I am interested in debating regular people, on comment sections in various blogs and threads. Over time, I’ve encountered various arguments that conservatives make on various issues.
I’ve decided it’s important to make a database of these arguments so that any liberal who faces these popular questions and issues on the subject, can easily reference them.
To that end, I address issues that conservatives pose. I also wanted to crowdsource, to you guys, to see if you had anything else interesting to add. Any arguments that you felt worked well, or questions that conservatives posed that you didn’t have an answer to.
Here I debate Transgender rights.
* Sex is different from Gender
- I see people confusing this all the time. Sex refers to the genitalia and secondary characteristics that you have. This is more or less set in stone. Gender is how you perceive yourself- as a male or female.
- People who don’t understand genetics argue that genetics determines sex (basically they are talking about the X and Y chromosome as the definitive sign of who is a man and who is a woman. Of course gender identity is different from sex, but even their point about the X and Y chromosome, when we bring up the example of 5-alpha reductase deficiency. In these children, they present with an XY (male) chromosomes, but outwardly a lot of them appear female. Some have ambiguous genitalia that appear as both male and female. Interestingly, when the family decides to choose one set of genitalia and raise the child with a particular gender, 50% of the children, choose to switch their gender during adolescence. This is clear evidence that the outward appearance of genitalia, or the way the child is raised, does not influence gender identity. Thus, gender is different from sex.
* Most of America’s doctors support transgender rights. - A link to American Medical Association (the largest association of doctors in the United States and their official support for the transgender community:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/abo...?-A link to American Psychological Association with 117,500 psychologists, and their support of transgender rights:
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/programs...-A link to American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest group of Pediatricians in the United States and their support for transgender rights.
https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the...- The argument here is that the smartest people, who understand the subjects of genetics, medicine, biology and psychology are on the side of the transgender community. The question for the conservative is: are you smarter than all of these people? Are you going to ignore what America’s doctors have to say?- If they choose to ignore the judgement of America’s doctor on this topic, it is rank hypocrisy for them to turn around and pay money for the judgement of doctors on their own health. I demand that everyone who calls America’s doctors wrong, fools, or liars, on this issue to acknowledge that they will never go to a doctor again. They need to put their money where their mouth is.
* Conservatives argue that transgender people are only .3% of the population, and thus shouldn’t be accommodated. -The U.S. Constitution protects minorities rights from the majority. Every person has the right to stand trial, even if every other person in the country votes to send you to jail. Furthermore, during the Jim Crow Era, the majority of whites voted for laws that discriminated against the minority blacks. By this logic, you support Jim Crow Laws.
* Conservatives say that they don’t have a problem with transgender people, they care about the predators who pretend to be transgender in order to molest girls.
-Of all the arguments, I sympathize with this the most. But it also rings false to me- if you really cared about predators molesting children, then why are you just concerned about the girls? Predators dressed as straight men can enter a men’s bathroom and molest young boys. Do you not care about young boys? - Using the conservative logic on ‘gun-free zones’: They (on the one hand) argue that 'gun free zones' are ineffective because "bad guys don't obey signs." So, (on the other hand) why would anyone think predators will be stopped by a bathroom sign? The counterpoint is, gender neutral restrooms neither encourage nor deter creeps.
-This sort of conservative argument is used to make it appear that THEIR side is the side with the victims. They know that Americans get turned off when people start taking away rights for other Americans, so they need to make this argument to make it palatable to the American people. Hence, it’s the most dangerous argument and the one that needs to be addressed directly.