Define “civil liberty”
God damn ACLU.
“Andraya,” who is a boy, “just wants to run” against girls, so that he will have a nice big unfair advantage.
Even if Andraya really does think of himself as a girl, and really does think that he “feels like a girl” on the inside (the meaning of which is impossible to pin down), he still should not, and should not be allowed to, compete against actual girls. It’s grossly unfair and it should not be allowed.
Ahhhhhhh that is such bullshit. What does “echo” mean? Nothing. This isn’t a poetry class. The arguments used to keep men who say they are women out of women’s sports are the opposite of those used to keep women out of sports. We argue that men should not be invading women’s sports because they have a sizable physical advantage; that is not why women were kept out of sports until the past few decades.
Men cheating women out of prizes in sport are not exercising their civil rights but trampling on those of women. The ACLU should change its name if it’s going to keep on with this garbage.
The arguments used to keep trans women out of women’s sports echo those used to establish separate sports for women.
It all comes down to the initial claim that trans people actually are the sex they feel they are. Yet too often rebuttals are dismissed with the insistence that these academic, intellectual debates ignore the suffering and needs of real, live people.
When you start with a lie, things tend to get worse from there. Right in the headline: “Banning Trans Girls from School Sports…”
Nobody is suggesting any such thing. “Trans Girls” (aka trans-identifying males) should compete in school sports as much as they want to. With other males. Their feelings don’t give them a special pass to abuse women.
The way in which this has been portrayed as a racial struggle is also despicable. It’s pure race-baiting and cooptation of the struggles of actual black women, which have been plenty. One of the plaintiffs is black.
Yet we are told that we must prioritise the suffering and needs of some few, real live trans identified males over the suffering and needs of all real, live women and girls. We are told that there is no actual conflict since, because “transwomen are women”, they are all in fact the same group, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot who desrves to be no-platformed or sacked. This is why the definition of “woman” is so vital. To what group of people are you referring when you use the word “woman?” How is that group defined, by feelings or biology? Being able to convince bystanders and others that this is a conflict within feminism rather than a conflict between “feminisms” (or more acurately, between feminism and something that identifies as feminism), allows TRAs to paint GC feminists as evil TERFs and avoids the much needed discussion of the very real conflicts they are so desperate to deny exist and at the same time paper over.
TRAs are currently in an advantageous tactical position given the rapid and widespread institutional capture in government and media they have been able to engineer or take advantage of, but the fact they have to fight material reality itself means that whatever tactical positions they hold now, they will always have to fight to keep them. Reality isn’t going to change, and it’s not going anywhere.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Define “civil […]
Next you know, there’ll be a men’s league and a men-who-identify-as-women league. And no women’s league.
Has anyone attempted to investigate how many ‘transfemale’ athletes are actually trans, versus how many are obsessives seeking a venue in which they can win? Or is the enormous ‘competitive’ advantage just a bonus that’s discovered after the fact?
We have several examples of older, mediocre, male amateur athletes becoming (hey-presto) elite ‘females.’ Any insight into the mindset of these high-school kids?
In the case of Miller and Yearwood I think they’re just cheating. I think they’re doing it because they can get away with it. They can’t not be aware of the vast size difference, or the fact that they win by a wide margin – so they can’t not realize it’s entirely unfair.