













But is that true?  Let’s take a look.















15 thoughts on “All The Things You Can’t Deny: Title IX, Trans Women, And the Reality of ‘Neutrality’

  1. Reblogged this on winterdominatrix and commented:
    Pure Male privilege allows a 53 year old retired from a full career in the army dude, to want to be on a girls college basket ball team.
    Do you think they would allow a 52 year old women do this? No, they would tell her she is too old. Male entitlement over female standard in play here? Yep.
    Do you think they care that a girls spot in sports is lost to a man? Probably not. Is it fair to girls? No. Do you think they asked the girls about having a guy the age of their fathers undressing in the same room? Probably not.

  2. This takes us back to your Winston Smith post. Arguing that hormone treatments alone equalize the playing field between men and women is exactly like the party saying that there are not four fingers but five. It’s not an argument; it’s a lie. By that logic, FtMs ought to be quite capable of playing in the NFL. After all, they’re taking androgen.

  3. “Do you think they would allow a 52 year old women do this? No, they would tell her she is too old. ”

    Well the issue is that a 52-year-old woman simply can’t compete with an 18-year-old. Unless this team’s coach is particularly afraid of a discrimination lawsuit or is really committed to being a cheerleader for the trans cause, I’m assuming that this 52-year-old transwoman can compete, athletically, with women less than half her age, which is a damn good example that transwomen have no business playing sports with women.

    The choices you make in life require sacrifices. Buck Angel, for example, was a female fashion model before he transitioned to being a man, and his transition necessarily ended his modeling career. How is it that transwomen are being allowed the exceptional privilege to compete with women in prosports or highly competitive amateur sports? Why are they not being asked/required to make a necessary sacrifice that goes along with transition? Want to transition? Great, but don’t ask women to give up our hard-fought right to compete on an equal footing against each other in athletics. Women have only had somewhat equal access to athletics for a few decades, but now we’re expected to step aside for the Fallon Foxes and Michelle Dumaresqs of the world? Screw that. The fact that two third-rate male athletes sailed to the top of the field once they transitioned is proof positive that they have an unfair advantage.

    Now that the medical establishment is medicalizing young gender non-conforming children, maybe we can revisit this conversation in 10-15 years when children who weren’t permitted to go through natural puberty start vying to compete in their desired gender’s sports leagues. But making women compete with biological men who went through male puberty is a non-starter. If I were a more serious athlete, I would be pissed if I had to compete with someone I (correctly) perceived as male.

  4. For MtoF transgender athletes, many high schools and non-college rec sports programs do not require, either hormone therapy or reassignment surgery. I am waiting for a lawsuit against either a high school or a rec sports program, claiming sex discrimination against women, because women do not get to play on a ‘level playing field’ vis-a-vis men. This lawsuit, if taken through all appeals possible, should help settle this issue. Right now I tend to think that women (both ciswomen and fully transitioned transgender women) are walked all over, because they won’t speak up the way men do when men’s rights are being trampled on.

    That transgender MtoF 2014 California high school softball player Pat Cordoza-Goff switched from baseball to softball because the all-male baseball team made her feel unwelcome is striking. The solution the school comes up with? Help her play on the girls’ softball team. Not require transgender sensitivity training for the boys on the baseball team. But send her to girls’ softball, where the girls won’t complain. It’s less for a school to deal with, isn’t it? Same for rec sports programs.

    I predict either sports will become unisex, with boys free to go out for girls’ softball teams, girls’ field hockey teams, etc. or in five years time, the standards for when a MtoF transgender individual can compete on female teams will become medically stricter.

    The tactics of the transgender community stink of the very bigotry they claim is applied to them. Say you want transgenders to meet a certain medical stage of transitioning, and many will call you a bigot. I do credit the transgender folks who say absolutely a transgender MtoF needs to at least be on hormone therapy for an appropriate amount of time.

    I hate this situation. As soon as women finally achieve some equity in sports funding, along come a bunch of folks who have not lived with the biology of a woman’s body. Here the women are again, back to having to elbow their way into spots on sports teams where the playing field is level.

    Please let there be a lawsuit soon, with top lawyers on both sides, to settle this fairly.

    The lawsuit transgender MtoF Choie Johnson has brought against CrossFit should help. The Renee Richards late 1970s lawsuit concluded Dr. Richards is a woman, but also said that she could compete in the U.S. Open because she was so old that the playing field was effectively level. Then in 2003-ish, the IOC said same-age as fine, as long as the surgery and the hormone therapy have taken place. Now with Jonsson sueing Crossfit, we will see what the courts are saying these days on same -age transgender, transitioned women.

  5. P. S. Would connecting by email with some of the folks here concerned about discrimination against women in sports via trans*gender rules be possible? I have a legal issue in process and need to bounce ideas off people who, well, “get it,” re untransitioned transgender women being prioritized over women in sports. Owner of this web site, can you email me? Or others, feel free to write me at

  6. I’m disappointed that you chose to completely negate the transwomen you wrote of by using male pronouns. Obviously, that’s your choice to write what you want, but at least be respectful of the people you write about. They are human beings who are women, whether YOU think so or not, so please use female pronouns as you would with any woman. Regardless of which gender they were assigned at birth, they deserve, as we all do, respect and the least you can do as a journalist/writer is to be respectful.

    1. I negate no one. They continue to exist. Being misgendered is not being blipped out of existence. If you’d like to know why I don’t use preferred pronouns for trans people, you are welcome to read the post “Cisgender? Cui Bono?”, which explains the reason for my pronoun usage.

  7. Fuck the age excuse too. As a youth athlete who has fallen away from athleticism, I look forward to the senior olympics, but I don’t want to be competing against ex-males there either. grrrrrrrr

  8. I don’t understand this argument. Why does basketball matter more than a person’s identity? Basketball is a game. It’s a way to amuse ourselves. So what if there are physical differences between cisgendered and trans women? Don’t you think it’s possible for those kind of logistical considerations to be addressed by, say, changing the rules of the game, or making new divisions, or just not worrying about it because, in this case, nobody’s getting paid anyway? The right of people to live in a self-actualized way matters more than sports, obviously. If you can’t see that, you probably also can’t see this situation with much clarity at all.

    1. What about other people’s right to have a fair playing field? Shall we make it so people born male have all the sporting positions, all the engineering and computer scholarships and other things set aside for women because of physical difference or historical and ongoing oppression?

      The “right of people to live in a self actualized way” does not mean they have a right to take a slot from a woman who is actually a woman, not just a wannabe.

  9. Again this comes to the issue of whether compassion and empathy on the subject of gender dysphoria should amount to everyone having to reorder their lives to accommodate it… which I would argue against. As you harshly but accurately point out in your 1984 post, a lot of sympathy that flows in the direction of obvious trans people is no more than disguised pity and / or social obligation, so anyone taking the full gender reassignment route should be bloody well aware that it often entails a lonely existence. However, is a hollow social acceptance legislated by government actually any better than an honest social rejection? Whilst I think it appropriate that healthcare providers and the law work to help and protect trans people, beyond that it is completely necessary that we keep a realistic view, show some inner strength, and resist the urge to play victim: an addictive and pointless behaviour pattern if there ever was.

    One narrative I have seen a few times since coming out, and been quite dismayed by, is to see some transpeople who complete their transition (or even who go any significant distance) then proclaim that they intend to cut ties with the trans community. A few do have the fortune to be able to do that (those who are lucky enough to “pass” flawlessly), but I for one cannot think of a more rotten way to promote the solidarity that transpeople actually need. If one cannot have empathy for the people in one’s own situation, how can one expect to find it elsewhere?

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