To be clear, Freddie deBoer, we don't support 'trans rights'

Freddie deBoer should probably stop writing about the trans debate if he doesn't understand what we're talking about

Rejoicing across the “transwomen are men” circuit occurred pretty unanimously this week when it was announced that Lia (né William ) Thomas’ attempt to challenge World Aquatics' policy banning men from competing in women’s swimming competitions was dismissed. In a ruling released on Wednesday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) determined he did not have standing to bring the case.

In a statement, Thomas called the CAS’ decision “deeply disappointing,” explaining, “Blanket bans preventing transwomen from competing are discriminatory and deprive us of valuable athletic opportunities that are central to our identities.”

This response is actually very good, as it reveals the actual purpose of including men in women’s sport: to validate their identities and offer them athletic opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The thing is, of course, that women’s sports don’t exist to validate men’s identities or to offer them athletic opportunities.

Due perhaps the algorithmic bias, I didn’t see much disagreement with this decision. An exception was in a response I was pointed to from leftist writer Freddie deBoer who, no matter how hard he apparently tries, cannot bring himself to understand why anyone cares about a few innocent men scooching their way into women’s change rooms, prisons, shelters, or sports. Just let them be, ladies! It’s barely even happening. Just a little… Just a few dicks, which is not even that many dicks!

This issue, he believes, is a fake problem: “Fears of transwomen dominating elite women’s athletics are simply not consistent with reality,” deBoer writes, as “transwomen competing at all are very rare.”

He references a statistic showing that “less than 40% of trans and gender nonconforming people are transwomen,” and the vast majority of those are not competitive athletes at all.

The thing is that we are not talking about “transwomen,” we are talking about men, and no amount of men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, because they’re men.

This seems straightforward, but becomes less so if you lie.

DeBoer complains that few engage with, to him, “the essential question,” which is “whether we recognize the right of people to identify with a gender other than the one they would traditionally be assigned and to do so in peace.”

Well, Freddie, we do not. But I think you know that.

To begin any response in this vein is only to demonstrate an unwillingness to engage in good faith, which has long been my impression of many of DeBoer’s arguments, resulting in a years-long confusion at those who see him as an exceptional “rational leftist.”

I have become a bit of broken record on this front, but it is key, so I will continue to pause and repeat: there is no concern about “transwomen,” there is a concern about men. There is no such thing as a “transwoman,” there are only men, some of whom claim they are something other than men, but are not. Men are not women; there is no such thing as a “transwoman,” end of. A man does not become a different thing in saying so. If we all moved forward on this basis, there would be no need for this debate at all, but then what would we all do with our time, except focus on real, material things that exist in front of us.

My insistence on referring to so-called “transwomen” as men is often treated as mean and cruel, when in fact it is just true and practical. Twisting yourself into knots trying to explain a separate category of people that do not exist in any concrete way beyond their own fantasies, desires, and declarations not only makes your own efforts at sorting out this issue and making clear arguments against gender identity ideology and related policy a challenge, but supports the ideology and related policies we are attempting to challenge.

Keep it simple: Men and boys are male; women and girls are female. There is no such thing as “trans rights” because there is no such thing as “trans.” One does not exist in the middle of the sex binary, and one’s personality and preference for dresses over pants does not define one’s rights. (In the modern, Western world, in any case.)

“One of the commonplaces you see in debates about trans rights and trans issues is the preemptive declaration that someone respects trans people and their rights,” deBoer offers as an entry point.

Ok, well fair. A lot of people do do that, mistakenly to my mind, as an attempt to “find a middle ground” or enter into the debate without hostility. But there is no middle ground or need for middle ground on this matter, and trans activists will not accept any compromise even if there were one, so let’s stop doing that, as we can all now see how confusing this is, yes?

DeBoer complains that this preemptive declaration (that we’re all going to stop doing) “very often precedes a list of problems that they have with trans people and their rights.”

Well, no Freddie — it does not. It precedes a list of problems people have with men claiming to be women, who use that claim as an excuse to predate, cheat, dominate, abuse, or otherwise behave in inappropriate ways that make women and girls uncomfortable, put them in danger, and/or nullify their sex-based rights.

Don’t start with a lie if your entire aim is to present yourself as the rational voice in the room.

Starting with a strawman is a waste of every single word that follows, and deBoer already has a problem using too many words.

He points to Joe Rogan, a seemingly fond target of his (make of that what you will, and I will) as an example, saying:

Rogan will frequently begin any discussion of trans rights by insisting that he doesn’t have any personal animus against trans people, before complaining about all the problems with trans rights for half an hour. Here he says that people should do whatever makes them happy before suggesting that being trans has spread through social contagion and indoctirination.

Well, first, I think it’s clear that what Rogan means is that people are free to do what they like with in their private lives which is not the same thing as saying that one’s personal private life feelings and likes should necessarily extend to the public sphere, particularly in ways that impede on the already established rights of others. DeBoer’s following complaint is that while Rogan himself may not be motivated by “reactionary feelings,” he “platforms reactionaries” and “virutlently transphobic guests” who transphobia all over his podcast.

Again, no Freddie.

Pretending basic and obvious points about men not being women and reasonable criticisms of transgender ideology, which in practice (not in theory, inside our personal apartments and minds) harms women and kids, equates to a “reactionary” and unacceptable expression of “transphobia,” in conflict with Rogan’s expressed views that he’s fine with people living their lives as they wish, on a personal level, is yet another claim so stupid one can only generously offer that deBoer is either disingenuous or not very bright.

“What’s worse?” is a fair question here: A dummy or a liar? I would unequivocally go with liars, as I know plenty of dummies, including myself at times, who are decent and ethical people. I’d much rather be bad at math and directions than be an intentionally unethical person.

To be clear, I also allow that a person who is a man can, in his own mind, think he is a woman, and that if he wishes to purchase breast implants, he is free to do so. Does this allowance make my insistence that men are never women contradictory? I would argue no, as delusions rooted in a sexual fetish and breast implants do not make a female. Indeed, I’ve managed my entire life to avoid both, and remain, by all standards, a woman.

In saying this, I am not declaring support for “the basic right to express one’s preferred gender identity,” because that doesn’t make any sense, nor does it matter. I do not agree that one’s feelings about “gender” should have any legal standing in terms of one’s legal rights or sex, as recorded on one’s identification and records. You can say you are a clownfish, but that doesn’t make it so. You can express anything you like, but that doesn’t mean that thing is legally or scientifically true or sound. DeBoer intentionally and manipulatively creates a contradiction in his framing, in order to win an argument with himself, to support his own desire to write a tangent he need not write.

He concludes by saying that, in any case, “trans is not a right that needs to be established legally because those legal protections already protect the right to exist as a trans person.”

“In American society,” deBoer explains, “we have the right to call ourselves whatever gender we wish, and to use whatever pronouns we wish, thanks to the First Amendment.”

Again I am forced to ask the “disengenuous or stupid” question here, because there is of course a difference between allowing a person to announce they are “trans” and call themselves “Jane” instead of “John,” and creating a law that allows males to declare themselves female in order to compete as “female” in sport. You can say “I’m a woman” until the cows come home, but if you aren’t, that is a fact no law can undo.

The First Amendment allows free speech. It does not protect the “right” of adult men to identify as girls so they can walk into a female change room and take their dicks out. That is still (or should be, in any case, a crime.)

The most useful thing that we can take from this otherwise pointless, intentionally dishonest masturbatory session is that deBoer is using your own efforts to be polite and accommodating while purporting to fight gender identity ideology and policy against you. When he says, “So many people declare a vague support for the right to be trans before being relentlessly critical of ‘The Trans Agenda,’” he’s right.

So stop. You don’t need to and it makes no sense.

“Clarity could be useful,” he writes. Indeed. And to be perfectly clear: there is no such thing as “trans,” therefore I do not support “trans rights.”

Ok?