I have a friend who plays the game Splatoon 2 quite a lot on the Nintendo Switch. This is an online multiplayer game, and one feature of this game is that people can draw a picture on their profile. This picture will be shown if you look at that player's profile in the game, and also in the sort of "lobby" of the game when you approach the character of that player.
This should immediately ring alarm bells in anybody, and it's quite strange that Nintendo decided to include such a feature. Players can draw whatever they want there, and stopping abuse only causes a lot of moderation work for Nintendo. Why would they willingly make their own life harder, and potentially upset people? But I digress.
Needless to say, while some people go through the trouble of drawing sometimes quite intricate pictures, most of the time this picture box is used for short messages. The vast majority of these messages that I have seen while my friend is playing the game are rather innocuous. Some of them are funny.
But then, of course, there are the political messages. Especially and by far most commonly identity politics messages.
I hate real-life politics, especially identity politics, being shoved into a video game (or any other piece of fiction) that has absolutely nothing to do with it. It makes me detest the game and not even want to ever purchase or play it. In this case, it's not even Nintendo's fault. It's not them who are shoving these political messages. It's their users. But that makes little difference. (Although one could argue that Nintendo is at least in part guilty of this because they are allowing those messages to be displayed. Surely they have some kind of moderation system in place to stop abuse, and these moderators are allowing those messages to be shown in their game. Thus, in this sense, Nintendo is not completely free of blame here.)
Anyway, after this quite long intro, I can finally segue to the actual point of this post: One example of such a political message that I saw recently was "trans rights = human rights".
That got me thinking: What exactly are these "trans rights" that they are advocating? I mean, seriously. What are they? What are these rights that, seemingly, "trans" people do not have that others people do?
In most countries people have constitutional rights. These rights are universal and apply to all citizens equally (which is the fundamental idea of a Constitution). Constitutional rights are based on human rights. Constitutional rights are the same for everybody, so it cannot be said that "trans" people have somehow less rights than other people.
Look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Is there something there that excludes "trans" people? Is there something there that discriminates against them? Once again, these rights are universal, ie. they apply to everybody equally. Nobody is excluded. The idea that some rights apply to only to some people goes against the very principle of the document. (One could, perhaps, make the case that citizens have different rights than non-citizens, and this is a genuine difference in rights. However, this is quite different from this alleged lack of "trans" rights, whatever those might be.)
Are laws different for "trans" people than they are for the rest? In many Islamic countries perhaps yes, but in general not in the west. These activists are not complaining about the human rights violations in Islamic countries. They are complaining about these rights in the west. Yet I can't think of any law that gives less rights to "trans" people than it does to other people, making that distinction.
So what exactly are these "trans rights" they are talking about? What exactly are the "rights" that they don't have, that everybody else does?
The fact is, it's not actually any "rights" they are advocating and fighting for. It's special privileges, which is a rather different thing. They want privileges that go above and beyond what the majority of people have. They want special protection. They want to be a "protected class", with legal protections that other people don't have.
When they say "trans rights", what they really mean is "special trans privileges". They want more than just equal rights (because they already have equal rights). They want special treatment. They want the law and society to change in order to give them a special status. They are not content in just being treated the same as everybody else.
I think that, in a sense, "trans rights" itself, as a term, reflects this. The qualifier itself denotes that these are special "rights", not just universal rights that apply to everybody equally. They don't want just "rights". They want "trans rights", which are different, and specially crafted for them. "Rights" that benefit them especially. In other words, privileges.
This should immediately ring alarm bells in anybody, and it's quite strange that Nintendo decided to include such a feature. Players can draw whatever they want there, and stopping abuse only causes a lot of moderation work for Nintendo. Why would they willingly make their own life harder, and potentially upset people? But I digress.
Needless to say, while some people go through the trouble of drawing sometimes quite intricate pictures, most of the time this picture box is used for short messages. The vast majority of these messages that I have seen while my friend is playing the game are rather innocuous. Some of them are funny.
But then, of course, there are the political messages. Especially and by far most commonly identity politics messages.
I hate real-life politics, especially identity politics, being shoved into a video game (or any other piece of fiction) that has absolutely nothing to do with it. It makes me detest the game and not even want to ever purchase or play it. In this case, it's not even Nintendo's fault. It's not them who are shoving these political messages. It's their users. But that makes little difference. (Although one could argue that Nintendo is at least in part guilty of this because they are allowing those messages to be displayed. Surely they have some kind of moderation system in place to stop abuse, and these moderators are allowing those messages to be shown in their game. Thus, in this sense, Nintendo is not completely free of blame here.)
Anyway, after this quite long intro, I can finally segue to the actual point of this post: One example of such a political message that I saw recently was "trans rights = human rights".
That got me thinking: What exactly are these "trans rights" that they are advocating? I mean, seriously. What are they? What are these rights that, seemingly, "trans" people do not have that others people do?
In most countries people have constitutional rights. These rights are universal and apply to all citizens equally (which is the fundamental idea of a Constitution). Constitutional rights are based on human rights. Constitutional rights are the same for everybody, so it cannot be said that "trans" people have somehow less rights than other people.
Look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Is there something there that excludes "trans" people? Is there something there that discriminates against them? Once again, these rights are universal, ie. they apply to everybody equally. Nobody is excluded. The idea that some rights apply to only to some people goes against the very principle of the document. (One could, perhaps, make the case that citizens have different rights than non-citizens, and this is a genuine difference in rights. However, this is quite different from this alleged lack of "trans" rights, whatever those might be.)
Are laws different for "trans" people than they are for the rest? In many Islamic countries perhaps yes, but in general not in the west. These activists are not complaining about the human rights violations in Islamic countries. They are complaining about these rights in the west. Yet I can't think of any law that gives less rights to "trans" people than it does to other people, making that distinction.
So what exactly are these "trans rights" they are talking about? What exactly are the "rights" that they don't have, that everybody else does?
The fact is, it's not actually any "rights" they are advocating and fighting for. It's special privileges, which is a rather different thing. They want privileges that go above and beyond what the majority of people have. They want special protection. They want to be a "protected class", with legal protections that other people don't have.
When they say "trans rights", what they really mean is "special trans privileges". They want more than just equal rights (because they already have equal rights). They want special treatment. They want the law and society to change in order to give them a special status. They are not content in just being treated the same as everybody else.
I think that, in a sense, "trans rights" itself, as a term, reflects this. The qualifier itself denotes that these are special "rights", not just universal rights that apply to everybody equally. They don't want just "rights". They want "trans rights", which are different, and specially crafted for them. "Rights" that benefit them especially. In other words, privileges.
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