[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Edit: New last paragraph is probably more helpful than the rest of the original post.

The point was about the conflation of terminology in colloquial use, not limited to one specific instance. My "edge case" was that someone with bad thoughts or someone they might go to for support (not just a professional) would hear/read the conflation; in what way is that broad a scenario "in Narnia"?

I have no idea what your intent was in saying that this is Lemmy and language is used colloquially here. Yes, that's what we're discussing?

Attaching the meaning of "has committed sexual crimes against children" to a person who must admit to having sexual thoughts about children in order to get help for said thoughts is going to add to the difficulty of admitting that. Being thought of as someone who has committed reprehensible and criminal acts that haven't actually done would certainly not be a motivation to speak up. It would be an extremely limited view of human behavior to assume every single factor can only have an all-or-nothing effect on what they end up doing. What is ridiculous about what I actually said, not just a strawman of it?

I'm sure the colloquial use of mental health terminology never impacted anyone who didn't actually do anything violent or destructive, right? Surely we never had trouble with people not getting help for that, since obviously we "don't care" about the people who only have bad thoughts, and the context is very clear that the words we used actually only meant the criminals. There's never been a some sort of stationary bike of terminology or something caused by the use of words with specific meanings as something totally different, everyone knows that the language we use in one space would never affect how those things get treated elsewhere. And the queen handing out Turkish delight would never turn out to be evil.

One definitely does not have to "hit bottom" to get help, and in fact it's often much more effective to deal with a problem before reaching the point of no longer being able to bear the cost of challenging it. My concern is not about "being offended", it's about doing what is actually effective to prevent people from acting on sexual thoughts towards children based on everything we know about preventing people from acting on other unhelpful thoughts. Maybe to you that's less important than being able to mock sexual offenders online? Your use of the word "offender" (as in sexual offender, ie the distinction trying to be made, what my post never really said anything about) here would seem to indicate that you have either not paid attention to the answers when you "keep asking why", or you actually consider the thought or attraction alone an "offense". You seem to do more fighting any responses you get than trying to understand (even if still disagreeing with) them.

Maybe it doesn't fit your image of those who disagree with you, but I do think those who have committed sexual offenses against children do deserve to be shamed for that, should face consequences, and I'm not particularly bothered by mocking or deriding them (especially in the case of "elites" or others who are definitely not wanting to get help for or "resist" urges). But I'm also pretty categorically opposed to "thought-crime", so I personally hold a distinction between a term that means "has bad thoughts" and a term that means "does bad things". And unless society decides to invariably execute or imprison forever any offenders, I think that there also needs to be some sort of treatment or plan to prevent someone from wanting to seek out another offense; and that just a risk of punishment or rules about staying away from children is a pretty crappy way of doing that.

Edit: I don't think we disagree on the big things: 1) anyone "participating" in Epstein's ring is a bad person; 2) the most important thing is a) preventing offenses against children and b) not compounding the harm after the fact. I think the disagreement is about if there is value to distinguishing between the term 'pedophile' as "a person with sexual thoughts or attraction towards children (ignoring the whole age/hebe- thing for now) and a term like 'child molester' (or similar) as "a person who commits a sexual offense against a child (again ignoring details like exact age of consent or whatever, below whatever one picks)"; ie is there a difference in how we would treat those people, what impact might distinguishing the terms have, in what situations would that impact apply, etc? My understanding is that we both recognize a difference in the definitions and would respond differently. I and others have said that it does make a difference whether we (collectively, in demonstrating language meaning by use) use the term 'pedophile' to mean the second definition, one who acts/assaults, instead of only relating to "is this person sexually attracted to children?" without connection to "has this person sexually assaulted children?"; also that neither definition falls completely within the other. (At least) I have claimed that maintaining a distinction does, in an indirect and as-a-general-rule way, contribute to the 2a goal of preventing offenses against children. You and others have said that, at least within the context of this thread since it was pointed out, it is not helpful to care about the distinction, and that taking the time and effort to do so detracts from 1a and (as I understand) 2b. Additionally, that the argument of distinction supporting 2a was not sound. I think the 1a-detraction only occurs if you pre-suppose mixed usage and conflated meanings, and consider engaging in other discussions like "is word choice important?" to be inherently taking away from the main idea of "bad people doing bad things". I can't claim any close knowledge about 2b, but I also don't see any argument that everyone using only action-oriented ("child molester", "sex offender", etc) or intent/behavior ("grooming", "predator", etc) language (or even just generic derogatives), without using language that (is claimed to) also maps to non-included groups (ie 'pedophile'), would further victimize someone; is that something you'd argue for? Overall, is that a fair statement of positions?

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

I'd say the "why" is that if you take a word whose non-colloquial definition is just "attracted to children/minors" and use it to mean "assaulter of children/minors", you inhibit the ability for someone to admit to the former to seek help to prevent becoming the latter. And I don't just mean from mental health professionals who may be trained to find that distinction and provide the necessary help anyway, a person's first line of support is often family, friends, a partner, etc. It's not just pedantry, language has a pretty significant effect on perception and perception is the closest any of us can get to reality. Also, it's very common mental health practice to separate thoughts from actions, and if there is someone sitting on the edge between the two, I'd really rather that they have the mental health to not cause such an abhorrent victimization to occur, instead of trying to remove that boundary between thinking something and acting on it.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago

You can't imagine a person who would excuse getting someone so drunk they no longer refuse sex as "boys will be boys" behavior or similar nonsense, but would express actual disapproval of their child entering a same-sex relationship? It doesn't just mean "convicted of assaulting a young white woman at gunpoint".

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

Eh, I think master is used (AFAIK) unproblematicly in other contexts like a master key, recording master, and master pattern. Converting it to "main" seems like a change or loss of meaning, but the problem may be that there is not really a consistent meaning across electronics usage to start with. I think "secondary" has some connotation of filling the same purpose or type as the primary, which doesn't really fit for m/s usage. Master/sheep is my most similar option that keeps the "m/s", but it feels awkward enough to draw attention to what it replaces. Could just do master (or main) and sub, where "sub" could mean substitute, subordinate, subscriber, [submissive,] etc. as needed.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago

There's more light during the summer because it all leaves the people, duh.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 16 points 7 months ago

I always felt like it was a good idea to prefer imports from developed nations with functional, representative governments. As an American, it is pretty embarrassing for my neighbor to see my roommate's leopard eating my face though.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

Is there actually something behind all these comments about his appearance, or is it just typical internet name-calling that mostly falls into the same anti-LGBTQ+ bucket?

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago

I bet the lab folks could tell you what's in their product much better than ranchers and meat processing factories ever could. A lot of science goes into it though and some people seem to be allergic to that, at least based on the sorts of claims they make.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago

Isn't the problem then the abusive power structure, whether it's built on family/generation/age dynamics or something else, and that saying the problem is "incest" is de-emphasizing the more critical component (that's already avoided too often)? Not to say that incest is a good thing or even harmless, but to be strategic in framing discussions that may affect how people look at things. Missed the thread header and this might not be the most relevant place to reply, but wanted to get the thought out.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

First sentence of the second paragraph literally says "What We Know: [woman's name] was arrested and charged ..."

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Re post text: For context, Washington state is mail-only voting, so that number would (I assume) be for all votes, not just specifically requested mail-ins. I didn't see it in the article, but I wonder if that is predominantly "centralized" or "distributed" in nature; i.e. are technically-valid ballots from all voters being incorrectly rejected by the county elections facilities office at different rates across racial lines, or are there other factors like targeted disinformation, education, local infrastructure, or socioeconomics that disproportionately affect Black (or other types of minority) voters that would make them more likely to produce a technically-invalid ballot?

Those might get the same statistic, but would seem to indicate very different sorts of problems and approaches.

[-] DarthFreyr@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

What are the cops going to do? Round here at least, thought crime isn't yet a thing. It'd essentially be the same as if you said "Sometimes, I want to hurt people". If you're actually speaking with a medical professional, what you say is legally privileged information, and AFAIK for the US at least, that continues until there is reasonable belief that you will harm someone or commit a crime.

This totally glosses over the social aspect, but for any legitimate medical provider that shouldn't be a problem. I don't want anyone who needs help to be afraid of seeking it.

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DarthFreyr

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