So, today we learn that World Athletics has voted to ban trans women from elite sport competition. Are you surprised? The head of it is from the UK. Go figure.
Of course we're not surprised. I think a lot of us were expecting this, it felt inevitable that the international sporting community would try to distract everyone from the myriad of abuses and corruption issues in their spaces using trans women. Trans people are the current popular smokescreen for powerful men seeking control, so why would sport be any different?
As I was reading the CBC article (don't read the comments) it became apparent that who is actually being impacted are cis/intersex women. Notably BIPOC women. Let's be honest, one trans woman competed in the last Olympics and placed last, to the surprise of nobody who knew anything about her sport, so what are they defending "female sport" from? There's no problem they are solving here, despite the protestations to the contrary, because it's cover, they have never care about women's sports. However, the real targets lie outside of Europe, because that racism has never stopped.
Anyways, there was no chance this wasn't going to happen. We have no voices in that room, no allies either, and so bigotry and discrimination, not science, will continue to be the order of the day in sports and that is why I have lost interest in it.
I hear you! I have always been quite a keen follower of (at east certain) sports and used to play one to a decent standard. I am now banned from any of the sports that I represented my school, county or clubs in. What has surprised me more is that I feel less inclined to watch now than before the bans. It's not so bad for me, I'm old but I feel for my younger trans siblings who would like to participate, and for our whole community as it adds to the general environment of growing exclusion.
ReplyDelete