After Atalanta

In a continuation of my last post in which I crib from GLAD lawyer Jennifer Levi's thoughtful social media posts, I offer here an explanation of why and how trans athletes became the target of the right. First, I keep seeing left of center posts/headlines/discourse that highlight how few trans girls/women are competing in sports. I don't love this framing. The underlying premise of inclusion and access does not have a tipping point.  Perhaps what it is meant to show is how the right is weaponizing this issue. This is both reasonable and true but not really very profound in its assessment. Look at some of the groups and people doing the work of banning trans athletes and you will also see agendas which are racist, and anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic, and anti-LGB as well.  If I have not already recommended Judith Butler's Who's Afraid of Gender? (though I am pretty sure I have), go read it. Some of what Butler says is what Levi echoed in a recent posting contemplating the...

 Oddly, sexism is giving me hope right now. Well, the recognition by folks that all this shit is based on sexist and racist idea that white women need protecting.  For example, the attack on trans women, which WILL expand to other folks in the queer alphabet. It is lumped in with the anti-woke agenda of the right. But do not overlook the decidedly sexist discourse. A rationale for removing transwomen from sex-segregated spaces (which is a project of erasure and violence) is that (white) women need protection from people believed to be men. This was excellently articulated by Jennifer Levi, a lawyer for GLAD, Gay and Lesbian Legal who is currently fighting the ban on transgender persons in the military and the removal of transwomen from women's prisons. In a commentary on the unfolding events caused by the cruelty of this administration, Levi cites Ruth Bader Ginsburg's argument in Reed v Reed (a Supreme Court decision which marked the first time the Equal Protection Clause was...