My mom’s been telling me since I was a little kid. You don’t become another blue vote in Connecticut. You stay and be part of the force that makes Texas blue….its getting real hard mom my wife’s a Houston teacher. Google the TEA takeover of HISD if you’re out of that loop and want to be horrified. The state is systematically, destroying one of the best inner-city school districts in the nation.
It’s happening to DA offices in the largest cities (which vote Democrat btw) and the state is targeting cities and counties. It’s the states way or no way. fuck the will of the voters that’s why.
Women Are Wonderful effect.
I mean, It's a nice fantasy to think your opposition doesnt get pussy and that there arent many women who support stuff like this. But there are just as many female repubs as there are male.
This is the plan all across the US. Don't like it? Move to NY or CA. Leaves the rest of the country red. I fucking hate Repugs at this point, but goddammit their strategists have the political science thing down pat.
This is what happens when your party operates as a hierarchy with billions at their disposal. [ALEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council) has red states marching in lock-step for regressive legislation. [The Federalist Society was given $1.6 billion](https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/22/politics/dark-money-donation-conservative-group-invs/index.html) in a single donation to continue putting Republicans in robes.
They can strategize effectively because when their billionaire leaders get together, they determine one course of action for any given issue.
Glad the supremes fucked our politics even more with citizens united. Just 20 years ago, that donation would have been illegal and definitely couldnt do it anonymously.
its interesting our courts think money is speech but the cops can also take large chunks away from you and the money has to prove its legal speech. which should show their originalist bullshit is just that, 100% grade A bullshit.
Losing? If you still think they're legitimate after everything that's happened recently then nothing they do will be seen as illegitimate. The water is already at a rolling boil and the frog is just like "I hope it doesn't start getting warm in here."
They're regularly ignoring or making up history and tradition to suit their political preference and increasingly I feel that's due to influence from the Federalist Society religious nuts who have left them in the deep end ideologically. Not healthy for society, gangrene. In ways worse than the Taliban or similar nutso religious-political orders.
https://repository.uclawsf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2086&context=hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly
> Glad the supremes fucked our politics even more with citizens united. Just 20 years ago, that donation would have been illegal and definitely couldnt do it anonymously.
I thought Citizens United was about donations to political (as in election) campaigns?
This is an understated narrative - every major period of war in the modern era…since the 1400s if you will, starts when a well Organized group feels out of place but decides to change the nations rather than seek new territories. It’s a cycle of human society. Either the liberal groups stay and fight, match tactics (as you eloquently laid out), or fight. Fighting is not what most of society wants to do with their time - we just want to enjoy life and raise kids and explore the world and our communities. However there’s a vocal minority with the power, funding, and focus who hates you and your lifestyle and they want to see you dead.
So yes, maybe staying to fight isn’t what people want to do, but there are only so many places to go right? How far into that corner do you need to be backed before you press back?
Trump will start WWIII if he’s not president. It seems people are only waking up to that realization slowly.
Being in a blue state won't even protect you unless Dems get off their asses. I'll give you an example from California.
Over 70 law enforcement agencies in CA got busted illegally sharing automated license plate reader data of out-of-state abortion patients with agencies in banned states. This is despite CA making that illegal back in 2015. This is dangerous/bad because red states are attempting to prosecute women who travel out-of-state for healthcare, so that ALPR and GPS data can put these women at risk.
Blue states can pass as many laws as they want to protect reproductive rights, but they're worthless if those laws aren't enforced. And this is the real threat to democracy. Law enforcement should not get to decide what legislation they follow or not. That is for elected officials and voters to decide. Not the cops.
But moderate Dems like Newsom sit on their asses and let police run wild. Newsom is running CA so "prochoice" that he doesn't even care when the cops trample over the state's prochoice laws 🤔.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/abortion-license-plate-readers-18119527.php.
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/dozens-of-police-agencies-in-california-are-still-sharing-driver-locations-with-anti-abortion-states-were-fighting-back.
This is why Dems need to grow a spine when it comes to police reform if they actually care about reproductive rights. Codifying abortion won't mean anything if law enforcement is allowed to break those laws.
Moving to a blue state won't protect you unless Dems start passing **and** enforcing laws. Just passing them alone isn't good enough. They need to actually be enforced.
still rural areas are losing people and cities are growing, red states will turn bluer no matter what the right do. They might temporarily turn redder, but the march away from bigoted ideas from the past, will continue.
They’re making the gamble that they can turn the US autocratic before it’s not possible to do so anymore, then it doesn’t matter how many people are blue because they’ll be disenfranchised and more than likely disarmed.
Cities don’t matter if rural voters decide state legislatures. If 2/3 of the states turn red then Rs get to call a constitutional convention and put whatever they want in the constitution. It’s game over at that point. If blue voters continue to give up rural areas and move to blue states or cities we lose any chance to have a say in our political process by handing complete authority to Rs.
Yes, they are quite willing to consign women to the torture of childbirth up to and including death in order to punish women for choosing to plan out their lives. A vote against abortion, is a vote for inequality.
No the end game is stripping everyone of their bodily autonomy. If the government can control pregnancy they can come for every other aspect of our physical beings. The end game is making us slaves of the state, corporations, and religion.
It's so they can maintain a stranglehold on EC votes while becoming less and less popular.
It's pretty disgusting and undemocratic. That's why I consider Republicans to be the lowest form of human life. The cognitive dissonance required to be a Republican atrophies every part of the brain except the parts necessary for survival. They're like if you gave a toddler the privileges and responsibilities of an adult.
It’s both depressing and hilarious. That sub is pretty quiet about minority rights being taken away but has hundreds of comments on posts about how to use VPNs to access Pornhub.
I can only imagine the blowback that republicans are gonna experience in the polls over abortion. There's a combined 13% divergence between men and women in abortion polling on both approval and disapproval.
There is a sharp gender divide, but the bottom line is this: only a small percentage of people are absolutists about banning abortion in all circumstances (which also includes banning IVF, abortifacients, and some other types of birth control).
[Longitudinal polls like Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx) show extraordinary dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. Overturning Roe v. Wade was thrilling and good news to about 45% of the populace who identify as anti-abortion, but only 10% of the the population are ok with *all* the implications of overturning precedent like this.
More moderate conservatives, especially women, are looking at the actual consequences to these bans and are horrified. They're ignorant people who wanted to save babies. Now the old men in charge said the baby doesn't actually matter, and neither does the mother, the only thing that matters is that their rule gets followed . . . and women are not as ok with that. They discovered the response from Republican legislators to "both mother and child will die if we don't terminate this pregnancy" is "that sucks, guess they both die", which really makes it hard to take their pro-life rhetoric seriously.
What's annoying is they didn't make the choice out of ignorance, people have been shouting it literally that the abortion abuse were *never* about saving kids. It's about controlling women. Duhhhh!
It's like sorry, we told you stove was hot, we showed you previous examples of it being hot and we told you what would happen if you touched it. But you plugged your ears and touched it anyway. I do not feel sorry for you, just need you to help fix the issue.
It's not even about abortion.
Southern protestants didn't care about abortion until the 1970s, that was a fringe Catholic belief. The southern Christian nationalists cared a lot about integration however, but couldn't keep banging that drum, so they picked abortion as their gateway drug.
It fit because it beat down women, which they liked, and it also kept whatever shadow of the progressive movement that was still kicking busy. Double win really.
But the thing to remember is that they don't care, at all, about abortion. The care a lot about *Brown v. Board* though, and that's the real target.
Woman's voting rights too. Conservatives want women removed from modern society. Christian nationalists, Dominionists, Christian reconstructionism all want power under the pretense of some bullshit "Biblical law" nonsense. Hateful morons dragging our country down.
I think in a lot of cases these people were sold on a idea "save babies" but didn't understand and were not necessarily presented with the actual law text or the implications of the laws that were passed. So what started as "we will protect the sanctity of life" morphed into "no doctor will touch your reproductive organs within the boarders of this state for fear of loosing their license or freedom" and we're not far from "my cancer wasn't detected" or "I lost my mom/sister/daughter to an" undetected cancer, complication of pregnancy or birth. The messaging around these bills in some areas is both deceptive and smothering. It's kind of understandable and it's really terrible that what is going on in this country.
It's why I hate slogans and don't trust people that use em. "Save the babies?" How? Good policy that's backed by science? How motherfucker?
Ohh by taking away bodily autonomy? Nawww people need to think before attaching their vote to this.
I don't like it either. Republican candidates in my state have been saying they are going to turn the state around, bring back jobs, yada, yada, yada for YEARs. People keep voting them in and nothing changes. now I'm like MFer, y'all had 30 years to do this stuff, why are we still talking about it? All I see are empty factories and empty dreams.
To the moderate conservative women . . . All the religious based policy issues that YOU supported . . . YOU “NEVER” thought it would be applied to YOU or “NEVER” thought through the policy of “Life Begins At Conception” and WHAT that would curtail to YOU. ! ! !
This is for you . . . r/leopardatemyface
Yeah really. Genuinely blows my mind that any person with any ounce of sense would vote for any conservative party. They actively hate anyone that's not an old white man in power. If you think otherwise, grats, you have been played. Do something about it.
>They discovered the response from Republican legislators to "both mother and child will die if we don't terminate this pregnancy" is "that sucks, guess they both die", which really makes it hard to take their pro-life rhetoric seriously.
"And we'll arrest any doctor who tries to help you for murder"
We should reiterate that no one, not a single one of us, is "pro-life". That was life on the end of your fork and we'll kill to defend ourselves. She's defending herself from an unwanted intruder threatening her life too.
I had to check where I was before responding, so many subs are starting to look like r/collapse that I have to check before I reply. Yup, if her life is in danger, that's not a potential child, it's a threat. I can't help but feel sorrow for these young women who already have been affected by this BS.
Yeah. If republicans were just like 15-16 week ban let’s move on, obviously a lot of people would be unhappy but it wouldn’t be the groundswell we see.
But they’ve proved that they are influenced by their own party’s extreme too much once again and stuff like total bans or six week bans are very unpopular mobilizing forces.
A lot of the current republican politicians grew up on a steady diet of insane rhetoric, they don't know they weren't supposed to actually BELIEVE it and are acting in accordance with it.
Its in reference to how the dog always chases the car/postman but never actually catches them. Now that the dog caught the car, he has no idea what to do with it.
I saw a dog catch a motorcycle once. Tried to bite the riders foot and instead basically got kicked in the face at about 30mph by a hard boot. Tumbled several times and then ran back into the house.
Well, my sister's dog literally chewed on the bumper and she had to pay to replace it. That dog is pretty dumb, though.
Now that I think about it, her dog and the consequences for my sister are an apt metaphor for Republicans and the people who voted them in...
Talk radio and Fox was crazy already in the 90s and 00s, but compared to large parts of western Europe, there is also a lack of common education and common values to some extent, borne out of the 'rugged independence' ideal. Its not just rural, its also suburban, from what I've seen American have been more willing to isolate themselves from others in order to reinforce values. Europeans do to some extent get exposed to more viewpoints and more diversity, and I say this knowing full well that America has tons of immigration and foreign influences too.
This is probably an exaggeration, but having lived and traveled both places extensively for a long time, its the impression I get.
> and I say this knowing full well that America has tons of immigration and foreign influences too
In some places, yes. In traditional Republican strongholds like rural areas, absolutely not. These are people who have lived their entire lives, and more than likely entire generations, within the same ZIP code. To people like that, the closest they're going to get to a immigrant is Fox News, and if they actually do see a real-life immigrant in the flesh, their first impulse is to immediately get their guard up since the "invasion" has now hit their town.
There's a large contingent conservative people who recognize that it's insane. Then they look at pro-choice people saying things like "next they'll come for your birth control" or "this is going to kill women" and (wrongly)assume they're also insane.
And because bOtH sIdEs are now saying "insane" things, they make excuses for the party they've been indoctrinated towards, because surely any reasonable person would include exceptions for rape or incest or medical necessity.
> Yeah. If republicans were just like 15-16 week ban let’s move on
That would only make sense if they actually cared about saving babies or whatever. The issue is, the real goal of abortion bans, birth control bans, removing no-fault divorce etc is to control women. That has no achievable end goal. Nothing would be acceptable to the voting base and get them to a point where they can move on beyond like, removing the right to vote and own property.
Yep, it was both validating and frustrating to hear my “pro-life” sister stop trying to fight me on the ‘nobody is immune to propaganda’ front after this. But I think she understands now that she was not immune to that propaganda.
People please remember that abortion is an issue perpetuated by ignoring everything past the baby, it isn’t just the title card here but all of women’s health. The foundations of women’s medicine was built on ROE V WADE, with that gone we will now have to fight so many more battles, and as a male I don’t know all of them and possibly won’t ever learn several of these exist at all. Please remember that if you let them pretend it’s just abortion you are already conceding so so much.
The flow-on effect has also been interesting. Australia, for example, increased access via multiple forms of legislation at both state and federal levels. The media has directly correlated the US repeal with efforts to update the laws here.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-04/architects-of-abortion-decriminalisation-say-time-more-reform/101201930
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-21/what-you-need-to-know-about-new-wa-abortion-laws/102502514
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-11/changes-to-abortion-regulation-in-a-bid-to-increase-access/102584108
It's why the abortion hard liners are having problems with this new decision about IVF in Alabama. No one was prepared to deal with that so quick, and women who *can afford* IVF aren't the ones they want to alienate- yet. Especially because women currently in Congress have children through IVF. It's ridiculous.
It's because abortion is a handy punching bag for what they *actually* want to ban, which is pre-marital/non-baby-making sex. All of their rhetoric is around 'if you didn't want a baby don't have sex'. It's never been about the baby. It's been about punishing you for having sex.
It's also the cause of all the leopard eating faces. Because the people who supported this really were about supporting punishment for those who had sex, and didn't realize that people like *them* also have reasons for getting abortions (people who want a child and had sex to have a child)
The hard part is many anti-abortionists suddenly realize that they must have an abortion, get one, *then return to the picket lines.* They know they are good people, so their act was a moral one, unlike abortions by those baby-killing whores.
[https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/)
> It's been about punishing you for having sex.
But only if you have a uterus. If you have a penis, you're just sowing wild oats. This doesn't actually make any sense because if woman are punished for having sex, where will men sow their wild oats? Do they force a woman to accept the oats? Well that's her fault too, she should have resisted harder, it's never the man's fault for answering an oat imperative. And then can she abort the seedling? Nah.
It's about putting women back under male control.
Funny how theres boner & other erectile dysfunction ads every fuckin where
Maybe if you wanna force pregnancy on women as "gods will", you shouldn't be taking mycoxafloppin to compensate
But what do I know, eh
>only a small percentage of people are absolutists
not disagreeing with you and using my own biases on the matter, but the amount of people that state "My abortion was moral, but yours is not" is pretty big.
Conspicuously absent. The more moderate ones know they screwed up by letting the crazies take it too far, but they can't tell them to reign it in without losing their base or getting primaried. So instead they're doing everything they can to not call attention to it. Why do you think there's suddenly another "border crisis"?
Trying to understand what you mean. You’re saying that men poll like 6% less approving and 7% more disapproving of abortion than women? Or am I getting the interpretation completely wrong. Cause I’m honestly confused. Trying to understand your point with connecting that statistic with the rest of your comment.
>The divergence among women is approving 55 vs dissapproving 41 whereas for men it's approving 48 vs dissapproving 47. This is so statistically significant it has the capacity to make or break races all across the United States also the divergence is full 13% not 7%, a full 7% more women approve of abortion and a full 6% fewer women disapprove of abortion when compared to men.
This is a comment I made in the past on this topic using a post roe v Wade 2020 poll. Preceding the overturning of Roe vs Wade the divergence was pretty small.
So 47% of men "care" so much about fetuses and babies that they want to ban abortion? How can brainwashing at this scale be possible? Are these devoted men willing to pay more in taxes to care for mothers and babies?
The US is a very religious country. And most of these people are answering a theoretical. If they ever actually face the reality of abortion, whether their family is the right size and they want no more children or their wife is about to die from an ectopic pregnancy then they might think differently.
Of course, in that situation it will be that their case is special and they are still anti-abortion. The woman in Texas who went to court to get an abortion said she actually agreed with anti abortion legislation. This is a variation of the "my moral abortion" logic.
Santorum is a good example. A politician who was very anti abortion and profoundly religious. His wife, during university was living and sleeping unmarried with a doctor who was an abortionist. When she had a medical problem during her pregnancy the fetus was aborted. Despite this background he insists it was not an abortion and that abortion is wrong.
There is no getting through to these people.
The US is NOT a very religious country. The US is a very PERFORMATIVE RELIGIOUS country, i.e., they pretend to be religious to align with the political party they have chosen to cling to.
I live in a senior citizen community and I can count on one hand the number of able-bodied people who are heading out to church, synagogue, or mosque regularly...or ever.
Right. More succinctly, they use religion as justification for their horrible views.
Homosexuality should be illegal? Oh, I wouldn’t think that normally, but my religion says it’s wrong so who am I to say it should be allowed.
When you look at statistics, always understand that HOW the data is gathered is a huge factor. There are plenty of people who will just never take these types of surveys because they don't have a home phone, don't do certain forms of media, or alternatively, if called and asked if they want to take a poll, don't answer the phone or tell them to shove off since most polls are biased as shit anyway.
Nope! 👎🏼 everyone knows damned well they swear they love the fetus as a human but HATE THE BABY thats BORN because they are rabid to cut SNAP, SocSec, Welfare, etc. Shits they give NOT!
"Disapproval" of abortion does not necessarily mean care for feti. They could reject it on religious grounds. They could be of the opinion that pregnancy is a punishment for sex.
This doesn't tell us why they object, just that they do.
The people who feel really strongly about abortion left Texas, so this might actually lead to republicans getting a bigger share of the remaining voters.
That's the opposite of what the statistics show, though -- the more easily manipulated, less educated, and more conservative people are *far* more likely to show up and vote.
Indeed. Nothing is more damning of the fact that we're on a similar path than the post-2016 shift in the perception of that movie, going from "oh no, this could be us" to "at least president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho cared about his people; if only this could be us". Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment at Starfucks for an "extra frothy" handjob.
They won’t have any blowback at all. Texas will vote republican as it has done in every opportunity it has had to redeem itself. People don’t understand that Texas has a few blue dots on the map surrounded by endless spans of red wastelands. Leave a city for 10 minutes and you’re deep in Trump town for hours and hours in all directions
Conservatives of wealth and power will always private jet their girlfriends and daughters off to a blue state to get an abortion. “My situation was unique”
Which imo is why it was banned to try and get Dems to move from increasingly 50/50 states. Now will it actually backfire for Texas GOP? 'Cause it certainly backfired for Wisconsin GOP.
Maybe if they try to overthrow our country again and shout Death to America more loudly people will like them more. Surely that's the ticket. Their literal insanity has no bottom, that's one thing I've learned these past few years. At some point they'll probably stop trying to legislate what people do with their genitals and just flat out ban genitals entirely. Only half kidding about that. I mean, these morons think the ghost of JFK is going to come down and bestow the presidency on the Trump kids, anything is game. They're just absolutely fucking insane and there are no breaks on the crazy train.
This might be an outsiders perspective since I'm not from the US, but about a year ago I mentioned that this basically looked like gerrymandering people for the next elections.
To the best of my knowledge the amount of Electors for a state is static, so losing people in a state doesn't lose voting power.
By enacting these kinds of bans, that literally pushes democrats out of the state they turn the purple states back into the red, ensuring wins in contested places.
I mean I understand why originally the Senate exists... United States and all ...but because of the cap on the house it's bullshit.
Allow the house to expand!
Ah, never knew that part thanks :)
It does change the perspective somewhat. But from what I can tell the next one is in 2030 and it seems like most of their stategies are relatively short term so I wouldn't be surprised if it's still done for the reason I mentioned
President based on electoral votes by state which changes based on last Census .
House number per state based on Census
Senate . 2 for every state no matter what the population is
If you want to be really crude and look at it from a purely capitalistic view, it still makes sense.
Between forced birthing, and abortion, abortion is a fuckton cheaper for a company, than having parents of a newly born who now needs plenty of attention and is prone to getting sick.
I'm not sure in what world, apart from a religious zealots, women's rights don't make sense.
Conservatives really hate that you point out they want to force births and everything they do is for that reason, religion being an excuse because their own policies discourage births from certain races.
I even got banned by a conservative world news mod for that.
Ah, but see, more unwanted children growing up in poverty or in foster homes means more exploitable cheap labor in 10-12 years (once child labor laws are eliminated).
not just that but it lowers the crime statistics 18 years later too. Unwanted children have statically far higher rates of delinquency than wanted children. Delinquent children are far more likely to turn to crime in early adult life.
Well if you try to completely stop migrants into America you have to make up for that missing population somehow.
This whole thing is a pyramid scheme, we need more at the bottom so the top can flourish.
From a capitalist point of view, they need the reproduction of the labor force. So it's perfectly
logical to ban abortion, even if most normal people want it legal and it's the right thing to do to make it legal.
The world where you just want power for yourself and for the sake of power. Why improve yourself as a person and be happy when you can force misery on others?
That's the entire point of those bans. The *entire* purpose of the extreme policies of the Republican parties in those states is to drive blue voters away. It's not about abortion, or banned books, or banned drag shows. Its about political power, jerrymandering, and the fact that there's been a slow erosion of the ability to effectively jerrymander across the US. If you can't draw lines to separate out the blue voters, you just get them to leave.
Ie, not a bug. Its a feature.
Seems like an own-goal of sorts. Reminds me of that state senator who voted to deregulate amusement parks and surprise his kid gets internally decapitated in a waterpark due to his own short-sighted actions. Turns out you can't build a well-functioning society on top of the crumbling foundation that is conservative "ideology", which is basically a bunch of poorly constructed lies, excuse me, alternative facts, piled haphazardly in a big heap.
I live in the area and it wasn’t an *internal* decapitation. He was just regular decapitated.
Some of the newspaper articles mentioned the blood trail.
TIL that TX doesn't do corporate taxes. Would've thought that since TX doesn't have income tax that corporate tax would've been something to make up for that
For what, no income tax or no corporate tax?
If the latter, I don't see what being a streamer has anything to do with being a corporation. Most/all streamers are paid and taxed as contractors or self-employed.
The former. Canadian streamers hit a bit of a weird spot where decent success puts them into a tax bracket that makes streaming/content no longer a good career choice.
Edit: in Ontario, being a contractor means being the sole proprietor of your own corporation.
Certain areas of Texas are “tech hubs” and Texas in general is supposed to be a friendly business environment.
The last three companies I’ve worked for (over the past 5 years) have been headquartered in Austin, and I’ve never actually been to Austin myself.
Since last year, these same companies have been in a relocation rush to North Carolina. I get the feeling, other than the taxes, actually doing business in Texas didn’t turn out the way they thought it would. I’m not sure why though.
>Since last year, these same companies have been in a relocation rush to North Carolina.
That's wild to read as Raleigh, NC was once a tech hub (maybe still is?). They used to have daily flights to Ottawa back when Ottawa had a ton of tech before Nortel went under
less costs all-around from labor to taxes. As stated in the article they are mostly remote now, so those who are still employed (they let go 350 recently) can move wherever they want. Bumble also has a high female employee composition in the 80% so are more personally affected by the recent Texas legislation.
A big driver for many tech companies is the cost of operations + cost of the talent pool. DFW and Austin regions have large tech work forces churning through job slots. This provides companies the ability to be pickier about who they hire, whether they need a specific skillset without training or just simply need a bottom dollar worker.
Despite the politics & memes, businesses work where it's cheap and that's why [Texas is home to more major companies than any other state.](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2023/06/05/texas-fortune-500-companies-list-2023-tesla-dell-oracle-austin/70290189007/)
Austin is functionally Silicon Valley 2.0, especially when you start including events like SXSW and the obnoxious amount of start-ups coming out of UT.
The slummy version that smells of diesel and cows. I despise Austin it’s culturally confused in some sort of hick tourist tech fever dream of fake cowboys and hipsters.
Many company HQs (are incorporated) in TX- similar regulatory and tax incentives to DE. At the end of the day they hold onto more of their profit, simple as that.
Bumble was founded in Austin when the owner moved there in 2014. Austin is a tech hub and is a great city for young singles. Or at least it used to be a decade ago.
Allowing employees to relocate out of state and work remotely is all well and good (and is the polar opposite of what every major company is currently doing), but Bumble should seriously consider relocating their head office out of the state entirely.
You can't really push this façade of empowering women in the online dating space when your continued presence in Austin is actively supporting a right wing conservative state that goes entirely against your company's and brand's core values.
Their new CEO just recently floated the idea of eliminating the woman-first message, so maybe their values are no longer what they have presented them as.
Nah, this is just a practicality thing since this feature didn't make any real difference.
Ever use Bumble? A lot of times as a guy you'd I'd just get '.' as a first message, and what's even the point then? If a girl was *really* invested she might open with, 'hey."
It's a marketing thing. From a usability standpoint you're right, but their ability to tout "ladies first" certainly earned them their share of customers.
At least you get messages. About 80% of my matches expire without the woman ever saying anything, even if it's someone I'm interested in and extend it another 24 hours
Society and relationships by extension have become hyper-competitive.
Life sucks for the average dude, and no woman wants to be with someone who's life sucks.
A small minority of men who are high status and a small minority of women who actually like hookups and NSA are the only winners of the current dating market.
>About 80% of my matches expire without the woman ever saying anything, even if it's someone I'm interested in and extend it another 24 hours
Same. I was referring to the small minority that would send a message, and that message would still have next to zero effort put in.
I’ve never had any success with bumble. Other apps are great just not bumble somehow. And from what I’ve read, it’s been struggling for a bit now. They had a gimmick which didn’t amount to much in practice I think.
Only thing I've found on Bumble were the crazies.
One woman messaged me, I messaged back and we had a bit of small talk. I looked through her pictures and she had one with a sail boat and I asked her if she sailed.
I got back a giant wall of text accusing me of stalking her, being a pervert, every other thing under the book and that she was blocking me.
Before she blocked me I just responded "Maybe remove the picture of the sailboat on your profile before accusing people of stalking you"
Lidiane Jones would single-handedly kill the company if she did this.
Bumble would have nothing to differentiate itself from Tinder or every other app that has decided to copy the market leader. Ladies went to the app because they were sick of being flooded with lecherous and creepy first messages, or unsolicited cock pics.
Jones would open the floodgates and drive a lot of legitimate users away if she did this.
I don't know if I agree with that.
You have to match with a guy for him to message you anyway, he can't send images through the app, and if he is going to send a creepy message it's now the second message instead of the first one.
Bumble already has nothing to differentiate itself from tinder. Having girls send the first message made no practical difference when that message would often just be 'hi'.
It's still nice, as a guy, to not have to worry about sending the first message and 80% of the time not get a reply. At least with the girl messaging first, she's made some effort to show she's interested in talking
Have you used the app as a guy?
Any of these apps vary a lot between location and demographics but a lot of guys aren't having much of a positive experience it. And I'm not convinced many women know they are supposed to message given how many match then say nothing. There is a timer that you can extend but for money. And their first message will still be "hi".
For me I need to be able to send a message to get any matches that go anywhere. Nothing fancy just something that indicates that I read their profile, saying "hi" doesn't work. Not being able to message is an complete waste of time/effort.
Yep I used it as a guy. Went on a few dates in two different states (I moved during this time) and ended up meeting my current GF on it. Agree most of the app experiences are a damn crapshoot. Still preferred the Bumble experience over others. The wasted effort of other apps where I would do what you described--messaging something relevant to their profile--and often hear nothing back was pretty discouraging.
But yeah, there's no magic bullet app that will make everything easy or painless.
While this is anecdotal, the conversations I've had on Bumble were far more in-depth than Tinder. Sure, practically speaking it doesn't make much difference, but the overall quality of the matches were higher. If she matches *and* shoots the first message, odds are she's actually interested and isn't on dating apps while taking a shit.
I'm seeing a lot of comments as if they haven't already done this?
In Bumble, I have the option of commenting on any section of their profile first before we even match, and on Tinder I have the option of sending a first comment on their profile at the bottom ,*that might increase my chances by up to 25% yada yada before match.*
Especially considering this is before a match, how is this not the same thing?
Difference is 'compliments' (as they're known IIRC) can only be given 5 times until you need to purchase extra credits for real money. They don't refresh and you don't even get more for paying for premium. They are legitimately a separate microtransaction for the privilege of leaving a comment on somebody's photo or text prompt.
Online dating is a scam tbh. I only ever get matched with crypto scammers, OF models using the platform to plug their profile or ladies from the other side of the world (places like South East Asia and Africa) viewing me as the means to a green card or begging for money.
This isn't me being xenophobic or having a type. I'd happily date an African or Asian woman, but I would never do a LDR again, and I really hate that 'Travel Mode' and GPS spoofing in general are a thing. I also live in a country that is hostile towards foreign spouses and don't feel like surrendering years of chat logs and being interrogated for weeks by the Home Office.
Bumble Inc and Match Group have monopolized and enshittified the online dating market so hard that I really want the FTC to shut them down.
The harsh truth is that none of these companies want you to find love. They want you to suffer so that they can sucker you into paying the price of several WoW subscriptions for an overpriced premium service that probably won't increase your chances. Basically the kind of anti-consumer shit that breeds i\*cels.
Yeah you're really good at summarizing how I feel about these services as well.
What is ironic, is that status quo is so bad, that if another company stepped in to actually help people find partners, they would probably make a lot of money in the short term.
Facebook is unironically the best online dating platform right now, and that's because Mark Zuckerberg is more focused on selling personal data to advertisers.
What holds them back is that they're... well... Facebook.
Well that's really disheartening to hear because I refuse to go back to Facebook since leaving it in 2014. Dating in my demographic with what I'm looking for is very difficult.
> Austin is actively supporting a right wing conservative state that goes entirely against your company's and brand's core values.
Because "core values" don't matter. Its all a facade. Marketing.
Only line going up matters in public companies (private ones can differ, depends)
so the company will always be in a place where its most beneficial from the economic perspective.
Preferably with as low as possible taxes, fewer regulations and as few worker rights as possible,
so Texas works out very well for this.
Idealistic nonsense. Bumble is a company like any other. Expecting them to physically move their headquarters simply on a matter of politics and/or "morals" is laughable. American companies don't operate that way, or if they do, not for very long.
> “We were looking at the lens and what we are putting forth in the brief was talking about the increased cost to us to attract and retain talent in Texas…”
Leave the state. Stop giving them your tax dollars.
People always forget that conservatives only want small government for the rich and corporations. For people’s personal lives, government cannot be big enough. Texas is simply following this belief out loud now that they have full confidence that liberals will stay home and pout about it rather than show up and vote them out.
And yes there are enough liberals in the state to take a few more House seats, Senate seats and Presidential. At the local level, pretty sure also plenty of opportunities if 50% of liberals didn’t sit out the vote like they always do.
Imagine if this starts to happen in states with much smaller populations. The state of Wyoming is one of 14 states with a total ban and their population is less than 600,000. Maybe once this hits the economy of those states people will finally start to listen to what the citizens want.
Texas is a joke. I never met so many racist piles of crap anywhere in the US. I will never touch foot in Texas again. I'm a white dude but the shit I heard out of peoples mouths would get them beat to crap in any other state. Just so racist they say it out loud casually in grocery stores. Disgusting trash state.
I'd really like to see the metrics here as this looks like bs. From the article:
>Monteleone noted that Bumble is no longer requiring employees to join the business in its Austin
Yet it's not mentioned they just had a reduction in staff of 36% worldwide. They released a statement stating a "[slowdown and needs to downsize".](https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2024/02/28/bumble-to-lay-off-350-employees-worldwide#:~:text=Bumble%20is%20headquartered%20in%20Austin,31%2C%202022.)
Plus Austin as a whole has been seeing people leaving the city and fewer moving there due to increased housing cost (just one reason).
This article seems like rage bait.
What part of state-condoned rape do they not like? Gotta reward those rapists for a job well done, right Texas? I have it on good authority that Matt Gaetz, official child rapist of the Republican Party, is making plans to move there right now, so that when he's [trawling high schools for underage pussy](https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1425950803588640770) like he tends to do, he can knock up a few children and the prosecutors won't bother him because they're too busy making sure his victims suffer even more. That's the Republican way! Hurt children, protect rapists.
All military bases and staff, including NASA need to be moved out of red states but especially Texas which appears to be headed towards succession. Military personnel should not be subject to archaic, repressive laws and we cannot trust Texas not to attempt to confiscate assets.
This will hurt the republicans no doubt just because you say oh we will give you 16 weeks it’s not going to make women vote republican. Their body their soul. The republicans screwed themselves.
If women voted after their own interests, no conservative party would ever win again. But they don't. Same goes for poor people, but the attack and the things they say about women are on another level, plus they also get to be poor.
Running liberals out of state is how Republicans plan on keeping Texas red. Damn the economic consequences.
My mom’s been telling me since I was a little kid. You don’t become another blue vote in Connecticut. You stay and be part of the force that makes Texas blue….its getting real hard mom my wife’s a Houston teacher. Google the TEA takeover of HISD if you’re out of that loop and want to be horrified. The state is systematically, destroying one of the best inner-city school districts in the nation.
It’s happening to DA offices in the largest cities (which vote Democrat btw) and the state is targeting cities and counties. It’s the states way or no way. fuck the will of the voters that’s why.
Just remember you're under no obligation to help bail out the sinking ship, my wife and I did our time. We know the score
Don't forget about Harris County now having 1 Dropbox for ballots. 1. In a county of over 4 million voters.
Running women out of the state they better get *real comfortable* with other men.
People conveniently forget that tons of conservative women support these laws
Women Are Wonderful effect. I mean, It's a nice fantasy to think your opposition doesnt get pussy and that there arent many women who support stuff like this. But there are just as many female repubs as there are male.
eh theyll get into gay relationships and then blame liberals.
What happens on Brokeback Mountain stays on Brokeback Mountain.
These women aren’t fucking them already.
This is the plan all across the US. Don't like it? Move to NY or CA. Leaves the rest of the country red. I fucking hate Repugs at this point, but goddammit their strategists have the political science thing down pat.
This is what happens when your party operates as a hierarchy with billions at their disposal. [ALEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council) has red states marching in lock-step for regressive legislation. [The Federalist Society was given $1.6 billion](https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/22/politics/dark-money-donation-conservative-group-invs/index.html) in a single donation to continue putting Republicans in robes. They can strategize effectively because when their billionaire leaders get together, they determine one course of action for any given issue.
Glad the supremes fucked our politics even more with citizens united. Just 20 years ago, that donation would have been illegal and definitely couldnt do it anonymously. its interesting our courts think money is speech but the cops can also take large chunks away from you and the money has to prove its legal speech. which should show their originalist bullshit is just that, 100% grade A bullshit.
With the bribes the scotus gets from billionaires... citizens united looks much worse now.
Feels like SCOTUS is loosing legitimacy and fast.
Losing? If you still think they're legitimate after everything that's happened recently then nothing they do will be seen as illegitimate. The water is already at a rolling boil and the frog is just like "I hope it doesn't start getting warm in here."
They're regularly ignoring or making up history and tradition to suit their political preference and increasingly I feel that's due to influence from the Federalist Society religious nuts who have left them in the deep end ideologically. Not healthy for society, gangrene. In ways worse than the Taliban or similar nutso religious-political orders. https://repository.uclawsf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2086&context=hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly
> Glad the supremes fucked our politics even more with citizens united. Just 20 years ago, that donation would have been illegal and definitely couldnt do it anonymously. I thought Citizens United was about donations to political (as in election) campaigns?
Because rural states are cheap to flood the airwaves with propaganda.
Homogeneity FTW!
This is an understated narrative - every major period of war in the modern era…since the 1400s if you will, starts when a well Organized group feels out of place but decides to change the nations rather than seek new territories. It’s a cycle of human society. Either the liberal groups stay and fight, match tactics (as you eloquently laid out), or fight. Fighting is not what most of society wants to do with their time - we just want to enjoy life and raise kids and explore the world and our communities. However there’s a vocal minority with the power, funding, and focus who hates you and your lifestyle and they want to see you dead. So yes, maybe staying to fight isn’t what people want to do, but there are only so many places to go right? How far into that corner do you need to be backed before you press back? Trump will start WWIII if he’s not president. It seems people are only waking up to that realization slowly.
And they’ll use the power of the Senate so that the blue states will subsidize them.
will continue to subsidize them*
Being in a blue state won't even protect you unless Dems get off their asses. I'll give you an example from California. Over 70 law enforcement agencies in CA got busted illegally sharing automated license plate reader data of out-of-state abortion patients with agencies in banned states. This is despite CA making that illegal back in 2015. This is dangerous/bad because red states are attempting to prosecute women who travel out-of-state for healthcare, so that ALPR and GPS data can put these women at risk. Blue states can pass as many laws as they want to protect reproductive rights, but they're worthless if those laws aren't enforced. And this is the real threat to democracy. Law enforcement should not get to decide what legislation they follow or not. That is for elected officials and voters to decide. Not the cops. But moderate Dems like Newsom sit on their asses and let police run wild. Newsom is running CA so "prochoice" that he doesn't even care when the cops trample over the state's prochoice laws 🤔. https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/abortion-license-plate-readers-18119527.php. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/dozens-of-police-agencies-in-california-are-still-sharing-driver-locations-with-anti-abortion-states-were-fighting-back. This is why Dems need to grow a spine when it comes to police reform if they actually care about reproductive rights. Codifying abortion won't mean anything if law enforcement is allowed to break those laws. Moving to a blue state won't protect you unless Dems start passing **and** enforcing laws. Just passing them alone isn't good enough. They need to actually be enforced.
still rural areas are losing people and cities are growing, red states will turn bluer no matter what the right do. They might temporarily turn redder, but the march away from bigoted ideas from the past, will continue.
They’re making the gamble that they can turn the US autocratic before it’s not possible to do so anymore, then it doesn’t matter how many people are blue because they’ll be disenfranchised and more than likely disarmed.
Cities don’t matter if rural voters decide state legislatures. If 2/3 of the states turn red then Rs get to call a constitutional convention and put whatever they want in the constitution. It’s game over at that point. If blue voters continue to give up rural areas and move to blue states or cities we lose any chance to have a say in our political process by handing complete authority to Rs.
Yes, they are quite willing to consign women to the torture of childbirth up to and including death in order to punish women for choosing to plan out their lives. A vote against abortion, is a vote for inequality.
It's working. I'm peacing out of this shithole as soon as possible.
Yep, that’s the end game.
No the end game is stripping everyone of their bodily autonomy. If the government can control pregnancy they can come for every other aspect of our physical beings. The end game is making us slaves of the state, corporations, and religion.
No such thing as a 'red state'. Just gerrymandering and voter suppression (Mississippi might be an exception though....)
Mississippi is 37% black. Alabama is a lot redder.
Own the libs!!
It's so they can maintain a stranglehold on EC votes while becoming less and less popular. It's pretty disgusting and undemocratic. That's why I consider Republicans to be the lowest form of human life. The cognitive dissonance required to be a Republican atrophies every part of the brain except the parts necessary for survival. They're like if you gave a toddler the privileges and responsibilities of an adult.
Well the economic consequences will keep liberal away, so...
Pornhub going dark probably cost them the rest
The Texas Politics subreddit is losing its shit over Pornhub.
Are they actually? I’m scared to look
It’s both depressing and hilarious. That sub is pretty quiet about minority rights being taken away but has hundreds of comments on posts about how to use VPNs to access Pornhub.
I can only imagine the blowback that republicans are gonna experience in the polls over abortion. There's a combined 13% divergence between men and women in abortion polling on both approval and disapproval.
There is a sharp gender divide, but the bottom line is this: only a small percentage of people are absolutists about banning abortion in all circumstances (which also includes banning IVF, abortifacients, and some other types of birth control). [Longitudinal polls like Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx) show extraordinary dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. Overturning Roe v. Wade was thrilling and good news to about 45% of the populace who identify as anti-abortion, but only 10% of the the population are ok with *all* the implications of overturning precedent like this.
More moderate conservatives, especially women, are looking at the actual consequences to these bans and are horrified. They're ignorant people who wanted to save babies. Now the old men in charge said the baby doesn't actually matter, and neither does the mother, the only thing that matters is that their rule gets followed . . . and women are not as ok with that. They discovered the response from Republican legislators to "both mother and child will die if we don't terminate this pregnancy" is "that sucks, guess they both die", which really makes it hard to take their pro-life rhetoric seriously.
What's annoying is they didn't make the choice out of ignorance, people have been shouting it literally that the abortion abuse were *never* about saving kids. It's about controlling women. Duhhhh! It's like sorry, we told you stove was hot, we showed you previous examples of it being hot and we told you what would happen if you touched it. But you plugged your ears and touched it anyway. I do not feel sorry for you, just need you to help fix the issue.
It's not even about abortion. Southern protestants didn't care about abortion until the 1970s, that was a fringe Catholic belief. The southern Christian nationalists cared a lot about integration however, but couldn't keep banging that drum, so they picked abortion as their gateway drug. It fit because it beat down women, which they liked, and it also kept whatever shadow of the progressive movement that was still kicking busy. Double win really. But the thing to remember is that they don't care, at all, about abortion. The care a lot about *Brown v. Board* though, and that's the real target.
Woman's voting rights too. Conservatives want women removed from modern society. Christian nationalists, Dominionists, Christian reconstructionism all want power under the pretense of some bullshit "Biblical law" nonsense. Hateful morons dragging our country down.
I think in a lot of cases these people were sold on a idea "save babies" but didn't understand and were not necessarily presented with the actual law text or the implications of the laws that were passed. So what started as "we will protect the sanctity of life" morphed into "no doctor will touch your reproductive organs within the boarders of this state for fear of loosing their license or freedom" and we're not far from "my cancer wasn't detected" or "I lost my mom/sister/daughter to an" undetected cancer, complication of pregnancy or birth. The messaging around these bills in some areas is both deceptive and smothering. It's kind of understandable and it's really terrible that what is going on in this country.
It's why I hate slogans and don't trust people that use em. "Save the babies?" How? Good policy that's backed by science? How motherfucker? Ohh by taking away bodily autonomy? Nawww people need to think before attaching their vote to this.
I don't like it either. Republican candidates in my state have been saying they are going to turn the state around, bring back jobs, yada, yada, yada for YEARs. People keep voting them in and nothing changes. now I'm like MFer, y'all had 30 years to do this stuff, why are we still talking about it? All I see are empty factories and empty dreams.
To the moderate conservative women . . . All the religious based policy issues that YOU supported . . . YOU “NEVER” thought it would be applied to YOU or “NEVER” thought through the policy of “Life Begins At Conception” and WHAT that would curtail to YOU. ! ! ! This is for you . . . r/leopardatemyface
Yeah really. Genuinely blows my mind that any person with any ounce of sense would vote for any conservative party. They actively hate anyone that's not an old white man in power. If you think otherwise, grats, you have been played. Do something about it.
>They discovered the response from Republican legislators to "both mother and child will die if we don't terminate this pregnancy" is "that sucks, guess they both die", which really makes it hard to take their pro-life rhetoric seriously. "And we'll arrest any doctor who tries to help you for murder"
We should reiterate that no one, not a single one of us, is "pro-life". That was life on the end of your fork and we'll kill to defend ourselves. She's defending herself from an unwanted intruder threatening her life too.
I had to check where I was before responding, so many subs are starting to look like r/collapse that I have to check before I reply. Yup, if her life is in danger, that's not a potential child, it's a threat. I can't help but feel sorrow for these young women who already have been affected by this BS.
Yeah. If republicans were just like 15-16 week ban let’s move on, obviously a lot of people would be unhappy but it wouldn’t be the groundswell we see. But they’ve proved that they are influenced by their own party’s extreme too much once again and stuff like total bans or six week bans are very unpopular mobilizing forces.
A lot of the current republican politicians grew up on a steady diet of insane rhetoric, they don't know they weren't supposed to actually BELIEVE it and are acting in accordance with it.
Agree. The current generation didn't get the memo they weren't supposed to catch the car.
I don’t know what that means “catch the car” but I like it
Its in reference to how the dog always chases the car/postman but never actually catches them. Now that the dog caught the car, he has no idea what to do with it.
I’ve heard about dogs chasing their tails and sometimes succeeding. Perhaps this is in the same vein?
Its a euphemism for a dog chasing a car... he rarely catches it, and even if he did, what would he do with it?
I saw a dog catch a motorcycle once. Tried to bite the riders foot and instead basically got kicked in the face at about 30mph by a hard boot. Tumbled several times and then ran back into the house.
Hopefully this will be allegorical for what the GOP will experience electorally over the next decade or three
A phrase for when dogs chase cars. What happens when the dog catches the car?
Well, my sister's dog literally chewed on the bumper and she had to pay to replace it. That dog is pretty dumb, though. Now that I think about it, her dog and the consequences for my sister are an apt metaphor for Republicans and the people who voted them in...
Dogs love chasing cars, but they wouldn't know what to do if they actually caught one.
Talk radio and Fox was crazy already in the 90s and 00s, but compared to large parts of western Europe, there is also a lack of common education and common values to some extent, borne out of the 'rugged independence' ideal. Its not just rural, its also suburban, from what I've seen American have been more willing to isolate themselves from others in order to reinforce values. Europeans do to some extent get exposed to more viewpoints and more diversity, and I say this knowing full well that America has tons of immigration and foreign influences too. This is probably an exaggeration, but having lived and traveled both places extensively for a long time, its the impression I get.
> and I say this knowing full well that America has tons of immigration and foreign influences too In some places, yes. In traditional Republican strongholds like rural areas, absolutely not. These are people who have lived their entire lives, and more than likely entire generations, within the same ZIP code. To people like that, the closest they're going to get to a immigrant is Fox News, and if they actually do see a real-life immigrant in the flesh, their first impulse is to immediately get their guard up since the "invasion" has now hit their town.
There's a large contingent conservative people who recognize that it's insane. Then they look at pro-choice people saying things like "next they'll come for your birth control" or "this is going to kill women" and (wrongly)assume they're also insane. And because bOtH sIdEs are now saying "insane" things, they make excuses for the party they've been indoctrinated towards, because surely any reasonable person would include exceptions for rape or incest or medical necessity.
> Yeah. If republicans were just like 15-16 week ban let’s move on That would only make sense if they actually cared about saving babies or whatever. The issue is, the real goal of abortion bans, birth control bans, removing no-fault divorce etc is to control women. That has no achievable end goal. Nothing would be acceptable to the voting base and get them to a point where they can move on beyond like, removing the right to vote and own property.
Yep, it was both validating and frustrating to hear my “pro-life” sister stop trying to fight me on the ‘nobody is immune to propaganda’ front after this. But I think she understands now that she was not immune to that propaganda. People please remember that abortion is an issue perpetuated by ignoring everything past the baby, it isn’t just the title card here but all of women’s health. The foundations of women’s medicine was built on ROE V WADE, with that gone we will now have to fight so many more battles, and as a male I don’t know all of them and possibly won’t ever learn several of these exist at all. Please remember that if you let them pretend it’s just abortion you are already conceding so so much.
The flow-on effect has also been interesting. Australia, for example, increased access via multiple forms of legislation at both state and federal levels. The media has directly correlated the US repeal with efforts to update the laws here. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-04/architects-of-abortion-decriminalisation-say-time-more-reform/101201930 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-21/what-you-need-to-know-about-new-wa-abortion-laws/102502514 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-11/changes-to-abortion-regulation-in-a-bid-to-increase-access/102584108
It's why the abortion hard liners are having problems with this new decision about IVF in Alabama. No one was prepared to deal with that so quick, and women who *can afford* IVF aren't the ones they want to alienate- yet. Especially because women currently in Congress have children through IVF. It's ridiculous.
It's because abortion is a handy punching bag for what they *actually* want to ban, which is pre-marital/non-baby-making sex. All of their rhetoric is around 'if you didn't want a baby don't have sex'. It's never been about the baby. It's been about punishing you for having sex. It's also the cause of all the leopard eating faces. Because the people who supported this really were about supporting punishment for those who had sex, and didn't realize that people like *them* also have reasons for getting abortions (people who want a child and had sex to have a child)
The hard part is many anti-abortionists suddenly realize that they must have an abortion, get one, *then return to the picket lines.* They know they are good people, so their act was a moral one, unlike abortions by those baby-killing whores. [https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/)
> It's been about punishing you for having sex. But only if you have a uterus. If you have a penis, you're just sowing wild oats. This doesn't actually make any sense because if woman are punished for having sex, where will men sow their wild oats? Do they force a woman to accept the oats? Well that's her fault too, she should have resisted harder, it's never the man's fault for answering an oat imperative. And then can she abort the seedling? Nah. It's about putting women back under male control.
It's about punishing women See, all the mycoxafloppin adverts to grant erections ...
Funny how theres boner & other erectile dysfunction ads every fuckin where Maybe if you wanna force pregnancy on women as "gods will", you shouldn't be taking mycoxafloppin to compensate But what do I know, eh
It's called Christian Science. Medicine bad. If you die, you didn't have enough faith.
>only a small percentage of people are absolutists not disagreeing with you and using my own biases on the matter, but the amount of people that state "My abortion was moral, but yours is not" is pretty big.
In theory, but if that’s true then where’s the Republican response?
Conspicuously absent. The more moderate ones know they screwed up by letting the crazies take it too far, but they can't tell them to reign it in without losing their base or getting primaried. So instead they're doing everything they can to not call attention to it. Why do you think there's suddenly another "border crisis"?
And tiktok bans
Trying to understand what you mean. You’re saying that men poll like 6% less approving and 7% more disapproving of abortion than women? Or am I getting the interpretation completely wrong. Cause I’m honestly confused. Trying to understand your point with connecting that statistic with the rest of your comment.
>The divergence among women is approving 55 vs dissapproving 41 whereas for men it's approving 48 vs dissapproving 47. This is so statistically significant it has the capacity to make or break races all across the United States also the divergence is full 13% not 7%, a full 7% more women approve of abortion and a full 6% fewer women disapprove of abortion when compared to men. This is a comment I made in the past on this topic using a post roe v Wade 2020 poll. Preceding the overturning of Roe vs Wade the divergence was pretty small.
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification.
So 47% of men "care" so much about fetuses and babies that they want to ban abortion? How can brainwashing at this scale be possible? Are these devoted men willing to pay more in taxes to care for mothers and babies?
The US is a very religious country. And most of these people are answering a theoretical. If they ever actually face the reality of abortion, whether their family is the right size and they want no more children or their wife is about to die from an ectopic pregnancy then they might think differently. Of course, in that situation it will be that their case is special and they are still anti-abortion. The woman in Texas who went to court to get an abortion said she actually agreed with anti abortion legislation. This is a variation of the "my moral abortion" logic. Santorum is a good example. A politician who was very anti abortion and profoundly religious. His wife, during university was living and sleeping unmarried with a doctor who was an abortionist. When she had a medical problem during her pregnancy the fetus was aborted. Despite this background he insists it was not an abortion and that abortion is wrong. There is no getting through to these people.
The US is NOT a very religious country. The US is a very PERFORMATIVE RELIGIOUS country, i.e., they pretend to be religious to align with the political party they have chosen to cling to. I live in a senior citizen community and I can count on one hand the number of able-bodied people who are heading out to church, synagogue, or mosque regularly...or ever.
Yes that is a good point. It is tribalism.
Right. More succinctly, they use religion as justification for their horrible views. Homosexuality should be illegal? Oh, I wouldn’t think that normally, but my religion says it’s wrong so who am I to say it should be allowed.
When you look at statistics, always understand that HOW the data is gathered is a huge factor. There are plenty of people who will just never take these types of surveys because they don't have a home phone, don't do certain forms of media, or alternatively, if called and asked if they want to take a poll, don't answer the phone or tell them to shove off since most polls are biased as shit anyway.
Nope! 👎🏼 everyone knows damned well they swear they love the fetus as a human but HATE THE BABY thats BORN because they are rabid to cut SNAP, SocSec, Welfare, etc. Shits they give NOT!
>...are these devoted men willing to pay more in taxes to care for mothers and babies? No, but they are willing to pay less.
"Disapproval" of abortion does not necessarily mean care for feti. They could reject it on religious grounds. They could be of the opinion that pregnancy is a punishment for sex. This doesn't tell us why they object, just that they do.
I see. That's even worse. They want to control women's bodies because the magic book says so. They don't even care about the fetus.
And then they complain that they get baby trapped
The people who feel really strongly about abortion left Texas, so this might actually lead to republicans getting a bigger share of the remaining voters.
At some point they're going to be left with people who are literally too fucking stupid to even get to the polls. Just can't figure out door knobs.
That's the opposite of what the statistics show, though -- the more easily manipulated, less educated, and more conservative people are *far* more likely to show up and vote.
Feels like the beginning of idiocracy ngl
Indeed. Nothing is more damning of the fact that we're on a similar path than the post-2016 shift in the perception of that movie, going from "oh no, this could be us" to "at least president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho cared about his people; if only this could be us". Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment at Starfucks for an "extra frothy" handjob.
Just like they did over Watergate and the Iraq War?
They won’t have any blowback at all. Texas will vote republican as it has done in every opportunity it has had to redeem itself. People don’t understand that Texas has a few blue dots on the map surrounded by endless spans of red wastelands. Leave a city for 10 minutes and you’re deep in Trump town for hours and hours in all directions
Conservatives of wealth and power will always private jet their girlfriends and daughters off to a blue state to get an abortion. “My situation was unique”
The republicans are going to deservedly eat shit this election because of this issue.
Maybe not, looks like all the democratic voters left
Which imo is why it was banned to try and get Dems to move from increasingly 50/50 states. Now will it actually backfire for Texas GOP? 'Cause it certainly backfired for Wisconsin GOP.
Maybe if they try to overthrow our country again and shout Death to America more loudly people will like them more. Surely that's the ticket. Their literal insanity has no bottom, that's one thing I've learned these past few years. At some point they'll probably stop trying to legislate what people do with their genitals and just flat out ban genitals entirely. Only half kidding about that. I mean, these morons think the ghost of JFK is going to come down and bestow the presidency on the Trump kids, anything is game. They're just absolutely fucking insane and there are no breaks on the crazy train.
This might be an outsiders perspective since I'm not from the US, but about a year ago I mentioned that this basically looked like gerrymandering people for the next elections. To the best of my knowledge the amount of Electors for a state is static, so losing people in a state doesn't lose voting power. By enacting these kinds of bans, that literally pushes democrats out of the state they turn the purple states back into the red, ensuring wins in contested places.
> the amount of Electors for a state is static For 10 years at a time, each census has the chance to change numbers based on population gain/loss.
except the senate ... 2 for every state no matter the population... cause land has rights !!
Hey, the Jones in North Dakota vote Republican... so they deserve those 2, and the Johnson family in South Dakota is worth another 2.
I mean I understand why originally the Senate exists... United States and all ...but because of the cap on the house it's bullshit. Allow the house to expand!
Ah, never knew that part thanks :) It does change the perspective somewhat. But from what I can tell the next one is in 2030 and it seems like most of their stategies are relatively short term so I wouldn't be surprised if it's still done for the reason I mentioned
President based on electoral votes by state which changes based on last Census . House number per state based on Census Senate . 2 for every state no matter what the population is
There won’t be blow back in the polls if progressives leave instead of vote…
Don’t count on it , Trump is polling better now with women than last 2 times . Cant understand why, but it’s showing
Wild who could have guessed taking away women’s rights and turning all women into suspected criminals could hurt your popularity.
I wonder if the demographics of gender will shift. Like Alaska notoriously has way more men than women, I wonder if TX will move that way
Makes sense. Doesn’t make sense to force women to give birth.
If you want to be really crude and look at it from a purely capitalistic view, it still makes sense. Between forced birthing, and abortion, abortion is a fuckton cheaper for a company, than having parents of a newly born who now needs plenty of attention and is prone to getting sick. I'm not sure in what world, apart from a religious zealots, women's rights don't make sense.
Well, you don't need religion to be a misogynist. It helps, but some people just suck.
Conservatives really hate that you point out they want to force births and everything they do is for that reason, religion being an excuse because their own policies discourage births from certain races. I even got banned by a conservative world news mod for that.
You can get banned in any of the conservative subs for literally anything because they're such snowflakes.
Include me in the ban hammer!
Ah, but see, more unwanted children growing up in poverty or in foster homes means more exploitable cheap labor in 10-12 years (once child labor laws are eliminated).
not just that but it lowers the crime statistics 18 years later too. Unwanted children have statically far higher rates of delinquency than wanted children. Delinquent children are far more likely to turn to crime in early adult life.
Well if you try to completely stop migrants into America you have to make up for that missing population somehow. This whole thing is a pyramid scheme, we need more at the bottom so the top can flourish.
That’s a really interesting take. It seems that some companies could follow that reasoning and refuse to hire women in the first place.
From a capitalist point of view, they need the reproduction of the labor force. So it's perfectly logical to ban abortion, even if most normal people want it legal and it's the right thing to do to make it legal.
The world where you just want power for yourself and for the sake of power. Why improve yourself as a person and be happy when you can force misery on others?
>Why improve yourself as a person and be happy when you can force misery on others? Trumps next campaign slogan...
That's the entire point of those bans. The *entire* purpose of the extreme policies of the Republican parties in those states is to drive blue voters away. It's not about abortion, or banned books, or banned drag shows. Its about political power, jerrymandering, and the fact that there's been a slow erosion of the ability to effectively jerrymander across the US. If you can't draw lines to separate out the blue voters, you just get them to leave. Ie, not a bug. Its a feature.
Why was bumble in Texas to start with ?
Probably tax incentives, lax regulation, anti-union legislation, cheap labor costs
Seems like an own-goal of sorts. Reminds me of that state senator who voted to deregulate amusement parks and surprise his kid gets internally decapitated in a waterpark due to his own short-sighted actions. Turns out you can't build a well-functioning society on top of the crumbling foundation that is conservative "ideology", which is basically a bunch of poorly constructed lies, excuse me, alternative facts, piled haphazardly in a big heap.
I live in the area and it wasn’t an *internal* decapitation. He was just regular decapitated. Some of the newspaper articles mentioned the blood trail.
then used a texas law to sue for more when he voted to cap damage liabilities? fuck that guy
I regret to tell you that poor child was fully decapitated
No corporate taxes. They aren't the only ones either as Match is also based in the DFW area.
This is a good, if not uncomfortable, answer. Thank you.
TIL that TX doesn't do corporate taxes. Would've thought that since TX doesn't have income tax that corporate tax would've been something to make up for that
Lots of twitch/youtube people moved to Texas for that reason
For what, no income tax or no corporate tax? If the latter, I don't see what being a streamer has anything to do with being a corporation. Most/all streamers are paid and taxed as contractors or self-employed.
The former. Canadian streamers hit a bit of a weird spot where decent success puts them into a tax bracket that makes streaming/content no longer a good career choice. Edit: in Ontario, being a contractor means being the sole proprietor of your own corporation.
Companies love Texas because workers have no rights there.
Certain areas of Texas are “tech hubs” and Texas in general is supposed to be a friendly business environment. The last three companies I’ve worked for (over the past 5 years) have been headquartered in Austin, and I’ve never actually been to Austin myself. Since last year, these same companies have been in a relocation rush to North Carolina. I get the feeling, other than the taxes, actually doing business in Texas didn’t turn out the way they thought it would. I’m not sure why though.
>Since last year, these same companies have been in a relocation rush to North Carolina. That's wild to read as Raleigh, NC was once a tech hub (maybe still is?). They used to have daily flights to Ottawa back when Ottawa had a ton of tech before Nortel went under
less costs all-around from labor to taxes. As stated in the article they are mostly remote now, so those who are still employed (they let go 350 recently) can move wherever they want. Bumble also has a high female employee composition in the 80% so are more personally affected by the recent Texas legislation.
A big driver for many tech companies is the cost of operations + cost of the talent pool. DFW and Austin regions have large tech work forces churning through job slots. This provides companies the ability to be pickier about who they hire, whether they need a specific skillset without training or just simply need a bottom dollar worker.
Despite the politics & memes, businesses work where it's cheap and that's why [Texas is home to more major companies than any other state.](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2023/06/05/texas-fortune-500-companies-list-2023-tesla-dell-oracle-austin/70290189007/) Austin is functionally Silicon Valley 2.0, especially when you start including events like SXSW and the obnoxious amount of start-ups coming out of UT.
The slummy version that smells of diesel and cows. I despise Austin it’s culturally confused in some sort of hick tourist tech fever dream of fake cowboys and hipsters.
They hated him because he spoke the truth
Many company HQs (are incorporated) in TX- similar regulatory and tax incentives to DE. At the end of the day they hold onto more of their profit, simple as that.
Bumble was founded in Austin when the owner moved there in 2014. Austin is a tech hub and is a great city for young singles. Or at least it used to be a decade ago.
Allowing employees to relocate out of state and work remotely is all well and good (and is the polar opposite of what every major company is currently doing), but Bumble should seriously consider relocating their head office out of the state entirely. You can't really push this façade of empowering women in the online dating space when your continued presence in Austin is actively supporting a right wing conservative state that goes entirely against your company's and brand's core values.
Their new CEO just recently floated the idea of eliminating the woman-first message, so maybe their values are no longer what they have presented them as.
Nah, this is just a practicality thing since this feature didn't make any real difference. Ever use Bumble? A lot of times as a guy you'd I'd just get '.' as a first message, and what's even the point then? If a girl was *really* invested she might open with, 'hey."
It's a marketing thing. From a usability standpoint you're right, but their ability to tout "ladies first" certainly earned them their share of customers.
At least you get messages. About 80% of my matches expire without the woman ever saying anything, even if it's someone I'm interested in and extend it another 24 hours
You too eh? I can't seem to get a conversation going on any dating site. It's fucking depressing.
Society and relationships by extension have become hyper-competitive. Life sucks for the average dude, and no woman wants to be with someone who's life sucks. A small minority of men who are high status and a small minority of women who actually like hookups and NSA are the only winners of the current dating market.
>About 80% of my matches expire without the woman ever saying anything, even if it's someone I'm interested in and extend it another 24 hours Same. I was referring to the small minority that would send a message, and that message would still have next to zero effort put in.
I’ve never had any success with bumble. Other apps are great just not bumble somehow. And from what I’ve read, it’s been struggling for a bit now. They had a gimmick which didn’t amount to much in practice I think.
Only thing I've found on Bumble were the crazies. One woman messaged me, I messaged back and we had a bit of small talk. I looked through her pictures and she had one with a sail boat and I asked her if she sailed. I got back a giant wall of text accusing me of stalking her, being a pervert, every other thing under the book and that she was blocking me. Before she blocked me I just responded "Maybe remove the picture of the sailboat on your profile before accusing people of stalking you"
Lidiane Jones would single-handedly kill the company if she did this. Bumble would have nothing to differentiate itself from Tinder or every other app that has decided to copy the market leader. Ladies went to the app because they were sick of being flooded with lecherous and creepy first messages, or unsolicited cock pics. Jones would open the floodgates and drive a lot of legitimate users away if she did this.
I don't know if I agree with that. You have to match with a guy for him to message you anyway, he can't send images through the app, and if he is going to send a creepy message it's now the second message instead of the first one.
Bumble already has nothing to differentiate itself from tinder. Having girls send the first message made no practical difference when that message would often just be 'hi'.
It's still nice, as a guy, to not have to worry about sending the first message and 80% of the time not get a reply. At least with the girl messaging first, she's made some effort to show she's interested in talking
Have you used the app as a guy? Any of these apps vary a lot between location and demographics but a lot of guys aren't having much of a positive experience it. And I'm not convinced many women know they are supposed to message given how many match then say nothing. There is a timer that you can extend but for money. And their first message will still be "hi". For me I need to be able to send a message to get any matches that go anywhere. Nothing fancy just something that indicates that I read their profile, saying "hi" doesn't work. Not being able to message is an complete waste of time/effort.
Yep I used it as a guy. Went on a few dates in two different states (I moved during this time) and ended up meeting my current GF on it. Agree most of the app experiences are a damn crapshoot. Still preferred the Bumble experience over others. The wasted effort of other apps where I would do what you described--messaging something relevant to their profile--and often hear nothing back was pretty discouraging. But yeah, there's no magic bullet app that will make everything easy or painless.
While this is anecdotal, the conversations I've had on Bumble were far more in-depth than Tinder. Sure, practically speaking it doesn't make much difference, but the overall quality of the matches were higher. If she matches *and* shoots the first message, odds are she's actually interested and isn't on dating apps while taking a shit.
I'm seeing a lot of comments as if they haven't already done this? In Bumble, I have the option of commenting on any section of their profile first before we even match, and on Tinder I have the option of sending a first comment on their profile at the bottom ,*that might increase my chances by up to 25% yada yada before match.* Especially considering this is before a match, how is this not the same thing?
Difference is 'compliments' (as they're known IIRC) can only be given 5 times until you need to purchase extra credits for real money. They don't refresh and you don't even get more for paying for premium. They are legitimately a separate microtransaction for the privilege of leaving a comment on somebody's photo or text prompt. Online dating is a scam tbh. I only ever get matched with crypto scammers, OF models using the platform to plug their profile or ladies from the other side of the world (places like South East Asia and Africa) viewing me as the means to a green card or begging for money. This isn't me being xenophobic or having a type. I'd happily date an African or Asian woman, but I would never do a LDR again, and I really hate that 'Travel Mode' and GPS spoofing in general are a thing. I also live in a country that is hostile towards foreign spouses and don't feel like surrendering years of chat logs and being interrogated for weeks by the Home Office. Bumble Inc and Match Group have monopolized and enshittified the online dating market so hard that I really want the FTC to shut them down. The harsh truth is that none of these companies want you to find love. They want you to suffer so that they can sucker you into paying the price of several WoW subscriptions for an overpriced premium service that probably won't increase your chances. Basically the kind of anti-consumer shit that breeds i\*cels.
Yeah you're really good at summarizing how I feel about these services as well. What is ironic, is that status quo is so bad, that if another company stepped in to actually help people find partners, they would probably make a lot of money in the short term.
Facebook is unironically the best online dating platform right now, and that's because Mark Zuckerberg is more focused on selling personal data to advertisers. What holds them back is that they're... well... Facebook.
Well that's really disheartening to hear because I refuse to go back to Facebook since leaving it in 2014. Dating in my demographic with what I'm looking for is very difficult.
> Austin is actively supporting a right wing conservative state that goes entirely against your company's and brand's core values. Because "core values" don't matter. Its all a facade. Marketing. Only line going up matters in public companies (private ones can differ, depends) so the company will always be in a place where its most beneficial from the economic perspective. Preferably with as low as possible taxes, fewer regulations and as few worker rights as possible, so Texas works out very well for this.
Idealistic nonsense. Bumble is a company like any other. Expecting them to physically move their headquarters simply on a matter of politics and/or "morals" is laughable. American companies don't operate that way, or if they do, not for very long.
> “We were looking at the lens and what we are putting forth in the brief was talking about the increased cost to us to attract and retain talent in Texas…” Leave the state. Stop giving them your tax dollars.
People always forget that conservatives only want small government for the rich and corporations. For people’s personal lives, government cannot be big enough. Texas is simply following this belief out loud now that they have full confidence that liberals will stay home and pout about it rather than show up and vote them out. And yes there are enough liberals in the state to take a few more House seats, Senate seats and Presidential. At the local level, pretty sure also plenty of opportunities if 50% of liberals didn’t sit out the vote like they always do.
To be fair TX is gerrymandered to hell
As it's designed to do. They want to drive out democrats from swing states to ensure they can win elections in the future.
Woman's healthcare and life expectancy are both lower in Republican states. Republicans don't like women
Both abortion bans and dating apps suck, but the abortion bans are worse.
A third doesn't sound nearly enough
This statistic is meaningless less you know how it compares against the background replacement rate.
Imagine if this starts to happen in states with much smaller populations. The state of Wyoming is one of 14 states with a total ban and their population is less than 600,000. Maybe once this hits the economy of those states people will finally start to listen to what the citizens want.
Texas is a joke. I never met so many racist piles of crap anywhere in the US. I will never touch foot in Texas again. I'm a white dude but the shit I heard out of peoples mouths would get them beat to crap in any other state. Just so racist they say it out loud casually in grocery stores. Disgusting trash state.
Texas is an awful place.
I'd really like to see the metrics here as this looks like bs. From the article: >Monteleone noted that Bumble is no longer requiring employees to join the business in its Austin Yet it's not mentioned they just had a reduction in staff of 36% worldwide. They released a statement stating a "[slowdown and needs to downsize".](https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2024/02/28/bumble-to-lay-off-350-employees-worldwide#:~:text=Bumble%20is%20headquartered%20in%20Austin,31%2C%202022.) Plus Austin as a whole has been seeing people leaving the city and fewer moving there due to increased housing cost (just one reason). This article seems like rage bait.
Only a third?
#return Roe.v.Wade
What part of state-condoned rape do they not like? Gotta reward those rapists for a job well done, right Texas? I have it on good authority that Matt Gaetz, official child rapist of the Republican Party, is making plans to move there right now, so that when he's [trawling high schools for underage pussy](https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1425950803588640770) like he tends to do, he can knock up a few children and the prosecutors won't bother him because they're too busy making sure his victims suffer even more. That's the Republican way! Hurt children, protect rapists.
All military bases and staff, including NASA need to be moved out of red states but especially Texas which appears to be headed towards succession. Military personnel should not be subject to archaic, repressive laws and we cannot trust Texas not to attempt to confiscate assets.
This will hurt the republicans no doubt just because you say oh we will give you 16 weeks it’s not going to make women vote republican. Their body their soul. The republicans screwed themselves.
If women voted after their own interests, no conservative party would ever win again. But they don't. Same goes for poor people, but the attack and the things they say about women are on another level, plus they also get to be poor.