Help me with the argument that trans rights aren't the same as gay rights hence we are NOT on "the wrong side of history"

[flashbac]

I'm sure you've all heard the the line, constantly pushed, "you're on the wrong side of history, the gay rights movement went through the same resistance" and so on.

I have an argument about who each sets of rights affects hence the difference but there has to be a better line than "this thing doesn't affect me personally so it's fine whereas that thing redefines my identity and seeks to erase the biological reality on which my oppression is based hence its not fine"
Or am I just lacking in conviction/confidence here?

If you need help in justifying a certain standpoint, perhaps this means that your thinking is based on prejudice and not logic or evidence?

@TheWhalrus

If you need help in justifying a certain standpoint, perhaps this means that your thinking is based on prejudice and not logic or evidence?

Nice try. Give yourself a medal.

Some of us don't have English as a first language, or have been conditioned to STFU because we are support humans and hence are seen as not very intelligent, and so on, so trying to find our voice isn't a sign we don't have a valid argument.

@TheWhalrus

If you need help in justifying a certain standpoint, perhaps this means that your thinking is based on prejudice and not logic or evidence?

Nice try. Give yourself a medal.

Some of us don't have English as a first language, or have been conditioned to STFU because we are support humans and hence are seen as not very intelligent, and so on, so trying to find our voice isn't a sign we don't have a valid argument.

For me this issue isn’t trans rights, the issue is that the way people ‘become’ trans is being eroded. So a man could identify as a woman then a man then a woman every 5 minutes if he wanted and it’s legal. So eg a man is harassing a woman in a club, she escapes him to the toilet (very usual), that man can follow her and if anyone tries to throw him out he can say he identifies as a woman and claim transphobia.

We have already heard how many rapists claimed to identify as women after being put in prison.

And that’s just two examples. There are hundreds more on this site alone eg men in womens changing rooms looking at and photographing teenagers, a boy who identifies as a girl raping a pupil at school.

Gay people having rights and respect didn’t cause any potential harms like this.

Look at what just happened to the woman raped in hospital by a man who identifies as a woman. There is nothing comparable when it comes to gay people and it’s not right to drag gay people into the argument as other groups have tried to do when claiming they need ‘rights’.

The reason it is different is precisely because of who it affects. If a transwoman has the "right" to women's sport, that person takes away an opportunity from a woman. If a transwoman has the "right" to be in a (previously single sex) changing room, that will exclude many women who need privacy when in a state of undress. And women are already a disadvantaged group (by almost every measure), so asking us to give up sport, safe space etc is a pisstake IMO.

Gay rights didn't involve sterilising children or removing healthy body parts.

I look at it like this. Rights sometimes compete. Someone with a support animal and someone with life-threatening allergies. An orthodox Jewish man on a plane who doesn't want to sit next to a woman and a woman who doesn't want to move. These are real examples of when rights ARE like pie.

Equal marriage, adoption, employment rights etc. for gay people (and trans people) aren't competing rights. There doesn't need to be angsty because my gay friends marrying makes no difference to my marriage. Rights are fantastic in this case. And generally supported.

Putting a rapist with a penis into a female prison does impact women's rights. I will now be careful with my language. AMAB athletes will push AFAB athletes out of sports. When rights compete, we need to consider gender identity rights AND sex-based rights. This is a grown up conversation and should be had sensibly.

Soundbites and pretending there is no issue is childish and dangerous. 'Wrong side of history' is childish and dangerous.

@Whitewhitewalls

For me this issue isn’t trans rights, the issue is that the way people ‘become’ trans is being eroded. So a man could identify as a woman then a man then a woman every 5 minutes if he wanted and it’s legal. So eg a man is harassing a woman in a club, she escapes him to the toilet (very usual), that man can follow her and if anyone tries to throw him out he can say he identifies as a woman and claim transphobia.

We have already heard how many rapists claimed to identify as women after being put in prison.

And that’s just two examples. There are hundreds more on this site alone eg men in womens changing rooms looking at and photographing teenagers, a boy who identifies as a girl raping a pupil at school.

Gay people having rights and respect didn’t cause any potential harms like this.

Look at what just happened to the woman raped in hospital by a man who identifies as a woman. There is nothing comparable when it comes to gay people and it’s not right to drag gay people into the argument as other groups have tried to do when claiming they need ‘rights’.

So is it fair to say this is about safeguarding too? Bad actors can't use gay rights as a guise to access vulnerable people whereas the same can't be said for trans rights? Just thinking aloud here, constructive critique is welcome.

"Gay rights didn't involve sterilising children or removing healthy body parts"

+1 for this

The "right side of history" arugment is always flawed. It depends on this idea that "progress" is inevitable. It's not empirically supported and the philosophical basis for believing it is rarely established by those using the term.

What people really mean is that they think that is the direction of travel in society and they don't want to be found espousing a minority opinion. Which is a little cowardly when it comes down to it.

As far the gay rights thing - part of the reason this is compelling to people is that gay rights are often argued on the basis of identity. As soon as we take that approach, it means that other identity based arguments can be hitched to it. So to some extent we've shot ourselves in the foot by being blase about accepting those kinds of arguments, which were never well formed.

But the basic issue is this - whether or not it should be legal, or morally ok, to have sex with whomever you can get to agree to have sex with you (who is an adult etc..) is simply not the same question as whether or not individuals can or should be able to assert anything about their sex or gender and that must be accepted socially and legally.

It doesn't matter if you agree with both ideas, disagree with both, or agree with one but not the other. They are not making the same proposition and so they need to be studied and argued on their own merits pertaining to their own characteristics and contexts.

The same is true for civil rights of blacks, or animal rights, or women's rights, and gay rights. There may be some parallels and overlap, insights that can be passed from one to another, but they are not identical. THat is what a comparison is, looking at different things to see what elements are the same and what aren't. You cannot say that because we should not discriminate on the basis of race, it follows that we should not discriminate on the basis or sexuality, or that what would constitute discrimination in each would be the same. We can't talk about discrimination against women in the same way as discrimination on the basis or race - there are important differences.

It's just a sloppy, sloppy argument.

@TheWhalrus

If you need help in justifying a certain standpoint, perhaps this means that your thinking is based on prejudice and not logic or evidence?

In this specific case it is more that the 'logic' we are dealing with is about as easy to understand as it is to nail blancmange to the ceiling.

Human beings cannot change sex

Transwomen are male
Transmen are female

All else is flummery, opinion, feelings and sometimes dysphoria! Which in any other presentation we do not affirm!

Sounds to me like you mainly lack confidence.

Jane Clare Jones doesn't, and here's her take on the theme.

[[https://janeclarejones.com/2018/09/09/gay-rights-and-trans-rights-a-compare-and-contrast/
Gay Rights and Trans Rights – A Compare and Contrast]]

Gay rights don't infringe on anyone else's rights. We also know exactly what homosexuality means, and it brought love, joy and removed inhumane laws. Telling children that gay relationships existed and were about loving who you choose to love, caused no harm. Homosexuality did not come with unproven medical treatment. The campaign had concrete goals, which were achieved.

However, "trans" and "gender" are woolly concepts without agreed definition, even within the movement itself. There is huge conflict over the way trans rights are superseding the hard-won rights of women to have our own spaces and opportunities, and to be able to live our lives safely, with dignity and equality. There IS harm being caused to children by experimental medical pathways. Harmful gender stereotypes are being embedded as the movement gains traction.

For gay people to have equal rights, no women have lost access to services, had their dignity, safety or career compromised. No-one lost anything - there was only positive gain. There was no compelled speech.

The trans movement demands we dismantle safeguarding, centre adult males over women and children and shut up about it all. It's regressive - just look at women's sports being dismantled and set back decades - and it is very, very far from individuals simply living their lives in peace.

And the trans movement doesn't even know what it wants - what's the goal, the end game here? That all services operate unquestioningly in response to individuals' changing whims, that no safeguarding exists, that we all deny our bodies? That women have nothing of their own? They don't even know.

It's also a circular argument, btw . Because presumably we can all think of things we would argue were entirely different, or maybe would not be sure about. Should we give equal rights to people who want to watch child porn? Or what about to cats or chickens?

Many of us would say, no of course not, but there are people who would say, yes. But we could only come to a considered conclusion after having made the argument, having the discussion. It's only having done that someone could claim that cat rights are the same thing as women's rights.

Saying, well, you need to accept cat rights because they are the same as rights for women, and we all accept that, is just a logical fallacy.

It's dead simple.

Gay rights don't affect anyone else's life. They don't harm anyone.

The demands that are being called "trans rights" are in direct conflict with women's rights. Males cannot have access to women's single-sex spaces or sports without taking those rights from women. (Those rights cannot be shared, because as soon as a male enters a women's space it is no longer single-sex.)

Ok I will give it a go.

Being lesbian, gay or bisexual is a biological thing. Same as your sex is biological. People are born female or male. Being attracted to the same sex is something genetic and you are born with. Being gay or lesbian may not be as binary as biological sex eg it can be a sliding scale - but nevertheless it is still written into your genes.

The TQIA++++++++ is a thought. It is not genetic. It isn’t something you are born with genetically. It is a feeling and a mental thing.

That’s not to say it is any less valid - but it is a completely different thing. Is why many LGB are getting cheesed off with the TQIA++++ telling them they are genital obsessed and that being gay or lesbian is also simply a thought in the head and a lesbian should be attracted to a man with dick who calls himself a woman, say.

A person who believes that they have a magic 'gender identity' different from his sexed body, is expecting the rest of the world to believe his fiction. Gay rights was never like this. They just wanted to get on and be left alone.

But it's more than that. Men are a danger to women, and allowing men into spaces where women have a reasonable expectation of being unclothed is dangerous. That's why we have single-sex spaces. Not all men, but there are about 80,000 reported cases of rape a year in the UK. And that's just the reported ones. Gay men were never a danger to women.

It's a religion, the 'gender identity' religion. And religions (in the UK, anyway) do not have the right to ask other people to subscribe to their religion. Trans rights demands obeisance in the form of respecting their pronouns, and pretending that you cannot tell the sex of a huge bloke. Gay rights never asked you to be a part of a religion.

Also - gay sex was actually illegal. So gay rights was asking for this prohibition to be removed. Trans is not illegal. In the UK anyone can present as they like. So what 'rights' are they actually asking for? It's unclear and undefined.

Women in prison are on the receiving end of sexual attacks from men who think that this is their 'right', because of Trans Rights. Gay rights was never like this.

Ah I realised I answered why gender ideology is not just the logical next step on from gay acceptance. It is totally different and not just a ‘logical next step’.

Then yep after that comes the harm much of the ideology does to kids and women.

Thx for the Jane Clare Jones link, @NecessaryScene !

Trans rights are similar to gay rights when we are talking only about bona fide human rights. Right to marry, to family life, to vote, freedom of speech, privacy, personal autonomy, etc.

The problems are:

1. many privileges are being conflated to be rights- ie gender confirming surgery of breast implants should not take precedence over breast cancer surgeries. The line that both are “life saving” and should be equal priority is not a trans rights issue. It’s an issue of privilege.

2. there is conflict of rights between groups in many scenarios, ie. access to single sex spaces conflicts with sex based right to personal privacy.

and

3. the processes and procedures to identify and support trans individuals are in their infancy and so full of missteps and bad decisions. As evidenced by regret, de transitioning and the abhorrent pressuring of children to consent to life changing irreversible treatments.

As for “wrong side of history” it’s similar to calling someone a racist when there is disagreement on trans issues. It’s an insult designed to shut down the dialogue. No one can know which side is the right side of history, the future is unknowable. And besides the winners write history so you can be sure that whoever wins will be on the “right side of history” as there is no ultimate universe power that ensures that the right side is the most ethical or moral side, it’s merely the side that wins.

Gay rights and the right for people to express their sexuality, live their lives free from discrimination etc doesn’t adversely impact on other people.

There is no negative impact on other protected groups.
Letting trans women into womens single sex spaces, toilets, changing rooms, rape services, abuse shelters, sports, hospital wards, prisons etc can and do have a negative impact on women.

There is also a negative effect on religiously observant women of certain faiths who cannot use spaces with men - thus excluding them from those spaces.

Many gay people are waking up to the fact that trans ideology states that exclusively same sex attraction is transphobic. Also that a disproportionate number of children referred to GIDs are gay.

The equivalence issues are (I) mens rights and (ii) safeguarding issues.

I would point out that no one at all is raising any concerns about women becoming men so that will be predatory towards men. No one at all it raising concerns about trans men competing in women’s sports. The safeguarding concerns that are being raised are purely about how men may harm
women and how women may harm themselves. It is entirely different to the treatment of gay rights.

I would also point out that the trans rights movement is DEEPLY homophonic itself.

Your rights ends where mine begin.

Gay rights did nothing to my rights. I could still get married, I could still love whoever I wanted. Now gay people could do the same.

Trans rights destroy my rights. I don't have the right to single sex spaces or sports, I don't even have the right anymore to healthcare catering for my sex class (just for my indivual body parts), I don't have the right anymore to equal opportunities based on my sex because any male can demand them as well. Male people win, female people lose.

Trans people already have equal rights. There is nothing I can do that they cannot do.

Should we give equal rights to people who want to watch child porn?
People who watch child porn also have equal rights. Until they are caught, convicted and in prison...prisoners and released convicts do not have equal rights for good reason.

Trans issues today are not rights based at all. It is purely on what privileges they think they are due from society. And it’s totally up to us in society to decide what privileges to grant or not grant. They don’t get to demand and receive. It’s a democratic society.