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Can You Help? I’m Confused About Transgender and Women’s Rights
As a lawyer, I try to understand the arguments for the “other side” regardless of whether I might agree with them. Being able to argue my opponent’s position sometimes reveals opportunities for agreement or settlement, and highlights weaknesses in my own position that I may need to shore up.
But I’m having trouble with recent developments in the “transgender” rights, specifically the court in Canada that is considering whether to require female employees of a grooming salon to view and to handle the private parts of a man who apparently wants to pretend he is a woman, and the US “Equality” Act that has been passed by the House of Representatives that would require women and girls to be exposed to men in women’s spaces such as restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, and showers.
In 2017 (just two years ago), the “Me Too” movement insisted that it is wrong for women and girls to be involuntarily exposed to men’s “private parts” or to require women and girls to expose their own “private parts” to men. The participants of the “Me Too” movement told us that such actions constituted morally wrong (and in some cases criminal) sexual harassment.
Now, the Canadian court and the US Congress are considering laws that would require women and girls to subject themselves to viewing men’s “private parts” if the man chooses to expose them in personal grooming businesses, in locker rooms, in bathrooms, and perhaps other places. In some cases (locker room, changing room, shower), the women and girls would be forced to expose their own “private parts” to this person who looks to them to be a man.
The women and girls see the same result whether it’s Harvey Weinstein or some guy who for some reason thinks he’s a woman. The women and girls do not know what is going through the man’s mind. Also, note that most demands for “transgender rights” insist that no one can question an individual’s “transgender” status or require that the person make any affirmative assertion or offer any proof about a “transgender” status.
I can’t see any interpretation other than that these transgender rights laws would require women and girls to submit to actions that have been deemed wrongful sexual harassment.
But I do not hear the “Me Too” proponents screaming “no” about the current “transgender rights” demands. That lack of outrage causes me to suspect that I’m missing some logical consistency between the demands of women to be free from exposure to men’s privates and the “transgender rights” demands that women must submit to exposure to men’s privates.
What logical thread am I missing that allows these two systems of rights to coexist? And if there is an inherent conflict, why am I not hearing more objections from the “Me Too” movement?
Published in Culture
Apparently Alan Dershowitz is as guilty as you are of using logic. Twenty years ago he asked as a matter of law (not morality) why an age of consent law was constitutional if someone younger could agree to an abortion without parental consent. So the child was too young to consent to sex but not too young to consent to that particular operation. For asking what the constitutional principle involved my be, he is twitterated as a pedophile.
Search Amazon for the effect of Nair on male balls. A little Bengay mixed with the Nair, or rust remover mixed with the Nair, and I think the point would be made quite nicely.
Is it because once they’ve been deflowered the damage has already been done?
Aside from the authoritarian power component inherent to all leftist positions, the key point to the new think for true believers is that there is no such thing as man and woman, that biological differences between male and female are mostly irrelevant, and that biological instincts are easy to control and manipulate. This has been a rapid development and even many current participants in the intersectional olympics haven’t caught on to the new reality yet. TERFs have caught an inkling and are resisting, but too late; they are well on the way to being marginalized as hateful bigots. In this utopia many of these classifications will be washed away nevermore to be used as tools of oppression. Gays and women hardest hit. No relief in sight for cis-men; they will simply have to stop repressing themselves and pick their unique spot on the spectrum and stop identifying as men (an antiquated term which is a tool of oppression)..
Perhaps hedge clippers in a glass case on the wall inside the women’s locker room: “Break Glass in the Event of a Gender Confusion Emergency.”
I’ll grimace in the presence of trans people all I want. They can do nothing to me.
And if Mark Regnerus predicts it it must be true! FWIW, most of the gay couples I know are now married. My acquaintances tend to be of a certain age, so maybe that’ll change among the younger set. I don’t know. But neither does Mark Regnerus.
Full Size Tabby,
In reading your wonderful statement:
But I do not hear the “Me Too” proponents screaming “no” about the current “transgender rights” demands. That lack of outrage causes me to suspect that I’m missing some logical consistency between the demands of women to be free from exposure to men’s privates and the “transgender rights” demands that women must submit to exposure to men’s privates.
I am reminded of this graphic I will post below. The members of the New Left announce that they are part of The Resistance and The Revolution, yet fail to see that for the past 2 1/2 years, they have embraced in lock steps each new fad, as the Party Leaders and Soros toss out one issue after another for them to support.
The most militant people I know on the Left are progressive lesbians. They want open borders and massive uncontrolled immigration from both Mexico and Muslim nations. Yet just three summers ago, 2 million Catholic Mexicans marched around Mexico City, decrying attempts by the LBGTxyz community to legalize gay marriage. Of course, traditional Muslims do even more rabidly hostile activities against gay people than mere marches.
Apparently, unless Soros, Pelosi or AOC brings such situations to their attention, they don’t consider the ramifications of their support for these immigrants.
But
I stopped reading comments assuming they’d continue in the same vein, but I’m gonna suggest something.
Perhaps if rather than mockery you took seriously the feelings of people who experience themselves to be transgender you could talk about them in a way that made possible the working out of reasonable accommodations and the prevention of absurd overreach such as the ball waxing demands discussed in the OP.
Just calling trans women men doesn’t change the fact that while biologically male, they experience their gender in a way that’s different from the way most men do and that makes life in a social world that puts a pretty bright line between male and female quite difficult.
These fellow citizens and fellow humans have been dealt a difficult hand. Decency requires that they be treated with sympathy and respect, even as we might insist that there are limits to how their situation need be accommodated by the rest of us. The disrespectful and mocking treatment, and the denial that there are even interests on their side to be considered, provokes the overreach you all are so appalled by and perpetuates a cycle of reciprocal contempt. It’s simply unhelpful, unchristian, unAmerican and unworthy of people who fancy themselves decent and reasonable people.
Always the safest place to keep it.
Sure it is a complicated nuanced argument he is making. The survey data is looking at shows that most homosexual men are not any more interested in monogamy then before Same Sex marriage. However the link between marriage and monogamy remains extremely strong, meaning people of any orientation not interested in monogamy are not that interested in marriage.
So, right now marriage for same sex couples is a real cultural high and achievements many wish to be married for many and varied symbolic reasons. As that effect fades so will same sex marriage.
So more specifically Lesbians will continue to marry, at least at higher rates then Gay men but divorce at very high rates (compared to heterosexuals or any other group)
A much smaller subset of Gay men will continue to marry and enjoy it. Gay men that want marriage seem to be about as stable as heterosexual couples but their is less desire for marriage over all then with straight men and women.
A much larger majority won’t bother with marriage any longer because it doesn’t really give them anything they want that bad.
The fact that same sex couples marry will remain legal but fade as an issue and people will hardly mention it anymore, even in the homosexual communities.
With homosexuals being a small percentage of the population with an even smaller percentage marrying their effect on marriage will be very small indeed.
He thinks this is likely based on the data he is looking at not a certain fact.
That may not make you any happier but I think I have presented a fuller and clearer picture of his point. Perhaps I should say again, He is not saying that Same Sex marriage will be made illegal or people will be hostile to it but it will simply no longer be a mainstream issue in the homosexual or straight community. Just something that goes on with the people that want to enjoy it.
By the by that is what he sees happening with straight marriage too fewer people engaging in it over all but a larger minority continuing to practice it with a growing cultural bias against divorce.
I think my attempt to explain the reasoning (to understand it) is an attempt to get us to address the issues as they are actually represented and not as I might characterize them (perhaps dismissively or mockingly). If we are to avoid losing a battle that they aren’t actually fighting then we need to understand what the battlefield really is.
Sympathy and respect are fine. Radical transformation of society based on faulty science and faulty philosophy and faulty political science is not fine. At some point arguing against the radical transformation is taken as de facto disrespect. I’m not sure if that tension can be avoided.
As a Christian I agree with treating others with kindness, respect, and compassion. As is so often the case, though, one man’s compassion/sympathy is another man’s condescension; one woman’s respect is not enough for another woman who is seeking imposition of something radical.
Amen! When someone believes they are born with the wrong parts whether gender or the condition that makes people think two arms are “unbalanced and ugly” or to sincerely desire the amputation of leg compassion is the way forward. People are different and their brains work differently. Different kinds of therapy should be applied that best suit the person so troubled. There is no one sized fits all approach to these things.
The politicizing the issues is bad for everyone and makes hard to treat every case with the compassion that it deserves and it shoe horns in people that troubled in different ways but see the transgender movement as a way to exert power and control over others or as a way to just make other people uncomfortable. Such people exist and find ways to manifest anti-social tendencies in a lot of different ways. The fact that these particular issues are popular now and cause people discomfort attract bad actors to these issues.
In some cases a person should be allowed to be a gender they were not born in and that will actually help make them function and contribute to society. Accommodation, motivated by our compassion, should be the norm for such a person.
Glorifying this great difficulty in someone’s life as a positive good that should be celebrated is I think deeply unhelpful to all concerned and gives cover to bigoted hateful people that are freaked out by transgendered persons and just want them to go away.
Compassion, therapy and treatment should guide all our behaviors in such circumstances and should be aimed a making everyone as happy and as helpful as they can be in our society. There needs to be no over arching narrative or any claims that any one therapy is always better for every person.
And I’m sure all this mind reading by a guy who’s got more contempt for gay people than he does knowledge about them will prove to be true. Look I’m not a big fan of treating big social predictions about 10 or 15 years out by anybody as gospel. We all tend to think we know more than we do. But Mark Regnerus’s opinions about gay people belong in the reject bin even by the standards of rank speculation. He’s never had an opinion about us that wasn’t highly motivated by his distaste for us.
Perhaps it’s unhelpful, but that seems to be the lifecycle. It also gives cover to identitarians to villify anyone not completely on board the enthusiasm train as hateful bigots. Compassion? Therapy? It’s not a sickness to be cured or overcome. Just stop oppressing them.
Gotcha.
We have undoubtedly reached a point from which it is very difficult to have a respectful conversation. There is deep distrust, and seemingly, disrespect, on both sides. But neither SoCons nor transgender people (nor other sexual minorities) are going away. So somebody needs to start reaching out a hand without an extended middle finger if our system is going to survive. I’m sick of the contempt on both sides and the left wing gays I come into contact with hear the same thing directed at the contempt they have for people like you.
That attitude is the exact one that is really, really unhelpful. Anyone who believes the parts they were born with are somehow wrong or unnatural is in trouble. Pretending that is a good thing, to hate a part of your own anatomy, is the very unhelpful stance that makes it hard to show the compassion and care we should show.
It encourages bad actors on all sides and heightens serious tension that should be diffused and makes it harder and harder to give the share and show the compassion that we should. It is down right evil. This is exactly the kind of issue that the current versions of the Progressives like though. The Progs are not interested in the well being of the Transgendered they are worried about who they will harm politically by exploiting the Transgendered.
A reasonable comment. It would be good if both sides attempted to be reasonable and accommodating.
I am as guilty as anyone of looking at unreasonable comments from one side and reacting with unreason of my own.
There are limits to accommodation. I do not think genetic men should be allowed to participate in women’s sports or go into women’s restrooms. Otherwise, I agree that respect would probably result in better outcomes.
Agreed. Except that I don’t want gays, transgenders, or anyone else to go away. I just don’t want to discard basic assumptions of science, philosophy, and political science which have served humanity and western civilization well for forever; I don’t want to embrace radical and radically incorrect views of reality. As seems to be the pattern, even wanting to discuss these assumptions is too much for the zeitgeist to bear. I am a bigot even though I’m not. Just reaching out instead of wholehearted embrace is taken as a middle finger. I’m attempting a disinterested intellectual conversation; some cannot separate the issues from the personal. And I get it. I just don’t see a solution to that tension. And you’re right that it only festers. I would suggest that liberty is the solution, but alas many people think pursuit of liberty is just cover for bigotry too.
I can’t tell you I really understand it either. But probably better to let transgender people decide how best to deal with their own challenges. We don’t know what’s best for them.
Perfect.
Biology is fact. Philosophy and political science aren’t. Tradition has something to teach and perhaps shouldn’t be lightly discarded, but sometimes discarded it should be. Western civilization’s treatment of sexual minorities is nothing to be proud of and I think clearly needed to change. The question isn’t whether it needed to change but by how much.
By the way, are you watching the debate? I think Bernie’s going to have a coronary. :)
The oppressed never want accommodation. They want to stop being oppressed. Your reasonable accommodation will be steamrolled eventually because it’s not accommodation – it’s just a lesser oppression which is a good development in the short run but unacceptable in the long run.
Either you will be allowed to continue with your conception of reality (which others claim is oppressing them) and they will have to adapt themselves to your right to “your truth”, or your conception of reality will be made verboten in favor of the new reality or a version of nihilism.
Did the comments go as you suspected they would?
Which comments? If you mean this debate, yes. They all sound like the same old same old. They’re trying to out socialist each other.
Agreed. And we can certainly treat people better without discarding ideas which have also served us well. We can certainly treat people better without discarding clear biological facts and patterns which inform religion, philosophy, and political science. These three might not be facts but they are reasoned to based on a combination of facts and unprovable givens, and track record – despite imperfections and shameful moments – should matter.
You’re not gonna get me to go with I have to live with your religion. I think there’s a bright line between denying biology and denying religion (or philosophy). I’m sympathetic to your refusal of the former, not the latter, especially where sexual minorities are concerned. Religion has been the cause of much of what’s needed to change in the treatment of sexual minorities.
By the way, did you all know health insurance companies earned profits????? Que horrible! The nerve. Services are always provided so much better by selfless bureaucrats without economic incentives.
(Why aren’t we having a live blog of this (debate)?)
You’re not gonna get me to go with I have to live without my faith in Jesus and all that that entails. I will not impose it on you, but I believe it is Truth and all else is untruth.