Law Equality Act: Should Gender Dysphoria (or Sexual Orientation) Constitute A Protected Class?

[Teppodama]

No special status for anyone.

 

[Teppodama]

I blame Jarred Leto for this. His Oscar winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club brought Trans to the cultural fore in mainstream media in a way which really hadnt happened before. Throw in Eddie Redmayne and his own movie about transgenderism and the doors to have been thrown wide open and made Trans issues the latest social trend.

 

[Andy Capp]

No, the problem is that after hearing years of intellectually dishonest arguments that (biological) sex and gender are two separate things, this legislation would redefine sex across all federal laws. Your "gender identity" is your sex afterall apparently, even with virtually no basis in reality. The opposition is building, full articles in the hyperlinks.

Not sure about the rest, didn't read the links yet due to time, but there is good scientific evidence that gender and sex are 2 separate things. I am all for seeing examples from you of the "years of intellectually dishonest" arguments, but I have already posted the evidence to which I refer in the past. Whether or not gender should be enshrined into law as a "protected class", or included in the DSM-5 as a mental illness, it is pretty definitely a different thing from biological sex.

 

[Andy Capp]

I blame Jarred Leto for this. His Oscar winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club brought Trans to the cultural fore in mainstream media in a way which really hadnt happened before. Throw in Eddie Redmayne and his own movie about transgenderism and the doors to have been thrown wide open and made Trans issues the latest social trend.

I "blame" science for this.

 

[Swing]

I just can't get past the idea that offering everyone protection against discrimination while still allowing people to tell someone like McKinnon to fuck off because of his behavior should be pretty doable.

 

[Fronk]

I "blame" science for this.

Yes, what science exactly?

Sex and gender are not two separate things, they are very much tied. The only question is to what amount. I think this is important to keep in mind. There is no problem to believe a certain amount of our gender expression is socialised, but to believe we can totally separate sex from gender... then there is a problem.

If gender is a "social construct" then transsexuality is a "social construct" too by definition.

 

[I am your real dad]

Some of us fall by the wayside, some of us soar to the stars and he who is fixed on one does not change his mind. However, a system which encourages the upward predistribution of capital accumulation with ever-increasing and wildly disproportionate levels of wealth and income inequality is not a strong country on the domestic front IMO. It eats away at the fabric of society and is a recipe for social unrest when so many are falling behind.

Its not a perfect system
But it is the best system

Now get out there and enjoy capitalism
And FREEDOM

 

[ocfightfan]

The Equality Act would essentially amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to explicitly include sexual orientation alongside race, national origin, sex, disability, and religion. It basically aims to make LGB(T) a fully protected class at the federal level with a slew of anti-discrimination protections similar to those which have existed in countries such as Norway and Sweden since the 1980s.

As mentioned before and contrary to popular belief, outside of issues such as legalizing same-sex activity between consenting adults (2003), repealing "don't ask, don't tell" military service (2011), being granted marriage and adoption equality (2015-16) nationwide, there aren't actually any federally enacted anti-discrimination laws. There is a patchwork of legislation that is dependent on and at the discretion of individual states.

Of course, this bill also includes "gender identity" and the rub here isn't even so much transgender inclusion in general as that was already shoehorned onto the LGB banner about a decade ago in the wake of the ENDA controversy with disagreements that arose between movement and community, the fundamental differences between gender identity and sexual orientation. "Trans-activism" has very powerful and influential financial benefactors, lobby organizations and co-opted LGB rights groups pushing its ideology at numerous levels of society.

No, the problem is that after hearing years of intellectually dishonest arguments that (biological) sex and gender are two separate things, this legislation would redefine sex across all federal laws. Your "gender identity" is your sex afterall apparently, even with virtually no basis in reality. The opposition is building, full articles in the hyperlinks.

NR: Bipartisan Women’s Rights Groups Protest the Equality Act


PD: The Many Harms of Gender Identity Laws: A Mother of a Trans-Identifying Teen Speaks Out


What Gives The Trans Lobby The Right To Chastise Martina Navratilova?

BAKE THE CAKE BIGOT!

 

[Andy Capp]

Yes, what science exactly?

Sex and gender are not two separate things, they are very much tied. The only question is to what amount. I think this is important to keep in mind. There is no problem to believe a certain amount of our gender expression is socialised, but to believe we can totally separate sex from gender... then there is a problem.

If gender is a "social construct" then transsexuality is a "social construct" too by definition.

I've posted sources on here before. When I get time I will dig them up or you can take a look.

Edit, also note, until I have more time to review this legislation and more I'm not for or against it, as I've already said ITT.

 

[Deleted member 159002]

Absolutely not. People shouldn't have to cater to other people's delusions.

 

[ultramanhyata]

But I would be interested to hear if this forum would even be in favor LGB being a protected class.

I am pro-LG.

But fuck the B's. Pick a damned side you reprobates.

 

[IDL]

There should not be any protected classes.

Or how about make everyone a protected class?

 

[ultramanhyata]

People shouldn't have to cater to other people's delusions.

I wish that was how the world really worked.

 

[NoDak]

I am pro-LG.

But fuck the B's. Pick a damned side you reprobates.

 

[NoDak]

I know you’re being somewhat facetious in that first sentence. But just to play devils advocate here, how many great cultural icons from the past may have had gender dysphoria?

In 217, the emperor Caracalla was assassinated and replaced by his Praetorian prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus. Caracalla's maternal aunt, Julia Maesa, successfully instigated a revolt among the Third Legion to have her eldest grandson (and Caracalla's cousin), Elagabalus, declared emperor in his place. Macrinus was defeated on 8 June 218 at the Battle of Antioch. Elagabalus, barely 14 years old, became emperor, initiating a reign remembered mainly for sex scandals and religious controversy.

Elagabalus was supposedly "married" as many as five times, lavishing favors on male courtiers popularly thought to have been his lovers,[3][4] and was reported to have prostituted himself in the imperial palace.

Herodian commented that Elagabalus enhanced his natural good looks by the regular application of cosmetics.[47] He was described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of Hierocles" and was reported to have offered vast sums of money to any physician who could equip him with female genitalia.[41]Elagabalus has been characterized by some modern writers as transgender or transsexual.[56][57][58]

Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence, and zealotry.[5] This tradition has persisted, and with writers of the early modern age he suffers one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors. Edward Gibbon, for example, wrote that Elagabalus "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury".[6] According to Barthold Georg Niebuhr, "The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others" because of his "unspeakably disgusting life".[7]

Many on the list of gay and bisexual and cultural icons that you listed were closeted and the claim that they were not fully heterosexual is based on the testimony of others or clues in their work. There are likely hundreds more that we are not aware of. Could some of them have also had gender dysphoria? How would we even know?

We could make a fairly long list of culturally significant cross dressers. Being a cross-dresser does not necessarily make you gender dysphoric , but I would argue that it is very plausible that some of them were expressing their gender dysphoria in the only way they knew how.

So I would not be too quick to discount the cultural and historical contributions of a group of people that we probably have no real way to identify anyway.

Of course, that does not necessarily influence my opinion on the issue one way or another as far as the law and protections are concerned. But it is definitely something to consider.

Like Michelangelo? Lol, the guy couldn't even draw a female. Walt Whitman is another that is just glaringly obvious. Bacon, Shakespeare, Goethe are more suggestive and people will always be in denial Re: Malcolm X. There are usually very good reasons these things are said about a very particular several dozen people out of thousands throughout history.

I actually put that together pretty random and sloppy, tried sticking with post-Renaissance clear cuts like Da Vinci (faced sodomy charges), Alan Turing (chemically castrated for it), Emile Griffith (His bf was at the weigh-in when Paret taunted him, before Griffith killed him in the ring), Lou Reed (said he was put through electroshock therapy for it), David Bowie ("It's true - I am a bisexual...I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me"), Pete Townshend ("An acknowledgment of the fact that I'd had a gay life, and that I understood what gay sex was about"), James Dean ("I'm not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back"), Marlon Brando ("Don't GAF, especially not what people think about me").

 

[Andy Capp]

Yes, what science exactly?

Sex and gender are not two separate things, they are very much tied. The only question is to what amount. I think this is important to keep in mind. There is no problem to believe a certain amount of our gender expression is socialised, but to believe we can totally separate sex from gender... then there is a problem.

If gender is a "social construct" then transsexuality is a "social construct" too by definition.

E.g's:
https://qz.com/1190996/scientific-research-shows-gender-is-not-just-a-social-construct/
I don't have the link to the actual study anymore, but it said,
"This doesn’t mean there’s such a thing as a “male” or “female” brain, exactly. But at least a few brain characteristics, such as density of the gray matter or size of the hypothalamus, do tend to differ between genders. It turns out transgender people’s brains may more closely resemble brains of their self-identified gender than those of the gender assigned at birth. In one study, for example, Swaab and his colleagues found that in one region of the brain, transgender women, like other women, have fewer cells associated with the regulator hormone somatostatin than men. In another study scientists from Spain conducted brain scans on transgender men and found that their white matter was neither typically male nor typically female, but somewhere in between."
-- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/01/how-science-helps-us-understand-gender-identity/


Both articles are quite long and contain lots of additional info. The central points are,
1. Neither sex nor gender are strictly binary, physiologically.
2. Gender is an amalgamation of biology and social construct.
3. There is clear evidence gender and sex are not the same thing.
4. It's not clear that there is any mental illness involved in all non-binary gendered people.

That doesn't mean I or many other people believe in giving kids the go ahead to make irreparable changes to themselves but I would defend the right of an adult to make such a change and I believe there's nothing wrong with legal protections against discrimination on the basis of gender regardless.

 

[NoDak]

@nac386 Now you kind of have me motivated to put together a semi-comprehensive all-time (half) list. The impact on culture is outsized and bonkers, if not P4P dominance across several areas of literary, visual and performing arts. Right at the very top of the fucking western culture wiki entry is Vitruvian Man.

Some of these people are absolutely giants and among the very - if not the - greatest and most influential figures of their respective fields. OTOH the impact on science has been pretty insignificant, aside from the father of empiricism who popularized the scientific method and the principal founder of computer science.

 

[nac386]

@nac386 Now you kind of have me motivated to put together a semi-comprehensive all-time (half) list. The impact on culture is outsized and bonkers, if not P4P dominance across several areas of literary, visual and performing arts. Right at the very top of the fucking western culture wiki entry is Vitruvian Man.

Some of these people are absolutely giants and among the very - if not the - greatest and most influential figures of their respective fields. OTOH the impact on science has been pretty insignificant, aside from the father of empiricism who popularized the scientific method and the principal founder of computer science.

That list probably exists on the internet if you google it. It's definitely a fact that non-straight people account for a significant portion of the greatest contributors to mankind. You already listed arguably the most celebrated author and most celebrated artist of all time.

 

[NoDak]

Its not a perfect system
But it is the best system

Now get out there and enjoy capitalism
And FREEDOM

I actually do, but I'm concerned about the growing inequality gap and sustainability of it.

 

[superpunch]

I don't think transgenders should be discriminated against at all. However, I'm hesitant to add even more groups special rights that other groups don't have.