So help them vote. Volunteer with efforts to get out the youth vote. Push for universal mail in voting where you are, or at least early voting. Help get politicians and initiatives on the ballot that they actually care about.
Shaming and complaining about the demographic you want to reach accomplishes nothing.
Obligatory-
If you are a legal resident of Wisconsin, and are not currently serving time or on paper, you can register to vote entirely online if you want, and you can request absentee ballots for all elections for the entire year (no reason needed, but necessary annual renewal, it’s my New Year’s resolution every year because it’s so easy to accomplish. entirely free of charge ofc.).
Just go to www.myvote.wi.gov to register, request absentee ballots, check your registration, or find your polling place. If you have any difficulty with your registration, you can find your local rep and contact them directly.
Please vote. Please vote for your own wellbeing. Please.
Edits to fix link redirect per convo below
This is why I love Washington. Everyone has an OPT OUT absentee ballot. Everyone gets one at your address. Every election. All the time. The same address that’s on your ID. It’s amazing.
I typed it in though.. the link and link text are the same, so that shouldn’t happen.
i see what happened.
you typed [www.myvote.wi.gov](www.myvote.wi.gov) in your comment's source. for it to register as a URL you have to put https before the link inside the parentheses: [www.myvote.wi.gov](https://www.myvote.wi.gov).
1. the bug is related to typing a link directly, as in pasting a link in the comment, like example.com (i typed it without brackets for a name or parentheses for a URL)
or
2. it's related to links explicitly starting with www, such as what you linked.
you can report lemmy issues at https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues. i searched on there to see if it was already reported but couldn't find anything, though if you want to i'd recommend searching.
Hey thanks, I changed it and that did the trick.
I guess it makes sense that would be a thing. I’m so used to everything accommodating for that lack, though lol
Shame ✍️ demographics ✍️ for ✍️ helpful ✍️ advice
My state’s on it!
It doesn't work. Every swiss citizen older than 18 receives them at home. The younger generation doesn't vote.
I'm older now and the older I'm the more people of my age around me vote. It's depressing. I try each time to make the younger vote but it's not working. And, I didn't miss one. Next one is the 3rd March. I will try again.
Don't take me wrong if I convince if just one younger person, it's a win.
You got this 🫡
I hope things will change, but we still have abysmal turnout. TX started allowing early voting over 40 years ago and we still struggle to get people to the polls. Early voting is a span of 2 weeks, where in the 1st week, polls are required to be open for at least 9 hours and can be open from 6 AM to 10 PM on the weekday and shortened hours on the weekend, and in the 2nd week, polls are required to be open at least 12 hours a day and typically have the same hours as election day. Yet we still have virtually no lines through all early voting and a massive line on election day.
It doesn't help that the news only bangs the final day of voting into peoples' heads.
I've been helping my fellow zoomers by figuring out what their townships/town wards/city districts are, then what their local/state/federal legislative/executive/judicial districts are, then who's running for what position, then where to vote and (primaries and generals).
But both sides are the same or my vote is worthless or it's too hard to vote or something
That said, election day not being a federal holiday is a crime.
In Australia it's always on a Saturday, and it's compulsory to vote. Works OK for us.
that sounds like a way for democracy to actually represent the will of the public. DEFINITELY not what they want in the U.S.
In Canada, we get mail in voting, advanced voting and voting stations are everywhere. I've never had to wait more than 5 mins to vote and the closet voting station is a 2 min drive from my house. They're also open late and most employers give us time off to vote. Not sure if there's a law for that but voting here is easy af yet some people still don't bother.
In Finland it's on Sunday. And with I think two weeks to vote beforehand.
Yes, but political engagement can't revolve around voting.
It's shit. You have to navigate a beurocracy and don't even always have choices down the ballot. And when you do, you often have no idea who the candidates are beyond some half baked Facebook page. It's also a huge burnout pit. Put months of stress into a binary outcome you can barely control. And even that is if you're engaged in canvassing and etc, otherwise it's just a chore.
Youth need to be mobilized in long term action projects. Something like Encode Justice for example, where they make civic engagement a part of their daily life, is far superior. It's also harder, but that comes with doing something actually impactful.
Things can change, though. California voted for an open primary in 1996 (think that was the year) and now you can participate in either one. Prior to that, you could only vote in the primary for the party you registered with.
Unless all these Gen Z kids actually fucking VOTE it won't matter, because Boomers fucking do.
Oh, you think the choices are trash? Well fucking vote in the primaries then. Get involved at a local level, and start promoting candidates that represent you. Don't just bitch and moan that the choice is between a codger and senile draft-dodger.
FPTP coupled with Electoral College means the only ethical vote is for the least problematic candidate.
Basic mafs. Simple as.
The reason nobody young is ever is involved with primaries is because it's driven by corporate lobbyists. How are the youth supposed to get involved with that when they are competing against billions of dollars? The choices will always be trash until we end the lobbying. It doesn't work with just promoting candidates that represent you. It involves massive sums of money that 99.9 percent of Americans will never touch.
Sanders came very close to winning the Democratic nomination two election cycles in a row, and his funding was largely individual donors, while Clinton and Biden were being funded by corporate interests. Sanders probably lost in 2016 because the DNC put it's thumb on the scale; he lost in 2020 because many primary voters didn't believe that he could win against Trump, and wanted a candidate that could peel away moderate Republicans. And that's a national level.
At a local level, there's a lot less money, so fucking start there, where it's not being driven by greed.
Sanders came very close to winning the Democratic nomination two election cycles in a row,
That is some revisionist history, because he did not. He did better than any openly socialist candidate has in 100 years, but because of the rules of the DNC was not actually in contention at any point.
By paying attention to the media, reading platforms, thinking critically, and making it out on voting day.
When I was young, I participated in the primaries for Obama's first election (Texas...). I was more or less put in my damn place by the older members and not allowed to have an opinion. It was Hillary this or that and racist comments otherwise. Seriously, Gen Y & Z need to participate, vote, and get involved at the primary and electoral college level or nothing is ever going to change. Don't let those assholes decide who gets to run. I really really wonder what kind of impact those votes, in the areas that have true primaries, will have if we step up early.
I agree there's a history of young people not voting, but every presidential election year there's a whole group of kids who were 14 at the time of the last election but are 18 for the current one.
Every four years since I can remember, that group of kids has been increasingly engaged politically, I think recent YouGov polls on this have been like very high, like 75% intend to vote and of those like 85% intend to vote more liberal candidates.
Trump was so bad, for everyone. Everyone remembers Trump's wanton child separation policy, his partisan Supreme Court picks, his COVID failures, and his constant lies and vitriol. Even small children can see Trump for what he is, maybe even with more clarity than most adults. Point, people who were ten years to seventeen years old at the beginning of Trump's presidency are eligible voters now. The Republicans see this tsunami coming at them. TV news has been calling it a blue wave to scare up red voters, but it's really a youth wave.
At the same time, older conservative voters are dying off. Republicans know they will never fairly win another popular presidential election. Their plan is to steal the White House with lawfare or outright terrorism.
Identifying as Republican went from 32% in the Boomer Generation to 21% in Gen Z. Identifying as LGBTQ+ went from 4% with Boomers to 28% with Gen Z.
With the exception of millennials, who were born between 1981 and 1996, Gen Z adults are notably less likely than those in other generations to identify as conservative.
Or in simpler terms, both Millennials and Gen Z are equally less likely than those in other generations to identify as conservative.
It turns out that people don't become more conservative as they age, they become more conservative as they gain wealth. Millennials and Gen Z aren't.
Dude it's plainly obvious, at least in my lived experience trying to reach 40. The Republicans I know who "became" republican all either
Moved up in class (perceived or real)
Became religious
Legitimately has a mental illness
I am not saying this as a dig, and I am not saying all Republicans etc etc just the people who weren't and then CHANGED THEIR MIND.
I'm starting to move up my career ladder somehow, and I feel this. It's very easy to be selfish and vote for less tax, taking advantage of the young and poor etc. Well, I mean, people other than me grab easy money, around my circle. (And when they justify themselves, I feel they show anger in order to warn me from questioning the morality further.
What's making me insist to be on the progressive (?) or socialist side (which I believe is the right thing to do) is maybe I've had enough anger towards the ruling class while I was younger. Or I read enough reddit / fediverse posts from the working class.
What’s more important than the absolute number of your taxes is what they’re being spent on.
I personally like having a nice community to live in, my shit not being stolen, my family not getting mugged, etc. And that means investing in communities so they can be better, so then the people living there will get better jobs, and we all grow our economy and have nice places to live.
If one party is promising slightly lower taxes, but they want to spend those on militarizing the police and book banning committees, you’re not really getting much in return for your tax investment.
My experience mirrors yours. Those who are after material wealth in any context tend to be conservative and define themselves by their perceived successes more than by their personalities. Such people will fill that void with religion.
Get on board GenX. We’re the future and the soon to be majority, so you might as well join the club. We promise we’ll treat you better than the boomers treated you.
The issue is that if Republicans win they will make sure they will win every election from now on. They already started doing it (vote suppression for the black and Latinos for example).
Because people are already jumping to conclusions without reading the article. Here is the core of the survey data.
Identifying as Republican went from 32% in the Boomer Generation to 21% in Gen Z. Identifying as LGBTQ+ went from 4% with Boomers to 28% with Gen Z.
The conclusion I would have jumped to is that the percentage of Gen Z who identified as LGBTQ+ would be greater than that who identified as Republican. So it seems I don't actually need to read it. 😜
Republicans know this, and push culture war issues to drive certain voters out of their states/area.
Then can we please be out and get out and vote?
I'm voting for Biden unless there's another nominee that will be the predominant choice against Trump. I don't like either of them but the choice is easy. Biden can't win my state, but I'm still going to vote for him literally just because he is running against Trump. I might cow about how I ate the Dems won't run on much else, but the contrast is big this time. It's always been really though, the Dems should be our new right wing party and a new farther left party like the Green party ought to be the more leftist faction. Dems to me already are neolibs with a neocon leaning. Leftist Populism must be embraced by the neolibs long term. Either way something has to give. Too much wealth to go around (even globally). The greedy old ideologies of constant growth at the expense of the poorest people in the world can't go forever. Growth economics can't go forever either. I have hope. Just go vote because that's what we can do easily as a minimum effort.
Biden 100% needs our energy right now. Trump will turn America into the Fourth Reich.
He might just win your state. Anything can happen.
The fact that you think the Green party is far left is just hilarious to me.
I take it you're an idealist and not a pragmatist (although I don't think the green party is pragmatic personally)
The neoliberals won't embrace anything unless there's profit in it.
Preferential voting is the only chance of a progressive gaining the power they need to make desperately overdue changes to healthcare, worker rights, housing, cost of living, etc.
A neoliberal government that occasionally panders to progressives is better than a neoliberal government that gets horny at the idea of spitting in poor peoples faces, which is better than fascists.
But we need to do so much more than "not making things worse".
What flavour of citrus is your face?
Lemon
Citrusface is an anagram of Cactus Fire.
That is all.
I needed this.
Once the hateful boomers die out, the republican party will be finished. They know this and is why they have been focusing on voter suppression so much.
I remember seeing this comment on Digg while people speculated that W would be the last republican president elected for a generation.
To be fair, he didn't win his first election by getting the most votes, and neither did Trump.
The Republicans realized during the Reagan administration that they would soon be unable to win the presidency with a majority of votes and took many steps to undermine the Democratic process. Voter suppression, purges, intimidation, voter ID laws, all of that began with Reagan.
Bush the elder was the last to win a "democratic" victory. If it weren't for 9/11, Bush wouldn't have been able to win his second election either. That fact always blows my mind. Like people rallied around the incompetent fool who managed to ignore warnings and let a terrorist strike happen only to then go on and invade the wrong country multiple times and spend trillions of dollars on nothing.
I don't disagree. I'm just calling out the whole "things will change when conservatives start dying off" trope because people have been banking on that for 20 years.
They keep living!
" ya don't change horses midstream 🤠" was a literal campaign ad phrase back then I remember
Boomers have a lot of lead accumulated in their brains, not entirely their fault
That was so dumb. We literally had a President die in office during the biggest war humanity has ever seen, and we still won. Not only that, but Truman was kept out of the loop on a lot of things ("What's the Manhattan Project all about?").
If the US president got elected by getting the most votes, there wouldn't have been a Republican since Bush senior. I really don't understand why electoral reform is not higher on the political agenda in the US.
Having it based purely on a popular vote will still wind up with a 2 party system. Ranked voting needs to be implemented. All of the benefits of a popular vote, with actual checks and balances to elevate 3rd parties.
The Democratic party and Republican party are united in their opposition to electoral reform because they both benefit the most from it.
This was the deal with the devil that people in the North made with people in the South to convince people in the South to join them in a government specifically set up to defy the British. The US as a democracy has always failed because it was designed to give ultimate executive power to the states rather than to the people.
So far he's the last to win the popular vote (and only for his second term).
Yeah this has been a thing forever. DeSantis was the strong culture war candidate too and... yeah. Trump has a clear role in culture war but he doesn't seem to care personally, he flip flops all the time on many culture war issues depending on what is convenient or funny to say in the moment.
It's almost like he's playing both sides of many issues; as a conman does and as the mark allows.
It's important to remember that collapse doesn't happen overnight, and then suddenly it does. It takes a great deal of times for cracks to form and a structure to fall, but once it goes, it goes.
They're more powerful and influential than you think - they're not going anywhere. They might change their policies to suit the times (remember Lincoln was a Republican) but the so-called "Grand Old Party" ain't going nowhere unfortunately.
If they pull a reverse Southern strategy and jump over and their become more left then the Democrats, I would be willing to vote for them. Also, hell freezing over might help with global warming.
It's not the name that's the issue. Whether they're called "Democrat" or "Republican" doesn't matter.
It's their backwards-ass, regressive, hateful policies that I don't vote for.
If they start saying they're going to force companies to take accountability for their impact on the climate, pledge to give the country a UBI, and socialized healthcare, I'd vote for a "Republican" so fast that I'd need new tires.
If they start saying they’re going to force companies to take accountability for their impact on the climate, pledge to give the country a UBI, and socialized healthcare, I’d vote for a “Republican” so fast that I’d need new tires.
I'm willing to go along with that, but with the recognition that between now and when we both die of old age we've got a greater chance of seeing absolute proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life than we do of seeing this happen believably enough for either of us to actually pull that lever.
They nearly overrode the vote last time around. They faced no consequences and they’re very close to being in a position to do it again and make lasting changes to seize power forever. Nothing good is guaranteed.
And they’re rewriting education including made up history to ensure that more kids are conservative in future generations. Things aren’t looking good.
They faced no consequences
Except the 200+ people who were convicted and are currently sitting in jail.
And, as cynical as we might be, we have to remember that Trump's various trials are not over yet.
Ues. The pawns were convicted and the people with actual power faced no consequences. The ringleader could very well be elected president where he ignored the law consistently. His trials keep getting delayed and the corrupt judge he appointed keeps helping him. It’s very scary times.
They literally have plans on concentration camps for reeducation into christofascism.
There are still plenty of ignorant and angry Gen X and Millenials. I agree that the GOP is finished, and it's only a matter of time. There will always be stupid people to pick up their mantle, however.
Plenty ignorant Gen Z while we're on the top, ain't nothing special about y'all. Vote democrat or you're just helping Trump turn America fascists and then the reeducation camps will start
I’m Gen X, but thanks. I work with university students and trust me that everyone else is a dinosaur.
Tdont kid yourself,, look at the numbers, Trump is propped up by gen x. The demographic loudest against biden are gunna be around a long time.
demographic loudest against biden
And add in the "Biden = genocide but I have no alternative to offer so I guess I want Trump to win" crowd and you can be in trouble.
As terrible as Biden's stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict is, he's still the lesser of two evils. Another Trump presidency would not spell good things for Palestinian civilians.
And that's my point. Trump CERTAINLY will be worse, but people have decided that they will let the greater of two evils in by default rather than work to bring in the lesser of the two.
People who think that Biden is genocidal have seen nothing yet compared to Trump being in that role agian.
It's like they forgot all of the pro-Israel moments of Donald Trump's 4 years in office. But since October 7th 2023, people have actually started to receive an education in Israeli/Palestinian relations. Most people thought it started on October 7th 2023 and not, you know, 75 years before that.
It is the first real conflict in a generation or so, there are probably many people who never thought of it before and are suddenly interested.
The fact that crowd exists is a scary reminder of the power of propaganda, advertising, and manipulation. It's a clear and devastating example of using people's values against them. It's an entirely artificially created demographic. To people who didn't get caught on that particular baited hook, it looks insane.
The fundamentals of how to wage information/cognitive warfare should be part of public schools' curriculum so our kids will recognize when its happening.
And yet those who did are passionately angry at you for not agreeing with them. Like insulting your dead grandma and saying you should never have been born kind of angry. It's so weird.
But what will replace them? Uni-party doesn't work either (e.g. NYC)
Hopefully the Democrats. No seriously, I hope the Dems become our more conservative party and we get a more progressive party. But… I’m not holding my breath, honestly. Feels like wishful thinking.
A new party will pop up. The Federalist Party died out after Hamilton was shot and also the War of 1812. They fielded their last Presidential candidate in 1816 with 30.9% of the vote.
Then the National Republican Party (different from the current Republican party) evolved out of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Personally, I'd love it if Democrats became the right-most party by staying exactly as they are, and a new party breaks off of them or evolves out to their left.
Personally, I'd love it if Democrats became the right-most party by staying exactly as they are, and a new party breaks off of them or evolves out to their left.
I'd say it's more likely to go the other way, with the more moderate or right-leaning Democrats breaking off to form their own party and perhaps steal away the more moderate Republican voters. There are a lot of voters who would naturally align more closely with traditional Republican political views voting Democrat only because the Republican party has been taken over by a radical faction. Having laissez-faire fiscal conservatives and outright socialists in the same party isn't really sustainable long-term; there are too many critical points of disagreement.
1 out of 4 for a midterm election is nothing to sneeze at.
Specifically, an estimated 27% of eligible voters in that age group turned out to the polls in 2022
In 2018, approximately 31% of young people voted
It's not that many, and it's actually down from the last midterm election. Fucking vote.
Golly I remember once on Reddit saying that people should vote and by howdy did a whole bunch of angry people vote me down double digits because, you see, apparently voting doesn't matter and I made people feel sad.
To be fair, I've voted my whole adult life and don't really feel like anything is better off because of it. I will continue to vote for the lesser evil, but I also completely understand why people are frustrated with this system. We just keep voting between a turd sandwich and a giant douche, and it gets old. So it doesn't surprise me when people feel like voting is useless, it feels like it's hopeless by design. We need a new system.
People get mad when they have a problem and you provide a solution they can feasibly take part in. As soon as they have any agency/capability to take responsibility suddenly they are unable to.
My mother in law famously stopped seeing a psychologist when they told her that she has the power to fix all of the problems in her life. She then spent the next 15 years being an unbearable cunt until her second-eldest had a child and suddenly she doesn't want to fuck up the grand kids as much as she fucked up her own children.
A lot of us aren't old enough to vote yet
Ok you get a pass 😉
They do vote...they're in areas where their vote doesn't count.
Wow, a news story that makes me think my kid could actually live in a better political climate than me in a few decades. I forgot what this feeling was like.
Bro, I'll tell you the same thing I was told as a young guy in my career. I'm in my 40's now and this was about 20 years ago. An older guy about to retire said something like 'ya know, everyone always says that the younger generation is lazy, or dumb, but from what I noticed you guys are doing it smarter and you'll be better than us.' I kinda thought that, but it was nice to hear.
Now I'll say about 10 years ago, I was recruiting in high school and those kids were leaps and bounds ahead of where my generation was. It was crazy how much they could socialize across cliques and it not matter. Now that I am in my 40's I have some family members in high school, and I just see them being better. I don't know how this will translate into the work force or a fight for a labor reform, but I think we need to be more open to their ideas than our elder generations were to us.
Exactly! Even if it makes us uncomfortable. I can’t relate to gen z, but I’m sure anyone from any other time in history would be unable to relate to me.
That doesn’t matter. It isn’t my world. I’m only here for a time. It’s our world.
Whatever direction society takes has my support as long as they aren’t imposing themselves on other people.
Freedom is beautiful even when I can’t understand or relate the ways people use their freedoms. I’ll vote for freedom no matter how I feel about things or how much I long for the comfortable world of my youth. I don’t matter. Civilization matters. Freedom matters.
I am right there with you. I didn't understand Vine, I don't get all these Tiktok challenges. The short repetitive nature is bothersome to me which is funny when I think about the number of times I replayed old Atari and NES games growing up. The point, though, is I don't need to understand it. Just accept that it's something they like to do and move on.
Yeah, I think the generation currently entering adulthood is seeing enough bullshit that they might do a great job leading this country, as long as they get a chance.
That's the kind of optimism we need.
Why do you think the GQP is panicing. Demographics are changing and they can't rely on old white male voters to shift the tide because they're all dying. Covid put a dent in them too.
I'm a bit confused by this.
Does this imply that the human race is drastically more sexually fluid than most species when allowed to be without oppression? Or that the culture gen z has grown up in helps cultivate a more fluid preference?
I grew up in the 80s, so I'm trying to understand, but it's tough meshing statements like this with my experiences.
Please don't misunderstand this post as disapproval. Just confusion.
Amazing what not punishing things does
I've got an older bro who is ambidextrous due to not being allowed to be left-handed in kindergarten (and beyond). He got held back due to "developmental" problems. I can't believe the teachers and principal were so dumb that they couldn't connect the dots as to what was really going on.
I'm cross dominant. I do some things left handed, some things right handed, and a select few I can do with either. Elementary school was weird. My teachers couldn't comprehend that I write with my right hand but use scissors with my left. For years I was forced to use right handed scissors held awkwardly in my left hand. To this day, I'm not particularly good with scissors.
I'm cross dominant but consider myself left handed mainly because I do the fine motor stuff writing, eating, etc. with my left hand. Out side of scissors I don't think I've ever felt forced to use a hand that didn't feel comfortable, stupid scissors.
distributed over the population vs the same 4 girls who sit together at lunch
Baseball?
Baseball (and sports in general) are wonderful man made examples of evolution and how selection pressure can force the expression of certain traits. About 25% of MLB players are left handed, versus about 10% in the general population.
A similar thing has occurred in the NBA where the average height is about 6’6” (or 198.6cm for those opposed to Freedom Units), which is about 8 inches taller than the average American male.
Doubtless, you can look at any top level professional sport league and find some physical trait (or set of traits) that is wholly disproportionate compared to the general population due to those traits providing some advantage(s) that is unique to that game.
That's true... And what I was (jokingly) referencing..
But, my Dad's mother, my Granny...
She was a natural Lefty...
And musically inclined...
Her Daddy slacked the strings on the family guitar before he left for work...
She figured out how to tune that instrument..
Those in her church, later, made fun of her for playing backwards chords, because she was a lefty. .
She learned to play the other way, too... And she taught me both..
There's so many sides and nuances to every thought in our lives..
It was a harmless joke, but it has roots in my reality..
This shit is so often much deeper than we think..
You made a fuckin hell of a statement, but it's without context or understanding..
I was just making an off-handed joke...
There is a fucking shitload of lefties in baseball...
Because it fucks with the righties when they're batting...
When people use that many ellipses it makes it look like they haven't made up their mind, so their opinions can be ignored.
Oh I thought it was like a poem or something because of all the line breaks and ellipses. But it’s just a regular comment?
I think it's mostly that very few of them identify as Republican.
But also, the less stigma around gender expression, the more kids will be open to explore theirs.
Identifying as Republican went from 32% in the Boomer Generation to 21% in Gen Z. Identifying as LGBTQ+ went from 4% with Boomers to 28% with Gen Z.
Both changes are major, but the LGBTQ+ change is massive.
It's probably worth mentioning we recognize certain types of people as part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella who were not before. Asexual people, for example.
Also huge swaths of bi people and a lot of people who are now understood as gay and trans as opposed to straight people who hate their body and life but got rejected from hormones
The best explanation I've heard is that it's similar to the stats for left-handed people. Way back in the day, almost no one "identified" as being left-handed. But once the stigma against left-handedness was eliminated, the numbers went up.
So in other words, yes, it's a reflection of LGBTQ+ becoming more acceptable, particularly among Gen Z. There could be other factors, but that's probably the main one.
28% seems huge, though. Are there any other animals like that? I'm kind of confused how it's that high even with acceptance lol.
Most male dogs hump your leg regardless of who you are
I get your point, but "most"? I've had 5 male dogs of my own over 40-ish years, and have known or met many, many others and I've never once had my leg humped.
It’s mostly bisexuals. You know like Julius Caesar, Alexander of Macedon, and large swaths of people in cultures where same gender romance or sex is acceptable in certain circumstances so long as you also marry and have children.
Julius Caesar, described by a contemporary as "Every woman's man, and every man's woman"
Human appear to be about halfway between chimps and bonobos on the primate spectrum. The violence of chimps combined with the fluid sexual social habits of bonobos lol
We are the only animal with cultural locks on gender expression. If we didn't have such hang ups about gender norms we would not really notice someone being LGBT. Paradoxically the more regressive and strict people are about gender roles the more people you have that don't fit within those gender roles.
Theres long been a camp that argues the vast majority of people are bisexual (myself included). That's also where pretty much all of the recent growth comes from. Interestingly, most of that comes from bisexual women, while bisexual men consistently self report at levels lower than gay men.
There are lots of men who identify as straight but have sex with other men. So much so that medical literature often uses MSM as a category instead of gay. There’s an entire DL subculture among African American men.
Anywhere you go you can download Grindr and find oodles of guys who are in heterosexual marriages. The stigma is pretty strong, they probably can’t even internally recognize themselves as somewhat bisexual.
This is particularly relevant as it relates to how silly this topic and its reactions are. We absolutely KNOW that the current number is an undercount, and yet it's still really hard for people to grasp that the percentage is that high.
I mean, sexuality is a spectrum. It’s statistically unlikely that a large part of the population is at the exact borders of the spectrum and not even slightly in between.
Especially since afaik physical attraction is just a matter of appearance, and there’s very masculine women or very feminine men.
Bonobos
Part acceptance, part widening the net of what's included in the category.
It's a confluence of factors. LGBTQIA+ is sort of a gender/sexuallity/ phenotype physicality solidarity alliance and the actual boundries has grown in scope since the 80's.
Like take for instance asexual people. Asexuallity became a part of the solidarity when people reached out over the internet and and started realizing that there were a lot of people who just don't feel sexual attraction and that there are certain widely accepted forms of social coercion that revolve around pushing people towards sexual attraction. But asexuallity as a part of the LGBTQIA only really became a thing in the early 2000's. Non-binary trans identities are much the same. A lot of people were feeling the way they did about themselves in isolation but they had no frame of reference to think that they were not just the odd person out.
The other half is a society wide re-examination of compulsory heterosexuallity/cis gender hegemony. There are way more people out there who no longer define themselves by who they've chosen to have physical sexual experience with and now a lot more people are more frank about defining themselves by the range of people they are attracted to. Like if the majority of people artificially penalize a bi-person for choosing a same sex relationship a lot of people will just take the easier path and just narrow their choices or keep their liasons with the restricted choice secret and not assume the label.
I before I came out as trans initially figured I didn't count as trans because I both wasn't physically transitioning and my industry is somewhat hostile to trans people so I was very closeted ao I figured the label only really belonged to the people brave enough to live out of the closet... But eventually someone found me and was like "No, it's not aspirational. Even deep in the closet you are still trans."
This combination of destigmatization, solidarity messaging, the inclusion of whole other groups (like intersex people, gender minorities, asexuals) broadening the scope and outreach to the closeted means that more people generally self identify as LGBTQIA or queer.
Animal kingdom wise we're still less observably sexual fluid than other primates. Bisexuality is actually pretty ubiquitous particularly amongst male primates with it actually being the overwhelming norm in some species so chances are we are probably actually haven't seen the curve level off from suppressive stigma.
I believe it's your first option, acceptance for being yourself is the normal instead of a beating from your parents like pre 2000.
I would assume they are more honestly/aware of their preference.
I am a gay dude, and I have had friends/coworkers who identified as straight say things like "Why does everyone need to label things? I am 100% straight, but sometimes on a road trip, you just wanna suck the other guy off. Both of us are still straight though"
Every time I have heard thigns like this, it's GenX, or older Millennial. Older than that, they don't bring up "queer" things, younger than that, they just say that they are "mostly straight", or "barely-bi", or "up for whatever".
Yepppppp, the kinsey 1s and 2s are really common and there was a time when even 3s and some 4s would identify as straight.
I identify as the +. My sexuality is Extra. Anyone up for some algebra?
I think most species are more fluid than you realize, and humans are just normal. Especially for apes that share a common ancestor with bonobos.
drastically more sexually fluid than most species
Have you heard about bonobos? They shag anyone for anything and they're one of our closest relatives. Friends have mutual wanks. Enemies have makeup sex. Threesomes, foursomes. Horny bunch of fuckers.
The 11% dip for the GOP makes sense. Their policies are just not in line with what young people value.
That said, the +24% gain in LGBTQ+ identification is fascinating and I would love to know how nature, nurture, taboo, and oppression play impact that. This would be a really cool time to be in university and studying human sexuality and gender.
LGBT as a category has been increased a lot over the years. Asexual or people who don't feel they conform to super strict gender norms are all included as "queer" now. So I imagine it's a combo of things, some people being trendy, some people being freer and not feeling the need to hide, some people who previously didn't identify being included.
Left handedness was persecuted and after it stopped being persecuted there was a massive rise in people who were left handed. But it plateaued and has remained pretty stable since then.
My (admittedly relatively hot) take as a younger millennial indoctrinated by the 2nd wave feminists (who weren’t huge on the third wave) is that what gender means has shifted. I didn’t experience myself as particularly gendered growing up in the 90s and early 00s and certainly wouldn’t consider it part of my inner essence. I don’t give a shit how strangers refer to me or whether they think I’m a dude or not. I found it to be a slightly annoying category imposed by everyone else. Something I needed to understand because it impacted how I was received by others, but not something that was core to my self-understanding. In school I studied the humanities which reaffirmed to me that gender was an annoying external category that put people in boxes—we didn’t want gay female CEOs, we wanted to get rid of gender altogether.
I think gen Z actually has a similar thought but instead of doing away with the gender categories many have chosen, on an individual level, to make them their own a bit more in line with 3rd wave ‘boss bitch’ vibes. This still undermines the oppressive nature of the gender roles because it it kind of divorces gender from the societal gender role.
We are indeed more sexually fluid than most species and given it's "most" and not "all", this isn't unprecedented. It's also not a new phenomena, in Ancient Greek and early-mid Ancient Roman societies queerness was quite common. In fact homosexuality was so prevalent that that the Romans didn't even have a word for heterosexual/homosexual; instead one was either dominant or submissive (e.g. giving or receiving) with the assumption being that most were bisexual and would take partners as they saw fit.
There would still be a stigma around being the receptive partner. The idea being that a higher status man can penetrate lower status people (younger men, slaves, women). A high status man being penetrated by a lower status person would be worthy of mockery.
Samurai were gay as fuck though. Sengoku period you could even be romantic with other dudes, women are for making babies. I have an 1940s (iirc) English translation of a book of 16th century gay samurai love stories - the guy who wrote the forward thought it was because “mongoloid” people look more feminine 😅
Putting sexuality in such a defined state is relatively new in human culture. So most often no one would have the worlds to talk about it or even know it could be classified differently.
fingers crossed it means there's five gen z Republicans and they don't know how to vote
Our closest related species gets it on so much in so many ways it is one STD away from extinction. It might be that we really are like this. Maybe the norm for humans was to have random homosexual and hetrosexual orgies everywhere. It was only because it became important to know who the daddy was that things changed? Or the sampling of the survey wasn't great. You know groundbreaking or meaningless.
sees source oh it's gay fox, which means it's probably sensationalized to the point that the headline is a lie, because that's what they do over there.
You had me at gay fox.
Actually the source is Axios, and the headline is not wrong even if it is from an obviously biased organization. You can see the original coverage of it here:
honestly it would make sense and i didn't doubt it until I saw it was on PinkNews - it's not about bias, it's about their headlines too often being the exact opposite of the real story (when there even is a real story; much of their content is sensationalized nothings). Just absolute crap reporting. Thanks for providing the original source.
I've been on the internet too long, because I assumed you meant it was a furry site.
As it should be. FUCKING VOTE! And remember, by not voting for Biden, you are voting for Trump whether or not you actually cast a vote. ALL of the Trump supporters WILL show up on the day.
Maybe they're more likely to take online polls. Were the participants invited to take the poll, or just posted somewhere and left up for people to discover and take if so inclined? I don't care about these results, just pointing out that usually these things aren't terribly reliable. Maybe this poll of some 6,000 perfectly represents Gen Z. I have no idea.
Is there an agenda to push, or is it less of a stigma and a sign of progress? Are the chemical products in our environment changing our hormones, or are young impressionable people following a trend? Will this trend continue, and what is the desired peak since this is apparently something to celebrate. Would we be celebrating if biologists determined that homosexuality has increased 64% among giraffes, or would it just be considered data to be viewed with no bias? Are mushrooms really safe to microdose, and what is the recommended dose SWIM should be taking?
The 28% identifying as LGBTQ+ definitely seems like an indication that the sampling might be off. That could be true, but it seems much, much higher than previous estimates.
For people under the age of, say, 40, the idea of sexuality is far more fluid than in previous generations. People are less likely to say "I am straight and straight only" and more likely to say "I usually like girls but I realize that context is everything and there may be some dude out there I like and I'm also open to trying other new experiences even if that's not necessarily my thing."
A lot more people identify with LGBT+ than there used to be, because it's a very open label and people are more able to identify with it in accepting environments.
There's a hell of a lot more people now who are... pretty much cishet, but maybe have some 5% attraction to the same sex, or they're attracted to trans/nonbinary people, and so they consider themselves bisexual or pansexual, etc. when 5-10 years ago they probably wouldn't have.
The specific number starts to mean a lot less when we remember the attitude of those people answering "do you identify with LGBT" has quickly shifted from "oh, well I'm definitely not gay!!" to "uhh sure, why not?" in a very short amount of time. I'm of the opinion this doesn't reflect a change in our baseline behavior and is... not even consistently measurable given the diverging, shifting cultural context.
It's weird. As a millennial in college I would always hear the grief from gen x hearing me complain and respond with "well get out an vote then." I guess it is now my turn to tell that to a younger generation, watch them get upset, and then eat my popcorn in 20 years while I watch gen lecture the next generation on the importance of voting.
But I do think this is alarming:
Before the 2020 election, 57% of Americans ages 18 to 29 said they were planning to vote. The number is now 49%, a figure many analysts say reflects disinterest in the likelihood of a Biden-Trump rematch.
I think the US would be a better place if we had compulsory voting laws similar to Australia that gets like 90 percent turnout. As a citizen of a democracy I think voting should be an obligation. And as a member of a democracy I wish the majority vote actually was a number that is a majority of Americans, not just Americans that voted, so we could have more faith in the outcomes actually reflecting the will of the people.
And if they don't vote, it won't matter.
So help them vote. Volunteer with efforts to get out the youth vote. Push for universal mail in voting where you are, or at least early voting. Help get politicians and initiatives on the ballot that they actually care about.
Shaming and complaining about the demographic you want to reach accomplishes nothing.
Obligatory-
If you are a legal resident of Wisconsin, and are not currently serving time or on paper, you can register to vote entirely online if you want, and you can request absentee ballots for all elections for the entire year (no reason needed, but necessary annual renewal, it’s my New Year’s resolution every year because it’s so easy to accomplish. entirely free of charge ofc.).
Just go to www.myvote.wi.gov to register, request absentee ballots, check your registration, or find your polling place. If you have any difficulty with your registration, you can find your local rep and contact them directly.
Please vote. Please vote for your own wellbeing. Please.
Edits to fix link redirect per convo below
This is why I love Washington. Everyone has an OPT OUT absentee ballot. Everyone gets one at your address. Every election. All the time. The same address that’s on your ID. It’s amazing.
Hi, your link (the actual link, not the link text) is to https://www.reddit.comwww.myvote.wi.gov .
So you went somewhere different than I did… weird..
For me it comes up https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/www.myvote.wi.gov
I typed it in though.. the link and link text are the same, so that shouldn’t happen.
i see what happened.
you typed
[www.myvote.wi.gov](www.myvote.wi.gov)in your comment's source. for it to register as a URL you have to put https before the link inside the parentheses:[www.myvote.wi.gov](https://www.myvote.wi.gov).for me it goes to https://pawb.social/post/www.myvote.wi.gov (my instance, error: couldnt_find_post)in your comment's source it is written [www.myvote.wi.gov\]\(www.myvote.wi.gov\), which shouldn't behave like this. looks like a lemmy bug maybe?i have two theories:1. the bug is related to typing a link directly, as in pasting a link in the comment, like example.com (i typed it without brackets for a name or parentheses for a URL)or2. it's related to links explicitly starting with www, such as what you linked.for testing purposes:www.myvote.wi.govwww.myvote.wi.govyou can report lemmy issues at https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues. i searched on there to see if it was already reported but couldn't find anything, though if you want to i'd recommend searching.Hey thanks, I changed it and that did the trick.
I guess it makes sense that would be a thing. I’m so used to everything accommodating for that lack, though lol
Shame ✍️ demographics ✍️ for ✍️ helpful ✍️ advice
My state’s on it!
It doesn't work. Every swiss citizen older than 18 receives them at home. The younger generation doesn't vote.
I'm older now and the older I'm the more people of my age around me vote. It's depressing. I try each time to make the younger vote but it's not working. And, I didn't miss one. Next one is the 3rd March. I will try again.
Don't take me wrong if I convince if just one younger person, it's a win.
You got this 🫡
I hope things will change, but we still have abysmal turnout. TX started allowing early voting over 40 years ago and we still struggle to get people to the polls. Early voting is a span of 2 weeks, where in the 1st week, polls are required to be open for at least 9 hours and can be open from 6 AM to 10 PM on the weekday and shortened hours on the weekend, and in the 2nd week, polls are required to be open at least 12 hours a day and typically have the same hours as election day. Yet we still have virtually no lines through all early voting and a massive line on election day.
It doesn't help that the news only bangs the final day of voting into peoples' heads.
I've been helping my fellow zoomers by figuring out what their townships/town wards/city districts are, then what their local/state/federal legislative/executive/judicial districts are, then who's running for what position, then where to vote and (primaries and generals).
Information is power!
But both sides are the same or my vote is worthless or it's too hard to vote or something
That said, election day not being a federal holiday is a crime.
In Australia it's always on a Saturday, and it's compulsory to vote. Works OK for us.
that sounds like a way for democracy to actually represent the will of the public. DEFINITELY not what they want in the U.S.
In Canada, we get mail in voting, advanced voting and voting stations are everywhere. I've never had to wait more than 5 mins to vote and the closet voting station is a 2 min drive from my house. They're also open late and most employers give us time off to vote. Not sure if there's a law for that but voting here is easy af yet some people still don't bother.
In Finland it's on Sunday. And with I think two weeks to vote beforehand.
It is genuinely too difficult in some places thanks to voter suppression.
Yes, but political engagement can't revolve around voting.
It's shit. You have to navigate a beurocracy and don't even always have choices down the ballot. And when you do, you often have no idea who the candidates are beyond some half baked Facebook page. It's also a huge burnout pit. Put months of stress into a binary outcome you can barely control. And even that is if you're engaged in canvassing and etc, otherwise it's just a chore.
Youth need to be mobilized in long term action projects. Something like Encode Justice for example, where they make civic engagement a part of their daily life, is far superior. It's also harder, but that comes with doing something actually impactful.
Things can change, though. California voted for an open primary in 1996 (think that was the year) and now you can participate in either one. Prior to that, you could only vote in the primary for the party you registered with.
Sadly some of them are republican
Not sure why you're being downvoted - you're 100% correct. People voting against their own demographic is nothing new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews
Please get out and vote.
I really hope that they do.
Because I am worried about the camps.
We're all worried about the camps.
Unless all these Gen Z kids actually fucking VOTE it won't matter, because Boomers fucking do.
Oh, you think the choices are trash? Well fucking vote in the primaries then. Get involved at a local level, and start promoting candidates that represent you. Don't just bitch and moan that the choice is between a codger and senile draft-dodger.
FPTP coupled with Electoral College means the only ethical vote is for the least problematic candidate.
Basic mafs. Simple as.
The reason nobody young is ever is involved with primaries is because it's driven by corporate lobbyists. How are the youth supposed to get involved with that when they are competing against billions of dollars? The choices will always be trash until we end the lobbying. It doesn't work with just promoting candidates that represent you. It involves massive sums of money that 99.9 percent of Americans will never touch.
Sanders came very close to winning the Democratic nomination two election cycles in a row, and his funding was largely individual donors, while Clinton and Biden were being funded by corporate interests. Sanders probably lost in 2016 because the DNC put it's thumb on the scale; he lost in 2020 because many primary voters didn't believe that he could win against Trump, and wanted a candidate that could peel away moderate Republicans. And that's a national level.
At a local level, there's a lot less money, so fucking start there, where it's not being driven by greed.
That is some revisionist history, because he did not. He did better than any openly socialist candidate has in 100 years, but because of the rules of the DNC was not actually in contention at any point.
By paying attention to the media, reading platforms, thinking critically, and making it out on voting day.
When I was young, I participated in the primaries for Obama's first election (Texas...). I was more or less put in my damn place by the older members and not allowed to have an opinion. It was Hillary this or that and racist comments otherwise. Seriously, Gen Y & Z need to participate, vote, and get involved at the primary and electoral college level or nothing is ever going to change. Don't let those assholes decide who gets to run. I really really wonder what kind of impact those votes, in the areas that have true primaries, will have if we step up early.
I literally have volunteered for local campaign offices every year since I turned 18. Don't use cynicism to justify laziness
You don't need to get "involved" just go get registered and fkn vote, It has a much bigger net effect that holding up signs on a street.
Doesn't help when the people who run the primaries go to court to ensure that they do what tf they want. 🤷
I agree there's a history of young people not voting, but every presidential election year there's a whole group of kids who were 14 at the time of the last election but are 18 for the current one.
Every four years since I can remember, that group of kids has been increasingly engaged politically, I think recent YouGov polls on this have been like very high, like 75% intend to vote and of those like 85% intend to vote more liberal candidates.
Trump was so bad, for everyone. Everyone remembers Trump's wanton child separation policy, his partisan Supreme Court picks, his COVID failures, and his constant lies and vitriol. Even small children can see Trump for what he is, maybe even with more clarity than most adults. Point, people who were ten years to seventeen years old at the beginning of Trump's presidency are eligible voters now. The Republicans see this tsunami coming at them. TV news has been calling it a blue wave to scare up red voters, but it's really a youth wave.
At the same time, older conservative voters are dying off. Republicans know they will never fairly win another popular presidential election. Their plan is to steal the White House with lawfare or outright terrorism.
Yeah primaries are absolutely important
Super this. Don't care what anyone privately identifies as as long as it includes "voter" in the tag cloud.
Because people are already jumping to conclusions without reading the article. Here is the core of the survey data.
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/23/gen-z-less-religious-more-liberal-lgbtq
Identifying as Republican went from 32% in the Boomer Generation to 21% in Gen Z. Identifying as LGBTQ+ went from 4% with Boomers to 28% with Gen Z.
Or in simpler terms, both Millennials and Gen Z are equally less likely than those in other generations to identify as conservative.
It turns out that people don't become more conservative as they age, they become more conservative as they gain wealth. Millennials and Gen Z aren't.
Dude it's plainly obvious, at least in my lived experience trying to reach 40. The Republicans I know who "became" republican all either
I am not saying this as a dig, and I am not saying all Republicans etc etc just the people who weren't and then CHANGED THEIR MIND.
You repeated the same thing twice.
Glad I wasn't the only one to notice this haha
I'm starting to move up my career ladder somehow, and I feel this. It's very easy to be selfish and vote for less tax, taking advantage of the young and poor etc. Well, I mean, people other than me grab easy money, around my circle. (And when they justify themselves, I feel they show anger in order to warn me from questioning the morality further.
What's making me insist to be on the progressive (?) or socialist side (which I believe is the right thing to do) is maybe I've had enough anger towards the ruling class while I was younger. Or I read enough reddit / fediverse posts from the working class.
What’s more important than the absolute number of your taxes is what they’re being spent on.
I personally like having a nice community to live in, my shit not being stolen, my family not getting mugged, etc. And that means investing in communities so they can be better, so then the people living there will get better jobs, and we all grow our economy and have nice places to live.
If one party is promising slightly lower taxes, but they want to spend those on militarizing the police and book banning committees, you’re not really getting much in return for your tax investment.
My experience mirrors yours. Those who are after material wealth in any context tend to be conservative and define themselves by their perceived successes more than by their personalities. Such people will fill that void with religion.
Get on board GenX. We’re the future and the soon to be majority, so you might as well join the club. We promise we’ll treat you better than the boomers treated you.
The issue is that if Republicans win they will make sure they will win every election from now on. They already started doing it (vote suppression for the black and Latinos for example).
I'm already here. Make sure you vote. 😁
The conclusion I would have jumped to is that the percentage of Gen Z who identified as LGBTQ+ would be greater than that who identified as Republican. So it seems I don't actually need to read it. 😜
Republicans know this, and push culture war issues to drive certain voters out of their states/area.
Then can we please be out and get out and vote?
I'm voting for Biden unless there's another nominee that will be the predominant choice against Trump. I don't like either of them but the choice is easy. Biden can't win my state, but I'm still going to vote for him literally just because he is running against Trump. I might cow about how I ate the Dems won't run on much else, but the contrast is big this time. It's always been really though, the Dems should be our new right wing party and a new farther left party like the Green party ought to be the more leftist faction. Dems to me already are neolibs with a neocon leaning. Leftist Populism must be embraced by the neolibs long term. Either way something has to give. Too much wealth to go around (even globally). The greedy old ideologies of constant growth at the expense of the poorest people in the world can't go forever. Growth economics can't go forever either. I have hope. Just go vote because that's what we can do easily as a minimum effort.
Biden 100% needs our energy right now. Trump will turn America into the Fourth Reich.
He might just win your state. Anything can happen.
The fact that you think the Green party is far left is just hilarious to me.
I take it you're an idealist and not a pragmatist (although I don't think the green party is pragmatic personally)
The neoliberals won't embrace anything unless there's profit in it.
Preferential voting is the only chance of a progressive gaining the power they need to make desperately overdue changes to healthcare, worker rights, housing, cost of living, etc.
A neoliberal government that occasionally panders to progressives is better than a neoliberal government that gets horny at the idea of spitting in poor peoples faces, which is better than fascists.
But we need to do so much more than "not making things worse".
What flavour of citrus is your face?
Lemon
Citrusface is an anagram of Cactus Fire.
That is all.
I needed this.
Once the hateful boomers die out, the republican party will be finished. They know this and is why they have been focusing on voter suppression so much.
I remember seeing this comment on Digg while people speculated that W would be the last republican president elected for a generation.
To be fair, he didn't win his first election by getting the most votes, and neither did Trump.
The Republicans realized during the Reagan administration that they would soon be unable to win the presidency with a majority of votes and took many steps to undermine the Democratic process. Voter suppression, purges, intimidation, voter ID laws, all of that began with Reagan.
Bush the elder was the last to win a "democratic" victory. If it weren't for 9/11, Bush wouldn't have been able to win his second election either. That fact always blows my mind. Like people rallied around the incompetent fool who managed to ignore warnings and let a terrorist strike happen only to then go on and invade the wrong country multiple times and spend trillions of dollars on nothing.
I don't disagree. I'm just calling out the whole "things will change when conservatives start dying off" trope because people have been banking on that for 20 years.
They keep living!
" ya don't change horses midstream 🤠" was a literal campaign ad phrase back then I remember
Boomers have a lot of lead accumulated in their brains, not entirely their fault
That was so dumb. We literally had a President die in office during the biggest war humanity has ever seen, and we still won. Not only that, but Truman was kept out of the loop on a lot of things ("What's the Manhattan Project all about?").
If the US president got elected by getting the most votes, there wouldn't have been a Republican since Bush senior. I really don't understand why electoral reform is not higher on the political agenda in the US.
Having it based purely on a popular vote will still wind up with a 2 party system. Ranked voting needs to be implemented. All of the benefits of a popular vote, with actual checks and balances to elevate 3rd parties.
The Democratic party and Republican party are united in their opposition to electoral reform because they both benefit the most from it.
This was the deal with the devil that people in the North made with people in the South to convince people in the South to join them in a government specifically set up to defy the British. The US as a democracy has always failed because it was designed to give ultimate executive power to the states rather than to the people.
So far he's the last to win the popular vote (and only for his second term).
Yeah this has been a thing forever. DeSantis was the strong culture war candidate too and... yeah. Trump has a clear role in culture war but he doesn't seem to care personally, he flip flops all the time on many culture war issues depending on what is convenient or funny to say in the moment.
It's almost like he's playing both sides of many issues; as a conman does and as the mark allows.
It's important to remember that collapse doesn't happen overnight, and then suddenly it does. It takes a great deal of times for cracks to form and a structure to fall, but once it goes, it goes.
They're more powerful and influential than you think - they're not going anywhere. They might change their policies to suit the times (remember Lincoln was a Republican) but the so-called "Grand Old Party" ain't going nowhere unfortunately.
If they pull a reverse Southern strategy and jump over and their become more left then the Democrats, I would be willing to vote for them. Also, hell freezing over might help with global warming.
It's not the name that's the issue. Whether they're called "Democrat" or "Republican" doesn't matter.
It's their backwards-ass, regressive, hateful policies that I don't vote for.
If they start saying they're going to force companies to take accountability for their impact on the climate, pledge to give the country a UBI, and socialized healthcare, I'd vote for a "Republican" so fast that I'd need new tires.
I'm willing to go along with that, but with the recognition that between now and when we both die of old age we've got a greater chance of seeing absolute proof of intelligent extraterrestrial life than we do of seeing this happen believably enough for either of us to actually pull that lever.
They nearly overrode the vote last time around. They faced no consequences and they’re very close to being in a position to do it again and make lasting changes to seize power forever. Nothing good is guaranteed.
And they’re rewriting education including made up history to ensure that more kids are conservative in future generations. Things aren’t looking good.
Except the 200+ people who were convicted and are currently sitting in jail.
And, as cynical as we might be, we have to remember that Trump's various trials are not over yet.
Ues. The pawns were convicted and the people with actual power faced no consequences. The ringleader could very well be elected president where he ignored the law consistently. His trials keep getting delayed and the corrupt judge he appointed keeps helping him. It’s very scary times.
They literally have plans on concentration camps for reeducation into christofascism.
There are still plenty of ignorant and angry Gen X and Millenials. I agree that the GOP is finished, and it's only a matter of time. There will always be stupid people to pick up their mantle, however.
Plenty ignorant Gen Z while we're on the top, ain't nothing special about y'all. Vote democrat or you're just helping Trump turn America fascists and then the reeducation camps will start
I’m Gen X, but thanks. I work with university students and trust me that everyone else is a dinosaur.
Tdont kid yourself,, look at the numbers, Trump is propped up by gen x. The demographic loudest against biden are gunna be around a long time.
And add in the "Biden = genocide but I have no alternative to offer so I guess I want Trump to win" crowd and you can be in trouble.
As terrible as Biden's stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict is, he's still the lesser of two evils. Another Trump presidency would not spell good things for Palestinian civilians.
And that's my point. Trump CERTAINLY will be worse, but people have decided that they will let the greater of two evils in by default rather than work to bring in the lesser of the two.
People who think that Biden is genocidal have seen nothing yet compared to Trump being in that role agian.
It's like they forgot all of the pro-Israel moments of Donald Trump's 4 years in office. But since October 7th 2023, people have actually started to receive an education in Israeli/Palestinian relations. Most people thought it started on October 7th 2023 and not, you know, 75 years before that.
It is the first real conflict in a generation or so, there are probably many people who never thought of it before and are suddenly interested.
The fact that crowd exists is a scary reminder of the power of propaganda, advertising, and manipulation. It's a clear and devastating example of using people's values against them. It's an entirely artificially created demographic. To people who didn't get caught on that particular baited hook, it looks insane.
The fundamentals of how to wage information/cognitive warfare should be part of public schools' curriculum so our kids will recognize when its happening.
And yet those who did are passionately angry at you for not agreeing with them. Like insulting your dead grandma and saying you should never have been born kind of angry. It's so weird.
But what will replace them? Uni-party doesn't work either (e.g. NYC)
Hopefully the Democrats. No seriously, I hope the Dems become our more conservative party and we get a more progressive party. But… I’m not holding my breath, honestly. Feels like wishful thinking.
A new party will pop up. The Federalist Party died out after Hamilton was shot and also the War of 1812. They fielded their last Presidential candidate in 1816 with 30.9% of the vote.
Then the National Republican Party (different from the current Republican party) evolved out of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Personally, I'd love it if Democrats became the right-most party by staying exactly as they are, and a new party breaks off of them or evolves out to their left.
I'd say it's more likely to go the other way, with the more moderate or right-leaning Democrats breaking off to form their own party and perhaps steal away the more moderate Republican voters. There are a lot of voters who would naturally align more closely with traditional Republican political views voting Democrat only because the Republican party has been taken over by a radical faction. Having laissez-faire fiscal conservatives and outright socialists in the same party isn't really sustainable long-term; there are too many critical points of disagreement.
I hope so but I think my fellow gen x'ers will just become as hateful and bigoted.
I'm LGBTQ...AND republican. Although that means something vastly different where I live, haha (I live in a kingdom).
The only cool kind of Republicans
In my republic (France), Republicans suck too. It looks like you're right: cool Republicans only exist in monarchies.
Had me in the first half not gonna lie
Vive la république!
Our time will come
Now if they’d just vote….
To their credit, they are: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/12/12/near-record-high-numbers-of-young-people-voted-during-the-midterms-signaling-a-possible-shift/
1 out of 4 for a midterm election is nothing to sneeze at.
It's not that many, and it's actually down from the last midterm election. Fucking vote.
Golly I remember once on Reddit saying that people should vote and by howdy did a whole bunch of angry people vote me down double digits because, you see, apparently voting doesn't matter and I made people feel sad.
To be fair, I've voted my whole adult life and don't really feel like anything is better off because of it. I will continue to vote for the lesser evil, but I also completely understand why people are frustrated with this system. We just keep voting between a turd sandwich and a giant douche, and it gets old. So it doesn't surprise me when people feel like voting is useless, it feels like it's hopeless by design. We need a new system.
People get mad when they have a problem and you provide a solution they can feasibly take part in. As soon as they have any agency/capability to take responsibility suddenly they are unable to.
My mother in law famously stopped seeing a psychologist when they told her that she has the power to fix all of the problems in her life. She then spent the next 15 years being an unbearable cunt until her second-eldest had a child and suddenly she doesn't want to fuck up the grand kids as much as she fucked up her own children.
A lot of us aren't old enough to vote yet
Ok you get a pass 😉
They do vote...they're in areas where their vote doesn't count.
Wow, a news story that makes me think my kid could actually live in a better political climate than me in a few decades. I forgot what this feeling was like.
Bro, I'll tell you the same thing I was told as a young guy in my career. I'm in my 40's now and this was about 20 years ago. An older guy about to retire said something like 'ya know, everyone always says that the younger generation is lazy, or dumb, but from what I noticed you guys are doing it smarter and you'll be better than us.' I kinda thought that, but it was nice to hear.
Now I'll say about 10 years ago, I was recruiting in high school and those kids were leaps and bounds ahead of where my generation was. It was crazy how much they could socialize across cliques and it not matter. Now that I am in my 40's I have some family members in high school, and I just see them being better. I don't know how this will translate into the work force or a fight for a labor reform, but I think we need to be more open to their ideas than our elder generations were to us.
Exactly! Even if it makes us uncomfortable. I can’t relate to gen z, but I’m sure anyone from any other time in history would be unable to relate to me.
That doesn’t matter. It isn’t my world. I’m only here for a time. It’s our world.
Whatever direction society takes has my support as long as they aren’t imposing themselves on other people.
Freedom is beautiful even when I can’t understand or relate the ways people use their freedoms. I’ll vote for freedom no matter how I feel about things or how much I long for the comfortable world of my youth. I don’t matter. Civilization matters. Freedom matters.
I am right there with you. I didn't understand Vine, I don't get all these Tiktok challenges. The short repetitive nature is bothersome to me which is funny when I think about the number of times I replayed old Atari and NES games growing up. The point, though, is I don't need to understand it. Just accept that it's something they like to do and move on.
Yeah, I think the generation currently entering adulthood is seeing enough bullshit that they might do a great job leading this country, as long as they get a chance.
That's the kind of optimism we need.
Why do you think the GQP is panicing. Demographics are changing and they can't rely on old white male voters to shift the tide because they're all dying. Covid put a dent in them too.
I'm a bit confused by this.
Does this imply that the human race is drastically more sexually fluid than most species when allowed to be without oppression? Or that the culture gen z has grown up in helps cultivate a more fluid preference?
I grew up in the 80s, so I'm trying to understand, but it's tough meshing statements like this with my experiences.
Please don't misunderstand this post as disapproval. Just confusion.
Amazing what not punishing things does
I've got an older bro who is ambidextrous due to not being allowed to be left-handed in kindergarten (and beyond). He got held back due to "developmental" problems. I can't believe the teachers and principal were so dumb that they couldn't connect the dots as to what was really going on.
I'm cross dominant. I do some things left handed, some things right handed, and a select few I can do with either. Elementary school was weird. My teachers couldn't comprehend that I write with my right hand but use scissors with my left. For years I was forced to use right handed scissors held awkwardly in my left hand. To this day, I'm not particularly good with scissors.
I'm cross dominant but consider myself left handed mainly because I do the fine motor stuff writing, eating, etc. with my left hand. Out side of scissors I don't think I've ever felt forced to use a hand that didn't feel comfortable, stupid scissors.
distributed over the population vs the same 4 girls who sit together at lunch
Baseball?
Baseball (and sports in general) are wonderful man made examples of evolution and how selection pressure can force the expression of certain traits. About 25% of MLB players are left handed, versus about 10% in the general population.
A similar thing has occurred in the NBA where the average height is about 6’6” (or 198.6cm for those opposed to Freedom Units), which is about 8 inches taller than the average American male.
Doubtless, you can look at any top level professional sport league and find some physical trait (or set of traits) that is wholly disproportionate compared to the general population due to those traits providing some advantage(s) that is unique to that game.
That's true... And what I was (jokingly) referencing..
But, my Dad's mother, my Granny...
She was a natural Lefty...
And musically inclined...
Her Daddy slacked the strings on the family guitar before he left for work...
She figured out how to tune that instrument..
Those in her church, later, made fun of her for playing backwards chords, because she was a lefty. .
She learned to play the other way, too... And she taught me both..
There's so many sides and nuances to every thought in our lives..
It was a harmless joke, but it has roots in my reality..
This shit is so often much deeper than we think..
You made a fuckin hell of a statement, but it's without context or understanding..
I was just making an off-handed joke...
There is a fucking shitload of lefties in baseball... Because it fucks with the righties when they're batting...
When people use that many ellipses it makes it look like they haven't made up their mind, so their opinions can be ignored.
Oh I thought it was like a poem or something because of all the line breaks and ellipses. But it’s just a regular comment?
I think it's mostly that very few of them identify as Republican.
But also, the less stigma around gender expression, the more kids will be open to explore theirs.
That’s not what the data said.
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/23/gen-z-less-religious-more-liberal-lgbtq
Identifying as Republican went from 32% in the Boomer Generation to 21% in Gen Z. Identifying as LGBTQ+ went from 4% with Boomers to 28% with Gen Z.
Both changes are major, but the LGBTQ+ change is massive.
It's probably worth mentioning we recognize certain types of people as part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella who were not before. Asexual people, for example.
Also huge swaths of bi people and a lot of people who are now understood as gay and trans as opposed to straight people who hate their body and life but got rejected from hormones
The best explanation I've heard is that it's similar to the stats for left-handed people. Way back in the day, almost no one "identified" as being left-handed. But once the stigma against left-handedness was eliminated, the numbers went up.
So in other words, yes, it's a reflection of LGBTQ+ becoming more acceptable, particularly among Gen Z. There could be other factors, but that's probably the main one.
28% seems huge, though. Are there any other animals like that? I'm kind of confused how it's that high even with acceptance lol.
Most male dogs hump your leg regardless of who you are
Male ducks will even do necrophilia with other males.
I get your point, but "most"? I've had 5 male dogs of my own over 40-ish years, and have known or met many, many others and I've never once had my leg humped.
Most (male dogs that hump)
It’s mostly bisexuals. You know like Julius Caesar, Alexander of Macedon, and large swaths of people in cultures where same gender romance or sex is acceptable in certain circumstances so long as you also marry and have children.
Julius Caesar, described by a contemporary as "Every woman's man, and every man's woman"
We stan a bicon in this house
Yes. Bonobos.
Human appear to be about halfway between chimps and bonobos on the primate spectrum. The violence of chimps combined with the fluid sexual social habits of bonobos lol
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-insights-same-sex-sexual-interactions-important.amp
We are the only animal with cultural locks on gender expression. If we didn't have such hang ups about gender norms we would not really notice someone being LGBT. Paradoxically the more regressive and strict people are about gender roles the more people you have that don't fit within those gender roles.
Theres long been a camp that argues the vast majority of people are bisexual (myself included). That's also where pretty much all of the recent growth comes from. Interestingly, most of that comes from bisexual women, while bisexual men consistently self report at levels lower than gay men.
There are lots of men who identify as straight but have sex with other men. So much so that medical literature often uses MSM as a category instead of gay. There’s an entire DL subculture among African American men.
Anywhere you go you can download Grindr and find oodles of guys who are in heterosexual marriages. The stigma is pretty strong, they probably can’t even internally recognize themselves as somewhat bisexual.
This is particularly relevant as it relates to how silly this topic and its reactions are. We absolutely KNOW that the current number is an undercount, and yet it's still really hard for people to grasp that the percentage is that high.
I mean, sexuality is a spectrum. It’s statistically unlikely that a large part of the population is at the exact borders of the spectrum and not even slightly in between.
Especially since afaik physical attraction is just a matter of appearance, and there’s very masculine women or very feminine men.
Bonobos
Part acceptance, part widening the net of what's included in the category.
It's a confluence of factors. LGBTQIA+ is sort of a gender/sexuallity/ phenotype physicality solidarity alliance and the actual boundries has grown in scope since the 80's.
Like take for instance asexual people. Asexuallity became a part of the solidarity when people reached out over the internet and and started realizing that there were a lot of people who just don't feel sexual attraction and that there are certain widely accepted forms of social coercion that revolve around pushing people towards sexual attraction. But asexuallity as a part of the LGBTQIA only really became a thing in the early 2000's. Non-binary trans identities are much the same. A lot of people were feeling the way they did about themselves in isolation but they had no frame of reference to think that they were not just the odd person out.
The other half is a society wide re-examination of compulsory heterosexuallity/cis gender hegemony. There are way more people out there who no longer define themselves by who they've chosen to have physical sexual experience with and now a lot more people are more frank about defining themselves by the range of people they are attracted to. Like if the majority of people artificially penalize a bi-person for choosing a same sex relationship a lot of people will just take the easier path and just narrow their choices or keep their liasons with the restricted choice secret and not assume the label.
I before I came out as trans initially figured I didn't count as trans because I both wasn't physically transitioning and my industry is somewhat hostile to trans people so I was very closeted ao I figured the label only really belonged to the people brave enough to live out of the closet... But eventually someone found me and was like "No, it's not aspirational. Even deep in the closet you are still trans."
This combination of destigmatization, solidarity messaging, the inclusion of whole other groups (like intersex people, gender minorities, asexuals) broadening the scope and outreach to the closeted means that more people generally self identify as LGBTQIA or queer.
Animal kingdom wise we're still less observably sexual fluid than other primates. Bisexuality is actually pretty ubiquitous particularly amongst male primates with it actually being the overwhelming norm in some species so chances are we are probably actually haven't seen the curve level off from suppressive stigma.
I believe it's your first option, acceptance for being yourself is the normal instead of a beating from your parents like pre 2000.
I would assume they are more honestly/aware of their preference.
I am a gay dude, and I have had friends/coworkers who identified as straight say things like "Why does everyone need to label things? I am 100% straight, but sometimes on a road trip, you just wanna suck the other guy off. Both of us are still straight though"
Every time I have heard thigns like this, it's GenX, or older Millennial. Older than that, they don't bring up "queer" things, younger than that, they just say that they are "mostly straight", or "barely-bi", or "up for whatever".
Yepppppp, the kinsey 1s and 2s are really common and there was a time when even 3s and some 4s would identify as straight.
I identify as the +. My sexuality is Extra. Anyone up for some algebra?
I think most species are more fluid than you realize, and humans are just normal. Especially for apes that share a common ancestor with bonobos.
Have you heard about bonobos? They shag anyone for anything and they're one of our closest relatives. Friends have mutual wanks. Enemies have makeup sex. Threesomes, foursomes. Horny bunch of fuckers.
The 11% dip for the GOP makes sense. Their policies are just not in line with what young people value.
That said, the +24% gain in LGBTQ+ identification is fascinating and I would love to know how nature, nurture, taboo, and oppression play impact that. This would be a really cool time to be in university and studying human sexuality and gender.
LGBT as a category has been increased a lot over the years. Asexual or people who don't feel they conform to super strict gender norms are all included as "queer" now. So I imagine it's a combo of things, some people being trendy, some people being freer and not feeling the need to hide, some people who previously didn't identify being included.
Left handedness was persecuted and after it stopped being persecuted there was a massive rise in people who were left handed. But it plateaued and has remained pretty stable since then.
My (admittedly relatively hot) take as a younger millennial indoctrinated by the 2nd wave feminists (who weren’t huge on the third wave) is that what gender means has shifted. I didn’t experience myself as particularly gendered growing up in the 90s and early 00s and certainly wouldn’t consider it part of my inner essence. I don’t give a shit how strangers refer to me or whether they think I’m a dude or not. I found it to be a slightly annoying category imposed by everyone else. Something I needed to understand because it impacted how I was received by others, but not something that was core to my self-understanding. In school I studied the humanities which reaffirmed to me that gender was an annoying external category that put people in boxes—we didn’t want gay female CEOs, we wanted to get rid of gender altogether.
I think gen Z actually has a similar thought but instead of doing away with the gender categories many have chosen, on an individual level, to make them their own a bit more in line with 3rd wave ‘boss bitch’ vibes. This still undermines the oppressive nature of the gender roles because it it kind of divorces gender from the societal gender role.
LGBTQ came out if the closet and GOP went in.
We are indeed more sexually fluid than most species and given it's "most" and not "all", this isn't unprecedented. It's also not a new phenomena, in Ancient Greek and early-mid Ancient Roman societies queerness was quite common. In fact homosexuality was so prevalent that that the Romans didn't even have a word for heterosexual/homosexual; instead one was either dominant or submissive (e.g. giving or receiving) with the assumption being that most were bisexual and would take partners as they saw fit.
There would still be a stigma around being the receptive partner. The idea being that a higher status man can penetrate lower status people (younger men, slaves, women). A high status man being penetrated by a lower status person would be worthy of mockery.
Samurai were gay as fuck though. Sengoku period you could even be romantic with other dudes, women are for making babies. I have an 1940s (iirc) English translation of a book of 16th century gay samurai love stories - the guy who wrote the forward thought it was because “mongoloid” people look more feminine 😅
Putting sexuality in such a defined state is relatively new in human culture. So most often no one would have the worlds to talk about it or even know it could be classified differently.
fingers crossed it means there's five gen z Republicans and they don't know how to vote
Our closest related species gets it on so much in so many ways it is one STD away from extinction. It might be that we really are like this. Maybe the norm for humans was to have random homosexual and hetrosexual orgies everywhere. It was only because it became important to know who the daddy was that things changed? Or the sampling of the survey wasn't great. You know groundbreaking or meaningless.
I would identify as ANYTHING before as a republican
like a helicopter? ;-)
No. But a hive of bees, perhaps. What about you?
sees headine oh, that's good news!
sees source oh it's gay fox, which means it's probably sensationalized to the point that the headline is a lie, because that's what they do over there.
You had me at gay fox.
Actually the source is Axios, and the headline is not wrong even if it is from an obviously biased organization. You can see the original coverage of it here:
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/23/gen-z-less-religious-more-liberal-lgbtq
honestly it would make sense and i didn't doubt it until I saw it was on PinkNews - it's not about bias, it's about their headlines too often being the exact opposite of the real story (when there even is a real story; much of their content is sensationalized nothings). Just absolute crap reporting. Thanks for providing the original source.
I've been on the internet too long, because I assumed you meant it was a furry site.
https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
As it should be. FUCKING VOTE! And remember, by not voting for Biden, you are voting for Trump whether or not you actually cast a vote. ALL of the Trump supporters WILL show up on the day.
Not buying it. Probably just scared of the well deserved ridicule received if they identify as Republican. We'll see how the vote goes.
Shy Tory factor. It hasn't usually been common to see in US polling.
You're dubious because why? Do you think there were only two options? Do you identify as republican or LGBTQ?
What they're saying is it's more embarrassing for a teen to come out as republican than LGBTQ+ (obviously depends on the area)
ThankFuckingGod.jpg
What a glorious headline!
This shows that:
If you identify as LGBTQ, you are less likely to vote Republican.
Why would anyone identify by their political ideology? Or worse, by a single party??
"Do you like Football. I'm a Packers fan."
"Why would anybody identify by their favorite sports team!?"
"... I take it you don't like sports"
Tribalism makes sense when the other tribe wants to destroy you.
Fuck yeah.
The West has fallen /s
A storm is coming...
Call Gerard Butler quick!
Doesn't matter unless they actually vote.
the american dream
Maybe they're more likely to take online polls. Were the participants invited to take the poll, or just posted somewhere and left up for people to discover and take if so inclined? I don't care about these results, just pointing out that usually these things aren't terribly reliable. Maybe this poll of some 6,000 perfectly represents Gen Z. I have no idea.
Is there an agenda to push, or is it less of a stigma and a sign of progress? Are the chemical products in our environment changing our hormones, or are young impressionable people following a trend? Will this trend continue, and what is the desired peak since this is apparently something to celebrate. Would we be celebrating if biologists determined that homosexuality has increased 64% among giraffes, or would it just be considered data to be viewed with no bias? Are mushrooms really safe to microdose, and what is the recommended dose SWIM should be taking?
The 28% identifying as LGBTQ+ definitely seems like an indication that the sampling might be off. That could be true, but it seems much, much higher than previous estimates.
For people under the age of, say, 40, the idea of sexuality is far more fluid than in previous generations. People are less likely to say "I am straight and straight only" and more likely to say "I usually like girls but I realize that context is everything and there may be some dude out there I like and I'm also open to trying other new experiences even if that's not necessarily my thing."
A lot more people identify with LGBT+ than there used to be, because it's a very open label and people are more able to identify with it in accepting environments.
There's a hell of a lot more people now who are... pretty much cishet, but maybe have some 5% attraction to the same sex, or they're attracted to trans/nonbinary people, and so they consider themselves bisexual or pansexual, etc. when 5-10 years ago they probably wouldn't have.
The specific number starts to mean a lot less when we remember the attitude of those people answering "do you identify with LGBT" has quickly shifted from "oh, well I'm definitely not gay!!" to "uhh sure, why not?" in a very short amount of time. I'm of the opinion this doesn't reflect a change in our baseline behavior and is... not even consistently measurable given the diverging, shifting cultural context.
It's weird. As a millennial in college I would always hear the grief from gen x hearing me complain and respond with "well get out an vote then." I guess it is now my turn to tell that to a younger generation, watch them get upset, and then eat my popcorn in 20 years while I watch gen lecture the next generation on the importance of voting.
But I do think this is alarming:
I think the US would be a better place if we had compulsory voting laws similar to Australia that gets like 90 percent turnout. As a citizen of a democracy I think voting should be an obligation. And as a member of a democracy I wish the majority vote actually was a number that is a majority of Americans, not just Americans that voted, so we could have more faith in the outcomes actually reflecting the will of the people.