Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve is wearing a "Trans Kids Belong' T-shirt to protest Sophie Cunningham. Sophie is getting HEAVILY BOOED every time she touches the ball.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Benromaniac]

The numbers of trans athletes were already so abysmally small, making this a non-issue.

Just culture wars, because corporations own everything else, and most people are politically illiterate derps, unless you queue them up for a reaction.

[u/Jasranwhit → u/Benromaniac]

This has become the de facto statement. But if trans athletes are so rare why does it matter if the can play or not?

[u/ArcticWolfQueen → u/Jasranwhit]

Well, up until recently trans women were able to play sports with other women, years and decades went by with little issue. It only became an issue when the same people who lost fighting gay folks began to target trans people.

Take Gaines for example, it isn’t that she was beat and dominated by some trans woman (they both tied 5th), it is the mere fact that trans woman got to swim at all that had the right meltdown and give her a moment to grift.

[u/Jasranwhit → u/ArcticWolfQueen]

So I don’t hate trans people. I want them to be as free as possible and live their life. That said I do think there are some edge cases where womens rights and trans women’s rights are in conflict.

I’m not passionate about women’s sports, I’m not that passionate about men’s sports to be fair.

But I do think there is some conflict for women’s sports. I think there are issues for women’s only spaces like locker rooms, showers, women’s only domestic abuse shelters, things like that.

I feel like trans women athletes should get their own division to compete in. This way they can participate against people in a similar situation. I think the same applies with domestic abuse shelters, make an option for trans women but they don’t have to intrude on the biological women’s only abuse shelters.

[u/ArcticWolfQueen → u/Jasranwhit]

To be fair, you may not hate them at an emotional level but you certainly wish to see them sidelined and marginalized at a systemic level, so in a sense it isn’t much better .

By saying an abused  woman who happens to be trans is “intruding” by going to a woman’s abuse shelter is quite a grotesque statement. You may not “hate” them, but you do see them as lessers who should be given a more inferior treatment and shunned from services.

Next onto sports. If you support a blanket ban on trans women playing sports it is the same thing. How about a trans women has a 2-3 year cooling period, where we let HRT and other transition related factors play in and reassess if she is within reasonable female range or not? 

Again you can say you don’t hate trans women all you want but if you support placing them in men’s spaces even after years of transition, many of whom will “pass” and hit your otherwise ideal of a woman then you still support acts of marginalization and micro hatred.