Pie or cake
Metaphors and slogans are all very well, but it helps if they get it right.
I think I would replace pie with cake. @UKLabour
EQUAL RIGHTS
FOR OTHERS
DOES NOT MEAN
LESS RIGHTS
FOR YOU.
IT’S NOT PIE.
Fewer rights, they mean, but never mind that. Pie or cake, whichever, it’s still not true. It’s not true because it depends. Anything can be called a right, and it’s not difficult to imagine purported rights that would indeed mean fewer or no rights for other people. Look at US history for example – the ruling class in the South and much of the rest of the white population thought the federal government was violating their “right” to own slaves. They considered themselves to be the aggrieved party.
Think of “right to work” laws. What those are in fact is laws that weaken unions, and weak unions means employers are free to impose dangerous working conditions and crap pay and benefits. The word “rights” can be used to disguise exploitation or oppression. It depends.
Laws against domestic violence interfere with the “rights” of husbands to bash their wives. Laws protecting children interfere with parents’ “rights” to bash the kids when they make too much noise.
It’s depressing that a Labour MP and Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary doesn’t get this, or pretends she doesn’t.
To use the classic example, your right to swing your fist could mean a reduction in my right not to have you break my nose.
And another example: My brother once insisted he had a right to smoke, and that meant he could smoke in my house. This would reduce my right to breathe (I am asthmatic; it could be fatal), and to control my household the way I wished. So I told him I had the right never to invite him to my house again. I never did.
“Right to life” vs. right to control one’s body.
But it might mean fewer spots on sports teams, or less access to toilets.
What about the right for men who don’t identify as women to try out for whichever sports team they feel more comfortable on? Letting people assigned male at birth play on the women’s soccer team or run women’s track and field doesn’t take away trans women’s rights to do the same. Let’s be fair.
Again with this pie garbage? No, it is not a pie, it is a binary again. Either real women have the right to privacy or they don’t. Real women have the right to safety or they don’t. People have the right to speak truthfully about what they see with their own eyes or they don’t.