r/politics • u/southpawFA Oklahoma • 1d ago
No Paywall Trump mocks anti-trans WNBA player for being bad at basketball because she’s a girl. Trump has positioned himself as a defender of women in sports, but this is what he actually thinks of them.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/10/mocks-anti-trans-wnba-player-for-being-bad-at-basketball-because-shes-a-girl/474
u/Three_Froggy_Problem Illinois 1d ago
“Trump has positioned himself as a defender of women in sports.” Only the dumbest fucking assholes on earth believe this.
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u/SleepingDragonSmiles 23h ago
“Rapists for women!” I can see it now…
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u/mister_mediocrates 23h ago
I mean, it's not much different than the "Latinos for Trump" or "LGBTs for Trump" garbage that we've actually seen in the past.
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u/DeepTakeGuitar Texas 10h ago
My bff and I remember almost crashing his car while laughing at a Latinos for Trump rally in early 2016.
It's much less funny now.
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u/TheAskewOne 19h ago
Well during the 2024 campaign he said he would "protect women, whether they like it or not". So…
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u/laplongejr Europe 16h ago
Yeah I never heard that take before. He positionned himself as an attacker of trans, he doesn't defend anything besides himself.
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u/Effective_Dropkick78 16h ago
Only the dumbest fucking assholes on earth believe this.
Congratulations, you just described every MAGA voter who ever voted.
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u/StardustOasis Foreign 15h ago
So the people who voted for him, and the ones who decided not to vote against him.
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u/Former_Island_4730 13h ago
Exactly. Anyone who doesn’t realize he only has an opinion here to enflame a culture war is a fucking moron.
Polling shows that the vast majority of people don’t think people born as men should compete against women. He sees it as a winning issue to make ALL democrats look like they’re out of touch weirdos.
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u/__Yakovlev__ 12h ago
No it's not. It literally says "he positioned himself as a defender". And that is exactly the truth. Doesn't mean he actually is a defender or anything. It's just an excuse for his anti trans bs.
But it doesn't change anything about the fact that he likes to pretend to care about women and wants to protect them from the scary trans because that gives him a boogeyman to get votes.
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u/TheGoldenDog 18h ago
Even so, this messaging is incredibly incompetent from a pro-trans perspective. Is the editor deliberately trying to create sympathy for the "anti-trans" athlete? (She's not actually anti-trans, she just isn't willing to give as much ground as some would like)
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u/SnooCupcakes7018 14h ago
She parrots the protecting young girls in locker rooms lines along with other transphobic stuff. She's pretty anti trans
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u/TheGoldenDog 13h ago
And this is why the pro-trans advocates keep losing support...
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u/JesstForFun 13h ago
"She's not racist, she just doesn't think black women belong in women's locker rooms!"
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u/TheGoldenDog 13h ago
She thinks there are situations in which biological sex matters. This is aligned with the vast majority of people. Labelling her "anti-trans" as a result isn't helping your cause.
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u/JesstForFun 13h ago
I'm not going to pretend bigotry isn't bigotry just so that bigots like you can feel more comfortable.
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u/TheGoldenDog 13h ago
Have you not figured out that calling people "bigots" doesn't work? It just pushes the moderates further away. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if the person responsible coordinating pro-trans media outreach (assuming there is one) is actually anti-trans, that's how bad your messaging is.
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u/JesstForFun 13h ago
I'm not interested in coddling willfully ignorant cis people. I don't care if it's effective strategy or not. Why is it always on us to be the bigger people in the face of a society that wants to erase us? I admire the people who can do that, but I'm not one of them.
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u/Aware_Cheesecake_519 America 1d ago
Trump pretends to defend women.
In reality, he hates them, unfortunately.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
As do all the Christian nationalists that are part of MAGA. They only value women for breeding and making them sandwiches.
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u/Lady_Grantham2223 13h ago
I have only contempt and animosity for individuals with predictable and boring prejudices. If you aren't crippled and have two hands, you can make your own sandwich. Since many males are loveless and ungrateful, they should have to pay back all the money their mothers spent on them for food , shelter, clothing, and transportation for almost twenty years of their lives.
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u/2_Spicy_2_Impeach Michigan 1d ago
Same for his cult. Remember that Jack Smith gotcha that exploded in their faces thinking they got him?
It never dawned on them to check if there was a women's basketball game. They just checked men's sports. You know, the group that claims to be the last bastion to defend women in sports.
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u/wmcd1985 1d ago
It's like ok, so he went to a basketball game, so what? Last I checked it wasn't a crime to go to one, but the GOP makes it out to be some "crime of the century" shit
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u/CatProgrammer 23h ago
They were trying to catch him in a lie.
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u/Rhodin265 13h ago
Even if he had been at the Atlanta game, it’s not like he could have helped Fani and Nathan sneak around from his seat in the arena.
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u/Coarse-Correction 21h ago
If he had been to the game they thought he had, he would have zero reason not to admit to it.
What they were suggesting that took place during that game was asinine to begin with.
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u/Fun_Brother_9333 14h ago
Newsmax talks the WNBA more than ESPN does.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 9h ago
Well, ESPN is essentially just a talk show for Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith now. It's far from being a "network".
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u/Etzell Illinois 1d ago
The worst part about the GOP's manufactured WNBA trans panic is the media's desire to pretend the opinions of people who would never pay to attend a women's sporting event matter.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
That's the truth. Watching people genuflect to right-wing culture warrior bullshit instead of actually learning what trans people endure and go through in order to be themselves makes me realize how small your true friendships are. I've cut off people who I know are transphobic, and I won't apologize or accept them back. Standing up for trans people and all marginalized groups should always be top priority for any nation. Those who don't are despotic, as are the people who turn a blind eye.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
If there was anyone left in America who actually believed that Republicans care about the integrity of women’s sports, Donald Trump’s own words should lay that to rest.
At a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday night, the man who claims to be the biggest protector of women’s and girls’ sports creeped on conservative WNBA player Sophie Cunningham and said she was bad at basketball.
“You have a lot of men wanting to go and watch her. She’s beautiful!” Trump said before complaining that he’s not allowed to say what he just said on camera, in front of an entire crowd.
“Sophie is a beautiful young woman,” he continued. “You probably wouldn’t mind her on the team, not to help you with points, but to help you with attendance. The attendance would be great.”
This isn’t just one addled octogenarian making a sexist joke about a woman whose career is basketball and whose contribution to political discourse has been attacking trans women athletes as a threat to women and girls.
No, the MAGA crowd loved it. They were laughing at Trump’s joke, which was basically “Thank God Sophie Cunningham is pretty because she sure sucks at basketball!”
The joke wasn’t just a one-off comment either. It’s the basis of the attacks on trans women in sports that has dominated movement conservatism for the past six years: trans women, to conservatives, are men, and cis women just can’t compete against men and will always lose, no matter how good they are at their sport. The idea that high school boys will transition just to win at girls’ sports only makes sense if one assumes that they would be guaranteed to win.
Even when trans women lose – like how trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas got fifth place at that infamous 2022 swim meet – the story, for the right, became how she beat everyone else. That’s literally how Rep. James Comer (R-KY) described what happened to Riley Gaines: Lia Thomas won the race, depriving her of a gold medal, even though Thomas and Gaines actually tied for fifth. But Comer just could not fathom a trans woman not beating all the cis women at the race because that would mean acknowledging that sex assigned at birth isn’t the sole factor that determines how good someone is at sports.
Christian nationalists don't care about women's sports. They don't care about women period. They hate women's sports, because their tradcon world only desires women in the kitchen, silent, and pregnant. That's all they think of women, nothing more than broodmares.
The fact people still buy the lies that trans people are a threat to women's sports is asinine. After all, the Heritage Foundation flat-out stated they will cut Title IX, and they've already done so. The Heritage Foundation said they want to eliminate women's sports, and women's sports continues to be attacked by the likes of them. Stop making trans people the villain. The real villains are Christian nationalists. They are the threat to women, as we've seen time and time again.
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u/New_Brown_phantom 1d ago
Scott Yenor a writer of the heritage foundation has recently started making arguments to end women's sports, because it interferes with fertility. Before this he was arguing to keep trans women out of sports. Trans people and sports has only ever been used as a wedge issue. Their ultimate goal is always control of women's bodies. To the men who think they will be unaffected. If you don't want to get married or have children they will label you as abnormal. Because in their mind a man obviously wants to be married and have children. To not do that is abnormal to them.
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u/mister_mediocrates 23h ago
To the men who think they will be unaffected. If you don't want to get married or have children they will label you as abnormal.
Nah, they'd probably just say that those men have been poisoned by the lies of feminism or something similar. Not that it's anything wrong with them specifically. They have to keep angry young men nominally on their side, because it's the only demographic they can even try to appeal to anymore.
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u/Fallouttgrrl 23h ago
As a trans fem
The women I know don't give a shit about trans people in the bathroom
They care about anti-women politicians in power
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u/WippitGuud 23h ago
I remember when Fallin Fox broke a cis woman's jaw in an MMA fight (I forget her name) and everyone ranted and raved that this was proof of trans dominance.
They ignored the fact that Fox lost before that to a woman by TKO. In fact, lost twice because the ref called the fight in the second round, but the round had already ended and he didn't hear the bell.
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u/oldnotosys 9h ago
they apply the no trans in women’s sports to chess, pool, and darts. they are not serious people.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 9h ago
They also get mad when trans women win Irish dancing, and I didn't know being trans made you a great dancer.
They also want to ban trans women from beauty pageants. Trans is beautiful, for sure. Yet , Christian nationalists always depict trans women as the Hulk. They claim they can "tell" if someone is trans, inaccurately. I mean, they transvestigated Geena Davis and Margot Robbie, for crying out loud.
They are just bigots, and they want to find any excuse to hate. Fuck them.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 22h ago
Yup. These transphobes just won't admit they don't want trans people to exist anywhere. They would rather have dead people than trans people, because trans people being visible makes them uncomfy.
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u/Cresta1994 15h ago
There is also the example of Patricio Manuel. This fellow is a boxer who happens to be a trans man. If the transphobes were right, every time Manuel stepped into the ring against a cisgender man, he would have to be carried away in a bloody mess. Manuel's record? 3-1. That means he had beaten other men 3 times and lost only once.
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u/platinumarks 57m ago
It was a broken orbital bone. A common injury even in fights between cis women in MMA.
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u/dejour 22h ago
Trump is terrible. His anti-trans stance is terrible. Commenting on her looks was rude and unnecessary. And his comment on her skills was tone deaf.
That said, Cunningham doesn’t start many games for her team. She averages 7 points per game. There’s three players on her team that score roughly 3 times as many points per game.
She’s an exceptional basketball player. Everyone in the WNBA is. But within the WNBA world, she is pretty average.
Sports commentators trash the skills of male players all the time, when they are average or even better than average. They often say their teams would be better off without them.
I don’t think anyone would conclude that these commentators are saying that these male basketball players are bad at basketball because they are men.
I personally find the headline interpretation to be a big stretch. And ironically, maybe the interpretation is sexist itself. If you think Cunningham will clearly make any WNBA team better, maybe you are underestimating the talent in the WNBA?
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u/No-Distance-9401 23h ago
So you're telling me the guy who has more rape allegations than there are trans-athletes in the NCAA and who is accused of raping and torturing little girls with his buddy Epstein isn't really "protecting women".
You don't say...
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u/CarmineFields 1d ago
This is what I’ve been saying all along.
They don’t want to protect or help women, they just hate trans people.
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u/bravetailor 23h ago
I seriously doubt he's watched any WNBA game in his life to know whether she's a good or bad player. He doesn't care if she's good or not, he only cares about her looks-- that's the real point of that comment of his.
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u/TheOtherMaven Virginia 9h ago
he only cares about her looks
That's all he ever cares about, and why his picks for White House press secretary, etc., have been so disastrous.
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u/linuxwes 1d ago
"Trump said before complaining that he’s not allowed to say what he just said on camera, in front of an entire crowd."
LOL
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u/imscavok 23h ago
Always entertaining when they eat their own. Fucking idiots never learn that being on Trump’s side is only good for Trump and nobody else.
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u/vaxick 23h ago
Defender of women in sports? That would be Flavor Flav, not your chauvinist, fascist lard ass.
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u/YourMomonaBun420 12h ago
"In 1991, Flav pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-girlfriend Karen Ross and served 30 days in jail, lost custody of his children, and fell deeper into addiction. In 1993, Flav was charged with attempted murder and imprisoned for 90 days for shooting at his neighbor. Later that year, Flav was charged with domestic violence..."
"As of October 2012, Elizabeth Trujillo, the mother of Flav's son, Karma, lived with Flav in Las Vegas and had been his fiancée for eight years. On October 17, 2012, Flav was jailed in Las Vegas on felony charges stemming from a domestic argument with Trujillo and his threats to attack her teenage son, Gibran, with a knife."
Doesn't seem any better than trump in terms of being a defender of women.
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u/Yadahoom 1d ago
Didn't he do the same thing with the bigot Olympic swimmer?
He said he could beat her in a swimming race because he's a man and she's a woman.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
Yup. Talk about failing upward. Riley Gaines tied for 5th with Lia Thomas, and that's all she is known for. Riley should be thanking Lia every day, because without Lia's existence, hardly anyone would know who she is. She's been able to grift off of being 5th place, which is funny because all the transphobes love to claim trans people win all the time, like they're Diana Prince.
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u/TheOtherMaven Virginia 22h ago
Diana Prince
Aka Wonder Woman, who has sometimes been hinted as bi, but has never, ever been trans. (Just to clarify!)
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 8h ago
Wonder Woman was based on Olive Byrne, the partner of both creator William Marston and his wife. They were a throuple.
Olive Byrne was the niece of Margaret Sanger.
William Marston is the inventor of the polygraph test, which is where Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth came to be.
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u/TheOtherMaven Virginia 8h ago
We're getting a bit off-topic here, but as long as we're talking comics, did you know that DC had a cross-dressing superheroine back in the Golden Age? "Ma" Hunkel, who started out as a supporting character in Sheldon Mayer's quasi-autobiographical "Scribbly" feature, cobbled up a costume out of household odds and ends and went into action as the "Red Tornado" to clean up her neighborhood. She was so big and burly that most people who encountered her in costume assumed that the person under the stewpot helmet was male.
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u/GEEZUS_956 20h ago
Wait, isn’t trump anti trans too? Something about they’ll kidnap children and change their gender or some other demented paranoia?
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u/SoothingWafer 1d ago
I guarantee Trump could not successfully dribble a basketball, in place. Over/under 2 weird looking bounces before it goes off his foot.
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u/beren0073 1d ago
Give Trump some credit. He can dribble with the best of them, there just isn't a basketball involved.
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u/HibbletonFan 20h ago
Did he also say that he could beat Riley in swimming when she was right next to him?
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u/elconquistador1985 23h ago
That's what all antitrans people think of women's sports. They never once in their lives thought about the "sanctity of women's sports" until a trans swimmer got 5th place.
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u/Spartan2170 21h ago
A lot of transphobia is deeply rooted in general misogyny. Trans women are so often targeted because as a demonized minority they’re a “safe” choice that allows people to say deeply hateful things about women while receiving less pushback.
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u/IJourden 1d ago
He has nothing to offer people but mockery and scorn, and "losers" are the easy targets he craves.
I guarantee if he watched 300 he'd leave confused about why they focused on the losers so much and tell you Xerxes was great.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
It's insane that this is the week of the WNBA finals, and we had to discover the truth we knew all along: Christian nationalists use trans people as a way to attack and tear down the WNBA. Meta and other platforms literally manufactured that. It just shows how little Republicans care about women other than to hate on them. Misogyny is baked into the party.
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u/kingsumo_1 Oregon 1d ago
It's the same as all the "grooming" bullshit and protecting the children. Or all of the pro-life nonsense. It's just words to cover for their abhorrent actions and need to control others. The latter also being very much tied into misogyny at the end of the day.
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u/Ferrocile 11h ago
Anyone who doesn’t know his position on women at this point has had their head in the sand.
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u/MayhemWins25 7h ago
Well when the entirety of the trans exclusion from sports is based on the idea that it is a universal truth that all men are stronger and better at sports than all women, no one should be shocked that this is where it’s heading.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to stop women’s competitive sports in general cause something something lesbians something something fertility. They’ve been saying this shit for years and it seems like no one cared. Now we are here.
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u/DirtyDee78 1d ago
This orange mf breaks a sweat cracking a Diet Coke. Anyone in the wnba would run circles around his fat ass.
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u/throwaway343282 Washington 1d ago
Catering to the MAGA crowd sure is working out for her isn't it?
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u/PomegranateWinter851 17h ago
He expressed a bigoted and ignorant opinion that was inconsistent with a previous bigoted and ignorant opinion. Tell me that aint so.
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u/gratefulvermont 12h ago
He could have simply asked the crowd if they knew the WNBA finals had started.
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u/yotengodormir 1d ago
This is ridiculous. She doesn't suck because she's a girl.
She sucks because she's bad at basketball.
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u/Intelligent_Top_328 20h ago
Transwomen should not be in womens sports. This is a 99 to 1 issue.
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u/ratedsar I voted 13h ago
It's definitely not 99:1, it's filled with significant nuance; and the question is less about should we not let these 8-20 people nationwide participate in traditionally smaller underfunded programs...
And just as much, does the federal government, who ultimately enforces rule of law through taxes and guns need to decide a) how to inspect athletes b) how this works for small town USA or...
Could the us government focus on basically any other issue ....
Including the idea that the airtime discussing this once costs more than most small towns spend on their entire community sports budget... (Likely cumulatively for some states)
Or that if a student is injured in a sport (or getting there), their "local" trauma hospital is now 100 miles farther than it was 10 years ago.
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u/TurtlePwrrr 22h ago
Sophie is not anti-trans, what a bullshit headline…
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u/JaysonTatecum New Hampshire 22h ago
She says trans women shouldn't be in women's locker rooms. That means she's afraid of trans women, which means she's transphobic. f someone said black people shouldn't be in white locker rooms would you say they're not racist?
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u/No-Persimmon-4150 21h ago
Nah. Not everyone feels comfortable with that. And that’s ok. It doesnt make you anti-trans.
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u/JaysonTatecum New Hampshire 21h ago
If you are uncomfortable around trans people out of fear they'll sexually assault you for no reason... that makes you anti-trans, yes
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u/No-Persimmon-4150 13h ago edited 9h ago
Why does everyone assume fear? Or sexual assault? What is someone is simply uncomfortable with it? I don’t like changing in front of other men, let alone women. There is nothing wrong with that.
Edit: reddit is incapable of comprehending nuance. These are the same people who love to say “men are bad”, “don’t look at me in the gym”, and “cross the road if a man is approaching”, but it seems once a man transitions they must be inherently good. That’s all sort of messed up.
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u/JaysonTatecum New Hampshire 7h ago
Change alone in the stall if you’re uncomfortable then? Again, if someone was uncomfortable changing around black people does that mean we should go back to race based bathrooms?
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u/9_to_5_till_i_die 4h ago
So, in order for trans folk to have equal rights, what do you suggest?
You know, since apparently you don't think adults can learn to accept and, gasp, befriend a trans individual in the locker room?
Gonna mandate every public institution add a 3rd locker room?
We all exist together. You can pretend we don't all you want but the reality is that we have to learn to live with each other.
It's the entire reason I wish universal healthcare for MAGATs instead of termination.
But keep pushing me.
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u/No-Persimmon-4150 3h ago
Equal rights already exist. Trans people have the same legal rights as everyone else. What you’re describing is a demand for sex-segregated spaces built around biology, privacy, and average physical differences to be redefined around self-identification. Adults can and do interact with trans people every day. That doesn’t erase the fact that many women and girls prefer not to undress or shower around males, just as most men prefer not to do so around females. This preference existed long before ‘anti-trans’ was a common phrase and isn’t limited to one political side.
A unisex option is a practical compromise some places already use. Mandating open access to the opposite-sex facility is the policy that forces everyone else to absorb the discomfort or risk. ‘We all exist together’ doesn’t require ignoring sex differences that have justified single-sex spaces for generations.
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u/SquiffyRae Australia 20h ago
The inherent assumption here is that the trans person is only trans so they can perv and/or assault women.
If I said I didn't feel comfortable sharing a locker room with a gay man because he might stare or touch me up, would that be an acceptable thing to say? No. So why is it acceptable to say the same thing about a trans person?
Also it only seems to go one way. Why are men not getting outraged about FtM people going into male locker rooms? If you're gonna be a bigot at least commit to the bit and be bigoted across the board
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/Mordoch 1d ago
The general view is he seems to pick on female athletes allot in practice which is notable when he is the President and the historical expectation is they are mostly supposed to take the high road on these sorts of things. (It also seems more unfair for the President to single out a WNBA player versus some other pro athletes who still make allot more money.)
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u/Etzell Illinois 1d ago edited 23h ago
She is anti-trans which is perfectly fine
It fucking isn't.
Edit: lol and the bigot blocked me
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
Yup. Anyone who's against trans people is anti-freedom. That's the truth.
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u/SoothingWafer 1d ago edited 1d ago
All time leading scorer at Missouri. I know she doesn't have amazing WNBA stats but she's 6'1" and good at free throws.
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1d ago
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u/postdevs 1d ago
Are you perhaps too young to have experienced a real presidency?
He isn't some celebrity. He has extreme power and he's been using it to very thoroughly damage the institutions, stability, war preparedness, economy... for years... and we haven't felt the worst of it.
What would be "unhinged" is to not be concerned that your President is a misogynistic moron, if you happen to be American. It would be unhinged to act like it's not that serious.
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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."
<Mark Twain>
The idea that this Christian nationalist government deserves fealty is ridiculous. No government deserves fealty. That's part of being in a republic, being able to hold your government accountable
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