Okay, this is the post about fencing and gender that I've been thinking about for a while. Because I think about fencing literally every day, haha
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Yes yes yes to all of this. I hope I didn't make it sound at any point like 'women in sports' is somehow opposed to 'trans and intersex people in sports' because obviously the forces working against women getting into sports are also closely entangled in the truly massive amount of cissexist bullshit in sports. But long-haul repair is exactly what it needs, not quick utopian fixes. I can see how gender-neutral sports would have an immediate benefit to some people (including me atm), but I can see a lot more clearly how it would hurt a lot of other people (including young me). Completely gender neutral sports are maybe an ideal, maybe something to test out periodically to see if they're feasible, and probably not nuanced enough for what we have to deal with right now.
Aaah, but this kind of argument makes me feel so old. I have had my own share of being annoyed by petty gender issues (especially in fencing), but you're completely right that most of that is manifestations of a systematic problem rather than the root cause of them. I've had a lot of these discussions lately where we start by complaining about relatively benign misgendering or erasure issues and end by throwing our hands up and saying 'heteronormativity!' But trying to have a conversation about heteronormativity writ large is exhausting, and it's much easier to focus on day-to-day annoyances rather than people dying. When I push myself to focus on the systematic problem, I don't have the energy to be outraged at all the tiny consequences of it. When I was a teenager I was able to bring the same level of anger to both... and I probably would have been completely in favor of tearing apart gendered sports, too.
(Hope all of that was coherent - it's kind of late, haha.)
Aaah, but this kind of argument makes me feel so old. I have had my own share of being annoyed by petty gender issues (especially in fencing), but you're completely right that most of that is manifestations of a systematic problem rather than the root cause of them. I've had a lot of these discussions lately where we start by complaining about relatively benign misgendering or erasure issues and end by throwing our hands up and saying 'heteronormativity!' But trying to have a conversation about heteronormativity writ large is exhausting, and it's much easier to focus on day-to-day annoyances rather than people dying. When I push myself to focus on the systematic problem, I don't have the energy to be outraged at all the tiny consequences of it. When I was a teenager I was able to bring the same level of anger to both... and I probably would have been completely in favor of tearing apart gendered sports, too.
(Hope all of that was coherent - it's kind of late, haha.)
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