I posted about this on hexbear as well, and as someone who has an intellectually disabled family member, this kind of behavior, from a mod, is really gross. I’m glad to see blahaj members pushing back against it

Nice post. Once the emoji bug is fixed, you’d be getting the gold star above the spoiler.

It really is odd to defend such a toothless phrase. It just alienates people who are neurodivergent/disabled or know people who are who would get slurred with it. And it’s not like the liberals would actually be insulted by it. What’s the point of using it, outside of feeling like you’re 13 again.

I’ll perhaps acknowledge there’s an ironic use (i.e. sometimes Hasan will use it when ironically saying what a conservative would), but even that makes me cringe.

The chapo podcast quit using it, so if they work to stop, I don’t see why posters can’t.

I mean, a lot of us are pro-Cuba, which is AES and has some of the most progressive family policy in the world.

Also, your “historical” thing is just really hard to process. After all, standards change. Hell, within the “West”, LGBTQ+ acceptance is barely 40 years old (and often, as we see, under attack for the gains that have been won). Was the US in the 90’s really that much better for LGBTQ+ folks than the USSR before it collapsed? And while not LGBTQ specifically, the situation of women in the USSR was far superior to the West - especially in STEM..

This doesn’t mean that we can’t (and shouldn’t) judge the lack of LGBTQ+rights in the past – we can and should. However, Cuba’s family policy shows that there’s nothing inherent to communism that’s “incompatible with our freedom and possibly our lives.”

In summary (and here I’ll post my only emoji, since there’s the bug),