First you need to stop seeing it as a binary (being gay isn't a bit that gets 'flipped,' it's more of a range that you are predisposed to fall somewhere within) and then this will start making more compatible sense. If you're willing to accept that, here's a really good interview on the subject: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_invention_of_the_heteros...
One thing I found especially interesting is toward the end, where Katie Couric sits down with Renée Richards and Hari Nef. It was interesting seeing Hari talk with Renée and realize they disagree on the binary topic.
Bluntly, because when we still had such things as sodomy laws and the "gay panic" defence[0], society wasn't ready to deal with that nuance in a productive way. You need to keep your message simple when you're trying to change deep-seated beliefs, lest people perceive a loophole in the minutae to excuse clinging to their prejudices.
Both the notions "anything but complete heterosexuality is unnatural" and "sexuality is a strict binary" were widely-held misconceptions in need of correcting, sure, but it was prudent to dismantle western sociey's attachment to the former before tackling the latter. If the idea of sexuality as a gradient had been popularized first, it would have been misused as a stick to beat down the campaign for acceptance of minority sexualities: "Why should we allow homosexual behaviour? As you've just been telling us, it's not a binary thing, so surely you're all a little bit straight? Sorry, you'll just have to put up with living according to only that part of your inner self. Stop complaining - according to you, we're all a little bit gay, and you don't see us grumbling about not getting to act on it."
Maybe look at the various social consequences in places where the "immutability" line is or has been sold, versus places and times where it isn't or wasn't.
there's a spectrum of sexuality which expresses itself in different ways to different degrees in different people /= sexuality is [almost] invariably mutable
Especially when the argument over mutability is usually framed as "people attracted to the same sex or inclined to gender nonconform are bad influences on others and they can and must adapt their behaviour to conform to social norms" vs the argument that it's imposing the obligation to change one's sexuality that causes some people psychological harm
Most people ignore women's general bisexuality, and confuse this by equating sexual preference as "complicated".
Not for men (for the most part, as in 99%). They either love vagina, and are disgusted by penis, or vice versa.
On the other side, most "straight" women, fantasize and experiment with the same sex, and to them, preference is usually on a sliding scale.
That all said, sexual preference is further confusing when we have a large subset of straight males, being attracted to very feminine transsexuals, like Bailey Jay.
To me this means male sexual preference is holistic, meaning if you pass as a woman, but have a penis, you may attract many straight males, who would gag at the idea of a well toned and very masculine male.
Even if the masculine "man" was a woman passing as one, with a vagina.
Not for men (for the most part, as in 99%).
They either love vagina, and are disgusted by penis, or vice versa.
In ancient Rome, "It was considered natural and unremarkable for men to be sexually attracted to teen-aged youths of both sexes, and pederasty was condoned as long as the younger male partner was not a freeborn Roman." [1]
Most people would agree that genetically, men haven't changed all that much in the last 2000 years or so, which lets us discount the idea that a genetic bit has recently been flipped.
That leaves the notion that sexuality is - at least in part - a social construction.
>They either love vagina, and are disgusted by penis, or vice versa.
I don't think it's normal for straight men to be "disgusted" by penis or for gay men to be "disgusted" by vagina. There's often social pressure on both groups to pretend that they have these feelings, but I don't think it's actually very common.
> To me this means male sexual preference is holistic, meaning if you pass as a woman, but have a penis, you may attract many straight males, who would gag at the idea of a well toned and very masculine male.
Hm... I'm generally attracted to (some) people who look like women, but that's just an assumption, open to change/dispute. I'm pretty sure I'd equally gag at the sight of that "pretty lady"'s penis...
I remember reading online that to bait the valve half life 2 leaker/hacker to come to the US for authorities to capture, valve sent the hacker a phoney job offer. At the end of the day, all these smart tech workers want is to get paid for their skills.
For the hacker types there are things like bug bounty programs where they could make money in a legitimate way. The story I linked to though is just regular extortion artists with no discernible skills. I'm not sure how you address that.
man I really got a new perspective on Gabe. Blatantly deceiving the German guy to cause tremendous harm to his life by colluding with the Gestapo even when Half Life 2 was a tremendous success and none of his precious monies were lost in the process, in fact the leak only raised the profile for Half Life 2 resulting in more sales.
I definitely won't be buying Half Life 3.
TIL Gabe Newell is actually very narrow minded and not a nice guy. Hacking and leaking is also bad but it's not clear that the action led to losses when Half Life 2 was a phenomenal success. It's the deceptive tactic of pretending to offer an olive branch and going back on your word. He should be fucking ashamed of himself.
Say someone broke in to your house, rifled through your stuff, and put pictures of your personal things on instagram. Would you not want to press charges?
I'm sure you can see the night and day differences. Gabe just got free PR exposure. He should've kept his fucking word and gave the guy a job but instead he got soft.
Tony Montana said it the best: all you really have at the end of your life is your word and your balls and how well you kept them.
Venezuela had a command economy that bet everything on an unstable natural resource. Terrible move, not related to socializing health care or helping the poor.
Cuba was economically starved by the US and its allies and unable to interact with the global economy. This paired with its early history of horrific human rights abuses led to a rough state that continues to this day. But, and this does not excuse how violent the state was in its early days, Cuba does have no unemployment or homelessness which is something remarkable.
Those are edge cases though. Look at the northern european countries, canada, or germany
Thank goodness someone is as brave as you are to defend neo-nazis and their rights. Do you also debate firefighters because, well, they're just as bad as the fires?
You see, white nationalists/facists/neo-nazis/alt-righters/whathaveyou have an ideology of genocide and oppression. Enacting violence against them can be seen as a form of self defense. Engaging them in debate only validates their ideology. Arguable, the best plan of action is to ignore them entirely and starve them of airtime, but the media clearly didn't get that memo.
Now, when you have somebody like Milo Y coming to campus with plans to publicly name undocumented foreign students (like he publicly named a transgender student at his last talk, forcing her to leave the school after harassment from his followers) in an attempt to incite violence against them or deportation, knocking over a few lights and breaking some windows to keep him at bay is pretty reasonable for defense.
BLM is a peaceful organization. There are rogue actors, but that is a result of its poor central planning and lack of clear agenda. Please do not discredit the entire movement of people fighting to stop systemic racism because a few of them torch some trash cans and break a few windows.
What is really interesting to see is political cartoons from the days of the MLK led Civil Rights protests. The arguments against the civil rights movement are exactly the same as the ones against BLM now. People thought the protesters were "too violent" and were a bunch of thugs destroying their own neighborhoods and holding back the more respectable black people and their agenda. The same arguments are used today to discredit the work of Black Lives Matter.
After all, didn't MLK say that a riot is the language of the unheard?
Fellow commentors, please be aware that "virtue signalling" is a buzzword used by the alt-right to discredit activists or socially progressive people. This tactic is meant to dissuade the socially progressive from actively taking a role in enacting change.
No, signaling in this context is a term referring to conspicuous behavior meant to substitute a difficult to prove characteristic (e.g. being a principled person acting morally) with an easy to perform ritual (e.g. sharing opinions with like-minded followers on Twitter).
Not everyone who dislikes this behavior is alt right, or rightwing at all. Stop focusing on the scape goat that's easy to dislike.
This is a really cool demonstration, love the code breakdowns. For a less technical, but broader scale description of ray tracing, Disney made an excellent video describing their use of ray tracing in movies. Check it out here:
Stop fearmongering and implying immigrants are naturally criminals.
Criminality us a result of being marginalized from society and not being able to work "honest" livings. You are forced to rely on your own group, pushed to the edges and fighting for its own.
Fun fact: the vast majority of North American terrorism is committed by white men. No other group since 9/11 has contributed more to terror than disgruntled white dudes in North America. Refugees are trying to escspe the same horrors you are describing. The situation is similar to the US turning away Jews under the banner of "America First" during WW2 because they feared Nazis sneaking in with the Jews. The "safe" countries you describe haven't been rocked by war, their national identities not torn down and confused by decades of installed dictators, foreign resource exploitation, and post-cold-war rebel group armings. Remember, we created the Taliban to fight the Russians. That one sure had some long lasting effects. Now we're empowering neo-nazis domestically to fight this perceived threat of Muslim people. How do you think this is going to play out when we're done being afraid of Muslims?
It's easy to be scared right now, but turning to racist rhetoric instead of finding parallels in history is what allows fascism to take hold. Read up, educate yourself, and come back tomorrow better ready for building a better tommorrow.
15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. The current ban would have done nothing to prevent them from coming here.
I could see a ban making some sense, but any ban that leaves out Pakistan, UAE and Saudi Arabia has deficiencies so glaring that it would never be worth the suffering caused.
Prior to 9/11, the all-time US terrorist record was the Oklahoma City bombing, by two white dudes. Divide out the number of deaths in each attack by the number of people directly involved in the attacks, and you reach comparable numbers.
Considering your views towards Muslims and willingness to ignore vast amounts of domestic terrorism, it seems like the goals of the 9/11 hijackers has been acheived.
9/11 is a valid date to start from because a large part of its shock value is that for the most part of post WW2 America, there weren't any foreign attacks on American soil. 9/11 was the anomaly, meant to provoke US outrage and further our violence against the middle East, convincing more young people that the US was an agressor and that they were the righteous. Clearly, these people are not righteous, but neither were we.
