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And then the poltergeist shows up and plates start flying out of the cabinet!
Fights start when someone chooses to attack someone who has not attacked them. Society has an interest in getting them to make better choices.
And it is every bit as insensitive as asking a woman who has survived a sexual assault 'why she was dressed that way'.
Which, if taken as licence for Bob to assault Alex, allows Bob to impose demands on Alex by becoming personally irate if his demands are not followed.
Which is why 'masculine environments' are increasingly frowned upon by many of the institutions of society.
Yes. We have a system for establishing a policy of "Do not do $THING or There Will Be Consequences." The Legislative Branch passes a law against $THING; the Executive Branch takes necessary action if someone does $THING anyway; the Judicial Branch makes sure that $THING isn't something one has a right to do (such as 'voting while black' or 'printing a column questioning Professor What's-Xir-Face of the Department of Oppressed People Studies's opinion on the best way to oppose racism').
If the government votes that $THING should remain legal, or the courts find that $THING is a civil right, it is not generally appropriate to turn around attempt to impose Consequences for $THING on one's own initiative, especially if $THING, to quote Jefferson, "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg", because that way lies madness.
People have spent thousands of years moving us up the entropy-slope, from a world in which the strong can do whatever they feel like and expect the weak to cater to their whims, towards a world where The Rules Are The Same For Everyone; they do not appreciate attempts to shove us back down into the abyss.
--Jon Stewart
Which is why we have laws against it. Seldom do people make laws against things that nobody does anyway.
In which case one approaches the problem by degrees -- prosecute the man who becomes violent over a tiny slight before the man responding to a more serious insult; prosecute the man who attacks someone smaller than himself before the man who picks on someone his own size, &c.
As the more egregious incidents decrease in frequency, one can establish stronger standards, and move the Overton Window in the direction of "use your words, not your fists.", or in some cases (things which don't affect anyone else) towards Tim Walz' Golden Rule.
Laws which in practice aren't really enforced when a man is perceived to have gotten himself in over his head -- that's the point.
Where $THING <> "force other people to pretend that you've changed your gender" I guess -- y'know, the topic of this thread? Then it's the opposite, right?
No, people have spent about 20 years convincing people like you that resort to violence is not a part of the masculine story -- to the extent that anything's actually changed if you step outside of your coddled environment, it's been at the earliest since after I went to high school.
Who's this 'one'? Nobody does that.
What does Tim Walz being a huge hypocrite have to do with anything?
Yes, society still has a ways to go before it lives up to the ideal of being perfectly just.
I would describe it more as 'exist while presenting as the gender opposite that associated with your genitals at birth'.
There are times when it is perfectly justified to resort to violence; if Albert starts hitting Benjamin, I certainly do not think that Benjamin is obligated to stand there and let Albert continue. What is not justified is to impose an asymmetric standard of inter-personal respect on people smaller than yourself, or to de facto prohibit conduct which does not harm anyone, and which violates no applicable legal code.
I don't know whether or how much it has changed, but if it hasn't, it needs to.
Anyone who is trying to move society in a direction in which Andrew being twice the size of Bill does not mean that the norms of society reflect Andrew's opinions more than Bill's, nor that Bill is obligated, under threat of bodily harm, to show any respect to Andrew that Andrew is not similarly obligated to reciprocate.
I was alluding to the speech in which Mr Walz said:
Even if one disagrees with the transgender ideology, a person, born with the genitals associated with one gender, choosing to exist in public while, via clothing choices/bodily alterations/whatever, presenting as the opposite gender is none of the business of the people standing next to them.
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