Cis sportswoman shares relentless anti-trans attacks from trolls on her gender identity
A cisgender sportswoman who posts her weightlifting journey on TikTok has shared the constant anti-trans attacks she faces from trolls who believe she’s a man. (TikTok / burritos_and_adhd)
A cisgender sportswoman, who takes part in competitive powerlifting, is using her TikTok to reveal the constant attacks she faces from anti-trans trolls on her gender identity.
TikTok user burritos_and_adhd, whose real name is Laura, has more than 400,000 followers and 10.4 million likes on the platform, where she documents her sport.
But her videos have been constantly criticised by trolls who have accused her of being a man and “cheating” the system.
On Tuesday (25 July), she posted a video captioned: “This idea that trans women are ‘cheating’ is based on the belief that people born as men are automatically stronger 100 per cent of the time. Y’all aren’t. Sit down.”
Her video was in direct response to a user who asked: “Are you really proud of cheating the system?”
In text over the video, Laura wrote: “No, but I am proud of hurting your feelings by just existing. Once ya’ll realise that men aren’t magically stronger from birth, you’ll stop accusing women of cheating when they’re strong.”
In January, a report, commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, found trans women have no advantage over cisgender women when competing in elite sport, if existing rules are followed.
The report concluded that trans women who have begun testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantage.
Responding to the “transphobia” she receives from people who misgender her and try to “affirm” her gender, Laura said that there isn’t a strict binary that bodies fall into.
“It can be just kinda harmful to people who don’t fit into the binary very well, whether they’re like me, and it’s not very obvious that I was born a certain gender, or it is someone who’s trans and you’re still trying to clock what they were assigned at birth rather than who they are right now.
“It’s not affirming when you guys do that and I don’t need it, so let’s not do that.”
Laura can be seen responding to another accusation that she is a cheat and should get out of women’s sports, by belching and simply saying “no”.
In response to a comment that called her achievements “void as a trans woman”, she played on the user’s claim that she was stronger than all of the Dallas Cowboys by flexing her muscles to overlaid text that reads: “You think I’m stronger than the whole NFL team?”
But Laura is unfazed by the transphobic trolls and warned in a different video: “I’m just gonna get bigger and more intimidating.”
Despite evidence to support trans women’s place in sport, and with rules previously in place to ensure there is no unfair advantage, anti-trans policies have stripped some athletes of a chance to compete.
UK sports governing bodies, such as the Welsh Rugby Union, the Scottish Rugby Union and British Cycling, have all, at some stage, suspended trans people from participating at elite levels.
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