Are equal rights like pie?

[MadameMassiveSalad]

Thoughts?

It's a stupid metaphor. Males in women's spaces is a zero-sum game: what one side gains the other loses. Gay marriage is a positive-sum game. There's the difference.

2 - always

My thoughts are that sometimes it is exactly like pie.

A swimming pool is like a pie cut into eight pieces. If Lia Thomas takes a piece, a female swimmer doesn't get any.

If Emily Bridges takes a slice of pie from a female cycling team, then a female cyclist doesn't get a piece. Emily still has regular slices of pie from Emily's male uni cycling team so Emily has double portions of pie. Emily is clearly a greedy guts.

Although not really because British Cycling have done the right thing.

The balancing of rights where there is limited opportunity is very much like a pie or a cake. If there are only 8 spaces in a race for women and you allow 3 men to take places in that race women lose 3 opportunities to compete. Obviously sometimes it is necessary to limit the opportunities of one group in order to make things better for another group (equal rights for men and women in the workplace for example).

Women can't have any pie whilst men have sex fudge.

If a woman can't go to her gynae appointment because her trauma means that it's too difficult to go into a space where she can't be guaranteed a female carer, the (possibly even completely hypothetical) transwoman employee got all the pie.

If I decide not to go out after work with my colleagues because they really like that pub with the mixed sex toilets, and I had a bad experience last time we were there but I know they'll call me a bigot, again no pie for me.

Not necessarily. Some groups, like Christians who believe that marriage is a sacrament ordained by God and only between one man and one woman, find their right to maintain this view publicly and act on it subject to sanction (I'm thinking of the famous gay cake row a few years ago). So they have lost rights. Whether they should lose this right or not is a political matter, but the material point is that the right has been truncated. Pie.

Not just correct but bloody funny too.

The cake analogy doesn't work though, afaics. The gay couple can still have a cake baked for them, just not from that one bakery. Whilst it's a sucky thing to do, it's not like they can't have a cake. There's a bakery every block.

The Olympics are every 4 years. Some sports are so demanding, you get one or two chances to be at the Olympics. If the female athletes find 4 males in the women's team, that's it. That's their pie gone. Probably forever.

Not necessarily. Some groups, like Christians who believe that marriage is a sacrament ordained by God and only between one man and one woman, find their right to maintain this view publicly and act on it subject to sanction (I'm thinking of the famous gay cake row a few years ago). So they have lost rights. Whether they should lose this right or not is a political matter, but the material point is that the right has been truncated.

Except iirc they didn't - their freedom to not have to write words they disagreed with was upheld, wasn't it? And the cake was available elsewhere.

If I recall correctly, they offered to bake and ice the cake, and provide writing icing in tubes so the wording could be done elsewhere.
It must hurt being refused exactly what you want. Like privacy, dignity and freedom from males in a women's toilet, for example...if only we knew what that was like......

In fact what that one boiled down to wasn't really gay rights or religion, it was about compelled speech.

One persons right to say something doesn't give them the right to force others to say it.

There is no such right to impose your religious views on others. They are free to practice their faith. Gay marriages don't prevent them from doing so. Religious freedom just means having the right to practice (or to not practice) religion.

Eventually, yes. But that's not the point. It's an illustration of how rights are like pie. Sometimes quite subtle and complex pie, but pie nonetheless.

Edit: I mean I'm arguing against the idea of rights ever being a "positive sum game".

And what about the right to vote. If, for example, we extend the right to a vote to 16 and 17 year-olds, that means more people with a vote, and my vote now counts for a bit less. Actually, I'm completely OK with that, but it does mean I have a smaller piece of pie.

Exactly. You now have 16 and 17 year old interests and views getting taken into account. This changes things, whether or not that change is for the better. And that change will impact the 18s and over. Pie.

Mine too 😩

I do hope that if rights are a pie then my Gran isn't doing the serving. No matter how many of us there were, she would always end up with one piece left over which she would then offer to my uncle - her only son.

Sorry, too late at night to read and think carefully... But if rights are a pie, whose piece of pie did lesbians and gay men steal when they gained the right to have civil partnerships and thus gain the privilege of legal protections, tax advantages etc previously reserved for straight people? Or the right to goods and services, just like the straight population? I suppose that piece of the pie was lopped off the 'right to discriminate' chunk of pie.

I believe that in the vast majority of situations, trans rights do not conflict with women’s rights. However:

If a place on any country’s women’s Olympic team goes to a trans woman, a “cis” woman will lose out. This has happened.

If young men in the US are allowed to compete for women’s athletic college scholarships because they identify as trans, then there’s a high chance that an opportunity intended for an exceptional woman will go to a mediocre man. Due to the cost of university tuition fees in the US, these scholarships can be worth £100,000.

If female rape survivors request the option of a female-only support group (in addition to trans-only groups and trans-inclusive groups) and they are denied this, they may not be able to attend a support group due to PTSD.

And what about all the women who won't go to the gym or the pool because men are allowed to change in their changing rooms, or won't go to the doctor's for a smear test or a mammogram because they can't be guaranteed femaleHCPs? Or lesbians who aren't allowed to advertise and hold a female-only event without being threatened and having to deal with angry men trying to gain access? None of those women's rights are compromised?

No rights are not like pie.

The primary purpose of rights is to prevent harm to a person. As in actual harm, not hurty feelings.

Then rights are balanced on the situation depending on need. .

The next risk is dignity and privacy.

Then it's about other issues.

So in a situation where there is a risk of harm, you consider than but not at the expense of another group by increasing their risk.

If you are talking about changing rooms this is relevant. We have laws about voyeurism. So we have the physical risk and laws to be upheld about this.

Whilst their is thought to dignity it can not be at the expense of the dignity of others. All parties are worthy of dignity. So refering back to previous point about harms and dignity, you can't take that away from others. You have to find alternative solutions (the third party reasonable adjustment).

This isn't negotiable. You can't say one group is worthy but another isn't. It's not a hierarchy

Isn't it odd how men parading fetishes has become a matter of human rights?

(Not really, of course.)