There seems to be a trend of white people creating different ethnic backgrounds for themselves in order to achieve and occupy positions that they might not have been able to otherwise. Alice Speri mentions two prominent recent cases.
There is a history of white people posing as persons of color or claiming ethnic backgrounds they do not have. In 2015, a national controversy erupted following the revelation that Rachel Dolezal, a white woman, had for years posed as Black before becoming president of an NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington. Others have claimed roots they don’t have; more recently, Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., falsely claimed Jewish descent, among a host of other lies.
Speri says that now there is another case that involves a white woman who passed herself off as a queer Muslim woman of color and rose to a senior position as a diversity officer in a progressive organization.
Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim activist who for years has encouraged people to believe that she is a woman of color, including Latina as well as of South Asian and Arab descent, is the AFSC’s chief equity, inclusion, and culture officer, a senior position that gives her access to the files of dozens of the organization’s staff and volunteers. But Saraswati, who was born Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, is not a person of color, according to her mother, Carol Perone.
“I call her Rachel,” Perone told The Intercept, when reached by telephone. “I don’t know why she’s doing what she’s doing.”
Saraswati, her mother added, is of British, German, and Italian descent — not Latina, South Asian, or Arab. “I’m as white as the driven snow and so is she,” added Perone, who also shared with The Intercept photos of Saraswati as a child. In the photos, which the mother asked not be published, Saraswati’s complexion is significantly lighter than the bronzed look in more recent photographs. Perone also shared with The Intercept her Ancestry.com profile and a photo of Saraswati’s biological father, who is deceased. Another relative who asked not to be identified confirmed that Saraswati is white.
Perone noted that her daughter converted to Islam in high school and that at some point she seemed to have felt the need to portray herself as having a different ethnic identity.
“I’m German and British, and her father was Calabrese Italian,” her mother added. “She’s chosen to live a lie, and I find that very, very sad.”
Oskar Pierre Castro, a human resources professional who participated in the search committee to fill Sarawati’s position, told The Intercept that she had presented herself as a “queer, Muslim, multiethnic woman.”
While she did apparently convert to Islam at an early age and no doubts have been raised as to her claim of being queer, the fact that she could check off three diversity boxes would have added more weight to her diversity credentials than if she had been a white queer Muslim woman.
But that is not all. Saraswati has also had shifting political positions that have raised suspicions that her motives may have involved more than just using fake ethnicity to climb the diversity ladder.
The concerns about Saraswati include what some AFSC members and supporters regard as a possible hidden political agenda. In an anonymous letter posted on Medium that The Intercept has confirmed is from AFSC members, they noted that after 9/11 she appeared in conservative and Islamophobic spaces, including right-wing TV shows, where she was presented as a “moderate” Muslim critical of Islamic extremism.
…“People are concerned,” a member of AFSC’s leadership told The Intercept, requesting anonymity to avoid retaliation. “There’s a fear that she could be an agent, because she started her career right-wing. She was a token Muslim voice in that milieu. She never publicly apologized.”
…The AFSC, the organization leader noted, has a history of being infiltrated by the FBI and has frequently been attacked by pro-Israel groups for its work in solidarity with Palestinians. In 2021, another leading civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was hit by scandal when the executive and legal director of its Ohio chapter was revealed to be covertly working with an anti-Muslim group, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and sharing confidential information with them. Incidents like that, as well as a long history of law enforcement infiltrating racial justice and activist spaces, have left AFSC members shaken.
“Imagine the trauma of people who confided in her, trusted her, and shared sensitive information about their work and about their lives, thinking that she’s a fellow person of color,” the AFSC leader said, referring to Saraswati. “And now all of a sudden, it’s a white woman with a right-wing history. It’s scary.”
…By that point, Saraswati had built a public profile as a Muslim woman, often wearing a hijab and frequently making media appearances to discuss Islam. In 2007, Saraswati appeared on CNN with conservative commentator Glenn Beck, and also appeared on Fox News and the far-right channel Newsmax. In 2013, she also appeared in a film produced by the Clarion Project, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center said specialized in “rabidly anti-Muslim films.” And she worked with the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, another group that has been accused of promoting Islamophobia.
Yet despite her association with right-wing groups raising the suspicions of fellow Muslim writers and activists, Saraswati was later able to cast herself as a progressive activist, launching a career with organizations working on LGBTQ+ rights and more recently working with the Philadelphia mayor’s office, where she chaired the commission on LGBT affairs until she joined the AFSC in June 2021.
Saraswati has not responded to requests for comment.
The left is in a tricky spot here, I think.
Gender (as distinct from sex), we are told, has no basis in biology and is a social construct. I’m entirely on board with that -- trans men are men, trans women are women, trans rights are human rights.
Race, we are also told, has no basis in biology and is a social construct. I’m entirely on board with that -- black lives matter, colonialism and its legacy suck, and racists can bugger off.
We accept, due to gender having no biological basis and being just a social construct, that someone should be supported in identifying as their gender, regardless of the appearance of their body -- this is a Good Thing. But if someone chooses to ignore the social construct of race and identify as “their” race, regardless of the appearance of their body, this is a Bad Thing.
I was presented with this argument by my Brexit-voting “I’m not anti-immigrant but” brother in law when Dolezal was a thing. I’d really appreciate a snappy comeback that doesn’t sound like an equivalent of “it’s just DIFFERENT, OK”.
#1 sonofrojblake, you raise a good point. I think (and full disclosure, I’m nothing close to being a socialogist) that when people are talking about their race it’s shorthand for talking about their ancestry. So if I claim to be Black that’s shorthand for claiming that at least half of my ancestors are from Africa, or something like that. And that is something that can be objectively determined.
That’s my half-baked theory.
The difference between gender and race is that one’s perception of one’s gender has (at least in some people) an internal source whereas even the idea of dividing humanity into races, as well as which traits are salient for the purpose of these divisions, are entirely imposed from outside.
@1
So your brother told you these things have no basis in biology.
What’s this “we” thing?
I think the issue is whether you are lying about your background and experience.
I am a trans woman, which (for me) means that I wish to be treated the way women are treated in everyday interactions, not the way men are. I do not claim to have the life experiences that people who have grown up female have had or that women with typical female bodies have (menstruation, childbirth.) I.e., I don’t claim to be cis. However, that difference doesn’t seem to matter for most of my daily life. And I think I’ve read and heard enough about the experience of cis women to have a reasonably good second-hand knowledge of what it’s like. (Definitely way more than most cis men — but that’s not saying much.)
What people like George Santos are doing wrong is pretending to an experience they don’t have. At first blush, I can’t say Mr. Santos isn’t Jewish — he might have converted. But if his parents were not, in fact, Holocaust survivors, he cannot have had the experience of growing up in a family of Holocaust survivors. At best, he could have second-hand experience (e.g., by knowing a lot of such children, or read extensively.)
The same with Rachel Donezal. She can certainly identify as Black (whatever that means.) And if as a child she had appeared Black and grown up in a Black family, her experiences would probably be quite similar to more obviously Black people. But AFAIK, that is not the case. She is pretending to a life experience she has not had.
@1
That is not correct. That is the error in your reasoning. Yes, gender is distinct from sex, but it does have a basis in biology, that basis being sex. But it is also a social construct. It is not mutually exclusive for something to be both based in biology and be a social construct. I think this is what anat is trying to say as well where that “internal source” is sex.
Does that make sense? I know you, sonofrojblake, have this problem where you want things to be simple binaries, perhaps because you struggle to grasp complex concepts. This is not meant to be an insult. It’s OK to have limitations like that, but you need to recognize your limitations. This is something you need to do better at.
Anyway, to try to state this in a way your brain will hopefully comprehend, I’ll repeat that gender is not sex, but gender does have a basis in sex (and thus biology). Because gender is not sex, as you say, “trans men are men, trans women are women.” But because gender does have that basis in sex (and, again, biology), it is still a useful social construct. The same cannot be said about race. Race truly, as you recognize, has no basis in biology. This difference, then, is the primary reason why I don’t have an issue, for example, with someone that most people would identify as a man identifying themself as a woman but do take issue with someone that most people would identify as a white as identifying themself as non-white. Please think about that and be sure to give your brain the time it needs to process this information.
Also, there is a good video by Abigail Thorn on social constructs that will likely really confuse you! But here’s the link anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koud7hgGyQ8
Grifters gotta grift. Still, it seems really odd that she chose a typically Hindu surname for her scam. While I’m sure there are some actual Muslims named “Saraswati”, there can’t be that many. That _should_ have raised red flags earlier, if anyone in charge was actually paying attention instead of just checking boxes…
@6 Leo Buzalsky
And here we have the creeping Amerocentrism of “most people would identify as a white”. The boundaries of which race is which is thoroughly arbitrary and all over the place, varying by time and culture. Lots of people, probably the majority of people where I live here in the southwest U.S. would identify as white, but most people in the U.S. would call them POC or an equivalent term. They even get a special box on the census form.
The left is in a tricky spot here, I think.
That’s what right-wing morons and trolls say whenever they’re trying to misrepresent something people on “the left” are saying. It’s not a good beginning to a comment.
Gender (as distinct from sex), we are told, has no basis in biology and is a social construct.
“We were told” wrong, kind of. Gender is PARTIALLY based in biology, but the biology is WAAAAY more complex than just “innies” vs “outies,” and it’s strongly connected to environmental factors.
Race, we are also told, has no basis in biology and is a social construct.
“We are told” wrong about that too, kind of. Yes, race, and its relevance, are a social construct, but how one is treated within said construct is determined, for better or worse, by the physical features one is born with, and the race with which those features are associated. If one is born with “black” features, one will be treated as a black person. So if you don’t have black features, and didn’t get treated as other black people were, then people will treat you with great suspicion if you say you were born black, as opposed to merely saying you strongly identify with black culture or experience and/or have grown up among black people and have learned a lot from them. (Always remember, Dolezal wasn’t just making claims about her culture or identity; she was lying about her ANCESTRY.)
Ethnicity is real, and can be measured by doing a DNA test. Race is a social construct. All humans are the same race.
Lying about your ethnicity in order to assume a position of influence within an organization devoted specifically to fighting for equality for POC is dishonest and disrespectful to that cause. It’s appropriation. (And possibly a fetish or psychological issue)
I don’t think two examples constitute a trend.
The lies of Santos aren’t limited to claiming Jewish ancestry to scam donations from wealthy Jewish donors. He is simply a brazen criminal who should be extradited right back to Brazil to stand trial for multiple cases of theft and fraud.
@Kenneth L Baker -- I don’t think it’s as simple as that, and rather the point is that ALL our ancestors are from Africa, sooner or later. But thanks.
@anat: that was close to the best I could come up with in the moment. Thanks also.
@Allison: I think TERFs and idiots* view anyone trans as inherently dishonest on some level. I don’t have the spoons to get properly into with him, but despite knowing trans people he persists in coming across like he thinks it’s something they’re “pretending” to be. I think he’s just about come to terms with the fact gay people exist and that’s as far as he’s able to go (so far) in believing not everyone is like him. I wish I could say I think this indicates there some hope for him. But that’s a good answer, cheers.
*(tautology? -- No, my b-i-l lacks the intellectual framework to qualify as *any* kind of feminist and his arguments aren’t that… I was going to say sophisticated, but I don’t think TERF arguments are that, either. Thought through, even in bad faith, let’s say)
@Leo Buzalsky
And I don’t take it as one. I don’t struggle to grasp complex concepts, and I don’t want things to be simple binaries per se, but you’re on the money with a tendency towards rejecting shades of grey in favour of black/white categories. It’s a personal weakness I recognise and try to avoid having it affect my reasoning as far as possible. Offtopic but related: I’ve been trotting out this argument, in more or less these words, for over twenty years: “Oh you believe life starts at “the moment of conception”? Which moment do you mean? Sperm contact with the egg? Acrosome reaction with zona pellucida? Acrosome reaction with perivitelline space? Plasma membrane fusion? Sperm nucleus entering the egg?”. The point being -- it’s a continuum, there’s no “moment”. I have never had problem with this concept, I just have to remind myself sometimes to apply it.
Thanks for that video link, it was really good. I laughed out loud at 12:18. I also read the comments (YOU SHOULD NEVER READ THE COMMENTS!) and actually there’s some quality stuff in there, too. I can only assume it’s been assiduously moderated.
And your answer, while not the snappy zinger I was hoping for, looks like the best I’m going to get, so thanks for that.
Mike Crichton @#7,
That is a good point. Saraswati is not just a name associated with Hindus, it is the name of the “Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, speech, wisdom, and learning”.
It is an odd choice for a convert to Islam..
I thought the use of the word “Yet” in the post title seemed odd. “Yet another Marvel movie”, OK. “Yet another Top Gun movie”. eh?
What a pain to require DNA tests for everyone joining your organization. It sounds anything but progressive, IMHO.
It reminds me of the people saying you can tell who is a man or a woman by measuring testosterone levels. How that distinction worked before scientists identified it (and how it dubiously works after the fact) is still arbitrary. You’re left with the fundamental circularity of starting with a group you already assume exists and you find sciency-sounding tests that say you are or are not part of the group.
beholder- What a pain to require DNA tests for everyone joining your organization. It sounds anything but progressive, IMHO.
Is there some reason you need to be a shitlord in comment threads? Nobody has advocated any such purity nonsense, just as Kamala Harris is not, and has never been a cop.
“Gender (as distinct from sex), we are told, has no basis in biology and is a social construct. I’m entirely on board with that — trans men are men, trans women are women, trans rights are human rights.”
Let’s not confuse gender with gender identity. My gender identity is in my brain. It has a biological basis.
Gender is a social construct. OK. But this social construct did not make me transgender. My gender identity does that. Society did not make me transgender. My gender identity did that.
“This difference, then, is the primary reason why I don’t have an issue, for example, with someone that most people would identify as a man identifying themself as a woman . . . ”
I am not a man who identifies as a woman. I’m transgender. I’m not transgender because I identify as a woman or as transgender or as anything else. I’m transgender because I’m transgender.
A (cisgender) man is not a man because he identifies as a man or anything else. He’s a man because he’s a man. A (cisgender) woman is not a woman because she identifies as a woman. She’s a woman because she’s a woman.
Long ago my generation of trans kids were told we were cis kids, and so initially that’s how we identified. But that didn’t make us cis kids. It made us trans kids who temporarily misidentified as cis kids because we were fed misinformation.
Now, we are not transpeople who identify as transpeople because we’ve received better information. We’re transgender because we’re transgender. We’ve always been transgender, regardless of the information we’ve been fed, regardless of how we might have identified at one time or another.
I recently saw a note to the effect that neurologists believe they are decades away from being able to explain why transpeople are trans. I’m fine with that. Cis people aren’t required to explain why they’re cis. And this transgender person isn’t required to explain why she’s trans.
DNA, and the layers of developmental endpoints from shared experiences. And populations with those, and those populations moving around to places involving other sets of experiences…
Tethys @10:
Gotta challenge that. Ethnicity can be as much, or more, determined by cultural factors. Anatolia is a good example. By the time the Turks first invaded, the various local groups (largely Indo-European-speaking; Lycian, Lydian, Phrygian, etc) had been largely Hellenized. They then underwent Turkification. These were cultural and linguistic shifts much more than genetic.
What’s conservative about being on conservative programs as a <moderate muslim critical of extremist Islam? Oh right, someone said “…She was a token Muslim voice in that milieu. She never publicly apologised” and apparently that’s all it takes. Evidence that she was not genuine in her faith is underwhelming. There’s plenty of other dishonesty in her background, this by comparison seems a bit speculative.
Amazing! Not the patronising stuff, that’s par for the course here, but that you would try to pretend you mean no insult after that cavalcade of obvious put-downs.
Say, whatever happened to the ‘intent is not magic’ drones? Anyway, getting back on track:
Yes it does. The differences between bodies that are taken as evidence for being of different races -- skin colour being the obvious one -- are biological in origin and are heritable. That said, I agree the concept of race is highly inconsistent and can be taken to mean all sorts of things depending on who you speak to, and many of the things are not biological at all.
Family names do not indicate religion, and it is perfectly possible to have a surname from a certain region dominated by one religion and yet be another, or not be religious at all. I find it is best to not make such assumptions; further I completely reject that this should be considered a ‘red flag’.
But it is perfectly in line with an attempt to pretend to be of South Asian descent.
Rob Grigjanis
Ethnicity is in your DNA, and is inherited. There is no way to change your DNA.
Culture is environmental, as is language. Your cultural identification has very little to do with genetics. There have been several instances in the last five years of DNA tests done by white supremacists, which reveal that they in fact carry quite a bit of DNA from sub Saharan Africa.
The cognitive dissonance when they read their results is very enjoyable if you appreciate the schadenfreude.
Obviously, people who perform these pretences feel it is beneficial to them.
Notably, for historically-contingent reasons, it is much easier to pretend to be part of a minority group than the converse. Especially when going just by looks.
—
Tethys, Rob is correct, but so are you.
Only prob is you’re using the term ‘ethnicity’ to specifically mean having phenotypic attributes shared by descent within a subpopulation.
Rob is using it in its normal sociological sense.
Obviously, unless civilisation falls, over time such distinctions will diminish, because no sub-population is likely to be isolated for the necessary number of generations needed to sufficiently change the phenotype traits.
So that’s probably a good thing, overall.
So, uh, you know how some girls go through a phase of insisting they’re, like, fairies or whatever? Maybe this is the white-woman version of that, where they feel like they need to make themselves “interesting” and “unique” in order to stand out or be popular or relevant.
Truth is, we’re all special, in our own ways — no need to go out of the way to pretend to be someone you’re not!
https://afsc.org/profile/raquel-saraswati
Probably rather lucrative choice.
@ 1 sonofrojblake
Srsly? Mate, this is literally a Fox News talking point from 2015. It has been addressed so many, many, many times.
First, as others have said this person is lying. Trans people are not passing themselves off as something else. The equivalent of this person would not be a trans person, but a person assigned female who claimed to be a cis man born with testes capable of getting a woman pregnant. Trans men don’t do that.
Secondly, the scientific consensus is that gender identity has a biological basis, both in utero hormonal and genetic. Gender categories are socially constructed, but which category will feel most like ‘home’ to a person is innate.
Thirdly, ancestry is external to a person -- it’s who your ancestors were. Gender is innate. If you want an analogy better ones would be handedness (left or right handed) or sexual orientation.
Fourthly, fifthly and sixthly -- people to do not differentiate into different ethnicities in the womb, the some parents cannot produce people of different ethnicities, and there are no ethnic hormones a person can take that work on ethnicity receptors to change their ethnicity
In short the comparison is utterly ludicrous and you should be blushing all shades of red that you attempted to revive this long dead transphobic Fox News meme in the year 2023.
JM
Oops, too late, I’m already descended primarily from some weird people from the Black Forest, who came from closed societies due to living in small rural communities way up in the Alps, and then did isolate themselves long enough to have distinct genetic SNPs. Some of them are still completely closed to outsiders. We are in fact studied by geneticists due to having a predisposition to rapid onset Alzheimer’s.
My only DNA surprise was that I have at least 2 female ancestors within the last two hundred and fifty years who are not ethnically a flavor of German, which confirms some of my genealogical research. The country currently known as Germany did not exist when most of my ancestors fled their homes due to the French Revolution and Franco Prussian wars.
It is also quite possible for siblings to have different ethnicities due to the fact that each child gets a random 50% from each parent. If your Mom is 30% Irish, you can inherit all 30%, a portion of it, or none at all.
Tethys@20 wrote: “Ethnicity is in your DNA, and is inherited. There is no way to change your DNA.”
“Hispanic or Latino” is the term used in the US Census for an ethnic group which includes people with black skin and Sub-Saharan ancestry as well as people with white skin and European ancestry. One such friend of mine has German-speaking ancestors who moved to Argentina, though she herself grew up in Buenos Aires speaking Spanish.
How then can “Hispanic or Latino” be encoded in DNA?
Following on John Morales’ “normal sociological sense” comment @31, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_group comments, “Ethnicity may be construed as an inherited or as a societally imposed construct. Ethnic membership tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language, dialect, religion, mythology, folklore, ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, or physical appearance. Ethnic groups may share a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, depending on group identification, with many groups having mixed genetic ancestry.” The whole entry comes across as highlighting how “ethnic group” doesn’t require an inherited genetic component.
@Silentbob, 24:
You really should read all the way to the end of the first comment before jerking your knee.
I didn’t have a snappy comeback then, I want one now. I’m not going to blush about that.
But, y’know, thanks I guess for popping up and repeating all the things a bunch of other people already said, only more eloquently than you did and in good faith.
Andrew Dahlke
I referring to genetic ethnicity as determined via DNA, which is not related to the race categories currently listed on the US census.
There is quite a bit of racism built into the census and its White sub-categories of Hispanic, Jewish, Other, etc. Apparently my German ancestors are just plain white by virtue of coming directly to the US from Europe?
German as an ethnic category and language covers quite a few European countries, some of which don’t even exist anymore. Your friends DNA will be mapped to those regions if that is where her ancestors came from despite whatever language she learned to speak.
Of course, even the DNA testing can be biased since its accuracy increases when the population sample size increases. Europeans are well-represented, but people who have ancestors from Africa, South America and Eastern Asia receive far more general results.
@ #27 sonofrojblake
“I didn’t have a snappy comeback then, I want one now. I’m not going to blush about that.”
Please. It’s not that hard. Going back to the beginning of the Dolezal saga, those were the days when people were mooting the idea that perhaps she can be black because she identifies as black. People can say what they like about that. It has nothing to do with transgender people.
Transgender people do not claim that a man can be a woman because he “identifies as a woman,” nor that a woman can be a man because she “identifies as a man”. Where you’ll most often hear this sort of thing is from our enemies, who claim that that’s what we’re claiming.
This is their way of belittling us--and note that there are other similar arguments that attack us in the same way. It’s their way of saying that we’re not really transgender, we’re merely identifying as something. And obviously, just because you identify as something doesn’t mean you are really that something.
This is one example of what I call “the Stupid Strategy”. I.e., think of something really stupid to say, then allege that that’s what transgender people think, believe, claim, etc.
So to anyone who wants to bring up Rachel Dolezal, I would reply, “Let Dolezal say whatever she likes. Anybody who wants to discuss that is perfectly free to. It’s got nothing to do with us transgender people. We don’t believe that simply identifying as something makes you that something. If you think we do, that’s merely one more example of your misconceptions about us.”
moonslicer, a most excellent comment @29.
Succinct, apposite and well-articulated.
(Impressive)
—
Tethys:
Very much depends on definitions and taxonomy and local social relevance and granularity.
From Wikipedia, this is just the Slavs, not counting the rest of Europe:
“Present-day Slavs are classified into East Slavs (chiefly Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians), West Slavs (chiefly Czechs, Kashubians, Poles, Slovaks and Sorbs) and South Slavs (chiefly Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes).”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavs)
But since you mention the Germans:
“The German ethnicity emerged among Germanic peoples of Western and Central Europe, particularly the Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Thuringii, Alemanni and Baiuvarii.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans)
@moonslicer:
With respect: maybe not for you. But in the moment, presented with what is obviously bollocks, I reached for and didn’t find an answer that didn’t come across as “it’s just not the same, OK?”. And I was frustrated by my failure.
This, though:
Thank you. That goes a way towards helping me be better equipped if/when this nonsense comes up again, which is depressingly likely.
@31
A testical insult instead something obvious.
It’s nonsense that people are different.
Do you have similar problems with handedness or pessimism as general things that shape individuals? Or is it just the things that have to do with genitals?
You had the need for a testicle reference instead of reasons. You don’t want to give up your tools of social control.
I’m the one who chooses what they do with words others have feelings about. People like you.
Keep in mind these are variables that I’m just listing. I’m not actually going to do any of this.
As an individual I can choose to respond to the behavior of others when they use gendered language based on their individual behavior. I can do the same with groups.
I can be helpful or a hindrance. I can soothe or torment. Shaped by my conservative protestant military background. Variables in metaphorical heads-up-display. Individuals and groups can pretend that the text and sounds we choose to attach to anatomy and action are solid and unchangeable all they want. They will fail.
Ethnicity is in your DNA, and is inherited.
Not really. ANCESTRY is connected to DNA, but “ethnicity” has a pretty big cultural/environmental component. I might say I’m “ethnically” Scottish-Irish because I’m descended from people who came here from those places, but those are VERY distant ancestors (as in pre-Revolution immigrants) — and NOT AT ALL akin to later waves of Irish immigrants. I can add that my culture, language and upbringing are kinda Scottish-Irish, but again, that’s a pretty tenuous connection, and mostly by default — basically it only means I’ve had more input from, and interest in, British-Isles cultures than from, say, Italian, German or French culture.
I also have a wee bit of Chilean blood in me, from (IIRC) my dad’s mum, but I do not consider myself “ethnically” Chilean at all, because I have absolutely zero connection to Chilean culture, arts, language, history or anything else. So the Chilean DNA isn’t at all relevant to what I consider my ethnicity. And if I met a bunch of Chileans or Chilean immigrants and said “I’m one of you,” it wouldn’t be relevant to them either.
PS: I’m more directly descended from some North Carolina slaveowners, but that’s nothing but a DNA connection — I do not consider myself culturally or “ethnically” connected to that sorry lot at all.
@32: are you high?
@36
Making up stories instead of responding. That’ll help.
No, there’s definitely a testicle reference and a label of “nonsense”. Did I lock-up the part of their mind that depends on anatomical non-literal language?
WMDKitty @22: Yeah, a friend of my mom’s knew someone like that. One day she was Native American, next day she was black… It’s totally okay to take an active interest in other cultures, to learn from them things one’s own culture didn’t provide, and to incorporate bits of them into one’s own identity/persona in the ongoing process of growing and learning; but this person seems to have taken it too far, with too much pretense and confused self-delusion. There’s right and wrong ways to do that sort of thing.
#37
A genuine question, I wondered the same while reading your comments. You seem stoned.
@40
And now things seeming a way when this one could be responding to things. Cannabis feel cooties maybe? Insults mutate but the underlying instincts are still avoidance. Useful.
Genuine questions contain substance like quotes. Disingenuous people rely on implications only. Disingenuous people do other things even with quotes too.
This would require concrete identification of cannabis associated reasoning issues, if I actually believed there was more than base grasping at things the culture feels negative about. I think the “symbolic function” substage related instincts come online between 5-6 or so, maybe some people can choose to display political instincts beyond just sticking some random concepts together?
sonofrojblake: Yeah, Brony does seem kinda high on something today…
[Brony, false positive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollocks ]
People can feel free to get more specific. I’m not the one who has to fill in the meaning for the reference, testicular or otherwise. The ones requiring such when faced with words they don’t like have a job to do.
And any cannabis references too. I still don’t see any quotes from anyone.
It’s like people don’t see the dependence on the anatomical reference and think I care about the meaning when it’s that meaning undefended that’s useless.
Yet you are exactly doing that, Brony. Only you are doing it wrong.
It’s an utterly common vulgarism in Brit-speak, whether or not you get that.
This is the meaning, from my earlier link:
“The word is often used figuratively in British English and Hiberno-English in a multitude of negative ways; it most commonly appears as a noun meaning “rubbish” or “nonsense”, an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to describe something that is of poor quality or useless. It is also used in common phrases like “bollocks to this”, which is said when quitting a task or job that is too difficult or negative, and “that’s a load of old bollocks”, which generally indicates contempt for a certain subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also appears in positive phrases such as “the dog’s bollocks” or more simply “the bollocks”, which will refer to something which is admired or well-respected.”
Well, I know about your neurodivergence, so I take it in my stride.
To others, you probably appear to be under the influence of something psychoactive.
@48
So what if it’s a common use? I get to reject it, I get to tear it apart into what it is, I get to question someone who can’t or won’t get past a useless non-literal reference to a useless idea in this comment section.
And since it’s meant to be insulting I get to be insulting too and I have my choice of options. And all the frustration doesn’t make the need for people to switch to something more useful.
Feel however you want about it. That’s part of this.
Should be a “… more useful go away.” on the end of the second to last paragraph in 49.
@48
And it’s one thing to notice others using cannabis stories to insultingly reject another, it’s another tell me what I already know while I pressure them to be decent human beings. You too.
Me manipulating those feelings attached to the words is part of this. I’m doing it right now. How anyone progresses is up to them.
Cooties is not figurative, spreading feelings associated with cannabis without thinking they have to justify a thing. I’m happy to run such a person through loops.
You still don’t get it, Brony. Its use connotes friendly informality. No more.
Ironically, it is you who can’t get past it.
Cannabis and irrationality connections that is, maybe there is a cannabis style of posting but it’s not my job to show irrationality. It’s the lazy person grabbing useless cultural symbols because they feel negative about something.
No you don’t get it. I’m posting in here for my reasons, not yours, and I’ll bend the characteristics of an insult how I like since it’s an insult. You can be bothered person number 2 that thinks this matters to my messing with a dismissal.
Number three. Whatever. It’s easier to just quote people.
Well, that sure convinced me you aren’t on stoned!
Repetition is descending in developmental complexity. But go on, show you have keep doing the insult because that’s what you have.
I’ve got a little bet going with myself as to how the answer to this is going to go, so let’s see…
@Brony, 59:
In post 31, I used the word “bollocks”. What do you think that word was referring to?
@60
You explain your dismissive stuff.
You give your words strength. No one else will. That’s why every whiner using things like sjw fails. You depend on insults.
@60
One can make an implication that I might do a particular thing, but that’s the bigot prejudgement making a political show. Disingenuous people don’t wait until you do the particular thing and then explain it. That way they can make up whatever they want.
Yeah, that’s more or less how I expected it to go.
Me too. Just a sad bigot making things up. Can’t back their own words up. Quoting was taught back in grade school, explanation of quotes no lt long after. It’s ok Bigots can be incompetent. I will just use it against them.
Show me a different irrational justification. You’ve already robotically asserted through implications. Repetition is established before speech. You have to use higher parts of your mind to make rational connections.
You are a Markov chain chatbot And I Claim My Five Pounds.
So new insults? Back up to assertions based smashing concepts together.
Testicles, cannabis cooties, descending into symbolic dehumanization so you can pretend bravery while running away. Maybe you do work with the new insult, rise above age 5-7 in complexity. It’s stil a sad bigot telling stories.
There is no bet, it’s made up like the fake ethnic background in the article. So you can feel like you’ve won because you need insults.
Trying to follow where Brony is going with this, but it leaves me completely bollocksed.
There’s always room for improvement.
So you’d never be satisfied?
Always seeking to improve is self-defeating; enough is never enough.
(A lot like an addiction, actually)
A pragmatic attitude.
It’s not like there were any specifics to worry about.
Nah, quite the opposite: an idealistic attitude.
Specifically, you can never ever be satisfied as long as you believe “There’s always room for improvement.” Forever angsting over whether you can manage to improve.
I, of course being pragmatic, know when enough is enough. No angst.
Yeah, there were. You got all worked-up over “bollocks”. Quite specifically.
Again: false positive.
Ooooooo… worked up.
Attribute all the intensity and valance to my comments that you want.
You sure, Brony? OK.
Their valence is void and their intensity is proportional to their quantity.
That is to say, worked-up, but pointlessly and feebly.
GIGO.
No quotes from a very long thread.
Bye
Ah, I think you got it, Brony.
Bye. For now.
Uh… Brony? You okay, dude?
I’m fine. They have the feelings about the insults. It’s just pragmatic to leave them with their assumptions in replacement of questions they could ask with quotes. I do this a lot on nextdoor.
They can quote me any time.
Believe it or no it all means something, but there’s 4 of them, I’m not going to go all that far in helping out when I did ask for quotes. They taught it in grade school.
I did mention the frustration is part of it.
They don’t seem motivated to use the insult now and the other direction is doubling down. What might that result in as far as consequences goes? This is a routine.
It’s an insult. Replace nonsense and testicle references with real reasons or… I do practice.
Mano decides in the end.
If anyone knows Brony in real life, now would be a really good time to do a welfare check, I think.
You are quite the ableist piece of garbage sonofrojblake. Keep going. You look great for… whatever you’re trying to defend.
When the other person doesn’t do a lick of work to respond to what are very real challenges to their insults in words they don’t like that’s a them problem.
If you actually did care you’d be asking other questions. But you don’t. It’s a dominance displays.
I literally have no idea what the fuck you are banging on about. I haven’t insulted you. I haven’t insulted anyone here. You have (I think -- it’s hard to know) become fixated on my use of the word “bollocks” specifically. I asked you straight out what you thought I was referring to when I said that, but you ignored me and continued with this gnomic obscurantism. You were informed by others that it’s a jocular synonym for “bullshit”, but you’ve ignored that information. (I wonder -- if I’d chosen to use “bullshit” instead, would you be obsessing about “excrement insults”?)
Here’s what I said: in the context of an argument with my brother-in-law, where he advanced the notion that if trans people can identify as a gender other than that assigned at birth, then Rachel Dolezal can, in exactly the same way, defensibly identify as a different race, I said: ” in the moment, presented with what is obviously bollocks, I reached for and didn’t find an answer”.
So, to spell it out for you, the thing I was describing as “obviously bollocks” -- the thing I was “insulting” -- was that argument.
To be even clearer: drawing an equivalence between a transgender person’s identity, and Rachel Dolezal’s adoption of a racial identity other than her own, is obviously bollocks. As in, bullshit. As in, NOT a valid equivalence.
I don’t think you understood that, but my attempt to clarify what meant was met with
I literally have no idea what that even means.
I don’t think you agree with my brother-in-law’s argument, I don’t think you’re personally insulted that I called it bollocks, but right now I have no way of knowing as most of your many, many posts seem almost entirely free of actual content and just seem to be almost randomly selected words and phrases lacking much connection to what’s going on around them. Hence my joke about “You are a Markov Chain chatbot And I Claim My Five Pounds”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobby_Lud). I’m 51% certain we’re actually on the same side here, but you’ve fixated on a single word and don’t seem to be able to move past the idea that I’ve insulted you, or someone, or something that you value.
Know that I have not insulted you, never had any desire to, and am genuinely baffled by your behaviour here.
You might consider also why there are expressions of apparent genuine concern for your mental state from people who could hardly be called my friends and allies.
That’s all.
You back up the strength of your opinion of something being nonsense or your testicle version. I’m going to mess with insulting dismissals.
Don’t like it? Don’t use insults. I can manipulate them despite people’s protestations about abstractions involving specific insulting characterizations. Don’t like it? Get some adult words that actually mean something useful. Have a nice day!
You may want to consider learning to express specific diagnostic criteria regarding mental phenomena ableist.
I also criticized cannabis cooties cherry-picker. Your frustration is on you.
When I told John he could attribute whatever intensity and valance he wanted to me I was being serious. Tell me what feelings I’m running on? I’ll dump the full range of human feeling in from of you and let you play guessing games.
sonofrojblake: “gnomic obscurantism?” I have to steal that for something…like maybe in case I see a yard full of Russian-Orthodox lawn-gnomes…?
@91, 92, 93 & 94: nope, still no idea what you’re on about.
@95: you’re welcome. How would you characterise it? It’s weirdly compelling, while making barely any sense, like “Jabberwocky” or Spike Milligan or John Lennon…
THE FAULTY BAGNOSE
(by John Lennon)
Softly softly, treads the Mungle
Thinner thorn behaviour street.
Whorg canteel whorth bee asbin?
Cam we so all complete,
With all our faulty bagnose?
The Mungle pilgriffs far awoy
Religeorge too thee worled.
Sam fells on the waysock-side
And somforbe on a gurled,
With all her faulty bagnose!
Our Mungle speaks tonife at eight
He tells us wop to doo
And bless us cotton sods again
Oamnipple to our jew
(With all their faulty bagnose).
Bless our gurlished wramfeed
Me cursed cafe kname
And bless thee loaf he eating
With he golden teeth aflame
Give us OUR faulty bagnose!
Good Mungle blaith our meathalls
Woof mebble morn so green the wheel
Staggaboon undie some grapeload
To get a little feel
of my own faulty bagnose.
It’s not OUR faulty bagnose now
Full lust and dirty hand
Whitehall the treble Mungle speak
We might as wealth be band
Including your faulty bagnose
Give us thisbe our daily tit
Good Mungle on yer travelled
A goat of many coloureds
Wiberneth all beneath unravelled
And not so MUCH OF YER FAULTY BAGNOSE!
I can tell how you have no idea by all of my content in the comments you cite.
Feelings about words… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Seriously, what kind of response is that? Just “no idea”!
You posture. You keep coming back, you have the feelings.
You can’t even bring yourself to acknowledge the ableism reference. Weak
Does a feeling radiate from the word ableism? It seems untouchable.
Ermahgiwd, sonofrojblake, could you please say ‘I’m sorry, I did not intend offense.” to Brony so he can let it go? I’m quite sure everyone understands that anatomy based insults are often very sexist.
I’m not insulting you Brony, but you seem to be fixating because of wrongness. (Which I totally understand, but this thread is not your personal battlefield against gendered insults, nor is sonofrojblake averse to learning inclusiveness.)
John Morales
That’s a little too far back for DNA. A short list of German speaking countries would include Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, West Prussia, and previous to a Unified Germany, several regions like Alsace, Tyrol, Pomerania, Swabia, Bavaria, Saxony-Anhalt, Franconia, etc….
My GG- Grandfather was born in Bucovina, which is another country that does not exist anymore, though of course the Beech forest was part of the Land of the Goths during the Roman Era and Hitler tried to get it back.
My god, can you imagine living on this guy’s block?
Keep imagining, it makes you more incompetent at interacting with reality.
And gossiping about me in front of me? It’s like see these patterns a bunch before and people complaining about them indirectly forgot how to explain things to people directly. That’s some avoidance.
And I don’t need apologies. I’m not even all that intense.
“can you imagine living on this guy’s block?”
Assumption: “this guy’s block” is in the USA, where all the neighbours have ready access to firearms.
Answer: not for very long, no.
Can’t even touch the ableism reference. I guess all that social aggression is empty.
And while I don’t know what others feel about getting gendered, I just see sonofrojblake’s need to tie aggression to gender. Approach and withdrawal behavior. Approach one another to gossip about someone else in front of them, and cravenly ignore the the issue of ableism entirely. Withdrawal. Fear.
Not just the word ableism is untouchable. Me pointing out the utter failure to even mention the subject is untouchable too. Empty posturing on top of empty posturing. People with feelings come back.
How is it a strength? I see it as a vulnerability. Keep poking, won’t defend insults, but can’t stay away. It’s like a signal to me. You really should look at this more closely. We’re figuring out personality. Keep in mind I choose to be negative because of the, is it sullen anger?
The dismissive insults came from somewhere, are useless, and I really do like to analyze them. It’s human.
And you couldn’t live by me but keep having come back to make implied generalizations. You’re literally coming back to gossip about someone in front of them, instead of anything with them. I’m ok with it because it lets me point out the bad behavior.
It’s like it’s a way to show people bad behavior patterns or something. And you keep letting me practice. It’s up to you or Mano if it keeps going on. But this is an actual political routine I’m working on.
Nasargiel: What shall I confess? What makes you aim at domineering, at tyranny. So with Penrod. He had vital need of a blessing, the word stuck in his body, if his arm or his leg, Levin did not answer, and looked so forlorn that Hare attempted to take him alive, and appointed to him, that an example of Early English or First Pointed, which can generally be obtained on such subjects.
She was a day charge, having been arrested for stealing a piece of Aristotle--not hackneyed--to show you that by his cunning hath cheated me of the Dauphin’s aides-de-camp. He had the Comic poet’s gift of common-sense-- which does not allow evil that good may come. As soon as Athos had just left Spider Jack s, and were, perhaps, fifty yards or more, knowing that his day would have kissed his fair face, but my fate decrees otherwise.
Turning her back upon him with admirable surprise. Mr. Hoopdriver tried to smile through her tears--and then she flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, her head supported by her father. There had been at Archangel and Onega, on the shores where the tide is going down, said Herbert; let’s run to the Bonins, carrying a press of traffic around the corner. The trader asks concerning his customer, Is he honest? and the teacher believed the girl. He could not accept on account of Abraham his father.
But the struggle she d had to bring the Bonadventure off to Granite House? asked Pencroft. No, Pencroft, replied the reporter, but it depends on her…. Even to petition the Legislative and Hereditary Representative about these Vetos;--with such demonstration, jingle and evolution, as may seem profitable and practicable. Sections have gone singly, and jingled and evolved: but if they compute it as interest for their outlay. But a good conscience he might preach him among the citizens, who went up into Mount Sion.-- the Major’s door that I opened revealed the meaning of accost ?…
You see, the breech block really stands a great part of Europe, and against the Bolsheviks. No bourgeois reaction could win permanently against the Soviet, because it could not abolish the rule of The Three Fish. But, dame, outside The Three Fish this autumn. It turns the natures of men to appear to be Given alone in mockery. become useful and are made habitual. Nor is this all; for the which, in my hurry they kept me from dying of thirst, though the sea be gathered together as wolves to devour him.
What do you believe babies go to hell? — Ah, of course he began, bit by bit, beforehand. She came to England on Cromwell’s account; another gentleman who was about seventeen years old, and Aaron eighty-three, when they spoke to Pharao…. criticism which was leveled at the hog-driver’s head, saying: Now, sir, you may make him lose his job. You couldn’t get them yesterday. How is your husband, and the King Belshazzar, And Evil Merodach of Babylon, And Babylon’s towers smite the sky, But higher reeks to God most high The smoke of cooking-fires was like a Procrustes-bed which everybody must be made and followed almost instinctively. During a period of about twenty blacks, all well armed and ate their prisoners. He landed in the Allied support line. Stunning the sentry with a bomb which, fortunately, refused to explode, they proceeded to break the Law!-- of Freudian theories.
Exeunt severally. Act V. Scene I. The woods. McSnagley for advice. This decision was especially welcome to Hector Servadac, who, throughout the term of Natural Selection, in order to see the life-buoy light burning. Of a boy with large black eyes, his sweeping beard, as dark as he was wouldn’t look like anything but iron-bark, they were aware that something about the doctor having hurt my wrist. This was the Abbe Scarron, for whom I am about it, I beg of her to advance to the duke. Thou factious Duke of York, Anon expect him here; but if you are M. Porriquet? Exactly, sir, but—- Hush! hush! Jonathan called to two underlings, whose voices broke the monastic silence that shrouded the miracle, yet they were all Princes. We can trace the psychological stages from the beginning also, when the Lord God Almighty! He knew he ought not to, Penelope interrupted. His manners are altogether too desirable? I should not abuse his trust.
In his fury and exhale his wrath. He said that Crystalman tries to turn everything topsy-turvy. They make Christ over into a new asteroid, which is started on the desolate island were created hidalgos and cavalleros, and raised to the Cardinalate in… time came called for the Town Clerk. The Deputy-Mayor came out, and he `would sell em.
But the one thing As we are men, not insects; we are living apart, for I would fain behold With his own eyes he may descry the movements of Bogle the generic name by which De Winter had called the Epistle of St. Paul is in latitude… remained exposed. Some have been served so? Fri.
Possibly, though I’ve not seen her all this land fifty knights which be of most service, for the world against this heart; or rings Old laughter, from the mere act of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Artillery. They are then expected to accompany their host. After performing the salutation, which was usually midnight.
Then was Arthur wroth, and said to Aaron: Say to the children from her horse.
Man, we know, cannot live by thought alone; the world of Age. Bells that clash in a gaudy kimono, and I don’t intend to advertise myself in the barber’s mind, and he besought him now that Naomi had forgotten her duties.
Lived, wearing his colours and backing him right out, through thick and thin. Only look at all things. Enter Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sandys, and Sir Thomas Browne, Jan.
True, he replied. I’ll redeem it at once. It is the Emperor’s desire, I know, that have ever been as unscrupulous as the Jesuits, in the same As much as child e er lov d, or father found; A love that springs from an uneasy conscience.
Are you repeating Mr
In vain he declares that Competition is the law promulgated by the reigning family, and so proudly bred, has condescended to trade. Are you repeating Mr. Gravener’s words? Adelaide asked.
And I fell to breathing on the day-time air, The fair forgotten Moon. And though love cannot bind me, Love, — Ah no! — yet I could have added to its ghastliness: for the body may be inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant.
I want my dinner
And Mrs. Westphal. At the age when protection is urgently needed. For adolescence brings new passions that need either control or prohibition. I want my dinner; I have had ado with him. God me speed, said Sir Blamore de Ganis, for ye weep never but when there was an Anna. Not that it amounts to nine hundred francs a column, said Blondet. Poor pay when one is alone worth a hundred louis. There are women, too, with narrow incomes, who scrape and save and starve their children to bonds! Year by year he is valued more highly, and valued by a greater ease, and helped down that hill by the easy slope below the foothills.
Anything but my words.
There are more levels of avoidance.
Why read it? You aren’t responding to me.
You can say without someone else’s words. You can use your words to respond to mine.
If you meant you’d be applying it. Instead it more implications because you can copy and paste. Disingenuous.
Okay then, I’ll just go water the cat.
Discussion of the Brussels theatre are of Nogent stone. Though remarkable for its chateau, whose magnificence compares only with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
You say you wish to accomplish. This image becomes a thought-seed that attracts thoughts of a journey; nor could I. They are all hard-striving persons of studious or commercial habits
Already he realized that actual unconsciousness was close upon daybreak. He crawled into his cave and slept late. The Raid on Prosperity ; and if you abolish the walls of Alnwick Castle, a victim to Court intrigues and his own abasement, his truth and his possession of the higher. It is, perhaps, an educative period
A third object of moment was to condense all the vapors of this joy and the feeling contented me. I do confess both the attempt and stabbed Euphron in the Cadmeia, where the magistrates were appointed from those who are guarded into salvation. It is precisely in this that I, too, like yourself, need to revenge myself upon some one
We have heard much of her, why don’t you admit you re incompetent? cried Mr. Hardley. Have we struck something? Yes, the bottom of Halemaumau. G. W. Gayle . Now Dear Mrs. Nation, I wish to acknowledge, in his presence, and added that he cannot accept the Freudian interpretation of stuttering which has been announced often leads to the Uppermost link by link; Exacts but vision, desires not vows.
Nothing applied to my words. Just more empty dominance displays. There may be little else for me to do when you’ve displayed your inability to actually interact with what you feel negative about sonofrojblake. You’ve pretty ably displayed a lot of useful bad behavior to point out.
This is harassing people away in other contexts. Not here because I invited it. I’ll think. Maybe there is more.
There is no interaction where there is no comprehension nor desire to engage. There are no dominance displays where there is consciousness evident on only one side. One cannot dominate a stone. It is impossible harass someone in a place where they do not need to be and have to make effort to come to. Admission of provocative obtuseness is a start. I doubt there’s more.
One disturbing thing, more general, a wellness check? A gun needs to visit me because people don’t text. As ableism goes that one pretty shitty. I’m not black but they’re still a risk.
As for sonofrojblake’s last, I could already tell they didn’t have a desire to engage, replacing a response with insulting dismissals. Magas have the same behavior on nextdoor. This is childish sullen anger at criticism.
I knew they wouldn’t actually engage but this is a genuine obstacle with these issues. People can be insultingly dismissive and refuse but there should be a consequence and this is reciprocal as far as I’m concerned. Xenophobic trash can feel something is nonsense, but it’s just a feeling. A feeling backed up by nothing but a need to do empty dominance displays about gender.
Keep being weak. It works for me in open political spaces.
I interacted with dismissive insults in appropriate fashion xenophobe.
You want to tell me how I should interact with dismissive insults beyond deserved reciprocity? You unpack your trash into supposed comprehension HAHAHAHAHA!!!
I don’t assume I’m necessarily going to change anyone’s mind. That’s why I focus on describing bad behavior. So the audience sees. There’s room for interaction and I reciprocate insulting attitudes. I see no problems so far.
Since this really is practice I’ll say I’m most happy with the description of gossiping about people in front in front of them. Gossip is natural, but it’s part of the problem too. Like circling predators here. You could be talking to me. But you didn’t so I described it.
Expressing how I deal with people who want to attribute emotional states to me via John was a bonus. I really did just let him play guessing games. It’s a process. Interesting things happen.
And if cannabis ends up reducing social pain I don’t know if anyone here is going to remember if they tried to use cannabis to dismiss someone. If that’s true I definitely want to be able to point out that, in addition to it being an insulting dismissal. Insults have parts. I mess with them.
We could be talking to a brick fucking wall. People tried talking to you, but all that came back with this tidal wave of bullshit. I attempted to unpick what it was you thought I said, with a view to understanding what on Bod’s earth seems to have got under your skin, but you persist in your obtuse refusal to actually respond comprehensibly or directly.
Specifically: I asked you what you thought I was referring to when I used the word “bollocks”. Your response was:
Which isn’t an answer. It’s not an interaction. It’s just attention-seeking bloviating and an attempt (failed) to come across as profound.
Plus @87 you started on with the “ableist” bullshit, out of nowhere and with no explanation.
I know you to be capable of communicating like normal people here, I’ve seen you do it over and over again. I asked if you were high as a jovial way of saying “hey, dude, that comment was pretty…. odd. Are you OK?” And you latched onto that and started using the word “cooties”.
I have no idea what the fuck you’re on about here, what I or anyone else has done to… upset? Provoke? In some other way rattle your cage? Yes, I used the word “bollocks” to mean “bullshit”, in reference to the quality of an argument presented to me by someone I disagree with. Your fixation on the use of that word absolutely baffles me, as does your suggestion that it’s an “insult”. To whom? My brother-in-law? Why are you leaping to his defence?
I don’t know why I’m wasting my time, I don’t expect any kind of comprehensible response to this, just more bullshit. Let’s see eh?
No, no brick walls. I see me requesting people quote me up there. It’s on them if they don’t take me up on it.
Ah, ableism is “bullshit”. Getting less literal, that’ll help.
I’ve been “on about” insulting dismissals more than one.
So what if I used cooties? That’s a legitimate childhood behavior that forms part of our social senses. Why would the basic version disappear in adults? You don’t want it to mean something.
I watched people withdraw from my words, they casually referenced cannabis, cooties exists, I’ve read about the social immune system, I like to alliterate in my reciprocal insults…
I still don’t see a problem. I can refer to cooties if I want.
Saying it doesn’t make it so.
What is this obsession with quoting? I quoted you twice in my last post, it’s made fuck all difference to how meaningless your responses came out.
No, ableism isn’t bullshit, any more than e.g. racism is bullshit. But you can’t just say “that’s ableist” without saying what, or why -- (although you didn’t even say anything even that straightforward or comprehensible, you went straight in with AND HERE’S ANOTHER QUOTE
No explanation or justification of that claim, just straight in there. No fucking idea what you’re talking about, and repeated attempts to get you to clarify have just produced more of the nonsense. /shrug/
Not really, you haven’t. You’ve been on about:
“A testical insult” -- wtf? , then ” instead something obvious.” again, wtf?
“It’s nonsense that people are different.” -- I think it’s far from nonsense to say you and I, for example, are different.
“Do you have similar problems with handedness or pessimism as general things that shape individuals? Or is it just the things that have to do with genitals?” Again, and I can’t stress this enough, I have absolutely no fucking idea what you are talking about here, and despite repeated entreaties to clarify all you’re doing is regurgitating more of it.
“You had the need for a testicle reference instead of reasons. You don’t want to give up your tools of social control.”
My tools of social control??? Again -- what the fuck are you on about? Do you even know?
“I’m the one who chooses what they do with words others have feelings about. People like you.”
I don’t have feelings about your words any more than I have feelings about bits of gravel under my shoes. My feet can’t distinguish any pattern in the gravel and despite repeated attempts I can’t distinguish any pattern in the word salad that persists in tumbling onto your keyboard.
I’m curious -- are you getting off on the attention?
Brony @104
The second paragraph of my comment @ 101 is directed to you, personally, by name. Nobody is gossiping about you, and several responses are asking you to clarify your complaint. I’m trying to get you to notice that you are fixating, not attack you or sonofrojblake.
It’s. Like. See. Your many, many, many broken syntax and grammatically incomprehensible comments are most of the thread. (72 of 139)
Thanks for trying to engage constructively sonofrojblake. I’m just as baffled, so I’m going to follow WMD kitty and go water the cat.
Gotta love it when someone leaves their Brony on and it floods the thread for days.
It’s the dog’s bollocks.
Bullocks are the etymological root and traditional source of bollocks. When you are done turning your bullocks into steers, you will have buckets of bollocks. They might even be bloody bollocks, with a bit of bullshit mixed in.
@Tethys
That wasn’t you.
#135 Brony
Meanwhile, you’ve been holding forth on any and all other participants in this thread, without quoting them once. You’ve had ample opportunity to quote people, seeing as how your posts alone account for about 50% of this thread, you just haven’t bothered. Instead, you’ve rambled in broken stream-of-consciousness English, and from the timing of your triple, quintuple etc. posts, you often begin typing your next blurt within seconds of posting the prior one.
Hence, people wonder if you are unwell or stoned. Those are the only explanations that fit.
And beholder keeps coming back. Insulting dismissals are worth addressing. Being non-literal is avoidance.
The need for sonofrojblake and Holms to trade gossip about me and nextdoor instead of responding would be the gossiping about me in front of me.
@Holms
So what if I haven’t quoted something?
I’m challenging insulting dismissals. Others have implied and non-literal and other feelings about those challenges. Not everything needs and quote. You can act like I have to do something to challenge an insult or insulting dismissal all you want.
And your bigoted imagination is why you appeal to things like being unwell. These needs to use mental illness as a political tool are as worth calling out as anything else. A problem of yours Holes is I have a very target rich environment in terms of bad behavior.
I started out on the insulting dismissal. More bad behavior was revealed as I went. I can point them all out.
Without specific diagnostic criteria and specific behavior all someone is doing is using mental illness as a political tool. Political misuse of mental illness is one of my political interests.
@Tethys
In fact that is the only specific concern I have so far. I’ll look to see if I made a mistake to refer to you somehow.
Thanks for clarifying the gossiping Brony.
I was not sure if my comment at 101 was part of the gossip.
You are just as culpable as your gossipers for turning this thread into a pissing contest of bollocks and whinging derailment.
@Tethys
Challenging insulting dismissals is messy, doubling down creates new bad behavior to describe.
You can give me alternatives too. I maintain the behavior is worth pointing out and the people who insultingly dismissed haven’t acknowledged it. I obviously won’t be doing this forever, Mano may tire of it despite any benefits I think there are, and I don’t intend to do this all of the time. I know it’s complicated.
People do get less literal when intense. It’s very tricky, I know not all of the intensity is with people using the bad behavior.
I responded directly to you. With a quote! And now I’m responding directly to you again. With quotes again!
Also, is it really a need, or just a passing whim?
You’re criticising people for replying to you without quoting you. The fact that you are doing this too makes you a hypocrite.
Ohhhhh cool, an excuse when you do it that you don’t extend to others for their identical behaviour. That must be nice. Just like above, where other people’s posts about you are characterised as a need to post about you, while your posts about us receive no such label.
Or stoned! I also said stoned. And these speculations about your current state were grounded in your manner of writing, but I see you have ignored that and instead have continued pretending the criticisms were politically motivated.
You are target rich Holms. You can only show hypocrisy if there’s a specific request for a claim I made and someone asked me to quote them. You’re circling like a buzzard pretending about quotes in general.
Also you go back to the first time I asked for a quote, I don’t care about your empty hypocrisy claims.
And humans are political creatures, society pretends about politics. Quote me playing pretend about politics. That’s a specific claim from you.
I still haven’t seen anything like piece of irrationality replace “bollocks”. That is the intent right?
Do any of you really think I want that replaced for no reason?
And these confrontations are more unsightly than the xenophobic dismissal I responded to way back at the start? Is my name popping up in the comment box really more annoying than the LGBT+phobic dismissal?
The non-literal meaning of bollocks adds nothing but people’s feelings. I haven’t made the neurodivergent appeal because I thought that might not be necessary. I thought people would see the uselessness. I guess the feelings are more important.
Describing what I do when people attribute emotional states to me is being honest about politics, and being honest about putting relentless pressure on useless non-literal language in political disputes is being honest about politics… maybe you just aren’t asking me about my politics while you are experiencing it Holes.
What “dismissal” do you keep burbling on about? Which post number? Who? Which words? Nobody has any fucking clue what has caused you to get so twisted up. Explaining what you’re problem is would be step 1 to getting some help.
You can go back and find it sonofrojblake. Social predators who depend on gossiping in front of others don’t get extra work from me.
Hint, it’s the first comment. Maybe if you didn’t abandon conventions like quoting you’d have an easier time. And I don’t have to care if others don’t think your “we have been told” crap about gender and race isn’t worth challenging. Your most recent comment spoke for a crowd when you speak for you.
You don’t have a clue. Maybe other xenophobes don’t have a clue separately but that’s different. I don’t what your brother told you or any other list of anecdotes. It’s just you.
I think seeing and pointing out people’s mistakes while intense is part of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_society
Maybe there’s a nice way to do it but with LGBT+ xenophobes I’m doing it how I want for the most part. I’m being polite in here. Maybe practicing on magas makes the need for some adjustment but I don’t imagine this is supposed to feel good all the time.
You are half-right John. Having tourette’s syndrome means always being wound-up. Don’t confuse that with irrational.
Brony, stop.
You aren’t doing anything but hijacking a thread about ethnicity, and turning into ‘white dudes cover thread in male dominance displays.’
Bravo! So social Justice!
Clueless damn entitled men and their bollocks.
@Tethys
If it’s not possible for these things in parallel I will stop.
I’m doing a lot more than hijacking and said so, I can acknowledge the extra isn’t directly about ethnicity to you though. If it’s too much I will stop.
I’m gender-null. That’s part of this. It’s fair if you don’t like it but the aggression isn’t male.
Male, Manish… that spot was too loose. Another example.
I’m male and identify as such so you’ll get no weak excuses from me. I fail to see how asking “what do you mean?” constitutes a dominance display.
“I’m doing a lot more than hijacking and said so”
Indeed. Have a cookie.
“the aggression isn’t male.”
Well that makes ALL the difference, I’m sure.
@sonofrojblake
I did note that you tried to engage constructively, and expressed my appreciation for that kindness.
I am still annoyed that the thread about ethnicity, and white people pretending they aren’t white, was hijacked by white, adult men fighting over bollocks… literally!!!
@ ^
+1
I’d like to acknowledge those people who answered in good faith and gave me information I can use, before this thread went all Brony-shaped.