It’s not “shut up and do what we say”, it’s “try to be a decent and tolerant person”. It’s okay to ask questions, but for personal, intimate things like gender identity, the answers will often be different for each individual. That’s why “live and let live” is so important – they’re not hurting anyone, so you don’t have to dig deep into their motives… you just have to treat them with decency and respect.
And this isn’t leading to anywhere, necessarily – contrary to the real bigots, it has nothing to do with accepting pedophilia or other things that actually hurt people. This really is no different than homosexuality in this respect – you don’t have to love it, or like it, or personally accept it… you just have to not discriminate against them. And beyond that, treat them with decency and respect. That’s what’s being asked – let them get married; let them use the bathroom; let them adopt children; let them allow their partners and spouses into their hospital rooms and make decisions for them, if necessary, just like any other spouses; etc. And don’t fire them for being gay, trans, etc. And don’t outlaw medical treatment for trans children. Etc.
I don’t understand everything about it. Nobody understands how every single person feels about their own gender identity. All you have to do is treat them with decency.
And it appears that’s what you’re already doing. So that’s all you have to ask your friends to do, if they want your opinion. If they need extra special justification just to treat someone with decency and respect, then that says something about their personal character.
Sorry, there was no derogatory intent there (I certainly have my own hangups which I am trying to rise above!). I will try to phrase things more carefully.
Child molesters and murderers aren’t frowned upon because some people consider them “absurd”, they are frowned upon because they hurt other people.
The private decisions people make in their every day life, no matter how absurd they seem to you, aren’t hurting anyone.
I think it is troubling to put people into categories of “good” or “bad” because we consider them absurd, rather than because they are causing harm to others.
You are asking us to convince you that a pregnant man isn’t “absurd”, but that is a subjective feeling you have on the matter. Why should society base its support of people’s private decisions based on an arbitrary judgment of absurdity?
You don’t need to stop feeling like a pregnant man is “strange” to be an ally, to support his right to be treated as a man while also supporting his right to have a family.
There are some topics and even words that can cause such pain to another person that as part of living in a polite and civilized society we forego saying them, because doing so would be an act of deliberate harm.
A good case is the “n-word”. It is so associated with pain and suffering among those of African/slave descent that using it can cause great pain to another person because it brings up memories and even fear. It is an unkindness to use that word. You are not physically prevented from saying it but to use it is to incur consequences for exercising the right of free speech.
Likewise, misgendering someone can be excruciatingly painful. Therefore, as part of polite and civilized society and polite and civilized person refrains from doing this, and if an error is made apologies need to be forthcoming. It is an unkindness to do such a thing. To do so deliberately is to demonstrate the speaker is neither polite nor civilized.
Your rights are absolutely important, but they end where someone else’s rights begin. Your freedom to swing your arms ends where my nose begins (and vice versa). Surely there is a right to NOT be deliberately hurt by others and if there isn’t there should be.
Telling someone you think they’re crazy because they spent $200 on tickets to a sports game, or because they don’t cook at home, is not likely to cause harm or pain or suffering to the other person. Misgendering a person does cause such harm to trans gender people. That’s where the difference lies.
The main reason it became an issue is that she kept lying about her parentage, and that those lies negatively affected others. She lied about her upbringing as well. And not just occasionally, but continually, making a big deal out of it.
Granted, transgender people will sometimes lie if they have transitioned but are not out. However, due to the huge history of discrimination, a lot of that is often excused as something they had to do. However, this doesn’t normally involve complicated stories, nor something that paints their parents in a bad light.
The fact that transracialism doesn’t seem to be a thing leads people to conclude that Dolezaal was actually participating in extreme cultural appropriation, something that is a concern among black people. Since transgenderism is backed by science, it is not seen that way.
That’s not to say things won’t change. Maybe transracialism is a thing, and there will be a compelling reason to treat transracial people the same as people from the race they claim. But, right now, we’re not there yet.
As for her being transracial at all? That is 100% the idea that, as long as she’s not hurting anyone, she can claim whatever she wants. That’s why TERFs keep trying to prove that trans people are in fact hurting women. The problem is, none of their arguments hold up.
As long as she’s honest that she was assigned white at birth, I can’t see how it is anyone’s business.
I agree. I think it’s a really interesting thought experiment, and where I always end up is that it’s just numbers. I don’t think there is much analysis that applies to just a handful of Dolezals that would not also apply if there were only that many people who were transgender, or did apply when only that many people came out as trans.
Or, the other way around, if there were, I don’t know, a hundred? a thousand? people who had Dolezal’s experience, I think you would see a very similar arc of history to the trans movement, including the feminist-equivalent backlash, and so on. I don’t see a long-term bright line distinction unless there is some biological one that is discovered (or that already has and that I’m not aware of).
I’ll never be able to respond to all of the good and capable responses in this thread, but I picked this one out as an exemplar. I disagree with the assumption. I agree with the sentiment, however. But this country has never adopted the neo-Libertarian ideal that as long as you are not harming someone else, then it is okay.
For example, I cannot use cocaine in my own home even though it only harms me, nor can I hang siding on my house without a government permit. The debate of the propriety of those laws are outside the scope of the thread but simply illustrate that the proposition you propose is not law, nor is it rooted in privacy as John (in the hypo) demands that I take affirmative steps to do what he wants. It is not about his right just to be left alone, say that the police don’t arrest him, but a command to me to conform my conduct to his wishes.
I think that is an important distinction because as much as John has his rights and desires, so do others.
Babale said “aren’t hurting anyone”, which is not the same as “not harming someone else” (emphasis added).
Yes, the government prohibits a lot of potentially harmful things even when the only person they’re harming is the person doing them. (Which is arguably not even really the case for the examples you mentioned: e.g., cocaine users have to get the drug from somewhere, contributing to a whole lot of harm and immiseration, while seriously incompetent unauthorized home DIY can pose significant dangers not only to anyone else who enters the home but possibly even to entire neighborhoods.)
AFAICT another factor in play is the civil-libertarian ideal that something as personally important and foundational as sexual/gender identities should be as free as possible from government interference. Trying to claim that your right to put unauthorized siding on your house is just as crucially personally important to you as the right to marry her girlfriend is to Jane, or as the right to be called a man even while he’s pregnant is to John, would be unconvincing and disrespectful.
I disagree. I would bet that there are more people who would rather save $50 for a building permit than change their gender and have a same gender marriage. That is my house, some would say, and it is much more personal than an invented right to require others to call you by your preferred gender. It has much more historical backing at least.
You seem to be missing the point. Of course most people personally care more about saving $50 than about being able to exercise their right to be openly transgender and/or homosexual, because most people are not transgender or homosexual.
If most people were suddenly not allowed to exercise their right to be openly cisgender and heterosexual, on the other hand, they would care about that a whole lot more than they’d care about saving $50 for a building permit.
I repeat: Equating other people’s desire for fundamental sexual and gender autonomy with one’s own desire to avoid relatively trivial bureaucratic inconveniences like paying for building permits is unconvincing and disrespectful. There’s a whiff of ancien regime privileged cluelessness about it, like the aristocrat grousing “Why are the peasants so upset that they don’t have enough bread? Sometimes my weekly supply of duck confit and caviar runs out after only three days, but you don’t see me complaining about shortages!”
Right. We agree on this. So the question becomes what rights should the transgender person have. And that argument is prohibited by board rules. So then it becomes what right should the “pregnant man” have.
Your arguments (and those other arguments) have simply said that it would make him happy for me and others to recognize that he is a he and act like I mean it. You have not shown me, let alone my contemporaries, how this is a logical thing that should displace what we were taught growing up.
ETA: And we should be forced to do so…not a debate, but under pains and penalties of job loss and social ostracizing. I want to do better than that and if you can’t you could gain an ally, but poster seem to keep saying “shut up and do it.”
Are you talking about the need for a building permit to hang siding? I don’t want to hijack the thread, but yes I am one of those people. It’s my fucking house; I shouldn’t need a permit to hang siding.
Why is “what rights should a pregnant man have” a different argument from “what rights should a transgender person have”? A pregnant man typically is a transgender person. And being acknowledged as the gender one identifies as—even if one is manifesting characteristics typically associated with a different gender, such as having a beard or a vagina, or being pregnant—is a core issue of transgender rights.
I don’t know what you were taught growing up. When I was growing up, I certainly wasn’t taught that it was okay to refuse to call someone a man who identified as a man, just because he was behaving in a way that was more generally associated with women. E.g., wearing long hair or a skirt or makeup, or carrying a purse, or holding hands with a man.
I never (to my knowledge) encountered a pregnant man while I was growing up, but if I had done so and had refused to refer to him as a man or address him as a man, I would have got at least a very severe lecture on courtesy to others and not taking impolite liberties just because I thought I knew best about what other people should be doing.
And I’m 58. When were you growing up?
Call me old-fashioned, but “shut up and do it” is exactly the level of non-negotiableness that I encountered when I was growing up on the issue of being polite to others. Which included the requirement to address others properly according to their declared identity.
(This situation actually came up not in the context of transgender identity, but when the teacher I had been looking forward to having for third grade suddenly announced that she was no longer Miss Starn but rather Mrs. Mawhinney. I was highly indignant about this inexplicably illogical and arbitrary rewriting of reality, because of course Miss Starn was obviously still the same person she always was, and I protested against being made to comply with it. My reluctance in this regard was not tolerated for one hot second.)
The war on drugs, misguided as it may be, operates under the premise that you ARE harming someone when you do coke at home by supporting the illegal drug trade and giving money to violent drug dealers.
Because of the risk that an improper installation by an unskilled person would lead to harm.