u/svcg — Ginny [they/she]

It depends on your definition of "legitimate", I suppose.

My point is that the targeting of civilians is still and always has been common in war. It may now be de jure illegal but it is de facto not policed.

According to the British (during the Malayan Emergency) and Americans (during Operation Ranch Hand), indiscriminately starving enemy civilians by spraying Agent Orange everywhere was legal.

In more recent history, we of course have Captain Drone Strike's reign of terror against wedding parties and aid workers in Afghanistan.

The only thing that's changed since the Geneva conventions of 1949 is that when civilians are targeted, the rest of the world says "tut tut, that's a war crime" before it proceeds not to do anything about it.*

\* Unless you're from Africa or the Balkans, apparently.

Since when?

I'm British so I can't really say, but I think if not more well-liked, they're at least more low key. Britain made its royal family part of its brand, and with that comes a lot more coverage, better or worse.

I am anti-monarchy and I don't particularly give a shit that this woman has to change universities or whatever, but quite frankly I'm shocked by the amount of comments here hoping for horrific things to happen to a woman just for being born into a family they don't like.

That was quick.

This case specifically can't be appealed to the ECHR since the scotland act doesn't allow the devolved government to do so (IIRC), so we'll probably have a few years of this until another case works its way up the ladder.

You might be thinking of the Council of Europe, of which the UK is still a member (for now).

>An example of compromise would be to acknowledge that trans women are biologically different from cis women.This is not an extreme or hateful idea.

It is also not in dispute.

What is in dispute is *sometimes* the extent of those differences, but is *usually* whether those differences are relevant at all.

>Other issues like sports or bathrooms can still be nuanced discussions that acknowledge peoples concerns and work to educate rather then alienate.

Opposition to trans rights generally comes from three motivating factors:

1. The propensity to find trans people icky.

2. The desire to deny the existence of gender identity as something that is distinct from sex. (This comes in both pro- and anti- gender essentialist flavours and we could discuss it all day, but that is not relevant for now.)

3. Having a genuine concern about biological differences.

The reason why we're not having nuanced discussions is because people in categories 1 and 2 will masquerade as people in category 3 and not participate in any discussion in good faith.

Let's take trans women in sports as an example. There is - for sure - a small number of people who will argue that that anyone who identifies as a woman should be able to compete as a woman in any circumstances, but this is not a mainstream position, even in the trans community. The mainstream position is that trans women should be generally be allowed to compete as women in competition after some suitable amount of time on hormone replacement therapy.

This is because strength is not stored in the balls or in the genes; the difference in strength between cis men and cis women is a result of the effect of testosterone on the muscles, and the presence of testosterone needs to be maintained in order to maintain those muscular differences. Such studies that there are seem to suggest that trans women tend not to have any advantage over cis women after a year or two on HRT when controlling for differences in height.

Some people who are hostile to trans women in sport are unaware of this and think that strength advantages are permanent, and when you explain the reasons that they aren't then those people may become less hostile to the concept. Maybe they have doubts about the specific studies or want there to be more research for any given sport or whatever, but that is the region in which compromise is possible. But maybe they'll just start pulling further justifications out of their arse.

• "Those height differences are significant enough to merit banning trans women!" If it were then the sport would have height categories, wouldn't it?

• "What about muh bone density?" In what world does having heavier bones and weaker muscles to move them around with constitute an advantage?

However, the debate is mostly populated by people who pretend to care about biological differences, but in reality simply object to any concession that trans women are in any way women. Anyone who claims that men are biologically better than women at chess or darts is fundamentally unserious. The film Lady Ballers came about when someone at the Daily Wire suggested that they make a documentary about men identifying as women so they can compete against women. When they found out that actually, that's not a thing that happens and there are requirements that you have to meet, did they let that stop them? No, they just wrote a fictional film about it instead because they object to trans women being treated as women for ideological reasons, and they want to poison the well by persuading people that it is a thing that happens.

How do you compromise with that? How do you compromise with someone who objects to a trans woman competing as a woman in a chess competition because they fundamentally object to the premise that a trans woman is in any way a woman?

What is there to compromise here? Every building with gendered facilities has to build a third set of toilets for trans people? The government has to build a third set of prisons for trans people?

You forgot Portugal and France, but yes.

Is it not significant that the fact it is 60% Russian is because it was ethnically cleansed of Crimean Tatars?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Tatarization_of_Crimea

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars

My dude, if people have to go away and read other things in order to understand what you were trying to communicate, then you did a bad job at communication.

Wilhoit's law.

>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Not necessarily.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/attender