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I remember reading physical comics that looked like this in my childhood, so this feels like the trans-positive messaging I never had as a child. Felt oddly healing.

Also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my feelings as a closeted trans woman captured so perfectly. The way the seductive promise of gender euphoria constantly weighs against concrete real-world terror… the mermaid analogy is going to stay with me for a long time.

This actually made me sick to my stomach. I’m used to prison rape (and men being raped in general) being treated as a joke, but to see it in an ostensibly “progressive” movement was just too much for me. Especially since these are the same people who rushed to condemn violence after Kirk got shot. Where is your morality now?

Realise that the revenge you’re praying for can only happen if the institution of prison rape, which predominantly victimizes queer people in men’s prisons, continues to exist. If you find that tolerable even for a second… I just don’t know how to reach you.

sjfhsjsjddj you are so beautiful my heart hurts

Your mom is being shitty. I also have a parent who would randomly threaten to cut me off, and it was the last thing I needed to hear when struggling with life-threatening depression for the first time. A decent parent would show love and compassion, or at least not make it worse for you. Understand and remember that she is in the wrong here, not you. Mental health issues are not personal failures, any more than other health issues are.

You’ve posted before about your mom making horrible threats against you. It would be worth asking - how many of her threats has she actually acted on in the past? I don’t know her and I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness of your plight, but my own abusive parent was (is!) all bark and very little bite. The abuse was still harmful, but mostly in an emotional sense. I was never actually cut off or deprived in any significant sense, as my abuser still clung to the idea of loving me and being a faithful parent. Maybe yours is similar, and you don’t actually need to take the fear of being cut off so seriously. Maybe if you could do that, you’d feel better?

Your fear of ICE is legitimate and not pathetic. There really is no limit to their indiscriminate cruelty. But it would be good to assess the risk carefully. For example, statistically, the likelihood of a kid dying in a school shooting is pretty low; you’re far more likely to die of something common like a car accident. So while parents are terrified of a shooting, they still send their kids to school, because the benefits of their child being educated outweigh the risk.

When I was severely depressed, one of the few things that helped a lot was just stepping out of my usual surroundings and watching the world for a bit. It helped me remember that the world is so much bigger than me and the worries that consume me; that there’s enough beauty out there to drown my depression. That there’s always hope, out there in the unknown, though I often can’t see it. It’s a difficult feeling to convey in words, but you’ll know it when you experience it. Stepping out of the house, even for a few minutes, could possibly have game-changing benefits. It definitely saved my life more than once, as silly as that might sound.

Now, the risk. In the case of ICE, the exact risk is unclear as their actions are somewhat random and unpredictable; but there are things you can do to estimate it. You might be able to find out whether ICE agents were spotted in your area (social media, and I think there was even an app for that? Try asking around here). Moreover, there are plenty of people trying to keep vulnerable populations safe from ICE. They know better than anyone else, from firsthand experience, what factors affect the risk; and they’re doing their best to share that information. Try your best to find it. (I wish I was saving that kind of information so I could share it here, but I’ve really not been on top of my game lately.) Then make an informed decision, and hold yourself to it.

Whatever you decide, you’ll feel better about your decision knowing that it was one that you made yourself, not one that was forced on you by fear.

Finally, I just wanted you to know that as someone who experienced something similar, I feel very strongly for you. I got very emotional several times while typing this, and I really wish I could give you a hug and tell you how much I appreciate you for making it this far; I know it can’t have been easy. While my own problems (which are not limited to my parents!) are far from over, I was lucky enough to live away from them for a while, and I think the distance has allowed a lot of wounds to heal. Sometimes things work out in ways you’d never expect. So don’t lose heart! I’m rooting for you.

Didn’t click on this initially because I was sure it’d be someone getting fired for an anti-ICE comment. Nice to be pleasantly surprised.

Depends on how much music you want. I have about 3500 songs at the highest quality free YouTube will let me download songs at, and that comes to around 15GB.

but I wasn’t sure if Spotify, YouTube, or anyone else will reach out with cease and desists like has happened to me with torrents in the past

Right now Google is more focused on breaking the library that powers downloading from YouTube (yt-dlp). They haven’t succeeded yet, but that’s definitely an easier path for them than prosecuting piracy.

I doubt Spotify will try to punish you for this since the content isn’t actually being stolen from them directly.

I only use Spotify to get song/album URLs (web client search w/o login), which I then pass to spotdl to download them off YouTube. Now I have all the music I could ever want, offline and without ads.

Given that surveillance / phone cameras are ubiquitous, and it’s been possible to track people through cell tower triangulation / monitored WiFi hotspots for ages, does this really make things much worse than they already are?

Please don’t. We want you here.

From the survey methodology:

Since 2018, the ATP has used address-based sampling (ABS) for recruitment. A study cover letter and a pre-incentive are mailed to a stratified, random sample of households…

Can you imagine anyone under retirement age actually responding to a survey that comes in the mail? A survey of primarily old people is going to overemphasize conservative voices. It doesn’t look like they did anything to account for this.

What we can do is stay alive until this blows over.

Because it will. The current wave of anti-trans hate is not organic, it’s from propaganda being pushed by right-wing millionare money. Propaganda that people are already waking up to - for example, look at the MAGA discontent around right-wing media coverage of the Epstein files. Eventually most of the public will go back to not really thinking about us anymore.

The real question is whether public opinion will retain its influence on public policy… but that’s a different worry.

My friend - I didn’t reply to defend myself from your arguments, or to demand anything from you. I replied because I’ve known people who express this level of anger and hate, and I’ve seen this kind of thinking lead them to extremely dark places. And that includes myself.

This is not concern trolling, I’m not trying to win or get a rise out of you here, and I’m trying my best not to sound condescending (admittedly without much success) - Please take better care of yourself. Please don’t push away the vast majority of people who do not share your rage. And please, for the love of all that is holy, touch some grass before you give yourself an aneurysm.

I told myself earlier that I’d stop replying, but I felt the need to give this one last try with more direct communication. I’m going to commit this time, if only for the sake of your blood pressure. Wishing you well, genuinely.

Sure, let’s hold the victims of fascism accountable for the actions of fascists.

If you’d actually read my comment, you would have realized that you’re demonstrating exactly what I was talking about. You want to hold fascists accountable, but you don’t have the immediate means to do that. So you turn around and victim-blame your fellow sufferers.

You’re not the first person to fall into this trap. It’s the entire reason people voted for Trump - if you can’t change the system that’s screwing you over, at least you can punish the people around you and call that accountability. I hope we can be smart enough not to do this to each other, but the responses in this thread are making it hard to be optimistic.

So, ironically, I’m going to tune out of this conversation too, before it crushes me even more. I’m going to try to find hope and courage elsewhere, because I’m all out of it at the moment. To the rest of you, whoever you are, I hope you can find it too.

Ok, fine - everyone who didn’t vote is irresponsible and unreliable and a bad ally or whatever, and also let’s do Fox News’ work for them and blame left-leaning emancipatory movements for our problems.

Now what? What viable allies, what options, does this frame of reference leave you with? What are you going to do now?

I’ve spent a lifetime watching people blame the ones closest to them for their problems, while the real enemy is right in front of them. It’s a powerful human impulse, and it’s the primary right-wing impulse. I’m not foolish enough to think it’s ever going away. I can only hope, like I hope of right-wingers, that you’re not too far gone into rage and despair to understand what’s going on.

I can only hope that at some point, before it’s too late, you’ll consider how far a political establishment needs to fall that the people it’s supposed to stand for find it less depressing to tune out; that the only people who engage with the system do it to bring in a guy who’ll tear it all down. I hope you’ll be able to direct your rage at the people who truly deserve it.

I hope you find a way to work with the rest of us. Otherwise, I hope that you’re strong enough to fix this yourself.

I mostly wish I could dream even bigger. If I could truly imagine a life better than this one - if I could see how it’s possible to get there - then I’d have a lot more purpose in my life.

There’d still be a lot of cum and remorse, but at least I could make it mean something…

you’re WRONG!!! and here are some reasons why you’re wrong:

• you’ve had the strength to survive this long, despite the obvious hell you’ve been through. there is beauty in that, and if even i can see it, then you will see it one day
• despite all the pain, you’ve been kind and encouraging and caring in your interactions with people here. the right wants to rob us of our basic empathy and decency, and here you are defying them
• i love you, god damn it. you might think that’s meaningless because i don’t really know you, you may think i wouldn’t love you if i knew you. you’d be wrong. believe it or not, every second you survive is precious to me

so stop being ur own hater!!!
<spritzes you with water like the silly lil kitten u are>

“propaganda”?

Hmmm are there? massive? I mean I know we all use that word lightly but “massive” they are not

34,000 people for Sanders in Denver. Tell me with a straight face that this is a small number of people. “But relatively speaking-” hush. Big number is big.

…but yeah, pretty small compared to the number of people at, say, the Women’s March in 2017. I guess a lot of people learned a thing or two about what peaceful demonstrations can meaningfully accomplish against a police state. Still, nothing to sneeze at.

Yes, Americans love rallies… that is not a protest

Absolutely valid point here. The thing is, both Sanders and AOC have built their entire political careers on grassroots organizing, which is happening quietly alongside all the big speeches. Cory Doctorow has a good overview of this.

Sure, I’d much prefer to see spontaneous uprisings, but we’ve been in this hell for nearly a decade at this point. People are fucking burnt out. If AOC/Sanders is what it takes to bring in fresh blood, then so be it.

have been asking for evidence of these protests myself for the last few weeks and I have not seen anything more than a couple dozen people by the doors of a Gov building… not even big enough for Police to be around

Consider that sharing footage of a protest can put attendees in danger. Lots of emboldened brownshirt types would love to rat you out to the cops or your boss. Lemmy users are probably aware of this, which might be why you the only pics you see are from corporate media - those are already out there and a little traffic on Lemmy won’t make it much worse. See my original point about corporate media not covering the protests.

On that note: the people who showed up in 2017 and 2020 probably learnt this too. Maybe they’re now taking part in less visible/public actions that would be too dangerous to share indiscriminately? Who knows.

There are massive protests all over the US. AOC/Bernie drawing huge crowds. Republicans chanting “tax the rich”.

Corporate media won’t give it the coverage it deserves, and mainstream social media will bury it with their algorithms. Because they’re all owned by the billionaires bowing to Trump.

They want you to feel like nobody’s doing anything. Remember that.