[RD] JK Rowling and Explicit Transphobia

[El_Machinae]

Well, murder of cattle farmers is not part of western culture. There are regions of the planet where those protections are necessary.

It's funny, Western Society will give me a tax deduction for handing out a book that claims that God used to want us to kill transgender people, but it's an uphill battle to convince people that transgender people are more likely to be targeted for persecution

Just so I can understand what you are saying more clearly - why would a person claim to be trans without actually being trans?

If a group has privileges, codified, then over 2% of the population is sociopathic enough to consider pretending to be part of that group in order to get the privileges.

It's why it's so much safer to create freedoms than to create privileges. Freedoms can be couched in universal terms. For example, Canada introduced non homophobic marriage legislation in the 2000s. It used to be that only men could marry women. And instead of creating a privilege where gay people were allowed to circumvent that law, we changed the law so that we no longer cared about gender when it came to granting a marriage.

It's a subtle distinction, and sometimes our common law fails. For example, in Alberta you are legally required to wear a helmet while motorcycling. And then they changed the law to say that Sikhs were exempt from this law. So it created a privilege, and didn't spread equality. A more equal law would have been to say that turbans would count as helmets. But even that is subpar. The best law would have been to pass regulations about how much cloth density is required on your head. That would have created a universal freedom rather than a privilege. Similar effect, but it stops giving advantage to people who are willing to lie about being part of a subgroup

It's a lot of work in order to grant people an exception to safety laws. And one could say that choosing to wear a turban is voluntary, and therefore sets up a necessary dichotomy with it not being usable with the helmet, so motorcycling is not allowed. But Canada also has freedom of religious expression, so we have to create common law to decide how much history a religious expression needs

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Wait, what you're wanting is justification of the concept of Crimes against humanity? I mean, why not go the full distance and justify having the concept of crime?

If there is a reason one example is a crime against humanity and the other is not a crime against humanity, you have yet to demonstrate that reason.

In addition, nobody seriously advocates for extermination of soccer fans and would not be okay with such a scenario. Comparatively massive number of people seriously advocate for extermination of jews, blacks, and lgbtq, and would be willing to be complicit or otherwise uncaring of such scenario.

Not relevant to the argument made.

It is legal jurisprudence, not simply theoretical concept, that national, religious, cultural, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation division groups are considered to be more worthy of protection compared to other forms of stratification such as whether they play baseball or soccer.

Claiming it is "legal jurisprudence" *is* claiming theoretical concept of law. If there is basis to value some groups of other people rather than others, let's see that basis.

This is also such an obvious concept that I didn’t think that I would have to explain to people. For starters, one does not generally choose whether they belong to these categories. Excluding exceptional cases, most people will remain a member of these categories for life and thus this categorization is much less arbitrary categorization than soccer players or soccer fans.

Not relevant to the motivation of targeted eradication of the subgroups. Also, it's false to assert that religion one follows isn't a choice, yet this is still a "protected group", which undermines part of the quoted reasoning.

FYI, claiming that the Holocaust would have been just as bad if we replaced “slaughtering the Jews” with say, “slaughtering dairy farmers” is actually one noted aspect of Holocaust denialism

Lol no. The motivation of "X group is targeted for slaughter" is a key point in my position. My argument couldn't be coherent if it denied the holocaust. The assertion that the argument I made constitutes "holocaust denial" is an exercise in flagrantly ignoring reality to a comical degree.

Indeed, if we ignore motivation, intent, and way of death entirely, we might even consider the 5-7 million German dead to be just as devastating as 6 million Jews who were brutally slaughtered by Nazis.

"We" weren't ignoring that though. There's a reason I picked subcategories of people with innocent/mundane preferences, and did not pick a subgroup of people holding weapons and shooting at people. That reason doesn't require much nuance to grasp. I'm demonstrating that "protected groups" receiving unequal treatment before the law is an inherently unjust concept. For that to work, the groups chosen must both be victims with similar motivations against them to illustrate my point.

I have no respect for the notion that identical motivations + actions should be treated differently before the law, and "protected groups" necessarily implies this will happen.

This obviously is a dangerous stance which ignores historical motivations that caused the Holocaust and downplays the horrid intent of its architects.

Using that logic, Donald Trump can obviously bench press the entire moon by himself.

Because you're controlling for variables. Because it's a variable. Because it varies by variable.

And it was an example for an idea. Of controlling for variables. It's not a program, it's an example.

This is not hard. I'm not the one confusing conversations. If you don't think "interesting" can be compressed to surprised, perhaps share what's so interesting.

Why not control for height? Lung capacity? Eye color? TV show preferences? Brand of toothpaste usage? We're controlling for variables. These are all variables too. Just some examples for ideas.

There are reasons to select which variables you control for. I'm interested in hearing the reasoning for the one(s) you suggest that will actually give data with more confidence as to the experience of the entire transperson population.

I'll have to admit, I didn't expect that people would be so boneheaded to understand that, as-it-is, no one is trying to exterminate dairy farmers, while in the real world (i.e, not in the realm of trollish claims), we do have multiple cases of systematic-scale physical abuse, murder and extermination of LGBT people.

Both irrelevant *and* ad hominem trash.

 

[NinjaCow64]

From most to least likely: because he's a voyeur; because that's his idea of a prank; because he wants to set an anti-trans example of why it is "wrong" to let people identify as another gender.
EDIT: Finally, I forgot the one JKR alludes to: he might be a sexual predator trying to avoid detection and/or wanting to have an excuse in case he's stopped. That one is getting really contrived though.
Clearly none of these are a sufficient reason to exclude trans people from bathrooms/changing rooms of their choice - but I'd bet money we'll see instances of some of these happening.

I mean we might see a couple of instances but it will be extremely rare. I don’t think that pretending to be a transwoman is a particularly effective strategy for getting away with sexual assault and harassment, as you allude to. I really don’t think that that problem are as big as people think that they will be.

As for the pranks and “owning the Libs” nonsense that actually does happen occasionally. Joey Salads (eugh) did a rather insensitive “social experiment” about that and right wingers have been known to try and “own the Libs” by pretending to be transpeople. Still those are mostly irrelevant data points.

If a group has privileges, codified, then over 2% of the population is sociopathic enough to consider pretending to be part of that group in order to get the privileges.

2%? Where did you get that number?

The thing I don’t get about these arguments is that I can’t imagine pretending to be trans is that easy or beneficial. From my understanding, getting the state to recognise you as trans is a pretty hefty process requiring one to jump through many legal and medical hoops. And I’d be surprised if there are any countries in the world that are offering benefits to trans people that are so enticing that cis people would be willing to put up with all that nonsense.

If you’re talking social benefits I struggle to imagine many circumstances where socially pretending to be trans would be considered beneficial. Even access to gendered spaces is theoretical, in most circumstances gendered spaces are physically accessible by people not of that gender. As I’ve said before there aren’t magical barriers protecting bathrooms and change rooms that you can somehow breach by pretending to be trans.

 

[Seon]

No, let’s see your basis for thinking that soccer fans require equal amount of protection from/by the law as Jews.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's funny, Western Society will give me a tax deduction for handing out a book that claims that God used to want us to kill transgender people, but it's an uphill battle to convince people that transgender people are more likely to be targeted for persecution

Demonstrating an honest statistical representation that shows said likelihood is still on the table. Nobody is stopping anybody here from doing that to prove the point.

So far, the claims made range from "unsubstantiated" to "probably false" when it comes to homicide. But I've already granted that more information could demonstrate otherwise, and that persecution can and likely does take other forms than homicide. Homicide only came up because of repeated explicit claims about transpeople being killed and a link to an article that claims the rate is disproportionate (without basis).

Well, murder of cattle farmers is not part of western culture. There are regions of the planet where those protections are necessary.

You're also still not presenting a coherent justification for "protected groups" if we hold motivations before a given crime to be equal.

The best law would have been to pass regulations about how much cloth density is required on your head. That would have created a universal freedom rather than a privilege. Similar effect, but it stops giving advantage to people who are willing to lie about being part of a subgroup

I'm advocating for exactly this sort of practice, as an alternative to "protected groups". We more or less know what pre-meditated, targeted destruction or harassment of groups looks like. To my knowledge there has never been a case where the ensuing action is acceptable, and it's not clear why as a society we can't hold a perpetrator of something that is uncontroversially considered to be a heinous act to the same standards consistently regardless of their target(s), if the initial motivation is similar.

No, let’s see your basis for thinking that soccer fans require equal amount of protection from/by the law as Jews.

Soccer fans and Jews are both people. If our legal system is to value the lives of people equally, we should not expect Jews and soccer fans to be treated differently, and should attempt to punish injustice against either the same way because in both cases it is injustice against actual people.

We can anticipate that heinous motivation against Jews is more likely than soccer fans based on past history, but that should not stop us from considering a person or organization that attempts to brutally target and murder soccer fans more leniently than if they instead chose to target Jews.

 

[Senethro]

If there is a reason one example is a crime against humanity and the other is not a crime against humanity, you have yet to demonstrate that reason.

Probably because laws tend to be written reactively? As new acts are argued as crimes, new laws are written to define them as such.

I feel sure that if extermination of soccer fans became a common or even just a plausible occurrence and was not felt to be sufficiently covered by a particular Crime against humanity then one would be created.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Probably because laws tend to be written reactively? As new acts are argued as crimes, new laws are written to define them as such.

This is not a valid basis to write laws arbitrarily or poorly. See El_Machinae's post above for another example of a good vs bad way to codify a law, then consider my response to it in the post above.

Protected groups do not appear justified based on this line of reasoning, nor needed with proper laws that hold up to the alleged standard of equality. It is possible to write laws that capture what is defined as "hate" regardless of which group is targeted, if the motivation of the perpetrator is known or demonstrable. And such laws appear strictly superior to creating protected/privileged groups while quite possibly missing a targeted group that wasn't considered in advance.

 

[Seon]

This ignores all legal precedent and practice throughout all of human existence. By your reasoning, we should treat people who accidentally run over a pedestrian with a car due to momentary distraction the same as people who did so due to drunk driving (for which they were known for previously) or for intentionally ramming said person with a car. After all, the same injustice (ramming a person with a car) was committed.

Treating these people the same way is not just. Nor is treating a murderer who murdered someone for being a Jew and someone who murdered their abusive husband the same fair nor just.

 

[Seon]

Explain to me why we should do away with the categorization of first, second, and third degree murders and once we come to an understanding in your favor (that such categorization are unjust) we can talk about why the legal category of hate crimes are unjust.

 

[Samson]

Demonstrating an honest statistical representation that shows said likelihood is still on the table. Nobody is stopping anybody here from doing that to prove the point.

I cannot believe this is really needed:

Respondents reported high levels of mistreatment, harassment, and violence in every
aspect of life. One in ten (10%) of those who were out to their immediate family reported
that a family member was violent towards them because they were transgender, and 8%
were kicked out of the house because they were transgender.

The majority of respondents who were out or perceived as transgender while in school
(K–12) experienced some form of mistreatment, including being verbally harassed (54%),
physically attacked (24%), and sexually assaulted (13%) because they were transgender.
Further, 17% experienced such severe mistreatment that they left a school as a result.

In the year prior to completing the survey, 30% of respondents who had a job reported
being fired, denied a promotion, or experiencing some other form of mistreatment in the
workplace due to their gender identity or expression, such as being verbally harassed or
physically or sexually assaulted at work.

In the year prior to completing the survey, 46% of respondents were verbally harassed and
9% were physically attacked because of being transgender. During that same time period,
10% of respondents were sexually assaulted, and nearly half (47%) were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.​

Spoiler Details of study :

The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS) is the largest survey examining the
experiences of transgender people in the United States, with 27,715 respondents
from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico,
and U.S. military bases overseas. Conducted in the summer of 2015 by the National Center
for Transgender Equality, the USTS was an anonymous, online survey for transgender
adults (18 and older) in the United States, available in English and Spanish.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

It's honestly depressing to see the topic of Transphobia be railroaded into whether hate crime exists at all, everyone here knows it exists currently and historically and that there are differences between targetting someone on the basis of their profession and on the basis of characeristics they did not choose and cannot change.

I do not for a second believe that anyone arguing against the existence of it is doing so in good faith or is even neutral on the topic.

 

[Senethro]

And maybe everyone should pay the exact same numeric value of tax too! We're all equal, right?

This is looking a lot like TMIT's thing about equality in principle as being better than equality in actuality. And that principle ignores material, societal and historical circumstances. Greater concern that a system should be "elegant and beautiful", rather than functional.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Being treated as the gender you're transitioning to isn't asking for any extra rights, no more so than a blind person asking for braile, no more so than person with a nut allergy asking to have a no-nut diet, no more so than a gay man asking to be able to marry his partner, but to hear TMIT speak about it, he makes it sound like minorities are being treated preferentially over the majority when that just isn't the case; it took alot of people dying and suffering before any the above's basic rights were respected and even now we still struggle to do so.

 

[Lexicus]

And maybe everyone should pay the exact same numeric value of tax too! We're all equal, right?

This is looking a lot like TMIT's thing about equality in principle as being better than equality in actuality. And that principle ignores material, societal and historical circumstances. Greater concern that a system should be "elegant and beautiful", rather than functional.

This is indeed exactly what this boils down to.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This ignores all legal precedent and practice throughout all of human existence. By your reasoning, we should treat people who accidentally run over a pedestrian with a car due to momentary distraction the same as people who did so due to drunk driving (for which they were known for previously) or for intentionally ramming said person with a car. After all, the same injustice (ramming a person with a car) was committed.

That is either a grossly negligent or outright dishonest representation of my reasoning, to a degree that isn't subtle.

Just a quick glance from this page alone:

The motivation of "X group is targeted for slaughter" is a key point in my position.

Not relevant to the motivation of targeted eradication of the subgroups.

We more or less know what pre-meditated, targeted destruction or harassment of groups looks like.

We can anticipate that heinous motivation against Jews is more likely than soccer fans based on past history

It strains plausibility to consider your response to these claiming I'm arguing "we should treat accidents and intentional ramming the same" is genuine.

Explain to me why we should do away with the categorization of first, second, and third degree murders and once we come to an understanding in your favor (that such categorization are unjust) we can talk about why the legal category of hate crimes are unjust.

I don't need to explain that because it's disingenuous straw. Classification of degrees in murder is contingent on the motivation of the perpetrator, and in the examples I gave I have explicitly and repeatedly emphasized that the motivations in the hypothetical cases are the same.

I cannot believe this is really needed:

Unfortunately, experience has taught me that I can and should believe that posters will ignore the context of the previous discussion *and* the qualifiers in the same post:

So far, the claims made range from "unsubstantiated" to "probably false" when it comes to homicide. But I've already granted that more information could demonstrate otherwise, and that persecution can and likely does take other forms than homicide. Homicide only came up because of repeated explicit claims about transpeople being killed and a link to an article that claims the rate is disproportionate (without basis).

What you posted is a good representation of the plight of transpeople's experience. It is an abject failure for demonstrating disproportionate homicide rate, however. Which was the line of discussion leading to what you quoted.

This is looking a lot like TMIT's thing about equality in principle as being better than equality in actuality. And that principle ignores material, societal and historical circumstances.

I'm not the one actively advocating for less equality in actuality though.

Being treated as the gender you're transitioning to isn't asking for any extra rights, no more so than a blind person asking for braile, no more so than person with a nut allergy asking to have a no-nut diet, no more so than a gay man asking to be able to marry his partner, but to hear TMIT speak about it, he makes it sound like minorities are being treated preferentially over the majority when that just isn't the case; it took alot of people dying and suffering before any the above's basic rights were respected and even now we still struggle to do so.

Care to actually address any of the arguments made, or does it just feel good to try to make someone look bad when for whatever reason you either can't or don't feel like doing it?

Nevermind that what you're saying doesn't represent my position as written in this thread.

This is indeed exactly what this boils down to.

Sure, if you're operating in fantasy land.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Nevermind that what you're saying doesn't represent my position as written in this thread.

Because you dance around what you want to do, you want to eliminate hate crimes in legal terms but you seem aghast that minorities might take issue with that or that they read into your motivated reasoning behind it.

I don't believe you want to get rid of protected classes or hate crime legislation because you care about equality, quite frankly it's the opposite.

 

[Seon]

And if you believe that categorization of murder based on intent is valid, what’s the justification under which we should consider hate criminals differently? Why do they deserve special rights to avoid moral judgment and scrutiny by the legal system?

 

[Senethro]

So is this about definitions? You would be ok with the concept of 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree Mass Executions but not with the crime of Genocide?

 

[Cloud_Strife]

I'm struggling to understand what benefit there is for minorities of doing away with hate crime legislation.

 

[Samson]

Unfortunately, experience has taught me that I can and should believe that posters will ignore the context of the previous discussion *and* the qualifiers in the same post:

TheMeInTeam said: ↑
So far, the claims made range from "unsubstantiated" to "probably false" when it comes to homicide. But I've already granted that more information could demonstrate otherwise, and that persecution can and likely does take other forms than homicide. Homicide only came up because of repeated explicit claims about transpeople being killed and a link to an article that claims the rate is disproportionate (without basis).

What you posted is a good representation of the plight of transpeople's experience. It is an abject failure for demonstrating disproportionate homicide rate, however. Which was the line of discussion leading to what you quoted.

So a bit more context, the post you were replying to, I have bolded the bit I thought you were talking about:

Well, murder of cattle farmers is not part of western culture. There are regions of the planet where those protections are necessary.

It's funny, Western Society will give me a tax deduction for handing out a book that claims that God used to want us to kill transgender people, but it's an uphill battle to convince people that transgender people are more likely to be targeted for persecution

What I posted seems completely in context to me. Now, you argue that the rates of persecution described in the report above need statistics to be convinced that they are above the national average, but man that would be really bad for the united states.