stray

There's already so many animals out there that only eat one specific type of leaf for whatever reason, and it's not to do with lack of other leafs. I never thought about it before, but it makes sense in hindsight.

I think it matters in terms of psychological health. Internally thinking that an older teenager is attractive is a pretty normal thing that might happen to an allosexual human, whereas the same attraction for a younger teen or child is clear "get in therapy now before something bad happens" territory.

Please note that I have specified internal thoughts and not making gross conversation about how hot young people are and/or approaching them with sexual intentions.

But I agree that this is really not the context to bring up the difference.

I get what you're saying, but popular usage is what it is at this point, and pointing out the wider range of accurate terminology is just going to get people accusing you of being a pedophile.

Did you? They spent the whole post arguing that a trans woman is not a woman. To clarify, a cis woman and a trans woman are different things. Both of these things are women. Cis and trans describe the women.

Some trans women may identify with having once been a man, but it's hardly the case for all of them, especially the ones who recognized their mistaken assignment early. She was always herself. She was never a man unless she herself identified as one.

The wording "used to be a man" and "used to have a penis" makes me wonder if this person is using genital surgery as a determining factor. It's thankfully becoming very acceptable these days to be a girl with a penis or boy with a vagina, so that such surgeries are more of a personal decision rather than a means of legitimizing oneself to society.

Scientific studies also use male and female in reference to human subjects' gender identities. Woman and female are both incredibly old terms which have been used interchangeably as there was no widespread concept of gender identity in the English-speaking world until recently. We had to invent the term "gender identity" to separate gender from sex because they'd previously been used to refer to the same thing.

You seem to be saying that a trans man is female because he was assigned the female sex at birth. Have I understood that correctly?

Sources:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex%E2%80%93gender_distinction

https://www.etymonline.com/

Small sample of studies using male/female to refer to gender:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6748626/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10685922/

Women penguins only sounds weird because that's not the normal word for it. They're girl penguins or lady penguins. "Woman" feels too formal and human.

Well, they're right that it is pretty simple. Here's a fun experiment for anyone who thinks this isn't transphobic: try reading it again, but substitute black for trans. Totally reasonable they should have to use another bathroom, right?

I agree, but that argument doesn't do anything for people who don't really care about the animals' suffering if it means they get to enjoy meat. They understand what they're doing and have made the informed choice that they're okay with the arrangement. If you want them to stop torturing animals you're going to have to find them another way to get meat or you're going to have to kill them.

So is Sitting Bull. Swedish confectionery isn't terribly woke.

e:

I don't understand blue even after knowing the answer.

I don't really understand how you can think meat consumption is necessary for health and also be against lab-grown meat. Is there some other way you have in mind to address environmental and ethical concerns? It doesn't really help to survive today if doing so means extinction later from climate change.

Do you think its alright to use dumb and stupid? [...] I imagine Idiot is ok because it comes from the greek for common man.

It's not so much what words I think are bad, but what usage is hurtful or unconstructive.

For instance, thinking Trump is an idiot is a fine gut reaction to have to the latest dystopian headline, but I think his actions go well beyond simply having a low IQ. There are lots of very nice stupid people in the world who don't deserve to get thrown under the bus with someone who's actively malicious.

Or say you're arguing about something and think to yourself "Wow, this guy is fucking stupid." Maybe they are a stupid person, either by disability or lack of education, but attacking them over it seems purely cruel to me. It also undermines your own argument by creating an emotional distraction.

A thought can be dumb

The difference between calling an idea stupid and a person stupid is a pretty key part of context in my opinion. It's still pretty charged language though, so I hesitate to talk that way with strangers. I'm more free with people I know well who won't feel attacked.

Somebody cuts you off in traffic you say motherfucker and you feel kinda better for just instantly getting it out of your system instead of keeping it bottled up

I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there by using motherfucker instead of an intelligence-based alternative like moron or similar. But even if you do go after their intelligence in the heat of the moment, that doesn't make you a terrible person. Being able to later reflect on internalized ableism and how prevalent that language is in society is a good thing, imo. You don't even need to feel bad about it exactly; I just think it's a good thing to be conscious about your internal thought processes.

you don't sit there and go through a Buddhist podcast about forgiveness and suffering and think about how difficult life must be for that motherfucker that cut you off, and how she probably was distracted by her kids or stressed about something.

I think you should though, sometimes. (You don't have to be perfect all of the time.) This is part of cognitive behavioral therapy and can help alter your thinking patterns in healthy ways. Being empathetic towards others is not only good for them, but also good for you.

(I realize in the course of this that I've been intolerant of people banging their own moms, and I'm okay with that position at this time.)