@FeralRobots imo interrail/eurail are pretty fantastic for exploring Europe.

A couple of weeks ago I needed to get to Vienna from Nice, so I took some trains down to the Cinque Terre, explored those for the day and then took a night train from La Spezia to Vienna. I could have flown direct with WizzAir instead and it would have been quicker, a lot simpler and a little cheaper, but much less memorable.

On the other hand: while direct trains can be nice, it's often just as good to have frequent trains with timed connections. gruene.social/@jon/11271632597…

Jon Worth

2024-07-02 10:04:01

Agh

Greenpeace has a new report about missing *direct* connections between European capital cities

PDF:
greenpeace.de/publikationen/Gr…

This is somehow right and wrong simultaneously. Sure, some routes we need are missing. *But* for example I’d prefer a Frankfurt-Paris every hour than a Paris-Berlin once a day…

@RustyRing

I think you've put your finger right on it - TERFs are indeed just conservatives of that extreme kind.

I don't really think their views have anything to do with gametes or safe spaces or any of the things they say they're about, because they make no sense in relation to those things.

What I think does explain their views is that conservatives fear any change to a status quo they're invested in - and a certain kind of (generally older) feminist is also invested - I mean intellectually and emotionally - in a neat division of the sexes. They've made that division part of their 'feminist' identity, so they mistake the emergence of cracks in that neat binary as an attack on their own way of being in the world. For them, it's personal.

@goatsarah

@christineburns
Yes. You stick to a clear statement of your position and don't allow yourself to get derailed.

If your position was highly dubious this wouldn't fly of course. But for example "people have the right to live as their true selves and it isn't within the legitimate authority of the state to say whether they are allowed to" is a good starting point.

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

Anglophone feminism in general has an ideology problem. I learned this while living in France during a formative part of my life. (My twenties.) Having grown up in the 70s, battered by the angry, often hypocritical feminism that was prominent in the States during that era, I had a visceral aversion to the word "feminism".

So when I found myself in a nation of ideologically introspective feminists I had no idea such a thing could exist, and was astonished to find they actually shared some of my resentment of the American movement. I spent much of my time there listening to women and seeking conversations with overt feminists; hell, just finding myself in a place where a man _can_ talk about these things with women was exhilarating. I was completely converted. Frankly, they saved my life. I shudder to think what I might have become in the Internet Age.

So yeah. As French feminists say: "American feminists are more American than they are feminist."

It's also potentially a good idea to post a link to their reply with the hashtag # fediblock so other trans instances can pre-emptively defederate.

(Specifically, I would like to defederatethis server.)

Sensitive content Reveal/hide