Aug. 10, 2016 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
06:16
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unidentified
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| Talking about trans issues is one of the most polarizing conversations you can have these days, | ||
| and in many cases, if not most cases, people seem to barely know what they're talking about. | ||
| To be clear for today, I'm going to be talking about transgender people, not Transformers. | ||
| While they're both more than meets the eye, I'm not here to talk about Autobots and Decepticons, so let's discuss transgender people and the entire whirlwind debate around their very existence. | ||
| What comes to mind immediately when you mention trans issues is the North Carolina law that was the outrage of the month when Republican Governor Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2, putting into policy a statewide plan to ban individuals from using public bathrooms that did not correspond to their biological sex. | ||
| Immediately, the media went bonkers and McCrory and basically the whole state of North Carolina were labeled transphobic bigots, which of course was followed by the usual feeding frenzy of partisan hackery. | ||
| The narrative quickly became either you want creepy adult men to be able to be in a woman's bathroom with a little girl, or you hate trans people. | ||
| Maroon 5, Demi Lovato, Bruce Springsteen, and other entertainers canceled concerts in North Carolina, and the NBA even pulled the All-Star Game, scheduled in 2017, out of the state. | ||
| So let's back up here for just a second. | ||
| First off, transgender people are an absurdly tiny minority within the country and the world. | ||
| This doesn't mean they should be ignored, but the virtue signaling coming from celebrities and pundits was totally overblown. | ||
| Why should all of the people of North Carolina be punished for the actions of their governor? | ||
| Yeah, they voted him in, but should every politician's decision decide how a whole state full of individual people is treated? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| How many of the people who were part of the outrage machine even know a transgender person or have volunteered at an LGBT center or donated to their cause? | ||
| I'm guessing very few, but showing outrage instead of actually helping people in a constructive way is apparently how you demonstrate how good of a person you are in 2016. | ||
| So let's unpack exactly what happened in North Carolina for just a second. | ||
| First off, trans people have been using whichever bathroom they see fit in North Carolina and every other state for as long as they've existed. | ||
| And as far as I know, there hasn't been a widespread problem relating to them going into the bathroom of their choice. | ||
| And if there has been a problem, it probably has been violence directed at At the trans person themselves, not the other way around. | ||
| So in effect, the Republican House and Senate of North Carolina decided to pass a law to stop a presumed issue where there was no ample evidence of a problem in the first place. | ||
| In short, it seemed more about moralizing about the existence of transgender people than passing a law which really needed to be passed. | ||
| And by the way, aren't Republicans supposed to be for individual liberty and small government? | ||
| Well, creating laws about bathrooms doesn't seem to be in line with limited government thinking at any level whatsoever. | ||
| Now don't worry, I'm not gonna let the Democrats get off the hook here either. | ||
| In response to this misguided law, President Obama issued a federal directive On how public schools should deal with transgender kids' use of the bathroom, saying that kids should be allowed to go into whichever bathroom they see fit. | ||
| I believe Obama's actions were well-intentioned and the president was trying to protect this tiny minority of transgender students, but his response, in effect, was another power grab by the federal government. | ||
| Actually, it could be argued that this directive by Obama is a direct violation of the 10th Amendment, which states that any power not specifically delegated to the federal government in the Constitution goes back to the states. | ||
| Ultimately, this case, in which Republicans made an issue where no issue existed, allowed a Democratic president to take power away from the local state government and put it in the hands of the Fed. | ||
| Long story short, this is a perfect, just a perfect example of how dysfunctional our political system has become. | ||
| I should back up here for just a second and actually address trans people instead of making this all about the government. | ||
| From the trans people that I know to everything I've read and heard about them, trans people seem to just want to live the most authentic life they can, pretty much just like the rest of us. | ||
| Imagine for one moment that you weren't born into the body corresponding with the sex that you felt that you were. | ||
| None of us who aren't going through this horrific and truly existentially conflicting experience can have any clue what this is like. | ||
| That in and of itself is enough for me as a liberal to have compassion for trans people and want to help them in their struggle for the same dignity that we all want. | ||
| Of course, a libertarian who might not care about trans people one way or another could come to the exact same conclusion by arguing that the government has no right to dictate which bathroom a person goes into. | ||
| This, like with gay marriage and legalizing marijuana, is another in the long line of issues where I see a new political center aligning. | ||
| People who want to do good by their fellow man, coupled with people who want to reign in the power of the government, are coming to the same conclusions based on respect of the individual, and that's an incredibly beautiful thing. | ||
| I believe this new coalition of people coming together despite political differences is exactly what could be the antidote for our obviously broken political system. | ||
| My guest this week is Blair White, a YouTube personality who, yeah, so happens to be trans, and she's also a men's rights activist. | ||
| Adding MRA to the equation really flips the oppression Olympics on its head, and you guys know I'm all about that. | ||
| I'm looking forward to having a wide-ranging conversation with Blair about her own personal journey, the battle for equality, her unique position on men's rights as someone who was assigned male at birth but now identifies as a woman, and much more. | ||
| I doubt she'll have all the answers. | ||
| I certainly know that I won't have all of them. |
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