'The right side of history' = 'God is on our side'?

The desire to cast gender critical people as biological essentialists is such a wilful miscomprehension. Saying men are faster sprinters than women is nothing like saying women can’t be engineers.

History does not move in a straight line towards a distant object on the horizon. History is the story of the same old patterns repeating themselves just in slightly different configurations.

Right side of history = belief (an ideology)
God is on our side = belief (an ideology)

Material reality = humans are either male or female and can not change to the other. It is a law of nature than can not be escaped.

Also see gravity.

If you could not put words in my mouth and ascribe motives to me, that would be great, thanks.

The web does indeed have a lot of reading matter.

Male still =/= female, because anything else is piffle.

It's so interesting. I think it's often 'gender essentialism' that I am particularly allergic to in these changes. I object to the idea that I should put my pronouns in my email signature because it promotes the idea that I have a gender identity, which I don't, in a world where I still face sexism for my sex, which I do have. This is because the wider world will still assume that a 'she/her' is female (after all, that is precisely the presumption the original push to declare pronouns relied on, though it's moved past that to general promotion of GI now). I don't want to promote the fact that I'm a woman in my emails. My sex may occasionally be relevant at work as I'm an HCP, but in emails hardly ever. I'm not going to lie or conceal, but I shouldn't be required to emphasise it.

As far as biological essentialism goes... well, biology and gender should be completely separate but with society as it is it can be harder to tease them apart, eg that research showing better outcomes for all patients with female surgeons, but particularly for female patients. I think those results are probably about gender- ie because it's harder for women to become surgeons for gendered reasons, only the most talented women do it. But I don't know that for sure. What I do know for sure is that obscuring sex in records of staff or patients or in research will actively work against improving healthcare for us all.

actually I read a lot of comments that are biologically essentialist on this board - including from you. You think our understanding of sex is “fixed”. And you want to keep it there as it suits your agenda.

But history shows us such emphasis on fixity is often on the “wrong” side of history.

what comes next may not be what is currently being articulated by trans advocates, but neither will it likely be what you think is true either.

commenting on/noting is not the same as 'decrying'.

nobody thinks today is the 'end of history'.

strawman arguments are tedious.

It’s interesting that we’ve had commenters decrying “Whig” ideas of history as progress building towards what we have today as a desired and inevitable outcome. Yet those same posters believe what they think today is the end of history. It’s entirely plausible we will come to have rather different ideas about sex and gender.

I'm not 'stressing"; I'm speculating. I enjoy analysis and reflection. It is not stressful at all.

The same thing was once said of the pro-creative mixing of the races - oddly enough by eugenicists. What is deemed biological “reality” is unstable.

To an extent, yes - although some 'races' and ethnicities are more prone to certain kinds of condition - such as sickle cell disease for black people, and so on.

Sex, though, runs through every category and is measurable and identifiable. It is one of the defining categories of life on earth,

What we are in a "tussle" with is an ideological construct that has no roots in practical reality. All ideological constructs that do not pay attention to the nature of reality tend to come apart at some point.

race was deemed to be biological essentialised in the 18th and 19th centuries. that’s when the idea of “races” was invented. It’s subsequently been shown to be a nonsense idea. There are no “races” in any meaningful way beyond a few surface differences.

DNA, Chromosomes and how they interplay with naturally occuring hormones is not variable at all, and hasn't changed.

In theory, I agree that "right side of history" is a daft phrase. History doesn't always (if ever) go in a straight line, attitudes change, countries become more conservative, less conservative and so on and so forth.

And yet. I also find myself very drawn to the idea. Because I actually think this whole fucking business of men pretending to be women, and stuffing kids with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, is both so intellectually absurd and so morally repellent, that I have to be able to believe in a future where people say "What the fuck was that about? What were they all thinking?" The idea that the passage of time will provide some perspective on this is what keeps me going, frankly.

It's a bit like other equally mad episodes in history - the Salem witch trials, the use of frontal lobotomies, the sterilisation of Black women etc. Eventually we all look back and say, That was bloody horrific.

The right side of history is just a speculative phrase. Don’t stress

'Trans rights', though, is purely a product of post modernistic theories. It is not like race, sex, or sexual orienetaion. The contemporary trans rights movement is also a product of the end point of individualistic and consumeristic american culture - and for many people that is anything but 'progressive'.

But what is deemed “biologically essentialised” changes over time though as history shows. Right now we’re on a tussle over sex and gender. Could go either way.

If they stick with the right tribe - the tribe that belives in 'progress' - whereby progress is measured in ever greater freedom for the individual.

That tribe is now the wokesters - those who hold to the three post modernistic theories of 'Intersectionalism' 'Queer Theory' and 'Critical Race Theory'.

Generally though, initiatives affording more rights to minorities have been on the “right side of history” when looked at retrospectively.

I am no Whig, but the above is certainly true.

Of course you may argue that in the case of advancing trans right women’s safety is potentially also undermined, therefore it doesn’t “count” as an example of the above.

Perhaps we should ask Victor.

Autocorrect doesn't specify which Victor, alas.

Probably the grumpy one.

We are essentially biological creatures of earth. There is no disputing that.

Human beings, though, also have the possibility to channel the instincts and drives and thus be seen to be 'transcending' them. We don't really ever transcend or escape them, though.

The phrase that springs to mind is that history is written by the Victors.

(Autocorrect insists that Victors must be capitalised; who can say whether Autocorrect is the RSOH or not?)

How can anyone know if they’re on the RSoH ?