[creakingstairs]

Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? I had to pretty much hide who I was during school due to fear of bullying/ not fitting in but most kids these days seem to be able to be themselves in many ways. I agree we can be friendlier though!

[fennecbutt]

Probably in general, but not as much as you'd think.

For example as a gay dude, people still hate gay guys (lesbians are far more accepted). But they're just much more quiet about it now, and even if they don't hate us we still "gross" many people out, which affects their decisions due to perception of us.

[exe34]

Unfortunately I think lesbians are only "far more accepted" in the sense that they turn on straight cunts rather than repulse them. The objectification and othering is the same.

[wvh]

Maybe, but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to on either side of the fence, just their rational responses to "the other".

And I'm not sure lesbians are "far more accepted", perhaps as long as they fit a traditional heterosexual idea of beauty and femininity and associated behaviour.

[exe34]

> but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to

That's an odd thing to bring up randomly.

[topato]

I think it's because you said "cunts" lol

[exe34]

Ah the "straight" was the adjective to qualify the noun, not the other way round! I.e. the same cunts who will get disgusted by two men kissing and try to harm them, will get turned on by seeing two women kissing and therefore it appears that the latter are more accepted. It's not kindness or open-mindedness, it's pure sleaze.

[freilanzer]

> Unfortunately I think lesbians are only "far more accepted" in the sense that they turn on straight cunts rather than repulse them. The objectification and othering is the same.

"Straight cunts"?

[scott_w]

The intersection of straight people and cunts. Not to be confused with "straight people are cunts," which is a different statement.

[fennecbutt]

No, it's because they're perceived as less threatening or different. Men must follow what is perceived as a rigid masculine doctrine and a lot of gay behaviours break free of that.

Because even straight women prefer lesbians (just conjecture from me, though. I doubt anyone would bother running a study on it).

[potato3732842]

How much of that is a reflection of or reflected in societal acceptance vs just a figment of differing societal attitudes and standards toward women and men?

[Smithalicious]

I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure the definition of "straight cunts" is that they aren't turned on by lesbians.

[astura]

I think that the GP must not be American.

I noticed in Ireland (at least) the word "cunt" is used to describe an unpleasant/objectionable person in general (regardless of gender) whereas in the US it's a derogatory term for a woman.

[potato3732842]

There's at least four possible parsings here depending on what was meant by "straight" and "cunt"

In one corner of the matrix is a heterosexual woman and in the other corner is an ill tempered gay man.

[exe34]

Indeed, its a non-gendered term here.

[stickfigure]

I do think people - and especially kids - are generally nicer and more accepting than they were back in the 80s when I grew up. I wonder if this is related to the fairly dramatic drop in violent crime statistics we've been seeing over the last several decades?

[vanviegen]

There may be a connectedion to reductions in lead-poisoning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...

[pbhjpbhj]

Lead-free petrol helped.

[rbanffy]

It’s fun to imagine that an alternative reality where lead was never added to petrol. We’d be colonising neighbouring solar systems by now and living in a post-scarcity society.

[jemmyw]

I notice that some of the teens my kids are friends with are pretty weird in ways that would have invited extreme bullying when I was their age and they don't seem to have the same troubles. However, I still hear about some bullying cases. Maybe that's changing for the better too though, when I was their age we seemed to actively hide that we were bullied from adults and now adults are often (ineffectively) involved.

[SamPatt]

I have two teenagers, and bullying is still extremely common in school.

Perhaps the range of acceptable weirdness has broadened, I'm not sure, but it's discouraging to hear their stories of just how mean kids can be.

[OJFord]

It's just fashion I think - for the last 10-15 years the idea of being a nerd who works for Google or whatever has been relatively cool.

[esseph]

That really depends on where you are in the world right at this minute.

[hilsdev]

You’re right the world is a lot more accepting. No matter how much things improve and how positive the trajectory though, there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough

[mathieuh]

It didn’t just happen. It happened through struggle and its continuation is not guaranteed. Look at all the reactionary movements springing up around the world. This is not an area I believe we can settle on “good enough”.

[somenameforme]

I think societies somewhat naturally wax and wane on most topics, probably because it seems we're simply unable to maintain a middle ground on anything. We always end up taking things to an extreme which, regardless of what that extreme may be, tends to lead to unpleasant scenarios which causes society to start bouncing back in the opposite direction only to repeat the cycle in the equal but opposite direction some time later.

You can see this playing out in real time with religion which went from societies that were highly religious to secular to militantly anti-religious, and now gen-z is suddenly some ~400% more religious than previous generations. [1] The most interesting thing is that that's also a global trend, probably owing to the relative global homogenization of societies in many ways.

[1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-chri...

[Adverblessly]

I can't speak to other countries, but here in Israel at least, religion is highly correlated with number of children.

Focusing on jewish women, fertility rates for different levels of religion in 2021-2023:

  Ultra-orthodox                6.48
  Religious                     3.74
  Traditional-religious         2.81
  Traditional, not so religious 2.20
  Not religious, secular        1.96

So naturally over time the religious portion of the population grows.

[Thorrez]

What's the difference between "Religious" and "Traditional-religious"?

Is "Traditional-religious" a strict subset of "Religious"? Is Ultra-orthodox a strict subset of "Traditional-religious"? If so, it's odd that Traditional-religious has lower fertility than Religious.

[somenameforme]

And this follows globally - fertility is one of the most interesting and critical issues of our time. It's going to change the future in ways most absolutely do not appreciate. On this topic most people see the world as inevitably becoming more secular because that's how society has trended during most of our lives, so it seems almost like a natural law. Yet even fertility alone means that society will almost certainly become substantially less secular over time.

This also has implications for the long-term population of Earth. The claim we'll reach a "max" population sometime this century is quite silly. It'll be a local max, not a global max. Because if even a single group maintains a positive fertility rate, that group will eventually drive the population to start increasing again (and basically take ownership of the gene pool while they're at it).

[mathgeek]

> It'll be a local max, not a global max.

There really isn’t any way to know this for a fact. The future could hold technology that allows us to expand far beyond the current population, but it also could lead to setbacks that the population never recovers from. It is reasonable to guess it’s a local max.

[chongli]

That story is trying to paint this as a revival of Christianity but looking at the Pew report and the data paints a different picture.

Conservative Muslim countries show a pattern of overwhelming male dominance in religious service attendance. At the same time, over half of the Muslims in the US are recent immigrants [1]. This raises the question to me: is the resurgence in religious service attendance among men driven primarily by a broad return to the Christian church? Or is it largely an effect of the growing Muslim population in western countries?

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/14/muslims-in-a...

[somenameforme]

I'm not a huge fan of Axios, but chose to link to them for two reasons. (1) They leave their stories bullet pointed instead of feeding them into an LLM, or a human LLM, to add 5,000 words of fluff, and (2) they use extensive citations. Here [1], for instance, is a recent Pew study they linked to. All the studies have Christianity as the driver. And FWIW church itself is not a neutral term. Church => Christian, Mosque => Muslim, Synagogue => Jewish, etc. A neutral term would be 'attending religious services' or whatever.

The sex issue also seems to be just Axios' spin. By their own numbers it looks like church attendance is up 3x for women and 5x for men amongst Gen Z. Definitely a significant difference, but not really in line with their spin on the topic.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...

[chongli]

I do appreciate their citations but the spin is a bit much. I’m still very skeptical about the interpretation of a “return to religiosity” rather than religious immigrants continuing their religious observances in their new home countries.

To show a proper “return to religious observance” (any religion, not just Christianity) means showing a large number of people who attend religious services regularly but whose parents do not.

[shafyy]

[flagged]

[jajko]

[flagged]

[shafyy]

I should have said "should have...", maybe this was not clear. I am not claiming tha there's a "perfect" country. Some countries come pretty close though, where you have affordable public transportation, affordable housing and affordable health care. For example and Germany and Switzerland (two countries where I have lived for long periods of time), nobody will die because they can't afford health care. Nobody will be homeless because they can't afford an apartment (yes, I know, there is also homelessness in these countries, but for a variety of other reasons).

Doe that mean it's perfect? No, of course not, there is always room for improvement.

[Thorrez]

Most communist countries haven't been such a utopia as you describe.

>He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution."

https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...

[okasaki]

Cool story from an alcoholic traitor

> On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, began a major economic and administrative reform ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of "macroeconomic stabilization", a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization programme, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending.

> In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. The reforms devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare programs.[108] Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50%, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, whilst incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out many people's personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.[109][110]

[shafyy]

I am not talking about communism. Nobody on today's political left spectrum of is seriously talking about communism. This is about socialism, or social capitalism.

[potato3732842]

You know, for all their ills at least the historical communists meant well. Sure, some of them were pretty f-ing brutal but at least they tried to make their societies better, tried to make their countrymen richer and more prosperous.

The comparable people today telling us we have have to live under constant surveillance and be subjugated by all powerful governments and government intertwined institutions and organizations or otherwise losing all our rights and practical autonomy to various collective interests don't even do us the courtesy of pretending that the goal is to everything better and nicer. They just tell us that we'll all gaslight ourselves into liking the bugs or whatever and that despite everything being worse it's somehow better because stonks up and microplastics down, or whatever other metrics they also control.

[r14c]

Generally that's because they're in the group (or have some sympathy for the group) that still isn't being accepted and may otherwise face obstacles that make it difficult to live a fulfilling life.

tolerance is a peace treaty, but there are a ton of gaps in how we implement it because our default socially and politically is more-so based in privilege than co-existance.

[ghurtado]

The world can absolutely be more accepting of certain groups than in the past, while at the same time being less accepting of other groups.

If you were part of the latter, you would instantly understand why we still have a lot of work to do.

[Loudergood]

It's ok to say "we can do better" even when we already are.

[mynameisvlad]

As someone that lives as multiple minorities, both visible and not, this is very much untrue.

And that applies for many definitions of "normal". A person outside the "norm", in whatever category, is accepted far less than you claim. Sometimes it may not be visible or even intended, but it's there.

[samplatt]

The whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now.

There's a lot of people that have woken up to this and are loving and accepting, and sometimes it can feel like this is becoming the norm when you're able to surround yourself with that kind of person... but you're right. It isn't "the norm" it just normal enough for some lucky people.

[vanviegen]

> The whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now.

Could you please expand on that? I have no idea what you are talking about.

[sjw987]

Not the OP, but they're possibly referring to hatred of "others", a group far enough geographically or away from social acceptance, that people don't see any issues in the future with holding aggressive / intolerant views on them now.

I think a lot of social acceptance today is a mask. It's something people put on to virtue signal in the age of social media, and they expand their appearance of tolerance as wide as is currently socially acceptable to avoid anything being used against them in the future. You can see these masks slip occasionally.

My wife was originally born in Russia. She's lived outside the country for over 2 decades, is as little aligned with that country's politics as you can be, and is generally a very likeable charismatic person.

I've seen some incredibly "tolerant" and "accepting" people (of religious, ethnic, sexual, nationality aspects) who are unaware of her nationality spurt out the most vitriolic opinions of Russians (mostly when something relevant appears in the news), sometimes pretexted with "all" or "majority". In the environment these "tolerant" people live in, Russians are an acceptable group to hate en-masse. Many other nationalities also apply.

Many times she doesn't say anything, but when she has, you can see the mask going on in real-time. "Not all", "not you", "except you", backtracking and saving face.

[phs318u]

Yes, and there will be others rolling their eyes and calling out all this "woke" acceptance.

On a serious note, if the world is a lot more accepting, it's mostly because the youngest generations are a lot more accepting, and the more bigoted among us (which tend to skew older) are slowly dying off.

[esseph]

New bigots and racists are made every day.

Nothing went away, it just got hidden under a thin veneer.

[rbanffy]

> are slowly dying off.

Far too slowly, I might add.

[wiseowise]

> there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough

And they would be right. And I say that as someone who’s hard anti-woke.

[tstrimple]

We live in a largely more accepting world that somehow exists in the same timeframe as "empathy is a sin". No matter how far we come as a society, there will always be people looking to "Make X Great Again" regardless of how great or not X ever was. Unfortunately humanity cannot rest on its laurels. No matter how much we advance as a civilization there will always be a conservative somewhere looking to pull up the ladder or cut off support. Ultimately looking for a way to game the system and deny benefits to others. It's quite amazing that we can look back on all the advances humanity has made in the last few centuries and can clearly see conservatives opposing all of it and somehow still rationalize conservatism as just some other process to achieve the same goals through other means. Yet at every major inflection point in our country conservatism has been the fucking enemy. They have been wrong. Every. Single. Time. When conservatives rebelled against the country and decided to start their own so they could maintain slavery, they were wrong. When conservatives fought against women's suffrage. They were wrong. When conservatives fought against civil rights. They were wrong. When conservatives fought against gay marriage. They were wrong. They have been wrong at literally every fucking important decision since their ideology was created during the French revolution. It's beyond time we stop pretending they have some insights worth listening to or some valuable lessons to convey and treat them as the enemies of humanity that they actually are.

[robertlagrant]

You've mis-defined "conservative" to mean "everyone who lost in history".

[rbanffy]

“Conservatives” yearn for an idealised version of something that has been, but that is no more. In that, they are the very definition of sore losers.

[robertlagrant]

You've done it too.

[rbanffy]

Can you elaborate on that?

[reissbaker]

Ironically, this is the least empathetic message in this thread.

You're also wrong: there were plenty of "anti-war protestors" during the Holocaust, who lost, and were wrong; plenty of radical feminists who were (and are) anti-trans; and the idea that the American Revolution was primarily about maintaining slavery has been debunked — for one thing, it was often led by Northeners who had already banned slavery. (The 1619 Project eventually conceded and issued corrections.) Environmentalist groups in the 70s doomed the planet by making it near-impossible to build nuclear energy in the US, and then later drove the US into spiraling inequality by making it near-impossible to build enough housing. Opposing eugenics was once a conservative opinion, whereas the "science" of eugenics was favored by academia — and most of the suffragettes! The largest anti-eugenics movement came from the Catholic Church.

Of course, new ideas that were better than old ideas usually came from people now termed "progressive" — the term is self-defining (if it wasn't "progress" no one would look back and call it "progressive.") But plenty of bad ideas have also come draped in the cloaks of people who term themselves progressive, and opposed by people who at the time were termed conservative: it's only in retrospect that we rewrite the people in the wrong as not-progressive, and consider the people then termed conservative as the true-progressives. Ultimately most people want good things for most people, and mainly argue — sometimes vociferously, and acrimoniously — about what the best way for that to happen is.

[wizzwizz4]

It seems to me there are two types of conservatism: concern about a change to society that does not have a clear evidential basis (which I'll call "small-c conservatism"), and a desire for other people to not have nice things (which I'll call "capital-C Conservatism").

If you read early radfems' complaints about trans women, you'll see concerns about men infiltrating the burgeoning movement to subvert or destroy its ability to effect much-needed substantial societal improvements for women. Nowadays, internet access and 10 minutes can disabuse you of this notion – but in the past, you'd have to have talked to an out, activist trans woman (who would often adhere to a different school of feminism to you, which if anything is evidence that she is dangerous to the Cause!) or had the right zines circulated to your doorstep (not really an option until the 90s, by which time it was generally understood that Transphobia Bad, the debate was about to what extent trans women's experiences were central to the Cause ("only tangentially" versus "in every respect"), and everyone knew you could pick up a Judith Butler book from your local library), to receive evidence to the contrary.

Likewise, the Catholic Church's conservative opposition to eugenics: they raised concerns about the human rights of those subject to eugenics practices, and later added secular arguments as justification. Contrast their opposition to trans people, which is… theologically confusing, to say the least: the existence of trans people "erases differences" (Galatians 3:28), distorts the image of God (Genesis 2:22), and (I seem to remember one bishop claiming) has already killed God… somehow. (Perhaps Pontius Pilate was secretly transgender? (This is me being silly.)) The justifications are all over the place, as is characteristic of post-hoc rationalisations of Conservative bigotry: replace the vague unevidenced claims about God with vague unevidenced claims about "nature", and the Catholic claims become the same rubbish as TERF claims. (Obligatory note: many Catholics do hold coherent views on this topic: I'm talking about the overarching organisation, not the people, or even all parts of the organisation.)

Small-c conservatism is a strategy, and isn't right by accident: it's an application of the same principle as Chesterton's Fence. Capital-C Conservatism is about denying resources and happiness to perceived enemies, while harming them as much as you can rationalise while still calling yourself a good person. (There are no capital-C Conservative policies that do not involve hurting people, prohibiting social mobility, or restricting what kinds of people are allowed to exist: many of them can't possibly qualify as small-c conservative policies, because they're only "conserving" an imagined past. Anti-immigrant sentiment in North America is one example: https://xkcd.com/84/.)

To undrape the cloak, we can look at how people talk about their ideas, and how they respond to criticism. (And remember not to focus on those calling themselves "conservative". Many "progressives" are actually capital-C Conservative, with a different – but no less harmful – idealised-state-of-nature: many modern-day eugenicists work in autism "charities", promoting "progressive" torture "therapies".) Unfortunately, this does not tell us which ideas are good, and which are bad: to find that out, you have to look at reality, not study rhetoric.

Most people may want good things for most people, but many people wilfully delude themselves about what "good things" means. Those, perhaps more so than the liars, are the dangerous ones.

[ryandv]

> It seems to me there are two types of conservatism: concern about a change to society that does not have a clear evidential basis (which I'll call "small-c conservatism"), and a desire for other people to not have nice things (which I'll call "capital-C Conservatism").

False dichotomy [0]. Basically a bunch of sophistry to say "all conservatism is bad."

> the existence of trans people "erases differences" (Galatians 3:28),

You can't just quote the Bible without providing a translation, and I can find no translation with this wording. I would suggest that you refrain from commenting upon other cultures that you are ignorant of, as this is a form of cultural appropriation at best, and active bigotry at worst.

Same with your supposed "quotations" of Genesis 2.

> Capital-C Conservatism is about denying resources and happiness to perceived enemies,

Apply principle of charity [1].

> [...] while harming them as much as you can rationalise while still calling yourself a good person.

> Many "progressives" are actually capital-C Conservative, with a different – but no less harmful – idealised-state-of-nature: many modern-day eugenicists work in autism "charities", promoting "progressive" torture "therapies".)

On this we can agree - I don't actually see much difference between progressives and conservatives; they all fall prey to religious and superstitious thinking. All this self-aggrandizement about how diverse and inclusive one is, all the moralizing and ethical high-horsing, is really just a series of magic incantations the progressive chants to themselves to "psychologically manage the results of living in a materially deeply unequal society," [2] without actually needing to do anything about the material reality. Not so different from the way the sinner takes a dunk in a bathtub of water and is now "born again, free from sin," doesn't take the Lord's name in vain, uses gender-neutral pronouns, and wears a crucifix or a Pride flag - take your pick of religious idol.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

[2] Liam Kofi Bright, "White Psychodrama." https://philpapers.org/archive/BRIWP.pdf

[wizzwizz4]

> You can't just quote the Bible without providing a translation,

The quotation was from Pope Francis. The Bible reference (one of Saint Paul's letters) was me being facetious. Same with the Genesis reference: transphobic Catholics cite Genesis 1, but if you try to interpret Genesis 2 by the same logic, it says the opposite (and more definitively): the bigoted reading is eisegesis, and not even particularly good eisegesis.

For the record: I also think "my" reading of Genesis 2:22 is eisegesis. Very little of the Bible has to do with trans people specifically. Those passages of the Old Testament which do are best interpreted by an Orthodox rabbi, since they can't really be understood out of context (which hardly anyone else bothers with learning); and the few things Jesus is recorded as having said about trans people (that is, people who'd fall under the modern umbrella category "transgender") were positive; but trans people have little spiritual significance in the major Abrahamic religions (as compared to, say, Hinduism) and aren't major characters of any of the narratives, so there was little reason to say much about them (until the Talmud, which has rulings about a lot of uncommon situations, such as the appropriate treatment of many minority groups – but dates to after Christianity's split from Judaism and isn't really regarded by Christians).

This specific example wasn't my point. The Catholic Church is one of the few organisations in reissbaker's comment that's been around long enough to have taken a strong stance on two of the topics mentioned in the comment. (And I don't know enough about their take on slavery to neatly categorise it as small-c conservatism or capital-C Conservatism: from what little I know, it seems more like Realpolitik.)

> Apply principle of charity

That is me being charitable. There are harsher ways to apply "the purpose of a system is what it does", here.

[apwell23]

> Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays?

yes for sure. I make sure to teach that to my kids and model that behavior. Lot of my peers are doing that too. I like the 'differently abled' terminology and mindset so much better.

When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.

[supplied_demand]

== When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.==

I’m 41 and have noticed the exact opposite movement in my lifetime. Today, we celebrate the meanest people in society (we even elect them President). Kindness is considered a flaw and means you aren’t taking advantage of every opportunity to move yourself forward.

If I compare the rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, it doesn’t tell me that we are more kind as a society.

[Cthulhu_]

I want to say yes, but there's a lot of regression happening right now, with right-wing rhetoric, manosphere influencers, and various regimes pushing the other way - the Trump admin firing people, removing symbols and renaming things that they consider "DEI" for example, or teenagers thinking women are property thanks to people like convicted sex trafficker Tate.

The latest is that the Trump admin wants to institutionalize the homeless and "people with mental disabilities".