Bigots Don't Know Ball, Can't Bother To Learn

Like bus-floor gum, New York Times sentences stick to me against my will. Sometimes these gross stowaways feature award-winningly busted prose. Other times they’re like the following, from a conversation between the dreaded Ross Douthat (sorry) and two fellow freaks titled “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” (very sorry). Emphasis mine:

In all of the important ways, this quote and the authors’ broader project sucks. But in one specific way, it’s nice to get such a tidy mission statement: I don’t know anything about this issue, and the consequences don’t impact me anyway, but here’s What It Means About Gender. It’s a studied ignorance; a principled lack of principles. Bigots don’t know ball, and they can’t be bothered to learn.

These same impulses guide the paper’s coverage of so-called “trans issues.” Instead of thoughtfully working through questions about hormone levels, biological sex, and gender identity, they’re doggedly committed to reaction, to laundering moral claims through opinion polling, and to never interrogating their role in the grievance machine.

Defector genuinely cares about sports as a whole, women’s sports in particular, and the long and sordid history of policing gender lines. I’m proud of what we publish: It situates the concept of “biological advantage” in relation to the myth of the “natural body,” unpacks everything crammed into the word “fairness,” and doesn’t amplify the right-wing feedback loop on gender inclusion.