This creates such problems for no good reason.
They did this to a kid here who was transitioning to male from female. He was a wrestler; he had almost completed the transition but they made him wrestle with girls because his birth certificate said he was female. He is effectively a male. It wasn’t fair to anyone - not to him and certainly not to the girls he was wrestling. He beat every one of them in nothing flat.
This is the nonsense they create with this.
I dunno. I have a hard time with the mix and match possibilities in similar sports:
Which one of these athletes do you want playing against your daughter’s field hockey team?
Why do we separate boys’ and girls’ sports in the first place?
If it’s primarily for sex-aligned physical characteristics, like muscle mass, height, center of balance, whatever, then I think this bill might actually be reasonable. Gender identity does not change baseline physical characteristics, any more than sincerely-held religious beliefs change the fact that medical science works and prayer does not prevent strep from turning into rheumatic fever.
If it’s primarily because we don’t want kids sexy-groping each other during school activities, then it makes no sense at all. In fact, if that were the case, it seems like we’d actually want to assign kids based on their stated sexual orientation.
They’re just punishing the kids who are transitioning. It’s senseless is right and that’s the only reason they are doing it - to satisfy some bigoted parents.
The parents found out here with the wrestler that they needed to back off since they created a situation in which competition no longer existed - the kid could beat any girl they paired him with.
Back in the dark ages when I went to high school, the only coed sports were Cross Country and Track & Field. Only two girls ever went out for either sport back then. As the sports became more popular, girls teams were created and the number of female medal winners increased dramatically. Sometimes physics doesn’t surrender gracefully to the notion that gender is a social construct.
In other news people in South Dakota will be provided with free knuckle guards as they tend to get injured when dragging.
Good old SD, always 50yrs behind social norms…Maybe they should look to CO, which has female wrestlers competing with men at the high school tournaments:
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/02/23/two-colorado-wrestlers-made-state-tournament-history/
OT, but isn’t it time to combine the two Dakotas, so we only have to deal with 2 of their senators and one rep?
Gender identity does, in fact, change physical characteristics if the person transitioning is taking hormones or hormone blockers.
Exactly. That’s what transitioning is. That’s what happened with the wrestler.
This is a no win argument for Democrats. Either people who support women’s sports will be concerned at the likelihood that ultimately non-trans women won’t be able to compete or trans supporters will be upset that they are being discriminated against. Either way the argument hurts democrats.
Republicans push these arguments to make Democrats seem extremist and out of touch, or alternatively, to drive a wedge in the Democratic coalition. Democrats need to stop taking the bait.
Because Usain Bolt is always going to be faster than Flo-Jo (even though she was on steroids).
We could move away from gendered sports teams. They could organize sports based on ability with different divisions and it might shake out that one division is mostly male and another is mostly female, but it would allow for cross-over and put this sort of nonsense to bed.
When divisions of the armed forces were complaining about letting women serve in all roles, I remember hearing that groups like the Seals were particularly concerned because they were worried that they would have to “lower standards” in order to permit women to join the special forces. I think that turned out to be much ado about nothing as the women who made the cut were just as capable as the men. Not every woman is going to be Usain Bolt, but there are some who could compete at that level with the right training and drive.
South Dakota’s legislature is considering a new House bill that would force transgender students to play for sports teams according to the sex listed on their birth certificate, according to a Monday CNN report.
You don’t have a penis now, but by-God you did when you were born. That makes you our teams starting linebacker! And you’re gonna like it!
Just means that every female to male transitioner who plays sports will have to play as a girl which means they’ll beat the shit out of the girls.
It’s not fair to anyone.
Cool. Let’s litigate science.
Sue the state, the hospital, the doctor, the staff, the county record keepers, the mayor… the more the merrier.
Sue them all for getting your birth record wrong, causing you a lifetime of pain, suffering, unlawful discrimination, lost opportunity…
Remember to smile smugly when you do.
Forty-two years ago, in 1977, Renee Richards (formerly Dr. Richard Raskin) competed in the women’s side of the U.S. Open Tennis championships. She was beaten in the first round by Virginia Wade.
Her entry into the competition was fraught with controversy with most of the same comments you hear now. She was 6’2" and scored a lot of points with serving aces that just weren’t being hit by women players in those days. As a side note, it was Roy Cohn who brought her case to the Tennis Federation and won the right for her to play as a woman.
She never rose higher than number 20 in the world tennis rankings for women, and her latter career was as a coach to Martina Navratilova through her many record setting championships.
Using trans people as a wedge issue is just the latest iteration of the same evil purpose and intent that the Republicans have been using for decades - weaponizing ignorance and homophobic fear for political purposes is their stock in trade. Wonder what it will be 10 years from now?
Bullshit.
It’s an easy argument to make if you point to the results of being stupid about it. Notice the bathroom freakout is no longer a thing?
Yea.
If we decide that a “woman” is defined as “an adult who says she is a woman”, before long, persons born with two x chromosomes will find all professional (non-transphobic) athletic competition closed off to them.
I’m not any kind of conservative, but while fighting for trans rights in work opportunities makes sense, this type of thing is really self-defeating and silly in obvious ways.
I agree with that question.
However, that means that the entire concept of male and female teams can be made obsolete. If a woman has a style of play that compliments the team regardless, then the physical gender assumptions made in that regard become irrelevant across the board. The other side of that is what is required to actually achieve the intended result. Are the other abilities being ignored, both for men and women in favor of thin expectations of performance that the use of that performance? Football for example could be a radically different game.