npr ran a story this morning on air about the recent supreme court ruling in favor of trans youth sports bans, a ruling that specifies trans girls in particular and allows even public schools in red states to do whatever kind of exclusionary policy they want. and for this story they interviewed two people: a teenage trans boy in massachusetts who participates in tons of school sports, and an activist trans man in nyc who runs a nonprofit for trans youth. I'm not saying that either of these people have absolutely nothing pertinent to say about trans youth issues, but the teenager from MA mostly spoke about how lucky *he* is to participate in sports and the activist from NYC spent the entire interview plugging the book he wrote while barely answering a single question. The activist guy mentioned that he actually has spoken to the west virginian trans girl who was part of the case, but only to say how proud/sad he is to watch her become an activist "just like him".
not to be a critic, but its crazy to me that they could not speak either TO or ABOUT the people affected by this ruling (trans girls in conservative areas) at all. a combination of transmisogyny and shitty reporting means that the takeaway from that segment seemed to be "well, it sucks, but at least blue states are still allowed to be accepting of trans youth" rather than the very real attempts to eradicate trans people from public life or the very real possibility of violent retaliation against trans girls in these states.
during the activist's interview, the radio host asked him if he could quickly dispel some of the myths around trans youth in sports somehow being unfair to cis youth, and his response was to awkwardly shrug off the question and say that the answer is simply too "complicated and nuanced" to give a short soundbite on air about. are you fucking kidding me? live on WNYC with about 1 million weekly listeners, and you can't just say with your whole chest that trans girls belong in girls sports because they are girls too? come on
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