For a start, I can guarantee that they wouldn't include internet distribution rights, since the internet didn't exist in the 1960s.
They didn't have a "distribution" deal - they had a "writer on contract" deal. The contract he signed would have said, basically, "When you finish, CBS owns the script and all distribution and production rights associated with it." At that point, they don't have to consult with him about "putting it on the internet," or "putting it on TV," or "using it as the basis for a feature film," or anything else. They *own* the script. It was produced for them by a writer on contract, and I can guarantee you that the CBS lawyers were not so dumb, even back in the 1960s, that they would have said "if any new form of distribution medium comes along, well, I guess you can have the script back."
Many book publishing contracts expressly require the publisher to actually publish and sell the book, otherwise the publisher loses the rights and they revert to the author.
Yep... and? This wasn't a book. CBS still owns the rights - if they didn't, they couldn't have stopped this production from moving forward. The writer was working with the team of fans to produce this show. If he had the rights, if they somehow reverted to him... CBS wouldn't have had any say in the matter.
You assume that the economic rights were comprehensively signed away (I doubt it),
Show me a precedent.
and you assume that moral rights aren't relevant to the question of resuscitating a buried script (so to speak).
Again, show me a precedent. One single case where moral rights were asserted to resuscitate a buried script, and a court upheld that. If you can't show a law, or a precedent, then you're simply talking about how you "wish" these rights worked. Which is great that you wish the writer retained more control, but that's not how it works in real life.
No, the final quote is relevant because it establishes noncommercial intent by the fans, a fact that CBS has acknowledged
Their intent is irrelevant. That was the original stipulation CBS added when they gave the green light for other episodes: "We're okay with this, but only if you don't sell the stuff you produce for profit without our authorization." As the sole rights holder, they can revoke or amend their agreement at any time. "We're no longer okay with this, we think you're doing damage to our franchise, you need to stop."
Or, "We're so pleased with the job you're doing, we'd like to work out a licensing deal and hire you as a production company to create a new Star Trek series that will make all of us huge gobs of money."
Or, "Look at what the fans are doing, that's so cute, we don't care, but you can't use this single script because we might have some plans for it."
This decision is solely at the discretion of CBS. It's their franchise, their script, and they can change their approval at any point they wish. If the author retained any significant rights to the screenplay, CBS would not have been able to kill its production.
While he most likely did transfer the right to exploit his work economically, that's not the same as the right not to exploit it, ie to keep it locked up in a basement forever. He most likely did not transfer that right.
Now you're just making shit up. The economic rights he would have transferred are the "property rights" to his script - i.e., the script is CBS' to do with as they see fit.
if the script is buried forever, then he (the author) can't show the script to his friends, and he can't get any credit, prizes or celebrity that might be due to him because of the work.
That has nothing to do with his moral rights. Moral rights say that they can't take something and distort or misrepresent it in such a way that it reflects negatively on him, and that they can't take his name off it and say "No, he didn't write it." They have no affirmative duty to "exploit the script that he created for them and assigned rights to them for," so that he can "enjoy celebrity" as a result of it. This *does not* infringe on his author rights.
The point is that authors' rights cannot be signed away.
And THAT POINT IS WRONG - from your VERY OWN ARTICLE on author's rights. There are two categories - economic, i.e., the 'property rights' to the script, and moral, i.e., the 'attribution and distortion' rights. He CAN and DID sign away his economic rights to the script. He retains his moral rights, but those rights of his mean that CBS can't just slap a new author's name on the script, and give him a minor say in whether or not they produce the script in such a way that reflects negatively on him or his work. That's it. His moral rights do not obligate CBS to produce the script so that he can enjoy "fame" as a result of it. It simply allows him to challenge their specific production of it if he feels their production misrepresents or distorts his work in such a way that it would reflect negatively on him as an artist.
If they don't produce it, he cannot challenge their production of it. If they don't produce it, it's their choice to not economically exploit it. It really *is* that clear cut, as your own links show.
Even your final quote does nothing to support your point. "CBS allows," meaning the decision is up to CBS. Not, "CBS is obligated to allow." The script is OWNED by CBS, because the author signed away his economic rights to it as part of the writing contract he signed with CBS. CBS can do whatever they damn well please with it, up to and including "letting it rot away in a cardboard box somewhere in a basement."
That this may happen is unfortunate for the author & start trek fans, but there is no "obligation" on the part of CBS to let anybody make this film.
From your very own link, your statement is completely incorrect:
The economic rights are a property right which is limited in time and which may be transferred by the author to other people in the same way as any other property (although many countries require that the transfer must be in the form of a written contract).
You don't think he signed a contract assigning his rights to the work to CBS? I'd bet a lot of money that he did just that.
As far as his "moral" rights, those generally allow that he has the right to be identified as the author (or a co-author) of the work, and that he has the right to object to "distortions or mutilations of the work that would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation."
Unless he did not sign away his rights to the script (and it seems pretty clear that he *has* or CBS wouldn't have copyrights to assert), then author's rights are irrelevant to this case.
copyright is suppose to encourage creative endeavours
I'd submit that there's at least a little bit of inherent irony in this statement. The team isn't being told "you can't make a movie," the team is being told, "you can't use THIS SCRIPT to make your movie." There's nothing preventing them from writing, and producing, an interesting original story, rather than nostalgically flogging a 40 year old franchise that's pretty well played out & formulaic by now. Hard to see how "we're gonna take your script and make a film of it" is their only creative outlet.
Wrong. The correct analogy would be you write a book under contract for a publisher, under a contract that assigns them all copyrights for the work you are producing for them. After you deliver it and they pay you, they decide it's just not "right" for them to release, and they lock it in a vault and refuse to publish it.
Then they refuse to let you turn it into a movie with another group of people, because you created the story on contract for them, and your contract stipulated that you no longer own the copyrights to the story you wrote.
The actual author of this episode was actually part of the production, but he wasn't actually the copyright holder. And so whether or not he was part of the production is actually rather irrelevant.
Want to produce your own work on your own terms? Don't produce it under a contract for a company who will own the copyrights when you finish, write it yourself, on your own time, and don't sell the rights to it.
I know you don't want to admit this, but if the problem were "systemic" - i.e., caused by lax morals, bad leadership, and hostile environments endemic to the military - this type of event would be WAY, WAY more common. Tens and hundreds of thousands of deployed troops, and a small number snapping and doing things like this? They're the outliers, by a wide margin.
I'm sorry, how is Afghanistan "valuable real estate for trade" if we can't use the strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf? A land-locked, mountainous country, with the sides closest to the Gulf being bordered by Iran on one side and Pakistan on the other, and miles and miles of mountains in between? Are we gonna build roads across all of that terrain, airlift in all our trade goods, and drive them to the borders of Pakistan and Iran, only to be turned around and sent back to our airbases?
Your argument would have made far more sense if you had suggested the government wants a military footprint between Pakistan and Iran - airbases, staging areas, etc. I could credit that that's something the DoD might be interested in. But trade? Please.
Then you have failed to make your point clear. Because what you said, and what you *think* you said are apparently not related in any way. All you've done is assert that it's "dehumanizing" to acknowledge that different values, priorities, and ways of thinking arise in different social & economic circumstances. Nobody has said that "different" = "inhuman," yet that's exactly what you assumed in order to reach your conclusions about dehumanization.
I never wrote, let alone shouted, that the original commenter was racist.
It's implied in every comment you made, about "dehumanizing the other." Don't be obtuse.
Africa has many problems. Africans being different kinds of human beings from me is not one of them.
Pathetic straw man argument. That's not what was said, what was said is that they THINK differently from you - as a result of growing up and living in a completely different social and cultural environment, that is to be expected. Nobody ever said that they're "inhuman" - that's just your kneejerk over-reaction to an imagined slight.
It's not about thinking different, nor is it some kind of learned behaviour that makes the people fundamentally different.
Person1: "I think bribes and corruption are normal, and okay, because I grew up in a country where that's the norm."
Person2: "I think bribes and corruption are abnormal, and not okay, because I grew up in a country where that's not the norm."
Yep, both of those people think identically! Why, it's amazing you can even distinguish one person from another, their positions are so identical.
Nobody has said that "thinking differently" means that someone is inferior, or incapable of changing the way they think. But - given the two hypothetical statments above - to assert that Person 1 and Person 2 do not "think differently" on the issue of bribes and corruption is just ludicrous. Nobody here is saying that "Africans are inherently oriented towards bribes and corruption, because they're bad people."
Instead of freaking out over whether or not you agree with his particular word choice, why don't you consider the actual issue at hand, which is, as he rightly pointed out, a problem of corrupt dictators in charge largely squandering foreign aid money. It's comforting to shout about somebody else's racism, but it'd be more productive to actually talk about the problem.
Sorry, but that's your own sensitivity looking for a reason to be offended. It's not "dehumanizing" to note that people from vastly different backgrounds will think differently, value differently, and prioritize differently, and that those differences will result in them behaving differently than YOU might expect them to.
To assume that they are "the same as me in all respects," is just as fallacious as to suggest that they are "worse than me in all respects."
What the AC noted was that, "The problem is the governments, or rather dictators." Do you disagree? Instead of shouting about how he's a racist, why don't you tell us what the problem is, and why so much foreign aid never reaches the people who need it in Africa?
If history had been reversed and the US and Africa changed places I'm pretty sure my town would have warlords instead of councilmembers.
And in your rush to relieve yourself of the discomfort of his perceived racism, you just underscored his point.
In the west, in "first world" countries, we - on average - enjoy fairly high standards of wealth, education and privilege. This informs our world view. In the "third world" countries referenced by GP, people do not enjoy those same high standards of education and wealth, and that informs their world view. To suggest that one person who grew up affluent in modern day San Francisco and someone who grew up poor in modern day Mogadishu will view the world differently, and have different ways of viewing the world, is NOT racist.
To claim that the person in San Francisco is "better" than the person in Mogadishu, simply because of the circumstances they were born into, or to claim that the person in Mogadishu "could never" achieve the things the person in San Francisco has because of where he was born would be racist. To suggest that two people born to very different circumstances in very different cultures, with widely differing educational standards will generally have different outlooks on the world, and different sets of priorities and values - that they will "think" differently than you, and "act" differently than you - is not a racist statement, it is an acknowledgement of the fact that your environment has a great deal of influence on you.
If you want to sell non-essential / "luxury" items, then the groups with disposable incomes are generally your target demographic. You won't find too many BMW 7-series ads in rural Appalachian mining towns, for instance.
If you want to sell essential commodities - food, clothing, etc., then yeah, mass market (i.e., not looking for "disposable" income) is your target.
Your tone when talking about them would certainly call that statement into question.
All you have "proven" is that you have some friends who you don't feel are passable. From that, you have generalized to the assertion that "no transgendered person is passable as the opposite sex, and the only reason somebody would find them attractive is a fetish." Pointing out the obvious transgendered person at a gay pride parade doesn't prove your point, either.
And for what it's worth, I'm sure your attitude that "they do NOT look like the sex they feel they look like, they either look like men in drag or women in drag," is in no way contributory to your so-called friends feeling that "constant voice in the back of their head, telling them they aren't female or male enough yet," either. I mean, with "friends" like you eager to point out that nobody could ever find them attractive, or could only find them attractive as the object of a sick fetish, how could they not be happy with the results of their transition?
Friend, you should stop talking for God... I hear he doesn't like that.
Friend, you should probably re-read what I wrote. In fact, I believe we're rather in agreement.
I responded to somebody who claimed that somebody finding a "ladyboy" as cute (or cuter) than an "actual woman" was operating solely from a fetishistic standpoint, and he went on to say that there is no way, barring the operation of a fetish, that one could find a transgendered person to be as attractive as a genetic female. I've seen some really ugly genetic females, and some really beautiful trans-women. There is no need for a "fetish" to be in effect to admit this to be the truth.
That part in quotes? That was me, paraphrasing back what the person I responded to wrote. You know, where he asserted that only the operation of a fetish would make a transwoman attractive, as if there is some sort of universal, objective standard for beauty and attractiveness which he is uniquely qualified to judge. I found it even more amusing that he offered the credentials of "I know plenty of gay people, so it's not like I'm biased here," as if "knowing some gay people" would make him qualified to be a universal arbiter of beauty.
I found his tone and his statement distasteful, so I ridiculed him. I'm sorry you missed it.
drinking too much and going through the various scenarios of drunkenness and ending up in Somalia
Sweet jesus, if that's really how hard they party, I need more gay friends.
"Guys, I think we really gotta take it down a notch. This is the third time this month we've woken up, hung over, on Sunday morning in Mogadishu. It's fun, but this walk of shame is killing me."
Hey, while you were out, every advertisement featuring hot girls in bikins (with absolutely no relevance to body spray, cars, guns, energy drinks, music, or any other product they're used to sell) called - they want their broad brush back, they need to paint something.
This just in: If you run a gay nightclub, it is a better value to target your advertising at gay males who like clubbing. Also, if you sell refrigerators, it is a better value to target your advertising at people who don't live at the north pole. Also, if you sell ketchup popsicles, it is a better value to target your advertising at people who are not wearing white gloves.
What you find attractive is an abhorrent abomination in God's sight. What I find attractive is objectively beautiful, and in no way subject to my own tastes, preferences, and biases.
Also, while I'm no queer, I do have some faggot friends, so I think this qualifies me to speak as an expert on gay stuff.
No homo!
Sincerely, Kettle."
You like girls. He likes trans-women. On an individual basis, I'd be perfectly inclined to grant him the point that some "ladyboys" are "way more cuter" than some "actual females" - I've been to Wal Mart, and I'm here to tell you, possessing a vagina is no guarantee you won't grow up to be an uggo. I've also seen Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, and know that sometimes, the only remark any of us would make on seeing a transgendered woman walking down the street would be, "Damn, what a cutie," because you wouldn't think they're transgendered, because they really are that passable.
More proof that Google's relevance is declining. This guy can't be much of a criminal mastermind, if he can't figure out how to control other people with a devious mind control ray from his Antarctic ice fortress guarded by gene-spliced penguins with huge fangs. Guy can't even master Super Villain 101, but Google insists on telling me he's a notorious criminal.
Senator, I served with Brutal Killingspree; I knew Brutal Killingspree; Brutal Killingspree was a friend of mine. Senator - you're no Brutal Killingspree.
So what you're really saying is that you'd be totally fine with - and continue pursuing a job - with a company that treats its employees akin to 1850's slave patrollers in South Carolina, the 1950's State Department homophobes, or pre-EOE-regulation chauvinists? That's an interesting position to take, especially while calling my comments "fascist." (Pro tip: the word "fascist" doesn't mean "I disagree with you!")
I prefer to try not to let my prospective employers' moral turpitude compromise my personal ethics.
When someone asks you a question that is Not Their Damned Business, you tell them "That is not your damned business." What purpose does lying serve, anyway? Maybe if they hear "that's not your business" enough, they'll reconsider their policy. If all they hear is "here's my password," or "sorry, I don't use Facebook," there's certainly no pressure being brought to bear to make them eliminate the policy.
Slashdot Mirror
They didn't have a "distribution" deal - they had a "writer on contract" deal. The contract he signed would have said, basically, "When you finish, CBS owns the script and all distribution and production rights associated with it." At that point, they don't have to consult with him about "putting it on the internet," or "putting it on TV," or "using it as the basis for a feature film," or anything else. They *own* the script. It was produced for them by a writer on contract, and I can guarantee you that the CBS lawyers were not so dumb, even back in the 1960s, that they would have said "if any new form of distribution medium comes along, well, I guess you can have the script back."
Yep... and? This wasn't a book. CBS still owns the rights - if they didn't, they couldn't have stopped this production from moving forward. The writer was working with the team of fans to produce this show. If he had the rights, if they somehow reverted to him... CBS wouldn't have had any say in the matter.
Show me a precedent.
Again, show me a precedent. One single case where moral rights were asserted to resuscitate a buried script, and a court upheld that. If you can't show a law, or a precedent, then you're simply talking about how you "wish" these rights worked. Which is great that you wish the writer retained more control, but that's not how it works in real life.
Their intent is irrelevant. That was the original stipulation CBS added when they gave the green light for other episodes: "We're okay with this, but only if you don't sell the stuff you produce for profit without our authorization." As the sole rights holder, they can revoke or amend their agreement at any time. "We're no longer okay with this, we think you're doing damage to our franchise, you need to stop."
Or, "We're so pleased with the job you're doing, we'd like to work out a licensing deal and hire you as a production company to create a new Star Trek series that will make all of us huge gobs of money."
Or, "Look at what the fans are doing, that's so cute, we don't care, but you can't use this single script because we might have some plans for it."
This decision is solely at the discretion of CBS. It's their franchise, their script, and they can change their approval at any point they wish. If the author retained any significant rights to the screenplay, CBS would not have been able to kill its production.
Now you're just making shit up. The economic rights he would have transferred are the "property rights" to his script - i.e., the script is CBS' to do with as they see fit.
That has nothing to do with his moral rights. Moral rights say that they can't take something and distort or misrepresent it in such a way that it reflects negatively on him, and that they can't take his name off it and say "No, he didn't write it." They have no affirmative duty to "exploit the script that he created for them and assigned rights to them for," so that he can "enjoy celebrity" as a result of it. This *does not* infringe on his author rights.
And THAT POINT IS WRONG - from your VERY OWN ARTICLE on author's rights. There are two categories - economic, i.e., the 'property rights' to the script, and moral, i.e., the 'attribution and distortion' rights. He CAN and DID sign away his economic rights to the script. He retains his moral rights, but those rights of his mean that CBS can't just slap a new author's name on the script, and give him a minor say in whether or not they produce the script in such a way that reflects negatively on him or his work. That's it. His moral rights do not obligate CBS to produce the script so that he can enjoy "fame" as a result of it. It simply allows him to challenge their specific production of it if he feels their production misrepresents or distorts his work in such a way that it would reflect negatively on him as an artist.
If they don't produce it, he cannot challenge their production of it. If they don't produce it, it's their choice to not economically exploit it. It really *is* that clear cut, as your own links show.
Even your final quote does nothing to support your point. "CBS allows," meaning the decision is up to CBS. Not, "CBS is obligated to allow." The script is OWNED by CBS, because the author signed away his economic rights to it as part of the writing contract he signed with CBS. CBS can do whatever they damn well please with it, up to and including "letting it rot away in a cardboard box somewhere in a basement."
That this may happen is unfortunate for the author & start trek fans, but there is no "obligation" on the part of CBS to let anybody make this film.
From your very own link, your statement is completely incorrect:
You don't think he signed a contract assigning his rights to the work to CBS? I'd bet a lot of money that he did just that.
As far as his "moral" rights, those generally allow that he has the right to be identified as the author (or a co-author) of the work, and that he has the right to object to "distortions or mutilations of the work that would be prejudicial to his honor or reputation."
Unless he did not sign away his rights to the script (and it seems pretty clear that he *has* or CBS wouldn't have copyrights to assert), then author's rights are irrelevant to this case.
I'd submit that there's at least a little bit of inherent irony in this statement. The team isn't being told "you can't make a movie," the team is being told, "you can't use THIS SCRIPT to make your movie." There's nothing preventing them from writing, and producing, an interesting original story, rather than nostalgically flogging a 40 year old franchise that's pretty well played out & formulaic by now. Hard to see how "we're gonna take your script and make a film of it" is their only creative outlet.
Wrong. The correct analogy would be you write a book under contract for a publisher, under a contract that assigns them all copyrights for the work you are producing for them. After you deliver it and they pay you, they decide it's just not "right" for them to release, and they lock it in a vault and refuse to publish it.
Then they refuse to let you turn it into a movie with another group of people, because you created the story on contract for them, and your contract stipulated that you no longer own the copyrights to the story you wrote.
The actual author of this episode was actually part of the production, but he wasn't actually the copyright holder. And so whether or not he was part of the production is actually rather irrelevant.
Want to produce your own work on your own terms? Don't produce it under a contract for a company who will own the copyrights when you finish, write it yourself, on your own time, and don't sell the rights to it.
I know you don't want to admit this, but if the problem were "systemic" - i.e., caused by lax morals, bad leadership, and hostile environments endemic to the military - this type of event would be WAY, WAY more common. Tens and hundreds of thousands of deployed troops, and a small number snapping and doing things like this? They're the outliers, by a wide margin.
I'm sorry, how is Afghanistan "valuable real estate for trade" if we can't use the strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf? A land-locked, mountainous country, with the sides closest to the Gulf being bordered by Iran on one side and Pakistan on the other, and miles and miles of mountains in between? Are we gonna build roads across all of that terrain, airlift in all our trade goods, and drive them to the borders of Pakistan and Iran, only to be turned around and sent back to our airbases?
Your argument would have made far more sense if you had suggested the government wants a military footprint between Pakistan and Iran - airbases, staging areas, etc. I could credit that that's something the DoD might be interested in. But trade? Please.
Then you have failed to make your point clear. Because what you said, and what you *think* you said are apparently not related in any way. All you've done is assert that it's "dehumanizing" to acknowledge that different values, priorities, and ways of thinking arise in different social & economic circumstances. Nobody has said that "different" = "inhuman," yet that's exactly what you assumed in order to reach your conclusions about dehumanization.
It's implied in every comment you made, about "dehumanizing the other." Don't be obtuse.
Pathetic straw man argument. That's not what was said, what was said is that they THINK differently from you - as a result of growing up and living in a completely different social and cultural environment, that is to be expected. Nobody ever said that they're "inhuman" - that's just your kneejerk over-reaction to an imagined slight.
Person1: "I think bribes and corruption are normal, and okay, because I grew up in a country where that's the norm."
Person2: "I think bribes and corruption are abnormal, and not okay, because I grew up in a country where that's not the norm."
Yep, both of those people think identically! Why, it's amazing you can even distinguish one person from another, their positions are so identical.
Nobody has said that "thinking differently" means that someone is inferior, or incapable of changing the way they think. But - given the two hypothetical statments above - to assert that Person 1 and Person 2 do not "think differently" on the issue of bribes and corruption is just ludicrous. Nobody here is saying that "Africans are inherently oriented towards bribes and corruption, because they're bad people."
Instead of freaking out over whether or not you agree with his particular word choice, why don't you consider the actual issue at hand, which is, as he rightly pointed out, a problem of corrupt dictators in charge largely squandering foreign aid money. It's comforting to shout about somebody else's racism, but it'd be more productive to actually talk about the problem.
Sorry, but that's your own sensitivity looking for a reason to be offended. It's not "dehumanizing" to note that people from vastly different backgrounds will think differently, value differently, and prioritize differently, and that those differences will result in them behaving differently than YOU might expect them to.
To assume that they are "the same as me in all respects," is just as fallacious as to suggest that they are "worse than me in all respects."
What the AC noted was that, "The problem is the governments, or rather dictators." Do you disagree? Instead of shouting about how he's a racist, why don't you tell us what the problem is, and why so much foreign aid never reaches the people who need it in Africa?
And in your rush to relieve yourself of the discomfort of his perceived racism, you just underscored his point.
In the west, in "first world" countries, we - on average - enjoy fairly high standards of wealth, education and privilege. This informs our world view. In the "third world" countries referenced by GP, people do not enjoy those same high standards of education and wealth, and that informs their world view. To suggest that one person who grew up affluent in modern day San Francisco and someone who grew up poor in modern day Mogadishu will view the world differently, and have different ways of viewing the world, is NOT racist.
To claim that the person in San Francisco is "better" than the person in Mogadishu, simply because of the circumstances they were born into, or to claim that the person in Mogadishu "could never" achieve the things the person in San Francisco has because of where he was born would be racist. To suggest that two people born to very different circumstances in very different cultures, with widely differing educational standards will generally have different outlooks on the world, and different sets of priorities and values - that they will "think" differently than you, and "act" differently than you - is not a racist statement, it is an acknowledgement of the fact that your environment has a great deal of influence on you.
Depends what you're selling.
If you want to sell non-essential / "luxury" items, then the groups with disposable incomes are generally your target demographic. You won't find too many BMW 7-series ads in rural Appalachian mining towns, for instance.
If you want to sell essential commodities - food, clothing, etc., then yeah, mass market (i.e., not looking for "disposable" income) is your target.
Your tone when talking about them would certainly call that statement into question.
All you have "proven" is that you have some friends who you don't feel are passable. From that, you have generalized to the assertion that "no transgendered person is passable as the opposite sex, and the only reason somebody would find them attractive is a fetish." Pointing out the obvious transgendered person at a gay pride parade doesn't prove your point, either.
And for what it's worth, I'm sure your attitude that "they do NOT look like the sex they feel they look like, they either look like men in drag or women in drag," is in no way contributory to your so-called friends feeling that "constant voice in the back of their head, telling them they aren't female or male enough yet," either. I mean, with "friends" like you eager to point out that nobody could ever find them attractive, or could only find them attractive as the object of a sick fetish, how could they not be happy with the results of their transition?
Friend, you should probably re-read what I wrote. In fact, I believe we're rather in agreement.
I responded to somebody who claimed that somebody finding a "ladyboy" as cute (or cuter) than an "actual woman" was operating solely from a fetishistic standpoint, and he went on to say that there is no way, barring the operation of a fetish, that one could find a transgendered person to be as attractive as a genetic female. I've seen some really ugly genetic females, and some really beautiful trans-women. There is no need for a "fetish" to be in effect to admit this to be the truth.
That part in quotes? That was me, paraphrasing back what the person I responded to wrote. You know, where he asserted that only the operation of a fetish would make a transwoman attractive, as if there is some sort of universal, objective standard for beauty and attractiveness which he is uniquely qualified to judge. I found it even more amusing that he offered the credentials of "I know plenty of gay people, so it's not like I'm biased here," as if "knowing some gay people" would make him qualified to be a universal arbiter of beauty.
I found his tone and his statement distasteful, so I ridiculed him. I'm sorry you missed it.
I'm throwing my ticket money at the computer screen right now. WHY WON'T YOU TAKE IT?
Sweet jesus, if that's really how hard they party, I need more gay friends.
"Guys, I think we really gotta take it down a notch. This is the third time this month we've woken up, hung over, on Sunday morning in Mogadishu. It's fun, but this walk of shame is killing me."
Hey, while you were out, every advertisement featuring hot girls in bikins (with absolutely no relevance to body spray, cars, guns, energy drinks, music, or any other product they're used to sell) called - they want their broad brush back, they need to paint something.
This just in: If you run a gay nightclub, it is a better value to target your advertising at gay males who like clubbing. Also, if you sell refrigerators, it is a better value to target your advertising at people who don't live at the north pole. Also, if you sell ketchup popsicles, it is a better value to target your advertising at people who are not wearing white gloves.
"Dear Pot,
What you find attractive is an abhorrent abomination in God's sight. What I find attractive is objectively beautiful, and in no way subject to my own tastes, preferences, and biases.
Also, while I'm no queer, I do have some faggot friends, so I think this qualifies me to speak as an expert on gay stuff.
No homo!
Sincerely, Kettle."
You like girls. He likes trans-women. On an individual basis, I'd be perfectly inclined to grant him the point that some "ladyboys" are "way more cuter" than some "actual females" - I've been to Wal Mart, and I'm here to tell you, possessing a vagina is no guarantee you won't grow up to be an uggo. I've also seen Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, and know that sometimes, the only remark any of us would make on seeing a transgendered woman walking down the street would be, "Damn, what a cutie," because you wouldn't think they're transgendered, because they really are that passable.
More proof that Google's relevance is declining. This guy can't be much of a criminal mastermind, if he can't figure out how to control other people with a devious mind control ray from his Antarctic ice fortress guarded by gene-spliced penguins with huge fangs. Guy can't even master Super Villain 101, but Google insists on telling me he's a notorious criminal.
Senator, I served with Brutal Killingspree; I knew Brutal Killingspree; Brutal Killingspree was a friend of mine. Senator - you're no Brutal Killingspree.
"No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks."
So what you're really saying is that you'd be totally fine with - and continue pursuing a job - with a company that treats its employees akin to 1850's slave patrollers in South Carolina, the 1950's State Department homophobes, or pre-EOE-regulation chauvinists? That's an interesting position to take, especially while calling my comments "fascist." (Pro tip: the word "fascist" doesn't mean "I disagree with you!")
I prefer to try not to let my prospective employers' moral turpitude compromise my personal ethics.
we're on the edge of that. watch the video. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17183890
Yes, Two wrongs.
When someone asks you a question that is Not Their Damned Business, you tell them "That is not your damned business." What purpose does lying serve, anyway? Maybe if they hear "that's not your business" enough, they'll reconsider their policy. If all they hear is "here's my password," or "sorry, I don't use Facebook," there's certainly no pressure being brought to bear to make them eliminate the policy.