StillUndefeated

Of course the president wouldn’t do that. I’m talking about whoever actually published the image. The person who wrote that text on the photo must be held legally accountable

Persian Mom

Privacy is paramount - no doubt about that. I highly doubt RV actually supports Hamas. He’s really just critical of U.S. interventionist policies in other countries. I also doubt that anyone here - RV or anyone else - has a real understanding of the Middle East or Hamas. But my point is that for someone like you, children clearly don’t matter - just as you’ve repeatedly shown regarding Palestinian children.

And if this were about Biden, I doubt you’d suddenly be concerned about those kids’ privacy. You’d likely be flooding this forum with those images. My point was about protecting children. Don’t fish in troubled waters.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about Trump, clearly showing the faces of those two children is a violation of their privacy.

I have no doubt that Hamas does these things - and probably far worse.

All of his sentences are completely immature; he’s just repeating what he’s heard, without ever looking into it himself.

Persian food from a street-side kitchen.

If it were a spoken debate, I’d win. By the time you understand my thick Persian accent, I’ll already be up a few points.

Whoever wins the live meet-up competition joins the National Non-Wrestling Thread team… and then they’ll have to face me in the Olympics of face-to-face arguing! We also need a Russian.

That’s just Criterion A. You need to read Criterion B too.

Absolutely! It really makes you happy to see others enjoying themselves. This singer, Ebi, is one of the famous singers from the Shah's era. After the revolution, like many others, he moved to the U.S. Nowadays, they hold concerts in places near Iran, like Dubai and Turkey, and thousands of Iranians attend. Usually, Turkey is easier for Iranians to travel to. This particular concert was in Istanbul. In Iran, concerts happen in many cities, and both men and women go, but unlike concerts abroad, they can’t dance or drink alcohol in public. Over the past four to five years, with the increase in public protests, the way people dress, especially regarding hijab, has changed somewhat. Previously, restrictions were stricter. The regime also does not give permission for singers from the Shah’s era to perform in Iran.

I was in New York at the time.

Okay. It happened in New York then.

What do you mean?

Here, the government allows people to choose their gender, meaning a woman can decide to become a man and vice versa. However, anyone who wants to do so must go through the official medical procedures for gender transition. I’m not really sure about the laws regarding a third gender—someone who doesn’t identify strictly as male or female. However, if a man wears women’s clothing and enters women’s bathrooms or locker rooms, this is clearly considered a crime in Iran. In such cases, the soldiers who arrest the person might even give their own kind of "friendly punishment" before the trial - basically saying something like, "Well, you’re a woman, right? Okay, come on, we'll take care of you!" And it can get much worse. After going to court, the person could be sent to prison, often alongside criminals whose minimum offense is murder. Once inside, everyone knows why they were arrested, so it’s hard to imagine how the person could safely sleep at night. In any case, I really hope no one ever tries something like this in Iran.

If someone who thinks they’re a donkey starts expecting everyone else to act like donkeys too then that’s where the "as long as they’re not hurting anyone else" clause kicks in. When it comes to gender, the American Psychological Association (APA) recognizes the rights and identities of transgender and queer people. They make a clear distinction between an identity and a disorder. The only time the APA talks about "disorder" in this context is when a person is experiencing significant distress because of their gender identity. In other words, the issue isn’t the identity itself, but the suffering that may accompany it. I actually have a Persian translation of the DSM-5 manual. The sections on Gender Dysphoria in Children and Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Adults explain that these conditions are associated with significant clinical distress or impairment in social, academic, or other important areas of functioning. In other words, a disorder is only considered when the individual themselves experiences this distress. The text is quite long, so I haven’t gone into full detail here.

LOL. Actually, I realized later it probably wasn’t the best title, but this board doesn’t let you change thread titles. I’m planning to keep everything I like about Iran in this one thread--music, dance, whatever--instead of starting a bunch of separate threads and cluttering the board. That way, if someone’s not into Iran-related stuff, they can just skip this thread.

Do negative attitudes toward trans and queer people stem from the religious leanings of some Republicans? I ask because similar attitudes exist among Islamists and hardliners in Iran. Unfortunately, trans and queer people - both those with different chromosomes and those who choose a different gender identity - face severe discrimination and harassment in many Islamic societies.

How do you know they’re a boy? So, can 'whipping boy' be used for both genders?

Mansour Barzegar: I’ve said it 20 times: Yazdani, after two shoulder surgeries and with the state of his hand, shouldn’t wrestle anymore. Regarding the national team, he said he has no opinion on it, since he’s no longer following wrestling. https://www.khabarvarzeshi.com/news/536674/حسن-یزدانی-باید-کشتی-را-کنار-بگذارد

LOL. I swear I love RV. They’ve got everyone here wrapped around their finger. Every single thread ends up back at RV. They’ve taken on everyone all by themselves. They’re hilarious. If RV ever left, this place would be so dull and boring.

I think everyone has the right to choose who they want to be - as long as they’re not hurting anyone else. About 23 years ago, I worked in the fiction section of a bookstore. One time, a girl came up to me and said, "I'm a donkey - give me a book." At the time, I didn’t get into a debate that didn’t concern me (like the silly advice of saying, "No, you’re not a donkey, you’re human"). I just handed her Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho, because I felt it might be interesting for her. Who are we to judge? We all have thousands of contradictions and conflicts inside ourselves - we’re not in a position to decide what others want to be.