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trans people of the right to exist in the public sphere then you're saying human rights are conditional and/or can be withdrawn.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.
@cstross I will admit, I find some of this stuff to be unsettling, but I also think that I have no right to control such things nor does anyone else.
If people want to be trans for example, that isn't my right to control.
No one should get in the way of this.
Not only does it serve nothing worthwhile but humans should be able to decide what they want to be.
And for those conservative nutcases, they should be aware that some people will stick to their beliefs no matter what.
They should know about this given their delusional beliefs of supporting a tyrant and denying reality so much.
Trying to stop people from being who they want to be permanently especially is like trying to make water not wet.
it just aint going to happen.
Btw, I fully expect some people from different beliefs to find my various beliefs strange.
i also heard it said that 20% of people will always be at odds with you.
So there's that.
@skedarwarrior @cstross
You find it unsettling because you have it backwards. Nobody wants to be trans.
You list yourself as christian, so I'll use the word "soul", where I would otherwise use other terminology, because that might work better in your world view.
A class mate of mine had a sister who was born with six fingers on each hand. She had surgery to remove the extra fingers, likely before she even remembers. That's just how nature works. Sometimes people grow body parts that are not meant to be there.
Now let's imagine a god-given perfect soul. A female soul. Unfortunately, there is an imperfection in how her body grows. Just like my classmate's sister grew a couple of extra fingers, this poor girl grows a penis.
Why shouldn't we fix that the same way they did with my classmate's sister's extra fingers?
But instead, bigots insist that when it comes to genitals (their favorite subject), nature must be obeyed, and the god-given soul must be tortured into conforming to a freak accident of nature.
Does this help understanding how the world looks from our side? To make it less unsettling?
@skedarwarrior @cstross
Oh, one more thing. What you call "unsettling" may just be a glimpse into what we call dysphoria.
You hear about transition, and imagine wanting to live in the wrong body. But that's the thing - we already live in the wrong body. To us, transition is fixing the problem.
If you were to transition, you would get dysphoria. We were born with dysphoria and transition to make it go away. That's why it's unsettling to you. Because you imagine transition as changing away from the body that matches your soul, rather than changing it back to match your soul after some freak accident that made it grow the wrong parts.
@AnnieG @skedarwarrior @cstross
Shoot you? There's nothing in your post I have even a slight problem with.
You may want to look into the non-binary community. It includes huge variations, e.g. "non-binary woman". And even if you decide not to consider yourself a part of that community, you might still find information of value to you. I would say you have some non-binary traits, but it's up to you whether those traits are enough to consider yourself non-binary. Not every non-binary person goes by "they".
Charlie Stross
skedarwarrior
Leeloo
Annie G