• Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    18 days ago

    A few years ago, I played roller derby. It’s one of the most trans inclusive sports on the planet. Trans women are explicitly welcome to play in the womens leagues.

    I live in Australia, in a city of a couple of million people. We had 4 or so different derby “clubs”, and each one of those could field anywhere between 1 and 3 derby teams of various levels. Once you looked outside of the city to include towns and smaller cities within a couple of hours drive, there were around 10 or so “teams”. I was one of 2 trans folk active in my city at the time (3 if you count someone who was playing on the mens team)

    Now, every capitol city in Australia has a similar situation, though the bigger cities can field a few more teams than my city could.

    At one tournament weekend, with a whole year of planning, folk decided to put together a trans team for a demonstration game. It took the whole country to fill that team, and they played the game, without having had any chance to practice together.

    There wasn’t enough trans folk to make two teams, let alone a meaningful season, with playoffs and multiple rounds against different teams.

    “Just make a trans league” has the same meaning as “trans people aren’t allowed to participate”.

    • venusaur@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      You could make a trans and cis league, keep cis league and then eventually create a trans league.

      • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        17 days ago

        Notably, this is so typical of the issues we face. It’s a type of (subtle) transphobia called “Just asking questions” or, more rudely “JAQing off”

        You “just asked a question” about trans leagues.

        I made a multi paragraph response, from a first hand, lived experience.

        Your response in turn, did not connect or engage with a single thing I wrote, despite my entire post being a reply to your question, and was basically just another question, shifting the goal posts to the try and arrive at an answer that aligns with the perspective you clearly already hold.

        A perspective clearly on display in your other engagements in this thread, where you haven’t once given ground, taken anything on board or shifted your position in response to someone giving you an answer to your questions. All you have done is push for exclusion, and then just shift the board around to push from a different direction.

        You may not be actively transphobic, but you are doing the work of transphobes either way, because you phrase your questions as if you’re open to hearing the responses from folk, but keep pushing for exclusion, no matter what answer you get.

        • venusaur@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          Sorry I didn’t remark on your experience playing roller derby. I absolutely responded to what you said by saying that they could create a separate league that combines people because there aren’t enough numbers. That was your whole point with your big long answer. Don’t need to respond to every piece it. You may not be a pretentious but you’re doing the work of pretentious people.

          • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            16 days ago

            Trans leagues don’t work because there aren’t enough trans people. That’s not going to change. Trans people will always be a minority. We won’t suddenly get the numbers to support segregated teams.

            Your solution is delay segregation, so that we can be segregated in the future. It so fundamentally misses the heart of the issue… Segregation is the problem… If cis folk would just “not” segregate trans folk, the problem would be gone. So your solution is to start with the point we want to end up at, where no one is excluded, until we get to a point where exclusion is possible, and then do it!

            You may not be a pretentious but you’re doing the work of pretentious people.

            Yeah, because my attitude is the real issue here, not the ongoing campaign of exclusion and hatred targeting trans folk…

            • venusaur@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              There already is segregation in sports. This is not new and for some it’s not some targeted attack on trans people. It’s coming from the same reason we separate men and women’s sports. In fact, it’s quite inclusionary to try to segregate trans sports because that’s what we do already. One day trans people may no longer be the minority they are and you might be thinking, hey I’d like to have a trans exclusive league.

              The whole idea is to have a league where people are cool with playing with trans people or even make it a league where anybody can play, but also keep leagues for just cis people. Then if you want have a trans league.

              • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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                15 days ago

                it’s not some targeted attack on trans people

                It literally is. The transphobic organisations pushing this openly admit that it’s a wedge tactic, a first step to make future trans segregation easier.

                One day trans people may no longer be the minority they are and you might be thinking, hey I’d like to have a trans exclusive league.

                You can rest assured, we will not reach a day when I enjoy being segregated

                The whole idea is to have a league where people are cool with playing with trans people or even make it a league where anybody can play, but also keep leagues for just cis people.

                So, “open” leagues tend to just be mens leagues, with the odd adventurous cis woman, and the gender diverse people that have been pushed out of their other spaces.

                And I don’t want to play with men for the same reason that most cis women don’t want to play with men. On average, they are stronger, faster and put me at a higher risk of injury.

                And it doesn’t matter how “open” the league is, when the majority of people in it are cis men, it’s deeply uncomfortable to navigate that space as anyone who isn’t a cis man.

                • venusaur@lemmy.world
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                  14 days ago

                  Then make a women’s league with trans people, a cis women’s league and a trans league if that’s possible at some point.

                  • Ada@piefed.blahaj.zone
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                    14 days ago

                    That simply won’t happen. It’s not a solution. Every sport, every league, suddenly splits down the middle over a political desire for exclusion of some of their players? Everyone loses…