No thanks
I can’t wait to rush out and not read this book, let alone not buy it. ($55 for the paperback!)
Transgender and Non-Binary People in Everyday Sport – A Trans Feminist Approach to Improving Inclusion
Ok first what is “everyday” sport? If you mean amateur say that; if you mean something else, make it clear.
Second what is a “trans feminist” approach? Is that a sly euphemism for “fake feminist” approach?
Description:
This formative work discusses transgender people’s inclusion in everyday sport in the United Kingdom. It adopts a trans feminist approach to explore pivotal issues regarding the barriers to participation faced by transgender and non-binary people.
What is a “formative” work? Is “transgender people’s inclusion in everyday sport” a euphemism for letting men invade women’s sport? What, again, is a “trans feminist approach”? Does it mean an approach taken by male people who are not feminists and enjoy seeing male people take over female sport?
Offering a critical perspective on the current landscape surrounding this topic, the book draws from insightful interviews conducted by the author with 18 transgender and non-binary individuals. The author uses a critical social science approach to explore the heteropatriarchal construction of sport in the modern industrialised West, and how this has formed the backdrop to the continuing discrimination towards many athletes, not just those who are transgender. Using first-hand perspectives, it focuses on the three themes of the sporting body, sporting spaces and sporting communities. It investigates why conversations about fairness and safety regarding transgender athletes have become so polarised within the media, and the significance of taking a trans feminist approach to reducing barriers in sport.
Mmkay I think we get the drift. It’s a book about the urgent need for men to take over women’s sport.
The hardback is only $200.
I’m guessing there were no interviews with women who would have to compete against men in the author’s desired Brave New World? The word “woman” does not appear in this description, despite the fact that the contested terrain under discussion is WOMEN’S sports. In the “critical perspective”, this would undoubtedly be like interviewing Klansmen about the integration of the local Woolworth’s lunch counter. This stuff writes itself.
Well, until quite recently, in the heteropatriarchal construction of sport THERE WERE NO WOMEN’S SPORTS (or just a small, ghettoized selection of “ladylike” passtimes to which women were officially restricted). Just like there were no momen’s public toilets, or women’s votes. Also, until quite recently, there was no such thing as “transgender” in the “modern” sense. Gender non-conforming people have lways been around, but until they were swallowed by the Genderborg, they would have considered themselves opponents of the unjust and artificial strictures of gender arrayed against their entire sex, rather than conceeding them, and seeking their own individual escape from them by claiming to have been “born in the wrong body,” or some other metaphysical twaddle. So the monolithic Western Colonial Construction of Sport could not have been established to punish trans people, because there were no trans people to punish. In order to remedy this sad anachronism, the author is going to force-team trans “rights” with the fight for racial equality, riding on Jesse Owen’s coat-tails in order to cast women’s resistance to
transmale intrusion in women’s sport as racist, colonialist bigotry.I must admit I’m surprised they didn’t slap scare quote around fairness and safety, given that these are the two big issues they’re going to have to hand-wave away, because allowing men in women’s sports is both unfair and unsafe. The author is going to try to either convince us otherwise, or hide these basic truths under so much tortuous verbiage that we give up and run away from the “argument” in fear of our sanity. If they can call this justification for the destruction of women’s sport a “feminist” enterprise, then they’ve honed their Newspeak to fine, sharp edge. Of course there have been plenty of gender zealots willing to sacrifice these foundational notions in sport on the altar of “inclusivity”, and there are plenty of useful idiots prepared to hand them the knife, because they’re swayed by emotional blackmail, and are deathly afraid of being seen as the bad guys, or worse, Karens. No questions asked. If they think they’re preaching to the choir, they might just proceed without any kind of argument or discussion at all. As far as critics or opponents, it’s possible that there will be little attempt to convince us at all, just a load of Butlerized, po-mo, up-is-down, left-is-right, black-is-white, word salad, with a chaser of browbeating.
And, like the skewing of the word “discrimination” to always mean something bad, not all “barriers” should be removed. Ask the Dutdh.
Sigh. I remember when Routledge was a reputable publisher.
They published most of Bertrand Russell’s books. I owned the Routledge “Bertrand Russell’s Best” as a teenager, with this interesting quote:
Yes, I remember when Routledge was a reputable publisher, and Routledge & Kegan Paul ( I seem to remember Trench a Tübner being still there in the name) had a wonderful shop near the British Museum, which I used to haunt.
@1 that’s a good catch – as has been endlessly reiterated, no one’s saying people who claim to be ‘trans’ are excluded from participation in sport – but that’s certainly how the blurbs in the OP are framing the issue.