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Comment by fsargent | Hacker News Reader

> But shouldn’t we just indulge the harmless whims of an oppressed minority? Maybe, were it not for a strain of aggressive bossiness which insists, not so very harmlessly and not sounding very oppressed, that the rest of us must humour those whims and join in.

Goodness, what a whine. If you’re not a person who is directly confronted with this, why are you throwing yourself into this debate? The only reason to enforce your idea of a person’s gender over their own view of it is because you’re a jerk. It’s that simple. Stop being a jerk.

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Why did you invoke gender? The quote is generic enough to my reading it could mean any one of various mathematical minorities.

Do we all join in with Trump flag waving caravans of F150s? They were a whiny minority recently.

The article is about gender.

No it’s about hypersensitive minority groups and uses one as an example.

You’re being weird. I thought you hadn’t read the article when you asked “Why did you invoke gender?”. They’re just talking about the same thing the article is.

Oh I am? Ok, sure. Did not realize there was an obligation to avoid “being weird” to your sensibilities.

That’s what the entire article is about. Trans people: “Please don’t be rude to me. This is how you can be nice” Dawkins: “My being rude to you isn’t the same as violence.” Trans people: “Ok… why would you feel the need to say that unless you wanted to be violent to us?” Dawkins: “You’re calling me violent! That’s policing my speech which is oppression!”

Only when you take the quote out of context. For the majority of the article he focuses on gender. And in the very same paragraph as that quote comes from he invokes J.K. Rowling. It is entirely reasonable to assume that transgender people are "the oppressed minority" he's specifically talking about.

It’s reasonable to assume otherwise.

My takeaway is it reads like a scientific publication; here’s authors premise, and author walks through an example of what they mean.

The title and subtitle are generic enough to apply to any of the tribal bubbles bleating online about a sense of persecution; Gurner and the CEO class, right wingers, politicians.

Hallucinations of persecution are not just coming from the trans community. It’s just easier to write a coherent article using one example.

That's like saying to an atheist that they have to personally accept any of the harmless whims of the religious.

Like, a quick prayer won't hurt you if you don't really believe in it, will it? Just do it to be polite. Hands together, eyes closed, done. What's the problem?

In your example, I take it Dawkins is the atheist and Trans people are “forcing him to pray” ?

I think the analogy is better said that Trans allies think it’s rude to yell in people’s faces that god doesn’t exist (which is exactly what Dawkins does, so points for consistency).

There’s no personal obligation on what you believe, just don’t be a jerk and tell people that they can’t exist.

> There’s no personal obligation on what you believe, just don’t be a jerk and tell people that they can’t exist.

Can you clarify on this? This seems contradictory to me.

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