I died my green hair in response to my boss telling my new female colleague that "at least she's not one of those weird girls in IT who dye their hair an unnatural hair colour"
Like extremely prominent cishet white male former moderators holding up the opinion of another prominent cishet white man as proof that cishet white people shouldn't have to consider the hurt they cause as they walk through life in ignorant bigotry /rant
I don't like the amount of trolls the pronouns-issue attracts. Most of the issues don't personally affect me, but I still care about them. But I don't want to accidentally care about a troll's issue and/or dismiss a genuine issue because I mistake it for a troll.
@Belle I understand. That's why I feel it's important that people be educated about the subject of discrimination and how it can be sneaky and invisible. Too bad schools don't actually teach you that :/
heh, whenever people go "but but you need to listen to different opinions!" I think, oh you mean, call my parents? visit home? read my old journals? :P
a lot of the allies I know became that way because they worked really hard to overcome the stuff they're now speaking out against
@Belle I still remember all the hurtful behavior I had when I was in middle school. I wish I had known better. But I'm glad, I do know better today. Though I still find it outrageous to see how hard it can be to self educate yourself when you are willing to because good resources are just hidden in the middle of very bad ones (like white cis men screaming stuff like "THIS IS REVERSE RACISM!!!")
@EmC Yeah, that's what people don't understand. We already know the other opinions!!!
@Belle Makes me wonder how much diversity they have on their team (note: I didn't read the article in fun, I'm vegan and I don't really enjoy reading about how animals are mistreated :/ )
In other, nicer, news, a new user just left a very good first answer on my question :) It's right over here
@Ælis The article is basically saying that milk is being used as a symbol of white supremacy (true), so drinking milk makes you a white supremacist. I think that's some kind of logical fallacy.
@EmC Yeah, it's how vegan activism usually works. You show horribles pictures/videos and you hope people will react to it and stop eating animals/buying their fur. I understand it to be necessary to "convert" people, but once you are, seeing those pictures/video is a bit too much :/
I really really like the suggestion to use "Is there anything I can pray for?" in that answer. So thoughtful, but so simple. It offers the other person the opportunity to decline gracefully if they do not believe in prayers or whatever.
@Belle Too bad I don't believe in prayers >< It doesn't stop me for "hoping" stuff, though. Maybe I could say instead "is there anything I could hope for you?" but that would probably sound a bit weird ^^'
@Ælis Same, but this one hit home because I recently had an awkward encounter at work with colleagues telling me they'll pray for me. I was like 'sure?'. I didn't believe it would help, but it was nice, but weird.
@Belle Well, it must be nice to see that some people are ready to pray for you :) But I definitively get the awkwardness. Especially since we don't really talk about these subjects in France (no one ever told me they would "pray for me" but many have told me they would "finger cross" for me)
I realize now how weird it is that I don't find "finger-crossing" weird but I do find "prayer" to be x)
@Belle No one, would ever do that in France. I'm pretty sure it would be seen as unprofessional. In France, everyone is supposed to act like they have no religion, even if they do
@brug I don't want to discourage you, but French is far from being perfect either. I do believe that Macron (the president) is a little better than Trump. But it doesn't stop him from being pretty bad (like despising everyone that isn't rich and healthy)
@brug I... fully understand the need to rant, and the hurt feelings... but there's a lot of language in there that's not so nice either (cis, cishet, white man, ignorant bigotry... they're all pretty easily imagined as being spat at you by an angry faced person). I'm going to unstar it from the sidebar for that reason.
(And that's not really a message for @brug, as they can't star their own)
@Tinkeringbell I'd be fine with you removing it entirely. It isn't very nice. And we don't need to pollute this space with the drama for MSE. Thank you for letting me rant. The room was supportive. Let's move on now.
@Belle ohh nice. I worked with a woman who got her septum pierced in response to the boss telling another woman that she had to remove her septum piercing because he didn't like them. (Unfortunately both of them lost their jobs within a month)
@TheTinyMan There's a pretty long list of Google results for 'cis pejorative'... especially in combination with a vent/rant, it will give off that impression to people who want to see it that way :)
it's just a descriptive term.. the only times I've seen people claim it's pejorative is when - I won't say trolling, but when they are already unhappy with what's being said
I do understand that if we talk about issues involving trans people, it's a good way to distinguish between groups... like neurodiverse and neurotypical are better than 'crazy and normal'... I don't have a good option to offer besides 'if you don't have to mention it, don't'. Like we edited sex/gender into salutation last week ;)
It's weird, I kind of identify as cishet, but I'm not actualy straight. I'm bi. But I've been in 'straight' relationships for 10 years, so I'm a bit afraid to say "I'm LGBT too!"
@Belle Yeah, it's a weird term for me to see applied to me too. I never really had any serious relationships, so how would I know? How would the other person know better than I know then?
I guess it's mostly for yourself. I finally rent a place from a woningcorporatie, so I'm allowed to do things to the exterior. I'm going to put a flag pole above the door and have a rainbow flag out all June next year :)
@Belle Ehhh. I identify as agender and I'm not completely straight but I almost consider myself cishet, too. I mean, I don't feel like LGBT fits much better than cis at least?
@Belle I'm in a similar situation (pansexual but most of my last relationships were with men), and I see why you could feel scared to publicly identify as such. From my experience - if that's what feels right, then please do so! Technically, your situation makes you part of the LGBT community, but if you don't relate to it, don't bother.
There'll always be people angry at you for whatever it is you identify to. They don't matter. What matters is how you feel. And that you're loved for who you are. And you know what you are? You're great! I'm glad you're back.
I dated a trans person in high school. My parents didn't know we were dating, but they didn't approve of him being trans in the first place. They called him "her" and said the woman to date "her" would have to be very confused.
@Tinkeringbell Yes I am super fortunate. Most people aren't so lucky. I've heard a lot of stories. Not to mention the divorce rate for transitioning trans people is 70%
@brug Well... it kinda makes sense if both people thought they were hetero before they married? At least to me. At some point you're going to reach a point where your transitioning partner is just no longer sexually attractive to you, as much as you might love the person....
@Belle Nice! My aunt and her daughters used to do these too... to the point where they couldn't talk about anything else besides the cheap diamond paintings they bought on AliExpress each time you met them :P I'm kinda glad they're not that much into it anymore :P
Yours looks like it's going to be massive!
Is it hard to stick those in just the right place?
It's not that difficult, it's actually quite relaxing. I'm in a facebook group where people always talk about the ones you can buy in a shop called Action. It's a shop that could be Aliexpress's Dutch storefront.
@Belle I know Action! I like getting craft supplies there, and the pillows (makes good crochet stuffing)! I didn't know they also sold diamond paintings...
I used to be on several craft groups on Facebook, that also talked a lot about what was on sale there each week and then all those ladies would comment either 'Oh, I went and everything was gone :(' or 'Look at my super big haul!'
I had a yarn shop just down the street when I still lived in Vlissingen which sold cotton for 1.75, which was really nice. She went out of business after I moved away though :( may or may not be related.
Hahaha definitely related! :P The yarn shop here in town is still open, but they charge 2.50 a ball (phildar). I do go there when I don't feel like going to the city for a few balls of yarn though, and to support the local business.
This question occurred to me when looking at one of the answers on this question.
The asker had a complaint about some specific predictions the answerer had made about the likely outcome of following their advice. The asker felt uncomfortable about some perceived implications of those prediction...
@upper awesome question. Thanks for bringing it to meta where the conversation belongs. I think that's an important discussion that we haven't had yet.
@ankii Mostly, it's up to the mods ^^ (since they are the only ones who can add the "feature" tag). But I remember the sandbox and some of our faq question being featured from time to time, so if it's faq or a big change, then it's probably a good candidate for feature
oh didn't mean this one scohe refers to, but some questions on AD meta have votes only from mods who I think somehow are notified of meta questions(someone said that some day)
so they're not hot enough and are awaiting consensus which is never going to come.
Off topic but questions in camel case make me feel wave-y. I can't read them in my head properly. My head-voice reads them like a bad electronic voice.
@scohe001 It basically works as a main site. For example, mods can't suspend users on a meta site either, and we can definitely suspend people on MSE :P
@Ælis meh, we don't get new meta questions often enough for that to be worth it. I'd be wasting that much screen space for days at a time when there are no new questions :p
@EmC I think I want to ask them to feature things regularly.. keeps flow and people interested out of the main site's decorum. Not that metas are a place for off-topic discussions but definitely an escape. Some questions are about tag separations, one is about editing guidelines which is applicable to a wider audience of editors who sometimes leave troubling things in posts.
@Tinkeringbell Ooh now that I could get behind. Although people would definitely be calling out "favoritism" if anyone in this room got one (even though ppl in here hit HNQ all the time--looking at you @Ælis -.-) . There's really no good solution :/
@user58 ooh snazzy. Maybe someday I'll see one in the wild
@scohe001 It's why I kinda was hesitant about the 'take a question out of HNQ' option too. I didn't really want the responsibility to decide who was allowed to stay in and who went out! But in the end, we've only used it a few times, and often on request. So it's not too bad ;)
Though the MSO thing did result in an uptick of comments/flags on MSE asking for featured tags to be added or removed, and we left those to the CMs because we did not want to decide on that ;)
I wanted to share something here before bed. I've had a new coworker since two months. He's kind of nice. Very open about being autistic. I'm not "out" in the workplace.
Last week we were talking about gatekeeping and I said something like "You've probably experienced quite a bit of gatekeeping, having autism," to him. He responded: "You know it's a joke, right?"
@Ælis Yeah... I can understand saying that you're on the spectrum without an official diagnosis. But joking... A few of my colleagues seemed to know it was a joke and think it was funny. Quite a few excused his behavior. I'm not sure if I'm being overly sensitive about it or not.
@Belle Pretty sure you aren't... In any case, I would be pretty upset if on of my coworkers acted like that, making fun of people being on the spectrum :/
I told him about meltdowns afterwards in a one-on-one. How they affected me. How I planned my life around brain.exe crashing once in a while. He seemed sorry.
It just hit me. Instead of "huh?" I should've made the command for the bot to show the regex tripped "NANI?!?!??!" @Ælis @avazula I missed a golden opportunity :(
