I am writing from Los Angeles where I am visiting my cousins, five siblings, and their children. We elders are all in our 70s (how did that happen?) and sat down for Sunday dinner last night. All of us tend toward the Democratic Party (for want of a better alternative in my case) and at least one of us has been active in Party politics.
One topic of conversation was the idea that in order to win the next election, the Democrats had to find simple fixes for some issues like transgender sports. And we were off to the races.
Everyone had an opinion, most believing a male to female transgender athlete had an unfair advantage in competition and something should be done about it. Only one of the youngest at the table was noticeably annoyed by the discussion, saying it was beside the point and a distraction from actual political realities, a position I agree with.
On a day when ICE provocation was fomenting violence in the LA streets, in a time when Trmp et alia are dismantling the Bill of Rights (except for the 2nd Amendment, at least for Republicans), we were engaged in a basically useless discussion about a topic that involves a miniscule number of people directly, about five people in K-12 sports, according to Save Women’s Sports, “a leading voice in the bid to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports,” and less than 0.002% or 10 out of 500,000 US college athletes, and even fewer of recent Olympians (about 0.001% or 1 in 100,000).
What was extremely odd to me is that I suspect all of us at the table know at least one family which has a transgender child, besides our own cousin who made the transition from female to male a few years ago and whom I would venture to say we all love and support.
Once, long ago, a friend and I were talking about opposition to wind energy based upon the fact that some wind turbines kill birds. My friend made the simple point that those arguing for the lives of birds against wind energy didn’t really give a damn about birds. They just wanted to stop wind power. Applying the same idea to the trans discussion (which is almost never about female to male transgender people), few to none of those opposed to transgender competition in women’s sports give a damn about improving access and money to women’s sports under Title IX or any other circumstances. They (you know “them”) just want to have some group as a designated “other” on which to wreak their vengeance and scorn.
This whole issue is a distraction from more important and vital concerns or ….“Squirrel!”
