Hacker News Reader

Comment by PartiallyTyped | Hacker News Reader

JAQing off and asking questions to learn and understand are two truly different things.

Misrepresenting positions and arguments to a rabid “fanbase” is not asking questions.

It’s time the charades stop and the fascists drop the pretences, oh wait their supreme leader has PUBLICLY said he will ensure that trans people will be outlawed.

No amount of science and evidence is ever enough for these people either.

Transsexualism is not a new thing and to claim it is is either wilfully ignorant when you act as a host and don’t do due diligence, or maliciously intentional.

I am not asking people to have correct opinions, i am asking that they listen to those who did the science and the research, i am asking that they talk to actual trans people about their experiences.

Perhaps asking for some empathy (not sympathy) as a fellow human is already too much.

View on HN

The problem is, there’s no way for you to know which type of person it is until you’ve talked with them for a bit. From what I’ve seen, people immediately condemn anyone not in lockstep, and never find out, leaving a very confused, interested person, who only experiences irrational, negative, interactions.

I see your anecdotal data and I raise you my predictor variables:

- Wears a maga hat

- Supports forced pregnancies

- Is evangelical christian

- Is proudly unvaccinated

- Considers him or her self a "pureblood"

- Is proudly uneducated and complains about "overeducated" women.

- Complains about drag shows - which nobody forced them to go to - while not batting an eye for beauty pageants for children.

- Complains about HBO Max's The Last of Us showcasing a gay couple (but they obviously loooooove watching heterosexual "couples" on shows)

Which, online (the context here), would require communication with them, to know. That communication would have to be a somewhat spooky probing, completely tangent to the question.

Anecdotes aren’t required for this.

you might not be aware of this but for many people, myself included, seeing casual use of the word "fascists" in discussions such as these elicits an immediate, uncontrollable eye-roll. presently the word "fascists" appears three times on this page (outside of this post), and like, I know what you're getting at, because I'm familiar with the general ideology you appear to subscribe to (based on your use of that term in this context), but, many if not most people are kind of done with people who call everyone and everything they don't like "fascists" or "fascist", just casually using it as a sort of slur.

I know that it makes perfect sense in your ideology and that use of this term is common there, but for the rest of us, it's a bit of a hard sell to connect the word "fascists" with a low-poly poorly-animated Jerry Seinfeld facsimile who emits strings generated by a language model, about thirty seconds of which happens to be politically incorrect, yet, all told, quite mild.

it's kind of on par with talking about "satanism" in the context of Dungeons & Dragons play—I can definitely see how that connection could be made, but doing so would require me to subscribe to an ideology that I simply don't subscribe to, so instead, repeated use of this term has caused it to become, in my mind, and likely the minds of many others, a sort of humorous non-sequitur.

The word "fascist" was used to refer to a person who supports authoritarian regimes that attack minorities, education, reproductive rights, freedom of speech whenever they do not like said speech. I used it to refer to people in support of creating lists of "unwanted" people [1], I used it to refer to people in support of banning books that stand against their ideology.

In your overly condescending and infantilising response, you missed context from parent comment:

> there are actual Nazis out there who want to put people in ovens, so it's taboo to make jokes about how they may have a point.

> similar thing with trans people, you mention them and trolls come out of the woodwork saying they should kill themselves.

Now, you may be okay with a small segment of the population dying at the hands of definitely-not-fascists who have attempted to murder certain officials at their homes, but I do not subscribe to your morally deprived and bankrupt view of the world.

Anyway, what's the difference between Putin's regime, Iran, and GOP besides the religion? It's quite eerie to see how many parallels one may draw from GOP, Iran and Russia.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-transgender-database-dr...

I'm not sure why you took the time to write this specific reply, when I clearly stated that I'm very familiar with the general ideology of the person who enthusiastically and repeatedly uses the word "fascist". I spent most of last decade in the greater Seattle area, in the game development scene—trust me, I've heard it all before, repeatedly, ad nauseam. there is no new information for me in your post.

I was merely attempting to convey that use of the word "fascist" in a context such as this can and will be taken by many as extreme hyperbole bordering on abject nonsense, because I suspect that many people who still casually use this term don't realize that it has lost any weight or gravitas that it once had through sheer overuse, and as a result, use of the term elicits immediate dismissal for many.

also, to everyone else: isn't it curious how some issues such as this one cause people to go off about myriad completely unrelated political topics, wholly unprompted?

> Anyway, what's the difference between Putin's regime, Iran, and GOP besides the religion? It's quite eerie to see how many parallels one may draw from GOP, Iran and Russia.

what could any of this possibly have to do with language-model Seinfeld making a transgender joke?

> you may be okay with a small segment of the population dying at the hands of definitely-not-fascists

I'll just uh.. reiterate my comment from above in hopes that there's some level of introspection possible here:

> The problem I'm seeing is that with some regularity, people are being designated as "intolerant" for simply asking questions, deviating slightly from the most up-to-date acceptable opinion, or just not keeping up with what is the correct opinion to have now. Applying nuance and assuming that others _might_ have good intentions isn't really in vogue

As the other comment said, there's difference between JAQing off and genuinely asking questions.

If you wish to ask questions, there are places where you can very much do so, like r/honesttransgender. You can read papers on the topic, you can read experiences, and you can pose questions in a manner that isn't antagonizing people.

If you wish to blame somebody for the "intolerance" towards the "just asking questions" rhetoric, there are plenty of "news" anchors that cause mass hysteria and purposefully misrepresent information to push their ideology.

Matt Walsh "just asked questions", while supporting, and condoning violence against trans people. Shapiro "Just asked questions", and so does Carson or whatever that guy's name is.

So now trans people have to justify their own existence as people and live in fear because of said people who "just ask questions".

You see, if you wish to learn, there is a time and place for it, antagonising people who genuinely fear for their life by using the same rhetoric the above people used to fuel a rabid and bloodthirsty base you are showing that you don't actually care about people, or at least that's the impression that you are giving.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com