No one is saying that.
That is my impression of the position that Stonewall seem to be taking.
Your impression is incorrect.
Says the guy who first heard of them yesterday.
I mean, make it personal if you want, but evidence would be more persuasive.
This is also my impression of what the majority of posters here are saying.
Your impression is incorrect.
I think it’s reasonable to point out that you are very unlikely to be well enough informed on the subject to justify such a categorical statement.
Can you give an example of a deviation from your beliefs that you will agree is not bigoted?
I’ll refer you to Puzzlegal’s modnote to say, no.
I’m sure you think that’s reasonable, as it’s easier to adopt that position than to provide evidence to support the claim. Over the last day I’ve read a half-dozen article about them and about the current dustup, and none of those articles, including ones hostile to Stonewall, contained any evidence to back up your (or NB’s) claim.
I think we can discuss this in the abstract: we may not agree on what constitutes a “reasonable view”, but obviously we can agree that reasonable views (including a few that deviate from our own!) may exist.
Suppose someone who holds a reasonable view is wrongly accused of transphobia. What “different end result” do you envision? Why the deep concern? Would such a thing transform a genuinely tolerant person into an actual transphobe, when they were not before?
I mean, if I were falsely accused of racism, obviously I’d be upset. But it wouldn’t make me start hating all black people and advocating actual racism. Because I’m an adult, and I don’t start endorsing despicable views toward an entire class of people in spiteful irrational retaliation because my feelings have been hurt.
It seems to me that there are only grounds for concern if the allegedly reasonable views are in fact a veneer for an undercurrent of preexisting transphobia.
If your reasonable view gets labelled and accepted as transphobia then how will such a reasonable view be brought into the conversation and included as part of the resulting policy debate?
Can you honestly not see any downside to reasonable and widely held views being discounted out of hand due to the ad-hoc labelling of them as bigoted? At the very least it ensures a narrower discussion than is actually warranted.
As for you latter point, I don’t know that such a risk exists but an organisation that holds such a hard line may well risk losing support from such reasonable people who don’t much like being told that they are something they clearly are not.
My own response in such a situation would not be to turn 180 degrees in my views but rather be to support a different group who are more open to discussion and slower to hurl unwarranted accusations.
What civil rights have been gained as the result of compromise? I’m sure there’s one or two examples, but for the most part it’s the result of an uncompromising demand, an absolute refusal to accept anything less than statutory equality.
And for the article’s author, all of this risk you state is “not theoretical” is very much theoretical until you prove its existence. Outside of the fact that there are horrible human beings who are also transwomen, when you have hundreds of millions of women exposed to a ‘risk’ for years and years, there must be examples of that risk coming to fruition. Not the one example you picked off the cherry tree from 3 years ago, but many of them, a statistically significant number of them.
This is where the anti side loses me, they are making clear non-bigoted claims about the safety of women, but not supporting those claims with data. If hundreds of millions of women were put at risk every day, and they have been for years, we should be able to see it, if the risk is real and significant.
It matters very much whether this risk is real or theoretical. Bigots have used theoretical risks to justify their views forever, and they always use theoretical risks, their claims are never supported by unbiased scientific review of the facts.
Every person in history espousing a bigoted viewpoint has felt that they have a “reasonable argument” for their bigotry. No one’s ever said, “The Carthaginians are fine people, fundamentally no different from our own, and there’s no reason they should be treated any differently, but fuck 'em, I’m going to discriminate against them anyway, just for lolz.”
If they are genuinely reasonable views then that will happen, and nobody can prevent it.
In any rights movement, there are always fringe crazies. Our own beloved Huey Freeman comes to mind. He threw around all kinds of nonsense, but his views neither turned me into a racist, made me less inclined to be an ally, nor silenced what I think are my far more reasonable views on the matter.
Obviously we will disagree on whether the views Stonewall are expressing are extreme fringe views. I don’t think they are. But even if they were, so what? For anyone genuinely concerned with opposing racism, the fight isn’t with Huey Freeman, it’s with actual racists. You shrug off the crazy and focus on what’s important. Likewise, for any true supporter of trans rights, the important fight is not tone policing those on the fringe of your own movement for fear that someone might take offense.
Sure, if you’re genuinely supportive of trans rights but disagree with some of Stonewall’s positions, go do that.
But to come back to reality from this theoretical discussion… I’m highly skeptical that those who are so deeply concerned here are in any way genuinely supportive of trans rights. They are looking for rationalizations and justifications for their bigotry.
Part of what’s tricky is that the entire conversation is over bigotry: what comprises reasonable discrimination, and what comprises unreasonable discrimination? By definition, the latter category is bigotry (setting aside pedantic dictionarial appeals).
In this specific sense, yes, I might think people who disagree with me espouse a bigoted position, because we’re discussing what a bigoted position is.
The OP seems to want to deny Stonewall the room to stake out a position on what anti-trans bigotry even consists of. Or, if they want to stake one out, it must agree absolutely with the OP’s position, or else they’re “risking all they have fought for.”
That’s absurd.
Of course, a claim of “reasonable argument” is no defence against bigotry.
By the same token a claim of “bigotry” does not automatically trump a reasonable argument.
What matters is the content of the argument.
Yup. Only arguments about what is actually bigoted are verboten in this thread, so the only real discussion is whether Stonewall should call 'em as they see 'em, or whether anti-trans activists are correct in telling them what a terrible strategic error this is.
Agree completely.
It won’t just be “anti-trans activists” telling them it is a strategic error, unless you think that anyone telling them that is automatically “anti-trans”
Perhaps not automatically. But history tells us to view anyone with a tone policing agenda with great skepticism.