A simple fix for the Transgender issue.

[Kylie]

You can make that statement, but I don't see from where comes an obligation for anyone to accept your assertion.

If the person insists on calling you "guy" or "dude" what recourse do you have beyond appeal to a source of coercion for agreement that you have such a "right."

So you think people should have the right to disrespect me?

What does that say about the people who would do that? What does that say about the people who think they should have the right to do that?

 

[Moral Orel]

And yet when the exact same thing is done for other things that he wouldn't do - like theft - does he complain? I'm criticising the double standard.

Unless you're for making all the things you find immoral being illegal, then you're the one with a double standard for criticizing us. Theft is immoral and should be illegal. Misgendering people is immoral but shouldn't be illegal. It's okay to have different opinions about whether things should be illegal or just immoral. You do it, I do it, he does it.

 

[RedPonyDriver]

And whatever there was of the subject in Native American history/sexuality has been overcome by events. It wasn't adopted by society. It doesn't matter anymore.

In terms of grammar, we're not even talking about homosexuals or transgenders, the issue is with "gender fluids." That's a very, very small pool.

As I said before, grammar does not increase in complexity over time, it simplifies. An attempt to inject new complexity that will have significance in only such rare occurrences simply will not "take" in the course of time.

It wasn't adopted by EUROPEAN society. Way back when, those things were hidden, no less prevalent than today, but hidden (where do you think the expression "in the closet" came from?)

But I understand you see the white european society as superior to the native populations that were already in the new world when the invaders came and spread their ideas and diseases.

 

[stevevw]

But it's not aimed at a gender, it's aimed at pregnant people. If a business isn't firing non-pregnant women, then it isn't aimed at the gender. If a transgender man gets pregnant, he should be protected from firing as well.

Then why are all the laws and human rights aimed at women. Like I said pregnancy is part of a bigger issue of discrimination against women and we need to understand pregnancy in the context of women to appreciate its full implications regarding rights and disadvantages. Saying a person gets pregnant denies womanhood which I think goes too far. A person who is pregnant does not include the women specific issues that are associated with the difference and disadvantage compared to men. For example the Australian Human Rights Commission goes into detail about stats relating to women in the work force and their role in the family to give context to the problem of discrimination against women who are pregnant in the workforce.

Pregnancy FACT SHEET

1. 18% of complaints received by the Commission in 1999-2000 concerned alleged discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or potential pregnancy.
2. In 1998, 3.7 million women were employed and approximately 250,000 live births were recorded
   in Australia.
3. The average age of women at the birth of their first child is 29 years.
4. This is also the age of greatest career progression and when women are entering their prime earning years.
5. Increasing numbers of women put off having children in many cases due to work pressures and the expectation of women's primary role in child-care. The percentage of Australian women over 40 without children has grown in 10 years from 8% to 12% and that proportion is set to increase.
6. A massive 54% of women in one study believed that their careers have been affected by taking maternity leave. A further 44.1% say their salaries stall, 30.4% believe their careers take a backward step and 29.9% say they sacrificed their careers when they gave birth.
7. Current low fertility rates (1.86 children per woman) indicate a growing trend by women to make a choice between work and family rather than seeking both. Such choices are still necessary partly because of the failure of
   workplace practices to accommodate the realities of pregnancy and family responsibilities.

Pregnancy FACT SHEET | Australian Human Rights Commission

I don't know what it means to "minimize a fact".

Gender and transgender ideology minimizes and denies many facts about gender. IE that biological sex also determines gender, that you cannot be a women because you say so or feel so. A women getting pregnant shows that there are biological differences between men and women. Only a cis women can get pregnant and therefore transgender activists want to overlook this fact because it exposes their claim that a man can become a women by just saying so. Because a man does not have a women's physical features they can never really be a women. They can only feel like they are a women.

 

[RDKirk]

So you think people should have the right to disrespect me?

What does that say about the people who would do that? What does that say about the people who think they should have the right to do that?

A "right" is nothing more than the privilege of power. You have a "right" if you have someone with sufficient physical power to enforce it.

When I was young, any white person had the "right" to disrespect me in any way. Then one day the federal government applied its power in saying that white people no longer had such an unfettered right.

This wasn't stuff floating around in the ether that people just happened to discover that day. It took the application of force.

You have no natural "right" not to be disrespected any more than someone has a natural "right" to disrespect you. It depends on who the forces of power are currently backing.

 

[RDKirk]

It wasn't adopted by EUROPEAN society. Way back when, those things were hidden, no less prevalent than today, but hidden (where do you think the expression "in the closet" came from?)

But I understand you see the white european society as superior to the native populations that were already in the new world when the invaders came and spread their ideas and diseases.

You don't seem to know me very well.

I'm pointing out that in the big scheme of things, it didn't matter then that a very small percentage of the population had personal grammar quirks, and it won't matter in the future.

Grammar does not grow complex over time, it simplifies. Efforts to force additional complexity into grammar--particularly complexities that most people will never use and certainly never use often--will simply fail.

Try to force people never to split an infinitive today. You can't make them do it.

 

[Moral Orel]

Then why are all the laws and human rights aimed at women.

Because that's how we've phrased it thus far.

Like I said pregnancy is part of a bigger issue of discrimination against women and we need to understand pregnancy in the context of women to appreciate its full implications regarding rights and disadvantages. Saying a person gets pregnant denies womanhood which I think goes too far. A person who is pregnant does not include the women specific issues that are associated with the difference and disadvantage compared to men. For example the Australian Human Rights Commission goes into detail about stats relating to women in the work force and their role in the family to give context to the problem of discrimination against women who are pregnant in the workforce.

Pregnancy FACT SHEET

1. 18% of complaints received by the Commission in 1999-2000 concerned alleged discrimination on the basis of pregnancy or potential pregnancy.
2. In 1998, 3.7 million women were employed and approximately 250,000 live births were recorded
   in Australia.
3. The average age of women at the birth of their first child is 29 years.
4. This is also the age of greatest career progression and when women are entering their prime earning years.
5. Increasing numbers of women put off having children in many cases due to work pressures and the expectation of women's primary role in child-care. The percentage of Australian women over 40 without children has grown in 10 years from 8% to 12% and that proportion is set to increase.
6. A massive 54% of women in one study believed that their careers have been affected by taking maternity leave. A further 44.1% say their salaries stall, 30.4% believe their careers take a backward step and 29.9% say they sacrificed their careers when they gave birth.
7. Current low fertility rates (1.86 children per woman) indicate a growing trend by women to make a choice between work and family rather than seeking both. Such choices are still necessary partly because of the failure of
   workplace practices to accommodate the realities of pregnancy and family responsibilities.

Pregnancy FACT SHEET | Australian Human Rights Commission

All of this affects transgender men too. Changing our terminology isn't going to change any of this either.

Gender and transgender ideology minimizes and denies many facts about gender. IE that biological sex also determines gender, that you cannot be a women because you say so or feel so. A women getting pregnant shows that there are biological differences between men and women. Only a cis women can get pregnant and therefore transgender activists want to overlook this fact because it exposes their claim that a man can become a women by just saying so. Because a man does not have a women's physical features they can never really be a women. They can only feel like they are a women.

A cis woman is someone who was born a biological female and identifies as a woman. So it is false that only cis women can become pregnant. Transgender men have the physiology to get pregnant too.

And if a transgender activist wants to personally overlook any fact, so what? If that's all they're doing, then they aren't affecting anything other than their own personal viewpoint.

 

[stevevw]

Because that's how we've phrased it thus far.

Maybe we have phrased it that way for good reason ans still do today. United Nations seems to have recognized gender fluidity and changed their position on it being a mental disorder. So I would have thought it would have changed its language on gender as well. But it hasn't and that's because women as a gender suffer discrimination and need to be identified as a separate gender to support their rights. That's why they even have an entire convention for women "The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women". Neutralizing this and changing the language to people is not going to identify women's disadvantage which has been subjectively named a man. The UN cannot neutralize the women's convention as this would just discriminate against women even more buy not recognizing them as a unique and separate gender.

All of this affects transgender men too. Changing our terminology isn't going to change any of this either.

A cis woman is someone who was born a biological female and identifies as a woman. So it is false that only cis women can become pregnant. Transgender men have the physiology to get pregnant too.

And if a transgender activist wants to personally overlook any fact, so what? If that's all they're doing, then they aren't affecting anything other than their own personal viewpoint.

But this is part of the unsupported transgender ideology that is causing the conflict and confusion. A cis women is biologically a female and a transgender man is biologically a female. Physically we are talking about the same gender a women and it is only an ideology that a women can become a man. So a transgender mans discrimination about being pregnant is still really a women disadvantage. The transgender man is not being discriminated based on their male attributes but female ones.

 

[Moral Orel]

Maybe we have phrased it that way for good reason ans still do today. United Nations seems to have recognized gender fluidity and changed their position on it being a mental disorder. So I would have thought it would have changed its language on gender as well. But it hasn't and that's because women as a gender suffer discrimination and need to be identified as a separate gender to support their rights. That's why they even have an entire convention for women "The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women". Neutralizing this and changing the language to people is not going to identify women's disadvantage which has been subjectively named a man. The UN cannot neutralize the women's convention as this would just discriminate against women even more buy not recognizing them as a unique and separate gender.

That doesn't have anything to do with pregnancy specifically, which is what we were talking about.

"It's wrong to fire someone for being pregnant" is fine to say. It doesn't matter that it doesn't say, "It's wrong to fire a woman for being pregnant".

We should have laws that protect people from being discriminated against because of their gender too. But people shouldn't be discriminated against because of their biological sex or their self-identified gender. So it's fine to say, "It's wrong to fire someone because of their gender" which covers all of that, and again it doesn't matter that it doesn't say, "It's wrong to fire someone for being a woman".

But this is part of the unsupported transgender ideology that is causing the conflict and confusion. A cis women is biologically a female and a transgender man is biologically a female. Physically we are talking about the same gender a women and it is only an ideology that a women can become a man. So a transgender mans discrimination about being pregnant is still really a women disadvantage. The transgender man is not being discriminated based on their male attributes but female ones.

"It's wrong to fire someone for being pregnant" isn't confusing. The only conflict is about meaningless semantics. A person's physiology matters to them and their doctor, for the most part. It doesn't really have any bearing on the outside world at large other than some isolated contexts that people rarely find themselves in. And in a lot of those isolated contexts, I'll probably take your side with dividing people based on biological sex.

 

[Kylie]

Unless you're for making all the things you find immoral being illegal, then you're the one with a double standard for criticizing us. Theft is immoral and should be illegal. Misgendering people is immoral but shouldn't be illegal. It's okay to have different opinions about whether things should be illegal or just immoral. You do it, I do it, he does it.

Are you suggesting that disrespecting people by misgendering them is moral? Care to explain how?

 

[Strathos]

So you think people should have the right to disrespect me?

What does that say about the people who would do that? What does that say about the people who think they should have the right to do that?

Do you think that you, as an atheist, should have the right to disrespect Christians by denying God?

 

[comana]

Do you think that you, as an atheist, should have the right to disrespect Christians by denying God?

That doesn't even make sense.

 

[Strathos]

That doesn't even make sense.

If she says that she should have the right to never be disrespected by anyone by calling her the wrong gender, then I should also have the right to never be disrespected by anyone calling my religion false.

 

[Moral Orel]

Are you suggesting that disrespecting people by misgendering them is moral?

How did you get that from this?

Misgendering people is immoral but shouldn't be illegal.

Now you tell me. Should everything you think is immoral be illegal?

 

[Moral Orel]

If she says that she should have the right to never be disrespected by anyone by calling her the wrong gender, then I should also have the right to never be disrespected by anyone calling my religion false.

Absolutely. Either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred. I don't want to live in the sort of Kindergarten country it would take for everything to be sacred, so I choose nothing.

 

[stevevw]

That doesn't have anything to do with pregnancy specifically, which is what we were talking about.

"It's wrong to fire someone for being pregnant" is fine to say. It doesn't matter that it doesn't say, "It's wrong to fire a woman for being pregnant".

We should have laws that protect people from being discriminated against because of their gender too. But people shouldn't be discriminated against because of their biological sex or their self-identified gender. So it's fine to say, "It's wrong to fire someone because of their gender" which covers all of that, and again it doesn't matter that it doesn't say, "It's wrong to fire someone for being a woman".

I agree that there is nothing wrong with saying "it is wrong to fire someone who is pregnant" but that does not give context to understanding the issue to be able to address it properly. For example in the link I posted on pregnancy discrimination in the workplace it gave info on the average age of women getting pregnant which is also linked to the time that women are at the prime of their career and earning capacity. This gives context as to how women are specifically affected. Saying a person is at the prime of their earning and career capacity diminishes how women in particular are affected. Saying people who are pregnant are discriminated at work diminishes how women are affected.

But this is part of a bigger issue that transgender activists are trying to instill in society. They don't want people to use the word women, men, boys and girls as they believe this is not associated with gender. Language is often what dictates behavior and actions and if we took the word women out of everything I am sure it would diminish women's rights and support as a whole in society.

"It's wrong to fire someone for being pregnant" isn't confusing. The only conflict is about meaningless semantics.

I agree if we just focused on the word meaning in a sentence this would be OK. But we also have to include how changing words will affect the issues that sentence is referring to as the example above.

A person's physiology matters to them and their doctor, for the most part. It doesn't really have any bearing on the outside world at large other than some isolated contexts that people rarely find themselves in. And in a lot of those isolated contexts, I'll probably take your side with dividing people based on biological sex.

A persons physiology has more representation than on an individual level in society and there are many occasions this will be a factor. As we have already seen it is an issue in just changing the name on public toilets. This is also related to all situations women find themselves in where they need to have privacy or be protected. This represents men,s spaces where they want to disclose private information which is usually associated with their physiology such as Men's Sheds. Changing the name to peoples shed has implications, it opens the door for other genders to come in. Sports is another area which has massive implications. By disassociating physiology with gender you are opening the door for males who claim to be females destroying women's sports and risking their safety.

 

[comana]

If she says that she should have the right to never be disrespected by anyone by calling her the wrong gender, then I should also have the right to never be disrespected by anyone calling my religion false.

Neither are rights. Everyone needs to chill on being offended.

 

[Moral Orel]

I agree that there is nothing wrong with saying "it is wrong to fire someone who is pregnant" but that does not give context to understanding the issue to be able to address it properly.

Yes it does. Don't fire someone simply because they're pregnant. It's really simple, and I think you're trying to overcomplicate it.

But this is part of a bigger issue that transgender activists are trying to instill in society. They don't want people to use the word women, men, boys and girls as they believe this is not associated with gender.

That's not true. Why would we have a discussion about the use of "he" and "she" if folks were pushing for a genderless society? Why would people be referring to trans women and trans men if they didn't want people to use the words "women" and "men"? Transgender activists still want gender to be a thing, they just conceive of it differently than you do.

Personally, I think moving towards a society that concerns itself with gender less and less is a good thing. The same way that we've moved forward to concern ourselves less and less with race. There are some contexts where that isn't going to be possible, but most of the time it would be better if we didn't care about gender at all.

A persons physiology has more representation than on an individual level in society and there are many occasions this will be a factor. As we have already seen it is an issue in just changing the name on public toilets. This is also related to all situations women find themselves in where they need to have privacy or be protected. This represents men,s spaces where they want to disclose private information which is usually associated with their physiology such as Men's Sheds. Changing the name to peoples shed has implications, it opens the door for other genders to come in. Sports is another area which has massive implications. By disassociating physiology with gender you are opening the door for males who claim to be females destroying women's sports and risking their safety.

Like I said, there are some contexts where it matters, but we aren't discussing those right now. We're discussing discrimination against pregnancy.

I do have to ask out of curiosity though, what are "Men's Sheds"? Is that an Australian thing?

 

[Kylie]

Do you think that you, as an atheist, should have the right to disrespect Christians by denying God?

You don't actually think that's the same sort of thing, do you?

And if it is disrespectful to Christians to be an atheist, does that mean Christians are disrespectful to all non Christians? How far does it go? Would you say Catholics are disrespectful to Protestants, or are they not different enough? Where do you draw the line?

Seriously, that is the worst argument ever.

 

[Kylie]

How did you get that from this?


Now you tell me. Should everything you think is immoral be illegal?

Okay, I admit I didn't read your post properly, and misunderstood what you were saying, and I withdraw my comment.

I will say that if an action can cause demonstrable harm to people that it should be illegal. That's why we outlaw murder, rape, theft, etc, because all those things cause demonstrable harm.

Now, it has been shown that misgendering people and not giving them that respect to acknowledge who they are causes harm to. Trans people (and gay people as well) who are not giving that respect have higher cases of depression and suicide. The same studies also show that when trans people are given love and support, they have much lower instances of depression and suicide.

So, if we agree that actions that cause harm should be illegal, and disrespecting trans people has been shown to cause harm, what's the conclusion you draw?