MossWitch

Inskeep asked Buttigieg for his own opinion on transgender rights, to which he replied, “I think the approach starts with compassion. Compassion for transgender people, compassion for families, especially young people who are going through this, and also empathy for people who are not sure what all of this means for them. Like, wondering, ‘Wait a minute. I got a daughter in a sports league. Is she going to be competing with boys right now?’ And just taking everybody seriously.”

“I think when you do that, that does call into question some of the past orthodoxies of my party,” he continued. “For example, around sports, where I think most reasonable people would recognize that there are serious fairness issues if you just treat this as not mattering when a trans athlete wants to compete in women’s sports.”

When Inskeep pressed Buttigieg on whether he believes a parent who has complained about a trans athlete competing in girls’ school sports “has a case,” he agreed.

“Sure,” he said. “And that’s why I think these decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians… in Washington, trying to use this as a political pawn.”

I was expecting a more nuanced case and was disappointed when I didn’t get one.

If you’re going to hand out medals, I think you should borrow from how they do it in boxing: by weight class. Or limb length or whatever matters to the sport, so that you’re competing on skill, not whoever was born with the better [insert sport here] body.

What usually works (when I remember to do it) is imagining a grenade going off wherever I put the thing down.