It’s the “Taking Part That Counts.” Unless You’re a Trans Athlete.
Social media is all of a flutter about the recent comment by Caitlyn Jenner claiming that those born males shouldn’t be able to participate in girls’ sport. Some supposed liberals and leftists have endorsed this view — quite wrongly.
Picture the scene.
A sports day at school. A gaggle of parents pushing forward, fumbling cameras, trying to see who may win the 100 m dash. A surge of runners sprinting vigorously, one staggering over the finish line. Other races take place. Different categories of sporting event, with two genders delineated. And off at the side, a single student not able to participate.
Why? Because the school is in Alabama. Following the bans on transgender women and girls from playing on sports teams, this student has been excluded from taking part in their chosen gender’s events. Or they feel unable to.
This is not to target a particular school here. But when states and countries change the rules, everything can change. Will this only affect trans girls and women, rather than trans boys and men? Of course not. It is likely that schools will adopt similar, implicitly understood positions in the name of some kind of fairness (in heavily inverted commas).
The truth is that everyone wants sports and games to be about taking part until they’re not. Those of us who went to school in the 1990s and 00s, such as this author (a less than talented athlete), heard this day in and day out during the Summer months of the neo-liberal heyday, when the smell of plimsols and cut grass filled the air. So it’s a bit rich, readers.
Discriminating because certain people have certain physiological characteristics is not fair. At best it shows a lack of critical thinking skills best and at worst merely bigotry.
There are clear examples of where the athletics legislative issue is purely a semi-invented scare story, such as in a recent case in Texas. The 2017–2019 Connecticut case of highly successful runners Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood is pretty much an exception: it’s sour grapes on the part of some of those who lost.
The defense lawyer in the Connecticut lawsuit made the pertinent point that “there’s room enough on the podium for everyone.” But this is not making the rather trite point that “everyone can be a winner.” A podium is large and who is on it and for what can be defined broadly.
Changing games and sports is a lot easier than changing people’s bodies or the need for gender expression. So let’s work towards changing them. Paris 2024 is set to have a female boxing weight division added. I hasten to note that a scandal is yet to emerge of distraught bantams who may be excluded in the light-fly belt due to “woke totalitarianism.” However, I’m sure the blue-tick Twitterati will be in their corner, limpidly massaging their shoulders come that day.
Why compete if you’re going to fall at the first hurdle and whimper that you were beaten by someone, someone who's overcome a lot more to get where they are?
Moreover, when did some radicals and “tole-ranters” get so focused on the physical attributes we possess and less interested in the social world in which we live in? Sports and games are an important part of our culture and broader society. Why indeed do we play games or sports? To desire to be someone else, or to feel authentic in a certain role, or to burn physical and emotional energy… or maybe to experience conflict in a safe, structured setting. At least, this what philosopher Mary Migeley thought about “games” as such. When all is said and done, they are just “games” or “sports.” They’re highly meaningful for one person, and not for another. Or they can be meaningful in different ways, for different people.
When you listen to trans athletes describe how taking part in sports helps them become themselves in a world that seeks to deny them, to find their identity — that’s a deep kind of need. This need, I am sorry to say, trumps the simple need of someone to win. Perhaps other runners have their own equally deep, personal need to compete. Does that mean that we should prevent someone from competing? No. Every sportsperson is an aggregate of traits, skills, physiological features, and genetics, loosely put into a binary of “man” and “woman.” The battles of runners like Caster Semenya show the idiocy of being puritanical about this. Intersex — how does she fit into our rough schematic? She doesn’t. Which explains her poor treatment and struggle.
Another sports area where the issue of trans competitors comes up is that of the UFC. Why some self-proclaimed humanists and liberals seek to use the closest living thing to Mortal Kombat as some kind of check-mate move in their arguments is utterly beyond me. They get worked up about the injuries sustained, of course always those sustained by birth-assigned women to trans women, in the ring. Surely the issue of whether a controlling, union-fearing, body-destroying, sawbones-pleasing fight club like UFC exists, to begin with, is more the issue.
Regarding trans competitors: let’s look at bigmouths like Joe Rogan for mind-numbingly stupid arguments from that curiously modern “liberalism” bubble. I see you smug liberals who somehow think you are somehow an argumentation cut above an interviewer like Rogan. From what I can see, being this kind of “liberal” involves pretending you care about the facts an awful lot, whether those facts are made up or pub chatter, whilst imagining you exist in some kind of balanced, intangible marketplace of ideas. Whilst also not being able to say any of that… of course, your free speech is under constant attack.
Back in 2013 on transgender fighter Fallon Fox he said (TW):
I say if you had a dick at one point in time, you also have all the bone structure that comes with having a dick. You have bigger hands, you have bigger shoulder joints […] I mean, you can wear all the lipstick you want. You want to be a woman and you want to take female hormones, you want to get a boob job, that’s all fine.
First off Joe, not really sure dick and bone structure have quite the innate connection that you think they do. And what exactly would the advantage of Fallon Fox getting a boob job be? Not sure it’s mandatory UFC surgery. Is an ample bosom somehow pugilistically advantageous (you can throw a quick jab from behind the left nipple?) Does an enhanced, heavy, artificial bosom somehow cancel out those large hands and shoulders? What are we factoring in here? Fighter Nick Newell fights with a left arm that’s not fully developed. Is that cheating because the other arm must be super, super strong to compensate, making him some kind of cage-fight fiddler-crab?
Not to mock Nick Newell or Fallon Fox, but…the folly of such gibberish. It’s the vacuous speculation you would expect. Fallon Fox has her own, not UFC useful, reasons for augmentation surgery. This is the kind of un-scientific, armchair sports-fan guesswork that a lot of people indulge in.
Meanwhile, smaller, lighter (and perhaps less busty) UFC fighters go on to beat larger ones. Fight mechanics are really not important here. But we’re only a step away from the tacit racist arguments made about the advantage certain ethnicities have on the running track. A single step away. In sport like in life, any one of various factors can give you an advantage or disadvantage. What’s left if you cut the pseudo-scientific sports babble away?
“Men shouldn’t hit women.” So are you saying that these women are not women?” Should women even hit women then? Should UFC exist in its present form, with its present divisions and rules? Are you against consenting adults signing contracts and punching the daylights out of each other? Perhaps not — these are different questions. But what you’re saying is not rational or based on sound premises. It’s based on junk arguments with no validity in genetics or what we know about the human sexes.
I can’t speak for the trans community. I’m a cis-gender guy. I can’t speak for Caitlyn Jenner. She may well have struggled in her life. She may well have struggled as an athlete. But I’m guessing a lot of trans people might appreciate if not expect the solidarity of a privileged, white, reality TV star. So well done, Caitlyn.
Sports are, in some senses, about “the taking part.” But not in the rather corn-ball, sitcom, happy ending way the phrase is intended. Another way we can think about it is the idea of being “sporting.” Being “sporting” involves recognising that the play or sport is more important than the possibility of succeeding or losing to others. It’s about appreciating a person’s need to play a sport. It involves a touch of empathy and perhaps charity — not just a blind observance of the rules. Isn’t this what we call a traditional value?
These calls to exclude trans people from sports do not stem from a good place: they are built on scare stories and right-wing stirring. They also have no appreciation of what it takes to engage in a sport itself, or indeed what a sport is. Liberals and allied leftists need to defend the trans community. In the name of good “sporting” values in fact. Not chum up to right-wingers over the undeducible, immeasurable feelings of “unsporting” athletes, as another chance to kick the broader community while they’re down. They need to recognise their own biases. And go beyond the simplistic binaries that right-wing narratives veer towards.
“Taking part” in this political context most definitely counts.
