I mean his collected works of modules have quite a bit of sexism. The age old shit of rape and exploitation as set peices, maidens in need of rescue, duplicitous backstabby honeypots, women depicted as sparsely dressed supermodels or villians and just general statements that women were less capable of enjoying his stuff because of “biological differences in the female brain” is kind of all over the place. We could dredge that all up as the article sumerizes but we’d be here awhile. There’s not much point. Guy is dead.

This article reminds me vibe wise a little of the whole “Trans people are responsible for the closing of gay/lesbian bars.” thing. Like I am sorry, why is it my fault that my gay friends don’t feel comfortable in the establishments where their trans partners and buddies are hassled, dissed and generally not allowed to go and just chill and just be? It’s in the favor of the bar owners to invite more people in to spend money than to play games that shut people out. It’s not like little forums online that will be there as long as somebody shows up. If brick and mortar locations don’t make enough to keep the lights on they close.

If my buddies want me to wingman we’re going to the trans inclusive places where we all feel safe and your bar withering isn’t our problem. Good luck finding a MAGA friendly gay bar.

My folks are generally wholesome. I do have family members who are not onboard but like… We estranged from them largely for other biblethumpery reasons.

My coming out to my Grandparents was hilarious. My granddad with his hearing aids somewhere other than his ears was bellowing at the top of his lungs "(Chosen Name) IS A GREAT NAME KIDDO! I ALWAYS KNEW YOU TOOK AFTER ME! " as my Gran was like a minute behind the conversation and trying to clarify what was going down over the din granddad was making. It was like 15 minutes of utterly chaos that had me just dying with laughter.

But then they are all kind of cool. My 90 year old Great Uncle has a non-binary carer and went to his small town pride with his walker wearing a shirt that read “I’m 90 and I get it. What’s your excuse?”

Coming out to my Mom as a transmasc non-binary person was kind of hilarious.

Mum : So you are kind of a gay man then?

Me : I… Guess so?

Mum : So your Husband (who has a solid female phenotype preference)… Is also gay?

Me : Uh… He’s kind of queer by association yeah. Like my LGBTQIA+ 1.

Mum : Oh! That’s what the plus is for!

Me :… Yes.

I mean… I don’t know if that’s gunna be the complete answer. The Boy Scout leaders had no expectations of celebacy but they had an endemic issue with child molestation. The idea that it’s the lack of adult access to sex that creates these situations ignores a lot of the realities of predators.

Personally I think the best thing to do is to actually mandate age appropriate sex ed. They piloted that program in our district when I was a kid. For a youngster of the tender age of 1st grade all this needs to be is "Here’s the proper names of the different genital types and if someone wants to touch in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable it’s okay to tell a parent, a teacher a doctor or an adult you trust where and how you have been touched to help make it stop.

You would be quite frankly shocked how many kids in the district blew whistles on adult some right out the gate from that first briefing. Preserving some nebulous children’s “innocence” isn’t worth even one child suffering in ignorance.

Ditto. Not a particularly a religious person (spiritualist more generally) and generally pretty critical of the Church but bloody tired of people who have been religion burned taking it out on others who are just clinging to comfort to get by in a hard world. Lemmy has a rather large Christian Atheist community. You know the sort, the “I don’t believe in God but the God I very stridently don’t believe in is the Christian God” type of person. It does come across as fairly insecure at times. I am reminded of the way I used to behave as an angry teen.

I think we are seeing a historic waning of faith and a reassessment of cultural values…but looking at the cycles of things that generally means there’s a backlash which might be still building or we might be facing it right now. I think it’s far better for those traumatized atheists to build solidarity with people inside the faiths who are pushing for and building the foundations for changes as “enemy of my enemy is my friend” alliances. Sadly a lot of them seem way too busy trying to attain personal catharsis by just scalding anyone who treats religion with respect.

I know it’s a minor point and food security is an actual very practical concern and valid reason to protest, but I feel like one of the tenants of a successful protest is very much like advertising : make the target directly relevant to the message. “Art and historical conservation efforts aren’t worth your concern as much as (blank)” feels like it’s a muddy message when the whole point of art culture is that it is kind of frivolous. Quite frankly you could throw anything at a beloved historical conservation peice and make the news even if your reason was “I felt like it”. People are probably gunna treat it as a bare faced stunt for attention because it’s already been done and the response is predictable. Our society wide fascination with historical preservation is immediately hostile to anything that seems to be spontaneous. It’s the opposite of exploiting a weak spot in people’s thinking.

I understand and am sympathetic to their cause but I am pretty sure there’s some property damage or mischief stunt that could have been immediately more effective by being somehow tied more directly to food, convenience culture or contemporary targets.

I mean what has actually been said by this Pope is that gay people should not be denied blessings. Not sure if this article specifically got into the nitty gritty but the things he has ALSO said in his original full brief was :

• Being gay is still a sin
• Gay people however should not be denied access to the church because they are sinners.
• You can bless a gay person or couple BUT strictly outside the context of anything resembling a marriage or civil union ceremony because marriage still only counts for heterosexual couplings

Which… Really isn’t anything substantial. There have been people’s pets who have been blessed in the way he is describing… So gay people have finally reached parity with the family cat in the eyes of the Catholic Church! Huzzah!

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/12/18/vatican-approves-blessings-for-same-sex-couples-under-certain-conditions&ved=2ahUKEwi7qLqr_-SDAxXbHjQIHTehD84QFnoECBgQAQ&usg=AOvVaw38B032zsvsZsbybf2RgALw

In reality holding the Pope to an actual progressive standard isn’t going to be feasible. The cardinals don’t want to lay hands on us LGBTQIA lepers so even the notion that we deserve anything but to sit mournfully outside the gates is a completely radical notion. The Vatican city was not built in a day and revisiting the bible and throwing out Pauline doctrine, the cornerstone of (very sus) legitimacy the Catholic Church was built on isn’t exactly something they want on the agenda this or any century.

I imagine the Genocide claim will be aided by the targeting of hospitals which are highly restricted targets in wartime which even if their protected status is removed requires a lot of very specific measures to be taken to not be a warcrime. Since the permit system allowing use of Israeli hospitals to Palistinian patients has not relaxed and has for the most part closed up shop it is a bad look.

Not to mention the Israeli government had made outright statements that they intend to starve the civilians of food, water and fuel (fuel being fairly key to sanitation ). In fact they have actively attempted to block international relief efforts in the region so wouldn’t that mean they are :

“Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”

After all if you starve people in unsanitary conditions and take any medical care options effectively off the table I would imagine a fairly large part of the group would die as a consequence. I imagine the actual brief will have many counts as to why this is specifically a Genocide but all they need to do is fail one.

What isn’t mentioned is that there’s a kind of tit for tat norm in politics. If you damage the soft negotiation power that comes from co-operation retaliation is normal. Forcing a group to do something completely against their interests because you took advantage of the size of your resources (hard power) isn’t actually difficult… It’s just that you destroy goodwill and open the door to future “screw you” style retaliation.

“Stomping our head of State” isn’t exactly difficult when there as many Canadians in the world as there are Californians. He basically tanked steel trade because it would cause outsized harm to a smaller country the costs of which which ended up being borne by the US industries to force milk onto a market where it generally isn’t wanted. American milk contains artificial growth hormone which domestic milk doesn’t and threatening to tank our domestic food security because Canadian milk isn’t Government subsidized like American milk is means that we can’t compete on price is a dick move.

Since then that coercive deal has been taken apart by the courts and that Milk deal has all but been rescinded as of November last year. The Biden admin did their best to make it stick but Trumps abysmal understanding of the law extends to international trade law and the flaws were there from the beginning.

Trump damaged a lot of America’s good diplomatic standing for temporary victories and there was a lot of America’s long standing dirty laundry that other nations were already overlooking due to soft goodwill policy. The only advantage Trump had was that people were banking on him being a temporary nuisance. If he returns to power he does invite a lot of opportunities for international retaliation. Canada is a notorious soft diplomacy country. A future Trump lead US might not like what closed door handshakes may be in it’s future.