It’s not an “edge” issue
The news outlets just can’t figure it out, can they.
On Wednesday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters in Kingston, Ontario, that female sports “should be for females — not for biological males.” Poilievre was responding in part to a new policy in Alberta that bans transgender females from competing in women’s sports.
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Polls consistently show that Canadians favour full legal equality for transgender individuals – as well as special protections from discrimination. But opinions change rapidly when it comes to edge issues such as sports.
No they don’t. Equality is not the same thing as impersonation.
Guess what: I too “favour full legal equality” for trans people. It does not follow that I think that includes allowing men to force their way into women’s sports and prizes and rape crisis centers. That’s not an “edge issue”; it’s all too fucking central.
“transgender females” – still trying to have it both ways? A ‘transgender female’ would be a TiF…in other words, female pretending to be male!
An apposite quote is from Ernst Mayer: Equality in spite of evident non-identity is a somewhat sophisticated concept and requires a moral stature of which many individuals seem to be incapable – Mayr, E. (1963). Animal species and evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
My Web search found the quote in an article of Jerry Coyne’s from last year; feel free to snip that link if you think it risks hijacking the thread.
This is partly a side effect of the fact that it’s now social conservatives in the legacy media who are running with this issue. Tristin Hopper and the National Post have found themselves in unfamiliar territory. They’re fumbling a lot with their wording because quite frankly they’ve never been in the position to have to be so sensitive to social issues like women’s rights before. This is not their traditional wheelhouse.
It’s the strangest thing, the seismic political shifts between left and right. It’s like watching a sideways lava lamp: great blobs from the bottom are randomly breaking free and moving to the top, and vice-versa. The whole situation is unpredictable and volatile, but it’s unmistakeable that great shifts are happening, and it’s hard to take yer eyes off the thing.
But yeah, you get strange artifacts like old-school social conservatives suddenly reporting from the frontlines of women’s rights… and not quite sticking it.