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'Given that african savages are manifestly, transparently incapable of civilization and self-rule, it's dishonest to say that enslaving them is a racist policy'.
Yeah these are anti-LGBT laws dawg. You can claim that they are anti-lgbt and justified, if that's the hill you want to die on. But writing a law with the sole purpose of restricting a right from a specific group is 'manifestly' anti-that-group.
I think there are plenty of people who are ore likely to commit a crime if they think they can get away with it; if that weren't true, there would be little purpose for having laws and law enforcement in the first place.
And while I suspect it's just true that police in those state are actually less likely to punish you - or will punish you less harshly - for that type of crime, I'm confident that a good portion of the people who want to commit those crimes will hear about their local government passing anti-lgbt laws and take that as a sign that the law is on their side and will treat them kindly if they go ahead.
I take it, then, that you think biological men competing in female sporting events is fair.
I think you're missing the whole reason that women's sports exists. (No, I'm not talking about Title IX.)
It's because for most sports, if you just had an open competition, at the highest levels, no women will win, ever. There are some exceptions, but in general, women's sports exists because they will do worse otherwise, at least, against other athletes.
This is not surprising; the need of the woman's body to be able to provide for pregnancy and childbirth places is something of a tradeoff against physical ability, whereas men's bodies hardly need to do that at all.
Okay, so maybe, sure, it's fair to have them compete, but the whole point of the existence of the category is equity rather than fairness, in one of the rare cases where most people agree that that's a good thing. Having trans activists in it gets rid of the equity (as then we're back to the point where ordinary women are no longer represented among the elite) and still limits the fairness, because it excludes men.
Okay, then. A quick syllogism.
This is anti-LGBT (provided by @guesswho)
This is good (most agree that this is true)
Some anti-LGBT things are good. (logically follows, by existential generalization)
This is valid.
Maybe you don't agree with premise 2, but it's very common, and I've briefly argued for it above. You at least are arguing that most normies should believe they think that some anti-LGBT things are good.
Only if moral truth rests upon democratic majority, in which case, I have several questions. Chiefly, do different things become good depending on where you are and local sentiments, or do we need to take the majority of the global population? Or do we need to go even further and take the opinion of all people that ever lived? Does ultimate truth require us to know the opinions of all future people as well?
The only place that I see you would be getting democracy from is in the last part, so I assume you're addressing that.
I was assuming my second point; he is of course free to reject that.
I was not trying to argue for truth by democratic majority. (That would also have some other, weirder implications: it would make ethics non-local, though I suppose that might already be true. Would angels/demons or far-off aliens get votes, should either exist? You can't exactly poll them. You would also have the fact that many in history would affirm beliefs that are currently rather unpopular, (yes, yes, precisely the point is that popularity isn't what matters), like that (post-birth) infanticide is fine.)
But I was figuring that guesswho might not like the statement "most people (even in the west) agree that some anti-LGBT policies are justified," and so I was trying to show that that followed.
Why might he not like it? Because I think the original purpose of describing it as anti-LGBT was to try to indicate that we're just some weirdos who have beef with LGBT people, or something, and this policy is an outworking of that, but when it's a fairly broadly conceded view, it becomes far harder to present one's opponents as crazy when even some of one's allies might agree with them.
And I figured he'd prefer to say that people are against a sports policy (in a way that doesn't say that most, even some of the left, are sometimes anti-LGBT) than affirm that they are sometimes anti-LGBT more flatly. That is, arguing that anti-LGBT things are democratically preferred. Since both sides like to think themselves as part of the majority in a democracy, and to have the mandate of the masses (should such a thing exist), I figured he wouldn't like that too much.
Yeah, I get that that isn't exactly a rational argument, and I'm not even sure to what extent it succeeded in what it was trying to do, but the aim (though not quite so explicitly formulated in my mind at the time of typing it) was to adjust what dialogically made sense.
That, of course, is not an argument that means that guesswho must be wrong.
Funnily enough, I described this argument and (what I imagine to be) the motivations behind it in my last effortpost before this one. Like you, I acknowledged that the fact that an opinion is popular doesn't imply that it's right. But it's still annoying to have your opinions mischaracterised as crazy fringe extremist views when they enjoy a high level of popular support.
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A law can be both farcical and Anti-X.
As one hypothetical, imagine that there was an activist that promoted the right to bear arms and self defense. If he started pushing for the rights of prisoners to carry concealed weapons (prison is one of the most dangerous places, after all), then I'd call it farcical.
I wouldn't bother mentioning that my opposition is (by a strict definition) anti-self-defense. If anyone (accurately!) defended it on those grounds, then they're farcical too.
I don't think OP was saying the laws are farcical, I think OP is saying it's farcical to call them anti-LGBT.
Sorry, let me retry.
A law can be Anti-X and highlighting that fact can still be farcical.
As one hypothetical, imagine that there was an activist that promoted the right to bear arms and self defense. If he started pushing for the rights of prisoners to carry concealed weapons (prison is one of the most dangerous places, after all), then I'd call it farcical.
I wouldn't bother mentioning that the law prohibiting prisoner concealed carry is (by a strict definition) anti-self-defense, even though it is.
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Yes, that's what I was saying.
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Saying men have a competitive advantage over women in physical sport is the same as saying blacks are genetically uncivilized?
Not sure you want to nail that comparison to your mast.
Which right is that, exactly?
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TIL that it is a right for a boy to compete against girls. Just like the right to life.
Let's take the case of Andraya Yearwood, one of the trans athletes whose rights you are so vigorously defending. After getting into college due to the publicity around being a trans female runner in high school, Andraya promptly gave up sports. So no Olympic future there! To be fair to Yearwood, they seem to be genuinely trans*, but it's also pretty clear that taking the easier option of beating the girls and thus getting the victories to plump up the college application was part of it. Did Yearwood take a place away from a cis female runner who would have gone on to compete in the Olympics? I have no idea, but I don't think this can be ruled out, either.
*Now identifying as an Igbo-American Trans Womanist involved in LGBT+ activism.
If you want to play weird semantic games about the word 'right', replace it with 'liberty' and the sentence still works fine.
And, oh no, one trans woman won a competition one time. Since no cis woman has ever won any competition, obviously this represents the existence of a categorical advantage.
Statistical analysis or bust, as per usual.
Friend, the transwoman who won the competition was doing it on fair grounds and wasn't being a howling lunatic over demands to accommodate her even if she made no effort at all to pass as a woman. That kind of trans person is going to fit into normal society.
The spa flashers and prison rapists won't, but they are the people you are so hell-bent on defending. I think at this stage, you're the one who has to put up or shut up: do you really believe the spa flashers and rapists are Real Women and should be in women's jails and women's spaces, or not? And if you do, how are you going to protect women from the guys who want to show off their feminine penis around eight year old girls? Because that's on you, just as much as you like putting responsibility on "people like Rowling who want to genocide trans people" if any trans person gets attacked or harmed or insulted.
You can keep trying to assign me positions I haven't ever taken for as long as you want, if it brings you comfort. But it's not actually an argument.
The laws being passed are about athletes, not flashers and rapists. Rape and sexual assault have been and remain illegal whether you're a 'real' woman or not, the question is immaterial to those cases. Cases like that are bludgeons that one side occasionally trots out, but the bailey here is and continues to be normal trans people trying to live normal everyday lives.
You say that the athlete 'is going to fit into normal society' and therefore isn't the issue at hand, but the laws being passed today are targeting them and how they live their normal life, and they are the living the type of lifestyle that speakers at Republican national conventions are talking about 'eradicating'.
I agree that this would be more convenient for you if the debate were only about the rapists and flashers, and your opponents were for some reason defending them. But that's really not what's happening, no matter how many times you say it.
Right, I'm rollling my sleeves up here.
You're crying about "The boy who competed in the boy's races last year is being brutally oppressed just because he's now going by "Jamie" instead of "James" so he can win the girl's races". That's the same logic as "this guy with a dick is really a woman and should be in the women's prison not the men's prison".
The fact that you can't bring yourself to say "yeah, the rapists and flashers are not, in fact, Real Women" is the problem as to why the likes of me and J.K. Rowling and the TERFs can't accept "oh just let the guy with a record of domestic violence into the women's shelter, now she's got a wig and is wearing pink leggings".
The majority of normal trans people trying to live normal everyday lives are not gaming the system so they can get cushier accommodation in prison or win undeserved sports victories for personal gain, even ego satisfaction. If the trans athletes accept that Jamie has to wait two years until her hormone levels and strength advantage are in the same range as cis women, then fine. But Jamie wants to switch from the boy's races six months ago to the girl's races now, while Jamie is still in possession of an unfair advantage.
It's a legitimate problem of trying to be fair to everyone, but so is it a legitimate problem when the crazy edge cases get away with blue murder instead of being slapped down as "yes, this is not what trans means". And until the defenders of trans rights grapple with those exceptions, then the most of the rest of us will continue to object to "male-bodied individual trying to compete against female-bodied individuals, get into spaces for female-bodied individuals, and force themselves onto female-bodied individuals".
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Cynical answer: if women getting raped by men in prison is what it takes to bring attention to the general issue of inmates being raped by stronger inmates in prisons...
If I remember right, the law claims there is no such thing as consensual sex in prison. It's just selectively enforced by the wardens to minimize the effort needed to maintain control. Having a zero tolerance policy for prison rape creates more work, so is naturally opposed by the wardens.
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It seems that it depends. Some women did bring cases, some of those cases were successful, others were not.
After all, it is terribly unfair to separate trans paedophile lovebirds who found one another in jail and married, just because they're probably stoking each other's interest in child porn!
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I'd say it's rather not cynical to consider that "if" to be at all possible.
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If you're so confident that cis women are handily winning competitions against trans women, it shouldn't be so hard for you to cite some specific examples of some to win me over. I notice that you haven't cited any, just like the last time this topic came up.
I remain unconvinced that the burden of proof rests with gender-critical people to demonstrate that male athletes do have an essentially insurmountable competitive advantage over female, as opposed to with TRAs to demonstrate that they don't. TRAs, after all, are the ones demanding that male athletes be allowed to compete in female sporting events. Normally it's the people who want to radically change institutions who are required to demonstrate that their proposed changes are good ideas.
???
Every competition in which a trans woman competes and doesn't win is an example of this. That's every case in existence that's not the handful of anecdotes your side keeps recycling.
You still didn't cite any.
There's a trans woman who plays at our local boffer combat realm, my wife beats her in like 90% of duels, is that good enough for you?
You're asking for 'dog bites man' statistics here, I don't know the names of random trans athletes ho haven't won anything because that's not newsworthy, which is the whole point.
I had to look up what boffer was. Ah yes, completely comparable to competitive swimming!
But don't worry, there's a gender studies professor who is in total agreement with you:
Can somebody direct this lady to historical images where women did not shave, wear makeup, or pluck their eyebrows? Granted the women in them didn't cut their hair and didn't wear men's clothes, but still - they kind of don't look like men.
Gee, Grandma, since you don't pluck your eyebrows, I can't hardly tell the difference between you and Grampa!
Is this a Land Girl or a Land Man? They're wearing trousers, how am I supposed to be able to tell?
One of these coal mine workers is a man, but how can I pick him out of the line up? Nobody is wearing makeup or shaving their underarms!
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But no, not L, G or B. I'm sure some transwomen don't at all like these laws. Almost all LGBT people aren't transwomen.
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If you mean to imply that "the average male is stronger and faster than 99% of females" is as obviously ridiculous an assertion as "African savages are incapable of civilization and self-rule" - well, I don't know what to tell you. That you're wrong? That you're exactly as wrong as the last time as we talked about this stuff, when you offered some extremely weak arguments in favour of the hypothesis that "trans women have no competitive advantage over females", I pointed out (at length) how weak your arguments were, you said you were going to reply and then didn't?
To be pedantic, these laws mostly seem anti-T, not anti-LGBT. The only ones which maybe could be classified as anti-LGB are the ones about sex ed, and even then it's a reach. Good luck explaining to me how gay men are negatively impacted by bans on male athletes competing in female sporting events, or lesbians by bans on males using female bathrooms. There are quite a few lesbians who support laws banning males from using female bathrooms, if you haven't already noticed.
I'm curious where and when it was decided that everyone has the "right" to compete in sporting events which accord with that person's claimed gender identity. On the contrary: everyone has the right to compete in sporting events for their sex, and legislation of this type does nothing to restrict the ability of trans women or girls from exercising that right.
If commitment to being an "ally" requires me to pretend that there's no innate difference between male and female athletic ability, and all of the female athletes complaining about being ruthlessly outcompeted by male athletes who "discovered" that they're trans all of five minutes ago - those uppity women just need to stop whining and Git Gud: then yes, this is the hill I want to die on, thanks for asking. The idea that any policy which is marketed as pro-LGBTQ is automatically a good policy is such a silly and juvenile way of looking at the world.
Curious, then, that states which didn't pass anti-LGBT laws saw far greater spikes in anti-LGBT hate crimes during the period under discussion than states which did. As I went to great pains to demonstrate in the post that you're replying to.
I think you're missing the point of her analogy. A law that restricts trans behavior is an "anti-lgbt law" regardless of the truth value of the underlying premise and how good the law is. Likewise, a law that restricts blacks to chattel status is an "anti-black law" regardless of whether it's actually true blacks can't govern themselves. Trying to say "A law that restricts X group isn't anti-X, because X should be restricted" is incoherent.
Misconstruing the focus of an analogy is a failure mode of debate I'm glad not to see too often here.
As far as I can tell, that was brought into the conversation by guesswho. A law can be both anti-X and farcical. For example, promoting the right to self defense by giving those most likely to face violence (prisoners) the right to defend themselves (by carrying guns in prisons) is a terrible idea, and I'd have no problem laughing it out of the room.
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Then we may as well say that a law that restricts shoplifting is an "anti-thief" law regardless of how good the law is. Oh no, imagine saying that robbing and stealing are bad things! I'm denigrating the culture of people who have different traditions around the concept of property ownership!
"You don't get to take what is not yours" is the underlying principle, be it snatching drugs off pharmacy shelves or deciding you're really a girl so the medals belong to you.
Shoplifting laws are definitely anti-thief laws. (
andthatsagoodthing.jpeg) Lawmakers do not want people to act as thieves in the context of the shop; in Texas, lawmakers do not want men acting as female ('being trans') in the context of sports.The reason that anti-trans laws are controversial is that the "underlying principle" you speak of is not agreed upon in society. Two sides cannot agree on whether a biological male entering a female space is a 'thief' taking what he is not due, or a female taking what belongs to her.
I think it's fair to say laws against stuffing iphones in your pants are, in fact, denigrating the values of people who would do that if it were legal. Likewise, I understand that, to a MtF, I really am pissing on their sacred values when I block the door to the women's restroom. That the shoplifter and the MtF are in the wrong is an entirely separate question from whether I am opposing them; I am opposing them. I am making an anti-thief/anti-trans action.
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This whole debate seems like a textbook example of the worst argument in the world.
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This is only true if (as I stated in my reply) one accepts the premise that everyone is entitled to compete in the sporting events which are designated for members of a particular gender identity. I don't believe female sporting events were ever intended for "people who identify as women" but rather for "female people".
The argument that everyone is entitled to compete in the sporting events which are designated for members of a particular gender identity also logically implies that the absence of a dedicated non-binary category in a sporting event is directly infringing upon the rights of any non-binary athlete who wishes to take part.
It is a ticklish problem because genuine trans people who want to compete in sports will have to wait until the strength or whatever advantage is gone and they're down to general female levels. But that may take a year or two, and for elite sports, the years tick by very quickly, and being out of competition in your prime years may be a setback you never recover from.
However, I think that is a different case to the 'trans' athletes who demand that they be allowed maintain their usual level of testosterone or whatever because it's sexist/transphobic/medical gatekeeping to expect them to reach normal female ranges of hormones. That's not about fair competition, that's about "I'm so special I deserve this medal".
Someone needs to do a proper detailed meta-analysis on this question. The evidence I've seen has not been remotely favourable to the idea that puberty blockers and/or HRT bring trans women's athletic performance down to within a typical female range:
Agreed that I will never be persuaded that it's fair to allow males who haven't suppressed testosterone etc. to compete in female sporting events.
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By that definition, most laws are "anti-human". I'm not generally opposed to strict, literal interpretations, but this definition seems to go quite strongly against common sense understanding of "anti".
Sure. I would say that goes unsaid for the same reason that it's the "Department of Education", not "Department of Human Education"; or "Department of Labor", not "Department of Human Labor".
There's no question that journalists calling laws "anti-trans laws" are implying a negative valence. But Folamnh3 called the idea they're anti-trans laws "farcical", which is a bit off when the description seems literally quite defensible. Which was the point guesswho's analogy tried to draw out.
Strictly speaking, I called the idea that these laws are "anti-LGBT" farcical: only trans people are impacted by bans on male students competing in female sporting events, not gay men, not bisexuals, not lesbians. I moreover argued that describing such laws as "restricting trans student access to sports" is knowingly misleading: trans students are not being prevented from competing, they're just being prevented from competing in opposite-sex events.
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Nobody would call a law against drunk driving an "anti-driving law" even though it restricts driver behavior. (And that's actually a better example because only drivers can engage in drunk driving, while it's possible for a non-trans person to try to play in a female-only sport.)
No, but it is an anti-drunkard law.
Not really? It doesn't restrict you from drinking.
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Is "white people aren't allowed to run red lights" an "anti-white law"? Would it become an anti-white law if it was overruling a lower level of government, like if some municipalities were allowing white people to run red lights and the state government passed a law saying they couldn't make racial exceptions? Yes white people are more restricted than if they got an exemption from traffic law, but nobody describes the lack of such an exemption as anti-white, not even white supremacists. But this means that describing a law that restricts X group as "objectively an anti-X law" is just a way to smuggle in assumptions about what laws are reasonable. I think Folamh3 assumed the implicit argument was that those laws were unreasonable, not that they were anti-transgender in the same way that "Chinese-Americans need to pay income tax" is anti-Chinese, because otherwise the argument doesn't make sense.
Notice that guesswho didn't describe segregation of sports by sex as anti-male, despite men and boys being the overwhelming majority of those restricted, likely due to believing that the segregation is reasonable except for when it applies to people who identify as transgender.
Certainly, if it removes the right of red-light running to whites specifically.
Still anti-white, because it's legislation that removes a previous privilege from that specific group.
In a hypothetical universe where whites had a historic go-on-red privilege, its revocation would certainly be seen as anti-white by white supremacists. And they'd be correct. Even though such a change would be a good idea by my books, removing a specific white-held privilege is an "anti-white law". Likewise, restricting MtFs from female sports where they previously had access locally is an "anti-trans law", even though I agree it's a good idea.
When the system of female-only sports was first created, the restriction against men joining was definitely an "anti-male rule". Identifying which groups a rule targets is different from condemning the rule.
You can argue that consistently using "anti-X" to refer to any restriction on X, even if the restriction is the lack of a special privilege and is something the speaker thinks is justified, would be a more objective way to use language. But it is not the standard way to use language, guesswho isn't out there talking about people arrested for dangerous driving as being "arrested under an anti-white law", so it seems understandable for Folamh3 to interpret guesswho as making a bolder and less semantic claim.
I don't think it would really be a better way to use language either, because it's so impractical to do consistently that nobody would do it. Nobody is going to use it for every hypothetical special privilege that could exist, at best it would be influenced by status-quo bias based on what laws already exist, and realistically personal bias would creep in immediately. It would just create a natural motte and bailey where people would use "anti-X" in some cases based on their biases, and then retreat to "it's a restriction on X so it's anti-X" when challenged.
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Laws which reaffirm sex segregation in sports do not remove the right to compete in female sporting events from trans women and girls in particular. As I stated in the OP, they ban all male athletes from competing in female sporting events, including the minority of male athletes who identify as women.
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Ok, so now apply that to the laws in question:
Ok, but those laws are not applied specifically to trans people, so they can't be declared anti-trans (let alone anti-LGBT)
This seems like the opposite of how we talk about laws? I've never seen removal of privilege be declared anti-[group] because they remove privilege. In fact I've seen plenty of the opposite - declaring discriminatory policies aren't discriminatory, but merely removing privilege.
For one, you're already admitting only white supremacists would see it like that, and in that case I agree, those laws aren't anti- trans, opposition to them is trans-supremacist. But the other issue is that historically trans people had no such privilege.
So the sports leagues that never allowed it in the first place are not anti- trans?
So in the case of MtFs, the laws are mischaracterized, as they are still targeting men, not trans people in particular. FtMs have a better claim, since they'd be dinged for doping.
It is, because people call privileges "rights" when they support them, but they call rights "privileges" when they oppose them. I am a neutral looking from the outside on a ridiculous scenario, and can clearly see "whites can run red lights" is a privilege. In the hypothetical universe where a whites-can-run-red-lights law exists, people opposing the change would holler hell about their natural rights being infringed.
This is exactly where we find ourself with letting MtFs into female spaces. Pro-trans think their "rights" to be treated as female are being infringed; anti-trans are denying that those rights exist.
The situation may seem comical, but during the abolition of slavery and feudalism, slave-owners/feudal lords complained bitterly about their property rights being infringed. Things like that are only ludicrous in retrospect.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
The intent of the law is going after trans entryists, specifically, even if the language of the law is framed generally.
Certainly this is obnoxious. The motivation by journalists to generalize actions against tiny minorities with a broader interest group is the same thing behind blacks becoming BIPOCs. If you criticize calling the laws anti-LGBT on these grounds I have no objection.
I am stepping into a hypothetical set by sodiummuffin. The scenario proposed is so ridiculous, if a soapbubble universe where whites could run lights popped into existence, everyone except hardcore white supremacists would wake up to how stupid that is immediately. Our current situation is less ridiculous so people's thoughts are much more confused on the matter.
They were anti-trans in their inception, though there would not be the language to describe it as such. Again, I am not using 'anti-trans' as a synonym for 'bigoted' or 'evil', but merely descriptively.
Yes, but they shouldn't.
guesswho calls this an anti-LGBT law because he's deep in the middle of calling things "rights" inconsistently depending on whether he supports or opposes them. But when called on it he denies this and just claims he's being literally truthful.
I think it's unlikely that he refers to drunk driving laws as anti-driver, compulsory school laws as anti-child, and laws against robbery as anti-minority (for a minority that disproportionately robs), even if he thinks they can be literally described that way. It's a motte and bailey where the motte is "see, that's what it literally means" and the bailey is that he's using the words to imply something negative.
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X is being restricted from conducting political assassinations?
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