#MedievalistsForTransRights
LightNews LightNews
megsmith.bsky.social
The wide range of currencies and modes of exchange in the Middle Ages of course turns this specious analogy on its head. And don’t forget that trans people existed then too! #MedievalistsForTransRights
katjathieme.bsky.social Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they) @katjathieme.bsky.social · Sep 22
What it sounds like when philosophers who are also anti-trans activists submit an amicus brief to a US court where they argue for banning trans girls and women from women's sports.
30 the option of interpreting the Idaho and West Virginia statutes as motivated by the justified aim of excluding all males from female sports, it is quite invidious to interpret them as instead motivated by the unjustified aim of excluding males who identify as female in par- ticular. Consider a simple analogy. Imagine that we are back in Medieval Europe. Gold is the currency of the land. Consequently, many merchants prefer to accept gold and only gold as payment. However, a new move- ment is afoot, whose members are known as the alche- mists. The alchemists purport to have found a way of turning iron pyrite (fool’s gold) into gold. Some people are convinced by the claims of the alchemists, though many others are not. This difference in attitudes starts to lead to time-wasting interactions in which an alchemist or fellow traveler tries to purchase a good using iron pyrite from a merchant who, unmoved by well-publicized insistence on the part of the alche- mists that only irrational prejudice could lie behind lingering doubts about the possibility of converting iron pyrite into gold, continues to insist on only ac- cepting gold as payment. One such merchant, whose unofficial working policy has hitherto been to accept only gold as payment, decides to make his policy offi- cial by putting up a sign on his store saying, “Only gold accepted (no iron pyrite!).”
September 23, 2025 at 1:09 PM