The problem with the Paradox of Intolerance is that it comes with no enforcement mechanism at the ballot box.
You can enforce anti-intolerance in the media, in the classroom, on social media, in boardrooms, on dating apps, and everywhere else in society. But unfortunately, as long as a secret ballot exists, people will continue to vote their true feelings in the polling booth.
That’s why you keep getting outcomes where bigoted speech is more taboo than ever in society, yet Trump/MAGA has never been stronger.
Judging by how it’s used on this site, a ‘gotcha question’ means one that the questionee doesn’t want to answer honestly because it would mean conceding some point to the asker.
In that light, kudos for answering it, even if I am skeptical others would agree. After reading yours and @DocCathode’s responses, I think your issue with my question is that someone who believes differently to you is probably going to talk about their belief, and/or support and vote for different polices as a consequence, and it is this that you actually have a problem with, not the belief per se. As @Velocity says, the polling booth is still private. Is this correct?
More broadly, I’ve been thinking about the famous scene in Yes Prime Minister where Sir Humphrey explains how polling companies can rig the questions to get the result they want. My thought is that conservatives tend to think about and describe progressive beliefs and policies in a very negative way, and - similarly to the leading poll questions - this causes progressives to deny that said policies are happening, or that they support them. Meanwhile the same policy presented in a positive way by an ally would be met with approval. For example, if you accuse the Democrats of discriminating against white men, you will get denials or the usual gaslighting about how equal treatment feels like discrimination. But tell the same people Biden wants to help out women and POC restaurant owners by prioritising them for Covid relief funds, and they will support it.
Similarly, tell progressives that they think they are better than others, and they will deny it. Except, of course, for all those nasty racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes etc, who are obviously bad people. But the majority of Americans don’t subscribe to 100% of progressive views, so they must at least suspect they may fall into one of these categories. This is off-putting to average people, especially compared to a Republican party that will validate their concerns and tell them that not only are they good people, they are correct to be worried about immigration or crime or whatever.
I’ve spent this whole thread trying to avoid it being turned into another ‘trans’ discussion. But fine. I think there are broad psychological differences between men and women, and most trans people are more similar to their birth sex than to their desired gender in this respect. I also think that bodies do matter, as much as we might sometimes wish they didn’t. Maybe I’m biased because I don’t identify with a lot of the gender-role stuff other women complain about, but I do share and identify with the physical aspects of womanhood? But that’s how I feel, and it does affect how I see trans people and what policies I support.
More broadly, there is a difference in values here:
I agree with this statement, but I think cis people’s rights and feelings are equally important to trans people’s. I don’t think there is an absolute right to be recognised as what you want to be, or for society to cater to one person’s health and happiness and even their hurt feelings if that is detrimental to others. From the outside, the woke calculus appears to be that whoever is considered the ‘most oppressed’ in any given situation gets their way: their feelings are catered to, and those of the comparatively privileged ignored or invalidated by ascribing them to some kind of phobia or -ism. The needs of ‘oppressed’ classes are paramount, and those of ‘privileged’ classes brushed aside. I believe this is an injustice.
Maybe you don’t recognise this description of what is happening. I fear this will fall into the pattern I described above, where a negative, unsympathetic description of ‘woke’ beliefs is not recognised as something you support. So perhaps an example would be helpful: it’s considered acceptable in progressive circles for women to fear being assaulted by men (vs other women), to talk about this, and act on it by avoiding situations where they would be vulnerable. There was a question going around on social media recently asking women if they would rather meet a man or a bear while walking alone in the woods, and most said the bear. But it is not considered acceptable in the same circles for women to fear homeless men more than other men, or to fear transwomen more than other women, and so far as I can see, the reasoning is that it is okay to have and express prejudice against a privileged group, (since it is unlikely to harm them?) but not okay to have and express prejudice against an oppressed group. Whether the fear is well-founded or not is at best a minor consideration.
Is that closer to the positive inside view of what is happening?
Please expand on this, if you are willing? Specifically, how does recognizing a trans or non-binary person by how they want to be addressed and treated – or, at least, by not being a jerk to them (misgendering them, telling them they can’t use their preferred restroom) – detrimental to others?
Oh, I understand that just fine. @DemonTree has been repeatedly saying that they feel that “principled disagreement” with the left isn’t even allowed anymore. I’m trying to understand how they feel that “principled disagreement” would play out in this case.
For example, telling a non-passing, pre-surgery trans person to use an individual changing room may well make them feel invalidated and ‘othered’, while allowing them to use their preferred shared locker room is likely to make other users very uncomfortable. Whose feelings are important here?
Or the sports issue. Not allowing trans women on hormone therapy to play in women’s divisions is obviously detrimental to them, since taking female hormones generally makes them non-competitive with men. But it seems highly likely they still have an advantage over cis women, so allowing them to play in women’s divisions is unfair to everyone else. Whose rights are more important here?
Allowing principled disagreement would mean accepting that other people may come to different conclusions in cases like these, without it being due to ignorance or character flaw.
One side thinks trans people should live because they are human, the other side thinks they should die because they are an abomination. See? Principled disagreement.
You can write hundreds of pages of garbage dressing this up. But underlying it is this simple disagreement.
Do you think that keeping Black people out of public swimming pools because they make White residents uncomfortable is similarly a principled disagreement?
Or would I be justified in calling it a racist position?
Or keeping gay teachers out of classrooms because it makes some parents uncomfortable that the gay teachers will try to convert their children?
Fair points, but I think that both of those are kind of corner cases. My suspicion (and I may be wrong) is that many (most?) trans individuals might avoid common/open locker rooms anyway. And, of course, trans athletes who are seeking to compete in a sport as their preferred gender are a very small fraction of the total trans population.
Gong back to what I wrote:
…are those things that you feel you have a “principled disagreement” about?
No, no. It’s not time to roll that back yet. We have to roll back gay marriage, then decriminalize homosexuality, then interracial sex. There are lots of steps to take to get the Overton window moved for “principled disagreement” before we can get to racial resegregation!
You seem to be asking me “Apart from the things you disagree about, do you disagree with anything?” I believe in being polite in general, which includes using preferred pronouns (within reason, not ridiculous individualised ones). I think the restroom issue comes down on the side of letting people choose, since it is generally necessary to use one or the other. However, I would not tell cis women to ignore their instincts if they feel uncomfortable, as I consider that dangerous.
It doesn’t matter that you think these are corner cases. I’ve been called a bigot multiple times for these views on social media, way more than I can count. Right here in this thread people are comparing it to saying trans people should die because they are an abomination. Who would feel comfortable talking about it in the circumstances? Who with similar views would not feel that left-wingers were judging them? I think these intolerant attitudes are a large part of the PR problem the left is suffering.
Can you please explain this more? (I’m sorry if I’m being repetitive.) What do you believe would make a cis woman uncomfortable if they saw a trans woman in a women’s room? And, what do you feel their instincts are telling them – that the trans woman is just a guy in women’s clothing who is only in there to somehow catch a glimpse, or maybe sexually assault someone?
There is a reason i distinguished, above, between a person who has personally been made uncomfortable by a trans woman in the ladies room and another person who is worried on behalf of a hypothetical situation. And a large part of that is that the former is actually extremely rare, and also, their concerns do not generally lead trans people to be unable to use public restrooms. (For any number of reasons, most people whose sexual presentation is ambiguous choose the men’s room. They are less likely to be hassled that way.) Although i note that when these issues make the news, the majority of women who “caused concern” turn out to be cis women who happen to have masculine characteristics. Which is pretty common, as neither gender nor sex are binary, even though the majority of people cluster towards one of the two common sexes.
As a child, i learned all sorts of tidy categories, like sex and species, that turn out not to be tidy when you examine them closely. Fwiw, our ancestors were more aware of this than we sometimes are, because they didn’t have modern medical techniques to force people of ambiguous sex into one of two boxes at birth. A friend pointed out that babies with visually ambiguous genitalia are common enough that a typical small-town rabbi was likely to run into one over his career, for instance. It’s not a lot of people. But it’s real people, who exist, and whom society has to interact with.
So i will make a policy suggestion. A principled position, if you will. If a cis woman encounters a person in a public restroom whom she is afraid of, she should quietly leave the restroom. This has two benefits over “attempt to force the scary person out”. The first is that if the scary person is actually a predator, she’s much better off leaving than confronting that person. The second is that if someone looks scary through no fault of their own, they are going to run into this ALL THE TIME, and just as it’s troublesome for attractive young women to be hit on constantly in public places, it’s troublesome for masculine women to be driven out of public places.
If it’s a person you regularly interact with, like a coworker or classmate, then you really ought to know whether they are dangerous. And if they are, this is a bigger problem than “sharing a restroom”. And if they just look funny, yeah, i think you can suck it up.
Why the fuck “roll back gay marriage”? And the other two are a done deal.
Look, gays, etc are just people. There is no reason not to let them just do their thing.
What do you mean? Go with a friend, or leave and come back? or call the police?
Look, the scarecrow of men pretending to be trans and going into womens restrooms for something is totally bogus. Hell, I have been in genderless bathroom, and other than the lack of urinals, people go into the stalls, close the door, do their totally unsexy business, come out and hopefully wash their hands. Its no big deal.