[MisterMuncher]

This is a contention I've heard again, and again, and I'm sorry, but it just does not bear scrutiny. The defence of trans folks, of it occurred at all, was the kind of milquetoast shuffling of administrative minutiae. If they blundered on it, and I'm not entirely convinced it actually moved the needle much at all, it was in falling to address the concerns of trans folk with any conviction. Much like every other minority group, they got at best grudging recognition of their existence because electorally, where else could they go?

Actual messaging centring the humanity of trans people would have done something to counter the foghorn of panic from the other side, because it's much harder to hate a person than a group. Trump's promise to remove trans people from the military was a fucking penalty kick they couldn't even see, because they feared pissing off wankers who would never have voted for them anyway.

[The Weeping Angel]

67& of Democrats think trans people shouldn't be allowed in women's sports. Are they all bigots? Ultimately I think trans-activists and ther allies have done enormous damage to the cause of trans people.

[Andy McDandy]

80% of people don't have any fucking idea what they're talking about.

[MisterMuncher]

Doesn't stop them telling us about it, sadly.

The "men in women's sports" don't seem to have much to go with, given their propensity for lying constantly and declaring any non-white women who's a bit too good at her sport to be a man.

The 67% represents the dearth of any counter-message in the political mainstream.

[The Weeping Angel]

No it's about how trans activists have fucked up. Screaming bigot at anyone who dared to disagree with them isn't a good idea to win people over.

[MisterMuncher]

Ah, the well reasoned "no, it isn't" school of argument. I've a five year old here, thanks.

[Crabcakes]

No it's about how trans activists have fucked up. Screaming bigot at anyone who dared to disagree with them isn't a good idea to win people over.

Nor is rolling over, giving up and dying, but that’s what some commenters would like to see happen. And let’s be clear - some of those disagreeing absolutely *are* bigots. Which doesn’t help win people over the other way.

[The Weeping Angel]

It's about winning people over to your side. Shouting bigot at people isn't working nor is arrogantly asserting that you're on the right side of history. Let me tell you what is wrong with that assertation.

1. History doesn't actually work like that.

2. Lots of people have claimed to be on the right side of history including some very dodgy people.

[Crabcakes]

This is how history does work though:

1. Certain people freak out at change involving a group - usually small, of limited power and influence - they have decided is one or more of undeserving, inferior or “icky”. The troubling change in question is usually that the target group simply want basic human rights and freedoms and are drawing attention to this. The certain people will not have any reduction in their rights or privileges, they will simply have to treat this other group without prejudice.

To them, this is unacceptable.

2. The certain people say that if the group they have decided should not be fairly treated protest nice and quietly, so as not to disturb the status quo or effect any change, it will all be fine. ‘Fine’ meaning it’s fine for the certain people, and no change - or reversal of previous progress - for the target group.

3. The certain people get very very annoyed when their demands for no change and silent obedience are inexplicably (to them) not met. Any push back against them is branded as extremism, be it actual extremism (because marginalised people often have to resort to such things) or just trying to have a fair, level conversation.

4. If the certain people make any progress suppressing the group they’ve decided need to be silenced, they immediately move on to rolling back rights for groups they had previously targeted too. Because there’s always a target, and it’s always someone not exactly like them. It is a perpetual quest to increase their own power and influence by decreasing that of others.

5. Long term, the certain people are eventually defeated, and the world becomes a little bit fairer - but those small victories must always be defended, and nothing is fixed.

Currently the certain people who think they are “on the right side of history” are Trump, Linehan, Braverman, Badenoch, Farage and so on. A real parade of delights, desperate for you to lap up their culture wars.

Or to put it another way, if you think the people who have legislated so less than 10 people in the whole of the US can no longer participate in sport are ‘doing the right thing’, you may need to seriously reconsider exactly who you are throwing your lot in with. Because it’s not about sport or fairness. It’s about marginalisation, dehumanisation and victimisation and it always, always is.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Transgender athletes have been limited by their sporting bodies for a couple of years now, after Lia Thomas became well known. So what a lot of Democrats support will already be the policy. It's basically if you went through male puberty, you can't compete as a woman.

It might have been helpful for more people to know that but Trump and co want to go further than that.

[The Weeping Angel]

James O'Malley does a very good job here of pointing out relying on the right side of history doesn't always work.

https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/you- ... ion-search

Because you can also look back at history and see things that, at the time, were the focus of much progressive agitation and activism – but which also turned out to be completely and utterly wrongheaded. And I’m not just talking about the ska-punk winter that we’re currently living through.

For example, take eugenics. The one thing that everyone knows today about eugenics is that it is a really bad idea. Though we may be happy with farmers and dog breeders selectively breeding their animals to optimise for specific characteristics, humans have broadly concluded that doing this to ourselves would be a pretty monstrous idea5.

But this wasn’t always the case. The best known proponents of eugenics today are associated with the political right, but one dark secret of the left is that before World War II it wasn’t just the right who were into it – eugenics was pretty widely viewed as a progressive endeavour too.

For example, famous socialist writers like George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells were both big supporters of eugenics for the role it could play in achieving ‘social progress’. Similarly, economist John Maynard Keynes was a director of the Eugenics Society for several years and had some rather spicy views on the topic.

And then there’s Marie Stopes, the birth control and abortion pioneer who, let’s just say, wasn’t just into it for strictly feminist reasons.

Of course, the reason nobody on the left thinks like this today is because the Nazis did a rather effective job of permanently discrediting the idea.

But before the war, eugenics was a mainstream part of the progressive discourse. It’s hard to know exactly how popular these ideas were – but even if it wasn’t universally supported, there was clearly an appetite for it amongst intellectuals, and a lot of clever people took it seriously. Perhaps it was in a similar position to some new-but-pretty-popular ideas we have today, like Universal Basic Income or Liberating the Postcode Address File?

[Tubby Isaacs]

What has eugenics got to do with transgender sports?

[kreuzberger]

What has eugenics got to do with transgender sports?

Dunno but Universal Basic Income would keep one friend of ours in razor blades and another in lippy.

(To have the privilege of calling either of these people a friend put you on the right side of the future and whatever it threatens or promises.)

[The Weeping Angel]

What has eugenics got to do with transgender sports?

He's using it as an example of how something can be seen as modern and progressive then it isn't. But it's also an example of how claiming you're on the right side of history doesn't always work.

[Crabcakes]

I assume the link we are invited to make here is we all now think eugenics is a bad thing, and so it follows treating trans people with things like hormone treatment or gender realignment surgery may also one day be seen as “not the right side of history” and an equally bad thing.

The problem with this is twofold. First, as far as I’m aware no group has invited the practice of eugenics upon itself. Instead, it’s the usual array of racists, bigots and the like trying to make out they’re doing everyone a favour by suppressing undesirables rather than, you know, just being racist, bigoted and/or killing poor and marginalised peoples in preference to helping them, or even merely leaving them alone.

Second, as trans people *do* choose their lives for themselves, comparing treating them to the practice of eugenics in turn means that health and social care professionals offering them any sort of care, and the wider public being accepting they have a right to be who they choose to be, is abhorrent. Or to put it another way, you are saying simply being trans is wrong, and trans people are…what, exactly? Mentally ill? Perverted? Freaks? Should be locked up? And people who support them should be thought of in the same way we now think of - for example - Nazi scientists?

If he doesn’t mean this, he might want to choose his comparisons more carefully in future.

[Crabcakes]

And before the response of “but lots of people thought it”, yes that’s true - but they usually supported the ‘lite’ version that was “let’s discourage the poor from having too many kids” that rapidly moved on to “let’s just forcibly sterilise them” etc., and even figures of note usually were hugely racist and (compared to today) massively problematic,

[MisterMuncher]

Thankfully there's no counter examples of repression that turned out to be a really fucking bad idea, then.

[The Weeping Angel]

I assume the link we are invited to make here is we all now think eugenics is a bad thing, and so it follows treating trans people with things like hormone treatment or gender realignment surgery may also one day be seen as “not the right side of history” and an equally bad thing.

The problem with this is twofold. First, as far as I’m aware no group has invited the practice of eugenics upon itself. Instead, it’s the usual array of racists, bigots and the like trying to make out they’re doing everyone a favour by suppressing undesirables rather than, you know, just being racist, bigoted and/or killing poor and marginalised peoples in preference to helping them, or even merely leaving them alone.

Second, as trans people *do* choose their lives for themselves, comparing treating them to the practice of eugenics in turn means that health and social care professionals offering them any sort of care, and the wider public being accepting they have a right to be who they choose to be, is abhorrent. Or to put it another way, you are saying simply being trans is wrong, and trans people are…what, exactly? Mentally ill? Perverted? Freaks? Should be locked up? And people who support them should be thought of in the same way we now think of - for example - Nazi scientists?

If he doesn’t mean this, he might want to choose his comparisons more carefully in future.

Except it wasn't just racists who were into eugenics plenty of left-wing people were into it as well and no just because they didn't want the poor to have kids it doesn't make it alright in fact in many ways it makes it worse.

[The Weeping Angel]

I assume the link we are invited to make here is we all now think eugenics is a bad thing, and so it follows treating trans people with things like hormone treatment or gender realignment surgery may also one day be seen as “not the right side of history” and an equally bad thing.

The problem with this is twofold. First, as far as I’m aware no group has invited the practice of eugenics upon itself. Instead, it’s the usual array of racists, bigots and the like trying to make out they’re doing everyone a favour by suppressing undesirables rather than, you know, just being racist, bigoted and/or killing poor and marginalised peoples in preference to helping them, or even merely leaving them alone.

Second, as trans people *do* choose their lives for themselves, comparing treating them to the practice of eugenics in turn means that health and social care professionals offering them any sort of care, and the wider public being accepting they have a right to be who they choose to be, is abhorrent. Or to put it another way, you are saying simply being trans is wrong, and trans people are…what, exactly? Mentally ill? Perverted? Freaks? Should be locked up? And people who support them should be thought of in the same way we now think of - for example - Nazi scientists?

If he doesn’t mean this, he might want to choose his comparisons more carefully in future.

You might want to read the whole article before making a snap judgement. This part should be of interest to you.

By now you can probably see why I find appeals to the “right side of history” to be a bit hollow.

I think ultimately, it doesn’t really work as an argument – it’s more of a thought-terminating cliché designed to blunt thinking by gesturing towards a hypothetical great moral weight carried by one side over the other.

And for this reason it is intellectual lazy too. Because it also functions as an excuse not to do the job of persuasion. Instead, it is a reason for you not to engage with trade-offs, complexity and counter arguments, because instead you’ve created essentially a ‘prophecy’, that someday your side will win. If that’s the case, why even bother engaging at all?

In any case, I’m not convinced that, even if you deploy the ‘argument’, it is particularly persuasive.

[MisterMuncher]

It's a lot of words for cherry picking, which is precisely what is being engaged in here.

"People have been wrong before" is every bit as much of a thought terminating cliché.