Friday [5]

5.  If you believed the earth were flat ...

... and you were my neighbour, you were not noisy in the wee hours and not too bad during working hours, you didn't indulge in narcotics, having people traipsing to your door from outside through the night although you might have a drink, a ciggy and a puff of whackybacky, but I'd never know ... in other words, there was nothing externally bad going on that was going to wake me through the night ... no violent fights etc. ... then what of your belief in a flat earth?

In other words, as in the video below, let's narrow the issue to your belief system which results in you having taken certain private actions.  To all intents and purposes, to look at, you're just a standard neighbour.  But you call yourself a TERF and that's where the video comes in:

#  TERF by the way is Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.  

#  Said Arkad in the video: "I think it's a poor manoeuvre to adopt the framing of your opposition."

#  Judge, about the TERF:  "Offensive and exclusionary language in tweets."

#  Arkad: "All language is exclusionary - that's how terms are defined."

#  What were some of these radical tweets?  Here's one: "Men cannot change into women."  Or: "They haven't got a womb, where's the foetus going to gestate?"

#  The TERF argued that this was a philosophical belief she held under the 2010 Equality Act.

#  Arkad and host: "The judge did not agree ... it only goes one way, doesn't it?  Always."

At this point, I mention the pastor who stood up in public and quoted from the Bible that it was in fact so that there were only two sexes.  In fact, they marry under God and become "one flesh".  Like wow - radical.  You'll recall a few days ago that he was arrested and charged, his Bible taken away.  He was incarcerated, pending.  Back to the video:

#  The TERF's beliefs, said the judge, "... did not have the protected characteristic of philosophical belief." 

Which of course raises the question of which views do have that characteristic?  All one way, innit?  "I conclude," said the judge, that the TERF, "... is absolutist in her belief set."  

Like that pastor arrested for saying there are men and women and that's that?  Like MTG in DC, who put a sign outside her office at the Capitol that such was the case?

Now, next door in this hypothetical says to me that the earth is flat.  I say it didn't look that way the last time I flew around the world.  My neighbour calls the authorities who arrest and charge me with humiliation of her belief system and in fact, I'm guilty of hate speech, though I urged no action on her over her belief system.  

In the case in the video, the judge said that the TERF's view, "... was not worthy of respect in a democratic society."

I'll just leave it at that, shall I?