Trans athletes: guarding against disinformation
By: David Allsopp
Tags: LGBT, Sports, Misinformation, Transgender, LGBTQ

Frau Farbissina (played by Mindy Sterling) in the movie “Austin Powers”, shouting “Lies! All lies!”

CW: transphobia, blood

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are now belatedly under way in 2021, and this is the first ever Olympics in which any openly transgender athletes have qualified to compete, despite this being permitted since 2004. This topic attracts a lot of heated argument, to put it mildly.

The problem is that a lot of the information that you’ll see on social media and in much of the press is outright disinformation. Propaganda. Fake news. Lies.

Much of this propaganda is designed to appeal to your emotions, not your reason — to provoke outrage, not thought.

This isn’t an article about the trans athletes currently competing. Nor is it a detailed analysis of the science. Nor am I even stating a position on what the policies for trans athletes should be.

This about recognising the ways in which people are trying to deceive you.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?!

One of the key tactics is to use carefully-selected images to appeal to your emotion rather than your rational thought.

Mack Beggs, a trans boy, as a high-school level wrestler, holding a girl in a wrestling hold.

Those who have followed this debate for a while will probably recognise this photo. It’s used relentlessly to present the inclusion of trans women as an obvious threat to girls and women in sport. Who could fail to be appalled by the manifest unfairness of this masculine brute calmly destroying a poor girl in the wrestling ring?

Just one problem: this wrestler isn’t a trans woman (i.e. assigned male at birth). He’s a trans man, assigned female at birth.

Mack Beggs wanted to compete with the boys in high-school wrestling, but the State of Texas wouldn’t allow him to. If you agree with Texas that trans athletes should compete as their birth sex, then this photo is what you are voting for.

Beggs later won a scholarship to wrestle in the men’s division at college, as he always wanted.

So this photo isn’t just selected to appeal to your emotions — the way it is used out of context is also an outright lie.

Don’t think, just look

Veronica Ivy winning gold in the master 35–39 women’s sprint at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles. Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen took silver and Jennifer Wagner took bronze.

Similarly, this photo of Veronica Ivy has often been used by those opposed to trans athletes — generally without any explanation beyond “JUST LOOK!!!”.

Look at what?

People posting such photos often won’t articulate what precisely we are supposed to be seeing and concluding, because the whole point of the tactic is to trigger an emotional response, not to encourage you to think.

Presumably we are expected to conclude that the race was unfair because Ivy is taller and larger than the silver and bronze medallists? So what’s the assumption behind that conclusion?

Are we assuming that size is an advantage in this event? What even is this event? Is size likely to be an advantage?

The event is track sprint cycling, and conveniently we can compare with a previous event where Kristina Vogel (5'3" / 1.60m) took gold against a cis (non-trans) woman (Elis Ligtlee) who is bigger than Ivy.

Kristina Vogel winning gold in the track sprint event at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, near Paris, February 21, 2015. Elis Ligtlee took silver and Zhong Tianshi took bronze.

None of this has anything to do with scientific or ethical debate on inclusion, because we can’t determine anything relevant from one photo.

Ivy has a thread here with some further details, including a photo that is dishonestly cropped to compare her to another woman who isn’t even a competitor.

Naturally the people posting this photo omit other key facts about Ivy’s performance. For example, the fact that (with all due respect) her world record of 11.649 seconds was: