Sneers and scare quotes and “supposedly”
There’s this CNN piece from four months ago that I don’t think I saw at the time, so I don’t think I’ve already ranted about it.
It’s irritating because CNN is a news outlet, so it’s supposed to deal in verifiable facts for the most part (along with a lot of political commentary, it’s true). Reporter Devan Cole wrote about trans athletes and there’s hardly a fact to be seen.
South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi Noem banned transgender girls and women from competing on women’s sports teams at public high schools and colleges via a pair of executive orders issued Monday.
In other words she banned male people who claim to be trans from competing on women’s sports teams. It sounds rather different when you say it that way. The purported “trans women and girls” are men and boys. Maybe they genuinely identify as female, maybe they don’t, but the fact is they’re male. Once you remember that they’re male it’s quite obvious why they’re banned from competing on women’s teams. That of course is why Cole doesn’t say it that way.
Though the two executive orders signed by Noem do not explicitly mention transgender athletes, they reference the supposed harms of the participation of “males” in women’s athletics — an echo of the transphobic claim, cited in other similar legislative initiatives, that transgender women are not women.
But they’re not. They’re not literally women. Even if they sincerely “identify as” women that still doesn’t make them women. That’s the point. A news outlet shouldn’t be treating that fact as a wicked lie, and the fiction as obvious truth. News outlets shouldn’t be feeding us politicized lies that way. They also shouldn’t be calling it “transphobic” to say that men are not women, trans or not.
The orders also reference “biological sex,” a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students’ original birth certificates.
Disputed by whom? For what purpose?
It’s not disputed in life, for the most part. People mostly aren’t confused about how to make babies. We all know who is which really, it’s just that a few of us have ruled that we have to engage in this elaborate dance of thinking that biological sex is a “disputed” term.
It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and for some people, the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have.
There’s no such thing as “a person’s gender identity.” That’s a silly invented concept meant to retroactively make sense of the whole “identifying as” nonsense. There is no “for some people” about who is female and who is male. It’s just a blunt fact. It’s gaslighting for a news outlet to be shoving this politicized gibberish on us.
While sex is a category that refers broadly to physiology, a person’s gender is an innate sense of identity. The factors that go into determining the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate may include anatomy, genetics and hormones, and there is broad natural variation in each of these categories. For this reason, the language of “biological sex,” as used in this legislation, can be overly simplistic and misleading.
All said as po-faced and solemnly as if it were instructions on how to build a fence, yet it’s just bafflegab.
Supporters of the ban have argued that trans women have a physical advantage over cisgender women (women assigned female at birth) in sports, but trans advocates and some Democratic lawmakers contend that they’re discriminatory, citing the natural variations that appear in athletes at all levels and of all genders.
And they’re bullshitting.
I don’t know. There are doubtless a million more pieces just like this from news outlets, but it annoys me that we’re having this absurd jargon-ridden ideology forced on us disguised as factual.
At the bottom of the piece:
CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to provide additional explanation as to the distinctions between gender and sex.
Because you’re just making it up as you go. None of it is true, so don’t bother with the updating to provide “additional explanation” of what can’t possibly make any sense.
About these variations among athletes … if the only significant difference between men and women is that they have different gender identities — and these internal states can’t be determined from what people look like on the outside — then why are there single-gender anything? Why a “women’s sports” and a “man’s sports?” Why not just Unisex Sports? Yes, people who were randomly assigned “female” at birth may end up underrepresented for some reason, but there still will be plenty of women athletes.
Oh, wait. No. A Unisex Sport won’t validate these women. Never mind.
Uh, what? Sex listed on birth certificate is, as far as I know, always based on body type. So unless you’ve chopped off a few bits here and perhaps added a few bits there, it’s actually a very reliable guide to certain aspects of your body.
I mean, my birth certificate says I’m a male, and I’ve got these dangly things between my legs.
That implies that “biological sex” is simply a bureaucratic convenience, something listed on a form, not some intrinsic to the person, but rather something that might simply not exist if there were no one around to write it down.
I know people who actually advocate this. Most of them are gender ideologues.
The history of women’s sports begins with women considered too frail to engage in sports at all. It seems like they want things to head back that way; rather than a women’s tennis league, or a women’s golf league, they want women to be treated like smaller men, and to endure more criticism that women simply are too small and frail to play golf or tennis well. So why would a woman want to bother learning to play golf or tennis? It will be almost as rare as a woman playing American college football is today. Who does that benefit?
US Title IX, as I recall, requires equivalent spending and equivalent opportunity for men and women in sports. Because football requires so many resources, the rule has the effect of cutting men’s smaller sports, and the creation of women-only teams in sports that might field teams for men and women, such as gymnastics or rowing. What happens in these cases if there is no such thing as women’s sports? And again, who does that benefit?
In neither case do women benefit, that’s for sure.
Somehow I skipped right over this great point.
I’ve read about a company that required all people to use “they/them” pronouns for everyone, until objections were raised by TiMs who felt this wouldn’t validate their womanhood. I haven’t been able to find that story since, so maybe it wasn’t true, but it’s still a good thought experiment and I suspect a real concern.
I suspect that a certain segment of the TiM population would not bother declaring themselves “women” or “girls” if there were no athletic benefit in doing so. You’ve brought up an additional point, that even those who might not achieve great success on the field nonetheless might still want to compete only against or with women or girls, and there being no sex-specific sports makes that impossible.
This whole convoluted performance piece is an admission that TIMs are indded male.
Because the orders say nothing about trangender anybody, it has to be introduced. Our intrepid reporter then has to go through the mental gymnastics, and ideological redefintions of terms that everyone knows the original meaning of in order to show that this measure is wrong and bigotted. It’s just like the TA accusations of
‘transphobia’ against feminists arguing for the rights and safety of women and girls, even when the term “trans” is not used. They can’t help themselves, and they cannot allow female autonomy that denies them access to the “validating” female only spaces they crave and demand. They insert themselves and their agenda into the discussion because everything is supposedly, actually about them. It’s a tacit admission that, however strenuously they deny it, there is a conflict between women’s rights and trans demands, and that the reaction against women defining and defending their boundaries proves that trans “rights” are violations of these boundaries.
As I noted in a previous thread that looked at BBC reporting, CNN is not helping their reputation by doing this. It is an actual example of fake news, no scarequotes needed. They are providing ammunition the the whole “Evil Leftist Media Elites” argument. How can they not see this? Why degrade their credibility for this cause? Something that is just, and right, and true should not require this much calculated mendacity to make its case. An actually worthy “rights” struggle should be able to define and defend itself clearly and honestly. Just as women can, and do. How can you be on the right side of anything when you are completely undone by four simple words? Woman: adult human female.
When this collapses or explodes, and righteousness dies of embarassment, maybe someone at CNN will look into how and why this was done by and to them.
There are oodles of men who were assigned male at birth who have decided that they want to be classed as women and compete in wonens’ sports.
There are not nearly as many women who were assigend female at birth who want to be classed as men and compete in mens’ sports.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why. Perhaps an outfit like CNN could offer a reason.
Sex is a disputed term, but gender identity is rock solid. Okayyyyy.
@Omar #6
Perhaps Nancy Lieberman and Annika Sorenstam would have been given better opportunities if they had identified as men.
In some sports men andwomen can participate and compete on somewhat equal terms; where dimorphism confers no advantage. eg rifle shooting, horse racing (Michelle Payne rode the winner in the 2015 Melbourne Cup: Australia’s richest horse race.) Maybe billiards, snooker and pool; also tiddleywinks and card games like poker.
But not too many others.
Holms wrote:
What is “rock solid” isn’t the meaning of “gender identity,” but the method used to identify it: you have to ask each and every individual. How do they feel? What do they want? It’s all up to them.
It’s choosy-choice in action, a soothing and empowering example of you being in charge and everyone else caring, really caring, about the Real You. Or else. Most people instinctively find this idea enchanting. It’s especially appealing to a culture which went through a longish period of preoccupation with Therapy and Self-Help Therapy — as well as Anti-Bullying campaigns. The fact that in this particular case we’re not dealing with psychology but factual claims is lost or downplayed.
Downplaying inconvenient facts is the very core of trans ideology. Where would genderism be if they accepted these simple facts:
Humans have only two sexes.
Humans cannot change sex.
Gender stereotypes are social constructs used to enforce patriarchy.
Facts are “transphobic.” They can’t be allowed to stand. If they can’t be ignored, they are (re)defined away. Feelings and fantasy are more important than facts, unless those feelings are those of women and girls. Male feelings and demands must be entertained and catered to. Unsubstantiated accusations of alleged “transphobia” are to be taken seriously, but actual documented cases of harm to women and girls are to be ignored.