- cross-posted to:
- mtf
- cross-posted to:
- mtf
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I’m also concerned for their safety and wellbeing. That’s why you’re concerned, right Mrs. Harris?
…That’s why you’re concerned, right?
Concerned about, not for.
Fucking spineless weathervane. No wonder she lost. Focus group driven decision making.
Oh look it’s not just Newsom and that rep from Georgia anymore. The spineless democrats are testing the waters now to see how throwing trans people under the bus will go.
Ooo yeah let’s be concerned over the, what .002% of our population doing things they wanna do and being who they wanna be. Yeah that’s a big talking point when 80% of the rest of the country can’t afford rent.
Fuck. Just leave trans people alone already Jesus Christ…
Jesus fucking Christ, sports shouldn’t be a political issue at all. It’s literally a fucking game, the government and politicians shouldn’t be involved in this shit at all in the first place. We should care about as much about Kamala’s opinion on the WNBA as we do about her opinion on Minecraft. The leagues are privately-owned companies, let them run their fucking company how they want (which up to this point, has been trans-inclusive).
Agreed, but people are sooooo into sports and their teams. Sometimes I think we’ve turned politics into sports teams, making bipartisan politics harder to achieve.
Why do you think GW Bush’s daddy bought him a baseball team, and why do you think Trump was involved in WWE? The same rube-manipulation techniques that are used in sports are used in fascist politics.
only sometimes?
Generally yes. But the government also enforces civil rights, including against sex and gender discrimination, especially at public (i.e. government-funded) universities.
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Oh, so they are going to mandate weight and height classes across the board for all sports and stop separating sport by gender?
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It was more of a joke in how ridiculous it would be to implement such a system… the logistics would be crazy for team sports…
But like you said, it would be easier to just let them play…
If you want to be crazy you can add a new format for anyone, but men… and make the men’s category just open so that anyone can join…
My problem with the article is how much air Americans give to the topic of trans athletes in sports when Americans have more pressing problems. Healthcare, affordability of life, violence are real issues affecting Americans much more than sports games. I don’t think giving air to this conversation is helping Americans.
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“with goodwill and common sense, I believe we can…”
When the folks across the aisle you’re champing at the bit to reach demonstrate goodwill and common sense, maybe you might have a ghost of a chance. Until such time, you’re validating the position that trans women have no place in established sports.
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There’s no peer-reviewed, statistically sound evidence that trans people have unfair advantages in sports.
Not that sports should matter that much.
And behold the thing that I said was going to happen, has happened. More democrats engaging in transphobia to try to pry votes away from the fascist party by being fascist-lite.
Can we stop pretending the democrats can be reformed now? Their leadership has time and time again proven they do not give one fuck about progressive politics.
Neoliberal garbage. This is why she lost to literal fascists.
My first reaction especially given other things I’ve heard about this book was Wtf is wrong with this lady?
The full quote is not quite as bad as I assumed:
“I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports,” Harris reportedly wrote. “With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways to do this, without vilifying and demonizing children.”
Every time somebody brings up concerns over trans athletes I always think about these images of Katherine Switzer running the Boston Marathon:
I question why we have gender divisions in the first place, bc it’s definitely not that society was ever concerned about fairness. The reason gender divisions were created in the first place, is the same reason we originally had racial based divisions until one day we didn’t.
That guy wasn’t physically assaulting Switzer and trying to stop her from becoming the first woman to run the Boston Marathon bc he was concerned she may be at an unfair disadvantage. He was trying to stop her bc back when the marathon first started somebody made “No girls allowed!” one of the rules, and this guy was uncomfortable with change. It seems pretty obvious now, that was just a dumb and unnecessary rule to begin with.
If this is all really about fairness like people claim, then maybe we should consider just nixing gender divisions entirely and moving to something like weight class or skill level divisions for competitive sports.
There are plenty of sports where gender divisions basically dont exist until you hit the college level. Hockey is a prime example. There are all-girls select youth teams, but all teams that arent exclusively for girls are open to anyone that can hang. There are plenty of girls that play competitively with boys through highschool hockey. There are plenty of women who play with men at the adult level in beer leagues and the like. But at the juniors, college, pro, and olympic levels they are gender divided.
Realistically at the highest levels of play some division does make sense, as that is where the highest level of physicality is allowed, and generally that is the reason why it can be less safe for women to be playing alongside men. As well as the fact that few women would be playing college or pro hockey if there were not gender divisions.
That said however, I see no reason why the odd woman that can hang in upper levels hockey shouldnt be allowed to play, nor would they be barred from doing so if they could. Likewise I can see how forcing womens upper leagues of the sport to accept cis men who cant hang in the upper levels of mens hockey would push women out of the sport. So it makes sense that they have exclusivity there.
Its one of those issues where I have no issue with gender divisions at the highest levels, in the interest of allowing a professional level of womens sport to exist, but at the same time trying to apply that same logic to youth sports completely falls apart. All youth sports should be just be open gendered competitions. If you see open-gendered hockey at the 12-14 year old level the girls are often 1-2ft taller than any of the boys and physically the more dominant group, and yet no one says the boys’ safety is at risk over it.
Not to mention that lost in all of the trans fear-mongering is the fact that when people take hormones their bodies significantly change. If someone born male starts hormone therapy to transition, their feet will shrink, they will lose muscle mass, so on and so forth. So at the end of the day they truly have zero physical advantages over cis women they would compete with in sport. Women’s leagues in the upper levels of a sport make sense, but it also makes perfect sense to allow transwomen to play with them. People dont seem to understand that male physicality is the result of a continual supply of hormones making you look as you are, not solely the result of past hormonally influenced growth. If you cut off the hormones making you a big strong man, you will no longer be big nor strong
I think divisions at the highest level are understandable, but does it absolutely have to be gender based division?
For contact sports like hockey, it would be interesting to see if you really went with a strict division by something like weight class how much would gender really change competitiveness?
Even in gender based divisions for noncontact sports like basketball, individual skill level can be more important than mass. Mugsy Bogues was a pretty rare case, but he was 5’3" and holding his own with guys that were well over 6’ tall.
Maybe divisions with some combination of weight and skill level? Or some other factor? Idk I feel like we’ll never really know until somebody is willing to try.
Generally they are gendered based on physical purposes, but what youre saying makes some sense yeah. In hockey, its gendered both because men play a more physical game and because historically (at least until more recently) women havent had equal access to the sport at the youth level. So both physicality and skill are lacking among women at the pro level. If you forced a women’s league to be open to cismen then cismen would push out all of the women, as they have had more time to develop their skill. The end result would be that many women wouldnt be able to hang well enough to compete with men just as they cannot compete on a mens olympic or pro team. So having a womens exclusive league makes sense. But there also is no rational reason to bar transwomen from competing, since they are also women.
Basketball is the same, and is also a contact sport really. In womens ball, the three point line is shallower than it is in mens basketball because of physicality differences. Mens basketball is also often played more physical and less technical. Womens sports in general often lean on technical skill over physical dominance, which personally I find more interesting to watch. But yeah, there is no reason to bar women from competing with women at high levels of sport just because some of those women might have been born male
The best way for us to move towards having open classes of as much of all sports as is possible would be to make youth sports open-gendered competition, so that any given sport ultimately moves towards neutral rules and styles of play. No different three point lines, etc. And allow women to develop technical skills that can work around their opponents physical advantages the same way that small men are able to find ways to do it in pro mens sports. But that takes time to develop, we cant just drop the rules without that development and expect women not to get clobbered by men when they arent used to competing with men under mens rules and styles of play. Equal access to sport and development is crucial to creating the kind of world that youre talking about, and were pretty far from that
The NFL already allows women. But I don’t think there are any female players, due to physical differences and lack of developmental leagues, like you mentioned.
I think they’ve had female referees, though.
There was even a woman goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lightning organization in the 1990s! She tried out for the team and was in minor league hockey for five years.
She did play in two preseason NHL games, in 1991 (allowing two goals on nine shots) and 1993.
Why should I give a shit what a politician says about fucking sports, period?
This ends up being very effective as a wedge issue for Republicans, because they can make shit up about the other side, and run against the lies they tell themselves, because the truthful situation is complicated and the lie is simpler to understand.
Some sports are strictly separated by gender, and some are not. Generally speaking, it’s people who administer the leagues that make that decision. Everything from pro leagues down to rec leagues will have rules based on gender, and they are created by whoever administers the leagues to foster competition.
I don’t feel qualified to know which sports confer a distinct advantage to people who go through male puberty. It certainly isn’t all of them, but there must be some where it makes sense to exclude humans who have gone through male puberty from women’s leagues. But, I don’t feel most politicians are qualified to know that, either. People who know each sport best should make that decision, based on science and the knowledge of their sport, and politicians should just butt out. But you get better soundbites by lying about it and airing grievances about it than by being rational.
It’s only a wedge issue because of people like Harris. If she had a spine and decent values, she could have explained that actually trans athletes in sports are not a serious concern, because look at the data FFS.
And we all know, sports is the most important thing right now. Or ever.
Especially when no trans athletes are at the top of any sport they’re involved in.
It’s all about harassment of a small, vulnerable minority. It has nothing to do with fairness.
There is no goddamn problem! Fuck sake I should not have to choose fascist asshole or shifty semi fascist.
This shit again? I can’t believe we’re still talking about this like it’s an issue that matters AT ALL.
