You might remember that a couple of years ago I wrote a post about the movement to abolish gender-segregated toilets and changing rooms in Scandinavia and California. You might also remember my take on it was that I could see where they were coming from, but I'm too set in my ways to want to change. Well, things have evolved a little bit since then. The battle against the gender binary has now reached into places where I can no longer put my opposition down to my own age and intransigence, and I just have to say, "no, this is fucked in the head".
The first issue involves sex re-assignment for children, and for the life of me, I can't work out why this is even on the table. Look, you can dress your kids up however you want, and you can push them to play sport or dolls or whatever takes your fancy; but pumping them full of hormones to try to change their sex is fuckin' child-abuse. End of story.
The second issue is—thankfully—far less serious. Apparently, it is becoming common for male-to-female transexuals to be allowed to compete in women's sport, and there is even a push to let in people who merely "identify" as women, but haven't been through any sort of transition. At this point, most of the controversy involves combat sports, like wrestling, kick-boxing, & MMA, but there's also trans-gender people competing in women's weight-lifting and cricket—and, surprise, surprise—they're doing really REALLY fuckin' well … and the women they're beating aren't too happy about it … and understandably so.
Look, let's be brutally fuckin' honest about this; letting men—and even people who used to be men—compete in women's sport, is like letting able-bodied people compete in para-sports*. When it comes to sport, being a woman is a distinct disability. If it wasn't, we could just abolish women's sport and have everybody compete together. But we can't. And that's the reason why.
* Can I also point out that there is now a trans-ablist movement, for people who "identify" as disabled (but aren't); as well as a trans-racial movement. If you want to know more about that second one, look up a woman called Rachael Dolezol (spelling?), a white woman who has apparently spent most of her adult life pretending she's African American.
What the fuck is wrong with people.
2 comments :
1. I don't believe any MtF trans should be allowed to compete with (natural born) women. Neither should women with undescended testes such as Costa Zemenya from South Africa. If there's a suspicion of that kind of thing, a simple blood test will show genetics and Testosterone levels. Any woman with a high testo should be ineligible to compete. It's harsh, but it's the only way to be fair to the 99.99% of women who are within the normal ranges.
2. We have a unisex toilet at work. It's no issue - though as it's right next to the tea room, we're banned from doing No2s in there. There might be an issue if the men started to do that en masse! We have to take ourselves and our poos down the hall to one of the more distant toilets.
3. I don't like the idea of gender re-assignment in kids. Mostly because kids get ideas in their heads and can hang onto them for a very long time. They are impressionable and so on. I also do not like the idea of surgery to give an intersex child a gender just to make it easier on the adults in a binary world. The child needs to grow up and be what it feels.
4. Ridiculousness like trans-race and trans-able shits the pants off me. That woman is white and does not know what it is to be black. No matter that she thinks her life would be more interesting if she was - or whatever - she doesn't have the lived experience of it. And people who want to be disabled? Give me a break. Have no understand of that either. Even a minor disability can be a trial. It's like those men - feeders - who have fetishes for fat women and feed them up until they are 200kgs or more. They IMPOSE a disability on women who - for reasons I do not understand of their own - go along with it, and allow someone else to make them disabled (or more disabled). I'm unhappy with how difficult it is to care for and carry my own obese body, I can't imagine what desperation motivates someone to let someone else make them so fat they can barely get to the toilet!
Got a bit off-topic there, but essentially I agree with you. Though I also support people's rights to choose FOR THEMSELVES to be whatever they want to be.
I hadn't given any thought to women with abnormally high testosterone, but you're probably right.
I understand parents who want to make their intersex kids one thing or the other, because they're afraid they might get bullied; but I also agree that ideally they should be allowed to grow up and decide for themselves. I would only advocate intervention in cases where there are health risks.
I saw a documentary years ago called (I think) "Fatties & Feeders". From memory, everybody featured in it seemed to be emotionally broken in some way. It was pretty harrowing stuff.
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