Lindsay Crouse of the New York Times “produced the Emmy nominated Opinion Video series “Equal Play,” which brought widespread reform to women’s sports.”
This year, lawmakers in more than 20 states have introduced legislation to ban transgender kids from girls’ sports, under the guise of protecting women and girls. Bills have already passed in Mississippi and Idaho.
Not “transgender kids” but boys. The issue, as I’m sure she knows, is boys playing on girls’ teams.
The cause is catching on: One recent Politico poll found that 46 percent of women support a ban on transgender athletes (as do 43 percent of young adults born since 1997).
Again: not a ban on transgender athletes, a ban on male athletes competing against female athletes.
It’s telling how consistently the defenders of boys competing against girls obscure what they’re actually defending.
This is disappointing. We might look to champions like Megan Rapinoe, Billie Jean King and Candace Parker, who have been outspoken supporters of inclusion, as well as trans athletes who are shouldering the brunt of this fight. Exclusion elevates nobody.
But inclusion of what, exclusion of what?
If girls and women can’t have their own sports then they can’t ever win anything. This is Crouse’s subject yet she gets it completely wrong.
She goes on for many more paragraphs saying much the same thing – why worry about trans kids when women’s sports are already devalued? – without making any more sense, let alone addressing the actual issue.
Comments
7 responses to “Who says it’s a guise?”
There is no reason a person born male, but who for whatever reason wishes that he had been born a woman, cannot compete anyway in mens’ sports. But there are very good reasons for keeping him, born male, for competing as a woman in an womens-only event. Those reasons, which have to do with the natural sexual dimorphism of our species, are the reasons why we have sex-segregated sports from olympic down to local primary school level.
There is a very clear reason a person born male, but who for whatever reason wishes that he had been born a woman, will shun competing in mens’ sports and prefer to take on women in women-only events: a better chance of ‘winning’.
Though ‘winning’ at precisely what is debateable.
“Exclusion elevates nobody…” Wrong. Women’s and girl’s sports are supposed to be exclusive, exclusive of men and boys, that’s the whole point. Who are these idiots. Of course Rapinoe, King, and Parker are for it, it’s inaccurately framed as anti-trans laws, when in actuality it’s the preservation of women’s sports. Too bad they’re not attentive or discriminating enough too see that, maybe they would be in favor preserving women’s sports for women, but alas, the trans cult rhetoric rules the day as usual.
Framing it as proposing a ban, even as proposing a ban on males playing in female leagues, angers me. Males are already supposed to be prohibited from competing in female divisions. For fuck’s sake. It’s not proposing a ban. It’s denying an exception.
@ Nullius, YES! It is infuriating and false framing. I’m regularly told that, if I want women’s bathrooms/change rooms/locker rooms etc to remain female only, I’d need to prove that TW are dangerous. And they won’t let me use data on males generally, and they don’t care if the simple presence of males drives women away. It HAS to be TW, it HAS to be data, not “a handful of rare and cherry picked incidents”, and it HAS to be physical harm, not voyeurs, upskirters and so on.
And I just respond no, I don’t need to prove squat. You’re the ones proposing the change. YOU prove it’s fine. YOU prove no damage.
Arcadia @#4:
Didn’t no one never tell you that you can’t never prove a negative?
Thanks to my local paper, the Boston Glob, printing a top of the metro section article bemoaning it, my attention was drawn to a real barn-burner of an article written by a professor at URI:
https://4w.pub/fantasy-worlds-on-the-political-right-and-left-qanon-and-trans-sex-beliefs-2/
The article compares the fantasy worlds of QAnon on the right and Transgenderism on the left. Quite appropriately so, in my opinion.
This juxtaposition calls the left onto the carpet. How can we so flippantly condemn the crazies of the right for their conspiracy theories while we empower those on our side of the aisle – who might actually be doing more damage to children – with a carte blanche to refashion the law according to their irrational fantasies?
Hughes puts it right out there – we, in capitulating to the crazies on the left, have ruled that men’s fantasies trump women’s realities.
The Glob article shows the usual suspects all in a pother about Hughes’ outspokenness:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/25/metro/uri-students-staff-professors-essay-with-anti-transgender-perspectives-signals-an-ongoing-problem/
I hope they’re installing extra fainting couches at URI. They’ll need them, because the head and endowed chair of the Gender and Women’s Studies Department is not backing down.
This is going to be an interesting case in terms of what academic freedom really means. Hughes is a department head, in an endowed chair. If she does not have freedom to research as she wishes and say what she believes, then no professor does, and we might as well bury the tenure system.
That is interesting.