A combination of: Marxian economics—specifically the framework of oppressor and oppressed—applied to social categories such as gender, race, and sexuality + Critical Theory from the Frankfurt School.

bro who is putting that in video games

The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.

I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.

Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.

That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.

It can be very valuable and interesting to study the surrounding context of a war. Military history with battles and kill counts and discussions of tactics is something I find boring af, but there are endless discussions to be had about how the causes of the American Civil War can be traced back to before even the Revolution and tracing the repercussions of the war all the way up through to current politics.

Think about how the Taiping Rebellion, which killed more than 20 million people, would have affected day to day life in 19th century China - which weakened China and rendered it more vulnerable to European powers. Think the Opium Wars. Think about how Hong Kong was just returned to China in 1999 - and all of the complexities that entailed.

Or how the World Wars depopulated Russia. You had a generation dead or traumatized. Russian alcoholism is usually treated as a joke - trauma can have intergenerational changes in genetic expression.

Wars also make excellent chronological signposts. I’ garbage at dates, but usually wars segment significant social/economic/cultural/blah/blah/blah changes that they help me keep events organized in my head.

The UK trying to section off an Indian reserve as a buffer state after the French and Indian War was 100% a cause of the Revolution. Also the UK trying to step in and say “no, you are not allowed to purchase all of Kentucky from one random person.”

Funny how that’s never talked about in K-12 history. Or even undergrad. It’s all about those nasty taxes (after spending how much on troops to kill Indians who kinda had every reason to be pissed off?)

I like that he’s very open about the fact that he’s not an expert/professional historian. He walks the line between storytelling and rigor pretty well for a pop historian. My favorite episode is the one about the Memnonite (edit: Anabaptist) rebellion that ended with corpses being left up for centuries.

It’s less about succumbing to hedonism, and more the fact that he was disobeying God (and trying to screw the women he was banging out of an inheritance).

He was supposed to impregnate his brothers widow to provide her with a son. This was a “levirate” marriage - essentially, the son would considered his brother’s and would inherit his brother’s property. Women didn’t inherit property, so this was a common practice to make sure that widows were taken care of.

Onan pulled out because he didn’t want to get her pregnant - he wanted the inheritance for himself. So he was being a massive douche, and deserved it.

The problem is, trans people are very vocal about this, people don’t want to listen! I see so many comments about chopping dicks off - that’s not even how bottom surgery works.

Trying to “decouple” does nothing, because these people are going to be deliberately disingenuous. Notice how all often the news headline is “judge bans sex change surgery for youth” - it’s a lie, and it’s on purpose.

The reality is that gender affirming care is mostly hormones. Bottom surgery is prohibitively expensive and rarely covered by insurance. Rarely I’ve heard of teens having breast reductions, but it’s also 100% legal and accepted to get a cisgender 16 year old a breast enhancement.

They genuinely don’t care what gender affirming care even is. I’ve seen so many conservatives wailing about surgery on kids, when 99% of gender care is using the right name and pronouns plus hormone blockers. Like fuck, I wish they were just handing out surgeries! I’d really love a phalloplasty, but my insurance excludes any gender confirmation surgery for adults!

He did it during his first administration. I was planning on joining the Navy and becoming a doctor at the time.

Yeah, I have no faith in the legal system at this point. It’s really clear they’ll sign off on whatever the right wing wants. It’s ridiculous that he’s spent years thumbing his nose at the legal process, and is continued to allow to do so.

They’re starting to break functionality though. Sometimes old Reddit doesn’t load comments or work at all on specific subreddits.

Phalloplasty is so heavy duty that you’d be out of commission for several years anyway. Even with the other option, metadioplasty, (basically, they cut loose the clitoris and sometimes reroute urethra) you’d be out at least 6 months. I doubt they’d allow surgeries until after you served for some amount of time, just hormones.

Almost like Jim Bridenstone was a bad pick….

The big idea is about giving children choice. “Do you want to get out of the bath and brush your teeth now, or do you want to brush your teeth in the bathtub?” “Should we work on math homework or our essay first?” “Would you like to do your homework at the table with me, or would you like to sit in the living room and listen to music while you do it?”

Both choices should be choices you are happy with.

Many traumatized foster kids will react very poorly to just being told to do things. They struggle with a lot of feelings of powerlessness - being moved from place to place with little consideration of what they want, having to follow new rules from strange adults. You have to work around some “pathological demand avoidance” - you have to avoid tripping them into that flight or fight mode. You empower them by providing them with two acceptable options, instead of reminding them that they have no power over their own lives.

They won’t always go along with those two choices, but then the focus is going to be on natural consequences - “you didn’t clean up your room, so I don’t think we have room for a new squishmallow.”

The name of the book is perfect. You start from a place of love - you want this child to grow into a healthy and happy adult, you want to provide them opportunities because you care deeply for them and that informs your actions. You give them rational rules to their behavior - it’s not about control, it’s about teaching them how to function.

Remember how the police/Alex Jones kept making big talk about a “manifesto” which never manifested?

I work for a charter school, which means I have no sick leave. I also tutor, and don’t get paid if I don’t tutor. I’ve been working usually 8 am to 9 pm for about the past three months.

I also live in the only state that’s counties are 100% red. Part of the reason that I work so much is that there are no legal protections for my employment, housing, or even just discrimination in divorce court ❤️ I’m hopelessly in debt and genuinely terrified for my life, because I do a lot of work with children in rural areas and a cop could very easily rape and murder a transgender man with no consequences out there.

I do deeply care about what is happening in Palestine and Ukraine; my vote in a state which doesn’t recognize me as a human being doesn’t usually matter anyway.

Fun story - in high school, I did a lot of volunteering for a city council run in my city. The person running was a lesbian - she wasn’t out publicly - but it was pretty important to me after a kid at my high school killed himself after a horrific city council meeting over a pride month proclamation. We worked our asses off, the opponent barely campaigned and was fucking unhinged.

The day before the election, he sent out an illegal flyer. It said something like “sex, lies, and we wish we had a videotape!” They outed her the day before, and she lost.

I’ve knocked a lot of doors in my life. I can tell you confidently that my vote will never matter in Oklahoma, just like my personhood doesn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t perform my civic duty, but I’m working on some of those earlier levels of Maslow’s needs right now.

Uneducated people in rural areas struggle very much with understanding their experiences of others, and have very strange ideas about how the world works. I told my grandmother I wanted to move to Chicago - she’s convinced I’m going to get gang murdered. (She would be horrified if I told her about wandering around LA on foot)

The idea that there are options other than cisgender heterosexual people is threatening to their understanding of their world. Many have not thought about their gender or sexuality; it’s assumed that you’ll get married to the opposite sex, get gender appropriate jobs, have kids, and go to church on Sunday. That’s what life is in Anadarko or Siloam Springs. Many also struggle with unaddressed trauma from the opioid/fent crisis, or military service - so they think the appropriate response to anguish about your body should just be to just cope with it.

Many of these men are secretly bisexual. Many, many, many heterosexually married men seek out sexual encounters with gay men on the side. They would never want to be in a relationship with a man or someone they perceived as a strange, mentally defective man - for many of them that would also assault their understandings of a relationship as more of a property thing. They feel guilty about porn usage, especially the Christian ones, but externalize it as hatred.

The woman are miserable and are committed to making everyone else miserable as well. You gain power in those communities by policing others, especially young women. They are threatened by the idea that they weren’t locked into compulsive heterosexuality and performative femininity. There was a possibility that they could have graduated college, or not had children.

They get the program though. They’re proper Puritans. If life is suffering then the only joy to be had is in watching other people. And what better target than those who are defying our most basic sociological roles? These are the same people who host gender reveal parties - it matters to them. So it must matter to everyone else.

That’s my guess as a trans man at least, obviously I’m biased.

It isn’t something I had ever heard until I attended a lecture by the National Security Decision Making Game folks - they are intense on history. (And I genuinely have a bachelors degree in history - with an American focus)

Essentially, the French and Indian war fucking sucked for the Crown and Kingdom. It was mega expensive and difficult and ya know, the Indians live there. Who knows how many of them there are, if we keep pissing them off it’s going to keep costing us money. Soldiers cost money. Sending soldiers across the ocean costs a lot of money.

The French had a lot more native allies. The Americans were constantly being mega dicks, the French weren’t awesome but they were relatively chill.

Anyway, they finally win this expensive ass war and get some land. Indians live on it. Americans want land now - the Crown wants to not start another war and would in fact like a nice buffer state. At the very least, it’s a good idea to take some time to lick some wounds and figure out what We want to do. (I suspect if George could have foreseen the French Revolution, maybe they would be more agrees - something to try if you play NSDM lol)

The Americans are not happy. And they keep pushing into native lands, making illegal and shady treaties, all the while having a fucking meltdown about having to pay taxes for all these fucking soldiers that are protecting them when people get mad about having their land stolen. The Crown is having to say things like “hey no you can’t buy Kentucky from like one guy.”

It’s one thing to be pissed off about paying taxes - it’s another to have the promise of land. In a way, we were built similarly to Rome.

Slavery never ended.

Ever see those stupid laws like “don’t ride a horse on a Sunday?” Or look at when “vagrancy” laws were passed, or differences in sentencing between crack and coke.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Look at prison rates and racial backgrounds in the south. Look at how felonies are used to disenfranchise. Look at the war on drugs.

Bro, I literally have taken a graduate religious historiography class and I’m citing sources - if you want, later tonight I can give you a ton of more academic sources. Arguing that Buddhism is nontheistic indicates a serious lack of understanding of Buddhism.