“Men run faster than women.” “Hence rape.” Or, Reddit in a nutshell.
Here’s a little exchange from Reddit that I found on ShitRedditSays that basically sums up everything that’s less-than-charming about the site. We start off with a blanket statement of male superiority, followed by an enthusiastically upvoted rape joke, and then we get massive downvoting and a “fuck you” to someone who’s challenging the blanket statement. (If you follow the link you’ll see that Butch_Magnus isn’t the only one jumping on piv0t.)
The context: This is from the Pics subreddit; they’re discussing a “sexist treadmill” with a control panel that looks like this:
Like this:
Posted on November 29, 2011, in douchebaggery, misogyny, rapey, reddit, that's not funny!. Bookmark the permalink. 339 Comments.
*Cue “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t know I was here to BE PLEASANT 4 U fuck off go fuck yourself are you stupid/illiterate twisted vile woman hater blah blah blah” type post*
To give a feminist example, say tomorrow MRAL turns up and says he’s a feminist. Okay, that’s strange and unexpected, whatever. It’s if he then decides to spruik some of the usual anti-women shit that I’d say, that is not feminism as far as I, and I alone, would consider it — who am I to speak for anyone else? If it was me spouting anti-feminist shit would it fly because of claims to be a feminist? I hope not.
Exactly — which is why I feel that the important thing is to call out ACTIONS (when you talk about X you are redirecting the discussion, taking over this space, etc.) rather than IDENTITIES (you can’t identify this way because I say so!). I’d question MRAL’s feminism, but more importantly address why his specific words were problematic from a feminist perspective.
Sorry I didn’t understand you at first, Xanthe.
As far as the Oppression Olympics discussion goes … I just don’t see why it’s necessary for asexuals to prove anything about the degree to which they experience oppression due to their non-normative sexuality. I don’t hear the asexuals in this thread dismissing LGBT struggles or history. And as someone pointed out, the LGBT experience is not a monolith. My experience and my girlfriend’s experience are very different. Yet we’re still both queer.
Is this exactly, literally, the same problems other types of queer people had? No. But this whole “oh, asexuality was great because everyone would totally respect you for not having any baser urges” thing is a pile of history-erasing bullcrap.
That.
….
I’ve also seen other lgb’s “claim” figures like Newton, saying that no record of sexuality likely indicates homosexuality - Which MAY BE TRUE… But erases the very possibility of asexuality. That’s also something we need to discuss in terms of appropriation/ erasures.
I said it was easier and that there was a non violent end that allowed an expression of that, not that it was super easy or ideal. Read for comprehension, or not at all, and do try to remember that the point of comparison is BEING MURDERED.
Most religious lives provide an out. Being celibate isn’t a requisite for being a buddhist monk (usually), but a buddhist monk has an excuse to not engage in sexual behavior. There are some that are pretty specific in religion being the opposite, and another small batch that actually had nothing to say on the subject, but by and large, religion lets you do this.
Might be a bias in what I’ve read, but… not generally. It’s all about having conquered their . Again, not as good as “Nope, just don’t give a fuck” and living normally, but a better end than the competition.
Oh shit, you’re not even arguing that and you still managed to drop in that many “fuck off” and “illiterate jackass”es?
I’d hate to see how you treat people you don’t agree with.
No you don’t. You only care now that it’s aimed in your general direction. It’s never bothered you before.
Wow, that was…. quite a callout. Yes, as a cis hetero I have no right to tell queer people how to define anything. I’m not trying to have a cis privilege meltdown on this thread and Darksidecat, I’m sorry for trying to dictate to you what you can and cannot define as a queer person. That was not right of me. However, I don’t think I have to be queer to step up and say someone when you tell someone to their face that they are identifying themselves wrong.
I’m not trying to tell oppressed people their identities, I’m defending their right to identify themselves. Bagelsan and Lauralot said that they were queer. You said they were not. That’s oppressive, and I don’t think they should have to come to this space and watch people who should be allies their erase them.
I guess if you’re a jerk to everyone, that’s… fair?
It makes it kind of hard for people to tell that you aren’t even actually disagreeing, though, since you and everyone you’re calling a stupid horrible asshole actually agree with every part of “asexuals should be able to identify as queer, but their history is not equivalent to gay or trans history.”
Thank you, Shora.
You used the “legality” of asexuality as evidence for our relative lack of oppression, and I objected to that being one of the criteria for distinguishing between asexuality and other minorities that can “legally” exist and comparing their level of oppression. So that makes me an illiterate jackass somehow.
…But hey, at least you acknowledge that I’m a queer illiterate jackass, so I guess I can count this discussion as a win! XD
Yes, you’ve just been such the unattached bystander and I’m being soooooo mean to a random. Or, you know, I’m not treating people who are being assholes with the civility they think they are owed. This isn’t exactly a great big secret of mine, you know; it’s how I treat everyone who annoys the hell out of me on this sort of deal. You’re used ot it not being you because you’re almost never a jackass to a marginalized group. You’re being one now.
Only if you aren’t actually reading. The label, I agree with. The creoles pretending they’re as put upon as the mestizos, not so much. I’ve been clear with this from the start.
You, and I mean you specifically, have been appropriating LGBT history for this, trying to claim it was somehow close because it’s an orientation that sometimes gets shit. Yeah, but it’s also an orientation that’s gotten motherfucking exalted. Repeatedly. It’s not really similar at all to people who generally get killed or arrested. Pretending it’s even close to as bad is motherfucking infuriating.
Yes. Also, the fact that you’ve been held up as the model, the historical acceptance (sometimes begrudgingly) of asexuality, and the dire straits the rest of us are in, but ALSO the fact that you face no legal barriers at this time, which is a damn sight better than the rest of us.
I’m bisexual. I’m dating a man now and I’m primarily attracted to men so I guess you can call me a fake trendy bisexual or whatever, but I dated a girl all through high school and was threatened and bullied for it, and in college I dated another girl and got told I was going to Hell.
I know I don’t usually post “as a bisexual person, I think…” because I feel a bit weird about it when my recent history is mostly men, but don’t go telling me that I’m appropriating LGBT history when it’s my history too.
. The creoles pretending they’re as put upon as the mestizos, not so much.
-I think that bringing in racial and ethnic issues here as a direct comparison is inappropriate. Also, I do not know your background, but if you are not creole, I think that could be read as very appropriative and dismissive.
But whatever. This isn’t even about the queer label any more. This is just about saying things that everyone agrees about (yes, asexuals have been oppressed, no, it wasn’t the same oppression as gay people) in successively more hostile tones.
Although you could check yourself on this bit:
I don’t know about arrested, but lots of people (mostly but not all women) have been killed for refusing to marry or refusing to have sex. It’s probably impossible when you’re looking at history to separate sexual people who didn’t want that particular marriage or sex from asexual people, but it’s not fair to say that nobody has ever been killed for not wanting sex.
I think that there are at least three definitions of queer that got brought up in this thread:
1) Queer as an identity situated in a particular history, epitomized by historically being called “queers,” but also including certain kinds of oppression that are mostly, but not entirely, only suffered by LGBT people.
2) Queer as a catchall identity for people who have non-normative sexual orientations or gender identities. Not only is it shorter and more pronounceable than “LGBTQQ2SIA”, but it also makes clear that we suffer from many related oppressions (heteronormativity, people thinking they have input in what we do with our genitalia) and keep being mistaken for each other (both trans people and asexuals, for instance, are often considered to be sekritly gay or lesbian).
3) Queer as politicized identity. That was the Kate Bornstein thing that started the whole thread off. “Queer heterosexuals” would be those who question, refuse to take for granted and break down the gender binary or sexual orientation trinary.
So, uh, pick your favorite? I guess?
This is why I hate terminology discussions.
Rutee, when you’re calling everyone illiterate and stupid and an asshole no matter how trivial the disagreement, it tends to a. distract from the actual issue, because it’s just kind of distasteful and unpleasant, and b. destroy any semblance of perspective, because no one can tell when you’re actually angry or when you really very strongly disagree with something.
Also, what the fuck is with this “four hundred years ago we had it worse”? No, four thousand years ago some long-dead gay people had it worse than some long-dead asexual people. You are not one of them.
@ozy: Nailed it. Pretty much the entire discussion revolves around people equivocating between all these different meanings.
Ozymandias42: well, I’d prefer actual discussions about terminology to people assuming everybody does or should share their meaning for contested terminologies (one of my favorite queer scholars, Alexander Doty, has a list of something like 8 different meanings for ‘queer’ in academic scholaship, in his great book on queering films). If everybody is using a different meant for queer or feminist or whatever, and nobody says what their meaning is, the fail is doomed from the start. Defining and limiting terms doesn’t mean there won’t be fail, but perhaps it will come a bit later and be a bit less. Maybe.
Ithiliana: I do recognize the importance of terminology discussions and of defining your terms before you use them, particularly contentious terms like “queer.” I just am not particularly fond of participating in them.
@ozy: Fully understandable.
My reason for not wanting to participate in them is that I’m a strict historical materialist that believes identities and ideologies are always nothing more than the rationalization of economic realities (the material conditions), so I get hated on by every side in these debates anyway.
@BlackBloc: Having lived with a medieval historian who I think may be fairly affiliated with the historical materialist view (her main work is on religious change in England in the late 1300s) since 1995, I have become more and more convinced over the years that this theory has a great deal of merit, and yes, it does not endear one to people operating under other assumptions.
We used to have some marathon and impassioned discussions back then (well, we still do, but I’m no longer arguing the positions I held then). (It doesn’t help that she got her doctorate at a Jesuit university, though it makes for some lovely theatre in committee meetings when the guys think they can outargue her).
@Ozymandias: I enjoy participating in them sometimes-depends on place and time (and I prefer in writing not speaking), but those are v. limited circumstances.
Queer is a reclaimed slur and still is. It is still a word that carries massive pain against LGB, etc and trans people and is still used against us. It can’t be divorced from that pain and that history. And it certainly can’t be declared to be by those who are not a part of those histories and experiences.
The queer identity term was popularized by Queer Nation, and ACT UP, only a bare few decades ago by people working in AIDS movements. This is a term that rose in a situation of people watching swaths of their community dying and being murdered by government neglect, as well as government and public hate. This is the opening of Queer Nation’s manifesto:
That’s the feeling and climate from which this identity was built.
Saying that this pain and this history is gone and saying it on World AIDS day of all fucking days, is a brutal erasure and denial of history and experience. This is a term with a massive ongoinghistory of pain, a term which is built out of that experience as an attempt at resistence.
I have had this word used against me, I have seen it used against my friends. I have seen people within the community say it sometimes hurts to hear it at times even from others within the community because their association of that word with brutality against them is so strong. The question of this word as a slur isn’t fucking academic, it is part of our oppression.
When you claim queer identity, you are claiming that oppression and that history. So this argument that “asexual people face stigma but don’t share queer oppression and history” means they can’t fucking claim queer identity. If you don’t share the history and oppression of an oppressed group Oppressed people don’t have a duty to let people outside of the oppression use their identity simply because those people face other sorts of stigma.
And, yes, joking about queer sexuality when trying to claim something asinine like a universal sexual privilege and to try and claim other’s experiences and histories and that saying queer people have privilege to express our sexualities is massive erasure and dismissal. Telling me I can safely engage in queer sexuality and genders when they involve such heavy risks is a denial of oppression and a denial of the hate done against us. To claim I have freedom or even in many cases fucking basic safety around my sexuality is absolutely and totally erasing my experiences and denying homphobic oppression (with more than a little overlapping cissexism). I consider myself lucky to be alive, lucky to have never been homeless, lucky that the attempts to physically assault me over this have been comparably few and minor, lucky each time the public naming and expression of my sexuality has not been met with slurs and discrimination, and, when it has, lucky when it doesn’t escalate to violence. People expect us to be grateful to be allowed to exist with our sexualities http://www.towleroad.com/2009/06/pa-senator-eichelberger-were-allowing-gay-couples-to-exist.html And that’s being called privilege. Queer people are directly oppressed around being sexual, a denial of that is a denial of histories, experiences, and pain.
Even if asexuality were another indisputably oppressed group (which I don’t think it is, not all stigma equal oppression), it would not give cis non-quuers a right over queer oppressions and histories. Cis non-queer black people don’t get to call themselves queer or claim queer identity and history on the grounds of being black, cis non-queer disabled people don’t get to call themselves queer identity or history on the basis of being disabled (excluding intersexed people if intersexuality is being discussed as a disability, because intersexuality has traditionally related to trans and LGB, etc. histories and experiences in its own unique way that more gives it more that solid grounds to do so in many, many cases), cis non-queer poor people don’t get to call themselves queer or claim queer identity and history on the grounds of being poor, etc. etc. It isn’t even a denial of an oppressed groups oppression to tell them they can’t co-opt the histories and experiences of another oppressed group. For example, when I as a non-black queer person hear black people call out white queer people for co-opting black experiences, I don’t see that as inherantly anti-queer, white queers don’t have rights to appropriate black experience either and royal fuckups around race when they do isn’t uncommon. Not being allowed to appropriate others oppressions does not just apply to people who are not oppressed in any way, it applies to everyone.
Trying to use feminism as a metaphor doesn’t work either. Feminism names an anti-oppression movement or an anti-oppression politics, it does not in and of itself name an oppressed identity. A close analogy would be if cis men felt as if the fact that they face some gendered stigma gives them the right to say they are women because of their feminism. Is queerness a political identity….well, in the sense that all identities are political, but not in the sense that what lets you use that term for yourself is having its politics. Identifying as queer is less analogous to identifying as a feminist or marxist and more analogous to identifying as a person with disability (though, of course, as always when discussing two different axis of oppression, there are important unique experiences and histories for both).
@shora
No you are not, because right after you say this you turn around and do it again. Until you understand what you did wrong and stop doing, I have not the slightest desire to hear your fake apologies.
Sorry, I want to clarify this because some of the discussion earlier about whether a fully closeted or self loathing person can be queer. Having queer politics is not a sufficient condition, is what I meant, whether it is a necessary one is a seperate debate.
Please stay, Lauralot. I value your posts.
Who here has done that? I’d like to see quotes.
Because every time you disagree with people here, whether it’s Pecunium not hating the Catholic Church enough, or me thinking that psychopaths probably have something in common with aspies and that we might be more similar to each other than either group is to NTs, or Kave saying that his life sucks because his son is dead and his daughter has cancer, every time, you flip the switch from disagreement to thinking the worst of your opponent and accusing them of oppressing you, and I don’t think that is what the people you’re arguing with here are doing.
Argle bargle bargle, DSC is determined to find something that excludes asexual people, and if it’s not the Bible or oppression based on our sexuality then dammit maybe the fact that asexual people do not currently frequently die of AIDS will do it!
Okay, sure, if being queer means you must have been alive during the 70s and/or lost friends to AIDS then I would not count as queer. You totally win that argument. :p
Which means that you’re agreeing with Holly, Baglesan, Lauralot, etc.
So, you’re agreeing.
So, you’re still agreeing.
This wasn’t a competition until DSC made it one.
Also, using dead people and their loved ones as a bludgeon seems like a very classy move. What’s next, a Holocaust reference?
Shora:
This.
@ Bagelsan, your comment to me beginning “Actually, now I’m more confused.” … now back on the previous page of comments — is more or less an inversion of what I thought I had been clear in saying, or nearly opposite. Perhaps as it was well into the a.m. hours when I typed it, so I will assume it is my fault that my communication was so poor. I think I did manage to get my point across to Comrade Svilova, who replied with greater cogency than I could manage.
Don’t pretend you didn’t explicitly claim earlier that queer is not used as a slur and is not connected to those histories.
That was your claim. I pointed at that claim is historically and culturally total bullshit. You are claiming the right to use a reclaimed slur, a slur that is currently in use, because you see it as a “blanket academic term”, that queerness is “purposefully vague”. That’s not the history of this identity, this is an identity built from certain oppressed people’s communities, histories, and experiences.
Thanks Shora, VoiP, ithiliana, and everyone else who’s shown me support over the course of this thread.
I honestly don’t know if I can keep continuing to post here. Even checking to see what’s happened in my absence has made me feel ill.
I’m used to attacks and marginalization from the trolls here. It doesn’t bother me. I couldn’t care less what they think of me, or what they have to say. But the attacks in this thread haven’t come from trolls. Instead, people that I respected, people I’ve learned from and agreed with, have started spewing bile at me just because I disagree with them, or worse: agreed, but the wrong way.
I have tried to calmly, clearly explain my views over the course of this thread. I have tried to stay respectful despite the insults I’ve received. But none of it has made any difference, nothing I’ve said has even slightly lessened the hostility, and my words have been ignored by the people I’m trying to explain myself to.
For my efforts, I’ve been rewarded with being told that I’m stealing my identity from others. I’ve had my identity erased, I’ve been belittled, mocked, and insulted. The posts I tried to communicate with were either dismissed or misconstrued (apparently saying that this thread has shown me asexuals face a hell of a lot more discrimination than I realized means I’m saying asexuals have it worse than anyone else, and apparently believing that a post quoting me may be directed at me makes me illiterate). I’ve done everything in my power to avoid a fight and every time, it’s been thrown back in my face.
And I have no doubts it will continue after this post. I have no doubts I’ll be met with accusations of playing martyr and more “oh god, spare me.”
And again, this isn’t from trolls. This is from people that I considered my allies.
It’s by no means a majority of the posters here, but that doesn’t make it any less toxic. I’ve spent the day alternating between feeling sick at what I’ve read here, and beating myself up for caring what anonymous commenters online think, and that isn’t healthy or productive. In general, I’ve loved being a part of this site. I’ve loved getting to know the posters here, and I’ve loved the discussions. I’ve learned a lot. But the more this thread continues the more the bad apples are spoiling the bunch.
Maybe I’m a horrible, oppressive, privileged princess, but I don’t see anything wrong with sticking up for people as they get erased right before my very eyes.
..yea, I don’t think I have anything more to say here than that.
“Queer” is not just used as a reclaimed slur anymore, DSC, its definition and appropriate use have expanded from that in many circles.
“Queer” is not just used as a reclaimed slur anymore, DSC, its definition and appropriate use have expanded from that in many circles.
“Queer” is not JUST used as a reclaimed slur anymore, DSC, its definition and appropriate use have expanded from that in many circles.
JUST
I hope you stick around, Lauralot, I like your posts.
Lauralot, I am so sorry you’ve been hurt here, I truly am.
It’s still a slur. You can’t use a slur without it being a slur unless you are part of the group the slur is against and have reclaimed it.
If you’re not using it as a reclaimed slur, then then you are just using slurs outright.
@DSC: Sorry but you are wrong and/or disingenuous here. Bagelsan clearly said it is *not only* used as a slur. Bagelsan never opposed the idea that it was used as a slur. Just that it has *only* one definition.
Which is obviously right, we only need a proof of existence to show that it has at least two meanings. It is also used as a term by queer academics as an all-encompassing term for all identities that radically confront social constructions of gender and sexual orientation. Asexuals are quite clearly grandfathered in under that definition, whether or not they have a past history of oppression for their identity.
@Lauralot: I’m so sorry you’re upset by this.
I think feeling upset is a perfectly natural and rational response to finding out that people you thought were cool are actually douchebags, even just if they’re internet people. I’d love for you to stay on manboobz, but obviously your well being comes first and it would probably make a lot of sense to take a break or at least avoid this thread.
@blackbloc, I don’t feel I was being disingenuous, or that I am wrong. If a person concedes X term is a slur, claiming they can go about using it and not be using a slur is rather absurd. I find the argument that “I know X is a slur against you, but it isn’t just used that way so it could be okay for me to use it” inherantly problematic.
@VoiP, not that you deserve my time, as you have blatantly misrepresented my claims and actions on other issues as an ad hominem attack, but for the benefit of others, here’s the exchange that happened earlier:
Claims like that about sexuality and being sexual erase and deny the current and historical fact that there are in fact oppressions of people based around their sexual expressions and desires, incredibly serious ones. Pretending that the oppressions around being sexual are so minimal as to make jokes that they are just “washing your sheets a bit more” us dismissive towards people who are killed, beaten, raped, and discriminated against on the basis of their being sexual in certain ways. Joking that being sexual carries no costs to people who face massive costs for having their sexualities and being sexual as LGB, etc. or trans people is erasing and dismissing that oppression. Saying that LGB, etc. (with overlapping issues for many trans people) people are not oppressed as sexual people is denying homophobia and homophobic oppression. That’s what I was addressing and that’s what was happening.
Oh, that’s precious.
If you seriously believe that Holly, who has blogged extensively about sexual issues and makes a great deal of good sense, thinks that the only problem with being sexual is that you have to wash your sheets a lot and therefore that she believes that LGBT people are not oppressed, you are monumentally dense. As I’m pretty sure you don’t have reading comprehension problems, I can only assume that you’re deliberately taking her words out of context in order to claim that she believes this:
She has not said this. She has not ever said this. NOBODY IN THIS THREAD HAS SAID THIS, and if you think that three people joking around in the middle of a very tense thread is the same as being,
then I have really no idea where you’re getting that.
WHERE HAS ANYONE HERE SAID THAT LGBT PEOPLE ARE NOT OPPRESSED.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe I was just disagreeing with you, because I saw things differently?
The joke was about sexual people not facing oppression for being sexual rather than asexual, not claiming that every class of sexual people hadn’t been oppressed.
It’s like saying “heterosexual people are privileged” isn’t denying oppression of heterosexuals of color, because they’re not oppressed for being heterosexual.
Hay everyone, MRAL’s back and trying to “add something” to the debate.
OMG he remembered my “We’re not here to be pleasant for you” post! squeeeee
@lauralot
I have been lurking and reading this thread and my own opinions are conflicted but I’m not comfortable saying them here (coming from an asexual queer person). I do want to say I understand your discomfort lauralot, I see a lot of hostility towards asexuals being show here. Having your identity up on a pedestal up for judging is draining and I don’t blame you if you want to opt out.
I will offer you my email if you would like to talk sometime: Jumboficsh@gmail.com
I will miss your comments if you leave so I really hope you stay!
@mral
go fuck off you vile women hater!!!
;P
MRAL feels that he has something to say about this issue? Well that will certainly be…interesting.
I hope you stay, Lauralot. You frequently say things to the trolls here that I wish I had the guts to say. But I definitely understand the importance of taking yourself out of a situation that makes you feel marginalized and unhappy.
I’m not sure if I should say this or not, because it feeds the stupidity, but anyone who consistently and deliberately misgenders other individuals here should not be intruding on a conversation about queer identity. You don’t have a horse in the race, here; let it go, and find another thread.
The only interesting part here is that, while DSC has posted a lot more than Rutee, and zir posts have been a lot more explicitly negative, MRAL is exercising his obsession with Rutee here:
Honey, you can’t cuss at people and then concern-troll in the same thread, mmmmkay?
But, VoiP, SHIT FUCK ALPHA. It had to be said, and poor MRAL was the lone MRA here to say it. He would hate us to forget how much MRAs us (pretty much all of is, in terms of the rest of the people involved in this conversation.)
That last paragraph was directed at our fair troll, Lauralot, not you. I need to have my head re-screwed on.
By which I meant to say, how much MRAs hate all of us.
It’s cool, MRAL, we know. You can put that super-pointy rhetorical sword of yours down now.
Wait, wait, i have it: men are like wolves, right? Or maybe cave-people. Yeah, we have hardly a clue how cave-people acted, but work with me here. MRAL is engaging in the customary display of his kind, after which time he and Rutee will fight, and then they will be bros. If Rutee were straight, she would then smell his urine and, if she were in heat, mount him.
That’s how this works, right? I slept through biology…
Shora, I think the personal attacks in this thread have been unnecessarily vicious and unhelpful and I’m very upset that some commenters are sufficiently enraged to either want to leave or to drive off other valued contributors. However, a couple of pages ago you asserted that since there is no consensus on queer within GLBT spaces, that DSC was therefore wrong. I’m here to say on the pro-side, DSC’s stake claiming is not the only definition — but on the con-side, the definition is one that fits squarely in the historical meaning corresponding to ozymandias’ item 1) earlier. It also happens to be the identity I’ve lived with for two decades as an out bisexual who has suffered homophobia and bi-erasure from heteros and biphobia from other queer people.
All the same I’m sensitive to not denying alternative definitions of queer identity such as the extended QUILTBAG umbrella or to the political aspect of queer theory — to the same extent that I would not want my identification with the historical movement idea of queer identity treated insensitively.
MRAL, kindly shut the fuck up. You don’t have a dog in this fight, not even close.
I’ve only just now caught up with this thread.
This is obviously a very complicated topic. It troubles me to see commenters I like getting upset with each other, yet I understand why people on all sides of this debate are getting upset with one another.
At this point I’m not sure that further discussion here is going to be productive. I think everyone involved has pretty much stated their opinions, and that further debate isn’t going to change any minds. (I have my own somewhat conflicted thoughts on the matter, for what it’s worth, but I don’t think sharing them now would be helpful; also, pretty much every argument I would make has already been made by various people in this thread already.)
I’m closing this thread, at least for now.