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It’s not about “fairness” in sports. It’s never been about fairness in sports. That might be what you hear coming out of the mouths of the Republican politicians who supported banning trans athletes from girl’s and women’s sports at every conceivable level with the a bill passed in the United States House of Representatives earlier this week, but those are just words. The point, as has been made elsewhere before and after the passing of this bill, is to alienate trans people, to demonize them, to push them out of society and into isolation.
There is no evidence that a trans girl or trans woman has some kind of advantage playing in sports leagues for girls and women, and it’s not because no one is looking for any. As Sydney Bauer recently put it in a piece you should take the time to read right now or after finishing this one, the reason for these “advantages” have to do with the idea that Men are Superior at sports, and therefore — due to both this perceived hierarchy and the transphobic belief that trans girls and trans women aren’t really girls or women, leads you straight to the patriarchal idea that they have some kind of advantage. You know, the same kind of attitude and belief system that allows some no-talent, zero-athleticism slob to believe that they’d be anything but a smoking crater after receiving a serve from Serena Williams, simply because they’re a man.
Continue reading “US House’s trans sports ban is an attack on trans visibility”