SeeingRed [he/him]

I’m sorry to hear you are having a hard time. It’s worth talking to your academic advisor to see if you can do an extended first term or something similar to get yourself more used to the way university is. I had several classmates do something similar and they got through the rest of university. I know it’s not offered everywhere, but it’s worth asking. That is, assuming you want to continue university and not take some time away from school, or maybe switch majors.

I uninstalled the YouTube app on my phone and I just watch it on Firefox with Adblock. The slightly worse experience also makes me not use the site as much.

I was near a US embassy today and there was an “Iran protest”. But it primarily consisted of brand new flags, and mass printed signs which either praised the US for having troops in their country or said “MIGA”… It didn’t make any sense.

The 12k dead line was placed unironically next to a made up low-balled death toll for Gaza as if it was comparable.

There were israel flags as well in the crowd.

Also the police seemed to keep a much more respectful distance compared to the times I was there for Palestine marches. Also no drones overhead.

So instead of a straw hat it’s a helmet with a brim? Not only have the coopted a modern day epic about revolutionary liberation and tearing down oppression, but they can’t even get the symbolism correct. It’s truly sad. I see some people being excited about this as a wave of revolutions, but i haven’t been able to dig in enough to understand how many of these are just attempts at colour revolution.

I’ve only visited China, and my chinese freinds haven’t talked about this issue before, so all my experience is from the chinese internet. I would be interested in a more in depth analysis if it exists.

I’ve only seen one person on Rednote talking about trans issues openly, and they were careful to make their content primarily in English. They claimed that making the content in chinese would get them more online harrassment which they didn’t want to deal with. It’s not that everyone is a problem, but there are enough of them to make it very unpleasant. While transition can be legally done, requiring surgery as others have pointed out, it is still difficult socially.

This same creator had one video where they pointed out that younger people are generally more accepting, but not universally so, and older generations are rarely understanding or accepting. That being said, they do make it clear that the culture is shifting, it’s just going to take time.

Regarding same sex couples, it’s a mixed bag as well. The media has to skirt around explicit relationships much of the time, but will include very heavily coded characters. There was the legal case a year or so back regarding the rights of same sexual couples as it relates to their children. There was a post here on lemmygrad about this a while back. The relationship was not considered legally relevant in that case, but they did rule in favour of the children being of both parents because one acted as a surrogate. There’s some hope there, but it’s a long, long way to go.

I’m hopeful that we’ll see things change in the next few decades as in Vietnam and Cuba, but that’s just vibes. It could be better, but it’s certainly not the worst in the world.