Sneers instead of argument
One Alex Kirshner at Slate is very confident that it’s “fair” to let men intrude on women’s sports.
Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially women, have any advantage over their cisgender competitors in women’s sports. They’ve spent considerable time investigating the subject, and in general, they have decided against all-out bans of trans competitors. The competitions tend to follow the guidance of scientists and geneticists, who are much less certain of trans athletes’ advantages than are various podcast hosts, conservative media icons, and disappointed parents of high school girls who finished a spot lower than they’d have preferred in a track meet.
The way he puts it is confusing, and that’s probably intentional. “Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially women, have any advantage over their cisgender competitors in women’s sports.” That reads as if he’s saying the governing bodies wonder especially if women have any advantages, and he then happily concludes nah. It would have been clearer and more honest to say “Scores of sports governing bodies are inquisitive about whether trans athletes, especially trans women, have any advantage”…but he didn’t say that. I suspect he muddled it on purpose. I’m so tired of this manipulative sleazy crap in aid of making it easier for men to cheat women in sports.
And then of course he concludes the paragraph by sneering at high school girls who don’t enjoy losing races to boys who don’t belong in those races.
Armstrong is asking the wrong question, though. He’d like to know if a world exists—and it does—where someone could ask a question about fairness in competition and not be labeled transphobic. He has less apparent curiosity about why anyone who takes issue with trans participation might, in fact, get a label of bigotry. If he’d asked that question, the answer would be just as simple: Because a lot of the loudest questioners and protesters of trans women in sports are also preoccupied with shoving trans people out of every other conceivable corner of polite society, and they’re concocting arguments on the fly in order to relocate trans people to those margins. It’s a spectacular coincidence, or none of this is on the level.
Even if that’s true, it remains unfair and wrong to let males invade women’s sports.
The conservative political and media campaigns supporting these efforts have paid dividends. The vast majority of Americans, and even a slim majority of Democrats, now see trans participation in sports as Republican politicians do. Gallup said in May that 69 percent of the public thought trans athletes should play on teams that match their birth gender.
And you know what else? They’re right.
That dismissive, sneering attitude, nearly always by men, about women and girls being forced down a place or two really pisses me off. If it’s unimportant for women and girls to experience a particular placing, why is so goddamned important for a bloke pretending to be a woman to experience it? They can still experience the joy of the sport by competing in the men’s or open divisions. The fact is of course that even for amateur athletes, getting the highest placing you can does matter. It’s a reward and validation for the often very significant sacrifices, effort, time, and expense involved in the training and competition. For those competing in professional sports, or at school/college/university level, income, sponsorship, scholarships, admission to a more prestigious institution are all at play. It can make a fundamental difference to the path a girls life takes. To be so dismissive is just pure misogyny, whether they realise it or not.
Or door number three, there are (broadly) two groups of people who oppose the admission of trans women to female sports. Feminists on the one hand and and conservatives on the other; drastically different directions of approach coinciding on this particular issue and not much else.
protesters of trans women in sports are also preoccupied with shoving trans people out of every other conceivable corner of polite society
Do we call this a “straw man,” “straw person,” or “cis scarecrow”?
Mike B, I think ‘ciscrow’ rolls off the tongue quite nicely.
How about “load of old bollocks”?