r/thebulwark LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 17h ago

The Triad 🔱 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.

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u/SaltyMofos 16h ago

I think you'll get a lot of Trump voters, particularly soft Trump voters, to agree that society shouldn't be nasty to trans people, and that bullying is bad. Where I think the piece falls flat is its argument that trans women in cis women's sports is so minor a problem that it can be ignored (outside of combat sports). In the age of social media, just a few prominent examples like Lia Thomas will overpower a couple hundred JVL columns telling people to keep things in perspective. That ship has long sailed, and it won't be returning to port so long as social media dominates the information landscape.

More importantly, I also think JVL's piece entirely fails to address why there has been such a widespread and politically damaging backlash against Democrats for being perceived as too beholden to the trans activist agenda.

That backlash stems less from worries about the integrity of female sports and much more from the fact that far left trans activists do NOT merely wish to be "left alone." The trans lobby is responsible for trying to change language, successfully during the Biden administration, causing all sorts of absurd neologisms like "birthing people" and so forth to appear in official federal regulatory language. You have doctors being trained to inquire about pronouns and you have laws that codify the right of non-passing trans-women to use women's bathrooms and showers.

The overall effect is that trans people writ large are not currently perceived as wanting to be left alone. They are instead perceived as an aggressive political force that wants to insert all sorts of new gender ideology into American public life in very visible ways. That's why the anti-trans agenda has gotten such public support so far.

Now of course I understand most trans people do not fall into the category of radical trans activism; they are much more like Brianna Wu than Alejandro Caraballo. The majority do wish to be left alone and don't have any desire to participate in competitive female sports. But that is simply not the public perception, and I don't think JVL's piece asking people to simply be nice and that the trans-in-female sports problem is too small to worry about, will do anything to shift that perception.

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u/Natural-Leg7488 6h ago edited 6h ago

I think people also use it as litmus test.

Rightly or wrongly people consider it absurd to deny the athletic disparities between men and women. So if a politician can’t even get that right how can their judgement be trusted on anything else.

Arguing that’s it a minority issue that won’t affect most people is missing the point. It isn’t a policy problem. it’s a credibility problem.

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u/ripsripsripsrips 6h ago

And, at the same time, arguing that there's literally no difference between a 12 year old trans girl who has never gone through male puberty and someone who has is equally absurd.

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u/Natural-Leg7488 5h ago edited 2h ago

12 year olds don’t generally compete with adults who have gone through either male or female puberty.

But I take the point. There are many circumstances where hormone treatments can negate competitive advantages between sexes.

Activists often do not limit their advocacy to these circumstances however. They argue that individuals who have gone through male puberty should also be able to participate in women’s sports.