The OP.
So you don’t think that the progress on gay rights has created the necessary space to advance transgender issues?
Do you think we could be talking about transgender issues without the progress we have had on gay issues?
That is not the dismissive attitude I was referring to.
So your contention is that this is the result of a change in the conservative focus rather than a change in the liberal focus, right?
You realize that the north Carolina law was a response to a Charlotte law right?
You seem to be of the opinion that your mind is completely separate from everything that goes on in your physical body. Sorry, but that’s just not how it works. Hormones can definitely change how you “feel” about things. Heck you even admitted that, but somehow your gender identity is not one of those things?
Gender identity before puberty is so much different than adult gender identity. Why try to muck with nature while it’s still developing? Sure, there are a few genuinely trans kids that would benefit, but many more ambiguous pre-pubescent kids would become happy adults if we didn’t try to mess with gender identity before they’d finished developing. (the idea of puberty blockers is really messed up imo)
There are a lot of drugs used to treat psychological disorders that are not appropriate to be prescribed to children because of their developmental state. This is no different to me.
Not a contemporary example of any such “dismissive attitude”. The OP is merely claiming, like you, that there were unspecified and undocumented “dismissive attitudes” floating around in the early days of controversy on gay rights.
I’m asking you for a cite for the actual existence of such alleged “dismissive attitudes” at that time and what they were actually saying.
[QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi]
Do you think we could be talking about transgender issues without the progress we have had on gay issues?
[/quote]
Of course. Take the example of India, for instance, which in recent years has combined regress on recognizing gay rights with progress in recognizing transgender rights. In 2013, the Indian Supreme Court set aside a 2009 ruling by the Delhi High Court that found criminalization of homosexual activity (which was effected in 1860 under the British colonial administration) to be a violation of fundamental rights, and in 2015 the Indian parliament rejected a bill attempting to decriminalize same-sex relationships. Same-sex marriage is not legal in India.
At the same time, recognition of transgender status in India has been increasing: in 2014 the Indian Supreme Court declared transgender to be an official third gender, along with male and female, in Indian law. The state of Kerala in south India very recently became the first state government to provide free gender-reassignment surgery in state hospitals to transgender people.
Iran, to take another (and perhaps rather surprising) example, is famously fiercely prohibitive of homosexual activity and relationships—to the extent of punishing them by various means up to and including the death penalty—but remarkably liberal in recognizing transgender identity and providing gender reassignment treatment. As of 2008, Iran performed more gender-reassignment surgeries than any nation in the world except Thailand.
**Transgender identity and same-sex sexual orientation are two different issues, and there’s nothing that intrinsically makes either one of them a “gateway issue” for the other. **
Yup.
Hey Una, as a buddy and someone who is in awe of the fact that you saw a live oppossum, I wanted to give you a heads up.
You do know you’re trying to discuss serious issues with someone so blindingly stupid (or trollish) that he angrily demanded a cite that Jews were persecuted before the late 1890s, right?
I mean, if you want to waste your time debating one of the dumbest, mouth-breather in the history of the SDMB, hey, more power to you…but just in case you weren’t aware. 
Not according to the transgender people who have actually had the experience of going through puberty while trans, at least.
[QUOTE=Sterling Archer]
Gender identity before puberty is so much different than adult gender identity.
[/quote]
How so? Says who? For me personally, puberty didn’t change a thing about the fundamental fact that I identified as a girl rather than as a boy. It gave me some new experiences related to being a girl, but it didn’t in the least change the basic fact of “girlness” for me.
And according to transgender people, puberty didn’t change anything about the fact that they identified as other than their birth-assigned gender, either. Developmental psychologists seem to agree. So who are all these people who allegedly identify with a different gender before puberty and then are redirected by “puberty hormones” to identifying with their birth-assigned gender?
[QUOTE=Sterling Archer]
Sure, there are a few genuinely trans kids that would benefit, but many more ambiguous pre-pubescent kids would become happy adults if we didn’t try to mess with gender identity before they’d finished developing.
[/quote]
Where are all these “ambiguous” kids who are being somehow forced into the “wrong” gender identity or having their gender identity “messed with” before puberty? All I see is a bunch of kids who are temporarily uncertain or uncommitted regarding gender, who aren’t being forced into any kind of trans identity, and a much smaller set of kids who are genuinely transgender and who deserve to have their cons/pers/insistent identification respected.
Again: I don’t think the left has dismissed transphobia as paranoia. I think the left has been advocating for trans rights for a quarter century. THAT DOESN’T MEAN THE LEFT HAS BEEN SAYING IT’S UP NEXT. Just that the left has been saying, yeah, this is a real thing.
Goddamn, are you for real? You think astorian’s post was written “back in the day”? Seriously, are you a cautionary tale, what lance armstrong would post like if he were really really stoned?
And you accuse ME of not reading for comprehension?
I’m trying to understand how you think it went down in the eighties.
Left: We’re all for LGBT rights! That stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights!
Right: We think you might be for transgender rights.
Left: Now you’re just being paranoid!
I agree with DA that you’re not reading for comprehension here.
The claim is that the left was more focused on gay rights, and the right said “gay rights will lead to trans rights” and the left said that assertion by the right was paranoia. (And, while the left may have supported trans rights back then, it also maintained that it was paranoia to insist that gay rights would inevitably lead to trans rights.)
Leaving aside whether that’s correct or not (or of any relevance), that’s what’s being claimed, so your repeated insistence that you “don’t think the left has dismissed transphobia as paranoia” seems to indicate a lack of comprehension on your part.
I recall slippery slope arguments that gay marriage or gay rights would lead to legal protection for bestiality, pedophilia, and polygamy, but I don’t recall any slippery slope arguments that gay marriage/gay rights would lead to legal protection for trans people (much less any dismissal of that worry by pro-gay-rights liberals). Do you have a cite, or is this just from your memory?
I’m not making any such claim. I specifically said “Leaving aside whether that’s correct or not (or of any relevance), that’s what’s being claimed”.
What that means is that I personally am not making the claim that anyone made that particular slippery slope argument. I’m just saying that that’s the claim that others (e.g. the OP, or DA) are making in this thread. Therefore, LHOD constantly repeating in response that he “doesn’t think the left has dismissed transphobia as paranoia” indicates that he didn’t understand the claim being made (which has nothing to do with whether transphobia is or is not paranoia).
It has everything to do with transphobia. Being worried that gay rights will lead to trans rights is only a worry if you’re transphobic. Seriously, is this difficult?
And no: nobody on the left dismissed this argument from the right, in any sense that I’ve ever seen in my life, and I was volunteering with ACT UP in 1991 in high school.
Oh, for fuck’s sake…I won’t continue this tangent, except to note that we are in the Pit and you shouldn’t be so sensitive. 
I am aware of the timeline, and I’ve even read the ordinance. But I am of the opinion that Charlotte’s ordinance, as it pertained to bathroom usage, did not change the status quo (which was that people used the bathroom which corresponded to their gender). Rather, it codified it. What do I base this on? After the Charlotte ordinance was passed, nobody would have to act differently than before. It was the North Carolina state law that led to the absurd requirement that obviously masculine transgendered men should use the ladies’ room and obviously feminine transgendered women should use the men’s room.
It is my understanding that the ADA analysis wouldn’t allow for a person to claim an undue burden based on their subjective feelings of being around the subject person. In other words, if a person without legs wanted to get a job, and the only accommodation was to be able to use a larger desk (which the company already had) so they could fit their wheelchair under it, the company couldn’t refuse to hire them on the basis that seeing a person without legs made the other co-workers uncomfortable, or grossed them out.
Similarly, a transgender person wants to use the facilities that already exist. If the “undue burden” that decision creates is a funny feeling in the people around them, then the burden is not undue and it’s not something the law should recognize. (And I’ll remind you that our little spat occurred because you were asked to name a harm that would accrue from a transgender person using a bathroom, and you responded sarcastically, which I take to mean that there really is no recognized harm).
Maybe not in Iran but I think there is a connection here.
Then doesn’t that contradict your premise that the conservatives are the ones pushing the issue?
pffft.
Is that the post where someone on your side of the argument had to correct your straw man:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17615139&postcount=1167
and the moderator felt for some reason that you hadn’t actually broken the rules of great debates but just got really, really close with your straw man?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17615678&postcount=1187
Chasing me around the board with two year old posts is not really a show of strength is it? Why not just call me an anti-Semite for having a critical view of Israel and be done with it?
Oh shit, you’re right. You can take the boy out of great debates but you can’t take the great debates out of the boy.
:smack:
I can’t defend the North Carolina law.
Correct.
I agree, there is no harm from the transgender use of a bathroom that would not occur from the general public’s use of a bathroom. I think that under the ADA standard (if we adopted by the courts) or something like it, then we would strike down the North Carolina law and go back to a simpler time when people just used the bathroom they were more comfortable with.
We now have a possum living in our woodpile in the back yard. One of our dogs scared it on Saturday, and then (I guess) felt so badly that it started cuddling it and…licking it to groom it (shudder).
I’ll work with, educate, or debate anyone until I believe they’re fucking with me, so I’m going to keep an open mind.
Nope. As Moriarty has noted, the Charlotte ordinance didn’t give transgender people any “special rights” that they didn’t have before.
The use of gendered restrooms according to one’s self-identified gender, with no policing of gender identification on the part of the state or the facility, has been the default situation everywhere until extremely recently. This is very different from, e.g., same-sex marriage, which no gay people had any kind of access to until a relatively short while ago.
If conservatives were being logically consistent about this “concern”, then they would be making a fuss about (cisgender) homosexuals using the restroom of the gender they identify with, too. After all, homosexual people are notoriously sexually attracted to people of their own gender, and here they are being freely allowed into restrooms with other people of their own gender for them to ogle or creep on or assault. :eek: And there are many many more homosexuals than transgender people! :eek: :eek:
But unfortunately for conservatives, popular opinion on gay rights and gay acceptance has progressed to the point where it would have a net damaging effect for them to freak out about letting homosexuals into restrooms. Almost nobody these days finds homosexuals weird or scary enough to fear their presence in a restroom.
The concept of transgender people, though, still strikes many people as weird and scary enough to justify fear about them and heightened scrutiny and shunning of them. So, even though:
transgender people are an extremely small segment of the population, and
many of them (unlike homosexuals) aren’t even attracted to other members of the gender they identify with anyway, and
most of them would seem far more out-of-place and alarming in the restroom of their birth-assigned gender than in the restroom of the gender they identify with, nonetheless…
…the new conservative schtick is that they need to be policed and identified, because otherwise some illogically hypothesized and nebulously stated Bad Consequences might happen. :rolleyes:
I appreciate your attitude towards my ignorance. I think we are still at the stage where the general public is ignorant enough about transgender issues that you can’t really fault someone for their ignorance… yet.
Like I said, it is only recently that I realized that transgender was not an extreme form of homosexuality. I am still grappling with the differences between issues related to the transgender community versus the homosexual community. Its all still pretty fuzzy to me.
Then why did Charlotte pass a law? Shits and giggles?
Yes I pointed this out earlier. It doesn’t make sense to be afraid of sexual assault by a transgender woman who is much less likely to be attract6ed to women than a lesbian same for gay men in men’s rooms.
The backlash against the conservative persecution of gays in today’s information age probably did more for normalizing homosexuality than if they had just left it alone and just talked shit about them behind their backs.
And this became an issue because Charlotte passed a law (perhaps it was a good law but they made the first move).
No, as Moriarty noted, it was a very typical version of the sort of legislation that has usually been perceived primarily as a gay-rights measure: i.e., an expanded nondiscrimination ordinance that specified that “businesses in Charlotte can’t discriminate against gay, lesbian or transgender customers, in addition to long-standing protections based on race, age, religion and gender”.
The inclusion of “T” in the “LGBT” provisions of the ordinance is and has long been standard in gay-rights-focused nondiscrimination legislation. As this ACLU map shows, the vast majority of state anti-discrimination legislation relating to gay rights has included “gender identity” along with “sexual orientation” among its protected statuses right from the get-go.
Making a big fuss specifically over the “T” in the NC pushback against Charlotte’s bog-standard and unremarkable LGBT nondiscrimination ordinance, as though transgender rights are some kind of recently emergent threat, is just a tactical play on the part of conservatives. There’s nothing about including transgender rights under the umbrella of gay rights that is in any way new or groundbreaking in the dread “liberal agenda”.