We Lost Our Way on Human Rights | Hacker News Reader

We Lost Our Way on Human Rights

quillette.com

62 pointspaulpauper17 comments

> The idea of individual agency, which lay at the core of the case for traditional human rights, is now seen as part of the vernacular of oppression

This is the exact fulcrum of my dissent from BLM et al. It's a fundamental difference in values that I cannot reconcile. It separates my tribe from other. And apparently my tribe is in decline if not yet endangered. Without this idea on both sides I can see no way to agree on what human rights are, dividing the project to improve them against itself.

> Yet he [Roger Scruton] remained committed to the principle of dignity and respect to all, regardless of their ideological convictions. His efforts to engage everyone in discussion and to demonstrate a lasting commitment to appreciate differences represent the measure of his character.

Roger Scruton took money from tobacco companies to write pro-smoking, anti-WHO articles in prominent publications. So, okay.

I don't think we've lost our way, I think there are a number of very wealthy individuals, and countries working hard to re-route everyone.

Very interesting and thought provoking. Making a bit clearer the, 'there's something happening here, not quite sure what it is.'

A wonderful encomium to Roger Scruton.

Can we please not have articles from Quillette or any other sites that give a voice towards people who promote things like race science?

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/quillette-fascist-...

Can we please not indulge in what are effectively ad hominem attacks on various web magazines?

I liked this, but the point that I feel it ignored—that a lot of similar essays ignore—is that having a dialog with someone about an external right (like property rights, that the author mentioned) is very different than arguing with someone about a right to their own identity. How do you have a dialog with someone, even someone arguing in good faith, when the dialog is about whether you have the right to be who you say you are? I could have dialogs all day about external principles, but internal ones, it’s a lot harder to talk about with someone who disagrees. It’s all well and good to decry cancel culture, but these are people who have had to fight tooth and nail to even get a seat at the conversation table in the first place.

Is there fundamental disagreement in people arguing in good faith about everyone's right to be who they say they are? Doesn't the problem usually start when they ask to be treated in a special way, that is, compel others to do things (which tends to collide with the fundamental idea of not-being-forced)?

I'm not sure that cancel culture-people actually had to fight a lot. It seems to me that people who are similar to them in some regard had to fight, but they themselves did not. And those who came before them and had to fight for their rights are usually not among those who seek to cancel others, and will sometimes find themselves on the receiving end of a struggle session, administered by the sons and daughters of their revolution.

> Doesn't the problem usually start when they ask to be treated in a special way, that is, compel others to do things (which tends to collide with the fundamental idea of not-being-forced)?

I don’t think so—black people have been asking to be treated like their lives have value, gay people have been asking to get married, trans people have been asking to be allowed to exist. Those seem to be pretty fundamental rights—I don’t see any of that as asking for special treatments.

Two out of three of these points seem to be primarily polemic. I am not aware of anyone (okay, maybe outside an insane fringe) who, in any meaningful way, is seeking to "forbid trans people to exist" - how do you not allow someone to exist, except by, you know, stopping them from existing, i.e. killing them? Instead, the fights, and cancellations of those deviating from the approved positions, tend to focus on issues such as whether people should be compelled to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, or whether trans people should be allowed access to their preferred gendered facilities (be it bathrooms or battered-women shelters). Do trans people die or pop out of existence when you refer to them by the wrong pronoun? If so, that would be a whole new level of fragility (a word I gather social justice advocates really like to bandy around in situations where it is far less appropriate than here), and it seems like a more appropriate response to someone whose existence is so precarious would be more akin to how we sustain those who are born without an adaptive immune system (https://www.rarediseasereview.org/publications/2017/8/7/livi...).

(Gay marriage, on the other hand, has been (rightly) legalised and enjoys majority support, but even there I think that the problem was that the state presumed to have a say in the definition of marriage to begin with. If any reference to marriage were struck from the books - perhaps by making a neutral construct of civil partnership or something else that can inherit its functions for property-sharing and mutual spokesmanship take it place - then the claim to marriage as a negative right that Scruton would have no cause to interfere with would become apparent.)

> how do you not allow someone to exist, except by, you know, stopping them from existing, i.e. killing them?

You tell them “you are not who you think you are, you’re wrong about your own life”

> whether people should be compelled to refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns, or whether trans people should be allowed access to their preferred gendered facilities

Those are perfect examples—have you ever had a problem getting someone to refer to you by your preferred pronoun? Have you ever been denied access to your bathroom? For me, such things are unthinkable.

> trans people die or pop out of existence when you refer to them by the wrong pronoun?

Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead. So: yes, you’re telling the person that you’re talking to that they don’t exist, that someone else, with a different name and gender exists instead.

> even there I think that the problem was that the state presumed to have a say in the definition of marriage to begin with

That’s an odd solution—gay people want to get married also? Well then: nobody can. Making everybody miserable instead of happy is one way to put everybody on the same footing, but not one I don’t think many people would have been happy with. Definitely I’m glad they didn’t go with that.

The problem with this point of view is that you're elevating your philosophy of gender and sexuality over other peoples' and claiming it as a sort of "safety right." This is pernicious.

Actually, what I was doing was describing a number of rights that I—as a cis-het white man—already possess, and that others have not been granted, and are asking to share, following in the article's quote of “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. But you've done a good job describing why dialog on these topics is difficult, since people such as yourselves consider that "elevating [my] philosophy of gender and sexuality over other peoples'". We can talk all day about property rights, but I can't explain to you why you need to care about other people, and without you caring about others, there's no possibility for useful dialog.

> You tell them “you are not who you think you are, you’re wrong about your own life”

> Those are perfect examples—have you ever had a problem getting someone to refer to you by your preferred pronoun? Have you ever been denied access to your bathroom? For me, such things are unthinkable.

The only bathrooms I have owned were in apartments I lived in, and obviously nobody has ever prevented me from accessing those. I was apparently a fairly androgynous kid and was mistaken for the opposite gender many times until a fairly late point in life, but I didn't particularly try correcting people. Who knows. Either way, if people suddenly decided to switch the pronouns they use to refer to me, I can't imagine it being a big deal, and I would be confident that I will still wake up, experience and interact with reality like any other existing, corporeal being the day after.

> Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead. So: yes, you’re telling the person that you’re talking to that they don’t exist, that someone else, with a different name and gender exists instead.

Are pronouns special in some way that other aspects of identity are not? I consider myself Good At CS, and multiple decades of my life have been spent on reinforcing/lending substance to this belief. I've certainly been in situations where people with minimal CS skills seeking to solve CS-related problems refused to listen to my proposals or acknowledge my expertise, and this stung, but at no point did I get the impression that I somehow faded out of existence in the process. More generally, what do other people's beliefs about me have to do with my existence? Am I like one of those tropey deities from fantasy novels whose powers and very ontology scale with the number and fervor of believers?

It seems to me that if this is your model of reality, classical liberalism with its distinction between negative and positive rights might not even constitute a meaningful philosophy to you. If a trans person only "exists" in the minds of other people, is there even a sense in which a person can be (negatively) not interfered with? The setup seems like a bizarre inversion of the (bad) "violinist argument" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion) that has been brought up for abortion, except now the trans person depends on other members of society to donate their epistemological resources instead of their kidneys in order to continue existing. I'm for the right to deny third parties the use my kidneys even if their continued existence depends on it, and I don't see why this principle should not extend to donating them part of my mental model of the world.

> That’s an odd solution—gay people want to get married also? Well then: nobody can. Making everybody miserable instead of happy is one way to put everybody on the same footing, but not one I don’t think many people would have been happy with. Definitely I’m glad they didn’t go with that.

That's a weird way to frame it. What benefit do I gain from being legally married? What part of it do I lose if s/marriage/civil partnership/g is run on the legal code, and I am now in a civil partnership as far as the law is concerned? If I don't lose anything, why should I be miserable?

(Do you think I derive non-misery from the legal construct that gives me tax breaks being called "marriage" in the books rather than something else?)

> but I didn't particularly try correcting people

If you did try, and they refused, what would that say about them? If they'd rather lose their job than use you by your correct pronoun, what would that say about who they are as a person, and how they're willing to treat others?

> Are pronouns special in some way that other aspects of identity are not?

Special in a way that your skill at CS is not? Absolutely. Much like your name.

> I've certainly been in situations where people with minimal CS skills seeking to solve CS-related problems refused to listen to my proposals or acknowledge my expertise, and this stung

Yeah, I do believe that would sting. Now imagine that it wasn't just someone refusing to listen, but instead the subject of legal battles—the state government of North Carolina legally refused to admit that you're Good At CS. Billionaire authors write essays about the fact that you're Bad At CS. The fact that you are Bad At CS would be the butt of jokes, and shocking news stories designed to make people afraid of you. Those would probably all sting, too.

> More generally, what do other people's beliefs about me have to do with my existence?

Others' beliefs about you? Nothing. Now, if people spend time and energy in an effort to enshrine their beliefs about you into law—say, legally dictating that you're Bad At CS (to continue with your earlier example), then finding a CS job would be pretty difficult. You say that you're Good At CS, but you'd be given no opportunity to demonstrate it, or to counter others' false beliefs about your CS skills.

> What benefit do I gain from being legally married? What part of it do I lose if s/marriage/civil partnership/g is run on the legal code, and I am now in a civil partnership as far as the law is concerned? If I don't lose anything, why should I be miserable?

At this point, I'm not even sure how to talk to you. Are you asking me to explain why people care about the symbol and the institution of marriage? I guess, if you have any married friend or family members, ask them what their marriage means to them.

> "Well, their existence as a trans person does, when you reject their own identity and replace it with one you have chosen instead."

The hole in this argument being that one can substitute anything else, no matter how outlandish, into that justification and it fits just as well. Try substituting "furry" in and ask yourself whether you are willing to add accommodations for people in fursuits. (And I'm sorry to pick on furries; the few I've met seem like nice people and are sincere in their identity.) If we wish to go for a more disturbing example, there is body integrity dysphoria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria . These people are also sincere in their identities.

(And for the record, I'm a liberal and have no problem with trans people. But the above is just not a compelling argument.)

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