Targeting trans women puts all women at risk
Preventing trans women from participating is not about fairness in sport or safety in bathrooms, it’s about policing all women’s bodies.
Editor’s note: Some readers have felt this piece centres cis women rather than trans women. That wasn’t my intention. Trans women are women and trans men are men. My argument is that attacks on trans women are ultimately attacks on all women. We all need access to public toilets, changing facilities, sports, and support services.
It’s saying that if you don’t comply with a portion of society’s idea of what a woman looks like, dresses like, or how she should behave, you will be subject to attack.
That could be being called out in the street.
It could be being forced to undergo a medical check.
It could be being forced to comply with dress or behaviour codes.
It could be the refusal of medical care.
It could be violence.
It could be losing a position you have worked hard for because the rules changed.
This week the International Olympic Committee officially banned trans women from competing in female categories. Women will be eligible to compete if they pass a genetic test looking for the SRY gene, which kicks in at the point when a fetus switches from female to male.
A similar rule has not been imposed for male categories of future events.
No openly trans woman has medalled in an individual Olympics event.
So it’s not a case of preventing someone having some kind of advantage over their competitors.
All women competing will have to undergo a test.
Which means some women who have never questioned their biology could find out they have a chromosome they didn’t expect.
And some might be barred from the sport they have trained hard for, made sacrifices for, built their life around, because a marker shows up they knew nothing about.
Some women won’t make it that far because the demand that they look a certain way or that their body conform to what others expect will mean they stop participating in sport.
And this is what it boils down to: what do you think a woman looks like?
This desire for women to look a particular way. Not butch. Not androgynous. Not physically strong. Not different.
All women in sport have had to work hard to be recognised in the same way as men. They face discrimination. They are paid less. They get less air and screen time. Their achievements are downplayed or ignored.
You only have to see how the USA women’s hockey team was treated when they won gold in Milan this year compared to the reception the USA men’s hockey team received for also winning gold.
It’s bad enough that female athletes have to compete in a crop top and pants. Or play tennis wearing a skirt so short it shows their pants. Or wear white of all things. Thanks guys.
And let’s not forget the hypocrisy of school uniforms for girls who can’t wear skirts more than a fixed number of centimetres above the knee but must play sport wearing a mini-skirt that flares outwards. Which bloke thought that up?
Women’s sportswear is sexualised while at the same time designed to pretend that most women don’t menstruate. It forces them to change the way their body operates or looks or to sit out.
Now women have to face a test on an arbitrary definition of what makes someone biologically female.
And no right to refuse. It’s yet another example of society imposing rules on women and forcing them to comply.
By calling out trans women, by making them seem less, by removing them from society (that’s what a bathroom ban does because you’re not going to go out and participate if you can’t go to the toilet) the people behind these attacks are changing the participation of all women in society.
Women with short hair. Women who look androgynous. Women who want to wear braces or waistcoats. Women who speak up. Women who do jobs traditionally done by men.
Gradually these women will be erased because the people behind these attacks want women to fit in a clear box of what it means to be feminine. And if they don’t, there will be consequences.
So women will grow their hair out while wishing they could have a buzz cut.
They’ll look longingly at the three-piece suit while putting on the dress.
They won’t take the courses that could get them the job they’d like to do.
They won’t ask questions that might draw attention to them.
They won’t compete.
They will hide their true selves.
The people pushing the anti-trans agenda are attacking a minority of women so that they can shift behaviour by the majority of women.
They don’t care about women.
If they did they wouldn’t be demanding people use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex people were assigned at birth. Trans men can be indistinguishable from cis men so now the door has been opened for cis men to go into women’s bathrooms.
And that is an issue for women’s safety, as well as that of trans men and non-binary people.
