Thread by @WomensLibFront

We’ve been asked our thoughts on fixing the US Equality Act, and have seen some proposals for this. To date, what we’ve seen has been unsatisfactory, as it introduces genderist language into civil rights law.

To use phrases like "transgender people," “transgender status,” or “gender identity,” introduces undefinable categories into civil rights law. There are people who identify as transgender, but the term, as a practical matter, refers to no objective class of person.

We hold that all people should be protected from sex stereotype discrimination on the basis of sex, their actual sex.

All the gender identity related language introduces terms into the law that can only mean either 1) sex stereotype discrimination, or 2) a compulsion to lie in some fashion.

The stereotype discrimination should be dealt with on that basis, with a grounding in material reality and objective fact.

But there should be no right to compel others to lie. The main, original innovation of gender activism is the invention of compelled lying as a “right.”

Terms like “gender identity,” “transgender person,” or “transgender status,” have no reference to any medical condition in modern gender policies or court advocacy. Activists mention medical conditions for sympathy, but the rights claim is made separately.

In fact, gender activists argue that any medical requirements are either unreasonable gatekeeping, or inhumane sterilization. So the old definitions of what it meant to be transsexual have been defined in common law, by gender identity activists, as a human rights violation.

Gender activists used to say that “being transgender” meant being recognized as the opposite sex, but it also doesn't only mean that anymore, nonsense as it is.

All genderist terms write an empty variable, perhaps even a division by zero error, into society's operating system. It demands recognition of falsehoods, of unfalsifiable claims, as a civil right, in contravention of the free speech rights of others.

It’s argued that these gender identity laws must be passed, or some people will commit suicide. It would of course be terrible if anyone were to harm themselves.

But gender identity policies are expressly not tied to any medical condition anymore.

Further, the purpose of civil rights law is not to function as an off-label treatment for severe depression.

It isn’t even clear that it *can* serve that purpose, let alone it having been established that it ought to.

That argument about the need to protect some people from harm, by compelling the whole rest of society to lie, also drafts everyone else into acting as lay mental health practitioners.

We aren’t qualified, even if it had been established that anyone had the right to demand it.

Expanding the use of gender identity language in civil rights discourse is an unraveling of reason, and an imposition on the speech and conscience rights of others.

In our view, we ought not to be promoting it in law.