this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Whether or not you meant it this way, your argument has been used to downplay important social issues for over 100 years, probably a lot longer.
I've heard "Why spend so much effort on X when people are dying out there?"
Where X is womens' voting rights, Black rights, sexual freedoms, political freedoms, and religious freedoms just off the top of my head in the US alone.
If you did mean it with good intentions and not as a debate tactic, know that we can work on two things at once. To use the US as an example again, most of those things I addressed were indeed improved and it's not like other things just fell by the wayside. We vastly improved food safety, workplace safety, hunger, infrastructure, etc. at the same time.
What I'm saying is that I'm tired of hearing about wants constantly on the news when our country is filled with so much need it hurts. You want to transition. That's good. I'm so happy for you that you've figured out who you want to be. You want a safe community for all your people to gather and share. Totally understandable, people have been doing that for thousands of years. What I am concerned about is what people NEED to live. People need shelter that doesn't make them unable to afford food. People need food that isn't so preserved with chemicals and colorants it gives them cancer 20 years down the line. People need water that isn't full of whatever runoff dupont feels like dumping in 10 miles up the river. None of the other issues become any less important, but we need to understand that needs are more important than wants on a fundamental level. And we are not meeting the needs of our people. Until that happens, I'm gonna be mad about people crying for their wants.
What a truly fascinating way to view the world.
If you actually believe that, surely you're not going far enough though? You can follow your logic to its conclusion:
Actually, some people have no water at all. We should literally expend no effort into cleaning up water until every single human on the planet has access to some form of water.
Actually, some people can afford neither food or shelter, and so we should not expend any effort in providing them with shelter until every single human on the planet has access to food.
It's almost like we're a complex society that can address more than one societal issue at a given point.
there's always a bigger fish, right?
the adage goes 'pick your fights' for a reason. while the needs that badadvice (fitting name, actually lol) mentions are vital and important, the scale of them is such that we would spend all of our energy on them and ignore the plethora of other issues being discussed in this post. while we need to be working on affordable housing, clean water, etc., we also need to be considering where we can do the most good. and people like badadvice get angry that the forest exists because it obscures the their particular tree and would burn the rest of the forest if they think it will help their tree. the reality is that the diminishing returns for fights like badadvice is advocating for puts us in a position that they are often untenable to try and tackle with the level of effort they want to put towards it. this isn't a matter of being cold-hearted toward those issues, it's a matter of triaging our problems as a society.
You are so completely full of shit.
"You don't understand, I have to hate the gays, it's the only way to stop cancer and poverty."
Hello straw man. Lmao pretty sure what I said is that trans issues are disproportionately overexposed in media and really shouldn't be considering how small of a percentage of the population those issues directly affect. Especially when you look at it through the perspective of someone who knows exactly how much of an issue getting clean water on reservations can be right now, even in the "deluxe American poverty" of the midwest
The whole reason the LGBTQ+ topic is so big is because of those other issues, specifically because solving those would take actual effort and money and if you don't want to expend that you just tie up people's attention and energy in useless culture wars, and then they're too tired and distracted to deal with all the other problems that need solving.