Trans Activists Reject Inconvenient Truth Again
Dropping unpopular luxury issues could save trans lives
Recently, pro-LGBT, left-wing YouTube channel The Young Turks (TYT) has come under fire for being ‘transphobic’, simply because they stated that the issue of trans participation in elite competitive sports is unpopular, and could hurt the Democrats, and by extension, trans rights too. I, a trans woman who actually watched the video, didn’t think they were anti-trans in any way, shape or form. You can watch the whole segment here, and decide for yourself:
I think this drama is yet another episode in a worrying trend: that some trans activists, and some left-wing activists in general, are turning to an intra-left form of cancel culture, now that cancelling the right simply isn’t working. The problem is especially prominent in the trans community, with previous examples including the 2019 cancellation of trans YouTuber Contrapoints over the issue of pronoun rounds, and the 2022 attempted cancellation of trans actress Hunter Schafer, for allegedly liking a ‘transmedicalist’ post. I guess the critical anarchists have now decided that, if they can’t win the debate right now, at least they can keep the broader left in line, so their agenda can hopefully be enacted one day. However, this effectively kills off the prospect of any reasonable reformist politics. This, I think, is the biggest reason why we need to oppose critical anarchism, and its latest strategy of intra-left cancel culture.
If you listened to what they were saying, Cenk and Ana were actually talking strategy. Trans participation in sport is a very unpopular issue right now, with some surveys showing even progressive people being opposed to it. Like Cenk said, the evidence is not clearly in favor of trans inclusion here, and the average person is not going to be convinced. All Cenk and Ana were asking for is that the LGBT community pick more popular issues to fight on instead, and drop this one. We could, for example, talk about non-discrimination in housing and employment, or how to argue against the kind of bad-faith trans health care restrictions that have made life difficult for even consenting adults in several states across America. Strategy talk like this is important, because it is ultimately what will get the necessary reforms done to make the everyday lives of trans people better. I was involved in the campaign for gay marriage, and there was a lot of strategy talk there. We wouldn’t have won without it. The current situation, where critical anarchists keep trying to silence and smear those who want to talk practical strategy, will only end up harming trans people, by allowing authoritarian reactionaries the opportunity to enact anti-trans legislation that will be difficult to reverse.
Some trans activists might argue that, just because a cause is unpopular, it shouldn’t be dropped. Their favorite example is the civil rights movement and desegregation, which was indeed unpopular across the southern states of America back in the 1960s. However, this kind of pseudo-moral high ground talk can’t hide the fact that out-of-touch trans activism has led to a backlash, that has opened the door to oppressive legislation, which has ultimately left trans people worse off than 10 years ago. Also, comparing trans sports to the civil rights movement contains a fundamental logical fallacy: one is a matter of life and death, and the other is basically a luxury issue. The black community was facing widespread oppression in many areas of life under Jim Crow. Even if trans people are banned from every elite competitive sport, it wouldn’t lead to anything like that. Trans sports are a luxury issue because the number of people who get to play elite competitive sport is very, very small. Moreover, given the physical demands of elite sport, it is often luck, in the form of genetics, rather than merit, that determines whether one can play anyway. Those who can’t play elite sport, whether because they are physically unable to do so, or because they are trans and not allowed to participate, could always do something else with their lives. Most of us don’t play elite sport anyway.
On the other hand, the continued existence of the trans sports issue has been very, very harmful to the trans community. It is basically how the whole ‘what is a woman’ culture war started. Most people weren’t going to pay much attention to gender critical arguments, even if they didn’t necessary agree with ‘trans women are women’, if not for the rise of the trans sports controversy a few years ago. The issue of trans participation in competitive sports, and the issues of fairness it raised, were what gave credence to gender critical arguments. Sports are a major part of life in countries like America, Canada, Britain and Australia, and most people value fairness above all when it comes to sports. If trans people are seen as compromising fairness in sport, it will be enough to turn a significant portion of the public against us, which we can’t afford. While some trans activists might say that it was never really about sports for the anti-trans activists, the sports issue was still what allowed the gender critical movement to rise up. In other words, while I agree that anti-trans forces were always going to be out to get us, we shouldn’t have given them this opportunity. It is still not too late to drop the issue now, by the way, so that those who want to attack our rights won’t have their best piece of ammunition anymore.
Whenever a piece of anti-trans legislation is introduced or passed, the activists always say don’t blame them, blame the anti-trans politicians.I actually don’t agree. While it is true that some vehemently anti-trans politicians were always going to be out to get us, those giving them the opportunity to do so should indeed share part of the blame. After all, the commonly accepted logic is that, those who could have done something to prevent a bad outcome but actively refused to do so should shoulder at least some of the blame. It is an objective fact that dropping unpopular luxury issues would be of help in reducing and ending the current trans backlash, and make our enemies less able to attack us. Those who are not only unwilling to acknowledge this fact, but attempt to silence those who want to talk about it, are clearly complicit in the oppression of trans people morally.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
