5 ms·

Two out of three of these points seem to be primarily polemic. I am not aware of anyone (okay, maybe outside an insane fringe) who, in any meaningful way, is se

by 4bpp 6y ago

Two out of three of these points seem to be primarily polemic. I am not aware of anyone (okay, maybe outside an insane fringe) who, in any meaningful way, is seeking to "forbid trans people to exist" - how do you not allow someone to exist, except by, you know, stopping them from existing, i.e. killing them? Instead, the fights, and cancellations of those deviating from the approved positions, tend to focus on issues such as whether people should be compelled to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, or whether trans people should be allowed access to their preferred gendered facilities (be it bathrooms or battered-women shelters). Do trans people die or pop out of existence when you refer to them by the wrong pronoun? If so, that would be a whole new level of fragility (a word I gather social justice advocates really like to bandy around in situations where it is far less appropriate than here), and it seems like a more appropriate response to someone whose existence is so precarious would be more akin to how we sustain those who are born without an adaptive immune system (https://www.rarediseasereview.org/publications/2017/8/7/living-without-an-immune-system https://www.rarediseasereview.org/publications/2017/8/7/livi...). (Gay marriage, on the other hand, has been (rightly) legalised and enjoys majority support, but even there I think that the problem was that the state presumed to have a say in the definition of marriage to begin with. If any reference to marriage were struck from the books - perhaps by making a neutral construct of civil partnership or something else that can inherit its functions for property-sharing and mutual spokesmanship take it place - then the claim to marriage as a negative right that Scruton would have no cause to interfere with would become apparent.)

mcphage 6y ago
> how do you not allow someone to exist, except by, you know, stopping them from existing, i.e. killing them? You tell them “you are not who you think you are, you’re wrong about your own life” > whether people should be compelled to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, or whether trans people should be allowed access to their preferred gendered facilities Those are perfect examples—have you ever had a problem getting someone to refer to you by your preferred pronoun? Have you ever been denied access to your bathroom? For me, such things are unthinkable. > trans people die or pop out of existence when you refer to them by the wrong pronoun? Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead. So: yes, you’re telling the person that you’re talking to that they don’t exist, that someone else, with a different name and gender exists instead. > even there I think that the problem was that the state presumed to have a say in the definition of marriage to begin with That’s an odd solution—gay people want to get married also? Well then: nobody can. Making everybody miserable instead of happy is one way to put everybody on the same footing, but not one I don’t think many people would have been happy with. Definitely I’m glad they didn’t go with that.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  The problem with this point of view is that you're elevating your philosophy of gender and sexuality over other peoples' and claiming it as a sort of "safety right." This is pernicious.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    Actually, what I was doing was describing a number of rights that I—as a cis-het white man—already possess, and that others have not been granted, and are asking to share, following in the article's quote of “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. But you've done a good job describing why dialog on these topics is difficult, since people such as yourselves consider that "elevating [my] philosophy of gender and sexuality over other peoples'". We can talk all day about property rights, but I can't explain to you why you need to care about other people, and without you caring about others, there's no possibility for useful dialog.
    - baggy_trough 6y ago
      How rude!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 4bpp 6y ago
  > You tell them “you are not who you think you are, you’re wrong about your own life” > Those are perfect examples—have you ever had a problem getting someone to refer to you by your preferred pronoun? Have you ever been denied access to your bathroom? For me, such things are unthinkable. The only bathrooms I have owned were in apartments I lived in, and obviously nobody has ever prevented me from accessing those. I was apparently a fairly androgynous kid and was mistaken for the opposite gender many times until a fairly late point in life, but I didn't particularly try correcting people. Who knows. Either way, if people suddenly decided to switch the pronouns they use to refer to me, I can't imagine it being a big deal, and I would be confident that I will still wake up, experience and interact with reality like any other existing, corporeal being the day after. > Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead. So: yes, you’re telling the person that you’re talking to that they don’t exist, that someone else, with a different name and gender exists instead. Are pronouns special in some way that other aspects of identity are not? I consider myself Good At CS, and multiple decades of my life have been spent on reinforcing/lending substance to this belief. I've certainly been in situations where people with minimal CS skills seeking to solve CS-related problems refused to listen to my proposals or acknowledge my expertise, and this stung, but at no point did I get the impression that I somehow faded out of existence in the process. More generally, what do other people's beliefs about me have to do with my existence? Am I like one of those tropey deities from fantasy novels whose powers and very ontology scale with the number and fervor of believers? It seems to me that if this is your model of reality, classical liberalism with its distinction between negative and positive rights might not even constitute a meaningful philosophy to you. If a trans person only "exists" in the minds of other people, is there even a sense in which a person can be (negatively) not interfered with? The setup seems like a bizarre inversion of the (bad) "violinist argument" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion) that has been brought up for abortion, except now the trans person depends on other members of society to donate their epistemological resources instead of their kidneys in order to continue existing. I'm for the right to deny third parties the use my kidneys even if their continued existence depends on it, and I don't see why this principle should not extend to donating them part of my mental model of the world. > That’s an odd solution—gay people want to get married also? Well then: nobody can. Making everybody miserable instead of happy is one way to put everybody on the same footing, but not one I don’t think many people would have been happy with. Definitely I’m glad they didn’t go with that. That's a weird way to frame it. What benefit do I gain from being legally married? What part of it do I lose if s/marriage/civil partnership/g is run on the legal code, and I am now in a civil partnership as far as the law is concerned? If I don't lose anything, why should I be miserable? (Do you think I derive non-misery from the legal construct that gives me tax breaks being called "marriage" in the books rather than something else?)

by 4bpp 6y ago

mcphage 6y ago

> how do you not allow someone to exist, except by, you know, stopping them from existing, i.e. killing them? You tell them “you are not who you think you are, you’re wrong about your own life” > whether people should be compelled to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, or whether trans people should be allowed access to their preferred gendered facilities Those are perfect examples—have you ever had a problem getting someone to refer to you by your preferred pronoun? Have you ever been denied access to your bathroom? For me, such things are unthinkable. > trans people die or pop out of existence when you refer to them by the wrong pronoun? Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead. So: yes, you’re telling the person that you’re talking to that they don’t exist, that someone else, with a different name and gender exists instead. > even there I think that the problem was that the state presumed to have a say in the definition of marriage to begin with That’s an odd solution—gay people want to get married also? Well then: nobody can. Making everybody miserable instead of happy is one way to put everybody on the same footing, but not one I don’t think many people would have been happy with. Definitely I’m glad they didn’t go with that.

baggy_trough 6y ago
The problem with this point of view is that you're elevating your philosophy of gender and sexuality over other peoples' and claiming it as a sort of "safety right." This is pernicious.
- mcphage 6y ago
  Actually, what I was doing was describing a number of rights that I—as a cis-het white man—already possess, and that others have not been granted, and are asking to share, following in the article's quote of “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. But you've done a good job describing why dialog on these topics is difficult, since people such as yourselves consider that "elevating [my] philosophy of gender and sexuality over other peoples'". We can talk all day about property rights, but I can't explain to you why you need to care about other people, and without you caring about others, there's no possibility for useful dialog.
  - baggy_trough 6y ago
    How rude!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
4bpp 6y ago
> You tell them “you are not who you think you are, you’re wrong about your own life” > Those are perfect examples—have you ever had a problem getting someone to refer to you by your preferred pronoun? Have you ever been denied access to your bathroom? For me, such things are unthinkable. The only bathrooms I have owned were in apartments I lived in, and obviously nobody has ever prevented me from accessing those. I was apparently a fairly androgynous kid and was mistaken for the opposite gender many times until a fairly late point in life, but I didn't particularly try correcting people. Who knows. Either way, if people suddenly decided to switch the pronouns they use to refer to me, I can't imagine it being a big deal, and I would be confident that I will still wake up, experience and interact with reality like any other existing, corporeal being the day after. > Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead. So: yes, you’re telling the person that you’re talking to that they don’t exist, that someone else, with a different name and gender exists instead. Are pronouns special in some way that other aspects of identity are not? I consider myself Good At CS, and multiple decades of my life have been spent on reinforcing/lending substance to this belief. I've certainly been in situations where people with minimal CS skills seeking to solve CS-related problems refused to listen to my proposals or acknowledge my expertise, and this stung, but at no point did I get the impression that I somehow faded out of existence in the process. More generally, what do other people's beliefs about me have to do with my existence? Am I like one of those tropey deities from fantasy novels whose powers and very ontology scale with the number and fervor of believers? It seems to me that if this is your model of reality, classical liberalism with its distinction between negative and positive rights might not even constitute a meaningful philosophy to you. If a trans person only "exists" in the minds of other people, is there even a sense in which a person can be (negatively) not interfered with? The setup seems like a bizarre inversion of the (bad) "violinist argument" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion) that has been brought up for abortion, except now the trans person depends on other members of society to donate their epistemological resources instead of their kidneys in order to continue existing. I'm for the right to deny third parties the use my kidneys even if their continued existence depends on it, and I don't see why this principle should not extend to donating them part of my mental model of the world. > That’s an odd solution—gay people want to get married also? Well then: nobody can. Making everybody miserable instead of happy is one way to put everybody on the same footing, but not one I don’t think many people would have been happy with. Definitely I’m glad they didn’t go with that. That's a weird way to frame it. What benefit do I gain from being legally married? What part of it do I lose if s/marriage/civil partnership/g is run on the legal code, and I am now in a civil partnership as far as the law is concerned? If I don't lose anything, why should I be miserable? (Do you think I derive non-misery from the legal construct that gives me tax breaks being called "marriage" in the books rather than something else?)