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,........

© Brisbane Times