Gender Policing In Sports, 1937
Gender policing in sport has been popping up all over my social media timeline, recently. Given the discourses of the day and the upcoming Olympics, I guess it’s not surprising. I have taken my cues from a distant observation of the discourse, and noticed that pretty much every cis white dude with Strong Opinions About Gender And Sports seems to be some sort of homophobe/transphobe, or else is just drunk on TERF memes. So me, I’m mostly resolved to shut up and stay that way.
But I do think it’s interesting and worthy of note to point out that there’s nothing at all new about these gender-policing conversations. In evidence, I offer the following full-page spread of three stories from the February 1937 issue of Look magazine, headlined “When Is A Woman Actually A Woman?” For the times, the language is not especially brutal (you can click the image or this link for a larger version to read the fine print), but the policing is brisk nonetheless:
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It’s a tough question. We want people to be able to live their best lives and be true to their real selves, yet the differences in muscle density, etc., that classically make men better at some sports than women don’t just all go away when someone undergoes the standard male to female surgery and hormonal process. So that person has a clear advantage in many sports compared to women who weren’t exposed to so much testosterone during their life. Yet we’re trying to provide people with a chance to properly live as the gender that their psychology matches. Not an easy answer.
It’s only a difficult question if you think sporting contest outcomes are somehow more important than the well-being of the players. Why give a shit about a “clear advantage” (if that’s even true) in a contest where the outcomes are not important?
I think most participants in sporting events are very concerned about the outcomes. They are very competitive.
It is not an exhibition of style and flair but a competition for money and glory.
If you are concerned for the well-being of sportsfolk, perhaps you should support counselling to stop them damaging themselves with their obsessive extreme exercise in pursuit of appearing superior to others in front of the whole world. Outlaw prizes and publicity so they only do it for their own personal pleasure. Why would Laurel Hubbard continue to weightlift after breaking an arm at a major event?
It’s also an international pissing contest that allows us to have fewer wars, as nations show off how much spare capacity they have by funding athletic programs instead of armies. Well, both, sure, but just like sports leagues allow towns and cities to decide the matter of who’s best this year without sending out people with actual weapons, we hire fit young people to run around fields of sport rather than fields of battle. The USSR apparently got a lot more international attention after they started winning a lot of Olympic medals (many due to fancy new drugs, but hey).
I follow national politics like some people follow sporting teams. Except that the actions of the captains actually have rather serious real world consequences.