and they have the right to force this world view onto others.

Anyway. Freedom from is always in tension with freedom to. But there are obvious clear cases. Should we have the freedom to punch everyone, or the freedom to not get punched? The freedom to not get punched. Likewise, should we have the freedom to decide our own ''worledview'' when it comes to our own genders and pronouns, or the right to force it on others? Obviously we should have the right to decide our own gender and pronouns. It just makes the most sense. And like, I for one only go by he/him pronouns, if some transphobe insisted on calling me ''she' literally fucking no one would know who they're talking about because literally everyone else knows that I go by he/him. It's just less confusing.

Hate this stupid argument and hate how fucking incapable they are of thinking through their own arguments and how disingenuous they are. Rant over.

I was listening to Vox today explained and they were talking aobut how the progressive politicans in the u.s need to rebrand because they've been to focused on ''cultrual issues'' such as trans rights, abortion rights instead of ''affordability''.

And it's just like... how is people's rights to healthcare, to bodily autonomy, to protection against discrimination, a cultrual issue? Because why? Because the cultrual ideas and norms say we shouldn't have these rights? Didn't cultrual and social norms used to say that working 6 days a week, 18 hours was good, that kids working factory jobs was good because ''it made real men out of them'' or what the fuck ever. Is that not a cultrual issue in the same way then?

Or the damn ''male lonliness epidemic'' that I hear so much about, I don't think I've ever heard someone frame cishet men's issues as ''cultrual issues''. Maybe I'm wrong but I just felt some type of way, and I don't really have all my thoughts together about it yet, but it just feels dismissive to call it ''cultrual issues'' rather than civil liberties and human rights issues. And I think it just feeds into this idea that you can have either lgbtq/women's rights or affordability, not both. Like this very right wing idea that we either focus on ''the economy'' or civil liberties, when like.. these are linked. Civil liberties is the economy is for. Healthcare is what the economy is for. People's ability to plan when they have children helps their economy, for generations, and their communitys economy. People's ability to have access to healthcare helps their economy, helps the economy of their community. Without free trans healthcare I would either be in a horrible financial state, or dead. I don't know. What do you think?