I’m trans, and that’s what bothers me the most about those two congressional Democrats coming out against trans athletes in sports. Parroting the “biological boys in girl’s sports” line the right has been using for years now.

They were so comfortable saying it, that’s what pisses me off the most. It shows me it’s not ingrained in the party’s platform, and we were just a token group to support when they thought we brought in enough votes. So they’d rather scapegoat us and try to court a minority of moderate Republicans that won’t vote for them anyway.

It showed me we, trans people, don’t matter to the DNC. Maybe we matter to the electorate of the DNC, but we don’t matter to the DNC.

Oh 100%.

I agree wholeheartedly, believe me.

I have a lot of socially unpopular opinions regarding how technology has and is progressing, and how dependent we’re becoming on all of it.

Most doctors don’t want to run full panel STD-tests anyway. I remember in the military I had to basically tell my doctor I slept with anything with a pulse for her to do anything beyond the basic STD panel (despite me not sleeping with anything with a pulse).

I had some bumps down under and had a doc look at them (after I got out of the military), and asked about an STD test, and she said they were skin tags, no test needed if I hadn’t been with anyone lately. Alright, fair enough, and the skin tags eventually went away on their own.

Now for herpes specifically: there are two main types, Herpes 1 and Herpes 2. I don’t remember which is which off the top of my head, but, they correspond to oral versus genital herpes. They’re not the same virus, though similar. Something like 80% of American adults have oral herpes and most don’t even know it. They’re cold sores more or less on your lips, and they can remain dormant for the entire time someone is alive.

Genital herpes is the “acne” type, and same thing, they tend to come during flare ups that can be exacerbated by stress or other life circumstances. It is possible, but rare, for someone to contract oral herpes on their genitals, and vice versa, and you are correct that it only takes contact or a small open wound for the virus to be transferred.

Does having either form of herpes make you unlovable? No, while there’s no cure, you just need to take precautions if you or a loved one has either form. Basically, do your best to avoid intimacy when you or your partner has a flare up, and if you still gotta get the deed done, consider mutual-masturbation or other sexual activities that don’t require direct skin-to-skin contact. Condoms obviously help, but they don’t protect against everything.

Yep, so why don’t the Dems do the same things, but to actually benefit the average person?

I understand people are going to say, “Well, we have to respect decorum and the rule of law,” but… How’s that going for us? The GOP doesn’t care, and we keep pretending they’ll find the line they won’t cross to accomplish their evil agenda…

So why can’t the Dems break the rules to actually help the American people and show them they’re willing to get things done? This isn’t a “I gotcha” moment or praising the GOP, I just don’t understand it beyond “they’re the same party, one just pretends to care.”

and just calling them dumb and discarding them isn’t a winning strategy.

But that seems to be the SOP for Lemmy users, any criticism of the DNC, Harris, or Biden is met with “bUt TrUmP fAsCiSm,” or some variation of you being a racist or fascist or whatever.

AOC sat down with her voters and asked them why they voted for her and Trump, and they gave her their honest answers.

And y’all (not you, the people you’re responding to and the majority of Lemmy) immediately insult them, their intelligence, and their understanding of the world because y’all know better then them.

There were plenty of articles showing despite a good economy, Americans felt more strapped for cash and felt like they were doing worse than four years ago. That’s their lived reality, and the DNC just kept doubling down on “economy good, soft landing,” and then threw out the $15/hr minimum wage from a decade ago as if it would mean anything to most Americans (my state already has a minimum wage of just under $16/hr, and it’s $8/hr short of what our own university said someone would need to afford a one bedroom apartment). So no working class person would have benefitted from that in my state, but the DNC and liberals act like we should be gobbling their nuts because they were so progressive for even briefly mentioning it.

I said right after the election (and was repeatedly attacked and downvoted for it) that the American people want change. And if it’s not going to be progress, they’ll roll the dice on regress. But something has to change, and for better or worse, Trump promises that while the DNC can barely be bothered to maintain the status quo.

I think it was more of a long way to say “manual windows and door handles have worked since cars were invented, why are we reinventing the wheel and introducing new fail points on something like a door handle by making it electric?”

We were taught about it, but most Americans don’t view westward expansion with the same… Reverence? Notoriety?

Like, I remember learning about it across multiple grades, but… Oregon City being the final destination, that’s not something I would probably remember a year or two later, nevermind a decade or more.

I believe we are still issuing Purple Hearts from that 500,000 surplus to our troops.

It’s also interesting to note that we’re basically lucky the Japanese surrendered after the second bomb. We didn’t have any more ready to go.

Personally, I’m of the mind that we did save both American and Japanese lives by dropping the bombs versus invading the Japanese mainland. People forget how fiercely loyal the WWII-era Japanese soldier was to their cause. They had to play messages from the emperor to get the military to surrender, otherwise they just believed it was propaganda, and the Japanese propaganda of the day told them the American soldiers were coming to rape and kill every last one of them.

One of the proposed weapons for an assault on the main Japanese islands was a bat-incendiary bomb. The bomb would be filled with bats that were strapped with time-delay incendiary bombs. The bomb would land and break apart, and the bats would scatter and hide amongst the houses in attics and what not. Eventually the bombs would detonate, and whatever Japanese town/city would be engulfed in flames city-wide.

Three Mile Island, and they want to do it to power their AI development. Not move their current servers and infrastructure to the nuclear power grid.

And the owner of Three Mile Island, who’s working with Microsoft, is trying to get the fed to give him the money needed to get the plant running again. Taxpayer money for Microsoft’s AI project that they’ll reap all the reward from.

Kurzgesagt has a video about life after nuclear war… It’s not pretty.

The DNC during their campaign to save democracy refused to compromise with their base on genocide.

To reiterate, genocide.

And after they lost, they threw trans people and the left under the bus.

So what makes you all think they’re going to change their stance on anything now? They’re already screaming that the DNC was too far left during this campaign, this campaign, where they unapologetically and unconditionally showed support to a fascist and his genocide.

They had Republican after Republican parade across their convention stage, but had zero Palestinian Democrats come speak despite requests from the Uncommitted Protest movement.

What’s that thing all of Lemmy is always saying, “When people show you who they are, believe them?” They’re showing you who they are and who they want to be, so believe them. There’s no saving the DNC, it’s just a slow march to fascism under them versus the speed run with the Republicans.

Two Democratic politicians already threw trans people under the bus, saying the party is too left on trans-issues, and then parroting the “people don’t want biological boys in girl’s sports” bullshit.

And then that one Dem who ran the campaign ad “I’ve never pushed for sex changes,” or something like that.

I’m trans too, and honestly, I will never be supporting the DNC again after hearing that from two of their congressional members.

We’re well aware, and it’s honestly getting old hearing “wElL tHe ReSt Of ThE wOrLd,” yeah, the UK voted to leave the EU and ousted a party to replace them with Labour who don’t want to hold another referendum on the vote.

India continues to elect the populist and nationalist Modi as their PM, because he gives them bags of rice with his name on them and tells them it’s ok to hate Muslims.

Germany is flirting with fascism again, and they’ve got all the stuff Americans are apparently too fucking stupid to get done, right?

Dutch police just rounded up a bunch of pro-Palestinian protesters, protesting peacefully, and then started beating them for not moving fast enough.

Oh, and the majority of European countries are freaking the fuck out about immigration and the floods of immigrants trying to come into their countries. And funnily enough, your politicians speak about immigrants the same way our Republicans do.

But you’re right, the people who weren’t alive 50 years ago when all of this should have been done, yeah, that’s our fucking fault too, right?

They raised over a billion dollars after Harris got the nomination.

They spent a quarter of that on sending door knockers to the same people’s houses 2-3 times.

And they donate money to Republican outsider campaigns to try to siphon votes off the Republican incumbent (who they usually still lose to anyway).

They would absolutely spend millions of dollars thinking they were going to lose. It’s not their money, and their lives will not change whether it’s spent or not.

Yep, and I have friends who have a lot of their social events and stuff there. I usually politely decline if I’m invited.

But isn’t he the one that purposefully held up military officer promotions as some grand protest against some qanon bullshit?

Gotta love when users go to insulting intelligence and acting like them screaming their argument louder makes them more corrector.

You’re lived experience is yours, it’s not the lived experience of everyone. Not everyone has the means, money, ability, or desire to just sell everything they own and start over somewhere new, completely alone.

So, once again, not everyone can just drop everything, hop in a plane, and hope the new country takes them in with zero issue.

You’re also a man, I assume, since you mentioned a deceased wife and then your children. And since you’re German, odds are you’re also white. So how easy is it for the Arab trans woman to just drop everything and be accepted in a completely new country with no rights as a non-citizen?

Oh wait, they’re just being silly, they should just be a white man from a European country, and follow your exact life path because it’s the only possible way, and any other way is lazy.

You’re laughably out of touch, and since you’ve resorted to insults, I’m done with this conversation. I swear Lemmy is worse than Reddit, ffs.

Edit:

tHeRe’S nO LaNgUaGe ReQuIrEmEnT

I’m goad this worked out for you (despite you never naming which country you immigrated from and which you emigrated to). But I assume you’re not American, and haven’t actually looked into this. And you’re wildly, wildly out of touch if you think your exception to the rule is somehow the rule.

Yes, they do care if you’re American, yes they do care what degrees and certifications you hold, and yes, they do expect you to be proficient in the language. I’ve looked into, parts of Canada require you to have a certain level of proficiency in French. The Netherlands want you proficient in Dutch, the countries that people want to move to require language proficiency if your only language is English.

Your advice is basically drop everything, move somewhere, and hope they don’t deport you. Wow, what a way to live a life, why hasn’t everyone in America done this, and if it’s so easy, why do all these countries have these application processes and wait times and language tests? Why do so few Americans actually emigrate every year?

Must be because we’re all stupid and don’t understand you just move somewhere, live in squalor for an indefinite period of time (minimum two years, it sounds like), and then everything just works out. Wow, it’s so easy.

And how long did it take to learn the language? Was it done beforehand? What skills do you have? What country were you immigrating to, and which were you emigrating from? How much money did you have put aside, and what did you liquidate? What was the legal process like, and did you receive help? Were you allowed to live permanently in your new country before being granted citizenship? Did you have any connections in your new country? Did you have any sort of employment lined up? How did you and your family survive if you just up and moved? Did you have any pets and what was the process to have them emigrated vis vaccines, physical, breed/species restrictions, etc?

You act like everyone who may want to leave can just sell their positions, buy a plane ticket, and start over with the money in their pocket and the clothes on their back, and with enough hard work, they can get through it. Yeah, maybe. But it’s not like you apply tomorrow and are granted citizenship a week later and you’re on your way. There is months/years of work that goes into the emigration process, and it varies wildly by country.

But the reality is, most countries don’t want American immigrants, and even when they do, they normally expect you to already be proficient at the new language and will test for it (which can take month/years to learn for people), and they’re normally looking for specific occupations or qualifications. They don’t want brick layers and retail associates, they want software engineers and nurses and doctors.