And as for telling women their “voices don’t matter,” Haley would do well to actually listen to experts who’ve been steeped in the conversation about equity in women’s sports for years.are the people whose voices have actually been drowned out by much of the public discussion around women’s sports.
I’m posting it again below. Watch it and you’ll note that none of the panelists referred to trans people as pressing threats to women in sports. Instead, they talked about patriarchal leadership structures, denial of adequate equipment, poor recruitment and the media’s marginalization of women’s sports as a whole.
When I see Haley and other right-wing politicians trying to win women over with anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, I’m reminded of writer, filmmaker and former college basketball player Melissa Johnson speaking critically in that lecture of a “climate of panic, and fear, and scarcity about what a trans athlete is gonna mean for you.
Republicans seem to think they can paper over their anti-women politics with anti-trans politics. Unfortunately for them, and people like Nikki Haley, the ruse is plain to see.