Transgender Rights

[Mickey]

I'm sorry but you quite simply do not have to take anyone's opinion on collegiate sports seriously.

You’re smarter than this comment.

I'm smarter than every post I make on this board

[Rob]

Yeah, I don’t know how to respond to that. I posted the fact that we have an actual federal holiday dedicated to MLK. He wasn’t actually liked backed then. Now he’s got his own day. That’s an example of the “arc bends toward justice” argument. I have no idea why you take things so far. It’s hard to have a convo with you over this.

[Rob]

Damn Mickey - my response is to Ms H

[Ms Harmless]

no it isn't, it's an example of how the State invents days that celebrate social justice agitators those states once killed in order to superficially placate and pacify the social justice agitators who still exist and are doing things the state still doesn't like and pushes back against, using the term "nonviolence" and attributing it to a fake, sanitised cartoon of MLK to drum up white-privileged support

and as far as talking to me goes? I'm glad you find it so, that plan was tailor-made for you personally; I didn't ask for you to start talking to me, and actually I'd rather you stop

[Ms Harmless]

don't assume MLK changed just because public recognition of him did; he was dead, he didn't consent to that

[Rob]

“Oh shit - you were right the whole time!” isn’t something I think MLK is sweating in the afterlife, but I must confess, I really don’t know. But, I’ll stop. You’re too hard to talk to, anyway. I’d bet you don’t like people making assumptions about you, but you’ve made a few about me.

[Ms Harmless]

if you think you've made no cruel assumptions about me, I don’t know what to tell you, but by all means be sad about it, I support people feeling their feelings

[Ms Harmless]

also I hope you're not this passive-aggressively guilt-trippy with people you actually know and it's just strangers

[Rob]

I made no assumptions about you. I asked your opinion. I concluded it was hard to talk to you. Whatever. Keep calling everyone who has questions a transphobe and see how well it works.

[Ms Harmless]

I don't call everyone who has questions a transphobe, very far from it; I called you one

[Ms Harmless]

that whole "you call everyone who has questions a transphobe" thing is what I mean when I say you make some pretty big (untrue) assumptions about me

[Mickey]

I said it probably twenty pages ago in this thread--the second you start asking questions based on the completely imaginary horizon of fairness in sports, you have ceded ground to a right-wing and/or anti-trans position. I don't know if that makes you a transphobe full stop but it does the work of transphobes.

[Mickey]

Only 15 pages--this one kinda gets the jist of things

I'll try phrasing it differently one more time--I am not saying that by claiming a moral high ground you can simply ignore the conversation (though I will note that I don't personally believe in American democracy as it currently exists and think the contemporary trans panic is ultimately rooted in a deeper crisis that will not be fully solved through debate). I'm saying that if you take that moral charge seriously as outlined above, it should reframe the debate for you, and in turn allow you to reframe the debate as it stands more broadly. In this case, this means that instead of simply asserting to the claim that "sports matter," one might ask, "Why do sports matter?" Do they matter because of scholarship and career opportunities? Do they matter because of the individual pursuit of athletic excellence is a human right? Asking those questions is, to my mind, a more effective line of argumentation than saying, "well, yes, sports matter, but I do support trans people too." Because once you've accepted that it matters in itself whether Lia Thomas or a cisgendered woman wins the 500 Freestyle you have already surrendered the terms of the debate to Peterson et al., and I think the moral imperative is to not do that.

[Ms Harmless]

write it in stone: Mickey is correct

[Ms Harmless]

I am glad that this thread exists here, but trans people are the minority in it; when we show up and what we say is not deferred to, that sends us the message that the thread exists just so that the rest of y'all get to gossip about the mainstream news

I am a real person with real losses that I'm still grieving after years (including a wife and stepchildren) because I came out and started living in the only way I could continue living

more generally, I am a real person with a right to full, unthreatened and safe participation in public, not just a subject of debate; when I feel that I'm being reduced to the latter, I might snap, in which case a person who truly supports me will be more interested in self-reflecting on why and how I felt hurt, instead of hurling accusations at me around how horrible I am to deal with

it's not nice to hear that you've done harm to someone that, in your heart, you wanted to help; but "good" is something you do and not just something you "are"; transphobia is something you can do -- unintentionally and by accident -- not just something you are ("a transphobe")

please be careful of politely listening to us with exceptions and caveats; that's not listening to us at all

[BurtReynolds]

when we show up and what we say is not deferred to

Lol stfu. No, I will not be deffering to you.

[Ms Harmless]

and I will not be adding that to the list of things I care about

[BurtReynolds]

Sheer malignant narcissism.

[Ms Harmless]

kiss before you go

[Bammer]

I have no interest in reeling you in, I'm just living my life

I'm building plenty of things with plenty of people, I have lots of ideas about what and how to build

Build but don’t try to bring new people into the fold. Got it.