u/valonianfool

Recently read about PKU as part of studying for medical school. Its a disorder that causes the body to be unable to break down the essential protein phenylalanine, a protein found in protein-rich foods. Because of this, the traditional PKU diet which is recommended for life excludes all animal products, effectively meaning the patient has to adhere to a vegan diet for life. Failure to conform to the diet, especially during the developing years can result in permanent brain damage and intellectual disability.

Young people diagnosed with PKU might never have had any animal products into their teens, at least according to one AMA.

This information was difficult for me to grasp at first, knowing that most vegans eventually quit, which makes it doubtful to me that a vegan diet could be healthful and not lead to any long-term consequences. PKU patients seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place--consuming animal products, as well as many protein-rich plants can result in brain damage, but cutting them out completely would likely need to detoriating health as well.

To be fair, according to one article about new treatments for PKU stated that most adults no longer follow the diet.

Still, I would like to ask that if its possible for PKU patients to live for decades without eating any animal products, that means veganism is viable for life.

In the trans community it has become taboo to acknowledge the existence of sex-based oppression, it has often been denied on the basis of being "terf rhetoric". I myself have been called "transmisogynistic" for arguing that sex-based oppression, including even for trans women, exist.

The argument against sex-based oppression Ive seen is that sex is a social construct, and two people who share birth sex assignment can differ greatly in what sex characteristics they have: people AFAB can have penises and testes, people AMAB can have vaginas and uteruses.

But it is objectively true that discrimination based on sexual characteristics and not gender presentation exists. Discrimination based on sex traits can begin before any gender expression, such as with female infanticide, how infants are treated differently depending on what sex theyre perceived as and the corrective surgery of intersex infants.

If sex-based oppression doesnt exist, then there is no explanation for the origin of patriarchy and how women came to be oppressed, you're left with naturalizing feminity and masculinity and therefore gender essentialism; coming to the conclusion that men oppress women because of something inherently bad about masculinity or manhood.

In reality, the patriarchy was developed in response to controlling the reproductive anatomy of those who can give birth to consolidate power.

In your opinion, does sex-based oppression exist?

In some fantasy settings female dwarves have beards just like the men, as someone else said "as any student of Tolkien knows even females of the Khazad have beards that make the most hirsute patriarch of Humankind look almost clean shaven in comparison".

Lets imagine a scifi setting where are imagined as hominids or hominid descendants. Would having beards mean that dwarven women are less fertile in comparison to human women, because hirsutism in women implies high levels of testosterone?

I got into an argument on the internet about the possibility that transfems can be afab and trans men can be amab. The person i argue with says that someone afab who identifies as a woman would just be cis.

Ive read the personal experiences of intersex people who say they were initially assigned as one sex, then reassigned another by doctors, sometimes within hours of the initial sex assignment.

This person wasnt satisfied with posts on tumblr and asked for "real sources" for this phenomenon. Ive tried to search for them but so far found nothing. If its ok I would like to ask for help.

On tumblr theres a tumblr blog which hosts the "transfem voices project", where transfeminine people would submit their personal experiences as asks which the tumblr posts.

The blogger has gotten backlash for posting an ask by a trans woman who said that at the age of 12, she molested an 8 year old girl. The trans woman shared that around age 7-9 she was exposed to porn by an older child, introduced to "lolicon" became hypersexual, then when she was 12 she got into her head that an 8 year old girl liked her, and molested the girl.

In the comments there are people who say that "child molestation deserves a life sentence", that its true even if the perp was a child themselves.

One user who posted a screenshot of the ask has said that as a survivor of cocsa herself, she has no sympathy for rapists, and believes they are inherently beyond rehabilitation.

She said that part of belief in youth liberation and rights of children includes an "acknowledgement of childrens capacity for understanding right and wrong, and that children are capable of abusing each other."

When I told her it goes against my belief to label any child as irredeemable, she said that as a supporter of youthlib, it seems like I "want to have your cake and eat it too if you yourself are pro the liberation of children but are unwilling to entertain the idea of children being able to consciously act autonomously in ways that can harm other people, that children or that children are capable of understanding responsibility, including criminal responsibility, for said harm."

noblackwomannocry told me " logic like yours has a real impact on the child victims of children who abuse other children, because those children can see the kiddy gloves being put on to deal with those who made a choice to abuse them." And gave an example of a case in the UK where 3 teenage boys raped 2 teenage girls and filmed it, and the judge didnt give them custodial sentences.

She also said "the idea that a 12 year old simply would not understand what's Really wrong about it seems like ignorance of actual child development and how children interact with the world. I think if you're at that age and choosing to sexually abuse younger children you are in fact irredeemable. "

I do acknowledge that children are able to harm other children, and are capable of some form of criminal responsibility, but I still hold on to my belief that a child including 12 year olds, cant be judged and treated as adults because there is a huge difference between adults and children in terms of mental development and understanding of consequence.

The main reason for my refusal to brand children as irredeemable, and hangups about labeling children as rapists is that society promotes the idea that children are innocent and that harming a child is an inherently an evil act, and that rapists and child molesters are evil scum who deserve violent retribution.

If children can be rapists-and that label is a lot more heavy to accept than merely the fact that children can molest children-then these two narratives are in conflict. I fear that the logical conclusion of "children can be irredeemable" is "there are children who it is ok to mistreat".

I would like to ask for the youth lib perspective on rehabilitating cocsa offenders, and if its really true that a 12 year old offender is "irredeemable" because they are old enough to know better.

Im curious about what the setites think of the Exodus myth. Based on what ive read, the setites follow a belief system similar to gnosticism where the Egyptian pantheon are false divinities who have to be destroyed in order for mankind to be freed from their shackles.

Because of this, would they approve of a story that cast the Egyptian gods as powerless to stop the plagues sent by another god?

I once saw a post on tumblr where the op argued that farmers are capitalists because they make money from living things, ie livestock. And this of course implies that livestock are the true proletariat under their worldview.

Many vegans are leftists and hold progressive politics, including communism. So in combination with the usual vegan worldview about animals this isnt surprising.

I know im picking at low-hanging fruit here but i still want ppl to laugh with me about the vegan cringe

There was a post on askhistorians which asked about gender roles among steppe-nomad people. The post was asking whether its true that huns, mongolians and other steppe nomads held women in much higher regard than their chinese contemporaries, in the context of Shan Yu not being surprised by Mulans gender in Disneys Mulan.

In response there was a comment which described the Tuoba, a xianbei (north eastern steppe nomads) clan as "incredibly misogynistic" and woman-hating, they started a policy of killing the crown prince's mother to ensure that the matriarchal clan could never gain power over the patriarchal one.

Is there any truth to the idea that women among the steppe nomads had more freedom and enjoyed more power and respect than their settled agrarian counterparts? And did the tuoba matricidal policy have any basis in indigenous practice?

I read that the tuoba-ruled wei dynasty started a policy of executing the mother of the chosen heir to prevent the matriarchal clan from gaining power over the patriarchal clan.

How was this system viable? I cant Imagine how it wouldnt be politically disastrous, what with marriages being political unions. Why would anyone marry off their daughter of they knew for certain that she would die?

Imagine a hypothetical advanced civilization where gestation is done through artificial wombs—how much time would need to pass/how many generations before sexual dimorphism is erased entirely?

My inspiration for this question is a Swedish childrens scifi book series which feature a species of reptilian aliens which are in reality descended from Cretaceous reptiles—the askalon. The askalons have been a spacefaring species for millions of years, but still look like their prehistoric ancestors (in fact thats a major plotpoint), and are heavily sexually dimorphic with makes being significantly larger than females.

A commonly held belief is that masculine women are more accepted in society compared to feminine men, because masculinity is held as superior to feminity, and this theory is often given as an explanation behind why transmisogyny, the specific oppression faced by trans women exists but not trans men dont experience any unique oppression because of their identity.

I had a conversation with a transmasc about this topic, and he explained his position on why transmisandry doent exist in the same way as transmisogyny: he said that even though women are forced to be feminine, a woman who is too feminine are often looked down upon, labelled shallow or slutty, while men never suffer for being perceived as too masculine, and men can often appreciate a woman who can be "one of the boys".

And even though masculine women might be punished for not being subordinate and failing to be feminine, they are often at least empathized with as trying to "move up in the world". But society cant grasp why a man would want to refuse to be a man or reject masculinity, the superior position.

And this is his explanation for why transmisandry cant exist the same as transmisogyny.

Whether transmisandry exists or not, the above logic doesnt just have implications for trans people, but society at large as well.

Are masculine women treated better than effeminate men because masculinity is seen as superior?

I understand that vampires are fictional, but I enjoy vampires when they are distinct enough from humans because of their undead state, which is one of the main reasons I dislike portrayals where they are capable of sexually reproducing and producing children just like humans.

When entertaining the idea of vampires having children and families I came to the conclusion that it would mean vampire society would become patriarchal just like most historical cultures in Europe. The root of patriarchy is controlling women and reproduction to ensure a man's children really belong to him, it's because of this reason that women's bodies and sexuality were historically restricted.

Nearly all gender roles and expectations around sex and sexuality derive ultimately from the reality of which bodies can get pregnant and who can't, pregnancy and childbirth leaves the person carrying it vulnerable for a lengthy period of time before and after.

If vampires could sexually reproduce then they might create dynasties based where inheritance is based on patrilineal descent, and might restrict the sexualities and bodies of their women for the same reason real aristocracies did. It would also mean that even undeath can't free vampires from gender expectations, because having a body capable of pregnancy leaves you more vulnerable than one who can't.

In contrast, were vampires infertile and only capable of reproducing through turning mortal humans, there would be no material difference between a female and a male vampire except for aesthetics, both would be capable of creating new vampires the same way, leaving gender roles moot.

In the real world, adultery seems to have been created in patriarchal societies to secure paternity: the only way for a man to ensure that a child really is his is to prevent the mother from having sex with other men. But in a matriarchy where wealth and status are inherited from mother to daughter, the faithfulness of male partners isn't a concern because a mother will always know which of her children are hers.

In a hypothetical matriarchal society, could a concept of adultery ever develop, especially if marriages among the ruling class are mainly made for politics, not mutual love between partners?

Chinese dragons are described as having the antlers of a deer, the whiskers of a catfish, head of a camel, a snake-like neck, eyes of a demon and the belly of a clam.

The last part always confused me because clams dont have bellies. Does the description actually refer to the belly scales of a dragon resembling clams lined after each other?

Recently Ive read a post by Dairyisntscary on tumblr, who currently goes by a different username, saying that there are things they think are wrong with industrial husbandry practices, and that they hate how cows dont really "get the whole cow experience" on large-scale dairy farms.

They've said that they "don’t believe that we can argue that cows on large dairies get their “freedom to display natural behaviors” in any sense and I don’t think it’s fair to them at all."

This felt a bit jarring to me, because previously theyve stated that there is no real correlation between animal welfare and the size of the dairy farm, large farms can have good welfare while small farms can have bad welfare. And for much of the time theyve been on tumblr, their position has been that animal welfare on dairy farms arent really as bad as vegan activists make them out to be, though even back then they still admitted that there are improvements that can be made.

To people who work in dairy farming: what's your opinion on the general animal welfare in dairy farming, and is there anything that can be improved? Do you share Scout's (Dairyisntscary's nickname) feelings on the state of animal welfare in dairyfarming?

In fiction vampires can both be a metaphor for sexual and racial minorities and the exploitative ruling class, but from a logical standpoint, assuming a worldbuilding similar to vtm where there are people who need to feed on human blood to survive, can turn other humans into them, have supernatural powers, are immortal and become stronger with age, would they inevitably become the ruling class over human society, influencing leaders from behind the shadows?

Medusa is probably the female mythological figure who is most often reinterpreted as a feminist symbol. When I look her up on social media sites like twitter, tumblr or reddit I see posts about how she was a victim who was raped by poseidon, and either blessed or cursed by Athena who either wanted to protect her from further assault or was jealous.

Since I know that this version was far from "the original version", it was written by the roman author Ovid in his work which was intended to satirize the current leadership in his day.

He also never said that Medusa was a priestess of Athena, just favored by her.

In the earliest texts about Medusa, which was written by Hesiod in the 8th century BC, she and her sisters Stheno and Euryale were the daughters of two primordial sea gods, Phorkys and Ceto. They were born monsters, but unlike her sisters Medusa was mortal.

In older artwork Medusa and gorgons in general were depicted as hideous monsters who were extremely muscular, had wings, beards and boar tusks, with the snakes for hair coming a bit later. It wasn't the gorgon's gaze as much as its hideous appearance that caused people to turn to stone, which was originally probably a metaphor for being frozen in shock.

To be fair, around the 5th century BC Medusa and gorgons began to be depicted as attractive women with snake hair, and Ovid's version of Medusa's story could've been based on a story predating him a couple centuries earlier.

History lesson ended, I'm going to explain why the "girlbossification" of Medusa bugs me: the main reason is that people mistake Ovid for the OG version and usually do it as an excuse to demonize Athena.

Most "feminist" retellings of Medusa portray her as an attractive woman with snake hair even though she's supposed to be a hideous monster, which is honestly counter-productive because it conveys the message that women need to be attractive by patriarchal beauty standards to be relevant and sympathetic.

And if you want to tell a story about a woman who was raped and turned into a monster, to convey the horror of transformation, then using the apperance of archaic Medusa would be much more thought-provoking and compelling.

The problem I have with the "girlbossification" itself, as it is with other mythical figures is that its rarely done by people from that culture. We don't see greek feminists adopt Medusa as a symbol, its mostly just American people who probably couldnt point out Greece on a map.