You are reading a single comment by @ough and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@ough
Yes, thanks indeed. I confess I find it hard to wrap my head around this (surprise: white man)
I accept that if trans women compete in the female category (and trans men on the male category), it may create a situation where women lose ground that was hardly fought for, and is still small and precarious. I agree we live in a world where the implied normal is male, so I can see how categories may be internalized as male and non-male (or other, or miscellaneous, normal vs non-normal). It could also end up encouraging stupid narratives in the occasion where a trans woman wins a high profile event. I take the point that these scenarios are diminishing to women, not because of trans people or women themselves, but because the way society is.
On the other hand, if we had a third category we’d just be moving the tag of ‘others’ to a different place. It’d do nothing to correct the implicit views at play, and it’d put vulnerable people in harm’s way. This is a world where a person can’t live their truth in public. I suspect that this is where it gets contentious, what is truth, but it’s where I take issue with brokenbetty’s point about gender being simply an inner feeling, identity is never simple. I know there’s loads to unpick here, and I’m not educated enough to know what I think about the scientific, hormonal, mental, or other angles. Personally I believe people can choose their truth, as imperfect of a fit as it may be in a binary system.
Which means in my view it’d be denigrating for trans women to compete in the male category — and dangerous, if what passes for an ally can cause what happened upthread. In most cases, it’d be perpetuating the trauma of people who had to grow up in a hostile environment, were brave enough to brake away from it, and now find themselves back to square one.
I guess I’m struggling with the challenge of representing the vast multitude of human lived experiences in a couple of buckets. And if we do away with them, one big tent for everyone, I’m not sure it advances the cause of women at all. Is this what I’m getting wrong? Playing a zero-sum game, where progress for one group results in loss for the other? Also, it’s not lost on me that not a single one of the scenarios above result a loss for males. Any way we can make that happen instead?