Once Upon a Time…
Human beings, through millennia of interaction, developed a non-physical tool to facilitate better relationships, foster peace, and allow for trade, proper resource allocation, discovery, and better living standards. Over the centuries, it was given a title of “rights”, based on old English and old Germanic for what was “proper”. The idea wasn’t alien, wasn’t created in a lab, and wasn’t invented by government. It was simply based on mutual respect -- a kind of “mutual hands-off-ness”… You own yourself and your property, and you respect your neighbors’ claim to theirs. In fact, the very concept of “proper-ty” is simply a term equating to “hands-off”, and reinforces the mutual respect that leads to better social interaction. Pretty simple…
But politicians stepped in…
They wrote something called the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was generally regarded as a positive move to make sure states acknowledged the inherent rights of all people (though that’s impossible, since the state can only exist by taking your money in order to pay for the police to “protect” you), for minorities to vote and to be admitted to public, tax-funded buildings. But the politicians also wrote what was called the “Public Accommodations” portion of the act, which ordained that any private property open to commerce was to be seen as “public property”, and had to cater to everyone. Lots of people applauded that, thinking that it was a proper role of the state to punish people for “discriminating against” others, for whatever reason.
But a few warned that it would lead to problems. And now, the problems are coming home to roost. The violation of that bedrock principle of property rights has opened the door to not just religious pastry shop owners being pressured by the state to bake for gay weddings (and the potential that gay chefs would, likewise, have to make cakes for people with whom their principles did not agree), it’s led to this:
In Massachusetts, a man who claims to be a transgender woman cited the 2016 state “Anti-Discrimination” statute SB 2407 as a reason the state Attorney General should attack the owner and employees of a female-oriented beauty salon that refused to, get this…
Give him a “Brazilian Wax”.
If you’re not familiar with the “Brazilian”, as it’s known, here’s the lowdown. It’s a body hair removal procedure that extends “under the belt”, all the way to the genital region.
Ahh, the classy subject matter politicians force upon the masses through collectivism, in this case, through the very idea that the state might police this.
As Matt McDonald reports for The NewBostonPost:
A biological male who identifies as a woman asked the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office to force a female-oriented spa on the South Shore to give him a bikini wax and other beauty services under the state’s gender identity law.
Yep, someone “went there.”
The transgender biological male said in the complaint that he contacted the spa in December seeking hair removal all over his body, including the area around his genitals. The complainant also detailed his troubles with other spas in Braintree and Quincy, including one that ‘said I was not really a woman because I had a penis.'
First, on the practical side of things, let’s spell it out. No matter what a biologically male or female person does to his or her body to make it appear like it is of the opposite gender, a male born a full male will still be a male and a female born that way will still be a female. They will both be their original genders, but will cosmetically appear different. If a man gets silicone put into his chest, has his sex organs removed, and gets hormone and other medical procedures done, he is still a man, just as a man who has lost an arm or had to undergo plastic surgery after a fire might not be physically the same as he began, but he is still a man.
I have two friends who are undergoing sex change procedures. They might appear female in the end, but they are men, and that can’t be changed unless science can change the chromosomes with which they were born. If these men ask me to call them women or women’s names, I will take it on a case-by case basis, merely as a gesture of kindness, but I will stipulate an understanding with them that I know they are not women.
Likewise, as Jordan Peterson said when the government of Canada mandated that all state offices and any businesses “regulated” by the government use pronouns that “gender-different” people preferred, I will not have my speech dictated by the state.
And that principle should hold for all non-state interactions, including business.
Look, we discriminate every day. It’s not necessarily evil. The very act of discrimination means to choose between two or more options. If we don’t discriminate, we die. To dictate to a shop owner that he or she cannot make choices about those with whom they will do business means that politicians also dictate to customers that they must do business with people they don’t like. All market transactions are trades, made through mutual consent. To infringe on that principle is to break all principles of human interaction, from business, to dating, to conversation.
Should a woman be forced to date any man who approaches her if she is on the “dating market”?
Should a town of mostly Jewish people be forced to do business with the one minority skinhead who runs a local shop?
'In general no one wants to work on transgender women,’ the would-be customer wrote in the complaint. ‘… It is really difficult to find a full service spa that will work on transgender women.’
And they have a right not to, just as a lesbian has a right not to date a man. Perhaps we should get the state out of all of it and see what people choose themselves. It’s possible that because these businesses don’t want to go weed-whacking in this man’s shrubbery, they could see a downturn in their business. It’s possible they won’t. We can only see what people value if we allow them to make decisions for themselves.
To use an inelegant phrase, the blade of the state cuts in every direction. Don’t try to wield it, lest you be the one who is cut.
Thankfully, the unnamed man who was prepared to bring suit has withdrawn his action. But the threat of coercion remains until people tell the state that when it comes to policing our social interactions, markets and private property are part of that, and they need to cut it out.