The Conflict of Rights: Why can't people just admit to this?

[CatsGetCOVIDToo]

I am very gender critical.

However, I can see that the crux of this debate is based on a conflict of rights.

Whilst I don't believe that it's possible to change sex, I respect that some people do believe that. They can believe what they like, and I can believe what I like. Sadly, our beliefs are in conflict.

This is also the case on many other heated issues, such as abortion, anti-vaxxers, and surrogacy. I have strong views on these topics too, but I accept that there are two sides to each debate.

My discussion question is this: Why are so many people so reluctant to accept that there is a conflict of rights in the gender debate?

While it would be nice to think there was middle ground to be found, it just isn't that sort of scenario. Male-bodied people cannot be partly in and partly out of women's spaces, sports, award ceremonies or shortlists, can they? It's one in, all in or nothing.

The way the lobbyists had everything stitched up privately beforehand is chilling. Whatever happened to "Nothing about us without us"?

You've changed your name NewlyGranny. Congrats?

Gender woo is just the smokescreen for the Umentionable thing anyway. Human rights my arse.

@NewlyGranny

While it would be nice to think there was middle ground to be found, it just isn't that sort of scenario. Male-bodied people cannot be partly in and partly out of women's spaces, sports, award ceremonies or shortlists, can they? It's one in, all in or nothing.

The way the lobbyists had everything stitched up privately beforehand is chilling. Whatever happened to "Nothing about us without us"?

I don't think that's the kind of thing that would be compromised. The question in this case is around rights to self define membership in a category, for everyone. In a way it's not really two rights in conflict, it's about the same right for different individuals. Plus the questions around language and the good of the community as a whole.

Presumably people who consider themselves trans also have the right to call themselves what they want or wear what they want or whatever. The question is how is that applied within a community made up of many different people and in terms of meaningful language.

That Twitter mantra stating that "rights are not a pie and that if someone gets a slice yours won't get smaller " is based on this thinking.

That saying has always annoyed me because it's so patently untrue in many cases.

Goosefoot outlined some good examples of where rights collide. Others have arisen in this current pandemic e.g. the right to meet family and friends versus the right not to catch and potentially die of Covid. Some people try to deny this conflict by downplaying the sacrifices involved ("what's the big deal if you miss your sister's funeral?") or outright ignoring reality ("Covid-19 is a hoax, sheeple!")

Obviously it's healthier to acknowledge there's a conflict and determine there's a balance to be had, but that's harder and so much less satisfying.

Thanks for the responses everyone. It's been nice to hear different points of view.

Personally, I feel that there is a conflict of rights here.

I am gender critical, but I accept that other people believe that their gender identity is important. Some people even believe that their gender identity is the most important part of their whole body. Many of these people think that biological sex is useless and doesn't affect our everyday lives.

I think that these people are wrong, but I also think that they have the right to believe what they want to.

My right to believe in biological sex conflicts with their right to believe that biological sex is irrelevant.

I wish that there were more TRAs willing to debate this point, and I hope that more TRAs do engage with this debate in the future.

It is not an issue of conflicting rights. Transpeople have the same rights as anyone else, and more in some very specific cases (the right to have one’s birth certificate and other documents changed to reflect a legal fiction, for example).

The so-called “rights” that trans activists are agitating for are actually privileges, and in the process of attempting to secure the privileges they want - e.g. the privilege to make any single-sex space mixed sex by the act of entering it; the privilege to have their gender identity validated by, for example, insisting on treating a patient in a healthcare setting where the patient has asked for a healthcare professional of the opposite birth sex to that of said trans clinician - they are perforce removing women’s actual rights, enshrined in law, to single sex spaces, intimate care etc etc.

Because it's easier to bury your head in the sand.

It's important I think to somewht separate discussions of specific legal rights, like those you see in the equality act, with inherent rights. Sometimes legal rights are attempts to describe what we cosider to be inherent rights. Sometimes they aren't. But even in the former case, it can be the case that there are different ways that could be achieved, and you really have to explore the nature of the inherent right in order to try and get it right. It's possible that the legislation doesn't accurately reflect that.

"My right to believe in biological sex conflicts with their right to believe that biological sex is irrelevant."

In theory we all have the right to believe what we want. I think the conflict is in how we act on those beliefs.

I agree with others that they will never acknowledge a conflict exists because this forces them to acknowledge that they are not what they say they are (women), and their already tenuous argument falls apart on closer moral and scientific inspection.

The more frustrating thing, I find, is that the activists won't even acknowledge the safeguarding concerns on a very basic, practical level. So even if you are talking about a hypothetical, predatory man who is not 'trans', but is pretending to be in order to gain access to single-sex spaces, they will still not acknowledge that this is a very real risk which cannot be separated from the likes of self-ID. They will inevitably tell you that it would never happen, that the person isn't a 'true' trans person (therefore it isn't their problem), or just start screaming that you are a bigot. And the reason they don't engage with the safeguarding issue, I think, is because then they would be forced to engage with the calculus of risks and harms to women and children of opening the floodgates to predators, versus the risks and harms to trans people of not being able to access women's spaces. Which is to say, comparing the relative merits of avoiding increased instances of rape, abuse or harrassment (or an increase in the baseline level of fear of these things) for women and children, to the hurt feelings and lost validation of men who want to 'feel like one of the girls'.

Any way you look at it, they cannot win hearts and minds through reasoned debate on the practicalities or moral aspects of their position (as far as I can see, there aren't any). Thus the battering ram / trojan horse approaches.

Why would you respect that some people believe this? It’s not possible. We all know it. Even those who pretend they don’t know it.

Personally, for the same reason that I would believe that somebody believes that Jesus is the Son of God. I don't agree with them, but I accept that they do.

@CatsGetCOVIDToo

Thanks for the responses everyone. It's been nice to hear different points of view.

Personally, I feel that there is a conflict of rights here.

I am gender critical, but I accept that other people believe that their gender identity is important. Some people even believe that their gender identity is the most important part of their whole body. Many of these people think that biological sex is useless and doesn't affect our everyday lives.

I think that these people are wrong, but I also think that they have the right to believe what they want to.

My right to believe in biological sex conflicts with their right to believe that biological sex is irrelevant.

I wish that there were more TRAs willing to debate this point, and I hope that more TRAs do engage with this debate in the future.

I'm not remotely interested in debating with the TRAs - not at all. What debate is to be had? What they demand conflicts with my rights. And those of my daughter and granddaughter and every other female relative and friend I have. My world does not centre around men and their feelings. I do not owe them any validation. And I don't want them in my spaces, taking medals in female sports, winning scholarships intended for females etc etc. I certainly don't want to be in a position where one day I have to pretend they are a female and the next a male. It is gaslighting of the highest order. There is no debate to be had on this.

My right to believe in biological sex conflicts with their right to believe that biological sex is irrelevant.

Biological sex isn't something you 'believe' in, though. It's a real, physical thing, which has real physical and social consequences whether someone believes it's irrelevant or not.