Tran’s Rights vs. Women’s Rights Is More Complicated Than You Think, So Shut Up.

A couple of stories, from the past couple of weeks, stand out as particularly troubling when it comes to women’s issues.

A trans swimmer in women’s sports has made news everywhere. And let’s be honest, for those of us who haven’t personally known a trans individual, it’s very difficult to grasp even the basic concept.

I, as a branded liberal, for once, don’t have the answer. You aren’t going to hear that very often.

This is however a great opportunity to appreciate the spectrum for both progressive and traditional thought.

Many of us think we need to be either liberal or conservative. We are one way or the other. There is no middle ground.

But, if the truth is told, there is nothing, but middle ground. You can throw a million different subjects up in the air and a person who may declare themselves conservative or liberal will find they fall on various parts of their brain’s political/social spectrum.

And that’s what we have with transgender rights. Too many of us, due to a lack of information, probably still fall in the conservative ranks where we wish to do nothing, or in the liberal ranks where we want potentially to do too much.

The beauty, and heartache of political/social growth is the agonizingly slow change. But forcing a change, where the mechanisms of society have not adjusted may cause even more dysfunction.

This is such a dangerous thing for me to say. This is the same thing slave owners said before the civil war. This is the same thing Jim Crow said after the Civil War. This is the same thing school boards in the south said in the 1950’s.

But yet here I am saying it, in defense of women, about trans rights.

My issue, with trans rights and women’s sport is the potential for stark unfairness to born female athletes. I want to know if it can even be fair for someone who has transitioned from male to female, to compete athletically against other women.

And as long as I’m making that argument, let’s consider the side of the argument we haven’t heard, how fair is it for a person born female to transition to male and then compete athletically?

Are we seeing the convolution here? If you are born female, you are being marginalized on both sides of this argument.

Women continue to get short shrift in our society. This theme is thinly veiled and blatant!

Last week, a professional football team gave the largest guaranteed contract to a quarterback who is an obvious sex offender. I’m not going into details. He simply is. Courts may not be able to prove it because of the he said/she said aspect of this particular type of rape, but that’s what he is.

And now a Haslam, the owner of the football team, and from our State, has not only rewarded him for this type of behavior, but made that behavior acceptable!

The problem is this stuff happens all the time! Half of our population gets marginalized by the male part of our population, literally every day, every hour, every minute!

For example here are a few of this week’s headlines:

Middle and high schools have now been closed to Afghan women. And oh yeah, since our military left, many women protesting such actions have been taken into custody, severely tortured and gang raped.

Bill Cosby, now freed from prison, even though he drugged and raped countless women, is considering a final standup tour.

Rape victims in Albuquerque, NM, may wait as long as eight years before their case specific rape kit is tested. Oh I’m sorry, that’s only if their particular case is considered, “low priority.”

And state legislature after state legislature, are reversing women’s reproductive rights. Why?

Just because they can.