South Park’s ‘Board Girls’: Is it Transphobic?

So . . . . South Park.

What can be said about it that hasn't already been said? It built it's legacy on being irreverent, unapologetically crass, unbelievably disgusting . . . but most shockingly of all it uses all of those things to create some actually sobering commentary on America's current political climate. Being the type of show that it is where a single 20 minute episode can be created literally within days, South Park has always had a unique edge on television in that it has ALWAYS been topical and talked about the latest news while it was still . . . y'know . . . news? Unlike shows such as The Simpsons or Family Guy who's format naturally means that they would comment on trends and news MONTHS after nobody cared anymore, so it showing up on those shows truly meant that the “meme was dead”.

But another unique quality south park has always maintained is that it can depict political opinions so nuanced, so grey in nature, that everyone who watches it thinks that South Park sides with THEM. And when they can't reasonably rationalize why South Park didn't target them in this weeks episode . . . all of a sudden they want to boycott it because it has “always been bigoted”.

The episode “Board Girls” is no exception. When I saw the episode pop up on Twitter because journalist sites and popular twitter users were bashing it for it's subject matter, all I could think was “People don't like what Parker and Stone had to say? What else is new?”.  I pretty much gathered that people would get their fill in voicing their outrage for this episode but then would move on to the next thing the week after. But this case genuinely fascinated me. I don't know why, but hearing about this made me curious for myself to see if this episode was as bad as everyone was saying. Could the episode “Board Girls” really be ripping into Transgendered people as much as they say it is? Well, I decided to watch the episode and come to my own conclusion. Before I go into it though, here's a synopsis of the episode's plot.

Strong Woman, PC Principal's female partner, eagerly attends a women's athletic competition and is a good sport to all of the other women participating in the event. That is, until a Transgender woman, who bears a striking resemblance to the late WWE wrestler Randy Savage, sweeps the competition with her naturally higher athletic prowess. This causes Strong Woman and PC Principal to go into a dilemma about how this makes them feel. On one hand, they've always been strong advocates about supporting transgender people and they want to be good sports when it comes to allowing the transgender athlete to participate. But on the other hand, Strong Woman can't help but feel cheated because she has to bare the loss against somebody for whom she would always have some natural disadvantage against, and it doesn't help that said Transgender athlete is extremely cocky and meanspirited towards her competitors while preaching about the merits of being a strong woman. While this is going on, Cartman and the rest of the boys are hosting a board game club at their school that was initially exclusively boys up until some girls wanted to join. Cartman initially makes up some bullshit excuses for why they can't join in, but the girls prove their prowess in board games and demonstrate that they aren't naturally worse at it just because they are girls. So Cartman and the boys go to some excessive lengths in a shallow attempt to prevent them from playing.

So just based on that plot synopsis, one thing immediately becomes evident; the two main stories of this episode juxtapose each other. On one side you have competitors wanting to be inclusive in an environment where some exclusion is necessary for the sake of making the game fair and on the other side you have competitors wanting to maintain closed doors in spite of the fact that they engage in an activity where ANYONE can pick up and play. On one side you have an event where sex has no bearing on the outcome of the games whatsoever and on the other side you have an event where it undeniably DOES have some bearing. It's the whole reason why women's sporting events as a separation from men's sporting events exist to begin with. When it comes to athletic capabilities, the bodies natural level of testosterone against estrogen DOES make a substantial difference. Men have larger hearts and larger skeletal muscles. They are less prone to injuries in the joints such as the knees and shoulders. Women have more body fat whereas men have a higher production of red blood cells. That isn't opinion. That's biology. It's quantifiable, measurable and demonstrable.

But with that said, here is something else that is undeniable. Everyone has the civil right to identify as whatever they are. Gender is not binary. It is a spectrum. Everyone should have their preferred pronouns respected and everyone should be able to enjoy the freedom of being seen however they want to be seen. Gender is a superficial social construct that we shouldn't feel obliged to adhere to. But just because Gender is superficial doesn't mean the differences in our bodies chemistry are. That's what the difference between sex and gender is. Sex is anatomical but gender is social, and it's sex NOT gender that is the reason we have a male and female league in sporting events. Otherwise you might as well not have these events separated at all.

I understand that this is a difficult point to grasp because in the modern age people want more than anything to be fair. They don't want to be exclusionary just because of identity but they also want to make sure the playing field is even. But what happens when those two concepts are at odds with each other? What happens is that people are forced to form a more nuanced take than just “either this or this”. That is exactly what happens to PC Principal. PC Principal is a character known for being a cartoonish satire of people in the modern age who dedicate themselves to being more sensitive and tolerant to those who don't receive that attention enough, often times coming to odds with those who feel no obligation to do so. But for the first time ever, PC Principal is put into a position where the RIGHT thing to do isn't necessarily the PC thing to do. He sees his partner being disrespected against an athlete who is participating in an event where she knows she has a natural advantage against her competitors, and of COURSE he wants to step up to defend his partner's honour because she's been put into a box where doing so for herself will make her transphobic (or if nothing else appear to be). Despite the transgender athlete's accusations, PC Principal isn't out to get any transgender people. He just wants to stop a bully from harassing someone he cares about. But doing so makes him question his own morality. He thinks of himself as a hypocrite who went against his own values on public television. But honestly . . . he just said what everyone else was thinking. It's actually kind of nice to see this deliberately one dimensional character take an unexpected stance for a change. He learns that sometimes doing the right thing DOES mean saying something that nobody wants to hear.

There's no getting around it. In the context of this episode's narrative, the transgender athlete is a bully. A bully who hijacks progressive ideals as an excuse to invalidate other people under a thin veil of seeming more progressive. But luckily she's defeated by the girls at school who take her on in a field where biological differences truly don't matter . .  .board games. Through this exercise they knock this egotist down a few pegs. Personally, I think the inclusion of this side story was a smart move on Parker and Stone's part because it makes for a necessary caveat that inclusion of all people CAN happen under certain circumstances. The point isn't to be exclusionary every time, the point is to accept the undeniable truth about our differences in capability whenever it's necessary to do so. It's also poignant that Cartman sides with the transgender athlete, because they are essentially the same asshole on different sides of the spectrum. They both want to rig the game so that they can win every time, and that's NEVER fair no matter how you slice it.

So with all that in mind, do I think the new South Park episode is transphobic? Not really. I just think it's demonstrating an instance in which limits to what certain people can do are necessary, because otherwise the game becomes unfair to everyone else, and you shouldn't be penalized as something you're not just because you point this out. South Park has never been afraid of holding ANYTHING up to scrutiny, not even themselves, so it amazes me that even after all this time people are surprised that they can take stances like this.

As far as my own take on the issue goes, personally I think male and female leagues SHOULD be abolished in favor of leagues based on weight, height and muscle fibers. We measure the athletic prowess of every athlete separately and put them in weight classes anyway, so we might as well take that to the full extent and pit people against each other based solely on similar capability, not on sex or gender. That way the games are all inclusive AND objectively fair. Part of me wishes the boys at South Park touched upon this idea, but for what the episode is I think it's about as poignant as South Park ever is.