Great write up. It bothers me a lot when I see people suggest that supporting Ukraine is imperialist and therefore bad, and that Russia’s aggression should simply be accepted. Judging the actions of any entity based on what category you can put it into is dumb as hell when you can judge it on its merit instead.

Its certainly harder to explain over text since we can’t hear your tone. Do you put in a lot of effort when you speak ? Does talking come naturally, or do you spend a lot of energy trying to be polite ?

well if I had said that I’d mean it manipulatively

Without knowing exactly what you said its hard to know if this reflects more on your friend than you. Apologizing should be fine, so the issue is either how you apologized or your friend. Also a two day argument is a long argument. Who kept it going? Who would bring it up first?

Edit: I see in one comment that you are autistic. Have you talked to your friends and family about what this means in a conversation ? At some point its on them, honestly.

One possibility is that it’s how you phrase things? Everything seems fine here but people tend to write and speak differently, so just throwing out a possibility here.

I used to say essentially “not my fault” a lot as a kid (it was a kind of deflection that I resorted to instead of actually dealing with stuff), and my mom called me out on it once, which caused a huge shift in how i thought about communication from then on. See, sometimes it was my fault, and other times it wasn’t, but that doesn’t really matter a lot in a conversation, so I started kinda taking a mental step back to consider what I was about to say would actually accomplish in the conversation, or how it might be perceived by others, and it became clear to me that I had some other bad conversational habits as well that escalated situations when they didn’t need to.

It might not be easy to detect all of them at once, but just getting into the mindset of thinking about this stuff might help. Hopefully this technique isn’t why I’m anxious these days :P

Edit: Also some subjects are sore as you experienced with your unemployed friend, so having this habit of taking a step back might have helped with realizing that in advance. It’s not always doable of course, you can’t know everything.

and download F:NV

Only after I’ve installed linux and Celeste 😈

Oi, just a heads up as you don’t seem to use it in a negative way, but

is considered a slur these days. Calling someone trans or transgendered is preferred.

OP and me are venting, we are well aware that the issues can be mitigated to some extent. Also, this post is literally about someone putting hateful messages in their username and profile picture, hiding your identity won’t exactly help then :(

Constant harassment? … a single infraction is enough to remove internet strangers forever.

I think maybe you don’t quite understand, doesn’t matter how many we block there is always one more phobe just around the corner, and being attacked by these people can be quite taxing emotionally in the long run.

I reported their account and a couple of other ones, hopefully steam will do something eventually.

History disagrees with you. The truth is that regular protests can be ignored, and voting may not always be very accessible (in non-democracies or because of voter suppression) or effective as a means to achieve change where you live (the US and similar countries because of first past the post voting systems). Direct action is absolutely a necessary and important tool for democracies to be functional whatsoever, and is in fact part of how we ensure good workplace conditions and good wages here in Norway (we have regular strikes as part of bargaining with businesses and the state). Hoping and waiting for things to improve is at best a recipe for nothing to happen.

It seems you think that disruptive protests need to be violent or damaging? Strikes are disruptive and harmless and very effective at changing things for the better.

Direct action is an easy way to end up in jail

I get you. It’s hard to organize something that can’t be shut down easily, and honestly if it can be it might not be worth it. I see a lot of americans and sadly people where I live as well who underestimate the importance of unions in a functional democracy as the most viable way to force the government and businesses to listen.

Voting downballot but making no choice for president sends a very clear signal.

After the election maybe? That seems rather late to me. Direct action and building up third party alternatives seems to be the best long term courses of action. If I were american I would work towards unionizing as many people as possible, report that I won’t vote democrat, and then vote democrat unless a third party has a chance of winning in my state.

I disagree on principle. Voting for a lesser evil is still voting to perpetuate evil. At best, it maintains an intolerable status quo, and it comes from a fear of the radical change that we know is sorely needed. “Lesser evilism” is conservatism.

I disagree. Voting is currently not a means of meaningful change in the US (at least for the left), which is why I refer to it as damage control. You are correct however if all people do politically is vote.

I live in a very small town so if I want vegetarian here we’re talking a margarita pizza or eggs on toast :P

That said I’ve mostly cut dairy out of my diet, but I don’t remember to check the ingredients of everything I eat so who knows how plant based I am these days. Probably some dairy based butter in some of the things I buy.

I have a lot of stomach issues and unfortunately react somewhat to oat milk, but almond milk (which has other climate issues to my knowledge) and coconut based milk is working very well for me.

Vegetarian with ADHD (among other things) here! I started the same way many years ago, by cutting out red meat and pork, and then reducing meat consumption until I realized I had been eating like a vegetarian for a week and then committing.

For me it was about what was and wasn’t doable. I struggle with motivation a lot, and bothering to cook a proper meal everyday or sit down and do proper research into what constitutes a healthy diet isn’t something I can just make myself do.

Honestly if this is about CO2 emissions, which it originally was for me, then cutting meat by 90% or whatever is almost as good as going vegetarian and will be way easier in terms of nutrition.

I’ve seen people debate this endlessly, but I’ve never seen anyone on the side of not voting explain anything beyond “I don’t want to support genocide” as if the republicans aren’t just as gung ho about killing children. What is the utility in not participating in the election? What do you think not voting will achieve?

You aren’t sending a signal and you certainly aren’t making the democrats commit less genocide.

Voting democrat is the lesser evil and will have actual positive results for people living in the US, and it isn’t mutually exclusive with other ways of enacting change.

Yet I still hear people arguing for not voting as if minimizing harm is not useful. You’ve not morally failed in any way by voting for the democrats while still working towards change in other ways.

Minish Cap is just absolutely amazing. The world is small, but very well made and fun to explore. It has aged very well (I imagine most GBA games have?) so I would recommend everyone to give it a go if they like that sort of game!

I’ve never tried any Castlevania games, maybe it’s time.

Your issue is you have two boxes, female and male, when intersex conditions are the result of sex being a spectrum. Intersex conditions can happen in a multitude of ways, and many are not very outwardly detectable.

Masulinization and feminization is a complicated and messy process which results in people with sexual characteristics outside the binary, and sometimes this means that people are born infertile or less fertile, which invalidates your point. Biologically it’s asinine to say that bio sex is binary.

You say if someone belongs to the sex which can have babies then they are biologically women. How do you define if someone belongs to the sex which can have babies? Your definition doesn’t describe this, you just arbitrarily put someone into the woman box.

Then say that instead? You started a completely irrelevant discussion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mostly-male-woman-gives-birth-to-twins-in-medical-miracle-10033528.html

Biological sex is not binary, and the purpose of women isn’t just squeezing children out. I called your logic terfy because your talking points are eerily similar to theirs.

Biology is far more complicated than you make it out to be. You are also invalidating cis people with your terfy logic about producing babies