Why the conversation about “trans people in sports” isn’t about trans people in sports

“What do you think about this whole trans people in sports thing?,” a friend asked me the other day. I could see she was ready for a good-natured “debate.”

The question didn’t surprise me. I’ve been drawn into this discussion countless times over the past year, from people whose politics and perspectives on the world are otherwise aligned with mine. This divergence is a big clue that the heated furore about trans people in sports isn’t really about fairness in athletic competition. It’s a wedge issue — an issue that is designed to be divisive and distracting.

In the past few weeks, it’s become increasingly clear that as feminists/ progressives/ leftists/ liberals, woke snowflakes — whatever you want to call us — we really need to deeply examine the harm caused created by letting inclusivity for trans people become a matter of “debate.”

• One of the first executive orders from the oligarchs now in power in the US declared trans people pretty much non-existent, and last week’s SOTU was littered with transphobic rhetoric
• Republicans introduced a bill to ban all trans folks from participating in sports; it was blocked by democrats, but many high profile democrats, like Gavin Newsome, are still lamenting the “deep unfairness” of trans people competing.
• Some sports orgs are doing “anticipatory compliance” with these bans, like CrossFit (which Alexis Shotwell wrote about for the blog) and the NCAA
• The webpage for the Stonewall memorial in the US national parks service was edited to remove all references to trans people, including erasing the “T” from LGBTQ, — also erasing the fact that transwomen were the first to fight back at Stonewall
• Trump announced the decision to ban trans folks in sports on National Girls and Women in Sports Day

The cruelty, as one fellow blogger put it, is the point.

All of the overheated “debate” (don’t get me started on “both-sidesing” human rights) about chromosomes and genitals and hormones over the past several years — including bots spewing anti-trans hatred showing up in media comments on any vaguely related story — have done their work. People who would typically be inclined to argue against any kind of discrimination have learned to make an exception on the topic of trans people. See: wedge issue.

Sowing this kind of division is deliberate. If people who would otherwise agree are distracted by arguing among themselves, they are not going to ask the questions like who does this policy serve? It certainly doesn’t serve women in sports — putting all of your energy into arguing about maybe 10 women among tens of thousands is an easy way to avoid dealing with abuses of power, equitable access to resources and equitable pay.

But this is problematic on so many levels beyond sport.

Any time we politicize a category of body, we begin the process of “othering”: using differences to create the belief that a group is less than, or inferior. Over time, we stop seeing the people in that group as breathing, feeling human beings with unique features, hopes and possibilities, and, historically, begin to see them as sub-human.

This is happening, right amid us, right, now.

When you engage in “debate” about chromosomes or gender markers in sports, you are also engaging in creating the space to destroy the human rights of trans, intersex and other gender non-conforming people. And this includes me, many of the people I love, and many of the readers and writers of this blog.

I was scanning the comments on one of the stories about the proposed ban on trans people in sports last week, and one commenter made the point about how few transpeople there really are in sports. Another commenter immediately wrote “one is too many.”

As a Canadian, this sent chills. “None is too many” was famously the phrase used to justify anti-semitic policy that blocked European Jews in Nazi Germany from taking refuge in Canada. It doesn’t take a phd in communication theory to draw a line between that experience and the sinister rhetoric we’re seeing today.

Trans people are already experiencing profound harms. In the US, trans women are being illegally transferred to men’s prisons, despite court rulings against Trump’s order. Trans health has been defunded, and even in Canada, where these orders don’t apply, trans health organizations are closing down and physicians are refusing hormonal care for adolescents who are already on puberty blockers.

All of this has empowered people to be open with incredibly hateful language — check out the comments on the Yoga with Adriene IG after she wrote about trans inclusivity in her weekly newsletter last week — and to be openly aggressive in the face of trans folks. A friend of mine called their IT help desk in their workplace last week and the IT guy demanded to know whether they were male or female because “I can’t tell from your name or your voice.” When my friend — just looking for computer help to do their job! in a social service agency! — said “my pronouns are they/them,” the IT guy said scornfully “oh, one of those “neutral” people,” and proceeded to lecture them on chromosomes. In Toronto. At work.

This empowerment of bigotry is insidious — and most importantly, does not stop with trans folks. Pride Toronto announced this week that three major funders have pulled support. Decades’ worth of work to move toward equity for all marginalized groups is being destroyed in mere weeks. “Trans people in sports” was the weaselly way in to plant doubt about what it means to value difference, to respect difference, and to act to build an accepting world for people who aren’t you.

So back to my question about “who does this policy serve?” The wedge issue of trans people in sports doesn’t serve anyone looking for fairness in sport — and doesn’t serve anyone with any kind of progressive values. It serves to distract and divide us, so that we can’t band together to fight the incredible onslaught of destructive actions coming at us faster than we can respond.

Having your body politicized is a profoundly disorienting and disempowering experience. And “they” — the oligarchs set on creating a world order based on might and winner takes all — are relying on this.

It’s not about fair competition in sports. Just like Trump’s moves to eliminate Canadian sovereignty aren’t about fentanyl. It’s about power, and divisiveness. What our world will look like in the future. And what it means to be human.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who lives in Toronto. They turned 60 last month and seem to be moving into their “mouthy crone” phase of life.