I don’t think you understand what empathy is.

Maybe your empathy is failing.

People can feel how others feel. That doesn’t mean they’ll morally reason well, have the integrity to defend it, or not use those feelings to justify irrational injustices even if they mean well. People are susceptible to biases that empathy alone won’t defend against.

Smart doesn’t mean logical/rational. Logic doesn’t require much intelligence.

Empathy doesn’t reliably prevent people from doing wrong: injustices are often defended with irrational appeals to emotion, partiality, & selective reasoning.

It’s a bit of a reduction that construes offenders as alien to the rest of humanity (they’re incapable of empathy), promoting a dangerous sense of immunity to the problem (I have empathy, so I’m not capable of these offenses). Better social psychologists have come along, performed revealing studies, and identified general susceptibilities in humanity to conformity, authority, diffusion of responsibility, & moral disengagement that show the problem is more relatable to humanity in general. Historical record consistently shows people’s capacity for cruelty & inhumanity isn’t exceptional.

The truth is we may be far more similar to people who commit atrocities than we’d like to think. It’s hard to predict how someone will do unless they’ve actually been tested.

Emotions can & often are bent to irrational, unjust ends: empathy alone won’t reliably save us from succumbing to irrationality & far worse. People also need reason & integrity to withstand challenges. These may be more important than empathy: I’ve seen far more emotional, irrational people being unjust than people with reason & integrity on their side.

Wrong argument: he’s literally citing the supremacy clause.

A better argument would be that same constitution prohibits violation of limits on federal power, especially the bill of rights, enumerated powers, judicial review.

Features

Nice things about PieFed:

• Written in a common programming language that many developers understand and which has a bright future ahead of it. Python, of course! This will enable more contributions from a wider range of people than if it was made with Erlang, Ruby, Rust or PHP, for example.
• Constructed in a simple and straightforward manner that new contributors can come to grips with quickly. No fancy algorithms, special design patterns, fragile build process, or front-end framework. Just Flask with sprinklings of vanilla JS and htmx.
• Keep third party dependencies to an absolute minimum, to make server administration easier. Python + database (PostgreSQL) and you’re good to go! Redis optional.
• Consume few resources, to make it cheap to run. Many examples of federated software are bloated Rube Goldberg machines that require hefty servers and serious server administration skills, making money a constant problem. PieFed instances will be small and nimble.
• Emphasise trust, safety and happiness, drawing inspiration from the Mastodon Covenant.
• Built to last using tried and true technology that will still work decades from now.

Differences between Lemmy and PieFed

• Comments with -10 score are collapsed by default.
• Communities are organized into topics. See https://piefed.social/topics.
• Image-heavy communities can have a tiled/masonry view, like https://piefed.social/c/pics@lemmy.world
• People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name. You’ll know it when you see it.
• Hide all posts based on keyword filters.
• Keyboard shortcuts.
• Upvotes in meme communities do not add to reputation.
• Better UI design (somewhat subjective!)
• Improved hotness ranking algorithm (subjective)
• Voting is private.
• See also features for healthy communities.
• Each community has it’s own wiki.

Mastodon Covenant & “safe spaces” are overmoderated trash. Features for healthy communities consist of Reddity moderation tactics.

Heavy handed moderation is the main reason Reddit disgusts me, so no thanks, & fuck that shit.

It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen

I believe our government should reflect that truth.

She’s right: leading prayer in Congress at all should never be allowed. Government should reflect the truth of a secular government.

a third party […] will break the 2 party system
ignore all other 3ʳᵈ parties

bruh

Capitulate like weak-ass bitches, get treated like bitches.

Maybe it’s a lack of social intuition, or just a failure to grasp the bigger picture but too often, the left underestimates the power of cultural resistance. Ridicule, art, memes, jokes these are tools that shape perception and cut authoritarianism down to size.

The right certainly uses this tactic against the left. Look at all their cringe viral memes, online propaganda targeting generation z/α, & trashy displays on their cars & clothing.

Tacos are delicious, though. 🌮

Not how government works: they’re independent branches.

The DOJ is subordinate to the Judiciary

Maybe crack open a book on US government or read an encyclopedia article: Department of Justice is department of the executive branch. Historically, they started out as the federal government’s attorneys/prosecutors.

The judicial branch only has the federal courts, its judges, its administrators.

I think we grasp cognitive meaning & emotive force in language. I think we also understand the concept of twisting words, have likely rolled our eyes witnessing it, and generally agree that a fair, reasonable person should resist it.

The claim is the word itself is derogatory. It’s an argument roughly of the form:

1. Someone mentioned female humans.
2. They used the noun “female”.
3. The noun “female” is derogatory.
4. Therefore, their statement (regardless of message) is derogatory.

These look like errors of reasoning: a persuasive definition (a definition biased in favor of a particular conclusion or point of view) and a type of straw man fallacy. While it can be used in a derogatory way, that’s not the general, conventional meaning.

Language isn’t always about logic.

Yet you attempt to defend the claim by a (specious) logic language doesn’t follow, either. Language does follow a standard (of sorts): convention. By that standard, the claim is false.

Natural language gains conventional meaning through collective choices of the language community. This general acceptance is reflected in responses of native speakers (not niche online opinions who don’t decide for the entire language community).

If (as reported) native speakers require frequent “correction” on a word’s meaning, that indicates the proposed meaning isn’t generally accepted. A longstanding definition (like “female” as a nonderogatory noun) holds more weight than a novel reinterpretation recognized by fewer.

If the “corrections” aren’t, then what are they? At best, a proposed language change—an attempt to push the idea that the noun “female” is derogatory and change the way allies speak.

Is it a good proposal?

Would defining the noun “female” as derogatory weaken sexist ideologies? Unlikely: extremists like Andrew Tate wouldn’t adjust their rhetoric because of a vocabulary. They wouldn’t need to adjust a single word.

Is it just? Justice requires targeting wrongdoers narrowly—discrediting problematic messages, condemning extremist ideologies, promoting deradicalization. Blanket condemnation based on a word punishes nonoffenders instead of actual wrongdoers. Antagonizing nonoffending parties alienates potential allies rather than foster change.

The result? A reductive purity test that challenges & penalizes allies instead of challenge wrongdoers. That is neither right nor beneficial.

Would making the noun “female” a dysphemism suggest to society that femaleness is wrong/taboo? That seems misguided.

Why that word? The assumption appears to be that usage by sexist extremists taints the word itself as if the word is to blame for their rhetoric. It’s roughly an argument of the form

1. Sexist extremists use the noun “female”.
2. Sexist extremists derogate female humans.
3. Therefore, the noun “female” is inherently derogatory: anyone who uses it derogates female humans.

First, is premise 1 true: do figures like Andrew Tate even use the noun “female” disproportionately? I’ve only seen it among socially awkward individuals: not the same crowd.

More crucially, this argument is invalid: it’s a genetic fallacy (guilt by association).

Thus, the proposal doesn’t advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned: it’s not good in any sense.

often done when discussing science or medical topics

or legal or technical or any context for impersonal abstraction. Such language has appeared in classified ads for apartment rentals: there’s even a movie about it. Not derogatory. Context matters.

It’s also used in situations where people are deliberately ‘othering’ people. Watch any police bodycam footage and you’ll see that cops frequently say “male/female” when discussing non-police individuals.

While US policing has serious issues, this claim seems forced: impersonal terms are standard in legal settings.

Assholes like Tate push a twist in this dynamic so that men are called men but women are called females

Recalling an earlier question: do they?

Though interesting if so, that alone doesn’t make the word in general derogatory. Nonderogatory instances are common (as you’ve identified). If a word requires a particular message to be derogatory, then the message (not the word) is responsible.

The use of a word in a derogatory message doesn’t make it derogatory. That would require an unattainable level of purity (ie, never appear in derogatory messages) for nonderogatory words.

Your argument really shows the people who “consider it derogatory” misattribute an entire rhetoric to a word.

Final thought: humans don’t need constant reassurance that they’re humans to know they aren’t being demeaned (unless they’re painfully insecure).

tl;dr The claim that noun “female” is derogatory is false according to conventional meaning established by the language’s community, corroborated by the frequent need to “correct” native speakers. Moreover, the claim doesn’t advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned.

it’s still derogatory

It logically isn’t. While you think that, and anyone spending their future with you should mind it, it doesn’t make it true.