We need to be asking, fair to whom?

Apr 10th, 2023 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

The Nation for some reason decided to publish an article by a they/them called Frankie de la Cretaz who has nothing but contempt and hostility for women.

In 2021, the Department of Education announced a formal review of the way Title IX was enforced. The goal was ostensibly to come up with an interpretation of the law that protects transgender students from discrimination.

The proposal unveiled on Thursday, to put it mildly, does not meet that goal. Instead, under the cover of a ban on what it calls “one-size-fits-all” anti-trans policies, it makes explicit allowances for restrictions on trans participation in sports to ensure what it describes as “fairness in competition” and “preventing sports-related injury.” Even observers inclined to be generous to the Biden administration about the proposal acknowledge that it would allow for targeted bans against trans students, particularly in high school. 

Male trans students, they means but of course doesn’t say. It always always always has to be concealed that the people being championed in these polemics are male people who want to displace and cheat women.

…it’s important to understand these terms for what they are: transphobic talking points that have been honed and weaponized by anti-trans groups. They sound reasonable but they are incredibly insidious—and now they are being used by a supposedly trans-friendly administration to justify its endorsement of anti-trans policies.

Yes it’s just so incredibly insidious to try to protect women’s sports and the women who play them. The not insidious thing to do would be to sit back and watch cheerfully as men destroy women sports and injure the women who play them.

Title IX, because of the way it is written, allows for this kind of discrimination against transgender athletes, and transgender girls and women, in particular. That’s because when Title IX was passed, the need for its existence relied on arguments that there were biological differences between girls and boys, which created a need for separate divisions.

Ah yes those silly obsolete arguments of yesteryear that there are biological differences between girls and boys. Isn’t it glorious to live now, when we know so much better??

It made the definition of “girlhood” reliant on a body, rather than on a concept of gender. These arguments, built into the very fabric of Title IX itself, allow for the protection of cisgender girls to be maintained at the expense of transgender girls.

At the expense of. We’re so rude, so greedy, so callous, so heartless, protecting girls at the expense of boys.

Let’s examine the two concepts the DOE leaned on to justify the discrimination against trans kids. The first is “fairness in sports.”  This is a red herring, an elusive and unattainable concept. Sports are inherently unfair.

…

When anti-trans groups harp on the issue of fairness, they are framing the issue in a misleading way. We need to be asking, fair to whom? When we think about fairness we should think about justice, which requires centering the most marginalized people in the room—and that is transgender women and girls. It is that group that we should be most concerned about including, rather than making rules at their expense.

Men who claim to be women are the most marginalized people in the room. Women who are mere women however are the least marginalized people in this particular room. Men are at the mercy of all-powerful women. Who knew?

The rule’s second anti-trans loophole, the supposed prevention of sports-related injury, implies that transgender women and girls are inherently bigger and stronger than cisgender girls, and that cisgender girls will be harmed if trans girls are allowed to compete. There is no evidence to support this. All sports come with the risk of injury and a cis girl is just as likely to be injured by a larger cis girl than she is by a trans girl on the field.

A girl is just as likely to be injured by a larger girl as she is by a man on the field? No. That’s just a lie.

The Biden administration has capitulated to well-worn anti-trans talking points, ones which transgender advocates have spent years trying to dismantle. These arguments, which transphobic groups frame as “protecting girls,” actually put our most vulnerable girls at risk by harming trans girls. If you want to protect women and girls, you need to be protecting all women and girls, not just the ones you deem worthy of protection, and not at the expense of the group of people most likely to be the victims of discrimination and violence.

If you want to protect workers, you need to be protecting all workers, not just the ones who work in factories and meatpacking plants, and not at the expense of the group of people who make the rules and pay their workers as little as they can.

The Nation should be embarrassed to publish this dreck.

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