Fair enough.
This is one of those topics that I feel really torn on.
As a preface, I don’t have much skin in the game: there are few issues where my fundamental rights are debated around here. The closest it comes is when people suggest teachers shouldn’t have the right to collective bargaining–a right I lack in my state–and straight up that’s nowhere near having people debate whether, say, I should be allowed to pee in peace. Even so, some of the arguments against giving me this right have made me feel nearly apoplectic, with their calm, sneering contempt for my life.
On the one hand, I agree that it’s repulsive to see people calmly dismissing the rights of other people as if it’s a game of Cribbage. The rhetorical flourishes people use, from slippery slope fallacies, to I-know-you-are-[the real racist/misogynist/homophobe/bigot]-but-what-am-I, to lies about cites, to straight up pernicious stereotyping, are appalling. It’s no wonder that the people being so deeply insulted often say, Fuck This Noise, and get the hell out of here; and it’s a real loss to the board when they do. I miss a lot of folks who have left for exactly this reason, in a way that I don’t miss the assholes who have eventually gone too far and gotten banned.
But on the other hand, I think about Bricker. I think about, some fifteen years ago, talking to him about same-sex marriage. I made an appeal that was primarily emotional, asking him to think about what was most important about his marriage, describing what was most important about mine, and contrasting the important parts with the genitalia parts.
And it worked. He went from someone who denied a fundamental right to millions of his neighbors, to someone who accepted that right. And, bit by bit, across the country, so did enough other people that eventually folks fighting for recognition of the right were able to win it.
Bricker’s dismissal of rights was repulsive. It was appalling to see him use rhetorical flourishes to deny those rights. It’d be no wonder if he drove LGBT board members away. But if he’d been banned, he wouldn’t have changed his mind.
I’m not suggesting that therefore we gotta allow that kind of discussion.
This is one of those topics that I feel really torn on.
I thought Judith Light was the boss.
That would be Bruce Springsteen.
He can’t be my boss until he starts singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” right.
Let’s start with: Does the law actually punish women who suffer a miscarriage or is that just a strawman that is not actually part of the law?
The law could be used to prosecute a woman who has a miscarriage if it is decided she was negligent. Various state prosecutors have said that they wouldn’t actually prosecute a woman who miscarries or has an abortion, but technically the law WOULD allow it, so I guess it depends on how much you trust them.
Source: the very cite you posted earlier.
I don’t see that anywhere in my cite. I do see this
The law defines a miscarriage as a “spontaneous abortion.” Removing “a dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion” is legal, under the new law.
Has that actually happened to you? Or is this projection about what you imagine might happen if you didn’t do it?
Also, does specifying “he/him” on a name tag or in an Outlook profile really constitute “bending over backwards?” That seems like just about he most trivial amount of effort possible.
Sure we do! It’s literally a +1, as that’s the code for it.
That bit allows a doctor to remove an already dead child, but according to a number of the legal experts cited in your link, a woman could be prosecuted if it is decided that she was responsible for the miscarriage.
From a practical perspective, I don’t think that sort of hyperbole is the best way to counter this law. I don’t think anyone in Georgia wants to lock up women who miscarry, even if the law they did a shit job writing would allow for that.
It is clear that what they DO want is to scare women off of having abortions and to scare doctors off of performing them. Which is reprehensible enough on its own.
And you read the example of this? The woman that shot herself to cause a miscarriage? THAT is what is being discussed is when a woman gives herself an abortion and calling it a “miscarriage”. It similar to before Roe v Wade when women didn’t get abortions - they got D&Cs.
It is not illegal for a woman to have a spontaneous miscarriage.
Great, so if the woman’s estranged spouse claimed she is at fault because she insisted on continuing to exercise during the pregnancy, or that he saw her drink a herbal tea to induce a miscarriage, or she miscarries after being arrested and the prosecutor decides to up the “resisting arrest” charge by claiming she miscarried in the struggle?
Can you guarantee that none of those scenarios, or anything like them, would be used to prosecute women for miscarrying?
Since you mentioned me, I have to point out that none of what you mentioned here is what I consider “beyond the pale”—at least, not in the contexts they were discussed. There are a few bigoted arguments in there, but, in context, they seemed to come from a place of genuine ignorance.
This isn’t what I mean when I talk of banning bigotry. I’ve said before I mean “blatant bigotry,” but maybe I can be a bit more specific. I’m referring to that which defends discrimination. I’m talking that which paints a particular minority as lesser.
And, yeah, I’m talking about the people who play games with saying stuff that’s just behind that line, but keeps on doing it after everyone tells them it’s bigoted.
And, of course, I’m talking those who I made a Pit thread for, who are disingenuous, who engage in ways that no sincere person actually trying to debate the topic would.
I’m not talking about getting rid of all bigotry-related discussion. Sure, that’s something you can pull off on other types of boards, where it would be off-topic. But that’s not this board.
And I’m definitely not saying that controversial topics should not be discussed. I’m not the one saying there can be no debate on abortion (though I do agree with @MrDibble that there is no actual debate on the Georgia law, it wouldn’t make sense as a GD thread).
It’s because we haven’t evolved them yet, isn’t it?
I was under the impression that opposition to thumbs was what separates us from lower primates.
I disagree that listing your pronouns is virtue signaling. I have an acquaintance who’s a rabbi. He, and a bunch of other Jewish hippies from Camp Isabella Friedman*, attended the zoom shivah service of a friend of mine who died a few months back. I wondered if I had built up Rabbi Yakov in my mind. Then, when I saw him on the zoom meeting he had his pronouns listed by his name. He’s obviously male- he’s got beard, presents as typically male and his name is not ambiguous. But, he took that step to normalize listing your pronouns. He wasn’t trying to say ‘Look how woke I am!’. He was trying to say ’ This is what we should do in consideration of others’.
Listing your pronouns is no big hassle and can be very helpful to those whose pronouns are not standard or not obvious.
*Camp Isabella Friedman is the bees knees. Like I said it’s a bunch of frum (that means religiously observant) Jewish hippies. Not only are all meals kosher, there are always vegetarian and vegan options.
Your gripe is not with bigotry then, it is with bad faith posters. “Disingenuous” posters “who engage in ways that no person actually trying to debate the topic would.”
–
For another example I have also explicitly argued that transgenderism is a disorder. Homosexuality too, in the same thread.
If I had a different mindset I might argue that we should do something to fix the disorder - thereby presenting the archetypical harmful message to a transgender/homosexual poster: ‘there’s something wrong with you that needs to be fixed’ (ETA: not my opinion, just to clarify).
If you’re telling me allowing that kind of argument is okay by you, then you’ve done a full 180 from post #46.
~Max
In that post, you define a “disorder” as anything abnormal, but then say that there’s nothing wrong with being abnormal in this particular way. Your summary of the post makes it sound a lot more offensive than it actually was.
Certainly, I’d take issue with your choice of language. I think “disorder” and “abnormal” are very loaded terms. But you do take some care to strip those terms of some of that negative framing, and overall your point is very live-and-let-live.
I’m more worried about people who are very careful in how they phrase things, yet have much more hostile intent behind their words.
I put “Mr. Atama” as my name in my profile on this site because otherwise people aren’t going to know. I guess I should be flattered that a couple of people assumed I was female in the past. (Sorry, I’m not.)