As I had heard it described by a few people, it was considered cool in the 70s to have gay friends.

By a very very very small amount of people maybe, those who were considered to be radicals. Not only did a majority of people believe that homosexuality should not be accepted or tolerated, this was a time where at least half of the population believed that homosexual relations should be illegal.. And this didn't change until quite recently.

people were still living in the wake of the hippie revolution.

The "hippie revolution" was pretty much dead at that point. And of course, "normies" always hated the hippies. They were considered to be radicals, they were probably seen in a less favourable way than people see "antifa" today. And at that time, the hippies were associated with murderers and cults (Jim Jones, Charles Manson).

Recreational drugs were very widely used, as was all sorts of things like swinging…

Compared to how things were before the 60s, yes. But that's just because before the 60s, "free love" was unthinkable and recreational drugs simply did not exist in the eyes of the general public (outside of alcohol and tabacco). But we also shouldn't forget that those things happened in very specific metropolian areas.

So, having gay friends was considered normal

Again, by a very very specific subsection of people. It's as if you said that today, it's considered normal to have a "gender-fluid pan-sexual furry who identifies as a fox" as a friend. But for 99% of people, it just isn't.

by the 1990s, the mainstreaming of gay actors and gay themes in TV began to take off.

And it's not until the 90s that views on homosexuality slowly started to change. In 1997, it was still more people who believed that homosexuality should be illegal compared to those who believed it should be legal. Views on homosexuality only really started to radically change in the 2000s and 2010s. In 2008, while most people believed that homosexuality should not be punished by a law, it was still half of the population that believed that homosexuality is immoral and should be discouraged. In 2023, 64% believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable while 33% belive it's not. So there has definitely been a radical change of attitude towards homosexuality that is still going on, but this only happened relatively recently.

And of course people who are still opposed to homosexuality have noticed this shift too, which is why politicians have shifted focus away from scapegoating homosexual men towards scapegoating trans people (who are still a lot less tolerated today than gay men). The same talking points which are today used against trans people ("they are crazy and mentally unstable", "they are pedophiles") were traditionally used against homosexual men.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/4045/Some-Change-Over-Time-American-Attitudes-towards-Homosexuality.aspx

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

I’d also like you to know that, if I had my way, we would have not made any provocative posts at all and pot a moratorium on such content in order to establish trust

In my admittedly biased view, to a majority of people on the right, provocation is an elemental part of their behaviour. It seems that some people orient their entire identity based on "triggering the libs/triggering the left" and then complain when they actually succeed..

I had a discussion the other day with a user here who had the username "Ihatretroons" who was complaining that people would unfairly accuse him of, well, "hating troons". To me, this is absurd. Everyone should know by now that people on the internet form their opinions based on the smallest amount of information, when you choose the username "ihatetroons", most people will obviously think you hate trans people..

and that violence can only be done if it is defensive and meant to protect the innocent.

Right but every possible group that advocates for violence of course claims that their violence is defensive and meant to protect the innocent. The violent far-right neo-nazi white supremacist claims they only want to use violence to "protect their white children and their people from white genocide". Far-left antifascist militants claim they only want to use violence to "defend their community from fascists using violence against them". Anti-trans militants claim they only want to use violence against trans people to "protect children from getting abused and child trafficked". And my guess is that pretty soon, we will start to see violent environmental activists who claim they only use violence to protect the environment from destruction. And the state/police/military of course claims it's using violence "to maintain peace, order and stability".

Nobody claims that they want to use violence just because, they always claim it's defensive.

I’m gonna have to maintain that if you come from some small European shit hole and you travel a short distance to a neighboring country you are not more traveled than a new yorker who has visited south Carolina and Texas.

Fair.

This is like an American going to the Bahamas. Like everyone does that. Most American do visit mexico.

Yeah but those are actually different countries. An American travelling to Mexico is different than a Californian travelling to Texas.

its just like a 13 hour plus flight and hard with kids.

Yeah I completely understand why Americans don't travel as much overseas, all I'm saying is that it's kinda funny sometimes when Americans talk about other countries with a lot of confidence even though they have never even visited that country.

And I also think it's pretty funny when Europeans think they are basically a native just because they visited a country a couple of times.

Its just like a Romanian almost never goes to see Texas.

Sure, but again, you claimed that the US is "more Like the EU in form and function". That's just not true, the EU doesn't really have a federal government at all, it doesn't even have law enforcement or a common cultural identity. I would say that a Romanian has about as much in common with an Irishman as he does with an American. And I'm not saying that someone from Texas is exactly the same as someone from California, but the cultural differences are smaller.

That sucks, I had this happening once on lemmy as well.

Most US states are larger than most European countries.

In terms of geographical area maybe. In terms of population, no.

They also vary in culture nearly as much. Its more Like the EU in form and function.

No, absolutely not, you underestimate the impact that different languages and a history full of international conflict has. Until WWII, Europe was constantly and brutally fighting each-other. Until very recently, you had a large array of different political entities and systems, from small republics to empires.

All the regional differences that exist in America exist within European countries too, they just have a longer history.

The main point I make is often many Europeans look down on Americans for never visiting another “country”.

I wouldn't say I "look down on Americans" for that, it's just a stereotype that Americans always think of the US as this magical, special and unique place in terms of diversity and regional differences while at the same time, they believe that everyone in Europe basically has the same views and opinions on everything because "Europe is a homogeneous place", all without ever having visited Europe.

It was a common meme for a "typical american" to say something like "Yeah, an European country providing healthcare for people is nice and all, but that wouldn't be possible in the US. It works in Europe because they are so small and homogeneous and America has so many differences and is so large, it would never work.". Meanwhile, half of all US states have a population of 5 million or lower.

Because some English ass hole visited Ireland and Romania once

Most people from Europe tend to travel more than Americans, it's not just a once in a lifetime thing. Even poorer people will go to a neighbouring country or something for vacation occasionally.

hardly different than a Texan visiting California and new York.

Of course it's different. The difference between the average Texan and the average Californian is a slight accent and some specific differences of opinion about very specific topics. The biggest thing will probably be that the average Texan sees himself as more of a countryside/rural person and the average Californian sees himself as more of a city person, but again, you will have those kind of differences in the smallest of countries.

The average Irish person and the average Romanian person will barely be able to effectively communicate. They have a completely different language, a completely different history, a completely different identity and completely different values. So much so that they will be completely unfamiliar with traditions, customs, etc of the other outside of some stereotypes.

A Texan and a Californian will not have any issues interacting with eachother at all, their biggest difference will probably be rural vs urban thinking. Every Texan knows at least one person from California, probably they know a Californian personally or they are familiar with at least 1 Californian due to TV, radio, etc, same thing the other way around.

I will take whatever I want as hard as I want it.

Completely off topic, but it seems then that you can actually change the username, or at least the display name in lemmy. That's pretty cool.

Yeah except he never said what this meme claims he said.. It's completely made up. I don't think the word "gender" is even mentioned in the whole episode..

https://youtu.be/7cGN1sLYMhA?t=544

So no, 90s kids certainly won't remember, unless they are right wing 90s kid who remember it because they made it up..

They are like the bisexuals of the 1990s: they signal their uniqueness to get prestige without making any commitments.

What was "prestigious" about being a "homo" in the 90s? What is prestigious about being trans today? They are overwhelmingly hated all over the world for who they are, the push against that hate has been met with extreme scepticism by a lot of people.

Even in the US, THE example of "the progressive west", the last president has claimed that if he becomes president again, he will go after all transgender healthcare..

Also, what are you implying when you say "without making any commitments"? Isn't one of the right's main criticisms that the changes are too permanent/not reversable? Shouldn't you be happy that they "aren't commiting"?

So… To me, when anyone starts taking such hormones to lactate and presents this to a child, they are not doing it as an actual woman, but they are doing it as a person who is deeply troubled…

Yeah as I have said, I have my concerns with this as well. The only thing I find a bit strange is that your concerns are about "it not being natural" which to me, is just a weird justification for anything.

And if I was a male who was lactating due to a medical condition, I would not offer it to my own baby.

And I'm not saying you should (unless maybe you are in that desert scenario or something like that). I'm just saying it's not as "unnatural" as you might think, or rather nature can be pretty fucked up and weird in it's own right.

Not only would it take me entirely out of my comfort zone, it wouldn’t be healthy for the baby.

Right and to me, the first one is not very important. It's the second one that should be important, no?

But this is pure, disembodied reason thinking purely along Cause>Effect lines without the proper context of healthy human living, culture, and norms.

And this is exactly where I believe our main difference in thinking comes from.

You talk of "proper healthy human living", "proper culture" and "proper norms" or of human behavior being "unnatural". To me, humans have abandoned nature thousands of years ago. And in the past 100 - 200 years, we have also start to abandon virtually all traditional social norms, social structures, hierarchies, customs, culture and norms, etc.

And some people say they want to go back to "traditional society", but first, I don't thinkt that's possible, and second, many just want to go back in some specific cases, but keep the rest of the progress they like, which certainly doesn't work.

At the very least, I think that's clearly the direction we are heading towards. Young people will keep on questioning and opposing older traditions, norms and customs, I believe simply because the world they grow up in is different to the one their parents grew up in. And I don't think this is happening for artificial reasons as some want to claim, I believe it's the extreme impact that our technological and scientific progress has caused, it would be unreasonable to see everything in our world radically transform, but to expect that specific customs and traditions stay the same..

I have seen that a lot of the people who voted against us were not just mistaken, but extreme in their views.

I think it's pretty silly when people say "we are banning the nazis" when they are talking about you. I mean many do it to provoke you and piss you off while they know you are not actual nazis, but still, it's pretty silly. But at the same time, I don't really know how to address it, it's just how people on the internet seem to act and you people certainly like to provoke, so you almost have to expect a reaction.

But I also actually think that guys getting their hatred out in stupid internet posts is OK. Maybe even helpful.

I don't see how it helps anyone.It certainly doesn't help with finding any practical solutions to any problem, it certainly doesn't help in making the internet less toxic and it certainly doesn't help with finding any kind of compromise or common ground between the camps. All it does is making people act more and more extreme and unappologetic on both sides.

I think anyone who is willing to start using violence for political reasons is already insane.

Yeah a lot of people say that, but EVERYONE is using violence for political reasons. The left is, the right is, and the center is using violence against both the right and the left to keep the status quo. But of course, there are different levels of violence and I think we can both agree that using random and extreme acts of violence is not only insanse, but also impratical. But I also think that at the end of the day, it's a consequence of people being desperate and hopeless.

There’s nothing I can do to help them. They are at timebomb who will go off for some strange social or religious reason if not for a political one; they are attracted to anything that justifies a violent outburst.

Here I agree with you. But I know that fantasising all day long about violence and "finally getting revenge" while blaming "the opposite side for everything" will certainly not help. And this goes for both right wingers who are fantasysing about lining up and shooting all the trans people/leftists/sjw's as well as all the extreme lefties who fantasise about "bringing out the guilitine" and executing all the rich people, racists and right wingers.

I think free speech is never dangerous, so I am not into censorship.

I'm not into censorship either, but I think we have a different definition of censorship. To me, moderation does not restrict free speech. One could even argue that moderation makes free speech possible.

It depends very much on where you go, which is why I said middle east.

But "middle east" isn't one place, right? There are plenty of destinations in the middle east that are insanly popular vacation spots for westeners. Many people got rich through oil there and they know that it won't last for ever, so many places in the middle east have been shifting focus to tourism for decades now. Hell, the world's most popular international sport event was last held in the middle east, they are spending a lot of money to signal to westeners that they are welcome and will be treated like kings..

And it seems to be working as many westeners, especially Europeans, enjoy traveling to the middle east. I know a lot of people who go to the middle east for vacation and while I personally am not really extremly interested in traveling there, I have not heard anyone feeling afraid of the government there..

And you’ll find that much of the “privilege” you feel is fear of your government.

I don't find that at all.. I'm sure there are places in the middle east, like places in Afganistan for example, where I wouldn't feel save. But even Afganistan/the taliban are begging for tourists, so I would mainly be afraid of ending up in the crossfire, not that the government will specifically target me for being white.. There might be other groups who target me for being white and the government will probably fuck with me if I disregard the rules, but certainly not more so than the government fucks with the local people, who are generally seen as "non-white".

If they don’t fear reprisal it will go differently as it did for those idiots who were driving across the middle east trying to prove the world was all full of love.

No clue who you are talking about, you are gonna have to provide a few more details.

I never said anything about banning CRT.

But that's ultimately why politicians rant against "CRT", right? They want to "ban CRT" and so far, they have been successful in 16 states. And the problem of course is that according to those politicians, "CRT" can mean pretty much anything vaguely related to race, which is great for them because they can use "anti CRT" to ban a relatively wide range of topics.

This is what gets me with many conservatives, you say stuff like "we like free speech, we don't want to ban free speech", and then as soon as some politician wants to ban something you don't like, you support them..

But the talking points here are CRT concepts.

According to politicians, CRT can mean virtually anything even remotely conntected to race..

If you go to the middle east and start dancing around in speedos as a white male you’re not going to feel very privileged.

So if you go to the middle east as a white person, especially a white man, you will feel incredibly privileged.. Maybe more so than in the west.. Of course there are significant differences depending on where exactly you go, but in a lot of places, there are significant differences of standards that apply to tourists compared to locals. And as a white person, people of course automatically assume that you are a tourist and they will be much much more tolerant towards behaviour that is normally not tolerated.

For example, there are many places where alcohol is completely illegal for locals, but it is completely legal for tourists. And if you wear a speedo, you might get some looks, but if your white, everyone knows you are a western tourist and will most likely tolerate it. If you are a local and/or non-white, chances of it being tolerated will probably be lower. And certainly if you are female, the chances of it being tolerated is virtually 0.

And there are many laws where the police either looks the other way, or it officially does not apply to westeners (anti-LGBT laws, sex outside of marriage laws, etc.)..

There’s nothing CRT can predict that “financial class theory” won’t predict better.

I mean there are a lot of different theories about many different things that might or might not be interesting for certain people. I'm not an academic, so I don't know if CRT is usefull or not, but at the end of the day, a theory is a theory.. It probably has it's limits of usefulness, but using the state to ban/outlaw a theory seems very questionable to me on principle.

If you are looking for actual opinions / discussions, then you may be misinformed or looking in the wrong place.

Dude, we both know that there is no space where right wingers have "civilized dicussions", at least not in places where non-right wingers are tolerated.. You guys seem to communicate via facebook tier memes at this point. The only possible place to have any contact with right wingers are "free-speech" meme communities because everywhere else, I would get banned pretty much immediately.

Those subs probably have the highest number of users right

They are the only communities with any numbers right now, the rest is virtually dead..

Well, if speech is free, then why not?

"Free speech" kinda implies that memes with different opinions and views are posted. Instead, the opposite is the case, it's virtually only one viewpoint that is presented.

However, I don’t set out to exclusively post stuff about Trans despite what you seem to be thinking.

Given your attitude towards the trans community, I definitely don't think you do it on purpose.. In practice, I still see a community that is obsessed with the trans community to an absurd degree..

I have plenty of posts memeing other topics like socialism, authoritarian regimes, Joe and Hunter Biden, censorship, how leftists like as a group tend to have a large number of individuals that claim to be more accepting / less racist but in actually are less accepting / more racist, and so on.

Right, the way I see it, you guys have exactly two topics, or one topic depending on how you look at it. It's "the gays/homos/trans" and "the left". In practice, those two are often treated as the same thing.

That's pretty much it. It's pretty much the same as the liberals who go on about Trump all day long and about how everyone not living in cities is a violent racist homophobe..

Now, I know what your probably thinking. Some guy that creates a s/n about hating troons is probably a “transphobic bigot”. Personally, I give zero fucks what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes.

Right, but the thing is nobody will ever believe you when you are called "ihatetroons", write about how much you hate "troons", post memes about how "troons" are pedos, etc.

It's pretty much the same as the KKK member saying "I'm not racist, I have a black friend" or "I don't hate black people, I just want them to live seperately from white people, that's better for everyone". Either your definition of "transphobic bigot" is different from most others or you are just a bad troll..

And if someone wants to irreparably mutilate their own bodies instead of going to a therapist

Right, that's how it works, you just go to the trans factory and say "one body mutilating transition please"..

But when those same politics start bringing that stuff into the grade school classrooms or bullying tactics like “you can’t disagree with us or you’re a bigot” start getting thrown around, then I give lots of fucks.

The funny thing is that it was mostly you guys yourself that have built that narrative.. Sure, if you go looking for it, you will find dumb people doing dumb things, that's true for every possible group of people. But you guys seem to be working overtime to keep up the fantasy world where you get oppressed daily intact and that's on you.

I’ve also seen several online tech forums that have nothing to do with gender of any kind invite all types and over the course of several years end up getting a lot of trans and furry content posted all over in the general areas, which kind of pissed me off.

No way, tech online forums are filled with weird nerds who like strange stuff? Who would have thought..

The issue in my view was the move away from strongly moderated forums where your comment would get removed for the simplest of reasons towards the idea that online forums should be as unmoderated as humanly possible because of "freedom of speech". And the reason this happened was probably because big tech didn't want the effort that comes with moderating a community.

But of course you want a free-speech forum, or am I wrong?

So if speaking out about stuff like that makes me a hater, then I don’t care anymore.

Being critical or questioning things doesn't make one a hater. But again, you are literally called "ihatetroons", so I seriously don't understand why you want to act suprised when people actually take what you say half-way seriously.. Don't you think this whole game about "I don't really dislike trans people, well just a little bit, but I actually hate the politics" is a bit silly? I mean again, even if you were just using that name to be edgy and to trigger the libs (which everyone claims), you are actively trying to signal to everyone that you hate trans people, so you shouldn't be suprised when people think you actually do..

in context he is calling for capital punishment for criminals who abuse children

He was literally saying that "trannyfags should be lined up and shot.", that's the direct quote..

He didn't say "People who sexually abuse children should be prosecuted and punished according to the law with the death penalty", he said "trannyfags should be lined up and shot"..

And he had the opportunity to edit and/or clearify his comment to avoid misunderstandings for several days, but he didn't, he instead replied with "cry about it.."..

Also, notice how the comment was eventually removed after several days? Since this is a free-speech community where comments aren't normally removed, I think even the mods disagreed with your interpretation..