he could have changed the tone of his message considerably by saying “This appears to me the most trans-positive space on the internet”

He literally said "I have seen", which has the same meaning. Either way, not prefacing your statement with "IMHO" shouldn't lead to a ban. And other users were banned in this thread for essentially "showing undue deference to a mod". I know mods have to deal with shit, Atheismo bless them, but it's like they develop a cop mentality.

You can ask to be communicated with without downplaying or talking over trans voices.

Sure, but what does that mean in practical terms? For example, I can't tell who is trans and who is not - there are no ID badges and I'm not going to creep anyone's post history before replying. Someone says they're trans and posts a 10 page rant - how do I know that's representative of what other trans people are experiencing? How do I know this post isn't a troll/a joke/someone having a bad day? How do I know this isn't being upvoted by bots to create infighting?

This isn't real life. You can't see anyone's face. Maybe I saw their username before, maybe that was someone else. Trust is earned, not given.

It doesn't help that OP (and another similar post by u/cofabulously (sp?)) are only speaking for themselves. Are other mods/admins on board? (A resignation makes it seem like there's trouble among the admins/mods.) Do they have an official message for everyone? Does a trans sub have a joint statement they can endorse? Something that's prepared, polished, and CONCISE?

From the out-of-the-loop perspective, everything's going fine, then someone yells "THIS PLACE SUCKS, I'M SICK OF YOUR SHIT" and when you ask what happened they chew you out for not knowing and then when you question them again they ban you.

I believe them that there're apparently targeted attacks on trans people behind the scenes (though I still haven't seen anyone define the problem any more precisely than "transphobia")... but you have to tell people what's going on if you want them to know about it.

I must be missing something too, because from some angles it looks like someone’s just using their powers to ban everyone that is “unable to see things” the way they see them.

Banning people for something that even hints of wrongthink is antithetical to building a community

Yeah. WTF are you on, mods?

I want to be on the same page with you guys. I want to hear what the trans experience here is like (especially because it seems night and day compared to mine). And I get there's trolling/brigading that requires counteraction.

But you're banning users who joined when the site was first founded for asking for a bit off context? Not everyone knows/sees the same shit as you.

Check yourself. This is awful for the large inclusive place we all want to have.

You guys are being shit at communication - and then attacking people for asking to be communicated with.

Sounds like they were one of the organizations (doing various Republican legal/PR shit) involved in the march, not quite "Google paid people to storm the Capitol". But this bit of involvement is pretty damning:

They paid for robocalls to encourage folks to march to the Capitol building to “stop the steal.” We all know what happened next.

“I’m calling for the Rule of Law Defense Fund with an important message,” the robocall stated, according to Documented. “The march to save America is tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the Ellipse in President’s Park between E St. and Constitution Avenue on the south side of the White House, with doors opening at 7:00 a.m. At 1:00 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections. For more information, visit MarchtoSaveAmerica.com. This call is paid for and authorized by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, 202-796-5838.”

My money is on Nate Silver joining fascists if he had to choose between that and fighting them. He has a very anti-left, centrist fundamentalist record.

I think this is one of those areas of discussion where for me there’s a huge difference between a “hypothetical, ideal situation” and my current, specific one.

You're totally right! Hypothetically supporting having conscription in an ideal society is different from supporting it in a specific place and time.

I’m an immigrant from the Soviet region

Ich auch, aber wohne in der Staaten. Vielleicht verstehen wir einander deshalb )

But I just don’t wanna pick up a fucking gun for this ex Third Reich country that massacred my relatives.

The problem here is of course not conscription in Austria, but rather, like with everything else in life, the dissolution of the Soviet Union! Or, more abstractly, anyone having to move to a place that they aren't willing to fight for. I'd see no problem fighting for (denazified) East Germany, for example.

My perception of boot camp and stuff was always that of a giant hazing ritual, which while I’m sure it’s necessary it just feels off.

Yeah, war sucks. But if society is gonna do war - then everyone must have a chance of being hazed. What should happen in a democratic/free society is that people hate being hazed enough that they vote for politicians who avoid conflict and resolve differences so eventually no one has to be hazed.

What happens now is only the poor (and bullies) get hazed. That's both unjust AND there's no negative feedback loop for the rest of society not to engage in war.

"Service guarantees citizenship" - you only get to vote if you have served in the military.

people that wouldn’t make that connection for it basically just cause suffering for no reason

Yeah, sure, not every worker suffering under capitalism becomes a socialist either. But if everyone has to serve customers at some point, everyone will be a bit nicer to customer service workers, you know?

I would hope the draft wouldn’t be a problem or a necessity in a socialist country because most people in it would be aware that the collapse or takeover of it would be a very bad thing.

That's a thought contradictory to the one above - is everyone conscious of the condition of their society or not? In a utopia, we'd all know when to fight a war and when to boycott one. But I think even in a socialist society the average person would shirk responsibility if left to their own devices - or even if only a minority would shirk responsibility, you'd be creating inequality down the line if you allow that minority to escape paying the costs that everyone else is paying.

Starship Troopers are a professional military! You have to volunteer to join - and if you don't you're a soy beta.

Ofc it’s different if it’s a social work year and not army training, but that still leaves the question of what the army should be comprised of.

True! I guess the logical of democratizing war ultimately means dropping all exemptions (except mental/physical disability) - everyone must have an equal chance to serve. That doesn't mean everyone has to be drafted into soldering, but everyone must have a chance of being drafted by lottery, so that every demographic is represented. An added benefit is every citizen is a potential soldier - every community has veterans capable of resisting oppression by force.

If your country is actually in danger, then you vote that ~50% of all eligible draftees have to become soldiers next year (and 50% do social work). If war is not on the horizon, then it's only some 5% (and 95% do social work). Actually teaching everyone to fight would pose problems - it's like giving everyone a hammer.

when the state is overall right wing, it’s just an extra opportunity to pour nationalistic propaganda into impressionable young people.

No more than at school. And just as at school, when it's you and your peers going through it, you can see through their bullshit better. With a professional army, the young people who already fell for the propaganda are isolated in a bubble.

I think societies like Israel's have militarized cultures. Conscription is not the linchpin of propaganda, it's just one aspect of the system.

It would make wars much more unpopular and thus less likely. Terrorism/democracy/oil/lithium is enough to justify a line on the news once a month, but not your child driving over IEDs.

And if you're drafted - free revolutionary training plus a chance to radicalize a fraternal organization. Conscientious objection should of course also be an option.

The current shortage of volunteers does constrain the US military to some extent - but they're rapidly shifting toward using more tech and arming locals to counteract that. I think drafts have more benefits than costs.

Austria still has conscription (for men only, and you can do either 9 months of social work or 6 months of military service). Tbh I’m against it.

AFAIK in Germany you don't get punished with a longer time for choosing the social work option, which can also be things like doing research as you have choice over what it is. IMO some sort of national service is a good thing - work experience, communal work, sense of solidarity. And of course you want it to be gender-equal.

Peacetime conscription in a country that probably won't fight a war within your lifetime is definitely annoying. But with the alternative service option I see it as an extension of compulsory education - in the wider Bildung sense, the formation of the citizen.

If you're part of a society - you must sweat and bleed for it. If you sweat and bleed for your society - you will demand more from it. The government shouldn't be some distant corporation that you have no relationship with - because if it doesn't need anything from you, it won't give anything back to you.

Christian feminine divinity is usually associated with the Virgin Mary. One of the minor leaders in the Haitian Revolution lead a religious cult by claiming to be speaking for the Virgin Mary. This person was a man who affected a female persona - I don't know what the correct way to express this is without being anachronistic: they would plausibly have been trans nowadays, but that wasn't a concept in French/Creole culture at the time.

What good is knowledge if someone's not deriving rent from it?

Drafts are good, actually.

Wars are bad. Bad wars are evil. But if you have to fight a war, forcing the entire society to participate means democratizing the costs of war. Politicians' kids, rich kids - no one is exempt. That means the elites have to think harder before getting into war, try to end it quickly, and take care of the troops (supply them properly, don't send them into meat-grinders) while it lasts.

Drafts can be unfair - giving exemptions to the rich/elites ala Vietnam and drafting minorities at greater rates, and that's bad. But they still spread the costs of war more broadly than professional armies, which employ sadists/militarists and the poor. A professional army will attack its own civilians more readily, too, as it has less in common with them.

My reaction to reading the headline, too. I won't be surprised if that ever happens after they do an episode using Lockheed Martin's leaked PR documents or something.

“Cuck Schumer”

That's not making fun of the name though. It's not abusing him for the culture that produced the name being different. It's just a rhyme - with a sexual insult thrown in. "Chunk Yogurt" isn't funny - it's just an attack on the name.

if don’t like the dude

Right, if you don't like someone, one of the things you might do is make a joke off their name. But with Cenk, that's what people do immediately every day. It's driven by xenophobia. And it's not clever.

the famed tolerance of the empire for minority populations within its borders

Except when it came to dealing with rebellious subjects - which, like I said, were met with harsh reprisals. And some Armenians/Christians were at least restive during WWI (which is what all genocide apologia focuses on). There was also the famous conscription of Christian boys etc. The Ottomans were more religiously tolerant than most European states (especially of Jews), but they still lived in an age when collective punishment was the standard mindset. But, yeah, definitely an arguable question.

(given that ataturk did the genocide)

AFAIK, he did not (except in that he was an officer for a government that was doing it). He was a mid-level officer when it started (1914), was busy fighting WWI battles during it, and only became a national figure in 1918, when it was basically concluded. He later fought the Turkish-Armenian War where more civilian massacres occurred, so those are on him. But he had little power when the bulk of it took place.

part of me wonders about the reputation of the young turks ... are they hailed as liberal and progressive simply for being a secular/nationalist/liberal rebellion in the imperial core of a dying Islamic empire?

Great question for someone Turkish! I can only offer a glimpse of the Soviet perspective, which was generally anti-Turkey (NATO country, long-time Russian enemy), pro-Ataturk (Lenin and Ataturk were allies against the Entente powers during the Russian Civil War).

My guess is that people who're actually trying to reform the country after it had been declining and losing wars non-stop for like a century would be appreciated.

a group that did one of the worst genocides in the 20th century

As far as I understand the history, that's not exactly accurate. It's more like the Jacobin Magazine - yes, the Jacobins did some atrocities (and before you say killing nobles is good - the vast, vast majority of the victims were peasants and suspected political enemies of all stripes, left and right, which is what eventually got them overthrown), but it was quite a complicated time and what we remember and praise them for isn't the atrocities, it's their ideals and the forceful pursuit thereof.

The Young Turks were liberal nationalists who were trying to reform the Ottomans for years before they sniffed political power. That's when they and their name became famous and associated with "revolutionaries" of any kind - which is the definition TYT was founded under. Certain factions of theirs eventually took power and perpetrated the Armenian/Assyrian/Greek genocides, but that was one of the things they did, it wasn't a linchpin of their program. Arguably, an unreformed Ottoman government would have done the same in their place - they had already been arming paramilitary Bashi-Bazouk forces that were known for massacring disloyal minority populations.

Given that Cenk was a genocide-denier in his Republican youth, I do agree the naming is a bit fucked up in retrospect - I'd rename themselves if I were them. But the Young Turks weren't the equivalent of Nazis, they were way broader than that and did represent one of the most progressive movements in Turkish history.

It is racist/xenophobic. You meet someone named "John" do you think "hehehe like the toilet" or "Jack" - "hehe like masturbation"? You don't, because those are normal names.

Turks are a minority in the English-speaking world. Cenk was pressured to pick an American name when he tried getting into media. "Chunk Yogurt" and it's myriad versions is what gets posted on like every Cenk video, along with "fat brown libt*rd" or whatever. The impulse to go after the name is about focusing on the one thing that's other about him. Ben Dixon doesn't get called a Dick-Son on every on of his videos, does he?

Making fun of names can be good fun. But it's a bit like racial slurs/jokes - you need to be in the in-group, you need to be a friend who's known to be cool. Otherwise you look like an asshole participating in ostracism.