३ नोव्हेंबर, २०२२

"Female beauty pageants are allowed to exclude transgender women, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled."

"The case stems from a complaint filed by Anita Green, a transgender contestant in several Miss United States of America pageants.... Mandating Miss USA allow Green to be in the pageant would amount to forcing the pageant to say that transgender women are included in a vision of ideal American womanhood and that would amount to compelled speech, the court held. 'Given a pageant's competitive and performative structure, it is clear that who competes and succeeds in a pageant is how the pageant speaks,' wrote the judges. 'Put differently, the Pageant's message cannot be divorced from the Pageant's selection and evaluation of contestants.'"

Reason reports in "Miss USA Has First Amendment Right To Exclude Transgender Women, Court Says."

The Reason writer, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, opines: "I don't think the court is wrong about what allowing transgender contestants implies, though it is a shame Miss USA doesn't broaden its horizons a bit. Being more inclusive seems like not only the right thing to do but also a way it could shed some of its old-fashioned, intolerant image and help with its lack of resonance with today's audiences."

Me, I don't care about helping beauty pageants gain "resonance" with more people. They are inherently old-fashioned. They're into outward manifestations of femaleness, and that puts them on the same wavelength as transgender women, ironically. But it's all expression, and there's a problem with using someone else's platform of expression to amplify your own expression.

Here's the text of the court opinion.

३८ टिप्पण्या:

rcocean म्हणाले...

Why is it the business of the Federal courts to decide who gets into a beauty pagent?

Readering म्हणाले...

Apparently plaintiff was a successful veteran of pageants, and her participation had been solicited by a pageant official. But when she said, "By the way...." Plaintiff's counsel suggested at argument that there may be a number of transgender contestants these days who have not revealed themselves.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Beauty pageants are for women to watch, not men. Men will enter farm animals, given the chance, as their own statement.

ConradBibby म्हणाले...

"They are inherently old-fashioned."

No, beauty pageants may be out of fashion and no longer as popular as they once were, but that's not inherent.

And so what if they're only about "outward manifestations of femaleness"? That's why they're called BEAUTY pageants. They celebrate woman who excel in physical beauty. Do you condemn spelling bees because they only focus on the contestants' spelling ability and not on the full spectrum of their cognitive abilities?

We don't need a competition where women compete based on the ENTIRE range of their abilities and traits as human beings. That competition already exists. It's called "Life on Planet Earth."

Zavier Onasses म्हणाले...

Rather tortured logic. Much simpler: because they are not women.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"Being more inclusive seems like not only the right thing to do"

Of course, prog inclusiveness always happens to exclude those who prefer tradition.

"help with its lack of resonance with today's audiences."

Cuz everything progs touch turns to entertainment gold--just ask PC Hollywood movie makers.

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Brings to mind an anecdote from my days working at the university library. One of the librarians rushed into the office one day and said, "To There's a man in the women's bathroom! In a dress! And he has better legs than me!

Maybe the Miss USA organizers worried about unfair competition.

Wa St Blogger म्हणाले...

IDK. How many contestants come in with more than they were born with? Why not allow others to come in with less? All snark aside, I find most of the women too fake as it is and have no interest in watching the show. I am sure this appeals to some number of male audience, but it would turn most of those off if there were bio males competing.

There are specialty pageants already, they can "get their own pageant" rather than ruining someone else's. But Trans will never be satisfied as being separate be equal.

Leland म्हणाले...

I don't mind beauty pageants, regardless of how I feel about what they represent or lack of joy in watching them. F1 racing represents a lot of things out of favor with today's progressives and is boring to many people, but I enjoy the sport as others enjoy other sports and activities, such as attending drag shows (and I don't mean the ones with top fuel and funny cars). I do like this ruling. Forcing beauty pageants to accept trans people competing would be like forcing F1 to accept NASCARs and drag shows to accept non-trans performers.

Richard Dolan म्हणाले...

Courts have had a tough time applying generic public accommodation laws broadly prohibiting discrimination in providing services by commercial actors to those who object on various grounds to endorsing gay and transgendered messages. This one involves the application of the Oregon public accommodations law to the Miss USA Pageant, which refuses to allow transgendered women to compete, and the divided Ninth Circuit panel dismissed the case based on the Pageant's First Amendment expressive rights to shape its own message.

Masterpiece Cakeshop from a few terms ago was the first case in the SCOTUS on that issue, and the court decided to duck it by focusing on the obvious hostility to religion expressed by the state administrative agency in ruling against the baker. Meantime, the lower courts are all over the place, trying to weigh First Amendment claims to free expression (which includes a right not to express messages the speaker does not want to endorse) and free association against broad anti-discrimination laws that were upheld against similar arguments by segregationist-minded proprietors early in the Civil Rights era.

As it happens, SCOTUS will hear argument on Dec 5 in 303 Creative v. Elenis, challenging the application of the Colorado public accommodations law to a website designer who declines to create custom-made wedding websites for same-sex weddings. That case involves the same public accommodations law as was at issue in Masterpiece Cakeshop. In 303 Creative, the Tenth Circuit came out the other way from the ruling by the Ninth Circuit in the case against the Miss USA Pageant. As it happens, both cases were decided by divided panels. And there are widely varying rulings on the same issue by lots of other federal circuits and state courts of last resort.

Given the early Civil Rights era precedents desegregating hotels, restaurants, etc. using various public accommodation laws, the First Amendment argument gets very tricky. At bottom, I think that shows why the approach in Bostock (the case about the right of transgendered people to be free from employment discrimination, decided as a matter of statutory interpretation under Title VII) was far better than teh approach in Obergeffel (the case about marriage equality, decided on constitutional grounds). The dissenting opinions in Obergeffel predicted that constitutionalizing these issues would lead to intractable problems, and this is just the first and most obvious to bubble up. Waiting in the wings are cases, applying, e.g., the rationale of Bob Jones University v. IRS, to demands that religious institutions rejecting the new same-sex and transgendered orthodoxy should be denied tax exemptions.

n.n म्हणाले...

Men in dresses? A male is not a female, of course, but feminine gender can be simulated (e.g. breasts), perhaps stimulated (e.g. orientation), and mocked... sculpted... carved... hacked with trans/social progress.

Another old lawyer म्हणाले...

Can this decision be squared with the SCOTUS decision mandating that the PGA Tour allow a golfer with a medical condition that made walking difficult for him to use a golf cart? Walking not expressive enough in and of itself? Had the PGA Tour argued that requiring pro golfers to walk while playing expressed its view of the ideal golfer, fit and capable for walking 18 holes a day, for 4 days, would the SCOTUS decision have been different? I don't think that's far from what the PGA Tour actually argued, but perhaps the PGA Tour didn't express itself in a way that the SCOTUS majority understood the expression.

John henry म्हणाले...

Sort of related: The Miss Universe pageant was bought lock stock and barrel by a Thai transgender "Woman" (as he calls himself)

Even more amazing to me was that he only paid $20 million for it. Can that really be all a major, worldwide, beauty pageant is worth? I thought at first that I must be reading it wrong and that it was only for the Thai franchise. Nope. The whole worldwide thing.

I pay no attention to such things but if I'd had to guess, I would have thought it would be worth closer to $100mm or more than $20.

Will Miss Universe have any women contestants going forward? Or will they now all be men pretending to be women?

Story here https://nypost.com/2022/10/28/thai-tycoon-jakapong-jakrajutatip-buys-miss-universe-pageant-for-20m/

John Stop fascism vote republican Henry

Carol म्हणाले...

"Men will enter farm animals"


The next taboo to fall...

Mark म्हणाले...

They're into outward manifestations of femaleness

No. The Miss USA organization is into -- as they themselves state in their own qualifications -- NATURAL WOMEN.

Mike म्हणाले...

Well now that Stephen Reinhardt is off the Ninth Circus bench, their decisions may become more reasonable. At least the Justices don't need a biologist to let them know what a woman is.

Anthony म्हणाले...

There is no such thing as a 'transgender woman'. There are men and there are women, and people pretending to be the other.

Michael K म्हणाले...

Maybe beauty pageants should have short arm inspections, like in Basic Training.

Mark म्हणाले...

The approach in Bostock (the case about the right of transgendered people to be free from employment discrimination, decided as a matter of statutory interpretation under Title VII) was far better than the approach in Obergeffel

The approach in Bostock was a tortured exercise in Roberts' style too cute by half mess-making. And it rivals Roe in the mess it has made. It was a case about SEX DISCRIMINATION under Title VII (not about the "right" of "transgendered people"), and while everyone was focusing on the statutory interpretation of the word "sex," the Court majority said, "no, the important part of the statute is 'on account of.'"

Which is how we got to the absurd point of laws meant to protect women's equality being used to effectively erase women, with men invading women's spaces and shoving them out and even lesbians being maliciously condemned because they insist that their girlfriends not have penises.

phantommut म्हणाले...

"And he has better legs than me!"

If you ever go to Patpong in Bangkok to see the sights, you will be amazed. A Chinese woman by way of Indonesia clued me in; the boys were the ones in heels, the girls were the ones in boots. The boys had better legs.

Josephbleau म्हणाले...

"Men will enter farm animals"
"The next taboo to fall..."

Has not that ship sailed? Or have I just been listening to fictitious jokes. I do recall that gerbils were reported to enter men though.

FullMoon म्हणाले...

We have come a long way from "No shoes, no shirt, no service".

Bobb म्हणाले...

Although it shouldn't matter, it does. It was a 2-1 decision. The majority comprised a Bush II judge and a Trump judge. The dissent was by a Clinton judge.

Wince म्हणाले...

On the other hand, Hot Lesbians are much more palatable.

Aggie म्हणाले...

Female beauty pageants are for females. This does not include males, nor does it include male approximations of females, however authentic-looking they might think themselves to be.

I find the outrage of mentally-disturbed people not getting their wish for the world to share in their delusions particularly uncompelling. And I suspect that ship has sailed for society, as well. Bon Voyage!

Randomizer म्हणाले...

"Being more inclusive seems like not only the right thing to do..."

The right thing to do based upon what? A writer from Reason should know better than to assume she knows the most moral thing to do. The pageant organizers can decide what's right for their show.

wildswan म्हणाले...

Here's a standard.
In the womb a female child at 18 weeks forms all the eggs she will ever have, about 1 million, and these eggs begin the process of meiosis 1. Then they stop and nothing more happens until puberty. Every born woman has done this; no transwoman has or will.
A male child forms no sperm until puberty after which, by the process of meiosis, he produces 1500 sperm per second and this keeps up only slightly and slowly diminishing for the rest of his life. Every boy who becomes a man does this; no transman has ever done it or ever will.
amirite?

wildswan म्हणाले...

Here's a standard.
In the womb a female child at 18 weeks forms all the eggs she will ever have, about 1 million, and these eggs begin the process of meiosis 1. Then they stop and nothing more happens until puberty. Every born woman has done this; no transwoman has or will.
A male child forms no sperm until puberty after which, by the process of meiosis, he produces 1500 sperm per second and this keeps up only slightly and slowly diminishing for the rest of his life. Every boy who becomes a man does this; no transman has ever done it or ever will.
amirite?
What about beauty pageants? You can choose to make them for women. What are women? See above.

Carol म्हणाले...

"Here's a standard."

I lurk at trans forums. Those poor girls think they can actually change their sex by taking cross sex hormones and adding/subtracting body parts.

They don't let outsiders comment.

Freeman Hunt म्हणाले...

"not only the right thing to do"

Oh, no! I sprained my eyes.

The Godfather म्हणाले...

I've said before: This is not a "transgender woman". This is not ANY KIND of "woman". This is a man who wants to be treated and accepted as a woman, and should be called a "transgender man".

walter म्हणाले...

"there may be a number of transgender contestants these days who have not revealed themselves."
Pleas don't...

effinayright म्हणाले...

Where is the "BEAUTY" in 99+% of the world doing the judging having to avert their gaze from the lump in the "woman's" pants---or ignoring the strap-downs that keep that lump from being seen?

WHY should the world be FORCED to "consider" a new definition of "beauty" that includes FUBAR freaks?

Go ahead, Althouse: tell us that women are no different than men---then tell us why the fake women have to PRETEND they are men by hiding what they truly are?

p.s. your naked opinion that beauty contests are outdated or otherwise objectional comes with NO supporting evidence other than your disapproval.

Are men supposed to IGNORE female beauty, as THEY define it?

Are women supposed to IGNORE male beauty, as THEY define it?

Why do you support "change" pushed down upon us by freaks and misfits?

Christopher B म्हणाले...

@Richard Dolan

In a special PowerLine 3WHH podcast after the Harvard/UNC oral arguments, Steve Hayward mentioned that smarter liberals realized after Bostock that it being grounded in Title VII rather than the 14th Amendment was directly applicable to overturning AA race discrimination based on Title VI.

In re 303 Creative and Masterpiece Cakes, somewhat facetiously, when did the 13th Amendment become a dead letter? I know legal reasoning gets a bit tortured at times but it seems that a line could be drawn between goods and services offered to all comers, and bespoke labor.

Rusty म्हणाले...

See Letterkenny, "Sausage Party."

PM म्हणाले...

For many, this will be a reason not to watch what they weren't watching.

mikee म्हणाले...

This is an argument that could be paralleled into a case-winning freedom of association argument by female sports competitors and organizations.

'Given a [sporting competition's] competitive and performative structure, it is clear that who competes and succeeds ... is how the [competition membership chooses to associate freely].... 'Put differently, the [competition's free association rights] cannot be divorced from the [organization's] selection and evaluation of contestants.

Explain how this is wrong.

Leland म्हणाले...

A male child forms no sperm until puberty after which, by the process of meiosis, he produces 1500 sperm per second and this keeps up only slightly and slowly diminishing for the rest of his life. Every boy who becomes a man does this; no transman has ever done it or ever will.
amirite?


What then to make of a boy who is castrated prior to puberty? Are they no longer a male because they never produced sperm?