This week, the Aquatic Federation of Canada, a body representing Diving Canada, Canada Artistic Swimming, Swimming Canada, and Water Polo Canada, voted to effectively ban trans women from women’s events. This vote was for a policy with the international body FINA governing its events of which the Aquatic Federation is a member.
Contrary to assertions, this was not about fairness in sports. I’ve already debunked that line of reasoning with the Rugby ban. The reason we’re having this moment about a topic as specific as trans inclusion in swimming is because conservatives successfully created a panic out of the minor success of a single trans swimmer, Lia Thomas.
The reason they were focusing on her was because conservatives have been trying to create fear around trans women and girls participating in sports. This follows efforts to seed other panics around washroom and change room use, respecting pronouns, inclusion at school and in books, employment, medical care, etc. They learned about Lia and made her their bogeyman.
She was chosen because there’s only a handful of visible trans women in professional athletics to begin with, and conservatives had already savagely attacked all of the other ones like Laurel Hubbard and Rachel McKinnon. The biggest media companies followed along with extreme and unhinged rhetoric, claiming that Thomas was single-handedly “destroying sport” (National Post) and “an abomination” (Toronto Star). Lost on them was that the rarity of these athletes disproved the very claim that we’re taking over. In an era where both online mobs and their real-world peers have unprecedented access to their targets to harass and threaten them, this dehumanizing language was especially unforgivable. I’ve documented media pile ons like this before; they are not new to queer and trans individuals.
This manufactured crisis is why misinformed cisgender decision makers voted for the ban. There had been nearly two decades of de facto trans inclusion preceding this; it had never been a problem until conservatives made it one with this scare.
The Baseline
Providing the veneer that it isn’t prejudicial, the ban on swimmers applies to those who transitioned pre-puberty. It only so happens that this excludes virtually all trans women today. It isn’t lost on me that those who are praising the outcome of this vote are simultaneously opposed to the puberty blockers necessary to adhere to this policy. It sounds cognitively dissonant until you understand that the end goal here was always the elimination of trans people from society, and on this conservatives are consistent.
It’s vexing. I’ve been covering trans issues on this blog for over ten years, and my twenty-something self thought we would eventually move on from this baseline of arguing that we’re not a threat and having mainstream institutions peddle in vitriolic rhetoric.
Indeed there’s been significant cultural and legislative progress towards inclusion; but this conservative impulse to vilify minorities and leverage non-partisan institutions to launder their prejudice never abated.
Nor will it for the foreseeable future because conservatives are almost never challenged. Instead, they deem others unworthy of equal rights, and that becomes the debate. Gay people and the right to have custody of their own children. Trans people and the right to use a washroom. Never scrutinized are the conservatives that keep lobbing these attacks and the kind of character that finds such ease at inflicting cruelty on others.
Their motives ought to be questioned before entertaining another manufactured crisis about how a minority poses an existential threat. Instead, would-be critics incorrectly portray these “debates” as good faith inquiries and normalize conservatives behaviours that are normally the domain of young children.
After over a decade of documenting bigotry, I’ve become convinced that contemporary conservatism is a political theory for the emotional immature to justify their antisocial whims. It is:
- …the adult version of a child bullying classmates who look different. The adult incarnation pretends their attacks are just an expression of their liberties like the freedom of religion, claims proven hollow by their stance on Muslims for example.
- …the adult version of a toddler throwing a tantrum because they were asked to share what was never theirs. The adult incarnation funds think tanks to justify blaming the have nots for not having. They profess to believe in small government, but only for services aimed at have nots; they support lavish government spending otherwise.
- …the adult version of a kid crying it’s not the same. Unlike the child, these adults can devise excuses to make their opposition sound like the result of careful consideration and successfully stymie the change.
Let’s stop pretending like this behaviour is above reproach. The retort that challenging the source would be getting personal or nasty is rich given their silence at the endless ways conservatives have devised to demonize trans people. Unlike them, I’m not questioning their existence, nor their right to use washrooms nor participate in sports nor adopt nor marry, I’m challenging the seemingly genocidal urge they keep acting upon.
As long as news organizations of all political inclinations continue to uncritically parrot the output of these desires, to mistakenly believe that neutrality means presenting conspiratorial hogwash with equal standing to the unanimous agreement of dozens of professional bodies and hundreds of studies, this hate will persist. Not that these should ever be the requirement for basic kindness to a neighbour, a family member, or a stranger.
Moving Forward
For ten years I’ve tried to take on the mantle of a science communicator but for transphobia, attempting to be the Neil deGrasse Tyson of explaining prejudice. I adopted an emotionally detached communication style, even though these acts were harming those I loved, because in this circus that is the media, showing emotion kills credibility. No matter how personal it got, no matter how cruel it got, and no matter how absolutely one-way these attacks were.
I never once watched a debate about trans issues flip the table, and have the guests opine as to whether the cisgender and straight people at the table deserved basic rights. I never saw people argue that a kiss between an opposite sex couple in a children’s movie was obscene and ban it from viewing. I never saw gay people claim that their freedom of religion made it such that all Catholics should be denied the right to marry or incarcerated for having the relationship at all. I never saw trans people try to rip cisgender families apart for providing evidence-based medical care to their kids. I never saw a single cisgender or straight person used as an example to say that all of them are a danger and should be denied rights.
And yet this is exactly what is done to us, and the perpetrators are so sheltered that they and all their enablers from producers to librarians to social media moderators believe that platforming these attacks is a neutral act. That anything different is partisan or unjust. They mistake the status quo for a lack of bias, when the status quo is a one-sided shit fest.
The real tragedy is that in keeping to this baseline, liberals and conservatives alike are displacing discourse around the issues that make transphobia so deadly, like the extra obstacles placed on the poor, housing affordability, the life-long impacts of a lack of parental supports, the inaccessibility of mental health care for those who need it most, how the culture grooms men to feel entitled to women’s bodies, the barriers to reporting sexual harassment and assault, government actions that reduce the safety of sex workers, the impact of bias when receiving medical care, etc. Issues whose resolution would benefit themselves too. If there is to be any discussion of moral panics, it should be on the damage they inflict and deconstructing their appeal.
Alas, the current dynamic won’t change anytime soon. I can feel the deleterious impact debunking this fear-mongering over and over has had on me. Acknowledging that, I’m not going to debase myself by working from the frame of reference of bigots and regularly entertain transphobic attitudes in my online presence anymore.
I have lovely people in my life and a good home, and while transphobic experiences are inevitable, I don’t need to introduce any more of them. The world will do what it does, and we will have that nice picnic in the midst of it all.