But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Completely agree mate. Great post.
Cheers thanks. We - the left - need to move this one away from outre ideology and onto practicalities. If we can do this (but can we?) it will leave the other side looking unreasonable and ignorant and prejudiced if they continue as they are now.
That will entail you standing up to the UltraWoke types, further to your Left.
Are you prepared to do that? Brave.
If it genuinely requires great courage I will not be doing it. But I think I'm up to trading tweets with Aaron Bastani.
It depends where you work, if you work, and whether you do this in your real name.
I believe if you said some of this sensible stuff, and you worked in journalism, publishing, other media, you could get fired.
I don't for one moment think I'd be fired from any job - other than Head of Comms for "Instant Self ID Now!" plc - on account of what I've written about trans on this thread or anywhere else. And that right there is the key difference between us. So either I'm being complacent or you're being hyperbolic. I wonder which is more true?
I said "could"
It is hard to know the consequences for sure, because this war is so strange and the rules so obscure, and they change every day. Making it a minefield.
My guess is that you would be in trouble in some bien pensant media jobs, or the charity sector/academe, for saying these things:
"There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary."
"Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport – are better founded and require some rules."
In the competition between China and the West, China has the advantage of scale and the ability to execute a long term strategy (no elections). The West lacks scale and is short term because of politicians' desire to be elected.
But the West does have a competitive advantage. Because it is more diverse and experimental in ideas, technologies and processes it is more innovative than China. Hence China's desire to steal IP.
If the West could capitalise on its innovation capability and at the same time form cooperative partnerships and a stable demos that supports long term strategies (PR for the UK and US) then the West could out compete China.
Disagreed completely.
The West has not just the advantages of innovation but it'd be a step backwards to go for "a stable demos". It is our instability that is our greatest strength. From chaos comes progress.
As for competing with China, we massively outcompete China. Best way of looking is GDP per capita by PPP.
US 67,426 (Hong Kong) 66,527 Taiwan 57,214 UK 48,169 European Union 46,468 Russia 30,820 China 20,984
We don't need to become more like China.
You don't disagree completely. We agree on the advantages of innovation.
From overall chaos comes anarchy - and you are not a anarchist. I agree chaos is good for progress within bounds. It is Darwinian. Out of mutations and resyntheses comes new forms that are fitter for purpose. Innovation.
But the chaos needs to be within the bounds of a overall framework of the rule of law, stable institutions and infrastructure. Political chaos is not helpful in providing a stable framework including long term global strategies and partnerships. Look at Trump. "From chaos comes progress" is just too simplistic.
Your GDP per capita is a snapshot of now. Just look at the trends.
Our democracy is a stable framework even if we are not stable with our politicians, politics and parties in power. Trump shows the advantage of our system and why our system is better than China's. Because Trump is awful, its a shame the Americans elected him 4 years ago but in 15 weeks on Tuesday we could be seeing the end of Trump as his successor is peacefully elected to replace him. That is the strength of democracy - we will not be seeing the end of Xi through such a peaceful demonstration of democracy.
As for trends, the trends are not against us. China are playing catch up, but they are not in any sense overtaking us. They are not demonstrating their own innovation and technology. Until their science and technology can overtake our own they're not going to be able to do much more than produce what we've invented cheaply.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
Nor should we frame a law that enables that. I'm glad the Tories have dropped that legislation.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
You dont need to masquerade as anything you just walk in and if anyone questions it you just say "I identify as female" No need to dress the part or even shave your beard off.
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Has a goalkeeper's form ever deteriorated more than De Gea's?
I can't think of anyone since I've started watching football.
In 2018 I put him in my all time opposition XI that I've seen play (ahead of Buffon). I doubt I'll ever see a goalkeeping performance as good as the one he made at the Emirates a few seasons ago, but his deterioration has been remarkable.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
Has a goalkeeper's form ever deteriorated more than De Gea's?
I can't think of anyone since I've started watching football.
In 2018 I put him in my all time opposition XI that I've seen play (ahead of Buffon). I doubt I'll ever see a goalkeeping performance as good as the one he made at the Emirates a few seasons ago, but his deterioration has been remarkable.
It's bizarre, he's not even 30, he's got the world's most expensive defender in front of him, he should be approaching his peak.
I wonder if it's the constant upheaval at United that's had an impact, he must be on his third different goal keeping coach in the last three years.
Challenging China where is behaves evilly is the right thing to do. I’m shocked that you think otherwise
If it does any good, absolutely it is.
If it has no effect, it's just empty virtue signalling.
So, for instance, it's right that we offer Hong Kongers citizenship here. But I'm far from sure what if anything we should do about Xinjiang, where we have no influence whatever over the Chinese government's actions or their effects.
In the competition between China and the West, China has the advantage of scale and the ability to execute a long term strategy (no elections). The West lacks scale and is short term because of politicians' desire to be elected.
But the West does have a competitive advantage. Because it is more diverse and experimental in ideas, technologies and processes it is more innovative than China. Hence China's desire to steal IP.
If the West could capitalise on its innovation capability and at the same time form cooperative partnerships and a stable demos that supports long term strategies (PR for the UK and US) then the West could out compete China.
Disagreed completely.
The West has not just the advantages of innovation but it'd be a step backwards to go for "a stable demos". It is our instability that is our greatest strength. From chaos comes progress.
As for competing with China, we massively outcompete China. Best way of looking is GDP per capita by PPP.
US 67,426 (Hong Kong) 66,527 Taiwan 57,214 UK 48,169 European Union 46,468 Russia 30,820 China 20,984
We don't need to become more like China.
You don't disagree completely. We agree on the advantages of innovation.
From overall chaos comes anarchy - and you are not a anarchist. I agree chaos is good for progress within bounds. It is Darwinian. Out of mutations and resyntheses comes new forms that are fitter for purpose. Innovation.
But the chaos needs to be within the bounds of a overall framework of the rule of law, stable institutions and infrastructure. Political chaos is not helpful in providing a stable framework including long term global strategies and partnerships. Look at Trump. "From chaos comes progress" is just too simplistic.
Your GDP per capita is a snapshot of now. Just look at the trends.
Our democracy is a stable framework even if we are not stable with our politicians, politics and parties in power. Trump shows the advantage of our system and why our system is better than China's. Because Trump is awful, its a shame the Americans elected him 4 years ago but in 15 weeks on Tuesday we could be seeing the end of Trump as his successor is peacefully elected to replace him. That is the strength of democracy - we will not be seeing the end of Xi through such a peaceful demonstration of democracy.
As for trends, the trends are not against us. China are playing catch up, but they are not in any sense overtaking us. They are not demonstrating their own innovation and technology. Until their science and technology can overtake our own they're not going to be able to do much more than produce what we've invented cheaply.
I'm not saying the Chinese system is "better" than ours. I'm saying it gives them a competitive advantage. We need to nurture our own competitive advantages and counter their's.
I am not at all complacent about the threat China poses to us economically.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
If we can self identify as different genders why not species? How dare you question anyones right to self determine their species
"JOHN GRAY: It's not an exaggeration to compare the methods used by the new 'woke movement' to those of Mao's Red Guards
Today we are no longer living in a free society. Instead, we are ruled by those who try to enforce their extreme views by shaming and ruining those who think differently."
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Including those who have concentrated power in a communist state ie the leaders or eventually THE leader
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
You dont need to masquerade as anything you just walk in and if anyone questions it you just say "I identify as female" No need to dress the part or even shave your beard off.
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
Kinabalu agrees with you. He said that in his magnum opus that we all agreed with. You should not be changing gender on a whim he said.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
I was doing it on a whim and expecting respect for it. An analogy.
I hope Lampard turns against Giroud again. I think Arsenal are better off playing Chelsea than Man Utd (even with De Gea in goal), but Giroud is a class act.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
My god Biden looks old, I hope he is still up for the fight and the job, he is badly needed.
Biden actually looks older than his advanced years. He’s 77 but looks like he’s in his 80s.
I don't know how Biden is going to get through the debates.
He'll be fine. Just let Trump ramble on.
Or let him kook out. He might find that stalking behind his opponent wrestling-style when she is speaking, spiced up with a threat to jail her, has lost its allure in this time of greater seriousness. Already 4m US citizens have tested SARS-CoV2 positive and more than twice as many have died with Covid-19 as were killed in Vietnam.
Nonetheless, Biden is not a strong candidate. His SP is that he is reasonable and he is standing against a pathological liar and incompetent nutter who won't release his tax returns, is an archetypal spoilt brat, and is totally out of his depth holding public office. The sneaking fear is that his SP might be insufficient once he suffers a cut from a Trump right hook and the Trump corner gets to work on it. There is a worry that Biden might arrive at the debate and then forget where he is and the Trump side could then spend a gazillion dollars pushing the line that Trump might not be everybody's cup of tea but at least he can find his way to the Oval Office. There are other possible banana skins too.
From the GOP POV, that's not much to rely on, because their own candidate is even crapper. A replacement such as Haley or Ryan, though, would whup Biden, score >400+ ECV, and look like a two-term president. It's a no-brainer: choose a candidate who would be very likely to win, or choose a stupid maniac who wanted to send in the army to protect a few statues, and who spends half his "great 2020 launch speech" insisting he can drink properly from a glass of water, but who might possibly win if he's lucky. The hard question is how to insert the first in place of the second.
As for "when", after the convention seems too late, and too long before the convention might give the collection of mostly retarded gun nuts who are the registered Republican voters the opportunity to screw things up again. There has to be a golden hour some time in the next 4 weeks.
Possible GOP replacements, arranged by descending Trumpiness:
Cotton (as far-right as Trump but doesn't advocate drinking bleach) Cruz, Rubio (bumsniffers of Trump but can they reposition?) Pence (his coronavirus role would hinder a rebrand, but he's been there as a possible replacement since 2016; although, that said, look at Ford) Ryan (interesting possible unifier, both experienced and young) Haley (ditto) Kasich (his support for impeachment may work against him) Romney (ditto, even more so - he actually voted to impeach)
Bettors think in descending order of probability the list runs Pence, Haley, Romney. Pence is in a category of his own. Haley might be able to unite former Trumpers and moderates. Romney? If this were the Tory party then voting with the opposition to impeach would have finished his chances. But in 2016 Trump was the only candidate for the GOP nomination who wouldn't rule out standing against the GOP, and he still won. Ryan may be good value at 1000. Cruz or Rubio? Repositioning possible. Rubio looked good with "Just wear a damned mask".
There's a lot of stuff on birth certificates that doesn't need to be there - on mine there's father's job, but not mother's job, and mother's place of residence, not father's place of residence. What would happen if we stripped down birth certificates to remove those things and gender?
No one (is supposed to) ask your age any more for eg jobs.
Which is fine, until I mention I worked on computers with punched cards and paper tape.
OT - One option for isolating HM Govt from the far-from-immune herd (which would have added benefit of helping support struggling cafes, restaurants, shops, massage parlors and rest of multi-faceted Westminster infrastructure) would be for Cabinet to take over the Cabinet War Rooms, and transfer both Houses of Parliament to the alternate mega-bunker dug just before WWII out in the burbs somewhere.
Similar to what National Basketball Association is doing (or rather getting ready to do) down at Walt Disney World sports complex in Orlando.
Heck, maybe HMG should go join the NBA - know how you Brits love Florida! PLUS fact the Sunshine State is HUGE Covid hotspot right now would certainly justify hazardous duty pay allocation for ministers, lords, MPs & entourages.
Has a goalkeeper's form ever deteriorated more than De Gea's?
I can't think of anyone since I've started watching football.
The best part of lockdown was not having to worry about how West Bromwich Albion could disappoint in ways one could not conceive as possible.
Since the return of the Championship I have not enjoyed a night's sleep.
It's not the despair, I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.
That is true.
Conventional wisdom tells me that the Baggies should canter to a three nil win against a side with an even worse current form than the Albion. Just imagine how disappointing it will be when the Hoops trot out as one nil winners or snatch a draw.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
i am afraid I haven't a clue about all this and even less so about how to "solve" it. Frankly I don't think anyone does. It strikes me as the biggest pointless waste of time trying to solve it (at a academic/givernmental and even Twitter level) at a time when actual important things like a messed up economy /EU exit and health crisis are on. Its student politics at its worse and most of the world just stares and laughs at this sort of thing. My only recommendation is people occasionally have to learn to accept "no" . as in "no you cannot go into those toilets " or no you cannot enter a womens 100m sprint at the Olympics but you can do whatever else you want to with your body
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
You dont need to masquerade as anything you just walk in and if anyone questions it you just say "I identify as female" No need to dress the part or even shave your beard off.
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
Kinabalu agrees with you. He said that in his magnum opus that we all agreed with. You should not be changing gender on a whim he said.
No he doesn't agree thats just his empty words claiming he does
You can have self identification but that means you always have changing on whim
or
You can have a method where you have sanction from a medical professional that you do indeed believe yourself to be a different gender to your biological one
Kinablu can't have it both ways you can't stop changing on whim and have self identification
While typing this I have to also add that I will definitely self identify as a woman if I ever face a jail sentence....not because I wish to perv but purely because womens prisons tend to be a little more pleasant from accounts I have had from friends who have been jailed
once upon a time most companies paid in company scrip that could only be spent in company stores. While you can argue well if you dont like it change jobs it wasnt so easy. Laws were passed to stop it
1) Do you agree with those laws or do you regard being paid in company scrip should be allowed
2) if you answer the law was right what is the difference between that and telling companies they have to also accept hard currency and not just cards. In the first the company issuing the scrips dictates where you can purchase things in the second card issuing companies and dont forget there are really only two are limiting where you can shop by giving you a card or not
I have no qualms with people getting a benefit in kind of company scrip so long as other laws are followed including getting paid a minimum wage in hard currency and getting taxed on their benefit in kind.
2: The difference is that cards are hard currency. If you spend pound sterlings in coins, pound sterlings in notes, pound sterlings by BACS transfer, pound sterlings by cheques or pound sterlings by cards your hard currency is pound sterling either way.
If there is a role for the government to pay it is to ensure everyone has access to being able to get a card. A universal service obligation on banks even if it's only for prepayment or debit cards without borrowing options. Other than that there is no role for the government to play, it is a matter for commercial choice by both businesses and consumers.
You didn't get hard currency only company scrip so I take it you answer is No it should not be allowed......so state intervention was good
I fail to see the difference between the state intervention declaring all shops must accept cash and state intervention stating banks must give a bank account to everyone. In fact the second is the worst of the pair for intervention because it takes choice out of peoples hands
So now we have established you don't mind state intervention can you cease your whining when others say that it is sometimes necessary and go read some more Ayn Rand
I've never said I support zero state intervention in the first place, as I've said when this has come up in the past I am a libertarian not an anarchist.
It is far, far, far better to impose a universal service obligation on banks than it is to impose an obligation on every single small shop, large shop, restaurant, bar, hairdresser, boutique or anything else in the entire country that they must accept cash.
Banks are structurally important and integral to the entire economy, a universal service obligation is something they can withstand without jeopardising their business and as part of their regulations (which must exist). Ensuring everyone has access to banking is far better because it puts the choice into people's hands, they can access all parts of the economy (many online retailers won't accept cash for instance and I doubt even you're suggesting they must are you?). There is a requirement to ensure everyone has access to basic banking.
Putting the onus on eg small businesses that don't want the security or other risks involved with accepting cash is an entirely different matter. Cash is not required and can lead to armed robberies and stabbings so there is a very valid justification not to want to accept it. If everyone has access to banking there is absolutely zero justification to compel people to literally put their lives at risk accepting cash when they don't want to do so . . . I don't know if you've ever been subject to an armed robbery by people looking for cash but it is not a pleasant experience.
Small business have always accepted cash so its not asking them to change it is merely specifying that they must continue to do so. The number of businesses that only accept card payments is tiny so as usual your argument is bollocks.
Libertarians believe that defence is one the people of the country is one of the key things for a governement. Defence doesn't just mean from invasion it is also a defence of freedom. In this case the freedom not to have a bank account, not to have every penny spent tracked, not to have their data given to governments and big business
You should give up being a libertarian you really do fail at it
Small businesses have not always accepted cash. In the past some small businesses only accepted cheques and have swapped asking for cheques with asking for card payments. The idea that businesses have always all accepted cash is total bollocks. Your argument is the bollocks one not mine.
You may want to be a conspiracy nut without a bank account . . . that's your choice and if you find businesses willing to trade with you on that basis then good luck to you. There's no reason to compel an onus on businesses to trade with you on that basis that has never existed in the past nor does now. Its your choice.
Companies are not compelled to cater to your choices.
99% of businesses at least have always accepted cash...obviously I am referring to physical shops not mail order or online at this point.
Your way paves the way to authoritarianism as soon as we get in the wrong government. Mine is a small intervention to protect freedom.
As to conspiracy theory which part is conspiracy. We know governements have access to are bank accounts and card payments, we know big business collects data on our spending. A conspiracy theory is a theory that something is happening without any tangible proof it is. I don't think worrying about data collection is a conspiracy theory.
You will be the first one shrieking when a nanny state government using all the data available because its all electronic decides to restrict for example alcohol purchase by blocking payment for it after a certain amount each week. That is the power you want to hand them.
To a certain extent, this mirrors the arguments about forcing people to accept paper money when that was introduced. Instead of "real" silver and gold.
The reality is that most people I know have some cash in their wallets as backup. The recent COVID crisis has accelerated the trend (another one) towards cashlessness.
It is nothing like the same argument because paper money is no more traceable than gold or silver neither did it require you to have a bank account. I suspect the argument at the time was while gold and silver had an intrinsic value in and of themselves paper money didn't
You might be surprised - some people were not happy about serial numbers on money, in addition to the whole fiat money thing.
Even in the days of hand written ledgers, governments and banks tracked (well, tried to) paper money.
Serial numbers on money are like numbers on ballots truly conspiracy theory territory unlike government and big business ability to track electronic transactions which Philip keeps throwing in because he knows he is wrong
That the government can track electronic transactions is not a valid justification for compelling businessmen who don't want to, to risk their death by accepting cash.
All I am saying is that it should be people's choice whether to accept cash or card and no compulsion. A company should be able to choose to be cash only if it chooses, or card only if it chooses, or a hybrid if it chooses.
You are basically saying that even if a small business operator finds cash a pain and that the business has been repeatedly robbed and held up at knifepoint for cash, even if the business gets 90% of its trade by cards anyway, even if the business operator has been stabbed by thieves . . . and if the business decides that it would rather give up cash trade than face the risk of handling cash anymore . . . you know better. You insist that the business must by law continue to accept cash, continue to face being held up, robbed, stabbed . . . for what? So that a hypothetical future government may not abuse electronic data because people voluntarily chose to use electronic funds?
All I can think is you are hopelessly naive and know nothing about the real world.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
i am afraid I haven't a clue about all this and even less so about how to "solve" it. Frankly I don't think anyone does. It strikes me as the biggest pointless waste of time trying to solve it (at a academic/givernmental and even Twitter level) at a time when actual important things like a messed up economy /EU exit and health crisis are on. Its student politics at its worse and most of the world just stares and laughs at this sort of thing.
I reckon the fucked-up nature of the world makes clever people focus on this kind of absurdity even more, as a way of ignoring real but difficult issues.
Cf the relentless focus on "Islamophobia" as against actually tackling, say, FGM
In the competition between China and the West, China has the advantage of scale and the ability to execute a long term strategy (no elections). The West lacks scale and is short term because of politicians' desire to be elected.
But the West does have a competitive advantage. Because it is more diverse and experimental in ideas, technologies and processes it is more innovative than China. Hence China's desire to steal IP.
If the West could capitalise on its innovation capability and at the same time form cooperative partnerships and a stable demos that supports long term strategies (PR for the UK and US) then the West could out compete China.
Disagreed completely.
The West has not just the advantages of innovation but it'd be a step backwards to go for "a stable demos". It is our instability that is our greatest strength. From chaos comes progress.
As for competing with China, we massively outcompete China. Best way of looking is GDP per capita by PPP.
US 67,426 (Hong Kong) 66,527 Taiwan 57,214 UK 48,169 European Union 46,468 Russia 30,820 China 20,984
We don't need to become more like China.
You don't disagree completely. We agree on the advantages of innovation.
From overall chaos comes anarchy - and you are not a anarchist. I agree chaos is good for progress within bounds. It is Darwinian. Out of mutations and resyntheses comes new forms that are fitter for purpose. Innovation.
But the chaos needs to be within the bounds of a overall framework of the rule of law, stable institutions and infrastructure. Political chaos is not helpful in providing a stable framework including long term global strategies and partnerships. Look at Trump. "From chaos comes progress" is just too simplistic.
Your GDP per capita is a snapshot of now. Just look at the trends.
Our democracy is a stable framework even if we are not stable with our politicians, politics and parties in power. Trump shows the advantage of our system and why our system is better than China's. Because Trump is awful, its a shame the Americans elected him 4 years ago but in 15 weeks on Tuesday we could be seeing the end of Trump as his successor is peacefully elected to replace him. That is the strength of democracy - we will not be seeing the end of Xi through such a peaceful demonstration of democracy.
As for trends, the trends are not against us. China are playing catch up, but they are not in any sense overtaking us. They are not demonstrating their own innovation and technology. Until their science and technology can overtake our own they're not going to be able to do much more than produce what we've invented cheaply.
I'm not saying the Chinese system is "better" than ours. I'm saying it gives them a competitive advantage. We need to nurture our own competitive advantages and counter their's.
I am not at all complacent about the threat China poses to us economically.
Their competitive advantage is temporary, ours is structural.
once upon a time most companies paid in company scrip that could only be spent in company stores. While you can argue well if you dont like it change jobs it wasnt so easy. Laws were passed to stop it
1) Do you agree with those laws or do you regard being paid in company scrip should be allowed
2) if you answer the law was right what is the difference between that and telling companies they have to also accept hard currency and not just cards. In the first the company issuing the scrips dictates where you can purchase things in the second card issuing companies and dont forget there are really only two are limiting where you can shop by giving you a card or not
I have no qualms with people getting a benefit in kind of company scrip so long as other laws are followed including getting paid a minimum wage in hard currency and getting taxed on their benefit in kind.
2: The difference is that cards are hard currency. If you spend pound sterlings in coins, pound sterlings in notes, pound sterlings by BACS transfer, pound sterlings by cheques or pound sterlings by cards your hard currency is pound sterling either way.
If there is a role for the government to pay it is to ensure everyone has access to being able to get a card. A universal service obligation on banks even if it's only for prepayment or debit cards without borrowing options. Other than that there is no role for the government to play, it is a matter for commercial choice by both businesses and consumers.
You didn't get hard currency only company scrip so I take it you answer is No it should not be allowed......so state intervention was good
I fail to see the difference between the state intervention declaring all shops must accept cash and state intervention stating banks must give a bank account to everyone. In fact the second is the worst of the pair for intervention because it takes choice out of peoples hands
So now we have established you don't mind state intervention can you cease your whining when others say that it is sometimes necessary and go read some more Ayn Rand
I've never said I support zero state intervention in the first place, as I've said when this has come up in the past I am a libertarian not an anarchist.
It is far, far, far better to impose a universal service obligation on banks than it is to impose an obligation on every single small shop, large shop, restaurant, bar, hairdresser, boutique or anything else in the entire country that they must accept cash.
Banks are structurally important and integral to the entire economy, a universal service obligation is something they can withstand without jeopardising their business and as part of their regulations (which must exist). Ensuring everyone has access to banking is far better because it puts the choice into people's hands, they can access all parts of the economy (many online retailers won't accept cash for instance and I doubt even you're suggesting they must are you?). There is a requirement to ensure everyone has access to basic banking.
Putting the onus on eg small businesses that don't want the security or other risks involved with accepting cash is an entirely different matter. Cash is not required and can lead to armed robberies and stabbings so there is a very valid justification not to want to accept it. If everyone has access to banking there is absolutely zero justification to compel people to literally put their lives at risk accepting cash when they don't want to do so . . . I don't know if you've ever been subject to an armed robbery by people looking for cash but it is not a pleasant experience.
Small business have always accepted cash so its not asking them to change it is merely specifying that they must continue to do so. The number of businesses that only accept card payments is tiny so as usual your argument is bollocks.
Libertarians believe that defence is one the people of the country is one of the key things for a governement. Defence doesn't just mean from invasion it is also a defence of freedom. In this case the freedom not to have a bank account, not to have every penny spent tracked, not to have their data given to governments and big business
You should give up being a libertarian you really do fail at it
Small businesses have not always accepted cash. In the past some small businesses only accepted cheques and have swapped asking for cheques with asking for card payments. The idea that businesses have always all accepted cash is total bollocks. Your argument is the bollocks one not mine.
You may want to be a conspiracy nut without a bank account . . . that's your choice and if you find businesses willing to trade with you on that basis then good luck to you. There's no reason to compel an onus on businesses to trade with you on that basis that has never existed in the past nor does now. Its your choice.
Companies are not compelled to cater to your choices.
99% of businesses at least have always accepted cash...obviously I am referring to physical shops not mail order or online at this point.
Your way paves the way to authoritarianism as soon as we get in the wrong government. Mine is a small intervention to protect freedom.
As to conspiracy theory which part is conspiracy. We know governements have access to are bank accounts and card payments, we know big business collects data on our spending. A conspiracy theory is a theory that something is happening without any tangible proof it is. I don't think worrying about data collection is a conspiracy theory.
You will be the first one shrieking when a nanny state government using all the data available because its all electronic decides to restrict for example alcohol purchase by blocking payment for it after a certain amount each week. That is the power you want to hand them.
To a certain extent, this mirrors the arguments about forcing people to accept paper money when that was introduced. Instead of "real" silver and gold.
The reality is that most people I know have some cash in their wallets as backup. The recent COVID crisis has accelerated the trend (another one) towards cashlessness.
It is nothing like the same argument because paper money is no more traceable than gold or silver neither did it require you to have a bank account. I suspect the argument at the time was while gold and silver had an intrinsic value in and of themselves paper money didn't
You might be surprised - some people were not happy about serial numbers on money, in addition to the whole fiat money thing.
Even in the days of hand written ledgers, governments and banks tracked (well, tried to) paper money.
Serial numbers on money are like numbers on ballots truly conspiracy theory territory unlike government and big business ability to track electronic transactions which Philip keeps throwing in because he knows he is wrong
That the government can track electronic transactions is not a valid justification for compelling businessmen who don't want to, to risk their death by accepting cash.
All I am saying is that it should be people's choice whether to accept cash or card and no compulsion. A company should be able to choose to be cash only if it chooses, or card only if it chooses, or a hybrid if it chooses.
You are basically saying that even if a small business operator finds cash a pain and that the business has been repeatedly robbed and held up at knifepoint for cash, even if the business gets 90% of its trade by cards anyway, even if the business operator has been stabbed by thieves . . . and if the business decides that it would rather give up cash trade than face the risk of handling cash anymore . . . you know better. You insist that the business must by law continue to accept cash, continue to face being held up, robbed, stabbed . . . for what? So that a hypothetical future government may not abuse electronic data because people voluntarily chose to use electronic funds?
All I can think is you are hopelessly naive and know nothing about the real world.
The only naive one here is you, look to china to see where no cash transactions take you. Sorry but it's you that don't live in the real world, governments including our own have shown time and time again by their actions they want more and more data about what we do, who we talk to. There is a drive towards a surveillance state and you want to give it to them.
If a business owner doesnt want to risk being robbed because he takes cash then he has a choice not to be a business owner. See works both ways this choice thing.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
You dont need to masquerade as anything you just walk in and if anyone questions it you just say "I identify as female" No need to dress the part or even shave your beard off.
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
Kinabalu agrees with you. He said that in his magnum opus that we all agreed with. You should not be changing gender on a whim he said.
No he doesn't agree thats just his empty words claiming he does
You can have self identification but that means you always have changing on whim
or
You can have a method where you have sanction from a medical professional that you do indeed believe yourself to be a different gender to your biological one
Kinablu can't have it both ways you can't stop changing on whim and have self identification
While typing this I have to also add that I will definitely self identify as a woman if I ever face a jail sentence....not because I wish to perv but purely because womens prisons tend to be a little more pleasant from accounts I have had from friends who have been jailed
I said - and I mean - a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria should be required. Why would I lie to you?
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
This will go over terribly. Johnson is incredibly unpopular in Scotland.
They will be installing fridges and oiling back doors big time. He will be kept well away from the public. Will be limited to same arse licking Tory wannabes
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
Marxism is also bad for workers as there is no choice in who you work for .Get fired in one job and you only have one employer (the state) so bad luck ! Workers in a mixed economy always have a choice of who to work for so always some power retained in the sense you can walk away from a job /boss you hate
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
You dont need to masquerade as anything you just walk in and if anyone questions it you just say "I identify as female" No need to dress the part or even shave your beard off.
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
Kinabalu agrees with you. He said that in his magnum opus that we all agreed with. You should not be changing gender on a whim he said.
No he doesn't agree thats just his empty words claiming he does
You can have self identification but that means you always have changing on whim
or
You can have a method where you have sanction from a medical professional that you do indeed believe yourself to be a different gender to your biological one
Kinablu can't have it both ways you can't stop changing on whim and have self identification
While typing this I have to also add that I will definitely self identify as a woman if I ever face a jail sentence....not because I wish to perv but purely because womens prisons tend to be a little more pleasant from accounts I have had from friends who have been jailed
I said - and I mean - a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria should be required. Why would I lie to you?
yes you did I just reread ypur initial post and you did indeed say "A defined process" It is good to see you do have some common sense on some issues and some non woke views
once upon a time most companies paid in company scrip that could only be spent in company stores. While you can argue well if you dont like it change jobs it wasnt so easy. Laws were passed to stop it
1) Do you agree with those laws or do you regard being paid in company scrip should be allowed
2) if you answer the law was right what is the difference between that and telling companies they have to also accept hard currency and not just cards. In the first the company issuing the scrips dictates where you can purchase things in the second card issuing companies and dont forget there are really only two are limiting where you can shop by giving you a card or not
I have no qualms with people getting a benefit in kind of company scrip so long as other laws are followed including getting paid a minimum wage in hard currency and getting taxed on their benefit in kind.
2: The difference is that cards are hard currency. If you spend pound sterlings in coins, pound sterlings in notes, pound sterlings by BACS transfer, pound sterlings by cheques or pound sterlings by cards your hard currency is pound sterling either way.
If there is a role for the government to pay it is to ensure everyone has access to being able to get a card. A universal service obligation on banks even if it's only for prepayment or debit cards without borrowing options. Other than that there is no role for the government to play, it is a matter for commercial choice by both businesses and consumers.
You didn't get hard currency only company scrip so I take it you answer is No it should not be allowed......so state intervention was good
I fail to see the difference between the state intervention declaring all shops must accept cash and state intervention stating banks must give a bank account to everyone. In fact the second is the worst of the pair for intervention because it takes choice out of peoples hands
So now we have established you don't mind state intervention can you cease your whining when others say that it is sometimes necessary and go read some more Ayn Rand
I've never said I support zero state intervention in the first place, as I've said when this has come up in the past I am a libertarian not an anarchist.
It is far, far, far better to impose a universal service obligation on banks than it is to impose an obligation on every single small shop, large shop, restaurant, bar, hairdresser, boutique or anything else in the entire country that they must accept cash.
Banks are structurally important and integral to the entire economy, a universal service obligation is something they can withstand without jeopardising their business and as part of their regulations (which must exist). Ensuring everyone has access to banking is far better because it puts the choice into people's hands, they can access all parts of the economy (many online retailers won't accept cash for instance and I doubt even you're suggesting they must are you?). There is a requirement to ensure everyone has access to basic banking.
Putting the onus on eg small businesses that don't want the security or other risks involved with accepting cash is an entirely different matter. Cash is not required and can lead to armed robberies and stabbings so there is a very valid justification not to want to accept it. If everyone has access to banking there is absolutely zero justification to compel people to literally put their lives at risk accepting cash when they don't want to do so . . . I don't know if you've ever been subject to an armed robbery by people looking for cash but it is not a pleasant experience.
Small business have always accepted cash so its not asking them to change it is merely specifying that they must continue to do so. The number of businesses that only accept card payments is tiny so as usual your argument is bollocks.
Libertarians believe that defence is one the people of the country is one of the key things for a governement. Defence doesn't just mean from invasion it is also a defence of freedom. In this case the freedom not to have a bank account, not to have every penny spent tracked, not to have their data given to governments and big business
You should give up being a libertarian you really do fail at it
Small businesses have not always accepted cash. In the past some small businesses only accepted cheques and have swapped asking for cheques with asking for card payments. The idea that businesses have always all accepted cash is total bollocks. Your argument is the bollocks one not mine.
You may want to be a conspiracy nut without a bank account . . . that's your choice and if you find businesses willing to trade with you on that basis then good luck to you. There's no reason to compel an onus on businesses to trade with you on that basis that has never existed in the past nor does now. Its your choice.
Companies are not compelled to cater to your choices.
99% of businesses at least have always accepted cash...obviously I am referring to physical shops not mail order or online at this point.
Your way paves the way to authoritarianism as soon as we get in the wrong government. Mine is a small intervention to protect freedom.
As to conspiracy theory which part is conspiracy. We know governements have access to are bank accounts and card payments, we know big business collects data on our spending. A conspiracy theory is a theory that something is happening without any tangible proof it is. I don't think worrying about data collection is a conspiracy theory.
You will be the first one shrieking when a nanny state government using all the data available because its all electronic decides to restrict for example alcohol purchase by blocking payment for it after a certain amount each week. That is the power you want to hand them.
To a certain extent, this mirrors the arguments about forcing people to accept paper money when that was introduced. Instead of "real" silver and gold.
The reality is that most people I know have some cash in their wallets as backup. The recent COVID crisis has accelerated the trend (another one) towards cashlessness.
It is nothing like the same argument because paper money is no more traceable than gold or silver neither did it require you to have a bank account. I suspect the argument at the time was while gold and silver had an intrinsic value in and of themselves paper money didn't
You might be surprised - some people were not happy about serial numbers on money, in addition to the whole fiat money thing.
Even in the days of hand written ledgers, governments and banks tracked (well, tried to) paper money.
Serial numbers on money are like numbers on ballots truly conspiracy theory territory unlike government and big business ability to track electronic transactions which Philip keeps throwing in because he knows he is wrong
That the government can track electronic transactions is not a valid justification for compelling businessmen who don't want to, to risk their death by accepting cash.
All I am saying is that it should be people's choice whether to accept cash or card and no compulsion. A company should be able to choose to be cash only if it chooses, or card only if it chooses, or a hybrid if it chooses.
You are basically saying that even if a small business operator finds cash a pain and that the business has been repeatedly robbed and held up at knifepoint for cash, even if the business gets 90% of its trade by cards anyway, even if the business operator has been stabbed by thieves . . . and if the business decides that it would rather give up cash trade than face the risk of handling cash anymore . . . you know better. You insist that the business must by law continue to accept cash, continue to face being held up, robbed, stabbed . . . for what? So that a hypothetical future government may not abuse electronic data because people voluntarily chose to use electronic funds?
All I can think is you are hopelessly naive and know nothing about the real world.
The only naive one here is you, look to china to see where no cash transactions take you. Sorry but it's you that don't live in the real world, governments including our own have shown time and time again by their actions they want more and more data about what we do, who we talk to. There is a drive towards a surveillance state and you want to give it to them.
If a business owner doesnt want to risk being robbed because he takes cash then he has a choice not to be a business owner. See works both ways this choice thing.
China is not where they are because they don't have cash. China is where they are because they have an overly burdensome government which is exactly what you want to encourage.
Yes surveillance exists, this is the 21st century, get over it. You're not avoiding all surveillance just because small companies choose to accept cards only. Who are you to tell business owners they can't run a business the way they want? Who are you to say be robbed or go out of business? Are you still pretending to be standing up for liberty or just for gangster criminals?
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
If self identification trumps genetics -
Why is that sex can be change to match self-identification, but race (which involves less genetic difference) can't be?
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
Every time you are confronted with an inconvenient argument or an awkward truth, you accuse your interlocutor of arguing in bad faith.
It gets REALLY boring, so shove it up your great big hairy mangina. Thanks.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
If self identification trumps genetics -
Why is that sex can be change to match self-identification, but race (which involves less genetic difference) can't be?
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
You want 'a fair and equitable society' but think business owners should be robbed as a matter of course with nothing to say in the matter?
You think "if you don't want to be robbed, don't go into business" ... And that's fair and equitable?
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
Marxism is also bad for workers as there is no choice in who you work for .Get fired in one job and you only have one employer (the state) so bad luck ! Workers in a mixed economy always have a choice of who to work for so always some power retained in the sense you can walk away from a job /boss you hate
From my days as a "mortgage slave" I am not entirely convinced by your argument. I worked for some absolute barstewards. I dare not have left for fear of having my home repossessed.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
Gender dysphoria is a thing yes but the debate is about self identification not whether gender dysphoria exists.
Saying I believe I am an anglo saxon born in a bantu body is not really that different to saying I believe I am a woman born in a mans body. Just because psychiatrists havent got round to naming it yet doesn't mean its not just as valid
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
Re: Joe Biden and his weaknesses, due regard should be given to his strengths, which go beyond simply NOT being Trump.
For starters, consider that Joe Biden was written off by most pundits and many politicos in early 2020 - until he won the South Carolina Democratic Primary. After that, he - and the majority of Democratic primary voters across America - never looked back.
And why did Biden win the Palmetto State? Because he won the overwhelming support of African American primary voters: key opinion leader in their communities, who did and do NOT see Joe Biden as a demented vegetable. Instead, they see him as a leader in Congress - in particular for civil rights - who stood by Barrack Obama through thick and thin.
Once Black voters made their choice crystal clear in SC, a large section of Democrats - moderates & pragmatists but also significant numbers of liberals & progressives - quickly joined them and put their voting strength behind Biden.
BTW, last night NBC aired a "Saturday Night Live" re-run from 2008 that began with a skit on that year's Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden & Sarah Palin; can't recall who played Joe but Tina Fey memorably portrayed Palin.
Also BTW, the major takeaway from THAT debate - the actual one - was that Joe Biden won. Which was challenging in sense that he had to bend over backwards NOT to come across as overbearing establishment male versus a charismatic populist woman. All while showing his superior (to put it mildly) experience, achievements and knowledge.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
Gender dysphoria is a thing yes but the debate is about self identification not whether gender dysphoria exists.
Saying I believe I am an anglo saxon born in a bantu body is not really that different to saying I believe I am a woman born in a mans body. Just because psychiatrists havent got round to naming it yet doesn't mean its not just as valid
I predict transracialism will become a potent issue in the next few years.
And there is a logic to it.
Take this example: imagine you're a white kid growing up in an overwhelmingly black neighbourhood in an American city. You have a black American accent, listen to black American music, eat black American food, have entirely black American friends, you are immersed in black American culture.
You might then, genuinely feel a kind of "racial dysphoria" when you are told that you are white, unlike your friends, even though you "feel" wholly black.
In addition, you will see that being black carries some advantages (as well, of course, as historical disadvantages): you benefit from affirmative action, you need lower SAT scores to get into some important colleges, and so on.
In that context I can easily see someone seeking to officially change their racial identity. And I cannot see many arguments against it, unless we admit that race is a biological reality and we have genetic tests for it, and we are never going to do that.
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
You want 'a fair and equitable society' but think business owners should be robbed as a matter of course with nothing to say in the matter?
You think "if you don't want to be robbed, don't go into business" ... And that's fair and equitable?
Whereas your fair and equitable society is that you feel we should all have an added layer of state surveillance because else a few thousand shop keepers might get robbed. Frankly I am done with this debate. I am not going to bore people by going round in circles with it.
I have neither the time nor inclination nor the crayons to explain it to you.
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
Adolf Hitler didn't!
I did say most, there will always be the likes of hitler, mao, pol pot, stalin around
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
Kinabalu should be cancelled for being phobic towards my right to self-identify as white!
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
You want 'a fair and equitable society' but think business owners should be robbed as a matter of course with nothing to say in the matter?
You think "if you don't want to be robbed, don't go into business" ... And that's fair and equitable?
Whereas your fair and equitable society is that you feel we should all have an added layer of state surveillance because else a few thousand shop keepers might get robbed. Frankly I am done with this debate. I am not going to bore people by going round in circles with it.
I have neither the time nor inclination nor the crayons to explain it to you.
No, we should have the potential for state surveillance if people CHOOSE to VOLUNTARILY act in a way that can be done that way.
People choose to have smartphones. People choose to have apps. People choose to have GPS. People choose to have cards. People choose to have Facebook.
If people want to use landlines and not carry a phone and not use apps, not use GPS and not use cards then fine that's their choice. And they can use businesses that want to cater to that clientelle.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
I was doing it on a whim and expecting respect for it. An analogy.
It's trite and highly inappropriate. If you claim to be a golden retriever trapped in the body of a man you are clearly and by definition insane. A dog does not have the intellect to think that. If you're a dog your thoughts are limited to eat, drink, where's my master? wanna go walkies etc. There is no "analogy" to transgender except in the sense of ridiculing the entire concept in "humorous" manner. Which it isn't because it's yawningly obvious and commonplace. Suggest you send it to Jimmy Tarbuck.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Completely agree mate. Great post.
It shouldn't be compulsory to 'go all the way', but until you possess the plumbing of your reassigned gender, you don't get to use the lavatories. I don't see why that concept is so distressing. Those who currently live as their reassigned gender and don't feel comfortable using the a loo that doesn't fit their appearance, should have dispensation to use the disabled loos. We are brilliant at making simple things complex.
Incidentally @Pagan2 I find your snooty and dismissive way you say "because a few thousand shop keepers might be robbed" frankly disgusting.
Have you been robbed? Have you been through that trauma? Do you have any experience or knowledge about this topic that you are speaking about? Have you got experience in trauma counselling, what is your area of expertise? Have you comforted someone who has had a knife held to their throat?
Do you have any idea how real this is in the real world? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get robbed? Get held up at knife or gunpoint? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get stabbed in robberies? Any idea how many die?
And you wish to deny them the right they have ALWAYS had to refuse cash. You wish to instil an obligation that has never existed ever in our history to take cash, because you know better? Because their safety comes below your paranoia. If you wish to attend to a cash only business go to a cash only business . . . but guess what, they'll probably have a lot of CCTV too. Cash businesses tend to do so.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
I don't think most women worry so much about the toilet issue but most I know are definitely against self declared trans women sharing changing rooms with them. My boss at work is very woke to the point I try and avoid speaking to her because she finds offence where none is intended but when I said to her "Oh so you would be ok with it if I decided to declare myself female and walked into your changing rooms at the pool" . Her response was basically that wouldn't be ok with her because she would know I didn't really think of myself as female.....well yes rather the point....for those that enjoy naked woman there is an incentive if you are brazen enough to just go in the womens changing room. It must be a flashers dream come true he can wander around stark bollock naked and if anyone complains just tell them "Hey but I feel like I am a women"
Masquerading as trans to cop an eyeful? That's an outlier situation. We shouldn't frame a law which would be damaging and impractical around that.
You dont need to masquerade as anything you just walk in and if anyone questions it you just say "I identify as female" No need to dress the part or even shave your beard off.
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
Kinabalu agrees with you. He said that in his magnum opus that we all agreed with. You should not be changing gender on a whim he said.
Pretended to agree with, I'm starting to suspect. Which is very nice and polite. But I hope people weren't agreeing for fear of me cancelling them if they didn't. Because I wouldn't do that. I'm tolerance personified. I put up with so much.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
If we can self identify as different genders why not species? How dare you question anyones right to self determine their species
Pls see my post to @Barnesian where I explain why this analogy should not be made.
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
Adolf Hitler didn't!
I did say most, there will always be the likes of hitler, mao, pol pot, stalin around
If you read Mein Kampf, you will find that Adolf Hitler was utterly convinced that his ideas were The One True Way To A Truly Just Society. And saving humanity from extinction, to boot.
This is one example of why intention isn't the best metric to judge belief systems on.
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
The Mongol conquests and the Mughal invasion of India also had a massive death toll. World War Two killed 60-120m.
War is pretty bloody.
I've never even heard of the second war on this list? The war of the Three Kingdoms? Killed 40 million?!
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
Kinabalu should be cancelled for being phobic towards my right to self-identify as white!
Do you think gender dysphoria is a crock of shit? You are what you are at birth. Penis = male = male for life. Is this the point you're making?
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
I was doing it on a whim and expecting respect for it. An analogy.
It's trite and highly inappropriate. If you claim to be a golden retriever trapped in the body of a man you are clearly and by definition insane. A dog does not have the intellect to think that. If you're a dog your thoughts are limited to eat, drink, where's my master? wanna go walkies etc. There is no "analogy" to transgender except in the sense of ridiculing the entire concept in "humorous" manner. Which it isn't because it's yawningly obvious and commonplace. Suggest you send it to Jimmy Tarbuck.
I wasn't comparing it to genuine dysmorphia but to a man on a whim declaring themselves to be a woman and expecting to be recognised as such. I thought we agreed on this? I wasn't pretending. I just gave a ludicrous analogy to illustrate the problem with the whim.
We have a small Overton window within which we agree on this subject. You can be very touchy, slip out of it and come across as very self righteous. Which is a pity.
Incidentally @Pagan2 I find your snooty and dismissive way you say "because a few thousand shop keepers might be robbed" frankly disgusting.
Have you been robbed? Have you been through that trauma? Do you have any experience or knowledge about this topic that you are speaking about? Have you got experience in trauma counselling, what is your area of expertise? Have you comforted someone who has had a knife held to their throat?
Do you have any idea how real this is in the real world? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get robbed? Get held up at knife or gunpoint? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get stabbed in robberies? Any idea how many die?
And you wish to deny them the right they have ALWAYS had to refuse cash. You wish to instil an obligation that has never existed ever in our history to take cash, because you know better? Because their safety comes below your paranoia. If you wish to attend to a cash only business go to a cash only business . . . but guess what, they'll probably have a lot of CCTV too. Cash businesses tend to do so.
Oh do get off your high horse more people are killed and traumatised every year in car accidents than in shop robberies. We could stop people driving but dont because its for the greater good.
Preventing more government snooping is for the greater good and if they are so paranoid and fearful of being robbed do something other than be a shopkeeper.
State snooping is well documented its not paranoia.
I predict transracialism will become a potent issue in the next few years.
And there is a logic to it.
Take this example: imagine you're a white kid growing up in an overwhelmingly black neighbourhood in an American city. You have a black American accent, listen to black American music, eat black American food, have entirely black American friends, you are immersed in black American culture.
You might then, genuinely feel a kind of "racial dysphoria" when you are told that you are white, unlike your friends, even though you "feel" wholly black.
In addition, you will see that being black carries some advantages (as well, of course, as historical disadvantages): you benefit from affirmative action, you need lower SAT scores to get into some important colleges, and so on.
In that context I can easily see someone seeking to officially change their racial identity. And I cannot see many arguments against it, unless we admit that race is a biological reality and we have genetic tests for it, and we are never going to do that.
Let's cross that bridge when we (don't) come to it. Meanwhile we can adopt my approach to trans. Everyone "agreed" after all, didn't they? Too late now if it was just for show.
In the competition between China and the West, China has the advantage of scale and the ability to execute a long term strategy (no elections). The West lacks scale and is short term because of politicians' desire to be elected.
But the West does have a competitive advantage. Because it is more diverse and experimental in ideas, technologies and processes it is more innovative than China. Hence China's desire to steal IP.
If the West could capitalise on its innovation capability and at the same time form cooperative partnerships and a stable demos that supports long term strategies (PR for the UK and US) then the West could out compete China.
Disagreed completely.
The West has not just the advantages of innovation but it'd be a step backwards to go for "a stable demos". It is our instability that is our greatest strength. From chaos comes progress.
As for competing with China, we massively outcompete China. Best way of looking is GDP per capita by PPP.
US 67,426 (Hong Kong) 66,527 Taiwan 57,214 UK 48,169 European Union 46,468 Russia 30,820 China 20,984
We don't need to become more like China.
Incredible that Taiwan has a GDP per capita so much higher than the UK.
70 years ago it was an island of peasants and rocks, with no natural resources.
If China can repeat that miracle on the mainland, China will eventually be four times bigger than the USA, in economic might. A big if, tho.
I haven’t seen regional stats for China but I suspect that the coastal cities do well and the other parts of the country are breadline
Incidentally @Pagan2 I find your snooty and dismissive way you say "because a few thousand shop keepers might be robbed" frankly disgusting.
Have you been robbed? Have you been through that trauma? Do you have any experience or knowledge about this topic that you are speaking about? Have you got experience in trauma counselling, what is your area of expertise? Have you comforted someone who has had a knife held to their throat?
Do you have any idea how real this is in the real world? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get robbed? Get held up at knife or gunpoint? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get stabbed in robberies? Any idea how many die?
And you wish to deny them the right they have ALWAYS had to refuse cash. You wish to instil an obligation that has never existed ever in our history to take cash, because you know better? Because their safety comes below your paranoia. If you wish to attend to a cash only business go to a cash only business . . . but guess what, they'll probably have a lot of CCTV too. Cash businesses tend to do so.
Oh do get off your high horse more people are killed and traumatised every year in car accidents than in shop robberies. We could stop people driving but dont because its for the greater good.
Preventing more government snooping is for the greater good and if they are so paranoid and fearful of being robbed do something other than be a shopkeeper.
State snooping is well documented its not paranoia.
State snooping will exist whether or not you compel businesses that don't want to take cash to do so. Cash does not terminate snooping and you are even more naive if you think it does. Yes people get killed and traumatised every year in car accidents but we don't compel people to get behind the wheel if they don't want to do so. We don't compel people to drive when they don't want to. We don't compel people to disable their airbags, unclip their seat belts and drive negligently. We try to reduce harm and risk not increase it.
Being concerned about robbery is not paranoia for commercial businesses. For retail businesses the crime rate is over 27,000 offences per 1,000 properties. Though not all properties are at the same level of risk, some more than others. That is why companies should have the freedom . . . the freedom they have always had . . . to decide what they want to accept.
There has never been a universal obligation to take cash. There never should be.
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
I was supporting your original post with irony.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim you said.
Nor should you change species on a whim. Even worse!
You're losing me now. What has "changing species" got to do with any of this?
I was doing it on a whim and expecting respect for it. An analogy.
It's trite and highly inappropriate. If you claim to be a golden retriever trapped in the body of a man you are clearly and by definition insane. A dog does not have the intellect to think that. If you're a dog your thoughts are limited to eat, drink, where's my master? wanna go walkies etc. There is no "analogy" to transgender except in the sense of ridiculing the entire concept in "humorous" manner. Which it isn't because it's yawningly obvious and commonplace. Suggest you send it to Jimmy Tarbuck.
I wasn't comparing it to genuine dysmorphia but to a man on a whim declaring themselves to be a woman and expecting to be recognised as such. I thought we agreed on this? I wasn't pretending. I just gave a ludicrous analogy to illustrate the problem with the whim.
We have a small Overton window within which we agree on this subject. You can be very touchy, slip out of it and come across as very self righteous. Which is a pity.
I see. Didn't read that way to me. Terrific offering then and sorry. In my defence that "joke" is just oh so common and tedious. Thought you'd succumbed. As if. Man like you.
I try not to be touchy. "Respond don't React". Do my best to do that.
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
The Mongol conquests and the Mughal invasion of India also had a massive death toll. World War Two killed 60-120m.
War is pretty bloody.
I've never even heard of the second war on this list? The war of the Three Kingdoms? Killed 40 million?!
Lewis Hamilton identifies as black despite not actually being black.
What? And I know his mum is white!
Where do we draw the line on this? The whole BLM thing has been very clear that it is about black lives and anyone wanting to make it about racism in general needs to STFU.
If race isn't something people can make a choice about, where do we draw the line?
I predict transracialism will become a potent issue in the next few years.
And there is a logic to it.
Take this example: imagine you're a white kid growing up in an overwhelmingly black neighbourhood in an American city. You have a black American accent, listen to black American music, eat black American food, have entirely black American friends, you are immersed in black American culture.
You might then, genuinely feel a kind of "racial dysphoria" when you are told that you are white, unlike your friends, even though you "feel" wholly black.
In addition, you will see that being black carries some advantages (as well, of course, as historical disadvantages): you benefit from affirmative action, you need lower SAT scores to get into some important colleges, and so on.
In that context I can easily see someone seeking to officially change their racial identity. And I cannot see many arguments against it, unless we admit that race is a biological reality and we have genetic tests for it, and we are never going to do that.
Let's cross that bridge when we (don't) come to it. Meanwhile we can adopt my approach to trans. Everyone "agreed" after all, didn't they? Too late now if it was just for show.
I think we all agreed that gender dysphoria is real. And all the things you said about that.
We diverted to a male self identifying as a woman on a whim and drew analogies with race and species to show how ridiculous it was and you got all shirty. That is what happened.
If you look at deaths through human history and look at their causes, then natural causes is clear number one.
Second is death at the hand of one's own government. Whether it's being killed by the police in the US, executed for one crime or another, or being purged for one reason or another.
Death at the hand of another government is way, way below death at the hand of your own government. Then there are car crasdhes. And then death at the hand of another person - i.e. murder - is below that. Terrorism is way, way, way down the list.
Given the propensity of governments, over time, to use additional powers to kill their own citizens, I'm always surprised that people think strong government is a good thing.
I'm really not sure that's true.
Death in and by war - with another tribe/state/clan - is surely more common than "killed by your own government"
Various implementations of communism have a staggering death toll, dwarf ANY other ideology. And mostly on their own people generally.
I still find it hard to comprehend why its ok to be a communist or socialist which had a death toll ten times that of fascism but not ok to be a fascist. For record I am not arguing fascism be given credence here more arguing that communism and socialism should be treated with the same contempt.
If a conservative shadow chancellor tossed mein kampf at a labour governement in the commons there would quite rightly be uproar Yet McDonnel chucks a copy of Mao's little red book who alone killed at conservative estimates around 20 million and its all lmao from the left and media
Because the fundamental doctrine of fascism is negative and xenophobic, whereas Marxism sets out to be righteous and good, it just seldom turns out that way.
I am not sure fascism as an ideology rather than the third reichs version is either negative or xenophobic merely nationalistic and totalitarian but like stalin I am sure they believed they are creating a better world. You or I probably wouldn't like that world but then I wouldn't like a communist or socialist world either. I haven't studied it as an ideology. Perhaps fascists should just use the normal excuse communists and socialists trot out....It wasnt really fascism Hitler just claimed it was.
You have changed the frame to totalitarianism. I would argue the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt for a detailed analysis.
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
Marxism by its definition is totalitarian and yes I would agree and I think have said the same when debating abolition of private schools that the failing of the left is they never take human motivations into account and pass stupid laws which backfire because they assume people will "do the right thing"
I can't argue with the notion that failure to account for human motivations is a fundamental failure of Marxism.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
I think most whether left or right want a fair and equitable society I know I do. However we will disagree how to get there and what fair and equitable actually mean
Adolf Hitler didn't!
I did say most, there will always be the likes of hitler, mao, pol pot, stalin around
Lewis Hamilton identifies as black despite not actually being black.
What? And I know his mum is white!
Where do we draw the line on this? The whole BLM thing has been very clear that it is about black lives and anyone wanting to make it about racism in general needs to STFU.
If race isn't something people can make a choice about, where do we draw the line?
In the competition between China and the West, China has the advantage of scale and the ability to execute a long term strategy (no elections). The West lacks scale and is short term because of politicians' desire to be elected.
But the West does have a competitive advantage. Because it is more diverse and experimental in ideas, technologies and processes it is more innovative than China. Hence China's desire to steal IP.
If the West could capitalise on its innovation capability and at the same time form cooperative partnerships and a stable demos that supports long term strategies (PR for the UK and US) then the West could out compete China.
Disagreed completely.
The West has not just the advantages of innovation but it'd be a step backwards to go for "a stable demos". It is our instability that is our greatest strength. From chaos comes progress.
As for competing with China, we massively outcompete China. Best way of looking is GDP per capita by PPP.
US 67,426 (Hong Kong) 66,527 Taiwan 57,214 UK 48,169 European Union 46,468 Russia 30,820 China 20,984
We don't need to become more like China.
Incredible that Taiwan has a GDP per capita so much higher than the UK.
70 years ago it was an island of peasants and rocks, with no natural resources.
If China can repeat that miracle on the mainland, China will eventually be four times bigger than the USA, in economic might. A big if, tho.
I haven’t seen regional stats for China but I suspect that the coastal cities do well and the other parts of the country are breadline
But have you read Samuel Huntington’s seminal work?
Yes, I have. Jolly good, as I recall, though I didn't agree with everything
Reread the last chapter. The conclusion isn’t quite what you expect
What does it say? I read it many years ago and don't have a copy.
The argument is that the real “clash of civilisations” isn’t between Islam/Sino/Judeo-Christian but inside the West between social conservatives and progressives. That will undermine their west and fatally weaken it in the struggle with other cultural blocs
Don’t forget this was written in the early 90s
Golly. That's prescient.
I fear he is right. The rot started in academe, and spread from there. Some of the examples of mad cancel culture in this essay are quite startling, and depressing - see the one about the college persecuting a bakery. Amazing.
And did you know the Vagina Monologues is no longer allowed on American campuses? It is considered regressive and reactionary, as it excludes women who don't have vaginas.
I won’t defend the Vagina Monologues being classed as transphobic. That sounds extreme and I reject the extremes in this debate. Gender is not merely a social construct unrelated to body at birth. You should not be able to change it purely by proclamation. But the TERF notion that male to female transformation is yet another attempt by the patriarchy to devalue women is equally bonkers. And I say this as a believer in the concept of the patriarchy.
On this subject I believe that if armed with the facts and a degree of empathy most reasonable people would reach agreement with me on the following -
There is such a thing as biological sex. Almost everybody is born male or female. It’s binary.
Gender usually aligns with this but not always. Dysmorphia is a real thing and those affected by it are entitled to the best remedy which is to transition. Denied this they are often doomed to abject misery. It is a small number of people but for them it is (literally sometimes) a matter of life or death. For the vast majority the transition is beneficial. Conversely it harms no-one.
Transition can be full (with op) or partial (stopping short of this). It should not be compulsory to go all the way. It should however be compulsory to go through a defined process. You should not be changing gender on a whim. The process should be neither desultory nor so elongated and intrusive as to be a barrier. Special care is required in the case of minors.
For transwomen (born male) there are certain fears to be addressed. Some of these – e.g. access to female toilets and changing rooms – require information and education only since they are not well founded. Others – e.g. protections around women’s sport and access to refuges from domestic violence – are better founded and require some rules.
Well, it's nice to agree. I can sign up for pretty much all of that.
The trouble is, this debate is being driven by the extremists, not you, and the nutters are taking it down a dark road, where cancel culture is very real and some people are getting badly hurt. And the madness is spreading, not dwindling.
The trouble is, soft liberals like you are either ignoring this trend, or denying it, even when it is right there in front of you. Wokeness really is a problem as you implicitly concede, here.
I think we will end up (by and large) where I've described. And imo there are more people getting hurt by one extreme - the TERF / Rowling tendency which feeds anti trans bigotry - than the other one.
There's no sign that's where we're headed at the moment, though I obv hope you are right. As for people getting hurt, the only ones I can see are allies of Rowling getting fired.
You may not see the upset caused to trans people (an already vulnerable and maginalised group) by the increased hostility they experience due to the output of the "only women bleed" brigade but this doesn't mean it's not real.
An old friend of mine is trans, and her perspective is that the hardcore trans activists are making life WORSE for trans people. She sees them as more of a problem than J K Rowling and Co.
Just one point of view. But interesting.
Because they are provoking a backlash?
Or because she does not agree with their aims?
I can't go much further without speaking to her. These are her opinions not mine.
But I can say this: given that she had to live two years as a woman, to get her NHS gender swap surgery, she is deeply resentful of the new idea that you can just self declare you're a woman and that's it.
You can self declare that you are anything you like. Whether people take any notice is another matter.
I could self declare that I am a labrador. I quite fancy being a labrador - fed, petted and adored. And when I self declare expect peole to respect my choice. It's only polite. I will be deeply offended if they don't. I will cancel them and expose them to all my followers.
You said you agreed with my original post and yet you post this, comparing trans gender to trans species. I smell a rat.
Can I self-identify as white?
That's not trans species.
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
Why does that follow?
Race is a social construct. So we are told. It does not exist, biologically.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
Gender dysphoria is accepted and real. It's mainstream. The equivalent for race is not. Maybe one day - who knows - but as regards this debate in the here and now it clutters rather than illuminates. As those who throw it in know. That's the idea.
Every time you are confronted with an inconvenient argument or an awkward truth, you accuse your interlocutor of arguing in bad faith.
It gets REALLY boring, so shove it up your great big hairy mangina. Thanks.
Not bad faith. Just going off point. I like discipline. But people post what they want, don't they. Which of course is great. If everyone were like me it would be no fun whatsoever. We'd solve everything in 2 minutes and then be at a loose end.
Incidentally @Pagan2 I find your snooty and dismissive way you say "because a few thousand shop keepers might be robbed" frankly disgusting.
Have you been robbed? Have you been through that trauma? Do you have any experience or knowledge about this topic that you are speaking about? Have you got experience in trauma counselling, what is your area of expertise? Have you comforted someone who has had a knife held to their throat?
Do you have any idea how real this is in the real world? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get robbed? Get held up at knife or gunpoint? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get stabbed in robberies? Any idea how many die?
And you wish to deny them the right they have ALWAYS had to refuse cash. You wish to instil an obligation that has never existed ever in our history to take cash, because you know better? Because their safety comes below your paranoia. If you wish to attend to a cash only business go to a cash only business . . . but guess what, they'll probably have a lot of CCTV too. Cash businesses tend to do so.
Oh do get off your high horse more people are killed and traumatised every year in car accidents than in shop robberies. We could stop people driving but dont because its for the greater good.
Preventing more government snooping is for the greater good and if they are so paranoid and fearful of being robbed do something other than be a shopkeeper.
State snooping is well documented its not paranoia.
State snooping will exist whether or not you compel businesses that don't want to take cash to do so. Cash does not terminate snooping and you are even more naive if you think it does. Yes people get killed and traumatised every year in car accidents but we don't compel people to get behind the wheel if they don't want to do so. We don't compel people to drive when they don't want to. We don't compel people to disable their airbags, unclip their seat belts and drive negligently. We try to reduce harm and risk not increase it.
Being concerned about robbery is not paranoia for commercial businesses. For retail businesses the crime rate is over 27,000 offences per 1,000 properties. Though not all properties are at the same level of risk, some more than others. That is why companies should have the freedom . . . the freedom they have always had . . . to decide what they want to accept.
There has never been a universal obligation to take cash. There never should be.
While just about true, a shop that refused to take cash could easily be done under age discrimination legislation
I predict transracialism will become a potent issue in the next few years.
And there is a logic to it.
Take this example: imagine you're a white kid growing up in an overwhelmingly black neighbourhood in an American city. You have a black American accent, listen to black American music, eat black American food, have entirely black American friends, you are immersed in black American culture.
You might then, genuinely feel a kind of "racial dysphoria" when you are told that you are white, unlike your friends, even though you "feel" wholly black.
In addition, you will see that being black carries some advantages (as well, of course, as historical disadvantages): you benefit from affirmative action, you need lower SAT scores to get into some important colleges, and so on.
In that context I can easily see someone seeking to officially change their racial identity. And I cannot see many arguments against it, unless we admit that race is a biological reality and we have genetic tests for it, and we are never going to do that.
Let's cross that bridge when we (don't) come to it. Meanwhile we can adopt my approach to trans. Everyone "agreed" after all, didn't they? Too late now if it was just for show.
I think we all agreed that gender dysphoria is real. And all the things you said about that.
We diverted to a male self identifying as a woman on a whim and drew analogies with race and species to show how ridiculous it was and you got all shirty. That is what happened.
EDIT: OK we've made up
- I should have logged off when I got that "Great Post" from Topping. Do it now.
In the competition between China and the West, China has the advantage of scale and the ability to execute a long term strategy (no elections). The West lacks scale and is short term because of politicians' desire to be elected.
But the West does have a competitive advantage. Because it is more diverse and experimental in ideas, technologies and processes it is more innovative than China. Hence China's desire to steal IP.
If the West could capitalise on its innovation capability and at the same time form cooperative partnerships and a stable demos that supports long term strategies (PR for the UK and US) then the West could out compete China.
Disagreed completely.
The West has not just the advantages of innovation but it'd be a step backwards to go for "a stable demos". It is our instability that is our greatest strength. From chaos comes progress.
As for competing with China, we massively outcompete China. Best way of looking is GDP per capita by PPP.
US 67,426 (Hong Kong) 66,527 Taiwan 57,214 UK 48,169 European Union 46,468 Russia 30,820 China 20,984
We don't need to become more like China.
Incredible that Taiwan has a GDP per capita so much higher than the UK.
70 years ago it was an island of peasants and rocks, with no natural resources.
If China can repeat that miracle on the mainland, China will eventually be four times bigger than the USA, in economic might. A big if, tho.
I haven’t seen regional stats for China but I suspect that the coastal cities do well and the other parts of the country are breadline
Absolutely right.
Places like Chengdu are developed.
Yep. Been there. Chengdu is fun. Great nightlife, and, in places, pretty wealthy
Lewis Hamilton identifies as black despite not actually being black.
Does somebody of mixed race not have the right to choose which of those races to allign with? Or does being of mixed race rob them of being either?
I suspect there are still plenty of whites who would say "he can't choose to be one of us whites". I don't know if there is a similar degree of prejudice in the black community that would say "you can be a fellow traveller - but not one of our footsoldiers in our Black Lives Matter culture war. Because you don't know what it's like to be black."
Comments
But if I can self-identify as a lady (assuming I wanted to), I can self-identify as white too, surely!
He used to be brilliant, now he's worse than Jordan Pickford.
As for trends, the trends are not against us. China are playing catch up, but they are not in any sense overtaking us. They are not demonstrating their own innovation and technology. Until their science and technology can overtake our own they're not going to be able to do much more than produce what we've invented cheaply.
"And the chickens don't mind" - West West Virginia Corollary
If voyeurism and flashing were as rare as you seem to believe we wouldn't need laws against them. I don't have any issue with self identification but if it includes going into what should be a female space where they want body privacy then it should take more than saying "Well I feel like a girl"
You asked why the one was less unacceptable than the other. I would defend neither from historical evidence. However I would still claim the motives for Marxism are theoretically fair. It is just that in practice it is almost always the Animal Farm pigs that attempt to manage Marxism and it inevitably ends in bloody failure.
One could argue the failure of Marxism is that it relies on the fairness of humanity. And human beings are generally programmed for self preservation and self gratification.
It is I believe illegal after all to let an animal suffer needlessly rather than put them down
I wonder if it's the constant upheaval at United that's had an impact, he must be on his third different goal keeping coach in the last three years.
If it has no effect, it's just empty virtue signalling.
So, for instance, it's right that we offer Hong Kongers citizenship here. But I'm far from sure what if anything we should do about Xinjiang, where we have no influence whatever over the Chinese government's actions or their effects.
I am not at all complacent about the threat China poses to us economically.
Today we are no longer living in a free society. Instead, we are ruled by those who try to enforce their extreme views by shaming and ruining those who think differently."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8537583/JOHN-GRAY-not-exaggeration-compare-methods-new-woke-movement-Maos-Red-Guards.html
Since the return of the Championship I have not enjoyed a night's sleep.
I know Pep doesn't rate him, but I thought he was a decent goalkeeper, but everyone's swerved him since like a an ex with the clap.
Now we are told sex/gender is a social construct. It has no reality outside our minds.
Logically, therefore, if you can self identify as a woman whatever your "sex", you can self identify as being of a different race
This is an active debate right now in academic circles. "Transracial identity"
https://www.essence.com/news/rachel-dolezal-transracial-identity-opinions/
http://honisoit.com/2018/05/in-defence-of-transracialism/
https://twitter.com/AndyRobsonTips/status/1284917301192601600
Nonetheless, Biden is not a strong candidate. His SP is that he is reasonable and he is standing against a pathological liar and incompetent nutter who won't release his tax returns, is an archetypal spoilt brat, and is totally out of his depth holding public office. The sneaking fear is that his SP might be insufficient once he suffers a cut from a Trump right hook and the Trump corner gets to work on it. There is a worry that Biden might arrive at the debate and then forget where he is and the Trump side could then spend a gazillion dollars pushing the line that Trump might not be everybody's cup of tea but at least he can find his way to the Oval Office. There are other possible banana skins too.
From the GOP POV, that's not much to rely on, because their own candidate is even crapper. A replacement such as Haley or Ryan, though, would whup Biden, score >400+ ECV, and look like a two-term president. It's a no-brainer: choose a candidate who would be very likely to win, or choose a stupid maniac who wanted to send in the army to protect a few statues, and who spends half his "great 2020 launch speech" insisting he can drink properly from a glass of water, but who might possibly win if he's lucky. The hard question is how to insert the first in place of the second.
As for "when", after the convention seems too late, and too long before the convention might give the collection of mostly retarded gun nuts who are the registered Republican voters the opportunity to screw things up again. There has to be a golden hour some time in the next 4 weeks.
Possible GOP replacements, arranged by descending Trumpiness:
Cotton (as far-right as Trump but doesn't advocate drinking bleach)
Cruz, Rubio (bumsniffers of Trump but can they reposition?)
Pence (his coronavirus role would hinder a rebrand, but he's been there as a possible replacement since 2016; although, that said, look at Ford)
Ryan (interesting possible unifier, both experienced and young)
Haley (ditto)
Kasich (his support for impeachment may work against him)
Romney (ditto, even more so - he actually voted to impeach)
Bettors think in descending order of probability the list runs Pence, Haley, Romney. Pence is in a category of his own. Haley might be able to unite former Trumpers and moderates. Romney? If this were the Tory party then voting with the opposition to impeach would have finished his chances. But in 2016 Trump was the only candidate for the GOP nomination who wouldn't rule out standing against the GOP, and he still won. Ryan may be good value at 1000. Cruz or Rubio? Repositioning possible. Rubio looked good with "Just wear a damned mask".
Similar to what National Basketball Association is doing (or rather getting ready to do) down at Walt Disney World sports complex in Orlando.
Heck, maybe HMG should go join the NBA - know how you Brits love Florida! PLUS fact the Sunshine State is HUGE Covid hotspot right now would certainly justify hazardous duty pay allocation for ministers, lords, MPs & entourages.
Conventional wisdom tells me that the Baggies should canter to a three nil win against a side with an even worse current form than the Albion. Just imagine how disappointing it will be when the Hoops trot out as one nil winners or snatch a draw.
You can have self identification but that means you always have changing on whim
or
You can have a method where you have sanction from a medical professional that you do indeed believe yourself to be a different gender to your biological one
Kinablu can't have it both ways you can't stop changing on whim and have self identification
While typing this I have to also add that I will definitely self identify as a woman if I ever face a jail sentence....not because I wish to perv but purely because womens prisons tend to be a little more pleasant from accounts I have had from friends who have been jailed
All I am saying is that it should be people's choice whether to accept cash or card and no compulsion. A company should be able to choose to be cash only if it chooses, or card only if it chooses, or a hybrid if it chooses.
You are basically saying that even if a small business operator finds cash a pain and that the business has been repeatedly robbed and held up at knifepoint for cash, even if the business gets 90% of its trade by cards anyway, even if the business operator has been stabbed by thieves . . . and if the business decides that it would rather give up cash trade than face the risk of handling cash anymore . . . you know better. You insist that the business must by law continue to accept cash, continue to face being held up, robbed, stabbed . . . for what? So that a hypothetical future government may not abuse electronic data because people voluntarily chose to use electronic funds?
All I can think is you are hopelessly naive and know nothing about the real world.
Cf the relentless focus on "Islamophobia" as against actually tackling, say, FGM
OK I am off for a walk and then GIN
If a business owner doesnt want to risk being robbed because he takes cash then he has a choice not to be a business owner. See works both ways this choice thing.
I would argue however that through whatever means possible, striving for fairness and an equitable society is a positive ambition. That is why I am a social democrat and not a Marxist.
Yes surveillance exists, this is the 21st century, get over it. You're not avoiding all surveillance just because small companies choose to accept cards only. Who are you to tell business owners they can't run a business the way they want? Who are you to say be robbed or go out of business? Are you still pretending to be standing up for liberty or just for gangster criminals?
Why is that sex can be change to match self-identification, but race (which involves less genetic difference) can't be?
It gets REALLY boring, so shove it up your great big hairy mangina. Thanks.
You think "if you don't want to be robbed, don't go into business" ... And that's fair and equitable?
Saying I believe I am an anglo saxon born in a bantu body is not really that different to saying I believe I am a woman born in a mans body. Just because psychiatrists havent got round to naming it yet doesn't mean its not just as valid
For starters, consider that Joe Biden was written off by most pundits and many politicos in early 2020 - until he won the South Carolina Democratic Primary. After that, he - and the majority of Democratic primary voters across America - never looked back.
And why did Biden win the Palmetto State? Because he won the overwhelming support of African American primary voters: key opinion leader in their communities, who did and do NOT see Joe Biden as a demented vegetable. Instead, they see him as a leader in Congress - in particular for civil rights - who stood by Barrack Obama through thick and thin.
Once Black voters made their choice crystal clear in SC, a large section of Democrats - moderates & pragmatists but also significant numbers of liberals & progressives - quickly joined them and put their voting strength behind Biden.
BTW, last night NBC aired a "Saturday Night Live" re-run from 2008 that began with a skit on that year's Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden & Sarah Palin; can't recall who played Joe but Tina Fey memorably portrayed Palin.
Also BTW, the major takeaway from THAT debate - the actual one - was that Joe Biden won. Which was challenging in sense that he had to bend over backwards NOT to come across as overbearing establishment male versus a charismatic populist woman. All while showing his superior (to put it mildly) experience, achievements and knowledge.
And there is a logic to it.
Take this example: imagine you're a white kid growing up in an overwhelmingly black neighbourhood in an American city. You have a black American accent, listen to black American music, eat black American food, have entirely black American friends, you are immersed in black American culture.
You might then, genuinely feel a kind of "racial dysphoria" when you are told that you are white, unlike your friends, even though you "feel" wholly black.
In addition, you will see that being black carries some advantages (as well, of course, as historical disadvantages): you benefit from affirmative action, you need lower SAT scores to get into some important colleges, and so on.
In that context I can easily see someone seeking to officially change their racial identity. And I cannot see many arguments against it, unless we admit that race is a biological reality and we have genetic tests for it, and we are never going to do that.
I have neither the time nor inclination nor the crayons to explain it to you.
People choose to have smartphones.
People choose to have apps.
People choose to have GPS.
People choose to have cards.
People choose to have Facebook.
If people want to use landlines and not carry a phone and not use apps, not use GPS and not use cards then fine that's their choice. And they can use businesses that want to cater to that clientelle.
Have you been robbed? Have you been through that trauma? Do you have any experience or knowledge about this topic that you are speaking about? Have you got experience in trauma counselling, what is your area of expertise? Have you comforted someone who has had a knife held to their throat?
Do you have any idea how real this is in the real world? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get robbed? Get held up at knife or gunpoint? Do you have any idea how many shop keepers get stabbed in robberies? Any idea how many die?
And you wish to deny them the right they have ALWAYS had to refuse cash. You wish to instil an obligation that has never existed ever in our history to take cash, because you know better? Because their safety comes below your paranoia. If you wish to attend to a cash only business go to a cash only business . . . but guess what, they'll probably have a lot of CCTV too. Cash businesses tend to do so.
This is one example of why intention isn't the best metric to judge belief systems on.
We have a small Overton window within which we agree on this subject. You can be very touchy, slip out of it and come across as very self righteous. Which is a pity.
Preventing more government snooping is for the greater good and if they are so paranoid and fearful of being robbed do something other than be a shopkeeper.
State snooping is well documented its not paranoia.
Being concerned about robbery is not paranoia for commercial businesses. For retail businesses the crime rate is over 27,000 offences per 1,000 properties. Though not all properties are at the same level of risk, some more than others. That is why companies should have the freedom . . . the freedom they have always had . . . to decide what they want to accept.
There has never been a universal obligation to take cash. There never should be.
I try not to be touchy. "Respond don't React". Do my best to do that.
If race isn't something people can make a choice about, where do we draw the line?
We diverted to a male self identifying as a woman on a whim and drew analogies with race and species to show how ridiculous it was and you got all shirty. That is what happened.
EDIT: OK we've made up
"Can't we all just get along?" - Rodney King.
Whitehall sources described Matt Hancock's "fanboy" attitude to tech and "tendency to overpromise and only sometimes deliver"."
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-inside-story-of-how-government-failed-to-develop-a-contact-tracing-app-12031282
England Deaths, all settings, revision per reporting day
Only got data from the 16th, but interesting.
I suspect there are still plenty of whites who would say "he can't choose to be one of us whites". I don't know if there is a similar degree of prejudice in the black community that would say "you can be a fellow traveller - but not one of our footsoldiers in our Black Lives Matter culture war. Because you don't know what it's like to be black."