Anything to declare?
Amnesty UK smuggles in its assumptions too. It’s a core part of trans activism and ideology and allyship – it’s crucial to refrain from spelling out what is meant by “trans rights,” because that would make it too obvious how destructive they are to other people’s rights, especially women’s.
On the recent statements published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the governments’ consultation on conversion therapy, Amnesty International UK disagree unreservedly in the EHRC’s assessment of separating protections for LGBTI people and specifically excluding trans people from initial legislation.
It’s a very useful aid to smuggling, this lumping together of “LGBTI” people as if they were all the same kind of thing, or all needed the same kind of rights. The T is not at all the same kind of thing as the L and the G.
These statements are actively damaging to the rights of trans and non-binary people in the UK, and we find them to be disappointing and deeply troubling. [Emphasis theirs]
What are those rights? What, exactly, are those rights? Of course they don’t say.
We encourage the UK and Scottish Governments’ to continue to show commitment and leadership on human rights by delivering on their commitments to reforming the Gender Recognition Act and introducing a comprehensive legislative ban on conversion therapy that protects the whole of the LGBTI community, including those who are trans and non-binary.
Another act of smuggling: pretending “conversion therapy” means the same thing for both LG people and trans people, when in fact that’s not the case.
There is no “right” to lie about your sex.
T *is* conversion therapy against G and L.
Maybe what they mean is forbidding traitors to the faith from converting BACK to their original biological sex?
If we start out with the premise that transwomen are women and transmen are men, the “rights” become obvious.
If we start out with the premise that transwomen are men and transmen are women, the “rights” become baffling.
Obviously, the part we have to establish is the premise. Amnesty UK can’t just pretend it’s obvious they’re right. Particularly when they’re not.
The highest-level smuggle of them all is the premise that we’re all so sure we know who’s “really trans” and who’s lying, that we can pass laws that take away anyone’s right to question someone’s claim in the first place.
So even if we managed somehow to all agree that there’s a meaningful, material thing called “being trans,” and even if we then came to agree that all people who possess this attribute of “transness” have the legal and moral right to force us all to treat them as though they’re the opposite sex (or, somehow, no sex at all), we’d still have a problem that we don’t agree on who qualifies as “really trans” and who doesn’t.
Even the most ardent supporters of the “anyone who says they’re trans is trans, period” line would loudly object if I were to declare today that I’m a transwoman. (I know this because I’ve gotten into arguments with some of those people.) But they’re the victims of their own smuggled assumption: they’re lobbying to take away their own right to tell me or anyone else that we aren’t really trans, and they don’t even realize it.
As orgs like Amnesty and the ACLU find themselves backing more and more dubious claims of “transness”, it’s only a matter of time before this backfires spectacularly.
The same can be said of I – intersex is not a sexuality, it is a category of improper development. As usual, they are being dragged in to muddy the concept of sex.
@Artymorty #4
It’s not so much smuggling as fraud, in that despite their reassurances that That Never Happens they don’t really care about being able to distinguish Actual transgender people from Fake ones who are pretending. A woman attacked in the Woman’s Room is less significant than a transwoman attacked or even just discomfited in the Men’s because the second one is a violation of Human Rights and the first one is just another criminal act. The cause of the criminal act is the criminal, not the poor transwoman who just wants to pee. It’s the price a culture must pay to be tolerant, enlightened, and fair.
If it happens, it will be only “a small amount of predators” who take advantage of self-ID they reassure us. I ask what the cutoff point is — what % of Fake Trans would potentially be so high that they’d agree that safe spaces should not include Real trans either? They do not answer. But they know. So do I.
It’s interesting if they think that, because many crimes of course are violations of human rights. They probably do though.