So, Dan
The New York Times did an offensively bad and one-sided job of Explaining the moves to prevent boys from competing against girls in school sports. To put it more bluntly, they argued for allowing boys to compete against girls as if it were just obviously fine and not at all unfair.
I’m quoting from the transcript. It’s worth listening to some, to hear how emphasis is used to tip the scales even more.
Just four months into 2021, Republican state lawmakers across the country have already proposed more bills restricting the lives of transgender youth than in any previous year. Today, Sabrina Tavernise spoke with our colleague, Dan Levin, about what’s behind these bills and the impact they could have on the children and families that they target.
This is a transcript of a podcast, which is why they start every single exchange with “so” – which a producer or someone should teach them to stop doing.
Sabrina Tavernise: So, Dan, can you start by telling us what are these bills we’ve been seeing around the country?
Dan Levin: So, the big national picture is, since January, in often Republican-controlled legislatures in over 30 states, lawmakers have introduced more than 80 bills that focus on the rights of transgender youth. And these bills kind of fall into two main baskets. The first focus is on trans youth in sports. And the other big basket of bills is around transgender medical care.
Sabrina Tavernise: So, Dan, let’s start with the first basket. Tell me about the sports bills.
Dan Levin: So these bills have been introduced in states from Texas to Florida to West Virginia, Kansas, and Missouri. And the major focus of these transgender sports bills is that they aim to prevent transgender athletes, and really, in most of these cases, transgender women and girls from playing on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
Sabrina Tavernise: So let me make sure I understand this. This would bar a girl who was called male at birth from playing on a female soccer team.
No, it would bar a boy who calls himself a girl from playing on a female soccer team. The magic story we’re being told about Trans Girls is just that: a magic story. It’s not true. Justice and fairness don’t require adult journalists to pretend it is true.
Dan Levin: Exactly. These bills would ban transgender girls on a high school soccer team or a middle school soccer team or in a college team from playing on women’s teams.
That is, boys.
Dan Levin: The main argument of proponents of these bills is that they’re all about ensuring fair competition in sports.
They play a clip of a legislator saying it’s not fair to girls.
Dan Levin: They say that women and girls might be physically outmatched by transgender women and girls.
Might??
Sabrina Tavernise: Dan, is there any truth to the argument that trans women have certain advantages in sports? Tell me about that.
Dan Levin: So this is a highly debated question. And there isn’t enough research done on transgender athletes to say definitively. But what we do know is that the American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that kids should play on sports teams that match their gender identity. And sports associations like the N.C.A.A. and the International Olympic Committee already have policies in place to really ensure that athletics can be inclusive of transgender women, while also ensuring fair competition.
No they don’t. They have policies to do with testosterone, which is only part of the advantage males have. Less or more testosterone won’t do anything about the bigger bones and muscles, the greater lung capacity, and the other hard-wired physical advantages.
Many school athletics associations are saying this is not really an issue. And they have come out against these bills, saying they are based on stereotypes and are actually not really needed. And trans advocates also say that these bills are incredibly invasive in that many of them would allow anyone to contest a student athlete’s gender. And that student would then be required to undergo, say, a genital exam, other kind of testing that would just be incredibly stigmatizing and invasive.
ST: Wow. How often does this question of transgender athletes playing on sports teams even come up, Dan? Are there a lot of schools encountering this?
DL: There really aren’t. Transgender youth make up less than 2 percent of the population, according to recent estimates. And trans athletes are even fewer. Last month, the Associated Press reached out to sponsors of these anti-trans sports bills in more than 20 states. And many of these sponsors could not cite a single instance in their state or their region where the participation of transgender athletes has caused problems.
Oh well that’s ok then. It will happen to only a few girls, at first, so that’s fine. Who cares anyway, when they’re only girls. The really important people are boys who say they’re girls.
Bastards.
It’s like everything put out by TAs and their aplogists needs to come with translations or subtitles that make plain what is being glossed over, elided and obscured. It shouldn’t be too hard to do, as all of these individuals and outlets have the mechanisms to gloss over, elide and obscure in the first place; they have to know what to avoid, what not to say, lest they give the game away.
I read this and the sections you quoted and laughed out loud. It’s hilarious when pointed out.
I wish this could be the main focus of the argument, rather than the obvious problems with fair competition. Why allow boys to play in the girls’ team, and why these boys rather than other boys.
If a mediocre college team wanted to play in a high school league, maybe grabbing some of the team and individual honors away from high school students, I don’t think the argument would be that they are unlikely to win anything, or no local colleges want to do that. The argument would be that this is a league for high school teams, the colleges have their own leagues, you can maybe play for fun but not in the league. The college team is simply not eligible. There would be no hue and cry to merge the leagues.
Funny how there’s a recognition of the necessity to recognize the material reality of a player’s age, and denial of the material reality of a player’s sex. Somehow, I doubt that the old saying “you’re as young as you feel,” would hold as much water in the former case as self ID as a “girl” or “woman” seems to in the second case.
Though using both tracks simultaneously seemed to work for the infamous “Stephonknee.”
Indeed. Competitive fairness is a red herring.
Of course we already know what they would say: That these people are just another subset of “girls” / “women”, that being a “girl” / “woman” is all about how you think or feel and has nothing to do with physical traits etc. Once again my response would be that by that definition any plain old biological female who fails to think or feel the right way (what “right way”? Why do people who think or feel some unspecified way need separate sporting events in the first place? How do we make sure only people who really do think or feel in the ways required are allowed to compete?) is not a “girl” / “woman” and does not belong on the team. Hence even by their own definitions there is no justification for saying that TIMs belong in the same sporting events (or bathrooms, domestic abuse shelters, jails etc.) as the biological females, since they have taken the only thing that made all the latter “girls” / “women” out of the definition of “girls” / “women”. I wish that would be the main focus of the argument.
Again, what about those of us for whom any “gendering” what so ever is misgendering, and any sports team that “aligns” with any gender identity is gender-inappropriate and exclusionary? What teams are we allowed to play on?
No it isn’t. The data is in, some just don’t like what it says. Their shouting should not be taken as any serious challenge to the data; many of them read no further than the first few lines of a paper or article before claiming that it wholly backs their claims. As was the case when Silentbob linked to a paper that he thought made the case that trans women retain no advantage after transitioning… only for it to specifically state that they did retain some advantage, further down in the text.
“Opening girls’ sports to boys who claim to be girls will only result in a tiny number of trans girls joining teams anyway so it’s not a problem”
Also:
“Not letting the boys join girls’ teams will result in all the girls having their genitals checked to ensure they are not boys”
How on earth do they get from one to the other?
Leap of faith.
It’s easy. All you have to do is twist logic into a pretzel shape, and you can step easily from one part to another.
Call me paranoid, but I think there’s more to it than that. They look like two serarate, but connected moves.
First, minimize the the imposition. Make the problem look small; make the reaction to it look extreme and unreasonable. “It’s only a few, what’s the harm? You’re over-reacting!” And this is setting aside the fact that however “few” boys are admitted to teams, at least that number of girls will be cheated out of playing on that team at all, and any girls from other schools who lose to teams with boys on them are also being cheated out of victories and awards. TAs have to clothe their own demands in the language of “fairness” and “justice” to hide the injustice to which girls will be subjected. They claim priority in their manufactured hierarchy of injustice. “Look, we’re fighting cis privilege!” This is on top of the absolute necessity to completely disguise the fact that what is being demanded is boys playing on girls’s teams, which would be a much harder sell to call “just” or “fair.”
Part of this may be an unjustified confidence in the ability of boys to pass as girls. This ability diminishes considerable after puberty. Long, multicoloured hair, lipstick, and head tilting can only get so far against the primal, finely-tuned evolutionary skill of being able to tell males from females.
I believe that this idea of “genital inspections” is a threat. It’s being presented in such a way that it portrays the poor TIMs as being subjected to this inhumane treatment, but I think that TAs are actually going to demand that girls be subjected to genital inspections. If they don’t get their way in blocking these bills, I fully expect TAs to make exactly this demand. I also think this is letting a bit of projection slip. They think their opponents are plotting to do this because it’s what they themselves are planning to demand. It’s a scare tactic designed to make girls and their parents back down in their fight to protect the rights and health of girls and women..
The simple presentation of a birth certificate would completely circumvent the need (and threat) of genital inspections, assuming that they have not been changed. As humans cannot change sex, this should not be legally possible, but we’ve seen how there is pressure to enable records to be tampered with in this way. It’s distorting history, and a demand that we play along. Welcome to Minitrue.
On IMDB, there is no longer an entry for Ellen Page, and all her past performances are now credited to “Elliot Page,” even though there was no such person as Elliot Page at the time those movies were made. Would any romantic scenes filmed with Page’s male co-stars now be considered “gay” love scenes? Only if you’re willing to deny reality and have compliantly retconned your own memory. Wherever Page is now in the continuing evolution (or disintigration) of her personality and “identity,” she was not then where she is now, and to pretend otherwise is, to put it plainly, a lie. The first five returns on Google in entering a search for “ellen page academy awards” are for “Elliot.” The oscars.org website has yet to be sanitized, and Ellen’s 2008 win for Juno is still in her original name. I’m not sure if this is the result of an actual commitment to historical integrity, or simply because nobody has gotten around to “fixing” it.
This same demand for compliance with, and acquiesce to dishonesty, is at the core of the push for so-called trans “rights,” including the demand for boys and men to play on girls’s and women’s teams. Reworded truthfully, it’s clear that this effort cannot survive the use of clear, plain language, so distortion, obfuscation, and emotional blackmail are the only tools it has. It may be hidden behind a facade of glitter and rainbows, but looking closely, what we see is the same old male entitlement, as prepared to resort to threats, intimidation, and violence, as it always has been.
Yes, that threat of genital checks has been so utilized on bathroom bills, too. For all my life, we have segregated bathrooms, and no one has needed to check genitals. Because, as you say, we can tell the difference between female and male. I have seen F to M that have looked quite male, but most M to F cannot manage. If they can, they probably won’t have any problem using women’s rooms, because no one will realize they are male. If they cannot, then they will be asked to leave…and removed if they refuse. That is the simple way it is handled. And if a M to F who does pass creates problems and commits violence, he should be tried, convicted, and jailed as the male he is, though keeping him in a separate spot for trans would be fine with me to protect his life.
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