COMMUNITY/MODS: want this post gone, it’s gone - would remove ASAP.
Please be excellent to each other here. We have to self moderate or I’ll delete without being asked. Assume good intent.
I’m pro human which is why I’d rather have some people in office here in the US than others, and why I’m pro human rights.
Trans rights are human rights.
After reading criticism of the dems, this question resurfaced in my mind. I know we don’t have time machines, I know it’s easy to claim a false equivalency is being drawn. So note this question doesn’t represent reality. It represents a curiosity of a hypothetical.
Trans rights are human rights! Thank you.
PS: I hope neither this post nor its comments represent/produce any content that bad people will use to make arguments to further evil causes. Have I already erred? Yes I’m worried, I’m also curious enough to hit this post button here… gulp
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Imagine you have a time machine that lets you peek into the future, specifically the 2024 election. You can see two possible pathways:
Pathway 1: Democrats go all-in on trans rights.
They champion inclusive policies, fight for trans healthcare, and actively challenge anti-trans legislation. However, this galvanizes the opposition and they lose the election.
Pathway 2: Democrats stay completely silent on trans rights.
They avoid the issue entirely, focusing on other policy areas. This strategy helps them win the election, but trans rights are left in a vulnerable position.
The question is: which pathway would you choose?
Would you prioritize a Democrat win, even if it means sacrificing progress on trans rights? Or would you fight for trans rights, even if it means risking a loss?
Democrats are already sacrificing climate targets, asylum seekers, and Palestinians. Yet another sacrifice on the pyre?
At some point you’re just voting for Republicans.
I reject the premise of your question.
I agree, the job of politicians is to reframe Trans rights as policies that benefit everyone. If everyone at a negotiation feels like they are winning you have a successful negotiation. Who cares if the new policy disproportionately benefits one group, we are all better off because of it, and in the case of Trans rights give them the same (non-codified) protections as everyone else.
(This is if course ignoring the oft used tactic of the far right which is to do the opposite and reframe beneficial policies (eh. ACA) as something that only benefits one group by calling it a funny name (eg. Obamacare), so it’s easier said than done, but that is what the democrats should be doing more of, imho)
As a Dutch citizen I just want to kick the shit out of this post and all it stands for. Seriously your system is broken. Period.
Trans rights are human rights, and how you treat anyone in your society is how you treat everyone. Democrats were scared in the '80s and '90s to support gay people for this exact reason, and instead of losing elections they started winning because people realize gay people are people. They lost elections because they weren’t brave enough to stand with the courage of their convictions, and in my opinion that’s what they deserved.
Interesting. Then I’m guessing you’d accept the time machine showed you the right outcome & would let the dems lose this election, but it would help them for the next/future elections?
The current democratic party isn’t standing for trans rights any better than anyone else. Perhaps individual politicians are, but the party has a lot of de facto republicans in the ranks. So vote for them or not, they aren’t going to make things better for folks that are trans. They also aren’t ending wars, reducing military spending, helping vulnerable people seeking asylum, helping homeless people, providing free mental healthcare or national healthcare at all, and so on. Hell, they haven’t enshrined abortion rights into law in the past almost 50 years.
People vote for democrats because of tradition and lesser-of-the-evils reasons. That’s it. That’s a shitty place to be, and should embarrass us the voters as well as the party.
How does public facing statements make trans people vulnerable? Legislation is the power of legislators.
Being quiet about an issue during the campaign makes little difference if they are supportive in office.
Being strategically quiet during a campaign is a good strategy, if only they were smart enough to use it on even more divisive issues, like the genocide.
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So, in this hypothetical we have a time machine, and can see not just if Dems lose but also what the consequences of that loss are. Further GOP court-packing? Loss of human rights for other vulnerable groups? Or maybe just a continuation of the status quo? With the time machine, we would know. Because the Dems winning or losing is not a good or evil in itself, but the consequences could be.
But, real word time now, we can’t know all the consequences of our actions. We should always try to achieve the best results we can, of course, but you can’t do something you know is wrong (like stay silent on trans rights) in the hopes that an evil now will lead to a greater good later, or prevent a greater evil. That’s my take, but what else can you expect from a virtue ethicist?
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This kind of post just shows why I think politicians are spineless cowards. If winning is everything to anyone, they should stick to investing in a stock market.
But American politicians can invest in the stock market with insider knowledge.
The politicians may want the win for selfish reasons. You just want the best representatives for yourself, your loved ones, and your country.
This hypothetical allows you to weigh a party taking the moral high ground against representatives the average Lemming does not want making four years of policy decisions being in a position to do so.
You can give the party you want to win a spine, but it comes at a cost.
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I’ll give you a different perspective. I don’t vote in the US elections (given the impact on people in other countries maybe we should) so I won’t focus on the Democrat/Republican thing but on the reasons for selecting a specific candidate.
Step 1 - deal breakers. Determine if the proposed policies cause any immediate regression in what is already achieved. Rolling back existing trans rights, banning abortion, stuff like that.
Step 2 - vibes. This is the critical one. Don’t immediately look at positive policies you want implemented. Look at how a candidate winning would move the Overton Window .
After this election there will be more, and who wins today moves the general vibe of the entire political system. It sets a base for policies of future candidates who might not even know it yet.
Step 3 - narrowing down. Now if you have several candidates that pass step 2 equally, you can look at the specific policies. Generally you can expect any politician to overpromise (khm lie), but usually they try to achieve at least some of the stated goals.
In two-party electoral systems basically you can’t often reach the step 3, but you do have primaries so it can be applied there.
