About trans rights:
They're a wedge issue. If you think it's okay to deprive trans people of the right to exist in the public sphere then you're saying human rights are conditional and/or can be withdrawn. Which puts you on a slippery slope to no human rights for anyone.
When you trace the roots of the modern anti-trans movement they boil down to some combination of bigotry and billionaire bullshit— the oligarchs think rights are for the rich.
So: trans-rights are human rights. No exceptions.
I'm just sad that "this group deserves to exist" is a wedge issue, and not just something most people can agree on 😞
@smattymatty Agreed, but also it's a manufactured wedge issue designed to ease the trans-ignorant into taking a series of that will lead them into a reprehensible position that they would mostly direct if they were confronted with it cold.
"Hi! We are your leaders and we want the right to dehumanize you and strip you of your rights at will!"—who'd say yes to THAT? Much easier to start by targeting a small minority nobody knows. Could have been left-handers or germophobes: but they picked trans.
@orionkidder @cstross @smattymatty and why the #Nazis started with #Trans* people in 1933!
@orionkidder @cstross @smattymatty exactly that!
@kkarhan @cstross @smattymatty Yes, exactly. It's the overlap of:
people fascists genuinely hate
AND
people the fascists can get away with hating in public
It's been the same damned refrain since the oligarchs in question were romans.
Pick your smallest domestic minority. This could be roma, or homeless people, or disabled people, or morally injured vets, or NGO aid workers.
What's important here is the disparity in power, not the identity in question, since their inability to fight back is what's being singled out.
Villianize them.
Blame them for the shit your doing and don't want to engage in constructive dialogue about.
Abuse your influence over institutions and soft power to co-op others into being your voice.
Get rich while people's backs are turned.
Rinse the money.
Repeat.
This is the structure of power. The "kingdoms and principalities" Jesus refered to.
@cstross I've seen people I thought were otherwise reasonable say insane shit like "trans women shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's sports," and I'm like, why is this stupid shit so effective in turning people into idiots. Let people compete wherever they want. Who fucking cares.
Trans rights ARE human rights!
@Legit_Spaghetti @staringatclouds @Photo55 @cstross Is that the historical reason? Do you have a source for that? Is there currently a top league that is closed to women?
Right now all top tournaments and the German leagues are open to women. I don't know about others.
@Legit_Spaghetti @staringatclouds @cstross
I don't recall that game. If not the players - surely she is a grandmaster - then at least give the opening. Please.
@Photo55 male view? in true sports without arbitrary restrictions as i describe it would be unlikely any mere human male would ever be allowed to compete by the insurance company, at least without the kind of drug and cybernetic augmentation that would render whatever edge their genetics granted them a rounding error.
after all, if you entered a weightlifting competition, you'd need to compete against construction cranes. a pack of wolves in rugby. a jetboat in swimming. any team size, any technology, any tactic to achieve the base goal without any further restrictions. sport would finally achieve its true potential without these endless whiny babies trying to say 'whats allowed' and 'whats cheating’
@leon
Aha, _true_ potential.
Not just a bunch of children running because it is fun, and seeing who goes fastest because: primates.
I think your idea has transcended sport.
It is a different thing, beyond.
It implies that human sport would then form a category or cluster of categories. Because, for one reason, it is no _fun_ weightlifting against a crane.
@Photo55 I dunno, it’s fun for the shareholders for the winning crane company, and fun for the engineers, and fun for workers who get better cranes and people who get better buildings
if you want to lift weights on your own time cool I’m not here to kinkshame no one but if you want it to be your job you’ve got to do the best you can without arbitrary restrictions
Like if you’re a doctor (in most of the world) you’re not stopped from proscribing a drug because it’s too safe and effective because it’s “unsporting” for the disease right? Your job is to save people. But if your job is to get to the end of a pool for some reason you can’t use good swimmers that make you faster or a jet boat. Or use an air cannon to launch a ball at a net if your job is to get the ball into the net. Every gold medal, every trophy has an asterix, “under these specific circumstances, using only a certain arbitrary amount of human ingenuity and strategy some old men are comfortable with”
It’s time for us to grow up
@leon you present an idea of purpose which I don't think is useful.
I recently saw a disparaging comment about an imaginary person who sees the purpose of the gymnasium as eg raising weights, and makes efficiency gains by using a fork lift*
Your analogy of would fit better as competitive surgery, with or without automated assistance, or indeed staple resectors.
And yes, there is competition. It is ...subtle.
* "Such a big machine to lift forks" Flanders & Swann, on wheelchaired air travel.
@Photo55 @Legit_Spaghetti @cstross
There was recently a thread where we talked about this. This was my answer to this question. https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/116312574801448988
@futurebird
I'd suggest calling one of the categories* "Open". Everyone in the men''s sports currently would be the initial population of that.
I wasn't really commenting about clubs. One of the things about clubs is the people in them would tend to have clubbed together. Our local running club, and the cycling clubs I was in last century, both have men boys, women, girls in them.
But the phenomenon of sport, and a subset of any arbitrary one which is women's sport, why that?
The problem with the "E-card" is that in actuality relatively few people are actually shocked or disgusted by his activites. What they're actually disgusted by is getting categorised into the people to be avoided.
Note how companies went back on their DEI-promises as soon as the POTUS changed. It wasn't about morals, but about optics.
Thus "your viewpoint was probably paid by Epstein money" will probably get a takeback like "who's funding your views, then?".
>I've not met a single person who was not disgusted.
For the abovementioned reasons. But there's a reason why "it's not pedofilia, but ephebophilia!" is such a meme.
I'm not going to go into this further: even writing this much feels disgusting.
>Companies are irrelevant here, they're not people.
Well, they're hierarchial communities. That's what the "company" originally means. Again, not going into this further.
You may disregard me, if you wish.
@LoseFriendsandAlienatePeople You have it backwards. Billionaires spread hate towards trans people to distract you from making them millionaires.
The default state is that human rights are for everyone. You literally don't have to care, you can just accept what people say about themselves and move on. It does not touch you, does not concern you.
There is no reason to hate trans people, except when there is a lot of money riling you up.
Fucking Carl Schmitt and his evil but really insight that establishing a border and saying "those inside are the in-group and protected and those outside are the out-group and not protected" allows you to later move the border, because it has been already established that the out-group is not protected.
We really should have Nuremberged much harder.
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