minnow

Tardigrades are just talented like that, don't be a hater

Seriously.

"Trump destroyed my multi generation family business, but I'd rather lose my multi generation family business than have a black, female, Democrat for president."

That's the level of brainwashing we're dealing with. It's profound.

The Emperor Calígula declared war against Poseidon, had his army march to the English Channel, and ordered them to strike the water with their weapons and collect sea shells as spoils of war.

So yeah, I think you're on to something.

If you're the person being arrested, your options are to surrender or fight and hope they only beat you within an inch of your life without actually killing you (with the understanding that the chances of them killing you are increasing every day). Unless you manager to use legal force against them in which case you are 100% dead.

Community defense is when OTHER people come to rescue you, typically using nonviolent methods to harass and inhibit the agents until they give up and leave. Of course, the chances that agents will just kill them are increasing every day, too. Either way, once you've been targeted you'll likely need to go into hiding, and engaging legal council is probably a good idea even if you're a citizen.

I don't think this is pessimistic or nihilistic. I feel like it's a pretty accurate assessment of the likely possibilities. I'm open to hearing other interpretations, though.

It doesn't matter if it's a blue or a red state if there aren't any more elections because they've been suspended because of war with, say, NATO.

The absolute least we can do is force them to jump through the hoops. Like, I get that it feels pointless but it's better than just giving up and letting them do whatever they want.

They WANT you to feel like there's no point so that you'll give up. They want you to give up because that's the easiest way for them to win. Why give them the satisfaction? They haven't actually won yet, but even if I can never win I'll won't give up no matter how impossible the victory, and neither should you.

Maybe then TERFs are finally going to drop the F, like they should have a long time ago.

Just because they mandate body cams doesn't mean the agents are 1) wearing body cams, or 2) turning them on.

This is a fascist regime, they'll say anything and do whatever they want. Policy and reality aren't connected in any meaningful way. All you've pointed out is that they're either lying or ignoring policy, both of which are par for the course.

Ah, I think I see where the confusion is.

The "positive" or "negative" identification is in relation to what the person claims. So if a person claims to be a woman, we can use science to determine either "yes this person is definitely a woman" or "maybe this person is a woman." What we can't do is say "no this person definitely isn't a woman" because it's possible there is some factor we haven't identified or discovered yet which would validate their identity.

Edit to add: actually, I can think of ONE test to prove that somebody who says they're a woman but isn't: gender transition to the gender they claim to identify as. Cisgender people usually get severe gender dysphoria if they attempt gender transition. I would consider that proof positive that they aren't the gender they claim to be. However, subjecting somebody to such an experiment without fully informing them if the risks and/or against their will is massively unethical which, imo, disqualifies it for the purposes of this conversation. But technically it's an option.

That's probably because I wasn't writing a rebuttal per se, but a clarification. The distinction is important because, although he's incorrect to say that we have no means of identifying if somebody is a women besides them honestly self identifying, we also don't know if we have found all the different means by which a person may legitimately be considered a women. We can positively ID a person as a certain gender, but we can't negatively ID them as not a certain gender.

So I guess the direct answer to the question about if we can identify a woman outside of a person self identifying is "sometimes". Certainly, allowing people to self identify is easier than forcing them to take a bunch of tests and MRI scans only to get results ranging from a "yes" to "maybe"

I'm not super familiar with what specific aspects of the brain are different between men and women, but the fact remains that there are differences at least in the manner in which the brain processes certain input related to sex & gender, as well as the cortical homunculus (which I suspect is probably the area of greatest contrast and even that's pretty minimal).

Science has also looked at the question about difference in ability and found that there's no statistically difference in the brain's ability between men and women. So no, this isn't a dangerous question that's going to lead to a slippery slope of claiming that women are less able than men. That claim was already being made and has already been investigated and debunked.

No, I'm saying that the lack of any particular medical criteria can't be used to invalidate anybody who genuinely identifies as transgender.