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Well, I think both sides are the same to an uncomfortable degree. To quote Bill Maher: “Trump has renamed Lake Ontario to the Lake of America. Of course, the l

Well, I think both sides are the same to an uncomfortable degree. To quote Bill Maher: “Trump has renamed Lake Ontario to the Lake of America. Of course, the left knows you can’t just rename things for political gain, just ask any Latinx birthing person.”

kg 24d ago
His examples don't hold up. Latinx is attempting to provide an umbrella term for latino and latina, it's not renaming one of the two. "Birthing person" is attempting to provide an umbrella term for people who can give birth that may or may not necessarily be female. (You can express your own feelings about the reality that this exists, but it does exist regardless of how you feel about it). On the other hand Lake Ontario is a real lake that already had a name and now someone is trying to give it a new one.
- sphinxterai 24d ago
  [flagged]
- jackp96 24d ago
  Largely agree with you, but Democrats should drop "birthing persons" ASAP (if they haven't already) IMO. I'm all for inclusivity, but there's a certain point/form of language policing where you're asking folks to perform a lot of mental labor to adjust their language to reflect an extremely rare edge case. Like why? It's like if we insisted that people avoid the phrase "look at this" in general communication lest you offend/exclude a blind person who might be listening.
  - cogman10 24d ago
    > Democrats should drop "birthing persons" I've never heard 1 democrat politician say "birthing person". This was never something "democrats" said and always something that rightwing media says that Democrats say. There's nothing to drop or defend as this is completely a distraction from real issues. Basically, rightwing media LOVES picking fringe individuals pushing a position and pretending like every democrat actually believes the same.
    - liveoneggs 22d ago
      2024 NIH guidance: https://web.archive.org/web/20240409042454/https://www.nih.gov/nih-style-guide/inclusive-gender-neutral-language https://web.archive.org/web/20240409042454/https://www.nih.g... These word changes were real things that happened by government policy.
      - cogman10 22d ago
        > Both pregnant women and pregnant people are acceptable phrases. Literally the first sentence in the guidelines that talk about birthing person. The entire paragraph says "it's fine if you want to" and isn't prescriptive. This is a fake controversy. You are literally just mad that some people recognize and want to be accommodating to trans people.
        liveoneggs 22d ago
        I really can't stress enough just how offensive "chestfeeding" and similar turns of phrase are to massive numbers of women. It is a very big deal.
  - bigstrat2003 24d ago
    Also, there's no such thing as being able to give birth and not being female. Many argue that "woman" refers to an internal sense of gender and not the physical reality of one's body, but even in that framework the term "female" refers to the nature of the body. And if you can give birth, you are female, because that is the configuration your body is in.
    - psd1 23d ago
      You've never heard of hermaphrodism? Biology is _complicated_
- badc0ffee 24d ago
  You definitely need to be female to give birth, regardless of whatever gender identity label you give yourself (e.g. "man" or "non binary").
  - ceejayoz 24d ago
    Oh yeah? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19155947/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19155947/
    - liveoneggs 23d ago
      I'm not sure if you're kidding or what but the mothers in that paper had 46 (the normal number) of XX chromosomes, a female with a mosaic-type defect containing some Y - successfully giving birth further proves these were female humans.
      - nostrademons 23d ago
        If you want your mind-blown, read up on feto-maternal microchimerism: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8762399/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8762399/ tl;dr: All boy moms will have some proportion of XY cells lodged in their bodies until they die. And this can result in them showing up as genetically male on a DNA test, simply because they once gave birth to a boy. When you get down to a cellular or molecular level, notions of "sex" or even "individuality" are far more blurry than our mental models admit. Sorta like recent findings that by cell count, humans are only about 43% human, and the rest is the bacteria making up our microbiome, and that our microbiome can have significant impact on our behavior. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270
        liveoneggs 23d ago
        yeah I knew that already - I have a son and it was mentioned as a fun fact along the way
  - kg 24d ago
- nostrademons 24d ago
  Latinx is terrible, though, because it is something no native Spanish speaker would ever say. It's an example of the exact same sort of cultural imperialism that most of the people who like to say latinx rail against. The term that Hispanic queer and non-binary communities use is latine, which is pronounceable, follows normal Spanish grammatical rules, actually arose from the communities being discussed, and pluralizes easily to "les latines".
  - plorkyeran 23d ago
    It's almost like it's not a Spanish word. It was coined by native English speakers to describe themselves. It also happens to be a terrible English word, but the fact that it doesn't work in a different language's grammar isn't why it's a bad English word.
    - liveoneggs 23d ago
      when did this retcon get invented?
- what 24d ago
  > "Birthing person" is attempting to provide an umbrella term for people who can give birth that may or may not necessarily be female. There is no person that can give birth and is not female.
- tzs 23d ago
  Latinx actually is comparable to what Trump is doing. It is outsiders trying to force a word on a community that doesn't want it. Only about 4% of the US Hispanic population uses it, 75% say it should not be used, and half have never even heard of the word. It doesn't fit Spanish grammar or pronunciation rules which makes it look even out of place.
_3u10 24d ago
[flagged]
jackp96 24d ago
Eh, it's a decent joke, but it seems like the power dynamics here are a bit out of balance? Maybe I just live in a red area, but I see a lot of people judge liberals based on wild Twitter takes and random think pieces — which aren't actually policies/rule of law. If Joe Biden signed an EO denouncing the use of the phrase "pregnant woman" in government documents as a queerphobic slur or mandating Gov employees add their pronouns to their email signatures, I'd find this take more compelling. But he didn't.
- _3u10 24d ago
  [flagged]
- matwood 23d ago
  You reminded me that I had a person at work get mad that I used the phrase “9 women can’t have a baby in 1 month”. They couldn’t explain why other than I’m a man and can’t talk about women. So it’s not wild Twitter takes.
  - wredcoll 23d ago
    Boy, this sounds like a fair and honest representation of a totally real conversation you had.
    - matwood 22d ago
      That’s the exact conversation. We were talking about speeding up a development process and I used the classic saying in the context that some things just take time. It shook me a bit because I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but me and the other people in the room sat there at a loss with what the issue was. She also couldn’t explain other than saying woman is bad, which showed she didn’t take the time to even try to understand what it meant. She was eventually fired in part for yelling at a guy in a huge meeting when he answered a question about to a hypothetical boss as “he” instead of she or they. So I understand your skepticism and would also be a skeptic if I didn’t live it.
cogman10 24d ago
Really bad example by Maher. There are much better examples where the 2 parties are frustratingly aligned to a large extent. For example, datacenters, ICE, and foreign policy. You can find a good number of democrats who are mad about Iran not because it's a dumb war, but because it wasn't done correctly by going through congress. Both sides are aligned pretty closely in making their donors happy above their voters. That keeps democrats from regulating like they should and it keeps republicans focused on "the enemies within".
- laimewhisps 24d ago
  Maher himself is a perfect example of this. He's a hardcore Zionist warhawk who has an ideology nearly identical to Ted Cruz, yet he's a "liberal" (neoliberal). He also had Democrat Van Jones on his show making fun of dead Gaza babies. While I don't think the media and politician class represent the public (at all!), they are as aligned as lasers on promoting Israel.
wredcoll 23d ago
You know, aside from, well, everything else that makes this a stupid comparison, the most important part is the motive that people like you seem so happy to ignore. Latinx is a not particularly useful attempt by a tiny group of people to make another tiny group of oppressed people feel slightly more comfortable Trump renamed lake ontario because he is a gigantic asshole.

kg 24d ago

His examples don't hold up. Latinx is attempting to provide an umbrella term for latino and latina, it's not renaming one of the two. "Birthing person" is attempting to provide an umbrella term for people who can give birth that may or may not necessarily be female. (You can express your own feelings about the reality that this exists, but it does exist regardless of how you feel about it). On the other hand Lake Ontario is a real lake that already had a name and now someone is trying to give it a new one.

sphinxterai 24d ago
[flagged]
jackp96 24d ago
Largely agree with you, but Democrats should drop "birthing persons" ASAP (if they haven't already) IMO. I'm all for inclusivity, but there's a certain point/form of language policing where you're asking folks to perform a lot of mental labor to adjust their language to reflect an extremely rare edge case. Like why? It's like if we insisted that people avoid the phrase "look at this" in general communication lest you offend/exclude a blind person who might be listening.
- cogman10 24d ago
  > Democrats should drop "birthing persons" I've never heard 1 democrat politician say "birthing person". This was never something "democrats" said and always something that rightwing media says that Democrats say. There's nothing to drop or defend as this is completely a distraction from real issues. Basically, rightwing media LOVES picking fringe individuals pushing a position and pretending like every democrat actually believes the same.
  - liveoneggs 22d ago
    2024 NIH guidance: https://web.archive.org/web/20240409042454/https://www.nih.gov/nih-style-guide/inclusive-gender-neutral-language https://web.archive.org/web/20240409042454/https://www.nih.g... These word changes were real things that happened by government policy.
    - cogman10 22d ago
      > Both pregnant women and pregnant people are acceptable phrases. Literally the first sentence in the guidelines that talk about birthing person. The entire paragraph says "it's fine if you want to" and isn't prescriptive. This is a fake controversy. You are literally just mad that some people recognize and want to be accommodating to trans people.
      - liveoneggs 22d ago
        I really can't stress enough just how offensive "chestfeeding" and similar turns of phrase are to massive numbers of women. It is a very big deal.
- bigstrat2003 24d ago
  Also, there's no such thing as being able to give birth and not being female. Many argue that "woman" refers to an internal sense of gender and not the physical reality of one's body, but even in that framework the term "female" refers to the nature of the body. And if you can give birth, you are female, because that is the configuration your body is in.
  - psd1 23d ago
    You've never heard of hermaphrodism? Biology is _complicated_
badc0ffee 24d ago
You definitely need to be female to give birth, regardless of whatever gender identity label you give yourself (e.g. "man" or "non binary").
- ceejayoz 24d ago
  Oh yeah? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19155947/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19155947/
  - liveoneggs 23d ago
    I'm not sure if you're kidding or what but the mothers in that paper had 46 (the normal number) of XX chromosomes, a female with a mosaic-type defect containing some Y - successfully giving birth further proves these were female humans.
    - nostrademons 23d ago
      If you want your mind-blown, read up on feto-maternal microchimerism: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8762399/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8762399/ tl;dr: All boy moms will have some proportion of XY cells lodged in their bodies until they die. And this can result in them showing up as genetically male on a DNA test, simply because they once gave birth to a boy. When you get down to a cellular or molecular level, notions of "sex" or even "individuality" are far more blurry than our mental models admit. Sorta like recent findings that by cell count, humans are only about 43% human, and the rest is the bacteria making up our microbiome, and that our microbiome can have significant impact on our behavior. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270
      - liveoneggs 23d ago
        yeah I knew that already - I have a son and it was mentioned as a fun fact along the way
- kg 24d ago
nostrademons 24d ago
Latinx is terrible, though, because it is something no native Spanish speaker would ever say. It's an example of the exact same sort of cultural imperialism that most of the people who like to say latinx rail against. The term that Hispanic queer and non-binary communities use is latine, which is pronounceable, follows normal Spanish grammatical rules, actually arose from the communities being discussed, and pluralizes easily to "les latines".
- plorkyeran 23d ago
  It's almost like it's not a Spanish word. It was coined by native English speakers to describe themselves. It also happens to be a terrible English word, but the fact that it doesn't work in a different language's grammar isn't why it's a bad English word.
  - liveoneggs 23d ago
    when did this retcon get invented?
what 24d ago
> "Birthing person" is attempting to provide an umbrella term for people who can give birth that may or may not necessarily be female. There is no person that can give birth and is not female.
tzs 23d ago
Latinx actually is comparable to what Trump is doing. It is outsiders trying to force a word on a community that doesn't want it. Only about 4% of the US Hispanic population uses it, 75% say it should not be used, and half have never even heard of the word. It doesn't fit Spanish grammar or pronunciation rules which makes it look even out of place.

_3u10 24d ago

[flagged]

jackp96 24d ago

Eh, it's a decent joke, but it seems like the power dynamics here are a bit out of balance? Maybe I just live in a red area, but I see a lot of people judge liberals based on wild Twitter takes and random think pieces — which aren't actually policies/rule of law. If Joe Biden signed an EO denouncing the use of the phrase "pregnant woman" in government documents as a queerphobic slur or mandating Gov employees add their pronouns to their email signatures, I'd find this take more compelling. But he didn't.

_3u10 24d ago
[flagged]
matwood 23d ago
You reminded me that I had a person at work get mad that I used the phrase “9 women can’t have a baby in 1 month”. They couldn’t explain why other than I’m a man and can’t talk about women. So it’s not wild Twitter takes.
- wredcoll 23d ago
  Boy, this sounds like a fair and honest representation of a totally real conversation you had.
  - matwood 22d ago
    That’s the exact conversation. We were talking about speeding up a development process and I used the classic saying in the context that some things just take time. It shook me a bit because I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but me and the other people in the room sat there at a loss with what the issue was. She also couldn’t explain other than saying woman is bad, which showed she didn’t take the time to even try to understand what it meant. She was eventually fired in part for yelling at a guy in a huge meeting when he answered a question about to a hypothetical boss as “he” instead of she or they. So I understand your skepticism and would also be a skeptic if I didn’t live it.

cogman10 24d ago

Really bad example by Maher. There are much better examples where the 2 parties are frustratingly aligned to a large extent. For example, datacenters, ICE, and foreign policy. You can find a good number of democrats who are mad about Iran not because it's a dumb war, but because it wasn't done correctly by going through congress. Both sides are aligned pretty closely in making their donors happy above their voters. That keeps democrats from regulating like they should and it keeps republicans focused on "the enemies within".

laimewhisps 24d ago
Maher himself is a perfect example of this. He's a hardcore Zionist warhawk who has an ideology nearly identical to Ted Cruz, yet he's a "liberal" (neoliberal). He also had Democrat Van Jones on his show making fun of dead Gaza babies. While I don't think the media and politician class represent the public (at all!), they are as aligned as lasers on promoting Israel.

wredcoll 23d ago

You know, aside from, well, everything else that makes this a stupid comparison, the most important part is the motive that people like you seem so happy to ignore. Latinx is a not particularly useful attempt by a tiny group of people to make another tiny group of oppressed people feel slightly more comfortable Trump renamed lake ontario because he is a gigantic asshole.