Why don’t you ask a transitioning kid if this is self-defeating and silly.
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If the kid was born male, runs track, and is transitioning to female, I’m sure they’ll do just fine.
Be serious.
You may want to go look up the issues of gender in professional sport. Where women, both identifying as such and with all the right parts (and not transitioned from anything) have faced bans from competition because their biological makeup wasn’t ‘female enough’.
This is part of a much bigger debate and problem.
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I agree with you. But the trans stuff is a clear line.
A girl transitioning to male, who runs track, is gonna have a massive uphill battle. It goes both ways.
Not at all. It’s right along the same lines. Gender is not binary, it’s a sliding scale. And people that are closer to the center of the scale are going to be more apt to have a mismatch between their personal identity and their genitals.
Let alone intersex people, born with both sets. And usually have the surgeons and parents pick one for them. So where would they compete?
So if we can ban women from competition because they have too much testosterone, why in other cases would we force that same woman to compete against women because she was born with that?
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Hear, hear! While we’re at it, how about combining Idaho, Montana and Wyoming?
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Yes! They might be able to match the population of Rhode Island at that point.
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I’m not advocating for some right to ban female athletes for having too much testosterone. And in a world where athletes are divided by self-defined gender, I agree that such athletes would be well off.
But the fact remains, if we divide sports on self-defined gender lines, people born with two x chromosomes, for the most part, are going to have a hard time competing in most sports. If you wish to sacrifice the many for the few, that’s your prerogative. But it’s an obviously bad issue for Democrats to run on.
Equality is never a bad issue. However, nobody said we’re running on this but you.
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Go check out Tena’s post at the top of the thread.
Wrestler, born female, transitioning to male, forced to compete with females due to what was on the birth certificate.
Horribly unfair for all involved, including the competition who had no chance against him/her.
It’s exactly the same thing. That same individual, had they not been transitioning, would have been subject to bans from competing against females in other sports due to too much testosterone…
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This is untrue in most cases with hormone therapy. You should actually look up the effect of endocrinology on the human body. Muscle mass, fat redistribution, etc.
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No, they do this because they are demonizing trans kids, it’s an easy target, and they are seeing whether they can cleave off, well, people like you from actually protecting them–in which case it will be very very bad for trans people in a variety of legal and humanizing senses.
And trans people are just the first step. They’ll keep going. We know the playbook so let’s stop the playbook in its tracks, okay?
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Yeah they are punishing these kids the same way they tried to do with the bathroom bills that seem to have all died. Certainly it’s been dropped in Texas finally because believe it or not, there was too much pushback and public opposition.
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Yes, a trans person athlete is always a cheat. That’s a winning stand for Democrats somehow.
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Kinda OT. The youngest daughter of my boss was the starting placekicker for my high school football team for 2 years. She was one of the best place kickers in the state, and would have had scholarship offers if she had testes. The rest of the team had a lot of respect for her abilities, and for her courage in playing the game. Still, as far as football goes, though, that was the only position she could play. There was a feature article in our paper about her being left out of the locker room pep talks before the game. Somehow, the school made some accommodations and and made it work. One big caveat, though, is that she was definitely not transitioning. She was born a girl, and was damned proud to be a girl. She got into football because her boyfriend was a wide receiver. She played soccer, and had a good kick. He encouraged her to try out. She did, and was better than any of the boys. This story is definitely the exception, though. It’s not really relevant to your larger point. In that sense, you’re right. .
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Well it’s an aspect of the same thing though - the notion that is all has be divided in a binary gender fashion and it doesn’t. There are other girls who want to play football with the boys - they are here, too. It is hard because they aren’t as big as the boys usually but they’re willing to take the punishment.
It’s a shame she’s slightly ahead of the wave because eventually I hope young women do get scholarships to play football with the boys. They need to dial back the violence in football anyway. It’s getting to the point where parents are questioning whether they want their boys to play because it’s dangerous.
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What about just removing the female/male distinction and allowing drugs used for transitioning to be used by anyone? That would be fair, right?
There is one Olympic sport where men and women compete together … Equestrian - all three separate sports have men and women competing as teams and individuals, and the women win their fair share.
Of course, riding a horse isn’t about the same kind of strength as wrestling or football, but you do have to be strong, and fit to do it at a high level.
I’ve heard that a lot of place kickers played soccer. It just happens to be a sport where you learn how to kick a ball with your foot, so it’s useful for the one place in “football” where someone actually does use their feet.
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The vast majority of thinking about sports is cultural.
Americans separate girls and boys in sports classes in schools. Europe doesn’t.
And 60% of girls the same age as boys in those schools compete on equal footage with boys. Often win. In my school it was mostly girls that won. The really good coach was a woman. And she was better with teaching girls. It happens.
It’s only at the very top of the athletletic world that you can see the difference between the genders. In mass competitions - not so much.
And it is for the protection of the top athletes that the trans people need to compete in their gender. Not the one they were born with. The one they ARE.
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