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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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I don't feel this is a fair comparison, speaking at least from my own, religious perspective.

That's not surprising, but the comparison isn't meant to say I think believing you're trans and believing in God is an exact analog. Use any example you like of people believing things, based on their personal experience, which are completely internal to them and thus unverifiable to anyone outside their own head. Hence I used the example of people who believe they have experienced God directly and not, for example, people who believe they saw a UFO (something that in theory could be verified by anyone else who was there to see it).

The rest of your objection is basically "You can brush off someone's religious beliefs with impunity, but you can't do that with trans people," which is true today, in our society, but is not true in every society (trying telling an authority figure in Iran that their religious beliefs are nonsense) and has not been true historically in ours.

I am obviously against the current regime which so heavily punishes anyone who questions trans orthodoxy (see: J.K. Rowling and anyone else labeled "gender critical"), for the same reason I'm against religion having that much power. Even in the absence of such a regime, I wouldn't insist on calling a transwoman a man to his face, for the same reason that as an atheist I won't be rude to you just because you're talking about beliefs I don't share.

Also, in most workplaces (including mine), being disrespectful of someone's religious beliefs would get very similar treatment from HR as disrespecting someone's gender identity.

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