That's the question raised in
this New Yorker article about a lake in Florida, which is suing to protect itself.
From the intro:
Lake Mary Jane is shallow—twelve feet deep at most—but she’s well connected. She makes her home in central Florida, in an area that was once given over to wetlands. To the north, she is linked to a marsh, and to the west a canal ties her to Lake Hart. To the south, through more canals, Mary Jane feeds into a chain of lakes that run into Lake Kissimmee, which feeds into Lake Okeechobee. Were Lake Okeechobee not encircled by dikes, the water that flows through Mary Jane would keep pouring south until it glided across the Everglades and out to sea.
Mary Jane has an irregular shape that, on a map, looks a bit like a woman’s head in profile. Where the back of the woman’s head would be, there’s a park fitted out with a playground and picnic tables. Where the face would be, there are scattered houses, with long docks that teeter over the water. People who live along Mary Jane like to go boating and swimming and watch the wildlife. Toward the park side of the lake sits an islet, known as Bird Island, that’s favored by nesting egrets and wood storks.
Like most of the rest of central Florida, Mary Jane is under pressure from development. Orange County, which encompasses the lake, the city of Orlando, and much of Disney World, is one of the fastest-growing counties in Florida, and Florida is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. A development planned for a site just north of Mary Jane would convert nineteen hundred acres of wetlands, pine flatlands, and cypress forest into homes, lawns, and office buildings.
In an effort to protect herself, Mary Jane is suing. The lake has filed a case in Florida state court, together with Lake Hart, the Crosby Island Marsh, and two boggy streams. According to legal papers submitted in February, the development would “adversely impact the lakes and marsh who are parties to this action,” causing injuries that are “concrete, distinct, and palpable.”
A number of animals have preceded Mary Jane to court, including Happy, an elephant who lives at the Bronx Zoo, and Justice, an Appaloosa cross whose owner, in Oregon, neglected him. There have also been several cases brought by entire species; for instance, the palila, a critically endangered bird, successfully sued Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources for allowing feral goats to graze on its last remaining bit of habitat. (The palila “wings its way into federal court in its own right,” Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, wrote in a decision that granted the species relief.)
Still, Mary Jane’s case is a first. Never before has an inanimate slice of nature tried to defend its rights in an American courtroom. Depending on your perspective, the lake’s case is either borderline delusional or way overdue.
“It is long past time to recognize that we are dependent on nature, and the continued destruction of nature needs to stop,” Mari Margil, the executive director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, said in a statement celebrating the lawsuit.
“Your local lake or river could sue you?” the Florida Chamber of Commerce said. “Not on our watch.”
If corporations are people, then lakes are enlightened people.
ReplyDeleteLook at it this way: if a man can identify as a woman and vice versa, why can't a person identify as an inanimate object. Get ready for for the mother of all class actions as trees go after lumber companies.
ReplyDeleteGod gave us this earth to do with what we please. Pound sand Mary Jane.
ReplyDelete@1:39, please leave your transphobia at the door.
ReplyDelete@1:39. You gave me a great idea that will save me money on health insurance. I am 50 and pay oodles of money every month for health insurance. I am now going to "identify" as a 65 year old and go on Medicare. If objective truth mean nothing, why not?
ReplyDelete@2:05, I don't see a phobia, but rather a valid concern.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHLS in action
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was asked by a HuffPost reporter to define “woman,” and replied, “Someone who can give birth to a child, a mother, is a woman. Someone who has a uterus is a woman. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.” When the reporter asked him whether a woman whose uterus was removed via hysterectomy was still a woman, he appeared uncertain: “Yeah. Well, I don’t know, would they?”
@4:15, what's the concern, as you see it?
ReplyDelete@1127 (this is my first post on this string)
ReplyDeleteThe concern is that facts in the legal system are becoming detached from objective reality. "Feeling" a certain way does not make it objectively so. "Feeling" like a woman when you were born with a penis, feeling like a tree when you have two legs and a beating heart, etc. is fine so long as you do not ask the legal system to treat you as such. If you were born with male reproductive organs, you're a man (and if you were born with female reproductive organs, you're a woman). Full stop. These are objective, measurable, realities. "Man" and "woman" are simply the words that we use to describe these basic objective physiological differences. And in our society, and logically following in our legal system, we have organized certain structures around these basic physiological differences. For example, we house men and women in different prisons for the safety of inmates and to control behavior (among other reasons).
Allowing facts to become subjective opens the door to absurd results. One such absurd result is making its way around the news these days with women prisoners getting pregnant from sex with other prisoners in "all women" prisons. https://mynbc15.com/news/nation-world/2-inmates-pregnant-at-all-women-jail-in-nj-after-transgender-prisoners-allowed-in-new-jersey-edna-mahan-correctional-facility-two-women-child-baby-female
Let's be clear, the pregnant inmates had sex with men. Unless these women were artificially inseminated (which does not appear to be the case) only sex between a man and a woman can lead to pregnancy. It is an absurd result that the father(s) are housed in "all women" prisons because they "identify" or "feel" like women.
This is not "transphobia" or any other nonsense word used to insult or attack people that you disagree with. If a man wants to let his hair grow long, wear a dress, and call himself Susan - that's perfectly fine. Let him. I have no problem with that, and neither should anyone else or the law - this is a free country after all (someone tell "don't say gay" DiSantis - he doesn't seem to understand that). But he's still a man; just a man named Sue, in a dress, with long hair. This is objective reality.
@2:04, your discussion alludes to "basic objective physiological differences," and that differing from this renders the narrative "subjective."
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of ways that we are starting to understand that even biological sex may not be as binary as previously believed. For example, 2% of the population are born intersex, or with genitalia that doesn’t fit the male/female binary. This is a massive number — that’s the same amount of green-eyed people worldwide. After decades of intersex babies being subjected to sex reassignment surgeries at birth, intersex activists are now talking about the ethical problems with that practice, especially as it has no health benefits.
Another example: hormones are commonly believed to be deeply tied to biological sex. But we now know through endocrinologists that the levels of so-called ‘sex hormones,’ testosterone and estrogen, also exist on a spectrum, and are present in varying amounts in male and female bodies. Case in point: women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) have high levels of testosterone in their bodies, but are still women.
Plus, a person may have high levels of testosterone merely because their body is not efficient at using the testosterone it produces. To combat this inefficiency, the body simply produces more to ensure proper usage. This does not change one’s sex, nor is there any medically accepted threshold for how much testosterone or estrogen qualifies someone as male or female.
Chromosomes are not binary either. There is a common misconception that XX/XY chromosomes are the only two combinations that exist to denote a male/female binary. But some people are born with XXY and XXX chromosomes too, and these are only two examples of multiple chromosomal variations Intersex individuals, for instance, may have four different types of chromosomal variations. Some intersex individuals with mostly male chromosomes can also carry fetuses to term if they have the anatomy necessary for pregnancy.
So in summary, even biological sex, which most people believe to be binary, is far more complicated than a strict male-female binary. And it is far more fluid then even male/female/intersex.
These are objective facts, not subjective interpretations. The existence of people is not rhetoric, narrative, or subjective. And it is not a debate whether people exist.
"Transphobia" is believing that you have the right to invoke objectivity to tell someone else what they are and to believe that your saying so trumps their own self-identity.