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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.
I notice that I'm confused as to what "transgender rights" are.
From what I notice, it tends to be things like:
Being denied housing/jobs. - You know what, I could side with the Ts on this.
Surgery for adults. - I'm not going to celebrate you realizing your authentic self by cutting off your dick, but it's America and you should have the right.
Being able to use the bathroom of their choice. - Note that they always focus on bathrooms because they have stalls. Never mind locker rooms where you can glance over and see someone naked.
Legal documentation - I'd say it annoys me that they need everything to validate them, but speaking practically I don't care that much. I could actually slightly lead towards anon_'s take that the fact that they're actively revoking licenses shows direct animus.
Hormones for children. - They always play this game where they pretend getting them is difficult and you need to jump through all these hoops so no one could get them by accident. Never mind the gatekeepers (gender clinics) are also the advocates.
Sports. - They always attempt to pretend sports are unfair anyway due to biological differences, as if being male is equivalent to being a tall woman.
Prisons - A transwoman in a male prison is more likely to be raped. A transwoman in a women's prison is more likely to rape. Personally I'd rather make a small number of trans prisons around the country.
Insurance - Edited to add because I forgot about it. Because this is life-saving surgery of course they think it should be covered by insurance.
I deliberately search for takes from the left and right. The argument I constantly see is that the lefties on reddit seem to think that conceding any argument to the right is a slippery slope to Kristallnacht. Honestly, I would be perfectly accepting if a trans person would be willing to say, "Yes I know it's silly but my brain kicks me whenever I'm misgendered so please just go with it." My problem with the movement is the constant maximalist demands. I remember when the argument was that pronouns are meaningless titles, so it's no difference than using "Dr." instead of "Mr." Now it's "The science is settled and only a bigot could object."
To be fair on hormones, there was a nearly two-decade period where the Official WPATH-approved Protocol for adults was to require 'three months lived experience' -- aka looking like a bad crossdresser, full-time, at your work -- before prescribing hormones or surgical interventions, including levels of 'surgery' that was just laser hair removal. In a lot of places, even fairly friendly psychotherapists would draw that out to six months.
I think the WPATH-approved approaches are pushed way too hard the other direction, but the trans activists were reacting to policies that did genuinely exist as recently as the Obama administration. Wish there were options other than complete bans that leave a lot of people stuck with surgical interventions they might have been able to otherwise avoid, or extremely sketchy application on 12-year-olds without any admission when they don't work... but the Litany of Tarski still rules.
The problem's that it's worked, precisely because the activist branch pushed that hard and in that direction, and now it is going to be a serious problem for a lot of people when the pendulum swings. The framework where access to hormone therapy was access to early and fast gender transition was the only thing that could prevent thousands of people from A Heroing themselves was misguided at best, but it was a massive thumb on the scales for any and every risk-benefit analysis, and empowered a lot of motion claiming that opposition could only be downstream of rabid hate.
Now, there's a lot of not-psychological needs, and a lot of reasons for the social conservatives to hate. At best, the pendulum's going to have someone somewhere stuck paying out of pocket for stuff that they're now much more dependent on getting, whether that's 'just' dependent to 'avoid body hair' or dependent in the 'don't make sex hormones on their own' sense, and I'm not optimistic it's going to end there.
Yeah, but we'd need both that -- already pie-in-the-sky thinking -- and, simultaneously, a social conservative branch willing to just go with it.
Some of the latter does exist: I work in a moderately Red Tribe sphere in a fairly Red Tribe state, and we've had a trans employee that was willing to put up with a gender-neutral restroom while the mechanics weren't going to make a big deal out of there being a gender-neutral restroom, and outside of an older guy trying to take me aside and gently inform me that They Hadn't Always Been A Woman, it was just something no one mentioned. But that did also happen post-Bostock, and I'm not sure it'd have gone the same way even five years earlier or later. Worse, a lot of 'oh, they're not all obnoxious gits' only happened downstream of that coordination being possible in turn.
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