Serious people
And another thing.
“…but trans rights are human rights. They shouldn’t be up for debate amongst serious people…”
Jolyon Maugham is a lawyer. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it an important part of a lawyer’s job to be very careful about precision in language, and to make sure everybody is talking about the same thing?
I ask because what exactly are “trans rights”? How can we tell whether they’re human rights or not if people aren’t clear about what they mean by the category?
Is it a human right to force everyone to pretend you are what you visibly are not?
No, it isn’t. It can’t be. Such a right would be unworkable, and often disastrous.
Is it a human right to force everyone to say you are a woman when you obviously are not?
No, of course it isn’t. Why would that be a right? It doesn’t even look like other rights.
Is it a human right for people to be treated as if they were the sex they’re not for all purposes?
No. Such a right would carve great gaping holes in women’s existing rights, and they would be pretty bad for children too.
Those seem to be the pseudo-rights that trans activists want, but they shouldn’t and can’t have them. If they attain them everyone else will lose some genuine rights.
Jolyon Maugham is a lawyer. On some level he must know this, right? That the claimed rights aren’t rights as normally understood?
I mean… technically, yeah, trans rights are human rights. So they do have the same human rights as everyone else already; best they could even remotely reasonably argue is that they are equally oppressed to whatever group they (imagine themselves to) belong to.
TRAs *could* do good, if they acted as though they believed trans rights to be human rights. Too bad all the TRAs I’ve had the pleasure of hearing anything from are simple narcissists.
But technically is just what it isn’t. That’s my point. The people who repeat the mantra “trans rights are human rights” don’t spell out what trans rights are. The mantra isn’t “trans people have human rights just like other humans,” and it doesn’t mean the same thing either.
A man is and should be free to pretend, believe, publicly proclaim, etc, etc, that he is a woman, a giraffe, the imam of a mosque in Timbuktu (caution there) Jesus Christ returned to Earth (it has been done by many on many different occasions) and so on. But he has no ‘right’ to force others to accept those beliefs.
Nor does he have the most important ‘right’ claimed by men who pretend they are women: the right to enter and use, as a biological male, womens’ washrooms and other women-only facilities.
Margaret Atwood and Roxanne Gay will likely keep on this tack until the day comes when they are confronted and/or attacked by a male would-be rapist in such a womens’ facility, whereupon they will likely find reasons to each reconsider and revise their present opinion.
I still can’t quite figure out where all of this passion about “trans rights” has suddenly come from. It’s got little to do with the ‘Western’ concept of transsexualism as it was understood a few decades ago, and it’s got nothing to do with celebrating or encouraging gender diversity in general. Nor does it have anything to do with the ways other societies are structured around sex, sexuality, and gender roles, like in indigenous, collectivist cultures around the world. “Transphobia” as the term is presently used is an elusive spectre that seems to have been conjured entirely out of people’s minds. None of the terms it relies on can be consistently defined, or even roughed out: what is and is not “transgender”? What does and does not constitute a “trans right”?
If we can’t get anywhere with the words themselves, can we find some clues in the people who use them? What do the people who carp about “trans rights” have in common? Based on the insults they throw at their supposed enemies, they seem to share an anxiety about the “far right”, about Donald Trump or Brexit, about a general sense of loss of social cohesion, some kind of cultural splintering, and a fear of being left tribeless after a period of political disruption…
All that anxiety has led to the formation of an in-group/out-group mentality among some progressives, and “trans rights” appears to serve no function except as a shibboleth to signal that one is loyal to the tribe and willing to fight the good fight against its enemies in order to earn favour and maintain status among the in-group. It’s certainly got nothing to do with actual progressive values. Women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of speech… they’re being ripped to shreds. The degree of enthusiasm with which a person takes up the transgender cause corresponds closely to the degree to which that person is invested in publicly displaying his or her “progressive” credentials: direct financial incentive, career obligations or opportunities, insecure social standing or job position, etc. Jolyon Maugham has found a lucrative market in selling virtuous, crusading lawsuits to credulous backing donors within the group. Billy Bragg built his entire image for decades around being the most progressive folk troubadour in England — it’s his bread and butter. Owen Jones, progeny of prominent old-school hippie leftists, rests his entire social media and media-media brand on lefty militancy. On and on.
No wonder JK Rowling, possibly the woman with the most secure credentials, career opportunities, and finances in the whole United Kingdom, is so far the most prominent person to step up and speak out.
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The mantra also doesn’t mean “The rights we (as trans people are demanding) are rights that should be extended to, and enjoyed by all other humans.” Not at all. What they’re demanding are special privileges that are exclusive to them. Only they get the freedom to have “identities” that everyone else is supposed to recognize-through force of law, threat and intimidation.
Oh I agree… I do know that THEY don’t mean that, but the framing is so similar to other, actually progressive arguments… I find myself trying to find some redeeming quality, questioning whether these people are really as terrible as they seem, are really co-opting the language of movements demanding actual justice to argue for ultimately unjust ends. The most charitable reading I can come up with is to start by assuming they’re trying to argue for recognition of rights that people are *supposed* to have, but are actually denied based on some categorization, but that I’ve just completely misunderstood them, or that I’ve given too much credence to the loud-mouths inciting violence…. but: nope. As others here have said, they’re consistently demanding special rights for themselves at the expense of others, and threatening or outright attacking anyone who dares so much as question them or theirs :-/
Not really. As a barrister, Maugham’s job is to make convincing arguments. Which he also consistently fails at.
‘The mantra also doesn’t mean “The rights we (as trans people are demanding) are rights that should be extended to, and enjoyed by all other humans.”’
Really good point. That’s what ‘civil rights’ are supposed to be about.
There’s a reason it’s called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It’s only appropriation and camouflage. It’s no accident that nobody is able or willing to define exactly what these “trans rights are.” Just as they have attached themselves to gay rights, often compare their plight to racial discrimination, and have used the existence and language of DSD conditions (so-called “intersex” people) as justification for their demands, the “human rights” angle is just another analogy that no one is supposed (or allowed) to unpack. Thought and analysis is death to their cause, so it must be short-circuited at all costs.Questioning = bigotry. Their branding irons are always on the fire, ready to be applied to anyone who so much as pauses to think. Trans activists have no arguments and no facts on their side. It’s handwaving and analogies all the way down, with no solid foundation of actual “justice” underneath, just “I WANT IT. GIVE IT TO ME. NOW! OR ELSE!!
Tantrum politics. What could go wrong?