Why do they care so much? Why? I want to ask them to show me on the doll where the trans person hurt them.
It’s not that they got hurt.
It’s that fascism is an engine of hatred that burns minorities for power.
Think about bullies: they aren’t attacking people who hurt them; they’re attacking people to make themselves seem dominant.
You have a good point, but I’d like to add that the group mentality is probably different from what a single bully would do or feel.
I think that this comes from these people being scared of not fitting in and from not having anything in common with the other people who don’t fit it, so instead of uniting for a common goal, they can only find unity in being against something that they have in common not being. That’s why they attack minorities of all kinds.
It also explains the hypocrisy. The individual isn’t afraid of abortions, homosexuals or mexicans. Sometimes they need to accept those on an individual level, but they still go along with the anti-politics because it’s not about themselves personally.
Facism isn’t just based on simple hatred. It’s mostly based on fear of not fitting in, because the individual is well aware of their own not fitting in.
Fascism is also an ideology of fear. It requires an enemy that’s both weak and existentially threatening in order to frighten and divide people.
For the modern right that enemy is now the trans community. And make no mistake, it’s cynical and deliberate. Alt right figures sought and found the enemy they needed to galvanize voters, and now they’re stoking that fear as best they can.
This is the part that I fail to comprehend either.
What is the worst thing that would happen if trans people have rights (including the right to just exist in society)?
When it was making rules against gender-affirming care for children, at least they could hide behind the (ludicrously false) “we’re protecting the children!” argument.
They can’t even do that here. There is just no justification for this beyond either “god doesn’t want this to happen” or just basic cruelty.
The cruelty has always been the point.
A hate based ideology always needs an outgroup to discriminate against. It’s really as simple as that.
When you’re conditioned to need power over the other, you will always seek someone to put your boot on.
This is how it was explained to me; I’ll do the best I can to write it out in a way that makes sense.
You know how most left-leaning see MAGA as a cult of idiocy? Really Really dumb people easily motivated by propaganda, that if it weren’t for trump and other republican bad actors, they would just otherwise be innocent idiots ready to be manipulated by someone else? There exists a subset of conservatives that believe idiocy and gullibility applies to both sides. Just like a simple farmer can get turned storm-the-capitol-terrorist by a few tweets and youtube videos, the theory is that an innocent dumb gay kid can be turned trans by a few tiktoks. They don’t look at it like a rights issue; they don’t believe that most trans people actually exist. They look at it like catering to a dangerous cult who manipulates their followers into self-mutilation and a terribly unhappy life.
The thing about making an argument in good faith, is that logic and reason generally always apply to produce the same conclusions if given the same set of facts. There are plenty of people out there perfectly content to make a bad faith argument for personal gain, and I’m not really talking about those people. The issue with trans rights is that it’s very easy to make a good faith argument with only a minor dispute in facts that leads down a path of “treat the disease” rather than “give them rights” when solving in good faith for “protect the vulnerable”.
Think about it this way, You probably wouldn’t argue that law should cater towards the reality MAGA repubes believe the world to exist in, right?
The difference between a MAGA cultist and a trans person, is that a MAGA cultist wants to see everyone other than themselves to suffer.
I would hope that the difference is a trans person wasn’t manipulated by a deranged cult during their formative years. If that isn’t the difference, then the repubes were right all along.
Well, they’re not right.
If maga folks who think this way actually could get over their fear and disgust and see trans people as fellow humans, maybe they could truly listen to trans people’s experiences and listen to the medical community, and come to realize their view doesn’t line up with reality.
Thinking trans people are trans because someone convinced them they are is similar to thinking sexual preference is a choice (it isn’t, if you didn’t know that).
They retool and reuse a lot of anti LGB arguments - they still hate gay people, they just know it doesn’t play well right now.
The “protect the children” crowd put out so many lies that it’s impossible to keep up with. Chuds pretend that kids can just walk into a clinic, say “I think I’m a boy/girl” and walk out with a hormone script and a surgery appointment, and because most people don’t know anything about transgender care they believe it. I don’t think your average person actually is that bothered by real trans people, they’re just lead to believe that 8 year olds are getting their penises lopped off.
they’re just lead to believe that 8 year olds are getting their penises lopped off.
This is a huge part of it. A lot of these people have a huge misunderstanding of gender dysphoria and seriously think that people are convincing 8 year olds to have a sex change. It’s a lack of education and critical thinking skills that the leaders of right wing politics and religious/cult leaders have been perpetuating for a long time. Stupid people are easier to control.
That and a lack of empathy to even try to understand what another human is going through, especially if they are different from themselves. This too, probably stems from the same fascist playbook.
To them, it’s “icky” and “weird”. Therefore, it must be WRONG.
Sadly, I don’t think that’s an oversimplification. For them, it really is just that simple.
Probably, but I think there’s also a big element of “God hates you because my minister said so” or whatever.
Conservatives have an over active “ick” sensitivity.
Because we’re the enemy. We’re different and bad and we make them uncomfortable so we must be why they’re unhappy and why their lives aren’t what they thought they should be
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I’ve been finding a strange peace in understanding our history. Not just the history beginning with the 20th century but the reality that we’ve always been everywhere. When we’re cracked down on we rise back in the shadows in a generation, the second the grip inevitably slips enough. Is it a good life? No, it’s one of crimes of desperation, like sex work. But it is a life, and it’s a life that many found worth living unlike a life in the closet.
Even if the worst comes to pass some of our killers’ descendants will claim us as ancestors. And I for one claim them as my descendants.
It makes more sense if you look at this as them needing a scapegoat.
Most people don’t (or until very recently didn’t) really understand what being transgender actually is all about.
This makes it really easy to fearmonger the general population, by painting their “lifestyle” as everything that is wrong with society.And if you want to solve this issue… well clearly you have to vote for them, because the other guys don’t see the inherent dangers of transgenderism, now do they?
This is not anything inherent to being transgender. The scapegoat before this were homosexuals.
However society has progressed to the point where most people understand what homosexuality is, and accept (or at the very least tolerate) homosexuals existing as a part of society. It turns out they weren’t pedophilic devil worshipers after all…That will happen with transgender people too. People will learn, acceptance will grow.
And when it does, these cretins move on to the next minority group.Bonus round: Replace “transgender” with “Jew” in the things I mentioned above, and see what that reminds you of.
I know this is going to sound petty but small point of order - transgender is an adjective. It goes before who is being described - example “Transgender people”
“Transgenders"is a word that we in the community sometimes see from sources that want to create us as a wholesale noun. Usually same linguistic place as removing " cis” as an equal adjective in language and an adjective (ie “there are normal people and then there are transgenders”) or to create a differentiating noun wholesale by removing the space between adjective and noun ( ie. “that’s not a woman it’s a transwoman”)
These may seem a ridiculously small thing but in some places these linguistic cues are used either as subtle anti-trans dog whistles on the right… And on the other side of it inside the community the kindest way we tend to use the term is jokingly when doing impersonations of grandparents and the like… ie “Those kids today and their pokemans and their transgenders! When I was a kid we had bottlecaps and we liked it!”
Yeah, I was hesitating between using “transgenders” or “transgender people” there.
In the end I chose “transgenders” because it fit better with “homosexuals” a paragraph prior. I didn’t really mean anything more by it.I’ll be sure to edit the comment though :)
P.S. I also used the word “transgenderism” a few paragraphs prior, which I know is sometimes used as a dog whistle too.
In that case I specifically chose to use that word because of the context of that sentence being an example of hate.Oh no problem, you definitely have ally vibes so I didn’t think you meant anything by it, just doing a heads up since some folk legit don’t know. I saw “transgenderism” was being used in context of framed as not being proper nomenclature/ used by bigots but “transgenders” appeared to be used without the same context cues.
The real question here is why driver’s licenses have a gender field; we can’t sanely discuss questions about it (including why “they” care about this field so much) without answering this first.
Since the new Florida policy makes this harder, by raising the odds that a license does not match current records… I have no answer for you.
It’s a wedge issue. They incite hatred against their preferred minority (trans people in this case) and then score points with their voters by passing laws to harm that minority.
These are people who make up their own fantasies about oppression where they walk away the hero and someone starts a slow clap. All of this is based really on insecurity and projecting that outwards rather than to try to become a better person inside. They project their fears on others and make others suffer, as that is the only thing that can satisfy someone who believes they are pushed into a corner.
Conservatism is a mental disorder.
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This doesn’t even make sense from an administrative standpoint. The purpose of government identification is identification. If I can’t update my driver’s license to make me easier to identify then the entire purpose of having a gender on the ID card is moot
It gives cops an excuse to arrest (and beat up) trans people on charges of false ID.
Edit: spellingOh absolutely, it’s just meant to out us to every cop that sees our ID so they can decide to ruin our day. They won’t actually admit that, though.
If you’re going to make a stupid argument, at least use the right “beat.”
What’s the point of the law then? You seem to have the answer so please enlighten us
This is a weak justification, but here is a strawman:
If a person is involved in a firey buscrash, it is helpful to the coroner to know what biological sex someone was born as to help with identification (different bone structures etc).
To tear that strawman down again, there is absolutely no reason that the drivers licence couldnt show their gender, and the authority could also track their sex in their system.
Of course, this is Florida, the answer is obvious, they are doing it to fuck over trans people…
I understand that not being able to change forms of ID can cause problems for trans people, but if I were trans, I would be terrified to out myself to the state of Florida. I feel for my brothers and sisters affected by this bullshit.
That justification gets even weaker when there’s no fire in the lethal crash. They’re not looking at burned skeletons, they’re just looking at corpses.
Also! Skeletal differences are actually minimal in people who transitioned at a young enough age, so that wouldn’t even be helpful in their case.
Yeah, its a weak justification, but worth lining up, so that it can be knocked back down.
In this strawman, the point is to be prepared for the worst case, which would be skeletal remains only.
The skeletal differences being minimal depending on the age of transition is interesting, do you have a source? Id like to know more.
Of course that gets even muddier for this strawman, because the authority could make up arbitrary rules like “If you transition before X years old, you can change your official gender”. Which ends up essentially the same as the “when is it life” discussion, and we all know how that panned out.
The defining skeletal differences are mostly in the pelvis, which undergoes much of its development in puberty. Intervention in those years should allow for trans teens to develop along affirming physiological lines, rather than being mutilated by a dysphoric puberty.
Buuuuut I did overstate my case, though; such early treatment is still on the rarer side, so it doesn’t look like there’s definitive answers on how that impacts skeletal development. We can draw conclusions, I think, but the literature is mostly focused on the psychological development rather than looking at physiology.
Yeah, possibly needs more research. I read something about bone density being mostly unchanged, but that may also be intervention age dependant as well. Also, as a fairly contentious issue, the literature is also prone to biases.
Thanks for your response though, I appreciate it :)
If a person is involved in a firey buscrash, it is helpful to the coroner to know what biological sex someone was born as to help with identification (different bone structures etc).
Yeah… no. The bone structures aren’t that different. It’s more likely that anthropologist can’t identify the sex by bones alone than they can. I also can’t think of a different reason for it, but there really doesn’t need to be a reason for them to just be bigots.
The pelvis is absolutely different, do you have a source that claims they can’t tell the difference?
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/media/file/wibskeletonmaleorfemalefinal.pdf
There are stereotypical differences between the two, yes, but it isn’t as obvious as just having male and female bones. It is often unable to be determined based on bone structure alone, and historically there has been a lot of misidentification from this.
https://psmag.com/social-justice/our-bones-reveal-sex-is-not-binary
Interesting read.
Link to the paper: https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5579&context=utk_gradthes
I would have said it isnt always obvious, but yeah, humans exist on a spectrum.
When was trying to find articles about this topic I kept hitting “trans people don’t belong in sport” type articles, which have a very clear bias. Thanks for the link :)
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Well, what is the function of having sex/gender on an ID? It’s to make someone more identifiable, right?
That means that “verification” only needs to be visual. The purpose is to be able to tell, at a glance, that the ID and the person are a match. That’s why eye color and height are on there too. Precise record keeping is for the court house and hospital records, not a driver’s license.
By using sex and making that unchangeable it actually makes my ID less useful for identifying me.
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This process is already gatekept, to my knowledge. In my state, changing your legal gender id or name requires going through the courts and a substantial amount of legal paperwork - even if you do so without a lawyer, there are some substantial fees associated with that process. Not to mention if someone wanted to become less identifiable, they probably wouldn’t want to do that in a way that is available as public record. Personally, I’d probably just get a haircut - they’re a lot faster and a lot cheaper.
Additionally, banning everyone - especially banning exclusively trans people - from fixing their documentation is not a reasonable solution to your hypothetical problem, a fact so obvious anyone arguing in good faith almost certainly would have caught it.
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Then they’d get harassed by cops for having a suspected fake ID and have to go through the trouble of proving its their actual ID.
Like I am going to be when we get a law like this.
That’s an advantage that trans people who can ‘pass’ have, but not every person looks physically enough like their expressed gender and suddenly they’re “a man in a dress” or something.
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No I didn’t. You asked how they will verify gender. The answer is that they will call trans women who still look biologically male men and not allow them to call themselves women.
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Oh, I see. Sorry.
Wouldn’t this come into conflict with REAL ID? Florida is currently REAL ID compliant.
Federal docs like your passport are used in verifying your REAL ID, and generally, the names need to match.
I mean this is true but there should be a known grace period where you can show the cop some sort of medical procedure will be affecting the data on your passport in the coming year. I’ve followed some such transitions and can be a period of several years actually. So maybe the state and federal governments should have a sex change license or application like they do for marriage. That way everything is legal.
I’ve had to carry around proof of my transness for years before I got to change my documents. It’s not really fun having to expose your medical history to that random dude over there because you’re trying to buy alcohol with an ID that says “female” and you have a full beard. It’s humiliating and could even be dangerous if you happen to hand your ID to a raging bigot that’ll now know you’re trans
Yeah this is such a good point. It’s like being a second grade citizen.
Another proud moment for Christianity
I don’t think the IDs need sex on them. A name, a picture, a number, birthday, height and what sort of vehicles you are licensed to operate.
If it’s that divisive, remove the field. I do not have a women’s driving permit, I can drive the same things my husband can, it’s not used for anything related to its function. A picture gives more information on identity, then if someone transitioned they could go get a new one and it would identify them correctly.
Like if my banking doesn’t require a gender to make a transaction why should my driver’s license.
Next up: Florida creates Women’s Driving Permit, only pink vehicles and engines below 120cc. Men on the other hand need a vehicle greater than 150cc with a hood high enough to no longer need to see children, as that is women’s business.
Doesn’t have to just be gender, trans people often change their name too as part of the transition. Also sex =/= gender
The article specifically mentions changing the gender and nothing about name. Lots of people get name changes for various reasons, but it’s a whole process.
I tried to read through it before commenting yet I still missed that, my bad
So how is this law enforceable? Isn’t the gender marker change through the state itself? I obviously assume they’re going to stop providing the changes, but what about people who have already had it changed? Or is this meant to punish trans people from other states traveling to Florida?
Inevitably a cisgender woman who does not meet enforced standards of femininity will get arrested for this. Or trans men who have not changed their gender marker. Violence against queer people and cis women is the intention.
I can absolutely see someone with androgen insensitivity syndrome (female with XY chromosomes) getting thrown in jail for this.
I think the most pertinent question these days is why is sex listed on a drivers licence anyway? If it’s referring to phenotype why does anyone I give my ID to need to know what genitals are in my smallclothes? If it’s referring to chromasomal makeup why the hell is that relevant to the guy at the liquor store?
If it refers to gender then the consideration becomes that you can’t always intuit gender from presentation so that’s hardly good at creating any benefit for visual identification.
ID is an issue in general for non-binary people. Here in Canada your passport and licence have to match but getting an X gender marker on your passport means your documents have a solid opportunity to subject you to travel discrimination and whether or not that ID will even be accepted abroad becomes a serious and sometimes peicemeal question.
The question of “should we allow changes of sex on identifying documents” is kind of missing the point. We should be talking total abolition of registration of sex on drivers licences.
It’s supposed to be gender but Florida is wanting to change that.
I think changing it to “Sex?” will result in a lot of responses being “Yes, Please”.
I have always wondered the same. Why does gender matter? Why is race sometimes included in documents?
It all feels very much like 19th Century thinking where the place and date of production are the most important aspects of your being.
Conservatives can all go fuck themselves.
WTF?!
Ok, this is obvious, but this is just messed up.
That’s going to help with their uninsurable homes and crime!
The article states they simply need to enter their sex when filling the forms. The headline is not supported by the article.
Literally the first paragraph of the article:
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles will no longer update a transgender person’s driver’s license with their correct gender identity, according to an internal agency memo sent last week — a move that was not prompted by any new law.
Fifth paragraph:
The agency’s memo states that “misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver’s license constitutes fraud” and would expose someone to criminal and civil penalties, including the cancellation, suspension or revocation of their license.
Headline:
Trans people in Florida can no longer update their driver’s licenses: A new state rule may expose trans people to criminal or civil penalties if they try to update their documentation.
So in what way is the headline not supported?
As I said, they need to enter their sex. The article (and your quotes of it) say they should not enter the gender of their choosing. Or do you agree with Republicans that sex and gender are the same thing?
I disagree that “sex” on a driver’s license means “biological sex.” Because that really doesn’t matter on a driver’s license, does it?
I thought it was a useful distinction that gender and sex referred to different things. To say nothing of the law or the article, I think it is good not to conflate them. If the field is to be on the ID, and maybe it shouldn’t, then it should be marked as intended; sex for sex or gender for gender.
Maybe there are reasons sex is beneficial, with respect to emergency services and immediate knowledge of biology, but maybe it would be better just not to have the field.
I disagree that “sex” on a driver’s license means “biological sex.”
The article very clearly describes that sex, not gender, needs to be entered into the form. That is how one gets and renews a driver’s license in Florida. And again, I would like to re-iterate, transgender people are free to get and renew drivers licenses in Florida. The article’s title is simply not supported by the facts or even the article’s contents.
Yes, I realize what it says. Just because the people who make licenses don’t know the difference between sex and gender doesn’t mean they actually want to know the biological sex of the person being issued on the card.
Otherwise, please explain to me why biological sex is a necessary thing to have on an identification card and gender is not.
God forbid a trans person sees a male/female field on a form and puts down their gender! Right to jail!
Oh please. You know what you’re doing right now and you know what the purpose of this law is.
The use of the word “sex” on identification cards predates our more recent understanding of the words “sex” and “gender.”
The acceptance of trans folks never hinged on the definitions of those words. It’s a useful framework to begin understanding the difference between the social aspects of your sex (gender) versus the biological aspects of your sex.
It’s a common mistake of the left to fall into the trap of debating this point like it actually matters to conservatives. There isn’t a conservative on the planet who gives a shit about the difference or who will change their feelings toward trans people depending on how those words are used.
Don’t play coy. You know why this law exists. It has nothing to do with Webster’s dictionary.
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Arli and the article only use “may” and “could” because we have no instances of it in practice yet and they can’t directly assert the policy’s intention as hastily. But it is simple: If you don’t add your biological sex, they can count it as fraud and subsequently refuse to update your documents. We’re all commenting on it because it’s so simple and obvious. It’s Florida. We know what they’re doing.
Dunno how x or xxy people gonna follow the law, since Florida doesn’t define sex in state law.
Obviously some rando on the internet knows better than a nonprofit dealing with these types of issues daily.
It’s a shitty source that’s trying to get people angry for clicks.
These people do not argue in good faith.
You know how doesn’t argue in good faith? Conservatives.
Sex is not as useful of an identifier for a government ID as gender.
If I go missing and they tell people to be on the lookout for a male, I will never be found.
Which is irrelevant to the fact the title is not supported by the info in the article. Transgender people are free to get and renew a driver’s license in Florida. They need to enter their sex on the form, not their gender.
As I understand it transgender people were able to change the sex on the form and now we can’t, so that headline is completely accurate. Yes, that’s not how sex works, but the reason we could do it before is because it made our government IDs useful for identification.
Now when a cop sees the male identifier on my ID he’s just going to harass me for having a “fake” ID. 🙄
If I get pulled over in Florida, as a burly dude with about three inches of beard and chest hair that doesn’t like to stay inside a t-shirt, what do you think the cop is going to do or say when they see an “F” on my drivers license? Do I need to out myself to the grocery store clerk every time I want to buy a beer?
