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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26023 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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So there are police outside bathrooms stopping people and saying "Yes, I know you look like a man but you have to use the women's room"?

Alright, lets clarify here.

I'm saying these laws would oblige male-looking people like Buck Angel to use the women's restroom, which would normalize male-looking people going into women's restrooms, teh precise thing people are claiming these laws are intended to fix.

It sounds like you're saying this won't be a problem because you expect male-looking trans men to break the law and go to the mens room anyway. Please stop me if I am misinterpreting or misrepresenting you.

Are you saying that you want and expect the laws as written to be broken routinely, would be upset if most people the laws applied to were not breaking them most of the time, but still want the laws passed?

Because like, yeah, it's true that marijuana laws are broken all the time, and police only bother to enforce them when they want to punish some citizen for a different reason. That doesn't make them good laws, that makes them terrible affronts to our civil liberties and freedom.

Laws should not work like that.

I'm saying these laws would oblige male-looking people like Buck Angel to use the women's restroom

I am reassured to know that trans people are so law-abiding and biddable, even if they really do look enough like a dude to be cast in a gay porn flick, they will obediently follow "I must use my natal sex bathroom". No, no, I realise there is no visual way to tell I am not a guy, but it's the law! Even if there are no police to enforce it, I will stick by the letter of it and not ignore it!

This line of argument is so stupid, are you surprised I'm not convinced by it? The people who would make a fuss are the likes of Sam Brinton, who get their kicks out of stealing women's luggage. Buck Angel may or may not be known to the wider public who don't view porn, and so they may or may not recognise "Hey, that's Buck Angel, trans man, trying to use the men's room! I am going to march up to him and demand he use his natal sex bathroom instead!" Also, whatever my views on Buck Angel, I'm pretty sure they're not interested in creeping on women, unlike the 'I'm trans, how dare you stop me!' cases. Oh but I forgot: if someone does that, well they were never really trans in the first place, they are No True Scotsman.

It sounds like you're saying this won't be a problem because you expect male-looking trans men to break the law and go to the mens room anyway.

Yeah, progressive activists are so well-known for sticking to the laws and never opening their mouths. I think bathroom laws are not helpful, but I think laws enforcing "yes, this guy can use the same bathroom as women and children" aren't any better than "yes, this guy has to use the ladies' room".

Please stop me if I am misinterpreting or misrepresenting you.

My view is that nobody will know you are trans or not unless you are so obviously not the gender you are presenting as, and that's not a problem that can be solved by passing laws about gender-neutral bathrooms or 'anyone who says they're trans can use that bathroom', because there is also the problem right now of the trans activism push around 'nobody owes you feminism' or there is no one way of being female or the rest of it, which means a guy can stick on a wig and a skirt, claim to be trans, go into the women's room, and nobody can do anything about it because that's transphobia.

I would be way more sympathetic to "that will never happen" (as were the debates I got into way back when, before all the push for legal laws) except the 'slippery slope fallacy never happen cases' did happen, and the trans activism set had nothing to say about that except, in the extremes, "well that person wasn't really trans anyway". How can you be 'really' trans when there is no way to be 'really' trans that is not decried as medical gatekeeping, transphobia, enforcing the gender binary, and the rest of the political sloganeering?

Ok, so you're among the group that wants to pass a law they actively want people to break.

I thought that was an insane position no one would ever take, especially given how may libertarian-oriented sentiments we normally get when things like speech or guns or etc. come up.

But I guess that's a really common position, we want to pass a law that we want most trans people to break most of the time.

Seems insane to me. I will never agree to that being a good idea, even if I agreed with the rest of the logic behind the motivation.

Ok, so you're among the group that wants to pass a law they actively want people to break.

Sweet Baby Ray, how much clearer can I get? I think bathroom laws are stupid, but I also think that trans people crying about bathroom laws is 90% political activity of the same sort that saw "we just only want the right to LUV, TWU WUV" get same-sex marriage passed in my country (and then prominent gays, like our current Taoiseach, are happy to appear in public with their partner but are conspicuously not getting married, doesn't he know he won't have visitation rights! if he's not married! he'll have to die alone and miserable! all the campaigning told me that and surely they didn't exaggerate just to get their way!).

The 10% of people who can't pass convincingly and so need legal bulwark about "yeah I know I look like a guy, but please let me into the women's bathroom" I'm sorry for, but there's nothing that can be done to help them until the creepers and predators are disavowed by the same campaigners who are out there convincing the world that "trans people are being literally lynched in bathrooms by the bigots right now".

If it's a stupid law, break it! Where the fuck did this worship of the literal letter of legislation come from, from people happy to go out screaming in the streets on protests about this, that and the other? I don't expect Buck Angel to go "well gee, I guess I'll have to use the ladies' room" in reality, no matter what the law says, any more than I expect them to stop being a sex worker, no matter what the law says. It'd be freakin' lovely if the trans lot were so slavishly ruled by "if the law says this, then I can't do it", because that would save the rest of us an ocean of trouble, but I don't see that happening in the world.

And if you really want my views? Trans women are not real women, trans men are not real men, biology is real, trans issues are mental health issues, but so long as you are not a screaming lunatic about it then hey, I can call you Susie and use she/her and not blink too hard if you show up in the ladies' loo. But I'm never going to believe that trans is the same as cis, and I'm not going to be brow-beaten or bullied into "if you don't think this, then it doesn't matter how you act, you are literally murdering trans people".

EDIT: Good God, I can't believe I'm having to invoke St. Thomas Aquinas here on "oooh, you want us to bweak the law!!!!" logic-chopping, but here goes: a bad law may be broken in good conscience. If the suffering trans martyr who will just die if he can't get his big hairy legs into the girlies' potty genuinely thinks the law is wrong and unjust, then he can break it:

I answer that, Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived, according to Proverbs 8:15: "By Me kings reign, and lawgivers decree just things." Now laws are said to be just, both from the end, when, to wit, they are ordained to the common good—and from their author, that is to say, when the law that is made does not exceed the power of the lawgiver—and from their form, when, to wit, burdens are laid on the subjects, according to an equality of proportion and with a view to the common good. For, since one man is a part of the community, each man in all that he is and has, belongs to the community; just as a part, in all that it is, belongs to the whole; wherefore nature inflicts a loss on the part, in order to save the whole: so that on this account, such laws as these, which impose proportionate burdens, are just and binding in conscience, and are legal laws.

On the other hand laws may be unjust in two ways: first, by being contrary to human good, through being opposed to the things mentioned above—either in respect of the end, as when an authority imposes on his subjects burdensome laws, conducive, not to the common good, but rather to his own cupidity or vainglory—or in respect of the author, as when a man makes a law that goes beyond the power committed to him—or in respect of the form, as when burdens are imposed unequally on the community, although with a view to the common good. The like are acts of violence rather than laws; because, as Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5), "a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all." Wherefore such laws do not bind in conscience, except perhaps in order to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right, according to Matthew 5:40-41: "If a man . . . take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him; and whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two."

Secondly, laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, "we ought to obey God rather than man."

The last word on this damn topic, and I wish the bloody bathroom law makers would think about this:

Reply to Objection 3. No man is so wise as to be able to take account of every single case; wherefore he is not able sufficiently to express in words all those things that are suitable for the end he has in view. And even if a lawgiver were able to take all the cases into consideration, he ought not to mention them all, in order to avoid confusion: but should frame the law according to that which is of most common occurrence.

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