Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek

This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.

I’ve got a super annoying story FORE you this week!

As far as TWIBS material goes, it’s ACE!

That is to say, it’s a bit ROUGH!

GOLF.

Ahem. Sorry about that. I always feel a bit too middle-aged when I throw out puns in casual conversation. A bit to Lin-Manuel Miranda, if you will. My weekly humor column (allegedly) seems like a safe space for that lowest brow comedy, puns, but I try to show restraint anyway. I hope you can forgive me for my TRANSgressions.

Okay so, anyway, we’re gonna talk about yet another sports ban this week. Hate ‘em or love ‘em, you… wait, no, definitely just hate ‘em. Do not love ‘em. If you love ‘em, please stop reading this and go somewhere else.

Thank you.

If the big goofy text above didn’t clue you in, we the girlies have now been wholesale banned from golf. Not just in one spot, either! This month three separate governing bodies that broadly oversee the world of competitive golfing have decided we have an unfair advantage at… uh… well, that’s not important. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.

The latest ban comes from the enigmatically named The R&A, or the R&A Trust Company (No. 1) Limited, but not technically The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, even though that most ancient and posh of clubs contributes heavily to the funding and governance of The R&A. Simply put, the R&A’s subsidiary company “R&A Rules Limited” oversees competitive golfing outside of the United States and Mexico, where the United States Golf Association (USGA) reigns supreme.

The R&A, the USGA and the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), who manage the LPGA golf tour for elite girly golfers, each decided this month to ban trans women who have “undergone male puberty” from competing. Such a dramatic sweep seems absurd, but the R&A and USGA share a single set of rules, and the LPGA often works hand in hand with the USGA, so it’s not that much of a surprise that they would all move to promote bigoted anti-science crap in lockstep.

R&A Chief Executive Martin “Sleepy Boy” Slumbers said, “We have carefully reviewed the best available medical and scientific advice relating to participation in elite and scratch-level golf competitions by transgender athletes and decided that updating our entry conditions to preserve fairness in our female professional and elite amateur championships is the right thing to do.”

Exactly what medical and scientific advice they received, I could not tell you, since a 2021 study commissioned by the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sports found that “trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantages over cis women in elite sport.”

The LPGA’s new rules state, “In consulting with top experts in the fields of medicine, science, sport physiology and golf performance, we have been advised that a Player’s exposure to male puberty provides physical advantages that are beneficial to golf performance compared to Players who have not had such exposure.”

Consider that The R&A, the USGA and the LPGA provide zero transparency about the specific “top experts” they consulted with, the “medical and scientific advice” they reviewed, or even the definition of “male puberty” that they’re using moving forward, besides using the diagnostically unhelpful Tanner scale.

Here at Assigned Media, we’ve reported on the banning of trans women from competing in chess, sailing, swimming, cycling, and running. We’ve talked about how these bans impact far more gender nonconforming cis women than trans women, like Caster Semenya, Imane Khelif or Lin Yu-ting, but make no mistake that they are intended to deny trans women our human rights. They want to deny us the right to participate if we undergo “male puberty,” but are poised at every turn to deny us the right to transition in a timely fashion.

Don’t let their blatant lies about “fairness in women’s sports” deceive you: What they want is our total eradication from public life, whether that’s the workforce, athletic competitions, or bathrooms.