The ACLU of Connecticut is digging in.

15 Connecticut groups committed to women’s rights and gender justice have a powerful message for those trying to exclude trans women and girls from sports. ⤵️

For the full statement: https://t.co/OHEAXh3KzI pic.twitter.com/vkrPqUYqtJ

— ACLU of Connecticut (@acluct) June 24, 2019

From the statement:

We, the undersigned Connecticut-based organizations committed to women’s rights and gender justice, support the full inclusion of transgender people in athletics. We are in solidarity with Andraya Yearwood, Terry Miller, and all other transgender student athletes in the Constitution State. As organizations that care deeply about ending discrimination against women and girls, we support laws and policies that protect transgender people from discrimination, including in participation in sports.

Together, we reject unfounded fears about transgender athletes in our state and reject the suggestion that cisgender women and girls benefit from the exclusion of women and girls who happen to be transgender. Instead, we recognize that all women and girls are harmed when some are denied opportunities to participate in sports because of stereotypes and fear.We proudly celebrate Andraya, Terry, and other transgender Connecticut athletes.

So…they simply assert that women and girls lose out when men and boys are not allowed to compete against them in otherwise sex-segregated sports. They don’t explain how or why that’s the case, they just announce it.

They also resort to tortuous backward wording to do so. The claim is not that women and girls “benefit from the exclusion of women and girls who happen to be transgender.” The claim is that women and girls are harmed by the inclusion of men and boys who claim to be transgender. Note that one issue here is that we don’t actually even know if Yearwood and Miller really are trans or if they’re just temporarily trans for the purpose of winning a bunch of high school races. I strongly suspect it’s the latter. I doubt that they really do “happen to be” transgender, as the statement so smarmily puts it; I think they may well be pretending to be transgender with all due deliberation.

We proudly celebrate Andraya, Terry, and other transgender Connecticut athletes. We applaud the parents, teammates, coaches, athletic directors, school administrators, and others who have welcomed transgender athletes with encouragement and respect. And we fully support Connecticut laws and policies designed to protect equal access to athletics for all women and girls, including those who happen to be transgender.

That’s all it takes, then – just keep talking about “all women and girls” meaning including men and boys who call themselves women and girls. Just ignore the fact that trans women and girls are not literally women and girls in the sense that literal women and girls are; just keep repeating the lie over and over and over again until everyone sees the same number of lights…Only that will be never. (Repeating the “happen to be” is meant to coach us to think of it as a tiny, trivial, meaningless attribute, as opposed to the difference between literally being of this sex not that one, and claiming to.)

There are three more paragraphs of similar bilge, all equally unconvincing.