Hi, I’m lost. Where is anyone defending not voting?

Also, where did she post on Lemmy so I can yell at her?

Oh, also also, you should be nicer to people, especially women.

How can you tell me it is false at the same time you tell me there’s not a lot of information passing between the two? These statements are in contention. But, like, I wouldn’t even think they literally all have the same haircut. I would think there is a prevalence to have similar hairdos. Because nationalism is like that. You idolize the military, you get people trying to look like the military. It’s not rocket surgery.

This is a weird misinformation combat strategy, where you tell me something isn’t true that is for sure not true, and then point to something that might or might not be true and say that it is the same thing. Because they’re not. If anything, it makes me feel like the opposite. Heck, I can even say that someone eating rats isn’t particularly crazy when you make me think about it. I’ve seen some poor conditions, and eating squirrels and rabbits isn’t that different from eatings rats, and there are people that do that here in America. Like, is eating a rat even that bad? It feels kinda like shaming someone for trying to survive. And I didn’t even really care about the haircut thing! Omg!

I don’t have an issue with having an issue with all existing countries. Why would I? It doesn’t defend your point to say “oh so you hate when other people do it?” Yes! Obviously! I think military parades are bad, specifically because it glorifies violence and promotes a national identity around use of that violence to keep people insular. Like, if you dislike imperialism, you kinda should dislike nationalism, even when used in self-defense because it is a huge double-edged sword.

Real life is never so simple as to be either good or bad. Are things good in the country you live in?

Good and bad are comparators. Some places are better, some are worse. But the argument indicates that we should treat an unknown as better than a known, and that the red flags are just flags. I like the optimism, truly, but I would rather see evidence for it.

I think there is a big difference between eating rats and having the same haircut in terms of propaganda angles. Like, I could believe the second one because a strong national identity tied to looking a certain way feels very in line with traditionally militaristic and patriarchal countries, but trying to tie that to eating rats is moat and baileying. Anyone that believes the eating rats is a small minority and would be given skeptical looks, especially without proof.

But seeing you do that at the same time you tie North Korea to Cuba feels like that’s the point? You see why I am skeptical of your premise. You keep pointing at eating rats and imperialism like it shields you from the other issues you don’t address.

I appreciate that you defended the nationalistic part, but I don’t appreciate that you glossed over the patriarchal part, but I digress.

Nationalism is just a crutch to bring support to the ruling class of any country. Saying that it is good if the ruling class is good or even just has good intentions is… Not good? I shouldn’t have to explain how that kind of fervor can be coopted. Nationalism doesn’t just disappear when it’s no longer needed.

But, personally, as a US citizen, I don’t think anyone I know thinks of North Korea as a hellscape. Media rarely portrays them as one, although it comes up more in Korean media, which does have some proliferation here. In the news, it’s just about the weapon capabilities, and the military parades, the former I don’t really care about as much coming from a country with an arsenal capable of destroying the world many times over and occasionally little hesitancy to do so, and the latter I very much do. Same with Cuba. If anything, American media tries to convince us of all African and sometimes South American countries are hellscapes. Mostly, we just get told Cuba has old cars and is poor and stuff about Fidel Castro, and North Korea is also poor and very militaristic and nationalistic. But, like, that seems pretty accurate from your replies?

So, are things bad there or good there? Because if your argument is that Western sanctions make it bad to be there, then why not lobby to push for the end of sanctions instead?

But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. It feels like you are trying to have your cake and eat it. It is simultaneously a good place to be and suffering under sanctions, defectors are paid lots of money to exaggerate and live destitute lives to need that money.

Like, it feels like you are saying people like it there, which… Yeah, people generally like to be in places they’ve always been. But that doesn’t make it good there. There are people in the US that live in very poor conditions in cities and towns with access to poor water, poor education, poor nutrition, etc., and like it there. Does that mean it is actually good there instead? No, obviously. That is silly.

Like, I dunno, man. Any country that does military parades is immediately kind of a red flag for me. That gives me strong nationalistic and patriarchal vibes and is not a thing that makes me think unbiased.

The same thing every billionaire did: He took it from other people.

It sounds like you didn’t even try!

The list did. You’re appending to a list.

Wait, where does this not apply to Republicans?

These guys are saying $50-100 but I have seen $200 per month on a $1800 per month apartment. It’s no joke.

Don’t hide behind the shitty half-assed news reports, you coward. Just name the actual Democrat that fired their vaccine board, so we can end this. Just name the actual Democrat that banned abortion federally, instead of posting fifteen useless articles. Just name the Democrat that kept child marriage protected because it’s easier. Just name the Democrat that deported my neighbor, specifically, since you seemed to have known him. Just name the Democrat that implemented a voting suppression measure, assuming you can find one within the last 25 years, instead of you saying that’s the same thing as ranked choice, which have been challenged by Republicans in every single instance (and this is the only instance you found for Democrats, if you could call it that, lol). Just name the Democrat that called queer people slurs openly and wants them tried for child sex crimes.

It should be so easy, right? If they’re the same, just fucking name them.

I don’t remember when the Democrats deported my neighbor or when they called self-proclaimed Nazis good guys or when they wanted to take away food stamps from single mothers or when they wanted to make voting harder or when they didn’t want to ban child marriage or when they wanted to take away the only source of food and housing for children, people with disabilities, and the elderly or when they wanted to ban vaccines or when they wanted to ban abortion or when they wanted to make being queer a child sex crime or when they ignored all of science, but I guess they were just too smart to do any of that.

I always get extra disappointed by the Outer Worlds, because I always confuse it with the Outer Wilds and would rather play that game.

The saying “you can’t butter a fly” is an idiom expressing that someone or something is too difficult to influence or manipulate. It’s rooted in the idea that butterflies, with their delicate nature, are virtually impossible to convince to do anything against their will, let alone “butter” them in a literal sense.

That doesn’t answer the question.

Sexual exclusivity is not a prerequisite for all relationships. ENM is a relationship based on the concept of sexual and emotional non-exclusivity. That’s the entire basis of ENM. If you disagree, please explain what keeps these men in the relationship that they can’t leave.

Why do you blame women for these relationships? Men and non-binary people are also ENM, but you seem to think it’s exclusively women.

You know you’re wrong because you haven’t bothered asking why those men don’t leave the relationship if they think it’s cheating? If they were cheating, then you would be telling them to leave. But you don’t. Why not? Would you tell a woman to leave a relationship if she were being cheated on?

Seriously, why is it exclusively the woman’s fault and not the man’s? Is the woman holding something in the relationship hostage? Children? Money?

Then your issue isn’t with ENM. It’s with men (I should also note that this equally applies to women and nonbinary people, but we’ll ignore them for now) staying in an ENM relationship that they clearly do not want. Why are they staying in that relationship? It’s worth exploring that.

Is it loneliness? Is it dependency? Is it a fear of not being able to find another partner? These are issues that we don’t often explore and try to help in men.

I definitely am sexist, likely in ways I don’t even know. I am working to fix those biases as I encounter them. It is tough, though in this particular situation, I don’t see those biases, so I’m trying not to be inconsiderate. I think I am holding men, women, and non-binary people to the same standard in this case.

But you are directly holding women responsible for ENM relationships when they didn’t really do anything wrong. If a man did the same thing, would you have an issue with it? If you want a harem and tell everyone in the harem about it, what’s the problem?

I did ask because I wanted to know. I just thought they were reasons to come to a different conclusion. Societal and cultural pressures on men aren’t dealt with to the same level as women, and we do leave men to fend for themselves because many men learned a set of behaviors that were tolerated until they weren’t. And that change can feel unfair. I think we can express masculinity in a positive way, allow us to focus on positive character traits and not physical ones.

There was a sentiment that you were hurt by someone who was ENM, and whether that was because you tried ENM and didn’t like it or whatever, it did seem to be tacked onto your perception of women. I just thought I’d try and give another view of it, in the off-chance that you or someone else reading this needed some more perspective.

Gonna be honest with you, these all mostly sounds like toxic masculinity, which isn’t really dealt with well by conservatives, mostly because they don’t like critical thinking and all that.

a lot of “ethically non monogamous” relationships that are basically a woman gaslighting their partner into letting them cheat on them

Um, I actually think it’s the opposite? It’s not cheating if all partners consent. If you don’t want to date someone who is ENM, then… don’t? Most ENM people don’t want to date monogamous people! That’s why you tell everyone before you do it (that’s the ethical part.)

women are highly encouraged to support other women regardless of circumstances. A failure to do so is implied to be sexist.

I don’t see the problem here? Is it bad to support women, or is it that they somehow support bad women? Do men not do similar?

In general there is this default assumption that a man is nefarious, usually with some reference to true crime or “the implication”.

This has some truth to it, and while I understand that this is, indeed, a sexist take, it’s one that is perpetuated by a patriarchal culture. Men have unreasonable standards thrust upon them the same way women do, but the standards are not necessarily equal in how they affect us, even on an individial level. Men are indeed seen as more violent as a whole, just as women are seen as sex objects as a whole, and working to change those societal pressures to conform to them is the point of pointing to “toxic masculinity.” There are good aspects to masculinity to admire, that we can try to positively adopt those, the same way that women try to adopt positive aspects of feminimity!

I actually see this the worst among conservative men and women. Conservative men and women tell you to “man up”, that “men don’t cry”, that you need to “take it with your own hands”, the idea of “alpha and beta males”. Very aggressive, and that’s a toxic mindset. The hard part about those cultural aspects is that they DO affect us all! Part of feminism is undersranding these biases within yourself and actively working to change them.

The first thing I do when I meet a woman I don’t know in a social setting is to somehow work in that I have a girlfriend in a way that feels organic, and a good amount of times I can see their body language shift

This actually goes both ways, too. Women very often have to tell men they aren’t interested, trying to tell them gently that they are taken. (There is the joke of “I have a boyfriend.” out of the blue to the most innocuous things.) This is a consequence of a society that pushes men to be the active pursuer of relationships. It is, frankly, stressful to have every interaction possibly be taken as a signal that you want a relationship. It is easy for me to understand their perspective because it feels like how my PTSD manifested. Trauma is hard to deal with, and being understanding and accomodating can also be hard, too.

There are a lot of single women I know that are very much architects of their own misery. They have super shallow dating standards, unrealistic expectations, and this mentality that if a man is attractive enough red flags are just misunderstanding.

Very much applies to anyone of any gender, so I’m not sure of the issue. I have seen this in cis-men, cis-women, trans-men, trans-women, enbies, gay men, lesbian women, and so on. This is not exclusive to women, and never will be.

• There are multi hundred member Facebook groups of women in every city that gossip about the men they date. This is obviously toxic, but the organizers frame it as a #metoo thing so it’s widely considered acceptable.

Okay? Don’t date them? I don’t see the issue, but discussing your partners isn’t particularly weird, and men do this too, and if it bothers you, well, don’t date anyone who does it.

• Basically everything I mentioned would be considered absolutely unacceptable if genders were reversed, but if you bring this up then you’ll get a pseudo academic lecture about historical oppression and the patriarchy that basically boils down to “it’s different when I do it”.

There’s some truth to that. Women are, ostensibly, an oppressed group, having less rights than men do, as well as being the one responsible when they get pregnant. They maintain a level of risk that most men do not have to face (though you could consider it a different type of risk, since men also face their own adversities that women typically do not.)

However, that’s irrelevant because none of the things you listed were women-exclusive behaviors, but I figured I would explain why it might be important just in case.

• This isn’t a big deal at all, but it’s sort of ridiculous that most women I meet both consider themselves feminist but will get peeved if men don’t pay for the date.

Don’t date them, then? I mean, I get it. I like when my dates offer to split, and I do judge them if they don’t. But it’s definitely silly to bring up as though they aren’t a feminist for engaging in that behavior. Progress is made incrementally, and sometimes we aren’t aware lf our own biases.

I support queer identities, but have become more conservative in my idea of monogamy and commitment.

Hey man, monogamy is a dating choice, just like ENM. No one makes you have to be one or the other. It is okay to be monogamous, but no one has ever oppressed monogamous people.

I even briefly considered staying home this election when it looked like the main line of attack democrats were gonna do was just to call republicans weirdos over and over again until November, because I’m personally just done associating myself with middle school mean girl politics.

It is really weird to me that you thought calling people weird for legitimately fascist behavior as a way of denormalizing that behavior was somehow a step too far, but the behavior that provoked it wasn’t, as if they hadn’t attempted to call the behavior out beforehand and were ignored.

If that was gonna dissuade you, then I think you might have bigger problems.