Guest post: Everything she’s worked for her whole life
Originally a comment by Sastra on Their primary duty is to ensure that somebody does not die.
A woman athlete who walks out has possibly just lost everything she’s worked for her whole life— her match, her eligibility, her standing, her reputation, and at least some of her friends. A group of women walking out simultaneously might manage to make a majority, but there will always be true believers and upcomers to step into their places on the team. Remember that the moral melodrama being trumpeted high and low is that transwomen are in the same position black athletes once were. You boycott, you take on the role of someone skipping class so they don’t have to sit next to a colored.
This battle can’t be fought by an easy solution like a walkout unless the scale is massive and the numbers close to unanimous— and even then they need the science. The organizers have to change.
Going after the sponsors could help. The reaction to Dylan Mulvaney was massive; he wasn’t even a risk for killing anyone.
Hitting ’em in the bank account does seem to be the only effective, long-term strategy. The Critical Social Justice mob has been successful partly because they’ve carrot-and-sticked corporations into doing their bidding. (My favorite recent example is Sweet Baby, Inc., because there’s at least one clip of the CEO talking about how her strategy is literally to threaten to smear companies that don’t hire her.) The whole thing is driven by corporate interests, whether medical industry profits, image-conscious Pride pandering, or HR extortion, it’s all ultimately about the dollar. It has to be made clear that pretending sex isn’t immutable is a hazard to the bottom line.
Walkout or boycott by the women athletes who are being cheated leaves the male cheaters in possession of the field. The boycott or walkout “solution” harms the leading women; it doesn’t hurt the cheating men. The Olympics especially are a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Asking women athletes to forgo their Olympic ambitions is just another aspect of the unfairness, and another instance of asking the victims to solve the problems created by the liars and cheats.