Barack Obama heartbroken by wave of anti-trans bills

[plantanoakhun]

www.google.com/amp/s/uk.news.yahoo.com/amphtml/barack-obama-heartbroken-wave-anti-153244006.html

Thoughts?

'In simpler times we were all gay. But then the word "gay" started to mean "gay men" more than women, so we switched to the more inclusive "gay and lesbian." '

Lesbians were always lesbians though!

Not sure about this fella.

Anyway will read.

quixote9,
The US is 99.99% in the tank for the TRA worldview. Obama is just being a good politician and parroting what's popular.

I don’t think this is the case at all. I think the US is several years behind the UK in terms of public awareness of the extreme demands being made by the gender movement. When these demands are clarified, they are not popular with voters in states as different as California and West Virginia: www.womensliberationfront.org/news/polling-from-13-states-reveals-widespread-disapproval-of-gender-identity-policies

Not sure about this fella

Lol, definitely not posting as an endorsement of all his takes, but it is maybe the only piece I’ve read from that era when the gender movement had already gained a lot of behind the scenes momentum that explains more about how it happened in the US.

It is interesting.

More interesting is the link to the actual document.

I haven't read more then the first few pages- I was interested to see who engaged the law firm.

'The law firms and Thomson Reuters Foundation contributed to this project on a pro bono basis. IGLYO’s time and
work on the project has been co-funded by the Rights Equality and Citizenship (REC) programme 2014-2020 of the
European Union. The contents of this publication can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the funder.'

Obama is in general an OK guy and was a decent president, but people overestimate how independent in thought he is. He is currently a major leader of the Dem party and is beholden to the big money funders. He's not going to come out against something that is being supported by tech and big pharma.

I remember when gay was a broader term, and not applied more often to men.

Anyway - this business about the US having fewer protections. Yes, this is true, they do. But I am not convinced that the problem is that they need to add more special categories.

Right now you could be fired for being a man who wears a dress. You also could be fired because your boss doesn't like your face. Or because he prefers to hire someone else. Or really pretty much any reason except a few things covered by protected category status.

I actually don't think it's worse to be fired for being a man in a dress, or a woman, or gay, than it is to be fired because someone doesn't like your face.

Really? When was that out of interest?

That gay generally meant men and women and was used more than lesbian?

Back in the early 80s, the word lesbian was certainly used, but it would also be quite common to say that a woman was gay. I don't know that I could pin down when it started to fall out of use as I think it's been very gradual, but as I guess I might say around the late 90s.

I recall the (non- because it was bleedin' obvious) debate being that the character Ellen in the sitcom Ellen was gay.

The issue is politics. These bills are all being proposed by conservative Republicans who don't care a bit for women's rights or feminism. The bills are seen as part of a conservative culture war, and some of them are badly written too. Trans rights have simply become a left/right issue as the conservatives have made it one of their causes.

There's also been the bills banning treatment for trans children which drew opposition from other groups. Doctors don't want state legislatures interfering. It would legitimize other sorts of interference.

As far as I recall "gay" became dominant (in the UK) as the general label around the time public attitudes were shifting and campaigning was to present simply normal people wanting rights and equality. I'd put that in the 80s.

He is an ex-POTUS.

He is entitled to an opinion, but his 'heartbrokenness' is not more relevant than that of any man (or woman, in this case) on the street.

In simpler times we were all gay. But then the word "gay" started to mean "gay men" more than women, so we switched to the more inclusive "gay and lesbian." Bisexuals, who were only part-time gays, insisted that we add them too, so we did (not without some protest), and by the early 1990s we were the lesbian, gay and bisexual, or LGB community. Sometime in the late '90s, a few gay rights groups and activists started using a new acronym, LGBT -- adding T for transgender/transsexual. And that's when today's trouble started.

Heh. It's a bit like the flag. "Gay" was just about an umbrella term covering everyone, but individual groups wanted attention. The rainbow covered everyone, but individual groups wanted attention.

Another minor point - "gay" is an adjective. "Lesbian" is a noun. Both of them have crept to be used as either, but just from grammatical correctness, a woman would use gay when an adjective was needed.

Another example - Basic Instinct (1991). Beth: "What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, guys, I'm not gay, but I did fuck your suspect!?"'

Took a little while for "lesbian" to be accepted as an adjective. Is the tautology "lesbian woman" acceptable yet? I'm not finding it horribly grating, at least, which means everyone else probably is using it happily.

Trans rights have simply become a left/right issue as the conservatives have made it one of their causes.

If this is true, it's very different from what is happening in the UK.

Here, it's the insistence of the left that TWAW which has made this a left/right issue, with mainly the right wing pushing back against this (but somewhat half heartedly, as they seem not to want to get involved at all). It definitely doesn't seem to be a 'cause' of the right.

There's also been the bills banning treatment for trans children which drew opposition from other groups. Doctors don't want state legislatures interfering. It would legitimize other sorts of interference.

Treatment for so called 'trans children' is experimental and a court in the UK recently ruled that children were not capable of consent to such treatment. I can well believe that some doctors in the US, where the financial incentives are different, might object to the banning of these lucrative treatments and state interference in their ability to capture young patients for lifelong treatment. That doesn't make this treatment any more ethical though.

I have lived in both countries so yes, very different. There's certainly leftists pushing in the USA but there the opponents are conservatives, not GC feminists. As a result, because trans people are a 'cause' for conservatives, it turns from an internal debate on the left to a polarizing issue.

Treatment for so called 'trans children' is experimental and a court in the UK recently ruled that children were not capable of consent to such treatment. I can well believe that some doctors in the US, where the financial incentives are different, might object to the banning of these lucrative treatments and state interference in their ability to capture young patients for lifelong treatment. That doesn't make this treatment any more ethical though.

I know about the Keira Bell case. It is and isn't about money. It is in the sense that medicine is always about money in the USA. The medical associations always come out against legal restrictions on practice and back each other up because next time it might be them. American doctors fight strongly for self-regulation. Then there's the other half of the problem: even if doctors are poor at self-regulating, the Texas Republican Party is not going to do a better job of it.

Lesbian can hardly grate as an adjective, given origins were in an adjective form, from Lesbos. I think I may have been guilty of using lesbian women when I particularly wanted to emphasise the woman aspect, that it was a group of women on the sharp end of something again. If lesbians dislike it I won't do it again.

If you look at what he actually said, he is quite vague.

I suspect Obama like Keir Starmer just isn't very engaged, but
it is true that some Republicans are cynically seizing on this issue, just as they exploit disagreement over abortion.

It's also very difficult to map American politics onto UK politics, because they don't seem to have a vocal left wing feminist movement.

Lesbian can hardly grate as an adjective, given origins were in an adjective form, from Lesbos.

True, but the tautology of "double female" does grate if you use it as an adjective in this meaning.

"lesbian woman" = "female homosexual female human". Yuck. "lesbian person" - huh? As weird as "female person" - use "woman". Okay "gay woman". Or "lesbian".

Checking a dictionary on my shelf - Collins 1986.

lesbian n. 1. a female homosexual. ~ adj. 2. of or characteristic of lesbians

(So allowing it as an adjective for "lesbian bar" or "lesbian fashion". But not "lesbian person/woman".)

gay adj. 1. a. homosexual. b. (as n.): a group of gays

(Showing it used as a noun, but suggesting it's being misused as such.)

I never got the Barack Obama love so I am indifferent to his suffering.

There's certainly leftists pushing in the USA but there the opponents are conservatives, not GC feminists. As a result, because trans people are a 'cause' for conservatives, it turns from an internal debate on the left to a polarizing issue.

But is it really a 'cause' for conservatives or are they just pushing back against the genderists? If the genderists hadn't pushed so strongly for males to be allowed in female-only spaces and women's and girls' sports, there wouldn't be anything for the conservatives to make a 'cause' out of, unless they just wanted to persecute people for being different.

American doctors fight strongly for self-regulation. Then there's the other half of the problem: even if doctors are poor at self-regulating, the Texas Republican Party is not going to do a better job of it.

Are American doctors entirely unregulated?

@Lonel

I think it's tricky. In the UK trans people have the same rights as everyone else. AFAIK in the US this is not the case especially as regards healthcare. So I really don't feel qualified to talk about and I wish US posters would be equally as reticent about posting on British sites.

Completely agree.

He is entitled to an opinion, but his 'heartbrokenness' is not more relevant than that of any man (or woman, in this case) on the street.

Indeed. Perhaps he should be more "heartbroken" at his pivotal role in selling women down the river. But in any case, I can't say I'm that interested in what he feels.

But is it really a 'cause' for conservatives or are they just pushing back against the genderists? If the genderists hadn't pushed so strongly for males to be allowed in female-only spaces and women's and girls' sports, there wouldn't be anything for the conservatives to make a 'cause' out of, unless they just wanted to persecute people for being different.

I’m sure that some conservatives are genuinely concerned about women’s rights and irresponsible medical practices. I just don’t think that kind of Conservative has much power in the Republican Party at the moment.

I think Trans Orthodoxy sees trans identities as a standalone thing in their own right while feminists and (US style) conservatives both see them as a symptom of something else. However their ideas about what that something else is, and therefore how to address it to best support trans and other people, are very different.

For feminists, the underlying issue is that society is still pressurising people into rigid gender roles. For conservatives, it's that gender roles have become too flexible and blurred. So feminists would generally be fine and in fact see it as positive for trans people to adopt the social roles of the opposite sex as long as it does not disempower or endanger female people. Conservatives would want trans identities to go away altogether.

So it's really important to keep feminist voices distinct from conservative/right wing (US style not UK) voices even if we are superficially and transiently saying the same thing, because despite the t*rf slur the reality is that scrape the surface and feminists are far more sympathetic and accepting of trans identities than (US style) conservatives.

@merrymouse

But is it really a 'cause' for conservatives or are they just pushing back against the genderists? If the genderists hadn't pushed so strongly for males to be allowed in female-only spaces and women's and girls' sports, there wouldn't be anything for the conservatives to make a 'cause' out of, unless they just wanted to persecute people for being different.

I’m sure that some conservatives are genuinely concerned about women’s rights and irresponsible medical practices. I just don’t think that kind of Conservative has much power in the Republican Party at the moment.

My point wasn't about why many conservatives oppose genderism, but whether their taking this up as a cause really came before the genderist push for male access to women's spaces as OzMunchkin suggested: Trans rights have simply become a left/right issue as the conservatives have made it one of their causes.

I'm just unconvinced that it was the conservatives who first made this one of their causes, rather than that they were simply reacting to the genderists demands for access to spaces and sports based on gender identity. The left took up the genderist cause and the right reacted by taking the other side.

Which came first - the Republican 'Bathroom Bills' requiring segregation by sex, or the genderist demands for access based on gender identity? If the genderists weren't demanding access based on gender identity, why would the Republicans have even needed to pass any such laws?