It's not a question of wanting competition or not. Political parties by nature will attempt to get as strong a coalition as they can, until they reach a size large enough that bisecting the party still leaves one half in power and some internal disagreememt triggers the split.

Fringe parties in America, like the Green and Libertarian parties, arent oppressed by some conspiracy between Rs and Ds. Rather, they are left at the fringe because they do not have any power worth pledging to, for the simple fact that in the american single-rep plurality-wins system tbere is no prize for second place.

Voters who like the current office holder work to keep them in power and those who do not work with the opposition to remove the incumbent from power. Anyone not joining one of these sides serves only as a tool for one side against the other, since anything but a vote for the runner up is an effective endorsrment of the eventual winner.

The American system is imperfect and could be a lot better, but fringe parties and vanity campaigns do nothing to actually encourage systemic change.

I think rhe voting age should be the lower of the minimum age to labor or the age of potential conscription less the age of the longest-term official whoss job includes sending people to war.

In the USA, that would put the voting age all the way down to 12. And having both been 12 myself once and having close family who were recently 12, I'm entirely OK with that.

"they" has always been proper, it just used to be incorrectly taught agaist like split infinitives and ending a sentence with a proposition.

Wikipedia dates its first usge as over 500 years ago, and complaints less than 300.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

Does this imply that the rapture won't happen on any day any man or angel predicted it, and suggest that these crackpots are either delivering a "no rapture today" message from the Lord Almighty or else embarrassing Her into putting it off?

Neither the image posted nor "dismantling the gender binary" are feminist. And while the latter seems a worthwhile cause that deserved its own name and slogans, the former is a piece of art which echos hateful stereotypes about men and thus causes some.very real revulsion from viewers outraged by those stereotypes.

Maybe on your half. Like I said, I'm only here for grammar, rhetoric, and understanding.

I dont want to argue about whether or not the pain of children who happen to resemble the elite of the patriarchy is less urgent than the pain of children who do not. Both sides of that fight are very passionate and have good-sounding arguments and in other contexts I might argue either side.

Right now, here, in this thread, I just want to stand up for language and rhetoric and the need to be mindful that unspoken messages can still be heard and cause harm.

There are plenty of white-appearing men who suffer oppression, just not from the civil society of the USA on account of their gender or apparent ancestry.

Plenty of "white men" are gay, trans, left-handed, Jewish, atheist, nearsigjted, handicapped, neurodivergent, or mentally ill. It is absolutely racist to assume that a "white man" is not oppressed just because they are white and a man.

(Unless of course you hold fast to Patricia Bidol-Padva's thesis, in which case it would merely be "racially prejudical.".)

(edit: wrote "autistic" twice and said sex when I meant gender.)

The plane rules of rhetoric do not change simply because a thing is not oppression. I'm just a rando adding comment to down vote to express what I think was done wrong.

Thosen two quotes are an excellent example of my principle, actually. The second one when given as a response to the first carries all the factionalist racism and denial of your last line.

English is an organic language and can shift subtly with each speaker,. Especially if prior usage makes communication more difficult.

NOT having distinct terms for sex and gender makes communication and understanding harder. If you have alternate terms you think are better I'd love to hear them., but if all you have is an insistence that "incorrect English" is a thing I'll just have to wish you a good day.

Sarcasm and hyperbole are two of my favorite things, but Poe's ls is a real thing.

Without a clear indicator of intent, it's impossible to distinguish snark from extremism

Fwiw, I realized years ago that the only people whose opinion of my parenting actually matter are the adults my descendents will grow up to be.

It's worse than that. It's a sexist assertion that all men model the worst of our gender while all women model the best of theirs, which aggrivatingly dismisses feminist progressive men and excusing sexist regressive women.

DomeWife is not the one teaching DomeBaby about bodily autonomy or feminism, though she does have plenty of examples of women being sexist to our manly kith and kin.

I can't tell if this is an example of Poe's law or why it's a thing.

Yes, you did. In approximately the same way that All Lives Matter was just a dog-whistley way of saying "No they don't" to Black Lives Matter.

When someone says I suffer from THING, responding with other people suffer too as your primary message is always a dismissal of the person's suffering.

If you want to avoid the inferred message, include an affirmative message of acknowledgement, like "nobody should suffer like that."

You should check with the laws in your state (or your insurance agency, if you have a low enough deductible.).

Just because the grocery store puts up a sign that they are not responsible for damages doesn't mean they aren't. They have a first amendment right to lie, and a game-theory reason to do so.

Male or female = sex = what's in their pants.

Man or woman = gender = how they express and identify.

While I recognize that some may use these terms differently, I find that having a strict sex/gender seperation for them in my personal use helps greatly in keeping the concepts distinct and having empathy for those whose gender is not sex-conformant.

That it also leads to a pithy rebuttal to "what is a woman" bigotry is just a nice side effect. Apologies if my usage was not immediately apparent.

I think the best response is always "you don't know that". Sex and Gender are not the same thing, and adults should know by now that they can't tell what's in someone else's pants by looking at their face.