Women athletes are being abused, and the helpful media aren't helping.

Gilead groomers win the day.

“Protecting women” with a “sex is the only thing that matters” framework never works. It never works not least because the people who say that only your gamete production matters never check your gametes before deciding whether you’re “real” or not, whether they hate you or not.

We’ve seen the TikTok and YouTube videos of cis women being harrassed in a bathroom or by cops. We’ve seen people tweeting accusations and conspiracy theories regarding Madonna and Beyoncé and Charlize Theron being secretly trans. (Um, while I don’t quite speak for the entire trans community, if you’re reading, Mx. Theron, we’d love to have you. You wouldn’t even need to change that bad ass name.)

And while Theron has the friends and resources to effectively fight back (but you don’t have to! Just saying!), the heaviest burden is always going to fall on those who can’t fight back. As I’ve said before, you can’t police the margins without policing the marginalized.

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So it was with some trepidation that I read this article about a cis woman abused for winning a half-marathon. I suspected to find the victim to be relatively privileged, and I did. And I expected the coverage to be ultimately harmful to feminism and to women, and it was. As it always does, the assumption that trans women will always dominate women’s sport leads directly to the conclusion that any woman who displays athletic excellence must be secretly trans. The tale is familiarly awful:

Anna Harrold should have been celebrating her victory at the Great West Run in Exeter on Sunday, but instead she faced a barrage of abuse from people online who called her “disgusting”, “revolting” and a “disgrace”.

The comments were centred on false claims she was born a man.

Similar abuse has targeted recent Pervert Justice fave Caitlin Clark and, oh, just 92% of any girls whose athletic prowess raised them above the crowd in the last few years during this disgusting focus on trans women “invading” women’s sport.

The comments targeting Harrold included many on the race’s Facebook page, which led the organizers to make a statement

We are aware that the winner of the women’s 2024 Great West Run Half Marathon has received a number of unsubstantiated and speculative comments regarding her gender and eligibility.

We do not condone the victimisation and abuse that has been levelled at Anna over recent days and anyone identified as being party to this will be banned from taking part in events and their identities will be shared with England Athletics authorities.

Harrold was being quoted in The Independent saying,

I was accused of being a trans man and called disgusting, revolting, twisted, vile, a disgrace, a cheat.

I am a mum of four, a GP and I run for fun. Being told I look just like a man and don’t conform to the ideals of being a female is upsetting enough but being called abusive names and threatened is awful. No need to do that to any individual, ever, no matter what you believe.

I quote this here because this is all too typical of the experiences of the targets cissexist harassment of those who display athletic skill. Typical except for one thing: Harrold is quoted in a major daily newspaper.

Note that the race organizers condemn the “victimisation and abuse that has been levelled at Anna.” They don’t condemn all abuse of anyone, cis or trans, who is targeted for winning a race or smacking a ball or skillfully twisting up a balloon animal. They condemn the abuse of Anna, because good Anna, mother of four, doesn’t deserve it.

And while that’s great for Anna and surely comforting to her, what about the idea that no one deserves this abuse? Neither people who are cis, nor trans, nor “it’s complicated.” Not even Riley Gaines deserves to be targeted for looking muscley or swimming fast. (You have enough to criticize her for anyway.)

But while Anna the GP, mother of four and surely a member in good standing of the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium gets an article in The Independent to defend her honour, my assumption is that she probably would have been fine with the Facebook pushback of the event organizers and the love of her sizeable family.

The people who are getting crushed are the 6th grader who catches hell for being strong enough to bury a 3-pointer or the devout Baptist who is suddenly the outcast of her religious college for beating the hated Lutherans in the 800m by two or three strides too many. What is the conservative Baptist to do to end the suspicion? Flashing her cooter to the student body isn’t going to help anything.

These are the people who are legitimately trapped, unable to fight back, who are terribly harmed by these attacks. And yet cis coverage, when it occurs, never focuses on how this treatment would be wrong no matter who it targeted, that this trend only harms, that this behaviour makes girls — cis or trans — want to hide their talents, retreat back into the corner, do anything to avoid standing out.

This trend punishes those who are skilled, who are excellent, who are fast, who are strong. This trend punishes those who gain notice, gain visibility, within a small community or on a national stage.

This trend’s goals as inferred from its methods are nothing less than the reestablishment and reaffirmation of a shaming and controlling patriarchy that does not allow feminine excellence its due celebration, much less serious reward.

Of course I don’t want the good Anna to be abused, but it would be nice if the relatively privileged, when they get a chance to tell their stories to media with resources and readership and reach, spent a thought on the larger topic, the clear, sexist endgame of these cissexist outbursts.

In this case, the gnawing, nauseating conclusion of the piece instead serves to praise sexist control over women’s lives:

Great West Run holds a licence with UK Athletics, which last year banned transgender athletes from competing in the female category of its competitions.

Organisers added that following an investigation, Ms Harrold’s victory on Sunday was eligible and stands. “We have had no reason or evidence to believe otherwise,” they added.

In other words, the harassers got what they wanted. Harrold’s womanhood wasn’t just informally denigrated; the petty officials of a local sporting event felt entitled to reach deep into Harrold’s sex and pass judgement on her womanhood, with The Independent kind enough to report on the happy outcome that the investigative files of half a dozen douchebro sports czars reveal nothing that would call into question Harrold’s good standing as an econowife.