Well, that's what you and I think.

You should spend Thanksgiving with my ex-family. A typical Thanksgiving involved a debriefing about how my brother and I would go to hell if I we believed the differences in interpretation that my grandparents believed.

You get folks who believe themselves linguistic Biblical scholars. You get arguments based on whether that appearance of "is" comes from this Aramaic word or was later inserted by some monk by accident.

People get very serious about this and very emotional. I suppose that's what happens when one's been convinved that they'll go to hell and burn forever based on some nit-picky interpretation of the etymology of some word or whatever. Imagine meeting someone who can walk you through an argument that their god is mad at us because we don't practice racially-based slavery any more!

(From what I remember, it has something to do with how caucasians are the lost tribe of Isreal [insert scriptual evidence I never cared enough to memorize here] and because some guy got smashed drunk once in a tent and passed out without any clothes on.)

I don't know what the solution is. By the FSM, the country I live in will be a 3rd world country in 50 years because when the going gets rough, the tough turn to superstition, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Going way off topic here, but it was pretty harmful to me.

It's at best a cosmetic procedure. The troubling thing is that we perform this cosmetic procedure on patients who have no ability to report problems during healing. When something goes wrong, the patient has no way of knowing what's normal or not. I'm not the only person who went through a big chunk of their life thinking that something abnormal and utterly wrong was just a normal part of being a man. Hell, I didn't even know it had been done to me until I had already taken drastic measures to correct the physically painful problem I had that I had thought was a completely normal part of being a man.

And maybe it really is. I don't know. My doctor said that my female mind might have been interpreting something that should have felt pleasurable as intolerable pain. I'm not sure I entirely buy that. Despite the help he provided me, his idea of gender transition was Rocky Horror Picture Show. I've never heard another account like mine from another trans woman, and side effects that aren't cosmetic or don't revolve around sexual pleasure later in life simply aren't studied, so there's no evidence to support or refute his claim.

I feel sorry for my ex-parents. If they had just kept their hands off my dick, they might have had the grandkids they wanted so much. Well, shit happened, and now they'll never have grandkids.

"Mutilation" or not, the ethics are apalling. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the primary reason we do this to infants is to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases. How much sex does the typical infant have?

There's the UTI argument, but that barely holds any water. UTI is a routine condition that infants develop, and female infants have a higher rate of UTI. The way I see it, why can't we just accept that maybe male infants in their intact state just have a little higher rate of incidence of UTI than female infants? Why don't we research cosmetic surgeries to perform on female infants to bring their rate of incidence of UTI down in line with the rate of incidence for circumcised male infants?

If the evidence is to be believed, then it would be more ethical to perform the procedure on a child after 24 months. The foreskin is not fully developed until then, and many side effects such as skin bridges could be completely avoided if the procedure were performed after the foreskin had fully developed. It would also allow a better opportunity to administer local anesthesia, since any kind of anestesia is risky to perform on a newborn.

I don't see any kind of rationality surrounding the issue like what I proposed above. I mean, for FSM's sake, it's a cosmetic procedure at best. Nobody seriously believes that it's more effective at preventing transmission of STDs than a condom! Well, unless you're a victim of this practice in rural Africa. They do, and the results have been tragic. Relying on circumcision to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS/GRID and other STDs has led to widespread infection there. Clearly, circumcision is ineffective at controlling infection, regardless of the percentage point here or there that the AAP reported.

All I can figure is that the point of performing it on newborns is so that the patient never knows that he is missing a body part that is design to protect the glans from external irritation. The patient might protest and advocate against the practice if he were to be aware that before the body part was amputated, there was no pain or irritation, and afterwards there was. The patient might report more complications instead of beliving those complications are simply a part of being a man, and the rate of incidence recorded would probably increase.

Iirc the AAP currently reports that 1/500 circumcisions have complications. How much higher would that be if we preformed this procedure on 4 or 5 year olds the same way we wait until a child is about that age before removing their wisdom teeth? I don't know, and by performing this procedure on infants who come into consciousness never knowing what it's like to be intact with a foreskin protecting the glans from irritation, it's impossible to know.

Based on that, I believe we can call it a "mutilation" and even a form of child abuse. The fact is that if it were simply a procedure such as removing wisdom teeth that was based on medical wisdom, we would wait until the patient were old enough to report problems that would indicate follow-up care. It's a pet peeve of mine that anti-circumcision groups ("intactivists") throw around arguments based on some kind of sexual pleasure or somesuch. I would be happy just knowing life without genital pain.

In Windows, win+R for the run box, win+D to go to the desktop, win+E for my computer. There are a few others, but those are the ones I use most frequently.

In Linux, it's much more useful. I have it set up as a 3rd level shift. I hacked together an XKB map that gives me greek letters; punctuation such as em and en dashes, typographical quotes, proper ellipsis, less than/greater than or equal to, etc; and arrows plus times and divide on my numpad. Combined with remapping capslock to the compose key, it makes for a versatile keyboard layout.

If one wanted, one could also map say some of the F keys (F1-F12) to things like volume up/down, play next track, pause, calculator, run, etc with 3rd level shift, but I haven't bothered.

On the topic of keyboards themselves, I'm loving my Unicomp black buckling spring USB keyboard. The trackball is wonky, though, and as far as I can tell the extra two mouse buttons are mystery buttons that do nothing (no middle click!), so I'd recommend skipping that to anyone who wants a decent 5 lb USB klacker. The thing in indestructable, and the tactile feedback from the buckling springs makes it a pleasure to type on, improving both speed and accuracy.

Thanks for the reply.

Where can I meet this mythical womyn-born-womyn? I've observed what I've observed first-hand.

Hell, I've had girls (plural! multiple!) that my ex-boyfriend have dated that have offered to cook and clean for me if I'd let them move in! Every time I've said hell no, just move in if that's what you want to do. These womyn-born-womyn need higher aspirations. One who wanted to be an engineer before she learned she could dance on a pole and make good money just like her own Mother (I do have respect for the athleticism involved, but little else) I tried as best I could to tell to forget the cooking and cleaning and focus on taking classes. Well, last I heard about her, she had become a Mother, sights still set on retirement around 35. How can I blame her? Maybe I'd do the same things if I had been born with my reproductive system on the inside and had the opportunities and privileges that came with that.

Hell, I'd be happy if I even knew what life with intact genitals was like. You can't tell me womyn-born-womyn aren't privileged when it's illegal and gets us jerking our knees like there's no tomorrow at the suggestion of even poking a clitoris with a pin, but there's no recourse for all the physical pain circumcision left me with and there's no recourse for the discomfort I still suffer even after HRT eliminated the excrutiating pain that had me planning suicide.

There really are people who act as white knights and I know no better term for them outside of perhaps pro-feminist chauvenists or maybe just bigots. They believe that womyn-born-womyn are utterly blameless perpetual victims. That's an attitude that should be held in contempt, because it is at utter odds with gender equality. I mean, I'm a short person (fortunately for me given my other circumstances). No matter whether I have estrogen or testosterone in my system, most women are taller and objectively stronger than me.

Additionally, I've realized that the term "womyn-born-womyn" wasn't quite as well known as I had hoped. That term doesn't come from 4chan (unless somebody there picked up on the same hypocrisies that led me to start using it). It comes straight from the feminist movement. Feminists are extremely threatened by trans women (once one understands feminism is a religion and has nothing to do with gender equality, this is easy to account for), so they invented a term based on the term "womyn" to shame trans women with. It strikes me as a kind of no true Scotsman thing. After all, feminists who refer to themselves as womyn-born-womyn as a way of degrading and marginalizing trans women haven't had their genitals inspected Crocodile Dundee style. How else could anyone possibly know that the speaker herself never had a period or couldn't have children or had any number of other health conditions that would make her any different from this spiritual femaleness that we're supposed to believe is superior because it has a period and it can have children. Hell, if I wanted, after I get bottom surgery or otherwise if I were very careful, I probably could actually invade a feminist group, present myself as a womyn-born-womyn, and pull it off. I'm not a lesbian, so other "womyn-born-womyn" would have no reason to inspect my genitals. That feminists would draw a distinction and slander an entire group of people---trans women---based on the honesty of the individuals in that group by disclosing their past when discussing matters of gender, to me is utterly contemptable.

Then there's womyn-born-womyn who have manly features. You've seen one or two and so have I. I always wonder how often they're accused of being trans by a feminist while using a changing room or bathroom. They're not trans because they were assigned the female gender at birth and persumably have a period and can grow children inside themselves. The term womyn-born-womyn only, in an optimistic sense, implies the first one of those criteria. Every single other criterion based on objective fact or biological evidence is invalid next to the fortune of having been assigned the female gender on a piece of paper at birth. Even cases of botched circumcision resulting in genital amputation and raising the child as female (which never works, btw, too much of a statistical disparity I assume between being born trans and having a grusomely botched circumcision---if that had happened to me, my circumcision being botched just enough to be assigned the female gender at birth, I would have had a very happy life and probably never would have gone into IT) would qualify that child for the status of womyn-born-womyn in feminism despite having XY genetics and completely normal male anatomy at birth right up until botched circumcision.

I will be working on evidence shortly. The next time this comes up on /., it would probably be good to be less ranty and present evidence of why feminism is completely off its rocker when it comes to womyn-born-womyn (cis women) and IT careers.

Either that or I'll be pleasantly surprised to learn I'm wrong and have merely had bad experience after bad experience after bad experience after bad experience. I doubt that, though. It's more likely that it really is time to knock womyn-born-womyn down a few notches.

I believe in gender equality, not female hegemony, and sure as fuck not hegemony of individuals merely lucky enough to be assigned a gender on paper at birth.

I replaced nearly all incandescent bulbs in my house with bulbs similar to these from Lowe's the first few months after I bought it a few years ago. They cost a little under $3 per bulb, so you're off by an order of magnitude there.

They turn on instantly, and it wasn't difficult to get used to the color difference. Anymore, the color quality of incandescent looks odd to me.

My only real gripe is that when I started using CFLs, I learned that the equivalency rating to incandescents in power consumption just isn't right. A 13 watt CFL looks a hell of a lot dimmer than a 60 watt incandescent. Maybe it's just me. I've found 18 watt CFLs to be acceptable replacements for 60 watt incandescents.

You have a valid point about dimmers. That would be one application I'd probably keep incandescents for, but I don't have any dimmers in my house. If I were looking to purchase one, I'd seriously consider a CFL dimmer, but I haven't looked into how much more the upfront cost is.

That being said I don't need the federal government to get me to make decisions that will reduce my power bill, and I find it appalling that the federal government apparently has the power to prohibit the production of a product that does no more harm than eat a little over 3x as much power as a competing product.

What governments should be doing if they want to engage in market manipulation is subsidizing installation of solar panels for roofs. That would probably be more productive than forcing everyone who wants to keeps their incandescents to moving to a bulb that they're not happy with. Hell, it'd probably help the economy, too.

Another thing governments can do is investigate what we would need to build new fission power plants and move away from coal and natural gas. Perhaps some kind of anti-NIMBY legislation and some real critical thinking about how we safely build and operate fission reactors without allowing greed and bean counters from creating disasters.

A third alternative is stopping this nonsense with corn ethanol and promoting biodiesel. Petrolchemicals may be the best way to store energy, corn ethanol is not the best petrochemicals to use for that purpose, and maybe plants are the best way to harvest energy from the sun.

We're consuming energy at an increasing rate as a species, and we're only going to need more and more. That isn't a bad thing. The bad thing is being dependent on fossil fuels. Those are only renewable on scales measured in millions of years, which isn't of much utility to human progress.

Forcing people to use a bulb that, judging by comments here, even the thought of using causes visceral rage will probably be no more than a drop in the bucket compared the above.

At the end of the day, it's your power bill. It's not like you're somehow using incandescants and only being charged for the power consumption of CFLs. Hell, I'd bet certain individuals who seem to be physically incapable of turning a light off once they've left a room would see more of a savings from doing that than switching to CFLs.

Except for the problem that being a single parent is 100% an individual choice for individuals born with their reproductive systems on the inside.

Why would somebody choose to have children they can't afford? Perhaps it's because we have so many entitlement systems that having a child guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, and perhaps another factor is how much we privilege Mothers.

I should amend that. I'm still not sure if he even wanted sex. He wanted to have a stable mother for his children who could provide. In many ways, he was a very progressive man.

Not only that, but I dated a guy once who wanted to use his EBT benefits to buy me food. There are always ways around the system to buy drugs. I don't think they're in common use, though. The guy I was dating didn't want alcohol or drugs (he wanted sex and oddly wanted me to be a mother for his children---but he couldn't see how a family court would have a field day with a trans woman caring for his children---I hope I did the best I could have for him by refusing). I'd like to see some real sociological research from the right wing before they presume that anybody using EBT is trading it for drugs. I think it's a canard.

This, children, is what's known as the tragedy of the commons. Unfortunately, Americans see welfare as a lifestyle, not a tool.

I must be getting old, or something. Personally, I believe that a woman should not have the right to choose if she does not have a career that would enable her to support a child. Or a husband, but that's archaiac. Sure, call me a baby-killer. I believe that we need to force abortions, and if that's too much trauma for a woman, then perhaps women who can't afford birth control shouldn't be having sex.

You're correct. That's not how it is in Michigan. I don't know why, but a lot of unhealthy, processed foods are cheaper to buy than healthy foods.

Personally, I've gone back to a primarily instant ramen diet. It's not healthy, but it keeps the stomach from grumbling. I don't know what I'd do if i had a child who was dependent on my ability to provide healthy foods.

It's easy to get things for pennies that will shut the stomach up, but it's not easy to get green veggies for the same cost. A nice salad is something that I've had to move to my "once in a while" category. A brick of ramen is now my "every day" category.

Most individuals I know who use food stamps are staunchly in support of incarceration of users of non-prescribed drugs and do not use non-prescribed drugs themselves. They do tend to use prescribed drugs such as addictive, opoid-based pain killers and anti-depressants, but those wouldn't be covered by food stamps. They also present themselves as highly suspicious of the evidence that cannabis is more effective than anti-depressants and opoid-based pain killers. I suspect this may be in part an attempt to counter the idea that if left unchecked, they would be supporting a drug habit due to some undefined moral failiing on their part.

While I think there needs to be something better than government handouts of these individuals, I also think the idea that they're using those handouts to support drug habits is unfounded. At least I've never seen compelling evidence that this is the case. Welfare queens do not need illegal drugs with all of the privilege that comes with being a Mother, and I've observed that welfare queens are the least likely to be using non-prescribed drugs.

What I do see is an acute moral failing in the tendency to have another child in order to continue benefits. That is a self-defeating side effect of handout programs targeted at children that must by design also benefit Mothers. It would be good if there were a way to decouple benefits from family size and encourage better family planning.

I'm even prepared to argue that perhaps it's not a human right to reproduce. Perhaps that's something that needs to be earned.

Sorry I came off that way. My thing is that we need to look closely at why individuals who were assigned the female gender at birth choose different careers than individuals with female minds assigned the male gender at birth.

I think what we'll find is that we extend too much privilege to those assigned the female gender at birth, and that privilege is the reason they don't choose careers like HVAC, mechanic, builder, etc. They have no need for those careers in a society that will give them a reasonable lifestyle and provide for a family while working minimum wage if at all. In fact, why should they bother learning those skills at all if having a wild night of sex is all they need to do to start a family and live a middle class lifestyle?

I think that's wrong.

Men and women are different, absolutely. Those differences on their own don't support the theory that women are staying out of CS and STEM because of estrogen or vaginas or something biological

My argument is that it's completely sociological, it's something that no amount of male bashing will fix because assigned males are not perpetuating the problem (or are too afraid of being seen as a misogynist for telling feminism that it's playing a big, big part in this problem), and it's something we can't solve unless we're willing to hold individuals who were assigned the female gender at birth accountable for their choices.

The fact that as a culture we've decided to make Mother a valid career for women while simultaneously destroying the father role and replacing fathers with sugar daddy government seems to explain a lot more. We have a horrendous anti-male bias, and the more I'm forced to live as a man, the more it becomes impossible to ignore.

The term womyn-born-womyn is used by feminists to shame trans women because trans women don't have a period and cannot have children and thus are somehow inferior according to them or a threat. I decided to start using it instead of "cis woman" because I don't see any reason to overlook the fact that feminism values animal functions over the body part between the ears.

At the very least, I need some term to draw a distinction between cis women and trans women to illustrate that the differences in career choice aren't hormonal or neurological.

Imo, if cis women were to take the energy they use to bash all assigned males and to complain that none of them make the choice to enter STEM and CS careers and just make the choice as an individual to enter STEM and CS careers... well... I suppose they wouldn't have a problem, then!

They also wouldn't be living a better lifestyle than working a minimum wage job or not at all and getting government benefits for being a Mother. That's the big difference I'm arguing that pressures cis women to make the choices they make, and I think that's a much bigger difference than any neurological or hormonal differences can account for.

Therefore, if this thing with a lack of cis women in CS and STEM careers really is such a problem (maybe it isn't), then I'm saying that the only way to solve it is to take the option of being a Mother away from cis women and take away their privilege of being presumed victims so they have the exact choices than men and trans women do.

If nobody wants to do that, then whatever. I see no other way to solve the problem, so if taking the option to become a Mother before a cis woman has a steady career is not something that we want to do, this "problem" will continue to exist.

Maybe some day feminists will either choose to be happy with the current cis female hegemony we have or choose a level playing field and not try to have their cake and eat it too.

Yes. I am.

Too bad it's not untrue.

An eye-opening experience for me was a co-worker I had a while back. She was kind, hard-working, and fair. She wasn't afraid to let me know when I was wrong about something and she didn't fly off the handle when I told her she was wrong about something. Then again, I don't recall many times other than when she was new that I had to let her know her perception of how something worked wasn't accurate.

Unfortunately, she get pulled down by the drama and decided to find another job.

It must be difficult working as a woman. Every other woman sees you as a target, somebody to claw down. The heartbreaking thing is watching this happen to somebody, watching things that are wrong and things that aren't even wrong or are sheer lunacy get thrown around just to smear somebody. Sometimes when it gets really bad I'll see things like official documentation get surreptitiously screwed with. One thing one has to be careful about in a workplace that's dominated by womyn-born-womyn is when one woman asks you to make one change to some software and then another woman asks you to make a very similar but different change.

Hoo boy, I've learned attempting to reconcile the two individuals requesting different things from me is a complete mistake when they're both womyn-born-womyn. I have a feeling that's what got the co-worker I liked working with in over her head. The most frustrating thing is that attempting to bring this to the attention of both individuals invariably is seen as picking sides. Sure, guys do this from time to time (just like having a vagina does not make one above sexism, having a penis does not make one above pettiness), but with a womyn-born-womyn you can count on it. It's not honest, but I've found the best way is to work through each nuance of the request, implement the parts of each that seem most correct, and then just tell both requesters it's all set. I don't know if they ever go back to check if I did what they asked, but the important point to a lot of womyn-born-womyn is that you were asked to do something so you did it without involving them in the details.

It's not important to be objectively correct to womyn-born-womyn. They have other priorities, values, and ways of knowing. There's a lot of what that article calls "Subjective Knowledge: The inner voice" going on. Unfortunately that "way of knowing" simply doesn't lend to success when you're writing a computer program. For many womyn-born-womyn, it's just simply unimportant to move to another "way of knowing," and why should they? What benefit would using "Procedural Knowledge: Separate and connected knowing" or "Constructed Knowledge: Integrating the voices" that incorporate both personal subjective knowledge and external objective knowledge have to a Mother?

That I think is a big problem. I cannot have children, and being trans I also have no family or any other way to influence a child with a reproductive system on the inside to have other aspirations than getting rich in sales or medicine or being Mother. Instead, it seems they continue to be influenced by Mothers and the increasingly womyn-born-womyn dominated elementary school.

The only solution I can think of is that we have to stop giving entitlement benefits to womyn-born-womyn solely on the basis that they got themselves pregnant. Require them to have a career or some other way to support a family before they choose Mother. Unfortunately, I think a lot of womyn-born-womyn would continue to limit themselves to being a Mother, but at least maybe they'd just be a lower-case mother and there might be a father involved instead of wage garnishment.

I look at you cisgendered people, and a lot of times I'm at a loss for many of the ways objectivity goes out the window when it comes to gender. Do I want women "back in the kitchen?" No, but I struggle to see any other outcome as long as all we do is blame anyone and everyone assigned the male gender at birth for life choices and the drawbacks of those life choices that individual womyn-born-womyn make. It takes two to tango; it's time to start putting some accountability for the lack of womyn-born-womyn in CS and STEM on the individuals who are making the choice to pursue other interests.

I'll tell you what I hear and see. I hear a lot of men who are saying they'd love more womyn-born-womyn especially in CS. I see girls interested in engineering and CS right up until they find out they can make twice as much and retire at 35 if they pursue erotic dancing for example or else decide to start a family before they've even gone to college. I see a lot of kvetching from feminists and white knights about the outcome of these facts of life. I hear women who are seeking careers in CS complain about how they get job offers simply because they're the only woman who was interviewed for the position and, thanks to the white knights and feminists, the interviewers are too scared not to offer her the job. I also know a number of womyn-born-womyn who believe that I can program computers because of my assigned gender!

No amount of male-bashing will help a womyn-born-womyn who herself believes that the ability to program a computer has anything to do with gender. I feel bad for their grand-daughters, but there's jack shit I can do about what those individuals choose to believe and choose to pass on to their grandchildren.

Pointing out how certain womyn-born-womyn are responsible for this problem and how entitlement programs that enable the Mother lifestyle exacerbate this problem is not misogyny. Pointing out that womyn-born-womyn aren't perfect, innocent victims here is not misogyny. However, I will admit that my position that if womyn-born-womyn can't figure out how to solve something that really is their problem---reviewing their own beliefs and attitudes for sexism and misogyny and getting their daughters to take CS classes and get STEM degrees---they can go back into the kitchen for all I care may be misogynist. We can't continue to pretend that womyn-born-womyn are somehow being oppressed, and we can't continue to ignore womyn-born-womyn who hold rediculous views and think that computers are just for boys. These individuals need to be held accountable; no more free passes.

If I had a genie and could wish myself a different reproductive system, I wouldn't make the choice to become a Mother, and there are plenty of womyn-born-womyn who don't choose to become Mothers. Hell, I might even stay with CS instead of getting frustrated enough at the accusations of sexism to learn some other way to make money. I can't make that choice for anybody else, though, and I think the EULA with most genies and other wish-granting figures prohibits mind control anyway.

Of course standard disclaimer, the plural of anecdote is not data.