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Let's not forget there's good news in the colorful, diverse, awesome, queer world

stickygirl said:
Owch yes... but a good pain in some ways
Click to expand...
It's just all part of these amazing changes happening to me 😊 pretty sure you are as familiar with it too. Tomorrow the 14 of November is my one year anniversary of starting hrt and I'm still as excited as ever!
I've read that the second year can bring more noticable changes and I'm anxious to see if this does happen.

Happy trans awareness week to all!
 

Pope says priests can bless same-sex unions​

abcnews.go.com.ico
ABC|58 minutes ago
ROME -- Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, with a new document explaining a radical change in Vatican policy by insisting that people seeking God's love and mercy shouldn't be subject to "an exhaustive moral analysis" to receive it.
 
jaF0 said:

Pope says priests can bless same-sex unions​

abcnews.go.com.ico
ABC|58 minutes ago
ROME -- Pope Francis has formally approved allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, with a new document explaining a radical change in Vatican policy by insisting that people seeking God's love and mercy shouldn't be subject to "an exhaustive moral analysis" to receive it.
Click to expand...
This could be like poking a stick at a hornets nest!
Might have to get some popcorn and watch it all go down ⚡
 
On an unrelated thread, I mentioned that I'm feeling optimistic about the future. I saw this thread and thought this might be a good place to go into further detail about why I feel that way. Hopefully I don't bore anyone, because this turned into a bit of an essay, but I'd like to think that what I have to say is worth the time.

First off, I think it's important to remember that human beings have a negative bias when it comes to predictions about the future, and that makes a lot of sense if you think in terms of evolutionary psychology. If you anticipate bad things happening and prepare for the worst, but nothing bad happens, maybe you lose a bit of time and resources, but will probably be fine. If you anticipate good things happening but disaster strikes, you might lose your life. So pessimism is a survival strategy, and it's likely to lead you to expect bad things even when good things are right around the corner.

Secondly, I see the current culture war and political polarization not as a battle between good and evil, but as a struggle of ideas and perspectives, and ultimately, a matter of human development. (What I'm talking about here might make more sense if you are familiar with the AQAL meta-model or at least the theory of spiral dynamics.) These ideas and perspectives are not simply a matter of bad vs. good but are fully comprehensible and valid within the context of their own cognitive and moral frameworks. Certainly, malicious individuals can and do exploit these differences for personal gain or to cause harm to others, but for the most part, people act out of a desire to do good. It's just that what "good" is can vary depending on your perspective and your level of personal development. If you don't possess the sophistication to question the assumptions built into your current worldview, then you are unable to transcend that worldview and see its inherent flaws and limitations.

For example, consider someone who insists that transgenderism doesn't exist because chromosomes determine gender. That statement is completely true and valid within a cognitive framework where factors of biology are determinant of sexuality (sometimes called the modern or "rational" level of development). To disagree with that statement, you have to question the cognitive framework itself. You have to posit that gender expression is socially constructed, rather than biologically determined. You have to refute the assumption within such a framework that there is a "right" way to express gender, one that is in line with genetics. That requires a higher order complexity of thought, sometimes called the postmodern level, that someone using the lower level complexity simply can't understand.

On the other hand, some observers have noted that many postmodern thinkers are so committed to egalitarian ideals and the methodology of deconstruction that their thinking contains many contradictions. For example, the postmodern/liberal worldview that no particular belief system should be considered superior to any other is contradicted by the implicit belief that the liberal worldview is itself a superior belief system. An example of the consequences of such a flaw can be seen John Mearsheimer's paradoxical theory of liberal hegemony, in which liberal democracies make war on illiberal regimes in the hopes of spreading liberal democracy. Likewise, postmodernism is at war with rationalism and the lower order levels of thought, seeing them as absolutely immoral, rather than simply being more limited in the scope of their perspectives. That's a rather big error to make, and I think that it accounts for self-destructive behavior coming from elements on the political left, such as the impulse to curtail free speech.

So given the conflict between these perspectives, why do I feel optimistic? Because there is a way forward. Quite simply, we have to start to move beyond postmodern thinking to the next higher order level of thinking, and that is already happening. This next level of cognitive development allows you to recognize exactly what I've been talking about here, that different cognitive frameworks/levels of consciousness lead to different thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and that there is value and truth within all of those levels. Where postmodernism rejects the idea that, for example, being heterosexual is the correct or superior form of sexual expression, the next level recognizes that human development must necessarily proceed through these lower level orders of consciousness before reaching a level where non-heterosexual relationships can be understood and accepted. When you start to move from post-modern thinking to this higher level, you find yourself better able to understand and empathize with people who think at a lower level.

What I've described here is based on decades of psychological and sociological research, and I encourage people who are not familiar with it to give it a look.
 
GenZer's - I guess that's looking at you, Zrosey will save us all. They're embracing the term queer as a non-discriminatory term that encompasses all aspects of sexuality instead of labels gay, lesbian and bi. Hooray! Read about it
 
CuriouslyBiDom said:
On an unrelated thread, I mentioned that I'm feeling optimistic about the future. I saw this thread and thought this might be a good place to go into further detail about why I feel that way. Hopefully I don't bore anyone, because this turned into a bit of an essay, but I'd like to think that what I have to say is worth the time.

First off, I think it's important to remember that human beings have a negative bias when it comes to predictions about the future, and that makes a lot of sense if you think in terms of evolutionary psychology. If you anticipate bad things happening and prepare for the worst, but nothing bad happens, maybe you lose a bit of time and resources, but will probably be fine. If you anticipate good things happening but disaster strikes, you might lose your life. So pessimism is a survival strategy, and it's likely to lead you to expect bad things even when good things are right around the corner.

Secondly, I see the current culture war and political polarization not as a battle between good and evil, but as a struggle of ideas and perspectives, and ultimately, a matter of human development. (What I'm talking about here might make more sense if you are familiar with the AQAL meta-model or at least the theory of spiral dynamics.) These ideas and perspectives are not simply a matter of bad vs. good but are fully comprehensible and valid within the context of their own cognitive and moral frameworks. Certainly, malicious individuals can and do exploit these differences for personal gain or to cause harm to others, but for the most part, people act out of a desire to do good. It's just that what "good" is can vary depending on your perspective and your level of personal development. If you don't possess the sophistication to question the assumptions built into your current worldview, then you are unable to transcend that worldview and see its inherent flaws and limitations.

For example, consider someone who insists that transgenderism doesn't exist because chromosomes determine gender. That statement is completely true and valid within a cognitive framework where factors of biology are determinant of sexuality (sometimes called the modern or "rational" level of development). To disagree with that statement, you have to question the cognitive framework itself. You have to posit that gender expression is socially constructed, rather than biologically determined. You have to refute the assumption within such a framework that there is a "right" way to express gender, one that is in line with genetics. That requires a higher order complexity of thought, sometimes called the postmodern level, that someone using the lower level complexity simply can't understand.

On the other hand, some observers have noted that many postmodern thinkers are so committed to egalitarian ideals and the methodology of deconstruction that their thinking contains many contradictions. For example, the postmodern/liberal worldview that no particular belief system should be considered superior to any other is contradicted by the implicit belief that the liberal worldview is itself a superior belief system. An example of the consequences of such a flaw can be seen John Mearsheimer's paradoxical theory of liberal hegemony, in which liberal democracies make war on illiberal regimes in the hopes of spreading liberal democracy. Likewise, postmodernism is at war with rationalism and the lower order levels of thought, seeing them as absolutely immoral, rather than simply being more limited in the scope of their perspectives. That's a rather big error to make, and I think that it accounts for self-destructive behavior coming from elements on the political left, such as the impulse to curtail free speech.

So given the conflict between these perspectives, why do I feel optimistic? Because there is a way forward. Quite simply, we have to start to move beyond postmodern thinking to the next higher order level of thinking, and that is already happening. This next level of cognitive development allows you to recognize exactly what I've been talking about here, that different cognitive frameworks/levels of consciousness lead to different thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and that there is value and truth within all of those levels. Where postmodernism rejects the idea that, for example, being heterosexual is the correct or superior form of sexual expression, the next level recognizes that human development must necessarily proceed through these lower level orders of consciousness before reaching a level where non-heterosexual relationships can be understood and accepted. When you start to move from post-modern thinking to this higher level, you find yourself better able to understand and empathize with people who think at a lower level.

What I've described here is based on decades of psychological and sociological research, and I encourage people who are not familiar with it to give it a look.
Click to expand...
Huh?
 
Some asshole is insisting that chromosomes determine gender. Wrong! Don't attempt to use your pseudoscience to justify your hatred.
 
Zrosey said:
Huh?
Click to expand...
What I’m saying is that surface level we are seeing, the culture war, the right wing backlash and the provocations from both left and right are the last gasps of a struggle between ideological viewpoints that are flawed and incomplete. People are beginning to move on to a new paradigm of thinking that validates and contextualizes both right-wing rationalism and leftwing egalitarianism while transcending them both. As more people move into this paradigm, expect new problems but a settling down of the tensions that currently plague us.
 
Escierto said:
Some asshole is insisting that chromosomes determine gender. Wrong! Don't attempt to use your pseudoscience to justify your hatred.
Click to expand...
Oh, boy, I must have communicated that badly. Let me try an analogy.

Think of a child’s belief in Santa Claus. This is classic magical thinking, the same type of thinking that a primitive human would use in attributing natural phenomena to the actions of gods. Is the child an asshole for clinging to that belief? Is the child wrong to believe it?

Or does the myth of Santa Claus serve as a story that communicates ideas about love and generosity? We grow beyond such myths in time and realize that the love always came from our families. Similarly, you can grow beyond the rigid definitions of a rationalist worldview to an individualist worldview that sees gender as something you create rather than something you must accept as biologically determinant.

What I’m suggesting is that the person who insists that chromosomes determine gender isn’t motivated by hatred. They are simply following the assumptions and precepts inherent in their worldview. And once you understand that, you can start to empathize. Not agree with it, but understand the why of it, which in turn gives you the power to change their mind.
 
stickygirl said:
I think he means, roll on the days of GenZ when the angry old men have all gone
Click to expand...
Hehe, I love you, stickygirl. 😘

But no, I think this time, Planck’s Principle might just have to be retired, along with Generational Theory and a lot of other cyclical theories that assume that people are born, grow to old age, and die. We’ve got a big disruption on the way once the cellular rejuvenation technologies being tested right now begin to make it to market. It’s going to break a lot of our shit and potentially cause major social upheaval if the wealthy get first access (they will), but once things die down, we’re going to have to figure out how to live in a world where aging is a treatable illness, and people start routinely living centuries.

Maybe people will regain brain plasticity with a more youthful body? I don’t know, but it’s not a bad problem to need to address.
 
just because I'm crazy happy right now

*grabs my friends and dance wildly*

Alright guess enough of that...back to the regularly scheduled good news things 🤣
 
Zrosey said:
republicans find these obscure, forgotten laws like this, are there not some to be used against their own shenanigans?
Click to expand...
This kind of thing is lamentably typical in the world of politics. If anything, we need less shenanigans from all sides.
 
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