As frustrating as it is to deal with the alphabet people, you have to admire their ability to manipulate language to pull our heartstrings.
It’s disgusting and cynical, of course. But also impressive in a Machiavellian sort of way. The way they weaponize compassion is a form of empathic jiu-Jitsu that elicits just a bit of admiration from me in much the same manner as American soldiers both feared and admired the courage of Japanese soldiers in World War II.
That was my reaction to this Vice article on the policies the UK government is drafting. While the policies make perfect common sense, which is kind of shocking in itself, the civil servants leaking to Vice have somehow elicited sympathy and outrage from the writer, and presumably a substantial fraction of the readers to whom he is directing his article.
Can the govt please just understand many women don’t want to share toilets, showers, changing rooms etc w a male colleague
Even if he grows his hair and wears a dress.
Even if he changes his name.
Even if he has a secret government certificate. https://t.co/smlt8daEkQ— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) July 12, 2023
Civil servants in Britain, or at least the tiny tiny fraction who identify as transgender, are reportedly “terrified” at the prospect of not being able to silence their colleagues and, even worse, not being able to use their preferred bathroom without a “Gender Recognition Certificate” that the government apparently is happy to provide, establishing the legal recognition of the sex change one has undergone.
Scary stuff.
New draft policies for the UK’s 500,000 civil servants would block some trans staff from using single-sex spaces such as toilets, and force staff to accept transphobic views in the workplace, VICE News can reveal.
Senior civil servants have told VICE News that they are “terrified” by the proposed plans, which were leaked to us.
Is Great Britain about to return to the stone age, where Taliban-like enforcers seek out and stone transgender Civil Servants?
Yeah, well, not quite.
The new policies state civil servants should equally recognise “gender critical beliefs” and “gender identity beliefs” – meaning that employees can openly share controversial views on trans lives without being penalised.
Responding to this policy, a trans civil servant – who did not want to be identified in fear of losing their job – told VICE News: “My existence is not a belief. How can my safety be just as important as someone’s belief that I shouldn’t be safe? This feels like it was written by someone gender critical, just to give transphobes more clout.”
The leaked document also proposes “changes on access to toilets”, so that only trans people with a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) can use single-sex facilities.
So…the government is going to allow people to have and express opinions, and this is a problem. Because unless somebody “affirms” what they believe to be your delusion you no longer “exist” and are not “safe.”
Yep. If somebody thinks that you, born with a penis, is a dude you will die a slow, painful, and violent death before turning to dust before their eyes.
Because you don’t exist.
This is just silly. I and everybody I know who is a conservative spends countless hours being derided, called a Nazi, accused of perpetrating genocide, and generally treated like an outcast by the ruling clique and their minions in this country, and some transgender person is “terrified” that somebody might refer to them as “He.”
It really has come to this.
The leaked policies also emphasise that “employees can hold different opinions and beliefs in the workplace” on trans and non-binary lives “as long as they engage in reasoned and rational debate.”
The document explains that “gender critical beliefs are protected” under the Equality Act. It continues: “This affords protection from discrimination or harassment suffered as a result of holding that belief. Insulting or offensive comments” about a person who holds these anti-trans views “can amount to harassment of or discrimination against that person.”
Another part of the document reinforces this, saying that the government acknowledges that some employees may not believe that a person can actually change sex or gender – and that people who hold that belief “must be treated with respect and dignity and protected from bullying, harassment and discrimination.”
Before you think I give any credence to their claims of being “terrified,” let me make clear that I don’t. If you have ever dealt with a transgender person who has been “misgendered,” you may have noticed that they don’t curl up into a fetal position and start whimpering, begging for mercy.
No, they lash out and scream at you. They get in your face. They demand compliance.
These are not the acts of people who are terrified, but rather of bullies looking to make others terrified, and it often works.
That’s not to say that all transgender people are like this. In fact, until a few years ago almost no transgender people were. The earlier version of transgender individuals were not clout-chasing tyrants, but generally, people who suffered from genuine dysphoria from which they were trying to find relief. It takes a hard-hearted person not to feel some empathy for them and hope they can find peace.
But we are way past that now. The alphabet movement is filled with tyrants, not people seeking compassion and understanding, and at this point, the only rational move is to give no quarter. They don’t.
Personally, I don’t give a hoot about who is in the bathroom anymore, barring it being thugs wanting to hurt me. But that isn’t the point. The point is that some people do, and bathrooms are places where one’s sex actually is important, as they are very private places and ones where everybody rightly feels vulnerable.
Especially women, because they are physically more vulnerable than men. Having men in women’s bathrooms is a step or two too far. It isn’t “compassionate;” it is, for some women, rightly terrifying.
Let women have their own spaces. How hard is that?
Read the full article here