How To Talk About Women's Sports

Pro tip: Talk about women's sports

GB News host Michelle Dewberry, in the above video which I recreated with a crayon, gives a masterclass in how to talk about women’s rights. SHE DOES THIS BY TALKING ABOUT WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Exclusively and relentlessly. She refuses to be diverted to talking about anything trans. The unfortunate and unfortunately named Samuel Sweek, on the right, was burdened by the illusion that this would be like all his other trans advocacy appearances, in which he talked only about trans people and trans rights, and rattled off some mantras. Michelle was having none of it.

You might think that talking about men in women’s sports, for example, would always involve talking about women’s sports, but you’d be dead wrong. In fact, every “news story,” every opinion piece, virtually every time women’s sports are in the news, they are falsely framed as a trans story. We hear from trans advocates and trans athletes. We hear nothing from women or about how this impacts women. THE STORY IS THAT WOMEN’S RIGHTS HAVE BEEN UNCONSCIONABLY, ILLEGALLY ERASED IN FULL VIEW BECAUSE THE STORY IS ALWAYS FRAMED AS TRANS RIGHTS.

Let’s learn something from Michelle. (Even if you can’t really make her out in the video, you can hear her legendary takedown with one simple, heart-of-the-matter question). Lesson #1: Whatever it takes, as often as it takes, redirect the conversation to women and girls. Frame the conversation only in terms of women and girls, and demand that the discussion be in regard to women and girls. Michelle relentlessly redirected Sweeks’ stuttering claims that men are women to the woman-focused, “Why should I be forced to undress in front of a biological male?” Because that IS the only question. It’s easy enough to shift that to sports—Why should women be forced give up their single-sex sports and spaces to biological males? DO NOT RELENT. Male rights activists will try again and again, as our man Sweek did, to pivot to comfortable territory—trans victimhood, trans women are women, existence of trans people. NO. All irrelevant.

The center of the issue of men in women’s sports is not and never has been men or trans people, but rather is the fact that gender identity completely eliminated women’s rights including single-sex sports, gender identity made the word woman meaningless, and it simply steamrolled the idea that women are a distinct class of humans. The story is and always has been that these outrageous violations of women’s human rights were enacted in stealth and, when their true horror was revealed, were energetically championed by every major sports organization, our federal government, schools, and most importantly, the media. If, from the beginning, talk show hosts and podcasters and journalists had framed men in women’s sports as a crime against women, if they had insisted on talking to and about women and women’s rights, if they had consistently asked the simple question—Why should women be forced to give up their single-sex sports and spaces to biological males—advocates like Sweek would be left with lame mantras and their even more pitiful truth—Because men. Men in women’s sports is a women’s issue, and if it had always been covered as such by the media, women would have made their point as decisively as Michelle, and “trans rights,” i.e. men’s rights, would have been as brutally eviscerated as the empty Mr. Sweek (I will absolutely not stoop to some cheap and childish taunt such as misspelling his name Squeek). Try to imagine if every TV news hour, every article, every podcast framed men in women’s sports as a women’s issue, if every trans advocate was faced with answering, Why should women be forced to give up their single-sex sports and spaces to biological males?

But that’s not what happened. It’s not what’s happening now. Every stinking news story, every TV show, every podcast frames men in women’s sports as a trans issue. Trans rights. Trans athlete’s stories. Trans protections. Trans bans. Talking to trans advocates and trans athletes. Notably missing is even a passing reference to women or girls, or how women and girls are impacted. Kind of an egregious miscarriage of journalism to consistently leave out the demographic most impacted by a misogynistic system of beliefs, but that gaping omission has become normalized, and with it the entire florid and fantastical construct of trans truth, fragile as it is. Trans advocates like Sweek can only operate under controlled conditions—if they are allowed to rattle off their nonsensical talking points uninterrupted, with no injection of reality, no questioning, and only head-nodding acquiescence to their every assault on reason. It happens. All. The. Time.

That’s why the painful dismemberment in the video above is so notable. It’s unique. In all my rabbit holing, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a media host so determinedly frame the discussion in very real, personal, female terms—Why should I be forced to get undressed in front of a biological male? We’re used to fighting on trans terms, talking about trans issues rather than women’s rights, as if women don’t really deserve the right to their own sports and spaces. Michelle took the stance that she bloody well had this right. Obviously this was a novel challenge to the unsuspecting Mr Sweek, one he was not up to. Even if, even because Sweek would not answer the question, it was very revealing to viewers.

There is no Lesson #2. That’s the whole ball of wax. I am thinking of similar face-to-face situations like school board meetings, and the education of the public around the amendments being heard by the Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association to restrict girls’ sports to those born female. Yes, it’s important to center women and girls in all your letter writing campaigns, but history has shown that “trans,” i.e. male focused op-eds and articles are the ones that will be published.

Only face-to-face situations allow the weapons-grade level of redirection that a woman-focused discussion demands. You never know when you’ll find this skill applicable, so study up, review that video, amazingly poor quality as it is, until you’ve mastered the dead level tone, the confidence, and the bulldog determination to stick to the point, which is, repeat after me: Why should I as a woman (men, adjust to third person if you like) be forced to give up my sex-based sports and spaces to biological males? If you really want to nail it down in Michelle fashion, you’ll finish off with, Why is it always women who have to suck it up? Fed up with it.