Good Fight - exploring trans in sport

[Triffid1]

Interestingly, considering that I always get the sense that in America the official line is that TWAW so I was quite surprised to see that in The Good Fight, they are making arguments.

Of course, I'm also at the part in the episode where all the junior (women) come along and say that their bosses are transphobic. But I've just not seen this in popular TV so far.

Apologies if this has been done before - I'm only catching up on Good Wife now.

There were a couple of very short threads on it when it aired.

I think you need to know the history of the good fight / the good wife to understand just how important it is that they covered this in the way they did.

This was discussed on The Good Fight Telly Addicts thread.

I thought it was their usual smug glib aren't we clever with out words, our dialogue is so dazzling.

And they totally avoided the actual issue and made a young women with (cant remember the plot exactly) some hormonal imbalance pay the price. I was disgusted by that tactic.

And given that there has been a push back in the States specifically on women's sports thought it a total cop out.

And the throw away line about it being an issue that young women get.

I can never work out which horse they're riding in TGF.

@stumbledin

This was discussed on The Good Fight Telly Addicts thread.

I thought it was their usual smug glib aren't we clever with out words, our dialogue is so dazzling.

And they totally avoided the actual issue and made a young women with (cant remember the plot exactly) some hormonal imbalance pay the price. I was disgusted by that tactic.

And given that there has been a push back in the States specifically on women's sports thought it a total cop out.

And the throw away line about it being an issue that young women get.

I disagree, although I understand where you're coming from.

They had the trans woman squirming on the stand by pointing out that they'd only had success in sport when they changed to the female category. The judge allowed the trans woman to stay on the team because of the law - which highlighted how wrong/unfair the law was, IMO.

The fact that it came down to two biological women in the end showed that women have lesser protections/will always lose out before a man does. I thought it was quite clever.

Yes I took the same from it as you MattDamon

it highlighted the unfairness generally, for everyone.

it got in all the important points about male puberty, the conflicting needs/ rights between women and transwomen (given it's never about transmen's access to sport... wonder why) and then at the end a poor young woman with a DSD ends up being the loser despite it never being their battle in the first place.

Yup, having watched it I think it wasn't too bad in the end. It certainly showed all sides in a way we don't normally see. And I think the awkwardness with with Liz dealt with it was interesting and helpful too.

Probably not going to change any hearts and minds, but still interesting.

I think you need to know the history of the good fight / the good wife to understand just how important it is that they covered this in the way they did.

I don't even know what this means. It's a TV show. I'm not sure I need to consider some massive academic theory about the show's history to understand that they chose to cover trans issues.

@Triffid1

Yup, having watched it I think it wasn't too bad in the end. It certainly showed all sides in a way we don't normally see. And I think the awkwardness with with Liz dealt with it was interesting and helpful too.

Probably not going to change any hearts and minds, but still interesting.

I think you need to know the history of the good fight / the good wife to understand just how important it is that they covered this in the way they did.

I don't even know what this means. It's a TV show. I'm not sure I need to consider some massive academic theory about the show's history to understand that they chose to cover trans issues.

No academic theory, I was purely meaning that the good wife was never shy about covering difficult and controversial topics but the lawyers always in some way managed to express when they found the views of their client distasteful. The 'right' person didn't always win due to the technicalities of the law and the writers always had their finger right on the pulse of the emerging issues in politics, law and society.

The good fight has carried this on to an extent (I find it lacks the warmth of the good wife, sadly) and I was surprised that the conclusion was that the transwomen didn't 'lose' and didn't get painted as the victim and instead sort of 'won' on a technicality.

I'm not sure it would have been written that way round by the same writers a few years ago and I was very surprised (initially) that they concluded that episode the way they did, particularly with how this debate is actually playing out in America and Canada in reality.

All I was trying to get across was that if you only watched this as a stand-alone episode without having watched the back catalogue of how these things usually went it maybe wasn't as a surprising ending as I felt it was.

@exwhyzed Aaah, okay. But I did know all that. But the reason I was surprised was because I honestly thought that in mainstream US, particularly hollywood, it is considered more or less professional suicide to even suggest that trans women are different to natal women! And yes, you're right, if I had to pick a show that would explore this, this is the one that would do it. But I was still pleasantly surprised they didn't ignore the whole issue or bottle it entirely.

That's why they did their usual facile but clever tricks to appear to cover a topic but actually show that lawyers are just word merchants with no values.

Its the type of writing that made the West Wing so smug and politically empty.

(The Good Wife was better when it had Kalinda in it, but because she made the star look like such a wet blanket they got rid of her. I kept hoping she would re-emarge in the Good Fight whose race politics are so excruciatingly desperate to appear on the right side. I understand many of the leading Black actor and actresses are leaving the show.)