Whether you have a place
The BBC a couple of weeks ago:
Twelve months into her gender transition, Grace McKenzie was recruited out of the blue to join the Golden Gate Women’s rugby club in San Francisco.
Cue Rebecca Solnit to remind us how awesome and accepting San Francisco is.
McKenzie says playing rugby has given her a platform to “just focus on living and enjoying myself” – but a new proposal to ban trans women from women’s contact rugby could bring that to an end.
Because, oddly enough, women’s safety and right to fair competition is more important than one trans woman’s “platform to enjoy herself.”
“There’s a lot of rhetoric out there about where trans people fit into sports overall, and it really makes you question whether you have a place, especially as a trans woman playing women’s sports,” McKenzie told BBC Sport.
That’s because men are a danger to women in rugby and so should not play on women’s teams. It’s also because letting men play on women’s teams results in unfair competition. Women’s sport is for women, it’s not for giving men the happy. Men can get the happy in other ways.
“I think the fear of losing rugby as a community and supportive space has been weighing on me quite heavily,” said McKenzie. “There isn’t a moment I don’t worry about losing that access.”
Apparently the safety of the women on the team hasn’t been weighing on McKenzie at all. He worries about his access to the women’s team, but not about the women’s access to the women’s team. Let’s not forget that his presence on the team means there’s a woman who missed out. What about her access? Not his problem, apparently.
“I worry that other sporting federations will look at World Rugby and begin to second-guess the existing science that supports trans women’s inclusion in sport, and begin to make policies based out of a place of fear instead of a place of logic and reason,” said McKenzie.
What “existing science” would that be? Anyway the issue isn’t inclusion of trans women in sport, it’s inclusion of trans women in women’s sport. What is the logic and reason that concludes it’s a good idea to add men who identify as women in women’s sports?
“I would ask them to think about what it would be like to have something that you love, cared about and that brought meaning and happiness into your life taken away from you, and you had been told that that you weren’t able to access that based on who you are as a person,” said McKenzie.
Says the guy who is blithely ignoring the woman he is displacing. What if she loved it and cared about it and it brought meaning and happiness into her life? Where is McKenzie’s empathy for her?
The opinion of a handful of woke scientists, of course. Like PZ.
This is something we all face at various times in our lives. When my grandmother died, the only person I felt actually loved me. I lost an anchor, something that made me feel good. When my husband walked out. That took a long time to resolve, because he took everything with him, including things that belonged to me before we were married, and including my son.
Grow up. Learn what it means to be human, and live with other humans. You will have things taken away from you, probably more than you like. I had a job taken away from me, a job that meant tons to me, a job where I was doing good in the world, restoring wetlands, helping keep water quality for people. I had it taken away from me because I was a woman and the place didn’t hire women except as temps and interns. So yeah. I can imagine that. Actually, I don’t have to imagine that, I can remember that.
I am so sick of these fragile flowers who are unable to handle being a human living in a world of other humans, and who definitely are not able to cope with what it means to be a woman – to be rejected, to be told no, to be told to smile, make a sandwich, sit down and shut up. Just try actually being a woman for a change, Mr. McKenzie. You wouldn’t last an hour.
It’s easy to make a complaint to the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint
A complaint in this case might focus on the lack of balance in the report. The clip presents World Rugby’s deliberations as capricious reaction to a “moral panic” rather than as the considered response to risks of serious injury. No serious attempt was made to present an alternative view. Ms Mackenzie’s comparison to apartheid is emotive but specious, as there seems to be nothing stopping her playing in a team with other people observed to be male at birth. But it’s all too easy to imagine people nodding along with the obvious reasonableness of her unchallenged arguments.
I thought the production quality was awful, by the way.
Well no amount of crocodile tears are convincing me that “who you are” is remotely relevant to safety and competition. It’s “what you are” that’s the key factor.
Lie detected. No, there is no debate about whether trans people can be permitted into sports in general, the only debate is about whether male people get to enter the leagues set aside for the female sex. A small number of males are trying to do so by attempting to redefine themselves as female, mostly via word games, and we are arguing against that specific thing.
Notably, we aren’t arguing against trans men entering from female to male leagues, making it even more dishonest to claim that this is a general anti-trans stance.
Aha, this is more like it. I pity it was prefaced by the dishonesty note above, but yes, this is alllllllll about trans women entering women’s sports. Because trans women are male, and women’s sports are for females. Calling yourself a woman, even a special male kind of woman, is not acceptable.
And back to lying. No, we are not pushing trans people out of the sport entirely, just the female league. Feel free to enter the male side of rugby.
Qualification will be drastically more difficult however, being that that league is full of males. Welcome to competition on equal terms!
There’s the same lie for a third time. No, this is not a pushback against trans people entering sport entirely, it is a pushback against males entering leagues set aside for the female sex.
Fuck off with that guilt trip. Enter rugby’s male league, and the opposition goes away.
Holms: ‘Enter rugby’s male league, and the opposition goes away.’
Well, if we are talking about Rugby League, I recommend playing for Wigan, ‘the dirtiest team in world sport’ – you can find a Youtube entitled that; it is one perpetual brawl.
McKenzie is a well-chosen case, because unlike many examples, the athlete in question is not problematic in terms of size/strength/speed in women’s rugby. Kelly Morgan (Wales) is a forward, and has ludicrous advantages having played as a forward in men’s rugby at a decent level. Logically enough, McKenzie is being put forward as the ‘face’ of criticism to this initiative on the part of World Rugby. The simple fact of the matter is that no one truly cares that much if someone like McKenzie plays rec league rugby in San Francisco, but a rule that allows that has the potential to destroy women’s rugby, which has seen such impressive growth over the past 15 years.