Growing Up Alyssa • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#41

Post by hersko » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:34 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #35

hersko wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just looking at the bill [1]. It seems like a very straight forward reinforcement of a parents rights to oversee the education of their kids. > any parent to sue to the teacher for mentioning basically anything involving sexual orientation "prohibiting a school district from encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a specified manner. ..... to adhe…

> "prohibiting a school district from encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a specified manner. ..... to adhere to standards developed by the department of education." I'm not 100% sure what that means though. What if a kid draws a picture of his two dads or two moms; does the teacher just not allow him to present to the class because that might lea…

So I guess the main issue is that it is not specific enough and is open to interpretation. I don't know enough about how laws are written to know if this standard or not.

> Simply not true: https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/597215...

This is what I was trying to say, the law was written, and then when people objected there began a discourse (which i don't agree with) that the only reason people would object to this is because they must be groomers. Seems like it was the law first and then this "groomer" thing.

I appreciate you explaining your criticism to me.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#42

Post by tombert » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #31

tombert wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yep. Whenever I see "republicans and democrats are the same", I know I'm talking to someone not directly affected by the policy differences (so someone likely cis, white, straight, and/or middle-class or higher).

I just think that "enlightened centrism" is sort of intellectually lazy at this point.

Obviously you don't have to agree with everything that a side does, but I think it's extremely easy to just throw your hands up in the air and say "both sides are bad!" and then turn your brain off. It is the facsimile of an enlightened opinion, but you didn't actually do anything to earn it.

There are plenty of things that the American left do/say that I don't agree with [1], but I don't think the logical conclusion of that is to just act like both sides are equally horrible.

[1] For example, I fundamentally do not agree with the (at least one point) popular leftist opinion of decreasing military funding.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#43

Post by antisthenes » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #39

dale_glass wrote: post #4

The whole discourse over this in the US is getting nuts as of late. We justifiably get annoyed when uninformed lawmakers make sweeping laws without understanding the technical issues involved. It's frankly bizarre to have some 80 year old fossil who can barely understand using a cell phone be involved in something like deciding net neutrality or AI regulations. We should be equally annoyed at the current trend of thr…

> There's no reason whatsoever why random people... Having "random people" participate is a cornerstone of democracy. As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy. The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves. Nobody seems to do that any more, including here. This is the foundation that's failing. Fix th…

> As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy.

Having "random people" (or people without specific domain knowledge) in a democracy doesn't really do anything to prevent oligarchy, it's tangential at best and orthogonal realistically.

> The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves.

That seems like a tall order in a culture that consistently promotes ignorance as a virtue for the wide masses.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#44

Post by jfengel » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:44 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #14

> if you vote Republican in 2024, you vote erasure. You vote oppression. You vote fascism As a registered independent who finds both major parties unconscionable, this line of argument worries me. Frankly, members of both parties can ascribe the worst possible motives to those who vote for the opposition, precisely because both parties are a massive tangle of complex social, economic, political, and administrative is…

I find your last analogy kind of interesting. If it were 1994, and the Tutsis said "If you vote Hutu, you vote oppression, you vote fascism", would you tell them that they should not fan the political flames?

I hate to risk Godwinning the argument; it doesn't (yet) look like that. And you've already said that you don't want to draw false equivalences. But I think it's worth considering that sometimes the motives are the worst possible motives, and it's not up to the victims to reduce polarization.

This isn't just about "people who don't vote like me". It's about people who are actively voting to oppress me, to make harmless behavior illegal and to diminish my voting power to prevent it. Voting isn't harmless; it's ultimately a matter of compulsion.

That can often be benign. We'll never be unanimous and sometimes minorities on any issue will be compelled. That works when it's not done with malice. But malice is a real thing, and it only takes one side to have it. And it really looks to me as if it's being done out of malice in the US, right now. Maybe not genocidal... but I don't think it's up to the trans people or any other group to avoid inflaming Republicans just by existing.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#45

Post by notacoward » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:45 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #43

notacoward wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason whatsoever why random people... Having "random people" participate is a cornerstone of democracy. As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy. The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves. Nobody seems to do that any more, including here. This is the foundation that's failing. Fix th…

> As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy. Having "random people" (or people without specific domain knowledge) in a democracy doesn't really do anything to prevent oligarchy, it's tangential at best and orthogonal realistically. > The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves. That seems like a tall…

Please don't use "realistically" to privilege your own opinion beyond its merit. My opinion is just as reality-based as yours. Time after time after time, leaders within any elite have accumulated personal power and turned it into an instrument of that power (as opposed to its original purpose). When that elite is ruling society, those leaders therefore are too, and we have a word for that: oligarchs. We probably can't fix the organizational dynamics that lead to this accretion of power, but we can prevent it from being our basis of government by keeping the franchise broad. Limiting franchise has always been a favorite tool of dictators, oligarchs, and supremacists - not of people who actually believe in democracy.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#46

Post by jawns » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:46 PM UTC

_pjx9 wrote: post #33

jawns wrote: post #14

> if you vote Republican in 2024, you vote erasure. You vote oppression. You vote fascism As a registered independent who finds both major parties unconscionable, this line of argument worries me. Frankly, members of both parties can ascribe the worst possible motives to those who vote for the opposition, precisely because both parties are a massive tangle of complex social, economic, political, and administrative is…

This is a bad moment to be playing the enlightened centrist. The main point is that one party in particular is pushing discriminatory legislation against a minority group and demonizing them. That counts as oppression to me. People who vote for said party are therefore voting for those things - voting for despite not supporting such policies is still enabling said discrimination. Your response seems victim blamey. Ye…

If you're familiar with the history of the Rwandan genocide, it was not simply a matter of the vulnerable Tutsis being massacred by the evil Hutus.

The genocide was the culmination of a hundred-plus years of power shifting from one group to the other. When the Tutsis were in power, they made life hell for the Hutus, and when the Hutus were in power, they made life hell for the Tutsis. Each group came to see the other as deserving of that punishment because of the way they had been mistreated when the other group was in power.

But my broader point is a criticism of the major-party duopoly, where every single social issue, economic issue, military issue, civil rights issue, etc. gets boiled down to these two choices. And often the philosophy that underpins them is inconsistent. So it's no wonder that each party is able to point out the inconsistencies and evils of its opposition; our political system is designed to make that as easy as possible. And the politicians who run within those parties benefit from that polarization.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#47

Post by jfengel » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:47 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #30

jawns wrote: post #14

> if you vote Republican in 2024, you vote erasure. You vote oppression. You vote fascism As a registered independent who finds both major parties unconscionable, this line of argument worries me. Frankly, members of both parties can ascribe the worst possible motives to those who vote for the opposition, precisely because both parties are a massive tangle of complex social, economic, political, and administrative is…

They're not assigning the worst possible motivations to people who don't vote like them. It's actually the opposite, they're trying to speak to the people who might vote Republican and who may not realise what they are voting for.

I have a very hard time believing they don't realize who they're voting for. This isn't a secret. They're quite explicit about it.

I had been willing to believe that they simply put other issues first, which was merely selfish and short-sighted -- the kind of thing a democracy can be moderately robust for. But the culture war is front page news every day in every medium, and I simply cannot believe any more that it's not a deliberate choice.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#48

Post by tombert » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:49 PM UTC

hersko wrote: post #41

tombert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "prohibiting a school district from encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a specified manner. ..... to adhere to standards developed by the department of education." I'm not 100% sure what that means though. What if a kid draws a picture of his two dads or two moms; does the teacher just not allow him to present to the class because that might lea…

So I guess the main issue is that it is not specific enough and is open to interpretation. I don't know enough about how laws are written to know if this standard or not. > Simply not true: https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/597215 ... This is what I was trying to say, the law was written, and then when people objected there began a discourse (which i don't agree with) that the only reason people w…

> So I guess the main issue is that it is not specific enough and is open to interpretation.

It's open to interpretation, but in some cases it's actually more bluntly horrible. For example, it seems like conservatives are clutching their pearls about the possibility of a math problem mentioning two moms [1].

From the article:

> The legislation could also impact how teachers provide instruction on a day-to-day basis. At a Senate hearing on Feb. 8, Republican Sen. Travis Hutson gave the example of a math problem that includes the details that “Sally has two moms or Johnny has two dads.” Republican State Sen. Dennis Baxley, who sponsors the bill in the Senate, said that is “exactly” what the bill aims to prevent.

This seems to imply that my fears of othering of gay families is founded.

> This is what I was trying to say, the law was written, and then when people objected there began a discourse

I feel like the LGBT grooming conspiracies have been around for a long time. There are 50's era PSAs about how gays will show your kids porn and then try and molest them [2]. I don't think these sentiments ever really went away, at least not completely.

In more recent history I don't know if the "gays are trying to groom your kids" came before or after the bill.

[1] https://time.com/6155905/florida-dont-say-gay-passed/

[2] https://youtu.be/3bPZxRD1GJQ

EDIT:

I think I linked the wrong video. https://youtu.be/EqIIeGmhL2Q

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#49

Post by mgkimsal » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #37

jawns wrote: post #14

> if you vote Republican in 2024, you vote erasure. You vote oppression. You vote fascism As a registered independent who finds both major parties unconscionable, this line of argument worries me. Frankly, members of both parties can ascribe the worst possible motives to those who vote for the opposition, precisely because both parties are a massive tangle of complex social, economic, political, and administrative is…

The Republican Party is moving in a very dark direction, and has been for years now. This isn't just red team/blue team partisan cheerleading. This isn't Trump Derangement syndrome. Both parties aren't equal in this regard. I think the author's fear is justified and maybe the onus should be on Republicans to finally smell the rot in their own house instead of on everyone else to be polite about it.

> ...Republicans to finally smell the rot in their own house...

I'm not sure it even matters currently. I've got friends who vote Republican, knowing stuff about their party/candidate which makes the uncomfortable (or worse). They still keep voting Republican, mostly because "democrats will kill babies and take away my guns and social security!". They've had more than a decade of "worst motives" ascribed to the opposition.

---

Republicans: decades of "they'll take away our guns!"

Democrats: "that's not going to happen."

Decades later, doesn't happen.

---

Democrats: decades of "they're going to take away your access to abortion/contraception"

Republicans: "meh... nah... why are you so paranoid?"

Decades later... access to abortion heavily restricted, on track for total bans in many regions.

Re: Growing Up Alyssa

#50

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, May 22, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #39

dale_glass wrote: post #4

The whole discourse over this in the US is getting nuts as of late. We justifiably get annoyed when uninformed lawmakers make sweeping laws without understanding the technical issues involved. It's frankly bizarre to have some 80 year old fossil who can barely understand using a cell phone be involved in something like deciding net neutrality or AI regulations. We should be equally annoyed at the current trend of thr…

> There's no reason whatsoever why random people... Having "random people" participate is a cornerstone of democracy. As others have pointed out, it's what separates democracy from elitist technocracy - and, ultimately, oligarchy. The problem is that another cornerstone is the public's responsibility to educate themselves. Nobody seems to do that any more, including here. This is the foundation that's failing. Fix th…

I think that you are both right on different levels and possibly talking past each other.

Yes, on the level of franchise, it is good that everyone is involved.

Its bad, on the other hand, that the form of the debate in this concrete instance has been directed to trying to make decisions on specific medical procedures as electoral politics issues.

Belief in democratic franchise does not imply belief that all democratic decisions are equally correct, or that all possible framings of debate within a participatory system are equally correct.