So imagine conservatives are out there telling each other:
First they gave women rights, and I did nothing.
Then they gave black people rights, and I did nothing.
Then Obama gave consenting adults the right to get married, and I did nothing.
Then Hillary gave trans people rights, and I did nothing.
Then QAnon told me I needed to act—and there was no one left to bully.
After trans people, who's next on the basic human right's agenda?
Disabled people. The treatment of disabled people in the US is nightmarish. Brutally enforced poverty, medical neglect, mobility is impossible, housing is extremely difficult, social isolation is a huge problem. It goes on and on.
2023 convo...
Mrs. Chud: "Disabled people don't matter. Maybe it would be better if they were all dead."
Mr. Liberal: "What a terrible thing to say! Disabled people deserve the same rights as anybody else!"
Leftist: "Mr. Liberal, what's your plan? What should the dems plan be to stop the GOP fascists."
Mr. Liberal - very earnestly: "Vote."
2024 - It's after the elections where the GOP won everything and we're going to get GOP President Ghoul.
President-elect Ghoul: "Disabled people don't matter. It's better if they were all dead."
Leftist: "Who could have seen this coming."
Mr. Liberal - very earnestly: "People didn't vote hard enough! Damn you Susan Sarandon!"
Equally possible that the Liberal will be scared into line by the prospect of a 0.5% tax hike to pay for humane benefits and rights for disabled people.
He might feel guilty about it though. However, he's been thinking about inflation and he's been looking at his 401k and a 0.5% tax hike could be surprisingly detrimental.
It must be because those Bernard brethren did not vooooot for an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself.
I’ve seen a lot of anarchists make good points about children needing more rights
Yeah kids need to know and have bodily autonomy. The US is the only country that hasn't signed on to the UN's rights of the child. And there's still probably a lot of pedos to kill.
Oh and alcohol tobacco and the :vote: should be younger. Age based prohibition is one of the biggest reasons behind America's shitty culture on substance abuse. And for voting, I was pretty sure at 16 that I had a better political grounding than any of the "adults" around and, now, while I'm definitely sure 16 year old me had a somewhat simplistic view of the world compared to current me, I also know they were a lot better at math than me so they may have been smarter because there have been like five untreated concussions since then, thanks, sport-pushing parents.
As long as kids are provided with a good political education I don't see any strong argument against letting sixteen year olds vote.
Traffic deaths went down when the drinking age went up. Maybe that's more a problem of car-dependent culture, but it's something to consider.
I guess the weird thing is having these things be set to a different age than adulthood, like the separation of drinking from other 'responsibilities' (not the right word but you know what I mean) is off, either your mature enough or not I guess is my mostly uninformed opinion.
Yeah, maybe move everything up to 25, supposed to be when the brain is actually fully developed, less impulsive. But that would hurt the prison and military industrial complex, gun sales, cig and booze sales, etc
Not OP but until they respond, I've seen it primarily revolve around how children basically have no rights and are at the will of their parents, regardless of how good/shitty the parent is. Children have zero bodily autonomy. A Christian Scientist parent can refuse a child's medical care or religious grounds with zero say from the child.
Additionally, children can be forced into conversion therapy, abused, put to work, etc and so much of it comes down to "my child, my decision".
That being said, I've also seen a lot of children not wanting to do their homework. Public school system is fucked up, but do your damn homework.
Apparently all the research shows that homework is counter-productive and doesn't really help kids with learning or retention. I'm told all the teachers and pedagogy groups are against it but there's so much institutional pressure to continue the practice that it just keeps chugging along.
Interesting.
I'm not entirely pro-homework, its more or less a sly at actual children.
Mathematics I think benefits from the repetition. I don't think fill-in-the-blanks history homework ever helped anyone.
Yeah, math takes practice. Personally I think gamification is the way to go for math practice. Kids won't do homework for shit but I bet if you offered fortnite bux and interesting math problems they'd go for it.
There are a ton of better ways to teach kids. The school system overall actively drains any passion a kid could have for learning.
The purpose of public education is to socialize you and train you as a worker.
The education system will not teach you to think but to obey. You do not learn about nutrition, the philosophy of math, Euclidean geometry from a rigorous perspective. They claim that none of this is useful to most people, but these are the kinds of things that make you informed and able to think critically.
At this point, other commenters have elaborated better than I could have, haha.
Limited liberal rights aren't even basic human rights, so I'd push back on even considering any of those other examples as being something that's done.
To be honest, I think liberals will say they're done, there are no more frontiers, they did it and you should thank them for it.
In reality, it's all of the same frontiers we've been organizing around forever. I would personally say that I'd want to see a left-driven anti-imperialist push, since liberals don't consider most people overseas to have human rights like not getting murdered through bombings and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. But I don't think liberals can actually concede on that domain. To concede on it you'd have to stop being liberal, it's a direct threat to the entire economic model of the West and propaganda would be turned up to 11.
They say it all the time: "trans people are mentally ill!" The next logical step is to go after those with mental health issues (or at least, mental health issues as defined by the fascists).
"trans people are mentally ill" was always such an upsetting framing device.
Like, Im definitely both of those things but why does being "mentally ill" mean I have to repress everything so nobody gets offended by someone who dares act differently?
Children. Prisoners. Ex-cons. In terms of bullied by conservatives, Atheists too. Hell, communists.
Still a lot of ground to cover for women and minorities and queer rights too.
there are a long list of people to support at the same time as our trans comrades.
Disabled and ND people come to mind. The State can still seize even more from you the moment you are diagnosed with certain medical conditions, including the right to gun ownership.
And of course the ongoing fight for women’s liberation. Viewing basic human rights as something we “win” one category at a time though is a bit idealistic though. Need to be careful and remember chuds will always be working to roll out wins back
Assuming progress was actually being made and we weren't sprinting towards a fascist theocracy, probably ammending marriage laws to allow for legally recognized polyamory?
well it's the current civil rights struggle, I'm just asking who's next.
I feel like we never actually did civil rights for black people
Everyone kind of remembers that happening but like did it?
civil rights, as being nominally equal before the law, definitely happened. it's just that civil rights are a very minor part of actually enjoying human rights.
for example, women in East Germany did not only have free access to abortions, they also had maternal leave and free access to daycare shelters (often purposefully built right next to their workplace if they had industrial jobs). whether they wanted a child or not was actually their free decision, as they did not have to worry about who takes care of the child and who brings home the money to feed them. that was taken care of. you didn't need a man, you could be a single mom without constantly having to struggle and to worry, as jobs were secure and payed a living wage. and if you still didn't want the baby in spite of that, if you just didn't want to be a mother, that was your choice. but it was a choice you didn't have to make simply because you didn't know how to make ends meet for your child. there was no economic necessity for poor women to abort their child, because that level of poverty had been eradicated. that is what women having autonomy over their own body looks like.
IDK, furries?
Every few months some state legislator or school board member gets mad about a chain email they read saying schools are adding litterboxes for children who identify as cats to shit in.
the homeless, the healthless, prisoners, pop stars in conservatorships
edit: and people who are in huge debt (medical, school, credit card, home mortgage). and undocumented people, just give them citizenship and open the borders idgaf
weird people. not neurodivergent people, just neurotypical people that are kinda strange. i think they deserve rights.
weird people. not neurodivergent people, just neurotypical people that are kinda strange. i think they deserve rights.
explain how they don't? lol
people call them weird. i think they should have the right to be weird
after? you're mighty optimistic. there are a lot of comrades fighting for societal recognition of their basic humanity that don't have much traction currently - disability justice comes to mind.
also rights discourse sucks. society doesn't give anyone "rights". demands for recognition are made collectively through struggle and eventually society is forced to stop mistreating people, in some contexts, sometimes. what even are "trans rights"? the right to receive basic medical care? the right to be treated as one wishes? the right to not be brutally attacked or murdered? these aren't rights - they're just recognition of the shared humanity of people different from the so-called norm.
disability justice comes to mind.
The average Epic G*mer sees accessibility options in their treats as some affront that supposedly costs too much developer time and resources. With that in mind as a tiny microcosm part of larger society, I doubt the disabled will get anything good in the forseeable future.
who cares? either society will be forced to recognize the disabled as people or the disabled will have to fight society until it relents. there was never any middle ground and the culture war is basically irrelevant. it doesn't matter what gamers want because gamers don't wield any real power. they're just consumers demanding treats.
My point was that it was a smaller example of a larger society-wide issue. Disabled people's concerns are seen as inconvenient, or worse, for other people to even acknowledge.
