Zap!

[dreamer_easy]

Some memes have been floating around asking people to support "gay rights" in their LJs. I think that's a bit vague, so I'd like to suggest a thought experiment, especially for anyone who's not too sure about this whole "gay rights" thing anyway.

I think gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folks should have the same rights as I do. So the thought experiment's easy: just imagine I've been hit with a mad scientist's ray and I've suddenly been turned into a man. I should still have the same rights as I did five minutes before the ray hit me: not to get fired because I fancy men; to be married to Jon; to adopt kids; to have IVF; and so on.

Now since I'm in Australia, zapped-man-me would already have a lot of those rights, and he would also have them in the UK. In the US, though, male-me would not be able to take family leave to look after Jon, or get Social Security benefits if he died. In most states, either of us could legally be fired. If his health plan happened to covered male-me, we'd be taxed on it. And so on and so forth. Then again, if I did get zapped into a man, Jon couldn't bring me to the US anyway.

Now let's zap me back into a woman. Suddenly I have all my rights back, and the only thing that's different is what sex I am. Suddenly - to me anyway, I don't know if you agree - it's obvious that discrimination against queers is discrimination on the basis of gender, no different to being allowed to fire a woman for getting married, or pregnant.

Your comments on this thought experiment welcome!

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

...Which just begs the question "what do you mean by equality?" It also allows people to just say "yeah, I agree with that" and pass on by, without actually bothering to think about how the slogan applies to *any* specific problem of inequality.

I really don't see how dotting these vague slogans about does anybody any good. They're just noise and distraction.