Free speech and derogatory speech about "the transgenders"

And so it goes. Another "serious" blog has decided that supporting anti-transgender bigotry is a worthwhile goal. All in the name of "free speech" and "equal rights".

Here's the TL'DR: Lisa wrote a flame-bait piece, where she defined transgender people as strawmen for  her anti-transgender point. The piece was rambling, lacking in rigor and lackadaisical in its philosophy. Inherently lazy, in other words.

I decided to respond.

I was right: the post was pure flame-bait. Sharon S. Gaughan responded with a lecture and I forgot where I'd been arguing. In the meantime, someone else responded with the usual idiocy and that was that. This morning, I rediscovered the site.

Well, it seems that TS-SI isn't a blog. It's a... Well, I don't what it is. Sharon only said " Finally, TS-Si is not now, nor has it ever been, a blog." So it's a blog because I don't have any other noun to describe it.

And "TS-Si has a long and demonstrable record of explicit support for human rights and equality before the law. Moreover, we have always been a safe harbor for unpopular viewpoints, whether we agree with them or not. " Apparently being caustically anti-transgender is not only popular, but is also explicitly supporting human rights and equality. Except when it comes to those nasty transgender types.

Somehow I doubt that TS-SI would allow someone to publish a piece about how evil black transvestites were - but if it's all transgender folk? Well, in that case: [a]nd here is a very important point that bears repeating: a fair reading of the rise of transgenderism as an activist ideology shows it has been based, in part, on an attempt to co-opt the medical space of people born transsexual, redefining what is essentially a medical condition to accommodate unrelated sociopolitical initiatives."

(Unfortunately there's no way to link to specific comments.)

So we now know that TS-SI, and Sharon S. Gaughan specifically, supports equal rights and free speech except when it comes to those evil transgenders. Probably, as Lisa said: "They transgress the societal expectations of how a man or woman should properly talk, dress, and act."

Apparently that's not derogatory. Who knew? Not me! :-)

Net-net, all "transgenders" get tarred with the same brush because some of them have the audacity to try and redefine what transsexual means, and even - gasp! - what "being a woman" means!

At this point I'm wondering if Sharon could save herself some time and simply republish the known transsexual separatists, the radical transsexual "feminists" and the Christian Coalition. That way she could support free speech and the derogation of those 'orrible transgenders.

Notably, Lisa did not join the conversation.

Carolyn Ann