ah i know this is obvious advice but like: dont let your friends vaguepost about you. its disrespectful and passive aggressive and makes it a lot harder to facilitate safe discussions. also dont vaguepost about your friends thats childish
[Image description: The American flag flying above the LGBT flag]
“A U.S. court on Friday ruled in favor of a Trump administration policy barring certain transgender people from serving in the U.S. armed forces, handing the president his first legal victory on the issue after several defeats.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a decision by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that blocked the policy, saying it likely violates the constitutional rights of transgender recruits and service members.
President Donald Trump announced in March that he would endorse a plan by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of transgender people who experience a condition called gender dysphoria.
The appeals court victory is limited because other federal courts issued injunctions against the policy, which applied nationwide. The administration already has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue.
The high court is due to consider whether to hear three separate government appeals at its private conference on Jan. 11. The various injunctions allowed transgender troops to join the ranks as of Jan. 1, 2018.
“Today’s ruling is a devastating slap in the face to transgender service members who have proved their fitness to serve and their dedication to this country,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of the groups challenging the policy.
The three-judge panel said in an unsigned opinion that District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was wrong to conclude that the new restrictions were essentially the same as the original ban, which she had also blocked.
“It was clear error to say there was no significant change,” the judges wrote in the ruling.
The new plan, for example, “appears to permit some transgender individuals to serve in the military consistent with established military mental health, physical health, and sex-based standards,” the court said.
The American Psychiatric Association defines gender dysphoria as a “clinically significant distress” due to a conflict between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. Not all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria, according to the association, which opposes a military ban.
The gender dysphoria restriction replaced an outright ban on transgender service members that Trump announced in July 2017 on Twitter.
Trump’s move reversed Democratic former President Barack Obama’s policy of allowing transgender troops to serve openly and receive medical care to transition genders.”
Ok, but yeah. I want to work more than 15 hours a week. I genuinely love the challenge with what I do. 15 seems, oddly tiny? Where did this number come from?
This is a good response to that question, in case anyone wanted the q&a paired together. 15 would be the social average — some people might work more, some less, but that would be up to them. This is also presupposing a change in the way the economy effectively functions, in the sense that 15 hours would be the social average for necessary labor, and after that point you’d probably see tons of people participating in “unnecessary” labor out of interest. There’s an idea in socialist theory that basically says once you reach a point far enough along after capitalism you’d just start seeing a blurring of the lines between what’s defined as “work” (or as “a job”) and what’s defined as “a collective activity”, especially with regard to the arts, science, etc.
At the very least, a transition towards (eco)socialism will require a vast shortening of the workweek and a reduction in overall advertising/consumption, whether that mean a 15-hour week or a 20-hour week. The main point is that people are overworked, we can meet everyone’s needs feasibly with less hours anyway, and the over-emphasis on extraction and accumulation (which is in part fueled by a tediously long workweek) is having disastrous effects on the planet. We can both accomodate the needs of the planet AND expand the political horizons for the great majority of the population, but it will require the fundamental defeat of capitalism and the establishment of a new ecological workers’ democracy. It’s a big project, but so worth it in the long run.
The 15-hour week presupposes a change in the economy first. Obviously capitalism requires long hours for people to survive, but in terms of pure stats it’s not necessary for society to be working that much. There’s enough resources for everyone, and so much work is pointless bullshit that only exists to line the pockets of the rich. The ecosocialist project demands a new way of looking at and distributing work. Get rid of the bullshit jobs, divvy up the necessary jobs, and we’d free up people’s time immensely to engage in pursuits they actually want to do to contribute to society.
Also, food and housing and such would be guaranteed in an ecosocialist society anyway, so it goes beyond simply reorganizing work. People have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and those will never be achieved for the great majority in a capitalist society.
These were really good additions so I wanted t add them onto the cumulative post
the 40 hour workweek is not as productive as corporate/management wants us to think, and it also leave most people exhausted. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is an absurd amount of time to be working. And judging from statistics, there’s about 50% of Americans who work more than 40 hours a week…
This does not even include time spent commuting or getting ready for work.
Even though our productivity is leagues better than it has ever been, we now have less leisure time than feudal peasants! There is absolutely no reason for people to need to work 40+ hours a week just to support themselves or family.
There’s a lot of “But how will X industry function on so few hours?” And the answer that comes to my mind is that if the price we pay for no one living on the street, going hungry, or suffering from curable illnesses is that movies/video games take longer to make because no one can be coerced into working obscene hours on threat of starvation, then damn, that’s fucking cheap, and I would pay it without hesitation.
Also, on that last point: if we’re talking about projects that *actually* take that long? Yeah, most of the people who work those jobs are likely to volunteer more time at them; again, see “blurring the line between ‘a job’ and ‘a collective activity’” above.
