ObjectivityIncarnate

Take for example “toxic masculinity”. Literally taken, that word means that masculinity is toxic.

Well, no. Taking “rotten apples” literally doesn’t mean apples are inherently rotten, it’s just a descriptor.

What I have more of a problem with is that the exact same thing exists within stereotypes of femininity, but “toxic femininity” never gained any steam as a concept/term at all. That does more to imply ‘it’s all the males’ fault’, I think.

I’m reminded of someone once mocking the notion of a fanny pack being marketed to men with a camo pattern, calling it an example of “fragile masculinity” that was inherently misogynistic. I asked them if a tool set with pink handles being marketed to women was an example of “fragile femininity”, and response I got was no, that that was also misogynistic, somehow.

Also, “manspreading” is supposedly a misogynistic, aggressive act by men denying women space in public settings, and yet, (primarily) women taking up entire extra seats by putting their purses/bags on them never ‘went viral’ in the same way, again no colloquialism for it, despite being an act that’s significantly more common, and deprives others of more space than a guy whose knees are spread out.

Ideologues won’t see the obvious flaws in their logic no matter how blatant you make them.

Except the vast majority of the time someone says this about something someone else wrote, they have no idea of the sex of the writer they’re criticizing, so…no.

So common for people who don’t understand how generative AI works at all to think this is a big gotcha, lol, with their smug little thinking emoji.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for this to happen even if the Democrats do win, lol

Black Lives Also Matter would have been much better

Better, but still not optimal, since the whole thing is about police brutality, and that slogan says nothing about that. Even with the “also”, in general it comes off as an accusation of racism toward whoever you say it to (especially since it was said mostly to other ‘random’ citizens, not cops).

If I walked up to a random person and said “hey, women’s lives matter”, I should expect to get one or more of these responses:

• Uh, duh? Who said otherwise?
• Why are you saying that to me? Do you think I don’t think they do?

Because those are the implications that kind of phrase carries.

When BLM was a brand-new thing, it was a normal, and very understandable, reaction, for someone who’s hearing it for the first time to say/think something along the lines of:

• Who said they don’t matter? I know I didn’t, why are you saying “black lives matter” to me, as if you’re implying that I don’t believe they do?
• Why specify “black”, aren’t you implying others don’t, then?

It was also badly-named for another reason: the whole foundation of it was in response to police unlawfully killing black citizens. “Black Lives Matter” in no way speaks to anything involving police action. The phrase naturally comes off as an aggressive accusation of deep racism (to the point of believing a certain person’s life is literally worthless, which is a step beyond the inferiority actual racists usually ascribe to their ‘target’) when said to someone.

Or “mansplaining”. Woman can and do exhibit that behavior too. Just try being a young father and bring your toddler to a circle of older women. The correct word would be “overexplaining”, and suddenly it clearly describes the problem without unnecessarily tieing it to a gender.

“Overexplaining” already has an established unrelated definition, though. I’ve ‘coined’ “splaining” as slang for the behavior, which is not only perpetrated by both sexes, but is also perpetrated for reasons other than sex. It’s kind of a subcategory of condescension, I’d say.

When someone assumes another is ignorant on a subject, because of any characteristic that does not actually have a relationship with knowledge of that subject, and as a result, condescendingly explains something to them, that’s ‘splaining’. Also of note is that EVEN IF the ‘receipient’ actually happens to be ignorant of that subject, and of the information being given to them, it’s STILL ‘splaining’. What defines it is the combination of the unfair assumption, and the action taken based on said assumption. Assuming you know more about X than someone because they’re younger than you, is a non-sex example of the exact same behavior.

Things are still very bad for women and that is not even getting into partner abuse

Did you know that in nonreciprocally violent heterosexual relationships (i.e. only one of the two partners is violent), women are the perpetrators over 70% of the time? Yet, domestic violence is most often treated like a thing with only male perpetrators and female victims.

or topics like rape.

The narrative is such that the public consciousness is so skewed that you’re not aware that women rape men as much as men rape women, are you? Successful feminist lobbying (primarily attributed to Mary Koss) to call the rape of a man by a woman something other than “rape” so that female rapists can ‘fly under the radar’ on “rape statistics” is the primary reason this is so uncommonly known.

If you think underreporting and a lack of justice is bad for female victims of male rapists, your head will explode if you objectively look at the respective rates for male victims of female rapists.

It’s bad for both sexes, but it is literally objectively worse for males. Your ignorance of this subject just proves how wide the empathy gap really is.

The Innocence Project is all about getting wrongfully convicted people out of prison. Check out the linked list, filter it for “sex crimes” if you like, look at the years and decades of wrongfully-served prison time, then see if you can find any women.

There are no cases of a man molesting a girl and then successfully gaining both legal custody of the child, and legally-awarded child support - from the child he molested. But reverse the genders, and precisely that has happened.

This constant trivialization/erasure of male suffering just makes it clear how little people like you actually care about equality. Anyone truly seeking equality would be equally outraged about injustices suffered by both sexes.

I’m reminded of how outraged feminists were about the inequality when men possessed a significant majority of college degrees^[1], but in the present day, after the myriad of programs/grants/scholarships exclusive to women got it to the point where women are now significantly more than half of college graduates, and men are in the minority, suddenly feminists aren’t concerned with that inequality anymore.

One of the many reasons the claims that feminism was for everyone and that there was no need for male-focused advocacy (and that, in fact, such advocacy was inherently misogynistic) because feminists ‘had it covered’, always rang hollow.

One more quick example, an anecdote from my own personal life: a feminist friend was complaining about required reading materials for high school classes not being 50/50 re the sex of the author, but being majority male authors, which was disadvantaging the girls. When I pointed out that girls already are objectively significantly ‘ahead’ of boys in those subjects, so why was she pushing for the gap to grow even wider, her only response was to get angry.

An actual egalitarian would care about a significant imbalance in either direction that’s caused by bigotry/prejudice, regardless of who’s got the short end of the stick.

In any case, I think it would just be a nicer thing if we were nicer to all people that are disadvantaged, or just people in general. Tearing others down doesn’t lift you up.

Yes, this is actual egalitarian thinking. Special interests who don’t care about inequalities that benefit ‘their group’, or stop caring when an inequality that affected ‘their group’ now favors ‘their group’, are not forces for equality/fairness.

How do you get a mortgage in the US if you’ve never had ANY credit before?

You could have googled this in less time than it took you to ask the question.

https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/can-you-get-a-mortgage-with-no-credit/

For there to be squatters, the landlords had to have this property open and unrented for a while.

Huh? A squatter is most commonly simply a former renter who stops paying without moving out. The property is not vacant at any point.

Uh…

https://youtu.be/vpZf-svlXnQ

They’re each trying to put their own spin on it, there is no actual distinction in the words, just in the subtext/implication.

The former implies it’s a lacking of a necessary thing, the latter implies it’s the avoidance of an unnecessary burden. It’s completely subjective whether a child is one or the other to someone.

It’s a broadcast of one’s own biases to consider either of these terms more ‘valid’ than the other.

If you’ve never fallen behind, or it’s been over 5 years since you paid off your delinquent debts, there’s no record.

It’s kind of similar in the US, negative things are gone 7 years later, regardless of whether they were resolved.

The country is Estonia. Mortgage delinquency rates are 0.17% over 60 days late as of last year. Home ownership rate is about 80% and a lot of those are mortgaged.

I’m seeing about 20% of homeowners having mortgages in Estonia, I wouldn’t call 1 in 5 a lot. It’s more like 60% in the US.

Also reading up on this, it looks like some post Soviet-era policies gave a lot of people the ability to buy their homes outright for a fraction of the cost in the 90s, so it seems a lot of what you’re saying is the result of inertia from that. From what I read, it also seems Estonians are more likely than Americans to ‘live within their means’ as well, being much more averse in general to going into debt. That’s definitely going to contribute to that low delinquency rate.

There are good reasons to avoid delinquency. The bailiffs can get your bank accounts even in other EU countries arrested if you keep refusing to pay. Also the debt registry system is fairly effective. You won’t be getting any major credit for at least 5 years once you’re in on it.

This all sounds pretty similar to how it is in the US.

Banks are also willing to work with people on alternative payment schedules if they get in trouble. I’d wager that saves everyone involved some money and time too.

This is also true in the US.

Overall, from what I’m seeing, I don’t think any of the significant differences you’ve mentioned between Estonia and the US can be chalked up to how our credit score system works versus how it is there—you honestly describe a very similar system, and there are much more obvious reasons for the differences that I saw in the bit of research I did.

In my country there’s debt registries (that you can only be put into when you’re late enough on a payment) and lenders will usually ask you for proof of income and list of obligations, or account statements for the last 6 months, to determine if you’re capable of paying back.

So you have a system that’s only different than the US’s in the minutia—fundamentally, it’s still lenders using information from the to-be borrower’s past to try and determine how risky it is to lend to them.

Which is what the person I was replying to is saying is a bad thing for lenders to have access to. Your country’s debt registries are functionally equivalent to negative marks on a US credit report, so I think you’re actually more on my ‘side’ here than the person I replied to.

If your income is high enough and your expenses are noticeably lower than your income, and you don’t have an outstanding debt registry entry, you’re eligible for a loan.

This doesn’t protect lenders from people who are plenty capable of handling a debt with the income they have, but don’t, because they’re irresponsible with that income. But that may be more of an issue in the US than in your country overall, culturally.

Our mortgage delinquency rates are lower than in the US.

What’s your rate, if you don’t want to reveal your country of residence directly? I’m curious of the gap, and also want to make sure you’re not using figures from around the 2008 scandal (primarily caused by a bunch of lenders giving mortgages to people who shouldn’t have qualified); It’s 1.78% in the US presently.

And home ownership rates are pretty high

Define “pretty high”, so I can get a better idea; it’s 65% in the US presently, for reference.

There are no kids on Lemmy, lol

Credit score bad. Next.

Nah, it’s good for me to know the risk before I lend to someone. Only bad borrowers are against their reputation re repayment history not being public.

Without credit scores, nepotism and bigotry are what decides who gets loans, since lenders will have nothing but ‘vibes’ to go off of. No thanks.

you are a good investment if you are reliable to pay back your loans at maximum interest.

That sentence is correct only if you omit the last three words. The credit reporting agencies don’t even know what the interest rate is on a given loan. Also, your credit score goes up from paying a credit card off (i.e. down to a $0 balance) every month, which means you’re paying literal zero interest.

taking out loans and paying them back is the most well known way of raising a credit score.

This is so much the case that many financial institutions have “credit builder loans” which are essentially a loophole for building credit, where you’re given a ‘fake loan’ that you repay, then you’re given back your payments at the end of it. Meanwhile, the credit reporting agencies see that you took out a loan and faithfully repaid it, so your credit score goes up.

One arguably unjust part about credit scores is that the actions of people related to you, or simply sharing the same surname as you, can affect it! E.G i have heard that a friend-of-a-friend’s dad took out too many loans and now their credit score suffers.

It doesn’t work that way, at all. Credit scores are individual. Either that person is mistaken, or they were a co-signer on one or more of those loans (which makes them matter to their score also).

Anyway if it’s true that the actions of other people can affect your credit score

It’s not, they can’t.

The credit score was always a measure of how individuals took on an paid off debt in a way that the creditors wanted for maximum profits.

This is demonstrably bullshit.

Someone who maxes out a credit card, and then only pays minimum payments, and always makes them late, is, via interest accruing and late payment fees, making the lender basically the maximum amount of profit possible. And yet doing this will result in a garbage credit score, because using every penny of your credit limit is very detrimental to your credit score, and not making payments on time is extremely detrimental to your credit score.

Meanwhile, take me, someone who never pays a cent of interest, because he pays off his card every statement cycle (and on time, naturally), and because of card rewards, I’m the one profiting, the lender is literally the one paying me, and ‘yet’, my credit score is in the 800s.

So how do you reconcile that with your assumed truth quoted above? It’s very hard to understand how anyone can arrive at the conclusion you did, while also knowing (as I assume you do) that late payments simultaneously hurt your credit score and increase profit for the lender, just as one example.