SCOTUS: WV v. BPJ

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I've listened to some of the arguments...many of which I can't understand, not being a lawyer. You've got to have a lot of concepts, distinctions, terminology and cases on the tip of your brain to follow them--and I don't. If you have to stop and look something up every other sentence, you're pretty much screwed. Even if you can understand the new concept right away, your attention has been diverted. This is a pretty common phenomenon, of course. To understand complicated ideas and arguments deep down in any subject, you have to have a lot of other ideas and arguments already at your mental fingertips.

   But I can say one general thing:

   It's downright painful to hear Supreme Court Justices speak the language of "transgender" pseudoscience. It unnecessarily complicates the arguments, and gives the impression that, e.g., 'transgender girl' is a real category--and a kind of girl.

   Look: you might play along with this nonsense if you had a delusional friend or colleague who you didn't want to embarrass or offend... But when it comes down to serious business like determining public policy, you've got to leave the circumlocutions of politeness behind...

   Also look: here's the question. Actually, I'll artificially break it into two parts:

[1] Is it permissible to have girls' sports teams--i.e. teams that girls can join but boys can't?

[2] Is this permissible even if the boys in question are pretending to be girls? (Or we might say: misrepresenting themselves (to others and perhaps even to themselves) as girls?)

   I'm perfectly fine with asking question [1]. For all I know, some legal arcanum actually makes this a no-no. Many decades ago, I thought it should be impermissible, basically because it discriminates on the basis of sex. I though you should have, basically, top-tier teams, second-tier teams, and so on. My gf during part of that time was a hot-shot local tennis player and a philosophy grad student. I'd never really played tennis--nor watched it--more than very casually, and I foolishly thought that it was a game women might compete in on a level equal to that of men. Gf laughed out loud at that, informing me that even many boys from the local HS team would beat her. (Note: when we tried to play a couple of times, her returns knocked the racket out of my hand more than once. She hit hard.) But somehow I even managed to convince her with my dumbass arguments.

   But anyway: [1] seems to me like a reasonable question.,

   Though now I think the answer is in the affirmative.

    And, as for [2]: there is no reason on Earth that it should be taken seriously. Someone lying about themselves--or being deluded--does nothing to change the answer to [1]. 

   Now:

   All you do is confuse things if you insist on discussing these questions in the arcane, laughably ridiculous, language of "transgender" pseudoscience. There are no "trans girls." "Trans girls" are not girls. They are boys. Thus the question at issue is just [1]. Since [2] doesn't matter, their lies/delusions about their own sex are irrelevant.

   However, instead of phrasing their arguments in the plain language of common sense, common experience, and science, we find the Justices asking about "trans girls" and "cis" girls. Instead of straightforwardly asking about males, they are often asking about people "assigned male at birth." Instead of asking about boys, they are often asking about "biological boys"...the only kind of boys there are...

   There is simply no reason to speak the language of the cult--especially when evaluating the cult's cultish doctrines...

   Of course even many conservatives and conservative outlets have been doing this for years...but you've heard those complaints before...

   Anyway.

   Perhaps...perhaps...it's impermissible, some violation of equal protection, to have boys' and girls' sports divisions. I think it would suck if it turned out that way. But here's what cannot be true: it's permissible to have girls' and boys' sports divisions...but a boy who is pretending to be a girl (or who is legitimately deluded) must be allowed to play in the girls' division...because he's actually a kind of girl...

   Look, if I'm fighting professionally, and I'm pretending to be a welterweight when I am, in fact, a middleweight...I'll be outed at the weigh-in. The scale detects the relevant fact...and my false beliefs (or lies) about my weight are entirely irrelevant. I'm not a "trans welterweight"...I'm a middleweight. The left might make up a whole panoply of dumbshit terminology...but the fact of the matter is: I didn't make weight. If it's permissible to have weight classes, it's permissible to hold someone to them, regardless of their false beliefs--or pretended beliefs.

   It's an embarrassment to the country that we've allowed this kind ideologically-motivated nonsense to take over so much of the public mind, and even impose itself on Supreme Court justices. Though, almost certainly, some of the more conservative Justices know better, and are just speaking with the vulgar for some practical reason.*

* Here's a kind of interesting thing: actually, the wrong thing in this case is to speak with the learned. The vulgar understandand all this stuff and get it right. It's the learned who are delusional, and who speak confusedly...