Here's an odd thing. I got curious today about just how many trans girls (i.e., biological males transitioning to become girls) actually compete in girls' sports. The answer is that nobody knows, but a very rough extrapolation from a few state-level numbers suggests perhaps 200 in high school and 50-100 in college. These numbers are so tiny that it makes me think both sides probably ought to lower the volume on this.
But that's not what I'm writing about. As I was browsing around I ran into this:
Shazam! That's a lot, and certainly doesn't gibe with with my estimates above. And what's the UN's interest in this, anyway?
So I dug up the source, which turns out to be a recently published report called "Violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences," written by Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. The report is 24 pages long and it's mostly just what you think it is. But it also includes this:
The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males. According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.
Hmmm. What exactly does this mean? It doesn't say that 890 women have lost medals to trans competitors. It says that because of the "replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category" women have been "losing opportunities"—which is deliberately almost impossible to parse. I have no idea what it means. So let's look at the source:
The Women's Liberation Front is a group dedicated to keeping trans girls out of sports. Ditto for the ICFS and Dianne Post. And Lavender Patch turns out to be Lavendar Patch, which is yet another anti-trans group.
But where do the numbers come from? It turns out there's an invisible link in the footnote that takes you to SheWon.org, which maintains a running total of medals ("or records, scholarships or other opportunities") supposedly lost since 2001. The list is apparently self-submitted and includes competitions of every conceivable variety at every level around the world. In addition to the usual cycling and track meets, it includes things like poker, disc golf (lots and lots of disc golf), Irish dancing, darts, and so forth. Even developmental events. It's up to 1,055 as I write this, but counting only US high school events it comes to 13 during all of 2023. Some of the entries have a citation—usually a confusing one—and some don't. It's a dog's breakfast.
As it happens, the UN rapporteur, Reem Alsalem, is herself opposed to trans girls and women competing in girls' and women's sports. So what we have is a trans athlete opponent writing a murky sentence based on a submission from anti-trans activists that's not really from them at all but is just the latest number from a website of unknown provenance that's been around for years.
I'm not myself in favor of trans girls participating in girls' sports, but this is nonetheless ridiculous. The cite of 890 "medals" is a number pulled out of someone's ass and then deliberately distorted by both the UN rapporteur and every right-wing group that then reported it as a "UN estimate." It means nothing.
Well of course its a dogs breakfast ... as are all trans datasets. This is of course the obfuscation goal of "transwomen are women" - NOBODY is supposed to speak ill of the Emporer's New Clothes.
And ... watch the phrasing. This isn't about keeping the icky trans people away, its about ensuring sex-based rights and fairness in competition. Your comment should read "Reem Alsalem, is protecting girls and women competing from unfair competition in girls' and women's sports."
So, the question is not how many medals have been won, but how many girls have been affected. Lia Thomas was a 6'4" bepenised individual changing with a dozen young women daily and then competing against dozens more.
If you have males in female sport, it's not female sport anymore. It's a mixed sex category.
Like poker?
Disc golf?
Irish dancing?
If you have a case, make it with a source that isn't ludicrous, and look for support for someone besides a kid lit hack.
6'4"???
Pretty sure she's at least 6'8"
I heard 7'3"
I'm unable to see the changing thing as a significant problem. The girls might see a penis; that won't hurt them.
Bepenised? I didn't know you were a girl's panty inspector, food4. Since you're clearly not a doctor.
I kind of appreciate your rhetoric.
The first paragraph broadly states that all trans people are cynical and deceitful, hence lying or cheating against them is fair play as the idealized title in the second paragraph wants.
It looks like textbook demonization.
No, she isn't, because she is explicitly seeking to exclude girls and women FROM those sports.
That's disputable. I'm generally pretty liberal, except when it comes to language; I hate distortions of language to serve social justice goals. For all of human history up to the last few decades, we have ascribed sex to people based on physique, not on psyche, and I see no reason to change that, especially when it comes to sports, which are very much a matter of bodies, not minds.
In the world outside sports, I can see the physique (generally somewhat blurred by clothing) of the people I'm dealing with. If I encounter a person who is over six feet tall, has obvious facial hair, a bass voice and broad shoulders, I am going to infer that person is male. I can't see inside their heads, and so have no idea what their sexual self-image is. Because of the visibility issue if for no other reason, people should be ascribed the sex that fits their physique, not their psyche. It's only because people are being given the sex they want to have rather than the one they do have that it's possible to say that a person with a penis is a woman and should be permitted to participate in women's sports.
"For all of human history up to the last few decades we have ascribed sex to people based on physique"
It would be nice if people approached things with a little humility. Essentially nobody is equipped to opine on how all the tens of billions of people in "all of human history" going back a 100,000+ years have done things; in all likelihood, very few of us are equipped to informedly opine on even contemporaneous cultures that aren't immediately adjacent to our own. Arguing that your position has the weight of countless millenia and all the long-dead humans across that vast expanse of time isn't a claim you can make.
Anyway, your mechanism for initially (definitively?) identifying sex based on appearance could, quite plausibly, be a very, very recent phenomenon. For most of human history, humans lived in small groups, and thus rarely encountered strangers. The issue with how you "can't see inside their heads, and so have no idea what their sexual self-image is" might have mattered very little when nearly everybody you know is somebody that you've hunted/gathered/made cave paintings/etc. with for most of your life.
For all of human history up to the last few decades, we have ascribed sex to people based on physique, not on psyche
You don't know much about human history. There are many societies, including India, Iran, Polynesia and others, that have explicitly had roles for the transgender. What you mean is that European/Christian societies have always ascribed gender (which is the relevant thing, rather than sex) to physique rather than psyche.
and I see no reason to change that, especially when it comes to sports, which are very much a matter of bodies, not minds.
You also don't know much about sports, which are very definitely a matter of mind as well as body.
I can't see inside their heads, and so have no idea what their sexual self-image is.
This is your problem, not the transgendered.
It's only because people are being given the sex they want to have rather than the one they do have that it's possible to say that a person with a penis is a woman and should be permitted to participate in women's sports.
And, for the trifecta, you don't understand sexuality at all. Your sex isn't determined solely by external genitalia. It is a combination of genes, chromosomes (which are not the same thing as genes), hormones, cellular chemistry, and visible physical traits.
'Transgender' not 'transgendered' - it's not something done to us, it's just a facet. Like tall, short, black or white.
Funny, GrumpyPDXDad describes me to a tee. Anyways, this grumpy dad actually had one son in varsity x-country/track, and he runs in college now, a freshman; another son, who is a freshman in high school now, is JV x-country /track. A lot of things need to happen for a boy to displace a girl in a competition. Many, many things have to converge; therefore, it probably very rarely happens.
There are plenty of boys in JV, who will never run fast enough to compete against either the boys or the girls. It's heart warming to watch them struggle across the finish line in 25, 28, 30+ minutes. We are talking about most of JV runners here. They are just not competitive in any gender. So, now the field is significantly narrowed. Let's say there may be a thousand or so competitive boys. Given that transgender rates among kids are estimate at 1.6%, we are talking about a couple dozen boys or so. They would've had to transition after they hit puberty, which is pretty damn unusual, so far as I can tell.
My twins have a few transgender friends. Most of them started transitioning well before puberty. In short, transgender athletes competing and outperforming biological women is extremely rare.
Ahh, yes, the bigotry goes straight to blame the victim.
All trans women know any achievement they have will have an asterisk. But of course bigots have to pretend that means they're 'mixing'.
There is no 'sex-based right' to inspect another woman's genitals.
OK. So you agree that 890 medals *would* have been cause for concern? Then what's the cutoff between an OK number and a not OK number?
It really is far simpler to just keep sports segregated by sex as an absolute rule. Maybe this source is garbage, maybe it isn't, but the problem remains despite this particular source's state of garbageness or non-garbageness. Male people competing against female people is unfair.
Well no it isn't - not in all sports at all levels. And if I read what you are saying literally - then mixed doubles in tennis should not be allowed. But I'm pretty sure women's gymnasts would not be concerned about men competing in women's gymnastics. And why should rules, that might make sense at elite level, be (expensively) enforced at hit and giggle level?
There is a youtube video of Shawn Johnson East watching men doing women's gymnastics and she is more than a little impressed.
The source is covering self-submitted events over a 23 year period and includes things like poker and croquet. Is there really a solid argument that women are so inferior to men that they can't reasonably compete in croquet, or billiards, or Jeopardy (which is one of the listed competitions)? There is also the matter of impact here. Even in this garbage data set, most of the "would have won" lists third or second place finishes. So, even if we took the data at face value, almost all of these cases involve competitors who weren't the top in their competition even among their own sex.
Of course there's a threshold because the potential regulations are invasive. If you make every sport sex segregated, then down to what level? What sports? Does croquet really need to be sex segregated, or billiards? Are women just inherently uncompetitive at Jeopardy? Beyond that, how do you enforce it. Does everyone competing in a girl's sport have to provide their birth certificate at each competition? What about girls who don't have a copy or can't easily get one? Or girls who were born somewhere other than a hospital (birth certificates for home birth are subject to scrutiny from a citizenship perspective on the right)? If some one loses a match and just accuses their opponent of being a man then what? Do we really want to subject teen girls to the prospect of genital inspection (as has been proposed in some GOP controlled states) over something with a practical impact that is almost non-existent? If so, is it really worth putting all this expense into girls' sports when even the women who champion girls' sports admit that, competitively, they're inferior in every way to men's competition? And, if women are so physically inferior, then maybe the right is correct in trying to bar women from combat or roles in the police, firefighters, etc., where physical ability is very important.
That's the thing with the anti-trans TERF stuff. It ends up creating lots of alliances with the right wing because it fits into their framing of sex essentialism and once you start going down that road it can be tough to find a spot where sex essentialism doesn't bleed into patriarchal structures of control. There's a reason the left solidarity community uses the slogan "no one is free until we all are free." People who want to control everyone will leverage any social cleavage they can, which is why discriminating against marginalized communities inevitably leads to discrimination against other marginalized communities.
Women not being able to outrun or outpunch men does NOT mean they are "inferior to men." Holy crap.
Women have bodies that make new humans, this is amazing. They do not have bodies designed for fisticuffs. Men do. Everything that testosterone does to the human male body helps prepare him for fisticuffs - the skull is armoured at the brow and jaw, the whole body is built to create a powerful punch.
We live in a world where hopefully men's ability at punching doesn't matter much, but a hundred thousand years ago it mattered quite a bit.
If males are allowed into female sport, the women will leave. It's too frustrating. 15 yr old boys can break most female world records.
Hey, food4, you did the straw man argument to skipping the argument:
Boxing and running are not billiards or poker. Why should women be inferior to men in these sports?
I was #3 in my high school class for knowledge bowl and standardized testing. Did I prevent a girl from being on the team?
No. #1 in our school was a cisgender girl.
You keep saying 'males' but that only proves you aren't a dr.
"certainly doesn't gibe with with my estimates"
As an awful human being, I feel compelled to say that you mean "jibe" here.
Points are owed to you for avoiding "doesn't jive," though.
I like jivng, though. Jazz is lovely.
Rowling is by now the canonical example of "people who are competent in one thing are very often utter dumpster fires outside their areas of expertise."
It's a bit like Nate Silver when he's switching out polling analysis (which he's good at) in favor of pure punditry (where he often descends into pure crankdom).
She's not actually competent. None of her novels aside from Harry Potter have sold on their merits - her novels written under a masculine pen name (which oddly shares the same name of a guy who promoted conversion therapy) didn't sell.
And Harry Potter is basically a Worst Witch fanfic with the protagonist turned male.
I started the first book, quite a few years back, and couldn’t get beyond page 50.
It's pretty plain what "replaced female category with mixed sex category" means.
It means coed. As in your gender/sex doesn't matter. Anybody competes against anybody. Why is this confusing?
Exactly. When I was running cross-country in high school, there were girls running in the same event. Coed. This was in East Tennessee in the early 1970s. After that, I ran in a bunch of 10Ks and other long-distance events in Tennessee and North Carolina where girls and women competed. If you wanted to break out "winners" by sex, you could, of course.
There are coed bowling leagues and coed golf foursomes.
The TN Girls HS AAA State Cross Country Champion would have placed 99th in a co-ed event.
Gretchen Walsh owns the NCAA record in 50 Free SCY at 20.37. No HS boy is getting recruited with that time. I don't think she has ever split sub-20 even with a relay start. I have personally watched a HS boy split 19.95 in Butterfly.
The NCAA women's swimming records are slower than the last HS state meet boy's winners times. Not record times, just this year's winning times.
Yes, co-ed leagues exist. They are not competitive leagues.
It isn't just what people think of as physical sports:
World's #1 Woman Chess Player, Hou Yifan classical ELO 2633. Her overall rank is #111. In Women's Rapid she is #1, ELO 2539, overall rank #303. In Women's Blitz she is #1, ELO 2522, overall rank #324.
I'm a former competitive swimmer, and a damn good one at that. I could've competed in D1 in college, if my school had had a team. You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Yes, female swimmers are generally slower than male swimmers of the same competition class (e.g., Olympians vs. Olympians).
However, if a high school boy swam a 20-second 50 YARD freestyle (they swim yards in high school and sometimes in college, then generally meters in college and beyond - this makes a big difference in the time, which you'd know if you knew anything about it), he'd be being recruited at the highest levels. If he swam a 20-second 50 METER freestyle, even more so. Watching the Olympics this year, the top female competitors there were absolutely faster than perhaps 90% or more of college men and 99% of all high school boys, if not 100%. I just hesitate to say 100% because, unlike bigots like yourself, I keep my mind open to possibilities.
As for the rest, it depends on the sport: coed competitions can absolutely be competitive.
Also, get the fuck out of here with the "woman aren't as smart as men" bigotry you suggest with "it isn't just physical sports."
How disgusting. I need to go take a shower after reading your shit.
If you are a former competitive swimmer you are a moron. SCY is Short Course Yards. All NCAA championships are in SCY even in Olympic Years. Incidentally, all of Chas Morton's SCY records are gone. (And if you have to look up Chas Morton, then you know NOTHING about swimming.) Swimflation is real.
Women cannot compete against Junior boys. At just 2023 WJN-East there were 20 boys who went faster than Gretchen Walsh has ever gone in 50 Free. The WJN cut is 20.59. The 18&U boys cut 50 Free cut SCY for Summer Championships was 20.39 this year. The DIV II A standard (not I) was 19.48 this year. The 2025 DIV I A standard is 18.72 and the B is 19.69.
There were 12 junior boys at Summers that went faster in 50 Free LCM than any woman has ever gone.
15 in 100 Free LCM
And that isn't counting anyone who went to Pan Pac Juniors, where another 22 boys went faster in 100 Free than any woman has ever gone. And we are not even talking about boys like Maximus who did the trials and skipped the rest of the summer.
Congratulations, you can read acronyms and move goalposts!
Now go read about how bigotry is bad. Or FOAD, I don't care. Maybe by having one of those goalposts you're moving fall on you.
And the point is . . . the vast majority of athletes aren’t going to win, know they aren’t going to win, and compete for the joy of competing and the rewards of teams and sportsmanship.
The purpose of excluding them is to fuel the latest Republican Two Minutes Hate.
Reading all this crap is like reading comments that gay marriage could plausibly give rise to dog on man.
Do better.
I was going to comment on this, but really, it is deeply in the category of so frikkin what. I mean, first, 890 out of how many (I know, the stat itself is iffy, but when you do not even compare i to totals it becomes more of a joke). And second, could we (as a country) talk about larger issues like, oh, the Child tax credit or who Trump is trying to appoint to cabinet positions or climate change please?
And even better, it's about a thousand WORLD-WIDE over 25 YEARS! Do the math: 40 instances a year across a world of eight billion people.
Exactly. Statistically speaking, this "issue" does not exist (indeed, statistically speaking, the world of competitive sports is so rarefied that for nearly every normal person individual athletes do not "exist" in any real sense different from how, say, fictional characters in a tv series "exist"--we're talking about people who get watched for entertainment).
And that's even before we confront the reality that medals in sports competitions are inherently/fundamentally meaningless. Even at the very, very highest levels of athletic competition in which money is at stake, the money is a second-order thing: there are almost no situations in which significant amounts of money are awarded directly because of receipt of this or that medal. Sure, somebody who wins a gold medal at the Olympics probably has more endorsement prospects than somebody who wins silver, but the difference between coming in 3rd or 4th at the Topeka regionals fall 100meter highschool whathaveyou is absolutely nothing that anybody should give two thoughts to.
So if this is so unimportant why is it a hill that Democrats are willing to send their presidential dreams to die on?
Speaking as a Republican I am eager to see Democrats continue to treat this as a religious issue, continue to oppose the majority of Americans, and continue to lose elections because of this.
Go for it!
Giving a sh!t about humanity can indeed be a liability in the political realm, as D's have learned, and relearned, and re-relearned over the years.
R's just don't have that problem.
I am not the one saying that this is a Big and Serious Issue that presidencies should be decided on. If you are suggesting that Dem presidential candidates should not campaign on this issue, then, yeah, I'd agree with you.
But I will note that this, along with equally ridiculous fears about immigrants raiding doghouses for dinner, is something that folks on the right are constantly getting all hot and bothered about: trans people using bathrooms, and trans people playing sports (and then emphaticaly ranting about how this or that person, despite what that person says, is either too much or too little this or that gender to be allowed to do XYZ).
Besides adhering to the general point that this is America, and people ought to be able to do whatever the fuck they want and identify however the fuck they want, and being willing to defend people who exercise such rights, it ain't any of my business, and it ain't any of yours.
Because you, MF, not only supported the pardoning of an admitted murderer who planned and carried out his murder against a pedestrian in a crosswalk who complained about being threatened with a car...
...you're lying about Democrats. None took the position that sports should not choose for themselves how trans athletes qualify.
There are more than 180,000 student athletes at the collegiate level receiving over $3.6 Billion annually in scholarships.
A few thoughts in response:
1) there are much, much better ways to spend scholarship money, such as on scholarships based on academic merit or financial need.
2) Even if evenly disributed, that $3.6 billion among 180,000 students is just $2k apiece. And it's not evenly distributed (either by student or by gender).
3) There are nearly 19 million college students in the US. Meaning that fewer than 1% have any academic scholarship at all. Given how spectacularly unlikely it is for somebody to credibly have secured an athletic scholarship but for a trans person beating them in some competition, we're talking about an invisibly small fraction of 1% of students: a statistical nothing.
Bottom line: if anybody is concerned that trans athletes are going to appreciably cost them an athletic scholarship, they should really, really invest that effort on their math homework instead.
...and almost all of those 'scholarships' are cheaper than medically transitioning.
What kind of argument is this supposed to be?
In response to item 2) $3,600,000,000 / 180,000 = $20,000. I am not going to mention math homework if you don't.
In response to item 3) There are about 1.8 million academic scholarships given annually. That is about 11% of students, not 1%. What this has to do with athletic money I am not sure. You keep jumping between athletics and academics.
You skipped past the cost of medical transition to compete, dear.
Thank you. Far more youth pastors sexually abuse children than that.
Where is the right-wing outrage.
Also the right-wing outrage over teenage boob jobs. Gee, we never hear about that.
Americans (and the world) care more about trans participating in sports than the widespread use and hiding of anabolic steroids for the purposes of boosting one's testosterone levels and recovery times in the world of women's competitive sports.
Nailed it. Well done.
Well, really, the trans sexual issue seems small enough for the average American to at least grasp, or pretend to understand. All those other deals, like global warming, the whole middle east mess, etc, are things an individual can hardly wrap their head around, assuming they also have "lives", jobs, families, etc.
But having a boy who declares he's now a girl bumping your kid from her place on the basketball team? Or imagining this happening? That's easier.
No excuse, just a potential rationale. We will be scaling back, if not totally eliminating "female" rights over the next several years anyway, because that's what Americans have voted for, both nationally and state wide.
I know you're not implying it, but...
There is no right to inspect a girl's genitals.
And no one, literally no one, said a boy could 'transition' just for sports, That's a nonsensical straw man. All of these trans kids have spent thousands on counseling and care. Leave them be.
Your assertion that "There is no right to inspect a girl's genitals" is question-begging, when the question is "is that person physically female?"
Also, there are lots of people with at least a limited right to inspect a girl's genitals. Doctors. Police. Prison guards. Parents of small children. Etc.
So far almost all the girls and women forced into genital inspections were not male.
No one has the right to inspect another girl's genitals.
The mendacity and, dare I say it, hysteria, of the anti-trans movement in Britain is the subject of Shaun's video podcast, JK Rowling's New Friends," which is worth a listen: https://youtu.be/Ou_xvXJJk7k?si=UReAaAnTPUGSynh4
It's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion on this topic because the atmosphere is so poisoned by ranting on both sides, but particularly by the TERF and anti-trans crowd, which is often deliberately trying to gin up people's fears.
I am in favor of treating everyone humanely and honestly, including trans athletes. When trans athletes are not accommodated, particularly in school competitions, the unfairness of the missing accommodations often stems from anti-trans bias. I gave up on the idea of school sports in the US being a good thing long ago; the NCAA and the similar organizations that operate at the state level for high school sports are deeply corrupt and dishonest. And how can corrupt organizations enforce fairness?
Most problems stem from how sports organizations class the athletes. You could class competitions by measures that relate to performance, couldn't you, rather than by using biological sex? But this hardly ever happens.
The main thing to remember, as keeps being pointed out here, is that the affected groups are so tiny. That means that sports officials can make accommodations. But the anti-trans crowd is generally not interested in fairness or accommodating student athletes. They are mostly interested fighting a culture war.
Too true. Actually, that's been the case with far too many topics here in the U.S. of A. in recent decades. People are just screaming cliches in the general direction of one another, and ultimately, avoiding contact with one another on that basis, making things worse.
Too true! Both sides! The side that wants to live their oives and the other side forcing girls into genital inspections!
Both sides, huh?
Yes
Precisely
But Rowling is a turd, and shows it regularly
What I continue to find more troubling is the mendacity and hysteria of people like Drum and Chait dog piling on the discussion.
This whole debate is blinkered and goes to show how deceptive conservative media is.
A thousand kids and perhaps $10,000 of damage per instance if you really really stretch the worst case? This whole issue at a national level doesn’t rise to the scale of a petty local dispute about a school bond.
In the meantime we should be worrying about things like preventing nuclear apocalypse (if you could even put a price on that, it would be something like $100 quadrillion), climate change ($100s of trillions), health care (we waste a trillion a year), etc.
If your media has you squabbling over a penny, you’ve been played, hard.
Problem is: dog-tail issues like this get people worked up and cause us to lose elections over trivia. It's not the only reason we lost this time, but it certainly contributed and will contribute to close elections in the future, to our detriment.
When I'm feeling uncharitable (as I have been lately), my reaction to all of this is - if you want to change your sex, go right ahead and by all means have all your civil rights protected. But why in God's name do you feel you get to participate in women's sports? Just leave it be, fer chissake!!!.
I didn't get to participate in either women's or men's sports for the simple reason that I wasn't any good at sports! I suspect that puts me in with about two-thirds of the population. Why should I care whether a handful of people get to compete in sports in the category they want? It's not a God-give right. Most of us never get there. And it's certainly not worth losing important elections over.
What, you deny the Gawd-given right of every boy to be on the varsity team??
I'm with you on this sports obsession. I was on a number of teams in high school: debate, math, and also played in the orchestra. None of them was sexualized.
The rationale for women's divisions in competitive athletic sports is that females on average are smaller, less strong, and have less endurance than males on average. Females would thus simply not be competitive with males in most athletic sports. Whether trans women meet the criteria that established women's divisions is very much an unresolved question. I've read plenty of arguments on both sides but in the end I just say - why is this an issue?
Why push the envelope? If I were a trans woman, I really don't think I would want to call attention to myself by trying to compete in women's sports divisions. We can't all be sports stars. There's plenty of other things you can get into that are not divided by gender, like the ones you mentioned.
I am not trans, but I think I understand the motivation. You are seeking affirmation that others accept your gender. If you are a trans girl and you are allowed to play on the girls volleyball team, regardless of how good you are, you feel great. If you are forbidden, you feel terrible.
We all feel terrible when we don't make the team. But we deal with it and move on to other things.
Anyway, the real question is whether males who have transitioned to females really meet the criteria under which women's sport divisions have been established - smaller size, less strength, less endurance than males on average. The science seems to be by no means settled on this.
You said 'males' and then forgot that the large number of these 'medals' were in non-athletic or accuracy based competitions.
Trans girls are girls, not 'males'. Trans boys are boys, not 'females'.
Don't be dehumanizing.
Kids are kids and haven't yet gone through puberty. Why block those kids from competing with their peers?
How shocking that women want to play women's sports.
Because there is absolutely no consensus that a trans woman is a woman in the same way that has defined how women's sports leagues are organized. It's a big biological can of worms and you will hear very different opinions from a variety of experts and non-experts. It doesn't break down neatly on liberal/conservative lines either.
I say give it a rest. We don't all get to participate in the sports we would like. So what? Find other things to do.
Of course not, if you want to give bigots the same weight as the majority of doctors, psychologists, and women.
It's not. It's shocking that liberals want boys who dress up like girls to be allowed to play girls sports.
It's shocking the guy who supports murderers getting set free after admitting to planning and carrying out a murder of a pedestrian who dared complain about being hit with a car...
..you also support policies which result in dead women,
So of course you also lie about trans kids.
Sports are segregated based on physiques, not psyches. If a person with a male body wants to participate in a segregated sport, they should participate in it as a male, regardless of what sex their mind says they are.
That being said, I agree with other commentators that this issue affects so few people that legislators should not be wasting time on it.
Gross, man, gross.
Trans kids are not male or female. They're kids.
Because trans kids are kids and want to do things their peers do.
Also, sports are healthy.
But as noted elsewhere - all trans people know their accomplishments will have an asterisk. Why stop them?
Bigots are liars, and always have been.
I've categorized their lies into four basic lines of defense:
1. "We're bigots and those people are inferior!"
2. "Oh, uh, we're not bigots, it's just that science says they are inferior!"
3. OK, so the science doesn't say that, but, um, look how badly they are behaving- We must suppress them!"
4. OK, so the science doesn't say that and they aren't behaving badly, but...Behold the popularity of bigotry- None may stand against it!"
+1
+2
That the numbers are tiny is what I've been saying all along, as a trans advocate. And yet you say I should lower the volume?
WTF is going on?
AND, I am vexed by people's interest in turning trans people and their loved ones into the scapegoats for this election.
We did not seek this attention. We were fine with political neglect. The right turned us into the latest punching bag, both with trans people in sports, which I don't care much about as an issue, see above. And with gender affirming care. Which I do care about, a lot.
So right wingers spent millions of dollars demeaning trans people and so many of you just jumped on that bandwagon. Meanwhile, my (trans) daughter has been very depressed and low-functioning for the last couple of months because of all the people that she thought of as allies turning against her and people like her. So yeah, I'm salty.
All the framing is that "trans people are up to something" that they are trying to fool people and get away with things. This is what I'm pushing back on. I'm not going to stop, either.
+1
I've given up on Kevin and especially on his chat at this point. I have dear friends who are suddenly and quickly moving states or even leaving the country as a direct result of the election. Meanwhile liberals are telling themselves that they lost because of us. The next 4+ years are going to be disasterous for trans people, but cis people don't care.
I don't blame trans people any more than I blame Haitian Immigrants for the election loss. I do blame Republicans for scapegoating them and making them targets. It's evil. It's vile. It hurts people who are already hurting, who are trying to do the best for themselves in a world that would prefer to ignore that they exist.
Republicans focused grouped this poison and found how effective it was to turn people away from liberalism. Tens of millions of dollars were spent on ads exploiting the controversy. It definitely had an effect on the election, though I'd argue it wasn't determinative.
Objectively, trans people in sports was a very minor issue for everyone but the small population affected, whatever side one took -- and Kevin is all about being objective to a fault. 13 people (or 860, for that matter) are a drop in the ocean of over 300 million. To him, what's an important -- even existential -- issue for those few seems disproportionate to throwing democracy away for all the rest.
Blaming trans kids for the loss of democracy seems like blaming Jews for Hitler.
Which liberals, though?
Are they liberals?
Name and shame.
+1
+3
The number of sins we are willing to ignore in the name of Sports is astounding. We've had years of reports of CTE in football and other sports, but we're perfectly fine with hundreds (thousands) of people dieing early or becoming incapacitated. Youth sports teams have had report after report about sexual abuse, and we just shrug those off. Women's sports especially have had all sorts of tales of abusive coaches and the encouragement of eating disorders. So sad she died at 27, but she ran so fast until then! Even during the pandemic, it was the lack of school sports that made people the maddest about school closures, even though many of the sports people demanded were much higher risk than English or Math class.
Now people voted for fascism because of sports.
If we ban any coed participation, we will actually greatly reduce the opportunities for girls in sports. Lots of girls play on boys teams, simply because there are no girls teams available or because the school is so small, only a coed team can get enough kids on it. Banning that seems counterproductive, if the goal is female participation.
As a final note I will say that it is fascinating that we don't talk about trans men athletes at all. No one seems to care if they can or can't participate in any sport, nor does anyone care if they have a chance of winning if they do compete. If sports are so important for youth development and health, why leave out all of them?
+1
Yes, I too have wondered about the lack of mention of girls becoming boys to play in men's sports. Maybe because they're not competitive? If there was anything like competition, particularly a hint of "unfairness", the men would be howling in the streets.
My apologies for the sexism.
An addendum: there are lots of activities that don't need to be sexed. Games like poker (how is that a "sport"??) Target shooting. Croquet. Et cetera.
Trans men cannot compete in sports in any but the very lowest levels, because trans men all take artificial testosterone, and that means they are banned by almost every athletic sanctioning body.
Oh, the bigots are going on that they should be banned because they sometimes take testosterone.
I do think there needs to be a "mixed" category in HS and collegiate sports where both men, women, trans can compete against each other. But I also find it hilarious that Riley Gains was the media darling for no trans women in biological women sports but couldn't even beat other biological women and instead scapegoated Lia Thomas.
If teams were "mixed" that would be the end of women's sports.
I couldn't care less about trans sports but apparently a LOT of voters people made decisions on who to vote for based on it. I was proposing a men's, women and mixed categories of sports. Trans athletes would compete in the mixed category. I know trans folks will believe that this is abandonment from us liberals and progressives but competition in school sports isn't a hill to die on
Got it. I misunderstood and thought you meant only a mixed category. Thanks for the clarification.
Naw, we'd be fine with that, gibba-mang. We all know there's an asterisk next to our accomplishments. But the bigots want us banned from the mixed sports, too.
That very much depends on the level they're playing at. Small town high schools will often have a couple of girls who could earn places on the boys' basketball team, or baseball team, or who can run faster than the boys. At higher levels where all the team members are more-or-less elite athletes, you're right.
...Atticus, the guy supporting killing women and trans people for his forced birth fetish.
Absolutely wild to think about the fact that, in a country where the FCC chair nominee is threatening to yank media licenses and the president elected is threatening to use the military to round up immigrants, millions of people in the world's richest country, including reactionary centrists like Drum, have become obsessed with a tiny handful of trans girls competing in high school sports.
+1
I don't have a horse in this race, even on behalf of my grandkids, but why can't we have "divisions" in public sports based on height, weight, age, and years of participation, regardless of biosex spectrum or gender expression?
Yes, we could. But old concepts die hard.
If you do that virtually every medalist will be a biological male.
For example, in running, men will beat women in every event even if you create divisions based on height, weight, age, aNDe experience.
BTW, how many divisions do you want?
Noted, you're lying, MF.
Also... why do we have sexed categories of poker, chess, and trivia?
According to a recent NYT story, an approximate two-thirds of Americans recently polled on the topic believe that participation in sports should be sorted according to a participant's sex at birth.
I imagine that interpretations will vary on why people feel that way. And, unfortunately, I really do believe it’s fair to say that a typical trans rights advocate (and far too many ordinary Dems who play along) would assert that people only feel that way because they’re transphobic, bigoted, or reactionary (thereby insulting and alienating the vast majority of future voters).
I would assert that other interpretations are possible. Like Kevin, I am not in favor of biological males (trans women) competing in women’s sports. To me, it seems a fairly straightforward question of fairness. The biological males have an advantage.
And if anyone feels compelled to respond that there are no biological males in women’s sports because trans women are women, all I can say is that such ideological fundamentalism accomplishes nothing other than to undermine itself.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to admit that no one knows where this debate will end up. But: it does need to be a debate. That’s the one point that really is beyond dispute.
The dogmatic zealots who treat any attempt to even discuss the issue as tantamount to genocide may very well simply need to be isolated, because they’re doing more harm than good. And I hope it doesn’t take the Dem party until after Vance’s second term to finally accept that fact.
The fact that questions of gender are plonkingly obvious for 99% of the population does not mean we should ignore the issues raised by that last 1%. In generations past society simply ignored or repressed that 1%, but today we (or at least some of us) are finally starting to pay attention to those people who don't fit the usual definitions.
If saying that makes me a dogmatic zealot, then so be it. And it's nice to see you threatening to isolate people like me. Bless your vile heart.
@Five Parrots in a shoe:
As best I can tell, your response appears to be a non sequitur.
That's because you are dishonest.
"The dogmatic zealots who treat any attempt to even discuss the issue as tantamount to genocide may very well simply need to be isolated, because they’re doing more harm than good."
Please link to one of these zealots suggesting that discussing what constitutes "male" or "female" is the same as committing genocide.
@Narsham:
You ask: “Please link to one of these zealots suggesting that discussing what constitutes ‘male’ or ‘female’ is the same as committing genocide.”
Such comments have been common on social media for many years, typically directed at some of the most Liberal philanthropists on Earth (such as JK Rowling) because they happen to believe that biological sex is real.
But there are even institutions willing to attach their own name to this madness, such as the Lemkin Institute:
“The ideological constructions of transgender women promoted by gender critical ideologues are particularly genocidal. They share many features in common with other, better known, genocidal ideologies.”
Associating critics of trans rights extremism with advocates of genocide comes up pretty easily in an average Google search. There’s even a Wikipedia page on the topic.
But I guess that doesn’t matter unless you have at least some level of receptivity towards the actual reality that we live in.
Lemme get this straight... Leo the bigot, who comes to tell us repeatedly that different races are inferior...
...brings up the moved goal post that 'talking about it is genocidal' and then as proof, brings up discussion of gender critical beliefs...
Gender critical beliefs deny trans people access to public bathrooms, health care, schools, housing, jobs, and subject girls to panty inspections.
...That doesn't sound like 'talking about it' does it?
No, we don't say people who have no experience are bigoted.
We say bigots are bigoted. And people who, when faced with trans people in their midst decide that a birth certificate is more important than the person standing in front of you, that's a problem. And people who subject girls and women to panty inspections are bigoted.
We can totally talk about whether trans people have advantages or not. You know, when there's actually any evidence they do.
Well, the comment thread is still active, and I'm not interested in directly replying to certain posters who have, shall we say, a trollish bent to their comments.
I'll just say this: 26 states have laws on the books banning transathletes from competing. Number of states requiring high schools to allow a transwoman to compete in women's sports is ZERO. I am not aware of any prominent Democratic politician advocating that as a requirement. The trolls won't be able to name any because even if someone has advocated that, they're too lazy to look up the name, but maybe they'll surprise us all.
Interestingly, I'm unable to find any states which have passed laws prohibiting high school athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs. Presumably that hasn't happened because there are legitimate medical reasons that a high schooler might need to take testosterone or a steroid; possibly laws against illegal drug use already cover these cases and an Internet search isn't coming up with the specific case. But for some reason, these problems can be handled through athletic agency rules and not state laws.
Speaking of which, international athletic agencies instituted rules (in 2011) concerning "assigned female at birth" athletes with medical conditions like hyperandrogenism making female athletes unable to compete should their testosterone levels be too high. Strangely, zero states have passed laws which regulate this particular tiny subset of women from competing in high school sports. It's almost as if a tiny issue were being blown out of all proportion in a cheap attempt to win votes, which in the process makes any kind of reasonable discussion impossible.
+1
There are so few of us, and yet laws subjecting young women and girls to abuse and panty inspections have been passed to root us out.
"Interestingly, I'm unable to find any states which have passed laws prohibiting high school athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs."
Steroids are a schedule III substance. According the DOJ: It is illegal to use prescription drugs without a valid prescription or to distribute them. The penalties associated with the abuse or illegal distribution of prescription drugs vary depending upon the drug type.
In related news, Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to bar newly-elected Rep Sarah McBride from using the women's restrooms in the Capitol. Marjorie-Taylor Greene has suggested she might engage in a physical altercation to remove "someone" from said restrooms.
The goal of people like this is to deny any legitimate existence to trans people. There is no basis for their actions other than to completely eradicate trans people from any public life. What would you call that?