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Notes -
This reminds me of a serious argument I've seen someone make in the ultimate Frisbee community, for why transwomen ought to play with women despite admitting that transwomen, especially ones who haven't done any sort of medical transitioning, have a physical advantage: that transwomen suffer so much bigotry in their everyday lives that we just ought to accommodate them in this one thing. It doesn't make sense from a fair sports play perspective, but from the perspective of just seeing this as a question of status, it kinda does.
Someone on the anti-trans side -- who wants trans women to play in mens leagues -- is still thinking in terms of status when it comes to competitions. For them, it's stolen valor for a trans woman to play with real women.
I admit I have trouble understanding the pro-trans mind on this issue. If I had to guess, they are biting a bullet, and sacrificing womens sports on the altar of the greater good of tolerance. The womens sports issue is just one piece of a mass-deception designed to convince society that a transwomen share the same characteristics as ciswomen. This is the only way to effect the desired change, which is to make society treat transwomen as-if they are ciswomen.
Yes, this is more or less right. I've certainly encountered endorsement of something like this in left spaces. "It kinda sucks, but the right decided to make women's sports a battlefield of the greater societal conflict about What A Woman Is. Making sure they don't win that fight is of existential importance and takes precedence over concerns about the short-tem fairness of competitive sports". Personally I wish we'd settled on advocating for "let's rename them XX League and XY League". It seems more principled. Harder to turn into a slogan, though.
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