Yeah I don't want to be all like "transphobia hurts cis women too!" because we're not the most harmed by the transphobic bs... but this is what I have been saying every time trans panic rears its head. I am an amateur female athlete - I've raced trans women, beaten trans women, and been beaten by trans women. Trans women are not an existential threat to women's sports. But I know a lot of (cis) women who are broad shouldered, or six feet tall, or muscular - I can't think of a faster way to destroy women's sports than to normalize this kind of rhetoric on the start line or podium.
I hope more people listen to cis women in sports speaking up about this frankly. It's exactly the sort of thing we all need in order to put an end to it.
Transphobes keep being like "omg listen to the real women in sports!!" but then they have like zero examples to back up that rallying cry, or at most a couple incredibly cherry picked and bad faith examples.
I always want to shake them and be like "YEAH. WHY DON'T WE LISTEN TO THEM. MAYBE THE ATHLETES CAN SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES AND DESERVE TO HAVE A SAY."
Like I am sure there are some female athletes who sincerely want to get rid of trans women in women's sports. Maybe a few with nuanced positions about wanting a few different divisions based on weight or height, and a few who simply speak from a place of ignorance.
But overall I genuinely think most who have actually played with trans women just want to compete, know what it's like to face misogyny on the way there, and are competent at recognizing it for what it is when it's directed at trans women.
Like holy shit, after all this nonsense still nobody can point out to me one sport in which trans women have sincerely dominated. They're all dominated by cis women. All of them.
If one day that changes—OKAY—study why and make up a division based on something actually measurable & shown to make a difference, similar to height and weight classes.
I hope more people listen to cis women in sports speaking up about this frankly
They won't. It only took 16 women on Lia Thomas's team to start the absolute panic surrounding her. Her team had nearly 40 players on it, so it was less than half the team hating her.
What you're not understanding is that this is all the patriarchy. They won't listen to women because THEY DO NOT CARE ABOUT WOMEN. Women are nothing but a tool for them to attack trans women and gay men. They do the same shit with children. They literally do not care about anyone they are "protecting", it's all about using women and children as tools to get what they want and then throwing them away.
Turns out, they only want you to be listening to the select few women who agree with them, but the multitudes of women who aren't bigoted should just be talked over and ignored.
(Also, that open letter from those 16 women about Lia Thomas is such a joke. One of their biggest complaints seemed to be that Thomas changes in the locker room (shocker) and that her using the locker room to change should count as sexual assault, somehow.)
The glib thing to say, that is also completely true, that the people who are SO FUCKING CONCERNED about the sanctity of women's sports do not typically play, spectate, or support women's sports. If the only way that you interact with women's sports is to yell about trans women, your opinion is not valid.
I think something a lot of people don't realize is that literally all transphobia is misogyny in some fashion. This idea that men and women are inherently different and immutable things not only has its roots in misogyny but is to this day a misogynistic idea, and almost all acts of transphobia are also misogynistic acts. I tire of other people who do trans advocacy sometimes because of the lack of acknowledgement of this or even reinforcement of misogynistic ideas.
Radical feminism has seriously harmed how we think about misogyny. Misogyny happens to everyone, it is an undercurrent of society like no other. If we forget that, if we treat things like they're separate from misogyny, we will never escape any kind of prejudice.
Note: This is also true of racism. While not obvious in this particular case, consider the traits often considered "masculine" on women. You'll notice in many cases they bear a particular resemblance to features more common on or stereotypically associated with, racial minorities.
As a trans woman, you're kind of the most hurt though. Simply because we're about 5% of humanity, and you're close to 45% (taking all genders into consideration here). Just look at the Olympics, they're going far more after cis women automatically due to the massive difference in numbers. Being transphobic involves being strict on "societal norms" when it comes to genetics and looks, and anyone not fitting that gets ostracized and attacked.
I always say TERFs are not a thing, because being transphobic and a feminist is exclusionary. Both can't be the same person, a transphobe is ALWAYS a misogynist. And the Olympics just really proved it.
I think everyone would be fuckin shocked if we went around testing the chromosomes and T levels of every female athlete. About 1% of the world, the same percentage of people that are redheads or that are asexual, have a chromosome type that doesn't match their apparent sex. A further 10% of women with the "normal" XX chromosome configuration have hormone imbalances that lead to masculinized features. These tests are new, most people over 20 would never have been offered them at birth unless there was an obvious physical issue. If the gender police want to play they can but I think they'll be really surprised at what they started. Imo instead of opening that can of worms it's better to just accept that women can look like anything, and sometimes that means they look tall and wide with a strong jawline and often that means they'll gravitate towards contact sports over a woman who's like 5'3". Short women excel in other things, like gymnastics, so they aren't being iced out by others being big.
Yeah one of my concerns is the push towards this kind of testing (T/chromosome/period tracking (!!!)) for middle- and high-school athletes. It is one thing to test someone competing at the professional level (still terrible, still discriminatory) but to stigmatize a 14 year old who is just trying to play on her school sports team with exclusion bc her T was high is going to wreak havoc on an individual and societal level.
I know several intersex people, some found out in late puberty, some found out much older. One woman, a nulliparous lesbian never interested in having children, found out in her 50s she had an undescended testicle. None of them found out at birth, none of them found out before the age most kids are split by gender for sports. This kind of genetic scrutiny is going to disqualify a lot of women and girls, and the fucked up thing is no one scrutinizing male athletes like this and making sure they don't have ovaries hidden in their inguinal cavities or gynocomastia or a low T condition. I believe a mass genetic scrutiny like this might throw the entire meaning of the word woman on its head, tbh. Humans have categorized themselves into these two genders without the use of anything but our eyes looking at a baby's crotch and trying to bring invasive medical testing into it is going to necessitate a drastic shift in the way we categorize people. There's some data we just aren't meant to collect that closely imo.
the fucked up thing is no one scrutinizing male athletes like this
Exactly. This is what's going to send us back to the stone age (or at least, pre-Title IX, Kathrine-Switzer-banditing-the-Boston-Marathon era) with women's sports. If you're 12 and need to submit to invasive medical/genetic testing to play field hockey, a lot of girls just...aren't going to. It stigmatizes all women and girls, makes sports less accessible, and puts those with deviations from the two-gender-only XX view of womanhood at enormous risk for stigmatization and actual violence.
When I think about how integral sports were for me from childhood through present day - it makes me livid to think about what we're putting at risk.
no one scrutinizing male athletes ... a mass genetic scrutiny like this might throw the entire meaning of the word woman on its head
Kind of an aside, but an additional irritant for me about all this is the female sex in mammals is the template. We are nature's default, not men, despite centuries of religious beliefs and scientific assumptions the opposite way.
I wish it were enough for people to just care when trans people say that transphobia is killing us, but if this gets cis people to understand and fight back then I'm not going to complain too much.
There have been a number of court cases in the USA where cis women were forced by management to leave the women's restroom because they were suspected of being trans. In some cases even physically assaulted by an angry husband.
even if you forget about the transphobia stuff. it's just rude at the end of the day. it's like how you don't ask a big person if they're pregnant. what the fuck happened to basic manners.
417
u/VoodooDoII Aug 12 '24
This is the kind of thing we mean when we say transphobia doesn't just hurt trans people :(