For example, you can't "agree to disagree" on LGBTQ rights if you belong to one of those categories. See also pregnant people and abortion rights.
Why can’t you? Is it impossible to imagine civil friendly people who simply do not share one’s views on these issues?
It's not as polarised these days, but it was within my lifetime that consensual homosexual sex between adults was illegal in many parts of the world. It still is in some countries. You cannot "agree to disagree" when someone believes you are broken or sinful or whatever and wants to put you in jail.
That's just one example.
I'm straight, white dude. It's very easy for me to ignore issues like this, because most of the time, they're in my favour. That's just the world.
In the real world, two very different people might meet and start to build a history and a good deal of rapport and trust with each other before ever getting anywhere close to a divisive issue. When they do eventually get there, without a mob watching, without the fear of every word going in the permanent record, the conversation would likely be far less of a dumpster fire, and minds might actually be changed.
As it is, a lot of the discourse you see online is indescribably bad, and I think a lot of it is down to throwing two strangers into a conversation that they would never naturally arrive at upon first meeting.
the conversations are about important things that effect your life, the conversations themselves aren't important and don't actually effect your life.
I believe it’s very important to be able to calmly and genially argue points which are important to you. There may not be any value in merely being able to argue calmly and politely for points in which you have no interest.
With LGBTQ it is therefore not just a difference of opinion on taxation, or a few percentage points difference in a tariff. For trans people it's about whether the other person even acknowledges that you can be trans.
Ie, these debates are not between "pro-lgbtq" and "anti-lgbtq".
Instead most of these debates are more nuanced and complicated. I picked the "trap" debate because it's hotly contested, with both sides swearing up and down they are pro-lgbtq and both sides would even claim to be more pro-lgbtq than their opponents.
Which is to say, you can probably ignore the debate and not care, still be pro-lgbtq, and go back to playing your board game, even with friends who have a different ideological position on that particular debate.
A lot of social media fights are about this scale.
I think mutual respect also plays a part here. My respect, demeanor towards, and willingness to play Settlers with someone who believes LGBTQIA+ people are sinners depends a lot on whether or not that person engages in honest, consensual debate and respects the human on the other side. That is how we form good relationships and strengthen our collective understanding. I wish to underscore the importance of consensual debate, especially when there's a power gradient.
I will say though, "Do gay people get basic rights" is _very much_ still a subject of debate. Sadly.
Eeh, it's still "do gay people get basic rights" for many even in the United States. I've seen folks have last wills overturned by family through insidious legal maneuvers. I've seen doctors refuse to contact patients with biopsy results because their patients were trans. And I've seen folks even withhold paychecks from LGBT folks because of their religious nonsense. So, basic rights are still a matter of contention until it becomes not merely a legal formality that LGBT folks are equal under the law but that the entire population does not even think that they have a chance to violate those formalities and that they feel bad about thinking of doing such a thing. Until that happens, LGBT discussions will always go back to "do gay people have basic rights?".
On the contrary: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/texa...
I would equate a trans woman calling themselves a trap to being the same as a black person calling themselves the N word. It's a way of taking back a slur.
My preference here is to refer to people however they want to be referred to. When I adopted that view, I thought it was very safe but it has actually landed me in hot water many times. I still stand by it though.
Reclaiming != identifying as.
The person you're defending even went on to say that his mentality has gotten him into hot water. The fact that you didn't read into that as "I have no idea what I'm talking about and these people clearly didn't want to be called this" is disconcerting.
And yes, if you are not a person of color and you use a slur traditionally used to describe a person of color to describe or talk about a person of color, you are racist. Full stop. The very fact that you're concocting some outlandish situation where you'd magically be allowed to use slurs is extremely telling, though. If you had any idea what you were talking about, you wouldn't ask that.
Maybe you should stop opining on things and listen to the parties these things affect. The usage of slurs isn't yours to have an opinion on if the slurs aren't words for you.
Slurs are partially the actual word and partially the intent behind them. Once you get to know someone very well, it's typically the case that there is an understanding of no mutual malice between you and them. It is this context that "reclaiming" comes into the picture, because you have a shared perception of what the intent is. You might've heard of the "n-word pass"–it's kind of a meme, but before it was the concept was legitimate and the sentiment was that you're on good enough terms with someone that they know you're not trying to be malicious to them when you use it. It's a sign of trust, and to put it in vernacular, you can't "transfer" a n-word pass because it's a product of your individual relationship.
Putting it a in slightly different context, I (jokingly, of course…) call my mom old and senile when she forgets something in a dumb way ("Where did I put my phone, I've searched the entire house…oh, it was right in front of me where I put it down seconds ago"). She knows I am not directing hatred towards her. With that said, just because I can call her old and senile doesn't mean you can do it, or that I can go do it to any middle-aged woman. But because both of us know each other, it's totally fine to say this among ourselves because it's shared language to us.
Now, with that in mind, I don't think the commenter actually was trying to justify being able to go around calling any person they saw a slur. How would they get in trouble for this? Well, I look different enough from my mom that our relationship isn't immediately evident all the time. If called her old and senile within earshot of someone else, it could definitely look like I was being a jerk if they weren't aware we knew each other beforehand. If I did it around other women of the same age, it could really cause issues. I would certainly not consider either of these a wise thing to do, but in my eyes these are really more a lack of tact or maybe misunderstanding of the context you're in rather than just a racist person wanting to be racist.
(You might be wondering why I would choose to use these words at all…I think the answer to that is really what reclamation is about. Nobody wants to be old and senile, but it's a thing that happens. My mom appreciates it that it's something we can joke about, and I think it helps her deal with it in a way. My understanding is that mutual use of slurs on friendly terms has a similar effect. There's a more extreme form of reclamation of "I think anyone can call me these words, even if I don't really know them, because I'm just really confident/proud of this" but I understand that's not for everyone, and it's definitely something that you can't just assume about people.)
Anyways, to circle back to the original topic, I don't even think my interpretation is a good faith interpretation, it just seems like the more likely interpretation, which is that the commenter has situations where the slurs is normalized and even encouraged by the people who they apply to. You seem to have interpreted this as "the commenter thinks that this means its OK to use them generally because they are racist" but this just doesn't seem to be the case to me. (And if it is…I definitely don't support that.) That's basically all I wanted to bring up.
(One final thing that has more to do with the sentiment of your comment rather than its content, which I think is solid: it seems like you wrote it from the perspective that I'm, at best, woefully misinformed and isolated from marginalized communities, and at worst some sort of closet bigot which you can discern from my comments. I'm a real human being with real empathy and real experience and real faults! I understand that this is a topic you're passionate about, perhaps maybe one you're tired of discussing, but you don't have to attack me to express your opinions on it. Even if it sounds like I'm disagreeing with you, I'm here to interact with new perspectives and learn from them. I only ask that you don't immediately dismiss me as close-minded, as doing so from the start only makes that more likely, rather than less.)
If one, however, goes out of their way to harass transexual people when stating this preference, then yeah, it's a bit transphobic. Intention matters.
I'd say it is a probably a minority position but it is a genuinely held one
I wonder what their position is towards someone who prefers trans people.
They'd consider it fetishism, unless said person was also trans and only preferred other trans people because of wanting that shared life experience.
Their point was that thinking of trans women as different to women as a group was inherently bigoted.
Whoever brought it up has some deep unresolved issues, however. Or was fishing for an argument.
EDIT: It's like fetishes. Preferences are fine and should be respected, but they're also better kept off private. Telling people of a specific ethnicity you're "into them" is also kinda creepy.
This was in the context one of those kink quizzes regarding what things someone was into, so genders, fetishes, bodily features, sex acts, etc. It isn't like someone just announced to a bar "I'd never date a transperson" out of nowhere.
I think that depends on your social circle.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385 has some examples of people for whom this was clearly not a strawman as of 5 months ago.
You can choose to hold that opinion if you want, but most LGBTQ+ people and their loved ones will choose not to interact with you as a result.
That means one side thinks the other side is a child abuser, and the other side thinks that bigots are going to throw them in prison for being a supportive parent.
This is not something you can be "polite" about.
2. It was a clarification of existing rules
3. It does not make "supporting your child's gender transition" a jailable offense.
The order says subjecting a child to invasive medical procedure can be abuse, and that doctors and teachers have a legal requirement to report abuse.
Here is the order for your reading pleasure:
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-dfps...
Where "subject" appears to be the most general form possible, as far as I can tell from context.
Even puberty blockers are on this list! You're not supporting a gender transition if you can't touch hormones at all.
Wow, finally a law against infant male circumcision!
In Texas, of all places; whodathunkit.
Edit: also wtf does that have to do with sex? Do you mean the larger subject of child consent in general? Because contract law would be a less extreme example of children not having power of informed consent.
I absolutely hate that my ability to participate in modern society without harassment for things that are inherent to my existence is limited and I hope that one day we can move past this kind of foolishness as a species.
For gay, it means keeping secret over pretty large and important parts of life. As was explained to me by gay who was super civil, but did grumbled and complained about a lot of stuff that was said when it was safe to talk more openly.
Of course, let's put the transphobes and trans people on the same room. That should play out well, like KKK and black people and Nazis and the Jews, right?
There are even Ls and Gs who think Bs are "faking it".
The trick is that it's not a boolean question. Someone can be gay and anti-trans and this is trivially true.
I've seen a shirt that says "Bi now, gay later"
I think I know why gay men tend to take this view way more often than the rest of the acronym, though: straight men don't hit on gay men, but straight men constantly hit on lesbians. If I had a nickel every time I heard "I can turn you straight," I'd be closing in on a couple dollars by now.
Oftentimes a position, belief, or disagreement is a projection of other underlying fears and discomforts. Or maybe it's simply rigidly structured views that need additional time to process new shapes.
If an intergalactic enemy suddenly showed up on our doorsteps and started attacking us, we'd all band together.
If you have a stronger source I'm open to being convinced, but otherwise I don't find one anecdotal account very convincing. I can't easily get to the cited books to get any more clarity they might have.
And again, I'm talking about fairly fundamental things here. If someone is pregnant, that's pretty conversation worthy. I also can't imagine someone not discussing seeing a new partner.
Ironically, the things you can "agree to disagree" on tend to be the ones that might not come up.
But not all pregnancies are wanted. I have had friends talk to me about their decision wrt an unwanted pregnancy.