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One of the things I've noticed about the media is how they define the narrative by promoting the things that people should be talking about, rather than simply dismiss and ignore. Case in point:
AP News: "New law puts Kansas at vanguard of denying trans identities on drivers licenses, birth certificates"
Note that it's about how trans people must use the correct gender marking (i.e. gender assigned at birth), rather than their own preferred gender, on their drivers' licenses.
I notice that I'm confused as to what "transgender rights" are, and what rights specifically transgender people are demanding that Americans don't already have. Trans people have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, for instance. However, the demand that other people refer to you with a specific designation is not really a natural right, and in fact, suppressing or compelling the speech of others is a violation of other people's rights to free speech.
The question of if gender can "change" is purely philosophical and not something that can be settled by research. I can't begin to imagine how research could settle it, unless the research in question is from a hyper-advanced sci-fi future where reversible body modification is possible with no ill side effects.
Is the contradiction here that they can't be protecting women if they don't use favorable labels? If we accept that premise (which I don't), then surely calling women "menstruators" is also not protecting them, but that terminology has been advanced in the name of being inoffensive to trans-identifying males.
I love the multiple layers of lies that get packed into this one sentence. It's like a masterclass in lying while saying something that is technically true.
First, attributing it to unspecified "transgender people" in general. So you can't blame the journalist for printing this statement if it's blatantly false, he is just the messenger.
Second, attributing any supposed harassment from others to carrying ID that "misgenders" them, rather than other factors. They're painting this world where a trans woman (man who says he is a woman) is just like a woman in every other respect of the word, except that he just happens to have "M" on his license, and that causes him to be unduly questioned. In reality, a trans-identifying male can be spotted from a mile away, and if he was ever asked about it (which IME most people are too polite to even do), it was because he was clocked as a man and it's obvious to everyone that he's a man.
Finally, the assertion that they face violence. (To be clear, I mean violence as in physical violence, something that can at the very least be legally categorized as assault. I don't believe that mere speech is violence.) I am going to assert that there are vanishingly few cases where a trans person has faced violence simply on the basis of being trans and nothing else. Out of all the cases I've seen, they faced violence for other reasons, such as being the aggressor or for being involved in sex work.
I'm not saying it's impossible or hasn't happened, but I just haven't seen a case yet that could support the assertion that there are people who want trans people dead or genocided. There are no roaming death squads of extremists hunting down trans people. Being a trans person is quite a safe demographic in America. By and large, most people just don't care about trans people, but they are interested in making sure that trans people don't inflict negative externalities on society.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, we have the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Why the quotes around biological reproductive system? Are biological reproductive systems not a well-defined, scientifically-grounded concept?
My bigger point is just asking why anyone should even care in the first place, including trans people themselves. If I was trans, I would shrug and just accept the "M" designation on my license. To the extent that I would have a problem with the current state of affairs, I would find that the entire licensing regime that the government imposes on the people -- forcing them to register and pay fees in order to drive and participate in society -- is the actual problem here, not merely an unpreferred gender marker. But my stance is that it's not worth it to fight the licensing regime and it's better to comply. Hence, too, I wouldn't care about having the "M" on my license. It seems rather silly to me to question and reject one social construct (gender) while being completely subservient to another (driver's licenses).
And my biggest point is that this shouldn't even be worthy of discussion. If you're going to accept that the government has the right to force you to get licensed, who cares what kind of silly labels they give you? But a mainstream news article publishing this as a headline implies that it's a newsworthy item, a topic of controversy, something that people should care about even though it's really not going to have an impact on anyone's life.
Kiiiind of begging the question here....
Only in the sense that would define most victims of anti-Black violence in the Jim Crow era as not 'simply on the basis of being Black and nothing else'. The modal case of anti-Black violence in that time and place was something along the lines of 'white person Big Mad because black person insufficiently obsequious', or 'black person expects to be paid previously-agreed-upon wages rather than whatever pittance white employer feels like after-the-fact'. These aren't technically, in the narrowest sense, a Black person facing violence simply on the basis of being Black and nothing else; however, they were precipitated by a Black person 'thinking he's as good as a white man', something he has every moral right to be able to do without risk to life or limb, and thus, practically, they round off to that description.
Anti-trans violence follows a similar pattern: some victims are targeted on the basis of 'being trans while thinking of oneself as an equally valid human being rather than a horrifying, disgusting freak'; some are targeted on the basis of 'not performing one's assigned gender to the satisfaction of the Community'.
Speech isn't violence per se, but some speech can carry the implication of impending violence, or can serve the function of coördinating violence; the targets of said speech can't always tell the difference.
No, their first preference would be terrifying them into living by the standards of their assigned gender (which are younger than the New York Times crossword puzzle) no matter how miserable it makes them.
No, just individual bad apples and a barrelful of bystanders who would never personally do anything so vulgar as beat up a todger-bearer-at-birth for being insufficiently masculine, but who don't see it as being as bad as a 'normal' person suffering the same fate. (With their definition of 'normal' being less 'people on the bus' and more 'people at the church sponsored ice cream social'.)
...and just happen to have much stricter standards for 'externalities inflicted by trans people or other non-conformers' than they have for 'people they consider Normal'.
...whom they were interested in making sure didn't inflict negative externalities on society. That did not justify his being killed, because there are worse things than someone causing negative externalities and getting away with it. We expect the people-of-hair-colour, if the only alternative is the murder of people for their political opinions, to absorb the externalities caused by conservative pundits; the same applies to church-ladies being expected, if the only alternative is a combination of State repression and vigilantism making people terrified to put a single toe outside the closet, to absorb the externalities caused by non-heteronormative identities and/or lifestyles.
I'm guessing it was a direct quote from the statute in question.
What if you were trans in the other direction, identifying as male, but assigned female at birth?
The difference is that there is, at least theoretically, a legitimate government purpose in issuing and requiring driver's licences; I benefit from bad drivers not being allowed to operate multi-ton machinery on the same roads I use, whereas I do not benefit from requiring said licences to list what kind of gametes the operator of said machinery produces (very few motor vehicles are operated using the gonads), or for that matter, anything other than the licence-holder's name, date of birth, and photograph.
I will concede that there is an argument to be had as to whether the licencing regime accomplishes this purpose, especially in Miami, where per Dave Barry, "everyone follows the traffic laws of his or her own country or planet of origin".
Is it not correct to use that marker? My license says I'm 4'11". If I wanted it changed to 5'11", not because I am 5'11", but because I want to be, would that not be incorrect?
No, obviously the blacks lynched in the Jim Crow era were killed for being black. I believe that because their killers made it clear they were acting with anti-black motives. Meanwhile, the deaths of trans people I've seen are usually no different from, say, a sex worker getting killed by an angry customer or pimp.
If you're going to compare anti-trans violence to Jim Crow, please give me a specific case where something like this has happened.
A lot of people talk a big game but are unwilling or unable to put their money where their mouth is. For how much anti-trans sentiment there is in the First World, there are remarkably few instances of actual violence enacted based on it.
What standards? That you have to be honest about what you were born as? I thought we did away with gender standards entirely. A man can be emotional and wear a dress if he wants, but he's still a man. In olden times he would have been mocked and derided as a woman.
Has this ever actually happened?
I don't think they do. For example, normal people are not allowed to groom children into living an alternative sexual lifestyle, so trans people should not be allowed to do that either. Which standards do you think are stricter than the ones normal people are held to?
First, what externalities do conservative pundits even cause? An externality is an effect that you don't suffer but others do. Most conservative pundits have to live under the effects of their own policies and often are happy to do so. For example, Charlie Kirk made the (often mocked) nuanced argument that a tyrannical government is so terrible that the Second Amendment is worth keeping around even if it leads to a few (statistically rare) mass shootings, or in other words, the optimal number of mass shootings is not zero. In contrast, gun control advocates often don't have to suffer the negative effects of their policies when they are wealthy enough to live in a nice neighborhood and/or afford private protection. In other words, they hold luxury beliefs.
Second, the alternative to murder is speech. If anyone had an issue with Charlie Kirk, they could just talk to him. That one chose instead to shoot him makes speech less likely to happen in the future and murder more likely.
I'm not sure what difference this makes.
Police regularly use identification to catch criminals. If identification is not accurate, that makes their job harder. I benefit from police being able to quickly and accurately identify people. If we are to have licenses, they should at least be useful for this purpose.
Also, we can still prohibit people from driving even if we don't have a licensing regime.
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