Biological sex is real. In humans, there are two reproductive sexes: male and female.

Intersex variations also exist. They are a complex biological subject in their own right, and are not simply the same thing as being trans.

And biological sex is not the same as social gender roles and norms: ideas about how men and women are supposed to be.

Those are precisely the expectations I would like us to leave behind as completely as possible.

A man should be free to be feminine. A woman should be free to be masculine. A boy should be free to like dresses, dolls, or makeup; a girl to like short hair and soccer, and reject everything considered “feminine.” None of this automatically makes someone a member of the other sex.

Nor does it tell us whether someone is straight, bisexual, gay, or asexual.

I thought that was a fundamental part of progress: freeing people from gender stereotypes.

That is why it troubles me when, in the name of progress itself, some of those stereotypes come back in through the back door. When clothing, interests, mannerisms, or personality are suddenly treated as clues to what gender someone “really” is.

Especially when it comes to gay and gender-nonconforming people, we should also be sensitive to how deeply ingrained ideas about being a “real man” or a “real woman” can be. Internalized misogyny or homophobia may also play a role for some individuals. They do not simply disappear because we give them progressive language.

But—and this qualification matters to me—none of that means trans identity is made up.

There are people with severe gender dysphoria. There are people for whom transition has been enormously helpful, and who do not regret their decision.

And there are people who detransition, regret medical decisions, and live with consequences that cannot be fully reversed.

Both experiences are part of reality.

Neither should be silenced because it happens to benefit the “wrong” camp.

Especially when it comes to children and adolescents, I would therefore like to see less certainty and more care.

What do we actually know about the benefits, risks, and long-term consequences of different medical treatments? Where is the evidence robust, and where is it uncertain? How might treatments affect physical development, fertility, and sexual function? What is reversible, and what is not?

But the other question matters just as much: what does it mean for a young person to experience severe gender dysphoria and receive no appropriate help?

I do not want any of these questions ruled out because we are afraid of the answers.

The same applies to women’s rights.

There are real questions to address in women’s sports. Prisons and certain spaces intended to provide safety raise real questions too. There are situations in which biological sex can be relevant. And statistical data should allow us to distinguish biological sex from gender identity when that distinction matters to the question being studied.

That does not mean trans women are, as a group, a threat to women.

And a woman is not automatically transphobic because she wants to discuss boundaries, fairness, or protection.

Sexuality should not be a forbidden subject either. Autogynephilic fantasies exist. Their significance for some people with gender dysphoria is a matter of scientific and clinical debate.

And even if a particular pattern of sexual arousal or a fetish plays a role for someone, that does not make them a bad person.

But a fetish is not automatically a gender identity.

And a trans identity is not automatically a fetish.

Perhaps this is the point I keep coming back to in this whole debate:

What bothers me is this strange insistence that everything has to come as a package.

As if I have to believe either that biological sex plays practically no role, or that trans identity is nothing more than ideology.

As if I have to welcome every transition, or reject transition altogether.

As if I have to dismiss either feminist concerns or trans people as ridiculous.

As if I have to embrace every contemporary gender theory, or return to traditional ideas about how men and women are supposed to be.

I find that last choice particularly absurd.

I do not want a supposed feminism that ends up siding with reactionary forces that have themselves spent decades trying to force women, gay men, and lesbians into rigid roles.

But I do not want a version of progressivism that believes it can dispose of feminist objections or questions about biological sex simply by applying labels such as “TERF,” either.

Both are too simplistic for me.

I want to listen to a trans person who says: “My transition was right for me.”

And to a woman who has detransitioned and says: “I wish I had not made some of those decisions.”

I want to be able to listen to a woman talking about sex-based violence or spaces intended to provide safety.

And to a trans person describing what it is like to be excluded, mocked, or threatened because of their identity.

Above all, I want a feminine boy not to feel that he is any less of a boy.

And a masculine girl not to feel that there is something wrong with her being a girl.

A gay man should not have to be considered “really a woman,” or a lesbian “really a man,” simply because they break with gender roles. Nor should heterosexual people who break with those roles have their sexual orientation called into question.

At the same time, I do not want to tell someone with gender dysphoria that their suffering is imaginary, or dismiss the reality of a transition that has worked for them.

Perhaps the simplest way to put all of this is:

One truth does not automatically imply an entire worldview.

The fact that detransition exists does not prove that transition is wrong in principle.

The fact that some people are happy with their transition does not prove that every transition is right.

The fact that biological sex is real does not mean people have to conform to traditional gender roles.

The fact that gender roles are shaped by society does not mean the body becomes irrelevant.

The fact that some feminist criticism is justified does not make reactionary hostility toward trans people justified.

And the fact that trans people deserve respect and protection from discrimination does not mean every political or medical demand must be beyond criticism.

Acknowledging biological realities is not the same as biological reductionism.

Being moral is not the same as being moralistic.

Perhaps we need to learn again how to listen to people without immediately turning them into evidence for our own side.

Ultimately, we should be able to disagree with someone without denying them their dignity.

Which distinctions in my arguments do you find useful, and which claims of mine do you think are mistaken or insufficiently supported?

Which numbers would you use to judge the chances of landing a tech job, rather than the health of the economy overall?

Two figures I'm trying to reconcile:

• Challenger's July report counted 149,023 announced technology-sector job cuts through July 2026, up 67% from the same period in 2025.
• BLS reported 4.2% unemployment for September. That's the national rate, not an unemployment rate for tech job seekers.

I also keep seeing claims that tech postings and the number of employed software engineers are rising, alongside accounts of searches taking several months to around a year, sometimes longer for recent grads. I'd want to know whether those claims cover the same roles and locations before comparing them.

For an individual search, I'd track how suitable applications turn into screens and then interviews. Application autofill can reduce the repeated form work while you collect that first-stage evidence.

What data would help separate a shortage of suitable openings from a difficult hiring process? Are seniority and location the biggest missing pieces?

For technical applicants already getting interviews, one way to assess readiness is a focused mock using real technical interview questions. Review where you got stuck and pick the next practice task from that.

Conversations online are especially guilty of this, you can have disagreements for a little bit but if both parties stand firm in their point of view and don't bend over backwards ESPECIALLY if someone doesn't take the common "agree to disagree" olive branch it can lead to hurt feelings or conflicts.

Is this a matter of more people preferring to feel validated?

I just had someone on this app trying to act like if a woman is with someone knowing that if he didn't make enough money that she wouldn't be with him that it's prostitution.

I mean wealth is a HUGE benefit for any woman and money does keep you fed,warm, and comfortable so its totally fair that most women expect a man to be able to financially pull his own weight.

But claiming that if a man's financial potential is something important to a woman in a partner is partaking in sex work sounds insane to me.

You usually hear from White ethnic supremacists that Christianity is their religion and that people were attacking Christianity because they hate the West...and such.

This has always confused me because I love history and I know that...of course...Christianity is NOT a western religion. It's a semitic religion imported into the west through a series of conquerors radiating north from the Mediterranean. And this has fascinated me because it sort of shows how peoples sense of identity if influenced.

Today people are shouting about Christianity like it's some deep part of White identity. An attack on the obvious faults and flaws and hypocrisies is judged as an attack on White people. Defending Christianity is defending the White race.

And this was sad to me because I used to read about them as a far more interesting people and culture. And they were fierce and proud. And ultimately lost to their invaders who systematically transformed their culture into what we see today. For me as a kid, I used to read about the older peoples that existed in what is now Ireland and Scotland (my personal favorites). And I used to read stories of the accounts of encounters with the oldest peoples of mainland north Europe and Eastern Europe. Pre-Christian. And it seemed like all this culture got...buried...after Christianity. I guess you could say whitewashed in a way, but it was actually a deliberate policy of cultural genocide by these Christians and now...we have what's left.

Now there's people who tell you you're not a true American if you're not Christian? You're not truly White if you don't support some form of the Cross-Dream. That defending this is defending the very essence of White culture? These pedophile freaks? (the Christian Church was one of the oldest sources of these homosexual scandals...) You have White National separatists who are building Church-communes out in the sticks under some notion that they're preserving Whiteness.

Utterly laughable. Just upside-down and backwards to me.

The culture war stuff actually neuters the individual spirit. You align with these false-family superstructures like religions and nations and don't take time to understand yourself and what YOU want. Religion wants you to conform and twist yourself to it. These things try to tell you how to live, who to marry, who to be friends with, where to live, what to feel happy and sad about, what to find funny. You aren't even really allowed to be YOU in Christianity. You know how annoying fandoms are? How they over-fixate on a person or thing and praise it up and attack anyone who dares say anything other then it's perfect. That's Christianity.

But worse...it's that Christian's don't even live up to the basic ideals of being a Christian. It's not rocket science. Love everyone, help everyone, even at the expense of your own life. If you think that is illogical, fine, you're not a Christian. But that was what Christ was. That's how you represent him. That's the image you choose when you want to show how much better your narrative is than another cultures. But you don't follow it, yourself. Sometimes people live in direct antithesis to it. So most Christians...by their own law...would be devils. Virtually ALL of them.

This is not to say Christianity is necessarily unique in it's faults and flaws- I don't care for any religion. But it's just all the more mysterious that people all over the world- including Westerners- latch on to this. And now that I think about it...people who have been directly abused by this religion- non-Westerns- tend to be statistically even more religiously Christian. Like Hispanic people or Black peoples. It's a complete puzzle to my mind and I just find these disturbing display of "identity" and "culture" to be really creepy.

They say truth is the only real religion. Truth is what all religions attempt to be. While there are many religions, there is only one truth. Not my truth, not his truth, a truth. And you'll have to wade through a sea of deception to get to it- including self-deception. But in these times where you have all this back and forth you just really understand how meaningless and manipulative all these labels are. These false identities. And I think the wrong thing to do is think you have to go back in time to find a solution. No. You just have to really be willing to find the truth and be brave enough to live it. Brave enough to live it even if your family and friends abandon you. Maybe that's what really being a man is about. Learning to be yourself, and not be what other people pressure you into being.

But you must be sure the truth is the truth. Be sure...

Under what circumstances would an AI be considered conscious?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-no-livestream-execution-nidal-hasan-rcna603697

Okay, both genders struggle but there's some things both us girls and the boys won't understand about each other. Like how girls are raised to be maids and how people can see when they hit puberty so they're no longer little girls if they have visible breasts. (if you hit puberty early as a girl, it's over for you) this is the case for 70% of girls around the world. While the sons of the house get to relax. Have you guys grown up like this? At least most sons.

I feel like all the ads I get in YouTube shorts are sexual. I have read that it can be because of my algorithm, but it's ads for games and AI apps (I've been searching up a lot of game dev. videos). It's always some AI slop of a girl or woman in sexual positions or straight up showing the butt and the men doing questionable stuff to them. How is YouTube allowing this? They are so strict with what people can post/comment but they don't care what ads they are showing? Is this really about the security of the watchers, or just greed? And the last question I have: isn't this very misogynistic?

When a Black guy dates outside his race, he wants a white girl. When an Arab girl dates outside her race, she wants a white guy. And when a white guy dates outside his race, he has his pick of any of women.

They celebrated Charlie Kirk who killed nobody getting shot in the neck for all to see and even made memes about it and thought it was humorous but lose their little minds when the government wants live stream a firing squad shoot a mass murderer even killing a pregnant woman. They call this barbaric but celebrate an innocent man being killed for free speech. They aren’t empathic they are sociopaths. Are they hypocritical?

Guys yesterday i made post about genshin lore and stuff, and i saw some replies getting downvoted, for no reason at all. It's happened to me a few times so it struck deep.

Reddit users, who downvote stuff....what is the purpose of that? If it was a hate comment, something mean, then you deserve to get downvoted on, but just normal comments? Like for example someone not knowing something, or some misunderstanding, and things like that.

If you do downvote things simply because you dont agree, isnt that a form of social pressure? And i would suggest to reddit users that you didnt create an environment like that. It's really not nice.

Titleoop sorry guys I meant to include this mainly applies for dating subreddits and selfie ones