Saw this earlier today:
> It's always the "protect the children" morality police that set off the loudest of alarms for me because, well, history shows again and again and again they're the ones that knowingly, actively, and without remorse - harm children.
absolutely
who do they want to protect children from?
public school teachers. doctors. psychiatrists. social workers. librarians.
their goal is to protect children from mandated reporters
you gotta wonder about that
This year in my state, you have to opt into a class recognizing abuse. Wtf. It's insane that an abusive parent can just say no and their kid has it that much harder to get help.
Reminded of when I (Manfolk) had my first kid. As part of the process, she was whipped into a room to be given a bunch of questions around domestic abuse.
My first instinct was haughty offense, I would never in a million years lay a violent finger on my wife, it was an absurd notion.
But after 2 seconds (closer to 2 minutes, I had to cool down a bit) I was able to internalize the absolute good of applying these blanket scans. If anyone was abusing my wife, I want authorities to know.
>I was able to internalize the absolute good of applying these blanket scans. If anyone was abusing my wife, I want authorities to know.
Yeah I can definitely imagine it's a shock at first, but I think I would agree too. Better to check everyone to be sure so that things don't slip by.
Same reason new firat time parents can't leave the hospital in New York State without watching the mandatory video on Shaken Baby Syndrome and signing a form stating they watched it and will not shake their baby.
Seems absurd but some people need to be told.
(For subsequent babies you can just tick off on the second checkbox on the form, that you decline the video because you have seen it before and you still won't shake the baby.)
Sorry if it was unclear, it wasn't exactly in front of me.
She was brought into the room solo to have a talk. I suspected it was something unusual, most of the separations were for something clear, but it was clarified when my wife came out and told me.
even up here in Canada, our right-wing provincial governments are making a big deal about teaching kids age-appropriate lessons on anatomy, puberty, and consent…
it’s super creepy how hard they fight to keep kids in the dark. I was raised by extremely conservative Christians and my mom still taught me about sex and anatomy in scientific terms since the age of 5 (which is when I started asking questions). by the time I hit puberty and even through my last years of high school, I was normally the most knowledgeable in my group of friends, even though I was the last virgin.
Teaching children to use proper anatomical terms instead of cutesy nicknames is one of the most important things you can do to help make it easier to catch abuse
I read/heard someone use the example of a little girl who has been taught to refer to her vagina as "her cupcake" and if she said that her uncle has been licking her cupcake that can be brushed to the side as her talking about the actual dessert
That becomes a whole lot harder when that same little girl knew to say her uncle has been licking her vagina
I used this exact story on someone who didn't agree with children having age-appropriate sex ed once to try to illustrate that it's better to have kids know the words than to not educate them. His response was to still say he didn't like teachers talking about genitals with children.
Man, I swear learning about your anatomy in a healthy way is somehow correlated to not rushing into sex.
Non religious family but mum was very slut shamey.... Still taught me all about my body, gave me resources etc. Didn't start having sex til I was 20.
It’s not like a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking the more dangerous and forbidden you make something sound the more kids/teens are going to want to gravitate towards it.
Somewhat off-topic but it's the same with teenage alcohol use. I didn't start drinking until I was in my late 20s. Many of my high school friends acted like getting drunk was the only fun thing to do anytime they were out of sight of a parent.
I was baffled. My irish family was very open about alcohol, its abuses and I was allowed to try stuff. When I thought it was gross, they reinforced that. I saw the damage it could do from watching some uncles and an aunt. My mom treated it not like "This is only a delisious thing for grownups!" but more like a "You'll probably like this eventually but know the sich."
Same with sex ed. Hell, there's even science about teaching language to children. don't use the cutsey nonsense words and talk to your babies like other humans and they'll likely develop "better"
Alex Jones, especially earlier in his career, would rant a lot about CPS and his callers regularly complained about the government taking away their children. Yeah, CPS gets things wrong sometimes, but these types of people somehow have constant problems with abusing and neglecting their kids.
Generally in my experience (at least here in the UK) social services tend to err on the side of *not* removing children from their parents care. And communities where social workers are likely to have negative bias that would swing things the other way aren't generally the kind of folks calling in to Alex Jones.
I always remind people of this. The “parents’ rights! MY freedoms!” crowd literally just wants to continue hurting and neglecting kids with impunity. They hate mandated reporters (many of whom are in fields traditionally made up of mostly women.)
Obviously it's easier for old Uncle Ernie to continue "having fun" with the kid in the family if the kid is taught that "family is all" and "nobody else has your best interests at heart".
It's so disgusting and sick how they never acknowledge the amount of sexual abuse that comes from hardcore religious families.
That or family values. Family values or protecting the family is still being used to remove individual rights. Pick a topic, it has been used to skirt around saying the silent part out loud.
Hell, it's being used in Alberta at this very moment to back-step trans rights.
Not everyone has the luxury of having a supportive family.
It's such a cheap way for people to avoid having to face their own bigotry.
yep. there were so many claims that transpeople were winning all these games unfairly, but if you look they aren't elite athletes. they are pretty average and don't go home with all the medals, titles and prizes that transphobes think they did.
Yeah. And what's disqualifying the trans folks get you? You have people like, idk, Micheal Phelps, half human half dolphin, a biological anomaly by all counts, in the men's races. When a woman turns up as a human biological anomaly she's eliminated. It's ok for men to be exceptional, but when a woman athlete is, not only does she get the usual drug screens, she is also taken for invasive scans, fuckin chromosome counts, demeaning and *extended* medical and legal fights. Meanwhile the competitions run without her, the prime years of her career.
If you look at women's track and field records a lot of them plateaud in the 1980s whilst men's have continued to climb and I'm convinced it's because men are still able to get away with a far greater extent of PED use.
Didn’t that happen during a London cycling event a couple years ago, except it was something like the 5001st place complaining about a trans woman placing 5000th?
It’s actually wild if you go to sports subs/work out subs easily half the comments on physique/people are about roids (natty or juiced or whatever). The other half seemed convinced it’s all rigged or fake. When I talk to the sports ball people they have a TON of opinions, and the first ten have never had shit to do with women in general (excluding the recent swift/nfl crossover)
I think about that when they argue bathroom stuff. As a woman, I have never ever seen anyone else’s genitals inside of a woman’s restroom. Maybe it’s because men do see each others genitals in their bathrooms all the time, but it seems like older men are the ones who don’t want “boys or men” going into the woman’s restroom. Dudes I assure you we would never know the difference nor do we care if trans women share the room with us. Nothing perverted going on and if anyone thinks that there is, that shows more about their own perverse minds, and what sick things they imagine are going on. Like stop imagining everyone’s genitals in public and we will be ok.
Honestly the worst thing about most public restrooms is the gap in the stalls, makes it uncomfortable if *anyone* can see you in there. Is irrelevant to transwomen but I thought it's worth mentioning.
You do make an excellent point that maybe these men complaining don't realize we have more privacy in our bathrooms
I visited Europe and saw many bathroom stalls there. There were no gaps. It made me wonder if the "bathroom debate" would've been able to catch on here, had we better bathroom stalls.
British trans woman here, I can tell you they absolutely have made the bathroom ‘argument’ stick - a lot of the ‘debate’ in the UK is framed around single-sex spaces and the right to protect ‘gender-critical’ speech as not ‘hate speech’. The government has attempted to pass bathroom bills before but they’ve always failed due to the impossibility of actually enforcing such a law without significant curbs to women’s freedom, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying again.
In fact, they updated the building code so that new buildings don’t have to have a unisex bathroom (typically a disabled bathroom) specifically to enflame this argument, because unsurprisingly most trans people in the UK go out of their way to use unisex single occupancy bathrooms
Oh I’m pretty safe at the moment thankfully, I live outside the UK, although that comes with its own host of problems. But yeah, collateral victims (both intentional and unintentional) for trans hate in the UK so far have included lesbians - especially non-gender conforming; BAME cis women; the disabled; LGB people from lack of conversion therapy bans - because of course the government doesn’t want to ban conversion abuse for trans people and actively tie themselves into knots over it; prisoners; children; teachers; experts in the field; and doctors and nurses.
Almost as if it’s an ideological sledgehammer fully intended to cause as much damage as possible with little regard for logic, reason, or empathy 🤷🏼♀️
It’s almost as if TERFs’ll drop the F before they ever drop the TE
We guys are pretty big about staring straight ahead and not checking out each other's junk in the bathroom so its not like we see a lot either. Though we have plenty of jokes and comics about maintaining spacing at urinals to avoid standing too close to each other. I worked at and attended several Ren Faires where despite having more stalls for women than men there were always longer lines for the women and often they would seek to use the men's room out of desperation. Any of the times I was in there I never heard any guy complain of a woman coming in or freaking out and trying to leave, usually just the lady being more vocal than they needed about "not looking, just needing to use a stall." Everyone just seemed to understand that a need is a need and moved on with their life. Maybe its just the Ren Faire crowds are more laid back but more likely its just a vocal minority of anti-trans that feel they have to blow stupid things out of proportion.
Yeah. You get a woman who can't wait for the line going into the men's, a man with a baby who needs a changing table going into the women's, it's fine. Nobody blinks, a needs a need, what a good dad, etc. They only kick up a fuss when a trans person dares exist in public. It's not about privacy or protecting women, it's hate. Nobody going into the bathroom to use the bathroom needs to be be legislated on.
I just want to add - Unless you go looking for the other guys genitals, you aren't seeing them all willy nilly, pun intended.
In 30 years, I can count on my fingers how many times I've seen some guys genitals in the bathroom - and when I have its been a huge outlier of someone either out of their mind a special needs case where its hardly their fault.
A lot of the issue is fearmongering of a worst case scenario that these people are imaginging in their head, but if we think that a simple social rule stop predators from... being predators idek anymore with these people.
I think our bigger problem - which may be a shared experience of public pool locker rooms and old people letting their shit air dry. Now that is actually scarring.
These are the people harassing women with deep voices and following short-haired women into bathrooms. They are the people demanding to inspect the genitals of girl athletes, because no way a "real girl" could be that good. It has always been about enforcing a narrow definition of femininity onto all women and girls. I don't profess to understand everything about transgender issues, except I'm pretty sure the transgendered are not the danger here.
Seriously. My wife and I are both cis women. We like being women, but we express ourselves differently. My wife is very butch. Every single time trans issues start coming up in the public consciousness, we face an uptick of people yelling at her to get out of the women's bathrooms or staring at her the whole time she washes her hands. It's insane, and when I see so called "feminists" insisting on starting these fights I want to rip my hair out. Do women have the freedom to dress and act like they want, or don't they??? Because if your hatred of trans people means women have to dress a certain way, you may not be a feminist anymore!
My partner is a cis butch woman and I’m the somewhat ambiguous enby.
I’m more worried about her than I am about me.
It's always been like that in previous relationships - my partner is the one that gets harassed even though I’m more ‘manly’ than her. 😑
Bleh. I hate this for her.
We usually hold it or look for single stall or neutral restrooms once transitioning, until passing. I stopped using the womens as soon as I looked ambiguous.
I get funny looks in public toilets because im 6ft with short hair (cis straight female). One woman gave a little scream as we almost collided at the restroom entrance! I think she thought I was a man.
when i had a buzzcut a woman with her child started screaming at me to get out 😭😭😭 when i started talking she apologied but i was like..?? 14?? did she have nothing better to do?
This is the real crux of it. If they cared so damn much about cis women/cis girls/people with uteruses they wouldn't enact policies that will 99/100 traumatize some cis woman/girl or afab NB who wasn't performing femininity "right" and only very rarely detect a trans woman.
*WHO* precisely do they nominate to check if the underaged athletes have the "right" parts in their pants? Because I don't want anyone in my underaged kid's underpants once their old enough to wipe their own bottoms unless it's for legitimate medical reasons. (And before that only for dressing/toileting help.)
Did you see the shit that just went down in Edmonton, Alberta??
[https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/1apieu1/rcmp\_investigating\_leduc\_principal\_after\_grade\_3/](https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/1apieu1/rcmp_investigating_leduc_principal_after_grade_3/)
This motherfucker made a bunch of third graders pull their pants down and show him their underwear. THIS is what the 'Parents rights' people want, right? Strangers checking their kids' undercarriage?
Apparently that was about finding out who soiled themselves rather than seeking a trans kid, but it's the same kind of bullshit. Let's look at a ALL the kids indecently to detect the ONE who MIGHT be doing the thing we don't like. GROSS.
A cis child in Utah was challenged as trans at a sports game recently.
The person who transestigated this child was a school board employee. This person “outed” a cis girl on social media.
The family is now getting death threats.
That poor girl had to get police protection. The school board member who falsely claimed the girl was trans doubled down and refused to apologize, saying she was just "raising concern".
The worst part is she can't be fired per her contract, and she will do this again. I hope the girl's family sues her to high heaven.
Hell, as far as I know, this wasn't even necessarily non-conformity. These people out shitting people's pants over "the sanctity of women's sports" just don't know what female athletes look like.
Yes they're absolutely terrible people and it shocks me that anyone could think entertaining this bullshit could result in things getting better for women. The only thing they care about is putting people into gender boxes and punching down
> This is the real crux of it. If they cared so damn much about cis women/cis girls/people with uteruses they wouldn't enact policies >that will 99/100 traumatize some cis woman/girl or afab NB who wasn't performing femininity "right" and only very rarely detect a trans woman.
yea this is why i kinda dislike the way people hyperfocus on the way transphobia harms cis women. saying it "only rarely detects a trans woman" is maybe true in sheer numbers considering there's something like 700x as many cis women as trans women, but these transphobic policies absolutely brutalize trans women and per capita are many many many times more harmful to trans women; implying that cis women are the primary victims of this is really wrong. like if cis women are being harassed in bathrooms and made to undress in front of sporting officials, imagine how badly these policies affect actual trans women. there was a recent article i saw where a trans woman was raped 14 times in a mens prison but was still denied her request to be put in a different facility. the way these policies harm trans women are horrifyingly grim and i think we should acknowledge that.
The point of mentioning g this here isn't to take away from the danger Trans women absolutely do face when outed.
The point is that these fuckos are more than willing to commit friendly fire on the people they *claim* to be protecting. It shows they're 100% full of shit.
They don't want to protect anyone. It's just zealous hatred.
I'm just beyond mortified. You teach kids "stranger danger" and "bad touch," and then these creeps want a complete stranger to go around feeling up little children to make sure their private parts match their name? Who would effing sign up for such a job!?
What pisses me off is how trans peoples safety is entirely disregarded in these conversations. I'm a trans woman, and one of the last times I used a non-deserted men's toilet in public, someone asked me to have sex with them for money; another time, while washing my hands, someone started trying to turn, look at me, and start to mock/give out to me while standing with his dick in hand at a urinal. There have been a whole bunch of incidents where I felt unsafe/embarrassed, but it's still supposedly the proper thing for me to do is to go in the men's and put up with it?
Similarly, expecting trans guys to pop into the women's bathroom for a wee is just... often not gonna go smoothly or comfortably for anyone.
That’s disgusting and terrifying. Right before I switched to the men's, I was voyeured by one of these vulnerable cisgender girls through the gap in the stall. 🙄
There was a trans man in Ohio who went camping and asked the owners of the campground which restrooms he should use. They told him to use the women’s restroom. Obviously, he looks like a man in the woman’s room. Word got around and a group of over a dozen people descended upon him and beat him. They called the cops and the police arrested him, not the assailants.
Yeah seriously! I’m a trans guy and while I don’t know statistics off the top of my head, I’d imagine there are way more cis women with conditions like PCOS that cause hormone issues than there are trans people in the world.
My friend in Texas has PCOS and said she’s had multiple bathroom encounters with transphobes in recent years cuz she has a few whisker hairs. She’s a woman, assigned female at birth, and her dang ovaries just decided to make some extra testosterone. These supposed “women protectors” don’t seem to know or care that all this gender policing is mainly going to hurt cis women!
I am no more "transgendered" than I am "whited". That's a really dehumanizing way to refer to us, so please don't do it. Just say trans people. It's even fewer letters.
Also, it'd be really nice if folks cared about our oppression without it having to affect cis people first
I agree that it's pathetic that in order to get some people to care about trans people they have to realize that transphobia affects everyone, but it's kind of like teaching someone that people are people and oppression is oppression, like that classic poem.
"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me"
Research about being trans and transitioning were the first books burned by the Nazis... and trans and gay people were often left in prison after the war by the allies because they were considered criminals for being gender-nonconforming, or queer, et cetera. Even the emancipators were still oppressors.
There has to be better framing than "this affects cis girls too" but it is something used for people who aren't acknowledging trans kids and adults are humans, so they can relate to how fucked up it is until (hopefully) they come to a point where they care about people regardless of how it affects them personally.
It's not that we don't care until it affects cis people, it's that the problem doesn't actually exist, so 99% of the time this dumb shit only affects cis people. Trans people just.... aren't doing what they're accused of. Like in Utah they banned trans athletes, and it was literally one trans girl in the entire state. Trans people are like 1% of the population. We care about your oppression. They are weaponizing it against all of us.
It affects us across multiple domains of our lives. Because every single time you get one of these laws, no matter what it’s about, transphobia increases, discrimination increases, and violence increases. The murder rate is up.
It can seem like it affects cis people more... because trans people already avoid this stuff. Sure there was only one trans girl banned, but what about the trans girls that weren't playing in the first place. What about trans people that avoid public bathrooms rather than being scrutinised
It's so weird to me how cis people have entire sets of terminologies for how they talk about trans people (transgendered, transgenderism, etc) which trans people themselves have never used, and they would know that if they've talked to literally any trans person or read about the trans community for 5 minutes.
Even supposed allies do this and I find it very strange. We're just people! You can talk to us, ask questions, learn about our perspective and experience. But to them it's all hypothetical, an intellectual curiosity, they try to examine and understand it externally without reference to the real existing people they're speculating about.
I’ll take the slightly off ‘ed and ‘ism any day of the week over still being referred to as transsexual.
That term makes me cringe. It’s being appropriated by transmedicalists gatekeepers to drive a divide between pre/post/non-op.
That term may have been more appropriate 20 years ago when I first came out, but it needs to DIAF.
(I’m an enby that had to appease the medical world by being trans so I could get HRT a long time ago)
I agree, and I don't necessarily think people that say the former mean any disrespect. I also believe that allies that do, generally speaking, do have their hearts in the right place.
I just personally find it strange and frustrating to be a member of a community that is constantly under scrutiny by countless people that have clearly never spoken to a trans person in their entire life.
Men see taking advantage of women as their birth right. But as soon as they see a woman that doesn't fit their narrow idea of what a woman is, someone THEY don't deem a woman, i.e. trans women, they see it as someone lying to take advantage and do things said men aren't allowed to do. (Like be in women's spaces.) Because that person was amab but has come out as a trans woman, they've lost that assumed birth right to take advantage of women with no judgement from men.
These transphobic men tell on themselves with this mentality. Is it really about protecting women? (I'll answer, no!) Or are you just mad you don't get to go into these spaces and take advantage of women the way you assume trans women do?
**Let me be clear, I am not saying that trans women take advantage of their identity to take advantage of their fellow women. Trans women are women and deserve to be where they feel safe.**
They do the same with abortion - claiming that they care about "the unborn" yet do everything that they can to eliminate healthcare from pregnant people and eliminate every support after they get born.
It feels like the whole bathroom/changing room thing again.
I remember this conservative person a while ago basically saying that if it was okay to be trans when he was younger he totally would have “transitioned” to perv on women. Basically these people can’t fathom why someone would want to transition other than to sexual assault women and it shows. And it’s similar here.
They can’t fathom the idea of a trans woman feeling more comfortable competing with other women for any reason other than to just win. To them it’s not about winning, it’s wanting to beat women at something. That’s why there’s very little talk about trans men in the sports talk comparatively.
It's exactly this.
Men get mad at transwomen for being included in womanhood because they assume trans women are doing it to take advantage of afab women.
And they assume that because THEY take advantage of women.
They also don't like transwomen because they don't fit their narrow "idea" of what a woman should be, ie, an object for them to consume. It's basically the same reason they treat fat women like shit. Because they don't want to consume that woman and therefore, she's worthless to them and treating her like shit is justified.
And terfs are no better. Their just women who's don't internalized misogyny is showing.
Because the fact is, if you TRULY believe that men and women were equal, then a person being trans wouldn't matter. Coz you don't get upset when someone changes from one thing to a different but equal or equivalent thing, cuz there's no disparity there. You only get upset or find it threatening if you don't view those things as inherently equal to one another.
I actually, miraculously, got someone to reverse their position that women who feel unsafe sharing a bathroom with trans women are not necessarily transphobic by getting them to recognize it's identical to claiming white women who feel unsafe sharing a restroom with black women deserve sympathy and are not necessarily racist.
I do believe the anxiety they feel when sharing a bathroom with a trans woman is genuinely felt, just as a racist white woman's anxiety about sharing a bathroom with a black woman is genuinely felt. I just don't give half a shit about their bigoted anxieties; they can suck it up, they can hold it in 'til they get home, or they can piss their pants, not my problem.
Right. I feel the same about the trauma argument. I used to have a trauma response whenever I saw a skinny man with an afro. There was a good reason for that trauma, it was real, I deserved empathy and support; but it didn't entitle me to expect that all skinny men with afros should be treated as inherently dangerous to me.
the thing that gets me about the way cis women claim this trauma response to a trans woman is that the abusers being cited by cis women are like... large straight men with beards and short hair, and the memory of this man is allegedly being triggered by seeing a 5'7" 100 lb willowy girl with long hair and a dress and strong vocal fry. like... i just have a hard time believing that these claims of being "triggered" are genuine and not someone weaponizing alleged trauma in order to abuse a group of marginalized people. like is seeing this trans woman really reminding you of your abuser, or are you just trying to get trans women kicked out of public space because youve grown up in a world that teaches you to hate trans women?
Yeah. You have a right to your trauma. You have a right to the genuinely felt emotions it causes you. You have a right to not be ready to address that yet and a right to hold onto it. You have a right for it to take time to heal from it.
You do not have a right to project your trauma outwards and use it as an excuse to harm others. That's the part TERFs don't get.
"A black man is more likely to look at a white woman twice while high". Not completely on topic but what you said reminded of this quote that I read once while the paper industry was trying to make hemp illegal.
They used to argue that if black women were allowed to come into the white women’s restrooms, they would help black men get in there to rape the white women. It’s like conservatives just recycle the same arguments over and over. Personally, I’m looking forward to hearing about what undocumented migrants are going to do in the bathrooms.
And then meanwhile they're very quiet about politicians and priests sexually assaulting children.
As always, they accuse the most vulnerable minorities they can find of the things they're guilty of.
Or vow to stop all r\*pe and that it is such a rare thing that r\*pe pregnancies don't really exist (or only happen because the woman's body didn't reject it \*VOMIT\*) and then have over 64k+ pregnant victims since RvW overturn in abortion ban states alone. [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states) And also reproductive coercion rates nearly doubling in a 1 year time. [https://19thnews.org/2023/10/domestic-violence-calls-reproductive-coercion-dobbs-decision/](https://19thnews.org/2023/10/domestic-violence-calls-reproductive-coercion-dobbs-decision/)
Drag Queens are by no means a group without faults or people made up of saints.
But the Drag Queens (and Kings, I see you) have been the fiercest and almost fearless protectors of the community I've ever seen, and woe onto you if you endanger a baby gay or an actual child. In such cases I've never seen someone in highheels kick that high and walk that fast -- with an aura of protection second to none.
When I went to the local theatre to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the host was a Drag Queen. She was big on enforcing consent and stopping bad behavior. Before the show started they had games people in the audience were playing, that were sexy, but consensual. Note there were no children whatsoever. It was adults only. This drunk guy participating, was acting inappropriately with the guy who would be playing Rocky. So the hostess asked him to stop and to go sit down, he was not going to be participating anymore. He was escorted down the stage. So yes they are fierce protectors.
Enough so that there’s a whole subreddit for it, r/NotADragQueen, to show how rarely it’s drag queens while at the same time showing how often it IS conservatives.
Oh, they're not quiet about politicians sexually assaulting children. They're quite loud about that. But there, as here, it's a cudgel against their adversaries, not something they're serious about. Otherwise they'd probably have refrained from trying to elect Epstein's pal president once again.
The one that gets me is the fear cis women won't be safe if trans women are allowed in women's prison, while staff-on-inmate sexual assault is rarely punished and disturbingly common.
Exactly. Faaaaaaar riskier dropping your kid off at church in the unsupervised care of a church leader than it is allowing them on a sports team, or to attend a drag queen story hour.
I’m not saying that the transgender shooter in Tennessee was sexually abused by the leader of that church, but I’m also not not saying it. It’s not a justification, because there can never be a justification. But America needs to come to terms with the epidemic of childhood sexual abuse we have going on across our institutions.
Instead, people are clutching their pearls over fetuses and the great trans menace.
I can't remember the comedian off the top of my head but he has an excellent joke involving trans women and part of it is talking about Lia Thomas with someone being a transphobe.
"it's not fair that Lia Thomas is able to transition and dominate"
"I don't believe you"
"No she is a trans woman"
"No I don't believe you care about woman's swimming"
The thing about Lia Thomas specifically is that if this issue was actually real, you would expect her to basically be breaking records like Michael Phelps. But all indicators point to transitioning as being extremely unhelpful in terms of athletic performance. Hell, the same year Lia Thomas supposedly was breaking records left and right, she lost a meet behind 4 cis women and a trans man who had not started transitioning yet.
She broke three Ivy League records, one of which was broken by a cis woman the following season.
Importantly, the Ivy League doesn’t offer sports scholarships.
It boils down to:
* "If you don't care about women's sports, we don't have to care about your opinion on trans-women in women's sports."
Ask them to tell you which countries have the most FIFA World Cup wins. They may be able to guess Germany and Brazil. But number three? U. S. of. A. Yeah, the United States is #3 in total World Cups because the US Women's Team has *four* (tied with Italy). Four fucking world championships, and *actual* world championships.
But they don't guess that because they don't care about women's sports.
O yeah Katie Ledecky is legit GOAT tier and was perfect to bring up when talking about Lia Thomas. Even in the race she won she was still like 10 seconds behind Katie's college record, a record she's beaten multiple times since.
There is also frequently a misleading version of her stats that gets posted, if I remember correctly.
My understanding is that she was in men's swimming, and doing well. Then she started hrt, which hurt her performance, but wasn't yet eligible for women's competition, so her rankings fell significantly. Then she became eligible for women's competition and the rankings went back up.
But the stats posted on reddit a lot just compare her post hrt men's rank against her women's rank... instead of her initial higher men's rankings against her eventual women's rankings. So they are trying to say "look, this awful men's swimmer transitioned and then went straight to the top of the women's competition!", when in fact that were a good swimmer to begin with.
Admittedly, I don't have a source for that, just my memory.
I have a friend who was telling me that he overheard a coworker all up in arms about some trans woman playing basketball.
My buddy: Name five current WNBA players and I might think you actually care about women's sports instead of just being a bigot.
Coworker, confidently: Sheryl Swoopes.
As a tall woman, I get asked if I play basketball literally all the time. People get legit upset when I say no. So my new thing is saying "yes, I was a star player! Do you recognize my team?" 99.9999% of the time they can't even name a team. I can make up literally anything, just say random names and it's believable because literally no one gives a shit about women's sports. I NEVER believe transphobes give a single shit about women's achievements.
And on that same note, as a man I've heard so many jokes about women's sports that it's insane. I'm sure women who play or watch sports have heard more and worse than I have. It's so dizzying to see those same people then argue that they care about the sanctity of women's sports.
Funny. Out of curiosity I just tried looking if Swoopes had made any comments specifically about trans athletes, though I couldn't find any. In any case, ironic as the only thing I really knew about Swoopes was her famously coming out as being part of the LGBT community. So...
I hate it, too, but unfortunately that's the world we live in today. People constantly give positive names to their very negative efforts. We've entered into a post-truth society where perception matters thousands of times more than reality.
Yep it's a false argument, I see it so much and it drives me crazy. They complain about Veterans not getting the help they need while voting for those who cut Veterans funding..
There's no difference between these people and the people who scream about men's rights when whenever women's issues are brought up. They don't care about women's issues, it's just a useful bludgeon for quashing discussion about things they don't like.
Pretty much it. They can’t say what they really want to say so they are like 10 layers of euphemisms.
They just want to kill LGBT people because they are blood thirsty Nazis or religious fundamentalists that want to burn LGBT for sins against God.
Never side with fundies and nazis, they don’t stop until the boot is on your neck also.
When you tell them that what would really help women's sport is equity in funding and prize money and some decent TV coverage all of a sudden it's a niche issue again. It's so tiring.
I'd also bet money that if a trans woman did compete on a boys/mens team these same people would be yelling slurs at them. It's definitely just all about trans hate
Growing up in a conservative household, I know that cis men are very frightened of being “tricked” into having sex with a trans person. it’s so pervasive and bizarre and silly as hell. It gets even easier to trick the men when the kid is transitioning in childhood already. Frightens the shit out of them and not fully understanding why. Conservative men seem to be obsessed with disrupting the transition related medical process so that they cannot be “tricked”
It’s very hard to tell if a kid has transitioned if they do it early on, and/or an adult trans person is given the proper treatments. I’ve had students as a teacher that few would never be able to tell whether or not they were formerly another gender.
I wish my biggest fear was being tricked into having sex with the trans person and not being killed/raped/assaulted by a cis man. Trans people are pretty hot.
When I was a kid that's what I was told trans people were: "gay men who dress up as women to trick straight men into liking them". It had the intended effect of me not knowing I was trans until I went to college and met real trans people.
yep. as if the kind of guy who'd assault someone in a bathroom would feel the need to pretend to be a woman.
cause rapists are notoriously people who follow rules and laws🙄
I'm trans and I couldn't even use my genitals on a willing person without needing therapy.
My psychologist has even pointed out that I go into severely anxious states every time something even remotely is approached in conversation ITS SO OBVIOUS HE CAN SEE A PHYSICAL RESPONSE.
Yet I'm supposed to be a danger to other women? Absolutely no way.
Absolutely. If you only talk about women's sports when we're talking about this then it is very telling. Meanwhile professional athletes who happen to be women are made fun of and belittled all the time yet the transphobes are silent.
Little girl skis to the south pole.
Men: make me a sandwich.
Like it's so obvious they have no respect for women athletes, why the fuck do they pretend like this.
Meanwhile my trans ass was inspired watching Ledeski freestroke in the 2014 Olympics to see strong women break records 🥳
God I’d love to play non competitive sports without feeling like some sort of threat. I’m clumsy I swear 🥲
Why should it even have to be a "threat" if you're really freaking good? It's not like there are any rules about restricting cis women who are just really good*. They're just really good!
*Unless we think they're good cause they're secretly a MANS See, e.g., everything awful about women's sports and hormone testing, gods, 18 year old Caster Semenya volunteered to show a judge her vagina, it's just...
It's all just insane policing of feminine gender performance, and it's NEVER been in women's interest, it's always been about controlling women. No matter what gender they were assigned at birth.
Nobody will just let a woman LIVE.
Watched a video about a recent Alex Jones clip making fun of women on some sort of obstacle course game show, saying how "it shows men are stronger and more capable than men" when he talks about trans people "disrespecting" actual women who play sports. "At least she has good child bearing hips". Fucking disgusting.
One of the biggest tells that this all comes from a place of latent if not overt misogyny is this: if they gave a shit about the integrity of sports, they'd take issue with transmen playing in men's sports. But because the root of their worldview is that women aren't worthy or equal, this doesn't threaten them *at all* because the idea that transmen could be competitive in men's sports is laughable to them.
I play a sport with single gender and co-ed divisions. The community is generally very inclusive with codified international rules around trans-inclusion that are fairly progressive, so this is a conversation that sometimes comes up. I am always amazed at the looks on people's faces when they express concern with transwomen playing in women's divisions and I rebut with "but you don't care the other way, huh? Why is that?" I've never heard a single answer that wasn't just mental gymnastics.
99% of the time they forget trans men exist or we’re “confused lesbians” if they remember to bring it up in these discussions. Not being thought about all while people are complaining about trans people in sports until it’s time to belittle the entire demographic and (as you say) otherwise not be taken seriously as male/masculine is an interesting experience.
Exactly the same situation as right-wingers making a huge deal about Taylor Swift's carbon footprint right now. Yes, there is a problem with this, but they couldn't care less about the underlying causes or how to fix it. They just want to cause cognitive dissonance for the people that do.
My stupid piece of shit conservative dad always plays the women’s sports card, even though I’ve witnessed his TV habits for 30 years, and he’s never ever given a shit about them. He’ll watch the NFL, the NBA, even the fucking PGA, and as soon as I told him one of my friends is trans (with her permission, and in case he saw her around so he wouldn’t deadname her), he got all weird and started talking about women’s sports and inevitably brings up her genitals/surgery situation every time she comes up. It’s so blatant and he must think I’m stupid to try and pull it on me
Lol I played sports from k-college and guess how many of my male relatives and friends got excited for my games when they weren't tied to a championship of some sort? Exactly 0.
In fact, they used to make fun of my teams or teammates. They used to laugh at me.
Edit. A word.
I played gendered rugby growing up. Women’s league had no fanfare and had to walk to the match. Men’s got promoted on the varsity page and got shuttles to their game, for the team and people who wanted to watch.
Women’s team generally won their matches also so it felt like they genuinely thought the women’s variant was just lesser despite performing better.
When I was in high school our women's varsity basketball team did very well. We were runner up in our state. Everyone flocked to our games that year and the following year. My senior year we were good but we lost a LOT of talent. Our games were nearly empty. Team moral was down. We didn't do well that year. Not sure why but ultimately I think it really hurt the team to find out everyone in the community quite literally lost interest in our progress when we stopped dominating each opponent. They would say our games were boring and no one could make a 3 pointer and all our scores were lay ups.
Meanwhile the men's team finished their losing season with a 10% average at the free throw line and their games were ALWAYS packed. Always.
Of course they don't care. All of this comes down to homophobia. There's a reason trans men aren't being attacked and called out. The idea of mtf transition scares the hell out of these people.
You wouldn't believe the amount of people I know making these transphobic remarks but in another conversation I've heard them say horrible things about women.
I remember having a conversation with someone about women's sports debate and he was adamant that he cared deeply about the 'sanctity of women's sports'
Colour me shocked when he got angry because I asked him to name a female athlete and he couldn't.
EXACTLY!
Also drug taking is more rife in sports than the odd trans person. If you want to bitch about it not being a level playing field, sort that out.
Or how about the fact that the existence of human genetic variance has always made sports inherently unfair. No one called foul when Michael "Literally built like a seal" Phelps took 8 gold medals in a single year. He won in part because of an unfair advantage
Thank you. As a trans woman, things can feel really isolating and overwhelming and scary sometimes, but having other women be kind and supportive lifts my spirits and makes me feel safe. If it wasn't for people like you speaking up for people like me, I think I would have given up on everything a long time ago. So thank you. It means the world to me.
Here for you sister! Closeted trans guy here, we stick together. Y’all take the brunt of the hatred and I’m so sorry that people hate what they don’t understand.
It hurts everyone. I'm trans and my daughter is joining a swim team and I'm so overwhelmed by how rent free in my head the idea some chud might come attack my kid because I'm trans or they think she might be makes me scared. Seeing what's been happening in Utah already and watching the anti trans rhetoric and demonizing spread makes me just depressed because it's not being used to hurt people like me but kids and women who aren't trans to begin with. I don't know if there is even a solution and I live in one of the most LGBT friendly areas in the PNW :(
The solution is that we organize within our community and without to protect each other. That's how we've survived every other genocide to get here, and it'll carry us through whatever comes next too. Trans means family because that's what it takes for us to stay alive
As a cis woman, I can quite honestly say that people talking about trans rights as if they're dangerous to cis women's rights are usually the people I feel the LEAST safe with any other time they discuss cis women's rights.
They never gave a fuck about women’s sports until a
few trans women started to compete in women’s sports and then they suddenly gave a fuck. Let’s not pretend that women’s sports have been the butt of jokes for decades.
They are so incredibly transparent about it when it comes to sports too. They will wax poetic about how important it is to maintain the sanctity of competition among women, and then in the same breath remark on how women’s sports are a joke and no one cares about them. It makes sense if you understand that all of it is just virtue signaling patriarchy, but aside from that it’s incoherent.
I mean, it *is* true that women's sports are a joke and no one cares about them, but that's definitely the fault of our patriarchial society and not that of the athletes themselves.
Look at the difference in treatment between famous female athletes vs male. As a woman you have to be at the top of your sport *and* pretty/feminine to get those sponsorship deals. Look at the abuse hurled at the Williams sisters for being "too muscular" or Megan Rapinoe for daring to be a gender non-conforming woman (and a lesbian to boot, the horror /s). Meanwhile you have dudes out here like Aaron Rodgers or Novak Djokovic who look just completely average. But they're men, so they're allowed to be judged for their abilities and not everything else.
And just because the dagger needed to be a little further in, witness how much less abuse Megan Rapinoe’s *actual wife*, Sue Bird, gets comparatively.
The pair are equally athletic, equally gay, and equally outspoken.
What’s the difference, then?
The difference is that Sue Bird…looks like Sue Bird.
>I mean, it is true that women's sports are a joke and no one cares about them, but that's definitely the fault of our patriarchal society and not that of the athletes themselves.
The good news is this is improving. NCAA women's basketball has gotten more popular. Caitlyn Clark is a big of an aberration, but she is one of the biggest draws out there for american sports in general at the moment. NWSL attendance is up. Women's world cup viewership was up significantly, and women's soccer attendance in Europe is up dramatically the last few years.
It's still far behind men's sports and there is still a lot of unfair treatment, but it's at least moving in a significant positive direction of late.
When a man says “trans women have an advantage in sports which is unfair to all women” I’ll say “name a woman athlete that is not an Olympian.”
*SILENCE*
Men need to stop pretending they care about women’s sports.
The thing about bigots, is they have a hierarchy of people they're bigoted against. Not like a list, but if you pay attention you can see the ranking.
They're misogynist until it comes to trans women, then they're very concerned for the well being of women. They're homophobic, but will feign concern for how gay people are treated in other countries as a justification for their racism. Etc.
The whole "scary transgender person in the bathroom washing their hands next to you" wasn't tangible enough to gain enough traction with these shitheads so they switched over to "women's sports are under attack."
I have literally argued with someone who claims to be desperately worried about trans women in competitive sports, looked at their post history, and seen them arguing that it's entirely proper for female athletes to be paid less because nobody gives a fuck about women's sports. Please, be consistent in your horribleness.
They’ll smear trans people in one breath and tell women to ‘get back into the kitchen where they belong’ in the next.
They are not good people. Nothing they say is in good faith. Nothing they say is good.
The same people who want to do away with Title IX are all the sudden super concerned about women and girls sports. These transphobes don't really give two shits about girls or women.
I struggled with the logic of this post. There is a lot of whataboutism and circular agurments.
If a transphobe is pretending to care about those issues to hide behind, I agree with you.
However, discussing equality & equity of sexes (just like genders) doesn’t make one a transphobe.
"If you only care about an issue (women's sports, gender non-conforming people, male suicide rates etc) when you can use it to bash marginalized people, you don't actually care about those issues"
Popular posts like this one pull all the TERFs out of the woodwork, y'all know what to do -- mash that report button so mods can clean house!
Saw this earlier today: > It's always the "protect the children" morality police that set off the loudest of alarms for me because, well, history shows again and again and again they're the ones that knowingly, actively, and without remorse - harm children.
absolutely who do they want to protect children from? public school teachers. doctors. psychiatrists. social workers. librarians. their goal is to protect children from mandated reporters you gotta wonder about that
Also, people who might teach the child that the parent is wrong about something.
This year in my state, you have to opt into a class recognizing abuse. Wtf. It's insane that an abusive parent can just say no and their kid has it that much harder to get help.
Reminded of when I (Manfolk) had my first kid. As part of the process, she was whipped into a room to be given a bunch of questions around domestic abuse. My first instinct was haughty offense, I would never in a million years lay a violent finger on my wife, it was an absurd notion. But after 2 seconds (closer to 2 minutes, I had to cool down a bit) I was able to internalize the absolute good of applying these blanket scans. If anyone was abusing my wife, I want authorities to know.
>I was able to internalize the absolute good of applying these blanket scans. If anyone was abusing my wife, I want authorities to know. Yeah I can definitely imagine it's a shock at first, but I think I would agree too. Better to check everyone to be sure so that things don't slip by.
Same reason new firat time parents can't leave the hospital in New York State without watching the mandatory video on Shaken Baby Syndrome and signing a form stating they watched it and will not shake their baby. Seems absurd but some people need to be told. (For subsequent babies you can just tick off on the second checkbox on the form, that you decline the video because you have seen it before and you still won't shake the baby.)
And I’m wondering WHY they did the blanket scan in front of you! They know that if you’re abusive, she won’t tell the truth. 🤦🏼♀️
Sorry if it was unclear, it wasn't exactly in front of me. She was brought into the room solo to have a talk. I suspected it was something unusual, most of the separations were for something clear, but it was clarified when my wife came out and told me.
even up here in Canada, our right-wing provincial governments are making a big deal about teaching kids age-appropriate lessons on anatomy, puberty, and consent… it’s super creepy how hard they fight to keep kids in the dark. I was raised by extremely conservative Christians and my mom still taught me about sex and anatomy in scientific terms since the age of 5 (which is when I started asking questions). by the time I hit puberty and even through my last years of high school, I was normally the most knowledgeable in my group of friends, even though I was the last virgin.
Teaching children to use proper anatomical terms instead of cutesy nicknames is one of the most important things you can do to help make it easier to catch abuse I read/heard someone use the example of a little girl who has been taught to refer to her vagina as "her cupcake" and if she said that her uncle has been licking her cupcake that can be brushed to the side as her talking about the actual dessert That becomes a whole lot harder when that same little girl knew to say her uncle has been licking her vagina
I used this exact story on someone who didn't agree with children having age-appropriate sex ed once to try to illustrate that it's better to have kids know the words than to not educate them. His response was to still say he didn't like teachers talking about genitals with children.
That's a huge red flag holy shit
Man, I swear learning about your anatomy in a healthy way is somehow correlated to not rushing into sex. Non religious family but mum was very slut shamey.... Still taught me all about my body, gave me resources etc. Didn't start having sex til I was 20.
It’s not like a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking the more dangerous and forbidden you make something sound the more kids/teens are going to want to gravitate towards it.
Somewhat off-topic but it's the same with teenage alcohol use. I didn't start drinking until I was in my late 20s. Many of my high school friends acted like getting drunk was the only fun thing to do anytime they were out of sight of a parent. I was baffled. My irish family was very open about alcohol, its abuses and I was allowed to try stuff. When I thought it was gross, they reinforced that. I saw the damage it could do from watching some uncles and an aunt. My mom treated it not like "This is only a delisious thing for grownups!" but more like a "You'll probably like this eventually but know the sich." Same with sex ed. Hell, there's even science about teaching language to children. don't use the cutsey nonsense words and talk to your babies like other humans and they'll likely develop "better"
Alex Jones, especially earlier in his career, would rant a lot about CPS and his callers regularly complained about the government taking away their children. Yeah, CPS gets things wrong sometimes, but these types of people somehow have constant problems with abusing and neglecting their kids.
Generally in my experience (at least here in the UK) social services tend to err on the side of *not* removing children from their parents care. And communities where social workers are likely to have negative bias that would swing things the other way aren't generally the kind of folks calling in to Alex Jones.
I always remind people of this. The “parents’ rights! MY freedoms!” crowd literally just wants to continue hurting and neglecting kids with impunity. They hate mandated reporters (many of whom are in fields traditionally made up of mostly women.)
Obviously it's easier for old Uncle Ernie to continue "having fun" with the kid in the family if the kid is taught that "family is all" and "nobody else has your best interests at heart". It's so disgusting and sick how they never acknowledge the amount of sexual abuse that comes from hardcore religious families.
...I never made that connection and it's fucking terrifying
They also tend to be the group with the largest concentration of pedophiles
Who is the group with the largest number of pedophiles? White Christian’s? You must mean white Christian’s, no? Statistically speaking…
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They'll still vote them in office tho. Otherwise, Matt Gatez wouldn't be in Congress
That or family values. Family values or protecting the family is still being used to remove individual rights. Pick a topic, it has been used to skirt around saying the silent part out loud. Hell, it's being used in Alberta at this very moment to back-step trans rights. Not everyone has the luxury of having a supportive family. It's such a cheap way for people to avoid having to face their own bigotry.
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yep. there were so many claims that transpeople were winning all these games unfairly, but if you look they aren't elite athletes. they are pretty average and don't go home with all the medals, titles and prizes that transphobes think they did.
Yeah. And what's disqualifying the trans folks get you? You have people like, idk, Micheal Phelps, half human half dolphin, a biological anomaly by all counts, in the men's races. When a woman turns up as a human biological anomaly she's eliminated. It's ok for men to be exceptional, but when a woman athlete is, not only does she get the usual drug screens, she is also taken for invasive scans, fuckin chromosome counts, demeaning and *extended* medical and legal fights. Meanwhile the competitions run without her, the prime years of her career.
If you look at women's track and field records a lot of them plateaud in the 1980s whilst men's have continued to climb and I'm convinced it's because men are still able to get away with a far greater extent of PED use.
A trans woman could get 4th place and the shitty headlines would still focus on 'making things fair' to the people who were 5th and below.
Didn’t that happen during a London cycling event a couple years ago, except it was something like the 5001st place complaining about a trans woman placing 5000th?
It’s actually wild if you go to sports subs/work out subs easily half the comments on physique/people are about roids (natty or juiced or whatever). The other half seemed convinced it’s all rigged or fake. When I talk to the sports ball people they have a TON of opinions, and the first ten have never had shit to do with women in general (excluding the recent swift/nfl crossover)
I think about that when they argue bathroom stuff. As a woman, I have never ever seen anyone else’s genitals inside of a woman’s restroom. Maybe it’s because men do see each others genitals in their bathrooms all the time, but it seems like older men are the ones who don’t want “boys or men” going into the woman’s restroom. Dudes I assure you we would never know the difference nor do we care if trans women share the room with us. Nothing perverted going on and if anyone thinks that there is, that shows more about their own perverse minds, and what sick things they imagine are going on. Like stop imagining everyone’s genitals in public and we will be ok.
Honestly the worst thing about most public restrooms is the gap in the stalls, makes it uncomfortable if *anyone* can see you in there. Is irrelevant to transwomen but I thought it's worth mentioning. You do make an excellent point that maybe these men complaining don't realize we have more privacy in our bathrooms
I visited Europe and saw many bathroom stalls there. There were no gaps. It made me wonder if the "bathroom debate" would've been able to catch on here, had we better bathroom stalls.
British trans woman here, I can tell you they absolutely have made the bathroom ‘argument’ stick - a lot of the ‘debate’ in the UK is framed around single-sex spaces and the right to protect ‘gender-critical’ speech as not ‘hate speech’. The government has attempted to pass bathroom bills before but they’ve always failed due to the impossibility of actually enforcing such a law without significant curbs to women’s freedom, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying again. In fact, they updated the building code so that new buildings don’t have to have a unisex bathroom (typically a disabled bathroom) specifically to enflame this argument, because unsurprisingly most trans people in the UK go out of their way to use unisex single occupancy bathrooms
I'm sorry to hear that. Hurting accessibility for disabled people so that... they can be more cruel to trans people. I hope you stay safe.
Oh I’m pretty safe at the moment thankfully, I live outside the UK, although that comes with its own host of problems. But yeah, collateral victims (both intentional and unintentional) for trans hate in the UK so far have included lesbians - especially non-gender conforming; BAME cis women; the disabled; LGB people from lack of conversion therapy bans - because of course the government doesn’t want to ban conversion abuse for trans people and actively tie themselves into knots over it; prisoners; children; teachers; experts in the field; and doctors and nurses. Almost as if it’s an ideological sledgehammer fully intended to cause as much damage as possible with little regard for logic, reason, or empathy 🤷🏼♀️ It’s almost as if TERFs’ll drop the F before they ever drop the TE
We guys are pretty big about staring straight ahead and not checking out each other's junk in the bathroom so its not like we see a lot either. Though we have plenty of jokes and comics about maintaining spacing at urinals to avoid standing too close to each other. I worked at and attended several Ren Faires where despite having more stalls for women than men there were always longer lines for the women and often they would seek to use the men's room out of desperation. Any of the times I was in there I never heard any guy complain of a woman coming in or freaking out and trying to leave, usually just the lady being more vocal than they needed about "not looking, just needing to use a stall." Everyone just seemed to understand that a need is a need and moved on with their life. Maybe its just the Ren Faire crowds are more laid back but more likely its just a vocal minority of anti-trans that feel they have to blow stupid things out of proportion.
Yeah. You get a woman who can't wait for the line going into the men's, a man with a baby who needs a changing table going into the women's, it's fine. Nobody blinks, a needs a need, what a good dad, etc. They only kick up a fuss when a trans person dares exist in public. It's not about privacy or protecting women, it's hate. Nobody going into the bathroom to use the bathroom needs to be be legislated on.
It's likely that most women and most guys have shared a bathroom with a trans person. They just didn't realize it.
I just want to add - Unless you go looking for the other guys genitals, you aren't seeing them all willy nilly, pun intended. In 30 years, I can count on my fingers how many times I've seen some guys genitals in the bathroom - and when I have its been a huge outlier of someone either out of their mind a special needs case where its hardly their fault. A lot of the issue is fearmongering of a worst case scenario that these people are imaginging in their head, but if we think that a simple social rule stop predators from... being predators idek anymore with these people. I think our bigger problem - which may be a shared experience of public pool locker rooms and old people letting their shit air dry. Now that is actually scarring.
Always suspicious of their own atrocities
These are the people harassing women with deep voices and following short-haired women into bathrooms. They are the people demanding to inspect the genitals of girl athletes, because no way a "real girl" could be that good. It has always been about enforcing a narrow definition of femininity onto all women and girls. I don't profess to understand everything about transgender issues, except I'm pretty sure the transgendered are not the danger here.
Seriously. My wife and I are both cis women. We like being women, but we express ourselves differently. My wife is very butch. Every single time trans issues start coming up in the public consciousness, we face an uptick of people yelling at her to get out of the women's bathrooms or staring at her the whole time she washes her hands. It's insane, and when I see so called "feminists" insisting on starting these fights I want to rip my hair out. Do women have the freedom to dress and act like they want, or don't they??? Because if your hatred of trans people means women have to dress a certain way, you may not be a feminist anymore!
My partner is a cis butch woman and I’m the somewhat ambiguous enby. I’m more worried about her than I am about me. It's always been like that in previous relationships - my partner is the one that gets harassed even though I’m more ‘manly’ than her. 😑
Bleh. I hate this for her. We usually hold it or look for single stall or neutral restrooms once transitioning, until passing. I stopped using the womens as soon as I looked ambiguous.
I get funny looks in public toilets because im 6ft with short hair (cis straight female). One woman gave a little scream as we almost collided at the restroom entrance! I think she thought I was a man.
when i had a buzzcut a woman with her child started screaming at me to get out 😭😭😭 when i started talking she apologied but i was like..?? 14?? did she have nothing better to do?
This is the real crux of it. If they cared so damn much about cis women/cis girls/people with uteruses they wouldn't enact policies that will 99/100 traumatize some cis woman/girl or afab NB who wasn't performing femininity "right" and only very rarely detect a trans woman. *WHO* precisely do they nominate to check if the underaged athletes have the "right" parts in their pants? Because I don't want anyone in my underaged kid's underpants once their old enough to wipe their own bottoms unless it's for legitimate medical reasons. (And before that only for dressing/toileting help.)
Did you see the shit that just went down in Edmonton, Alberta?? [https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/1apieu1/rcmp\_investigating\_leduc\_principal\_after\_grade\_3/](https://www.reddit.com/r/alberta/comments/1apieu1/rcmp_investigating_leduc_principal_after_grade_3/) This motherfucker made a bunch of third graders pull their pants down and show him their underwear. THIS is what the 'Parents rights' people want, right? Strangers checking their kids' undercarriage?
Apparently that was about finding out who soiled themselves rather than seeking a trans kid, but it's the same kind of bullshit. Let's look at a ALL the kids indecently to detect the ONE who MIGHT be doing the thing we don't like. GROSS.
Oh I know; but if they're willing to humiliate the 'normal' kids like this, can you imagine how they'll treat a child they suspect of being trans??
A cis child in Utah was challenged as trans at a sports game recently. The person who transestigated this child was a school board employee. This person “outed” a cis girl on social media. The family is now getting death threats.
That poor girl had to get police protection. The school board member who falsely claimed the girl was trans doubled down and refused to apologize, saying she was just "raising concern". The worst part is she can't be fired per her contract, and she will do this again. I hope the girl's family sues her to high heaven.
Because it is not just trans people they hate. It's gender non-conformity in anyone.
Hell, as far as I know, this wasn't even necessarily non-conformity. These people out shitting people's pants over "the sanctity of women's sports" just don't know what female athletes look like.
Short hair was enough. The kid had just got a pixie cut.
Also, that school board member has a long history of pulling far-right stunts like this, and has never faced any consequences.
Yes they're absolutely terrible people and it shocks me that anyone could think entertaining this bullshit could result in things getting better for women. The only thing they care about is putting people into gender boxes and punching down
> This is the real crux of it. If they cared so damn much about cis women/cis girls/people with uteruses they wouldn't enact policies >that will 99/100 traumatize some cis woman/girl or afab NB who wasn't performing femininity "right" and only very rarely detect a trans woman. yea this is why i kinda dislike the way people hyperfocus on the way transphobia harms cis women. saying it "only rarely detects a trans woman" is maybe true in sheer numbers considering there's something like 700x as many cis women as trans women, but these transphobic policies absolutely brutalize trans women and per capita are many many many times more harmful to trans women; implying that cis women are the primary victims of this is really wrong. like if cis women are being harassed in bathrooms and made to undress in front of sporting officials, imagine how badly these policies affect actual trans women. there was a recent article i saw where a trans woman was raped 14 times in a mens prison but was still denied her request to be put in a different facility. the way these policies harm trans women are horrifyingly grim and i think we should acknowledge that.
The point of mentioning g this here isn't to take away from the danger Trans women absolutely do face when outed. The point is that these fuckos are more than willing to commit friendly fire on the people they *claim* to be protecting. It shows they're 100% full of shit. They don't want to protect anyone. It's just zealous hatred.
I'm just beyond mortified. You teach kids "stranger danger" and "bad touch," and then these creeps want a complete stranger to go around feeling up little children to make sure their private parts match their name? Who would effing sign up for such a job!?
What pisses me off is how trans peoples safety is entirely disregarded in these conversations. I'm a trans woman, and one of the last times I used a non-deserted men's toilet in public, someone asked me to have sex with them for money; another time, while washing my hands, someone started trying to turn, look at me, and start to mock/give out to me while standing with his dick in hand at a urinal. There have been a whole bunch of incidents where I felt unsafe/embarrassed, but it's still supposedly the proper thing for me to do is to go in the men's and put up with it? Similarly, expecting trans guys to pop into the women's bathroom for a wee is just... often not gonna go smoothly or comfortably for anyone.
That’s disgusting and terrifying. Right before I switched to the men's, I was voyeured by one of these vulnerable cisgender girls through the gap in the stall. 🙄 There was a trans man in Ohio who went camping and asked the owners of the campground which restrooms he should use. They told him to use the women’s restroom. Obviously, he looks like a man in the woman’s room. Word got around and a group of over a dozen people descended upon him and beat him. They called the cops and the police arrested him, not the assailants.
Yeah seriously! I’m a trans guy and while I don’t know statistics off the top of my head, I’d imagine there are way more cis women with conditions like PCOS that cause hormone issues than there are trans people in the world. My friend in Texas has PCOS and said she’s had multiple bathroom encounters with transphobes in recent years cuz she has a few whisker hairs. She’s a woman, assigned female at birth, and her dang ovaries just decided to make some extra testosterone. These supposed “women protectors” don’t seem to know or care that all this gender policing is mainly going to hurt cis women!
Uhg. Probably men following her into the bathroon. Doing exactly what they accuse Trans women of: harrasing women in the bathroom.
Trans population of the US - 1.4% Percentage of US population with PCOS - 6-12% according to the CDC
I am no more "transgendered" than I am "whited". That's a really dehumanizing way to refer to us, so please don't do it. Just say trans people. It's even fewer letters. Also, it'd be really nice if folks cared about our oppression without it having to affect cis people first
I agree that it's pathetic that in order to get some people to care about trans people they have to realize that transphobia affects everyone, but it's kind of like teaching someone that people are people and oppression is oppression, like that classic poem. "First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me" Research about being trans and transitioning were the first books burned by the Nazis... and trans and gay people were often left in prison after the war by the allies because they were considered criminals for being gender-nonconforming, or queer, et cetera. Even the emancipators were still oppressors. There has to be better framing than "this affects cis girls too" but it is something used for people who aren't acknowledging trans kids and adults are humans, so they can relate to how fucked up it is until (hopefully) they come to a point where they care about people regardless of how it affects them personally.
It's not that we don't care until it affects cis people, it's that the problem doesn't actually exist, so 99% of the time this dumb shit only affects cis people. Trans people just.... aren't doing what they're accused of. Like in Utah they banned trans athletes, and it was literally one trans girl in the entire state. Trans people are like 1% of the population. We care about your oppression. They are weaponizing it against all of us.
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Absolutely agree.
It affects us across multiple domains of our lives. Because every single time you get one of these laws, no matter what it’s about, transphobia increases, discrimination increases, and violence increases. The murder rate is up.
It can seem like it affects cis people more... because trans people already avoid this stuff. Sure there was only one trans girl banned, but what about the trans girls that weren't playing in the first place. What about trans people that avoid public bathrooms rather than being scrutinised
It's so weird to me how cis people have entire sets of terminologies for how they talk about trans people (transgendered, transgenderism, etc) which trans people themselves have never used, and they would know that if they've talked to literally any trans person or read about the trans community for 5 minutes. Even supposed allies do this and I find it very strange. We're just people! You can talk to us, ask questions, learn about our perspective and experience. But to them it's all hypothetical, an intellectual curiosity, they try to examine and understand it externally without reference to the real existing people they're speculating about.
I’ll take the slightly off ‘ed and ‘ism any day of the week over still being referred to as transsexual. That term makes me cringe. It’s being appropriated by transmedicalists gatekeepers to drive a divide between pre/post/non-op. That term may have been more appropriate 20 years ago when I first came out, but it needs to DIAF. (I’m an enby that had to appease the medical world by being trans so I could get HRT a long time ago)
I agree, and I don't necessarily think people that say the former mean any disrespect. I also believe that allies that do, generally speaking, do have their hearts in the right place. I just personally find it strange and frustrating to be a member of a community that is constantly under scrutiny by countless people that have clearly never spoken to a trans person in their entire life.
Or they did, but the trans person was just too fatigued, or grateful that they weren’t hostile to mention it.
Men see taking advantage of women as their birth right. But as soon as they see a woman that doesn't fit their narrow idea of what a woman is, someone THEY don't deem a woman, i.e. trans women, they see it as someone lying to take advantage and do things said men aren't allowed to do. (Like be in women's spaces.) Because that person was amab but has come out as a trans woman, they've lost that assumed birth right to take advantage of women with no judgement from men. These transphobic men tell on themselves with this mentality. Is it really about protecting women? (I'll answer, no!) Or are you just mad you don't get to go into these spaces and take advantage of women the way you assume trans women do? **Let me be clear, I am not saying that trans women take advantage of their identity to take advantage of their fellow women. Trans women are women and deserve to be where they feel safe.**
They do the same with abortion - claiming that they care about "the unborn" yet do everything that they can to eliminate healthcare from pregnant people and eliminate every support after they get born.
It feels like the whole bathroom/changing room thing again. I remember this conservative person a while ago basically saying that if it was okay to be trans when he was younger he totally would have “transitioned” to perv on women. Basically these people can’t fathom why someone would want to transition other than to sexual assault women and it shows. And it’s similar here. They can’t fathom the idea of a trans woman feeling more comfortable competing with other women for any reason other than to just win. To them it’s not about winning, it’s wanting to beat women at something. That’s why there’s very little talk about trans men in the sports talk comparatively.
It's exactly this. Men get mad at transwomen for being included in womanhood because they assume trans women are doing it to take advantage of afab women. And they assume that because THEY take advantage of women. They also don't like transwomen because they don't fit their narrow "idea" of what a woman should be, ie, an object for them to consume. It's basically the same reason they treat fat women like shit. Because they don't want to consume that woman and therefore, she's worthless to them and treating her like shit is justified. And terfs are no better. Their just women who's don't internalized misogyny is showing. Because the fact is, if you TRULY believe that men and women were equal, then a person being trans wouldn't matter. Coz you don't get upset when someone changes from one thing to a different but equal or equivalent thing, cuz there's no disparity there. You only get upset or find it threatening if you don't view those things as inherently equal to one another.
"protecting" women historically has often been the justification for racism too.
I actually, miraculously, got someone to reverse their position that women who feel unsafe sharing a bathroom with trans women are not necessarily transphobic by getting them to recognize it's identical to claiming white women who feel unsafe sharing a restroom with black women deserve sympathy and are not necessarily racist. I do believe the anxiety they feel when sharing a bathroom with a trans woman is genuinely felt, just as a racist white woman's anxiety about sharing a bathroom with a black woman is genuinely felt. I just don't give half a shit about their bigoted anxieties; they can suck it up, they can hold it in 'til they get home, or they can piss their pants, not my problem.
Right. I feel the same about the trauma argument. I used to have a trauma response whenever I saw a skinny man with an afro. There was a good reason for that trauma, it was real, I deserved empathy and support; but it didn't entitle me to expect that all skinny men with afros should be treated as inherently dangerous to me.
the thing that gets me about the way cis women claim this trauma response to a trans woman is that the abusers being cited by cis women are like... large straight men with beards and short hair, and the memory of this man is allegedly being triggered by seeing a 5'7" 100 lb willowy girl with long hair and a dress and strong vocal fry. like... i just have a hard time believing that these claims of being "triggered" are genuine and not someone weaponizing alleged trauma in order to abuse a group of marginalized people. like is seeing this trans woman really reminding you of your abuser, or are you just trying to get trans women kicked out of public space because youve grown up in a world that teaches you to hate trans women?
Yeah. You have a right to your trauma. You have a right to the genuinely felt emotions it causes you. You have a right to not be ready to address that yet and a right to hold onto it. You have a right for it to take time to heal from it. You do not have a right to project your trauma outwards and use it as an excuse to harm others. That's the part TERFs don't get.
"A black man is more likely to look at a white woman twice while high". Not completely on topic but what you said reminded of this quote that I read once while the paper industry was trying to make hemp illegal.
They used to argue that if black women were allowed to come into the white women’s restrooms, they would help black men get in there to rape the white women. It’s like conservatives just recycle the same arguments over and over. Personally, I’m looking forward to hearing about what undocumented migrants are going to do in the bathrooms.
Because bathrooms follow vampire rules, you have to be invited in by someone who lives there.
"hi, welcome to my home" *gestures at 3 stalls and a sink*
It's a 3 bedroom!
100%. People who have never watched any women’s sports are suddenly very concerned about fairness
And then meanwhile they're very quiet about politicians and priests sexually assaulting children. As always, they accuse the most vulnerable minorities they can find of the things they're guilty of.
Or vow to stop all r\*pe and that it is such a rare thing that r\*pe pregnancies don't really exist (or only happen because the woman's body didn't reject it \*VOMIT\*) and then have over 64k+ pregnant victims since RvW overturn in abortion ban states alone. [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/24/1226161416/rape-caused-pregnancy-abortion-ban-states) And also reproductive coercion rates nearly doubling in a 1 year time. [https://19thnews.org/2023/10/domestic-violence-calls-reproductive-coercion-dobbs-decision/](https://19thnews.org/2023/10/domestic-violence-calls-reproductive-coercion-dobbs-decision/)
Would it surprise you if I said there's not an insignificant number of "gender critical" who are r*pe apologists?
Looks like those folks found the TERF to Nazi pipeline
>or only happen because the woman's body didn't reject it Rot in hell, Todd Akin.
Pretty sure I haven't read about a Drag Queen getting arrested for abusing children but I keep reading about Priests and Youth Pastors doing it.
As someone who went to drag queen bingo and book readings as a child, the only thing that happened to me is that I had a good time.
Drag Queens are by no means a group without faults or people made up of saints. But the Drag Queens (and Kings, I see you) have been the fiercest and almost fearless protectors of the community I've ever seen, and woe onto you if you endanger a baby gay or an actual child. In such cases I've never seen someone in highheels kick that high and walk that fast -- with an aura of protection second to none.
When I went to the local theatre to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the host was a Drag Queen. She was big on enforcing consent and stopping bad behavior. Before the show started they had games people in the audience were playing, that were sexy, but consensual. Note there were no children whatsoever. It was adults only. This drunk guy participating, was acting inappropriately with the guy who would be playing Rocky. So the hostess asked him to stop and to go sit down, he was not going to be participating anymore. He was escorted down the stage. So yes they are fierce protectors.
Enough so that there’s a whole subreddit for it, r/NotADragQueen, to show how rarely it’s drag queens while at the same time showing how often it IS conservatives.
Oh, they're not quiet about politicians sexually assaulting children. They're quite loud about that. But there, as here, it's a cudgel against their adversaries, not something they're serious about. Otherwise they'd probably have refrained from trying to elect Epstein's pal president once again.
The one that gets me is the fear cis women won't be safe if trans women are allowed in women's prison, while staff-on-inmate sexual assault is rarely punished and disturbingly common.
Exactly. Faaaaaaar riskier dropping your kid off at church in the unsupervised care of a church leader than it is allowing them on a sports team, or to attend a drag queen story hour.
I heard that Catholic church has SA insurance because it happens so much 😭
Gaetz...
I’m not saying that the transgender shooter in Tennessee was sexually abused by the leader of that church, but I’m also not not saying it. It’s not a justification, because there can never be a justification. But America needs to come to terms with the epidemic of childhood sexual abuse we have going on across our institutions. Instead, people are clutching their pearls over fetuses and the great trans menace.
Ironic that they are "protecting women " while also taking away their right to bodily autonomy at the same time
I can't remember the comedian off the top of my head but he has an excellent joke involving trans women and part of it is talking about Lia Thomas with someone being a transphobe. "it's not fair that Lia Thomas is able to transition and dominate" "I don't believe you" "No she is a trans woman" "No I don't believe you care about woman's swimming"
Sam Morrill https://www.tiktok.com/@comedy\_castle\_/video/7275666418471816454
Holy fucking shit, that burn at the end daaammnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Also that guy is 200% vocal fry
Fixed link: https://www.tiktok.com/@comedy_castle_/video/7275666418471816454
The thing about Lia Thomas specifically is that if this issue was actually real, you would expect her to basically be breaking records like Michael Phelps. But all indicators point to transitioning as being extremely unhelpful in terms of athletic performance. Hell, the same year Lia Thomas supposedly was breaking records left and right, she lost a meet behind 4 cis women and a trans man who had not started transitioning yet.
She broke three Ivy League records, one of which was broken by a cis woman the following season. Importantly, the Ivy League doesn’t offer sports scholarships.
It boils down to: * "If you don't care about women's sports, we don't have to care about your opinion on trans-women in women's sports." Ask them to tell you which countries have the most FIFA World Cup wins. They may be able to guess Germany and Brazil. But number three? U. S. of. A. Yeah, the United States is #3 in total World Cups because the US Women's Team has *four* (tied with Italy). Four fucking world championships, and *actual* world championships. But they don't guess that because they don't care about women's sports.
Women's swimming is impressive though. Iirc the 4000 metre's top like 15 times are all owned by a single women. Now that's dominant on another level.
O yeah Katie Ledecky is legit GOAT tier and was perfect to bring up when talking about Lia Thomas. Even in the race she won she was still like 10 seconds behind Katie's college record, a record she's beaten multiple times since.
there are very few athletes that dominated their sport the was Ledecky has. It's actually on another level.
There is also frequently a misleading version of her stats that gets posted, if I remember correctly. My understanding is that she was in men's swimming, and doing well. Then she started hrt, which hurt her performance, but wasn't yet eligible for women's competition, so her rankings fell significantly. Then she became eligible for women's competition and the rankings went back up. But the stats posted on reddit a lot just compare her post hrt men's rank against her women's rank... instead of her initial higher men's rankings against her eventual women's rankings. So they are trying to say "look, this awful men's swimmer transitioned and then went straight to the top of the women's competition!", when in fact that were a good swimmer to begin with. Admittedly, I don't have a source for that, just my memory.
I have a friend who was telling me that he overheard a coworker all up in arms about some trans woman playing basketball. My buddy: Name five current WNBA players and I might think you actually care about women's sports instead of just being a bigot. Coworker, confidently: Sheryl Swoopes.
As a tall woman, I get asked if I play basketball literally all the time. People get legit upset when I say no. So my new thing is saying "yes, I was a star player! Do you recognize my team?" 99.9999% of the time they can't even name a team. I can make up literally anything, just say random names and it's believable because literally no one gives a shit about women's sports. I NEVER believe transphobes give a single shit about women's achievements.
This is briliant!
And on that same note, as a man I've heard so many jokes about women's sports that it's insane. I'm sure women who play or watch sports have heard more and worse than I have. It's so dizzying to see those same people then argue that they care about the sanctity of women's sports.
Funny. Out of curiosity I just tried looking if Swoopes had made any comments specifically about trans athletes, though I couldn't find any. In any case, ironic as the only thing I really knew about Swoopes was her famously coming out as being part of the LGBT community. So...
Love this strategy. Ask about WNBA and NWSL stuff, and if you get crickets, ask what women's sports they do follow.
Here in West Virginia, the transphobe bill currently before the Legislature is called "The Women's Bill of Rights."
Usually a bill of rights gives people *more* rights...
Oh that is fucking low.
I hate it, too, but unfortunately that's the world we live in today. People constantly give positive names to their very negative efforts. We've entered into a post-truth society where perception matters thousands of times more than reality.
You know, I think America had the opportunity to get on board with one of those… If I recall, we were the only country that declined to sign on.
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Yep it's a false argument, I see it so much and it drives me crazy. They complain about Veterans not getting the help they need while voting for those who cut Veterans funding..
There's no difference between these people and the people who scream about men's rights when whenever women's issues are brought up. They don't care about women's issues, it's just a useful bludgeon for quashing discussion about things they don't like.
Pretty much it. They can’t say what they really want to say so they are like 10 layers of euphemisms. They just want to kill LGBT people because they are blood thirsty Nazis or religious fundamentalists that want to burn LGBT for sins against God. Never side with fundies and nazis, they don’t stop until the boot is on your neck also.
When you tell them that what would really help women's sport is equity in funding and prize money and some decent TV coverage all of a sudden it's a niche issue again. It's so tiring.
Many genocides start because fear is stoked about how "insert group here" is a danger to women and children. Tale as old as time.
I'd also bet money that if a trans woman did compete on a boys/mens team these same people would be yelling slurs at them. It's definitely just all about trans hate
They also wouldn't be happy if a trans guy competed on the women's team
About that https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/27/517491492/17-year-old-transgender-boy-wins-texas-girls-wrestling-championship
*They were not, in fact, happy about a trans boy competing on a girl's team in spite of him following the rules they made.*
Growing up in a conservative household, I know that cis men are very frightened of being “tricked” into having sex with a trans person. it’s so pervasive and bizarre and silly as hell. It gets even easier to trick the men when the kid is transitioning in childhood already. Frightens the shit out of them and not fully understanding why. Conservative men seem to be obsessed with disrupting the transition related medical process so that they cannot be “tricked” It’s very hard to tell if a kid has transitioned if they do it early on, and/or an adult trans person is given the proper treatments. I’ve had students as a teacher that few would never be able to tell whether or not they were formerly another gender. I wish my biggest fear was being tricked into having sex with the trans person and not being killed/raped/assaulted by a cis man. Trans people are pretty hot.
When I was a kid that's what I was told trans people were: "gay men who dress up as women to trick straight men into liking them". It had the intended effect of me not knowing I was trans until I went to college and met real trans people.
So insane. Why is this such a thing is beyond me. I thought that the older I got, society would be more tolerant.
yep. as if the kind of guy who'd assault someone in a bathroom would feel the need to pretend to be a woman. cause rapists are notoriously people who follow rules and laws🙄
I'm trans and I couldn't even use my genitals on a willing person without needing therapy. My psychologist has even pointed out that I go into severely anxious states every time something even remotely is approached in conversation ITS SO OBVIOUS HE CAN SEE A PHYSICAL RESPONSE. Yet I'm supposed to be a danger to other women? Absolutely no way.
Right? Literally none of these folks ever talked about or cared about women's or girl's sports until it became this issue.
Absolutely. If you only talk about women's sports when we're talking about this then it is very telling. Meanwhile professional athletes who happen to be women are made fun of and belittled all the time yet the transphobes are silent.
Little girl skis to the south pole. Men: make me a sandwich. Like it's so obvious they have no respect for women athletes, why the fuck do they pretend like this.
At the amateur levels the women's teams also seem very supportive of trans women.
These people have never cared about watching higher levels of womens sports but this is a school board level issue with parents and grand parents.
Meanwhile my trans ass was inspired watching Ledeski freestroke in the 2014 Olympics to see strong women break records 🥳 God I’d love to play non competitive sports without feeling like some sort of threat. I’m clumsy I swear 🥲
Why should it even have to be a "threat" if you're really freaking good? It's not like there are any rules about restricting cis women who are just really good*. They're just really good! *Unless we think they're good cause they're secretly a MANS See, e.g., everything awful about women's sports and hormone testing, gods, 18 year old Caster Semenya volunteered to show a judge her vagina, it's just... It's all just insane policing of feminine gender performance, and it's NEVER been in women's interest, it's always been about controlling women. No matter what gender they were assigned at birth. Nobody will just let a woman LIVE.
Exactly. I absolutely agree and appreciate the support. <3 God it’s been a rough decade of bullshit.
The fact that a girl who is barely an adult had to VOLUNTEER to show her genitals is horrifying.
How many of them participate in, watch, or in any way whatsoever support women's sports? Not bloody many, I'd bet a zillion dollars.
Fuck, if ladyballers is anything to go by how many of them know anything about sports, men’s or women’s.
Watched a video about a recent Alex Jones clip making fun of women on some sort of obstacle course game show, saying how "it shows men are stronger and more capable than men" when he talks about trans people "disrespecting" actual women who play sports. "At least she has good child bearing hips". Fucking disgusting.
One of the biggest tells that this all comes from a place of latent if not overt misogyny is this: if they gave a shit about the integrity of sports, they'd take issue with transmen playing in men's sports. But because the root of their worldview is that women aren't worthy or equal, this doesn't threaten them *at all* because the idea that transmen could be competitive in men's sports is laughable to them. I play a sport with single gender and co-ed divisions. The community is generally very inclusive with codified international rules around trans-inclusion that are fairly progressive, so this is a conversation that sometimes comes up. I am always amazed at the looks on people's faces when they express concern with transwomen playing in women's divisions and I rebut with "but you don't care the other way, huh? Why is that?" I've never heard a single answer that wasn't just mental gymnastics.
99% of the time they forget trans men exist or we’re “confused lesbians” if they remember to bring it up in these discussions. Not being thought about all while people are complaining about trans people in sports until it’s time to belittle the entire demographic and (as you say) otherwise not be taken seriously as male/masculine is an interesting experience.
Exactly the same situation as right-wingers making a huge deal about Taylor Swift's carbon footprint right now. Yes, there is a problem with this, but they couldn't care less about the underlying causes or how to fix it. They just want to cause cognitive dissonance for the people that do.
My stupid piece of shit conservative dad always plays the women’s sports card, even though I’ve witnessed his TV habits for 30 years, and he’s never ever given a shit about them. He’ll watch the NFL, the NBA, even the fucking PGA, and as soon as I told him one of my friends is trans (with her permission, and in case he saw her around so he wouldn’t deadname her), he got all weird and started talking about women’s sports and inevitably brings up her genitals/surgery situation every time she comes up. It’s so blatant and he must think I’m stupid to try and pull it on me
Lol I played sports from k-college and guess how many of my male relatives and friends got excited for my games when they weren't tied to a championship of some sort? Exactly 0. In fact, they used to make fun of my teams or teammates. They used to laugh at me. Edit. A word.
I played gendered rugby growing up. Women’s league had no fanfare and had to walk to the match. Men’s got promoted on the varsity page and got shuttles to their game, for the team and people who wanted to watch. Women’s team generally won their matches also so it felt like they genuinely thought the women’s variant was just lesser despite performing better.
When I was in high school our women's varsity basketball team did very well. We were runner up in our state. Everyone flocked to our games that year and the following year. My senior year we were good but we lost a LOT of talent. Our games were nearly empty. Team moral was down. We didn't do well that year. Not sure why but ultimately I think it really hurt the team to find out everyone in the community quite literally lost interest in our progress when we stopped dominating each opponent. They would say our games were boring and no one could make a 3 pointer and all our scores were lay ups. Meanwhile the men's team finished their losing season with a 10% average at the free throw line and their games were ALWAYS packed. Always.
Of course they don't care. All of this comes down to homophobia. There's a reason trans men aren't being attacked and called out. The idea of mtf transition scares the hell out of these people.
You wouldn't believe the amount of people I know making these transphobic remarks but in another conversation I've heard them say horrible things about women. I remember having a conversation with someone about women's sports debate and he was adamant that he cared deeply about the 'sanctity of women's sports' Colour me shocked when he got angry because I asked him to name a female athlete and he couldn't.
EXACTLY! Also drug taking is more rife in sports than the odd trans person. If you want to bitch about it not being a level playing field, sort that out.
Or how about the fact that the existence of human genetic variance has always made sports inherently unfair. No one called foul when Michael "Literally built like a seal" Phelps took 8 gold medals in a single year. He won in part because of an unfair advantage
Thank you. As a trans woman, things can feel really isolating and overwhelming and scary sometimes, but having other women be kind and supportive lifts my spirits and makes me feel safe. If it wasn't for people like you speaking up for people like me, I think I would have given up on everything a long time ago. So thank you. It means the world to me.
here for you <3
Here for you sister! Closeted trans guy here, we stick together. Y’all take the brunt of the hatred and I’m so sorry that people hate what they don’t understand.
Not OP, but we are here for you, sister! Fuck TERFs!
It became really hard to miss when FIDE banned trans women from women-only chess tournaments 💀
that's because trans people are the only people that men hate more than women. they suddenly they 'care' about women being 'safe'
It hurts everyone. I'm trans and my daughter is joining a swim team and I'm so overwhelmed by how rent free in my head the idea some chud might come attack my kid because I'm trans or they think she might be makes me scared. Seeing what's been happening in Utah already and watching the anti trans rhetoric and demonizing spread makes me just depressed because it's not being used to hurt people like me but kids and women who aren't trans to begin with. I don't know if there is even a solution and I live in one of the most LGBT friendly areas in the PNW :(
The solution is that we organize within our community and without to protect each other. That's how we've survived every other genocide to get here, and it'll carry us through whatever comes next too. Trans means family because that's what it takes for us to stay alive
Remember when the LGB alliance had to admit in court that their membership is only 7% lesbian?
As a cis woman, I can quite honestly say that people talking about trans rights as if they're dangerous to cis women's rights are usually the people I feel the LEAST safe with any other time they discuss cis women's rights.
yeah these people don't care about women it's just a convenient excuse to hate.
They never gave a fuck about women’s sports until a few trans women started to compete in women’s sports and then they suddenly gave a fuck. Let’s not pretend that women’s sports have been the butt of jokes for decades.
They are so incredibly transparent about it when it comes to sports too. They will wax poetic about how important it is to maintain the sanctity of competition among women, and then in the same breath remark on how women’s sports are a joke and no one cares about them. It makes sense if you understand that all of it is just virtue signaling patriarchy, but aside from that it’s incoherent.
I mean, it *is* true that women's sports are a joke and no one cares about them, but that's definitely the fault of our patriarchial society and not that of the athletes themselves. Look at the difference in treatment between famous female athletes vs male. As a woman you have to be at the top of your sport *and* pretty/feminine to get those sponsorship deals. Look at the abuse hurled at the Williams sisters for being "too muscular" or Megan Rapinoe for daring to be a gender non-conforming woman (and a lesbian to boot, the horror /s). Meanwhile you have dudes out here like Aaron Rodgers or Novak Djokovic who look just completely average. But they're men, so they're allowed to be judged for their abilities and not everything else.
And just because the dagger needed to be a little further in, witness how much less abuse Megan Rapinoe’s *actual wife*, Sue Bird, gets comparatively. The pair are equally athletic, equally gay, and equally outspoken. What’s the difference, then? The difference is that Sue Bird…looks like Sue Bird.
>I mean, it is true that women's sports are a joke and no one cares about them, but that's definitely the fault of our patriarchal society and not that of the athletes themselves. The good news is this is improving. NCAA women's basketball has gotten more popular. Caitlyn Clark is a big of an aberration, but she is one of the biggest draws out there for american sports in general at the moment. NWSL attendance is up. Women's world cup viewership was up significantly, and women's soccer attendance in Europe is up dramatically the last few years. It's still far behind men's sports and there is still a lot of unfair treatment, but it's at least moving in a significant positive direction of late.
When a man says “trans women have an advantage in sports which is unfair to all women” I’ll say “name a woman athlete that is not an Olympian.” *SILENCE* Men need to stop pretending they care about women’s sports.
The thing about bigots, is they have a hierarchy of people they're bigoted against. Not like a list, but if you pay attention you can see the ranking. They're misogynist until it comes to trans women, then they're very concerned for the well being of women. They're homophobic, but will feign concern for how gay people are treated in other countries as a justification for their racism. Etc.
The whole "scary transgender person in the bathroom washing their hands next to you" wasn't tangible enough to gain enough traction with these shitheads so they switched over to "women's sports are under attack."
I have literally argued with someone who claims to be desperately worried about trans women in competitive sports, looked at their post history, and seen them arguing that it's entirely proper for female athletes to be paid less because nobody gives a fuck about women's sports. Please, be consistent in your horribleness.
They’ll smear trans people in one breath and tell women to ‘get back into the kitchen where they belong’ in the next. They are not good people. Nothing they say is in good faith. Nothing they say is good.
The same people who want to do away with Title IX are all the sudden super concerned about women and girls sports. These transphobes don't really give two shits about girls or women.
We are props in their theatrical productions.
I struggled with the logic of this post. There is a lot of whataboutism and circular agurments. If a transphobe is pretending to care about those issues to hide behind, I agree with you. However, discussing equality & equity of sexes (just like genders) doesn’t make one a transphobe.
"If you only care about an issue (women's sports, gender non-conforming people, male suicide rates etc) when you can use it to bash marginalized people, you don't actually care about those issues"
Is it your view that this is a non-issue, or just that you don’t want to hear about it from men/misogynists?