Rex Kerr
2 min readApr 25, 2022

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I think I can give a hypothetical example: concern over whether women's boxing should admit trans women along with cis women.

You can try to do trans activism thusly: "Trans women are women. It's women's boxing. Therefore, the only reason to object to women (who just happen to be trans) in women's boxing is because you're an anti-trans bigot. Trans people are just trying to survive, and you reject our right to exist."

Suppose if you'd listened to the details behind the concern, you'd have heard that it was, "Most trans women, even if they've transitioned, still have morphological features from male development that might be a big advantage in boxing and might cause them to pose an even more serious health risk to their opponents than boxing always does."

If the trans advocate's position is one that is willing to consider reasonable compromise, the reaction might instead be, "Well, if that's true it might be a valid concern. Let's ask: is it true? If no, you have no objection, right? If yes, let's see whether there are reasonable ways to mitigate the risk and/or advantage, and if the risk is high or advantage is huge and this cannot be effectively mitigated, perhaps mixed cis/trans woman boxing is not a good idea after all."

(Note: I'm oversimplifying everything here in the interest of brevity. And note that I didn't actually propose a specific compromise--I just outlined how the stance could be one where one is willing to consider compromise. Note also that I did not consider in this hypothetical the situation of cis vs trans male boxers--but the same logic would apply there too. Because biology is complicated, the same answer might not apply!)

(Also--my answer to everything about boxing would be, "WHY are you hitting each other in the head?! This is a terrible idea! Don't you value your brain?!")

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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