A plea for moderation in the face of fanaticism:
You don’t have to be that gung-ho on trans rights to realize that a world where girls’ genitals need to be inspected before they can play any sport is worse for girls than a world where once in a while there’s a trans girl on a girls’ team.
Being aware of the consequences is a good perspective to have for any goal.
There are an awful lot of extremists running the game right now who need to be sat down and told to grow up and shut up. They’re making the whole damn world worse for everyone.
I worry that routinely inspecting underage genitals is the real objective for a lot of these peepo-creepo people.
Same thing with bathroom policing. The alleged goal is to “protect women” from assault, but countless times it has lead to cis women being harassed in bathrooms.
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/05/08/woman-who-says-she-was-accused-of-being-a-man-in-boston-hotel-bathroom-files-complaint-with-ags-office/
The risk of being assaulted by a trans woman (unheard of) or a man pretending to be a trans woman, is a fraction of the risk of being harassed for being a cis woman who looks a bit butch.
To paraphrase Evan, a world where trans people aren’t harassed for using toilets is very much better for women than a world where they are.
I don’t think the goal is to pull down everyone’s pants — Christians are way too prudish for that. The goal is to police femininity: to let the allegations of social conservatives define what it means to be a woman, or to give a convenient excuse to bully any woman, cis or trans, for any reason.
For their purposes, it helps if they cultivate a false dilemma between the threat of inspecting everyone’s genitals or accepting a misogynist’s feels and vibes as good enough evidence to kick a cis woman off the sports team. Or perhaps if a process as humiliating as a genital inspection is the only recourse to prove them wrong — that will pretty much guarantee it’s never challenged.
I think the thing that is missed by comments like this one is that they don’t actually care about harming girls, and indeed to the extent that they care about it it is a feature rather than a bug. Girls not playing sports makes the world more like they believe it should be, them having the ability to force underage girls to get naked in front of them suits them just fine, and harming a few trans people is nice for them also. From their perspective, there is no downside to this.
Stuart Smith@4,
Who are the “they” you are talking about? In the UK certainly, many of the most avid transhaters are self-declared feminists – and no, I don’t believe most are insincere in claiming to be such. Many in my view have ludicrously exaggerated fears of transwomen, or pseudo-transwomen, as abusers or interlopers, and have simply failed to think through the consequences of what they are doing; some (e.,g. Rowling) I think are primarily about directing resentment away from billionaires onto the currently convenient target; some do actually hate men and so hate transwomen (who they consider men) and transmen (who they consider “gender traitors”, to borrow an apposite term).
“In the UK certainly, many of the most avid transhaters are self-declared feminists – and no, I don’t believe most are insincere in claiming to be such.”
Why not? They’re not doing anything to promote women’s rights, just attacking trans rights. Rowling is the poster child for this, being very willing to attack any cis women who don’t meet her
requirements of being feminine enough. And while many other people have done a much more comprehensive coverage of it, you can easily see her political beliefs in the Harry Potter franchise just by the fact that none of the heroes ever see the status quo as being a problem in need of fixing regardless of how obviously broken and unfair it is, so long as it doesn’t personally affect them. Notice that there’s a narrow line of how “good” female characters present themselves in their interests and behaviors and any female character who’s too feminine or too masculine is portrayed as evil.
I agree with microraptor @6 here: how many of those “self-declared feminists”, on either side of the Pond, have said or done anything that a present-day liberal or progressive would call “feminist?” How many of the people we call “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” are really “radical feminists?” “Feminism” (“radical” or not) doesn’t even seem to exist in public discourse these days, and we only seem to hear that label in reference to hateful irrational transphobia.
And way back in the days when “radical feminism” was a thing, some of the people we called “radical feminists,” such as Andrea Dworkin, were actually kind of sympathetic toward transwomen.
It seems (to me at least) that the people claiming to “defend” women from “men pretending to be women” are actually trying to defend a particular notion of femininity and traditional gender roles — more like Phyllis Schlafly than Gloria Steinem (sp?). That’s what phrases like “women’s spaces” and “women’s sex-based rights” seem to mean.
KG @5
Sounds like what you’re describing are TERFs. They’ve gotten a lot of attention as the anti-trans hysteria has gained steam but it seems like they’re just a facade. In many ways they’re like trans athletes, the attention they’ve received is disproportionate to their actual numbers.
The people who are really behind these extreme measures to supposedly root out cryptic trans interlopers aren’t feminists by any definition. They’re the same right-wing forces who’ve been wanting to put women (and various minorities) in their “place” for decades now.
Waitaminute, they’re inspecting genitals? I thought they were going by gamete size…or was it chromosomes…?
Two quick comments on points raised here. First, “checking genitals” would be irrelevant for post-op trans women. Second, the UK decision — and the push for something like that in the US — will lead to people with full beards, completely male clothing, and no obvious secondary female sex characteristics using women’s bathrooms simply because they were female at birth. I’m not sure that women will appreciate that. Especially since it raises the possibility that the true CIS-perverts no longer have to pretend to be female in order to invade female spaces — they can simply claim that they started off as female….
^ davetaylor : Truth.
Please correct me if I am wrong. I am not a biologist. I have, however, been relatively successful as a competitive athlete (distance running) and learned a bit about exercise physiology along the way. I keep reading about how “unfair” it is to have “women competing against trans women” in athletics, the assumption being that trans athletes that were male will have superior conditioning and an unfair advantage. Has anyone ever done any kind of ex phys study to see if there really IS an advantage? I say this because, knowing my own experiences with endurance training, I am quite sure that undergoing all of the procedures, therapies, etc. required to transition would’ve taken a huge bite out of my athletic performance, and I am in no way convinced that after transitioning, I would be anywhere near where I had been, or for that matter, at or above an equivalent competitive level in the women’s rankings. And that’s in a sport that is extremely low on technique and high on conditioning (i.e., a best case scenario for the anti-trans argument). Heck, I’ve had an entire season go into the toilet because of a torn gastroc. I think that the physical stress and deconditioning caused by transitioning would be waaaay beyond that.
The anti-trans arguments that I’m hearing sound like so much “armchair quarterbacking”. That is, people who don’t really know what it takes to operate at a high level just pontificate on what they perceive to be reality. So many people seem to take this argument for granted because “it seems logical”. Until someone can show me hard data that verifies an alleged performance improvement, I’m not buying it.
Oh, and the thought that a typical male athlete who is not at world class level would transition just so that they could then be world class in the women’s rankings is nothing but laughable. That argument essentially discounts the rest of said athlete’s life as unimportant and disposable. It appeals to the conspiracy-minded.
Words matter.
There is a difference between Radical Feminist and radical feminist. Feminists seen as extreme by those who just hate women or don’t care if women get hated on can get called radical. But the underlying philosophy of feminism, that women-are-people: this isn’t radical at all. (Gosh!)
RFs have a very specific philosophy that lends itself very well to RFs also being TE. RFs fervently believe that patriarchy will always exist, all interactions involve blame, the blame must be assigned, and then as a consequence violence must applied. (This is why they are currently allied with the religious reich, who also believe this but with different emphases on who hits whom).
It is TERF belief that transfolk are giving up their innate privilege-of-violence, or stealing a privilege-of-violence not rightfully owned by them. Why they are doing this impossible crazy-seeming thing (to them) must be asked/explained by them otherwise their doxology falls apart. The easiest way for them to do this is to assert trans* isn’t real and that trans* is an immoral and vicious attack on women. TERFs are therefore from our point of view, obvious failures. Many of Dworkin’s contemporaries were horrible shits about trans issues.
Today we remark on people by what company they keep. PZ just made a post about Newsom, f’rinstance. Dworkin, a master with words, ‘hung out with’ these people, intellectually speaking. I find myself much less likely to suppose that she was sympathetic to transfolk than some others. I think that to the degree she seemed sympathetic she was instead virtue signalling (in the bad sensu, that of performative hypocrisy) pity (and not sympathy), and throwing a sop.
@jimf
There have, in fact, been studies which have investigated this! The ones which purport to state that trans women have an advantage generally have one of the following characteristics:
They actually just compare cis men with cis women, not trans women with cis women.
They do not actually compare cis women athletes with trans women athletes.
The ones which do sorta compare apples to apples manage to find that the “advantage” pretty much is in grip strength…except that they also don’t control for height. Taller people have bigger hands…and in one particular study, the “mean” cis woman is 5’6″ and the “mean” trans woman was 5’9″. Bigger hands mean stronger grip…so when you control for that, the ‘advantage’ disappears. And there isn’t any sport which discriminates based on height.
There are a couple of really good studies which were run by the US military (which have a set of fitness tests required to show that service members maintain a certain standard of fitness). In these tests, the only advantage shown after four years is in sit ups…and even that is just outside of “statistically significant” and trans women are MUCH closer to their cis women counterparts. Additionally, the advantage in the long distance run has been shown to disappear in 18 months. The other one was push ups and I think that’s two years? I can’t recall right now.
Even then…one thing to note is that this only includes trans women service members which remain in the military after transitioning. So if their fitness levels drop to the point they can no longer maintain that level, they leave the military.
The IOC also has a study out in the last year or so which shows not only do trans women NOT have an advantage…but there is evidence they have a DISadvantage (which checks considering the near complete lack of champions at the elite level, either in NCAA sports or the Olympics or nationals).
Point of order for those commenting about “transwomen”. Please use “trans women”. Saying “transwomen” is like saying “blackwomen” or “whitewomen” or “Japanesewomen”. We are women…who are trans (trans here is an adjective, not a prefix).
I get how it’s easy to use that term, since so many of our “trans” words have trans as a prefix. However, transphobic people love to use that term to say “you’re not a woman, you’re a transwoman”.
RFs have a very specific philosophy that lends itself very well to RFs also being TE. RFs fervently believe that patriarchy will always exist, all interactions involve blame, the blame must be assigned, and then as a consequence violence must applied. (This is why they are currently allied with the religious reich, who also believe this but with different emphases on who hits whom).
seachange, which “RFs” (or “rfs”) are you talking about, exactly?
Dworkin, a master with words, ‘hung out with’ these people, intellectually speaking. I find myself much less likely to suppose that she was sympathetic to transfolk than some others.
Since you’re calling Dworkin a master with words (italics yours), you might want to quote her words on this, instead of just “supposing” what she’s said. I remember her being rather grossly misrepresented — both by other feminists and by men she allegedly hated — back when she was alive; and I also remember reading a quote of hers (which may or may not be representative of her overall stated opinions) that seemed rather sympathetic to trans people. So maybe we should be a little more specific when we’re talking about “radical feminists.”
Another thing…
RFs have a very specific philosophy that lends itself very well to RFs also being TE. RFs fervently believe that patriarchy will always exist, all interactions involve blame, the blame must be assigned, and then as a consequence violence must applied…
There is (or at least used to be) one branch of radical feminism called “difference feminism,” which (IIRC) sounded more like Victorian-era gender-roles with feminist rhetoric used to make it sound like the women’s roles would get equal respect to the men’s. Today’s “TERFs” may have once been that kind of “feminist,” or they might be just straight-up reactionary “traditional gender roles” advocates pretending they’re “protecting women.” But that branch of feminism was not the only one, by any stretch.
microraptor@5, to KG:
Since KG hasn’t responded, a fair interpretation is that if they themselves believe it then they cannot be insincere about their self-declaration. They may be wrong, but that’s not the same thing.
beholder@3 — None of those prudish Christians seemed to object to the idea of female athletes having mandatory genital exams.
deanna@14 — True. Very few studies have looked into the supposed biological advantage of trans women in athletics. It’s mostly broken designs with a clear intent to prove what the investigators wanted. But the real world evidence is clear. Trans women are not dominating athletics, not even in events that allow trans competitors such as solo ultradistance swimming or skeet shooting (the Olympic committee changed it from a mixed-sex event to a men’s only event with no women’s event after the 1992 gold went to a woman). And the bias is clear when pundits talk about the unfair advantage that athletes like Caster Semanya have from a high testosterone level — but Semanya has CAIS which means she lacks working receptors for testosterone, so the testosterone level is irrelevant to her athletic performance.
seachange@13– I have mixed feelings about Dworkin, but I don’t recall anything she wrote that could be considered anti-trans, and this excellent article from John Stoltenberg, her life partner, makes it clear that she was adamantly opposed to the gender essentialism at the root of the modern anti-trans movement. As for “virtue signalling,” I would suggest that this accusation is very easy to make and very hard to demonstrate. The evidence I would accept would be consistent expression of a set of virtues undercut by recurrent behaviours antagonistic to those virtues, and even then it requires further evidence to separate it from common hypocrisy. I am confident such a case cannot be mounted with Dworkin and trans rights.
I have a dream that one day my children will be judged by the content of their character and not the content of their underwear
philipbrown: For now you’ll just have to settle for the nightmare where your children’s character is judged by the content of their underwear.
jimf: Following on to Deanna’s comment, I am of the (not that rigorously informed) opinion that many AMAB persons identify as trans girls/women precisely because (possibly among other reasons) their bodies were not unequivocally male to begin with, which means they’re much less likely to have that “unfair advantage” in women’s sports that the transphobes are screaming about. And the hormone treatments that are a central part of transition would only further diminish such advantages. Other people’s mileage may vary, but I’ve never seen a trans woman, pre- or post-op, with a build anything close to that of, say, Ray Lewis or Mike Tyson.
Raging Bee @21: Based on very little evidence, I tend to think that probably there are a lot more intersex people than we can currently identify. Maybe that’s a stupid thing to say, and it’s really just “sex is a spectrum”. Either way, I suspect that most trans people are in fact some variety of intersex and whichever doctor looked at their baby self guessed wrong.
At any rate, as far as sports are concerned it would probably make more sense to remove “men” and “women” as the default categories for sports and instead (depending on the sport) either:
(a) have everyone compete in the same category
(b) have a “low testosterone” and “high testosterone” category (where in fact the trans women would be with the cis women in low testosterone provided they’re on hormones) – probably with a medical waiver for people with CAIS to compete in the low testosterone category because it’s not like their body reacts to it.
or (c) have multiple categories of either weight or height, each of which could have men and women in.
But perhaps the men wouldn’t like that, because they might lose to a woman… :D
mathscatherine@22–
Raging Bee is probably correct that some people labelled trans are intersex and vice versa, not that we have great data on this, but by and large trans people have the textbook standard chromosomes, hormonal profile, gamete sizes, and reproductive anatomy of their birth-assigned sex, unless altered by pharmacology or surgery.
Athletic testosterone classes à la weight classes would not be helpful. Endogenous testosterone level has little bearing on athletic performance. There are many male Olympic-level athletes with well below average testosterone level and, as per height, there is overlap of testosterone levels between male and female athletes. To make matters even more complicated, an athlete’s endogenous testosterone level is increased by exercise, time of year, and in some studies by winning events!
“…Due to variability in endogenous secretion, and similarities with exogenous testosterone, it has been challenging to establish allowable limits for testosterone in competition.”
and
“What’s strange is that women with androgen receptor mutations are extremely overrepresented among elite athletes, even though those with severe cases can’t possibly be getting the benefit of their natural testosterone without receptors to carry out those effects. Holt points out some of these women have even had their testes removed, bringing their testosterone levels to below female levels, and yet they’re still able to compete internationally.”
@22 mathscatherine
Most normal (jumping, running, kicking throwing) sports would simply no longer have any women at the professional level if everyone was in the same cathegory.
chrislawson@23:
My first point was more that I suspect there may be more to “how the body does gender”, or probably “how the brain does gender”, that many trans people would fall into – but I agree it’s an opinion without much evidence or expertise and could well be totally wrong.
Thank you for the correction on testosterone levels and athletic performance, as well as those interesting links. So clearly my suggestion about re-classifying sports that way clearly needs more science first. It will be interesting to see what the difference is that gives men an advantage in many sports – because there clearly is something that disappears when a trans woman takes hormones over a period of a year or two. And whatever it is ought to be measurable.
erik333 @24
Obviously, for many sports there does need to be more than one category of sports or women would not be able to compete at the professional level. But that doesn’t apply to all sports, which is why I included the option. I used to do dinghy sailing as a teenager – that’s an Olympic sport that women perform just as well as men (and in fact there are many any-gender competitions). Long distance swimming is, I believe, another one. And there are already sports that have more categories than just “men” and “women”.
@25 mathscatherine
Perhaps ultra marathons though data set is small… vehicle sports or e.g. marksmanship sports would work.
Football, less so… and e.g. weight categories dont make sense in Light of e.g. Messi or Maradona.
No genitals need to be inspected to protect fairness in women’s sport. There are no proposals, as far as I’m aware, to inspect anyone’s genitals. A cheek swab, once in an athlete’s career, would be fine.
Describing people who want to protect fairness in women’s sport as “extremists” is simply unreal. How can you pretend that the facts and the stats don’t speak for themselves? And more importantly why do you?
@ ^ latsot : “Describing people who want to protect fairness in women’s sport as “extremists” is simply unreal.”
Yeah -in the sense of the word “unreal” where that is NOT the actual fucking reality.
You do know that trans women are women right? That gender is a spectrum not a binary right?
Heard of Imane Khelif and Castro Semanya and Amélie Mauresmo & the totally unjsutified cruel bullshit they – among others – had to put up with?
Well, that wasn an italics fail.
FFS. Sigh.
@27. latsot : “How can you pretend that the facts and the stats don’t speak for themselves? And more importantly why do you?”
Care to answer your own question here?
Which specific stats & which specific facts do you refer to precisely?
Please. You know the facts. Men outperform women in sports.
You know this. Are you genuinely pretending that you don’t?
@27. latsot : “There are no proposals, as far as I’m aware, to inspect anyone’s genitals.”
Source :
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-trans-sports-bill-exposes-120447343.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9vY2Vhbmhlcm8udG9kYXkvd2ViP3E9V29tZW5zK2dlbml0YWxzK2luc3BlY3RlZCtiaWxscysrY3MtdHJhbnMrc3BvcnRz&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADluSyCJw_oCUnzMzs9CjWB790D8YGaJvJX2ghKBHLpiSaA8vPxIu2b08nFHl4GsmYoWRXjraTrgSE2SgKvUnZ_PBh4MYT7AoZ5SYRVXQNTrf_gIaTZTh9Wbn9zFZH9oE592vDn0Mda58BA3KLxNz0L1kdlb3IilI7NxXs8OVELZ
Plus :
Source : https://www.newsweek.com/kansas-republicans-pass-bill-genital-examinations-schoolchildren-students-transgender-1792954
Source : https://www.advocate.com/politics/gop-trans-bill-genital-inspections
Now you know.
If you really didn’t already?
Did you? Seeing these links – (if you bother to read them – will you?) make any difference to what you think? (Asking from morbid curiosity.)
Also Bothsiderist scum; do note how one side of USA politics wants to let Trans people be themselves and the other wants to brutally sadistically punish them for, well, that being themselves, hey?
@31.latsot : ” Are you genuinely pretending that you don’t?”
Are you genuinely pretending to be that willfully ignorant? Or are yo just that willfully ignoant?
Source : https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240731-the-sports-where-women-outperform-men
Plus :
Source : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/women-men-performance-gap-athletics-b2742085.html
In addition to :
Source : https://www.metroleague.org/what-sports-are-females-better-than-males/
Ofc, there’s the impact of history and culture and what sports women wetre & now are allowed and given fair chances to compete in here – let alone those whose genders aren;t easily determined.
Source: an article.
Well done.
What genital checks are being carried out on whom?
But really. Do you think that women can run faster than men?
Why don’t you look at the London marathon times, for example?
No elite woman has run it faster than an elite man.
Do you think that’s a matter of gender?
@ ^ latsot : Depends on distance and circumstances and obvs who is running. Ain’t that simple.
Also I cited a lot more than just more one article. There’s a lot more articles & facts out there. We’re always learning more too. If we’;re ropen tolearning.
Maybe try reading reading them and coming up with actual arguments against them if you can – or better yet acepting proven science?
You do have google and a memory and thus you could actually think about and reflect upon and engage with the examples I’ve already provided you with if you so choose. Will you?
Maybe care about women and girls.
You don’t.
latsot@37,
It’s clear you don’t care about facts. Nor, I strongly suspect, about women and girls.
A cheek swab to detect what, exactly? Surely you know there are people assigned female at birth, regarding themselves and regarded by others as women, who have XY chromosomes?. And people assigned male at birth, regarding themselves and regarded by others as men, who have XX chromosomes. Sex, despite your evident discomfort with the fact, is not a simple binary.
Deanna@15,
Thanks for that – I’ll remember to use the correct term in future.
microraptor@6,
Some of the prominent haters have long records as campaigners on feminist issues. Being on the side of social justice on one issue doesn’t guarantee you will be on others.
@ 37. latsot : I do. Your bullshit unsupported assertion otherwise dismissed for lack of evidence and. also lived experience and relevant knowledge.
Hint : Being a transphobic willful ignorami is NOT evidence that you actually care about women and girls – quite the reverse actually.
davetaylor@10,
Kishwer Falkner, the head of the UK Equalities and Human Rights Commission, has actually said trans men can’t use public toilets either designated for men, or those designated for women. In the absence of toilets not assigned to either gender, they presumably just have to cross their legs. Falkner was appointed by the previous Tory government (and even more shamefully, had her term of office extended by the incoming Labour government) specifically because of her reactionary views and particularly, her hatred of trans people. Bad as the Supreme Court decision was, she has gone far beyond it in her “interim guidance”.
Disabled campaigners in the UK have come out in support of trans people. Trans-hater Falkner also actually said that trans people should campaign for their own toilets! While Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said they should use the toilets designated for disabled people. These, of course, being so plentifully supplied and well-maintained in all public spaces that this solution would work well for all concerned.
(/s, for the trans-hating numpties reading.)