Yes, and to that end I do not believe that trans people and trans allies should be advocating a position on competitive sports that is guaranteed to fail, because it is both irrational and inconsistent with everything else that we are saying about trans rights and what it means to be trans.
…what position have trans people and trans allies advocated for on sports that is guaranteed to fail? (And I’m not talking internet debate here: I’m talking about in the real world.)
Separate but equal?
Sounds familiar.
From context I’m assuming that “sportsball” is just a USA term for sport in general, correct me if I’m wrong.
What sport are we talking about?
What level of sport are we talking about?
What category are they wanting to play in?
What do the regulations allow?
What level of physical transition has that person undergone?
I think the desire to balance inclusion, fairness and safety is admirable but there is no simple answer that works for all cases and questions like the ones above need to be addressed.
There are many cases in which the answer would be “yes”, but there are also cases in which the answer is “no”
My question to you, Would your answer be “yes” regardless of how those questions above are answered? i.e. There should never be a point at which someone is told “no”.
I agree, let the sporting bodies make the assessment on how best to balance inclusion, fairness and safety. That calculus will not be easy and it will vary from sport to sport. (as we are seeing)
This seems not to have been acceptable in the eyes of the ACLU.
That there should be no restrictions for transwomen playing sport in the “women” restricted category, but of course that supposes that the sporting bodies must therefore come only to one acceptable conclusion.
This thread attracted comments because the article that kicked it off does not seem to allow for, or would accept, any restrictions on transpeople at all. Such a position is impossible to square with the continued existence of a division based on physical properties.
Had the article made the point that you did above (and that I agree with) i.e. let the sporting bodies decide, then there would have been no debate at all.
The enemies of trans rights are saying that the physical body is everything, and they are the driving force behind this anti-trans-sports argument, not to protect women’s sport, but as a lever to reverse advancement of trans rights.
Your intelligent, nuanced, arguments about the impact of trans athletes on women’s sport isn’t where the debate is going. The debate is whether trans people get to exist as themselves, whether they can get the medical treatments they should have, whether they get treated as the people they are. That debate isn’t settled, by a long shot. Women’s athletics is a way to demonize trans people, and paint them as an existential danger to women. There’s nothing nuanced about it, it’s a “transwomen are men” cudgel.
Your argument isn’t wrong, but it provides aid and comfort to those who are very very wrong.
Obviously I don’t agree. I think the line taken on participation in competitive sports apparent in the ACLU article provides aid and comfort to the enemy. I think it undermines the process of educating people about trans rights to be taking a position on sports that is completely inconsistent with the message that we are otherwise trying to get across about what gender identity means and who trans people are.
Even just in the trans community, there isn’t agreement on this.
So what physical characteristics would imply that someone cannot have a female gender identity? I would say none.
That’s not the same thing as gender identity implying something about the physical body. You reversed the implication there.
In the case of some trans people, they believe that gender dysphoria is a necessary condition to be truly transgender (usually the same people advocate for a strong gender binary). So that particular view of gender identity definitely implies something about the physical body - that one that matches the identity is desirable, and one that doesn’t, isn’t. That a trans person who hasn’t transitioned/is in the process of doing so is not fully trans yet. Or more to the point, that a trans person not interested in physically transitioning at all is not really trans.
That view’s far from common in the trans people I know well (one, out of around a dozen), but it is a view, and not one I, a cis person, am going to just dismiss out of hand.
So it is perfectly possible to advocate for some form of trans rights and believe doing so is implying something about the physical body.
Er, what? Yes I reversed the implication, because it’s logically the exact same thing.
You agree that there are no physical characteristics that imply someone cannot have a female gender identity.
Yet you are simultaneously claiming that a female gender identity implies that someone must have certain physical characteristics?
Gender dysphoria is not a physical characteristic.
And a trans woman who has a desire to transition, but has not yet done so, is no less a woman. I’m sorry, but vague assertions that “some trans people hold this view” are not good enough. If anyone else claimed this, you would (correctly) call them a transphobe.
Well, in many cases there actually are rules that women can’t play in the men’s division. It varies from league to league and the wording isn’t always all that thought out, but you’d have to change the rules in some cases.
The more I reread what you wrote, I’m just… I really don’t know what to say.
Bigots: Trans women are not women.
Trans rights advocates: Trans women are women.
Mr Dibble: Some trans people think some trans women are not “fully” women, and I’m not going to tell them they are wrong.
I mean, I’m prepared to say they are wrong.
Excluding non-transitioned trans women from the restricted class in sport is one thing. But the position you are describing (which I realize you do not personally endorse, just not “dismiss out of hand”) seems to be indistinguishable from saying that they are men.
No it is not. It’s a derisive term used by people who don’t know anything about sports.
I would quibble a bit and say it is used by people who think organized sports (particularly pro and college) are at best a waste time. They may or may not know much about them.
Then the intelluctually honest thing to do is to agree and support those whose arguments are right and challenge those who extrapolate incorrectly from that argument.
Sorry to Godwinise, but it is possible to honestly argue that the post-1918 settlement in Germany was probably unfair and still abhor the Nazis.
No. The trans people I’ve spoken with are willing to acknowledge that (in the case of a non-dysphoric what you and I would call a trans woman) they’re not necessarily men, just … not trans women.
It might matter that we do have effectively historically a sort of third gender here, a little equivalent to Samoan faʻafafine or Thai katoey, but the lines are very blurred between that, trans women and effeminate gay men in some circles and the same word is used for all 3.
How is this any different from a cis bigot saying that a trans woman is not a “real” woman? I don’t think trans people who are prejudiced against a subset of trans people are exempt from transphobia.
In any event, unless you are suggesting that we should countenance the possibility of partitioning the gender identity of trans women into “women” and “not fully women” for the purposes of sports participation, I really don’t see how this sidetrack is in any sense a rebuttal to what I said, which was that:
Some degree of earned right? Who gets to say who is trans, if not trans folks? And in that conversation, these are trans voices that come up. That they don’t agree with entire definitions doesn’t make their opinion transphobic, any more than homosexuals who don’t consider sides to be fully committed are homophobic. They’re something, I’ll warrant, but not that.
Sure, but I am hesitant to call what these people believe to be transphobia in any way of the same class as RW and TERF transphobia. It’s gatekeepery, and I don’t support it, but I’m not going to shun them for it, either, the way I would a cis transphobe.
It’s a rebuttal to the idea that trans rights advocacy is some monolithic bloc that you can just declare has a single “entire point”.
Fair enough.