Mick Hartley

My essay on trans rights was originally posted on Medium. com but was removed because it was deemed to "undermine the dignity and rights of transgender and/or binary individuals" apparently because I stated a fact: trans women are biological males and trans men are biological…

— Prof. Gary Francione (@garylfrancione) August 3, 2023

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It's worth a read:

To say that the trans-rights issue is controversial is very much an understatement. Part of the problem is that there is a great deal of confusion about exactly what issues are at stake. I would like to propose that the crux of the debate centers on whether respecting the equality claims of trans persons and not discriminating against them requires that we accept certain belief claims that at least some trans persons make. That is, does not discriminating against trans persons require we accept as literally true certain claims that they make, or, at the very least, that we live our lives as if we believe those claims to be literally true.

A majority of us believes that trans people should not be discriminated against in terms of access to jobs, renting/buying living accommodations, education, and elsewhere, etc. This makes perfect moral sense. The fact that someone is a trans person is completely irrelevant to their access to employment, housing, education, etc.

The problem is that some trans-rights activists (TRAs) maintain that it is “transphobic” (among other bad things) to not accept as factually or literally true the claims that biological males who identify as women are women and that biological females who identify as men are men. They also claim that, in light of the literal truth of these claims, it is transphobic to maintain single-sex spaces. They demand that we eliminate all single-sex spaces, such as toilets, changing rooms, shower facilities, prisons, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, etc., as well as eliminate single-sex sports, and make other changes that are intended to eradicate the concept of biological sex from society.

So the issue is whether respecting the equality of trans persons and not discriminating against them requires that we accept these claims as true, or at least act as though we do, and eliminate single-sex spaces and activities as well as make whatever changes would follow from our believing in the literal truth of those claims. […]

In order to explore the issue here — whether the equality of trans persons requires that we accept as literally true their belief claims — it would be useful to explore another context in which a similar issue is presented. I have chosen an example that involves an important and prevalent institution — Christianity — that very much concerns the fundamental identity of many involved in it.

Most of us think that discrimination on the basis of religion is wrong. Indeed, discrimination on the basis of religion is prohibited by law in the U.S., U.K., and many other places. We should not, for example, discriminate against Christians in employment, education, and elsewhere in society. We accept the equality of Christians.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. They do not believe that Jesus is a prophet, or a “special” human. They believe literally that he is divine. Many Christians maintain that they have the experience of a personal relationship with Jesus. Does our not discriminating against Christians require not only that we not place them at any disadvantage in employment, education, or other contexts, but that we also accept that Jesus is the Son of God and live our lives as though we believed this to be literally true? …

To not believe that Jesus is divine does not make one “Christianphobic.” To the extent that some Christians suggest that we should all convert to Christianity, or that the practitioners of other religions are “doomed” or are “evil,” we regard those people as zealots and cranks. We certainly don’t think we have to agree that their beliefs are true or that we must live in accordance with them. For example, the debate about regulating abortion from conception or very early in the pregnancy term focuses in part about whether those seeking to restrict access to abortion are doing so for religious reasons and, to the extent they are, that forms the basis for an objection, at least in the United States, that the government cannot establish a religion.

In any event, Christians have a right to believe what they want; everyone else has an obligation to not engage in wrongful discrimination against Christians. But respecting the equality claims of Christians does not require that we accept Christian belief claims that Jesus is God or allow Christians to act out their metaphysical or spiritual beliefs in the spaces of others.

Now let’s apply this to the trans issue, which involves the same issue: does not discriminating require the acceptance of certain belief claims as literally true? …

Well, clearly not. Just as a respect for Christianity does not require us to believe everything that Christians believe, so a respect for trans people does not require us to believe that trans women are actually really women or that trans men are actually really men. Yet this is precisely what trans activists like to claim. Not to believe a trans woman's claims that he's indistinguishable from a biological women gets you called out as transphobic, in a way that refusing to believe that Jesus is really the son of God does not get you called out as Christianophobic.

As Francione says: No one has the right to demand that others accept their metaphysical beliefs as literally true, and to change their conduct to accommodate the supposed truth of those beliefs.

That slogan that you see everywhere, on all the demos – "trans rights are human rights" – is a case in point. You can ask till you're blue in the face for examples of exactly what sort of rights trans people are supposed not to have, and you'll get no answers – because there aren't any. Trans people have all the rights that everyone else has. What's unspoken here is the implication, not just that trans people are somehow uniquely picked out for persecution, but that trans people are denied rights because people don't feel compelled to believe in the trans doctrines that sex can be changed and that people are what sex thay say they are. They don't just want your normal everyday human rights: they want you to believe what they believe. They demand that you believe what they believe. Anything else is "transphobic".

Yep, it's a cult.