Berkeley Prof tangles with Sen Hawley, calls him trans phobic

Link?

 

You just stated that according to your beliefs, they effectively don’t exist or that you basically know more than they do about who they are. I don’t think you can can claim to “never mistreat” or “fail to love” them under conditions where you’ve literally just dismissed the existence of a category of people.

Further, while my take on these issues is generally “who gives a shit about personal beliefs”, the politicians pushing this garbage aren’t limited to “beliefs” and actually can and do inflict real world harm. This is the real crux of every right wing social warrior issue. Facts are ignored, “beliefs” are exploited by politicians and converted into bad or discriminatory laws which run afoul of constitutional concepts of freedom and equality for all people.

 

It's kind of ironic that you're complaining about being called a word that you feel is mean/hurtful, while at the same time arguing you should be able to call other people words that they feel are mean/hurtful, as long as you believe what you're saying is true.

 

If you redefine man to mean people who can't have babies, then a man can't have a baby. But that redefines many women as men, so it isn't a very useful definition of a man.

The world is less binary than we have been telling ourselves. It is uncomfortable to deal with, but in reality, male vs female is only binary in our minds.

 

But the pushback always affects that group.

 

I'll let them be the judge of that.
Their opinion matters way more to me than anything your unflexible side spouts out in ignorance.

We agree. (But respect can be given while disagreeing.)

Yep. Called them by their new name too. (They never outlined any preferred pronouns and they weren't "out". 90% of the staff actually had no idea until this person left to go back to school and a few folks started talking.)

So?

 

Its not even a universal binary, its completely cultural! Native Americans didn't subscribe to it, and it baffled some of the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas, so much so that they called men living as women (many of whom were not intersex) hermaphrodites because they had no correlation or other way to understand it.

 

But it shouldn't be. I think that is wrong and our society has swung and missed on that one.

 

That's good to hear. But you see how your treatment of an actual transgender person you know is different than the way you acted in this thread, which is what led to my comment. If you treat transgender people the way you do IRL, I say you're handling things the right way.

They were clearly in the wrong. Most people recognize that now.

 

You should read closer. I call them what they want. Just said so upthread

 

Should the government decide who is “legit biological anomaly” and who is doing it for… (fun???). Just find it curious how you are making those determinations. What is the metric? Just sounds highly presumptive of you.

My take: why I rejected social conservatism decades ago. Who gives a shit? Why is any “pushback” needed at all? Freedom means nothing is forced on you in your personal life. The govt should have zero role in any of this, and if it has any role at all, it’s probably the opposite of what you’d want… it should be limited simply to enforcing basic civil rights and non-discrimination laws in the workplace and public. The only reason this is even a debate is civil rights act failed to adequately define these particular people as “protected”. But if you believe in civil rights as I do, their equality should be a 100% no brainer, which would also mean all these Republican efforts to dehumanize them or exclude them are complete horseshit or outright based in evil.

 

Agreed, but this is why there is so much pushback, we swung and we missed, and now we need to try to get it right, but far too many are adamant that we don't need to get it right, that the way we've been doing it is good enough.

 

I don’t know that it’s an “effort to exclude them,” it’s just that pregnancy care has pretty universally been referred to as an aspect of “women’s health” forever. Look at your local hospital - I’m willing to bet the OB/Gyn and pregnancy care practices are probably housed in something called the “Women’s Center” or something like that.

When someone comes along and says we shouldn’t refer to pregnancy as a women’s health issue because it is exclusionary to the pregnant men out there, most Americans are going to roll their eyes. And some people (apparently including Senator Hawley) are going to vocalize that eye-roll.

 

And to muddy the waters and find out later in life that's not what the parents wanted. Now this may be a little off topic but seems to me if parents can choose a gender at conception shouldn't it be possible to avoid the nonsense of who is male or female. We definitely know the plumbing requirements for each and have the ability to make that choice.

How to have a girl or boy: Does gender selection work?

Does gender selection work?
Yes, gender selection is technically possible, thanks to advances in fertility treatments that allow doctors to identify male and female embryos. Sex selection is an option for couples who want to:

• Avoid passing a sex-linked genetic disease to their baby. For example, some females are carriers for over 350 X-linked diseases, even if they aren’t directly affected by the disease. Hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy are examples of diseases that occur with a recessive gene on the X (female) chromosome.
• Reduce the risk of their baby having a disease more common in certain sexes. For example, a family who has a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might try for a girl because ASD has a higher male incidence, and their chances of having another affected boy is 25 percent.
• Choose the sex of their baby because of a personal preference. Gender selection might appeal to parents who have a child or children of one sex and want to have a child of the other sex, for example. (This is sometimes called "family balancing.")

 

Heck. Abortion alone has been a "women's health" issue on that battlefield, yet now, we cant call it that.

It's like the sports topic. We wanted equality for women in sports but are now told that men should be allowed to play women's sports thus killing equality for women.

 

Hey @jjgator55 i see you are just firing off a bunch of drive by ratings... But perhaps you could explain what you disagree with in this post.

 

@jjgator55 you're not really reading the posts are you? You're just disagreeing when you see the posters name... Right?

You disagree that I call them by the pronoun of their choice?

 

Been taking some extra red vitamins lately, I see.

 

Hyperbolic response to the hyperbolic claim that pro lifers are waging war on women. Goose, Gander, etc.

Shoulda used the green font?