Trans Women in Sports
on how nuance is dead and why that makes me sad
I’m finally exhausted enough from hearing people be so consistently wrong and ignorant in their opinions on this subject to drop some truth bombs. You’re welcome world! I hate this. Y’all are being so stupid that I’m going to hammer this out so none of you can listen.
This is the last thing I want to be writing. Yet, it’s so unbelievably frustrating to hear people go on and on about this subject — which needs the care of those rarest adepts who find themselves able to accept the presence of nuance — because painting this in blacks and whites, no matter where you stand, is almost always dishonoring the reality of the situation in one way or another.
Seriously, people are being so incredibly dumb about this. Please check yourself, because you probably are too. I’m sure that comes back at me in one way or another, but that doesn’t invalidate the rest of it.
I can admit when I’m wrong — can you?
Probably not, but who gives a fuck, I’m going to try anyway. Voices which speak of truth are naturally buried by our media machines built to generate outrage and engagement, so I’m leaning into it, dumbass. Fight me.
These are systems which amplify the worst opinions. They aim to wrap people up in their egregiously thoughtless intentions of sating us ‘consumers’ into spiritual exhaustion, just enough to realize the only thing we have energy for is buying that gift for ourselves, because at least that’ll make the day bearable.
Regardless, this is about trannies playing sports.
Also, educational moment, that is not an appropriate term to use under any circumstance. So, I’ve been very bad here.
I do use it personally. My body — my choice. Yet, outside of this recently transpired satirical context, I would never refer to anyone else as a ‘tranny’, and you better not fucking call me or any of my sisters that, to our faces at least.
That’s just for us, if we choose.
If it hasn’t already been officially reclaimed, I’m doing that right now.
First and foremost, it needs to be acknowledged that the science of transness is not something concrete. No matter those pop-science studies floating around out there, and what they seem to prove to your average citizen, every truly informed person who understands the scientific process makes a singular conclusion; the true nature of transgender folks has not been proven scientifically. The subject of trans people and what makes them so has not been poured into or faced with any proper amount of peer reviewed study for conclusions to be rightfully drawn.
The ‘science’ of the past was projected from the minds of explicitly bigoted men, it was hateful and embarrassing, truly repugnant stuff when you’ve lived the life of a trans woman and read about how we were vilified by the views of perverted men and then made to be that way. It’s disgusting.
Modern science just hasn’t put the focus where it needs to in this regard —still too much of the old way in choices being made, on what we’re working towards understanding — the collective skewing towards the male-gaze, military development, and selling shit.
All of this means we have to make these decisions on how to serve transgender women as a society, while not failing cisgendered women, using common sense.
Perhaps, compassion could be wielded as well?
Who knows, that might be a bridge to far. Probably. It sure seems like it.
To the Hurt and Angry Trans Activists
I’ll start with our own bullshit.
Get your pitchforks ready girls and boys and non-descript human beings! Somebody is about to step out of line! They aren’t even using newspeak!
Maybe we should just pretend this is Maoist China to get our point across?
That’ll definitely work…
I digress, when a trans woman undergoes testosterone fueled puberty, their body changes in ways cis women’s don’t. I can vouch for that. Even when undergoing hormone replacement therapy and getting hormonal levels within or beyond the cis female range, those changes don’t just go away. They deteriorate over time, most surely, but they’ve still happened. Many of the results remain with us.
We shouldn’t be boxing, fighting in mma, or playing tackle football with cis women when we are in this category of transness; the kind who’s suffered through the wrong puberty for our heart, mind, and soul. At least, in organized and completive situations where cis women may feel unfairly pressured to take part in something they do not feel comfortable with.
Sure, if you’re a fighter and some cis woman signs up to go at it with you — hell yeah. But in organized capacities, leagues, competitive situations that might bestow people with better livelihoods in the future because of the accolades they may accomplish or scholarships they could earn; no.
That’s not right, not when physical advantages have come through our false puberty.
Bleeding heart activists can become steeped in their own victimization, often most rightly, and it can produce really nasty lashings out when people challenge their way of seeing.
I can see myself getting attacked by my own people and sisters for saying this. I can imagine myself being written towards quite angrily and called a bigot. I have experienced that before from stepping out of line with trans-activism’s self-ordained thought police.
So, I understand when people get reactive in response to this energy. Doesn’t justify bigotry one bit, that’s not what I’m saying. It does hurt though, to feel represented by these loudest voices which wield such lack of understanding or willingness to consider their own way of seeing as perhaps too black and white.
Yet, I’m not afraid of the backlash anymore. Nobody is listening anyway, not yet.
I understand what it is now that makes us do this. It’s projection of that lack of forgiveness we’ve offered ourselves for our own mistakes in life, and nothing more. Which is sad. This leads me to realize how deeply I’m rooting for all of us, because trans folks really have been fucked over ruthlessly. It makes sense to be angry. We just don’t know who to point it at, so much wrong with society at large, and throw it at each other over squabbles borne of the mind’s perceived sense of separation.
Still, when it comes to this issue that seems of such importance to the world. They have a point to be heard here. A valid one, and it’s what I’ve just explained.
To the Confused and Ignorant Cis Folks
Teenage trans girls playing on your daughter’s volleyball team in junior high is not a problem.
Get the fuck over it.
Trans women adults playing basketball or softball, in a sport that’s not full physical contact, in situations that are for recreation, is not a problem.
Get the fuck over it.
This one might be harder to accept — but it’s super correct.
Trans teenage girls and adults who have never undergone a testosterone-based puberty, because they’re lucky and live in a place progressive enough to allow them access to hormone-replacement therapy in their teens, circumventing the need to suffer through false-puberty at all, should have full access to all of competitive women’s sport, at all levels.
There are no bodily differences in that case, none that offer advantage, get the fuck over it.
To the Embarrassing and Morally Repugnant TERF Women
These people don’t deserve honest discussion. They don’t come in good faith. They’re liars and manipulators who hate themselves and project it.
This energy which people call TERF, it’s just misogyny.
It’s been grafted into women through the evil of a world gone wrong by the sculptings of men. This hatred has turned them against their own sisters; their lost sisters, who’ve been crying out to be brought home.
The biggest point brought up by these women apart from sports, is their demand for the existence of ‘single-sex’ women’s shelters and bathrooms, rejecting that gender should play a part, asserting that one’s genitalia is the most important factor in determining womanhood.
This is the hardest one for me — I’m also super-duper right about it.
Everyone, each woman, deserves protection, some safe harbor when they need it from domestic violence, or to pee. A place to feel welcome and protected when the worst comes to pass and they have no one else to turn to, or they gotta go.
I’ve been there. All of that.
I believe there should be safe spaces for women who hold prejudice against trans women to have publicly provided shelter where they feel comfortable. Yet, I don’t think trans women at large should be made to go to private rooms, or have their own underfunded shelters just because of these people. That’s othering, it’s wrong. That would be designing the way our structures work around prejudice.
The prejudiced should have their own special space. They’re the ones who are ‘different’. It’s those making the demands of separation who need to separated. Punishing other people for their ignorance and life’s trauma is not right.
It’s nuanced, but there needs to be morality in the way mechanisms of our systems hold space for everyone with welcoming tolerance. This attitude TERFs profess on the issue, and especially the way the argument is framed — by showing examples of predators, often delusional male ones, sometimes actual trans women — using exceptions of horrible circumstance to paint an entire group of people as sick men, and demanding their own fears and hatred dictate how we structure society.
That’s just straight-up evil. Fuck them.
Whose side do you stand on?
To the Bigoted and God Forsaken Men
Not all men — for real. That’s not a joke to me. It’s stupid to think it is. Great men are everywhere, oft unseen, getting just as fucked up by this sick world as everyone else.
This is not to those men. This is to the ones who’ve been consumed by blind hatred and fear of change. Y’all staring at me like you want to kill me for existing. The men whose insecurity about their inadequacy is causing them to consciously tear down this world rather than heal — abusers, predators, monsters, and our most lost brothers.
Nobody cares about your hateful opinions crafted to hide your own insecurities and unfaced truths of gender and sexuality.
Stop watching so much porn.
You need to save yourself from the evil you’ve let become you. No one else can do it for you. Everything you’ve been taught to believe is a lie. You’ve been corrupted. My heart goes out to yours, so buried inside your coffin of ignorance, left unrespected by your own twisted mind.
I won’t do it myself, because I don’t need to, and you’re not worth it, but it’s time for your kind to die. At least, the evil inside y’all.
Choose if you want to go with it.
To the Furious and Sad-As-Fuck Girl Named Daphne Garrido
Nailed it!
But what reasons do we have for allowing the trans girl in high school to play on the girl's volleyball team? Other than you saying "get the f over it" do we have actual reasons to accept that that outweigh other concerns?