Going to come back to this to reflect in more detail to your original post and to this comment, but wanted to quickly float the idea that perhaps these people view you as particularly sound, so when they lay things on you or are just more emotional or intense in front of you, and you seem unphased - neither rushing to condemn them nor scrambling to reassure - they interpret that as disapproval from someone whom they find sound. And that because they value your judgement & integrity, they get sheepish and awkward in the absence of a strong outward reaction, which in turn you interpret as them thinking ill of you.

Only suggesting this because have seen quite a bit of this between people, and experienced mild versions of both ends of that dynamic.

Not that it helps, if it even resonates, or provides guidance.

The extension of their arguments is firstly that women who wish to avoid the risk of being charged with manslaughter or murder in the wake of a miscarriage must abide by behavioural guidelines which are contrary to science. i.e., to rest indoors anytime she may be pregnant.

The intended effect being to remove women of childbearing age from the workplace & from public life.

Secondly: to severely undermine reproductive healthcare, such that clinics shut, specialists flee, research is stopped & general knowledge regarding reproductive health & access to care plummets.

The overarching ideology being the production of new labourers & to increase desperation, so that Capitalists can avail of ever-cheaper labour in order to lure factories to set up in the US. This is the endgame of "bringing back our jobs" + anti-abortion rhetoric.

These fuckers are such fucking ghouls.

If they just put a tiiiny bit of funding into supporting less unhealthy systems, they'd be at vastly less risk of the sort of reforms that will neuter them entirely.

"Students often say that before they took this course, they had no idea biological sex characteristics could be so diverse, despite having taken several biology courses."

Shocked to read this, though I suppose it explains a lot. It can be convenient in some situations to use crude categories as a shorthand, but only if those engaging with them do not lose sight of the actual variability & complexity.

What the hell is going on in the earlier stages of education though? This is far from obscure or novel information.

And security for same.

Seems to me there is near unanimity from relevant scientists & physicians that female trans athletes have no advantage over their female cis counterparts.

If the state of that knowledge changes, then by all means revisit the rules, but unless & until that happens, banning trans women & girls from competing is deeply unfair & arbitrary.

I could see that a trans girl or woman who has yet to commence HRT might have some physical advantages, but until we're considering national level competition, I think it is reasonable to let this (utterly tiny) minority compete.

For high level stuff, it would be easy to have a requirement of being on HRT for a minimum period. That said, attaining one's peak achievable performance whilst going through what amounts to a second round of puberty sounds... impossibly hard.

Feels like everything is much more a faff to set up, then one bit updates & something or other is longer compatible.

Don't even want to think about the waste it must generate, both of devices & of the hours trying to get things to work whether at the development end or in the home.

There have been no elections in Gaza since 2006

At that point, Hamas won on a plurality of 41%.

Hardly overwhelming.

Today, 50% of the population are under 18 & 64% of adults say they do not feel it is safe to criticise Hamas.

So enough of your nonsense, though frankly, even if a large majority had voted Hamas in a recent election, that would still leave a lot of people who are against Hamas.

Control, mostly, at least at the meta level.

Many of the parents who freak out hold a lot of shame themselves surrounding bodies & sex, having been denied good sex ed. It is their job to ensure they don't pass that to their children, but I imagine this is easier said than done, especially if shame & ignorance are normalised within a culture.

For them, the best argument may be that children who do not know about sex are vastly more vulnerable, not only to bizarre information and unpleasant mistakes, but to sexual predators.

Oh my days, Laura Jane Grace and uplifting news from Florida in one headline.

My heart is warmed. There can be light in the darkness.

So, so sorry you had to see that, and thank you for protecting the rest of us from seeing it.

On traditional forums, you'd have a lot of control over the posting of images.

If you don't wish to block images entirely, you could block new members from uploading images, or even from sharing links. You could set things up so they'd have to earn the right to post by being active for a randomised amount of time, and have made a randomised number of posts/comments. You could add manual review to that, so that once a member has ostensibly been around long enough and participated enough, admin look at their activity pattern as well as their words to assess if they should be taken off probation or not... Members who have been inactive for a while could have image posting abilities revoked and be put through a similar probation if they return. You could totally block all members from sharing images & links via DM, and admin email accounts could be set to reject images.

It is probably possible to obtain the means to reject images which could contain any sexual content (checked against a database of sexual material which does not involve minors), and you could probably also reject images which could contain children and which might not be wholesome (checked against a database of normal images of children).

Aside from the topic in hand, a forum might decide to block all images of children, because children aren't really in a position to consent to their images being shared online. That gets tricky when it comes to late teens & early 20s, but if you've successfully filtered out infants, young children, pre-teens & early teens as well as all sexual content, it is very unlikely that images of teenagers being abused would get through.

Insisting that images are not uploaded directly, but via links to image hosting sites, might give admin an extra layer of protection, as the hosting sites have their own anti-CSAM mechanisms. You'd probably want to whitelist permitted sites. You might also want a slight delay between the posting of an image link and the image appearing on Beehaw - this would allow time for the image hosting site to find & remove any problem images before they could appear on Beehaw (though I'd imagine these things are pretty damn fast by now).

You could also insist that members who wish to post images or links to images can only do so if they have their VPN and other privacy preserving methods disabled. Most members wouldn't be super-enthused about this, until they've developed trust in the admin of the site, but anyone hoping to share images of children being abused or other illegal content will just go elsewhere.

Admin would probably need to be able to receive images of screenshots from members trying to report technical issues, but those should be relatively easy to whitelist with a bot of some sort? Or maybe there's some nifty plugin for this?

Really though, blocking all images is going to be your best bet. I like the idea of just having the Beehaw bee drawings. You could possibly let us have access to a selection of avatars to pick, or have a little draw plugin so members can draw their own. On that note, those collaborative drawing plugin things can be a fun addition to a site... If someone is very keen for others to see a particular image, they can explain how to find it, or they can organise to connect with each other off Beehaw.

Full of admiration for everyone who has fought to achieve this. Am certain it will inspire many to join in the push to protect workers.