I’ve known a few plural folks that seem to get on just fine. In all their cases it arose from trauma and was pretty disharmonious and confusing to begin with, but with time and awareness their alters work better together and by the time I met em I wouldn’t have known if they didn’t tell me. I don’t know if they’d say it never affects them negatively but they certainly didn’t need to be freed of it. If anything, plural identity seemed to be more of a solution than an active problem for them.

forreal, people have such low opinion of what kids can understand (because they think kids have all their own same biases automatically)

My partner teaches preschool, sometimes the kids ask her if she’s a boy. She says she used to be but she’s a girl now, the kids say “ohhh” and immediately move on. It only ever gets weird and confusing for the kids when the parents feel the need to argue that point.

Oh hey, it’s my area of expertise and I’ve got some strong feelings so pardon the wall of text! This discussion tends to immediately focus on professional athletes and I think that’s doing everyone a disservice. Exceedingly few people are professional athletes, especially trans folk. Elite athletes have fundamentally different reasons to pursue their sport, and are closer to the genetic limits of their performance. I can see some value in accounting for broad genetic differences at that level of competition, but sex is far from the only genetic factor and in many sports it isn’t the most relevant. It’s not even like men are favored over women in every sport. Muscle mass and cardiovascular capacity advantages tend to favor men in most sports, but women can be favored over men in ultra-endurance sports due to advantages in fat metabolism and pain tolerance.

In fencing, for instance, men and women tend to be pretty equally matched. Broad average differences in explosive acceleration, balance, etc exist between the sexes, but it’s possible to account for these things through bladework and strategy in all but the highest elite levels. Know what you can’t really do jack-shit about? Reach! If someone’s a head taller than you, has a lankier build, and longer arms, it is incredibly difficult to get in range before they can hit you. Practice tends to be co-ed, with men and women performing equally, but for some reason fencing tournaments are split between men and women. It’s clear in both divisions that the lankier, taller people have an inherent genetic advantage. Why is sex considered the “more important” primary category? Why is this assumed to be the case in every sport? The science really does not back this up.

But again, that’s all just about high-level competitive athletes, a tiny tiny tiny fraction of a fraction of people. What’s the real value of sports for the rest of us, especially kids? Community, recreation, exercise, developing motor skills. Among the general population, the variation in skill level far exceeds genetic differences to the point that gendered divisions outside the most elite level just doesn’t make much sense to begin with. With this in mind, and considering how seldom few of us are athletes in the first place, does it not make sense for trans women to just be able to play in the division we socially fit in better with?

I haven’t even gotten into the long-term outlook for trans athletes on HRT, that’s a much longer discussion. But do consider that sports science (and human movement more broadly) isn’t a solved field. We’re just now getting over the “functional training” craze, itself a reaction to origin-insertion anatomy which did not properly model how multi-joint movements work. We’re just now coming to a better understanding of fascia, which plays a much more important role in motion than we understood and is very responsive to sex hormones. A majority of the systems involved in motion are ones where trans women are more alike to cis women than cis men. I won’t say there’s no differences at all, but it’s more nuanced than you’d think.

The number of cis women athletes (Imane Khelif being a notable example) harassed because people suspect them of being transgender goes to show how insane this is getting. Cis bodies are incredibly varied, in that context trans bodies are really not that different.

I could see it, yeah. I like Lemmy for a lot of reasons but it’s still social media. Commenting here isn’t activism and it doesn’t represent the irl dynamics of leftist circles. Engagement via comments and votes are the only things shown here, there’s no way to track the number of people that see a comment and think “you’re maybe not wrong, but you’re definitely splitting hairs…” and then move on. IRL, though, the dead air in the room would be deafening. (and could be a learning experience!)

My impression is this is primarily an issue in online spaces, without a clear goal in communication. When you meet leftists involved in a specific project, bigger-picture disagreements tend to fade away into focus and concern around a shared goal. It’s a lot easier to stay focused on the things that are immediately relevant when the route to making a real impact is right in front of you.

One I haven’t seen in this thread yet: the last playable bit of Bastion, if you choose to take Zulf with you. An early example of Supergiant’s mastery of interactive storytelling, coming to a head with a recognition of humanity in the midst of apocalyptic war.

I won’t overhype it, as others are saying it changes up a lot and there’s a particular section near the end that a few people I know bounced off of. It will be a very different experience, built on the same bones, but trying to accomplish something different.

But holy shit, to me it’s an improvement on an already phenomenal game, and builds on its narrative and mechanics in ways I thought were really clever. It feels like the other side of the coin from the main game and bolsters its themes from another perspective. Can’t recommend it enough.

I gotta get around to the other games in the series sometime, To The Moon was incredible. It’s been so long and I don’t remember many specifics, but I do recall it being one of a few games that encouraged me to come to terms with mortality.

Same on both counts. TWD season 1 is absolutely masterful and got me to care for its cast incredibly quickly.

I genuinely can’t believe the renegade interrupt that can happen during that scene in ME3 is in the game. I haven’t gotten spoiler tags to work consistently across Lemmy so I won’t say it but you know the one. One of those times where being given a choice to kneecap an incredible story moment felt really weird. Maybe other players didn’t connect with him as much / had more desire to continue the genophage?

Outer Wilds got me too, for sure, and stayed in my thoughts long after I finished. The music from the slideshow at the end of the DLC still makes me well up a bit. Such an incredible game. I still think of “the universe is and we are” from one of Solanum’s logs all the time.

Yeah, 100%. This kind of advice can maybe make sense if you’re starting a startup, but everyone employed at that stage needs to be on equal ground and well-protected. If they’re not, then that can still be fine, but they can’t be expected to put as much of their lives into your product. They’re contractors you’re hiring for some shit-shoveling and maybe it’s best to be honest about that.

The unfortunate thing in tech is that, due to pushing “learning to code” as a universal employment option, there’s always a pool of idealistic fresh blood that is willing to crunch for you if you make vague mention of being in it together, when a few people stand to gain the vast majority of the profit if the company’s product is successful. By the time the new recruits are old and bitter and burnt out, you can lay em off for poor performance (or cannibalize the company at large) and hire some more doe-eyed interns.

If you’re expecting your employees to consistently work long hours for you, they need to have the same stake as you do. They need flexibility to take care of their mental and physical health as needed. You should encourage them to unionize and collectively bargain for their needs once they come in conflict with yours, because they absolutely will. You can’t afford to lose these people, because it’s rare to find people that won’t get ground into dust doing this because they want it as bad as you. so make it sustainable and more than worth their while. if you can’t find these people? maybe your app sucks.

these types view themselves as above the labor they’re hiring because they got there first / had the means to form a company and I fucking hate it.

yeah… :((((

take care of yourselves, this is gonna get rough. I’m sticking it out where I am until I have no choice but to get out, and seeing what we can do here to help people relocate to relative safety. I have tentative hope that some states will effectively resist this, at least for now, but no matter where you are it’s definitely time for a flight plan if you can make one.

we may have lost the battle for now, but there’s time still to bolster our communities and survive this. at least I have to hope so.

I like this too, though yeah it’s frustrating how right wingers throw those types of quotes around and if I see that shirt on someone in public I probably wouldn’t immediately know what they meant by it. Seen too many goddamn Gadsden flag stickers right next to thin blue line stickers.

I was raised around a lot of “patriotism” (closet nationalism) and have had to adapt the feeling now that I understand better what America actually is and has been. I found that trying to abandon the feeling altogether was making me feel cynical and alone. The parts of America that I love in fact tend to exist despite our government and dominant culture, which steals and appropriates the things I love about us and turns them into the things people know about us and dislike for good reason. I love the source materials, not the end result. As a white person born into privilege on stolen land, my existence is not entirely apart from this, but all’s I can do with that is try to make something better of it.

There’s a salt-of-the-earth working-class segment of this country that’s getting screwed over, knows how and why they and others are getting screwed over, and has learned to survive together in spite of it. People that make families out of communities. Rail hoppers, union organizers, queer punks, the list goes on. That spirit is not unique to this country but there do exist uniquely American forms of it. I’m more proud of these people than words can express, and that’s about as close to patriotic as I can feel these days.

Maybe I just like seeing our shitty protestant labor worship turned to something more productive. Maybe I just spent too much time in the mountains to not fall in love with the land itself. Or maybe I just love banjos.

Maybe banning all men from the community is necessary, or maybe just efficient, to fulfill this purpose.

Yeah, that’s more or less how I see the rule too. Ideally it wouldn’t exist, but without something like it in place, the majority of comments in a women’s issues community would come from men, especially on popular/controversial posts, and the mod team would get bogged down trying to keep discussion on topic. The tradeoff is between creating a community where women can speak to each other on these issues, or including men, some of whom would positively contribute to discussion and have their own relevant experiences to offer. The former isn’t really something that exists otherwise on Lemmy and I do feel it’s important to have a community to fulfill that purpose. I don’t see a more inclusive mod policy that’s simple enough to communicate as a rule for WomensStuff, but other communities could definitely step up to fill that role.

The last two bullet points are good ideas and it’d be completely valid imo to respond to a post in WomensStuff in another community including men. (“Guys, how do we feel about this?” kinda threads) !mensliberation@lemmy.ca may be what you’re looking for, it’s primarily for men and masc people but it is open to everyone to comment. (though my impression is that the vast majority of people there are men)

There you’d find discussion of issues men face too, and discussion of women’s issues could be framed around how men can respond to them. I think it’d actually be cool to encourage discussion of women’s issues among men, without women necessarily being present - I have a feeling different opinions and feelings would come up in a men’s community that probably need to be processed and understood, among people with lived experience as a man. Back when I identified as such I personally benefited a lot from browsing /r/MensLib and engaging in those types of discussions. So long as it’s centered around productive discussion rather than blaming women, which I do see these types of communities do a good job of.

MESSSAAAA!! :D :D The Spin is awesome, was just coming here to post The Dress (still might tbh) really enjoying the Model/Actriz album too.

my favorites released this year so far, in no particular order:

• Messa - The Spin

• Model/Actriz - Pirouette

• McKinley Dixon - Magic Alive!

• key vs. locket - i felt like a sketch

• Viagra Boys - viagr aboys

• Honningbarna - Soft Spot

• Aesop Rock - Black Hole Superette

• Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka

• Nuvolascura - How This All Ends

• Rival Consoles - Landscape from Memory

• Bleed - Bleed

other albums I’ve fallen in love with this year:

• Gallows Bound - Rotting Oak

• Holy Locust - Beneath the Turning Wheel

• Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

• Elder - Innate Passage

• James McMurtry - The Horses and the Hounds

vegan communities might be a closer example. A community of people vastly outnumbered by carnivores that have strong feelings about vegans. Generally when a vegan post gets popular, the comments become a bit of a shit fest due to the influx of people with less positive views of veganism. /r/SeattleWA had a similar issue and without effective moderation, turned into a place for non-Seattlites to complain about Seattle.

AFAIK WomensStuff is open to trans women and nonbinary folks - pretty much anyone who identifies with womanhood on some level and can speak on it based on their own personal experience.

as a nonbinary person with lived experience across the gender spectrum I feel at home both in WomensStuff as well as MensLib type communities, so the “windows + linux” example definitely applies in these spaces too.

it’s definitely a thing for me too :) ideal deep squatting posture is one thing, but for me tight calves end up causing pain / other movement issues / difficulty sleeping too. if it ever ends up bothering you, standing calf stretches like runners do can help, or downward facing dogs, and if you have a resistance band you can do these:

https://www.rehabhero.ca/exercise/banded-active-dorsiflexion

https://www.rehabhero.ca/exercise/elevated-banded-ankle-dorsiflexion

(if it never bothers you feel free to ignore, also posting this for the benefit of anyone else in this thread)

If you’re falling over backward, your calves might be tight! Your ankles have to flex far enough for your feet to sit back far enough to be under your center of gravity.

the rule isn’t based on an immutable quality - the community accepts AMAB trans women and nonbinary folks. It’s in line with the goal of the community being to discuss experiences with womanhood - people that don’t identify with any aspect of it aren’t who the community is for.

Usually self-policing is good enough for this kind of thing. as an American, I don’t have much reason to comment in European centered communities, and while I do occasionally see Americans posting there, it’s pretty rare. (and even more rarely welcomed, lol)

That changes when it’s a community of people that are vastly outnumbered by those that have strong feelings about them. take vegan communities for instance. Check the comments of any vegan community post that gets popular, it’s often a shit fest due to the influx of carnivore opinions, and I can understand mods not feeling able to keep up when this happens. Without enforcing some kind of standard in line with the goals of the community, you turn into /r/SeattleWA, a place for non-Seattlites to complain about Seattle.

Ideally I think this rule doesn’t exist, ideally this could be like other communities where people recognize their opinion isn’t needed here and move on - but that’s absolutely not going to happen with a women’s community.

You can very easily block it if you don’t like the idea of a community that isn’t for you, but e.g. as an American I do like checking in on European communities to see what’s going on over there. Even if they’re clowning on us. That’s ok.