Guest post: Under the trans activists’ radar
Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on Frenzy intensifying.
J.A.:
It’s almost impossible to win in the court of public opinion with respect to how gender ideology has practically eliminated the material reality of sex.
Funny you should say that because there was a transgender boxer competing in this Olympics who appears to have flown under the trans activists’ radar – or they are deliberately ignoring her for very obvious reasons.
Hergie Bacyadan is a Filipino who has won World Championship medals in two separate martial arts and is now a boxer, and she was eliminated from the Women’s 75kg class boxing tournament by China’s Li Quan four days ago. Bacyadan is a male-identifying female, albeit not medically or surgically transitioned. She has avoided all of that in order to remain eligible to compete as a woman, presumably because she knows that she will be at a massive disadvantage if she has to compete against men.
This will obviously be problematic for trans activists’ because it raises the awkward question of why they insist that female-identifying men must compete as women while ignoring the fact that male-identifying women continue to compete as their biological sex. I mean, I’m sure the mantra doesn’t go ‘Trans women are women, end of. Trans men are men unless it puts them at a disadvantage’.
I can understand why the IOC and other sporting organisations allow her to compete as a woman because despite her transgender identity she is a woman, but if the IOC are prepared to let her compete on the basis of biological sex over gender identity, why are they ignoring biology in the case of the two boxers with DSDs? That question may be rhetorical here at B&W but it’s one that really needs to be asked of the IOC.
I vaguely recall when Lia Thomas (TiM) was competing against Iszac Henig (TiF) while the latter was still competing in women’s events (and had not started testosterone). Trans activists imagined that there would be backlash against Henig, or especially against Henig when she switched to the men’s events. The objections were not about “trans” athletes, though, but rather about men participating in women’s sports.
I have seen one or two brief mentions of Bacyadan, with people wondering why her participation in the women’s competition is not drawing controversy. I suspect those doing the wondering similarly don’t understand that the controversy is over men in the women’s competition, and Bacyadan is not a man, despite her “gender identity”.
(I do think there is a sentiment among more conservative people that more symmetrically wants sex segregation, where men (the sex class) only compete against men and women (the sex class) only against women. Trans activists don’t seem to understand that people campaigning to save women’s sports are not on this same side.)
That misunderstanding is deliberate. Trans rights activists are happy to conflate feminists who are gender critical and know what a woman is with conservatives who also know what a woman is but are absolutely not feminists, in order to discredit gender critical feminists.
Wasn’t there a Canadian trans soccer player who stayed on the women’s team?
Re #3, yes, Quinn is a female soccer player who calls herself “trans non-binary” and who was on the Canadian team in the 2020 Olympics. The team won a gold medal.