How to border and police

Juliet Jacques at Newsweek assures us that no male person would ever pretend to be trans just to win at his chosen sport:

As a transsexual woman and fervent soccer player (and fan), the idea that someone would transition just to succeed in women’s sports because they couldn’t do so in men’s sports is absurd.

Not as any kind of writer though. Writers understand that you have to keep your subjects and verbs straight throughout the whole sentence. There should have been an “I find” before “the idea,” and the “is” before the last word should be gone. Then the whole thing should be re-worked because that second clause is too clumsy.

ANYway – like hell it’s absurd. Is it simply obvious that “Rachel” McKinnon is what he says he is? “Laurel” Hubbard? Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood?

It may be true that some male athletes who identify as women really are serious about it and not at all consciously cheating; it may be true that all of them are (though not likely); the point however is that it’s not self-evident that they all are, and that even if they are serious about how they identify, it’s still not fair to female people. Both of those are true. We don’t know that zero males who claim to be trans do it in order to win, and it’s not fair to female athletes in any case. The unfairness of keeping male-bodied people out of female sports is trivial compared to the unfairness of ruining female sports for females. I think male-bodied people should just recognize that and back off.

It does female athletes a massive disservice, assuming the inherent inferiority of any cis woman to any trans woman or cis man.

Because he really cares about that. Give me a break. Anyway yes, humans are sexually dimorphic and males do have a long list of physical advantages. It would be nice if it were otherwise, but it isn’t.

[T]he particular issue of transgender athletes has occupied sports leagues for only about 40 years, ever since the U.S. Tennis Association barred transsexual player Renée Richards from the U.S. Open in 1976, citing a hitherto unprecedented woman-at-birth policy. They borrowed this terminology from second-wave feminist circles, which were then embroiled in fierce debates about whether to allow transsexual women into women-only spaces, and about how to border and police the category of “woman.”

Mmyes, how dare women say that men are not women, that’s so police-like, so border patrol-like. Bitches. Karens.

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