• 7 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • I honestly thought I had tagged more users

    I mostly only tag users whom I read as reasonable enough to have a discussion with initially, but I’ve learned it doesn’t go well. And the booooooomer tag is for the prolific poster of boomer-ass memes.

    (The combination of green and a positive vote count makes it look like I might be down for Islamophobia, but I just wanted a different color and I feel weird interacting with someone’s comments/posts after I’ve tagged them, because I’ve essentially prejudiced myself against them, so if they’re positive when I tag them, they’ll stay that way)


  • I wear flannels nine months a year because it’s good for layering and I tend to get really cold and really hot multiple times in a day. Plus, it looks professional enough for teaching and I’m unlikely to have any wardrobe issues with it (I learned the hard way that ponchos don’t mix with writing on the board). It doesn’t normally make me feel any kind of way, but a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about drinking culture in Germany vs our home countries with my students. I didn’t even think about how I was dressed when explaining that we typically played a drinking game with a stump and either hatchets or axes and we always drank in the woods as youths, but my students started laughing at me for being a lumberjack.

    I’ve never felled a tree, but I really love splitting wood, and a flannel is comfortable for that work. It might be less a stereotype and more just specialized gear.






  • I’m from the USA and I wasn’t a dick there, either. I don’t know why you’d assume I would be, especially as I said that I’m not the stereotypical American. I definitely don’t approach strangers to start conversations and when they do it with me, I respond politely and in a friendly way, but don’t try to drive the conversation into any divisive areas (or really anywhere at all, I try to let conversations with strangers whom I’m not planning a get to know die out as quickly as possible while maintaining friendliness).


  • I don’t meet many people who are upset when I do or don’t fit a stereotype (some Germans are sad that I’m not very “cowboy,” but that’s mostly just true for people who don’t meet a lot of foreigners and are excited to, so they definitely don’t get super mad). I’m not even sure what that would look like- I’ve only ever reacted with or received the reaction of positive surprise when an incongruent aspect of someone’s personality comes out, unless it’s something that would be upsetting from any personality type.

    I don’t seek to embody a stereotype: I evolved gradually over the last three decades, certainly influenced by my family, peers, and culture, but independently and as my own person. I don’t think many of the people in my life are very stereotypical either, but that might be because I’m an immigrant with very few friends from my home country, so people who interact with me are intentionally choosing to interact with people outside of their cultures.

    It sounds like you’re reenforcing stereotypes if you’re seeing that people seem to fit a stereotype and responding based on that without getting to know them (because again, I don’t identify with the SJW stereotype, even though I fulfill a lot of the tropes- based on this thread, I’m not alone).


  • I’m not personally big on labels (that’s part of why I’m not sure of my gender- I just don’t really care how people perceive me, so it doesn’t seem like a priority), nor do I ever introduce myself like the above irl. Very few of the people in my life are aware of all of the above, but it’s relevant for the post, so I looked for all the labels that fit.

    This isn’t a topic that consumes me, it just occurred to me that I check off a lot of boxes even though I don’t think I seem to.





  • To elaborate: I’m a queer leftist vegan with a bisexual partner and I’m not sure of my gender. I’ve got autism, ADHD, and anxiety, and I work part time as a barista in my thirties while very slowly getting a master’s degree in a niche liberal arts field after being unable to find work related to my bachelor’s degree in a related niche liberal arts field. When I was younger, I frequently had blue and/or pink hair, but now I donate my hair, so I don’t dye it anymore; similarly, I’ve had over 15 piercings, but could currently only wear a ring in my septum and maybe my earlobes if I put in some work. I feel very strongly about multiple causes, but do little active protesting.

    At the same time, I’m (afab, received socially as a woman, but who knows?) married to a man apprenticing as a butcher, I went back to school after saving up enough money in my role as an adjuster for litigated long tailed claims (basically contract analysis and directing defense strategy), I currently work in my desired field (German language education for new arrivals here in Germany), and I help run a mutual aid group and immigrant support group instead of demonstrating because I’m an immigrant with uncertain status.

    I’m very interested in preserving food, handicrafts that help me to be self sufficient, folk dance, and puzzles, but I’m also interested in TTRPGs, mtg, larping, and involved board games. Those groups of activities each fulfill different genres of SJW stereotype (puzzles and larping might work as cross category overlaps), but I also like cycling, rowing, swimming, and lifting weights, which feel like they don’t really fit.

    I guess most important would be that I try not to be preachy or judgmental in my daily life and have no reason to believe I don’t succeed- it’s pretty easy to get honest feedback from large groups of students who aren’t expecting my brain to hyperfocus on all spoken English after so long in Germany. Through those aid groups and my husband’s job, I end up giving out about €75 worth of meat a week, which means people are often very surprised that I’m a vegan (but the meat can no longer be sold, though it’s still safe to consume, so there’s no profit going to the butcher, and people buy less meat when they can get it for free, so it reduces demand, so my conscience is clear).

    As for being an American in Germany: again, I’m a vegan leftist, but I’ve also mastered German to the degree that I’m a German teacher, and my full married name sounds as bland in Germany as “Katherine Marie Parsons” would in the US.





  • You can read it. You could also read it as early as this review in the winter of 1982-83. The article begins on page ten with the relevant mention on page 11.

    If you scroll to page 50-51 of the pdf that was declassified, you’ll see a transit slip (the missing page 48 in the book is because it’s a blank page in the book following a section that ends on an odd number, like the missing pages 18 and 52). I’m guessing that piece of paper was the relevant document and it was found being used as a bookmark in this book. Scroll further to page 56 of the pdf, to see the supplementary reading and that’s what I’m basing my skepticism on. The Wikipedia page is just a helpful summary.