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That’s basically the right wing worldview in a nutshell. “Might makes right. Hierarchy instead of equality. Fuck you, I’ve got mine.”
Misunderstanding. For example it’s embarrassing how long I opposed feminism because I only read extreme scare stories about it, never realizing how much of what I took for granted in relationships between genders was a hard fought victory for feminism and all of us. Then when we had our first child, who were the only people standing up to say my company should have paternity leave? Feminists.
I have a more conservative brother who is very much against affirmative action. However he sees firsthand the results of blindly promoting people to meet diversity goals without regard to ability. Meanwhile I’ve been at companies who pay attention to both, resulting in a much more successful workplace
Or are we going political? Clearly the Palestinian situation is a crime against humanity, but do I oppose human rights by saying that is much more complex and it’s not as simple as Israel just stopping?
Or are we going political?
Not a political issue.
do I oppose human rights by saying that is much more complex and it’s not as simple as Israel just stopping?
Yes. This is a cowardly way of siding with the oppressor and (contrary to the question of this post) indirectly saying one is against not only human rights but also international law, in favor of one’s feelings, or to avoid the inconvenience of acknowledging a wrongdoing and not being moved to rectify it. In the least. Not even with words on an online forum.
There is no neutrality when it comes to human rights, you either support them or you are fine with some people not having them, in which case they are not a right.
Is it complicated for Russia to pull out of Ukraine and respect international law? Is it complicated because they have a historical right to that land? Is it complicated because Russia has the right to self defense against NATO encroachment? Do you condemn NATO? You and I personally, dear commenter, are not enemies by any definition of the word, but if the narrative has one excusing war crimes because “it’s complicated” then the narrative is our enemy. Should Hamas face an international court? Absolutely. Should Israel face an international court? Absolutely. Should all violence stop right this second? Absolutely. Our actions (or lack thereof) decide whether we live in a world of law or a world of brutal autocracy.
Yes. This is a cowardly way of siding with the oppressor and (contrary to the question of this post) indirectly saying one is against not only human rights but also international law, in favor of one’s feelings, or to avoid the inconvenience of acknowledging a wrongdoing and not being moved to rectify it. In the least. Not even with words on an online forum.
The reaching here to get an excuse to virtue signal is absolutely absurd
I doubt anyone you are talking to is opposed to all human rights, that sounds very much like a straw man statement. Reasonable people can disagree about whether any particular right should be protected by law.
The reason is simple: any legally-protected right you have stands in direct opposition to some other right that I could have:
- Your right to free speech is necessarily limited by my right to, among other things, freedom from slander/libel, right to a fair trial, right to free and fair elections, right to not be defrauded, etc.
- Your right to bodily autonomy can conflict with my right to health and safety when there is a global pandemic spreading and you refuse vaccination.
- Your property rights are curtailed by rules against environmental harm, discrimination, insider trading, etc.
No right is ever meant to be or can be absolute, and not all good government policy is based on rights. Turning a policy argument into one about human rights is not generally going to win the other person over, it’s akin to calling someone a racist because of their position on affirmative action. There’s no rational discussion that can be had after that point.
Part of it is disagreement over what should be a right. I have genuinely met people that belive rights like protest, movment, voting, legal rep, should not given they must be earned. So they are pro rights just a very limited list.
Example say “health care is a right” in the usa.
Some people live in dangerous places and believe that treating criminals like human beings is the same as ignoring their crimes. These people believe that human rights should only be for those who deserve it by not harming the “good citizen”.
The ownerclass benefits from people not having protections. I don’t think you can put it any simpler than this. Slaves, child labour, debt cycles, prison labour, forced sex labour, all examples of none-existant or low protections.
Slavery (as an abstract, not necessarily racially motivated) has A LOT of benefits for the owning class.
I’m also vehemently opposed to any and all of it’s forms, just fyi.
They’re a piece of shit human.
religion goes a long way to dehumanizing others, even in the same household
I am a “privileged whitevl guy” who married into a central American refugee family, and I can say there are a lot of people in developing countries that love human rights, but hate when they are applied to specific groups. Because if everyone has nothing, trying to help marginalized groups seems unfair to the majority who is also oppressed.
So if you want to fight femicide, or anti-LGBT discrimination, people not in that group often get angry because they want help too.
I obviously don’t agree, but I understand the viewpoint given their life experiences. What I don’t understand is when I meet Americans/1st world people who express the same sentiments. They need to go fuck themselves in the ass with a rusty spork and die of sepsis.
Only evil people and the ignorant are opposed to human rights.
Because he/she is a psychopath?
Context?
Maybe they’re crazy. Maybe someone said “guy who openly opposes human rights says what?”. Maybe they’re evil. Maybe someone paid them. Maybe they have a rare form of speech impediment or verbal tic. Maybe they speak a language in which that’s just “hello” or something. How is anybody supposed to know without any information?
Theres a lot of different ideas of what human rights should be. Abortion is the easiest example. Its a human right to abort, which to some is murder. In that case, it would make sense to be against to be against human rights, if you believe that right is to murder.
Or from the other perspective, pro life people see Abortion as violating the right to life.
Abortion is self defence, not murder.
Well no. The problem with all the comments here is that they all presuppose that whatever the commenter likes is a human right.
Someone against abortion would not say “I oppose human rights” they would say “abortion is not a human right” and more than likely “abortion violates human rights”.
Maybe your understanding of human rights is different than theirs. Maybe
In addition to the reasons suggested in several of the comments here so far, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben is extremely critical of the concept of human rights since they are a legal and political construct, and the same legal and political systems are used to create ‘exceptional’ circumstances in which the rights are deemed not to apply to certain groups. Relying on these rights is flawed, in his view, since they will be suspended when most needed. The Philosopize This Podcast did an episode on this just recently.
I feel I might have misunderstood something here, as it seems like this argument is ‘Anal sex can’t be pleasurable, because that’s where poop comes from and poop is bad’. Am I understanding his argument correctly?
I have only heard of him through the podcast. I’d suggest listening to that. It’s a great series. Or, of course, his actual books are listed on the wiki page.
However, I think that he is saying that we shouldn’t be relying on something that can be and clearly IS being removed or ignored when inconvenient. Maybe, instead, we should be looking at respecting human life just for itself, without cluttering things up with legal language that doesn’t actually add anything.
Personally, I can see where he is coming from, and seldom think or speak in terms of rights myself for much the same reasons. But, either way, however much ignored or misused it is, I don’t think that we can realistically expect anyone who is likely to create exceptions to human rights to have any innate respect for people otherwise.
Until someone comes up with something better, human rights are about the best way of framing the ideas that we have.
