Discrimination should be understood in a broader context, like I said, because there are good and bad reasons for firing/demoting/hiring/promoting someone. We seem to narrow in on specific things that are discriminated against for reasons I can only guess. Maybe it's because we want to retain our right to discriminate for other arbitrary things or maybe it's just because we only try to change things we personally care about. For example, we recognize that we shouldn't discriminate against people based solely on their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or sex, right? What about people that are fat, or ugly, or based on their political affiliations? These aren't protected classes, but they're bad reasons to discriminate aren't they? Understood in a broader context of not discriminating for reasons that have nothing to do with job performance, the semantics of protecting this specific type of person or that specific type of person becomes superfluous.
In saying that discrimination should be understood in a broader context because there are good and bad reasons for firing/demoting/hiring/promoting someone you are actually showing why it is important to understand context. Because there are individual circumstances as to whether a person is discriminated against we need to therefore understand each category such as women, race, religion etc and individual circumstance. If you begin to neutralize the language of each individual circumstance for each category that is discriminated against you run the risk of neutralizing the category as well.
I agree that as a general principle it is wrong to discriminate period but then we need to understand how that applies to context to be sure we get it right and that peoples rights are upheld in different situations because an argument may be possible to justify discrimination. For example a general principle would be that it is wrong to discriminate against fat people but in some situation it is OK such as for health reasons and certain jobs. Some airlines charge extra for obese people because they take more than one seat. This could not apply to race or religion. It is the same for gender in that some circumstances for women such as the gender pay gap only applies to women. So we need discrimination acts and rights. You will find that race, religion and Indigenous people have separate laws and rights as well.
Let's say they changed the language that you posted. What specific harm would happen and how do you know that would happen?
The harms would be what I have been talking about the hard fought for rights such as the right to privacy and safe spaces. Changing the language leads to this because making the language neutral is a representation of the transgender ideology that states that biological has nothing to do with gender. That allows males to become women just because they say so and enter women's private and safe spaces even if they still have male genitals. Your not seeing the bigger picture. The language and discourse we use shapes how we think and will determine the way we live.
For example this article refers to real situations where gender neutral language leads to self identity policies for transgender people and makes all spaces mixed where males can infiltrate women's spaces.
Recent Freedom of Information requests reveal that in the UK, two-thirds of sexual assaults in public pools and leisure centers took place in mixed-sex or “unisex” facilities. A pre-operative trans woman prisoner, Karen White, sexually assaulted two female inmates recently whilst on remand in a British women’s prison. Critics argue from such evidence that making self-ID the legitimate means of accessing women-only spaces puts females in those spaces at risk—occasionally from trans women, but also from predatory males who are not trans, but who now cannot be confidently challenged in such spaces. The inclusive language of “gender-neutrality” tends to obscure the fact that a policy of self-ID effectively makes spaces mixed-sex by stealth.
In considering this difficult issue, we need to be aware of the fact, often glossed over or treated as heresy if mentioned, that a substantial number of trans women are pre-operative and retain natal genitalia, and that many are sexually attracted to females.
Ignoring Differences Between Men and Women Is the Wrong Way to Address Gender Dysphoria - Quillette
Word definitions are arbitrary. I could say that "flabberdab" is the word for masculine and "goodersab" is the word for feminine. Arbitrary. All that matters is that you know what I mean when I use the words. They can change the meaning of the word "gender" to anything they like, and in those rare instances where biological sex matters, we'll consider biological sex instead of gender.
But it is not as simple as that. A society forms the way it thinks and acts through words and language. The words are not seen in isolation and often words have a cultural meaning and represent norms that have a bigger meaning than just the word meaning. They can be part of a narrative which makes an ideology. That ideology cannot be switched on and off. It will apply to everything which we are seeing now with the conflicts and confusion and women are losing their rights.
In some cases the simple changing of a word such as the reinterpretation of the word sex to also include gender permits transgender women to enter all women spaces. The word women no longer means biology women but anyone who says they are a women. These have massive consequences for how we think and act.
When you refer to the "rare instances where biological sex matters" being excluded from transgender inclusion this will not go down well for the transgender movement. Because for them it will represent discrimination in not being recognized as a women with full rights. This shows how you cannot separate biology from the issue in ideological terms. Second the biology is not a small and rare part of the issue. It applies to everything where males and females are different physically. That includes all sports, privacy situations which can apply to anything from women's groups for personal issues, swimming pools, change rooms, toilets, women's hostels and refuges.
But also state run prisons, hospitals wards and all medical situations where wrong diagnoses can be made because men and women have different reproductive systems. Also we haven't touched on the psychological and cognitive side of things. For example stats show that men are the main perpetrators of abuse towards women. By saying that men can be women this disregards this fact. Add to this that they can now have open access to women's spaces this is a risk overlooked.
Everyone recognizes that there are biological differences between the sexes. The issue is debating where that matters and where it doesn't. Like I said earlier, those trans activists who say it doesn't matter anywhere are wrong; but at the same time those who oppose them that say it matters everywhere are also wrong. Whether people identify as one gender or another doesn't matter, or at least, no one has given me a reason thus far to care.
The problem is for transgender ideology based on subjective feelings biological sex does not matter when it comes to determining gender and they are not willing to include biological sex. Whereas most including myself accept that in some cases gender can be socially constructed and therefore we should not have a hard and fixed criteria.
So we should primarily uphold the traditional and factual definitions that incorporate biology as the main basis for gender and allow subjective ideas in some situations, But transgender ideology want it the other way around by making subjective definitions the main basis and factual definitions as non-existent or minimal. The problem is the transgender activists are winning and influencing laws with this ideology and that is what is upsetting most people.
An ideology that is based on subjectivity is trumping science because people are being politically correct. When people cry out loud that denying the rights of transgender is causing harm and suicide it can have a strong emotional sway which people find hard to go against. But if we based all laws on avoiding to hurt people we would be in a lot of trouble.
Right, and human biology, specifically genetics, controls those physical characteristics, just like human biology, specifically genetics, controls whether people have a penis or a vagina. The trouble is recognizing which differences between the sexes and the races are purely superficial, and which ones aren't.
Yes I agree but what muddies the waters is political correctness and that seems to be the trend nowadays. Virtue signalling rather than actually doing the right thing. In 10 or so years we will be seeing those who transitioned wanting to de-transition and suing those who pushed them into sex changes. We will look back and see how society allowed this to happen. Another situation where people believed they were doing good when in fact they were actually making matters worse.