Scrum is a short documentary directed by Isabelle Alan about trans people playing rugby and the attempts to bar them from doing so.
I like the attitude of one of the woman players when told about the possibility of playing with a trans team mate. That at first she was like, no, no way but shortly realised that it’s the twentyfirst century and just had to get herself over it. That’s how most normal people respond; it may all seem a bit scary or weird in the abstract, but when confronted with the reality of it most people soon just accept it? Not everybody of course, there is a loud minority of assholes who want nothing more than to drive every trans person from sports and public life in general, but they are a minority.
The whole issue of how the transes are invading our sacred womens sport is such transparant bollocks, isn’t it? Whenever you see some crybaby cis woman whinging that her place was stolen, it’s always some grade a loser who never stood a chance in the first place. Best example was the skateboarder who as it turned out came in 34th out of 36 in the competition she complained about, with even eight year olds beating her. When the only way you came claim second place or higher is if there’s only two riders, it’s hilarious to blame it on trans women. Stop whining, git gud.
The truth is that there very few trans people competing on a level that matters, that the very very few elite trans athletes are not noticably or at all better than their cis competitors and that all of this is just another moral panic to pave the way for trans genocide. Even if being a trans woman gave you an advantage over cis competitors, so fucking what? Nobody is going to transition just to medal and so like with the bathroom panic, you’re left with the idea that some cis bloke will just pretend to be a trans woman. As if any cis male athlete good enough to compete with top female athletes isn’t better off just joining the regular mens competitions.
As with a lot of transphobes’ obsessions, the thin veneer of ‘feminism’ painted over it barely hides the reactionary core behind it. Ultimately transphobes seem to believe men are so much better at everything than women, that any random bloke can just waltz into an elite female competition and win. That core belief that women are frail, vulnerable creators which need to be protected and sheltered in their own spaces from the violent male world is at the heart of what we call terfdom, the fear that men are so much better than women that they would even make for better women. You can call it many things, but you cannot call it feminism.
