Trans women aren’t women, and indigenous people aren’t indigenous. But they’re both people. So are white people. So are rich people. Start with that. And if you do, you’ll notice that all people get constipated, and when they’re not they get brown streaks in their underwear. It helps to keep that in mind when you’re fist-pumping against those evil fill-in-the-blanks. It wouldn’t go amiss either to remember that they love their children as much as you love yours.
Some people have rights, but no right is inalienable. Wars and famines take care of that. But if fill-in-the-blank is a right, rich people have as much right to it as poor people.
No two people are the same, and no two people get the same. These two observations have nothing to do with each other. In fact there’s no accounting for what each person gets. But whatever she gets she gives it up when she dies, and then someone else gets it. So by all means grasp, but don’t covet. That’s the only one of the Ten Commandments that’s not entirely vacuous.
Speaking of scripture, if you’re lucky you get your three score years and ten. There is no God to Whom those years are precious. There’s only you. So enjoy them. And, if you’re lucky, there’s your fun ones, in which case enjoy those years together.
Sugar and fat and salt taste good because for most of your evolutionary history they were both good for you and hard to come by. In much of the world they still are. But not where you live. Don’t think of it as a diet, any more than you think of not raping as contra natura. Just think of yourself as a different species, one that neither gorges nor rapes.
Max Ehrmann entitled his version of this the “Desiderata”. His and mine both say pretty much the same things, but mine is more poetic.
Categories: Angst
Paulosophical Vimplications 
The Canadian Human Rights Act, section 3, states:
“Prohibited grounds of discrimination
3 (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are , ……, gender identity or expression, …………”
Therefore, while a trans woman may not be a woman to an ardent feminist or to a dictionary writer or in common parlance, the self-identified trans woman has the same rights of gender identity and expression as every other woman because Parliament has said so.
Similarly, indigenous people, even a small group, acquire legal rights such as to halt construction of a pipeline. These rights can be de facto (illegal blockades about which the authorities do nothing) or de jure (through legislation such as Bill C-15, introduced in Parliament December 3).
So what’s in a name, as Shakespeare asked about a rose? Well, not much, if you are given new identity-based rights.
The problem with rights is that they are nice to have, so everyone wants more of them. Doling them out like Halloween candy when the kids say “trick or rights” makes governments popular. So the kids keep asking and the government keeps on doling them out. Issuing more rights than people can peaceably exercise is like printing more dollars than the economy can support.
Rights inflation, through creating overlapping and contradictory rights, weakens all rights and ensures rights disputes. That’s a good thing, because it keeps lawyers and judges busy, and out of the taverns.
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White people aren’t white; rich men are just little boys. Say, why is it again that human authored evils elicit a different kind of outrage than what the lion does in the village? I ask because this outrage still occurs despite what Descartes may correctly observe (i.e., that no one commits evil believing it is evil).
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