Principled Perspectives: August 2024

Saturday, August 31, 2024

Transgender vs. Transgender Impersonator

Washington Post: Transgender Texans blocked from changing sex on driver’s licenses

Needless to say, this is controversial. Anumita Kaur reports:

Transgender Texans can no longer change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses to match their gender identity, according to a state policy rolled out this week. Advocacy groups say the new rule further harms a vulnerable community already targeted by anti-trans efforts in the state and around the country.

Previously, Texans could present the agency with a certified court order or an amended birth certificate to change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses.

"Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said the new policy denies dignity to the state’s 92,900 transgender adults."

Leaving aside the pros and cons of accurately listing a person’s gender on a state-issued ID, or even whether a person’s gender should be listed, the issue begs the question—What is a “transgender adult?”

Now, according to the economist and historian Dierdre McCloskey, who as a man actually went through the agonizing medical process of becoming a woman, a true transgender is a person who actually “crossed over,” not simply identified as such. In her book, Crossing, a Transgender Memoir—which I have read—McCloskey documents the years-long, grueling process of "Donald" becoming Dierdre that she endured in the 1990s. Being not only a person who has actually crossed over, she is also a leading living public intellectual—and one of my favorites. This in my view gives her tremendous credibility.

As I understand her, "crossing" is synonymous with transgender. If Pritchett’s statistics are correct, transgender adults account for about 1 in 322 Texas adults. But in her book, McCloskey also cites statistics, one of which is that the number of people who ACTUALLY CROSSED OVER to the other gender is 3 in 10,000—or about 1 in 3,333. This means that the figure cited by Pritchett in the article actually grossly overstates the number of transgender adults in Texas by more than 10 times. In reality, then, there are statistically about 9300 transgender adults in Texas, not 92,900. But what about the other approximately 83,600? McCloskey characterizes them—people who "identify" as the other gender, and live as such, but have not crossed over, as impersonators. McCloskey defends gender impersonation as an individual right. She herself, as Donald, before crossing over, referred to herself as a female impersonator. But should female impersonators be able to change their legal gender status, simply because he decides "I am a woman" while factually still being a man? Reality doesn't bend to personal choice, wishful thinking, or whim.

Mischaracterizing and exaggerating transgenderism, as the activists and their media enablers do, does no favors for actual transgender adults. It trivializes what they go through and went through to actually get to real transgenderism. To be fair to them, we need to get our facts straight. My study of the issue leads me to this: In Texas there are 83,600 gender impersonators, and 9300 transgenders. only the 9300, it seems to me, should be able to update their licenses. That the Texas policy won't allow it may be largely the fault of the transgender activists. What is the state to do? There is a clear difference between being transgender (crossing the gender line surgically and emotionally) and identifying as what we might call a transgender impersonator. By whitewashing that distinction, it is primarily Brad Pritchett and his Equality Texas ilk, not just the Texas policy, that "denies dignity to the state’s transgender adults." *

* [Texas doesn’t allow any change from the original birth certificate. Perhaps if people were more honest about their personal condition, the state will allow it for the 9300. In any event, it should.]

Thursday, August 15, 2024

My Lonely Place on the American Political Spectrum

More Than Half of Americans Think the First Amendment Provides Too Many Rights, screamed a recent headline in a Reason article. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) conducted the survey. Emma Camp Reports:

"Evidently, one out of every two Americans wishes they had fewer civil liberties," Sean Stevens, FIRE's chief research adviser, said on Thursday. "Many of them reject the right to assemble, to have a free press, and to petition the government. This is a dictator's fantasy."

This is scary. But the survey also indicates that many people don’t fully understand the First Amendment.

This latest survey indicates that many Americans are concerned about the security of free speech rights, yet also eager to censor speech they personally find distasteful.

I expressed my sentiments about my place on the American political spectrum in My FB Post

"This is a dictator's fantasy." -- Sean Stevens, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

I have always thought of myself as an American—not in the shallow sense of having won the "birth lottery," but in the deep, universal philosophical sense—a Founding American, a man of The Enlightenment; of the Declaration of Independence; of the U.S. Constitution. I have also suspected that I am in the minority in this country. This poll confirms how right I am. Today, I am in the political wilderness, not Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, Left or Right. Looking at the political landscape today, I see what's missing from the American political spectrum, however it is measured—a place for AMERICANISM. (If you think I’m exaggerating, consider how the question is worded. The Constitution doesn’t “provide” our rights. It recognizes and protects them.)

Yet, that's my place. I am in a shrinking minority. My only question is, Am I among the last of a dying breed, or one of the first of their return? Let's hope for the latter. If not—well, I'm an atheist, but I'll say it anyway—May God Help Us!

Saturday, August 3, 2024

KOSA Negates the Government’s Law Enforcement Responsibility

A bill known as the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, passed the U.S. Senate by a 91 - 3 margin. It now [8/3/24] goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The bill is not what the title implies. It is much more . . . and much worse.

Reason’s Elizabeth Brown observes:

The Kids Online Safety Act would have cataclysmic effects on free speech and privacy online.

"Bills like KOSA cynically hide censorship behind the mantle of child protection. Tell Sen. Schumer and other lawmakers to reject KOSA," urged the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

In a New York Times article, Senate Passes Child Online Safety Bill, Sending It to an Uncertain House Fate, Maya Miller reports

The centerpiece of the legislation would create a “duty of care” for social networking platforms that mandates they protect minors against mental health disorders and from abuse, sexual exploitation and other harms. Companies could be held liable for failing to filter out content or limit features that could lead to those adverse impacts. [My emphasis]

What content can anyone say does not fit with "could lead to adverse impacts? What would not be included is such a vague mandate as “duty of care?”

A second measure included in the package would strengthen privacy protections for anyone under 17 and ban targeted advertising to children and teens. It would create an “eraser button” for parents and children, requiring companies to permit users to delete personal information.

Despite the lop-sided vote margin, the bill has notable critics.

The bill faces strong pushback from technology companies, who argue it would place unacceptable burdens on them to moderate content and verify users’ ages, and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union that contend it would restrict free speech. In the Senate, the measure generated narrow but intense opposition despite several rounds of redrafting to address such concerns.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, recently called the bill “the Pandora’s box of unintended consequences,” arguing it would stifle First Amendment-protected speech. Other critics, such as Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said they were worried that limiting children’s access to certain content on social media could further isolate vulnerable youths, including L.G.B.T.Q. young people who often rely on online communities for a sense of belonging and acceptance.

Count me among the opponents.

The Washington Post also reported on the passage of the bill (Senate passes landmark bills to protect kids online, raising pressure on House).

I posted this WAPO Comment:

Note what the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) does NOT do—hold the people who actually create and post the harmful content accountable. Instead of doing their duty to identify and prosecute the guilty, the politicians are going after the social media companies. If a crime is planned around a dinner in a restaurant; or committed using the Verizon phone network; or committed using the public roads, would it be right to charge that restaurant owner, Verizon, or the government for the wrong-doing? Yet that is the position that the social media companies, which are no different IN KIND, are being forced into with this horrifically misleading bill.

Yes, KOSA is a threat to free speech and privacy, as the opponents argue. But it is also a massive abnegation by the political class in its primary function to identify criminal activity, make the necessary laws, and enforce the laws against the guilty while protecting the innocent.* In effect, the bill shifts that function from government, where it belongs, to private enterprise. Under the smokescreen of “kids safety,” KOSA is a massive inversion of the purpose of law and of justice: It evades the guilty and targets innocent third parties.

We should demand that the politicians do their jobs; go after the guilty, rather than take the easy, politically expedient course of making technology companies the scapegoats.

* [I am indebted to Jon Hersey for pointing out this little-discussed aspect of this and similar laws targeting social media companies. Hersey wrote “Many of the bureaucrats and commentators behind these laws and initiatives against social-media companies share essentially the same tactic. They blame social-media companies for not doing what governments are supposed to do—protect individual rights—and then rationalize that this supposed failure is grounds for doing what governments are not supposed to do—violate individual rights.”]