Following the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling that states may ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports. Forgive me for venting a little.
This is a reader-supported publication. You can support just by liking, sharing, and commenting. If you have the means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, so I can keep doing this work. You can also tip me at ko-fi.com/thaliavacha
Why is this a matter of national importance?
Why is it even important enough for state legislatures?
How many trans girls and women are playing sports in schools and colleges?
Really, how many?
At a college level, surely there must be quite a few, right, enough to gather this much attention?
At least a few thousand?
Fine, then at least a few hundred?
A few dozen?
Not even ten?
Surely, with all this fuss, with this federal attention, all these state bans, these opinion pieces in The Atlantic and The New York Times, the endless headlines, the memes, the raging of the manosphere, there must be at least ten?
OK, but how about trans girls playing sports at school?
Nobody knows?
Has anyone spoken to any of them?
Or the peers to whom they supposedly represent a threat?
How do you think they feel, these girls?
Or the trans boys whom this affects but who never get mentioned?
How would you feel, if you were in their shoes?
Have you ever heard any of these children talk about how they might feel?
How would you feel, listening to them?
Do you remember what it was like to be a kid?
Do you remember when the federal government told all your friends (and all the bullies) that you are not what you say you are?
OK, so given how few people this affects, how little consequence anyone will see but for a handful of children who want to play sports with their peers, what is this ruling really about?
Fairness in sports, you say?
Hormonal advantages, you say?
Biology, you say?
Are you fucking serious?
Since when have you cared about women’s sports?
What other issues do you know about vis-a-vis women’s sports?
As this issue gets sorted, is it time to focus on systemic sexual violence against girls and women’s in sports, from coaches, medical staff, and administrators—from men, I mean—or should we…?
It was just the trans women stuff?
So we should leave women’s sports alone, otherwise?
Ah, OK, gotcha, so it’s about men pretending to be women just to get an unfair advantage in high school and college sports?
About men pretending to be women just to get an unfair advantage in high school and college sports?
Or to get an advantage more generally?
Because where better to find advantage than in womanhood, am I right?
Like all the bathroom stuff, like men pretending to be women to access unlocked women’s bathrooms?
Changing their names, rehauling their presentation, lowering their social position, taking hormones, getting surgeries, becoming the kinds of individuals about whom the federal government of the United States passes rulings on, all just to get an unfair advantage in high school and college sports and access unlocked women’s bathrooms?
Oh right, yes, I forgot you were worried about them trying to enter women’s prisons, too, which is my bad, because who doesn’t want to go to prison, right?
Oh?
You just don’t like that they say that they’re women?
You want to restrict what a women can be?
In the name of protecting women?
Are you just trying to confuse me now?
Wait, you don’t care?
You never actually cared?
But it was a good debate, no?
Like, we really made the world a better place?
Right?
Tell me, in the comments, what questions you think are being skipped.
This is a reader-supported publication. You can support just by liking, sharing, and commenting. If you have the means, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, so I can keep doing this work. You can also tip me at ko-fi.com/thaliavacha
For a more in-depth and serious take on the question of trans women in sports and the logic of political scapegoating, you can follow up with my essay, It Was Never About Trans Women in Sports
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.