Just because you feel like you can try and compare someone saying mean things to another person on the street to living with a tyrant over years doesn't mean it's valid. It just means you have an agenda.
And if I may, as one of those victims, keep us the fuck out of it.
As someone who has experienced both, I can provide my anecdata to say that words hurt. Maybe they're not the same type of pain, but they do.
If you are a victim of verbal and mental abuse, do not let the above comment convince you that your suffering is somewhat lesser and thus not worthy of empathy.
You can tell because "don't use victims to further your agenda" got described as gatekeeping and lacking empathy for ... myself I guess since I'm a part of that group?
Think of what a Jewish person thinks when they hear insert Kanye West tweet here. The reason speech such as that is restricted is because it inevitably precedes physical violence. Historical victims of violence have learned to identify that through trial and error, while others can safely pretend that words never hurt anybody.
Ben Shapiro talking about it, I'll transcribe part of it here.
> I feel bad for Ye. There are people who are bipolar in my family, like when people are in manic episodes, which he _clearly_ is in a manic episode, they say things that are insane and they think that nobody can tell them what to do and the more insane it is and the more people disapprove the more they do it. And they do crazy stuff and when he comes out of the manic episode it's ... it's going to be really really bad for him.
Someone then asked Shapiro, "would you debate with him [Ye]" and his response was "I won't debate with people who are mentally ill".
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That seems like a pretty rational, reasoned response, and I'm not sure why you think he was harmed in some way.
Furthermore, what you're trying to argue here is that victims of rape should be protected from the word rape. No, the need to be protected from the _ACT_ of rape, how does one do that without talking about rape?
If a victim of rape feels harm from the very utterance of the word rape, that's a mental problem that should be dealt with through therapy, not by making it more difficult to protect from the _ACT_ of rape by making it more difficult to speak about it.
We have 100's of years of common law to better vet out what types of speech have a tendency to result in violence, and there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list.
No, that seems to be either an incredibly biased reading of my comment or an attempt at a bad faith argument. I am claiming: rallies that announce "all trans people are child molesters" are inevitably followed by physical violence against some trans person for "molesting children". More often than not, people who hold such rallies are aware of such implications, and are intentionally holding such rallies to cause harm. Thus, words, for all intents and purposes, can be a direct cause of physical violence and thus should be regarded as such in very extreme cases.
> there's a reason why the things you're claiming result in violence are not found on that list.
Sometimes the laws simply have not caught up with the times. Quick example: how long have gay marriage been federally legal in the United States? Law follows common sense and consensus, not the other way around, which is why I do not agree with your suggestion that we should forsake common sense and consensus to blindly follow the letters of the law.
citation needed
Some examples:
- Janiah Monroe, a man who murdered his male cell mate, was transferred to a women's prison, and raped a female inmate there [1]
- Ramel Blout, a man who was housed in a women's prison and raped a female inmate just after she'd finished showering [2]
- Karen White, a man jailed for rape, who sexually assaulted two female inmates while in a women's prison [3]
The problem isn't trans people in general, it's these new policies and laws that are obliterating female-only spaces, and thus allowing men who would never previously be permitted to be in proximity to commit abuses like the above.
[1] https://www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-felon-who-killed-m...
[2] https://reduxx.info/transgender-inmate-convicted-of-raping-f...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-...
Did you know that among transgender community, rate of attempted suicide is 40%? [0,1] If being inclusive of people regardless of their identity can help us mitigate that number, I believe we should do so, even if it lets three "perverts" mask their intentions. Citing three cases happening in the prison system and asking all trans women to be banned from all women's restrooms everywhere is... quite a strong ask.
Moreover, the three cases you mentioned all happened in prison, where you are already locked up and under tight supervision (supposedly). How many cases are there where such a thing happened in a general gender neutral bathroom? To argue that "we should not be respectful of people's gender identity because there is harm in to negate the overwhelming positive impacts of it", you have to show the proofs.
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031
My view is that with something as complex and multifactorial as suicide, we have to be cautious in ascribing a particular cause or mitigation, and the available data must be examined with caution.
The first abstract you linked describes a 41% attempted suicide rate, but I'm not clear how this was determined or exactly which population it applies to. It seems to be for a poster at a psychiatry conference, the full copy of which isn't available online, as far as I can see. Do you know how this figure was arrived at? I would be interested to see the original source.
In the second paper you linked, which concerns transgender people in India, it sounds like there are many other correlative factors that involve poverty and lack of access to education and employment, with many living in slums, begging and working as prostitutes. Access to the bathroom of their choice or other opposite sex spaces seems to be the least of their issues, and it's not mentioned in this paper. The section discussing resiliency sounds promising though, with correlations to higher income, better support structures, and being employed in a mainstream job. Perhaps these are the factors best addressed by policy, in India at least?