What price are you willing to pay to solve those problems, ideologically?
If it is necessary to become Singapore, are you willing to do this?
What Wirehead said, but also we as a society need to redevelop the social technologies so that groups other than those who can massively overspend on rent can have comfortable, low-crime communities.
Hey let’s destroy the pernicious myth that preteens were regularly marrying in medieval and early modern Europe and were having children as young teenagers. It’s just not true. Church records show the typical age people got married was around 18-23. Sure, around a third of brides were pregnant at the time of their marriage, but premarital sex was actually completely fine in medieval and early modern Europe if the couple intended to marry. (Oh look! Another historical fact the Victorian period completely mangled!)
Very young girls were not having babies in medieval times, people. The only people who ever bring this non-fact up are paedophiles looking to defend their dangerous paraphilia. So cut it out. Stop spreading this myth. It’s not historical, it’s not factual, it’s not true.
“Emerging evidence is eroding the stereotype of medieval child marriage. Goldberg and Smith’s work on low- and lower-middle-status women has refuted Hajnal’s argument for generally early marriage for medieval women. Even Razi’s ‘early’ age at marriage for girls in Halesowen hardly indicates child marriage, as a large portion of his sample married between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two… . Goldberg has offered evidence from fourteenth and fifteenth-century Yorkshire showing that urban girls tended to marry in their early to mid twenties and rural girls married in their late teens to early twenties, and both groups married men who were close to them in age.” (Kim M. Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, c. 1270-1540, p. 37 (x).
Bolded for emphasis.
Reblogging this as a reminder since I just saw another long thread on a social media website about how “the stigma of marrying at age 13-15 is recent”. No it isn’t, you’re just a pedophilia apologist.
This is fascinating, since “well the Medievals married that young” is used to wave off some of the side-effects of polygamy in certain foreign cultures today. But if that isn’t true, then that means culture or religion is responsible and not just economics like we were led to believe.
I’m paying more attention to ideological contradictions…
But what does Liberalism become when it starts saying “yes, some cultures are better than others,” and “yes, some groups practice inbreeding at higher rates than others, and this is terrible,” and “changing demographics through immigration is a feasible angle of attack that can be used in democracy”?
there is so much going on here.
We want to be tolerant.
But Capitalism.
But restroom materials and service cost money.
The issue is not money to run the restrooms. The marginal cost of extra people using the restrooms is trivial. You already have spent the capital to build it, so anything more is… some more rolls of toilet paper, and a few more hours of minimum wage janitorial staff?
The issue is who would use publicly available, free restrooms. Which is to say randos: homeless people, criminals, passerby’s and tourists who do not have money to spare, etc. Free facilities often attract that kind of people, and store managers are deathly afraid of their consumerist utopia looking like a waystation for riffraff (like our stereotypes of bus stations or public libraries.)
Which is why the exclusion of capitalism is so vital. It’s for everyone who is clean and responsible and will draw more people to want to be a customer at that store. In the new era that includes transgender people and handicap people and racial minorities, which is great progress, but it still relies on the idea that some groups of people are unwanted, and too many of them are a nuisance not a blessing.
Problem: While some people are unwanted for reasons that are griping, others are unwanted for reasons that are valid.
Quite frankly I think restricting it to customers in environments where there are a lot of people that would muck it up is a valid decision, and while I suggested materials and money, I should have included opportunity-cost type stuff as well.
I get that it’s ‘ironic’, but it doesn’t feel particularly deep to me, and the secondary side-effects - either those that brought this situation about, or of whatever solution will be undertaken to ‘fix’ this - are being ignored. (Though less so by you. More in the general case.)
You might just think of it as my having developed an emotional eye-rolling reaction to this type of critique.
“Because for some transwomen, femininity can feel asymptotic — the closer you get, the more you feel you can never make it.”
This is a…hard, uncomfortable read if you’re a cis woman, but it’s a good read.
a lot to think about.
as someone who has engaged in a lot of shitty misguided misandry in the past, this was a crucial read. who is invested in the stability of men as a category n why? how can one speak to one’s experiences with weaponized masculinity without reinforcing other kinds of structural violence, like cissexism and white supremacy?
This is a bullshit article. It reflects tremendous self-loathing, and it was irresponsible for Medium to publish it. “It’s so hard the other girls don’t know my tragic trans narrative, because I have made a conscious decision to live it only in dreams and online anonymous op-eds and will never ever tell them.”
This is another case of cis people exploiting the pain and suffering of trans people who aren’t in a position to know better.
I originally discussed this article in some depth on facebook so please read on for a (slightly choppy) elaboration of my reaction:
I just read the text. I don’t know what I think about it yet, but I know one thing for sure : wow, fuck you :) @collaterlysisters
let me add on to this, fuck you @collaterlysisters
Ah, yes, I read this some time ago.
I can never be a true traditionalist, because I want to build the switch and obliterate dozens of category distinctions in doing so. It’s the only way to end many of the existing tensions within so many systems. Eventually, you have to go beyond triaging with limited resources and build such an overwhelmingly powerful economy that you can choose all the options you wanted before simultaneously.
@oktavia-von-gwwcendorff
(Also, if it turns out to have been a clever way to quickly sate some bloodlust while defusing tensions that would’ve risked Clinton getting actually involved on the ground, while informing Russia (and indirectly even Assad) beforehand acted as a way to ensure it doesn’t get misinterpreted and start WW3, and they don’t have any longer-term escalating effects, then I guess grudging hats off to whoever came up with the idea to harm-reduce the “I was wrong about Iraq but Syria totally has chemical weapons and we need to Do Something” crowd by doing Something that isn’t yet another war)
I think the bit in parens is depressingly true.
I do as well, and I find it worrying. People joke that the issue with Democracy is that half of voters have below-average IQ. That isn’t true in itself, but…
What’s the median Clue Quotient?
Why did the Establishment, who are mostly all going to be above-average intelligence, start getting hyped up for a war in Syria? And perhaps, more importantly, how the fuck did these people whose IQs should all be above 110 not learn from the Iraq War not one decade ago? They were all alive and adults back then!
The only one Establishment man that I know for sure learned something was “Publius Deis Mus”, and he works for Trump the last time I checked.
Things I wish existed: apartment buildings with a “mandatory savings clause.” Add in whatever is needed to make it palatable, but fundamentally make people contribute to a savings account each month an amount equal to their rent (increase or decrease by factors required), and that savings account can’t be withdrawn from such that it would fall below min(“months paid in * amount per month”, 24) before the person retires or leaves the apartment building.
Why on earth would this be a good idea? Wealthy people may be assholes in many ways, but they aren’t going to be obviously dealing drugs in the corridors, they will be more considerate about loud music and parties, and they generally prefer being around other wealthy people for this and other reasons. Traditionally, we’ve kept poor people out of places by actually charging them money, but this results in low savings, insecurity, and much more being spent on wasteful housing than needs to be spent. This method allows for individuals to live cheaply without having to suffer the injury of dealing with low-income people
This is a good idea, but it won’t happen because it isn’t market-competitive. Only a Rationalist apartment building owner actively trying to help the country would do this.
It’s not obvious to me why it isn’t competitive. If A makes 10 per month and spends 4 on housing, 2 on saving money, 3 on taxes, and 1 on other (clothing, food, etc), they could move into this place instead, spend 3 on housing, and put 3 on savings. My implicit proposal is that a lot of what the fourth dollar spent on housing actually buys you is “the benefit of living with people who can afford to spend the fourth dollar on housing”, and this ensures that you’re only around people with at least six spare each month after taxes and necessities, a better deal than your original, while costing you less. For the landlord, meanwhile, this is probably competitive with just charging 3 a month, with benefits flowing from things like “middle and upper class norms involve less wanton destruction of property”
This is all partly inspired by @sinesalvatorem’s struggles on BART, which suffers from the problem that poor black people can use it. The benefit of tripling the price mostly wouldn’t be in getting more frequent service or better seats or whatever, but in not getting blatant transphobes, who are shunned in the bay area upper and middle classes. In my home of Boston, I ride both the commuter rail (expensive) and the T (cheap). People are quieter and behaviour is generally more in keeping with my preferences in the former.
The market of people that are openly aware of this and will admit to it and express preference for this as a solution probably isn’t that big, and people would instead either spend less on rent and more on other financial instruments (with a higher RoI), or spend more on the housing and gain more comfortable housing and more status.
I know it’s tagged as “#mostly a joke” but it really does get into a whole bunch of issues related to why housing is so expensive and things we normally aren’t supposed to talk about that are undermining modern Liberalism.
Also now that I think about it, despite this whole thing sounding positively Singaporean, eventually you’d get sued by self-identified civil rights lawyers for being exclusionary.
Huh, this dovetails really nicely with my comments on how this actually happens in practice.
Because doing this openly would be a flaming disaster: lawsuits, public shaming, no tenants, everything. But at the same time, doing it stealthily is actually really common!
Security deposits often don’t need to be super high. First/last rent isn’t necessary for people with great jobs and credit scores in easy-eviction states. Assorted ‘signing fees’ and ‘key fees’ and the like are often pretty much unnecessary when they could be bundled into rent. But they’re all plausibly (and genuinely) self-defense for landlords against bad tenants.
And so no one has to talk about the de facto outcome of driving out people who can pay rent, but lack the cashflow or support network to pay up front. After all, most Americans can’t front an unexpected $500 bill - charging three months rent up front is an easy way to price out people on the edge of affording a property.
Things I wish existed: apartment buildings with a “mandatory savings clause.” Add in whatever is needed to make it palatable, but fundamentally make people contribute to a savings account each month an amount equal to their rent (increase or decrease by factors required), and that savings account can’t be withdrawn from such that it would fall below min(“months paid in * amount per month”, 24) before the person retires or leaves the apartment building.
Why on earth would this be a good idea? Wealthy people may be assholes in many ways, but they aren’t going to be obviously dealing drugs in the corridors, they will be more considerate about loud music and parties, and they generally prefer being around other wealthy people for this and other reasons. Traditionally, we’ve kept poor people out of places by actually charging them money, but this results in low savings, insecurity, and much more being spent on wasteful housing than needs to be spent. This method allows for individuals to live cheaply without having to suffer the injury of dealing with low-income people
This is a good idea, but it won’t happen because it isn’t market-competitive. Only a Rationalist apartment building owner actively trying to help the country would do this.
It’s not obvious to me why it isn’t competitive. If A makes 10 per month and spends 4 on housing, 2 on saving money, 3 on taxes, and 1 on other (clothing, food, etc), they could move into this place instead, spend 3 on housing, and put 3 on savings. My implicit proposal is that a lot of what the fourth dollar spent on housing actually buys you is “the benefit of living with people who can afford to spend the fourth dollar on housing”, and this ensures that you’re only around people with at least six spare each month after taxes and necessities, a better deal than your original, while costing you less. For the landlord, meanwhile, this is probably competitive with just charging 3 a month, with benefits flowing from things like “middle and upper class norms involve less wanton destruction of property”
This is all partly inspired by @sinesalvatorem’s struggles on BART, which suffers from the problem that poor black people can use it. The benefit of tripling the price mostly wouldn’t be in getting more frequent service or better seats or whatever, but in not getting blatant transphobes, who are shunned in the bay area upper and middle classes. In my home of Boston, I ride both the commuter rail (expensive) and the T (cheap). People are quieter and behaviour is generally more in keeping with my preferences in the former.
The market of people that are openly aware of this and will admit to it and express preference for this as a solution probably isn’t that big, and people would instead either spend less on rent and more on other financial instruments (with a higher RoI), or spend more on the housing and gain more comfortable housing and more status.
I know it’s tagged as “#mostly a joke” but it really does get into a whole bunch of issues related to why housing is so expensive and things we normally aren’t supposed to talk about that are undermining modern Liberalism.
Also now that I think about it, despite this whole thing sounding positively Singaporean, eventually you’d get sued by self-identified civil rights lawyers for being exclusionary.
there is so much going on here.
We want to be tolerant.
But Capitalism.
But restroom materials and service cost money.
