Funny events in anti-woke world

Silvanus

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That's not a change. It would be a contradiction to call someone cis if they transitioned and remained transitioned. Calling them cis inherently means they began transition and then changed their mind. Adding the word "started" doesn't change the meaning.
It's not a factual contradiction, but it's a clear change of emphasis. Saying "someone has transitioned", and "someone has started their transition", very clearly imply different degrees of advancement down that process.

I've properly represented their position. You just fail to understand words if I say them, apparently. They said basically "A is better than B", and you've somehow deleted out most of the sentence to get to "they want to do A". Perhaps you should try reading with more nuance.
They only said "A is better than B" if you strip out literally all of the context and caveats. You're meant to read it with them. That's the reason they're there.

You agree with my description of the "researcher's" position.
Not without context and caveats, I don't. I do believe that its potentially less harmful for a cis child to go onto puberty blockers than for a trans child to be denied hormonal treatment altogether.

Yet I wouldn't sign up to "transitioning a cis child is better than not transitioning a trans child", because that statement gives a very obviously different impression, and could be applied to far more extreme interpretations.

The arbitrary part is the age. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to say 18, though that number could be higher or lower depending on what and where specifically something happens. Why do we wait until 18 to let people do things for themselves? Because it's an approximate timeline where individuals are reaching physical maturity. We give people the length of adolescence to grow into physical adulthood before they start making serious personal decisions. If you block puberty, you prevent the individual from reaching their physical adulthood, which makes waiting for age 18 a completely arbitrary timeline.
18 is not the age we wait for because of the secondary physical characteristics of puberty. The maturation of the brain goes on perfectly well in kids who are on hormone blockers.

phallometrics
There's a word I wish I hadn't just learned! Yay!
 

Terminal Blue

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Parent's are supposed to guide their children's personal development.
Parents are not "supposed" to "guide" their children's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

If you do not understand that, if you do not grasp the basic principle of why it wrong, then you are a very damaged person and whoever raised you has fundamentally failed you.
 

Trunkage

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Parents are not "supposed" to "guide" their children's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

If you do not understand that, if you do not grasp the basic principle of why it wrong, then you are a very damaged person and whoever raised you has fundamentally failed you.
Look, I would agree with Tstorm and say that parent should guide children

But you put the word 'guide' in quotes for a reason. Guiding does not mean forcing children to behaviour in a certain fashion just because someone pretends what God/Bible says. I would also agree that no one should force someone to be transgender

The issue arise when a fundamentalist religious persons pretend everyone else is going to treat children like they do. Parents of transchildren arent forcing anything on anyone and fundamentalists projecting their behaviour onto others is a them problem
 

tstorm823

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Yet I wouldn't sign up to "transitioning a cis child is better than not transitioning a trans child", because that statement gives a very obviously different impression, and could be applied to far more extreme interpretations.
Betcha $5 you would if you thought it through. You're almost certainly right there with Terminal Blue, and would call the latter option child abuse.

Don't get me wrong, you're the one reading things into a sentence that aren't there, but if they were there, I bet you'd still agree with the sentence.
The maturation of the brain goes on perfectly well in kids who are on hormone blockers.
The brain's structure changes based on hormones. Puberty blockers aren't magic pills that target only specific organs, they change your entire body's hormone levels.
Here's a fun quote for you:
" Other work has shown that a low testosterone level is correlated for increased risk of psychosis in males. "
Parents are not "supposed" to "guide" their children's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
Again, you've stumbled on a right answer for the wrong reason... you shouldn't guide those things because the child shouldn't have those things at all.
 

Casual Shinji

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Yes, please do. We wait with bated breath. Also, pick that fight with Apple, get the lawyers their early christmas bonus 🍾🎉🍿

Feel I'm ragging on Musk too much? Fair enough. I'll stop when he stops making it so easy and fun.
Dude, you couldn't rag enough on Musk if you lived to be a million.
 

Thaluikhain

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So I was playing Modern Warships yesterday, and by playing I mean logging on, and playing only when I feel like it which has been never done recently, and I looked up one of the things noted, and I googled called YJ-21, and it literally freaked me out.


The missile can go hypersonic, and attack land plus ship targets. But I can't find its accuracy, and precision numbers, for example, a scud that is hypersonic isn't accurate enough to strike within 1 meter of a target while a Javelin which is accurate, but slow can.

And I conclude what I always conclude the US needs a larger defense budget to counter it, build defenses, and a better weapon than it.
People keep blathering on about hypersonic missiles as the big game changer, make carriers obsolete and all. China is also going to build carriers. Hmmm.

Also, when you say the US need a larger defense budget, do you mean larger than China (which it has), or larger than it has already? Cause it's already got by far the world's largest military budget.
 

Silvanus

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Betcha $5 you would if you thought it through. You're almost certainly right there with Terminal Blue, and would call the latter option child abuse.

Don't get me wrong, you're the one reading things into a sentence that aren't there, but if they were there, I bet you'd still agree with the sentence.
As is typical, then, you have a very poor understanding of what your opponents actually believe/have expressed, and will insist on engaging with the imagined version.

The brain's structure changes based on hormones. Puberty blockers aren't magic pills that target only specific organs, they change your entire body's hormone levels.
Here's a fun quote for you:
" Other work has shown that a low testosterone level is correlated for increased risk of psychosis in males. "
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that use of hormonal blockers in adolescents has led to lower mental maturation? Or just gonna rely on tangential stuff and grim suggestion?
 
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Thaluikhain

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The man's literally using his mouth to shovel money into a dumpster fire like it's going to fuel his rocket to Mars. I'm not sure it's possible to rag on him too much.
Or like he has way more money than he could possibly need and it doesn't matter if he loses billions and wipes out companies.
 

Gergar12

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Can we stop means testing affordable insulin. You will die without it, yet the current government keeps stating you will be capped 35 dollars ONLY if you are on Medicare so fuck the young and the middle age. It doesn’t take a genius to know that some will ration it and lead to excess deaths.
 

tstorm823

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Do you have any evidence whatsoever that use of hormonal blockers in adolescents has led to lower mental maturation? Or just gonna rely on tangential stuff and grim suggestion?
Oh, it's pure rationalization, but as it turns out I'm really smart, and figured out how to google "effects of hormones on brain maturation" and found this study and this article, and this piece, which collectively have some choice suggestions about puberty's hormone release potentially increasing the ability to learn high cognitive functions, about how puberty is a critical window for the brain to develop adequately, and about how one girl studied on puberty blockers actually had her IQ decrease during treatment.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Can we stop means testing affordable insulin. You will die without it, yet the current government keeps stating you will be capped 35 dollars ONLY if you are on Medicare so fuck the young and the middle age. It doesn’t take a genius to know that some will ration it and lead to excess deaths.
Limitations of the system. While I'm certain Biden could be doing more, this is more Congress's issue
 

Silvanus

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Oh, it's pure rationalization, but as it turns out I'm really smart, and figured out how to google "effects of hormones on brain maturation" and found this study and this article, and this piece, which collectively have some choice suggestions about puberty's hormone release potentially increasing the ability to learn high cognitive functions, about how puberty is a critical window for the brain to develop adequately, and about how one girl studied on puberty blockers actually had her IQ decrease during treatment.
Right. I mean, the second and third there are just about the importance of hormones to development; they don't actually indicate that adolescents on puberty blockers have meaningfully suffered.

The first link is directly relevant to our conversation, but also doesn't say what you're saying.
 

Schadrach

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It goes without saying that the venn diagram between US fundamentalists/evangelicals and fucking morons is pretty close to a circle.
More like a bullseye. The former are definitely the latter, but we have so much more variety of fucking morons out there, and fundamentalist evangelicals are just a subset of our assorted fucking morons.

Can we stop means testing affordable insulin. You will die without it, yet the current government keeps stating you will be capped 35 dollars ONLY if you are on Medicare so fuck the young and the middle age. It doesn’t take a genius to know that some will ration it and lead to excess deaths.
Medicare isn't means tested, it's age/disability tested. Medicaid is means tested. That cap only applies to Medicare and not private insurance because insurance companies are essentially allowed to set their own co-pays for things, and Medicare functions as an insurance company. Congress is generally averse to price-fixing in a way that works against major donors, and Congress is who would have to do something about it. Just another reason we need to move to a single payer system, even if it's politically unpopular.

And I say that as someone who has been a Type I diabetic for 30 years, 2 months and a few days.

I'm currently fighting with my Dr/Pharmacy/insurance over getting prior auth for my CGMs (continuous glucose monitor, basically a bluetooth glucometer stuck to my arm that samples from what is essentially a plastic thorn sticking out of it and into me, changed every 2 weeks) because my sugar has been doing...weird things lately. Sudden precipitous drops, just kind of climbing by about 60 mg/dL per hour for several hours when I wake up in the morning despite nothing going in, but not every day. I also had an incident back in May that is used to justify the prior auth where my sugar dropped precipitously and suddenly and I'm missing time during which I apparently drove about 30 miles, wrecked my car 2 blocks from the ER entrance of the hospital, wandered out and was found on the street - my memory ends at 4PM at a store and resumes at ~6PM in the back of an ambulance with an EMT on each side - the one on the right was midway through squeezing a tube of glucose gel into my mouth, I had an IV already in with a glucose bag on it, and the one on the left was asking question to establish if I was conscious and aware (where I am, who's the president, what's my name, that sort of thing). Finger stick came up 43. Given the IV was already in and running, that's after receiving at least a little IV glucose. Wife asked me if it was scary and I told her it wasn't, because I can't remember any of the parts that should be scary, it's just a blank.
 

Terminal Blue

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Again, you've stumbled on a right answer for the wrong reason... you shouldn't guide those things because the child shouldn't have those things at all.
There are two meanings of the word "shouldn't". One is descriptive ("cats shouldn't have wings") and the other is prescriptive ("people shouldn't do drugs").

One very common tactic in right-wing discourse is to deliberately misrepresent prescriptive statements as descriptive ones. This is one of those occasions.

"Children shouldn't have those things" is meant to imply that children don't have these things by nature, but of course that is wrong. You can immediately tell its wrong because this argument is over how to treat children who clearly do have those things. Thus, the real point being made here is prescriptive. It's that children having these things is morally wrong and shouldn't be allowed. That when evidence of these things do appear in children, they need to be punished and deliberately suppressed out of existence. If that hurts the child in question, so be it, it's their fault for breaking the prescription.

Moreover, I think most people can just intuitively tell that this statement is wrong by remembering back to their own childhood, or by basic observation of child behavior. Most children, if anything, have an unusually strong sense of their own gender identity because they do not clearly separate identity and expression. Most children also have some form of nascent sexuality that may or may not be object oriented, but is probably leaning towards being object oriented. It may manifest in the form of overt sexual play, or just in the pattern of a child's relationships with other children of different genders.

Anyway, I realize I'm talking to the audience because at this point it seems more productive to do so than to attempt any meaningful dialogue, but let's dive back into the shit and pretend this is a conversation again.

Tstorm, as someone who was once a child (and a child who should have been referred to a gender identity clinic if it hadn't been the 90s when such things were basically unthinkable) your view of children is incredibly disturbing. Part of that is that I've heard similar sentiments and ideas coming from people who seriously abused their children, but it's not just that. It's also just not healthy.

You seem to have this view of children as objects that exist primarily for the benefit and amusement of adults, particularly their parents, and who can take any level of punishment or trauma because it will all be scrubbed away later as they age. But that's not how humans work. Even children have their own lives outside of their parents and they are supposed to have that. There are limits (very obvious limits) on how much power and license parents should have to control their childrens' lives, because those children are constantly learning. The way they are treated, far from being irrelevant or something which just gets scrubbed away once they hit puberty, will inform their basic expectations for how human relationships work in ways they will carry for the rest of their lives.

And I'm sorry if anything that happened to you in your childhood made you feel that you didn't matter, or that you weren't allowed to have any kind of independent existence outside of constantly pleasing the adults around you, or if you were punished for having normal emotions. Maybe it feels like that experience made you the person you are, and maybe pride necessitates believing that that must be a good thing. But look at what you are doing, look at what you are defending and justifying. It is not a good thing.

You are asking for children to be harmed because you have rationalized to yourself that being harmed is good for them. That is what all child abusers do, and I think deep down you have to know that it's wrong.
 
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XsjadoBlaydette

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Sample no. [Redacted] of "every accusation is a confession" added to database.




Believers in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory are always on the hunt for the powerful pedophiles they imagine run the world—like the cabal of pedophiles they say controls the Democratic Party, or the one operating out of the imagined basement of a Washington pizzeria.

But now, new court records reveal that QAnon leader Phil Godlewski has a criminal past of his own involving an inappropriate relationship with a minor that police records suggest turned sexual.

Thanks to an ill-conceived defamation lawsuit against a local newspaper, Godlewski has put his conspiracy-theory career at risk by inadvertently prompting the release of more details regarding his case, including lurid text messages and a video of his erect penis.

Perhaps worse, according to his courtroom opponents, records suggest Godlewski has been caught both committing perjury himself and attempting to convince his own victim to do the same to ensure a “financial windfall” for them both.


Now, in a bombshell motion, the newspaper claims they’ve caught Godlewski breaking a bevy of courtroom rules and want him to pay $70,000 in legal fees and damages. As the case heats up and revelations spill out, it also offers a chance to see the kind of person who can profit from the persistent conspiracy theory.

QAnon has ruined families, inspired multiple gruesome murders, and helped power the Jan. 6 insurrection. But QAnon has also been a lucrative career for Godlewski, a Pennsylvania-based promoter of the conspiracy theory who speaks to his fans in lengthy, rambling livestream videos.

With more than 600,000 followers on the social media app Telegram and 156,000 subscribers on the alternative video platform Rumble, Godlewski profits from encouraging his fans to sign up for financial arrangements like a multilevel marketing scheme that sells silver. Earlier this year, Godlewski used his QAnon earnings to buy a $1.7 million house.

But Godlewski’s online critics have seized on his conviction, dating back more than a decade, for “corrupting a minor” to suggest he isn’t the upstanding QAnon believer he claims to be.

In 2008, nine years before QAnon began, a 25-year-old Godlewski worked as a high school baseball coach in a school district outside of Scranton. That’s where he met a 15-year-old female high school freshman referred to in court records as “B.D.”

The student’s boyfriend died by suicide soon after she met Godlewski, and the baseball coach comforted her. A few months later, with B.D. still 15 years old and Godlewski a decade her senior, they began a sexual relationship, according to police records and a sworn affidavit from Godlewski’s victim that was filed in court in November.

Godlewski showered his victim with gifts, according to police reports and a letter written by her parents filed into the defamation record, including a $2,800 pair of diamond earrings. He also lavished her with attention in the form of text messages that laid out details of their sex life, with more than 300 messages in one day alone, according to a police report. In one, Godlewski wrote that they would only “ever be sexually satisfied if we did it like 4-5 times a day.” In another, he allegedly wrote that the teenager “looked so good and [was] giving incredible head” while lamenting his own sexual performance.

Godlewski also allegedly provided B.D. with a log of his ongoing thoughts over several days, many of which centered on his struggles with their illegal age difference, according to police.

“Realized that you’re only 15, but quickly stopped caring,” one of the messages read.

“Why are we so compatible?” read another. “I’m 10 years older than you.”

In an email to The Daily Beast, Godlewski’s lawyer Timothy M. Kolman claimed that “any sexual relationship occurred when the couple were of age.”

In 2010, Godlewski was indicted on a raft of charges related to the alleged sexual relationship. In her recent affidavit, B.D. claims that Godlewski contacted her and begged her to recant her claims against him, threatening to kill himself if she didn’t.

In response, according to her affidavit, she stopped cooperating with law enforcement in the case. Godlewski ultimately pleaded guilty to a lesser count of “corruption of a minor,” receiving three months under house arrest.

Godlewski’s arrest disappeared from public view until 2021, when a reporter at Pennsylvania’s Scranton Times-Tribune wrote a profile on the upstart QAnon promoter that mentioned his conviction.

A furious Godlewski sued the paper, assuring his followers that the reporter had “taken the bait.” In livestream videos, Godlewski insisted there was nothing to the investigation, claiming B.D.’s mother was behind the criminal case because she wanted his money and calling his victim a “conniving” schemer who faked the messages. He raised more than $26,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his lawsuit.

So far, though, the case has gone poorly for Godlewski. In late October, B.D. contacted the newspaper’s lawyers and offered to tell her side of the story in a sworn affidavit—one that was very different from the version put out by Godlewski, according to the paper’s attorneys.

In her telling, Godlewski and the woman had continued to carry on an occasional relationship after she became an adult—one documented through numerous text messages. For example, in a March 2021 text message, according to the defense attorneys, Godlewski texted the woman to express his condolences on her grandfather’s death—and alluded to their sexual relationship.

“I had no idea your Popa died,” Godlewski wrote in the text message, according to court filings. “I’m so sorry. I think we had sex in their bed though.”

“We’ve probably had sex in like 40% of the homes in northeastern Pennsylvania,” the woman responded, an apparent allusion to Godlewski’s alleged habit, when she was still underage, of using his second job as a real estate agent to access for-sale houses for their liaisons.

That same day, according to the paper’s lawyers, Godlewski sent the woman a picture of his “erect penis” and claimed it had “got bigger.”

Both those exchanges would contradict sworn statements Godlewski filled out as part of the lawsuit. Responding to interrogatories sent by the newspaper’s lawyers, Godlewski had insisted he had never had a sexual relationship with the woman, either when she was a teenager or as an adult. Godlewski had also never provided any text messages with the woman as part of discovery requests, claiming he didn’t have any.

“These text messages did not slip [Godlewski’s] mind,” the newspaper’s attorney wrote in a November motion. “He intentionally failed to disclose them in discovery for this lawsuit.”

In a Nov. 26 video for his fans, Godlewski admitted messaging the woman, saying he was also drunkenly flirting over text message with at least a dozen other women at the same time. Godlewski claimed his marriage fell apart after the Times-Tribune article. Seated in front of a woodcut model of the QAnon motto “Where we go one, we go all” in the video, he claimed he was so drunk during these flirting sessions, he would fall down intoxicated and urinate on himself.

“I was flirting with every girl that ever knew me,” Godlewski said. “Some of y’all watching may have been a part of that.”

In a statement, Godlewski’s lawyer claimed the woman’s damaging affidavit had a “troubling and coercive background.” He declined to offer specifics of the allegation to The Daily Beast. Lawyers for the Scranton Times-Tribune declined to comment.

Perhaps even more seriously, other text message exchanges between B.D. and Godlewski suggest that he wanted her to lie in his defamation case, according to the newspaper’s attorneys.

In May 2022, as the defamation case was ongoing, Godlewski contacted B.D. again. In the text messages, he alluded to a “financial windfall” that he couldn’t discuss in person that would require them both to work together. In another message, Godlewski clarified that he wasn’t talking about his precious metals multilevel marketing promotion.

“I think it might be fair to say that there is a very, very large, and very, very unique financial opportunity that exists in front of you,” Godlewski wrote, according to text message records entered into the court record.

In another message, Godlewski appeared to allude to the newspaper he was suing.

“I don’t trust those motherf---ers and I am literally foaming at the mouth to take them down once and for all,” Godlewski wrote, according to the court filings.

The newspaper’s lawyers say these messages are proof that Godlewski wanted his victim, now an adult, to perjure herself.

“Not only did Philip Godlewski commit a sex crime against a 15-year-old girl in 2009-2010, he has now solicited this same person to commit perjury in a Court proceeding so he can enrich himself,” the newspaper’s motion reads.

Easy mobs to gain favour with as long as you have no conscience.