Therumancer said:
Well, the idea of a melting pot culture is a touchy one in general because people tend to forget about the whole "melting" part and assimilating to become part of the mainstream. The rights of minorities who want the benefits of citizenship, but don't want to assimilate into the society is a big deal. It goes beyond things like transgender rights, and into issues with larger minority groups like demands for all important media and annoucements to be put into various languages instead of requring people to adapt by learning to speak the dominant language of the culture they are in.
Here's the thing: we don't live in anything resembling the ideal set by the 'melting pot' cultural theory. An analogy thrown around occasionally by my old history teacher was that America was closer to a TV dinner: everything's in the same overall group, but in its own separate compartments.
And even then, you're completely missing the point of the melting pot. The entire premise is based on new cultures being added to the pot and the contents changing as a result. It is
not the cultures changing themselves
and then jumping into the mixture, as you seem to think it is.
Therumancer said:
It's a tricky area in a general sense, because while people can make points about minorities becoming second class citizens who are just tolerated, the flip side is that by catering to minority groups you wind up turning the majority into second class citizens.
That's true...if we lived in a society of nothing but extremes. Do you really think that there's no ground between "treat minorities as second class citizens" and "enslave the majority to the whims of the minority groups"?
Therumancer said:
This is why I make the point about tolerance, nobody has brought genocide into this even as a concept. A more sane way of putting it is that we aren't going to arrest or exile someone for not fitting in.
Actually,
you brought genocide into it. Let me quote you:
Therumancer said:
Right now your tolerated, nobody is going to tattoo a purple triangle on you and ship you off to a death camp, or call the church to have an inquisitor absolve you of your sins through torture before burning you at the stake.
Ah, sorry, I misspoke: you invoked genocide
and religious persecution, a close cousin of genocide.
Therumancer said:
But that doesn't mean the rest of society should be expected to adapt to them or be uncomfortable.
The thing to understand is that in a lot of cases, it comes down to a situation where there is no way to make everyone involved comfortable with something. In such cases, the correct choice is to go with the lesser of two evils, which is simply put to work in favor of whichever side has more people and minimize the number of people who wind up having to make sacrifices or be uncomfortable.[/quote]
See, you keep talking about how minority groups shouldn't be given full rights if it makes any of the majority "uncomfortable." When has that ever been valid ground to deny any group rights? It certainly didn't hold up when George Wallace was trying to stop integration of southern schools, no matter how "uncomfortable" people were about having black people studying in the same building as their kids (perish the thought).
Therumancer said:
In practice however it's a lot less straightforward than simple matters of JUST looking at a minority group, of whatever sort, against the majority. One major concern is that there are TONS of differant minority groups, and they don't nessicarly get along with each other. In some cases you have situations where you see minority groups having their expression curved specifically to present conflict with other minority groups. An example of this would be say the banning of "ethnic" material in a school, not so much because of the "majority" of white students but because you don't want say the blacks and the Latinos going at it in the hallways when you have ethnic gangs of both sorts in the area. Some guy wearing a stylized "Malcolm X" hat running into a guy wearing a "Latin Pride" T-shirt can lead to a knife fight in some areas.
...good Christ. Is that what you think gang violence is about? That it's all a massive race war?
Therumancer said:
Of course the "evil white majority" gets it from both ends when they come in and institute a dress code banning all similar things, and people scream about being second class citizens, when really it's being done to cut down on the violence. The result of such dress code changes have been mixed depending on the location and exact situation.
...okay, let's start slow: a dress code implemented to stop gang violence isn't there to stop people from wearing clothes that remind people of their race. They have their skin color to do that...which you've apparently forgotten.
If a school district really has gang trouble, uniforms are designed to take away
gang colors and emblems.
Those are the things that cause problems. If kids were so driven to murder one another because they hated people for their race, the only way uniforms would stop that would be if they included masks and gloves.
Therumancer said:
The point I'm making here is in response to the point about so called "second class citizens" and perceived attitude that the majority shouldn't have the right to enforce any standards whatsoever. It's not a straightforward thing in a general sense. In most cases you wind up with people who will make arguements based on what they think of the specific group being dealt with. I tend to take one position, and remain consistant with it. While there are going to be exceptions to every rule, they tend to be few and far between. In my case there are groups I like and have sympathy for, but don't think should avoid having to take responsibility for what they do and how people perceive it. A good example of this would be the whole "punk" movement (having grown up in the 80s, it was largely gone before I seriously got old enough), I get the whole non-conformity thing, and can support people who want to dress and act that way on a lot of levels, on the other hand people who do that need to take responsibiluity for it, and you can't with a clear conscience FORCE people to have to accept them, or absolve them of responsibility from the reactions their appearance and attitudes elicit.
I see. You equate the GLBT movement with the "punk" style of the 80s. This whole 'gay' thing is just a passing fad among 'the youths,' and it'll blow over by the end of the decade, right? It's not like a fashion/music trend is any different than, say, a gay married couple wanting the same rights afforded to a heterosexual married couple.
Therumancer said:
At any rate, when it comes to aggravating and mitigating factors the basic gist of it is that if one person gets under another person's skin, "pushes their buttons" so to speak, the person's actions become less severe because the person they acted against contributed to bringing it upon themselves.
It's sort of like how if you insult someone and they punch you, the guy is going to get in trouble for punching you, but not as much trouble if they had just come and and did it out of the blue, or as part of say trying to beat you down and steal your money.
Blah, blah, blah. I'm not a dullard. I know the difference between aggravated assault and regular assault.
Therumancer said:
In such cases what the "buttons" happen to be is irrelevent. Even if the buttons are detestable or something you don't like, simply by pushing them your basically making the assault less severe.
That couldn't be further from the truth. It is
very important what the aggravating factor is, because some are dramatically less reasonable than others. If a man beats another man for insulting him, that might be considered aggravated assault. If a man beats another man because the latter was black and appeared to be romantically involved with a white woman, that is
not aggravated assault. It fits the dictionary definition of an 'aggravating' factor, but no court of law would commute a sentence because of it.
Therumancer said:
In this case, you might really hate people who don't like or are uncomfortable with transgendered people. However it's not an uncommon attitude. If someone who is obviously transgendered gets into it with someone like that, it's going to push buttons more severely than it would otherwise.
...really? You actually believe that's a viable defense? "Your honor, my client assaulted this person to the point of cerebral trauma, yes, but not before observing that she looked vaguely of masculine. The defense rests."
Therumancer said:
This is at the root of my point about responsibility among those who choose very contreversial forms of expression, no matter how they justify it. If someone approaches them and goes after them just for making a lifestyle choice, that's a hate crime. On the other hand if someone reacts to them from something they initiate, and the reaction is enflamed by their presentation, well that's the risks you take in choosing to go against the grain of society.
Here's the thing: being gay isn't a choice. Roy Cohn and any number of other self-hating gays are proof enough of that. Any alterations made to one's self as a result of being transgender are obviously choices, but at the very worst they're cosmetic, and at best they're surgeries meant to save a person from living their life in a state of unfulfillment and misery because of a fluke of nature.
Therumancer said:
I'm not making much in the way of moral judgements, just saying that this is the way things are. Largely because every arguement you can make in defense of a minority "just being that way" can be made about someone who reacts negatively to that group "just being that way" in the other direction. People might not LIKE that point, and want to take sides based on their personal beliefs, but inherantly taking sides causes even more problems.
Ah. So a gay male can expect to not be given the same rights as someone identical to him but heterosexual...and a violent bigot can expect to be given commuted sentences for hate crimes because of his arbitrary hatred. And you justify both cases because both are "just...that way."
Therumancer said:
Thus, in looking at situations like this impartially, it comes down to who actually initiated the incident. The transgendered person was not simply attacked out of the blue, it seems to be a matter of record that they had contact with a male patron, which caused the women with him to react violently. The violence is not inherantly excused, however it's apparently not entirely unprovoked either. Going by the reports, the person being a TG was apparently a factor to those involved, or at least witnessing the incident, it didn't lead
to the inititation of the incident, but apparently aggravated it and probably lead to it's escalation and contributed to the lack of sympathy.
Let me summarize: the victim of this crime had a momentary interaction with a man in the building. And because the victim had the audacity to
talk to another human being and be transgender at the same time, she was brutally beaten.
Explain to me how this is any different than the murder of Emmett Till. He was fourteen years old, talked with a 21 year old white woman in the town of Money, Mississippi and
might have flirted with her. Two local men then kidnapped, tortured, and murdered him, because he made the mistake of looking like he was flirting with a white woman while also being black.
Link, if you need it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
Therumancer said:
Sadly, by definition a society that is fair to everyone in an absolute sense really isn't possible unless you do something like genetically alter everyone within the society to be the same.
(facepalm) You know the Golden Rule? 'Treat others the way you want to be treated'? Here's a part of that I assume you didn't pick up on: it doesn't include an extra line reading, "...unless it's a (insert slur here)." There aren't exceptions to it, and there aren't supposed to be, and it was assumed that society would be just as diverse in the future as it was when the Golden Rule was first created.
Therumancer said:
You have to work with what is there. Overall someone's right to dislike other people and even hate them, is just as important as someone's right to express themselves. Hence my point about tolerance, and how who initiates a confrontation like this being important.
Okay...so? Harboring an arbitrary hatred for a group is something that law can't change. What law
can do is forbid people from acting on said arbitrary hatred, which is the point of virtually any civil rights litigation.
Therumancer said:
Outside of this specific incident, in most places and situations simply bu there being a fight, both people involved are going to be held accountable and punished. Fighting in self defense, as opposed to trying to run away first in of itself makes someone liable.
...what? Jesus, it's like you're reading from a law book that was translated from English to Chinese, then back to English. Because according to what you just said, someone acting in self-defense will be charged by the law
unless they tried to run away before acting.
A man who attacked a mugger who pulled a knife on his girlfriend? Fuck you, that's an assault charge. You should have run around the block first,
then tried to stop the mugger. Maybe by then he'd have also gotten his knife stuck in the girlfriend's corpse, making him that much easier to subdue.
Therumancer said:
In many cases though where the situation is paticularly nasty, there are injuries and/or it's not going to be solved by simply seperating the parties and having them spend a night in a lock up, the issue of who said what, how the people were dressed, whether there were threats made, and of course who inititated first contact, and who threw the first blow can all be incidents.
Well. Didn't see that coming. Apparently you're reading from a twice-translated law book
and a collection of failed defenses against rape allegations.
Therumancer said:
It doesn't apply everywhere but there can be a differance between contact and an attack in certain kinds of incidents. Such as if say a security professional initiates contact by say stepping between someone and an area they can't access (a doorway or access point for example) causing them to run into the security professional, or the holding up of an arm, or presenting a shoulder for similar purposes. This is to differentiate it in court if someone tries to claim that a physical intercession/impedement was a "first strike" and the guy who actually decided to throw a punch was "defending themselves". Of course that's an academic point and has little to do with this incident, and it's a distinction that doesn't nessicarly exist everywhere.
I'm not even entirely sure you're entirely sober at this point. You just told a bizarre hypothetical story about a security guard who was charged with assault because a man sprinted into him on his way to break into a restricted area. And you just spent the rest of the post referring to fictional laws and concepts that mean exactly the opposite of what you suggest they mean.
Actually, it's not even that: you present a fact that actively disproves what you're trying to say, and then proudly declare how it proved you right. Since you like hypotheticals so much, here's one: a scientist claims that humans can breathe under water, so he locks a man in a glass tank and fills it with water. The man subsequently drowns, in plain view, and the scientist turns proudly to the horrified onlookers and declares his hypothesis proven.
