Originally a comment by Holms on Marjorie.

For the last twenty years or so, there has been a strong push for movies, tv shows, theatrical productions (etc.) to have more widely representative characters and casts. Fewer male characters, more female; fewer white, more of every other ethnicity; fewer straight, more of other sexualities. It was emphasised that these characters were not to be reductive cliches. Further, this popular push emphasised that this was especially applicable to the lead role.

The reasoning was simple, and well understood by the left. People of demographic combinations other than ‘white male’ deserve to see themselves represented in movies, and not as insulting caricatures. Kids especially deserve to see their sex and/or skin colour as the hero, as the genius, as the object of desire, as the virtuoso, and so on. Broader representation was positive, perhaps even inspiring those kids to push themselves to become that themselves.

But bring up female representation in sport and all of that goes away. I’ve seen it argued for example that a person that needed to see champions demographically similar to themselves in order to be inspired to push themselves was never particularly interested in the first place. But worse is when that reasoning goes away for women but remains in force for trans women. Actual women are weak if they need someone else to feel validated and inspired, but trans women need to have visibility in sports so as to have heroes to admire and aspire to become.

Up with representation of demographics that aren’t straight white men! Then sotto voce: but feel free to forget about the female sex. Supplant them in sports, it’s a net positive because it helps males that wish they were women.