The current top responses actually seem to answer the question pretty comprehensively and without bringing in a bunch of nonsense politics

You ever wonder how South Korea and Japan have such low infection and death rates? 🧐

I’m not confident that you interpreted the results of the study you’re citing correctly, considering they did come to the conclusion that the masks had reduced transmission when used in the community, especially when used by carriers, which is what the entire debate over mask use is about. Your emphasis that it wasn’t found to be effective in healthcare workers is primarily evidence of how much more exposure they have than the general public as would be expected, and not that they’re therefore effective to reduce transmission among the public as you’re claiming - and as this study specifically contradicts. Finally, your argument that there is a slippery slope from requiring or encouraging people to wear masks is ... The Slippery Slope fallacy. Which is a fallacy for a reason. Your assumption that restrictions on behavior will necessarily grow more burdensome up to a comical degree over time is an assumption that benefits your argument and that we don’t have to share. Most people agreed to wear seatbelts while driving and it didn’t result in everyone wearing helmets and other cumbersome safety mechanisms while driving like you’re suggesting it would. Ultimately, these are pretty weak objections to a safety measure that is an extremely minor inconvenience for most people once adopted, for the sake of hypotheticals about freedom that will ultimately never be relevant, and take into account only a specific idea of freedom and ignore, say, other people’s desire to be free of disease regardless of your desire to allow them to accept higher risk.

I appreciate that you assumed I was arguing in good faith and responded accordingly. In short, my view is that sex is the biological reality and that gender are the social constructs built around the physical and practical realities of sex and sexual characteristics. I don’t think that distinction is controversial, and I’ll assume most people here also make that distinction I also assume you and even most of the people downvoting me would concede that the science has shown that most of the behavioral traits that we associate with one gender or another are only marginally “hard-coded” into individuals. Gendered traits are reliably associated with a particular sex on a population level, but it’s impossible to extricate the origins of those behaviors from social causes on that scale. And even on that scale, the differences in gendered traits are still sleight because there’s so much variance within each sex. I think we’re on the same page that a conversation about expanding the gender identities associated with each sex to better resemble the broad swath of behavior within each sex would improve plenty of lives at little social cost. Someone else in this thread mentioned that sex is largely bimodal in humans and that’s true. However, the small minority of people who are biologically intersex have a valid claim to being of a different sex regardless of how few they may be. They are not simply “without sex” for not fitting within the modal parts of the distribution. My assertion is that, even if there is not a third “mode”, denying that they are even a category for the sake of simplifying the concept of biological sex to “the sexes” borders on denying that sex is still a distribution. The fact that people exist outside of the two modes of biological sex is important to consider in conversations about gender. When sex itself has exceptions to it’s two largest categories, gender ought to be thought of as having infinitely more exception considering that it’s attachment to sex is as loose as it is. I don’t think that’s controversial either. I think what is controversial are some of the extremes that some people take these conclusions to. That sexual categories are so fluid that, say, it’s worth getting rid of sexual categories in sports, where they are obviously relevant. Or that they are so fluid that differences in sexual aggression between the sexes are beyond reasonable consideration. Or that the sexual and gender identities of developing people can be so reliably understood to the degree that there is no risk inherent in permanent medical procedures based on that understanding I think what is also controversial are the extremes that ignoring these conclusions would take a person to. That anyone with sufficient difference in their sexual traits is such an aberration that their existence shouldn’t even be considered when making public policy. That only a person’s genitals should be considered in assessing their sexual traits, even if they have hormone levels, brain chemistry, and behavior that resembles the other sexual mode. And that anyone with different preferences in their gender expression must necessarily be treated as morally deficient - under the guise of referring to them as mentally ill Anyway, obviously there are ideologues and outright frauds on both sides of this issue. Remember that such people are generally far more outspoken by virtue of their certainty

These other subs have a far lower rate of brigades, doxing, and organizing actually destructive behavior

Russia funneling hundreds of thousands into GOP campaigns is probably more of a problem than the zero illegal immigrants voting in federal elections. This post is cringe bruh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_foreigners_to_vote_in_the_United_States

Thisssss is why this kind of news is being taken down. Because it opens the door to idiots like this guy lol