senate democrats finally grew a spine
they voted unanimously against a federal anti-trans sports bill
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Below: on Senate Democrats finally deciding to grow a spine. Also, some newsletter housekeeping (including our next two Out of Your League Book Club selections) and links for you to read.
Housekeeping:
Our March selection for the Out of Your League Book Club is Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose by Leigh Cowart. Leigh and I are still finalizing a time for our Zoom meeting, but should have that hammered out soon. Reminder that the Book Club is for paid subscribers, so please upgrade if you want to join us!
And if you’re wondering why a book on masochism is being selected for a sports-related book club, even more reason for you to read the book. But here’s a hint: ballet dancers and ultramarathoners are two of the sub-cultures explored in the book!
If you want a heads up regarding what we’re reading for April, it’ll be Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates by Katie Barnes.
And the last book news before we get into the meat of this newsletter: Play It Forward: How Women Are Changing Sports to Change the World is now available anywhere you buy books. I have three essays in it: “They Fight Discrimination: Baring It All for Title IX;” “They Are Mothers: Athletes Demand More Maternity Rights;” and “She Cheers For Herself First: Justine Lindsay, NFL Cheerleader.”
Senate Democrats Finally Grow A Spine
On Monday evening, Senate Democrats unanimously voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, a federal bill that would have prohibited trans women and girls from playing women’s sports. Falling short of the 60 votes it needed to pass, the legislation died on the Senate floor and will not advance any further. Democrats dismissed the legislation—and the gender panic that Republicans have stoked leading to a torrent of anti-trans legislation—as a distraction from real issues affecting the American public.
Trump had previously signed an executive order declaring that trans women were banned from women’s sports, which resulted in the NCAA preemptively complying. The NCAA and its president, Charlie Baker, look even more like spineless cowards now that Congress refused to pass the bill itself. The first rule of fighting fascism is “don’t comply in advance.” Apparently someone forgot to tell Baker.
In their comments about why they voted against the bill, Democrats pointed out how few trans women are competing in sports nationwide. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado) said he felt Republicans were “trying to churn the social wars about something that really doesn’t exist,” while Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan) said “this is not really an issue in Michigan.” And while I’m glad that the emphasis on how few people were impacted seemed to be effective messaging in terms of uniting the Democrats to vote against the bill, it’s not really my favorite framing on the issue of trans rights, whether we’re talking about sports or bathrooms or healthcare.
“Even friendly responses to these claims tend to point out how few trans people there are relative not across time—how many then vs. how many now—but across the population,”
writes at The Autonomy.“In the face of a nationwide media campaign targeting trans athletes, we assure audiences that many states report just a handful or fewer trans student-athletes across their entire state and the NCAA points out ‘less than 10’ of their 500,000 collegiate athletes are trans. While helpful for rebutting specific points… one should wonder if we also aren’t simply affirming the initial anxiety we’re trying to address, that it’s possible there could be too many of us and there should probably be fewer.”
Because, as Branstetter also points out, the number of trans people is actually going up. There are more people who identify as trans now than there ever has been. And hammering home how few people are impacted by oppressive legislation makes it seem like that’s why this legislation is not necessary, rather than hinging on the fact that any legislation that denies a group of people their human rights is morally reprehensible and also illegal (it’s why last month, a Montana court blocked a law that attempted to define sex along binary and biological lines as “intellectually and morally indefensible”).
This framing also leads to the kinds of polling the New York Times released this past weekend, in which 10 opinion columnists declared that Trump’s assault on trans rights during his first month in office was the least consequential action taken by his administration. “I can't say it's exactly consequential, since so few lives are materially affected (which is kind of my point) but it is a shameful mark on our national conscience,” wrote Megan K. Stack while explaining her vote.
“The worth of a marginalized community isn't measured by its size,”
writes at The Present Age.Harping that “this issue doesn’t exist” while citing how few people are impacted is just another way of erasing trans people—the implication is that the problem doesn’t exist because our community doesn’t exist, rather than saying the problem doesn’t exist because our community’s existence is not “a problem.”
So while I’m glad that Democrats have finally done SOMETHING, ANYTHING to stop the Republican onslaught against the basic human rights of Americans under the new Trump administration, I’m not particularly heartened by the way they’re choosing to talk about the decision. It shows a continued misunderstanding of the actual issues at-play, and a continued disregard for the humanity of their trans constituents.
For his part, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), the former Auburn University football coach who sponsored the failed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, went on Fox News to declare that there were “high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls,” a comment so completely divorced from reality that it’s not even worth disproving. After his anti-trans bill failed, Tuberville took to Elon Musk’s Nazi site to declare that he’ll “NEVER stop fighting to protect women and girls.”
What makes the right-wing framing that anti-trans sports legislation is designed to protect girls even more laughable is that, while we’ve always known that these bills are championed by people who couldn’t name five women athletes if you paid them because they don’t actually watch or care about women’s sports, we now have research that confirms it.
A study published in January in the journal Sociology of Sport found that “respondents who viewed female athletes as less deserving of attention, support, and media coverage were more likely to oppose transgender inclusion in sports” and that “the rhetoric of the ‘save women’s sports’ movement may reflect ideological motivations rather than a genuine commitment to advancing opportunities for female athletes.”
Color me shocked.
Links: on Taurasi’s retirement, and more
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