Oh dear, looks like I'm going to have to do this again.
It’s one of those culture war things
Doesn't mean it doesn't matter, if that's the point you're making. If not, ignore this.
The bills are overblown, no doubt, but it was a fight begun by the Left
"They started it" is the argument of 5 year olds. You're expected to have the maturity not be an idiot in response to idiots once you grow up.
Liberals attempt to push a new view of reality on the law
I'm going to assume you mean the "orthodoxy" you mention later. Otherwise, this is meaningless.
Conservatives, with much flourish, provide an obstacle
If you consider directly singling out people groups for attacks an obstacle, sure.
If not, "religious freedom" bills do not count as obstacles. "Religious freedom" would require the freedom to discriminate against anyone in order to be true religious freedom. However, Republicans are not attempting to repeal discrimination laws around race, even though I'm certain there are people who would like to refuse discrimination for religious reasons. Why? Well, the only reason is that they prefer to give religious freedom to the people who want to discriminate against LGBT people over other people. That's not religious freedom – that's "freedom for the people I agree with".
And no, bathroom bills don't count either, because trans people have been using bathrooms of their choice for a long time. They aren't an obstacle when they're attempts to scale back what's already been in place long before the issue became an issue.
And forced outing is definitively an attack.
Everyone else just shrugs their shoulders
Except all 1.4 million trans people, plus their friends, and "allies".
Why do we hear so much about transgender people when they make up such a small part of the population?
Be careful with percentages. While they "only" constitute 0.6% of the population, that's 1.4 million. That's more than the population of multiple US states.
It's easy to forget the US is a big place. As such, there are a lot of people of different groups in it, as well as a lot of public workers and tax dollars. Just because the percentage isn't big doesn't mean they don't matter.
Although, your quarrel seems to be with how often they come up. In which case, I have no way to respond, because almost the only times I ever hear about transgender people and issues are when I go and look for it myself, or talk to people who care a LOT about it.
As an actually measurable point, LGBT people were only mentioned like, 3 times at most in the presidential debates. That's not a lot.
Because they are valuable for pushing the new orthodoxy
Okay… let me stop you there. And I wish I could actually have stopped you there, because it would've saved both of us a lot of typing.
This is such a negative way of looking at things. It's not because they care about us? It's not because of the severe discrimination and horrible risks we're at? Or were you just not aware of this, and assumed we lived in basically the same scenario as you?
Here, let me give you some stats, from the largest and most reliable study on transgender people yet.
- The majority of respondents who were out or perceived as transgender while in school (K–12) experienced some form of mistreatment, including being verbally harassed (54%), physically attacked (24%), and sexually assaulted (13%) because they were transgender.
- In the year prior to completing the survey, 46% of respondents were verbally harassed and 9% were physically attacked because of being transgender. During that same time period, 10% of respondents were sexually assaulted, and nearly half (47%) were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.
- Nearly one-third (29%) of respondents were living in poverty, compared to 14% in the U.S. population.
- A major contributor to the high rate of poverty is likely respondents’ 15% unemployment rate--three times higher than the unemployment rate in the U.S. population at the time of the survey (5%).
- Among the starkest findings is that 40% of respondents have
attempted suicide in their lifetime--nearly nine times the attempted suicide rate in the U.S. population (4.6%).
- Thirty-nine percent (39%) of respondents experienced serious psychological distress in the month before completing the survey (based on the Kessler 6 Psychological Distress Scale), compared with only 5% of the U.S. population.
This is only a sample of the full, concerning findings of the report. Remember, this applies to 1.4 million Americans. There are 11 states and D.C. that are smaller in population than 1.4 million people. Nobody would say we shouldn't care about North Dakota because it has a small percentage of the total population of the US, and if North Dakota had stats like I mentioned above I highly doubt many would assume people only cared because they were useful for some sort of end goal, and not because people actually matter to them.
Objective, physical reality is less important than emotion
I'm pretty sure this is a bipartisan problem.
There are dozens of genders and they have nothing to do with reproductive features
Burden of proof is on you. I don't know of many politicians that actually comprise the American Left (y'know, the people we're talking about) that actually believe the former. Remember, internet != reality.
Gender in this context has nothing to do with reproductive features. Let's make sure we're on the same page – that's how we're defining it. That's how the American Left tends to define it. I understand if you're using it with a different meaning, but don't get into semantics debates. Understand what the other person is saying and strike them on that, not their choice of words.
A man must be accepted as a woman, because he says so
Yeah, that's how this works.
Of course, you can call people out for BS – if they don't seem to have dysphoria, don't try to look female, are fine with being called a dude, you can confidently say they're a liar.
However, if someone shows these signs… what's the point of getting fussy?
If you disagree, you are a bad person
Yeah, if someone's claiming "accept transgender people as transgender or you're horrible" they need to tone it down a notch. This doesn't excuse anything the Repubicans are doing with these laws, however.
Get them in the bathrooms, then the locker rooms
Again, what's the point of being fussy if they're actually transgender?
Have conservatives overreacted? Yes. For example, outing the children to the parents, as you mentioned above, is terrible
Beautiful, a point of agreement. Harmony is nice.
Conservatives do themselves no favors by not including reasonable accommodations to transgender people like gender-neutral bathrooms in public facilities
This is a fairly complicated point. I'm going to leave this one up in the air. If needed, just assume I agree with you.
But in the original case of North Carolina, a firm response to a liberal attempt at redefining the basics of gender in policy was necessary
So close at ending it well.
This line is so vague it's almost impossible to respond to. How as it necessary? What's the basics of gender in policy? How were they redefining it? How was it an attempt? This line tells me so little, it's borderline meaningless.
However, it'd be stupid of me not to attempt to shut this down.
Let's say there is such a thing as "basics of gender in policy". Let's say that it was a "liberal attempt" at redefining it. The only thing they were responding to was Charlotte's ordinance, so that must've been the "liberal attempt at redefining the basics of gender in policy".
Beyond the fact that the city of Charlotte voted in people who openly supported these redefinitions, and thus this was a waste of tax money that literally trampled on the will of the citizens of Charlotte…
These laws have been around since 1975. 18 states and more than 200 municipalities have adopted it. If you look around, these 18 states and 200 municipalities have not fallen to horrible things that'd make "a firm response" to it "necessary". Here, try checking this out. That's a lot of cities with nondiscrimination rules. I don't see anything that makes it necessary to stop them.
But let's say, for some reason, it's just bathrooms and locker rooms you're worried about. Even though there are laws against sexual harassment and the such, and it'd be pretty easy to tell if someone was transgender or not in a court of law, I'd like a real example of someone pretending to be transgender to go to them (other than those people at Target who decided to purposefully abuse their rules to make a point). No, not just that, I'd like many examples. Whatever proof you can bring, it has to match up to the fact that you're inconveniencing 1.4 million people, and that building gender neutral bathrooms will cost money.
There is no good reason to deny them access. There is no good reason to stop Charlotte. There is no good reason, at all.
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