I call it “hate-bait” – a vicious version of clickbait. It is when, in media and politics, you pick out with cold calculation the one target you know, you just know, will generate so much outrage and hate it will go viral while you harvest ratings, clicks, and votes.
What does it do to the people – usually women, and ideally ones who can’t strike back – that you unleash the hate on? You don’t care! You’ve moved on to the next target, praise the Lord and pass the pinot.
The most flagrant example is transgender athletes in sport. The nastiest and most ruthless purveyors of hate-bait continually push out a catastrophically clichéd warning that the sports world is awash with swarthy truck-drivers wearing tutus and tights, storming and swarming their way through girls’ changing rooms and fields to leer and sneer their way to every trophy going.
The truth of the matter – that we are talking about mostly just a handful of gentle souls with the extraordinary courage to live as what they believe is their true gender and want to be included in sport – doesn’t rate as hate-bait, so forget it. Your job is to whip it up!
Last month in America saw a classic example, when a MAGA Republican from Maine, Laurel Libby, went on Fox News to aim her verbal guns at a trans-identifying female athlete, Soren Stark-Chessa, who, competing in the girls’ division, won the 1600m and 800m races at a high school meeting. Ms Libby accused the young woman of “pushing many, many of our young women out of the way in their ascent to the podium,” and made it sound like the world was about to end.
Great ratings! More votes! This time, though, the young woman who came second to Stark-Chessa in one of the races, Anelise Feldman, put out a statement in reply.
Republican state representative Laurel Libby.Credit: AP
“Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish …
“The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.
“We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.”
Brava, brava, brava. What decency. And what a wonderful stand to take.
Closer to home, last month we had our own major tabloid/talkback story about a transgender athlete at a South Australian Catholic school, who, it was breathlessly reported, had run riot at an athletics carnival. One father was quoted, saying the student “broke a number of records competing against girls at a recent sports day … breaking all the girls records”.
It was great hate-bait, and the usual suspects on talkback and tabloid went hard. Got some hate you want to spread? Our lines are open!
The former Liberal MP Gary Hardgrave certainly opened up on Sky News.
“In the end,” he said, “weak men want to compete against women and they put on the skirt and say, ‘I’m a woman now, and I want to compete against you’. But even weaker men support those people in that kind of decision.”
I repeat, great hate-bait! Manna from heaven.
Did anyone pause, ever, to think what effect this has on the target of the hate-bait? This week, the ABC show Media Watch did, and made enquiries. And whaddya know? Most of it was nonsense.
There was a school athletics meeting last year, creating precisely no controversy in the school at the time. Yes, the 13-year-old transgender athlete did indeed break a record, but it was another girl who actually swept the day breaking seven records.
And the effect on the child in question from the pile-on? Devastating.
“No child or family should have to experience the trauma or fear that we have been through,” the mother of the child told the ABC. “My child’s privacy and innocence has been violated without consideration or empathy for the devastating lifelong harm this can cause. It’s hard to express how horrific it is to read hateful articles about your child and have them used as clickbait for a political agenda created by adults and forced down the throats of kids who are just trying to be kids.”
Read it and weep.
Yes, yes, yes, occasionally the issue of an unfair advantage by transgender athletes in sport does arise – usually only at elite level – and is one to be discussed and sorted out by serious people.
But that ain’t this. The point is that we need to call this kind of stuff for what it is. It is not a genuine attempt to achieve fairness in sport put out by people who have a genuine track record of earnestly examining that very thing. It’s just hate-bait, no more, no less, put out by people whose job in life is to stir up big trouble way above and beyond what the actual problem is.
It’s just hate-bait callously thrown out there to bring in swarms of bone-stupid groper fish who live off that very hate – to boost your ratings, clicks and votes – and to hell with the trauma it causes to their targets.
For shame, you bastards.
For shame, you bastards.
What They Said
Lachlan Galvin on the Wests Tigers fans: “I understand where [Tigers fans] are coming from. I think they can have their opinion, and they can have their hatred and that against me. I understand that.”
Lachlan Galvin trains with the Bulldogs.Credit: Canterbury Bulldogs
Joe Montemurro, new coach of the Matildas: “I’ve followed their incredible journey closely and am energised by the passion, resilience, and identity they’ve built. The only promise I make is that we will play an exciting brand of football and that the integrity and the level and the respect of the Matildas will always be at the top of my thinking.”
Tennis player Daria Kasatkina on her first major tournament after switching allegiances to Australia: “To feel the support from the stands so many times. I don’t know if everyone who was screaming, ‘Aussie’, were from Australia, but I felt this support . . . So this is the kind of support which I honestly didn’t have before, it feels like it’s something new to me — but it feels so nice.” Oi!
Football manager Pep Guardiola doesn’t think he’s special: “Do you think I feel special because I won a lot of titles? No! Forget about it! I feel that special is the doctor that saves lives. The people who invented penicillin. That is a genius. Me? Genius? Come on.”
Kath McCann, the Tasmanian Devils’ general manager of marketing, corporate affairs and social impact on alternative stadium options: “This is Plan A and there is no Plan B.”
Ticketek on the demand for Ashes tickets: “We recognise that when we have high-demand events with limited inventory that some fans will miss out and will be disappointed. We encourage all customers not to use multiple browsers when trying to access tickets.”
Tennis player Lois Boisson, ranked No.361 in the world, found herself in the headlines in April when an opponent, Harriet Dart, told the umpire, “Can you tell her to put on some deodorant? She smells really bad.” This week she shocked No.3 seed Jessica Pegula to make the quarter-finals at the French Open, becoming the lowest-ranked quarter-finalist at Roland Garros in at least 40 years. “I’m not sure what to say. Playing on this court, with this atmosphere, was amazing. I gave my all and in the end I won, which is just incredible. I hope I’m going to win it all!” Boisson was beaten by Coco Gauff in the semi-finals.
Aussie Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri on winning his Spain, his fifth win of the season: “Hard to complain, it has been a great year and this weekend has been exactly the kind of weekend I was looking for . . . The team gave me a great car once again, it’s a lot of fun winning races at the moment and I’ve been enjoying it and I hope the team are too.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on the “run it straight” tackle challenge that has gone viral on social media after a teenager died from a serious head injury: “All I can say to young adults who are participating is you’ve got some personal responsibility in this. You’re hearing the advice from police, from the medical fraternity, from government, from principals saying don’t do it. To the adults that are involved in more formal organisation of it and are influencing it and leading this out on social media, I think you need to stop and I can’t be any clearer.”
75-year-old runner British runner Sarah Roberts, who took up running just eight years ago, and now holds the over 75 world records over every track distance from 800m to 10,000m indoors and outdoors, as well as 5km and 10km on the road: “I’d like people to think that they should always try something. You never know what you can do until you try it. Never think you’re too old. Give it a go. You will surprise yourself at what you can do if you really try to do something.”
Australian 100m sprinter Lachlan Kennedy has broken the ten-second barrier: “It’s so good. I can finally say I run nine.” Here we were, thinking he was going for Best Supporting Actor. He thinks he’s the star, and going for Best Actor – and he might be right!
Team of the Week
Callan Ward. The career of this fellow, the heart and soul of GWS could be over after he tore his ACL – a badly buggered knee, to you and me.
Alex Johnston. South Sydney speedster notched 200 NRL tries. Just 12 behind the all-time record held by Ken Irvine.
Reds and Brumbies. Good luck to them in the Super Rugby Pacific finals. The Waratahs, meanwhile, have shown some improvement, but finished disappointingly.
Australia/South Africa. Competing in next week’s World Test Championship final at Lord’s.
Socceroos. Beat Japan for the first time in 16 years with a thrilling last-minute winner in Perth and as long as they don’t lose to Saudi Arabia by five goals early Wednesday morning, they qualify directly for a sixth straight World Cup – an extraordinary turnaround from recent grim times.
Lois Boisson. The young Frenchwoman started at Roland-Garros ranked 361 in the world, and made it all the way to the semi-finals before being knocked out.
