J K Rowling and the trans furore

In My Humble Opinion
2564

True, but that doesn’t apply to transgender male athletes trying out for female-designated teams, AFAICT.

Even if we change our nomenclature to the “Girls’ Team” and the “Open Team” (which, as you note, is a more accurate reflection of their actual regulatory status than “Girls’ Team” and “Boys’ Team”, that still requires a transgender boy to be officially categorized as a “girl” if he wants to play sports on the team he’s qualified to join.

I mean, if the basic criterion for qualifying for the girls’ team is having been born with a vagina, then the transgender boy is entitled to join. But he is being officially labeled a “girl” for that purpose, which strikes me as misgendering.

On the other hand, if the basic criterion for qualifying for the girls’ team is identifying as a girl and being comfortable with the “girls” label, then the transgender girl is entitled to join. But she has physical advantages based on her birth sex that give rise to legitimate concerns about fairness in competition.

ISTM that the least unfair way to handle this, at least in a conventional two-tier sports setup, is to use birth sex as the competition criterion and change the official team designations to be non-gender-specific. “Open” and “Restricted”, maybe, if we’re not in favor of “B” and “A”?

I agree that, as I said, whatever name is associated with a predominantly female group of any kind is going to be interpreted as derogatory in some way, because of systemic misogyny and sexism.

I’ve heard my share of taunts about being on the “girrrrrrrrrrrls’ team”, which were definitely not intended as a respectful acknowledgement of our team’s commitment to athletic competition despite our relative physical smallness and weakness. I just am not convinced by the claim that using a non-gender-specific label for our team would have made the derogatory attitude worse.

Furthermore, and somewhat tangentially, I think the casual sexist denigration of athletes with female biology, just because they’re comparatively smaller and weaker physically, is something that really needs to be pushed back against hard, no matter what their teams are named.

2565

There is more misogyny implied by using “Team A” to intentional obscure the female makeup of a team restricted to females.

Just like all the other female-erasing terms we’ve discussed in this thread, it makes the words that girls and women associate themselves with ideologically taboo. The half of humanity born with a certain body type have been robbed the right to self-define using the language they were raised under. Pretty oppressive when you think about it.

2566

However, if the team is restricted to people with female birth sex, then it may include not just cisgender females, but transgender males. Speaking as a cisgender woman and a former participant in women’s sports, I honestly do not consider it misogynistic to prefer non-gender-specific team categories that don’t require a transgender male athlete to be officially designated as a “girl” or “woman”.

I don’t think that using a more inclusive term for the official team designation, which doesn’t mischaracterize the gender identity of anyone with a right to be on the team, is in any way making the term “girls” or “women” “ideologically taboo”.

ISTM there’d be nothing taboo about saying, for example, “Most of the players on our team are girls, and one is a transgender boy”.

2567

Trans men compete in women’s rugby, so why wouldn’t they in any other sport?

Unless a transman is on testosterone (which shouldn’t be treated as a given…many trans people don’t take cross-sex hormones) then why wouldn’t they be eligible to compete against members of their sex class? The only thing that would stop them is their own unwillingness to be lumped with women. This is not a problem that women should be forced to solve.

2568

As a woman who dreads the day someone IRL polices the word I use when referring to my demographic group, I definitely consider the erasure of biological sex in deference to gender identity to be a symptom of misogyny. The disparate impact this movement is having on women’s lives is why I believe this. This thread has only resolved my conviction.

2569

Sorry for the ambiguity, I meant that there are AFAIK official rules against men/boys playing on female-designated teams. If the rule is that someone born with a vagina qualifies for membership on a female-designated team, irrespective of their gender identity, then we need more specific definitions of “men/boys” to clarify such rules.

It’s a question of exactly what we mean by “lumped with”, IMO. If a transgender man just doesn’t like to admit that most of his teammates are women, for example, then yeah, I’d agree that that’s his problem, not ours.

But if a transgender man objects to non-inclusive official designations that contradict his gender identity as a team member, such as “our team is restricted to women” or “our team is the women’s team”, then I think he has a valid complaint.

Yes, it’s a team for people with biologically female birth sex, but AFAICT common language usage is shifting away from considering the category “people with biologically female birth sex” as automatically identical to the category “women”. Which is a shift that I think is reasonable.

2570

I believe you. But I’m a ciswoman who believes it is misogynistic. I have not done a poll, of course, but I think most women would find it misogynistic or at least very politically insensitive.

The current system doesn’t label transgender athletes or anyone else as inferior. It may not give transgender athletes all the warm and fuzzies they want in life, but it doesn’t deprive them of athletic opportunities.

The system you are proposing would do both of those things to ciswomen. It would not harm all ciswomen athletes. There are probably some ciswomen wouldn’t care about being labeled an “A” team. There are lots of ciswomen who aren’t trying to make a living playing sports, so they wouldn’t care about the professional ramifications of competing in 4-tier system. But what about all those other ciswomen who do care? Do they just not matter to you?

We’re not talking about civil rights here, but feelings. More precisely, the relative weight of feelings of the two groups. If we must shit on 40% of the athletes’ feelings to cater to less than 1% of the athletes’ feelings, then something is really wrong. You may not think you’re shitting on anyone’s feelings, but by repeatedly saying “Well, my feelings aren’t hurt by it!”, that’s what you’re doing. You’re suggesting that a woman’s negative feelings about being labeled inferior are nothing compared to the hypothetical transwoman’s negative feelings about being forced to play for the Warriors rather than the Lady Warriors. How is that progressive?

2571

I guess I still don’t understand what you mean. Why would need to trouble with definitions for men/boys just to maintain female-restricted sports? If “female” is defined as being a person recorded as female at birth (based on a genital exam) and the team is restricted to only people who are of the female sex class, then boys/men are irrelevant. They can’t play with females because they don’t meet the inclusion criteria.

2572

No, I get that. The fact remains that under this system, she wouldn’t earn a penny. No woman would. I realize she could only be matched against physically unimpressive men, and that practice at tennis isn’t what slots you into a spot. I read your idea. But she’d still be several rungs below any level that anyone would pay any significant amount of money to see. So she’d be paid nothing, if in fact anyone bothered to organize the competitions at all.

It wouldn’t matter if she WON. She’d make no money. And if the pros aren’t making the big bucks, many of them would not turn pro at all, or could dedicate the kind of time and effort that the currently do to excelling at it.

2573

I think not misgendering people is a more important thing than “warm fuzzies”.

Sure they matter to me, but that doesn’t mean that I should just take your word for it about how a hypothesized percentage of cisgender female athletes would hypothetically feel about some implementation of my entirely hypothetical suggested system of sports competition categories that you are hypothetically claiming would have certain hypothesized negative results.

I mean really, monstro, you’re making up all sorts of speculative possible consequences of this proposed (and itself highly speculative) system, unsupported by no actual evidentiary data, and then claiming it’s reprehensible (or at the very least not “progressive”) of me not to immediately take all your speculations at face value.

Sorry, but I’m not seeing how your link relates to your statement. That link just takes me to a webpage about a documentary titled “Media Coverage & Female Athletes”, the description of which mentions trivializing representation of female athletes in “sexy” poses, etc. I don’t see a reference to transgender athletes or to your 40% figure.

Wait, what? I’ve been consistently saying that if we stick with a basic two-tier sports system, it would be a reasonable compromise to assign athletes to competition categories based on their birth sex, and use non-gender-specific nomenclature for team categories and names.

So that would be exactly consistent with a transgender female athlete being entitled to play on the Open team called the Warriors, as opposed to a Lady Warriors team restricted to athletes with biologically female birth sex.

(Mind you, I do sympathize with a transgender girl’s wish to play on a girls’ team while identifying and being identified as a girl. But she’s not being actually misgendered if she plays instead on an officially Open team, which doesn’t have a specific gender-identity designation, while identifying and being identified as a girl.)

2574

It’s those descriptions, AFAICT, that would constitute the “more specific definitions” I was talking about. If the current rules are worded more along the lines of “boys/men can’t play on girls’/women’s teams”, then we need those more specific definitions to know whom exactly we’re talking about.

Why would Serena Williams, or any other elite female player, be matched against men at all, instead of playing against other elite female players as she does now?

Yes, I did specify that under this PPS system a talented player like Williams could choose to play at a higher PPS level than she qualifies at, which would match her mostly or entirely against (comparatively mediocre) male players. But she wouldn’t have to do that. She could just stay in the PPS level she placed into, competing exclusively or almost exclusively against other female athletes in the same category.

Once again, so many of the arguments against this hypothetical system seem to be based on the arbitrary assumption that elite female players would be forced to play against mediocre male players whose size/strength advantage compensates for their lower skill levels. But that’s the exact opposite of how the system works.

Again, I guess the confusion is ultimately my fault for not being able to define exactly what constitutes PPS or exactly how it would be measured. In fairness, though, that’s a pretty challenging task.

2575

She’s not being misgendered but she’s implicitly being told it’s wrong to see herself and other females as a distinct group important enough to merit a word to describe it. We assign language to things that are special and of value. When we can’t even call ourselves females, this is a problem. It means society is saying we are not special or of value.

This is how misogynists have always seen us.

2576

Serena is a good athlete. She is a better athlete than many men. There is no reason to think that a PPS level that includes a person with her strength, stamina, speed, and coordination would exclude men because they are all better athletes than her. They aren’t.

There are a lot of men who are more athletic than her, a lot of men who are less athletic then her, and a lot who are equally athletic. The only way to reliably exclude men from the competition is to identify the men and exclude them.

2577

Just realized I misread your post to mean you sympathized with girls rather than transgirls. So to be clear, the “she” is referring to former rather than the latter.

2578

You’re now saying (or maybe always were) that women will mostly be in the “A” group playing against other women, while the other three groups will be mostly men with maybe one or two exceptional women who choose to try the higher tiers.

Explain to me the difference between your proposal and just having men’s and women’s leagues. Because honestly, your idea is sounding more and more like “Leave the women’s league alone except to downgrade it to irrelevance, add two more men’s leagues, done!”

So a direct question: Do you envision that the women are playing against any men in the A league?

If yes, the men will ride roughshod over the women. Spin it however you like, but your magical PPS measuring system will never be able to allow in just the men that the women have a chance to beat. That’s just not how reality works. I mean, seriously, you obviously can’t just go by passive measures like height and weight, right? You need performance measures, yes? If a weekend warrior can live out his lifelong dream just by sandbagging the tryout, why wouldn’t he? What’s he got to lose?

If you envision women in the A league are just facing women, that’s just a women’s league with another name. And this point needs hammering home: Your proposed A league will not have any prestige or credibility. The WTA has both now. Why take that away from women?

2579

How is telling a transwomen that she is not eligible to compete against biological females “misgendering” her? Do you think the people who believe transwomen should be able to compete against ciswomen without modifying anything about their biology are doing so on the basis of civil rights? Or are they doing it solely for the purposes of indulging someone’s hypersensitivity about their biological sex? Aka “warm and fuzzies”?

Sure they matter to me, but that doesn’t mean that I should just take your word for it about how a hypothesized percentage of cisgender female athletes would hypothetically feel about some implementation of my entirely hypothetical suggested system of sports competition categories that you are hypothetically claiming would have certain hypothesized negative results.

So I don’t have to take your word for how transwomen feel either, right? Since no transwomen have lent their support to your proposal, but we’ve got at least three ciswomen here who think your proposal is garbage, that should count as evidence, right?

So far, you are the only ciswoman who has posted to this thread who doesn’t have a problem with labeling women’s teams with a label connoting inferiority. Multiple ciswomen have objected to this. I’m asking you to just pause for a moment and think about what you should do with this information. Should your indifference over being relegated to an inferior category be elevated over my objection over being relegated to an inferior category? What is the most objective way of deciding the righteousness of a proposal like yours, if appeal to the majority is off the table?

I mentioned this way upthread but I’ll say it again. When we discuss whether Confederate memorabilia is offensive, we don’t elevate the opinions of black people who are indifferent to these symbols over the opinions of black people who are offended by these symbols. Cuz there’s always going to be some portion of a population who don’t care about something. If we always gave their opinion more weight we’d never change anything. We don’t create a dinner menu to suit the tastes of the apathetic and indifferent. We create a dinner menu that caters to those folks who have sensitivities and intolerances, since we want the vast majority sitting at the dinner table to be satisfied, if not content. That is, if we’re a decent, non-oppressive society. If we are a hateful society, we’ll favor the the small minority that’s in fashion at the time and ignore what everyone else has to say about it.

I mean really, monstro, you’re making up all sorts of speculative possible consequences of this proposed (and itself highly speculative) system, unsupported by no actual evidentiary data, and then claiming it’s reprehensible (or at the very least not “progressive”) of me not to immediately take all your speculations at face value.

I mean really, @Kimstu, you’ve concocted a proposal to a problem facing less than 1% of the population while you’re ignoring all the people who are telling you it’s a proposal that if implemented would do much more harm than good. There aren’t any transgender folks who are excluded from sports because of their gender identity, so I’m not even convinced there is a problem. What we have are transgender folks who are choosing to exclude themselves because of their own self-perception. They don’t see themselves as male so they don’t want to compete as males. I get how having to reconcile one’s womanness with their maleness would be a personal struggle, but this frustration isn’t a problem that ciswomen should be forced to make sacrifices for. There are other ways to deal with this frustration that don’t involve ciswomen giving up the terms that affirm their identity.

The solution to the problem you think exists is not creating more opportunities for males while relegating women to the “inferior” category–a category they have fought for centuries to not be relegated to. The solution is to create more sports opportunities that are gender neutral by forcing biological sexes to be matched with each other. This is 100% analogous to the third space option for locker rooms and restrooms. Instead of squeezing a motley crew of males into spaces reserved for females and scolding females for having a problem with this, let’s be revolutionary and create spaces that are open to everyone regardless of gender or sex and leave the pre-existing spaces alone. This way, you don’t have to worry about causing old school robots like myself to be angry at regressive-sounding proposals.

Wait, what? I’ve been consistently saying that if we stick with a basic two-tier sports system, it would be a reasonable compromise to assign athletes to competition categories based on their birth sex, and use non-gender-specific nomenclature for team categories and names.

Wait what yourself! If this whole time you’ve been in support of a system identical to the current one, except you want us to say “female soccer” instead of “women’s soccer”, then why have you wasted so many exasperated electrons trying to sell us on your asinine PPS proposal?

SMH.

2580

Kimstu did mention earlier she’d be happy with a division based on biological sex, as long as it was called something else. ‘Female’ is also taboo, she suggested ‘open’ and ‘restricted’ to replace men’s and women’s divisions, which is certainly more informative than A and B.

Not sure what I think of this. I’m 100% on board with removing any restrictions based on legal sex or self-identification, making the ‘men’s’ team open and defining eligibility for the female team by sex at birth, chromosomes or whatever is most appropriate. Plus calling players by their preferred pronouns and name, and getting rid of any gendered requirements for clothing (women shouldn’t be required to wear a skirt to play tennis, never mind men).

But when it comes to the names of the leagues I’m unsure. I dislike the idea that we can do something (discriminate based on biological sex) but not say that is what we are doing. It strikes me as dangerous somehow, but I’m having trouble articulating why. Then there is the question of whether the majority should have to change the name they use to describe themselves because a minority objects. And finally, I think if we did change the names, they’d just acquire the original connotations anyway, similar to the reading groups Monstro mentioned earlier.

Is it unreasonable to simply say a woman can play in the men’s league in certain circumstances, or vice versa? Here’s an example of it happening:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/golf/8059907.stm

I don’t see Heather MacRae objecting to qualifying for a men’s event, in fact she’s probably pretty proud.

We don’t have any transgender sportsmen or women here to say whether they’d be bothered or not, or whether they’d be willing to play in these circumstances, so maybe there’s not much point speculating any further.

2581

Remember when @Kimstu was adamant that “individuals with cervixes” was necessary because how dare we imply females who have had hysterectomies (before the wee age of 25) need cervical screening? That was apparently just a fig leaf.

Her desire to see a sex-neutral “Team A” instead of referring to them as female teams clearly shows that she doesn’t think female humans should ever dignify the existence of their sex class with a word that represents us all. The word “female” is off-limit to us in the public sphere. It’s bad enough that “women” and “girls” are taboo, but now the f word is too.

This is dangerous because it’s sinister as fuck. Women and girls are oppressed because they are females. It is our female bodies that allow us to bear children; a function that is serious enough to kill thousands of us every year. Our health needs differ substantially because of female sex organs, hormones, and bodily functions. Sex is a protected class specifically because it has been and continues to be the source of discrimination.

But none of that matters, right? Because the costs to us aren’t important in this Brave New World. “Female” has now become the word that must never be spoken if there’s even the smallest chance 1) a transman is reminded that biologically he has more in common with women than men and 2) a transwoman is reminded that she has more in common with men than women.

2582

If she’s only playing against other women, why is there this PPS system at all? Why not call that, I dunno, something like the Women’s Tennis Association? Hey, wait, that already exists!

2583

This question keeps being asked but it’s never been answered directly. So I can only conclude the reasoning goes something like this:

Female human beings aren’t entitled to anything as a class of individuals; there is nothing special about them that merits protections or accommodations. They don’t even deserve a term that collectively refers to them. Their existence is a social construct and thus they can be ignored.

I reach this conclusion because it’s the only thing that explains the blasé disregard for women’s safety and privacy that is required to promote the removal of sex-segregated facilities and sports. If you start with the belief that female human beings don’t deserve special protections then of course *you’ll just shrug your shoulders at crime stats that show how frequently women and girls are victimized by opportunistic male predators. These stats don’t bother you because why should it? You don’t think female human beings are entitled to anything, and that includes safety and security. It doesn’t matter how many examples women provide which show the lengths criminals are willing to take to find victims. They don’t matter to you; another faceless, nameless female being raped or kidnapped is just a fact of life. Nothing to see here, nothing to see.

But the safety and security trans people does matter. They are entitled to things. You will listen to their concerns. If they don’t want to be lumped in with the f-words, then no problem. Let’s call these f-words “Team A” or “individuals” or “menstruators”. If they want to have their gender identity affirmed, it doesn’t matter to you if they are biologically indistinguishable to the bloke that just cat-called your 12 year old niece and there is not way to determine if they are truly trans or just a fraud; dammit, it is their civil right to disrobe next to naked 12 year old girls and how dare anyone say otherwise?

What I have just asserted seems pretty damning and uncharitable, but I honestly don’t see how any other conclusion follows from what Kimstu and others in this thread are advocating.

*you = general you, not you in particular