Er mer gerd….FOX (and I’m certain other righty propaganda outlets) is now complaining about hearing about Hunter Biden all the time! Last month FOX mentioned Hunter Biden 1300 times, more almost twice an hour 24/7….but GAWD DAMNIT WHY WON’T THOSE DAMN LIBTARDS STOP SHOVING HUNTER BIDEN IN YOUR FACE!?

He’s constantly going on TV giving speeches…oh wait, that’s Don Jr, ok, he’s always posting coked out videos attacking his fathers enemies….oh wait, that’s Don Jr…we’ll, he’s intricately involved in his father’s administration creating disastrous policies and agreements while being unbelievably high on coke….oh wait, that’s Don Jr.. I wonder, besides right wing propaganda, how many times has Hunter been in the news? Once? Twice in 3 years? 🤦‍♂️

You ijits are just too fucking hilariously clueless. So pissed at yourself for being utter morons completely devoid of rational thought processes or factual information, but unwilling to admit it because that might be rational. 😂😂😂😂😂

Trump is going to be your nominee, that’s a given, he took over the party, but it bears noting he is not attracting new voters, not one. He’s playing HARD to his base, but not one bit to centrists, undecided voters, and especially not to Trump voters that switched to Biden. Can you think of a single person who is pro Trump today that wasn’t pro-Trump on Jan 6? He has the second hurdle of Covid, because MAGgots were infected and died at a 75% higher rate than democrats in the same areas, so hundreds of thousands more Trump voters simply don’t exist now or are disabled…directly because of Trump policies. He’s only lost supporters since his failed coup too, and all those RINOS (by which I mean actual republicans that hate Trump’s narcissistic fascism, hatred, division, and stupidity) aren’t voting for Trump. This all assumes he’s not in prison by election time…it’s clear avoiding prison is the only reason he’s running.

MAGA has turned out to be a comedy troupe, like the keystone cops but without the “trying to do the right thing” part. Keep it up, it’s incredibly gratifying watching the fascist MAGgot party crumble under the oppressive weight of their own hatred and stupidity. The massively unpopular 6 week national abortion ban promise from all your candidates for president guarantee you a loss, but you’re too dumb to see it. Loving those MAGA tears, so yummy!

yeah, since efficiency is usually a measure of how much energy is lost to heat, should be 0% vs 100%... but, marketing.

I also doubt they are using aerogel or cryostats insulation to surround hot bricks. (or maybe that's why 1 container costs $9M?)

Matt (and team) from Undecided almost never approach their videos with a critical eye. Many startups' claims can be debunked with high school physics, but they just present everything as-is and with good production value. I consider their channel more entertainment than education, but still interesting to see some of the ideas out there.

I keep wondering why Trump keeps making "vote for Biden" commercials. First, promising we will never see him again, now promising a return to logic, reason, and science....just tell Trump "YOU'RE FIRED!"

If there were any real undecideds left, they should be convinced to vote Biden now.

I can understand why you all still respond to @bobnight33. It's satisfying to smugly respond to him who, effectively, is a real live straw man. It makes you feel righteous (and frankly, it's pretty easy).

But really, Bob's been around for 11 years and has not conceded literally anything.

You're not changing his mind. Obviously. Why do you keep trying?

If anything, a new person who is (admittedly, astoundingly) undecided will see your vainglorious responses and dig their heels in to any existing conservative leanings.

Wow, Bob. Your head is deep in that hole to think that. I hope you wiped first.

We have two secret illegal payoffs for porn/playboy stars he cheated on his wife with (campaign finance abuses, and admissions that he slept with them and they might have proof, and indicators of his fidelity), "grab them by the pussy"...(and 14 people who say he did)....bragging about cheating on his wife with his friend's wives, multiple personal guilty pleas to frauds, tax evasion/fraud, charity fraud, 100 contacts with the hostile foreign power that helped defeat Clinton during the campaign (and a clear statement that he would love to collude with them again), 10+ cases of obstruction, uncountable illegal policies shot down in court (today he lost another, the census question designed to hurt Democrats and help Republicans, and now he wants to delay the census), a pattern of racism, a pattern of misogyny, a pattern of infantile whining, bullying, threatening, constant never-ending lies, denying science, ignoring legal precedents, destroying our international standing and reputation, multiple trade wars, .....and golf, never ending golf, far more than twice as often as Obama (who he called irresponsible for wasting time playing golf) at a cost to us of well over $100000000 so far (much of that paid to Trump's properties) and he still sucks so badly and cheats so blatantly that he has to hide from cameras every time....I just don't have all day to explain how much there is wrong with him beyond "grab them by the pussy"

Edit: Let's not forget the exponential rise in illegal immigration under his watch too....and his insistence he's building hundreds of miles of new wall that, in reality, is just mending existing fences he claims don't work.
Also, the increased division in America can't be ignored.

People are already swayed against him. Never reached 50% approval, losing to the top 10 Democrats in all polls, even his own. He won't get the angry Bernie Bro votes, or the undecided anti politician, or the old school republican vote, or a lot of farmer votes, or factory worker votes this round.

The country can't afford to have him win, Democrats gained power under him. Duh. Expect to lose the senate, and lose ground in the house, not to mention local governments.

Everyone not in your cult believes it's likely worse than is reported, because he's bullied news organizations so much they're terrified to make a mistake or even report the whole truth or he will label them enemies of America and your ilk will threaten their lives, and their children's lives, and actually try to kill them. Dozens if not hundreds of cases since his election....none before...or he might even directly threaten to have them arrested like he did last week.

Wages aren't rising (except for at the top), and absolutely weren't stagnant under Obama. In states where minimum wage has risen, it's despite Trump denouncing a raise in minimum wages. Massive inflation caused directly by his policies....trade wars, ruined trade agreements, etc., mean purchase power is falling, not growing. No infrastructure repairs, no repeal and replace, only attempts to ruin and leave Obama care, tax cuts for himself (despite his denials before they passed) and tax raises on the middle class (despite the fact he lied and called them temporary tax cuts before they passed), the biggest growth in the debt and deficit ever......that enough for now?

Totally fucking up the China and Iran issues, both are exponentially worse thanks to him. Jebus! It's ignorant insanity to imply they were ignored, you just didn't like Obama's agreements, agreements that were working to our benefit until Trump abandoned them, now we have trade wars with one, driving them into an alliance with Russia, and nearing actual war with the other.

Really...name the charges Obama had to defend in court. Derp. I can name DOZENS that Trump has, and is defending in court, and hundreds more he'll have to defend as soon as his shield of being president is gone.

Another post 100% wrong, Bob. I'm impressed, but not in a good way.

I mean, yeah, that's pretty much what I was referring to.

Asian drivers in other states might have completely fine driving skills, where they keep up with the speed of traffic, and they're aware of their surroundings, and they don't seem like they're completely lost and undecided all the time, leading to erratic behavior on the road... But not in Seattle.

Thailand by way of Kansas. Just sent in my absentee ballot a couple days ago.

I agree that the idea of the video is to suggest that "protest votes" are either A) entirely counterproductive always, or B) particularly counterproductive in this election. And they chose to focus on Johnson because he fits their narrative of suggesting that policy-wise he is very different from Bernie Sanders, and they make the unspoken assumption that many people considering "protest votes" are Sanders fans that are disgruntled with Clinton.

I'm still very comfortable with my 3rd-party vote, and fully aware that there is a chance that it could "spoil" things for one of the main 2 candidates. Although realistically, since my vote will be counted in Kansas (very red track record, polling 47/36/17 Trump/Clinton/Undecided at the moment) that is incredibly unlikely to happen either way.

I understand people that would feel motivated to "hold their nose" and choose the lesser of two evils (whoever they determine that to be) if they were in a swing/tossup state, but personally I would stick with my vote even if I was in such a state.

If the election is "spoiled" one way or the other by 3rd party votes, it would send a pretty clear message to both parties: give us better choices, or face the consequences. Then again, maybe I'm being overly optimistic about the parties actually getting that message... Democrats should have been highly motivated to push for getting rid of the electoral college and/or considering a push for ranked-choice voting when Gore "lost" in 2000, but failed to do either.

No mention of Jill Stein?

I'm not undecided, but if we had something like ranked-choice voting I'd go:
1 Stein
2 Johnson
3 Clinton
4 Trump

To all the people that think that 3rd party votes are counter productive, you can take solace in knowing that I'm registered in a state that is pretty close to a lock (for Trump), so because of the electoral college my vote doesn't really count. But I'd be voting the same way even if I was in a swing state. 'Cuz fuck both parties. Right in the ear.

The thing about this, Dan, is that to some degree both Bernie and Trump alienate a lot of their party's base. Just like you have a lot of undecided republicans, I think Bernie would have caused a lot of undecided democrats. Similarly, of course, they dislodge a lot of the opposition and in particular people angry with the current system. This just causes a lot more free movement, which i think is a good thing in principle.

The daily ups-and-downs that are the curse of an election cycle would sway this mass in either direction. As much as I love Bernie, I very much doubt he'd be the landslide some people seem to think.

Yeah, Trump is a complete tool. Guilty of all the stuff Maher said about him. Given that kind of "competition", what would the Democrats have to do to get those 20 states to flip their direction?

I can take a stab that that one, Bill -- he's sitting right next to you. If the Democrats had chosen Sanders as their candidate, I guarantee that at least some of those states would have gone blue on election day.

Firm, registered Democrats? They'd all happily vote for Bernie in the general, just like they will vote for Hillary.

Undecideds, moderates, and young people? Drastically more likely to vote for Bernie than Hillary. A huge segment of the voting population is disgusted with the two major choices, and would happily flock to a candidate that has a proven track record of honesty and integrity, instead of the dog and pony show that we have now.

Firm, die-hard Republicans? Maher is right; there is a certain percentage of people that would never vote Democrat. But, I don't think that number is above 50% of the population even in the reddest of red states. But even for many of those people that are completely dissatisfied by Trump, from their perspective Hillary is NOT a better option.


Let's consider how all the arguments against Trump play to that specific audience: (note that the responses are what *they* think, not necessarily what *I* think)

Trump is a womanizer / misogynist / predator. Yeah, and Clinton is married to a worse one who disgraced the Presidency while he was in office.

Trump lies constantly. As opposed to the Clintons, who would never lie. For example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill), "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill), and "I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time" (Hillary).

Trump has no experience with government and would make an incompetent president. What's worse: a crooked / corrupt Washington insider that knows how to game the system, or someone with no experience?

etc. etc.

Hillary goddamn Clinton is NOT going to be seen as a reasonable alternative to Trump to those people. No matter how much he goes off the rails. No matter what crazy, foul, contemptible shit he says or does. No matter how many skeletons you dig out of his closet. Why? Because they are convinced (reasonably or not) that the Clintons have done just as much questionable shit and more, they are perhaps just better at covering it up.

But if the Democrat candidate was Bernie Sanders, I'm sure a lot more of those hard-line Republicans would be way more tempted to vote blue in November.

"Trump has said that he has six to eight ads in production and that his was a "major buy and it's going to go on for months."
He said he hopes the spots impress upon undecided voters that the country has become "a dumping ground".
"The world is laughing at us, at our stupidity. It's got to stop. We've got to get smart fast — or else we won't have a country," he was quoted as saying."

http://preview.tinyurl.com/zaj7rkw - Washington Post

Can we just vote for Colbert to be president? That's what I'm going to do. I've decided that if my vote is truly a personal decision and a reflection of who I feel is the leader AMERICA needs, I'm voting Stephen Colbert. Or Conan O'Brien. I'm still undecided on my vote actually. If Jon Stewart ran, that may change everything.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the majority of Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency, to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC, by replacing state winner-take-all laws for awarding electoral votes.

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps of pre-determined outcomes. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

The bill would take effect when enacted by states with a majority of Electoral College votes—that is, enough to elect a President (270 of 538). The candidate receiving the most popular votes from all 50 states (and DC) would get all the 270+ electoral votes of the enacting states.

The presidential election system, using the 48 state winner-take-all method or district winner method of awarding electoral votes, that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founders. It is the product of decades of change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founders in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. States can, and have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Historically, major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in every state surveyed recently. In the 39 states surveyed, overall support has been in the 67-83% range or higher. - in recent or past closely divided battleground states, in rural states, in small states, in Southern and border states, in big states, and in other states polled.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 33 state legislative chambers in 22 rural, small, medium, large, red, blue, and purple states with 250 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 11 jurisdictions with 165 electoral votes – 61% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote.com

Honestly, it's not that all news is bullshit, it's that most (all?) news outlets commit the same fallacious and detrimental information practices as always will happen in any system when experience is posited as "truth".

In the business world we are almost always working to change our perspective on how data flows and how best to store and distribute info; setting our educational bias aside when need be. One particular failed practice that does NOT get enough high level analyzing due to the nature of the bias in which the problem itself creates: Information siloing.

In this case, we have the American people silo'd (and if we don't have them silo'd, we actively seek to silo these "undecided" minds) as either liberal D or conservative R. Once you're silo'd, you now have the ability to be fed limited information, based upon limited experience, as the Truth. This is called a hook. A hook is exactly what you think it means and is not bad of itself, because hooks exist in all systems for better or for worse. Otherwise birds of a feather would not flock together. (They flock together because of hooks in their code and the world aka science around them which helps facilitate that hook.)

Now that the hook is in, we have separate news organizations that cater to the data bias you signed up for. You're a human with a blank slate, so don't you dare argue that your opinion is anything but inconsistent, even after education; because you assume that the patterns of existence taught as theoretical and scientifically posited "truth" scale in a reality based upon butterfly flaps of causation. Just accept it: You are fallible and the defects are inherent at every step of our civilization. (Algorithms of usefulness to engineers are only useful if they lessen the load on the user, otherwise we'd all be typing 1s and 0s; so the logic of simplicity suggests our systems are fucked and holding to them is an anarchy unto itself, where ultimate complexity becomes entropy -- LESSEN THE COMPLEXITY. That should be a rule for all government and economy.)

Liberals claim they cater to all sides and conservatives complain that if it wasn't for Fox, there would be no objectivity in the news. This further complicates the matter, but is itself a red herring because it's an argument that essentially says "YOU MUST GET YOUR NEWS FROM A MAJOR NETWORK." If you actually believe that these media giants are the end all be all to gaining information from the "truest" perspective possible, you are a dummy and you need to WAKE UP.

If you never made a thought pattern along these lines, you also need to wake up but I'm not mad at you. Information that deviates from a human's factory defaults (early family and life experiences in the form of fear induced bias) is difficult to objectively analyze. I fault you not, but your call to awaken is noted and will be remembered at the end of all (if you believe in any sort of karmic ending, Christians included). If you don't believe this, then your inability to rule the boundaries of your mind in the present is damning enough. Fuck you. And fuck your offspring. Subjective fear consume thee as your desperate and once nurturing stride for survival is abstracted into selfish, power seeking nihilism.

Information siloing creates tribal knowledge (which is information held by a select group, and then touted as negative patterns like nationalism and corporate thuggery), and tribal knowledge creates boundaries based upon a skewed perception of what the truth is; which in turn, creates subjective and often intangible competition within a system that should be making strides to improve its process via iteration.

MUD SLING AWAY. Or join me in narrowing the argument to its lowest common denominators and then objectively analyzing the system, starting at a generic starting point and building up to a truer understanding.

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

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