To be honest, though, as a 5ft1 female-presenting person, I would much rather compete against a 5ft1 guy than a 6ft2 woman
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This is true!
Also any transphobe I’ve seen speak on this hasn’t tried to advocate for a change in the system. They seem to want to uphold tradition but just keep trans people out.
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People like Rowling wanna make love to the status quo 
Also watch when a trans man wins a men’s gymnastics contest and no one says anything
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It’s like people hear the word “trans” and they just immediately think of a butch as hell woman
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This is exactly what makes me want to not concede to transphobes, I just think there’s no point in being charitable when they’re performatively advocating for unfairness in sport but only applying it to the existance of transwomen.
I think the opposite, to be honest. I think we can use their argument against them. I think we can point out their own hypocrisy if we say “I get that point you made, but what about this exact same situation in men’s sports?”
Lots of transphobes hide behind women’s activism. By pointing out the hypocrisy, all they’re left with is the transphobia, if that makes sense. I think we should force them out of the shell of “but women” and see how they react.
Like if people started sending Rowling articles of trans women who are victims of domestic abuse at the hands of male partners. Suddenly, what’s her argument against including those women in women’s crisis centres?
Like “But Rowling, if you think women who have trauma shouldn’t be forced to stay in spaces with people of the same gender as their abusers, where do trans women go if their abusers are men? To men’s crisis centres? Ok, so they’re being confronted with people of the same gender as their abuser. What then? What about their trauma, Rowling? I thought you said you’d stand with trans people if they were being oppressed. Well they are, aren’t they? Also, do enough of those men’s crisis centres exist, Rowling? How are you going to police who goes into which one? By checking their genitals or chromosomes? Either one might trigger someone who has just gone through trauma. I thought you cared about trauma, Rowling.”
No yeah, pointing out hypocrisy is great albiet time consuming since most of my experiences with these people is usually just them contradicting themselves anyway
It doesn’t have to be for their benefit, to be fair! There are a bunch of average joes out there who see this Lia Thomas issue or the Rowling issue and say “yeah I can see why they’re upset”. Then, they see us just shutting the conversation down and side with the transphobes because we look like the unreasonable ones.
It’s bad optics because those average joes could easily become our allies
We’re human, at the end of the day. When people don’t know a lot about an issue, they tend to side with the people who look like they’re the most reasonable.
We need those average joes to make political change happen
The conversation isn’t being shut down, if you present arguments and facts and these “average joes” side with the transphobes then that’s on them. They’ve read it and chosen transphobia.
I mean, if we counter “this is unfair” with “you’re just a transphobe”, it can make it seem like we’re not willing to engage with how her win might be unfair. That makes it seem more like we don’t have an answer than as though we have a great one transphobes just don’t want to hear, if that makes sense?
I’ve been seeing a lot more “stop being a transphobe” in response to Lia Thomas controversy than I have “well, let’s change sporting on a fundamental level”
I never actually said this, but her win wasn’t unfair anyway, plus if it was then this reflects an issue with the current sport categories in general and not the existance of transwomen
Yeah I think that’s the point we need to make. I wasn’t referring to you in particular with the transphobe thing, but look back at the first few points in this thread! The people are absolutely right, but for someone who doesn’t understand that “women’s sports” is often a dog whistle for “segregate trans women”, it kinda looks like we have a problem any time someone criticises a trans person.
I think personally, my response to this is “gender-based categories are unfair. It’s not Lia Thomas’s fault that this is where she was categorised”. That’s why I said I get where they’re coming from.
It’s like how Nazis tend to recruit people who see that there’s an issue with jobs and labour but blame the wrong people. They blame people of certain races and religions rather than the rich people making the jobs the way they are. Transphobes do the same thing. They point out a clear issue and then pin the blame on the wrong people. We need to show them where the actual issue is
This is the trans debate version of:
“Rich people underpaying us is the problem. It’s not the immigrant’s fault that they’re more desperate than you are and more willing to take those exploitatory jobs”
I fully agree.
Thank you! El makes some good points too, though! The thing about stuff like this is that they’re so complicated. Trans people don’t agree with one another. Lots of activists don’t. I don’t think there’s just one right answer!
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I also want to say I do have a problem with people critisising trans people on the basis of them being trans. For example, we have already stated that there are issues with how categories are divided up in sport, this issue can be reflected by cis people too so “unfairness in sport” is not an inherently trans related issue, to only focus on trans people in that debate is plain incorrect.
There are many “issues” people bring up in relation to trans people which are not inherently linked to being trans and also apply to cis people. It’s important to point that out but also if people wanna call it transphobia that’s completely fine as long as they can back it up.
I agree. There are some issues that a minority of people have been advocating to change for years. Now, as soon as trans people somehow get involved, it’s suddenly an issue to loads of people. Those people often want to just return to how it was before trans visibility, which is disgusting.
However, there are lots of average people out there who have never had to or had the opportunity to be confronted with issues like sporting. This is their first exposure and it’s, unfortunately, linked to trans people whether we like it or not now. No amount of “it’s not fair that this is brought up when trans people are involved” is going to change this association now that it’s there. The only thing that’s going to change it is if we point out that, yes, this is unfair. However, it’s not unfair because of trans people. It’s unfair because it’s unfair.
I don’t mean this in a disparaging way, but at the end of the day, most people haven’t had to face most of these issues until TERFs tried to fight against trans existence. There are so many people out there who would absolutely be allies if they were presented with resonable counterarguments.
Instead, the TERFs blame all the systemic issues out there on trans people and it seems reasonable to those average joes because they haven’t had to be confronted with the truth. Instead they see one side that seems reasonable and the other side that’s just like “no you’re wrong” without explaining how or why. That’s how people get radicalised.
Like it or not, we’re not going to make life better for trans people if average joes think people like Rowling are more reasonable than her critics. There are more average joes out there who could become allies (or transphobes) than there are allies. We need to look reasonable if we want change.
I’m not willing to throw change under the bus for ideological purity.