What was once a humorous but true observation has become a blatant tactic with the Left: everything they do is about projection.
The 24-minute news cycle is currently obsessed with transsexual and transgender rights because the President rescinded an awful “Dear Colleague” letter that was fraught with more danger than just who uses what bathroom. Naturally, of course, the Right, being stupid, latched immediately onto talking about who uses what bathroom, but I digress.
The Left fell in love with the term and promptly used it obsessively, wrongly, and beat its usefulness into the turf. The Left accuses anyone who dares questions the rationality or wisdom of a “victim’s” feelings of “gaslighting” that person. Gaslighting, however, is not about refuting or mocking the fee-fees of a humorless 19-year-old twat (gender neutral) on Twitter. Gaslighting is actually a systematic form of abuse which causes the victim to question his own memory, his own recollection of facts, his own judgment and perception. When I think of a campaign to systematically undermine known facts, rational thought processes, and good judgment, one political and cultural group stands out to me.
Naturally, the Left is whinging about gaslighting (without using the term correctly) while actually gaslighting the American public about gender and sexuality. If you are one of those crazy regressives who thinks there are two biological sexes, and those two sexes (male and female) happen to correspond neatly to “socialized” gender roles (men and women) that have evolved over thousands of years and generally hold true across cultures and civilizations, boy are you in for it. The Left is willing to Madred you until you squeal, “There are 1,000 genders!” We have actually come to the point where it is considered bigoted and awful to repeat biological, historical, psychological, and sociological facts.
I am sure, to no one’s surprise, my feelings on transgenderism and transsexuality will make me first against the wall when the First Internationale – United States Edition convenes its Comintern. I am a semi-educated layman on psychological disorders, and Gender Identity Disorder — I mean, Gender Dysphoria — fits fairly neatly into the class of problems called psychotic disorders. I am not the only one to think so, and the evidence is pretty compelling. For example, a study conducted in the Netherlands, a country notably “progressive” on this issue, found that GID/GD was the primary diagnosis in only 39% of psychologists’ patients. For the other 61%, it turned out, “cross-gender identification was comorbid with other psychiatric disorders.” Another paper in The Journal of Psychiatric Research found that 71% of GID sufferers had or currently have an Axis I psychological disorder, and wrote, “Lifetime psychiatric comorbidity in GID patients is high, and this should be taken into account in the assessment and treatment planning of GID patients.” The paper rightly points out this may be a chicken-egg problem: are GD sufferers’ additional psychiatric symptoms caused by the high stress of having GD, or does the comorbidity of Mood and Dissoaciative Disorders with GD prove GD is a kind of psychosis that “travels along” with mentally ill patients? Given the aforementioned Dutch study, where only 39% of GD sufferers had it as a primary diagnosis, I know which side I’m taking.
![](https://glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Cb6HuGz.jpg)
Science!
It’s important to note GD remarkably mirrors Body Integrity Identity Disorder. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say it is rather convenient the DSM-V renamed Gender Identity Disorder at around the same time Body Integrity Identity Disorder was named as such, but fortunately for you, I’m off Alex Jones duty this week.
All kidding aside, the parallels between GID/GD and BIID are obvious. You suffer from a delusion, despite biological and social evidence, that your body is “wrong” somehow, and the only way to fix it is to radically alter it.
One of my fav shows evar – especially the Gay! A Gay Musical episode.
Roy: Moss, how would you feel about a big girls night out?
Moss: That depends Roy. How big are the girls?
Sadly, Vista will soon be retired and people will forget just how bad it was, and the joke will just confuse the younger people.
OT but reminded by this –
Fuck you, Microsoft
Before it was just a running gag about how you sucked. Now you love to live down to the perceptions.
I was unsure if bailing on my free windows 10 upgrade was a good idea. Thank you for clearing my doubts.
meh. An unobtrusive little ad in exchange for a free upgrade to my operating system? Again, meh.
“Upgrade”? hardly.
“Inobtrusive”? not at all.
I think 10 is superior to 7. And it is MUCH superior to that shit-show known as 8
I looked at the picture again. Unobtrusive may have been a little strong. It looks quite large. But it sounds like it goes away for awhile if you click “not now”. Maybe my opinion will change if I see it on mine. I have yet to see any ads of any kind on my PC.
And you leave out the fact that this is not just on the machine of those people who got a free “upgrade”. It’s inflicted on those who made the mistake of paying full price for the product as well.
If a company wants my money, they need to do three things – make a good product, sell it at a decent price and not be an irritant. Nagging me is not going to work. It has the opposite effect where I do everything I can to deprive the company of my money, even if it costs me more.
Yeah, mea culpa time. I (stupidly) hadn’t considered that people are paying for 10. I blame it on the fact that I’m trying to do some work at the same time. (Yes my priorities are screwed up.)
Having not seen an ads on my PC or tablet yet, I guess I (obviously) have no complaints. If I start seeing them, my attitude will likely change. Has anyone else see these ads? Is it really that bad as the article makes it sound?
They’re an imposition if you’re a bit OCD and working on a smallish screen like a laptop.
On mine, they ‘grow’ as they’re rendered, so you run the risk of hitting hotspots in the ad instead of the UI elements you expected to hit.
I guess I technically paid for 10 because I bought my box with 10 preloaded.
Add also the fact that if you’ve got your computer connected to the modem via Ethernet rather than using Wifi it’s much harder to turn off automatic updates. A huge pain for people without unlimited bandwidth.
10 works a lot better than Vista or 8 ever did for me. Also it has Ubuntu for Windows, which is a game changer for someone like me who wants a first class GUI with a robust FOSS POSIX layer attached. Windows is heading in the right direction, unlike OSX, which is turning into fucking iOS.
meh. an unobtrusive little chancre in exchange for a mediocre night of sexual gratification? Again, meh.
Very poor analogy. meh.
I made it a point when I was replacing my old XP box (yeah, that’s how old it was) to get an external hard-drive so I could put Linux on it and use that while the basic Windows 10 sits unused on the hard drive that came with the computer.
Next hardware refresh, it’s native Linux of some flavor, and Windows ONLY in VMs when I really need ’em.
I’m done with Microsnot.
LOL, have fun with your GUI that almost… nearly… mostly… works until your distribution completely changes window managers. Again.
Hate to break it to you but your cell phone, ISP, cable provider and so many other companies you pay for a service are selling your data to advertisers.
There are degrees of obnoxiousness and odiousness.
My TWC email account had ads on it. That always pissed me off. What the hell am I paying you for? At least Spectrum got rid of that b.s. so point in their favor.
They’re certainly fucked up Linkedin after their purchase of it. The facebookification of it by idiots who can’t draw a line between their “professional” life and their signaling/political/personal life was bad enough, but MS has totally shredded the professional design elements into order to try and create a social platform. Forced feed with whatever they think is relevant. Excessively large text and sprawling larger than window layout. Hiding parts of a profile so that one has to click multiple times to see the whole thing. Right, I’m going to click down through and expand every box in order to take a look at potential job applicants.. next. The one thing that Linkedin did really well- online resume — gone.
This. If it weren’t for the fact that all the boomers in hiring positions are still obsessed with it, I’d bail on LinkedIn. As it is, I check it maybe once every 2 months.
I bet this is an exploit. I installed the free upgrade last summer on my (squeaky clean) laptop, and have seen no ads.
Oh, shoulda clicked the link first. The ads are on explorer. Well, who the hell uses explorer?
Have you seen that ludicrous display last night?!
Rather than discussing whether or not gender is ‘fluid’ (which is arguably the most inane and moronic conversation in the world), we should just focus on the fact that Congress granted them no civil rights protections. Ergo, if you want Leviathan to mandate bathroom policies, why not pass a law for that? I’m sure that would totally be popular in the middle of the country.
Gender Fluid is classified as a biohazardous material requiring proper safety gear to clean up.
“Gender fluid cleanup in aisle six!”
Speaking of gender fluid – the “snow” I just cleared was I suspect actually Satan’s frozen jism. Too thick and wet for the snowblower to work, and stuck to the shovel with every attempted throw. Fortunately my neighbor had his mini skiploader out and cleared our driveway. That left the deck, patio and walk and those are shovel jobs at any time.
WTF Cub Cadet – the snowblower only works for some snow?
1. Cub cadet? Lol
2. Flamethrower
The left are deranged because they are forcing themselves to believe in a failed ideology, which has proven itself a failure and oftentimes a humanitarian crisis, on the world stage over the last 100+ years. One which is now playing out again in Venezuela. The symptoms of the disorder are now reaching advanced stages, with complete derangement evident for all to see.
It is astonishing to me that the Venezuelans’ experience makes no impression on the minds of pro-socialists.
The answer to every failure of the left is “We just need to try harder!“
That’s because they didn’t do it right because it wasn’t true socialism, and anyway Murica and the CIA sabotaged them!
When facts threaten a beautiful theory, they made to conform via rhetoric.
Well Romania’s experience makes no impression on Romanian socialists… I guess you can’t fix stupid.
Oh no no now I understand you see that was not real socialism, no, if only the current socialist were given absolute power why that would be totes different.
Yeah, cause then it would absolutely nothing like cold war Russia. Nosireebob THIS time we got it.
Vaas would like a word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n_1zsCVBxw
Isn’t this a country where Vlad the Impaler is a national hero?
Maaybee
You call him that like it was a bad thing.
*Interesting history behind his immigration policy
Once you realize that political beliefs are about values and emotions and not logic and evidence, it becomes clearer. Read Jonathan Haidt.
Did you miss all the fawning articles about Venezuela from American leftists? Seemed like there was at least one a week for a while there. Before the part where they ran out of other people’s money, as always. Then the left tried to pretend like that country doesn’t even exist.
I wondered, so I googled and found this at Mother Jones. The article itself describes the situation in the country in the tone of a weather report, just reporting on some stuff that happened for no particular reason, and not at all in contradiction of the previous narrative.
The comments are not really what I expected…
Ok, maybe a little bit what I expected.
my favorite comment: “Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world and a nationalized oil industry. Why has socialism failed? The “managers” of the nation’s oil are probably greedy, crooked and incompetent capitalists.”
It’s such a perfect “THE WRONG TOP MEN!!” answer.
I am wondering what will be the “Taggart Tunnel” incident for that country. Whatever it is and whenever it is we can be sure of only one thing: The MSM will blame it on Trump.
They want “European-style socialism”
Which Latinos aren’t smart enough to figure out, I guess.
I am totally okay with the idea of letting adults over the age of consent mutilate their bodies to whatever grotesque degree their heart desires, provided they pay for it and live with the consequences of their actions. What I am very much not okay with is having to walk on eggshells trying to avoid the elephant in the room that is treating the xenomorph they have turned themselves into like they got a new haircut. If you turn yourself into a freak show I am going to stare a bit, end of story.
The other thing I am REALLY not okay with is this new standard of indulging the sexual delusions of actual fucking children. My girlfriend’s cousins child is 6, SIX, and has determined that he is actually a girl and his parents are ACTUALLY TAKING HIM TO FUCKING SCHOOL WEARING DRESSES. HE IS SIX! Pro tip: If you aren’t old enough to sign legal documents then you sure as fuck are not old enough to determine your proper gender. I wanted to be a cat when I was six, but apparently in this day and age my parents would have been visited by CPS for not putting cat ears and a fucking collar on me before taking me to school.
Jesus. That may have some… negative consequences in the future.
Furry threads are on Fridays.
It was a phase, I’m over it now.
*discreetly closes closet door with foot*
I’m so old I remember when girls who preferred pants over skirts and identified more with boys than girls were called ‘tom boys’ and by adolescence almost all of them grew out of it. Nowadays you would have to give that girl a sex change and pump her full of hormones before she even reaches adolescence or you’re a bigot. These kids haven’t even gone through puberty yet. This is child abuse, pure and simple.
I don’t know about that family, but I’ve read some posts where that situation looks an awful lot like Munchausen-by-proxy and has very little to do with the child. Leftist worship of the transgendered seems to be creating an opportunity for some unhinged, attention-seeking parents to get their proggy cred card punched. Vile behavior.
It would not surprise me too much if some of these parents were actually gaslighting their children into this.
“Mommy, I tried being a girl but the other kids don’t like me anymore, so I think I’ll go back to being a boy now.”
“No, honey! You wanted to be a girl, remember what we talked about? That’s totally okay and don’t let those other kids tell you what is right for you! Be brave sweetie! Mommy loves you!”
*Looking down* “Oo-ok mommy… I’ll be brave for you.”
It would surprise me if they weren’t.
I am also okay with letting adult people cut/stitch whatever as long as they don’t cost me money and I am free to consider them ill.
I do not support this for children. Most 5 year old are just confused.
At this point, I’m pretty sure most 25 year olds are confused.
…for not putting cat ears and a fucking collar on me before taking me to school.
You wouldn’t happen to be a woman and still into that, right?
Vy is the one is blue.
No, but maybe if you send a message back in time to my pregnant mother things might change.
Hey, someone got my stupid avatar meta-joke. Now your time travel sex change is all but inevitable.
Done.
You seem to enjoy your new life.
Uggghhh… The shittiest-looking hot dogs EVAR!
I think this is unfortunately going to be a self-correcting problem, where there will be an inflated suicide rate and/or a collection of people who got the operations at a young age now advocating against it due to longstanding issues as a result. And given that statistically the next generation seems to be a bit more socially conservative I bet child protection legislation will result.
Nekomusume seem so happy, though.
I try to not think too hard about your vast working knowledge of japanese cat girls, because I want to like you, I really do.
This man is an educator. He molds young people’s minds. Remember that.
My 4 year old really really wants to be a T-Rex. I’m gonna need a subsidy.
Wouldn’t it be easier to bang a gong?
These euphemisms are getting out of hand.
Then you’re doing it wrong.
After you read this, I guarantee you will feel sorry for Lachowsky’s kid:
Obviously never heard of Rule #34, and hasn’t discovered Google yet ….
The real question is: Feathered or unfeathered?
Variety is the spice of life.
Rule 34 would like a word.. and no I am not looking up tyrannosaurus porn at work you morons.
Missed being a 20th Century Boy by 12 years. Sad.
Just lengthen his legs.
I have been wondering whether the term “gaslighting” was derived from the movie, so I consider this to be affirmative.
Also, we should definitely reorder society based on the psychoses and obsessions of a tiny sliver of humanity. That would make everything better.
It remember it being a good movie – I have it somewhere in my collection so I will have to refresh my memory.
Excellent movie, and it’s got a saucy 18-year-old Angela Lansbury.
Oh, and the 1940 British version is pretty good too.
“…reorder society based on the psychoses and obsessions of a tiny sliver of humanity.”
You forgot the word dysfunctional. That is the whole point; to pollute society with dysfunctional individuals so that society becomes dysfunctional itself.
You hinting at Bezmenov?
Societies rose and fell long before that. Consider also, had they been competent social engineers – they should have achieved the New Soviet Man; if they couldn’t do that – what makes credible the argument that they are behind the decline of our own society? American progressivism was in its origin anti-socialist, even though it was thoroughly collectivist. Hmm, what direction does that political arrow point to?
Had football arisen by chance in a society that had no direct experience with our own the same strategies and plays would develop independently because they work within the rule structure of the game. The soviets didn’t really invent any of that shit and they have no hand in what is going on here today. The progressives here are using these strategies because they work. They may be copying them from others or they may have developed independently, it doesnt matter. They have the same goal and these are the time-tested strategies that work towards that goal. If you want to tear down a society to replace it with utopia this is how you go about it; you destroy the values that make society strong. You destroy people’s ability to solve problems and defend their society.
I see Bezmenov as simply an astute observer.
My own take is Bezmenov was a troll – a very good one, but still just a troll.
Transmogrifies Playa Manhattan into Tulpa.
DM: Your spell is well executed, but you failed to account for Playa’s Pendant of No Fun, which awkwardly reflects back all nerdy references in a maelstrom of confusion and anger. You feel your bacony flesh transform into cheap store-bought ham. The minor deities still pursuing you from last night lose your scent.
Looks like we have a common enemy, Bacon.
YOU’RE AWKWARD, JESSE
YOU’RE AWKWARD, JESSE
Speaking of maelstroms of confusion and anger…
Did you get glamoured, Playa?
Ah, I refreshed my screen. I see. Jesse, may your drums of lube turn into superglue.
Reads last sentence of DM…
“And may you be stuck to your favorite hunky person(I don’t know your tastes so naming names)”/Ham Wizard
*so no naming names
Freaking edit button instead of relying on faeries(winged good spirit kind not spirited good wings kind) would be nice.
DM: on his fourth reply to himself, Hamwiz, née bacon-magic, realizes he picked up the cursed Keyboard of The Fusionist during his adventures. A local shaman gives him an intramuscular injection of ceftriaxone and instructs him to avoid sex for a week. This does not rid him of the Keyboard, but does relieve his dysuria.
Thanks! I refuse to look up all those big words and assume they are good.
Might as well have just said “Rocks fall, bacon dies”, asshole DM.
DM: John Titor is eaten by a grue-bot.
Joke’s on you, I’m playing Cyberpunk.
“You have died of dysentery”
/Second Turn
Wintermute decides to reroute the ‘net and the power supply to your cyborg heart is interrupted.
Oh noes! He’s CANADIAN BACON!
Where’s the poutine ya hosers, eh?
If you had to be Canadian Bacon – you would be peameal bacon, right?
Only the best.
Here’s what I don’t get: if gender and biological sex are two entirely different things, then why get a “sex-change” operation?
*prog* Gender is in your mind while sex is physical. If your sex does not match your chosen gender you have the right to receive a taxpayer funded ‘sex adjustment’ to correct the problem */prog*
I love this place and I would never complain about it.
Edits are for important people
I fixed what I thought was the error you noticed. If there’s anything else, please let me know.
Change his comment to “I love this place”.
That is fucking meta right there. Now I don’t know what to think.
This is why you are so, so welcome. I was afraid you were going to be lost in The Remnant War.
That reminds me, I need a name for a multihomed AI whose android avatars form the perspective character for the story. (There is some form of quantum entanglement data bus linking the androids to each other so they share one consciousness, but it’s such an old piece of tech no one else realizes they’re all the same entity.)
The Swarm. No reason to get all fancy-schmancy.
There are a couple of problems with that.
It implies a trait that the character does not have (ie being together as a group in large numbers) There are at most a dozen nodes, many of which are offline as of the story. And I don’t think it works well for the narrator.
More dispersed, less clearly swarm-y. Hmm.
“Kin”? I’m assuming you want their relatedness to be evident when they’re introduced.
No, actually that would run counter to the fact that no one in-universe knows that they’re one entity.
Which kicks out Colony, Nest, and other common words that connotate conglomeration and interrelatedness.
Quantum Entanglement: Einstein referred to it as “spooky action at a distance”
Spooky is kind of silly. Hmm.
Spooky is racist.
OK, so the naming is for the AI itself, not focusing on the individual avatars at all.
Going the fun route, you could call it “Kipling”, if you want to tweak the more literate in your audience.
Tulpa, the singular entity with multiple avatars.
Robo-sock?
I’m only on that page because it was in “see also” from Egregore.
Although… since the Remnant War is inspired by the comment about the remains of the old commentariat, and this AI is kind of a sock-puppeteer, I accidentally did make him the narrator.
Just in case I’m too obscure here (which might be a positive argument for using the name)
I KEEP six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
Many something that plays off of dried lotus pods?
Y’know, I totally expected those from you, except that photoshop version of them that everyone has seen and cringed to.
Nelumbo nucifera which is also the sacred lotus of Hinduism, Padma. Feeds into the avatar theme.
Or Argo to go with Greek mythopoetics.
I’m tempted to call them “Gregor Fargo” as a play off multiple suggestions.
You could always go with Beowulf.
As a word, I prefered the sound of Hrothgar to Beowulf.
LEGION is the obvious.
Less obvious: Egregore.
Egregore is the warrior brother of Eeyore.
*narrows gaze*
Hrmmm…. *contemplates*
wait a minute…
I was tempted to say Tulpa but it doesn’t really fit the role, it’s more appropriate for a clone or remote controlled body.
I only pointed that out because it’s got me laughing my ass off.
Is Igregore his hunchbacked brother?
Sigh…
*narrows gaze*
Dude, really, it’s all I got.
, I need a name for a multihomed AI
Muhammad Ali .. .because that’s what I saw when I read your comment.
Help me out here…
that was Tulpa and he complained about something and Gojira edited his comment?
no, he complained about edit buttons.
I’d rather not have edit buttons except for maybe the first couple of minutes after one’s post appears if you notice an OMG GLARING ERROR.
That’s how a certain gun website I frequent works. I believe they use wordpress as well. You get a 5 minute uh oh window and then your comment is locked.
The comments in the Wall Street Journal do that as well.
Samizdata added that, and I like it.
SBNation and beeradvocate.com both work that way.
I’m not Tulpa. Not even close.
I apologize, I didn’t have the chance to see your uncorrected comment, then people started talking about Tulpa.
And for sake of clarity, I didn’t make that edit. I only fixed an actual spelling error in his original post.
Someone changed his/her/its avatar….
Okay, serious question: how do you embed pics in your posts? I tried the img tag and it didn’t work. Is it an admin only thing?
Yes to the admin thing.
They just like to taunt us…
or else they are stopping this site from becoming a .gif/pic porn swap
They could just cat ass the abusers. Wild idea, I know.
DRUNK WITH POWER
Oh, when I go drunk with power, you guys will know.
You will know.
/decrepit Yoda voice
I presume it will be when you grant yourself exclusive Blink-Tag powers.
I tried to mod-power the blink tag and it’s a no-go. I’m guessing SP thought ahead.
Even if you put it in most people won’t see it.
The only valid use for blink tags is to punish Kurt Eichenwald.
Shouldn’t that be, “know you will”?
I thought he actually had a line where he said, “You will know”. Maybe I’m wrong on that.
Nah… just drunk.
FWIW, I can’t seem to get embedded pictures in my posts, either. Lol. I even looked up the wordpress/html friendly code and couldn’t figure it out.
maybe you’re not drunk enoug
god damn stupid keyboard. enough. gah
Speaking of drunk enough
*snickers*
SugarFree is the Master of Imagery – ask him. He had to walk my idiot ass through how to do it.
Oh, we know SF’s master of imagery every time he releases a new chunk of fiction. I’m still suffering trauma from some of the stuff over TSTSNBN.
*shivers*
No, buttershots.
I am reminded of how Soave, in the midst of his endless tut-tutting about the side-effects of Title IX, casually slipped in that the law was *really* about Gender Discrimination rather than “Sex”.
Which was immediately obvious to some as basically “conceding the debate in the process of pretending to fight”
To be sure.
“to be sure” is only acceptable verbage in the context of phrases like “Nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure”
I do what I want. – Cartman
to be precise
If gender and sex are truly different, whats the point of having gender at all? Sex shows biology. If gender has nothing to do with biology then as a guy name Jordan Peterson said, it is little more than a fashion statement
Because gender is how different cultures and times define what is “masculine” and “feminine”.
![](http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/powdered-wig_5.jpg)
At one point, your ancestors thought this was masculine as fuck:
Whenever i see things like that i am reminded that they bathed about once a month.
Hah! My wife just mentioned that the other night while we were watching Black Sails. These people were wearing multiple layers of heavy clothing in the Caribbean, and they rarely bathed. It was a pungent era.
I believe they called it “musk”.
At least, that’s what my collection of pirate erotica tells me.
its why perfume became a commodity coveted by the upper classes. “deodorant” didn’t exist until… the early 20th century? (looks) ok, 1888. Close enough
I think we lost a great deal of our intuitive sense of “personality” when people were no longer walking around surrounded by a cloud of their own funk.
‘Smell ya later’ became a lot funnier, though.
Bathing standards were better in the early medieval period than in the early modern, at least in Europe. History of hygiene is a odd, odd area of study.
Much better in the Roman era, too, if I’m not mistaken. Wasn’t it the Black Death that made bathing a rare thing? I seem to remember something about bathing being blamed for spreading disease at that time which resulted in the end of regular bathing for hundreds of years.
In the post-Roman world many communities still had functioning bathhouses for centuries and a culture associated with them, so the stereotype of the shit-covered peasant is largely inaccurate. Most Europeans in the 900s bathed more often than Europeans in the 1600s. You’re correct that it was largely due to ideas about how disease was spread, and there was also a religion element of bathing too often being vain and sinful.
According to the above link it was the Pope, or at least religious-inspired prudery about disrobing.
I wonder how much the Little Ice Age and colder temperatures had to do with it as well.
Multiple layers of *woolen* or felt clothing too. Linen, and even more so, silk, were luxuries.
10 months of the year with prickly heat if you were lucky. You didn’t need to catch yellow fever, routine skin complaints could finish you off if the bugs didn’t.
You could have smelled the Queen Anne’s Revenge before it appeared hull up on the horizon.
Oh, and for those who haven’t heard of it, “The Invisible Hook” is an excellent beginner-grade book on pirate economics.
IF EVERYONE SMELLS THEN NO ONE SMELLS.
No, my ancestors were poor people.
That’s a good point. Socio-economic status also affects perceptions of what is masculine and feminine.
My ancestors were illiterate peasants and natives who liked firewater.
I’m pretty sure they would have seen that photo as “asshole nobles” or “scalping victim” respectively.
Then whatever was dour and Frisian and farmish worked for half my ancestors – the others, whatever some mid-level academic in Groeningen would have for togs.
Just a reminder, those guys considered it perfectly acceptable to cut you up for talking trash about them.
What 80’s band is that?
I think it’s Stryper.
Not much weirder than considering this feminine.
Woah, NSFW warning, please.
Wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t.
The second one from the left is giving you come hither looks.
SO basically a fashion statement
HAWT
Hell, I still do. Enlightenment warfare was metal as fuck.
wait “KHAAAAAANNN!!!” Is a tag here?
i know, that’s pretty awesome, right? It really puts the “glib” in things.
There’s an even worse form of gaslighting: the use of it to convince kids that “microaggressions” are a thing.
Suppose a woman says something stupid and a man rolls his eyes at said stupid utterance. That would be considered a “microaggression” because he’s using body language in a dismissive way, and gender politics are now on the table (it is quickly forgotten that the eye-roll was for a legitimate reason). Of course, men and women communicate differently, and women may be less likely to openly dismiss something dumb anyone says (and prefer to gossip among her friends about it instead, for example).
Once this concept is taught to people, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon takes over. It’s the term for what happens if you bring up something and then suddenly it seems like you’re seeing that thing everywhere. In reality, you’d be seeing that thing anyway and your brain just filters it out as irrelevant, but now you feel like you’re seeing it more. Now they’re seeing shrugs, eye rolls, subtle purse-clutching, crossing the street when a black male is on your side, etc. as all indicative of gender and race power dynamics. And one continues to be blind to the obvious counter examples (e.g. actually needing to be on the other side of the street) because they were naturally blind to them before it was pointed out.
I contend that doing this to people is itself gaslighting. It’s hijacking perfectly normal behaviors used by people all the time and implanting a psychological suggestion that it’s all caused by discrimination. This is not that different from the techniques that cults use to increase membership or conspiracy theories grow. Get a kid into a college classroom (you generally must take one of these courses nowadays), surround them with other students who also want to get a good grade and then give them assignments to explicitly go out and document these “microaggressions” and share them in class later. Students’ lives tend to revolve around school and other students, so they are effectively isolated (note that isolation is a key technique used by cults also). If other students make jokes about microaggressions, then those jokes are also seen as evidence of the same, and it becomes a self-perpetuating delusion.
I totally could care less about any of this. People can call themselves whatever they want, just don’t expect me to care. If they have a problem with that they can piss off.
But you must care. Not caring is a sign of privilege, because only the privileged can afford not to care.
I think that’s how that works. Damned if you do…..
Perfect summary of what’s wrong with ‘the Other Site’: They’ve been running multiple articles today and yesterday about Steve King’s comment as if it warrants it.
They just wanted an excuse to make “finger in the dike” jokes.
If finger in the dyke jokes are wrong then I don’t want to be right.
Tonight’s Google porn search selected.
OT – Five Forgotten Champions of the Total State
#5 will shock you! (because it’s T. S. Eliot)
Well duh, TS stands for Total State.
(reluctant applause)
OT:
This is from a Google+ community of which I am a member (B/X D&D)
Kevin Wright
B/X D&D
Mar 14, 1:35 PM
I need some help. My players were investigating what they’ve come to call Sacrifice Cave. The adventure was supposed to be about what happens after they loot it – bog mummies track them down until they return the treasure – but I threw in an off-the-cuff statement that one of the rooms was filled with small stone statues in the shape of people . For some reason, this freaked them out and they avoided the statues like the plague. So I put the statues in a couple of other rooms in various postures of worship or abject fear.
Now the players are obsessed with them and keep trying to figure out what they ‘do’. So I feel like they should ‘do’ something. But I don’t want them to animate and attack: that’s what the players expect. So what can I do with them?
Anyone have any ideas?
They sound like offerings made by the locals to placate the inhabitants of the cave.
My suggestion
They’re aphrodisiacs that make the characters horny?
Never undermine a paranoid episode – especially when it’s group paranoia. These are simply fetishes, held in reverence by some monstrous race who see them as being the physical perfection which they are not. So, they have no actual power, but they’re focal points in religious rituals. Maybe their shaman uses them to create whatever emotion is being expressed by the statues in the victims.
On the offchance the players change their views and start seeing them as valuable, well, they’re “holy”, so the monstrous race would see that as sacrilege. Furthermore, the shaman will put low level curses on them as booby traps, which will reintroduce a level of paranoia in the players.
In general though, that GM shouldn’t worry about the players getting spooked at shadows. Adventuring can be really scary. So let the adventurers be scared.
Really, you need lots of unanswered “story hooks” so that when the players amass power and riches, they have something pointless to investigate that absorbs time and treasure. Just because they’re heroic, doesn’t mean they can’t be scared shitless by a carefully deployed mcguffin.
Each time a statue is touched, it calls up some small monster? But the monster’s scared of their torchlight/magical artifact they’re carrying/whatever, so they can only skitter about in the shadows, but they keep growing in number because the dumb explorers keep touching the statues?
The statues should get boners when they are “getting warmer” with respect to completing the real quest.
Tell them the dolls are ancient devices used by authorities centuries ago to see where the monster “touched” you. If you steal them, you will suffer the same consequences as the last person who “used” the doll for said purposes.
Gaslighting is my term of greatest annoyance these days. The way it’s EVERYWHERE and is being used for every nonsensical grievance is infuriating.
It seems to me that genuine GD probably does occur in rare cases, like being born intersex/hermaphrodite. I remember reading a study a loooong time ago (way, way before this fluid gender bullshit trend) that transsexual people have brain patterns that more closely resemble the sex opposite the one they were born with (i.e., the sex they’re trying to transition into), which seemed to indicate that there may be some sort of mutation going on in the womb. This was in probably 2001-2002, and I thought it was really interesting and was curious to see what further studies would turn up.
The problem is now that this proggie “gender is cultural” bullshit is going on, studies like that would probably get squashed in an instant because it reinforces that there IS, scientifically, a gender binary, and that transsexual people have a medical condition rather than being blessed by the Specialness Fairy. The number of people who have this condition are certainly WAY, WAY below the number of people who are now jumping on the trans bandwagon because it’s so cool. They can’t have that, because if it’s a verifiable and treatable medical condition, it will ruin their feelings-based narrative.
Anecdotally (because it seems like there is a disproportionate representation of These People writing young adult fiction, so I have encountered well more than my fair share of them), I have definitely noticed a HIGH proportion of mental illnesses like the article mentions. Almost every single “gender fluid” (or some other “gender” other than male or female) person I know of has a severe mental illness, particularly depression and/or anxiety.
The other trend I’ve noticed is the cop-out of basically “cisgender” people calling themselves “non-binary” or some other name and wanting a special pronoun. This requires no effort or commitment of any kind, but gets them the Oppression Bingo points. I am incredibly, incredibly tired of other women (because in my experience, it’s all been women) thinking if they cut their hair short or want to wear pants and no makeup or other things that “defy the gender expectations” of freaking 1951 (or what they imagine 1951 was like, anyway) that they’re not women anymore. I don’t think they even truly believe that deep down. But it’s something they can do to make themselves feel special that requires no effort or any kind of change to their lifestyles.
I remember reading a study a loooong time ago (way, way before this fluid gender bullshit trend) that transsexual people have brain patterns that more closely resemble the sex opposite the one they were born with (i.e., the sex they’re trying to transition into), which seemed to indicate that there may be some sort of mutation going on in the womb. This was in probably 2001-2002, and I thought it was really interesting and was curious to see what further studies would turn up.
I remember those studies, too. I thought they would be interesting, because they would open up the debate as to the best treatment regimen, mental or physical.
I’ve read newer studies that looked at that study and found that all of the MTF trans were also sexually attracted to men. They compared this with other studies, and yadda, yadda, yadda, concluded that it was actually sexuality distinctions in the brain, not gender. I’m not neurologist so can’t confirm the results, but it could be an interesting distinction.
Those people are known as “Transtrender.”