taptap Is this thing on?
Finn Mackay continues not to answer the many people who have asked “What rights are you talking about when you say ‘What do we want: trans rights, when do we want them: NOW.'”
It’s odd. It seems like a perfectly good opportunity to say what trans rights, so as to further public understanding of the trans cause.
Maybe Mackay understands that the purported rights aren’t actually rights? That no one has a “right” to force people to agree that people are a thing they visibly obviously unmistakably are not? That men don’t have a “right” to take over women’s sports? That men who say they are trans don’t matter more than women? Maybe Mackay realizes the shouting and threatening and bullying are not working as well as they once did? That more and more people are realizing how absurd at best and destructive at worst the demands are?
Or maybe Mackay is just lazy, I don’t know.
Indeed. What rights activist wouldn’t jump at such a chance? Anyone involved in any such movement would be able to reel off any number of arguments and justifications for their cause off the top of their head. However forcefully and vigourously demands might be made, they are always undergirded by an easily communicated and comprehensible demand for justice. The exact nature of the injustice being perpetrated would be foremost in the minds of any such legitimate activists. Hell, it’s in the slogans they’ve used. “VOTES FOR WOMEN!” “END APARTHEID!” “END SEGREGATION!” “ABORTION ON DEMAND!” “NO MEANS NO!” “TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!” Trans demands have no such foundation, and are backed up by bullying and intimidation, much of which, I believe, is the result of their having no real arguments or justification. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!* is not a plea for justice, it is a lie. It is the inarticulate rage of of someone who has nothing but rage to convey. This is turned around, so that questions or doubts are branded as “violence,” and criticism or resistance is tantamount to plotting trans genocide.
My guess is that Makay’s response would be that “trans existence is not up for debate.” Or, that the question of what trans “rights” are is not being asked in good faith. In a way, the latter is closer to the truth than she would want to admit. It’s not that those asking the question don’t want to know the answer; it’s that most of them know she can’t give one.
If there were basic human rights being denied to trans identifying people, Mackay would be able to enumerate them (see above). We would have heard about them. Over and over. It’s exactly the sort of ammunition that trans activism would never fail to use. If they’re not using this as part of their case, it’s because they can’t. There are no such rights that everyone else has that trans identified people do not. It’s just like asking for actual transphobic quotes from JKR. If they existed they would be repeated. Over and over. We would be able to quote them ourselves simply through their repetition. If they existed. At all. I think Mackay knows that spelling out the exact nature of the “rights” being demanded would show them as not being “rights” at all, as Ophelia notes above.
* TWAW has more in common with MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! than it does with the slogans shown above. Both of them contain unspoken and unspeakable premises (dare I say “dogwhistles?”) that are purposely left unarticulated, lest the true nature of all that is being demanded be made plain to those who would be forced to pay the price of its fulfilment. Not everyone is going to make it to the Promised Land; only the worthy and elect. If you need to ask “Who?” you are not numbered among them.