…people have zero obligation to engage with people they disagree with. This isn’t political correctness. Not at all. That’s just life.
And people have also always been allowed to tell people they disagree with to “shut up” as well. That isn’t political correctness, either.
And if people like Matt Walsh, whom I cited earlier, say things like it should “be illegal for doctors to (transition someone) do this to anyone of any age”, then it isn’t “politically correct” to decide not to engage him in debate. And it isn’t “politically correct” to tell him to shut-up. Matt isn’t owed politeness. And one shouldn’t have to debate your own existence.
I find that to be a sad thing to say.
I would have supposed there is a difference between not choosing to " not engage" with someone and trying to ban his books. Am I mistaken?
…why?
Matt is advocating for genocide. He wants transgender people to stop existing. He made a “documentary” to promote his views and (his proxies) are spending thousands of dollars getting that “documentary” in front of millions of eyeballs.
Why would I be obligated to be polite to him?
Whatever happened to free speech?
How will you feel when your speech is unpopular?
You seem to be all over the place with your arguments. Can you clarify what you mean here?
Geocide would be mass murder. When I call for free public education I am not advocating for genocide against the uneducated. When I say I think all people should be vaccinated, I am not calling for genocide of the unvaccinated. If I call for everyone in American to learn Spanish, I am not envisioning the genocide of monoglots.
Some deaf people insist that cochlear implants should be banned as they are destroying deaf culture. some Gay people were opposed to freedom to marry as it would force Gay people to assimilate. These are not genocides.
I believe a couple of the Nordic countries prohibit the use of some “gender affirming” treatments on the very young for health and consent reasons. These countries are not engaging n genocide.
When my speech is unpopular, I will feel just as I do now. Speech ought not to be suppressed or banned without very strong reasons.
…nope.
Mass murder is mass murder.
Genocide is genocide.
When you call for the halting of transition to everybody seeking to transition, you are calling for the end of transgender people.
It really is as simple as that. There is no comparison between this and “free public education”.
Cite for which Nordic countries please. (not that it matters, because Matt doesn’t want to stop “gender affirming” treatments on the very young: he wants to make it illegal for anyone of any age to transition.)
Fortunately: the ACLU is around to fight for your right to free speech.
A cite? My pleasure; Cite. 1, Cite 2.
Thank you for pointing out the United Nations definition. I did not realize they were in charge of defining things.
At the danger of sealioning, is it genocide to eliminate people with Downs Syndrome, as Iceland is doing? Cite 3…
…what dreadful, hateful, unscientific policies.
Well somebody has to do it.
I’m not sure what this has to do with the ACLU or transgender people? I think we have taken this sidebar as far as it will go to be honest, if you decide to open up another thread on this, I’ll probably not engage with you on it.
I would have thought it has something to do with eliminating entire classes of people, you know genocide. Have a swell day.
Throughout that article they seem to be mistaking “Fact” with “Opinion”. It isn’t particularly persuasive and the content is riddled with strawmen and misrepresentation. e.g.
Excluding women who are trans hurts all women. It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” woman
The first part of that is pure opinion and the second flies in the face of the well-intentioned moves by various sports to balance inclusivity, fairness and safety. None of which are relevant to being a “real” woman (whatever that is) or too good but is searching for ways in which a competitive line can be drawn.
If females decide that such a competition category is to remain then I’m personally in favour of the various sports researching the degree to which post-puberty male anatomical advantage (which is massive) is retained, and deciding where the line is to be drawn regarding those concepts of “inclusivity, fairness and safety” Where there is no advantage, let them compete, where there is an advantage they cannot.
If that means some athletes who have transitioned past that point cannot compete as females, then so be it. The Paralympics make those nuanced performance category decisions all the time and the world seems able to keep turning.
The FINA decision yesterday seems to be a reasonable compromise. They aren’t banning transgender women from competing but they are setting certain conditions for them to be able to do so.
Has anybody considered that, as a society, maybe we give too much of a shit about athletics relative to other areas of human achievement? No? Okay, I’ll show myself out.
Seriously, though, there’s a reason this is a cause célèbre for bigots. It has numbers. Real, honest-to-goodness, indisputable numbers. Science-backed bigotry is the motherfucking dream for these people, and the amount of time it takes to run or swim a certain distance is so much more solid and indisputable than IQ scores or cranial shape.
This is a strawman and doesn’t help you make your point. “Gaining an advantage” and “being better than every single cis woman” are not the same. If a trans althete goes from middle of the road to, say, a consistent top ten, the bigots’ point is still being made because a ‘real’ woman is being pushed out of a top ten spot. Any relative improvement in performance is fuel for their fire.
Like it or not, winning matters. Women’s sport may not be a big deal for you but it is for a lot of people and it certainly is for those who make their living from it.
The fact that bigots will seize on scientific facts to make a wider point or to try and advocate for wider restrictions doesn’t actually change those facts, as uncomfortable as they may make some people feel.
I think we have to meet the facts as they lie and take a reasonable approach. In 99% of the world’s interactions with transgender individuals there is no need to draw any line or create any boundaries or restrictions. There are however, some areas where a reasonable argument can be made that we should.
Some people are fundamentally opposed to anything of the sort and consider that to even raise the possibility actually is bigotry. There is little hope of a resolution that makes everyone happy as long as that state of affairs continues.
It doesn’t. But when you find yourself aligned with bigots, even through no particular fault of your own, it’s helpful to take a step back and consider why. I had a number of very frustrating conversations with Trump supporters in 2016 who stuck their fingers in their ears and went “la la la la” about all the nazis who were suddenly openly on their side.
I don’t give a particular shit about sports in general, no. Sports in this country are largely a meat grinder designed to extract dollars from society in exchange for the health of young people. It’s positively vampiric.
But the only point I was really trying to make is this: most fearmongering over trans folks is about breathless “What If?!?!?!” situations that never happen. Sports are a convenient cat’s paw for bigots because the data doesn’t even have to be massaged to do the work that they need done.
Never Mind. Mistaken.
What do you mean “consider why”? I’m talking about objective facts that aren’t subject to change regardless of whether people choose to take harmful actions as a result.
Steve here has a pretty good take on the situation IMO, noting that numerous genetic or other innate physiological factors are ignored in sports, making the arbitrary focus on gender even more silly.
What facts? Call me when trans athletes actually start dominating womens sports.
Look, there are so few, that the law of averages say none of them will be exceptional in sports. Sure in a field of 1000, with one trans athlete, that person might stand out at 450 instead of 500.
There are genomes that seem to make runners better. Should we do a DNA test and ban those since they have a unfair advantage?
Is athletic performance determined by genetics?: MedlinePlus Genetics.
In some families they have the funds to hire a expert trainer. Ban those too?
It hasn’t been a issue and I will bet it never will be. Maybe about the time runners start having their legs cut off to get those running prosthetics.
It is not a strawman at all. The argument for why trans women shouldn’t be in sports is entirely about them having some sort of advantage over everyone else. If there is even one cis woman in their own division who beats them, it proves that entire narrative wrong.
Your logic only makes sense if the person is already admitting to being bigoted towards trans people. Only then would only the cisgender women who don’t make it matter. But the whole point of the trans athletics issue is to pretend it’s not about bigotry. So they frame it as it being unfair because trans women have an advantage. Hence that is the argument I’m going to rebut.
If it forces them to replace that argument with a bigoted argument like the one you showed, then that’s all the better, as we can then say “why do only the feelings of the cis women matter?” It’s good to force people to take off the facade and actually admit that they are motivated by bigotry.
And, for the record, I don’t make strawmen. I don’t argue against positions that I do not see happen. My argument may possibly be bad (though I argue it isn’t this time), but a strawman is specifically about making up an argument in order to knock it down. And I do not do so.
I’ve been a part of of trans spaces for a while now, as an ally. I am privy to the comments that get made and the more organized attempts to attack trans people. I keep up with the current TERF arguments, and how they sneakily try to present themselves as just concerned citizens.
I didn’t make up this argument. It is the main argument: that trans people have some sort of inherent advantage over cis women when it comes to athletics. Hell, I literally was responding to someone who claimed that in this thread.
As long as people think it is a forgone conclusion that trans women are athletically superior, we can’t actually figure this out. So I will rebut it every chance I get in every way possible.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment that this is an overstated issue, and not actually a problem, it is true that one trans female has dominated her sport - Lia Thomas in swimming.
But is it because she has the benefit of male puberty? Or is she just a dominant athlete with innate skills? I think it’s absurd to postulate that she is transgender just to get an advantage in the pool, and her gender history is but one of many qualities that make her who she is.
But she does serve as that example of the “Oh no! Women who used to be men will dominate women’s sports!”
“Having an advantage over everyone” is not the same as “automatically winning every single competition.” Discovering that a trans woman isn’t winning 1st place in every single competition is like ‘discovering’ that trans man aren’t, in fact, lurking in bathrooms to molest young boys. Of course they aren’t. The accusations and “what ifs?” are going to keep flying because you can’t logic away this kind of bigotry.
Consider your virtue acknowledged and admired.
Suit yourself.