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Society, Rights, and Self-Identification

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Does a man have the right to identify himself as a woman and enter their locker rooms and bathrooms, demanding equal rights for their self-identification?  Does a person have the right to identify herself as a native American and, when filling out forms for employment or college, indicate her ethnicity as such, even though she is not?   Should the force of law support such self-identifications which contradict the physical facts and insist that society accommodate any such self-identifications?

Where is the line between socially protected self-identification in conflict with physical facts and delusion?  Can physically unrelated people identify themselves as family and represent themselves as such on legal forms?  Can an adult self-identify as a child and thus obligate his parents to take care of him his entire life?

There are physical realities that exist which are not transformed by how one chooses to conceptualize themselves or others and which are not changed by altering clothes or body parts. Men are not women, and women are not men, no matter how much anyone believes that one can become the other.  Even if the whole world calls a woman a man, it is not so.  That’s just the physical reality.  No amount of self or public identification as such makes Elizabeth Warren a Native American or Shaun King black or Bruce Jenner a woman.

A person can dress up, obtain surgeries and call themselves whatever they like; that does not obligate the rest of society to indulge their particular conceptualization of themselves.  I don’t have a problem with people doing any of that to themselves and for their own personal reasons, but surely the rest of us should not be forced by law or even compelled by PC obligation to indulge their self-conceptualization.

Do people have the right to self-identify in contradiction to the physical facts and expect the force of law to make society accept and conform to their concept of themselves?  If I refuse to indulge your particular conceptualization of yourself, or as a business refuse to indulge, am I being a “hater”? Am I being “intolerant”?  Is it my job to protect the feelings and promote a sense of “equality” and “enfranchisement” for those that self-identify in conflict with physical reality?

Further, won’t the social and legal demand to ignore physical realities in favor of protecting the feelings of such groups, and in fact make it a crime to state those physical realities or act in accordance with them, most certainly cause problematic, even dire unintended consequences in the future? A population trained to ignore reality in favor of sentimental, feel-good, virtue signalling memes can be manipulated to do virtually anything given the right narrative-messaging.

Comments
Mike1962 -- "At any rate, there are far more worthy problems in the world that deserve attention." I couldn't agree more. Transgendered and transsexuals have been using the bathroom of their non-biological gender for decades. And I haven't heard anywhere that it has been a problem. In the women's bathroom they use the stalls like everybody else. In the men's, they also use the stalls. No children being exposed or threatened. Nobody getting raped or assaulted.ziggy lorenc
May 6, 2016
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Three Restrooms: Men, Women, Other The Target and the mall near me have Men, Women restrooms, and a separate "Family" restroom that is in it's own room, has a single toilet, wash basin, diaper changing station, and a locking door. That's the one I use, even though I am not LGBT, or some other minority mutant. I prefer to be alone regardless of the other considerations when I'm doing my business. Maybe all the stores should have those. However, if a store or restaurant have restrooms that only have one toilet in them, then let people choose which they want to use. Have two "unisex" restrooms. Problem solved. OK, I get that ladies don't necessary want to visit a toilet were males splatter their urine all over. Oh well. Hey, let's make a law and force males to sit while they take a leak. Think that's over the top for even a liberal culture warrior? Nothing would surprise me these days. At any rate, there are far more worthy problems in the world that deserve attention. Amazing that issues like this get any press at all.... except for the fact that the left-wing culture warriors are hell-bent on recreating the world in their image.mike1962
May 6, 2016
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Can we allow gay men to use the men's room? You know that's liable to incite lust. How about letting lesbians use the women's facilities? Shouldn't we be testing everybody for their proclivities and assigning them to the appropriate rest room based on that?MatSpirit
May 6, 2016
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KF -- "Z, we need to handle exceptions as exceptions, and not allow that to set the norms for our general conduct. " It's not as simple as that. Nothing is. Would you opposed handicapped accessible bathrooms? Braille signs on bathroom doors? Flashing alarms lights to accommodate the deaf? They are all exceptions. KF -- "Remember, social challenge number one is the proper socialisation of YOUNG MEN that through strong social reinforcement that backs up families, channels their energies and sexuality in stable, constructive directions." I guess young women are secondary?ziggy lorenc
May 6, 2016
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I am an obese female, I often wear baggy sweats; sometimes I am addressed as male. Can I be allowed in the ladies room without inspection?critter
May 6, 2016
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Zachriel: About one in a thousand human births involve ambiguous genitalia. So?Mung
May 6, 2016
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First of all, here are a couple of things to keep in mind: (1)My obligation to respect your rights doesn’t mean that I should surrender mine. (2)Your subjective feelings cannot be the objective basis of universal human rights, even if it represents a widespread form of group think. Historically and traditionally, especially in the United States, equal rights have been connected with freedom of conscience. Everyone was equally free to follow their own conscience when it came to personal morality, as well as religious and political beliefs. From this basic right comes freedom of speech, press and association etc. The secular progressive left, however, with its political correctness has turned this concept on its head. From the left’s perspective equality is no longer about conscience but about acceptance, inclusion and fighting oppression. The left’s ideological position is a utopian pipe dream as well as self-refuting and hypocritical. For example, on the issue of transgender bathroom rights, it’s not all inclusive because it excludes those who on the basis of conscience do not recognize such rights. Not only does it exclude but it also very viciously vilifies and demonizes anyone who disagrees with its agenda. (Yet hypocritically that is what the left uses for a justification when it’s directed towards transgendered individuals.) Who is the oppressor? Anyone who disagrees with the left’s egalitarian views of social progress. Furthermore, it succeeds not through rational persuasion but coercion—which is the only way it can succeed. You can achieve the left’s utopian vision of equality but only through an authoritarian or totalitarian legal route. In other words, legal equality without freedom of conscience.john_a_designer
May 6, 2016
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I think it's quite possible that some people are mentally of one sex but physically of another. Development of mental characteristics and genitalia occur at different times, and so I can potentially see slight hormonal shifts during development causing mismatches between mental characteristics and physical characteristics. Embryonic development is a complicated process with still a lot of unknowns. If I had to guess, I'd say that within the transgender community, there are some where hormonal or other issues during development caused a mismatch between mental characteristics and physical characteristics, others that had ambiguous genitalia at birth and had surgery as an infant, and others that are just plain delusional. I couldn't even guess at the percentages of each though. I think it's interesting that it's more often liberals that deny mental differences between men and women, and conservatives that claim that such differences exist, yet on this subject it's suddenly conservatives usually claiming that the only difference between the sexes is genitalia.goodusername
May 6, 2016
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Z said:
About one in a thousand human births involve ambiguous genitalia. Parents are often offered the option of surgery, but those results do not necessarily resolve all ambiguity. And this number doesn’t include all the variations in sexual behavior and attitudes in humans. For centuries, a common social response was to beat up sissies and other misfits, so there is a long history of discrimination against those who do not fit your notions of a perfect dichotomy.
I didn't say that everyone was physically a man or a woman. A hermaphrodite is a hermaphrodite. Etc. However, behavior and attitude do not change physical facts no matter how much the progressive left insists otherwise. Just because someone might behave like a woman and have the attitude that they are a women does not obligate the rest of society to conform to their concept of themselves. Others, note how Z makes an appeal to sentiment about the "long history of discrimination" about beating up "sissies and other misfits" as if anyone here is advocating such, and as if such sentiment entitles such people to characterize as "hate" and "violence" anyone that doesn't indulge their reality-contradicting characterizations. A man who dresses up and acts like a woman is a man that dresses up and acts like a woman. That doesn't grant us permission to "beat up" or ridicule that person, but it doesn't grant them the right to go into a woman's bathroom. They might do it discreetly, and get away with it, but that doesn't mean we should change the law or policy to accommodate their particular concept of themselves.William J Murray
May 6, 2016
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Playing with identification sounds fun. Today I self-identify as the president of the U.S. and declare that North Carolina is correct in what they did. I demand that everyone recognize my current identity and they honor my declaration, though it might change tomorrow. But, for now, my actions, as supreme law-enforcement officer, must be upheld.bb
May 6, 2016
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Z, we need to handle exceptions as exceptions, and not allow that to set the norms for our general conduct. Not, when fundamental issues of social stability and sustainability are on the table. Remember, social challenge number one is the proper socialisation of young men that through strong social reinforcement that backs up families, channels their energies and sexuality in stable, constructive directions. We are playing with fire here. KFkairosfocus
May 6, 2016
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WJM You are asking sobering questions. And you are pointing to a real as opposed to the stereotypical strawman slippery slope. (Cf my comments on the earlier thread. Note the added illustration of how a watershed point can have in it two mutually opposed slippery slopes; pointing to the possibility of divide and dominate as the polarised slide down to mutual ruin.) I would suggest we need to look a bit at the rights question and put back up the following, which targetted an earlier theme but apply also to the wider agenda we are seeing:
7 –> In this context, a core basic right is a binding moral expectation to be respected in regards to key aspects of our nature. That is, it is the mirror image and dual of mutually binding obligations imposed by our nature and its inherent dignity. That is rights are inherently matters of moral law connected to our nature. 8 –> As a consequence, a rights claim is a claim to be in the right and to be owed duties of care by others of like morally freighted nature. 9 –> You cannot have a right to the wrong, you cannot demand that others enable and support you in the wrong, such is to poison other souls with the taint of compulsion to do and to support the wrong. Such is monstrous and wicked. 10 –> Likewise, there are no rights to twist key institutions crucial to human thriving as individuals, families and communities. For the blessings of the civil peace of justice and liberty under legitimate law are key requisites of human thriving. 11 –> This holds for demanding that marriage be perverted through lawfare and agit prop, and the linked demand that sexual perversion be acknowledged on equal terms with the manifest order of nature stamped into our genes, organs, biology of reproduction and social- psychological- relational requisites of sound child nurture. In short, there are principled bases for objection to currently fashionable agendas imposed through agit prop and lawfare, but the spiral of silencing is well underway backed up by the attempt to induce massive “thought reform” in interests of a march of folly.
In this, a key issue is the question of our having a definite nature and linked intrinsic value or worth which can be in part evident through our intelligent awareness of one another and of the moral government we are under. But in a world dominated by evolutionary materialistic scientism and associated radical secularism, there will be a strong tendency to instead imagine that value, rights, truth and more are relative and in the end driven by power games of manipulation and intimidation. The blunt words are: might and manipulation make 'right', 'truth' etc. The proper -- and even harder to swallow -- name for that social vision is, nihilism. Which is sobering. We need to wake up and rethink where we are headed, and turn back. If, it is not already too late. KFkairosfocus
May 6, 2016
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William J Murray: Men are not women, and women are not men About one in a thousand human births involve ambiguous genitalia. Parents are often offered the option of surgery, but those results do not necessarily resolve all ambiguity. And this number doesn't include all the variations in sexual behavior and attitudes in humans. For centuries, a common social response was to beat up sissies and other misfits, so there is a long history of discrimination against those who do not fit your notions of a perfect dichotomy.Zachriel
May 6, 2016
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