Anti-Trans Orgs Seeking List of Trans Athletes
UK-based anti-trans activist organizations For Women Scotland Sport and Sex Matters are asking on social media for reports on any trans athletes or teams who might support trans athletes, for presumably normal reasons!
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
Last week, two “gender critical” (i.e., anti-trans activists) organizations in the United Kingdom took to social media to promote what will surely be the start of a targeted harassment campaign. As reported by Mallory Moore at the Trans Safety Network, anti-trans groups For Women Scotland Sport and Sex Matters have evilly joined forces to encourage transphobes to report any “teams, leagues, competitions” that are “allowing males [sic] in female sports.”
Of course, it isn’t the dreaded males that they’re after: They want the names of any sports organization in the UK that allows trans women to compete, specifically so that they can put together a list of trans athletes for… presumably non-nefarious, completely normal reasons. Funnily enough, when Assigned Media launched the Trans Data Library, a helpful repository of anti-trans activists and their anti-trans activities to be used by activists, reporters, researchers, and whoever else needs help untangling the complex web of dark money and interconnected personalities in the anti-trans movement, the most common response from panicked transphobes was to accuse us of being evil for making lists of people.
Wikis about transphobes? Bad and wrong. Menacing lists of trans women in sports? Normal and good. Got it!
FWSS posted the original request, including two emails at which you can help ruin normal people’s lives. Now, Assigned Media would never encourage our readership to engage in a spam email campaign against those two addresses, which you can find at the FWSS tweet linked above, so don’t do that. Please, nobody send either of those email addresses any unwanted spam that might clutter their inboxes and make it difficult for them to keep track of actual reports about trans athletes.
The Sex Matters Twitter account later retweeted FWSS, and a member of Sex Matters’ advisory board, Mara Yamauchi, personally quote tweeted FWSS to encourage reports on trans women including information such as: “... who they are, which sports, how many positions, medals etc they’ve stolen from females & injuries they’ve caused,” as well as “all the females who have self-excluded.”
When Yamauchi says “self-excluded,” she means cisgender women who are choosing to leave sports entirely instead of competing against transgender women. For example, earlier this year, Assigned Media covered an instance in which two Dutch darts players had resigned from their national team to protest the inclusion of a trans woman in international competition. Very weird hill to die on, but at least we don’t have to hear from you anymore!
Unfortunately, these sorts of campaigns aren’t always that goofy and easily ignored. Back in August we reported more than once on the extended, vicious harassment campaign against Olympic gold medalists Imane Khelif from Algeria, and Lin Yu-ting from Taiwan. The most shocking part about Khelif and Lin’s story, of course, is that neither woman has ever been confirmed to be transgender or intersex.
Confirmation of gender diversity wouldn’t in any way justify the widespread harassment both women received simply for not conforming to misogynistic and often racist standards of femininity, but it is strong evidence that the witch hunt against trans athletes harms everybody. Given the incredible disparity in numbers between cis and trans athletes, of whom there are statistically almost none anyway, it’s likely that more gender non-conforming cis women will be harmed by these campaigns than trans women.
Not that anybody deserves the kind of hatred Khelif and Lin received during the Summer Olympics.
Anyway, I’m typically more of an ACAB kinda gal, but just so you’re aware… police in Scotland consider transgender identity to be a protected characteristic, such that laws regarding hate crimes apply, and they also happen to have an online non-emergency report form that has its own option for reporting hate crimes against transgender people. The report is anonymous, and you aren’t required to live in Scotland to file it.
Do with that information what you will, dear reader!
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
