Mads "Y**i Advocate" Viande1d ago

am I crazy or is it fucking bizarre to have the discourse around trans women in sports be so focused on the highest level of women's sports?

not only are there a bunch of explicit bans on trans girls participating in sports at the primary and secondary school level, but there's also a good century of implicit encouragement to bully trans women and f-slurs out of sports at EVERY level.

almost nobody you will ever meet was ever even in spitting distance of the Olympics or professional team sports. almost everybody was present for targeted bullying to exclude transfeminine children, including the closeted ones, from sports in general. even co-ed sports!

Show threadMads "Y**i Advocate" Viande1d ago

there's this whole backlash against talking about how Olympic policies around trans women also have implications for cis women athletes, and how that's a transmisogynistic rhetorical move.

and like, I honestly just have to take your word for it that trans women Olympic-level athletes exist. how does that even happen? I cannot imagine a situation where coming out as a woman does not end an athlete's career, or at least stop it in its tracks

weren't there zero trans women athletes in the latest Olympics BEFORE the explicit ban that just happened? zero equals zero! this ban will affect cis women, and arguably will not affect trans women at all!

BECAUSE WE GET FILTERED OUT OF ATHLETICS AT THE FUCKING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL, BOTH EXPLICITLY AND IMPLICITLY

I feel insane for knowing this!

Show threadMads "Y**i Advocate" Viande1d ago

I have three huge problems with the "talk about how bans on trans women from competing in high-level sports primarily impact trans women!" backlash:

1) focus on policy over the material realities that the policy exists to entrench

2) focus on celebrity athletes over everyday people

3) focus on the distance of cis women from the impacts of transmisogyny over the centrality of trans women to misogyny

Show threadMads "Y**i Advocate" Viande1d ago

that last point is HUGE. you cannot create a transmisogynistic policy to target trans women without doing further misogyny to cis women as well! transmisogyny is a WOMEN'S LIBERATION ISSUE

and yeah, I GET why you would take offense to "well bathroom bans also affect some cis women!" because EVERY TRANS WOMAN IS AFFECTED BY BATHROOM BANS and centering trans women just makes sense

in the rareified context of highest-level women's sports, if we're not trying to make people understand the policy which effectively bans the *zero trans women who were participating in the Olympics* as, in general, a women's issue — what appeal are we making?

Show threadMads "Y**i Advocate" Viande1d ago
with all due respect, I think the argument that it is transmisogynistic to talk about impacts of transmisogyny on cis women athletes DIRELY underestimates the scale of our exclusion from athletics
Show threadMads "Y**i Advocate" Viande

you know who ELSE is discouraged from participating in sports, albeit less so than little faggots or little transmisogynized children? little presumed cis-girls!

there is a unifying logic to athletic gender-segregation and the exclusion of trans women from sports! that logic is patriarchy and white supremacy!

if we're not able to articulate these phenomena as part of a larger athletic misogyny, we aren't able to articulate trans women's exclusion from sports at all!

Mar 27 at 8:55pmWeb