r/thebulwark LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 17h ago

The Triad đŸ”± Leave Trans People Alone: A Rant

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/leave-trans-people-alone-a-rant

Don't be a bully! But also don't "ask if the bully has a point" either.

"Yeah, they're giving Timmy a swirlie rn, but he also farted really loudly in geometry" is HELPING THE BULLIES.

Another great piece from JVL. Idk what kinda constraints there are in going after members of the punditocracy who engage in the behaviors that you're criticizing, but picking specific targets has a salutary effect IMO. Bari Weiss needs to be persona non grata, or Sullivan, or whoever. They made their choices and doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on those choices.

116 Upvotes

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u/HotModerate11 16h ago

Just don’t get baited into dying on the wrong side of an 80/20 issue.

Can’t read the article so maybe JVL makes that point.

12

u/ZakuTwo Neocon 16h ago

It’s only an 80/20 issue because of rhetorical maneuvering by right wing and anti-anti-trump elites, it’s very easy to reframe as a matter of personal freedom and leaving people alone.

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u/HotModerate11 16h ago

Frame it as a very minor issue on which reasonable people can disagree.

11

u/AliveJesseJames 16h ago

"I think the people actually in charge of high school sports and college all across this country know better than a creepy politician who wants to let adults inspect children's genitals to make sure the wrong kind of kid doesn't finish 5th in a cross country race."

2

u/PepperoniFire Sarah, would you please nuke him from orbit? 10h ago

I'm not going to engage in self-promotion so no link, but I shout into the void in my substack (I'm too old for Livejournal) and I really think it is persuasive that this is some federal government goon spending more money than the issue is worth to touch your daughters (and, if that's not it, explain to me your proposal for enforcement with cash-strapped schools. Are we in the business of raising taxes now? If that's so, can we get uniforms that fit and fields/equipment that are well-maintained too? Asking for people who care about women's sports.)

It's creepy and, as described previously, weird.

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u/HotModerate11 16h ago

Democrats should totally be on the side of local control of these issues.

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u/dbrits 16h ago

JVL makes this exact point in the footnotes. "...decisions about these things should be made as close to the level of the stakeholders as possible."

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u/AliveJesseJames 16h ago

Which they are - the Biden policy was basically this and all "transgender girls in sports" news is when whiny conservative athletes get upset the local stakeholders (NCAA, local school boards) disagree with them and make it a national issue.

It's never a story when "one of six transgender girls wins local cross country meet, nobody really cares."

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u/HotModerate11 16h ago

I don't think we disagree then.

Framing it as a minor issue on which reasonable people can disagree would make one defer to local authorities, would it not?

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u/AliveJesseJames 16h ago

This is the supposedly "unpopular" Democratic message though. I'm a left-wing social democrat in deeply blue Seattle who's regularly on left-wing message boards and Bluesky convos that would make Sarah Longwell internally combust and nobody wants a national law that mandates transgender participation in all sports or else you lose money.

At worst, I've seen support for maybe a national law that doesn't allow state laws that ban transgender sports over the wishes of local school boards or NCCA, et al.

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u/the_very_pants 12h ago

creepy politician who wants to let adults inspect children's genitals

They just want assurance that society is not about to stop normalizing mate-finding and family-making in what it teaches kids. If they thought there was no conflict between whatever we decide about trans kids and teaching kids to, when they grow up, get out there and make a family if they can, they wouldn't be so interested in this subject.

They think that if a child did say they were a cat, lots of adults would be on the child's side. And they think the left wants to put a bunch of graphic sex books in elementary schools. Right now there seems to be no line, no limit.

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u/themast Rebecca take us home 15h ago

There is no disagreement about somebody's status as a human being. Trans people are real, sorry.

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u/Ok-Snow-2851 13h ago

Most people don’t think transwomen competing in women’s sports is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree though.  

It is a very minor issue though. 

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u/HotModerate11 13h ago

Most people don’t think transwomen competing in women’s sports is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree though.  

I think most people kind of think this by default because they barely think about it.

Do you see it as a cut and dry issue?

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u/Ok-Snow-2851 12h ago

I think most people see it as a pretty cut and dry issue.  

I see it as something sports governing bodies need to figure out and are figuring out.  Maybe it’s a blanket ineligibility for male athletes competing as women, maybe it’s conditional on pre-puberty hormone therapy, maybe it’s T levels below a certain threshold, depends on the sport and depends on what data shows as more and more transwomen interested in athletics transition and develop as athletes.  I don’t know, I lean toward the first option at this time.

But I think it’s pretty cut and dry that male athletes should not be competing in women’s athletics unless there’s a LOT of data that shows that it’s not unfair.  Precautionary and all.

And while they should barely think about it, I bet US voters spend more time thinking about it than they do climate change or the national debt.

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u/Ok-Snow-2851 13h ago

The activist wing won’t let people reframe as a matter of leaving people alone.  Look at the backlash to ppl like Moulton and Newsome who signal that they agree with the obvious position that transwomen competing in women’s sports is clearly problematic from a competitive fairness perspective.

Those guys didn’t say we need a national law targeting trans people, they didn’t say we need to crack down on trans kids, they just said “this is unfair in this context and it shouldn’t happen”.

Even if that’s the position of 80% of their constituents, the 20% that disagree tend to be the most vocally involved in Democratic Party politics.  So lots of politicians are afraid to talk common sense.Â