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Sunday, July 29, 2012

There's no such thing as women's rights

Or gay rights, religious rights, disability rights, or any other sub-group. If rights mean anything they have to be universal. From a legal, democratic, moral perspective, rights are worthless if they come with caveats that they only apply to a subset of humanity. If you want something to apply to your group and no other, that's a privilege, and that's not protected, and if you complain that you can't get your privileges, you will sound like a whiny spoilt brat.

In other words, a free and open society gives everyone the right to be a member of a religion, if they choose, the freedom to marry who they choose, they freedom to dress as they choose without fear of rape, or imprisonment, the freedom to protest, the freedom from persecution and bullying and discrimination, the right of a child to a safe, stable family home, whatever form that takes, and whatever you believe, others have the right to speak out against those beliefs.

I understand why different groups exist for women's rights and gay rights and every other subset, because there are different battles to be fought to achieve universal rights, but those who forget those rights are universal, particularly those who call out others for infringing on their rights, do themselves, and humanity, a gross disservice.

I have always tried to judge others purely on their actions. It has not been easy, given the background noise in society that wants to create tribal groups of "them" and "us" but I have never seen a reliable discriminator between the two groups, so I can only judge on what I see, and put most of humanity in a group that I don't know enough about to judge.

Human rights are not an obstacle to be worked around, they're not an imposition from disconnected bureaucrats or lawyers (or gods), and they must apply universally, regardless of background, genetics or geography, and can only be restricted by actions enshrined within the declaration of human rights, namely by an open court of law, in a free and fair trial.

What about "your" human rights? They are exactly the same as everyone else's. That’s how basic humanity works.