Mastermind Pet: Clones and/or female minions

[EyeLuvBooks]

6 hours ago, plainguy said:

I think ( can be talking out of backside here, as not muck of coder) pre-selected pets as Redlynne mentioned might be a decent start.

 

Yea we could say go big or go home, but just having preselected pets or color change options for certain pets. EG  Red Robots.  Might be a a simple and safe start.

 

And then maybe 6 months down the line you can have your Mixed Gender all Steampunk Merc Team ( Just saying I called it first ). 

I've long been a fan of allowing MMs to use the models from assets already in the game before trying to create new ones simply because of all the headache that causes.

 

I would LOVE to have my Thugs look like Family goons.

 

My robots can look like Clockwork? Sign me up!

 

And so on.

 

As for 'false equivalence' my points still stand. If the ONLY reason not to allow female MM pets is that a few twisted players might use the existing emotes to make disturbing images, I'd say it would be easier and better to remove those emotes.

[Steampunkette]

8 minutes ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

I've long been a fan of allowing MMs to use the models from assets already in the game before trying to create new ones simply because of all the headache that causes.

 

I would LOVE to have my Thugs look like Family goons.

 

My robots can look like Clockwork? Sign me up!

 

And so on.

 

As for 'false equivalence' my points still stand. If the ONLY reason not to allow female MM pets is that a few twisted players might use the existing emotes to make disturbing images, I'd say it would be easier and better to remove those emotes.

Did you read my post on how the powersets actually work? The Call and pool?

 

There's no way to add clockwork to the robots pool without getting clockwork -sometimes- and robots -sometimes-, and those clockwork would be 'standard' rather than Mastermind Pets.

 

To make it work like you hope, with clockwork pets that follow orders and stuff, you'd have to create a separate 'Clockwork' from the AI to the Model, then create a different 'Clockwork' Mastermind Powerset to summon them from because it works like an Enemy Group spawning in.

 

And nah, Eye. It's not about the emotes or a 'Few bad Eggs' It's about the culture. There's no emote involved in 'McPimpin the Mastermind with catsuit wearing female fighter npcs' that could change the Pimps n' Hoes connotations. There's nothing you or I can do to stop that harm from happening. Only react to harm that -has- happened. Other than, y'know, not including female MM pets.

 

Just think of the 'Threaten' emote, which has your character prepare to backhand someone but not actually do it. Consider how that looks when a man does it to another man. Consider how it looks when a woman does it to a man. And then consider how it looks when a man does it to a woman.

 

It's the same action. The only thing changing is the genders of the people involved, but there's a hell of a lot of different connotations that spring to mind from the three images. The first one, for me, makes me think of Scorsese and such. A Mafioso being angry at some capo who screwed up. The second image makes me think of someone who just got sexually harassed or had a really upsetting comment aimed at them. Like the Jamie Lee Curtis meme. The third? Domestic abuse. 

 

The answer isn't "Get rid of the threaten emote". It's "Understand why the connotations are different and realize that this is just one example of a large and pervasive issue that can't be solved by pretending it doesn't exist or locking out a few emotes"

[William Valence]

On 9/6/2019 at 8:48 AM, Steampunkette said:

So the way Pet Powers work is that there's a specific Call tied to the Power to summon an NPC from a specific 'Batch' dedicated to that powerset.

 

The actual -control- over the pet that Masterminds get is baked into the pet itself, it has a deferred AI that the Mastermind gets control of through a UI. It's AI does not function like normal NPC AI. Controller pets, on the other hand, do -mostly- work like normal NPCs only they're set to bungie-follow the person who created them like they're part of a patrol and you're the 'leader' of the patrol.

 

So in order to make new pets you'd have to take the AI Set that exists for the Mastermind Pets and then apply it to a new NPC model that is then added to the batch that the power summons, but also apply all power logic and stuff to it so it uses the same powers as any other member of the batch. But unless you remove all other NPCs from that batch, it's still going to be random whether you get the White Dude Thug with Red Hair or the Black Dude Thug with Black Hair or the White Girl Thug with the Blond Hair.

 

To set up model swapping they'd either need to create an override power and a separate NPC AI/Power Loadout/Etc to a separate NPC Batch with 1 NPC in it -or- create a way to divide all NPCs from the full combination of Model/Powers/AI that they currently are into a floating cloud of individual pieces that can be swapped around.

 

Like right now? The Devs could not Spawn a Crystal Titan that uses the Zeus Titan attacks. Those things are baked into the individual characters and aren't interchangeable. They'd need to decouple all of those things for every NPC in order to just "Swap the Model"

 

Obviously the override method would be less work, but still a LOT of work.

 

Meanwhile creating ANY Mastermind Powerset would, according to the Live Devs, take as much effort as creating 8 regular powersets... Sooo... We can get a new powerset with female minions or we can get 8 other powersets... So I wouldn't hold your breath on any of the above happening any time soon.

Just out of pure morbid curiosity.

 

Why do you believe the system works like this?

[EyeLuvBooks]

On 9/11/2019 at 3:33 PM, Steampunkette said:

Did you read my post on how the powersets actually work? The Call and pool?

 

There's no way to add clockwork to the robots pool without getting clockwork -sometimes- and robots -sometimes-, and those clockwork would be 'standard' rather than Mastermind Pets.

 

To make it work like you hope, with clockwork pets that follow orders and stuff, you'd have to create a separate 'Clockwork' from the AI to the Model, then create a different 'Clockwork' Mastermind Powerset to summon them from because it works like an Enemy Group spawning in.

 

And nah, Eye. It's not about the emotes or a 'Few bad Eggs' It's about the culture. There's no emote involved in 'McPimpin the Mastermind with catsuit wearing female fighter npcs' that could change the Pimps n' Hoes connotations. There's nothing you or I can do to stop that harm from happening. Only react to harm that -has- happened. Other than, y'know, not including female MM pets.

 

Just think of the 'Threaten' emote, which has your character prepare to backhand someone but not actually do it. Consider how that looks when a man does it to another man. Consider how it looks when a woman does it to a man. And then consider how it looks when a man does it to a woman.

 

It's the same action. The only thing changing is the genders of the people involved, but there's a hell of a lot of different connotations that spring to mind from the three images. The first one, for me, makes me think of Scorsese and such. A Mafioso being angry at some capo who screwed up. The second image makes me think of someone who just got sexually harassed or had a really upsetting comment aimed at them. Like the Jamie Lee Curtis meme. The third? Domestic abuse. 

 

The answer isn't "Get rid of the threaten emote". It's "Understand why the connotations are different and realize that this is just one example of a large and pervasive issue that can't be solved by pretending it doesn't exist or locking out a few emotes"

The connotation are different because of our culture. I think it's pretty obvious that running from it so far (for DECADES domestic abuse was almost a cottage industry that everyone ignored as long as it stayed in the home) has not worked. We need to teach people that it's unacceptable. We do that by punishing people who do unacceptable things. We don't take the spray paint away from ALL the kids, we simply punish those who use it to do insulting or destructive things.

 

And, again, I don't see anyone advocating the removal of costume pieces available for men AND women when they say that 'female MM pets would be bad.' Really? 

 

[Steampunkette]

8 hours ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

The connotation are different because of our culture. I think it's pretty obvious that running from it so far (for DECADES domestic abuse was almost a cottage industry that everyone ignored as long as it stayed in the home) has not worked. We need to teach people that it's unacceptable. We do that by punishing people who do unacceptable things. We don't take the spray paint away from ALL the kids, we simply punish those who use it to do insulting or destructive things.

 

And, again, I don't see anyone advocating the removal of costume pieces available for men AND women when they say that 'female MM pets would be bad.' Really? 

 

Punishment only really works when the culture wholeheartedly disapproves. And our culture doesn't.

 

Oh we like to say it does, but dudes still high five each other over sexist jokes and defend comedians who are "Just Joking". Women who have been raped are accused of lying to ruin some guy's life and there's still the tacit assumption women will do all or the majority of emotional and unpaid labor in the home. Plus the victim blaming tied up in it.

 

The President of the US talks about sexually assaulting women, fondly recalls the shock on nearly naked teen girls faces when he walked in on them changing during a pageant, and generally demeans women in a lot of little ways but we excused it, as a society, as locker room talk and elected him. Plus there's the rape allegations and the fact that his ex-wife described an act of rape both in court and her book and after a settlement was released stop calling it rape... but still acknowledges that it happened.

 

Even among Police Officers, the people who are supposed to catch and punish people, at least 40% of the families of police officers experience domestic abuse. The Watchmen don't stop the problem, 40% of the time they're a part of it. (Or they were in 1991 the last time someone appeared before Congress with concrete evidence of what was going on based on a probe of  police precincts where the cops themselves claimed to have beaten their spouses)

 

Punishment isn't half as effective as prevention in cases where society doesn't -truly- consider this kind of thing a problem.

 

And stop pretending that taking shit out of the game has the same social connotation. It's an argument to ridiculousness and a logical fallacy meant to play on an emotional response to make me defensive and more receptive to capitulation. It ain't working. 

 

There's problematic stuff in the game, already. But we don't need to add to it. And we certainly don't need to spend 8 times the resources on creating a single problematic powerset that we would spend on a new set that -isn't- problematic. 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Steampunkette

[EyeLuvBooks]

2 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Punishment only really works when the culture wholeheartedly disapproves. And our culture doesn't.

 

Oh we like to say it does, but dudes still high five each other over sexist jokes and defend comedians who are "Just Joking". Women who have been raped are accused of lying to ruin some guy's life and there's still the tacit assumption women will do all or the majority of emotional and unpaid labor in the home. Plus the victim blaming tied up in it.

 

The President of the US talks about sexually assaulting women, fondly recalls the shock on nearly naked teen girls faces when he walked in on them changing during a pageant, and generally demeans women in a lot of little ways but we excused it, as a society, as locker room talk and elected him. Plus there's the rape allegations and the fact that his ex-wife described an act of rape both in court and her book and after a settlement was released stop calling it rape... but still acknowledges that it happened.

 

Even among Police Officers, the people who are supposed to catch and punish people, at least 40% of the families of police officers experience domestic abuse. The Watchmen don't stop the problem, 40% of the time they're a part of it. (Or they were in 1991 the last time someone appeared before Congress with concrete evidence of what was going on based on a probe of  police precincts where the cops themselves claimed to have beaten their spouses)

 

Punishment isn't half as effective as prevention in cases where society doesn't -truly- consider this kind of thing a problem.

 

And stop pretending that taking shit out of the game has the same social connotation. It's an argument to ridiculousness and a logical fallacy meant to play on an emotional response to make me defensive and more receptive to capitulation. It ain't working. 

 

There's problematic stuff in the game, already. But we don't need to add to it. And we certainly don't need to spend 8 times the resources on creating a single problematic powerset that we would spend on a new set that -isn't- problematic. 

Right...ALL the players who want female MM pets would use them to enact terrible things. Not just a small percentage...ALL of them. So instead of address the problem by educating people that such behavior is wrong, you'd rather punish the innocent along with the guilty. So the 95% of us who love the AT and would use new pets to expand our creativity and make wonderful and fun characters have to be lumped in with the 5% who would do bad things with it because their parent failed at parenting.

 

Right...got it...info assimilated.

[Steampunkette]

38 minutes ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Right...ALL the players who want female MM pets would use them to enact terrible things. Not just a small percentage...ALL of them. So instead of address the problem by educating people that such behavior is wrong, you'd rather punish the innocent along with the guilty. So the 95% of us who love the AT and would use new pets to expand our creativity and make wonderful and fun characters have to be lumped in with the 5% who would do bad things with it because their parent failed at parenting.

 

Right...got it...info assimilated.

... WOW what a Strawman Argument that relies on appealing to ridiculousness, appeal to emotion, an ad hominem attack, and an appeal to the populace without actually addressing the point that it "counters" even -tangentially-! Like, you full on Matrix Dodged the point!

 

Congratulations, you've jumped the shark harder than the Riverdale TV Series!

Edited September 13, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Redlynne]

29 minutes ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Right...ALL the players who want female MM pets would use them to enact terrible things. Not just a small percentage...ALL of them.

[Bossk_Hogg]

I don't think the argument that some kids will draw boobs should be a basis for not giving kids crayons or making new crayon colors. If something is a problem, you deal with it. But it could open the door to a lot of fun and interesting concepts. We have POC henchman, but I don't think the opportunity to create a racially insensitive character should have prevented their inclusion.

 

I can respect your opinion Steampunkette, I just can't agree.

 

It doesnt really seem like it matters, as it's a ton of effort to change the way the system works. Just a shame. 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Bossk_Hogg

[EyeLuvBooks]

48 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

I don't think the argument that some kids will draw boobs should be a basis for not giving kids crayons or making new crayon colors. If something is a problem, you deal with it. But it could open the door to a lot of fun and interesting concepts. We have POC henchman, but I don't think the opportunity to create a racially insensitive character should have prevented their inclusion.

 

I can respect your opinion Steampunkette, I just can't agree.

 

It doesnt really seem like it matters, as it's a ton of effort to change the way the system works. Just a shame. 

Thanks for expressing my opinion in a manner less over-the-top. Obviously some people don't understand sarcasm when they read it...

[ShardWarrior]

On 9/4/2019 at 11:53 PM, Dragonfire said:

I'd like to see a mastermind set with clones as the pet you summon.

Especially if we could do this!

 

 

 

[Dragonfire]

5 hours ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Right...ALL the players who want female MM pets would use them to enact terrible things. Not just a small percentage...ALL of them. So instead of address the problem by educating people that such behavior is wrong, you'd rather punish the innocent along with the guilty. So the 95% of us who love the AT and would use new pets to expand our creativity and make wonderful and fun characters have to be lumped in with the 5% who would do bad things with it because their parent failed at parenting.

 

Right...got it...info assimilated.

I only suggested the option for female MM pets for gender equality and allowing female heroes/villains to have female henchmen.  Just expanded creativity.  I had a female mastermind but was a bit disappointed that she could only have male henchmen to command.  If there are female NPCs whose models we can use, why not do that if it's easier?  Down the road, I would love to fully customize MM pets, but I can understand that it takes more work than we have capacity to do now.

 

Aside from MM pets, a clickable 'summon clone' would be fun for RP purposes, where you can bring in a clone of your hero/villain temporarily to help on a mission.

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, Dragonfire said:

I only suggested the option for female MM pets for gender equality and allowing female heroes/villains to have female henchmen.  Just expanded creativity.  I had a female mastermind but was a bit disappointed that she could only have male henchmen to command.  If there are female NPCs whose models we can use, why not do that if it's easier?  Down the road, I would love to fully customize MM pets, but I can understand that it takes more work than we have capacity to do now.

 

Aside from MM pets, a clickable 'summon clone' would be fun for RP purposes, where you can bring in a clone of your hero/villain temporarily to help on a mission.

To make a Mastermind Powerset you need to follow the following steps:

 

1: Workshop the idea. This is the theming/planning stage where you choose what kind of pets it will get.

2: Determine the powers you want the pet to have. Are they gonna be Melee or Ranged? Here's where you pick and build their powers.

3: Develop the NPC AI which prioritizes power use based on their activity. Generally this means they hit the most recently recharged power or the highest damage/power/effect power that is available. IT also needs to include the 'Mastermind Deferences' within the AI.

4: Design the Model for the Mastermind Pet. If there's going to be differences in the same power(Like Thugs have with skin tones and hair colors) you need to design a different model for each one.

5: Combine the powerset, the AI, and the Model into a single NPC.

6: Repeat steps 2 through 5 for every variation. Gonna have 3 Necromancer ghosts? Do it three more times. Gonna have Gang War Thugs? Do it 10 more times. Gonna have a single NPC at the first tier that acts differently and uses a different, unique, model? Do it again. Well. Okay. SOME of it can use the same AI, so if you're gonna use the same weapons/attacks, skip to step 4 and 5.

7: Create Call Pools for each tier and specialty. The Arsonist thugs all exist in the Arsonist Thug 'Villaingroup' so that when you use the baseline Call Thugs power it calls 2 thugs from one group and the third thug from the other.

8: Determine which powers they get when they get Upgraded the first time. Create a 'Block' for those powers in the NPC AI that the upgrade removes. 

9: Determine which powers they get when they get Upgraded the second time. Create a 'Block' for those powers in the NPC AI that the upgrade removes.

10: Now that that's finished, select what other powers the Mastermind will get (Dual Pistols, Dark Blast, Etc)

11: Check the balance of the powers against all normal metrics.

12: Begin Alpha Testing.

 

The above is a big part of why Ninja, Robotics, Necromancy, Beast Mastery, and Demon Summoning have 1 model per tier, instead of a wide variety like Thugs. Or even a small variety like Mercenaries. Because it's too much damned work to create a variety! And even with only 1 model per tier you still have to go through this massive pile of effort. 

 

Heck, at Steps 2 and 4 I skipped over Animations, Powers Design, number crunching, and a hell of a lot more work... Meanwhile making a separate powerset that doesn't involve pets it's:

 

Step 1: Workshop the idea. Decide what kind of powerset it is, what makes it different, etc.

Step 2: Create the powers.

Step 3: Create animations for the powers.

Step 4: Check the balance of the powers against all metrics.

Step 5: Begin Alpha Testing.

[biostem]

26 minutes ago, Dragonfire said:

I only suggested the option for female MM pets for gender equality and allowing female heroes/villains to have female henchmen.  Just expanded creativity.  I had a female mastermind but was a bit disappointed that she could only have male henchmen to command.  If there are female NPCs whose models we can use, why not do that if it's easier?  Down the road, I would love to fully customize MM pets, but I can understand that it takes more work than we have capacity to do now.

 

Aside from MM pets, a clickable 'summon clone' would be fun for RP purposes, where you can bring in a clone of your hero/villain temporarily to help on a mission.

You could RP that your robots have female personalities/transferred minds.  The same goes for demons.  Zombies, at least the T1 and T3 ones, could arguably be female.  Arguably, the Oni, and maybe even the other ninja, could be female in disguise...

[biostem]

On 9/11/2019 at 4:33 PM, Steampunkette said:

 

The answer isn't "Get rid of the threaten emote". It's "Understand why the connotations are different and realize that this is just one example of a large and pervasive issue that can't be solved by pretending it doesn't exist or locking out a few emotes"

No, the solution is to understand that women are fully realized individuals with autonomy, and not delicate flowers that need protecting.  If you want true equality, then no one, regardless of race, gender (identity), religion, etc, gets special treatment/benefits/protections.

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, biostem said:

No, the solution is to understand that women are fully realized individuals with autonomy, and not delicate flowers that need protecting.  If you want true equality, then no one, regardless of race, gender (identity), religion, etc, gets special treatment/benefits/protections.

Are you -seriously- going to play that canard?

 

 

There were no protections for women, racial minorities, or sexual minorities for the first hundred years this country was around and those groups were treated like absolute shit. And then -SOME- protections were put in place. And though people were still treated like shit at least they had some protections. Go ahead another 60 years and some more protections were put in place. And another 40 years some more. And just recently some more protections, in the form of gay marriage rights. Are you suggesting that if we never had those protections in the first place things would be -better-? That people would be 'Truly Equal' without them? Look at the history of the US to see how "Truly Equal" society treated people before those protections were put into place.

 

It wasn't until the 1980s that Raping your Wife became a crime. Allow me to repeat that: Spousal Rape was not something you could get arrested for. It wasn't even grounds for fucking DIVORCE. If a woman went before a judge and said "I want a divorce because my husband held me down and raped me" the judge would go "So what? You married him. You owe him. Got a better reason?"

 

'True equality is no one gets protections!' my ass. True equality is no one NEEDS protections. But until we get to that fucking point you can stuff that pig ignorant opinion back where it belongs.

 

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Steampunkette said:

Are you -seriously- going to play that canard?

 

 

There were no protections for women, racial minorities, or sexual minorities for the first hundred years this country was around and those groups were treated like absolute shit. And then -SOME- protections were put in place. And though people were still treated like shit at least they had some protections. Go ahead another 60 years and some more protections were put in place. And another 40 years some more. And just recently some more protections, in the form of gay marriage rights. Are you suggesting that if we never had those protections in the first place things would be -better-? That people would be 'Truly Equal' without them? Look at the history of the US to see how "Truly Equal" society treated people before those protections were put into place.

 

It wasn't until the 1980s that Raping your Wife became a crime. Allow me to repeat that: Spousal Rape was not something you could get arrested for. It wasn't even grounds for fucking DIVORCE. If a woman went before a judge and said "I want a divorce because my husband held me down and raped me" the judge would go "So what? You married him. You owe him. Got a better reason?"

 

'True equality is no one gets protections!' my ass. True equality is no one NEEDS protections. But until we get to that fucking point you can stuff that pig ignorant opinion back where it belongs.

Nice strawman.  Did I ever say things weren't bad for people in the past?  Did I ever say there wasn't work still to be done?  We don't make progress by treating people differently - that is the very definition of discrimination!

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

'True equality is no one gets protections!' my ass. True equality is no one NEEDS protections. But until we get to that fucking point you can stuff that pig ignorant opinion back where it belongs.

Go reread my post, because you are horribly misquoting what I said here and taking it out of context.  You think that, miraculously, the violent and messed up people are just going to go away?  Of course people need protections - ALL PEOPLE - not just one rule for me and another for thee.  That is the whole point in trying to improve things - for EVERYONE.  That means we have to drop this notion that person A is necessarily disadvantaged because of category B that they had no control over.

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, biostem said:

Go reread my post, because you are horribly misquoting what I said here and taking it out of context.  You think that, miraculously, the violent and messed up people are just going to go away?  Of course people need protections - ALL PEOPLE - not just one rule for me and another for thee.  That is the whole point in trying to improve things - for EVERYONE.  That means we have to drop this notion that person A is necessarily disadvantaged because of category B that they had no control over.

The dangers I face in the day to day as a trans woman aren't all the same as the dangers you face. You're never gonna get arrested for walking in the bad part of town with a condom in your pocket. Trans women get picked up on prostitution charges for that. You're never going to get harassed for using the Bathroom. Trans women get that shit allll the time, to the point where I was -terrified- to use the ladies room after my transition.

 

You're not going to face the danger of being raped, murdered, dismembered, and set on fire for being who you are or advocating for the fair treatment of a group of people. But that shit just keeps happening to trans women activists.

 

And sometimes just trans women who get murdered by a dude who was attracted to her and then found out she was trans and got himself in a tizzy over it.

 

So far the "Gay/Trans Panic" defense has been banned in California in 2014, Illinois in 2017, Rhode Island in 2018, and Nevada, Connecticut, Maine, Hawaii, and New York  in 2019. But it's still a valid defense in the state -I- live in. A Man could think I'm hot, murder me, and literally GET AWAY WITH MURDER because he claims he was so distressed about being sexually attracted to a trans woman that killing her was the only logical response. Ahmed Dabarran, for example, was beaten to death in his -sleep- by Roderiqus Reshad Reed in 2001. The jury acquitted him -despite- his full confession. Did I mention that Dabarran was an Assistant DA in Atlanta Georgia? Did I mention that the JURY, a collection of radom people and not some murderous fucknuckle, decided to set the dude free because he was scared of 'The Gay'?

 

So long as you don't face those dangers, and countless others, rules and laws that protect 'all of us' will not always protect me. Rules and laws that protect your rights won't always protect others.

 

Until we get to a society where we don't need special protections, a society I fucking -LONG- for, we're not going to have true equality. But until then I'll take special protections to try and mitigate the damage between now and then.

 

 

[biostem]

Just now, Steampunkette said:

The dangers I face in the day to day as a trans woman aren't all the same as the dangers you face. You're never gonna get arrested for walking in the bad part of town with a condom in your pocket. Trans women get picked up on prostitution charges for that. You're never going to get harassed for using the Bathroom. Trans women get that shit allll the time, to the point where I was -terrified- to use the ladies room after my transition.

 

You're not going to face the danger of being raped, murdered, dismembered, and set on fire for being who you are or advocating for the fair treatment of a group of people. But that shit just keeps happening to trans women activists.

 

And sometimes just trans women who get murdered by a dude who was attracted to her and then found out she was trans and got himself in a tizzy over it.

 

So far the "Gay/Trans Panic" defense has been banned in California in 2014, Illinois in 2017, Rhode Island in 2018, and Nevada, Connecticut, Maine, Hawaii, and New York  in 2019. But it's still a valid defense in the state -I- live in. A Man could think I'm hot, murder me, and literally GET AWAY WITH MURDER because he claims he was so distressed about being sexually attracted to a trans woman that killing her was the only logical response. Ahmed Dabarran, for example, was beaten to death in his -sleep- by Roderiqus Reshad Reed in 2001. The jury acquitted him -despite- his full confession. Did I mention that Dabarran was an Assistant DA in Atlanta Georgia? Did I mention that the JURY, a collection of radom people and not some murderous fucknuckle, decided to set the dude free because he was scared of 'The Gay'?

 

So long as you don't face those dangers, and countless others, rules and laws that protect 'all of us' will not always protect me. Rules and laws that protect your rights won't always protect others.

 

Until we get to a society where we don't need special protections, a society I fucking -LONG- for, we're not going to have true equality. But until then I'll take special protections to try and mitigate the damage between now and then.

All of those issues would be resolved if we treated all people equally.  Do you not understand that the examples you gave were for people being treated unequally?

[Steampunkette]

31 minutes ago, biostem said:

All of those issues would be resolved if we treated all people equally.  Do you not understand that the examples you gave were for people being treated unequally?

NO SHIT.

 

But until All Cops crack down on each other for harassing trans women it's gonna keep happening.

 

Until every state bans "Trans and Gay Panic" as a legal defense it's gonna keep happening.

 

Until we no longer need special protections, it's gonna keep happening.

 

But holding hands with you and singing "Kumbayah" at the top of our lungs isn't going to stop this shit from happening. Pretending that there's no differences in how society treats us isn't going to protect anyone. Repealing the protections that exist and not instituting further protections won't make the world sunshine and happiness. You don't need to tell me 'Treat everyone equally' you need to tell that to Cisgender people who don't treat people equally and accept that until people -do- treat each other equally, we're gonna need laws to make them treat people equally.

 

As the world stands, right now, Equality is a pipe dream. A Fantasy of a distant future. Until then the best we can hope for is Equity. Making things as equal as possible by fixing the problems that do exist whether we like them or not with whatever means we have on hand.

 

This is not a world where everyone's 'Good at Heart' and it's a 'Few Bad Apples' spoiling the bunch. In this world the vast majority just don't care about problems that aren't their own. They'll walk past cruelty and turn a blind eye to hatred 'cause it doesn't affect them. Martin Luther King Jr. in one of his prison letters in Alabama is famously quoted:

 

 I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods..."

 

We like to imagine it's the KKK or the White Supremacists who screamed bloody murder when the first black students were admitted to white schools. But it was just people. And now, 60 years later, you look around and you'll never find them. I lived in Georgia for the first 17 years of my life and I never met a parent or a grandparent who stood in front of the schools screaming about letting black kids in... Only I did. Because of COURSE I did. They just didn't admit to it, anymore. They learned they were wrong, but it took the Federal Government forcing them to accept black kids in white schools before they realized it, and were too damned ashamed of it, 20 years later, to admit it to a kid asking questions for a Book Report.

 

So maybe 30 years from now we won't need laws to protect people from Trans Panic. Maybe 20 years from now we won't have cops harassing trans women for carrying condoms and arresting them for prostitution. Maybe 15 years from now racial profiling in Stop and Frisk situations won't be a problem, anymore.

 

But until then? We have that problem. And 'good' people trying real hard to treat everyone equally won't fix anything until all the people who don't care have been shown they -need- to care and the 'bad' people have been silenced.

 

[biostem]

6 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

NO SHIT.

 

But until All Cops crack down on each other for harassing trans women it's gonna keep happening.

 

Until every state bans "Trans and Gay Panic" as a legal defense it's gonna keep happening.

 

Until we no longer need special protections, it's gonna keep happening.

So obviously the solution is to codify the different treatment of people based upon their immutable characteristics, right?  You understand that our justice system isn't based upon getting to the truth of the matter, yes?  It is an adversarial system where the prosecution wants a conviction and the defense wants an acquittal - that means that either side may employ any dirty trick that they can in order to win.  Are you able to look at this objectively, and see that 1 set of rules for group A and a different set for group B does not promote justice or equality, and only furthers the divide between groups?  I've already stated that we have much work to do - but the way to accomplish that is to make sure that everybody gets the same treatment.

[Steampunkette]

18 minutes ago, biostem said:

So obviously the solution is to codify the different treatment of people based upon their immutable characteristics, right?  You understand that our justice system isn't based upon getting to the truth of the matter, yes?  It is an adversarial system where the prosecution wants a conviction and the defense wants an acquittal - that means that either side may employ any dirty trick that they can in order to win.  Are you able to look at this objectively, and see that 1 set of rules for group A and a different set for group B does not promote justice or equality, and only furthers the divide between groups?  I've already stated that we have much work to do - but the way to accomplish that is to make sure that everybody gets the same treatment.

 

That's the best explanation I think can exist. Until the basic inequities are addressed we need to treat groups differently when it comes to the inequities those groups face.

 

 

And it doesn't 'Create Further Divide', Biostem. That's just a right wing catchphrase to vilify any attempt to accommodate the differences that exist in our society. Any attempt to protect people from mistreatment based on the things that make them different. It's just another way to place the onus of responsibility for the mistreatment of minority groups on those minority groups.

 

It's just like saying "Racism wouldn't be a thing, anymore, if black people just stopped talking about it!" 

 

Which, by the way, as a white child in Georgia in the 80s I heard soooo often that I even believed it at one point and recited it more than twice. I was taught that racism only existed 'cause Black People didn't want to be treated in a racist manner. Can you imagine being that goddamned stupid? That somehow the world would be without racism if people just stopped talking about it, or protesting about it, or trying to address it with hate speech laws. It would just be gone. After all, the Civil Rights Act had passed 20 years before!

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

 

That's the best explanation I think can exist. Until the basic inequities are addressed we need to treat groups differently when it comes to the inequities those groups face.

 

 

And it doesn't 'Create Further Divide', Biostem. That's just a right wing catchphrase to vilify any attempt to accommodate the differences that exist in our society. Any attempt to protect people from mistreatment based on the things that make them different. It's just another way to place the onus of responsibility for the mistreatment of minority groups on those minority groups.

 

It's just like saying "Racism wouldn't be a thing, anymore, if black people just stopped talking about it!" 

 

Which, by the way, as a white child in Georgia in the 80s I heard soooo often that I even believed it at one point and recited it more than twice. I was taught that racism only existed 'cause Black People didn't want to be treated in a racist manner. Can you imagine being that goddamned stupid? That somehow the world would be without racism if people just stopped talking about it, or protesting about it, or trying to address it with hate speech laws. It would just be gone. After all, the Civil Rights Act had passed 20 years before!

Oh look, more strawmen.  Try arguing against the actual points I made.

[EyeLuvBooks]

7 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

 

That's the best explanation I think can exist. Until the basic inequities are addressed we need to treat groups differently when it comes to the inequities those groups face.

 

 

And it doesn't 'Create Further Divide', Biostem. That's just a right wing catchphrase to vilify any attempt to accommodate the differences that exist in our society. Any attempt to protect people from mistreatment based on the things that make them different. It's just another way to place the onus of responsibility for the mistreatment of minority groups on those minority groups.

 

It's just like saying "Racism wouldn't be a thing, anymore, if black people just stopped talking about it!" 

 

Which, by the way, as a white child in Georgia in the 80s I heard soooo often that I even believed it at one point and recited it more than twice. I was taught that racism only existed 'cause Black People didn't want to be treated in a racist manner. Can you imagine being that goddamned stupid? That somehow the world would be without racism if people just stopped talking about it, or protesting about it, or trying to address it with hate speech laws. It would just be gone. After all, the Civil Rights Act had passed 20 years before!

According to Morgan Freeman, a very intelligent black man, that's exactly how we deal with it. No offense but I'm not going to take a white person's advice on a black matter over a black man's any more than you should take my advice on a Trans matter because I'm not Trans. No matter how I grew up, what I've seen or what I may think I know, I can't possibly fully understand what it means to be trans. Unless you were born black, I don't think you need to be talking about what will and will not work with racism.