I agree. I don’t think people should be expected to do all this to be treated like they matter in a society. I do it because I don’t want to go back to living in my car, but the process offers me daily reminders of how our system is thoroughly rigged in favor of commercial interests and against the human who wishes to live as a human.

No joke, once you start structuring your life as a business, especially as formal corporations, the amount of financial, legal, and professional advantages, opportunities, and protection that appear are incredible. For example, did you know that …

1. … as an S corp, you can “pass through” the profit and loss of your business, such that your personal gross income excludes business expenses?
2. … the employer match on a 401k account is considered a business expense?
3. … the actual annual cap on employer contributions to various retirement vehicles are in fact much, much higher than employers are typically willing to offer you as a benefit?
4. … the terms of commercial factoring, mortgages and loans are often far more agreeable than consumer equivalents?
5. … many of the places where you shop offer discounts to business accounts (and not just for volume, simply because you’re a business)?
6. … it’s considered normal/SOP to request edits to many types of agreements individuals are expected to simply accept without question, including leases offered by landlords?

This is just a sample. Most endeavors and many functional aspects of personal life are by design simpler, safer, more scalable, and more profitable if planned and executed as a business rather than an individual in the late great United States of America.

To be clear, I’m saying gender identity isn’t [entirely] a social construct

Then I’m with you 100%.

Sorry for going straight to pedantic bitch over semantics, but sometimes it’s injected as a wedge issue by bad faith actors with local clout, and then burying the lede is a mistake.

Coherency on the gender constructionism thing is a phalanx for everyone in the space (protecting mostly trans folk now, others later) because the potential contradiction in the gender [identity/expression] distinction and the resulting confusion (quickly seen here) is continually weaponized by phobes in an old but still popular have-it-both-ways narrative about wokism.

Thanks for coming back to reply to everyone.

ETA clarity and context

I agree re: DS9 and SW with the recent but noteworthy exception of “Andor.”

I’m gonna guess you get push-back on this, depending on how you’ve phrased it before, because saying gender is not a construct is a strong/radical statement in the context of theory.

I imagine your point is that, for an individual, gender is not some arbitrary choice. It is very real. I agree. That is consistent with the idea of finding oneself on a dynamic gender spectra that is collectively defined; i.e., a social construct.

The people who try to deny an individual’s gender, who they are, by using social construct as a synonym for “not real,” do not understand the term and, more importantly, will always find some other reason to do so until they learn to be better people. That is, the term itself is not to blame.

Those people should probably read more. While a social construct does not have an absolute origin, that something is a social construct has never implied that it’s “fake.”

Especially at the level of the individual, where the gender “construct” becomes a monolith and internal and external perceptions belong to one person, it contains the entire definition for that individual at a point in time. So for the individual at a point in time, the construct is not only real, it’s literally all there is.

Yeah this is a favorite pet theory of mine as well, partly because I like imagining guys like Andrew Tate protesting being labeled “trans alpha” or whatever, but also because it’s just a fact that many cis people experience a form of gender dysphoria and commonly seek hormone therapy for it at early ages.

I’ve found that comparison usually clicks with uninitiated cis people immediately, even when they’ve only heard othering and alarmist narratives up to that point.

What is the breaker box in your analogy? Breaking legs?

lol I meant a [circuit] breaker box (aka power/ac panel, breaker panel, distribution board, etc)

So how do you suspend a license that the guy didn’t have?

It’s just a minor legal misnomer. If a defendant happens to not have a driver’s license in the first place, suspension could be more accurately termed “prevention.” Logistically speaking, the state probably just generates a stub file/account with a valid license number then just adds the suspension to that empty driving record.

“Necessary but not sufficient condition,” e.g. the light in your room might be off, but “suspending your light privileges” is easy at the breaker box.

The trick is to save many jars of the stuff, so you can really go out in style.

I think the romantic element is linked to desire for intimacy of some kind or other, and is there to some degree in every friendship, but when that becomes a “romantic attraction” usually varies and honestly is defined in hindsight more often than not.

So, not knowing is normal. If someone is pressing you to decide, they can definitely wait.

Sure thing! Yeah the type I cert is an easy choice, same as 609 MVAC. If you’re considering the trade, you might choose universal (I, II, III) to save time. Exam is longer, closed book, and proctored, but not hard.

Among skilled trades, HVAC is notoriously demanding physically (especially residential, where you’ll spend a lot of time in attics and crawl spaces in hot weather) but consensus on hvac forums is that pay’s good and you’ll never be out of a job as long as you take care of your body.

You’ll need to pickup 608 type I certification to legally buy most refrigerants. It’s inexpensive, the exam is open book, and takes an afternoon to complete.

The “textbook” used is actually a useful reference if you’re just starting out. The material familiarizes you with common terminology, regulations technicians must follow, and the procedural basics for typical jobs, but the emphasis overall is how to handle refrigerants safely and avoid venting them into the atmosphere.

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Is that when the unix time int overflows? If so, I gotta get this sticker lol

Edit: confirmed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem, I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000

Right-Wing Authoritarianism is a well-studied, if controversial, and ostensibly hereditary psychosocial predisposition that strongly predicts a number of psychiatric comorbidities often associated with acute cerebral trauma.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

Yeah he did the job! Now If his MAGA friends doxx him, we gotta make a strong showing of solidarity for our neighbor who wasn’t a total asshole. Fair’s fair.

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Oh shit, that is worse.

This got me good. I’m imagining a bro from Staten Island stuck in a dusty quiet room with bad coffee and New Yorkers from every borough 100% ready to cook.

He can’t log off. He can’t flee to his safe spaces. He can’t feed himself reassuring 4chan memes. He’s exposed. These are his neighbors. There’s nowhere to run. Will his fear and adoration of a wannabe dictator sustain him? Tune in next week to find out.