I’m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.
There are a number of reasons bills like these are wrongheaded. One is that it tries to implement the same kind of one-size-fits-all solution that opponents of trans inclusion claim to oppose.
But let’s get nuanced for a minute...
NEW: Hawaii Rep. @TulsiGabbard introduces bill called \u2018Protect Women\u2019s Sports Act\u2019 \u2014 would clarify Title IX protections to be based on biological sex, which would impact transgender athletes participating in athletic programs for women and girls @KITV4 pic.twitter.com/VcDDgO1mFL
— Tom George (@TheTomGeorge) December 10, 2020
I’m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.
How old are people competing in it?
What sort of hormone treatment has the person in question had and for how long?
Those are all factors that play into the fairness question.
Take the case of Mack Beggs.
A few years back, Beggs was a high school student in Texas. He was a wrestler, and wanted to do it at the college level.
He wanted to wrestle. Specifically, he wanted a spot on his school’s boys team.
He wasn’t allowed.
Now, here’s where you might go “wait, wait, isn’t it unfair for someone taking testosterone to wrestle girls?” and the answer is yeah, it is.
1. Don’t wrestle at all
2. Wrestle against girls, keep taking testosterone, have an advantage
3. Wrestle against girls, stop taking testosterone even though it’s something he, his family, his doctor see as necessary
But he couldn’t. Because of a blanket rule meant to ensure “fairness.”
He dominated. Obviously. He won the state championship twice in a division he never wanted to compete in in the first place.
And yes, it was. But it wasn’t his fault. It was an anti-trans rule meant to ensure “fairness” that caused the unfairness.
Here’s a story about him from this year. He’s in college now:
https://t.co/sAdkUN6SgC
Do trans women and girls have an advantage in sports over other women and girls?
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 11, 2020
I\u2019m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.
It’s a topic that often gets looked at with zero nuance. Bills like Gabbard’s in the House or Loeffler’s in the Senate look to codify zero nuance.
Look, here’s a 1976 letter to the editor sent to NYT: “women’s sports will be taken over by a giant race of surgically created women.”
44 years ago!
But, as I’ve said before: this isn’t actually about sports.
Something I wrote for Vice in 2014: https://t.co/VsFjdDRtwn
More from Parker Molloy
why is everything so weird
This is almost fitting because I used to make fake "In Memoriam" videos for whenever a Trump official left the administration back in 2017 set to this song until they all got pulled because of copyright complaints. haha
Beat it
Now playing: Tiny Dancer
This is actually just the Trump campaign playlist he's used at rallies since his 2016 campaign, if you can believe it
This is almost fitting because I used to make fake "In Memoriam" videos for whenever a Trump official left the administration back in 2017 set to this song until they all got pulled because of copyright complaints. haha
Beat it
Now playing: Tiny Dancer
This is actually just the Trump campaign playlist he's used at rallies since his 2016 campaign, if you can believe it
Then they played the theme from "Titanic." Now it's "Funeral for a Friend" by Elton John. Whoever is in charge of the music is being either quite dumb or very subversive. https://t.co/bmF3osSyph
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) January 6, 2021
This is what pisses me off about the constant bad faith victimhood crap people on the right do:
1. They wildly misrepresent something innocuous (no, Pelosi did not “ban” anything).
2. They come up with a “gotcha” example of hypocrisy... that relies on their misrepresentation.
This same exact nonsense gets trotted out constantly. “Oh, so now we’re not allowed to call ourselves husbands or mothers or uncles or aunts or men or women?! Outrage!” But no one at all is doing that, nor have they ever been doing that.
Yet the right loses its shit over this every few months. A lot of the time it’ll be something like... a lawmaker will introduce a bill that would tweak applications for marriage licenses to say “spouse 1” and “spouse 2” instead of just “husband/wife” because the status quo ...
... will have been creating actual legal issues for gay couples who then have to put something false on legal documents designating one of them as “wife.”
It’ll be something like that, just meant to fix an issue that has no material impact on 99% of people.
And the right, like clockwork, will lose their minds over it as though anyone is trying to “ban” the concept of someone being a husband or a wife or a man or a woman or whatever.
From a few years back, here’s Bill O’Reilly doing that
1. They wildly misrepresent something innocuous (no, Pelosi did not “ban” anything).
2. They come up with a “gotcha” example of hypocrisy... that relies on their misrepresentation.
Shot/Chaser pic.twitter.com/NwAZg7TTrL
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 2, 2021
This same exact nonsense gets trotted out constantly. “Oh, so now we’re not allowed to call ourselves husbands or mothers or uncles or aunts or men or women?! Outrage!” But no one at all is doing that, nor have they ever been doing that.
Yet the right loses its shit over this every few months. A lot of the time it’ll be something like... a lawmaker will introduce a bill that would tweak applications for marriage licenses to say “spouse 1” and “spouse 2” instead of just “husband/wife” because the status quo ...
... will have been creating actual legal issues for gay couples who then have to put something false on legal documents designating one of them as “wife.”
It’ll be something like that, just meant to fix an issue that has no material impact on 99% of people.
And the right, like clockwork, will lose their minds over it as though anyone is trying to “ban” the concept of someone being a husband or a wife or a man or a woman or whatever.
From a few years back, here’s Bill O’Reilly doing that
This is what happens when the Trump cultists refuse to acknowledge anything outside their extremely insular bubble: they can’t grasp that the majority of the country thinks he sucks and voted him out.
Not once in 4 years of Gallup’s 3-day tracking of Trump’s approval rating was it ever higher than 49%.
He was the least popular incumbent since Carter to run for re-election. It’s not shocking that he got his ass kicked in the election. https://t.co/7BSCQR2vI2
But if you do nothing other than consume conservative media, you’d be under the false impression that he’s popular, that his ideas are popular, and that the people who oppose him are a small group of haters.
In Gallup’s last update before the election, Trump had a -6 net approval rating. The last time it was a net positive was in May when it was +1.
And here’s how you get numbers like that: you do absolutely nothing to try to win over people who aren’t already part of your base. Look at those numbers among independents.
Check out the framing of this question from Fox News host @DavidAsmanfox. Embarrassing. pic.twitter.com/rchZqSV4n1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2021
Not once in 4 years of Gallup’s 3-day tracking of Trump’s approval rating was it ever higher than 49%.
He was the least popular incumbent since Carter to run for re-election. It’s not shocking that he got his ass kicked in the election. https://t.co/7BSCQR2vI2
But if you do nothing other than consume conservative media, you’d be under the false impression that he’s popular, that his ideas are popular, and that the people who oppose him are a small group of haters.
In Gallup’s last update before the election, Trump had a -6 net approval rating. The last time it was a net positive was in May when it was +1.
And here’s how you get numbers like that: you do absolutely nothing to try to win over people who aren’t already part of your base. Look at those numbers among independents.
If you're curious what Trump's defense will look like, all you have to do is turn on Fox News. My latest at @mmfa
The tl;dr is that for years right-wing media have been excusing Trump's violent rhetoric by going, "Yes, but THE DEMOCRATS..." and then bending themselves into knots to pretend that Dems were calling for violence when they very, very clearly weren't.
And in fact, this predates Trump.
In 2008, Obama was talking about not backing down in the face of an ugly campaign. He said "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
https://t.co/i5YaQJsKop
That quote was from the movie The Untouchables. And there's no way anybody reading that quote in good faith could conclude that he was talking about actual guns and knives. But it became a big talking point on the
In 2018, Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking to a group of Georgia Democrats about GOP voter suppression. He riffed on Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high" line from the 2016 DNC.
The tl;dr is that for years right-wing media have been excusing Trump's violent rhetoric by going, "Yes, but THE DEMOCRATS..." and then bending themselves into knots to pretend that Dems were calling for violence when they very, very clearly weren't.
And in fact, this predates Trump.
In 2008, Obama was talking about not backing down in the face of an ugly campaign. He said "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."
https://t.co/i5YaQJsKop
That quote was from the movie The Untouchables. And there's no way anybody reading that quote in good faith could conclude that he was talking about actual guns and knives. But it became a big talking point on the
In 2018, Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking to a group of Georgia Democrats about GOP voter suppression. He riffed on Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high" line from the 2016 DNC.
"Communist Blogger" is my favorite Neutral Milk Hotel song
Anyway, here are some of the "communist" blog posts about the Qongresswoman from Georgia (thread)
In 2018, she agreed with someone who said that 9/11 was an inside job and argued that the school shooting in Parkland, FL was a false flag.
And then there's another time she said that the Parkland shooting was fake
She claimed that there was "never any evidence" that a plane was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11
Communists bloggers like @mmfa run the same playbook of lies and smears on people they feel threatened by.
— Marjorie Taylor Greene \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8 (@mtgreenee) January 21, 2021
Produce fake news, spread it all around, then tag all fake news stories about their victim in all future stories.
Guess what?
Nobody cares about your BS.
Anyway, here are some of the "communist" blog posts about the Qongresswoman from Georgia (thread)
In 2018, she agreed with someone who said that 9/11 was an inside job and argued that the school shooting in Parkland, FL was a false flag.
And then there's another time she said that the Parkland shooting was fake
She claimed that there was "never any evidence" that a plane was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11
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Following @BAUDEGS I have experienced hateful and propagandist tweets time after time. I have been shocked that an academic community would be so reckless with their publications. So I did some research.
The question is:
Is this an official account for Bahcesehir Uni (Bau)?
Bahcesehir Uni, BAU has an official website https://t.co/ztzX6uj34V which links to their social media, leading to their Twitter account @Bahcesehir
BAU’s official Twitter account
BAU has many departments, which all have separate accounts. Nowhere among them did I find @BAUDEGS
@BAUOrganization @ApplyBAU @adayBAU @BAUAlumniCenter @bahcesehirfbe @baufens @CyprusBau @bauiisbf @bauglobal @bahcesehirebe @BAUintBatumi @BAUiletisim @BAUSaglik @bauebf @TIPBAU
Nowhere among them was @BAUDEGS to find
The question is:
Is this an official account for Bahcesehir Uni (Bau)?
Bahcesehir Uni, BAU has an official website https://t.co/ztzX6uj34V which links to their social media, leading to their Twitter account @Bahcesehir
BAU’s official Twitter account
BAU has many departments, which all have separate accounts. Nowhere among them did I find @BAUDEGS
@BAUOrganization @ApplyBAU @adayBAU @BAUAlumniCenter @bahcesehirfbe @baufens @CyprusBau @bauiisbf @bauglobal @bahcesehirebe @BAUintBatumi @BAUiletisim @BAUSaglik @bauebf @TIPBAU
Nowhere among them was @BAUDEGS to find
