MarjaU

I don't believe one's genitals should determine one's opportunities in society. I don't see why wanting equality could possibly imply wanting an outie too.

There are many feminist trans womyn right here, are you going to accuse us all of penis envy? And there are feminist men, too, on this site. The whole thing seems to divert attention from practical ways to approach equality for everyone.

I recently "upgraded" my computer - not the one I'm on here - from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04. Unfortunately, some of the hardware drivers are broken, and the user interface is much harder to use - perhaps only because the screen is messed up.

So how can I reverse the process and return to 10.10?

Since then, the word libertarian has been taken up by people from many other political backgrounds, some of whom stick closer to its original meaning than others.

But does anyone else think it is misleading and offensive when people who support warfare, borders, and/or other authoritarian institutions starts calling themselves "libertarian," starts smearing other people for being "socialist," and the like? Some people around here even argue that supporting immigrants rights means being "statist."

How can people discuss political ideas when these terms lose their connection to specific ideas?

Let's look back a few years.

Remember when the previous administration was peddling its lies about weapons of mass destruction? It didn't take much research to poke holes in the claims. But the mainstream media repeated the lies, and ridiculed those who questioned the lies. It turned out that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist. So that's one issue where the mainstream media was wrong, and it was siding with the government.

Remember when the New York Times sat on evidence of illegal wiretapping, until after the election? I guess they didn't want an informed citizenry. So that's one issue where the mainstream media covered things up, and again it sided with the government.

No doubt in a few years we'll have just as many examples of the media helping Obama cover stuff up as we have of them helping Bush cover stuff up.

But again and again, the mainstream media are siding with the government and the corporations, against the people and against accountability. How on earth can that be "left-leaning?" Isn't the mainstream media leaning toward authoritarianism and towards the right?

I just read an article commenting that confident people have - among other traits - "tall, straight posture."

People praise people for being tall, for standing tall, and so on, and ridicule people for being short, for being little. It happens pretty often here in Yahoo Answers. People speak as if being tall is a virtue and being short is a vice.

Obviously no none can help his or her height. It's partly genetic. It's partly the effect of nutrition and health growing up. Since no one can help his or her height, why do so many people judge others for their height? I was bullied, year after year, growing up and one of the reasons may have been that I was one of the shortest kids in each class. Shorter people tend to be poorer, and lower-paid, than taller people.

I have a light sensitivity which gives me trouble with many newer computers. (For example, I cannot use newer Toshiba models because, even at the dimmest setting, their screens are too bright for me to look at without eye pain.)

I would like to know whether the Efika MX Smartbook has screen brightness controls, and whether the controls allow users to dim the screens enough.

Thanks.

If you don't think workers should form unions to support one another, then who do you think should support workers?

If you think governmental safety regulations, and the like, solve the problems, the government will hardly ever stick up for workers. It mainly serves those who already have power and wealth.

If you think the market solves the problems, I think in the long run the incentives might work that way, but the market isn't an independent entity. If the market solves problems, it's because people in it work to solve problems, and create ways to solve problems - for example workers organizing for more bargaining power, sharing info on working conditions at different places, and so on, or workers organizing together to help build cooperatives.

Earlier today, someone commented that "id kill that tranny probly i kno it better not come near me" earlier. I run across answers like that every couple days. I am not counting the merely hateful answers - I'm talking about ones where someone says they would use violence or should use violence against another person.

Is it because the culture dehumanizes certain groups, such as trans folks?

Is it because the site doesn't respond?

Are there any femme girls who get a sexual kick out of presenting butch? And I'm using both terms loosely. Not just butches who only like femmes and femmes who only like butches.

What do you say to people who are born intersex?

There are many people, about 1 in 50, born intersex. For example, people can have one X chromosome and no Y chromosomes (Turner's syndrome), two or more X chromosomes and one or more Y chromosomes (Klinefelter's syndrome), etc. Besides which, the genes responsible for male development, particularly SRY, can be transposed from the Y chromosome to the X, or missing from the Y chromosome, producing XX males and XY females.

So you can't fall back on XX or XY, because not everyone fits in each category.

Then there are people with complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome; they are genetic males and develop testes, but their bodies respond to the low levels of estrogen that everyone produces, and ignore the testosterone. They develop normally, but don't menstruate. Most don't know.

Then there are conditions which can result in ambiguous genitalia. And, of course, there is transsexualism where certain parts of the brain develop along one set of pathways [female or male] while the rest of the body develops along the others [male or female].

I understand that most browsers have the scroll bar on the right side of the window. If you are reading the left side of the window, while scrolling, one slip could send you into the @#$% ad.

Where I live, we've had capitalism since the 19th century, and we've never had a free market.

Before capitalism, we had a mixed system involving slavery, mercantilism, and capitalism. Early on the government subsidized the railroad industry and shot labor organizers. That's not a free market. Since then the government has subsidized every major industry, has created barriers to competition, and has co-opted some labor unions while targeting others. That's not a free market either.

I hate the state-backed capitalist monopolies we have now.

I think a free market could do a lot of good. I don't think it has anything to do with capitalism. I am a free-market socialist... (mutualist)

This cropped up among the answers to another question.

We, libertarian socialists, have been calling ourselves *libertarian* since the middle of the 19th century.

The word libertarian comes from an open letter from Joseph Dejacque, an early anarcho-communist, to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an early mutualist. It was widely used by the early 20th century; for example, one well-known anarcho-communist text is the "Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists," using the term, of course, to distinguish voluntary communism (libertarian communism) from Marxist-Leninism (state socialism). I disagree with the Platform, but it's an important example.

"libertarian capitalists" have only been using the term since the middle of the twentieth century.

And anyway, it's ironic when minarchists accuse anarchists of not being libertarians. Of course some people, on each side, condone non-state aggression, but some people in any political movement condone aggression.

I certainly get that impression around here.

There are several different definitions of socialism and an idea can be socialist under one definition and something else under another definition. I strongly favor one definition and use it everywhere, but if people switch between two definitions in the middle of an argument, they fall into the fallacy of equivocation.

Some economic definitions:

1. Workers' control of the means of production. This is my preferred definition. Note that self-employment meets this definition but not necessarily the following definitions.

2. Cooperative or community control of the means of production. This includes participatory economics.

3. Free access to the means of production. This includes various forms of stateless communism.

4. Partial or complete state control of the economy, with or without central planning. This includes everything from modern mixed-economy capitalism, to the Five-Year Plans, to the state bailing out Wall Street. Now I'm an anarchist, and I'm rather hostile to this idea, and I think most anarchists still consider ourselves socialists.

One historical definition:

5. A transitional phase in Marxist theory between capitalism and communism. I think most Marxists envision state regulation during the transition (definition 4 above), then the withering away of the state, and stateless communism after that (definition 3 above).

Some political definitions:

6. The viewpoints of the various socialist movements. The 1st International included everyone from individualist anarchists to social anarchists to state-socialists; the 2nd and following internationals mostly excluded the various libertarian socialists.

7. The policies of the 2nd Socialist International (Social-Democracy).

8. The policies of the 3rd & following Communist Internationals (Marxism-Leninism).

How do you think people can avoid this confusion between different definitions?

There are some questions which portray trans women as sexual deceivers and the like and many answers calling for violence against, or even murder of people like us.

As it is, we are already facing violence at the hands of the transphobes. I don't like HRC but their statistics are as good as anyone's:

"Hate crimes against transgender people tend to be particularly violent. For example, one expert estimates that transgender individuals living in America today have a one in 12 chance of being murdered. [1] In contrast, the average person has about a one in 18,000 chance of being murdered. [2]" http://www.hrc.org/issues/transgender/1508.htm

Is it appropriate to search for these questions, i.e. to search for the slurs they use for us, and to report these questions, and the most violent answers? Or is it better not to?

How about the same sex?

Okay, it's an odd question, and I'm not sure where to ask. Thanks.

A significant proportion of the answers in this section assert that everyone is at least partly bisexual.

I find this hard to believe because I'm not attracted to any men, only to some other women. My best friend is a guy, and I'm not even able to kiss him w/o feeling sick.

So I'm wondering how people can claim that all people are bisexual; they can say, correctly, that many people are bisexual, and that some people are primarily straight and other people are primarily lesbian or gay. But how can they declare that no people are exclusively straight or exclusively lesbian or gay? Or asexual, as the case may be?

What is the evidence? Is this just privileging their theories over other people's experiences?

I have thought that it refers to three groups:

1. People with various intersex conditions

2. Eunuchs in the strict sense

3. A third group I'm not going to try to identify

... And see myself, a woman who happens to be transsexual, as a member of the first group.

However, I understand that other people interpret it in very different ways.

A lot of non-TS LGB and TG people treat gender as a performance. I'm inclined to agree about gender roles, but must disagree about gender identity/brain sex. The two are very different things.

Of course, there is no one trans experience. We each have our own experiences. We each feel gender dysphoria slightly differently and deal with it slightly differently.

What do you think of it? Do you think it's possible? Desirable? Do you think it's preferable to other forms of socialism? If not, why not? I am a mutualist anarchist and believe it is.

And no, socialism does *not* mean government control. As far as I'm concerned, it means workers' ownership of the means of production, without interference from statist/capitalist monopolies. So an economy of self-employed workers, workers' cooperatives, labor unions, mutual credit, etc. would be socialist.