Is it just me or does it smell an awful lot like the "personal is political" here?
It smells an awful lot like I'm going out of my way to explain objectively established scientific facts and medical protocols, and haven't even mentioned my personal opinions in this thread.
In every message board I've been to, it's always the cis people who try to meet halfway. Never have I once seen a trans poster say "all right, you are correct there, I was in error, my bad", almost as if any admission to that effect would be a blow against their agenda.
When "meet halfway" is framed as "concede that you're delusional, depraved freaks and/or should be eliminated from society", then no, you're not going to see very much compromise.
As for meeting halfway on the factual science, did I not *just* freaking say that Halleck's claims were overly broad?
I also observe that cis posers are consistently very superficial in their understanding of trans issues, because they have the luxury of treating it as a minor political issue rather than "this is literally my life". Moreover, I have observed that they heavily focus on "anti-identity politics" with little regard for the actual science and medicine; indeed, they are eager to outright dismiss the scientific facts as "overly technical" whenever they go beyond suitably simplistic generalities.
You do know that pushy liberal Karens can and will find a way to subvert actual clinical protocols, right?
If you actually live in the Karen edition of Spherical Cow World, then you have my deepest sympathies. However, in the practical everyday, if we limited medical treatment based on breathless hypotheticals about not having an infinite ability to prevent abuse, then no medical treatment would ever be available for anything.
Like, I was very clear to say that Johnathan Yaniv is a freak who's maliciously taking advantage of the laws intended to help trans people, and that he doesn't represent the norm for thier community....but I think we both know the next time someone in the states wants to try and pass a bathroom bill or something like it, the first thing they'll say is "well, there was this one dude up in Canada who..." and otherwise never let go of this one example (because Yaniv is in fact a living example of everything they said would happen).
That is a good point. However, I would actually argue that Yaniv is an
artificial example, in the sense that he's a malicious troll doing things in bad faith, and that this should not be taken as an actual counterpoint to transgender rights any more than the murderous rampage of Anders Breivik should be taken as an actual counterpoint to conservative politics.
I would also argue that there's little actual need to talk about Yaniv. There are
always going to be anecdotal examples of some sort, because no demographic has ever been or ever will be totally free of people ranging from assholes to the truly predatory. The way you argue against that is to point out that these are edge cases, that there is a huge double standard in demanding over-the-top "solutions" to these edge cases which are not brought up in equivalent edge cases for other groups, and that there are already laws and enforcement mechanisms in place to handle predatory behavior.
In other words: Yaniv exists. But if Yaniv's existence "shows" that trans people shouldn't be allowed to use public restrooms, does not the existence of vastly larger numbers of cisgender sexual predators show that cis people shouldn't be allowed to use public restrooms either?
