What do news reports count as a 'death threat' on social media?

motionlessoracle · 2021-02-09T20:17:48+00:00

I think standards have probably fallen. When I used to receive death threats, they said stuff like "the next time I see u, Im going to slit ur throat and stuff u in a bag". They were graphic and implied the sender knew where to find me and intended to carry out the threat.

I'm going to guess that "go kill yourself", "you're too stupid to live", or "I wish you'd die" are considered death threats now. In other words, they are messages that mention death and the recipient interprets them as threats because they are not 100% validating.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-27T20:11:45+00:00

Women of color are not masculine. I can see they are women quite easily. They are my sisters.

If men think women of color look masculine, it's because they've been pushed an image of femininity that is 100% white Barbie doll.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-27T19:48:28+00:00

I object to call out/cancel culture. Period.

Talking to people privately, settling differences privately, handling issues internally is where almost everything should start. If those methods fail, bump it up a notch and try again. To me, that's how rational, mature, adults handle problems.

What I see happening now is that people immediately jump to the most damaging, sensational method of receiving justice. They appeal directly to mobs to harm other people.

I read a Twitter thread about a BLM protestor who was asking the mob to identify a "Karen". The white woman was in her car and had come across a place where protestors were blocking the road and not letting traffic pass. (It is not legal to block traffic, btw, unless you have a permit.) The white woman attempted to drive through a gas station to bypass the protest. The protestors surrounded her car and began beating on the windows, shouting at her. She was surely terrified. To try to escape, she let her car creep forward slowly. Eventually, the police arrived and helped the white woman get on her way. The BLM protestor was outraged that the police had let "Karen" go when she had tried to "kill people" with her car.

It was full on stupid. If you surround a car and start harassing the occupant, expect to get run over. It might even be considered self defense in a court of law. The white woman was doing everything in her power to both escape a scary situation and hurt nobody. Yet the frustrated protestors are now plastering her photos all over Twitter and encouraging people to hunt her down and harass her more. If people cannot see that this is evil, that this is not about justice but revenge, then I despair.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-27T19:30:01+00:00

You make a good point about the anonymity of data. Somewhere, for any human study, there is a key that permits connecting real human beings to the ID numbers in the data. Perhaps that was what was being amended?

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-26T18:17:13+00:00

It's definitely worried about all out of proportion to actually happening, at least where rape is concerned.

I'm against the death penalty, for instance, even though the risk of executing the wrong person is low, because the damage done to the person wrongly executed is abhorrent. I feel similarly about public accusations. I have watched protestors going insane trying to doxx individuals from photographs/videos and I have seen them name many, many innocent people before finally getting the right one. Each one of those false namings has the potential to end a person's career and subject them to massive harassment. This is why police tip lines do not operate in the open. They are trying to maintain the assumption of innocence until there is sufficient evidence. Accused people have rights, even if they are ultimately despicable people. Twitter mob justice does not respect the rights of the accused.

I do not think that one can be aghast at what happened to innocent people like Emmett Till, yet simultaneously believe that one is on the "right side of history" as long as they are only unleashing injustice on white men.

Men need to face justice. Justice does not come from the mob.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-26T18:05:59+00:00

I sincerely hope the owners of the study know that happened and think it's irrelevant to the study, otherwise their data is fucked for all time.

What worries me are the retrospective studies. Sometimes, researchers go back and pull data from various studies done by different groups in the past in an attempt to look at other variables. Say a researcher wants to go back to clinical trials and look at how drug <x> affects female patients of a certain age. How will they know that the data they are grabbing hasn't been altered? Poisoning the female data with data from people who were male at birth potentially endangers female people.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-26T02:32:16+00:00

I reject all religions, especially religions that require subservience from females or consider them property.

If a woman must be pressured and coerced to wear hijab, it is patriarchy. All such women are forgiven for doing what they need to do in order to survive.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-26T02:25:19+00:00

If that's how you feel when you enter a woman's space and women are skeptical about you, then own that feeling. Take responsibility for it and reflect on it. I'm not responsible for how you feel. I will not take responsibility for how you feel.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-26T02:20:53+00:00

Let's have a chat when somebody "goes public" on you or somebody you love and you witness the absolute, batshit, full scale harassment and fuckery that occurs. If you've never been on the receiving end of a internet harassment campaign, I have. It's terrifying. (No, I didn't do anything to deserve it.)

One you release the mob, you lose control of it. You can't call it back. I think such an action should be the absolute last resort of a woman who has been thoroughly ignored.

I agree 100% that the justice system has been horrible to women attempting to file rape and sexual assault charges. The women who do actually get to go to court wind up reliving their trauma and having their character smeared all over (as if sexual assault is excused if nobody likes you). It's why I never sought justice for my own sexual assault.

All I'm saying is that social media mob justice has a way of being more mob than justice, and I understand why men would be terrified of a false accusation or a minor event being blown out of proportion.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-26T02:08:43+00:00

I'd imagine that not all TIFs immediately get a hysterectomy. The ones who haven't should probably receive reminders for smear tests until they opt out of them. The system as described is opt out only, meaning women without a cervix can stop receiving the reminders, but those flagged as "men" with a cervix are never sent reminders at all.

I don't believe the gender nonsense, mind you. I just think that if hospitals are going to permit people to register as their genderfeels and not their birth sex, they need to be prepared to offer proper health care regardless.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-25T18:20:30+00:00

She does live in the UK, where it's incredibly easy to sue a newspaper for publishing unflattering stories

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

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-25T18:16:08+00:00

For those who don't click the link and read: it's about TIFs who aren't receiving reminders to get a screening. It's not about TIMs.

If any "insanity" must stop, it is in having one single index of a person's birth sex. Doctor's offices need to be asking "what was your birth sex?" and keeping that on file, then using that to generate reminders for smear tests. That way, no matter how many legal fictions are put on passports, the truth exists.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-25T18:10:59+00:00

It may be a red herring, but it also may just be that they are entering the debate with their own discomfort. I think #metoo was an excellent awareness movement that went off the rails when it threw due process out the window and started publicly accusing people. Men are upset that a woman can just toss these accusations off on social media and their lives will be derailed whether the woman is telling the truth or not.

Listening to women does not mean throwing out the justice system.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-25T18:06:51+00:00

It was almost surely enabled by one or more people inside Twitter using their access to the administrative panel. There's no way that outside hackers managed to compromise so many accounts in such a short time, many of which had 2FA enabled. The only answer was that they were inside the admin panel toggling 2FA off and changing the account e-mail addresses to their own so they could request a password reset.

If I go through a checkout line with a bottle of liquor, the cashier frequently needs to call a manager to authorize the sale. Yet Twitter employees had access to the private details of millions of people and did not need a single other witness to modify them?

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-25T17:49:01+00:00

You're right. Even though I am on the left, I'm not too keen on it anymore. I'm of the left that used to be called "liberal", as in "liberty". Freedom to love whoever you want and own your body and ingest weird substances if it makes you happy. The left is doubling down on telling people they can't do or say x/y/z because -ism/-phobia, and people must use pronouns and I am over the censorship and compelled speech.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-25T17:41:47+00:00

You had me right up until you started talking about violence. The rest of your post opened my eyes to the realities faced by mothers of special needs children. I truly had never thought of it that way before. Mothers are blamed for their children in a way fathers never are.

However, since TIMs have appropriated the narrative that they are more at risk of violence and murder than everyone in the whole world, committing violence against them is a terrible plan. It plays right into their sense of righteous victimhood. What has been working for us is that TIMs shout about how evil TERFs are and how they need to die horribly but can't show many examples of women physically harming them. The dissonance wakes people up eventually. I think we should maintain the dissonance.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T19:14:06+00:00

Saidit is a website where people can have lots of alts and nobody has to give up personal information to create accounts.

How is anyone going to detect when an account is an alt versus when an account is legitimate, without completely invading the privacy of every other user on Saidit?

Solution: join subs you like, sort by "new", and read all the posts with interesting titles. Vote manipulation has no effect unless you rely on votes to filter content. Do stuff yourself instead of appealing to authorities to fix it.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T19:07:09+00:00

You: Explains a way OP is wrong.

OP: Reacts as if being wrong feels like pain.

Me: sips tea

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T18:19:29+00:00

Their ageism is self defeating. The women who have the wisdom to help them are the ones who were in the trenches before they were born.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T18:15:26+00:00

Very nice, my compliments to /u/d3rr.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T18:11:42+00:00

What I like most about Poisson's equation is that it looks so simple, but actually applying it to anything requires patience, boundary conditions, and loads of math tricks. Also, copious tears if you have to do it by hand.

https://www.wikihow.com/Solve-Poisson%27s-Equation-Using-Fourier-Transforms

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T18:05:13+00:00

Assume a spherical cat of uniform density, 1 gram/cm^3, and a mass of 5 kilos.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-24T17:34:19+00:00

Websites like Reddit use sophisticated tracking methods. These methods start out as defenses against bots and bad actors, but eventually morph into privacy invasions.

If you create multiple accounts with the same e-mail address, they will use that. If you don't enter an e-mail address, they will use the IP address of your connection. If you use a VPN to mask your IP, they will attempt to "fingerprint" your browser. This means they will use information about your browser to create a profile. For instance, they can query the user agent, like so: https://www.whatismybrowser.com/detect/what-is-my-user-agent

They can run Javascript on your browser to attempt to determine the size of your browser window. Since most people run their browser full-screen, or always use the same browser window size, this gives them a method to recognize you. They can query which other plugins you are running. If you use a browser that attempts to cloak the user agent and plugins, they can use code that is guaranteed to give different results based on browser to unmask you.

Worse, they can use DRM on your machine to identify not only your browser, but your computer uniquely. DRM permits you to stream protected content in your browser. DRM authorizes you by creating a full device fingerprint of your computer. Sites like Reddit will query that DRM, giving them a unique fingerprint of your computer/phone.

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

Scary stuff. Browse with as little enabled as possible. Turn off Javascript, turn off DRM, use a browser that will return junk for common browser fingerprinting queries.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-23T15:34:51+00:00

I see your wave equation and raise you Poisson's equation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson%27s_equation

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-23T15:32:38+00:00

Would 95 years be long enough for all the atoms in a cat to tunnel out of the box, assuming each tunneling event takes around 1 millisecond?

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-23T15:20:53+00:00

"If you're <x>, you must fight for <y>, too" is just shinier packaging on what women heard during the second wave feminist movement: "Ladies, you have to wait your turn. There are more important issues right now."

I actually don't have to fight for <y> in order to fight for <x>. I can put allllll my energy into <x>.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T20:33:48+00:00

I can see we are approaching a similar problem in different ways.

Women are happiest when they do not marry.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T20:28:12+00:00

You'll have to forgive the skepticism you might encounter here. Saidit is under attack and we have been repelling trolls lately.

This is probably the correct sub. I can't think of a better one.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T20:22:33+00:00

"maplegal"? You have got to be kidding. No reference to MAPs?

GoFundMe has an option to anonymize your donation (that's what I did!)

Except your name is on the credit card you use, and that cannot be anonymized. Anyway, it's a good excuse to mention security again for anyone reading. If you want to donate to stuff like this, use a pre paid credit card. You can buy them in most shops for cash and they do not have a name on them.

Edit: On second reading, I can see "map" "legal" and "maple" "gal" so my initial reaction to the name is ambivalent.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T20:20:58+00:00

They're not 100% wrong. It is possible to be initially attracted to all sorts of people who, after a few dates or closer investigation, reveal something about themselves that squashes your attraction.

The error they commit is in calling the later rejection "transphobia". If you are initially attracted, you are allowed to lose that attraction for any reason.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T20:13:47+00:00

An account named "honeypot" soliciting donations that will identify the donor. Hmm.

From a 15 minute old account. That has one post.

Stay away from this one.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T02:53:45+00:00

That sounds rough, like surviving a Twitter pile on in real life.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T02:50:49+00:00

I suspect some trolling and some genuine folks who are new to GC/radfem circles because of JKR or the Reddit bans. They're not totally detoxed from the libfem world and that's okay. Give them time. We just have to push back, gently, with education and resources.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-22T02:47:53+00:00

Tired of seeing my Black sisters being told they are manly and not beautiful by envious males who wish they were female.

Her refusal to physically fight was interpreted as "transphobic violence". The world officially makes no sense.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T17:56:37+00:00

I'm having this convo in two sub-threads here so excuse the cut and paste

That's fine, I appreciate the conversation.

So, why is it that for some spaces, some topics, those boundaries are reframed as "censorship" ? Terms of debate is a thing, as is freedom of assembly, and again, it's interesting who is and isn't allowed to assemble and set their own boundaries and terms.

Now that I see more of what you're trying to say, I think I agree with you.

I think of Saidit as an analogue of the US government. The government in the USA cannot silence your speech, except in a few fringe cases. That is absolute freedom of speech. The US government protects your right to say what you want to say and associate with whoever you wish. Its role is protective, only. Otherwise, it leaves you alone.

I think of the subs as like states or companies. The states in the US can absolutely create more legislation, as can the counties and cities. Companies can hire or fire you for almost any reason or no reason. Companies can create codes of conduct for employees. A sub, to me, is a voluntary association. Since anyone can make a sub, having a sub that restricts speech to a certain topic or tone is not necessarily damaging. Those who disagree can easily make their own sub and discuss there. I'm on the more liberal side of politics, so I think that speech should be tolerated to the maximum degree possible, but I agree that people talking about automotive repair on a woodworking sub should be directly encouraged to move the conversation elsewhere.

Within the context of the US federal government, which extends to everything the federal government supports (like public universities), certain boundaries infringe on free speech rights and are censorship. Within the context of private property, like a corporation, more boundaries are permitted. If people on saidit want to create black people only subs, or white people only subs, I think those should be permitted. If the sub moderators want to ban everyone who isn't black (or white), I also think that should be permitted.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T17:38:42+00:00

There's a tendency on the left (and perhaps in other groups, but I'm a member of the left so I see it more clearly) to say: this is a problem, I've thought of one solution, therefore it is the solution. Inevitably, the solution is the most obvious, which tells you something about the group proposing it. To the left, censoring speech is the first tool they grab. It's a clumsy tool, with splinters in the handle and a distressing tendency to injure both the user and innocent bystanders, but it vaguely gets the job done in the same way that a wrench can be used as a hammer.

There are alternative solutions that are far less chilling. For instance, permitting users to block other users so they never see their content puts control in the hands of individual users. The objectionable speech remains, but only for those who wish to see it, thus this option imposes no worldview on anyone. Everyone is free to cultivate their own bubble. Nobody has control over anyone else's bubble.

u/magnora7 indicated that this feature is desired and anyone who wants to take a crack at it can check out the github repository: https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit

Another option would be to display subs and comments in a filtered way, by automatically collapsing those from users with low karma/recent account creation and hiding their posts from the /s/all feed. The comments/posts would still be visible to those who chose to look at them, but the default level of engagement with them would be low.

When trying to increase the signal to noise ratio, you can boost the signal or reduce the noise. Both approaches have limitations. Anyone who has spent time processing signals/data can tell you that removing noise (rather than preventing it from occurring) inevitably changes the signal as well. It distorts it.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T17:19:19+00:00

I was thinking yesterday how even 5 years ago I saw quite a bit of pushback with people repeating the famous quote "I don't agree with what you said, but I'll defend to death your right to say it". I've noticed these last 3 years no one really say that anymore.

This is so true and so sad. You're right. I never see those sentiments anymore. I still believe them.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T17:03:04+00:00

Just talking out loud, here.

Sometime around 10pm, traffic hit a maximum. This suggests that compromised devices were either being powered on or a huge batch of unblocked Tor exit nodes opened up (or something else I haven't thought of). The decay in traffic is probably Cloudflare identifying the attack IPs and clamping down on them, or else maybe those devices were slowly being powered down.

If the surge is because devices were being powered on, then that narrows the time range to the beginning of typical work hours or the beginning of typical leisure hours. Workplaces are usually (but not always) harder to compromise en masse, and many workplaces remain closed due to COVID, so my instinct is that this surge is powered by leisure activity. Since many of the people who can work from home are doing so, laptops and all, you wouldn't expect this kind of surge behavior if people were working all day at home on compromised laptops and then using the same laptops to switch to leisure activities. You'd expect a steady state. Routers and other IoT devices that are always on also wouldn't generate this pattern.

To me, this has the feel of compromised, internet connected devices that are not always on. Things like tablets and gaming consoles, or maybe point of sale terminals. Stuff with a physical on/off switch, or at least in a sleep state most of the day. The width of the surge is only about five hours long. That also suggests, to me, leisure devices more than workplace devices. It suggests a surge at end of workday and a taper when people go to bed.

Am I barking up the wrong tree?

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:43:29+00:00

It's because I don't think they would get along, lol.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:42:24+00:00

I'm glad no offense was taken, because none was intended.

I'm not singling you out. I think everyone who is currently using this site needs to think very carefully about what free speech sometimes costs.

We've been spoiled for years by "free" internet services that were only free because we were what was being sold. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, TikTok are all using you to make money. They are willing to violate your privacy quite extremely, doxx you behind the scenes, sell that data to the highest bidder, then ban you if you become inconvenient.

Saidit has no ads and doesn't sell user data, so the costs are out of pocket for magnora7. Donations are the only way this site will stay online if it needs to spend $$$ repelling DDoS attacks. It's understood that not everyone can or will donate. The point I am making is that we cannot think of saidit in the same way we think of other social media. We cannot treat this site like a free lunch.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:32:40+00:00

Since cancel culture is inherently a group concept, I don't think individuals making their own choices on who they want to support is the same thing.

Cancel culture is millions of individuals who do not know how to cope with people they dislike, all making individual choices to harass, boycott, doxx, petition, and write letters.

I mean, I agree that choosing not to give money is different from a boycott. However, using this site is like being given a free lunch, and then declaring you don't want to leave a tip for the server because free lunches were also given to racists.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:27:36+00:00

Well, think of it this way. Monetary support isn't paying magnora7's rent. It's simply the cost to have a site like this online that is currently deflecting over a million hostile connections roughly every ten minutes while we get to be blissfully unaware.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Reddit was a money making enterprise with ads, so most people could easily decide not to give them more money and still sleep at night. This site is, as far as I can tell, a lot of work and zero financial gain. If it starts costing too much out of pocket to repel the attacks, it will go offline, and then we won't have anywhere to speak again.

That's the point of the DDoS attacks. We can fight back by making sure magnora7 has the funds necessary to absorb the cost of protecting our right to free speech. You're not protecting free speech if you're only willing to protect speech you agree with.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:16:09+00:00

Question: Is this costing you extra money in bandwidth or tithes to Cloudflare? If so, let us know how we can help.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:14:21+00:00

Can you sticky a post or a message to the top of /s/all explaining this? Or some kind of message every user is guaranteed to see once?

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-21T00:12:07+00:00

Sorry your site is having to deal with this.

"Reddit banned us for saying things other people didn't like."

"How dare people on saidit say things I find offensive?!"

Sigh.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T17:07:52+00:00

Part of me wish there's a way to donate without also contributing to help racists sounding off.

I'm not trying to attack you or make you mad, but I wonder if you've thought about the implications of a platform that bans people who say things you consider racist? How is that in any way different than a platform that bans people for saying things that men don't like?

Free speech really means anyone can say whatever they like as long as it isn't a crime. That is either valuable to you or it isn't. As soon as you allow somebody to decide which controversial ideas it is okay to have, you give one group power over others.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:50:56+00:00

Let them delete the wrongthink questions. Those will show up on removeddit and other archive sites. Then we can post screenshots about the hundreds of women who were silenced by Reddit.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:49:38+00:00

Why do you allow an inordinate amount of paid moderators who are transwomen?

Isn't that obvious? They are counting them as "women". Soon, there will be 50% male mods and 50% TIMs to accurately reflect the demographics.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:46:47+00:00

A mid-life crisis with extra steps.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:39:27+00:00

Yep. I know multiple secret TERFs, and none of them realize that I know others.

Once I collect enough, I plan to tell all of them how many others I know (number only, not names). That should let them know that they aren't the only ones.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:36:55+00:00

At the bottom of this page is information on donating to saidit. If enough of us can spare a few bucks a month, /u/magnora7 should be able to afford our presence here.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:14:20+00:00

The second we moved to saidit, I wondered how good their DDoS protection was. I figured they'd be getting some crap thrown at them. Cloudflare has been pretty good at mitigating the attacks so far, though.

Now is the time to donate massively to saidit. Donate before it becomes difficult to do so. Thank them for giving us space. GC on Reddit was one of the subs that bought the most gold per user. Let's continue the tradition here.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T16:10:24+00:00

And it is but only in the sense of social suicide, spite will keep me alive if nothing else.

You are enough, just as you are. You may have committed "social suicide", but in a year you will have completely moved on. Seek out the detransitioners on Twitter. They are amazing.

Sooner or later the lid is going to blow on this entire thing, I know it’s going to be people like me, Elle Palmer, Ryan Barnes, et al the detrans community, forging the way.

The lid is beginning to blow already. It takes bravery, like what you've shown.

How am I supposed to keep going knowing what I now know?

Here's how. You wait. Don't be nasty to anyone you used to know. Don't shout at them and try to get them to see your truth. They will see it eventually. Give your time and attention to people who uplift you. When your former friends have the same epiphany you had, they will seek you out and then you can help them.

You are strong. Stay safe and try not to despair. Turn despair and anger into productive activity. Create words, art, change.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-20T15:58:34+00:00

TRA reading the above post: Hey, I'm not a narcissist!

TRA on social media: Hey! Mean old TERFs are saying I'm a narcissist and I'm totally not, am I? posts a selfie and a poll

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-19T17:18:42+00:00

ETA: If any of you think you might have already been doxxed, it's an easy fix in the off-chance somebody you actual know finds out or you face any real world consequences! Just say you lurk here to see what the TERFs say that you know better how to fight them. They all do it anyway. When in trouble roleplay woke!

I want to add:

If anyone accuses you online, and it is not somebody you know personally, do not argue. Do not apologize. Gray rock. If you think they will start trying to hassle your employer, give your employer a heads up. Get to your employer first, explain that people on the internet are engaged in defamation of you, and ask for their support. Don't make threats, but make sure your employer knows that you are willing to hire a lawyer. It may make them think twice about firing you to appease a Twitter mob.

If it's somebody you know, then do the above. Be prepared to perform wokeness. Read something woke so you can dismiss everything you have seen in TERFland. It should be an Academy Award winning performance. Then do not fuck up again or it will be over for you.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-19T17:11:19+00:00

Thank you for saying this.

Ditch Chrome, Explorer/Edge, etc. Get Epic, Brave, or Tor browsers. Use those for internet browsing.

The Twitter hack should have been enough to convince you that nothing is private. If all it takes to get access to your private messages is an admin gone rogue, then you must be paranoid at all times on the internet.

For private messaging, use services like Signal that encrypt the messages. That way, an admin who accesses them will see only the encrypted version. Only the sender and recipient see them as decrypted.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-19T17:06:17+00:00

Decentralize. Create many forums in which people are free to speak.

Those who get tired of walking on eggshells to be part of Twitter will eventually find other online niches to occupy. Twitter will lose relevance and influence.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-19T17:02:59+00:00

Part of it seems to stem from fear. The trans community hypes some seriously distorted murder/suicide statistics. It's no wonder that many are incredibly afraid. They can't tell the difference between GC women who might argue with them and violent transphobes who might harm them. To them, the former is a slippery slope to the latter.

Grappling with your identity in the world is never easy, and a lot of the trans are teens or just past their teens. To them, it's the most important thing that has ever existed and if you question it, negate it, or mock it even a teeny, tiny bit, you're stripping them of all humanity and denying they exist. Which is bollocks. We know they exist. We don't want them not to exist. We want them to play dress up and have interesting hair and everything. It's quite lovely to watch the youth learn for themselves why some norms are norms and why some are stupid and can be transgressed.

Reality is a norm that really can't be transgressed. Most will eventually learn that. In the meantime, we have to reduce the damage they are doing to women's rights.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-19T16:51:46+00:00

And if a man is something with a penis, then imagine that a man removes all of his genitals in surgery, why will he still remain a man after surgery?

A man isn't merely "something with a penis". I realize that QT tends to phrase GC arguments as simplistic, in order to convince you that they are the only purveyors of nuance, but there are many signs of maleness that are not a penis and/or testicles. Delete the penis/testicles and there are still bushy eyebrows, sloped forehead, adam's apple, facial hair, broad shoulders, large hands/feet, tall stature, etc. Surgically alter all of those, and there is still, at the end of it, a set of XY chromosomes easily checked by a blood test. Those will never change absent intense genetic modification. And even if those were to change, many males have obvious behaviors and mannerisms that originate in the way they were raised and the years spent being perceived as male and stewing in the chemicals a male body creates.

A male can appear feminine, and this may help him cope with life, but he cannot become female. We can revisit this when it's possible to change chromosomes, as it will become a more nuanced question, but right now it's far too easy to tell. It's so easy to tell that 23andMe now gives you results based on your self-reported sex so that dysphoric trans women don't have to be confronted with an XY.

https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015843628-I-m-Transgender-Will-This-Impact-My-DNA-Test-Kit-Experience-

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-12T20:27:31+00:00

I would use a different account for GC views, with a different email address from ProtonMail or similar privacy service. Don't link your phone number to it. Don't use the Twitter app.

Then I'd delete all GC tweets from your main account. Set your main account private before deleting old stuff, then reopen it.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-12T20:24:13+00:00

It might if you stuck food in it and let it ferment... The bacteria alone probably have very little odor unless there's an unwanted invasion of yeast.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-12T20:19:29+00:00

In 2016 and 2017, you would have found me posting on social media and in various forums about how you can't go around silencing conservatives just because you don't like their opinion. That their freedom to speak is your own. That you shouldn't create weapons of censorship that can be used against you when the people in power change. (A few people agreed, most worried about harming marginalized people. They didn't get it.)

Chomsky probably thought that it was blatantly obvious that this was his perspective. The rest of the left is noticing with alarm that what they thought was basic niceness has become distinctly authoritarian.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-04T02:40:14+00:00

And you should feel pride! The LGB movement overcame so much intolerance and hatred.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-04T02:19:39+00:00

Hear hear.

Also, a lot of wokebros are appallingly bad at recognizing when a feminine presenting person is really male (and vice versa). They get totally fooled by the signifiers: the long hair, the makeup, the clothing. It's like they do not recognize facial structure or anatomy.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T22:13:27+00:00

Excellent point about the torts. I spoke incorrectly.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T22:10:40+00:00

Regarding AI/machine learning: my understanding is that ML algorithms require a large number of samples from a given individual just for training purposes. If you switch accounts frequently and do not make it obvious that your new account is related to your old account, they will find it difficult to acquire enough of a writing sample from a single account.

Spell words correctly and avoid obvious distinguishers. Even if a ML algorithm is trained, it will give a false positive on dozens of accounts that are not you. That kind of evidence likely won't hold up in court. If you wind up getting accused, don't cave. Let them commit slander or libel and try to damage your reputation. Then get a lawyer and sue the hell out of them and their weak proof. The legal system is one of the only ways to stop them, I think.

Somebody who understands ML better should step in and correct me.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T10:21:44+00:00

Sadly must agree with you. It is about the addictive rush of power and control.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T10:20:49+00:00

Absolutely. The young women grew up trusting technology to be benevolent. It has been in their lives since birth in a fairly tame form. They must learn to distrust authority and companies.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T10:18:50+00:00

Yes! I forgot Chromium.

I also forgot to say that, if you can, get rid of Windows, MacOS, and Chrome. Put a free, open source operating system like Linux (Ubuntu is a reasonably friendly distribution) on an old laptop/computer you weren't using anyway and use that for anonymous internet accounts.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T10:02:47+00:00

So, first off, they're not the same and yes, a gynecologist can tell the difference.

I'd like to put to rest the "wound" analogy, though. After surgery, transwomen do eventually heal. The neovagina doesn't bleed endlessly. However, since the pouch (for lack of a better word) is not being held in tension by all the ligaments and muscles that female vaginas have, it tends to want to atrophy. They have to keep stretching that skin daily or the depth of the pouch will shrink. There is (obviously) no cervix. Just a blind pouch.

(The inside of a female's vagina will also atrophy a bit after menopause unless estrogen is supplemented. That's for a different reason.)

A "clitoris" is constructed using the head of the penis that has atrophied in the absence of testosterone plus some skin to cloak it in something resembling a clitoral hood. There is no clitoral root inside the body and thus no G spot. There are no vaginal rugae or other interior features present in females.

Depending on the surgeon, the interior of the neovagina may be made of mucosal tissue from the bowel, in which case it will self lubricate with the same mucus that is in the bowel, or it is made using the skin of the penis that has basically been hollowed out and shoved into the body. The penile skin variant will not self lubricate. Some neovaginas are a hybrid of penile skin and bowel tissue because the penis was too small to permit much depth.

The urethra is relocated to a hole just above the neovaginal pouch and a crude vulva/labia are created. These will often be refined in later surgeries.

Penile skin often has hair follicles, so the skin must be laser hair treated prior to surgery to destroy them. Many neovaginas do wind up with pubic hair inside, though. Also, the "seam" where the scrotal skin joined together before birth is often obvious between the anus and the entry to the neovagina.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-03T09:39:18+00:00

Same, except... Not same.

I've been rocking a short cut for ages. Like you, I enjoy the easy care of it. The wash and get on with my life aspect. Like you, my hair hasn't been professionally cut for months.

I differ from you, though, in that I don't feel unlike myself now that it's longer. I rarely look in a mirror. I certainly don't take selfies. When my hair became long enough to annoy me, I cropped the annoying bits back a little with a pair of scissors and got on with more important tasks.

Feeling out of sorts when you don't look a certain way is a bit concerning, to be honest. Everyone knows right now that people are not going to look their best. We have an excuse not to please anyone else's gaze or our internalized sense of the world looking at us. Are you not still you, scruffy hair and all? (A hairdo is not a personality.)

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-02T20:46:37+00:00

Point of order, I spent quite some time volunteering at homeless shelters. Most of our customers were men. Poor women in the USA know they can have a kid and get housing, health care, and some money from the government. Poor men, often with severe mental illness, are just out there on the street.

ETA: I'm no MRA, but I felt it was unfair not to help the men out, too.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-02T20:29:52+00:00

A "hate crime" is an ordinary crime that is committed with the additional motivation of bigotry. Speaking is generally not a crime. Therefore, speaking cannot be a "hate crime".

The one exception is if you actually do commit a crime while speaking, such as slander, libel, making direct and highly specific threats, etc.

Saying "kill all TERFs" is not a crime, by the way, at least not in the USA. Nor is misgendering somebody. Since they are not crimes, they cannot be "hate crimes". There is no such thing as a "hate crime" exception to the First Amendment in the USA.

My condolences to anyone who is currently living in a country that actually does classify some speech as a "hate crime".

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-01T22:22:07+00:00

Anyone else notice that "less gendered" means "vague and nonspecific"?

If I refer to your "internal glands", do I mean prostate? Salivary? Milk glands? Your thyroid?

How ridiculous.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-01T22:18:51+00:00

I honestly think being on saidit will be a blessing for GC feminism. We will encounter more males here on account of being less free to ban people simply for being male and having an opinion.

Males are the people who need to peak next, because they have the societal power to oppose the men-who-feel-like-women-inside. JKR won us the women of the world. Now the men need to see.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-01T22:13:58+00:00

They also sympathize with not feeling "alpha", which in the "man" and "not man" binary means they understand that men can "feel like women" simply by not feeling masculine or manly.

motionlessoracle · 2020-07-01T21:19:39+00:00

Wait, wait, I remember this one.

"It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words." - George Orwell, 1984

motionlessoracle