You should be proud of your son, sounds like a decent human being.
pretty much agree in spirit with everything in your post.
let people be people…be kind to them…
i know the debate always gets skewed towards the pinacle of any sporting event, but i dont think thats really the main point to be made, and i think we are doing the whole debate a disservice…
we shouldnt be concentrating on if Harry Kane starts identifying as Harrieta Kane and wants to smash the womens world cup… that would be an anomolly and would compromise the integrity of the victory and the competition…and lets face it, its not going to happen so it makes the debate seem completely peripheral to ‘real world problems’…so we feel like we can just ignore it for the time being…but its not…
its as you go down the levels at any sport that it becomes absolutely critical that a solution is found…
the difference between winning silver and gold in the olympics can be 1% of an overall performance…but the difference in junior sport, or amatuer sport could be seismic…you could get a runner who would normally finish fourth and get to states coming fifth and not making it…tell her its not important as she gets muscled out of a potential career higlight
to be brutally honest its hard not to come across as a bit uncaring, i dont know why society has to adjust to the level it is being influenced to (blue, pink and yellow toilets in pre schools, he/she emails, gender equality days and so on) just to fit in a very small percentage of the population.
maybe if so much effort wasnt expended trying to point out why hetrosexual middle aged people are so shit, the debate wouldnt be so toxic?
ive even had it myself from more radical friends (his wife actually) whos opening position on anything is the strong inference that i’m a bit of a bigot on most subjects.
she even lectured me once on the old male female toilet debate and why men who oppose it are ‘hiding something’ or are just ‘scared of women’ when i hadnt said a word on the matter…
It can never truly exist though…and rightly so. I would not like to be the arbiter of what can be considered as “free speech”. Where does a reasonably free society like ours actually draw that line?
Which is fine provided that the speaker is responsible for their libel, slander, incitement and so on.
That is often not the case. When some trans kid is murdered in the park or a rabbi is beaten up on the street how many times that people who spouted crap about them are held responsible?
In all seriousness, there is an interesting discussion here but you have absolutely no business in it. You simply don’t have the empathetic capacity to take part
Comments like this aren’t given in good faith. They are simply intended to be divisive and inflammatory.
That was Elon Musk’s position too … until people started saying things he didn’t like.
Seriously though , and I’m certainly not accusing you of anything , the loudest voices for free speech absolutism are usually from those people who want to be allowed to vent their prejudices even when (and often because) knowing that by doing so will incite political and racial violence.
The modern (dare I say right wing) view on freedom of speech is that it isn’t just the freedom to say what you want - it’s the freedom to not suffer any consequences from what you say.
That’s never been the case for as long as freedom of speech has been a thing.
Anyone is free to say what they want, and if what they say falls outside what wider society deems to be decent, then people are free to make decisions about how they want to interact with that person. That’s always been the case.
Take Graham Linehan. Relevant to this discussion, and particularly front of mind for me because me and junior are current working our way through the wonderful Father Ted. He has been absolutely free to spout his offensive, transphobic nonsense to his hearts content. And in response to that TV commissioners and actors arecfree to decide that they don’t want to work with him anymore, his wife is free to decide that she doesn’t want to be with him anymore, his fans are free to divide to disown him etc. That’s all cancellation culture is - petulant baby’s whining “I want to say what I want and there to be absolutely no consequences”. Sorry, but nobody has ever had that right.
There are vulnerable people, who are swayed by people engaging in hate speech.
And regarding criminal behaviour:
It will always exist, however:
In many circumstances rehabilitation can progress. I said that earlier as well, but obviously not with any clarity.
There are people who are beyond redemption as well.
Freedom of Speech requires at least a modicum of responsibility.
And censure where that speech is inciting hatred and violence.
People will listen to the charismatic voice, no matter what the message is.
I think we are going to reach a point where we move away from gender division in sport to physiological categorisation. I look at boxing’s weight divisions and although that is an oversimplification, its this sort of breakdown into categories that most sports are going to need to move to. Something where both weight, muscle mass etc determines category, where those phyisiological profiles will differ from sport to sport. Sure there will be a category 1 class in most sports where predominantly only males will be competing ( a category 1 in many gymnastics types for example would be ruled by women) , but I actually think the categories where there is a mix would be the most interesting categories to watch.
I think such a system absolutely could not be rolled out soon though. Women would be at a huge competitive disadvantage right now not due to physiology, but more to do with the lack of time many sports have had professional competitions for women. I’m not talking about track sports or swimming or anything like that here, but think about football for example. Even a categorisation that would fit the physiology profile of women would still probably be dominated by males just from the sheer number of boys that play football from the age of 4 or 5. It would be hard for many women to break through at this point in time. Studies have concluded that a far greater percentage of men exercise and play sport in their early life than women. That sort of stat would need to change if we are going to eliminate gender divisions in sport.
Genuinely don’t understand how that point of view makes you a free speech absolutist. Are you saying you will defend anyone’s right to be free to say anything, but will imprison them if they say something you deem dangerous (inciting violence)?
I see what you mean.
But there are people who actually incite hatred in others by speaking…
Few here in Ireland.
You really have to be careful with freedom of speech if it promotes hatred.
Tommy Robinson springs to mind.
Ok, cool. Weirdly I feel like we just use words differently. You’re not a free speech absolutist in my world, but ok. I’m not, oddly for similar reasons as yours.
If this forum had the thread ban option that TIA had, I would have used it on you here. You are either trolling, or you genuinely are this inflexible, insensitive and downright unpleasant.
I’m about to explain, again, why you 250,000 years of history are totally irrelevant to this discussion. I do so with a weary understanding that the words will reach your brain and bounce straight back off again.
For the vast majority of that 250,000 years of Homo Sapiens, we did not live in anything like a civilisation as we understand it. The earliest recorded civilisation, with basic laws and rules, only began something like 7000 - 10,000 years ago. Even those early civilisations would have felt barbaric to us, with brutal executions, sacrifice to gods, slavery and oppression.
So for the majority of our species’ history, like maybe 99% of our history, the most common and routine method of reproduction has been rape. Women would have been treated as commodities and sold or stolen between tribes. Women would have been sexually assaulted with no prospect of justice, and the idea of justice would have been alien to most women. The most common cause of death has been some sort of violent end, such as murder or a death in battle. Over a quarter of a million years it is exceedingly rare for a human being to die of natural causes. Most people have led miserable, hard lives of backbreaking Labour, either in slavery or to sustain a meagre existence. Lifespans are mostly short, a few decades at best, and getting past childhood is a rarity across the history of the species.
So I think we should be able to agree that 250,000 years of human history is not some ideal situation that must be respected.
I’ll agree with you that for the majority of 250,000 of our history gender has been considered a binary, fixed position. Men have a dick, as you put it, with characteristic charm and sensitivity. But the problem is that for 250,000 years humans have basically been wrong about everything.
You are appealing to the inherent wisdom of a species that has known fuck all about anything for hundreds of thousands of years.
What else do you believe? It’s fine to rape women? After all, that’s what we’ve been mostly doing for 250,000 years. Should we bring slavery back? It was good enough for people for 250,000 years mate. Maybe if someone pisses you off you should whack them round the head with a big fucking rock? That’s what we were doing until fairly recently. Next time your crops fail, I suppose you’ll be opening a cows throat to win the favour of that big yellow ball in the sky?
250,000 years of human history is a fucking stupid argument, and you know it.
It’s a particularly bad argument to make with Transpeople because…
As you know full well, for something like 249,950 years of the human species anyone coming out as trans would have been killed, or subject to some horrific process to ‘correct them’. It would have been thought to be some sort of demonic possession or witchcraft, even by the trans person themselves. The absence of transpeople through history is not proof they did not exist.
Science is building a much more sophisticated understanding of gender than we’ve ever had before, and is showing that gender is not as binary as we had supposed. Of course, science itself is only really a few hundred years old, so it’s only natural that this kind of evidential and reasoned approach to understanding something like gender would be fairly new. I am surprised at your reaction to this, as you claim to be a big fan of science. Or maybe you’re only really a fan of science when it helps billionaires put dick metaphors in low orbit, and not when it tramples over your bigotry?
Exactly the same argument was once made about homosexuality. Are you homophobic? Do you believe that homosexuality is unnatural and against biology? Do you believe that being attracted to the opposite sex is a biological fact? I think you’d be horrified at the idea, but I am sure if we were having this conversation in the seventies, there is a fairly good chance that would be your opinion. People genuinely believed that heterosexuality was a biological fact.