Transsexual Toilet Trouble

[Montmorency]

In the UK we infringe upon the "Right to Bear Arms" enumerated in our Bill of Rights because a few people have used arms for terrible purposes.

I'm still not sure what subject we're currently on, but a couple problems:

1. This assumes that any attempt, or any means, to mitigate "small risk" is equally appropriate or salutary. To some extent deterrence is a component of any criminal justice system - yet we do not condone systematic torture toward deterrence basically because it's evil (and less saliently ineffective). Alternatively, men commit the lion's share (tee hee) of violent crimes. Would it be just to establish matriarchy and heavily subordinate men in the name of public safety?
2. It is historically false to say that gendered bathrooms were introduced as a response to men assaulting women in shared spaces. Perhaps you made this assumption because you were applying your contemporary perspective to historical contexts.

This argument started because Beskar implied that anyone with anxiety over the safety of his teenage daughter in allowing men into female bathrooms to accommodate transgender rights was morally bankrupt. I merely argued that this was not necessarily the case and now apparently I hate transgender people - I don't feel like I'm the one making the logical leap here.

Maybe it's not necessarily the case. But is it not the case? Justification is warranted. An employer may genuinely be worried that Asian candidates are indolent thieves; what's the source of this worry, and is it changeable?

We used to have men who owned guns and knives too - now we arrest them all and send them to prison before they even think of hurting anyone. We do this because we are not a liberal society- which is fine - but its inconsistent to be liberal in some areas and not others.

You arrest on the basis of ownership, not on the basis of intention. And anyway, you neglect consideration of whether a particular law is reasonable or not. I'm confident you don't believe that literally any restriction is legitimate or desirable; thus the necessary recourse is to the facts of the matter.

Sure you are, as you admit in the next clause. But every system has inconsistencies, are you really complaining that we haven't realized some utopian ideal?

Be a spate of that in Costa Coffee shops here - guess what. Those toilets are unisex.

And?

Not wanting transgender people to be in the bathroom of the sex they were not assigned at birth is not about "restricting transgender people" it's about our society being over-liberal and creating opportunities for abuse that do not currently exist.

THe problem here is two-fold, that you assume without evidence there are significant opportunities for abuse created, and that you fail to even notice the "over-liberalization" is advocated for the opportunities for abuse that it eliminates. Again, why do you think there's a problem with transgender people doing what they already do when they can? You are proposing a restriction, like how before the 1970s Britain restricted gay men by pursuing them into bathrooms in the name of public morality. And what do these restrictions do in service of segregating genders. It is difficult to make sense of the logic unless you reject the social status of transgenders and seek to characterize their behavior as injurious to public safety - which would be a prejudicial stance.

However, I accept it's illegal in the UK for reasons of collective safety.

Again, the fact that guns are restricted does not mean that any hypothetical restriction is merited.

AM I talking about transgender people? See, I though I was criticising Beskar for suggesting that anyone who DARED question the current transgender orthodoxy was morally bankrupt.

Correct me if I'm missing something, but here you've argued that it is appropriate to (eliding implementation) prevent transgenders from using bathrooms not aligned with their assigned birth sex, and you have argued that unisex spaces are bad and contribute to sex crimes. I'm not sure whether you are trying to link these two lines of thought. Do you argue the two points above, and if so, do you have any connection to make between them? And why?

My point, however, is that you seem only willing or able to see things from your own perspective - you resist seeing things from the perspective of others, this prevents you from understanding their position - which is why your attacks often miss. This is especially true in my case.

I haven't seen you try to understand our positions very hard.

Per the preceding, go ahead and clarify your position. Be sure to specify how we can tell there is no whiff of prejudice.

My point, however, is that you seem only willing or able to see things from your own perspective - you resist seeing things from the perspective of others, this prevents you from understanding their position - which is why your attacks often miss. This is especially true in my case.

I have no problem with women breastfeeding in public. However, our society frowns on public nudity and for that reason, and to avoid exciting the undue interest of teenage boys, I really think they should use a shawl - but apparently that makes me a monster for expecting women who are breastfeeding to only be as modest as women who aren't.

I would ask why women should adhere to your standard of modesty, and why two different categories of women should adhere to the same standard despite your highlighting that they are different categories, but really the important thing is that what you personally feel is whatever, you're entitled to your opinion - so long as you don't advocate regulation of breastfeeding women by law, business, or civil society. Same by garishly-dressed transpersons or anyone else whose style you disapprove of. We've all been there. (I really hope you are not so traditionalist as to advocate reinstating sumptuary laws...)

We, as a society, now tend to treat all cases of gender dis-morphia as transgenderism rather than as a psychological disorder. This is a very new idea, relatively speaking, and it is perhaps not entirely wise. The majority of children who display gender dis-morphia historically resolved their issues during puberty, but now we put teenagers on puberty-blocking drugs which can have harmful side effects and prevent them going through the process that might cause their condition to naturally resolve itself. Of course, we're now discouraged from even seeing is as a "condition".

Are you making this judgement after diligent reference to modern medical literature and practice? Why do you think there is a willy-nilly approach to gender dysphoria?

An incredibly blokish man doing doing an embarrassing, sexist, drag act - am I really expected to believe this is a "real" woman?

I am not allowed to question this?

Hmm. Do you think they can be "allowed" to question your view of them?

Teenage boys spend all their spare time trying to see tits

Is your social hierarchy centered on (a monolithic image of) teenage boys? Who cares.

No guns, not allowed to say the majority of swear words because they offend someone, tried to censor "Fairy-tale in New York".

Not that I necessarily disagree with banning homophobic or racial slurs, but it IS repression. Saying it isn't is rather like claiming Christianity isn't a cult.

Hmmm, Britain may be your city but you're forgetting the diversity that exists among liberal Western governments. For example, over nearly a century American jurisprudence has increasingly reinforced a free-speech regime that is perhaps the closest a society has ever come to absolutism.

but then children tend to have poorly developed empathy - which is why they are capable of such cruelty.

So teach them. From what I see and hear children are less cruel and chauvinistic than they were a generation ago. There's nothing wrong with looking at girls or boys so long as one isn't an asshole about it, and doesn't develop derogatory or exclusionary mindset.

especially when I made it quite clear what people are worried about is sexual assault and not peeping toms.

Oh yeah, just to shoehorn another instantiation for the upper reaches: I might be worried about black students attending my daughter's school because I'm worried about sexual assault... That would be a shameful worry to maintain. To act on it would be a basic exercise of racism, and ought-need be called out as such.

From my historical reading and observation of contemporary politics I have come to the conclusion that any nation larger than, say, Germany, tends to become coercive because in order to function the central government has to remain below a certain size lest it become unwieldy. From this it follows that elected representatives have unacceptably large constituencies and therefore become unacceptably remote from the people they are meant to represent.

I think that's a reasonable conclusion. Presumably a world-government would have to be structured in a bipolar fashion to maximize subsidiarity, local autonomy plus self-sufficiency, and inter-municipal solidarity and cooperation alongside the global apparatus. The latter would have to have built-in safeguards to shrink or restructure over time while augmenting and safeguarding the horizontal mechanisms of democratic power at the bottom of the dumbbell-form. It would not work well for long without a universally-educated and activated populace. It would be the hardest thing we've ever done. But we can never let perfect be the enemy of good - while juggling the importance of aspiration and high expectations.

Also, there's the whole thing with the specter of species-wide civilizational collapse dogging us...

I have enough reasons to hate myself, so I'm trying not to add to the list.

As long as we're speaking of bygones, you seem much colder this go around. I've been feeling it almost for half a year. Is that a real thing?