mostly white
As the US supreme court heard arguments on Tuesday for a case that could determine whether transgender children can participate in school sports – and potentially impact LGBTQ+ civil rights protections more broadly – competing groups of activists rallied in Washington DC.
First lie. The issue is not whether “trans” children can participate, it’s whether boys can and should play in girls-only sports. If they can’t, they can still participate in boys-only sports. That is participating. It’s not fair to let them ruin sports for girls on the pretext that anything else is preventing them from playing at all. Journalism really needs to stop lying about this.
On one side was a multiracial mix of hundreds of people rallying for trans rights and in support of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a track and field athlete from West Virginia and the plaintiff in the West Virginia v BPJ case before the supreme court.
On the other side was an equally large crowd, mostly white, that was calling on the supreme court to “protect women’s sports” by upholding laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prohibit trans youth from participating in sports programs aligned with their gender identity.
Geddit? Clear enough? Pointed enough? The people who think boys should not ruin girls’ sports are racisssssst.
In many ways, the scene looked like other DC rallies over trans and queer rights over the past decade. Trans advocates and their allies danced to remixes of songs by the pop star Chappell Roan, while those opposing trans rights at one point held a prayer for the legal team representing West Virginia.
Geddit? Trans people are cool and fun. People who think girls should still be allowed to have their own sports are god-botherers and boring. The hip side to take is the one that doesn’t give a shit about girls.
“We didn’t introduce this fight about sports. This was picked by the other side,” said AJ Hikes, executive director of strategy and culture at the ACLU, one of the groups representing Pepper-Jackson, the plaintiff in one of the supreme court cases and the only known trans teen in West Virginia subject to the state ban. “This hyper-focus on sports is yet another example that we have of the ways that they are trying to erase trans and non-binary people from public life.”
This lie is yet another lie. I for one don’t much care about sports as such, but I’m aware that lots of people do and that it’s an area of life where which sex people are does make a huge and important difference. I do care much about fairness to girls and women. I’m not trying to “erase” trans and non-binary people but I am pointing out that those labels are new, and peculiar, and based on the lie that people can change sex.
“This is about power, and it’s about control,” said Chris Mosier, an internationally ranked triathlete who came out as trans in 2010. He said he worries about a broad supreme court ruling that could open the door to more restrictions on trans rights in schools and erode existing LGBTQ+ protections.
But, again, what are “trans rights” and how do we know and what do we do when they erase women’s rights and girls’ rights? Is there really a “right” for men to play in women’s sports? Not in my book.
Thanks to blowback from forced teaming, I can well imagine that erosion of the rights of LGB Americans might well haPPEN.
The hell you say! Women and girls were not the ones who introduced the bizarre and dangerous notion that men and boys should be able to shove their way into sports for women and girls, so long as the guys say the magic incantation, “I identify as a woman/girl.” This was a fight picked by men and boys to bully and Lord it over women/girls, to steal their places, steal their victories, literally beat up on them, as well as to satisfy the men’s/boys’ sex perversions by invading the women’s/girls’ private spaces. It’s all very angry, very hateful, very rapey toward women and girls.
You poisoned the well by parasitizing the gay rights movement, and bending the LGB victories and good will to your own purposes, to preempt and prevent any discussion or examination of your dangerous dogmas. You mercilessly bullied and harassed any dissenters from the lie that men/boys could be women/girls. You usurped the power, the machinery, and the money-raising capabilities of successful and established LGB organizations to implant your ideology at the highest institutional levels — you captured the corporate and governmental leadership — to impose your doctrines from above, with no examination or vettng of your claims. The hell you didn’t “introduce” or “pick” this fight; you absolutely did, after having done your best to cut the legs out from under any opposition beforehand. You picked the fight, and it was never a fair fight. It was the old-fashioned boys picking on the girls from the very beginning, only with most people cheering you on this time. Misogyny-coated misogynists, with misogyny filling.
We’re not supposed to remember that part, just like we’re supposed to forget that these are man and boys, and that they will forever remain men and boys, whatever clothing and cosmetics they wear, whatever pronouns they demand we use, whatever drugs, hormones or “procedures” they take or undergo. There is also the “there have always been trans people” smokescreen designed to hide the novelty and extreme nature of trans claims. Having taken or been given their ill-gotten gains, these men and their “allies” will claim persecution and genocide as they get rooted out of the women’s spaces they’ve invaded. Thanks, ACLU, for helping to legitimize and defend the forced colonization of women’s spaces by men. Much Civil. Very Liberty.
I’m curious on the ACLU’s take on Trump’s plans for the forced colonization of Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland? If they were consistent with their trans “rights” position, they’d be all for it, right?
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