Republican Pataphysics
The cruel war on trans girls in sports
SHWOOOP
The computer duster shoots up my nostril. The tiny red nozzle directs the refrigerant past the mucus membranes of my nose and straight into the cranial cavity. There, it crosses the blood-brain barrier and osmoses into the extracellular fluid of my central nervous system. I depress the trigger until the can is empty, then let it clatter to the floor.
With the world spinning, my eyelids fluttering, and a dull clang rattling around my skull, I can finally decide what to write about this week. The spate of celebrity-endorsed Special Purpose Acquisition Companies which will probably collapse soon? Or the other engorged financial bubble of NFTs, which are like digital Beanie Babies that don’t have a tag and you can’t snuggle with? What about the 130,000 Israelis who have recently visited the UAE, all seeking investors for their companies, such as a tactical ring light for soldierfluencers, a WiFi-enabled beach volleyball net, and a lifestyle hummus for the selfie generation?
But sometimes, I don’t have to go poking around for the evil and nefarious motives lurking behind the surface. Sometimes, the goblins of government shove the cruelty right in our faces.
Right now, in at least 20 states, Republican lawmakers are attempting to pass a wave of anti-trans legislation. The bills focus on two topics: criminalizing gender-affirming medical care for trans youth and banning trans girls from girls’ sports. This wave comes in retaliation to Biden’s executive order requiring the federal government to combat gender-based discrimination. That order overrode Betsy DeVos’s effort as Secretary of Education to roll back Title IX protections for trans students. Presumably, DeVos got jealous when her brother’s company, Blackwater, killed 17 Iraqi civilians and decided she needed to wrack up some human rights abuses of her own.
Almost all of the bills follow a template from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian group which works to preserve "religious freedom, sanctity of life, and marriage and family.” Their website describes how, “like the Body of Christ, the alliance is one body made up of many parts,” including “attorneys,” “business leaders,” and “legislators.” It’s clever branding, but I don’t understand how they make a whole body out of only dicks and assholes.
Much of the national controversy over trans girls in sports comes from my home state of Connecticut. In 2018, two trans girls named Terry Miller and Andraya Coleman placed first and second in the state 100 meter final. Selina Soule, who placed sixth, and her mother went on the right wing media circuit to complain that the trans girls had won unfairly, despite three other cisgender runners placing ahead of Soule as well. The ADF sued on her behalf to change Connecticut’s rules allowing students to participate in sports based on their gender identity. This kicked off a frenzy of discriminatory anti-trans legislation, focusing on girls’ sports.
The degree of outrage over this situation belies a sad detail: there are very few trans girls who play sports at all. The Connecticut case is used so often to justify these bills because there is not a single other example of transgender athletes outperforming cisgender competitors. Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights says “It’s their Exhibit A, and there’s no Exhibit B — absolutely none.” When the AP asked 20 lawmakers to name a single instance where transgender participation in sports caused problems, not one could. The legislators from South Carolina and Tennessee admitted there were no trans athletes at all in their states.
Those who use a “slippery slope” argument to justify this hateful legislation are on equally weak footing. At the college level, transgender athletes make up an incredibly small proportion of participants. In Ohio and Kansas (where such data is kept), the number of trans athletes is in the single digits. And at the professional level, that line of reasoning fares even worse. Trans women have been eligible to compete as women in the Olympics since 2004 and not a single one has qualified yet in any sport.
Still, states are moving ahead with draconian, invasive proposals to penalize trans students who play sports. Some propose “sex verification boards that would scrutinize a young athlete’s genitals, chromosomal make-up, and hormone levels.” (Let me remind you that the “young athlete” in that sentence is a child.) This is similar to the infamous case of Caster Semenya, a South African champion runner. Semenya is hyperandrogynous, meaning she has naturally elevated testosterone levels. The governing body of international track ruled she would need to take testosterone-limiting medication and undergo humiliating medical exams in order to compete, which she declined to do. But does anyone say it was unfair that Michael Phelps has uncommonly large lung capacity or hyperflexible joints? Did anyone fault Barry Bonds for having superhuman eyesight? Did anyone say Yao Ming was unfairly tall? Note that Semenya is not transgender and has still been effectively barred from competing for not being “female enough.”
The debate over “fairness” in women’s athletics ultimately boils down to a means of policing gender. You can feel this when you compare Semenya’s statements to those of Maria Sharapova, who has been outspoken against trans women competing in women’s sports. Both claim to fight for “female athletes,” but Semenya seeks an inclusive definition of that term, while Sharapova fights to exclude people from it. Sharapova has claimed that men will undergo hormone replacement therapy to win a bunch of women’s sports events, then revert back when they are done winning. Obviously, this has not happened and probably never will. But that doesn’t stop her from joining the long political tradition of inventing someone to get mad at.
Of course, almost nobody behind these bills actually gives a fuck about girls’ sports. That’s why this legislation comes hand in hand with attempts to ban healthcare for trans youth. And anyone who argues for genital inspections of minors should be banned from going near a school anyway. The thrust of this effort is to discriminate even harder against one of the most marginalized groups in America, and to ensure that the good Christians of the Alliance Defending Freedom can afford their alimony payments.
The Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, laudably asked state Republicans to stop pursuing the anti-trans bills. “These kids are just trying to stay alive. You know, there is a reason none of them are playing sports,” he said. He’s right. According to The Trevor Project, 35% of trans youth attempted suicide in the past year. 44% seriously considered it. 31% experienced sexual violence and 27% felt unsafe going to school. Anyone who says trans athletes have an advantage is deluded. If you can overcome those odds and still win, you deserve it.
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In 1893, the French writer Alfred Jarry proposed the idea of “pataphysics.” Pataphysics is the science of developing imaginary solutions to imaginary problems. The Republican Party today is primarily pataphysical: they imagine problems so they can pretend to fix them. What else do you do if you have no ideas, no proposals, no vision for the future? If you do not want to do anything or help anybody, what do you talk about? So, they moisten their diapers over Kermit the Frog getting cancelled and not being able to read racist Dr. Seuss books to their kids and being made to hear Cardi B rap about her WAP while they shop at Old Navy. But, having largely lost their war against LGBT people, Republicans are using an imaginary problem to justify a real action: making life miserable for a very small group of very vulnerable children.
I think I’ll pass on that “unity” shit.