I’m beginning to believe that while this sucks now for the transgender community it’s for the best.
When you are a minority it is public awareness of your situation that is the most difficult impediment to progress, people who care don’t need to be convinced of your plight and people who don’t care can’t be convinced. All the right wing outrage is making this front and center but will eventually wash away and the majority of Americans who once saw a sexual deviant will see an American who has to piss. It will change their mind on not only this one silly issue, but the transgender community as a whole and will ultimately drag our nation up one more rung of the civilization ladder.
As it was with gay marriage, gay pride parades, etc.
I mean this crap started when just Charlotte made a local ordinance to allow it, the Right freaked and NC State government stepped in to overrule it, and eventually the Federal Government will overrule ALL State laws concerning this. Had the Right left well enough alone the Transgender community would have to continue scratching out civil rights at the local ordinance level.
Every single one of the objections to the whole bathroom issue going on has started with “Your wife and daughter are in danger”. None ever ask “Does your husband or son want to share a bathroom with a woman?” Until they do, this isn’t about protection or religious freedom or any of the other fake euphemisms that the right conjures up. This is about hate and discrimination, plain and simple. Nobody gives a shit about the occasional use of bathrooms until it became a political issue but like gay marriage, the GOP thinks they can find a wedge issue to win votes. They’ll lose this one eventually, just like gay marriage, just like interracial marriage, minority civil rights, women’s suffrage, etc. But they’ll go kicking and screaming and make a lot of people uncomfortable in the meantime
Calling a transgender person a “transvestite” means to imply that they’re just dressed up in a costume, not the actual gender they claim to be. It’s derogatory and purposefully insulting. It isn’t just a “definitional mistake”. It’s willful ignorance on the part of people who don’t want to believe that transgender people actually exist, but would rather insinuate that they’re all just perverted clowns who get their rocks off by fooling everyone else.
I think the response to the OP is, for the most part, deliberately myopic.
First let’s separate the merits of the OP’s claim from the merits of the underlying issue. The OP is obviously not a fan of treating transgendered individuals as having the gender they are, as opposed to the gender assigned them at birth. That’s unfortunate, but it has nothing to do with his inartfully – ok, downright ignorantly – phrased summary of the current situation and how unlikely this would have appeared to an observer in 2008.
So let’s imagine that a poster on this board had said, in 2008, “I think I’m going to vote for John McCain over Barack Obama. They’re really about equal in my eyes, but the one thing that really tips me towards McCain is my concern that if Obama gets in, by the end of his time in office, his administration will threaten to withdraw federal funds from any school that forces transgendered students to use the restroom appropriate to the gender they were assigned at birth. I strongly oppose that, and so I won’t be voting for Senator Obama.”
Does anyone truly contend that the bulk of replies to that poster would have been that he was mistaken? Many people might have said, “I WISH that would happen, but it never will, or at least not in the next four or eight years.” I doubt you’d have found anyone who would have agreed that this outcome was likely, and no one who would have acknowledged that the concern was realistic.
That seems to me to be almost undeniably true.
And of course the answer is: yeah. So what? The last eight years have been a social sea change for the rights of non-mainstream people when it comes to sex and gender. It’s true that even those who wished it would happen didn’t think it would.
But that wasn’t out of some concealment of some master plan. It just happened that society’s view took a tremendous leap in the prior eight years, one that no one saw coming so quickly…but many people expected would come eventually.
No, let’s not. Why should we feel bad about what fantasy versions of ourselves in an alternate universe would have said this year in response to what a fantasy version of astorian said in 2008? That’s a ridiculous discussion to have. If I’m going to discuss a fantasy version of myself in an alternate universe, there are going to be oceans of caramel sauce and lots of sex involved, not embarrassing admissions about how my fantasy alternate self didn’t correctly predict events.
Seriously, these bizarro universe accusations are truly terrible forms of argument.
That some the people they shit on would rise up and demand equal rights and a bit of justice. I mean, isn’t that basically what the fears in the OP reflect?
On a related note, Antonin Scalia asserted, in dissenting opinions to earlier SC decisions, that the reasoning of the majority would inevitably lead to gay marriage being found to be constitutionally guaranteed. The majorities asserted that this was not the case. Not only was Scalia shown to be correct, but his very words to that effect were cited by judges ruling that the majority decisions in those cases did require gay marriage recognition.
This is a sound and reasonable scenario, and also not remotely what the OP said or implied.
Since we’re just making shit up, how comparing these statements:
You’re delusional if you think Obama would ever address transgender bathroom issues.
Given that we’re middle of 2 wars and a global economic meltdown, I don’t see transgender bathroom issues becoming a political priority anything soon.
The OP travels back in time to read the hypothetical liberal’s mind and concludes #1 is the likely response, because this bolsters his retroactive vindication fantasy. Actual liberals in present company are telling you that #2 would have been their more likely response.
But neither scenario matters, because in 2008, whether liberal or conservative, transgender restroom issues were not a big enough part of mainstream political discussion to register as a point of contention.
I looked at your first cite, and that’s not what the majority asserted according to it. They asserted that they were not at that point ruling on SSM. Does your other cite offer proof that the majority asserted any such thing?
You know what this lefty would have said at the time?
That i don’t give a flying fuck if polygamy and trans rights were next. There’s no reason that transgender people shouldn’t be treated as human beings, and allowed to live as the gender they have chosen, and i also see no reason why consenting adults shouldn’t be allowed to marry more than one person.
Well, i have to admit, you’ve nailed it. You’ve got me.
I am willing to admit, here and now, that i might have expressed some skepticism that the bigotry and intolerance of the American fundamentalist right would be, by 2016, partially neutralized by a wave of reasonable and thoughtful public sentiment and policy decisions.
I concede that i would not have predicted, in 2008, all of the advances in areas of gender and sexuality over the past 8 years. I was pretty sure that gay marriage would come eventually—all of the polls and votes and statistical analysis showed Americans (especially younger Americans) moving in that direction—but it came more quickly than i thought, and the new defenses of transgender rights have also, happily, exceeded my original expectations. I was lamenting, on this very board, the passing of California’s Proposition 8 back in 2008.
I can’t honestly remember if i ever responded directly to anyone who made a “slippery slope” argument about gay rights leading to trans rights in 2008. I do know, however, that if someone had said to me “Pretty soon they’ll be letting transgender people use the bathroom of their chosen gender,” my main response would have been “So fucking what?”
On a related note, Antonin Scalia asserted, in dissenting opinions to earlier SC decisions, that the reasoning of the majority would inevitably lead to gay marriage being found to be constitutionally guaranteed. The majorities asserted that this was not the case. Not only was Scalia shown to be correct, but his very words to that effect were cited by judges ruling that the majority decisions in those cases did require gay marriage recognition.
On a related note, Antonin Scalia asserted, in dissenting opinions to earlier SC decisions, that the reasoning of the majority would inevitably lead to gay marriage being found to be constitutionally guaranteed. The majorities asserted that this was not the case. Not only was Scalia shown to be correct, but his very words to that effect were cited by judges ruling that the majority decisions in those cases did require gay marriage recognition.
On a related note, Fotheringay-Phipps asserted, in multiple posts to to the SDMB, that on a related note, Antonin Scalia asserted, in dissenting opinions to earlier SC decisions, that the reasoning of the majority would inevitably lead to gay marriage being found to be constitutionally guaranteed. The majorities asserted that this was not the case. Not only was Scalia shown to be correct, but his very words to that effect were cited by judges ruling that the majority decisions in those cases did require gay marriage recognition.
Edit: okay, I was skeptical of the cites the first time, the second time I just mocked them, but the third time? I give up! I’m convinced!