Guest post: Far from being deprived of a chance
Originally a comment by Holms at Miscellany Room.
Connecticut rule allowing transgender athletes in girls’ school sports upheld
The usual lie is packaged in the article heading – the issue is male athletes in girls’ sports. Par for the course.
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged a Connecticut policy allowing transgender students to compete in girls’ high school sports.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims by four cisgender female students that the policy deprived them of wins and athletic opportunities by requiring them to compete with two transgender sprinters.
They had sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), which oversees scholastic sports in Connecticut, saying its policy violated Title IX, a law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics.
I’ll take correction from a lawyer, but the argument that a right has been breached seems strange to me. As we’ve said in response to Veronica Ivy’s claim ‘access to sports is a right’, no, at least not as an individually stated thing. This seems to me more like a breach of promise undertaken by the athletics association of that (and other) states, as they fail to provide a fair competition despite claiming so.
I suspect this different framing makes the burden on the moving party lighter, as breach of rights often requires stringent judicial tests.
I also take issue with the reasoning supplied in the verdict:
But U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, writing for a three-judge panel, said that far from being deprived of a “chance to be champions,” the four plaintiffs all regularly competed in state track championships and on numerous occasions came in first.
This is an argument with diminishing returns. It is only true so long as there are other competitions in which female participants can find a fair field, meaning the argument cannot be applied to every competition available – once the last competition succumbs, the premise of the argument – that there are other avenues available to women – is no longer true. And if an argument cannot be applied generally, then it seems it is not generally valid but relies on externalities to mitigate the impact its own successes.
I still don’t think that I have a right as an old man who was only mediocre in athletics on my best days when I was younger to access sports set aside for women. In my last running race I came in 2nd in my age group, but I would have come in first as an N (no gender specified) or as a woman.
It was a small group.
As long as the argument focuses on Transgender athletes rather than male athletes it will lead to rulings like this.
And that’s exactly why the argument always does focus on trans athletes. Endless con game.
As far as I know, when black athletes were allowed in the mainstream sports teams & leagues, the argument was about fairness and wasn’t followed up with “it won’t be that many and they won’t be that good.” When gay marriage passed into law nobody was reassuring people to “relax, there won’t be a lot of same-sex marriages.” That’s because if it’s fair, it shouldn’t make a difference whether there are a lot of them or whether they win all the prizes or not.
And since they’re now arguing that it’s “fair” to let trans-identified males into women’s sports, I give absolutely no weight to the argument “it’s fair because there aren’t that many and they’re not that good.” BS. If every women’s sport team was 90% male and 90% of the records are held by the trans-identified, there’d be no “oops, we were wrong, let’s fix this.” If a TRA isn’t prepared to celebrate that and raise their chin with a so-what attitude, then they’re showing they don’t believe TWAW and didn’t believe it before, either. The depths of their not caring about “Cis” females cannot be overestimated.
If I may, I’d like to nominate Sastra’s comment for a guest post, mainly because I’d like to share it far and wide. Well said, Sastra.
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The actual court decision is here: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/document_3.pdf