With 37 states considering bans to block transgender athletes from sports, trans male swimmer (and 2021 Queerties nominee) Schuyler Bailar is using his platform to destroy conservative lies about trans athletes.
Bailar, who was the first transgender athlete to compete in any sport on an NCAA Division 1 men’s team, has shared his transition journey on TV shows like 60 Minutes and The Ellen Show. These days, he’s using his Instagram feed to post compelling, bite-size explainers on how right-wing hysteria over trans athletes is just old-fashioned misogyny and transphobia.
Trans sports bans affect all girls, he explains in a March 28 video, because in order to exclude trans girls, officials have to police girl’s bodies and allow some girls to be accused of being trans just because they seem too “masculine” to others.
“At what point is a girl ‘too tall’ … ‘too strong,’ ‘too good,’ ‘too fast,’ ‘too masculine’ to then be accused of being transgender?” he asks. “This affects all girls, not just the trans ones, because anyone can be accused of being transgender and then be tested. It also will disproportionately affect black girls who are already used to being too manly or not feminine enough due to white supremacy and anti-blackness.”
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In a March 26 video, he points out that most people don’t care about women’s sports until a trans woman wants to play. They don’t watch women’s sports on TV or in person, they don’t do anything to address the massive pay gap between men and women professional athletes or the huge difference in funding for boys’ and girls’ school sports. Nor do they do anything to stop the rampant sexual abuse and harassment that stops many girls from even competing in the first place.
So when people say it’s “unfair” for trans athletes to compete, because “they’re just protecting women’s sports and they just care about fairness,” he adds, their actions show that they aren’t actually doing to anything to promote fairness or ensure gender equality in sports.
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During Pride Month 2017, the International Olympic Committee Bailar profiled Schuyler in a series entitled IDENTIFY, highlighting his transition process, his past struggles with mental health and his LGBTQ activism.
Schuyler now works as a life coach, inspirational speaker, and a consultant on the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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jt1990
“Schuyler…his past struggles with mental health…”
Anyone with a strong desire to cut off their sex organs or major body parts certainly struggles with mental health!
I feel terrible for women diagnosed with cancer having to go through treatments. One of their many concerns is having to remove breast tissue, if the cancer is present there. I can’t imagine someone voluntarily going through this surgery. I would recommend therapy, and medication if necessary for those who can’t ignore the desire to transgenderize themselves. It worked with my alcoholism, and I thought nothing would ever fix that!
Joshua333
The real reason why Trans people, as well as the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community, has such bad mental health is that we still are widely hated by people who don’t have common sense but somehow are powerful enough to decide whether we should have the rights to exist or not.
BrownFriedRice
Who let a straight person in the comment section?
dragonboi
May be don’t be so ignorant. Or better yet, go back to the bottle and smash it over your head
white-queer-african
All good people, ignore @jt1990 posts.
It is an attention seeking troll. Craves it because in real life there is none of it. Sad pathetic human being. If it is even human?
jt1990
@Joshua333 not hating, just encouraging some common sense! Any surgery is best avoided if possible. The more invasive, the higher the risk of complications, even today. I could use a nose job to fix my oversized nose. A homeless guy once asked to use it for a can opener. Some people wonder if I’m Jewish. Those comments hurt, but I never let them push me to spending thousands on surgery. I was a terrible drunk for a long time, now I have no desire for alcohol. All it took was therapy and low dose adderall rx. Just my two cents
DarkZephyr
@jt1990
You aren’t one of us, stop pretending you are. Go away, hate filled straight boy.
RickHeathen
@jt1990
I think your comment is founded on the old concept of mental illness that is no longer used. Mental health professionals no longer look at someone and see someone who feels the need to change their gender or exclusively have sex with someone of the same sex, or whatever thing that is not in the mainstream of “normality” and declare someone as mentally ill. When they did that before the late 20th century, it allowed people to declare all sorts of things as mental illness and it took in no account of whether someone is happy and productive with their lives as they are, nor did it help people to reach such a state. It only sought conformity.
Bosch
JT, I suggest you read up on oestrogen signalling pathways.
Trans people don’t have a sick brain, they have the wrong genitals. And because the genitals control sex-specific hormones, they also control secondary sex characteristics.
Using plastic surgery to make the body match the brain is far more ethical than trying to affect the physical structure of the brain to match the genitals.
Bosch
Ps- try to get your medical and psychological information from doctors and psychologists, not politicians and qanon.
Kangol2
@jt1990, so in addition to equating your alcoholism with being trans, you had to vomit up an anti-Semitic comment too? There is nothing wrong with being Jewish or being mistaken for Jewish. Like, really? Please, go away, and continue getting psychological help because you need help with more than your drinking problem.
frapachino
@ Joshua 33 who exactly has the power to decide if we exist or not?
cat daddy aaron
You could be anything. Why be a condescending bigot?
tallskin4
““Schuyler…his past struggles with mental health…”
Yes, i think that is probably the key statement here
white-queer-african
It is getting more and more bizarre with @jt1990 as the days go by.
It is / was fat but will never fat shame fat people? Then fat people were a major sexual turn off? Now it was a drunk?
The only thing consistently factual is that @jt1990 is an attention seeking troll. Trying to bait all good, mostly, people posting on Queerty.
We’ve had Fake Tits M*ntalMarcy, SamB et al, now GayForTrump that needs to FO and leave us on Queerty in peace.
white-queer-african
WTF. Just read that the looney bitch @jt1990 claims to be straight and into Hispanic woman. The only “straight” the nutcase is going to get is straight to the asylum and a straight jacket.
What is the attraction to this clearly mentally unstable characters to our queer sites?
DarkZephyr
Now this makes sense, that he really IS straight. Up til now I have just been assuming he was because of his attitude. Where did he admit that he was straight and into Hispanic women?
DarkZephyr
OK, this comment from jt1990 pretty much sums it up:
“Years ago I worked in an office and one particular young woman assumed I was gay. Very attractive and fresh out of college too! Not sure how I gave that vibe, but she took interest in me for a good while. Until a coworker informed her that I was straight and only been single a couple months. From then on I was treated like a fresh salad in Donald Trump’s refrigerator.”
Kangol2
One of the chief effects of trolling is to throw people off a conversation or topic at hand. The sad thing is how effective so many of the trolls on here are. At any rate, back to the original subject of this article, Schuyler Bailar, I want to congratulate him on his swimming career and his advocacy for trans people, particularly trans athletes.
cheks
I was of the opinion that trans women shouldn’t compete in sports, especially if they weren’t on HRT. But I’ve read a lot of the science and my mind has been changed. However, I don’t believe that trans athletes who have previously trained and competed as men as adults and then transition past their prime only to compete in the women’s is messed up. Yes, I think Laurel Hubbard should have retired from the sport in her 30s, when gaining strength is difficult as testosterone naturally decreases. Instead she transitioned in her 30s and continued to compete into her 40s which is absurd. She clearly has an advantage from being trans, and it’s pathetic. Even if she doesn’t win, she’s clearly an “anomaly” as 40+ year old competing in weightlifting. And we all know why she’s an anomaly, and it’s clearly wrong.
JessPH
His argument for “biological diversity” makes no sense at all. Following that logic, men and women should just compete with each other.
frapachino
It’s not just conservatives that are against trans athletes competing with the opposite sex. This is why the alt left radicals are so disliked right now because they lie and twist everything to suite their agenda, you know like Marxists do.
Bosch
You know, like conservatives do.
frapachino
@bosch for sure, but the radical left is far worse right now in their blind ambition to rule us all.
cat daddy aaron
So you agree that trans women should compete with women.
Respecting trans folks isn’t an alt-left value. It’s just human decency.
But yes. Being anti-trans is a conservative value. Conserving the status quo: conservative, by definition. You can be progressive and also hold conservative values.
Bosch
People who don’t share the same opinion as you want to “rule” you?
It would be up to the athletic world to solve this problem, if they viewed it as one. Do you know why they don’t consider it a problem?
1) some trans athletes win, some trans athletes lose. You know, like all athletes.
2) segregation in professional sport has never been strictly about the athlete’s sex, but about the athlete’s hormone levels. That’s why females with high enough natural testosterone levels would compete on the men’s teams.
And how unethical is it to try and make schools ban trans students from their preferred teams? School isn’t the Olympics. School is supposed to be a safe place for EVERY student, not just the homophobic ones.
Kangol2
Except, @fraps, that it’s conservatives who are not only “lying and twisting everything to suit their agenda,” including grotesque lies about the 2020 election; CRT being taught in schools; claiming LGBTQ people are “grooming” children, etc., but also passing law after law to “control” everything and shut down “free speech” they disagree with. As a gay person, you seem to be utterly fine with this, which is appalling, but I do recall that you admitted to being a racist, etc., so I am not surprised. And as usual, you and other Con-servatives are projecting your obsessive desire to control everything on liberals and the Left, under the hazy banner of “Marxism,” when what you really want is to control everything in fascist fashion.
johncp56
I,m attracted to FTM men and this guy is a cream dream of hottness
London_resistance
johncp56 “I’m attracted to FTM men and this guy is a cream dream of hottness”
Do you give him blowjobs?
djhachey2020
jt1990 I think maybe you should pick up the bottle again at least then you have an excuse for being a belligerent, bigoted, trolly cvnt lol look inside you weren’t born chance it’s improving but your comments I just getting old and outdated and washed up probably like you I hate you go back to your life basement I will be wanking n whipping urself cummmin to pictures of trans people and gay people…lol you know how that works right guys ….lol
jt1990
Hey there bud you may want to call a pastor. I believe you might be possessed
nm4047
there is a sporting event that trans can participate in, it’s the Gay Games.
Polaro
I fully support him competing against men. He does not have a physical unfair advantage. I do not, however, believe this is true for trans women and reject his obsequious arguments.
moretruth
Exactly. This is a red herring. The issue is not with F2M because they are not gonna will anything versus men. This issue is about M2F competing against women.
Prax07
Yeah no, if you were born with a dick or vadge you shouldn’t Ever be allowed to compete on the biological opposite teams. That “hunky” female swimmer can have all the surgeries she wants to to look more male, but she’s still female. No amount of wishful thinking changes what she is.
Thad
Schuyler Bailar raises good points. I stand with him.
Almost all who would deny trans girls the right to play women’s sports don’t have any actual interest in women’s sports. They couldn’t name three college women swimmers, or the current NCAA lacrosse champion or field hockey champion. Maybe they know women’s basketball.
And what’s the goal of school sports? To promote fitness, strive for one’s personal best, teach cooperation, raise school spirit and a sense of belonging? Or a quest for titles, medals, “glory”?
London_resistance
Thad – you say “all who would deny trans girls the right to play women’s sports don’t have any actual interest in women’s sports”
your argument is this: that because people have had no interest in something before it becomes a major issue, that therefore these people have no right to comment
Well I paid no interest much in Ukraine before Putin invaded and killed thousands of people. But I do have the right to say this is an evil
Do you understand why your argument is stupid and fatuous?
moretruth
What a bunch of mumbo jumbo. This is a stupid culture war that trans activists will not win. And it’s destroying everything around it. The entire LGBT community is being pushed back into the closet because a handful of M2F trans athletes need to compete for titles (make no mistake — they aren’t just trying to participate, they’re are competing). Keep this up and the culture war will be lost, and that will be just the beginning for all of us. This issue is pushing more people to the GOP and when they win the midterms it’s gonna get bad. And when they win everything in 2024, say goodbye to everything gained for LGBT rights in the past 25 years (or worse, if the dictatorship goes full-throttle fundamentalist).
London_resistance
There seem to be a lot of men on here supporting a woman who had her breasts cut off under the impression that by so doing she’d become a man.
I guess that’s fine ….. but it’s not healthy to pump your female body full of testosterone, and maybe one or two of you should point this out rather than affirming this woman’s delusions
But outside of that most of the discussion on here has revolved around burly trans women competing in women’s sports. And you’re all saying that that it is ok for burly ex-blokes to swim, run, weight-lift, cycle etc etc etc against much weaker women, on the grounds, it seems, that to deny these burly trans women the opportunity to compete against said much weaker women, would hurt the feelings of these burly trans women.
Have I got that right?
jt1990
@Bosch “Trans people don’t have a sick brain, they have the wrong genitals.”
@RickHeathen
Firstly, that sounds terrible. I can’t imagine looking down and having the wrong genitals! Sounds like something from a horror movie, or a Simpson’s episode. Now about the brain, scientists also believe the brain is more ‘plastic’ than previously thought (at all ages, not just during adolescence). A quick internet search can yield more details than I can. But to summarize the concept, our brains can actually be modified with behavioral therapy and medication. And this should at least be a first step before chopping something off.
tallskin4
Well said