If that's the case, then why isn't the opinion of the Westboro Baptist Church forced on the rest of us? WBC is clearly a minority. By your logic, the government should be protecting their right to hate over everyone else's right to peace.
Nobody anywhere regardless of race, gender, fame, fortune, religious rank or political office is so sacred that others should be prohibited by LAW from offending them. Social contract maybe, but law absolutely not. Changing social contract is very hard, but changing law just takes the stroke of a pen. Look at the California gay marriage debacle. The citizens voted the government had authority over marriage, and that authority was promptly turned against them and used to impose the backward and hateful agenda of a minority over the entire state. Another example is Obamacare right now. The people have voted for it, the highest court of the land has voted for it, but it stops because a powerful few wish that healthcare remain a privilege of the moneyed and powerful. If anything, the government should be protecting all rights of all citizens equally. Currently is seems to be protecting the rights of the rich to exploit the poor. Your rights stop where the next person's rights start, unless you have lots of money.
The only measure of the legitimacy of a government is the consent of those governed. Imposing the will of a minority against the wishes of the majority hardly seems a good way to gain or maintain this consent. A government that acts as you describe acts against its own people, and is by definition an illegitimate dictatorship and should be removed from power by the most expedient means available.
As Shadoweh said, that's not even close to the notion of protecting the rights of minorities. Where does making sure minorities don't get discriminated and intimidated become letting hate groups get their message blasted everywhere? Their right to express themselves is protected, but that in itself is not an endorsement of their platform, nor does that mean they're guaranteed an audience. But this is different from LGBT rights as one is an expression of someone's personal ideas and the other is an expression of someone's personal identity. The idea is the majority can't stamp out the minority's rights to equal protection and rights due to the equal protection clause, and that certain rights are deemed untouchable for regulation by the government unless public safety is jeopardized. Equal protection clause protects against Jim Crow laws and other laws that have passed over the years that limits minority rights. In your example about the authority of the majority being used against the minority with Prop 8, it was rightfully struck down by the federal courts on equal protection grounds. DOMA was also struck down on equal protection grounds. Even though Prop 8 passed as a citizen amendment with majority votes it didn't make it legal. Just because you have the majority of votes in play doesn't mean you can deny rights to the minority who can't oppose such decisions.
Protecting the rights of the minority is not an endorsement of their message nor imposing wills, it is merely making sure that everyone enjoys the same level of protection by the government and aren't denied them based on personal identity. And whether the government is properly doing its job of fulfilling the social contract is a different debate entirely. It doesn't change what it should be doing, and that is protecting the rights of the minority from being trampled by the majority. My freedom of gender expression is a right, period, as it is a basic tenant of my identity. Is it properly protected right now? No, but that doesn't change the fact it should. I and others fight to make it so. This isn't a matter of not wanting to be offended, but not wanting to have my identity denied to me. Freedom of gender expression isn't just making sure I get the right pronouns, it's a whole list of things that government can and should be enforcing.
A non-exhaustive list of rights and freedoms freedom of gender expression should provide:
- Freedom to use the proper restroom facilities or to provide gender neutral offerings
- Allowing transpersons to marry and adopt
- Freedom to participate on the proper gendered sports teams (whether funded publicly in schools and rec leagues or private entities with public oversight such as boxing commissions)
- Freedom to have the proper gender on government issued identification and paperwork such as social security and birth certificates and drivers licenses
- Freedom to not be denied employment on the grounds of gender expression
- Freedom from harassment and intimidation based on gender expression
- Freedom to teach and discuss gender identities beyond cisgendered
- Numerous other freedoms cisgendered persons enjoy on a daily basis transpersons have to fight for
None of these "impose wills" as the religious wingnuts love to cry. Being forced to accept someone as just as human as others are is not "imposing will". That's just making sure peoples rights as citizens are not trampled. I should not have less of a right to use the restroom or feel comfortable in doing so than cisgendered persons. I should not have less of a right to play on sports teams than cisgendered individuals. And slowly but surely, the right for me to have the proper gender on my government issued paperwork and identification is being affirmed as well. I can get my passport and my social security card changed with a simple note affirming my trans status as evaluated by a licensed professional. I can get my birth certificate changed with the same note as I was born in California. Not all states currently recognize this but eventually they will be brought into line just like with gay marriage. Equal protection under the law. Just because the government currently isn't doing its job to protect minority rights doesn't mean it shouldn't be. It just means it's dysfunctional :S States not protecting transpersons from workplace discrimination, or denying the right to freedom of gender expressions are failing in their job to protect minority rights and should be brought to task for it.
I am definitely a strong proponent of free speech and I don't want to dictate thought crimes, but people do have the right to be free from intimidation. The right to be a bigoted asshole does not override someone's right to feel safe in society. Cross burning and other signs of intimidation have long since been banned on such grounds. Outing or threatening to out someone should fall on the same lines. Hate groups live on a very thin line between freedom of speech and harassment. If at any point a group feels threatened or intimidated by such speech the government can and generally does intervene. WBC exists on the thin line between harassment and protected speech and has come under fire before. They get away with it because they're a kabal of lawyers who specialize in legalese and make sure to protest only on public grounds and cross their eyes and dot their ts on everything to skirt defamation and slander/libel suits. Even if the government can't or shouldn't intervene on the basis of remaining impartial in the interests of freedom of speech and expression, and civil penalties can't be enacted, society at large should and has intervened. The number of counter-protests against WBC's actions are as famous as they are numerous. When the KKK is counter-protesting you you know there's shenanigans afoot.
Thirdly, saying that the government should be weighted towards protecting minority rights is not the same thing as saying it should be illegal to offend someone, and that wasn't one of the examples that helvetica named as something the government should support, all the things she named were clear points where one group's views are being forced to be followed by another group. It should absolutely be up to the social contract to stop people from being offensive douchebags. To continue the WBC example, they weren't stopped by the police, but other groups exercised their social rights by spreading the word about them, guarding off the cemetaries they were picketing, and adding their own ridiculous signs in counter-pickets. That kind of social recognition would never have happened if people weren't made aware of the issue and decided to take a social stand, similar to this thread.
Exactly! I'm raising awareness so that the social contract can take over. I'm not advocating the government step in and give me special snowflake provisions beyond protection from intimidation and discrimination. The things I listed are so I receive equal protection under the law. This is not policing people's thoughts and "infringing" on their right to religious or moral objections. You want to call me a hateful creature going to hell, sure that's your right. I'm working on raising awareness so that the good people in society can tune you out. The only thing I want the government to do is protect me from discrimination just for being who I am.
Pronouns aren't on the same level as an insult. There's a different psychological process at hand. This isn't simply being offended, it strikes at the very core of a gender variant person's identity. This wouldn't be the government protecting people from being offended, but by preventing intimidation and making sure its citizens are not harming themselves in an effort to avoid intimidation. Getting called the wrong gender multiple times a day is in itself a form of intimidation. It got easier for me in a lot of ways not because I got better at putting up with it but because I was avoiding it by passing better. If I was getting misgendered as often as I do at cons in public I don't know if I'd be full-time right now. Each time hurts a lot, each time I have to hand over my card or show my ID hurts a lot. And each time someone looks at my ID and then looks at me and gives me this "is this really you?" speech it hurts a lot. I know I could avoid a lot of this by not being full-time, but by not being full-time I would fall further into depression and psychological harm. That's what intimidation does. It forces people to choose between being themselves or avoiding ridicule and intimidation in public.
Watching my roommate deal with this has been an eye opening experience. It's soul crushing to be misgendered on a daily basis. I don't really face it as much because I pass better, and that's pretty sad in a way. When someone says they should just "suck it up" and realize society won't perfectly accept them, they're basically being told they need to pass better or just not engage in society. To the people who can't pass as well or don't fit on the gender binary, there's no winning move. This is where education comes in play. I truly think it's the government's responsibility to create a safe environment for all of its citizens, and prevent intimidation. While I don't think they should police for proper gender pronoun usage, I do believe they should be charged with public awareness and education. Most people aren't assholes, raising awareness would go a long way to reducing these situations. Public education and awareness is a public health and safety issue, and it's not "imposing the will of the minority" on people.
This doesn't mean I believe in public reeducation camps for people who aren't PC. People are free to be assholes, as long as they're not directly intimidating or threatening someone there's not much the government can do. That's where the social contract comes into play and why hate groups like the WBC and KKK are increasingly irrelevant. That being said, things like cross burning have been banned as they are purely intended as signs of intimidation towards certain groups. I think publicly outing someone should fall under that spectrum. I've had my trans status weaponized against me several times. The only people that need to know about my status is me, my doctors, my partner, and whomever I deem to fit. I'm open not as much because I want to, but because I'm the kind of person who just takes the bull by the horns and takes problems head on. I know people could netdetective me and figure out my history so I own up to it in an attempt to diffuse it. That doesn't mean I still face a lot of danger if my status is publicly outed, which is what made this particular situation for me all the worse for me emotionally. I know a lot of people who do not want their status out for various reasons, and it's completely up to them. Their history is not public record.
TSO-chan, you should though be careful when you speak of religion. The problem with religion is like Suzu-chan had explained, certain religious people follow them very strictly and therefore you cannot change their minds. As dumb as it may sound, it is the reality. And they do often use it as an excuse, what is worse is that they don't know for sure how it is approached in religion.
Why would their right to not have their religious beliefs offended trump my right to not feel intimidated for my gender? If they want to be ultra-religious conservatives they can go build a compound out in the middle of the desert and congregate with closed-minded persons like themselves. Nobody's forcing them to integrate and interact with society, but if they wish to then they need to understand that other people that don't agree with them exist. Same thing applies to racists. If they wish to benefit from society they need to learn to integrate peacefully with people of other races. Nobody is telling them they need to change their minds and beliefs, just not be assholes about them and deny people rights based on them. I think the key here is choice. Religion and morality is a choice, gender and sexuality isn't. And even if it was all a choice, why would religion get special snowflake syndrome over gender and sexuality? Someone being trans or gay doesn't deny a religious person the right to practice their religion, or forces someone to change their moral framework. Denying someone the right to gender and sexual expression does harm that person psychologically, this is medical fact.
I am religious too, remember? In the Islam there is no room for these things as far as I know/read myself. Though they always speak about the subject in general. I don't think religion treats people as sub-humans, that is a common mistake many people make when they speak of religion. We aren't allowed to look down on people (note, I said people. Doesn't matter what gender, culture, belief. People = people). But some assholes who abuse religion make it look like that. Actually, I cannot even be sure how gender is approached in those religious books: whether it be Christianity, Islam etc. Huge question mark.
Guess what, I am religious too! I'm not an atheist, although I lean more towards deism right now at this point. I pointed out religion merely as that's an extremely common excuse for objecting to providing LGBT rights. No, that's not how it works, period. They can believe I'm going to hell all they want, but they cannot stop me from having the same rights and freedoms they enjoy.
I am specifically calling out the extremists who think their beliefs entitle them to deny other people rights and privileges they enjoy. Religion isn't the problem, just merely an excuse bigots hide behind. The religion I was raised and confirmed in believes fully I am going to hell for what I'm doing. Sad thing is there's nothing theologically that says that, it's just people's bigotry twisting it. How awesome is that?
When someone says religion is a source of strife, they're not condemning all religious persons, merely the system and institution of religion that enables bigotry a voice and leverage and gives them privilege. When someone talks about the "white person" or "men", they're not directly attacking all white persons or males, they're attacking the institutions that gives them privilege and enable the bigots in their ranks to suppress others. The people that truly believe all religion is evil or all men are irredeemable are just as bad as the white supremacists or the jerks at the WBC.
I know this debate is big, complicated and surely we aren't the only ones but at the end, I strongly believe it boils down to personal respect and choice whether to accept someone's choice for being male or female, regardless of what my eyes see and my ears hear. I think Suzu-chan has worded that nicely as Social contracts.
The only thing that's a choice here is whether or how LGBT people choose to express their gender or sexuality, not the gender or sexuality they choose to take. Gender and sexuality may be fluid and change over one's lifetime, but it's immutable. One cannot forcibly change their sexuality or gender. Even if they did, it's a basic aspect of human identity. Religion and morality isn't, regardless of the fervor of the belief.
On IRC I gave the example about poor people living in misery (bad health, no money, etc). And asked the question: "What about them if they have gender doubts?" Nobody gave me an answer. Now don't get me wrong, I don't blame people for being whiny or overly reactive because this is the internet. But us being relatively wealthy, or conditionally having a better life in general, allows us to easier touch these subjects. A person living in poverty and misery won't be able to bother with all of this. And that gives that person an even harder time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needsThere's a lot of studies done on societies and gender. Societies that tended to have harder times with food and other resources tended to have stricter gender roles. Societies with plenty of food and little survival stress tend to be far more liberal with concepts of gender and sexuality. When basic needs of survival are met, then needs of self-esteem are sought after, and then self-actualization and determination. My own struggles with gender mirror this. Even though I was aware of it as a kid, I tended to repress it better because well, there was stronger problems with survival. I was a poor kid in a large family, and I was forced to take on parenting roles being the eldest. Once my needs for shelter and food were filled, I was still really depressed so in a desperate bid to get friends I built a persona around being male to try to belong. I had friends, I had a family, I had food and shelter. Why should I complain? Because as I filled each rung of the pyramid, I still was missing something, and unfortunately the stuff I had built were in direct contrary to my actual need for self actualization of my gender. This is still a sore point to me. My survival still depends on my alternate persona, as I cannot safely gain employment as a transgirl where I live. This causes an enormous amount of stress on me that right now is very overwhelming. I recently lost my job and the temptation to sacrifice everything I've done so far just to survive is very strong. Problem is, I know if I walk away from school then I will walk away forever and likely shut the doors to my transition, or at least make it significantly harder. But I have to pay my bills and eat :S
This is why protections to the expression of gender are EXTREMELY important. No one should have to choose between being themselves or having to eat, but unfortunately a lot do. Of the youth population 5-10% are LGBT but 20-40% of the homeless population are LGBT. Something like 42% of transpersons are unemployed or homeless. As a transgirl I have a 1 in 4 chance of being murdered, a life expectancy in the low-mid 20s. I'm beating the odds just by existing. And even with those who have their lives together and are able to move towards transition there's a lot of struggles gender variant people face that cisgendered persons do not face. I cannot get my name changed within the system at school or on my ID without a legal name change. That takes over a month and a significant chunk of cash to get done. Most of these limitations are in place to prevent people from abusing name changes for fraud, but these same barriers put up immense roadblocks on transpersons trying to transition. I never got it done because I was afraid of losing my job as changing my legal name would very quickly out me (Gwendolyn is not gender neutral). While I got my gender marker changed at school and could get it changed on my ID and social security card now, it took several therapy sessions I had to pay out of pocket for to get the confirmation of diagnosis. It was very expensive, $150 a session, and gender specialist therapists are hard to find. It used to be you had to have bottom surgery to get your gender marker change, a surgery that costs almost $30-50k (and extremely few insurances cover) depending on what is needed. And if my birth certificate was here in Ohio rather than in California, I wouldn't be able to change it at all. And even with having the proper name and gender on my identification, I have no protections from being fired for my trans status.
Just because there are more immediate needs to survival doesn't make gender or sexuality less important. Hell, it makes it even more important. Survival and coping mechanisms LGBT persons develop tend to be harmful in the long run towards reaching that tippy top point of self-actualization. I have a ton of anxiety and self-esteem issues separate from just the dysphoria that I developed through the coping mechanisms I had to use to survive. I used guilt for the longest time to motivate myself and because of that I am selfless to the point of causing myself significant harm. For people to reach their potential they need to be able to be secure that their basic needs can be met while still being able to be themselves. If at any point there's incentive to deny self expression for survival or acceptance then you run the risk of causing significant and potentially irreparable psychological harm, or at least reduce their productivity and happiness. It is extremely stressful for me mentally to realize that the fake persona I built has more rights than I will ever have as it stands now, and right now is my sole potential source of income for survival.
Can you people imagine that? I am sure you can't (neither I) unless you climbed up from poverty/misery. Again, calling nobody but please be more open minded about your surroundings before pointing fingers.
At no point was I pointing fingers at anyone except those that seek to deny me rights on the flimsy grounds of protecting their precious morals or religious beliefs. If their beliefs are so weak that my expression of my identity would corrupt them, then they need to reexamine themselves, rather than force me into a box and hide away from society or denied rights and freedoms other people get. And I realize I am very fortunate in a lot of ways. It doesn't make my fight for freedom of expression of gender and sexuality any less important though.