(cw: transphobia) SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP STOP GIVING THIS TRACTION YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING MORON SHES NOT EVEN TRANS!!!! SHES NOT EVEN FUCKING TRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH
I feel so terrible for the poor woman that won. She's at the fucking Olympics after coming from rural Algeria. I can't even imagine how hard she's worked to get there and now she has to deal with all this
Yeah I read a bit about her, how she grew up in desperate poverty but wanted to be a boxer. She would sell scrap metal as a teenager to have bus fare to go train in the next town over.
Like it's sports movie stuff. She's a genuine miracle story and now instead of celebrating her athletic achievement and motivation, she's an object to spread transphobia even though she's a cis woman.
after the olympics opening we got a new wave of trans hate, culture warriors got on their high horses, it was another validation moment like 'oh shit people really do suck and here it is out in the open again', straight up hate coming out, people should think for themselves instead of repeating talking points that are deployed for political engagement, why does it even work?
I definitely feel sadness about this whole sort of thing, but knowing that the person they are accusing of "beating up women" is a cis woman herself, it gives me some hope that the haters will be shamed by most regular people for being so goddamn ignorant and hateful like usual. It doesn't appear to me that most people care much about this stuff, so it doesn't help the reactionaries recruit much, though a fervent minority can cause a lot of damage.
Fascist's choice of victim is arbitrary. It's informed by the social norms of the day, but they can pick anyone to be the villains of their brutal passion play. It doesn't matter that she's cis. That's not what this is or ever has been about. Fascists, to fulfill their ideology, need an enemy who is external to them, who they can position as a strong, virulent threat to society but also as pathetic and weak. They pick some group in society that lacks the social cachet to defend themselves, then pump that group up as a threat. Then the fash destroy their designated victims so the fash can feel strong defeating their enemies.
They don't care about biology or science or gender or anything. They care about being strong, and being afraid, and about finding joy in hurting people who can't fight back.
Being an adherent to an objective materialist view of the world basically guarantees you'll always be correct or at least can reasonably predict how and why something is or will happen. Unfortunately in our world dominated by capitalists who will seek and provide any explanation besides the correct one... you're also doomed to a lifetime of being right while no one listens.
The worst part is most people, sat down in a comfy safe place, can easily understand the driving force for basically all the bad shit they encounter on a societal level, which bleeds into the interpersonal. "Oh, just rich assholes fuck everyone! Same as always!" is probably a 99% agreed upon sentiment. And yet, when you say, "yes, that's true, and here is how X group is exploiting Y narrative to get richer/more power to control capital" it often runs counter to some sort of liberal narrative sold by the media or something they just concocted in their own mind. So, logic goes out the window, "No, this has nothing to do with politics and the desire to control resources! This is about [protecting family or ensuring cultural purity or stopping terrorism, etc. from the list of bullshit]!" Every forced culture war pressure point is just an individualized quirk and proof of the "evil" of individuals who believe it (or don't, depending). Nothing is tied together. It's all the most important thing ever and yet, as a singular issue, the least important. When you tell people this is all interconnected in some way and most times the connections are not hard to see or speculate on it's just conspiracy theories and crazy talk. They've all heard the insane shit from right wingers and in their passing, uninterested view, it's just more bullshit.
It's all rather depressing. Understanding why it's happening, and knowing it's not going to stop anytime soon almost makes it worse. When you get to the level of realizing that those in power don't even care if you talk about the motivations openly because they see that you are absolutely no threat to them... no one will listen or believe you anyway... very very depressing.
Recall that fascist's choice of enemy has nothing really to do with their victims, and comes entirely from within fascism. If it wasn't Jewish people, if it wasn't trans people, they'd pick another group to fulfill their need for an enemy to destroy.
They're being self-consistent in so far as the fascists select an enemy then project all their hate and fear on to that enemy.
This is, for me, a really eye opening and clarifying example of transphobia being rampant, hurting cis women, and entrenching cis men in pure ideology. Failing the woman test is just as ridiculous as being gay for drinking pink lemonade. The thing is that far more people have an axe to grind about not being feminine enough compared to not being straight enough.
So many people who are going "actually, the science says..." like they give a fuck about biology besides using it as a cudgel. As someone with professional experience and relevant education it's so jarring to me to hear science illiterate people speak with such conviction and authority. It was a big part of what weirded me the fuck out about covid. No Niel Degrass Tyson, but you have no idea what you're talking about. I don't even like my natural science education being a big part of my personality or day to day outside of my work, but at least I know enough to understand that there are conditions where you can be AFAB with a Y chromosome. There are XXY genotypes and shit like that. Do I remember the name of the condition or related ones? Fuck no, that's why I wouldn't go popping off about how it means this or that. Especially because I'm not going to look up the Wikipedia article because, frankly, I wasn't really invested in women's boxing at the Olympics and I was never going to watch a middling boxer fight for what I understand is the middle of the tournament (?). Therefore, I'd never need to be informed of her medical history. I'd never have to see candids of her or what she looked like as a child. She can live her fucking life as far as I'm concerned, I don't NEED TO UNDERSTAND SCIENCE TO KNOW THAT SHE DESERVES A LITTLE DIGNITY HOLY SHIT!
At this point 3/4 of the people commenting on it are convinced that she is a transexual or currently has a penis. I don't trust people to understand anything.
And it's worth noting: the other boxer had nothing to do with this. She withdrew from the fight because she took a hit to the nose and she thought something felt wrong so she withdrew for her own wellbeing. All the crap saying she was afraid of the other boxer was made up by the fash.
I still can't wrap my head around the TERF racist piece of shit logic around this whole issue. This person, a cis woman, born a girl, with female genitalia, but who grows up to have apparently a "masculine" phenotype (whatever the hell that means) and a high testosterone count is a man?
So that means that outward presentation and hormonal levels are more defining of gender than a person's genitalia and gender assigned at birth? So an AFAB person can be a man, then? By that same logic, then, surely AMAB people can also be women, no? If not, then why?
I'm a cis man, but I have hormonal issues, a pituitary tumor that causes me to have very low testosterone levels, which might be more in line with what would be expected of a woman my age. I have a beard, low voice, wide shoulders and above-average muscle mass due to my exercise routine. I identify as a man and I look like a man. But, since my testosterone is lower than an average man's... am I actually a woman, then?
Also, I saw some people talking about her having XY chromosomes (which also seems to be unsourced nonsense), which makes her biologically a man, apparently. There's documented cases of women with predominant XY chromosomes being fertile and having children, so is the XY karyotype indicative of being a man? In that case, is it possible then for men to get pregnant?
TERFs can't resist being incredibly wrong about pretty much everything, and now that they're being confronted with their precious definitions of sex and gender being a spectrum rather than a binary, they're throwing a hissy fit and undermining even their own fucked up logic. What in the name of everloving fuck is wrong with these goddamn weirdos?
I think transphobes have gotten high on their own supply of transvestigations. That caused them to immediately declare this woman trans. When they got caught by people explaining she’s cis, they are incapable of backtracking so they feel they have to double down.
we get at least one story like this every olympics and it's the IOC's own fault but to fix it they'd have to do away with reactionary "biological" testing and they're run by the most fascist ancient pieces of shit in europe so that's never going to happen.
This whole thing is awful and other people have put it into words better than me here.
It's not the most improtant aspect, but seeing Labour double and triple down on this shit has managed to be even worse than I thought it would be. Nandy proudly proclaimed the culture wars were over when Labour won. Then they immeadiately went further than even the Cass Review (with all it's many problems) could even suggest to deny trans people healthcare. Now you have Labour MPs retweeting and endorsing unhinged far right conspiracy theories no more reasonable than when all the US CHUDs decide Michelle Obama was trans and members of the government going out to pour fuel on the fire with shit like this. Not to mention it looks suspiciously like Rowling basically paid to make transphobic policy.
I just overheard my chud landlord/roommate ranting about this to his girlfriend. Right wing media isn't even bothering to correct themselves that this was a cis woman.