Title IX Is The Ultimate Bad-Faith Weapon
Protections for women's sports have proven to be useful cudgels against transgender athletes
I once knew a guy, mostly from the online world of obsessive microblogging, who never missed a chance to have a little fun at the expense of women’s college and professional sports.
This fella, a mostly apolitical guy – someone who would tune into politics for a couple months before a presidential election to make epic both-sides cracks – truly loved to jump into a (pre-Musk) Twitter thread mocking women’s sports as something unworthy of public attention, media coverage, and certainly the respect of men, since all men who could probably beat any of these little ladies in their respective sports. There was lots of whining from this guy about sports media "shoving women's sports down our throats," things of that nature.
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He had always struck me as the kind of guy who plays co-rec softball and tells the outfielders to come all the way in every time a woman comes to the plate, even if that woman’s batting stance and demeanor and mannerisms are dead giveaways that she’s about to rip a stand-up double into the gap. I knew a lot of dudes like that over my fifteen years of co-rec softball, and I took great delight when a lady would make that man look like a complete dumbass, even when it hurt my team.
There was some sliver of justice there if you squinted hard enough. This was the story I told myself, anyway.
Denny Carter
Everything – or almost everything – seemed to change for this young man when he became a father for the first time. This guy, who had spent unknown hundreds of hours making jokes with the fellas about the unseriousness of women’s sports, was suddenly deadly serious about women’s sports because he had a daughter.
Overnight, he had become a dedicated defender of women’s sports. No more jabs at the ratings of WNBA playoff games. No more commentary on how far an LPGA player hits the golf ball. No more wondering aloud whether he could start for a pro women’s hockey team.
He had become woke to Title IX, which – as the dad of a girl – was vital civil rights law that must be protected at any cost.
This newfound concern with the protection of Title IX was a dead giveaway, I knew. It was a dog whistle that would shatter the eardrums of anyone who knows how to listen to such things. It wasn’t long after thie guy started posting about the importance of women’s sports that he revealed exactly why he was a newfound Title IX fanboy.
He had discovered, as so many casually misogynistic men had discovered, that Title IX could be weaponized against a group of humans they hate and fear even more than women: Transgender people. His was a dsicovery dripping with bad faith, since discrimination against trans folks could be dressed up in feigned concern for the integrity of women’s sports. So many girldads love Title IX, not for its legal protections and the opportunity it provides, but for its utility in denying trans people a place in society.
Denny Carter
I had seen this again and again during the trans panic of 2020-2022. Reactionaires were mostly unwilling to say what they wanted to say about transgender people. They needed a nice way, a widely acceptable way, to bar trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. They had to look respectable in their bigotry.
This guy has everything in common with the right-wing Supreme Court justices who this week ruled in favor of (unenforceable) state bans on trans athletes, two years after casually barring the Biden administration from stopping discrimination against trans athletes without any explanation.
Among smirking slights against trans people that once again prove many of the Court’s right-wing jurists spend every waking moment on the X platform, the conservative SCOTUS justices did their best this week to become champions for Title IX protections as the most straightforward way to stop transgender athletes from playing the sports they love. Supporting Title IX, for them, is only a means to an end.
The American right's sudden embrace of Title IX is a reminder, I think, that fascists have no beliefs beyond causing anguish for those they hate. They are, as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a century ago, "amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words."
It is the libs who actually care about protections for women's sports in the United States. It is the libs whose earnestness and caring about anything, anywhere, at any time, puts them at a disadvantage in their battles with the nihilist right. When they pretend to support Title IX, they're asking liberals, "Why don't you also support Title IX? I thought you cared about equality." They are, as always, having fun with words.
Brett Kavanaugh, who likes to make sure everyone knows he coaches his daughter’s sports teams, said Title IX had left the justices with no choice but to ensure the “safety and competitive fairness” of women’s sports. At least a couple other justices – I didn’t read the hundreds of pages of opinions in this case – fell in line with Kavanaugh, touting Title IX as a great accomplishment in ensuring American women access to sports.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in comments made from the bench this week, agreed with her far-right SCOTUS counterparts about the importance of youth sports and the role of sports in developing well-rounded teenagers and, one day, adults.
The majority’s opinion ends by reciting the many wonderful ways in which playing sports can be valuable to young people. It can help build resilience, tenacity, leadership, and discipline. It can lead to life-long friendships, community, and a sense of belonging. It can bring joy and the thrill of victory, along with all the lessons one learns from experiencing defeat. The benefits are immense.
It's a nice flourish, and Sotomayor – who dissented along with the Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan – was adamant that that Court had erred in its decision to keep in place Republican bans on trans athletes in public schools. But Sotomayor misses the bad faith – the fakery – of the whole thing.
Kavanaugh and John Roberts and other right-wing justices pretending to care about the integrity of women's sports is a charade, a total farce meant to make these jurists seem caring and concerned about protecting women's sports in the United States. These are the same justices who have sneered at any legal or legislative remedy for discrimination in American society. Their deeply partisan jurisprudence means there can be no such thing as discrimination, and if there is discrimination in some facets of American life, it's the fault of the discriminated and should not compel any lawmaker or judge to come up with a solution to this problem, which, of course, doesn't exist.
There is simply no way Kavanaugh and the rest have a real, good-faith concern about the protection of women's sports. I can't believe that.
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social
