Yes.

Either they’re a tankie and start singing the praises of the USSR and PRC and all sorts of totalitarian hellholes, or they start talking about hypothetical economic systems and states which haven’t been shown to be practically achievable

Well allow me to present the third option: communism has been tried in Australia and North America, and it worked. Marx’s ideas of what a communist society would look like were informed by descriptions he read of how the Haudenosaunee people actually organised their society. They did communism for thousands of years and it worked.

That sounds pretty statist. How do you square that with the fact communism is stateless?

Reality is god to realists. That’s what they believe in. They worship it, they obey it, they demand others have the same respect for it. It’s theism.

I don’t believe you’re an atheist, because you believe in reality. That’s religious thinking.

Anyway, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much if you weren’t trying to read my mind without consent. No means no, but you didn’t even ask. No wonder you’re in pain, you tried to delve inside my mind and I kicked you back out.

Yeah, I’m neurodivergent in a lot of different ways, and every one of them reduces the efficacy of neurotypical empathy. That sensation you’re experiencing right now from talking to me is the same way neurotypical people feel when they talk to you. No wonder neurotypicals are so ableist to autistics, talking to us causes them pain. But it’s still not right for them to demand we think like them, and it’s still not right for you to demand I think like you. What we have to learn is how to coexist together.

And any coexistence we reach isn’t going to involve always assuming we can read minds effectively. It’s just an unrealistic standard.

If you don’t believe in fantasy then your life must be very boring

Don’t forget that believing in a reality beyond the senses is a religion too. All atheists are solipsists.

Being a witch is a green flag. It probably means she’s woke

Psychopathy is a disability, Elon doesn’t have it, and that’s a negative stereotype.

I’m not a fetishist or an ally, I’m a gay. I’m gay for people who share my gender identity. Also I’ve never been on Beehaw

What’s up with this heteronormativity? You think everyone who’s attracted to fat enbies is a cishet person? Jesus Christ.

Cool, my new username is defusing hostile situations

Their guidelines say you shouldn’t keep responding to someone who says they don’t want to keep talking. So let’s say someone uses a slur that not everyone agrees is a slur, like the R word. I can’t downvote it, so I report it and reply “no slurs”. They respond “I didn’t use a slur and I don’t want to discuss it with you”. Well now it’s down to the moderators to remove the content, and if they don’t agree with me or they aren’t educated then I can’t do a thing about it.

Back on Reddit people used to use my disability as an insult all the time. I’d downvote, report, and comment. I’d pester the bigot so they’d learn that using slurs is more trouble than it’s worth, and lots of times the moderators would say “that’s not a slur” and leave the comment up, and then 4 weeks later the Reddit admins would come and remove the comment. But by then I’d already persuaded the bigot that using slurs is a huge hassle that only leads to trouble. I had a system. I could fight bigotry myself even though I wasn’t a mod.

On beehaw I’m just supposed to trust that the moderators are perfect? No thanks, I’m an anarchist. I don’t trust anyone unconditionally. It would take a whole lot of effort to persuade me that beehaw is a safe space. Because to me, a safe space is a space where I’m able to defend myself when nobody else will.

Hey, no slurs.

Beehaw seems like it breeds a toxic environment that’s welcoming to transphobes, so I don’t think I’d want to join

Well that’s a tremendous amount of faith in your ability to read other people’s minds. And given you make no distinction between reading the minds of neurotypicals and autistics, I’d bet good money that you’re frequently wrong when you try to read autistic minds. Which would make your actions towards autistic people frequently cruel.

Well see, sealioning is feigning ignorance, and it’s a simple fact that bigots really are that ignorant. I’ve never met anyone who understood progressive issues and still disagreed, except for amoral people who chose to have little investment and wouldn’t bother to engage in sealioning. This idea you’re proposing that there are people who pretend to be ignorant doesn’t make any sense to me. If they are acting like foolish bigots, I choose to believe them.

I argue with fascists, exclus, medicalists, and sexists all the time and I’ve never met a sealion. But I have met neurotypical people who expect their sense of cognitive empathy to work on neurodivergent people, and then project all sorts of BS onto them for having a different opinion. IME that term is a dogwhistle for ableism.

EDIT: Just looked up Beehaw’s guidelines and apparently it’s against the guidelines to accuse someone of sealioning so maybe Beehaw isn’t so bad

Sealioning is an accusation that rests on assuming someone else’s intentions. You can’t ever know for sure if someone is a sealion, because people aren’t mind readers. I usually see sealioning accusations thrown by neurotypicals at autistic people, because they can’t read our emotions like they’re used to and that freaks them out and they assume hostile intent.