The number of people who comprise the trans community is small. The number of them who compete in competitive sports and athletics is even more minuscule. And the number of them who are competing at the highest levels has to be tiny. And yet, the last group has become the focus of intense attention by social conservatives who seem to see this issue as an indicator of the end of civilization as we know it.
Nathan J. Robinson takes a long and close look at why this might be so. He says that the effort to institute laws and rules to prevent trans women from taking part as women in sports ignores the vast harm done to all the other members of the trans community in every aspect of their lives. He examines the arguments put forward and says that their focus on only women’s sports is significant.
Note that if you believe in full trans acceptance, the debate doesn’t even arise. If trans women are women, then of course they should get to compete in women’s sports. Mitchell and Soule misgender trans people repeatedly, calling those they are competing against “boys” who want to dominate “girls.” Mitchell and Soule are not just arguing that trans women are on average better physically equipped than cisgender women. They are arguing that trans women should properly be seen as Boys who are invading a space in which they do not belong. (This makes Mitchell and Soule budding TERFs.) Those who argue against letting trans women play women’s sports, then, see themselves as making (in Soule’s phrase) a simple “common sense” point about the correlation between physical ability and chromosomal sex, but they are also rejecting trans people’s self-identifications.
These sorts of arguments tend to claim to be driven not by anti-trans bigotry, but by faith in Scientific Fact. Like Ben Shapiro, the people who make these arguments insist that Science tells us that There Are Men And There Are Women, and they are physically different, and in sports we see the absurd results of denying Biological Fact, which is that you allow Men (by which they mean transgender women) to enter the women’s leagues and crush their competitors. Those arguing against trans inclusion in women’s sports insist that they are not transphobic, in that they do not hate or fear trans people, but they do believe that Reality and Science mean we must exclude trans people for egalitarian and feminist reasons.
…In fact, when you actually think beyond Shapiroesque “there are men, there are women, men big, women little, that’s all I need to know about anything” reasoning, you can see that the position of the anti-trans crowd is not actually well-reasoned. They like to bring up Fallon Fox, but they don’t bring up Mack Beggs, a trans man (i.e. transitioned after being assigned female at birth) who dominated Texas state wrestling after being forced (against his will) to compete in the girls’ division. Beggs had a perfect 56-0 record as a high school junior, and a parent even sued to prohibit him from competing because he had been taking testosterone injections as part of the transition process.
Beggs is a man. That is how he sees himself, and how others see him. But the “chromosomes are everything” crowd forces him to compete as a woman. Both Beggs and his female competitors may want to see Beggs allowed to compete in the league of his choice, but the “protect women” crowd, who believe in segregating sports based solely on genders assigned at birth, won’t let him. As a result, Beggs (a man) dominated female wrestling. If, as they say they are, the anti-trans activists are concerned with protecting women from having to fight men, why do they not mention this case? It’s obvious why not: because it complicates their narrative. They would like to make the question of trans inclusion in sports simply a matter of men “pretending” to be women in order to achieve athletic advantages.
I found Robinson’s conclusion particularly well put.
I am not convinced that those opposing trans women’s presence in women’s sports are actually interested in thinking hard about ways to create the fairest competitions. I think they just don’t think trans women are women, and assume they’re just sneaky Men trying to take advantage, the same way they assume trans women are just Men who want to sneak into bathrooms to commit sex crimes. As with many public debates about trans issues, those who profess themselves to have Sincere Concern frequently seem to have an underlying assumption that trans people are malicious liars trying to obtain unfair advantages, rather than human beings trying to live normal lives in a world of horrible bigotry. Trans female athletes are seen as “boys” wanting to win as many awards as possible, rather than girls whose reason for wanting to be on the girls’ team is that they want to live the life of an ordinary girl. The social costs to trans people of the proposed policies are never discussed. Chelsea Mitchell cares a lot about getting to win all the prizes rather than just a lot of them, but she doesn’t seem to care about what life is like for a trans woman athlete forced to be treated as a man (which she is not). Republicans are deeply concerned about protecting cis women, but couldn’t care less if their efforts to do so end up having horrible effects for trans women. (See also: the bans on gender reparative therapy for youths.) Until we begin these discussions by caring about the experiences of everyone involved, rather than just a subset, it will be impossible to have a discourse on gender and sports that is rational and free from bigotry.
It is a long read but worth it.
I don’t even think they believe any of that. It’s just a pretext.
I think they basically hate the idea of trans women (or perhaps trans people in general), and don’t want us to have any space at all. They want us underground and invisible and desperate (though available when they want a little “perverted” sex), and for people to be able to murder us with impunity. As a racist who was quoted in Black Like Me puts it in reference to African-Americans, “Other than that, you’re just completely off the record as far as we’re concerned.”
The stuff about attacking women in bathrooms or dominating women’s sports is just a pretext for institutionalizing hatred and bigotry. For making us illegal, the way we were before the Stonewall riots and Gay Liberation.
Oh, and gay men and lesbian women should keep in mind: once they get us trans people outlawed, they’re coming for you next. To them, we’re all just perverted queers.
Wby aren’t they worried about doping? Lance Armstrong did more damage to cycling than a busload of transwomen could.
I find “essentialism” useful: if you fall into a certain demographic group, then the characteristics associated with that group are part of your essence. It’s a form of magical thinking employed, for example, by the New Atheists in Mano’s post from yesterday.
“I am not convinced that those opposing trans women’s presence in women’s sports are actually interested in thinking hard about ways to create the fairest competitions.”
Of course they aren’t or they would promote a third category -- for transgenders. Mind you, I’m not saying this should be initiated; I don’t have an opinion because I don’t care enough.
Good news: the straight football player Bram van Polen has called for gays to play for his club and get out of the closet.
https://www.gaykrant.nl/2020/12/10/aanvoerder-bram-van-polen-pec-zwolle-de-ultieme-plek-om-uit-de-kast-te-komen/
It’s also worth noting, though it would be nice if articulating the harm to trans people would be enough to stop this hateful movement, that such efforts have terrible effects on non trans women as well.
You can’t have a law that forbids people from competing if they have or have had a penis, if they have or have had a certain blood serum concentration of androgens, without giving someone the authority to grope genitals and stab veins. As soon as one mean person gets it in their head that they want to hurt someone, they can accuse that person of violating rules related to trans participants in sport and then they get groped and stabbed or they lose the ability to participate in their chosen pastime altogether. Worse, it’s bound to get around that this is possible, so every single girl participating in sport will have to live with the knowledge that at any moment a stranger could show up and announce that an accusation has been made and that it’s time to get groped and stabbed.
Even though this groping & stabbing is unlikely to happen to the vast majority of girls (though you never know, some states might make it the norm), at the very least they have to live with the anxiety that at any moment this could happen: nonconsensual groping in the name of protecting our girls.
It’s sick.
“Republicans are deeply concerned about protecting cis women, ”
Republican history on reproductive rights and, well, life for women in general, show that comment to be false. They are so concerned about making the “right” stand on this transgender issue that they are willing to pretend it’s to defend “real women” (or whatever bullshit term they’d use) to make themselves appear as saviors to their base.
The scariest thing in English isn’t “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”, it’s
Hi, I’m a Republican and I’m protecting they way things should be.
@5 Crip Dyke
It does dovetail nicely with their existing campaign to control everything about women’s bodies.
@mjr, 2:
They (say they) are. As far as they’re concerned, being AMAB is doping, if the people you’re competing against are AFAB. Which doesn’t explain why
(a) ALL women’s sports aren’t entirely dominated by sneaky men “pretending to be women” -- after all, it’d be pretty lucrative to be a man in, say, women’s tennis, or women’s golf, where the rules are literally set up to make things easier for women (fewer sets in women’s tennis for the same prizes, ladies tees on golf courses).
(b) why they’re not complaining about the “doping” involved in transitioning when the transition is FtM.
It’s almost as if their position is not consistent and they have another agenda.
The way I see it, there IS a problem in sports, which is that some people have bigger, more powerful bodies than others and some of those people have better coordination and mental attitude than others. You can control for bigger bodies in some sports (combat sports and weightlifting particularly) where the differences become egregious or dangerous by having weight divisions. You could do similar in athletics -- height divisions for the high jump anyone? For the sprint? I mean, it almost doesn’t matter how talented a sprinter I am if I’m 5’5″ in my socks, I’m NEVER catching Usain Bolt. How’s that fair?
The main thing that gives away (to me at least) how bogus this objection is those first three sentences. If you are going public with an objection to this stuff, you are officially clutching at straws to find a way to say you hate trans people without actually saying it in so many words.
(Admission: when I made the point about women’s golf being easier due to shorter tees, I didn’t bother to check whether pros in fact play of women’s tees. Life’s too short. Women’s tees is a thing, though. And pro tennis players DO get to play less tennis for the same title if they’re penisless.)
You know, there are a couple of international women’s sports bodies who long ago declared that trans women could compete in all of their sports. The only regulation is that none of the women, cis or trans, have above a certain established level of blood testosterone, to prevent doping.
The boards of those bodies are far, far more interested in, and heavily invested in, the good of women’s sports, than the rest of us. They had, and have, much, much better and more access to the best experts and the most up-to-date research, on sports, sports physiology, trans and cis people’s physiology and athletic performance, sports medicine, effects of hormones, history of trans and cis womens’ performance in sports, etc., etc. These bodies have the most interest in the question and the best information on it, in the world.
So, before anyone else takes it into their heads to hide behind protecting the cis women, they should examine all the data that these bodies examined, and see how they came to their decisions. Also, explain why their decision turned out to be correct, as in, no womens’ sport is now, after decades, dominated or ruined or whatever, by trans women. Womens’ sports run just fine when both cis and trans women compete in them. Turn out that chromosones are quite irrelevant.
@10 garnetstar
I was only aware of the Olympics rules. Can you reference the organizations that have for decades used this criteria, please? I would love the additional data.
I’m so sorry, marner @11, I can’t remember the sports body’s name. It was in addition to the Olympic body, but covered the usual sports in the international and national non-Olympic competitions. It was a long name, many words, and passed out of my head as soon as I read it. Sorry.
@ 11 marner
Here’s a fairly comprehensive list.
Nearly every major sporting body has had policies on participation of trans athletes for nearly twenty years. I would be very rare to find one that didn’t.
garnetstar and Silentbob
Thank you!
@ Crip Dyke, #5:
Genital inspection was pretty much how the Olympics worked until 1976, when there was a certain competitor for whom the authorities deemed it an indignity too far and called an end to the practice …..
The supreme irony is that she was competing in the equestrian events, where there are no separate men’s and women’s categories anyway.