Ugh you’re probably right, it’s going to be our generation’s DMC DeLorean. The vehicle itself will age poorly, but slap it in a BTTF reboot in five years and it’ll fit right in

Probably low-hanging fruit here, but Cybertrucks

Tbh there’s lots of stuff in the Barbie movie that I would consider timeless, especially the feminist aspects of it. What parts of the movie do you think applies to the 2020s but doesn’t apply to, say, 1990 or 1960?

EDIT: I may have interpreted this comment too pessimisticly-- this question is about the future, not the past. Maybe, hopefully, societal views on gender will change in the future enough that the Barbie movie will become outdated

Maybe Cory Doctorow?

Porno for Pyros, is that you?

Absolutely, and thanks for pointing this out! I don’t have anything to add, I just wanted to let folks know that you’re 100% correct.

It seems like in this situation, it’s reasonable to just use the word “trans”. I really appreciate how much thought you’re putting in to inclusiveness, but it seems like it isn’t the queer community at large who your older coworkers are struggling to accept, but specifically trans people.

I don’t know all the details, but I would recommend two things:

First, you need to help trans people feel safe while they’re in your place of work. They are the people who are at the center of this conversation, not you and not your older coworkers. Get a small Progress Flag and put it somewhere in your workspace where it is visible to the public and also clearly associated with you. Your goal here is to put up a little flag that says “if you’re in the queer community, come to me and I will make you comfortable”. These statements of inclusiveness are aimed to the public, not your coworkers–your coworkers already know that you’re an ally because they know who you are and what kind of actions you do, but the general public doesn’t have that luxury so this is where your efforts for inclusiveness should be focused.

Second, if you do want to buy clothes or accessories to show your older coworkers that you support trans identities and try to change their minds about doing the same, make sure you support trans artists when you do so :) don’t “get them made”, buy them from a trans artist who has already made them. Not only will you be financially supporting the people you want to support, but you’ll also be elevating the voice of an actual trans person–which I think is what you wanted to do when you made this post.

That being said, hostile phrasing like “I’ll identify as a problem” may not be the best way to change someone’s mind. I don’t know a lot about your coworkers, but you might be the only person to ever speak to them with empathy about empathy for trans people. You’ve got an opportunity here to prove wrong the stereotypes about “screaming SJWs”, stereotypes that are so baked in to our society that they have even managed to enter the discussion we’re having here. In a world like the one that we live in, kindness and patience are radical and powerful tools, if we choose to use them.

Exposing my own ignorance here, but is “gay” necessarily gendered?

The difficulty of answering that question, and the fact that both “yes” and “no” are both valid answers that individual people of every gender could sincerely give, are two of the reasons why “queer” has become more popular than “gay” as an umbrella term. The people who do think “gay” as an umbrella term is gendered prefer the word “queer”, while the people who don’t think “gay” as an umbrella term is gendered are not upset by the word “queer”.

Another reason that “gay” isn’t used as an umbrella term is because it’s also a specific term. Imagine being a man and saying “I’m gay” and having someone ask you, “ok but are you gay or are you gay gay?”. Sexuality and gender are already sensitive and difficult things to explore, so removing ambiguity from the language surrounding those topics will make things clearer and easier for everyone involved.

That being said, you should always respect the way that people want to be identified. If you know a lesbian woman that identifies as “gay”, then just accept it and use it while understanding that not every lesbian woman will feel the same way.

The best term you can use is just “the queer community”. It’s a broad and vague word that asks no questions and offers no answers beyond “these people have sexual orientations and/or gender identities that are not exclusively heterosexual and/or cisgender”. It’s gender-neutral unlike the previous catch-all term “gay”. It includes people who were originally excluded and unrepresented by the original LGBT acronym, such as intersex and third-gendered people. It also includes people who find it culturally difficult to put a label on what they do, such as same-gender-loving Black people who don’t call themselves “gay”.

That being said, it is not always the perfect, use-it-all-the-time panacea that you’re looking for. “Queer” was originally a pejorative term, and although it has been reclaimed as positive terminology since the Stonewall Riot days (think of the chant, “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”), some older members of the queer community remember it as hurtful.

In addition, sometimes it’s important to be specific. Exclusively using the word “queer” to refer to the queer community flattens the queer experience to one single uniform word, when reality is anything but uniform. For example, when trans people are targeted by executive orders and bathroom bills, it’s important to be specific about who those actions harm: trans people, intersex people, and so on.

For these reasons, while it is safe to use “queer” as a blanket term, some individual people don’t like the term and some individual circumstances call for a more specific word.

As far as your flag question goes, if you’re looking for a visible signal to signpost that you’re a queer ally, you’re probably looking for the Progress Flag. It’s the original rainbow pride flag, but with added representation for trans people, intersex people, people of color, and those who died during the AIDS crisis.

Yep! I wouldn’t say it would be “yours” exactly because you would never have actual ownership of the thing while you’re using it, but it would be your right to use it and profit from it so long as you don’t destroy it. A good example would be the way Native Americans viewed land use, following herds of wild animals wherever they went and moving from depleted areas to more fertile ones. This clashed heavily with European and American colonialists, who enforced their views of exclusionary ownership with barbed wire fences and violence.

It’s the idea that because you own something, you’re the only one who is allowed to use it, whether you’re actually actively using it right now or not. You can contrast it with usufructuary rights, which are based on the idea that you only have rights to something while you’re actively using it

Oh yeah, no doubt about that. The point that I’m attempting to make is that the Middle East was not always that way

That’s pretty fair. It may feel impossible for me today to afford any capital, but if I were somehow able to accumulate enough money I would be legally allowed to own capital. Under monarchy, even if I got that much money, it would be illegal for me to purchase capital as an individual. That’s enough of a distinction to make them different for me, thanks for bringing it up.

We’re done here.

Oh thank god

And I’m telling you that trying to argue that there was one standard from Gibraltar to the Hindu Kush over the course of hundreds of years of history is utterly divorced from reality.

OK and who should I believe, some random dude on the internet saying “trust me bro” or Everett K. Rowson, American scholar and Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University? What I said comes straight from his mouth, so if you want to argue that point you’re welcome to send him an email. From his article, “HOMOSEXUALITY IN ISLAMIC LAW” (with further citations available in his bibliography):

At the same time, historical and anecdotal texts indicate a widespread acceptance of homoerotic love affairs, at least in elite society and probably much more generally, throughout the lands of Islam, with very little geographical or ethnic differentiation.

Do you mean the Islamic Golden Age?

That’s the one!

I don’t even know how to respond to this considering the loose legal system of the Saudis and the fact that Saudi Arabia as we know it still did not exist in 1928.

Welp, you’re the one who brought up Muhammad bin Saud, not me. As you quoted, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab formed an alliance with bin Saud, the emir of the town of Diriyah. The Emirate of Diriyah, also known as the First Arab State, was ruled by bin Saud and later his son until his son was militarily defeated and executed by the Ottomans in 1818-1819. The Al Saud clan and the followers of ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, however, remained in the same geographical area, and founded the Second Saudi State that lasted from 1824 until 1891, followed by the Third Saudi State in 1902. The Third Saudi State would eventually change its name to “Saudi Arabia”, and it is ruled by the Al Saud clan to this day.

Okay, first, the paragraph notes that it is bin Saud’s endorsement of the Wahhabist movement, which dominated from Damasacus to Baghdad, which is the relevant portion.

Here are links to maps of the First Saudi State’s territory, the Second Saudi State’s territory, and the Third Saudi State’s territory. You’ll notice that Palestine does not fall within the borders of any of those three maps. Furthermore, I think you might need a reminder on where Damascus and Baghdad are located. Go find both of them on a map, draw a line between the two, and tell me if Palestine is anywhere near the area denoted by that line. Once again, you need to do your research before you post assertions online.

Second, the culture of the Ottomans is not particularly relevant to the culture of Palestine - the Ottoman Empire was not a nation-state, and Palestinians were sure as shit not culturally Turkish. Third, most areas outside of Anatolia had a great deal of local autonomy to administer laws and punishments.

Fair enough. Palestinians are also sure as shit not culturally Saudi Arabian, though, so why do you keep bringing that up? I think the best source about specifically Palestinian history would be from a Palestinian academic. Let’s read an excerpt of an interview with Palestinian scholar and author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Sa’ed Atshan:

Same-sex marriage is not yet recognised in Palestine and homosexuality, under the British Mandate criminal code Ordinance of 1936, can face legal repercussions, including prison sentences. The British played a prominent role in exporting homophobia to the Global South, including the state of Palestine. “There is a role that Western colonialism has played in exacerbating homophobia within the Middle East, North Africa region and across the Global South,” Atshan agrees. “Much of the justification that the British and the French marshalled in colonising these parts of the world was the belief these people were seen as primitive and barbarians. The ‘evidence’ for that was that these people were viewed as too accepting of homosexuality and they need to be disciplined.” As a result, heteronormative Victorian models of gender and sexuality were imposed on colonised locations such as the anti-sodomy laws across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the Global South. “A lot of the legislation comes from the Western colonial forces, so we have to think about those legacies of colonial homophobia, and the British were a huge exporter of homophobia all over the world.”

Does the exchange of land between kingdoms via wedding dowries/treaties/violence fulfill the definition of a “market for capital”?

I would call monarchism a form of religious capitalism where the ruling class claims divine right as the methods to accumulate capital, rather than using financial means to accumulate capital

My friend.

Once again you have made assertions without doing your research.

I said “homosexual practices were accepted and commonplace in the Muslim world during the Islamic Era”

Do some research, learn when the Islamic Era ended according to whichever scholarly consensus you’d like, then count how many years that was before the criminal punishment for homosexuality was specified in Saudi Arabia in 1928.

And also, that’s where your haste has brought you: Saudi Arabia, not Palestine. Muhammad bin Saud’s name should have tipped you off to that. Palestine was created by carving up the Ottoman Empire, so that is the historical culture you must evaluate to make your claim, not Saudi Arabia’s. With that in mind, here’s the very next paragraph after the one you quoted:

Homosexuality in the Ottoman Empire was decriminalized in 1858, as part of wider reforms during the Tanzimat. However, authors Lapidus and Salaymeh write that before the 19th century Ottoman society had been open and welcoming to homosexuals, and that by the 1850s via European influence they began censoring homosexuality in their society.

This is not a misconception. This is the inconvenient reality. The Ottoman Empire began censoring homosexuality in their culture in the 1850s because of exposure to European society.

I think the simplest way to put it is “an economic system where individuals are allowed to have exclusionary ownership of capital”

My friend, maybe you should do some research before you make assertions so confidently, especially if you’re going to use those assertions to accuse others of being racists or ethnocentrists. I’d recommend the Wikipedia article called LGBT People and Islam, particularly the “History” section of the article. The TLDR is that homosexual practices were accepted and commonplace in the Muslim world during the Islamic Era, although their view of what homosexuality is would be considered lacking by modern standards. In fact, they were so damn gay that they wrote love poems to their male pages and Europeans made fun of them for it. Here’s a quote from Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World:

Whatever the legal strictures on sexual activity, the positive expression of male homoerotic sentiment in literature was accepted, and assiduously cultivated, from the late eighth century until modern times. First in Arabic, but later also in Persian, Turkish and Urdu, love poetry by men about boys more than competed with that about women, it overwhelmed it. Anecdotal literature reinforces this impression of general societal acceptance of the public celebration of male-male love (which hostile Western caricatures of Islamic societies in medieval and early modern times simply exaggerate).