Dario

Good luck to you.

I was wrong about the number of intersex people known to exist. There are less than six hundred known cases of people with ovotesticular syndrome, a condition that was also referred to as “true hermaphroditism”, where an individual is born with both ovarian and testicular tissue. As per strict definition of intersex, statistics are in the range of 0.02%–0.05% of the world population. A more lax definition wants this figure as high as 1.7%. This is an atypical condition that may or may not require medical attention. The existence of this condition does not undermine the fact that the sex of human beings is binary.

I had seen languages butchered in bad ways and I am not a fan of it. Sometimes I make mistakes in writing and speech, but I try avoid it. Even when it comes to pronunciation, I strive for a neutral accent devoid of regional inflections. Personally I aspire to language purism, though I concede that this concept is vague because languages naturally evolve over time, they always have. Nevertheless, I do not want a government putting “neopronouns” in my mouth. At the moment this is not the case and you are inferring that things are going to be okay and there is nothing to worry about. Of course I want you to be right, though at the moment only speculations can be made. You may not be an advocate of such hard to manage grammar, but there are people out there who are.

Regarding your suggestion about logging off of social media, if you mean Facebook, Instagram, X and the like, I am not a fan of them. I have never signed up to those platforms and never will. I have never had a Google account, not even for a brief time. I signed up to Lemmy and in the past I was also on reddit for a couple of years. I was also on IRC back when it was popular. For most of my life, I have been doing most of my online interactions via instant messaging technology with people I know in person.

Diversity in the workplace the way we know it is a concept inherently discriminatory. If there are laws in place that prevent the exclusion of marginalized people, everybody should be free to compete in the job market regardless of their sex, ethnicity, religious belief or whatever. If we concede that these laws are enforced, diversity can naturally occur. Pushing diversity in spite of existing laws means that people should be hired based on some specific inherent traits that have nothing to do with expertise and fit for the purpose. It is like racism, sexism or other “-isms”, but in reverse. People who are not white, heterosexual and male are supposed to enjoy special attention based on their “diversity”. This is unjust. Are we supposed to abide by a non-heterosexual quota? And what about dwarves? Romani people? Inuit? What if people who identify as two-spirit penguins are underrepresented?

The so called “woke ideology”, whatever name you want to call it, is very real, is an American concept and has started to creep to this side of the world. I speak about the situation of my country not because I am proud of my nation, but because you may give for granted something that may not reflect a worldwide view on a given subject. I prefer artists who are free to represent people with the skin of the color they want in their entertainment with no political agenda pushing them to do otherwise. I want comedians to be free to entertain with jokes involving all types of slurs and stereotypes, if they wish to do so. I am witnessing a chilling effect in entertainment with people walking on a thin line. I hope this is a fad that will crumble under the weight of its own lunacy. Until then, I will oppose every bit of it.

Less than six hundred intersex people are known to have ever existed. It is an extremely rare occurrence. There is no single human being known to have both reproductive organs in a fertile state. Fertile intersex people can have at most one reproductive organ that can generate offspring. Truly bisexual living beings have been observed in the animal kingdom: amphibians, molluscs and reptiles, but no human case is known to science. Moreover, most of the few intersex people known to have ever existed show physical and mental features that belong to one of two sexes. Contrary to popular belief, such people are mostly not some sort of hermaphrodites. They look and think as either men or women. Human beings are born either male or female and even if some rare occurrences exist, that tells us that something went wrong during pregnancy. For example, human beings are born with four limbs, but sometimes, something goes wrong and a baby with three limbs is born. This rare occurrence does not invalidate the fact that human beings have four limbs just like the fact that human beings are born either male or female.

In my country you can face consequences for calling racial slurs at a societal level or in specific settings, such as the workplace, but there is no law in place that directly tackles hate speech. In public, yelling racial slurs may upset someone and you can face consequences from people who oppose your manners, though in general no legal penalty can be levied for such behavior. I think this is the way it is supposed to be. It is a free country, after all. If people do not like you, society at large may isolate you. I do not want a government to take control of my mouth with laws limiting free speech the way they are doing in some parts of North America.

As I stated in a previous comment, when interacting with a transsexual person, I address said person by the pronouns that match the “gender” that they purport to show off. That is, when dealing with a man who transitioned to look like a woman, I use feminine declensions. I believe that doing otherwise would be impolite. I think that basic respect for others is advisable and being friendly goes a long way but I still want to have the possibility to say nasty things, if a polite feedback is not enough to state my point - or even for humorous purposes, if that is what I want.

The issue at stake is not to address men who appear as women or women who appear as men with the desired pronouns. This ideology is stretching things as far as making up an “inclusive” grammar with invented pronouns. My native language is highly inflected - we have nouns that are either feminine or masculine. Here we have marginalized left-wing organizations promoting a made up grammar that is so convoluted that even those who promote it can not manage to get acquainted with it. I do not dream of a government prescribing me to remember a made-up pronoun to refer to a specific person. There are laws in place that prevent the hiring process to selectively hire on the basis of sex and ethnicity, yet these groups are striving to push “diversity” at all costs, sometimes not on the basis of merit, but because they want spaces that look less heterosexual and less white.

We do not know yet if this unfortunate societal shift is going to reverse. History has taught us that reversal is possible. I am an outspoken opponent of this whole woke ideology and there are sensible like-minded people out there who oppose this American-born ideology.

From Dictionary.com: exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others (emphasis mine).

Much of what you are claiming is not grounded in truth, but I tend to pursue truth. Transsexual “women” fail to meet one basic requirement to be considered women: they are not female. A woman is an adult human female. I can guarantee that this word is well defined. Look it up on a dictionary, if you do not believe me. People can make statements about themselves that are untrue, but it is up to me if I want to keep up with their perception of themselves. They need not care about what I say the same way I do not want a law in place that forces me to keep up with their different perception of themselves. In parts of North America you can face harsh penalties for “misgendering”. When the left stretches things up to the point you can face legal consequences for truthful speech, we digress into totalitarianism.

It does not stop to being called out for a wrong pronoun. The consequences for using words not approved by the woke mob can be very real, like losing a job and being effectively cancelled. When interacting with a transsexual person, I address said person by the pronouns that match the sex that they purport to show off. Doing otherwise would be impolite. On a serious note, though, a man who underwent procedures to appear as a woman is not a woman: said person is still a man who underwent procedures to appear as a woman. The woke mob wants me to affirm that a transsexual woman is, in fact, a real woman. I will not say that. I would be a lying. I tend to pursue truth. Truth does not care about people’s feelings.

If everyone can say nasty shit, freedom of expression is guaranteed to everybody. I think that basic respect for others is advisable and being friendly goes a long way but I still want to have the possibility to say nasty shit, if a polite feedback is not enough to state my point. Or even for humorous purposes, if that is what I want.

LibreCMC, a fork of OpenWrt, running on my home gateway that also acts as my personal server: Nextcloud, aMule, qBittorrent, Samba, dynamic DNS updater, certbot and a DNSCrypt client.

I agree with you.

The so called woke ideology is in fact spreading all over the world although I believe the layman is somewhat unaware of what is really going on. I am from Europe. In recent years, in my country it has become a common saying that “we are not allowed to say anything”. Common people have become aware of this trend, though they have yet to pinpoint it to a political argument or even to the country of origin.

I lost some faith in humanity upon reading that such drama over attitude that I would consider juvenile at best and mildly inappropriate at worst is still sparking debate.

I regained some faith in humanity upon reading many people trying to put things into perspective - this guy is not evil incarnate.

Also - and this is catered to American audiences - do not forget that this guy is from Poland. American left-wing values do not stretch all over the world.

You are a purist. I love it.

You know, it seems pretty rude even for him.

Home gateway with LibreCMC, Nextcloud and a bunch of services I need, completely free software down to the wireless module firmware. On my computer I use Parabola GNU/Linux-libre modified to load a non free firmware for my graphics card. Being a x86-64 based system, there are non free firmwares in ROMs. I also run proprietary video games in an unprivileged container. Everything else is fully free.

I went through every comment left in the AUR for hyprland-git, but I failed to find a single rude comment from anyone. Was the comment deleted by an administrator?

I have yet to read of a truly obscure distribution, so here is mine: Parabola GNU/Linux-libre. It is Arch Linux minus non-free software - every bit of software considered not fully free is rigorously left out. In respect to other GNU/Linux distributions, its stance against non free software is very strict. It is one of a handful of GNU/Linux distributions endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. I have used it as my main operating system for more than ten years. The absence of proprietary firmware can be troublesome for most. While officially unsupported, it is technically possible to load proprietary firmware, but you may need to jump through hoops to install and use some proprietary software as is the case for proprietary firmware. Another downside is that some packages, especially from the KDE project, can be outdated due to lack of manpower.

Only a madman would strive to “normalize” sexual abuse, whatever that means. You are assuming that I am a bad person, but I think I am an all-around good person. I think I am fun and a good company at parties.

His request was not outspokenly abusive, but it was a passive-aggression. It is a tactic employed by some American left-wing supporters to make people feel guilty for something not intended to cause harm either directly or indirectly.

What’s “SA”, by the way? Are we also supposed to ban “sexual abuse” in an appropriate context? Of course I am not an enemy of victims of sexual abuse, though I am quiet clearly an outspoken enemy of such “woke” or “leftist” ideologies.

The amount of downvotes you received for your comment is enough to address that not everyone is on the same page. Indeed, this is an indication that a non-negligible number of people do not uphold your point of view. In my opinion, the original poster was being overly polite to promptly accommodate the taste of a portion of the American audience and, by extension, that of some international community influenced by it. It is your opinion and that of someone else that the use of the word rape is not appropriate to describe - albeit metaphorically - an unpleasant color combination for a computer program. In my country and in much of the rest of Europe where such ideas are not yet widespread, the use of a word that carry a terrible meaning to it is not enough to elicit such horrifying memories even to those who suffered from that experience.

You are assuming things to a certain degree of confidence that may or may not hold true to an international audience.

It’s generally better to use words that don’t bring with them the same issues.

If he feels that this particular word does fit the frustration of his experience - albeit not as traumatic as sexual assault - who are you to finger wag his choice? You think it is generally better to avoid it. To someone else, this word may be fit for the purpose.

It normalizes a word and desensitizes it, making it less likely for victims to stand up.

Stretching things to such dramatic consequences is your personal point of view. It is not a fact that the use of a word to describe sexual assault in an unrelated context will lead to under-reporting.

The fact is that using words that bring up topics of SA despite that being an extremely sensitive subject is a bad thing.

Again, this is not a fact: it is your opinion that this is a “bad thing”. You are taking for granted that this is a bad thing.

There is nothing to be gained at best, and at worst you’ve resurfaced horrifying memories for others.

There is to be gained that he fully conveyed his frustration using the word he saw fit. In a democracy, a society at large should be free to use the word they prefer, even for artistic license, if they wish to do so. What if a victim of sexual assault happens to hear this same word in a work of fiction when zapping on television? It is my opinion that if someone is triggered up to this point for reading a word, even if it was a victim, it is a problem that the person should bring up with a therapist. In a democracy, I think that such personal issues should not trample upon freedom of expression.