Today...

[Arceus]

There was a dead squirrel on the road when I was running and it looked disgusting...like the thing had its jaw crushed.

[Veiva]

I came across a very relatable video today (thanks to Reddit):
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V521Umt1NjU

 

(Warning: minor self-deprecating swearing).
 
I have only been diagnosed with psychotic disorder NOS (and therefore not schizophrenia; to be frank, a label in my opinion is meaningless for me, wrong or right), but the guy's thought process and reaction is like looking at a mirror.
 
What I fear is becoming less lucid over time. The brainhurt of having two opposing thoughts/beliefs and brief moments of detachment/complete irrational behavior is bad, but being completely irrational and detached day after day would be horrible. Treatment can only do so much, and it's honesty a band-aid with current methods (especially antipshychotics, which are controversial in effectiveness per independent studies). I hope I get better, somehow, or at least stay the same (if getting worse is the other option, I mean)...

[The Observer]

I've got to say, I was a bit curious about that. I mean, I've never really understood what it's really like and for me who is someone going into the medical field it's something I've needed to see.

 

Personally I was diagnosed ~2 years ago with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I have anxiety/panic attacks from time to time (they're definitely different, I know... trust me) and those definitely suck. I'm not trying to detract from your experiences in anyway, but I just felt that since you came out with something so personal, I'd might as well too and it might make you feel more comfortable about it.

[Estonian dude]

Today,

I woke up in a university dorm.

In a bed with a stranger.

I have a lot of henna tattoos everywhere.

Luckily I haven't found a single dick among them. Yet.

[Bonez899]

Sounds like Saq's no drinking policy has ended.

[Estonian dude]

Oh, my doctor told me to drink more.

[Bonez899]

Confused, were you drinking or not. I saw the first post before you edited and now I'm confused.

[Estonian dude]

I drank.

Tea :D

 

I haven't had anything alcoholic in over a week.

[Veiva]

BBC is adapting Pullman's "His Dark Materials."

 

And just a few days ago I was thinking of bastardized movie adaptations, of which "His Dark Materials" I hold the most dislike for. Especially because there was no "The Last Airbender" movie adaptation, so I can't hate what doesn't exist :).

 

Hopefully BBC can do the series justice.

[Alg]

God [bleep]ing damn it Houston

[Hedgehog]

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott ® and others — insisted in commercials, on television and in newspaper stories that allowing transgender women (individuals born male who identify as women) would leave women and girls suddenly vulnerable to attacks by crafty and now legally enabled sexual predators.

Idek what to say about that. It's just so wrong

[Veiva]

Speaking of elections/voting results from Tuesday, only 14.3% of Cumberland County, NC citizens voted. The incumbent mayor of Fayetteville, whose policies and stances are against the interests of just about everyone but most especially youths, won by some 600ish votes. His opponent pushed for policies to decouple Fayetteville from its dependence on the military/Fort Bragg by aligning with the Research Triangle (Raleigh [lots of medicine companies and research], Durham [see Duke University, a premier medical school], Cary [Epic is located there--y'know, Unreal Engine/Unreal Tournament/etc], and Chapel Hill) to move towards the tech and medicine sector, as well as properly reduce crime (i.e., education, community, and reducing poverty; the incumbent used higher property taxes to hire more police and line the police budget, amazingly backwards).

 

If only ~5% of voters 18-24 or ~3% of those 18-29 had actually voted (and voted in their interests), our new mayor wouldn't be some Republican stereotype. I was #92 to vote in my area approaching 11:00 am (4-5 hours after polling started), and probably one of the youngest to turn up (out of the four others who voted while I was there, they were all at least 20 years older, most probably more). There was an issue with my brother's voter registration (thank you, Republican poll quiz advancements!) so he was unable to vote, sadly, but that should be fixed before the upcoming primaries...

 

Vote in local elections. Vote in state elections. Vote in presidential elections. Vote in mid-term elections. Apathy is a terrible excuse, and enables abuses of the political system, especially in local elections, where a few hundred votes can make a dramatic difference. Not voting is worse than voting against your interests; at that point, you might as well live in a dictatorship.

[Arceus]

 

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott ® and others — insisted in commercials, on television and in newspaper stories that allowing transgender women (individuals born male who identify as women) would leave women and girls suddenly vulnerable to attacks by crafty and now legally enabled sexual predators.

Idek what to say about that. It's just so wrong

 

I guess that kind of scaremongering works, unfortunate as it is. It would be nice if people would go protest in front of the TV stations responsible for airing those commercials...

[obfuscator]

To be fair, it has already happened: http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2015/10/05/university-of-toronto-alters-bathroom-policy-after-two-reports-of-voyeurism.html

[Alg]

To be fair, it has already happened: http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2015/10/05/university-of-toronto-alters-bathroom-policy-after-two-reports-of-voyeurism.html

Yes, because those situations are totally comparable in any way, and as such it completely justifies stripping away previously existing nondiscrimination protections. Yes.

[Veiva]

 

To be fair, it has already happened: http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2015/10/05/university-of-toronto-alters-bathroom-policy-after-two-reports-of-voyeurism.html

Yes, because those situations are totally comparable in any way, and as such it completely justifies stripping away previously existing nondiscrimination protections. Yes.

 

I am reminded of faux-controversial news about transgender students being allowed in restrooms/showers/changing rooms of their identified sex (and always male to female, funnily [/s] enough). Often the discussion is that male students will abuse the protections to perv/molest/rape female students. The fear is irrational, though, for a very simple line of reasoning that invalidates their ignorant outrage:

 

A rapist (or some such) has already made the intention of violating the law. Going into the restrooms of their target does not affect this decision to any significant degree, because it's not illegal to use opposite gender restrooms/whatever (at least in the Western world). The act of a male rapist entering a women's bathroom is as much as a factor as the color of the president's suit when a murderer decides to murder: none. The outrage is a strawman. In the end, such ignorant/bigoted regulations hurt minorities, and offer no protection otherwise.

 

Funnily enough (again, /s), gun nuts tend to say "gun free zones" have no affect on someone intending to go on a massacre, and as such, are useless. Does that logic sound familiar? Yet, at the same time, many of these gun nuts belong to the parties (and oftentimes are the ones) that get up in arms about gendered bathrooms being used by transgender individuals.

[Veiva]

1) the gun nuts will say gun free zones don't stop a killer but they disempower everyone else who obeys laws.

 

 

2) I have a MTF transexual stepsister who gets very negative reactions when she uses girls restrooms and keep in mind at this point she already is on hormones and has long hair. I think the easiest way to safely accomidate transexual people is to have more single person restrooms instead of transexual public restrooms.

 

1) Very little difference, if any, in practice. Evidently, the murderer wasn't obeying the laws in the first place. I'm not saying gun free zones are good, either (I'm referring to the USA here, to be precise), especially considering the sheer number of guns possessed by Americans, both law-abiding and otherwise. That's why I mentioned it.

 

2) I can't say for certain because it's not something I've actively researched (but neither is it something that is a prominent issue), but unisex bathrooms seem to work out in Europe. To be honest, gender-segregated bathrooms are silly and archaic. If all bathrooms were unisex, this would not be an issue (since both men and women would use the same bathrooms).

[RpgGamer]

Post got erased but tl;dr, I hate voter turn outs and being sick while working 60 hours weeks is horrible.

[Veiva]

Gender segregated bathrooms serve a purpose of making women feel safe. I make that claim based on my stepsisters experience as a mtf transexual. And another thing, unisex bathrooms wont have urinals which are the reason why every womens bathroom has endless lines and mens rooms are empty in crowded venues.

 

 

And unisex bathrooms already exist in pretty much every public building. It's called the single person bathroom. 

 

It's not a matter of urinals vs toilets in regards to men vs women restroom utilization. I use toilet stalls over urinals in public restrooms for the privacy; the act of closing a door and then opening it adds an insignificant time to total time. Of all things, hand washing should cause the largest build up, because proper hygiene would necessitate washing your hands for around 20 seconds, and there's much less sinks than toilets/urinals. Much on the contrary, it's the fact women have to sit and have more hygienic responsibilities due to physical differences.

 

Also, I really dislike "feeling safe" being an excuse for otherwise able and safe individuals. It's completely irrational in about every circumstance. When I worked at a local grocery store, the unwritten policy was the front-end (cashiers/office/customer service) didn't have to collect shopping carts from outside at dark if there were no men scheduled because of "safety." Considering I was scheduled in the evening, and it would obviously get dark, I had to handle that (as part of my custodial duties). I would have no qualms, all things said and done, since it was part of my duties--but there was no effort to cater to a genuine, debilitating fear of darkness, in my case, while there was an effort to cater to unsubstantiated bullshit!

 

All said and done, the faux-drama around transgenders using restrooms is childish. Make all restrooms unisex. Ridicule people who are bigoted or refuse to be mature. Done.

[Veiva]

you can fit more urinals in less space which is why its quicker, rather than the time it takes to close a door. 

 

Alright, I really don't understand your train of thought in your replies. This discussion has spiraled into Bizzaro-Land. Do you think bathrooms should be segregated so women feel safe? Or is it because you think male bathrooms are more efficient, and therefore a universal system of unisex bathrooms would inconvenience men and therefore bad? I really don't get how this even relates to transgender discrimination when using bathrooms, in either case...

 

Seriously, male restrooms being more inefficient because of the choice of urinals (which is still oversimplified and incorrect) instead of toilets doesn't permit, by any means, discrimination or oppression of minorities. And the quickest, simplest, and fairest method would be to collapse gender-segregated restrooms into a unisex one, so even bigots would have no leg to stand on.

 

I'm going to absolve continuing this discussion, because it's just pointless.

[obfuscator]

Or, perhaps, people have a biologically driven aversion to putting themselves in compromising positions of partial nakedness around members of the opposite sex.

[Veiva]

Or, perhaps, people have a biologically driven aversion to putting themselves in compromising positions of partial nakedness around members of the opposite sex.

I'm more certain it's a social aversion, not biological.

 

Instinctively, countless animals, humans included, err away from stagnant water. That's a biological aversion. It's not nurtured; it's a genetic disposition.

 

However, plenty of cultures do not shame nudity, modern and historical. Hence, it's more probably to conclude aversion to nudity is nurtured. Unless you want to dismiss anthropology to cater to a conservative viewpoint.

[Major Dash]

Aversion to nudity is "nurtured", but so is another whole slew of other things.  In my opinion, that isn't a fair argument to use.

 

 

 

 

Let's be real though. Is there any benefit to having uni-sex bathrooms over segregated bathrooms? I mean, unless you just have a raging hard on to "break down discriminatory barriers in our society" or some bullshit like that, I can't think of any.

[Veiva]

1) Aversion to nudity is "nurtured", but so is another whole slew of other things.  In my opinion, that isn't a fair argument to use.

 

 

 

 

2) Let's be real though. Is there any benefit to having uni-sex bathrooms over segregated bathrooms? I mean, unless you just have a raging hard on to "break down discriminatory barriers in our society" or some bullshit like that, I can't think of any.

 

1) I never said nurture vs nature is a good argument (though depending on context, it very well is a valid approach, and to be blunt, your opinion is irrelevant as long as such logic is sound; opinions are irrational, proper logic is not). I simply rebutted an unsubstantiated* claim. Much like someone who uses the Bible as the basis of their argument that the Christian god exists, I can counter by using a scrap piece of paper with the words "Potato is god" proving the existence of Potato being god using the same logic. Essentially, it's to illustrate the absurdity of someone's logic using their own framework.

 

2) As long as bigots make strawman arguments to discriminate, then yes, unisex bathrooms are superior to gender-segregated bathrooms. A unisex bathroom eliminates the exceptional claims of increased sexual harassment, since both men and women will be using it, eliminating the possibility of a lone-wolf predator targeting women by using gender-segregated bathrooms to reduce confrontation.

 

edit: I accidentally a prefix (substantiated vs unsubstantiated). Now corrected.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Veiva

[Alg]

However, plenty of cultures do not shame nudity, modern and historical. Hence, it's more probably to conclude aversion to nudity is nurtured. Unless you want to dismiss anthropology to cater to a conservative viewpoint.

I mean, you really don't have to look very hard to find out that there's no one set standard for modesty across all cultures. It's a very safe conclusion to make, and anyone who's looked into life drawing at all can tell you that it's also extremely easy to break :v