Lia Thomas, an athlete who last year was ranked 462nd in the world ranking of men’s swimming, won the final of the American women’s university league last.
Thursday, placing herself in first place in the world ranking of women’s swimming. His change of gender identity, I mean, of sex, I mean, of gender, has made him rise 461 positions at once.
Athletes pass strict doping controls that guarantee that they are not cheating in competition. There are no gender doping controls.
Those who have followed Lia’s career from one season to another will not have noticed any change, except for her swimsuit.
But that is because, as the Little Prince said, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
“His change of gender identity, I mean, of sex, I mean, of gender… has made him rise 461 positions at once”.
I confess that I never quite understood that phrase by Saint-Exupéry. Do you mean that what is essential is invisible, just like that? Why then add “in the eyes”?
Does it mean that what is essential is invisible to the eye, but visible, say, to the ear? Indeed, in the transmigration of Thomas’s soul there are many invisible things beyond his identity, perhaps because they are not seen or perhaps because they are simply not there:
justice, rationality, fair play… Let’s keep pulling the thread of the quote of The Little Prince, do you know what is the most essential thing that is invisible in this story?
The swimmer at the end of the row, the one who should have been on the podium and hasn’t, the one who surely had been training for years and has seen her efforts rendered useless by surreal absurdities.
In the networks, “peaktrans” is usually called the moment in which a well-intentioned person, who initially felt inclined to support the queer vision of the problems of transsexuality and transgenderism, suddenly discovers that there are no good intentions that justify such a delirious speech.
And so harmful. What is at issue is not whether Lia Thomas is a woman or a man, but whether we live in a society where subjectivity prevails over others over the most elemental truth, or whether we can come to an agreement about the reality to which we all submit, so as not to live in a narcissistic asylum, for example, the locker room through which Thomas walks naked among the swimmers showing his genitals and their gigantic backs, according to what the interested parties themselves have told.
“What is under discussion is not whether Lia Thomas is a woman or a man, but whether we live in a society where subjectivity prevails over others over the most elemental truth”.
Postmodernity has tried to convince us that objectivity does not exist, and that everything —science, politics, morality— are discourses that do not transcend their own words, signifiers supported by other signifiers, all equal in their truth value.
Imagine the celestial music that this reactionary ideology supposes for those who want to impose their privileges, their delusions, the perpetuation of power relations. But the reality is stubborn.
The grotesque injustice that has taken place this week may have had a silver lining, provoking a planetary peaktrans, whose outrage and disbelief has been felt live on social media.
