this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
2 points (100.0% liked)

askchapo

22694 readers
34 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try [email protected] if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Was hanging out with my cousins the other day and learned they got some brainworms that need to be bullied out of them. One of them uttered the words "gender ideology" and I swear I almost slapped the shit out of him in his parents kitchen. The funniest part was that his lib dad actually was on my side for once and joined in ripping into him over his shit takes.

top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Mia Mulder's video has a full list of sources in the description, so that's a start.

These are my own thoughts:It is absolute absurdity how people seem convinced that gendered sports are about getting rid of "unfair advantages" to begin with. Left-handed people are overrepresented in baseball, tennis, cricket, and boxing. There's a disproportionate number of people with autistic traits who play chess at a professional level. Are we going to make separate left-handed leagues for sports? Separate neurodiverse leagues? Faaaark oorfff. What makes sports interesting is that different people with different bodies are competing against each other. If we're going to pissé pant over people's differences then all sports might as well be played by teams of identical twins.

And what actually gives trans women an "unfair advantage" in sports, anyway? Are any of these traits, things like height or bone density or hormone levels, actually unique to trans women, or are they also found in some cis women? If there are any traits that are genuinely specific to trans women, what makes these traits different from left-handedness in tennis? If you're needing to craft sports policy that somehow excludes all trans women but also includes all cis women with less common traits, then that is transphobia cap-a-pie. Moreover it's misogyny cap-a-pie. It all relies on the same narrative not just that trans women are willing to uproot their lives and face immense discrimination just to win a medal, but that women are all weak and frail and need to be protected from some sort of outside menace or perversion. Somehow trans women are all so big and bulky and mannish that it's absurd to let us play football or something, but also so feminine and graceful that we can't be allowed into beauty contests. We're too stupid but also too clever. None of these narratives are consistent. These narratives aren't even new or unapplied to other groups previously.

So what is the point of women's sports, then? Well, it's about providing role models for girls, and it's about giving women athletes, who have faced discrimination in funding and attention, and been cut off from a lot of sports science, the opportunity to build athletic skills, right? All of this applies to trans women as well. Trans women can be role models. Trans women face discrimination (obviously). Trans women's bodies are underresearched and are not the same as cis men's. There are no distinctions you can draw between trans women and cis women that matters. People shouldn't fall hook line and sinker for this sort of pointless division of womanhood, just because they think trans women are kinda icky. That's all this really comes down to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My go-to that hasn't failed yet is just ask them to name five female athletes. When they can't, it's proof they don't actually care about women's sports, they're just carrying water for the current fascist fixation.

Glad this thread exists, though, gonna save all these sources. This is a particularly insidious brain worm in that it seems to infect even average, otherwise well-meaning people. Probably why it's the one that stuck I suppose, since fascists will just fling shit at the wall.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think the biggest tell when it comes to people mad about trans women in sports, is they aren't also mad about trans men in sports. In fact, they have no problem with forcing trans men to compete with cis men, but they have a whole ocean of crocodile tears ready for cis women being "forced" to compete with trans women. Why the asymmetry? Because they want to pretend to be protecting cis women, who are idealized and treated as personal property and reproductive assets in a patriarchal society. Cis women are the source of future workers (babies) for the ruling class. Cis women are the source of domestic servants (house wives) for the ruling class. They must be "protected" from what transphobes imagine are simply men in drag. Notice how transphobes are always advocating for forcing trans women to compete with cis men to "protect" cis women, but are never advocating for forcing trans men to compete with cis women to "protect" cis men. It's an entirely lopsided ideology fixated on cis women as property as an ideological facade for discriminating against trans people. They won't even advocate a half measure like creating separate leagues in sports for cis and trans the same way it's already separated between men and women, adult and child, abled and differently-abled, professional and casual. Because to do so might incidentally grant more legitimacy to trans identities by admitting them to be categories, and that's the last thing they want to do. They want to ignore, bury, and discriminate against trans people without acknowledging them, or even resolving the contradictions of their own beliefs. Same goes for nonbinary, intersex, etc.