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

[RainWithSunnySpells]

I'm sure that this isn't an original thought (it's probably been suggested before) however once I thought about this it made a lot of sense of the weird phrase TRSoH.

I always wondered how anyone can be on TRSoH in the present. Surely it is the people in the future who will judge that when they look back at the past? Therefore, does TRSoH essentially mean or is an equivalent to 'God is on our side'?

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.

'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'.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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,

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.

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

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.

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

nobody thinks today is the 'end of history'.

strawman arguments are tedious.

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.

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.

The web does indeed have a lot of reading matter.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Well, quite. And this is why I think there is a right side of history in a sense. Is there ever going to come a time when people say, Actually, the earth is flat, there's no such thing as gravity, and humanity is only 4,000 years old? Nope, they're never going to say those things because we have definitively established that they're not true. Hence the idea that humans can change sex, or that sex is fluid, or there are multiple sexes or whatever the fuck bonkers shit the TRAs are coming out with at the moment will eventually be laughed at, because it is wholly absurd and patently untrue.

Anecdotally I have just finished watching a really interesting Netflix series called 'Encounters' which focuses on four different countries and the experieneces of those who have had sightings and encounters with UFO's and alien beings.

The most interesting outcome of this series is the way in which people construe meaning from their experience; and how over time/history/culture the exact same type of encounter can lead to various different interpretations.

No. History does not “repeat itself. Nor is it a March of progress.

History has no telos.

You always do this on threads - you’ve run out of steam with any substantive points and so hang around nit picking. You’re out of your depth in these discussions - same as on the NT thread

The idea that our understanding of a particular topic (i.e. sex) is 'fixed' is not biological essentialism.

Also the idea that it's somehow naive or short-sighted to believe that some areas of knowledge are fixed doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The idea that the Earth orbits the Sun and not vice versa is pretty fixed but that is not 'astronomical essentialism'.

At some point we can achieve an accurate enough understanding of a topic that the knowledge does become fixed for all intents and purposes.

Sure, but I’d say we’re not there yet with sex and gender (or indeed with sexuality).