Sigh. I came to Lemmy thinking it was small enough to be populated with real people who would have real policy discussions. But I see now that I’ve just been taken in by a troll. Kudos to you. You seem like a real person and not a bot, so I hope you enjoy the descent into chaos you have spurned.

It is a fucking lie. Women historically worked FOR MONEY, and you still deny them credit for it to fit your agenda.

5+ years of government paid income to every single household with children is not the standard anywhere. Some European governments give ONE year. You are misrepresenting facts again. And yes, I could get behind some kind of additional welfare for children in poverty, but I don’t think it needs to be universal. My children don’t need welfare checks. Nor do any of my neighbors’ children. Nor do I really believe that yours do; your irresponsibility in representing other numbers makes me doubt the veracity of your own income claims.

The $100k family, my family members, who choose to live their ideology about a woman’s role in the family and outsource the consequences of that decision to the rest of their family/ our family without the family’s consent do excite my frustration, yes. Their repeated poor decisions about money and then expectation that they will be relieved of the consequences of those decision is extremely frustrating. But they are inherently not other. They are blood relations and part of me. Your personal judgments about me continue to be wildly off base.

Are you now going to demonize us for paying for childcare? You have no idea what we paid. We organized a harassment campaign at the first corporate daycare we went to, to get the corporation to pay the staff more and fund their certifications so they would quit leaving. Then we took our business to a non profit daycare, that charged nothing to poor families, and we paid full price, but left because they barely had any kids there. Then we went to a local chain that pays their staff some of the best rates in region.

I don’t know if you noticed, but the rest of the world is getting tired of funding the US’s mountain of debt. And you can tax me more, that’s fine. And you can certainly close all the loopholes for the assholes at the top. But when the rest of the world dumps the dollar, we won’t be able to just make up money and inflate our problems away. We’ll only be able to provide services we can actually pay for. And the amount of money you’re asking for is huge. If you say 11 million people stay home and that is a quarter of families, then your asking for income for 44 million more people for at least 5 years each. What kind of income are you looking for? $30k/yr/ person? That’s $1.3 trillion per year. And if you scoff and say that’s not what you said, it’s because you conveniently left out any specifics to your demand, so I tried to sketch out what you might mean.

If you think expecting society to help out with their future citizens as demanding privileges then there is little hope for you.

I literally said there should be more subsidized daycare options. You are asking for tax dollars? Forced corporate fees? to cover the cost of half of every family’s income for 4-5 years? I said THAT is privileged. And if that’s not your ask, then you should be explicit about exactly what it is you’re proposing.

I never asserted that the majority of women used to not work.

Also you:

Going back to when one income could support a family and almost everyone had a parent that was at home that they could rely on is not a stupid lie.

If “almost everyone” isn’t the same as “the majority”, then we’re done here.

You cannot use her words to understand the struggles of the poor because she didn’t experience that

This is a logical fallacy. Do you disbelieve historians because they didn’t live in the time period they speak of?

I don’t know what “othering” people is… I assume it’s similar to dehumanizing them? At no point did I do that. And I’m tired of your word soup of all the progressive buzzwords. Someone who made enough money for his wife to comfortably stop working for 5+ years has no right to lecture anyone about class solidarity. You are better off than most and still feeling sorry for yourself about the struggles of parenting and how difficult the US is. It IS difficult for many many Americans, but that ain’t you. You are closer to me than those struggling. If you were going to suggest some kind of welfare payment to people with children below a certain income, I could get on board with that. The majority of the US’s children live in poverty; we should absolutely be addressing that. But you only care about your own problems. A hand up to the already privileged, just like the push for government to wave ALL student loan repayment.

Again with the laziness. As much as demanding privilege is lazy, I guess it’s applicable? But they’re not really the same vice. Minding young children and the household is very laborious, so I don’t think staying home with young children is lazy. But I do think it’s easier to dedicate the labor of a whole parent to them vs both people bringing in income and minding them.

I am denying your assertion that the majority of women used to not work, that that is the norm for history. And because I am denying that it was ever the case, I am skeptical that it is feasible in the future.

Personally, we are fairly privileged. We are both well-compensated engineers, so we paid for private daycare. And when the daycares closed for Covid, we rotated watching the children with a couple other families from daycare so that all parents could get all their hours in.

Society, particularly in the US, is guilty of not giving enough benefits and pay to take care of a family.

Largely agree with your assessment of the problem, it’s just your assessment of the solution I disagree with… Which I thought I implied earlier. Societally there should be more options for subsidized child care, there should be modifications to the tax code and corporate regulations to achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth, and also we should give children more freedom. As a society we expect parents to keep a close eye on children at all times, and it is oppressive to both parents and children and stifles their development: both their confidence and their decision making abilities.

I never said women should have to stay at home, please GTFO with that nonsense.

Indeed you never said that. And you seemed to think, however misguidedly, that the confinment of one parent to the home would be born just as equally by men. But history, and the current political climate, clearly show that one end of the political spectrum seeks to disempower women, and here you are making half of their argument for them.

Beauvoir was a misogynistic classist at heart.

What I’ve read so far is exactly the opposite of that, but I’m no expert on her.

No, my point is that your demand that everyone be able to do it is entitled and unrealistic. And I think your insistence that almost everyone has always done it does a huge disservice to the majority of women who always had to bring in income.

‘Parasitic women’ is a term de Beauvoir made up to refer to the elite women who did not advocate for their own sex and instead adhered to classist, sexist ideals that maintained their husband’s - and by extension their own - privilege. I just referenced it so you could go look it up.

I’m not interested in your defensiveness. I never used the word lazy. Do I think it’s more important to give your children the stability of a home and consistent heating than to be able to keep them isolated in religious indoctrination (the family existing on $100k)? Yes, yes I do. As a working woman, do I resent the implication that I ought to personally be more devoted to my children while also being tapped for money to support someone else’s ideology? Yes, yes I do. As a working woman, do I want to be shoved back into economic obscurity so that it is easier for my human rights to be trampled upon? What the fuck do you think?

I am a married working mother of two. Don’t tell me what I don’t understand. I am not trying to uphold my family as some paragon of virtue. They were the most accessible anecdotes I have on hand. My point is women always worked, and the view that they didn’t is just a rewrite of history to erase them and their contributions by conservatives, and now this fake history is being repurposed by liberals as some achievable ideal. Why do you think all the early women’s rights advocates were demanding equal pay for equal work? Because they were working!

I was going to throw out anecdotes about the folks I know now where one parent has stayed home, but it didn’t help to paint the picture of how things “used to be”. But as far as what people I know do, the picture remains that it is largely a luxury of the well-off: in households where I am fairly sure the husband makes >$250k/yr, I think they do/did fine (past tense for the mother’s that still chose to go back once the children were school-aged). They don’t live extravagantly, but there is no hardship. I know a couple where the Dad stays home, unemployed not by choice. The mom makes (I think) between $200k-$250k/yr, and their finances are tight. They are managing, but it’s not great. She actually took an assignment overseas where their money would go further and more expenses would be paid by her company, but this administration ended that opportunity and they are back. The last couple I know, the husband makes maybe $100k, and it is a hardship that she thinks her role is at home and will not work. They are constantly struggling to pay rent, to pay their bills, and to buy vehicles. They frequently seek financial help from everyone they know.

Anyway, go read some Simone de Beauvoir. Historically most people were poor and most women worked. She called the women in the upper class who didn’t work “parasite women”.

I am not talking about unpaid housework, nor did I ever mention parental leave from work/ a pause in a career. I am talking about paid work. Running a general store and baling hay is not housework. Most poor women have always worked. I read the autobiography of Grandma Moses a while back. You’d probably label her a housewife, but she worked a dairy farm like a dog for years with her husband to sell milk and butter. If she’s working to make money and provide, she’s not a housewife who is free to spend her energies only tending to the family’s needs. That is a luxury.

Further, when you mention the European stat… Which I’ll take in good faith since there’s no citation… You are confusing the first five years of life (preschool) with the original comment which seemed to be about grade school kids as well as your other comments about helping with homework, etc, that also imply grade school age kids. Maybe I could buy your argument about small children, but not school age children.

My point is not to penalize people who choose/have the financial ability to stay home. My point is that it was only really ever economy viable for the wealthier people. For the left to sit around and demand it makes them seem as coddled and out of touch as when they demanded student loan repayment. You are asking for subsidized luxury goods on the backs of people who can barely provide food and shelter for themselves. And maybe you think the whole system should be restructured for the wealthy to pay for it and/ or for us to cut back on military spending to pay for it, etc. but that’s not what people lead the argument with. They lead with this expensive, privileged demand.

That never fucking existed. There was never a large portion of the population that made enough money for the woman to stay at home, and even when there was enough to apparently make memes about it, it was at most 2 decades.

For real people, women have always worked. In the 1950s, my maternal grandmother ran the general store they owned and lived above while he worked in the factory, and she helped him bale hay on the weekends when it was in season. My paternal grandmother didn’t work, and they were dirt poor. She thought it was a woman’s place to stay at home and they barely kept food on the table and a roof over their heads. They got frequent financial help from her parents.

My husband: His maternal grandmother didn’t work, and the husband had a decent job. And my MiL died bitter because her parents would take all the kids’ incomes as teenagers to support the household/themselves. His paternal grandmother worked and retired from a federal job.

It’s a lie. It was a lie then to keep women suppressed, and it’s a lie now that doesn’t serve you like you think it does. The average American has always worked, and women’s work has always been discounted. The only ones who didn’t work were the wealthy parasite class.

I agree with you that the person I responded to was wrong for dumping on the parents, but everything else is just more grievance politics, but this time from the left.

According to The Bulwark, it was reported that this was actually a text Trump sent to the PM (?, I don’t know, someone in Norway’s government), and then the Norwegian government formatted it into a letter for release to the public.

It’s a safe bet that no one else in the US government saw this “official communication” before it went out. I’d go so far as to wager he was alone on the toilet when he sent it.

Congress was envisioned to jealously guard their own power. They have been eager to abdicate their power and responsibility to the Executive to avoid political fallout (so that they can stay in office capitalizing off the position) for decades before Trump was on the scene.

The Supreme Court has absolutely no legal oversight, and even publication of their corruption has not moved them to impose any code of ethics on themselves.

The two parties both conspire to deliver us to the same monied interests, just with different flavors of icing on top.

Trump is the culmination of the rot in the system, he is not the source of it. There is no realistic way for the system to go on, even if Trump keels over tomorrow. Regardless of if Vance can command the cult when Trump dies, the system must be greatly reformed/ overhauled.

This is a miserable take. Either

1. parents were historically solely responsible for everything a child received, including instruction, and thus you are in fact already contracting to do part of a parent’s job anyway Or
2. raising children was historically a communal responsibility and you are doing what was historically done by the extended community anyway

You have beef with the disparity between the lines for who has responsibility for the child vs who has ultimate authority over the child. And that is fair! But it’s a problem with the current structure of the system, and we don’t need to harken back to some stupid lie about the good old days to justify the current impasse.

While I empathize with the sentiment, I’ve been listening to A People’s History of the United States lately. My takeaway so far is that change is only allowed to happen by the monied interests that control our government when it becomes in their financial interest for it to happen.

Guns won’t do it. Civilians 1) can’t effectively opposed state violence with the arms and organization they’re allowed, 2) our society is violent enough that killing civilians opposing the government will always be sanctioned by some.

ICE has no jurisdiction over American citizens. All they can do is detain/arrest someone obstructing their legal role: detaining and deporting immigrants. Further, all law enforcement, federal and local are trained NOT to handle that situation with a civilian by shooting them in the face while they are behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. He acted stupidly and illegally, which one suspects he knew since he fled the scene.

Additionally, federal officials are constitutionally prohibited from forcing their way into your residence without a warrant signed by a judge.

So while ICE has a narrow legal mandate, they have far outstripped those bounds.

Trump just proposed increasing the defense budget from $900 billion in 2026 to $1.5 trillion in 2027. So, I expect you’re correct.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I presume you mean that it was an exercise in preaching to the choir.

But the way you put it seems to denigrate the white liberals themselves. Are you actively scorning valuable supporters?

Prior to the protests, there was a lot of discussion about how people of color, and especially black Americans, were always the ones putting their neck on the line for progress in this country and that they felt particularly vulnerable and that it was time for white people to stand up. I heard that line repeatedly. So why are we criticizing them for standing up when we told them to stand up?

How about you try to be inclusive and encourage as many people to join your cause as possible?!

His misogyny terrifies me. But plenty of gay men believe women are fully equal humans and even enjoy our company.

And what if she just lies? This is more or less true for me: I have an IUD that has more or less ended my periods. Whenever they ask me for a last period I just say I don’t have one and that I am not pregnant. I do not entertain any of their speculation. If you have no intention of remaining pregnant, it’s a good enough answer.

I am skeptical of your story because I don’t think any medical facility would accept the result of a pregnancy test not administered by a medical professional.

You’re deflected from blaming pesticide >manufacturers and real estate developers, so that >you can scream your head off at your neighbor’s >SPCA rescue.

I literally said that habitat destruction was a larger effect, you just chose not to quote that part of what I said.

I haven’t seen any numbers on wild cats prior to the >arrival of European settlers. But given the lack of >demographic analysis, I’m betting these figures >have enormous error bars, even assuming you’re >conjecture is correct.

For bobcats, wiki cites a journal from 1996 that said population density of bobcats varied from 1-38 per 25 sq km (numbers from surveys in the 80s, when I read the journal). Making an assumption that pre-European settler numbers averaged out across North American habitats to be more like the 38, and given that the lower 48 is ~8 million sq km, that would make the pre-1500s bobcat population ~12 million. The estimates for the current free roaming domestic housecat is about 100 million. You mentioned a couple other types of cats, but mountain lions are bigger and not the ones preying on small birds. Ocelots are more akin to the domestic cat, but their native range within the United States is much smaller (AZ to LA), with large portions of that area probably not able to support nearly as many animals. But even if I generously said there were another 12 million ocelots in the US, you’d still be only at a quarter of the current domestic cat population.

domestic cats have no natural predators. But again >- that’s not due to the cat population. It’s due to the >human population.

No. It’s due to the fact that they are not native to the United States. They don’t have natural predators because they aren’t naturally here.

Your visceral defense of housecats is just another example of the hypocrisy of humans. Everyone is willing to sacrifice the desires of someone else. No one is ever willing to give up their own destructive vices though. I didn’t even say people shouldn’t own them! I just said they should keep them indoors. Obviously, that’s not what cats want. Cats want to go outside and explore…and kill small animals. Because they are naturally predators and it’s their nature. But if you want to take responsibility for your personal impact, you would keep it indoors.

And again, while I agree that the industrial amounts of habitat destruction is a bigger effect, it doesn’t change the fact that the main impact you as an individual can have/ affect, is reining in your cute murder bot.

Domestic cats’ population is orders of magnitude larger than the native cats population was or is.

While you’re correct that humans are also devastating the habitats of native birds, and that that is likely a (much?) larger effect, the invasive species that is the domestic housecat is also talking a toll of a couple billion birds per year.

There are multiple well-regarded studies providing those numbers. You choosing to disbelieve them is about as valid as believing vaccinations are more harmful than diseases, that climate change is a hoax, or that illegal immigrants are responsible for the housing shortage.

Domestic cats are not native to the US. Their presence is absolutely human caused. And lack of efforts to contain them is also the fault of humans. People should not feed the strays in their neighborhoods. People should not let their own cats outside. Etc.