She meji on my 1.2 meter fusiform simulation til I

The thing you're saying.

That that thing is worth saying.

That is, speech/writing has a cost to it, in the form of energy and time expended doing it, in the energy and time taken by others to listen to/read it, and the thing you are communicating is implied to be sufficiently valuable to worth that trade-off.

E.g. if you meet a woman and she says, "Hi, I'm Becky, I was born on a Thursday," it would be an odd experience because even if 1 applies, 2 clearly doesn't (unless you are running some kind of day-of-birth study or something ig). There is a hidden meaning of, "you should be aware of the weekday of my birth because it is important," that seems to make no sense.

And yet people will often defend something they have said on the basis of it being strictly true, which is unsatisfactory because it only justifies half of what was communicated by the act of saying it.

If Becky comes along to a queer event and says "Hi, I'm Becky, I'm AFAB," you have to understand that that is not just a neutral statement of fact, it also communicates something like this: "I am aware that if I looked and sounded the same but my sex assignment was different I would be treated differently. I am informing you of my sex assignment right now so that you treat me appropriately hereafter."

And that is just straight-up transmisogyny, both in displaying uncritical acceptance of how prevalent transmisogyny is in queer groups, and in demanding exemption from it. It sounds absurd on the face of it that a cis woman describing herself using entirely true statements can be doing transmisogyny, even in the absence of any transfeminine person or any mention of transfeminity at all. But it's true all the same.

Because the way I was taught it, the Trolley Problem isn't a one-and-done thing in isolation - its classic form is there to set up the variations and test where your values change.

The classic form is: a runaway trolley is careening down the tracks. The brakes are broken, it can't be stopped. In its path, five people are tied to the tracks, and if it's left to its own devices, the trolley will run over them and kill them. BUT you have the option to pull a lever and send the trolley down a different track. On that track, one person is tied to the tracks. As it stands Right Now, if you do nothing, the five people will die, and the one person will live. But you can pull the lever and switch the trolley's track so that the one person will die, and the five will live. The trolley is approaching and you don't have time to untie anyone from the tracks. Would you pull the lever?

In its base form, the question is fairly simple, and it's about if the capacity to intervene makes you morally obligated to intervene, and if doing nothing and letting more people die is better or worse than personally intervening to make it so that fewer people die, but one person will die who without your intervention would otherwise have lived.

But that's even one iteration of the problem, because most people say yes - saving five people and sacrificing one is, overall, better than saving one person and sacrificing five.

And the real value of the Trolley Problem comes after you've said, yes, I'd pull the lever.

You've established that you believe intervening to save five people even if that means sacrificing one person is the more morally correct option. Then the question-asker hits you with,

... what if the five people were strangers, and the one person was your mom/your spouse/your sister/your best friend? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were adults, and the one was a child? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were convicted felons, and the one was not? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were disabled, and the one person was an Olympic athlete? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if instead of one person, it was four people? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if instead of five people, it was a critically endangered bird, whose death might doom its species to extinction? Would you pull the lever then?

The one that sticks in my head is, let's go back to the baseline version - a trolley is careening out of control towards five people, and you can intervene to shift it to the track where it will kill one person. Did you say yes to that?

Now imagine there are five terminally ill people who need a heart transplant, a liver transplant, a lung transplant, and two kidney transplants, or they'll die. Meanwhile, there is a perfectly healthy adult in front of you with fully functional organs that are a perfect match for these five people. Would you kill that healthy adult and distribute their organs to the five sick people, saving their lives?

If you said no to that, but yes to pulling the trolley lever... why? The logic is the same: kill one person who would otherwise have lived, in order to save five people who would otherwise have died. But it feels different, doesn't it? Why?

That's what the Trolley Problem is for. It's a deliberately contrived ethical thought experiment to draw out our values, our feelings, and how we apply our values about people's lives when we make decisions - and maybe make us face the realization that we have some gut feelings about the value of some lives over others, and make us ask ourselves why we feel that way.

It's applied to hospital triage situations about who to treat first, and to decisions when programming self-driving cars in a crash scenario of whether to prioritize the safety of a pedestrian or the driver.

And it exists so that once you realize the way you're thinking about this, you then have to turn the question to the trade-offs we actually make in society.

... what if instead of five people, it was seven million people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was The Economy?

... what if instead of five people, it was 7,500 people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it's letting car companies do what they want forever?

... what if instead of five people, it was 1,000 people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was police budgets and police immunity?

... what if instead of five people, it was a ground invasion of Japan, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was 140,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

... what if instead of five people, it was 251 hostages, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was the entire population of Gaza?

like say you wake up in the morning. you drive to work. on the way you realize you need to fill up on gas. your options are bp, shell, quik check and raceway. this is like choosing between someone who kicks puppies and someone who kicks kittens. all of them have done fucked up shit, all of them have blood on their hands and all of them will use your money to continue to fund their killing of the earth. but you have no choice, because your car is a gas car and you can't afford to drop fifty paychecks on an electric. that gas car is the only way you can get to work. and you need to work to live. so you're forced to choose, even though every option is unethical. there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

you buy groceries from the grocery store. food that you need to live. the water bottles are from nestle, however. the bananas are chiquita and the oranges are from a farm in georgia that uses prison labor. "okay then," you may think, "i'll go eat out. i wont contribute to this." but the restaurant you go to has a single guy working consecutive twelve hour shifts for peanuts. and the fast food place right next door has prison labor too.

you have no choice but to choose something so you don't go hungry, but every mode of consumption is unethical in some way shape or form. because there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

but here's the thing: you dont need the newest tim horton's ravenclaw latte to live. yes, even if you need the coffee to not fall asleep at work. because while every cup of coffee there is made using the same exploitative labor, both of its own employees and of the coffee farmers in the global south, only one of those coffees is actively giving money to someone who is singlehandedly using that money to kill trans women. all choices are unethical, but one is certainly more unethical than the others and it is completely optional. no one is holding a gun to your head telling you to order the ravenclaw latte. you dont risk unemployment and homelessness if you dont order the ravenclaw latte. you wont starve to death or die of thirst if you dont order the fucking ravenclaw latte. in fact you're paying more money for the latte than you would for literally any other coffee on the menu. and that extra money is going to jk rowling. you're essentially buying coffee and then making a voluntary donation on top of it.

to jk fucking rowling.

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism is political theory. it's not a get out of jail free card. it's not a magic phrase to say as you throw up your hands, say "whatever," and personally get down to lick joanne's moldy ass boot. it doesn't just magically absolve you.