Poll of the Day > Another day, another shooting

(+) Yeah! (+)

2 children are confirmed dead and over a dozen injuries are reported at a religious school in Minnesota.

A trans-man armed with ammo clips with the words "Kill Donald Trump" and "For The Children" along with weapons also saying "Destroy Israel" and "6 Million wasn't Enough" fired at morning mass, striking many before they were able to evacuate.

The shooter appears to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/minneapolis-school-shooting-1.7618933

my tag for you checks out.

ooger posted...

my tag for you checks out.

So does mine.

yikes

This is tragic and all, but:

aHappySacka posted...

2 children are confirmed dead

aHappySacka posted...

"For The Children"

Good God, I cannot resist the urge to point out the irony.

I am sure thoughts and prayers will fix this.

EclairReturns posted...

Good God, I cannot resist the urge to point out the irony.

You would not believe some of the social media comments being posted about this. I've seen many along the lines of "well at least these children won't have to grow up in a country Trump fucked over" and others far worse that I don't dare post here.

And correction to the OP: the shooter was a trans woman, not a trans man.

It's just how you know school is in session in America.

It is terrible. There have been too many shootings this century.

Did buddy really just roll up with "all trans people are mass murderers waiting to happen"? I've seen enough delusional transphobes by now that nothing should really faze me, but that's actually kind of impressive.

Just another far right mass murderer.

The only thing I'm going to say is that this is tragedy and the fact that the news is focusing so much on the gender of the shooter is unsettling.

The newspaper headline I read today said "Monstrous transgender" and that really bothered me.

The same thing happened after that school shooting a few years back that was carried out by a trans individual (I forget their gender). There were immediately calls to ban guns for trans people from many of the same people that were otherwise fervently against gun control. A disturbingly large number of people are very quick to latch on to any reason they can find to justify their hatred of trans people, and in this case blame anything other than the ready access to guns for the gun violence epidemic.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/1/137f7ba2.png
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/rfk-jr-were-researching-if-gender-affirming-meds-cause-school-shootings/

He's also going after antidepressants.

captpackrat posted...

He's also going after antidepressants.

going after the thing that'll keep things from getting worse. we're screwed.

I believe antidepressants have actually been a common factor among mass shooters (though less common than having access to guns), but I think it's more likely that they're both consequences of a common cause and not that one causes the other.

kingdrake2 posted...

going after the thing that'll keep things from getting worse. we're screwed.

Almost all antidepressants warn that they may cause worsening depression and/or unusual thoughts as well as anxiety and agitation. If they work for some people great, but they are not a cure by any means, simply a bandaid with faults.

Antidepressants are a cure, just one that requires monitoring to make sure it's working properly, since not everyone will respond to them the same way. In fact, it's treating them as a band-aid that causes problems, since that means the psychiatrist has just thrown drugs at the problem in hopes that it'll go away instead of treating it like a serious therapeutic option with risks and benefits that have to be carefully managed.

adjl posted...

Antidepressants are a cure

Given that I have pharmacological and pill production experience, as well as have personally seen the adverse affects antidepressants can have on people, they are not a cure, despite being told they will help while not helping.

All antidepressants try to alleviate symptoms, that's not curing.

I remember being on them and the 3 or 4 different ones the doctor tried before finding one that worked

SunWuKung420 posted...

Given that I have pharmacological and pill production experience,

Neither of those indicate anything about your therapeutic competence. Mixing chemicals together and prescribing those chemicals are two very different skill sets; having one indicates virtually nothing about having the other.

SunWuKung420 posted...

as well as have personally seen the adverse affects antidepressants can have on people

Nobody here has denied the potential for adverse side effects.

SunWuKung420 posted...

All antidepressants try to alleviate symptoms, that's not curing.

It's as much curing as most medical treatments are (that is, beating down the worst of the illness so the patient can recover on their own terms).

adjl posted...

The same thing happened after that school shooting a few years back that was carried out by a trans individual (I forget their gender). There were immediately calls to ban guns for trans people from many of the same people that were otherwise fervently against gun control. A disturbingly large number of people are very quick to latch on to any reason they can find to justify their hatred of trans people, and in this case blame anything other than the ready access to guns for the gun violence epidemic.

It's just transphobes wanting to be hypocritical asshats.

since the majority of criminals are impoverished, why not give them all money?

Revelation34 posted...

It's just transphobes wanting to be hypocritical asshats.

Absolutely, but it's still troubling whenever such individuals draw any sort of attention to their continued existence (that being a rather troubling existence in and of itself).

SunWuKung420 posted...

The only thing I'm going to say is that this is tragedy and the fact that the news is focusing so much on the gender of the shooter is unsettling.

The newspaper headline I read today said "Monstrous transgender" and that really bothered me.

That's kinda been a tactic for a long while, now. Anything to distract from the gun(s) itself will be jumped on.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

That's kinda been a tactic for a long while, now. Anything to distract from the gun(s) itself will be jumped on.

Even better to gin up more hatred against trans people to support the ongoing assault on our rights and rights in general.

I particularly love the logic of "trans people are dangerously mentally ill, so we should prohibit the care strategies that have been exhaustively found to yield better mental health outcomes than the approaches we'd rather promote." Transphobes are big fans of hiding behind "it's just science" while ignoring all actual science on the matter.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/65a2f622.jpg

captpackrat posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/65a2f622.jpg

That's funny, but I feel like they're just going to point out that the term gender was originally coined by Dr. John Money and then just associate it with all of the highly problematic shit he did, and the lives he ruined.

Realthuddydrumz posted...

That's funny, but I feel like they're just going to point out that the term gender was originally coined by Dr. John Money and then just associate it with all of the highly problematic shit he did, and the lives he ruined.

I think you give the average transphobe a little too much credit if you think they have any idea who Money was or how to interpret his various no-nos (which, for those who aren't familiar, included "treating" a baby boy whose circumcision was botched by reconstructing his mangled dangler into female genitalia and directing his parents to raise him as a daughter, which unsurprisingly didn't work very well and provided clear - if wantonly unethical - evidence that gender identity runs deeper than how you're treated growing up). That kind of awareness usually involves actually researching the subject, and actually researching the subject tends to at least yield the conclusion that gender-affirming care is a legitimate treatment approach, even if it doesn't fully eliminate transphobic leanings (like still being afraid of trans women in women's bathrooms).

Even then, though, the fact that the guy who coined the term was less than ethical about the research he conducted doesn't mean the term isn't valid, nor that subsequent, less-horrifying research on the subject hasn't supported the idea that gender and sex are distinct concepts. There's no shortage of useful medical knowledge that's come out of historical atrocities. While that knowledge doesn't justify the atrocities, the atrocities also don't invalidate the knowledge.

adjl posted...

I think you give the average transphobe a little too much credit if you think they have any idea who Money was or how to interpret his various no-nos (which, for those who aren't familiar, included "treating" a baby boy whose circumcision was botched by reconstructing his mangled dangler into female genitalia and directing his parents to raise him as a daughter, which unsurprisingly didn't work very well and provided clear - if wantonly unethical - evidence that gender identity runs deeper than how you're treated growing up). That kind of awareness usually involves actually researching the subject, and actually researching the subject tends to at least yield the conclusion that gender-affirming care is a legitimate treatment approach, even if it doesn't fully eliminate transphobic leanings (like still being afraid of trans women in women's bathrooms).

Even then, though, the fact that the guy who coined the term was less than ethical about the research he conducted doesn't mean the term isn't valid, nor that subsequent, less-horrifying research on the subject hasn't supported the idea that gender and sex are distinct concepts. There's no shortage of useful medical knowledge that's come out of historical atrocities. While that knowledge doesn't justify the atrocities, the atrocities also don't invalidate the knowledge.

I think you give the average transphobe too little credit if you think they dont know who John Money is. Similarly, this statement adds absolutely nothing productive to the conversation, but I just thought I'd throw it in there.

And hey, people cancel products and ideas for being associated with the wrong people all the time - regardless of whether the idea is good or not. The same group of people who like the idea of EVs started setting boycotting and setting some of them on fire this very year due to their association with a person they didn't like. It is not an issue that is associated exclusively with one side of the aisle or the other.

Realthuddydrumz posted...

I think you give the average transphobe too little credit if you think they dont know who John Money is.

I mean, I'd wager that the average person of any stripe isn't particularly familiar with him. That's a name that's generally only going to be recognized by people that have studied some psychology, which is a minority right out of the gate, even before taking into account that transphobia inherently relies on a certain degree of psychological ignorance to even exist in the first place that makes such people inherently even less likely to be aware.

Realthuddydrumz posted...

Similarly, this statement adds absolutely nothing productive to the conversation, but I just thought I'd throw it in there.

Was the conversation not about guessing what the fictional transphobe in the comic might say next? I don't know what could possibly be a more productive addition to the conversation than to comment on the plausibility of said guess.

Realthuddydrumz posted...

And hey, people cancel products and ideas for being associated with the wrong people all the time - regardless of whether the idea is good or not.

Broadly, you're not wrong, but there are limits to that, usually based on how strong/exclusive the association is. Nobody's suggesting that we should reinstate racial segregation because King was a bit of a misogynist, thanks to a combination of integration being more important than punishing him for that particular no-no and the fact that integration was not solely his idea. Similarly, Money may have done a bunch of wildly unethical stuff (which could be argued to have been par for the course for the era, since psych research in the 60's and 70's was kind of terrifying by modern standards, but that's a different discussion and doesn't make him any better), but even in his era he was not the only one studying the idea of gender identity as being separate from biological sex, and the amount of research on the subject since he first used the term by other people mean there's no reason to associate it specifically with him.

Plus, as I discovered when I did a quick search to remind myself of when he was active, Money didn't actually coin the term "gender identity." That's a common misattribution; his first use of the term was in 1973, but the term and concept showed up as early as 10 years prior in papers by Robert Stoller and Ralph Greensom, He did coin "gender role" and "sexual orientation," though, and it's largely a technicality to point out that he didn't coin "gender identity" when he was nonetheless a major pioneer in the field of gender studies (even if he did a lot of bad things in service of that study).

Realthuddydrumz posted...

The same group of people who like the idea of EVs started setting boycotting and setting some of them on fire this very year due to their association with a person they didn't like.

Those people aren't pushing back against the idea of EVs, though. They aren't boycotting and/or vandalizing EVs in general, they're boycotting and/or vandalizing the specific EVs that are currently being sold by somebody who is abusing the wealth he has gained from selling them. It's not "I don't like EVs anymore," it's "Musk is a lunatic I don't want to give him any more money."

This is something that comes up when people talk about separating the art from the artist. That's a valid idea in looking at something like Dune: Frank Herbert was a raging homophobe (which shows in parts of Dune), but he dead. His views and opinions can therefore be separated from the consumption of the art he created, such that you aren't doing anything to support or promote his homophobia by buying a copy of Dune or watching any of the movies.

By contrast, you can't buy a Chick-Fil-A sandwich without funding gay conversion therapy. If you bought Stardust or Coraline or American Gods, you helped Gaiman pay for the lawyer that prepared NDAs for the victims of his various sexual assaults. If you buy a Tesla, you're contributing to the campaigns of authoritarian politicians and the dissolution of government agencies in the service of further enriching billionaires. You can separate the art (or product/service) from the creator at an intellectual level, but the exchange of money means you can never fully separate the acquisition of that art from whatever the creator is doing with their money. Conversely, boycotting that art/product/service to avoid supporting the creator makes sense.

Goddamn it, I forgot to mute adjl again. Why does it always take a novel that could be substituted by a sentence to remind me?

TC sure hasn't posted much in this topic.

Realthuddydrumz posted...

Goddamn it, I forgot to mute adjl again. Why does it always take a novel that could be substituted by a sentence to remind me?

I'm genuinely curious how you'd summarize that into a single sentence, but we both know you won't.

Realthuddydrumz posted...

I think you give the average transphobe too little credit if you think they dont know who John Money is.

I see every day just how phenomenally stupid the average person is. And bigotry, to a certain extent, relies on stupidity as well. It's not possible to give them too little credit.