tricky-pockets:

jumpingjacktrash:

fierceawakening:

bitchybijou:

micdotcom:

Sportscaster Dale Hansen defends student wrestler Mack Beggs and takes a stand against transphobia

this man just CHECKED™ his privilege im living

this is what i mean when i say “actually tolerance isn’t all that bad”

this guy says several times that he doesn’t understand and even is uncomfortable, but that that isn’t what matters.

imo, that’s how tolerance works.

true tolerance is, “i don’t have to understand, because you don’t need my permission to live. my job as a member of your community is to have your back, whether i understand your situation or not.”

[ID: a series of captioned gifs of a sportscaster speaking. He is an old white guy in a suit. The captions say:

I would have thought in 2017… we would be done arguing about birth certificates, but obviously we’re not. 17-year-old Mack Beggs, a junior at Euless Trinity, who was born a girl and is now in the process of becoming a boy, wins the girls’ state wrestling tournament Saturday. So the argument has started again. Mack wanted to wrestle against the boys, the UIL said he had to wrestle the girls and that’s not fair for anybody involved in this argument.

The next gif shows someone getting wrassled pretty hard. I don’t know anything about wrestling, but it looks pretty intense. It’s captioned:

Mack has been taking testosterone and it shows… it was an incredibly unfair advantage for him and unfair to the girls who had to wrestle him.

(The next gif goes back to the sportscaster talking):

But the answer to the question, “When does a girl become a boy? When does a boy become a girl? When can you play games against those you identify with and not what a piece of paper says you are?” That’s way above my pay grade, but someone has to find a better answer than what we’re being given now. 

As I said when I wrote about Missouri football player Michael Sam, I’m not always comfortable when a man tells me he’s gay. I don’t understand his world. But I do understand he’s a part of mine. And I am saying the same thing now about Mack Beggs. 

Transitioning is a struggle I cannot imagine. It is a journey I could not make and it is a life that too many could not live. The problems that Mack Beggs is facing, remind me again that I don’t have any problems. He needs our support. He does not need a group of old men in Austin telling him who to wrestle because of a genetic mix up at birth. 

We have argued long enough about birth certificates. It’s an argument that needs to end. You don’t have to understand. I don’t understand. But Mack Beggs is not the problem so many people make him out to be. He’s a child simply looking for his place in the world and a chance to compete in the world. Do we really not have the simple decency to allow him at least that? Because it seems to me it’s the very least we can do.

end ID]