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Comment by aucisson_masque | Hacker News Reader

From the point of view of a conservative and non us citizen, you have a good life there compared to the rest of the world.

Technically, most countries don’t allow people to be openly gay. In some countries, being gay even privately means you get beaten to death or your head chopped off.

Needless to say that transgender people are not even taken into consideration.

If I was gay or transgender, god knows I would rather be in the USA or maybe north Europe than any other country and especially not Africa, Arabia, South America.

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Ah, the old "it could be worse" fallacy.

So to recap, you're saying, "don't worry about what's going on in the US right now, because you still have it better than most of the world"

Just because something could be worse does not mean that 1. It's nothing to be concerned about 2. That we shouldn't take steps to improve the situation.

Things can always be worse, so this "logic" is always applicable. It's a vacuous argument. Even if you lived in the country with the worst homo/transphobia in the world, you could tell the person, "well, at least your alive."

Moreover, there's nothing constructive about this line of thinking. If people actually lived by this logic, we would live in a static world, because "it could be worse."

On top of that, legislatures, courts, and right-wing agitators are pushing to repeatedly worsen living conditions for trans people.

It should be noted that the two don't necessarily go hand in hand the way you'd expect. E.g. in Iran, homosexuality is a crime that can be punishable by death depending on circumstances, but sex reassignment surgery is legal (and, indeed, can be de facto mandated in cases of anything perceived as gender dysphoria).

Indeed, I’m surprised to see it’s possible in Iran.

> The Legal Medicine Organization performs a number of tests, including at least six months of individual and group therapy sessions, interviews with family members, physical examinations, hormone tests, and chromosomal tests, in a process known as "filtering". Filtering is the separation of homosexuals, who are deemed "deviant", from transsexuals, who are deemed "curable" by undergoing surgery

Also, after further research, Iran is the only Muslim country in the Persian Gulf region that gives trans citizens the right to have their gender identity recognized by the law.

I don’t understand how such a country can be so open on trans right, but it’s really an exception in the world.

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