Gary Francione on gender is a metaphysical beief

[QueenHippolyta]

Gary Francione is a professor of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers in the US.
He wrote this excellent article which Medium took down.
He clerked for Sandra Day O'Connor, a Supreme Court Judge
https://www.abolitionistapproach.com/the-trans-rights-issue-equality-claims-and-belief-claims/

Placemarking to read later; I'm currently listening finally to the witch trials of JKR and I must say, when you know that "there are 67 genders" came from a meme on tumblr and is now being taught in U.K. schools "as fact" (my friend's daughter was taught this a few years ago)

"Your faith is problematic "....

Tumblr plus twitter = 💥

It's all a new order of belief. When you know about how algorithms work, Religion via AI.

There's another thread about this.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4864911-gary-l-francione-thoughts-the-trans-rights-issue-equality-claims-and-belief-claims

I thought it was a bit muddy in places. More unclear than I'd expect as to the truth claims of differernt worldviews.

On abortion, for example, it seems to be saying that because the claims of having a soul or personhood of an unborn human are what it describes as "metaphysical" they are unprovable, and therefore we don't legally enforce them on others.

But we could quite easily make the same kind of argument about the morality of eugenically euthanizing the intellectually disabled, or the death penalty, or murder, theft, or any other number of moral questions and rights of those defined as persons under the law. It's not self evident that any born human is a person any more than a fetal human. And people have not always believed that all were, it was an argument that had to be made and would certainly fall under what this guy is calling a metaphysical belief.

Not read the whole article but the breaking it down into 2 elements then comparing to Christianity is a really good way of explaining how I think about trans people.

Like Kathleen Stock etc I believe in equality/equity but not the belief itself.

I found the comparison to Christianity extremely helpful in explaining why I don't partake in the new gender identity faith.

One of my thoughts about the "stickiness" of trans as an ideology, racialisation politics, and the whole of woke/identarianism, is that I think it would be predominating even if Christianity hadn't gone into retreat in the West.

It's effectively a subset of organised religion, in that meld of altruism and group dynamics, but also a revolution beyond, yet an evolution of, despite also being a mutation. And a parasite as well.

That's why it's been so dominating, and so hard to fight against.