Just because most women that play video games are ugly
[citation required]
Way to go, insulting your natural allies (women who play games).
58% of minecraft players are women. Are they mostly ugly? Somehow I doubt it.
As I originally wrote, the definition of "gamers" has to be changed. The old view that all gamers are fat nerdy males needs to be abandoned. Either update the definition to match today's reality, or come up with a new word to describe people who play video games that is more inclusive.
It's that YOU women are invading our hobby
All I'm saying is make things more realistic. We already have a world where girls have poor body images because they see photoshopped images of women on magazine covers that are literally impossibly thin unless you're anorexic. Even Barbie is getting some more realistic competition because the old one had a ridiculously impossible physique, so bad she wouldn't have been able to stand.
Up here in Kanuckistan, you don't actually have to do anything to be registered to vote. It's automatic. Change your address on your driver's license? You'll get a note in the mail saying your voter's information has been updated. Same with income tax, government benefits, medicare card (pretty much everyone has one of those), etc. Change your address on any of those, and your voter's info is updated.
Somehow fell through the cracks? One piece of photo id, one piece of proof of residence, you vote.
If you had opted for a universal freely-accessible health single-payer health care system, everyone would have the necessary photo id to vote.
Game companies and developers are now reaching out directly to quasi-amateur enthusiasts as a better way to build their brands, both because the gamers are more influential than the gaming journalists, and because these enthusiasts have far better relationships with their audiences than gaming journalists do. (Admittedly, most anyone does.)
I went through the 2-1/2 months of press releases at Intel. They weren't all about chips. For example, there was one about the Michael J Fox Foundation. It's too bad that Intel, in making this decision, didn't post a press release on their site explaining why they are dropping the ads. It would have been a lot better than
"Intel has pulled its advertising from website Gamasutra,” Intel spokesperson Bill Calder said. "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements."
... which sounds so last-minute.
They could have posted something along the lines of:
Gamers are a diverse and growing segment of the population, and we are enthusiastic about making products that help them get the most out of their gaming experience. We have decided to pull our advertising from [list of sites] because they continue to promote an outdated view of gamers that stigmatizes people. At Intel, we listen to the men and women who buy our products, and we appreciate both their patronage and their concerns. Therefore, we have decided not to subsidize web sites that have become platforms for disparaging our customers. We will, of course, continue to advertise in other, more appropriate venues. If you feel that a site showing our advertising is violating this policy, please let us know. Thank you.
Right now, women, in general, are noobs in games. They don't 'get it'. They die easily and en masse, because they are retarded, and haven't figured out all the complexities of the game they're playing. In lieu of this, they have presumptions about the game based on casual observations from various sources, but no personal experience. They don't know how to 'do it' and are complaining that the definition of 'doing it' must be changed to suit their needs.
Nobody's saying "dumb down the game." At least, nobody I know. But saying someone is retarded? Really?
So maybe what's needed is more "single person modes", to help people get past the "n00b" stage. Too bad the gaming industry doesn't want that - they want everyone playing together on-line to grab more subscriptions and more in-game purchases and more downloadable content. And in doing so, they're inadvertently alienating new players of both genders. Short-term greed.
I read your post all the way through, and you make some very good points. Misandrists are an extreme reaction to misogynists, and reverse discrimination violates the rule most of us learned as kids, that two wrongs don't make a right. People who attack someone based on their gender are idiots, doesn't matter whether they're men or women. But Intel pulling advertising over a bunch of griefers? Of either sex? That's equally idiotic.
Hard-core, bra-burning anti-male feminism was a reaction to the barriers women had to overcome. There's still plenty of sexism, lots of "glass ceilings" and silly assumptions related to competency for various tasks depending on your gender and stuff, but I'd like to think we're making some progress as time goes on.
And not just for women. 20% of all nurses are now men. And let me tell you, when you're ill, really ill, you don't care about the gender of the person helping you.
Who else? Here's my perspective on the whole mess. I basically ignore him nowadays, but every once in a while he tries to get my attention again. We see this type of behavior (a resistance to change), expressed in different fashions, every time something changes too fast for a portion of society. In the case of my troll, means that people no longer give a damn about tweaking a hosts file - we have moved on. And yet if you check the online forums this is his "raison d'etre"
This is akin to those people whose religious beliefs required them to be against the LGBT. They fought tooth and nail against same-sex marriage, lost in so many places, and the dire predictions of the sky falling down didn't happen. So many of them then had to question at least the interpretation of their religious beliefs. They either came to an accommodation that works for them (same as Catholics and Fundamentalists who use the pill, etc), or abandoned their religion, or dug their heels in even more, thus isolating themselves from society at large.
When that last group passes a certain point the general public just loses sympathy and patience. Interesting things start to happen. Individuals like myself can be far more open because there are more positive than negative consequences - and I for one feel a need to "pay it forward" for all those who stood up in the past to make my life possible.
And yet to a certain extent I sympathize with the haters, because I know how hard it is to change. After all, I had to:-)
Obviously nothing is stopping the "straight community" from using fake names on Facebook. Look at how many people have more than one account.
It's only when someone complains that Facebook gets grumpy. In this case 1 individual spent their time targeting 200 people. Sounds to me like that 1 individual has a problem.
Also, many transgenders and transsexuals are members of the "straight community." The definition of "straight", for transgenders who are not transsexual is straight-forward (pardon the pun); "straight" for a transsexual is defined by their sexual preference in their target gender. For example, a male-to-female transsexual can be either "straight, bi, or lesbian," while a male cross-dresser can be "straight, bi, or gay."
Facebook has clarified their position so that you should use the name you're known by publicly. For example, "Billy-Bob" instead of "William Robert", or "Mary-Ann" instead of "Marienka Anastasia". You legally have the right to use the name you're know as publicly. All that's happened is that Facebook has acknowledged that the same applies to LGBT as to everyone else. Sounds to me like it IS about equal rights, not "special rights."
So Intell pulled out their advertising because the site will carry female journalists and articles about female gamers? That sounds like the type of decision that backfires on a company.
They should ask Facebook how discriminatory policies can so easily backfire.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folk inside Intel are going "WTF just happened???"
Intel has pulled an advertising campaign from video gaming website Gamasutra after it reportedly received a number of complaints from self-identified gamers upset that the site was championing fair gender representation in video games.
When you write:
However, Women's Rights activist/advocates should be firmly expressing their disdain towards this horrible movement of Femi-nazi's.
Why? When people point out that "gamer" no longer includes just a small hard-core subset of males who orgasm over every new video card and think that all female characters in games should have "vital statistics" that would put a Barbie doll to shame, they're not being "femi-nazis." The appeal of games like Minecraft (58% female) shows that the word "gamer" is either an archaism or needs to be updated to include the new reality.
If the old guard doesn't like that women are "invading their space", they need to realize that it's simply not just "their space" any more.
Why do drag queens get to have an alias and not straight people who wear straight peoples clothes.
What is straight peoples' clothes, exactly? Do homosexuals wear something different to the office? In my experience, gays and lesbians tend to dress just the same as their heterosexual peers.
In times past, a woman wearing trousers would have been absolutely scandalous! And is anyone stupid enough to question the sexuality of a Scotsman for wearing a kilt? Or a male judge for wearing a robe that looks a lot like a dress (no coincidence that "robe" is french for "dress")?
I'd also like to add that one curious thing I read in Whipping Girl is that drag queens are often welcomed into the female restroom, but trans women are shunned from that place.
The only women who get upset are those who (a) know and (b) reject the idea of transsexuals to begin with.
Case in point: The ONLY people I've ever had even raise the question were some of my sisters (I have 5, and 4 do NOT accept it). A few years ago they were still saying things like "which washroom do you use?" "Same as you." "You can't do that!" "I've been doing it since the turn of the century, so I guess you're wrong."
They don't "get" that, for example, when I'm in a restaurant with friends and I ask where the washroom is, that I'm directed to the women's. They still insist on seeing me as "the old me", and years after saying "give us a few years to get used to it", they now admit they will never be able to. Oh well.
Then again, one of them is jealous that I'm on HRT and they weren't able to get it (menopause).
I would like to add a word of encouragement. Last fall, a property developer outed my previous gender at a public meeting hosted by the city and attended by between 100 and 200 of my neighbors. The support I received from the other women in the community - whether they were fundamentalists, catholics, muslim, whatever - was amazing. Some I had told previously, some didn't know, but they all said what was done to me was not right. For those who say the sisterhood (the equivalent of the old boys network) doesn't exist, I would just say "you're doing it wrong." And for employers who would make an issue about my past gender, it's their loss, and I wouldn't want to work there anyway. Times have changed. People "get" it.
Believe me - never having to worry any more about possibly being outed is a huge relief. Openly putting the "T" in LGBT gives me both a sense of pride and community. I'm not alone. And neither are you. (Hmm - maybe I'll change my sig to that. Too bad my personal troll, who keeps on trying to embarrass me by exposing me as a transsexual who's damaged my brain by taking estrogen, etc, can't read the sigs since he never logs in).
Seriously, that's all they're doing. Someone who wants to put on the opposite gender's clothing, make up a fake name, and act like a giant stereotype of that gender with a fake name and made up personality needs mental help, not bent Facebook rules. Did you know that every study ever has found that 80-90% of drag queen, transsexuals, etc were abused as children?
Even if we take your claim at face value, what is the percentage of adults overall who were abused as children? Depending on how you define abuse, it could also be 80-90%.
Go watch "It's A Wonderful Life" this holiday season and ask yourself if George Bailey wasn't abusive towards his wife and kids.
Also, if you're a transsexual, you'll probably get bullied by other kids because, after all, they can sense you're different. It just leaks out, and kids can be really cruel, same as adults. You're confusing cause and effect.
Did Facebook ask YOU to prove your identity when you created an account? Would you send them a photo of your drivers license, bank statement, or whatever just to create an account? Did slashdot ask you to prove who you are, Mr Anonymous Coward?
It's not reverse discrimination - only people who other people wanted to "out" (in this case, one individual reported the 200 cases in question) are suddenly under undue scrutiny, based on their gender expression. That's not reverse discrimination - that's discrimination.
represents the group who's unfairly burdened by the original requirement.
I would say that the group is fairly burdened by the requirement. Burdens arent unfair just because you dont want to be burdened.
If you actually read the news stories (it's been widely reported) you'll find out that one individual reported 200 xgenders. Sounds to me like someone who was targeting a group based on their gender expression. Facebook said they didn't catch what had happened at first because they get thousands of reports.
Facebook clarified it's policy by saying that you can go by the name you're known by to the general public. How would you like it if you couldn't go by the nickname you've been using since grade school, but had to use your "real name"? "William Robert Doe? Who the heck is that? Oh, you mean Billy-Bob?"
Transgenders who are not transsexuals generally retain their legal birth name for things such as banking, etc. However, in the context of social interactions, what is the harm in letting them use the name that their friends and the general public know them as? Isn't it supposed to be a social network, and not a courtroom?
For transsexuals, do you have any idea of how long it takes to do the paperwork in some jurisdictions? Some places will refuse to change your name without a valid reason, backed up by documentation. And what is someone supposed to do while they're transitioning? Go by their old name (one that conforms to their old gender) on Facebook when their co-workers know them by a different name and gender? The Standards of Care for transsexuals require that you live and work full-time in your target gender for at least a year. So you've got a year when you don't have that documentation, and then another year while it goes through - minimum. Sure, YMMV, but that's the way it is where I live.
On October 9, 2001, the FAA published the first of a series of Special Federal Aviation Regulations (SFARs) to expedite the modification of cockpit doors in the U.S. fleet. This Phase I fix included installation of steel bars and locking devices.
some airlines are balking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators".
Several years before 9/11, pilots were asking that the cockpits be made more secure by installing a $200 lock on the pilot's side of the door giving access to the cockpit. Airlines complained that it would be too expensive. So, thanks to the airlines being too cheap to do something that made sense, more than 3,000 people died, and we now have the TSA going where no man has gone before.
If they really wanted to "think of the children", they'd take a realistic look at where the problems are, and help more children for the same money spent, without invading anyone's privacy.
A parent beating their kids is probably not going to be sending photos or texts bragging about what they did. The same for most cases of sexual assault by parents or relatives. And there's a heck of a lot more abuse by parents and relatives than by child pornographers.
Putting money into raising the standard of living reduces the stresses on parents who are trying to make ends meet and just run out of patience one day and take it out on the kids. Same with equal access to employment so there's no more gender inequality on the job, so that women can more easily leave a bad situation with the kids. Kids who feel more secure, who don't run away from home to escape being abused, are less likely to fall for predators.
Similarly, by reducing the level of domestic violence, kids don't learn by example that it's "okay" for an adult to abuse either another adult or them, so their sense of "this isn't right" when someone else tries to do something to them remains intact, and they're more likely to treat that adult as an anomaly, and seek the help of other adults who they feel they can trust (teachers, neighbors, their parents, a store clerk, even total strangers just passing by on the street), rather than treat all adults as a possible source of abuse.
Additionally, we could work to remove the stigma of depression, so that adults caught in such scenarios can have enough self-actualization to seek help.
Doing more of this would "save more kids" by removing the scenarios that put many of them in harms way in the first place and by making help more accessible. And it will be cheaper, and not involve depriving everyone of their rights.
Ain't gonna happen, though, because politicians like "big and shiny." Why? Because it's easier to point to "we're doing something about it", with yet another big program, than to explain to voters that putting more money into social services, education, and mental health isn't seen as "yet another slide down the road to a nanny state." For some reason, they prefer Big Brother.
Except that lately Lake Mead has been shrinking, because of water being drawn from it by people. When it shrinks too far, where are those people going to get their water from? Las Vegas will become a ghost town without water from Lake Mead. An interesting read.
Changing rainfall patterns, climate variability, high levels of evaporation, reduced snow melt runoff, and current water use patterns are putting pressure on water management resources at Lake Mead as the population relying on it for water and the Hoover Dam for electricity continues to increase. A 2008 paper in Water Resources Research states that at current usage allocation and projected climate trends, there is a 50% chance that live storage in lakes Mead and Powell will be gone by 2021, and that the reservoir could drop below minimum power pool elevation of 1,050 feet (320 m) as early as 2017. Although water levels in the lake rose by more than 30 ft (9.1 m) in 2011 due to a rainy winter and increased snowfall in the Rocky Mountains,[15] it appears highly unlikely that the prevailing pattern of drought will change to precipitation surcharge in a time frame shorter than that in which the lake level will fall below the dead storage level of the downstream diversion and hydro-power intake tunnels.
There's worse, if you google "lake mead drying up."
"A lot of the problems with the health care system can be laid at the feet of lobbyists."
No, it can't, unless and until lobbyists vote on the floor of the House and the Senate.
They already do, by proxy. They have the economic clout to have better access to members of both the house and senate than the constituents they are supposed to represent, and thus can lobby for things that are beneficial to them as opposed to the general public.
Well, the feds did manage to put a man on the moon in under a decade, when the technology didn't exist. One of the spin-offs of that project led to the computers we take for granted today.
And they did this while waging a proxy war with the Soviets in Asia, and not having the whole mess devolve into MAD, which was a real risk at the time.
A lot of the problems with the health care system can be laid at the feet of lobbyists.
The short story "To Serve Man", and the ensuing Twilight Zone episode, comes to mind:-)
We like stories with a twist because they ARE entertaining. They make us think, tickle our fancy, etc. There are SO many sci-fi stories dealing with how to interact with aliens who have their own religious beliefs, and the dangers of mis-steps and applying human assumptions to something that is, basically, alien.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because most women that play video games are ugly
[citation required]
Way to go, insulting your natural allies (women who play games).
58% of minecraft players are women. Are they mostly ugly? Somehow I doubt it.
As I originally wrote, the definition of "gamers" has to be changed. The old view that all gamers are fat nerdy males needs to be abandoned. Either update the definition to match today's reality, or come up with a new word to describe people who play video games that is more inclusive.
It's that YOU women are invading our hobby
All I'm saying is make things more realistic. We already have a world where girls have poor body images because they see photoshopped images of women on magazine covers that are literally impossibly thin unless you're anorexic. Even Barbie is getting some more realistic competition because the old one had a ridiculously impossible physique, so bad she wouldn't have been able to stand.
The problem is that the US is behind the times.
Up here in Kanuckistan, you don't actually have to do anything to be registered to vote. It's automatic. Change your address on your driver's license? You'll get a note in the mail saying your voter's information has been updated. Same with income tax, government benefits, medicare card (pretty much everyone has one of those), etc. Change your address on any of those, and your voter's info is updated.
Somehow fell through the cracks? One piece of photo id, one piece of proof of residence, you vote.
If you had opted for a universal freely-accessible health single-payer health care system, everyone would have the necessary photo id to vote.
It's their own fault for being gay.
Is it "your own fault" for being straight (assuming you are)?
Inquiring minds want to know.
BTW, most drag queens and cross-dressers are heterosexual.
Thanks. That slate article is good!
Game companies and developers are now reaching out directly to quasi-amateur enthusiasts as a better way to build their brands, both because the gamers are more influential than the gaming journalists, and because these enthusiasts have far better relationships with their audiences than gaming journalists do. (Admittedly, most anyone does.)
I went through the 2-1/2 months of press releases at Intel. They weren't all about chips. For example, there was one about the Michael J Fox Foundation. It's too bad that Intel, in making this decision, didn't post a press release on their site explaining why they are dropping the ads. It would have been a lot better than
"Intel has pulled its advertising from website Gamasutra,” Intel spokesperson Bill Calder said. "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements."
... which sounds so last-minute.
They could have posted something along the lines of:
Gamers are a diverse and growing segment of the population, and we are enthusiastic about making products that help them get the most out of their gaming experience. We have decided to pull our advertising from [list of sites] because they continue to promote an outdated view of gamers that stigmatizes people. At Intel, we listen to the men and women who buy our products, and we appreciate both their patronage and their concerns. Therefore, we have decided not to subsidize web sites that have become platforms for disparaging our customers. We will, of course, continue to advertise in other, more appropriate venues. If you feel that a site showing our advertising is violating this policy, please let us know. Thank you.
That would have sent a powerful message.
Right now, women, in general, are noobs in games. They don't 'get it'. They die easily and en masse, because they are retarded, and haven't figured out all the complexities of the game they're playing. In lieu of this, they have presumptions about the game based on casual observations from various sources, but no personal experience. They don't know how to 'do it' and are complaining that the definition of 'doing it' must be changed to suit their needs.
Nobody's saying "dumb down the game." At least, nobody I know. But saying someone is retarded? Really?
So maybe what's needed is more "single person modes", to help people get past the "n00b" stage. Too bad the gaming industry doesn't want that - they want everyone playing together on-line to grab more subscriptions and more in-game purchases and more downloadable content. And in doing so, they're inadvertently alienating new players of both genders. Short-term greed.
I read your post all the way through, and you make some very good points. Misandrists are an extreme reaction to misogynists, and reverse discrimination violates the rule most of us learned as kids, that two wrongs don't make a right. People who attack someone based on their gender are idiots, doesn't matter whether they're men or women. But Intel pulling advertising over a bunch of griefers? Of either sex? That's equally idiotic.
Hard-core, bra-burning anti-male feminism was a reaction to the barriers women had to overcome. There's still plenty of sexism, lots of "glass ceilings" and silly assumptions related to competency for various tasks depending on your gender and stuff, but I'd like to think we're making some progress as time goes on.
And not just for women. 20% of all nurses are now men. And let me tell you, when you're ill, really ill, you don't care about the gender of the person helping you.
Who else? Here's my perspective on the whole mess. I basically ignore him nowadays, but every once in a while he tries to get my attention again. We see this type of behavior (a resistance to change), expressed in different fashions, every time something changes too fast for a portion of society. In the case of my troll, means that people no longer give a damn about tweaking a hosts file - we have moved on. And yet if you check the online forums this is his "raison d'etre"
This is akin to those people whose religious beliefs required them to be against the LGBT. They fought tooth and nail against same-sex marriage, lost in so many places, and the dire predictions of the sky falling down didn't happen. So many of them then had to question at least the interpretation of their religious beliefs. They either came to an accommodation that works for them (same as Catholics and Fundamentalists who use the pill, etc), or abandoned their religion, or dug their heels in even more, thus isolating themselves from society at large.
When that last group passes a certain point the general public just loses sympathy and patience. Interesting things start to happen. Individuals like myself can be far more open because there are more positive than negative consequences - and I for one feel a need to "pay it forward" for all those who stood up in the past to make my life possible.
And yet to a certain extent I sympathize with the haters, because I know how hard it is to change. After all, I had to :-)
Obviously nothing is stopping the "straight community" from using fake names on Facebook. Look at how many people have more than one account.
It's only when someone complains that Facebook gets grumpy. In this case 1 individual spent their time targeting 200 people. Sounds to me like that 1 individual has a problem.
Also, many transgenders and transsexuals are members of the "straight community." The definition of "straight", for transgenders who are not transsexual is straight-forward (pardon the pun); "straight" for a transsexual is defined by their sexual preference in their target gender. For example, a male-to-female transsexual can be either "straight, bi, or lesbian," while a male cross-dresser can be "straight, bi, or gay."
Facebook has clarified their position so that you should use the name you're known by publicly. For example, "Billy-Bob" instead of "William Robert", or "Mary-Ann" instead of "Marienka Anastasia". You legally have the right to use the name you're know as publicly. All that's happened is that Facebook has acknowledged that the same applies to LGBT as to everyone else. Sounds to me like it IS about equal rights, not "special rights."
So Intell pulled out their advertising because the site will carry female journalists and articles about female gamers? That sounds like the type of decision that backfires on a company.
They should ask Facebook how discriminatory policies can so easily backfire.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folk inside Intel are going "WTF just happened???"
Intel has pulled an advertising campaign from video gaming website Gamasutra after it reportedly received a number of complaints from self-identified gamers upset that the site was championing fair gender representation in video games.
When you write:
However, Women's Rights activist/advocates should be firmly expressing their disdain towards this horrible movement of Femi-nazi's.
Why? When people point out that "gamer" no longer includes just a small hard-core subset of males who orgasm over every new video card and think that all female characters in games should have "vital statistics" that would put a Barbie doll to shame, they're not being "femi-nazis." The appeal of games like Minecraft (58% female) shows that the word "gamer" is either an archaism or needs to be updated to include the new reality.
If the old guard doesn't like that women are "invading their space", they need to realize that it's simply not just "their space" any more.
Just a few points in support:
Why do drag queens get to have an alias and not straight people who wear straight peoples clothes.
What is straight peoples' clothes, exactly? Do homosexuals wear something different to the office? In my experience, gays and lesbians tend to dress just the same as their heterosexual peers.
In times past, a woman wearing trousers would have been absolutely scandalous! And is anyone stupid enough to question the sexuality of a Scotsman for wearing a kilt? Or a male judge for wearing a robe that looks a lot like a dress (no coincidence that "robe" is french for "dress")?
I'd also like to add that one curious thing I read in Whipping Girl is that drag queens are often welcomed into the female restroom, but trans women are shunned from that place.
The only women who get upset are those who (a) know and (b) reject the idea of transsexuals to begin with.
Case in point: The ONLY people I've ever had even raise the question were some of my sisters (I have 5, and 4 do NOT accept it). A few years ago they were still saying things like "which washroom do you use?" "Same as you." "You can't do that!" "I've been doing it since the turn of the century, so I guess you're wrong."
They don't "get" that, for example, when I'm in a restaurant with friends and I ask where the washroom is, that I'm directed to the women's. They still insist on seeing me as "the old me", and years after saying "give us a few years to get used to it", they now admit they will never be able to. Oh well.
Then again, one of them is jealous that I'm on HRT and they weren't able to get it (menopause).
I would like to add a word of encouragement. Last fall, a property developer outed my previous gender at a public meeting hosted by the city and attended by between 100 and 200 of my neighbors. The support I received from the other women in the community - whether they were fundamentalists, catholics, muslim, whatever - was amazing. Some I had told previously, some didn't know, but they all said what was done to me was not right. For those who say the sisterhood (the equivalent of the old boys network) doesn't exist, I would just say "you're doing it wrong." And for employers who would make an issue about my past gender, it's their loss, and I wouldn't want to work there anyway. Times have changed. People "get" it.
Believe me - never having to worry any more about possibly being outed is a huge relief. Openly putting the "T" in LGBT gives me both a sense of pride and community. I'm not alone. And neither are you. (Hmm - maybe I'll change my sig to that. Too bad my personal troll, who keeps on trying to embarrass me by exposing me as a transsexual who's damaged my brain by taking estrogen, etc, can't read the sigs since he never logs in).
Seriously, that's all they're doing. Someone who wants to put on the opposite gender's clothing, make up a fake name, and act like a giant stereotype of that gender with a fake name and made up personality needs mental help, not bent Facebook rules. Did you know that every study ever has found that 80-90% of drag queen, transsexuals, etc were abused as children?
Even if we take your claim at face value, what is the percentage of adults overall who were abused as children? Depending on how you define abuse, it could also be 80-90%.
Go watch "It's A Wonderful Life" this holiday season and ask yourself if George Bailey wasn't abusive towards his wife and kids.
Also, if you're a transsexual, you'll probably get bullied by other kids because, after all, they can sense you're different. It just leaks out, and kids can be really cruel, same as adults. You're confusing cause and effect.
Did Facebook ask YOU to prove your identity when you created an account? Would you send them a photo of your drivers license, bank statement, or whatever just to create an account? Did slashdot ask you to prove who you are, Mr Anonymous Coward?
It's not reverse discrimination - only people who other people wanted to "out" (in this case, one individual reported the 200 cases in question) are suddenly under undue scrutiny, based on their gender expression. That's not reverse discrimination - that's discrimination.
represents the group who's unfairly burdened by the original requirement.
I would say that the group is fairly burdened by the requirement. Burdens arent unfair just because you dont want to be burdened.
If you actually read the news stories (it's been widely reported) you'll find out that one individual reported 200 xgenders. Sounds to me like someone who was targeting a group based on their gender expression. Facebook said they didn't catch what had happened at first because they get thousands of reports.
Facebook clarified it's policy by saying that you can go by the name you're known by to the general public. How would you like it if you couldn't go by the nickname you've been using since grade school, but had to use your "real name"? "William Robert Doe? Who the heck is that? Oh, you mean Billy-Bob?"
Transgenders who are not transsexuals generally retain their legal birth name for things such as banking, etc. However, in the context of social interactions, what is the harm in letting them use the name that their friends and the general public know them as? Isn't it supposed to be a social network, and not a courtroom?
For transsexuals, do you have any idea of how long it takes to do the paperwork in some jurisdictions? Some places will refuse to change your name without a valid reason, backed up by documentation. And what is someone supposed to do while they're transitioning? Go by their old name (one that conforms to their old gender) on Facebook when their co-workers know them by a different name and gender? The Standards of Care for transsexuals require that you live and work full-time in your target gender for at least a year. So you've got a year when you don't have that documentation, and then another year while it goes through - minimum. Sure, YMMV, but that's the way it is where I live.
So now we know why Charlie Gordon didn't stay smart - he was too old.
On October 9, 2001, the FAA published the first of a series of Special Federal Aviation Regulations (SFARs) to expedite the modification of cockpit doors in the U.S. fleet. This Phase I fix included installation of steel bars and locking devices.
No mandatory door locks before 9/11.
some airlines are balking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators".
Several years before 9/11, pilots were asking that the cockpits be made more secure by installing a $200 lock on the pilot's side of the door giving access to the cockpit. Airlines complained that it would be too expensive. So, thanks to the airlines being too cheap to do something that made sense, more than 3,000 people died, and we now have the TSA going where no man has gone before.
A parent beating their kids is probably not going to be sending photos or texts bragging about what they did. The same for most cases of sexual assault by parents or relatives. And there's a heck of a lot more abuse by parents and relatives than by child pornographers.
Putting money into raising the standard of living reduces the stresses on parents who are trying to make ends meet and just run out of patience one day and take it out on the kids. Same with equal access to employment so there's no more gender inequality on the job, so that women can more easily leave a bad situation with the kids. Kids who feel more secure, who don't run away from home to escape being abused, are less likely to fall for predators.
Similarly, by reducing the level of domestic violence, kids don't learn by example that it's "okay" for an adult to abuse either another adult or them, so their sense of "this isn't right" when someone else tries to do something to them remains intact, and they're more likely to treat that adult as an anomaly, and seek the help of other adults who they feel they can trust (teachers, neighbors, their parents, a store clerk, even total strangers just passing by on the street), rather than treat all adults as a possible source of abuse.
Additionally, we could work to remove the stigma of depression, so that adults caught in such scenarios can have enough self-actualization to seek help.
Doing more of this would "save more kids" by removing the scenarios that put many of them in harms way in the first place and by making help more accessible. And it will be cheaper, and not involve depriving everyone of their rights.
Ain't gonna happen, though, because politicians like "big and shiny." Why? Because it's easier to point to "we're doing something about it", with yet another big program, than to explain to voters that putting more money into social services, education, and mental health isn't seen as "yet another slide down the road to a nanny state." For some reason, they prefer Big Brother.
Changing rainfall patterns, climate variability, high levels of evaporation, reduced snow melt runoff, and current water use patterns are putting pressure on water management resources at Lake Mead as the population relying on it for water and the Hoover Dam for electricity continues to increase. A 2008 paper in Water Resources Research states that at current usage allocation and projected climate trends, there is a 50% chance that live storage in lakes Mead and Powell will be gone by 2021, and that the reservoir could drop below minimum power pool elevation of 1,050 feet (320 m) as early as 2017. Although water levels in the lake rose by more than 30 ft (9.1 m) in 2011 due to a rainy winter and increased snowfall in the Rocky Mountains,[15] it appears highly unlikely that the prevailing pattern of drought will change to precipitation surcharge in a time frame shorter than that in which the lake level will fall below the dead storage level of the downstream diversion and hydro-power intake tunnels.
There's worse, if you google "lake mead drying up."
There's water in those iceballs known as comets.
H2O + energy is the big stumbling block. Solve that, and everything else can work with enough will and resources.
"A lot of the problems with the health care system can be laid at the feet of lobbyists."
No, it can't, unless and until lobbyists vote on the floor of the House and the Senate.
They already do, by proxy. They have the economic clout to have better access to members of both the house and senate than the constituents they are supposed to represent, and thus can lobby for things that are beneficial to them as opposed to the general public.
Well, the feds did manage to put a man on the moon in under a decade, when the technology didn't exist. One of the spin-offs of that project led to the computers we take for granted today.
And they did this while waging a proxy war with the Soviets in Asia, and not having the whole mess devolve into MAD, which was a real risk at the time.
A lot of the problems with the health care system can be laid at the feet of lobbyists.
And your kids will be able to read about the same thing happening to Lake Mead if things don't change :-(
The short story "To Serve Man", and the ensuing Twilight Zone episode, comes to mind :-)
We like stories with a twist because they ARE entertaining. They make us think, tickle our fancy, etc. There are SO many sci-fi stories dealing with how to interact with aliens who have their own religious beliefs, and the dangers of mis-steps and applying human assumptions to something that is, basically, alien.
Features randomly appearing, disappearing, and reappearing? Who knew that these scientists were running slashdot BETA on the Cassini probe?