Prince Harry and his vaguely black wife that scandalized a nation.

I would love to be scandalized by her

Sure, she's no Terry Pratchett or George R. R. Martin, but I like the universe she created. I also quite like the Prisoner of Azkaban movie

Now you're turning my argument absolutist, which is not the point and also why I finished my post by pointing out we should still loudly disagree if we want. I wanted to squash that strawman before it got made, but here you are constructing it anyways.

You're sticking to your MO, I guess. Good job.

Are you a horse? Cause you sound like a nag.

I don't judge people who like Harry Potter cause JK Rowling is transphobic I judge them because I've ****ing met people who like Harry Potter and they are obnoxious about it

The soundest opinion in this discussion

What? No you're giving credence to the idea that she's being cancelled.

You're not engaging with my point. Should we or should we not allow white nationalists and far right wing demagogues on public platforms? Cause if not then your whole point becomes "We should carefully choose who we cancel" which runs counter to what you've been saying this whole time.

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

I would like some wine

We obviously have laws against hate speech and various forms of harmful expression. On private platforms, it is roughly up to the owners to make policies. Besides that, I think lawmakers should decide what goes and what doesn't.

As a general rule, I do think that right wing demagogues should be allowed on public platforms along with other scum as long as they stay within the limits of legal expression. On public platforms, they can be seen so we know who they are. Their opinions can be discussed by the public. They can be challenged. Keep them in the light so everyone knows what they're up to. Tying it in with what I wrote earlier, keep those ideas in an environment that is hostile towards them. They're less likely to blossom.

If you de-platform them, they may just find new platforms (like parler) where their messages go unchallenged. They might actually increase their influence that way and their messages might reach more receptive minds. I think this process is ongoing in various places, adding strength to various right wing movements.

That's how we got Trump dawg

Except kicking Alex Jones off Youtube has tanked his viewership and his relevance, and now that Richard Spencer isn't on CNN or any other major public platform nobody talks about him and he's fallen by the wayside. And after that guy punched him in the head on camera he doesn't really do public appearances anymore. Deplatforming these people CAN reduce their relevance, whereas publicly platforming them gives them exposure to an audience who they are not arguing in good faith with. They're just propagandists who are trying emotionally manipulate in a way that circumvents logic and reason. Allowing them that opportunity is simply irresponsible and undercuts the marketplace of ideas.

I don't know Richard Spencer and I'm no expert on Alex Jones either, so disclaimer that I'm aware of that and so a little careful with my claims.

But couldn't you very nearly make a case for the opposite, at least regarding Alex Jones? His influence rose through medias catering to the right, most of all his own media outlet InfoWars.

After Trump got elected, he got a lot of attention on him, even appearing in the news here in Norway. He didn't hold up well under intense public scrutiny, buckled under the pressure and became a worldwide laughing stock, on youtube and elsewhere.

When he got de-platformed from youtube, wasn't he already well into his downward trajectory? If it hurt his relevancy, was it his relevancy as a joke?

I assume these days he's retreated back into the far right medias where he can perhaps recuperate.

Making millions off of newfound reactionary support sounds stressful. I'd probably buckle too.

it's also how we got the episodes of Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones when they would bring the KKK guys on... Those were some good episodes

for a minute there, I read "Jerry Jones"

He's a straight up neo-Nazi who wore a suit and cleaned up his rhetoric just enough to be allowed on the news and for a hot minute in 2016-2017 mainstream news would have him on to talk about Trump and the alt right. Then the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally happened (where he was a headlining speaker) and he became persona non grata.





And here's the money shot.



But yeah what was being served by having this dude on the news? Everyone predisposed to not liking him wouldn't like him, but every idiot worried about immigrants or white people being marginalized would get someone put in front of them to potentially push them even further towards fascism. Which was exactly his plan.

Before he got deplatformed on YouTube and social media he had 1.4 million visitors to his Info Wars site every month. Afterward it dropped by half to 700,000. And that's not counting all the views he lost on all those social media sites.

Sure the "respectable" people were laughing but how many chuds started watching him? And Trump himself was always a laughing stock to many people but he still got elected and all the laughing changed nothing. If it hadn't been for covid Donald Trump would still be president. All the public scrutiny and fact checking never deflated his rise to power because he could just bull**** his way out of his problems, which is how the far right operates in general.

Thinking of these people as a joke and not an existential threat in need of removing like a cancer is precisely why far right figures are allowed to succeed despite their reputation. People thought Mussolini and Hitler were jokes. No matter how absurd they might seem and be they are a deadly serious threat who should be treated as such.

I'm glad you're so confident. We were confident with Trump in 2016. I wonder how many people were confident in Brazil or France?

Well, the Dallas Cowboys are known for their soap operas :D

True, but Jerry Springer, Jerry Jones, and the KKK sounds more like a sketch comedy.

Josh O’Connor, Paul Mescal Unite for Gay Romance ‘History of Sound’ From Oliver Hermanus

I'm a little ambivalent about straight actors who keep getting cast in gay roles. Mostly because I always feel they are not entirely convincing (probably the major reason why I wasn't completely sold on God's own country). I feel like casting maybe somewhat less talented gay actors in gay roles achieves more in terms of authenticity of feeling.

Although then there's the whole should we pigeonhole actors according to their sexuality argument.

The counter-argument to that is that gay actors have played straight roles in movies since time immemorial - not to mention in real life - so why not the reverse? Besides which, I think some straight actors have stated that playing a gay role has made them see the gay perspective more clearly. That can't be a bad thing.

An actor, after all, is someone who makes a profession out of pretending to be something they are not.

Sure, but it also may be that it's easier to play straight than to play gay. Maybe. Sometimes not very skilled straight actors might push the role into stereotypical camp which some people might find offensive, like with James Corden in The prom.

I certainly wouldn't make a big deal out of those kinds of things, it's just a preference.

I thought it was fantastic they cast an all gay cast in the recent film version of Boys in the band. I don't think it would have been the same experience had it been a straight cast.

There is a whole history of straights depicting gays in the movies. For a long time when it was taboo to come out of the closet, a gay person would be depicted as someone who was living a sinister type of lifestyle. I remember a movie, Advise and Consent, from 1962, where a senator (from Utah of all states), was threatened with a disclosure of his past. He confronted a person he supposedly had an affair with during the war in the seediest place you could imagine with something that sounded like Sinatra in the background. Long story short, the Senator was so worried that his wicked past would come out that he committed suicide. And this was a sympathetic figure; imagine all the characters that weren't played so sympathetically.


Later, when gay characters became more sympathetic in movies, straight people would still play them despite many of them being afraid their careers would be harmed by playing a gay person. Gay actors, of course, couldn't come out of the closet for the same reason. I think it began to change in the eighties a bit. Longtime Companion dealt with a group of gay men affected by the AIDS crisis. Most, if not all, of the main players were, in reality, straight, but they played the gay characters very well and with much dignity. I even became something of a Bruce Davidson fan from this movie (I especially liked his character). Of course, you could say Tom Hanks brought gay characters into the mainstream with Philadelphia, and I don't think people even think twice now when it comes to gay actors or characters (at least I hope so anyway).

I'm convinced "straight" people take gay roles to live out some sort of fantasy.

I would like to announce that I am pansexual and non binary. My pronouns are she/her. I love decorating the library for pride every February and am currently working on what type of events to hold next year for different age groups. If anyone has any cool ideas let me know. :)

Hello :) I am gender non conforming myself I go by he or they pronouns. Congratulations on finding yourself and feeling comfortable enough to post about it on here!

Thanks Tristan! Nice to hear you're on the same page, it's good to have allies :love::beer:

Cool, nice to meet you! I have a complicated relationship with my gender so I admire that you figured yourself out like that. (I'm a strongly tomboyish person, I identify as a girl but that's more or less just because it's the default option. I'm comfortable with any pronoun/label I guess.)
Also decorating a library sounds like life goals

Libraries are for masturbating, not decorating.

Nice to meet you too Marie! I tell you what it was not an easy process. I only came out to my parents 2 years ago. We had all been indoctrinated into the Catholic then Christian religious dogma, and have all finally let that brain washing go. We are now all non-religious, just spiritual which means they could accept my sexuality as normal, not what religion claims it to be. I initially said I was bisexual which I had felt since I was 14 but then realised after having a nearly relationship with a female to male person I was pansexual and would be with anyone no matter what gender, sexuality, ethnicity, assigned gender. Only recently I realised I am non binary, I don't feel like either assigned genders and don't want to be restricted by them. I believe as we learn more about ourselves and be honest about our feelings that our true forms will eventuate. I admire what you have identified as, I am very girly physically but am tomboyish in many other ways. I try to not associate hobbies or behaviours as belonging to a particular gender, I just am.



I will say, that has happened in a local library near my suburb :pssst:

Related to this, a nice thing about the english language is you have a word that describes whether your body would produce large or small gametes (sex) and another for what you identify as in terms of social characteristics (gender).

In norwegian, there's only one word covering all that. In a dumb way, it makes any discussion on the topic a lot harder.

So a lot of Terfwegians?

Weird. Even Croatian has both. And we poor.

I mean it's -50 below and your dick's in your pelvis is there any difference between sex and gender?

Lewis Hamilton praised after wearing rainbow helmet in Qatar GP practice

This is kind of cool. The rich and the famous can and should be agents of change, considering their privileged status.

Is it just me or more and more women are coming out as queer (mainly bi, lesbian or pan)? I think its partly that men are very hard to be around (they have the audacity) and when married/partners to women they use weaponised incompetence.

weaponized incompetence


When a person acts like they have no idea how to do something even though they definitely do. They do this so that later on they can act like they're the master at either to impress someone or get praise. Also known as strategic incompetence
"I don't know how to do that, you do it"
"Stop lying, everyone knows how to change a tire, weaponized incompetence is why you have no girlfriend"
"Fine, (murmurs cartoon profanities)"
by HumongousBazongas AvadaKedavra December 21, 2021




https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...20incompetence

Based workplace behavior though.

I think a lot of people think it's just not worth it to come out and I tend to agree.

I'm not sure you understand how sexuality works.

Depends on your circumstances, it's probably not wise to come out if you know the reaction in your immediate surroundings will be negative and it could impact your life severely. If it's down only to your family or toxic friends, it's probably best you get away from those elements in any case...

I don't think I ever heard of people regretting coming out if they chose to. Normally it's a huge relief and a burden off your shoulders.

Unquestionably there are positives to coming out as well, of course, and what you said about the negatives is also true. However, I am under the impression that, in general, almost everyone gets a nasty, negative reaction, especially when there are people out there who will use information against you the second something goes wrong. I dislike generalities, but I think it's tough to ignore this one.