Originally published at: The Four Fallacies at the Heart of SCOTUS’ Decision on Trans Athletes - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. The Supreme Court on Tuesday authorized further discrimination against transgender students. In a split ruling on two cases about whether states could ban trans students from school sports matching their gender identity — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. — the…
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Only in the Republican imagination is being trans something that’s convenient and unfair to do. Talk to any parent with a trans child who wants to support and affirm them. Long waitlists, endless medical appointments to “prove” the child is actually trans before approving any gender-affirming care, increasingly fewer providers and longer trips to get care, the threat of legal persecution, social stigma, and on and on. Imagine not being able to get any sleep in the week before a competition because you don’t know if you’ll be able to keep getting puberty blockers or if some bigoted school staff member will flag you for cyber abuse by LibsofTikTok or some other conservative influencer.
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Good points, but I think in addition, it is also important to emphasize the scientific/medical reality that somewhere between 1-3 children out of a thousand are born intersex, and parents and doctors have to decide whether to raise the child as a boy or a girl without fully knowing how the child will develop. There are also numerous genetic and developmental conditions that lead to complicated gender identity issues.
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Thanks to Dr. Theoharis for impressively and unimpeachably marshaling the evidence under workable bullet points.
And thanks to Sharong for the suggested addition.which needs to be supported by authoritative links.
But doesn’t this layout of the arguments truly make the underlying point that anti-trans-activism is really all about bad faith heaping of studied cruelty on innocent victims to serve evil ends? Please speculate as to what those ends might be.
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Getting bigoted ignoramuses to vote for you instead of the other candidate?
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These are very weak arguments, and I say that as one who is a lefty civil libertarian who is sympathetic with the need for respect for trans rights. Most of the points contained within these “fallacies” are a stew of straw arguments and irrelevancies in relation to the legal issues involved in the SCOTUS case. With all due respect to the piece’s well-meaning author, if this is the best case that can be mustered for why SCOTUS got it wrong, then it is no wonder that even liberals on the court agreed with the majority on the Title IX angle, and that (I’m guessing) a poll would probably show that 95% of the population thinks the court got it more or less right.
Under the guise of protecting the feelings and rights of trans women, George Theoharis presents another Me Generation, ignorant, effectively hate women argument. The science is largely settled, as are the dangers of transwomen playing contact sports as women. The IOC’s statement about the protection of the female category in sports, based on a thorough examination and discussion of the evidence, makes all that clear. It’s no accident that Theoharis doesn’t refer to it. I encourage commenters to read it: https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/International-Olympic-Committee/EB/policy/policy-on-the-protection-of-the-female-category-english.pdf, and www.olympics.com/ioc/news/international-olympic-committee-announces-new-policy-on-the-protection-of-the-female-women-s-category-in-olympic-sport. The IOC’s document also refers to exceptions for transwomen’s participation, and that there are some sports where the differences between biological women and transwomen may not come into play, and therefore separation is unnecessary. In addition, sports scientist Ross Tucker has several podcasts (Science of Sport) that go into the issue in depth (he was part of World Rugby’s process in examining the issue and creating their policy).
The Supreme Court’s decision, however, is in legal process and much of its reasoning reactionary. Kavanaugh’s seemingly sympathetic sentence about respecting transwomen athletes is patronizing. I suggest reading Sotomayer’s concurrence and thorough dissent to get a sense of what occurred. Eligibility should first be in the hands of sports federations, not reactionary, ignorant, biased politicians. In individual sports, trans girls/women should be allowed to participate in either an open category or in the male category. Until their numbers increase, it would appear that team sports are in most cases another matter.