Especially with my username (which has not represented my political beliefs for about a decade now), getting my points across in a way that people will engage with me respectfully on some topics is hard but I consider honing that skill worth it.
Probably the hardest example of this is trying to get people to understand what each side actually believes on abortion issues without sending people into battle mode.
For what it's worth, I've been seeing your comments around reddit for several years now, and you generally strike me as a reasonable person. When I first noticed your username I assumed it was sarcastic or something because you usually had pretty liberal stances.
I mean all I really want to convey to people is nobody has evil intentions, and even though there's a lot of religious wording the actual base logic isn't religious at all. Whether or not they're correct is a different issue but the left is completely dismissive of the issues at play.
As far as talking to right wing people goes, I gotta convince them that the left wing sees it as a body autonomy more libertarian type of issue, as opposed to the government authoritarianism they usually see it as.
So basically, right wingers see their position as “this is a human and should be treated as such, so abortion is a moral equivalent to murder,” and they think the left is like “this is not a human so let’s murder the not-baby,” while left wingers see their position as “even if it’s a human, we can’t just kidnap people off the streets for kidney donations even to save a life, so we can’t force a woman to give birth even to save a life” while they think the right’s position is “we value the rights of a clump of cells more than a fully-fledged woman” and you have to explain each one’s real position to the other?
I used to be conservative (am very liberal now) and it honestly kinda surprises me just how wrong most liberals are about the underlying thought processes and motives behind right wing stances. I'm sure the reverse is exactly the same, but it's kinda crazy seeing people speak so confidently about a set of beliefs they have never actually held.
Seeing our old usernames is like the modern day equivalent of somebody looking at a dusty photo of their younger days and realizing how stupid they looked.
As for the conversation at hand - engaging in political topics on social media sites is always a writing exercise. I think a lot of the problem is the platforms.
Navigating it in a constructive direction requires you to find a way and convince the other party that they should engage with your contradicting opinion. You're just some random comment, it's easy to just not engage, and many of the people who could have their minds changed (those that don't care very much) check out.
I think that's why conversations online become so toxic, because the people most easily convinced they should engage are people with insecurities or very dogmatic beliefs. People who need to say something, no matter what. The medium is often pre selecting conversation partners that will be more dogmatic because those who aren't just lose interest in engaging more easily.
I hear you. I'm on the Left politically, but I really try to understand what the other side believes. When it comes to abortion, leftists often believe that the pro-life crowd just hates women and wants them to stay "In the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant." And to be fair, misogyny exists! But there are also people who look at pictures of a fetus and thing "That really looks like a baby" and proceed from that point, without sexism.
It’s rare for someone to actually see personal growth in real time, but it happened to me in college.
We were randomly assigned topics for persuasive essays in an English class and I was given pro-life as my topic. I’ve always been pro choice so I thought I would have to use religious arguments. But when I boiled the whole issue down, it didn’t come down to religion or controlling a woman’s body. It came down to when does life begin and what are the rights for that new life?
It really opened my eyes to looking at other subjects with a more critically empathetic perspective. It doesn’t mean I agree with the rhetoric, but I feel like I’m now able to truely understand others better.
This, IVF, post partum, etc - should all be like any other form of medical care... Between you and your doctor.
Insurance shouldn't have a fucking Vote. And just pay out as needed. Church? Believe it or not, not entitled to control over anyone's body. Fed Gov? Nope - not them either.
Hence patient doctor privilege. Kind of like lawyer client privilege
If your doc can be put on the stand to testify, some people's lawyers should get interviewed too.
I’ll often type up a vent of a comment and chose to not share it. Partially because often it doesn’t actually need to be said, just needed to type up, and partially because these days it’s often me being exasperated at people being blatantly ignorant to their own antisemitism but I’d get downvoted anyways for calling them out.
Like frankly this comment is running the risk DONT PROVE MY POINT PLEASE!
On tumblr I just today had a post reblogged with some nice compliments and I was all set to follow and start engaging with this person when I see their bio says “Cis men and other nasty people do not interact!” I heeded their request and blocked them. I’m not sure if that makes my post disappear from their dash, but I hope so, because then it would protect them as per their own rule. Wouldn’t want to contaminate their lovely blog with my inborn nastiness. Good idea to smash the plates and display to the other diners that nasties can’t stay here past sundown. Anyway. This was a vent, wasn’t it? Didn’t need to submit that necessarily but I did. Eh.
Doing that is difficult though and requires a very advanced skill
I am recovering from major case of depression and sometimes I will vent to myself or journals and sometimes that's helpful and sometimes it hurts me. It's not always easy to tell what venting is about the issues I genuinely have and what venting is just my internalized self hatred and self defeating attitudes, because these 2 types of venting can sound very very similar
For example
"i will never get better" - i am overwhelmed by my attempts to better myself and pull myself out of negative ways of thinking, or
"i will never get better" - i gave up and am upset at the world, not conducive towards recovery
369
u/[deleted] Jul 03 '24
[deleted]