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Birth Certificate, perfect! They won't really work if people can change them all the time though -- teenagers would change them so they could buy beer, and foreigners might take advantage of the opportunity to apply for a passport or run for President. I think these Birth Certificates would need to be written in ink, on paper at or around the time of birth -- that way people wouldn't be able to use them to defraud others.
If people are issuing other sorts of certificates that muddy the waters and track 'gender' rather than 'sex' -- you should ask yourself why those people would do that, and further why they would then proceed to complain ('complain' i guess -- AOC is not actually complaining here) that it's impossible to keep track of what sex people are without subjecting them to genital inspections.
So your answer is people have to carry their birth certificate with them to prove which bathroom they can go into? I know the UK gets a bad rap for having licenses for everything, but I've never had to show one to go to the bathroom. So in the spirit of your query:
What happened to the free market solutions in the freest country in the world? Why are you jumping straight to a government solution? If you want a female (or male) only bathroom, you can pay for a subscription and the private company will demand proof (DNA perhaps, they can buy out 23andMe, I hear that is going cheap) before you get put on the access list, for their chain of male/female/unisex W.C.s across the nation.
The free market, not the government is the best way of determining what the value of a bathroom free from the opposite sex really is, by finding out what people are willing to pay. Who wants unelected government bureaucrats making these kinds of decisions? Have you heard how much the army pays for toilet seats? These birth certificates will be printed by equipment sourced from the lowest bidder, and will be easily falsifiable. No, let's let the invisible hand of the free market deal with it, that is what America is about. That way, as the amount people are willing to pay rises, companies will convert shops into toilets and perhaps the incentives will lead to exciting new developments in toilet security technology, as they will want to ensure people do not take advantage. Let's see the Russkies keep up with the unleashed might of the American bathroom dollar! If they thought Western supermarkets were startling, once the toilet boom takes off, all we will have to do is install a few American toilets in Ukrainian towns about to be overrun, and Putin will be out on his ear in no time.
I agree, the Civil Right Act is unconstitutional and unamerican and should be abolished to restore basic rights to freedom of association.
Well free association means anyone can use any bathroom, otherwise someones right of free bathroom association is being infringed, but if thats your position that is ok.
Aren't you just trolling at this point? If this is how freedom of association worked, there'd be no point in a Civil Rights Act to begin with, and there's no way you don't know this.
I'm not trolling, I am pointing out a mistake in the argument. Free association has a positive and negative right. If you have a whites only bathroom (or space in general) then a white and black friend group have their right to associate infringed. (Like pre Civil rights times) Likewise if you have a mixed bathroom a black guy who does not want to associate with white people has his right to not associate with people he does not want to infringed when he walks in and finds Bill Clinton (like post Civil rights times).
So yes prior to the Civil rights act some people had their rights to free association infringed, and afterwards a different group does. There is no way for both parties to have a universal right at the same time. They are contradictory. And this logically maps onto the trans issue here.
Just to point out, it is ok to infringe rights, we have to do it all the time. Its just as both sides have free association arguments, THAT particular reasoning can't be used as a deciding factor. You have to have some other argument. Of which there are lots of course, but thats beyond the scope of my point.
If you wanted to do only that, starting off by saying you find freedom of association contradictory, rather than by saying it means something you don't even believe yourself, would be a much more productive approach to the conversation.
Sure, but read the OP using a rhetorical technique about not knowing what a birth certificate was to make a point. Mine was as I pointed out in the same vein, using his argument tactic in return.
I don't believe that the free market should be deciding who uses what bathroom by what they are willing to pay either to be clear. I had hoped i had gone overboard enough to clear Poe's law but perhaps not.
IGI used my argument to show it supported something he assumed I would be against, then I used his to show that it actually supported a different position as well. Certainly on its own my point was not clear. But i think reading back through the whole thread our back and forth is relatively understandable. Definitely if you know our relative positions as we are both long term posters.
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This is certainly untrue. Under free association anyone can use any bathroom if they are authorized by the owner of the premises.
And yes I think that's a lot better than the status quo. If people want to have unisex bathrooms, strict bio separation, "no homers club" or whatever arrangement they desire, let them. It's a free country.
But public bathrooms are a thing. If you have a whites only bathroom and a blacks only, and I am black and you are white, our right to free association is infringed. Because we can't as so many women do go to the bathroom together.
Whether thats the owners choice or not is irrelevant, one way or another someones right to free association IS infringed. Either black and white friends can't use the same bathroom, or a white guy who doesn't want to associate with black people has his rights ti not associate infringed when he walks in and finds P Diddy there.
Its impossible for someones right not to be infringed because they are conflicting. Thats different as to whether that should be legal. You can certainly argue people should be able to pick whose rights they want to infringe, but they are certainly going to be infringing someones, ergo we are admitting there is no general right to free association. We're just picking and choosing. It can't be a free country in this regard. The US has roughly chosen that the positive right to free association is of greater value than the negative right for historical reasons but don't get it twisted, thete is no option that preserves everyones right to free association. Its a logical impossibility.
I mean, I have no trouble sharing a bathroom with most blacks, but would find it very concerning to have to share one with P Diddy.
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Americans are the proud inheritors of the British tradition of government by consent. As with every social institution in such a society, the rules can be set by the most local institution according to the local custom. And can be changed if the custom changes.
Rights are a lot less messy when you give up on the destructive idea that they can be positive and restrict them to the specific traditions of Englishmen. As Clarence Thomas is fond of explaining tersely.
No, you're just unhappy with the English tradition and would like a more ideal and logically consistent form of Liberalism that is untenable.
You are sick of the malady of the French Revolution and will only dissolve any society you get control of in a futile attempt to reconcile equality and liberty.
This is not possible, and it is not desirable.
The idea that one should shrug and accept tyranny in the face of such contradictions is not American. The American way is to embrace an optimistic negotiated compromise and entrust the future to make good on the spirit of that compromise.
It is certainly not to have the State figure out the rational answer to a problem and have people conform. That's the Continental way of doing things, with its managerial demands for universal standardization and its enforcement at the point of bayonets. One must ask: what the fuck is a kilometer?
@IGI-111, you're French, right? I would be very interested in your opinions on the nature and consequences of the French Revolution if so.
I am. And the sort of universalist integration talked about here is acceptable to the French because we have built the necessary social mores and institutions to make sure that it doesn't destroy our society. Painfully so.
Consider for instance that in France it is illegal to fire someone for political opinions expressed out of work, that there is a powerful culture of debate where people from the far left and far right regularly confront their ideas in public and that we have dozens of political parties instead of just two (none of which have a majority right now).
It is often said that every bad idea comes from France. But the truth is really that the French are an infohazard. We, in our infinite Statism, allow ourselves to philosophize about everything and decide complex social theories that ultimately don't affect the conduct of State, because somewhere somehow, our leader will say "let's be serious now" and do the right thing as opposed to the ideological thing, in Bonapartist fashion.
People who use our ideas don't have this luxury. They go to the Sorbonne, think all the radical leftism is fully applicable and go back to Cambodia to kill half the population. Foucault and Derrida were popular in their circles but ultimately benign until Americans took them seriously. And so goes for Proudhon, Sartre and Sorel.
I have too much to say about the French Revolution, good and bad, but the most spiritually important seems to me that France has killed a king that was central to how its tradition worked and has been looking for Great Men as a substitute ever since. And the more benign the men that rule us ("normal" as Hollande said) the more despised they are, and the more dysfunctional we grow.
I think this scar has left us in a weird unstable position with a sort of contradictory fervor for a republicanism that never satisfies, but we make it work thanks to the wealth of history we can draw from.
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Sure, so if the local custom changes to disallowing race segregated spaces (as America has done) then that idms fine and dandy. Abd then if they decide trans women can use womens bathrooms that is also fine and dandy?
I agree that is a description of how the world operates. But it doesn't give you any information on how to decide if the local consensus is good or not. The local consensus is the local consensus is both true and not terribly helpful.
Plus the English tradition (itself obviously only important if it is the local consensus) does include positive rights.
Regardless society is quite capable of compromises, so while it may not be possible to perfectly reconcile equality and liberty, the most sucessful nations do make the attempt and perfect is the enemy of good enough.
The only thing that matters is consent.
Segregation was ended by the force of bayonets. That was unjust. Even if segregation itself was an ill.
A healthy society would have sought to reconcile the races through means of discourse rather than force. And would not have created the ressentiment that animates racial tensions in it today.
I am precisely denouncing the notion you are so fully avowed to that you don't notice it: that of universalism.
The English tradition is peculiar, not universal. Your neighbors may not decide to live as you do. This is not cause for alarm and demands they change to suit you. Insofar as their relationship to you is proper.
As the English are fond of saying: mind your own business.
You'll note that such an arrangement is a lot more compatible with fair lives for transgender individuals than the universalist battleground where that have to win out some political argument to be allowed to exist, but it demands that they do not seek to upend society.
It does not. Or you would be able to name them.
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Sarcastic guns n glory American exceptionalism is kind of transparent man. I liked where you took it though.
Well to be fair I was trying to make sure, people would get it, what with Poe's law and all, so i wanted it to be transparent. My first draft was more subtle!
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