So we've locked the comments after getting some emailed complaints — Ken in MIA and David Abbott specifically, take it down a notch. Not going to do any bans today but we won't be able to have comment threads on LGBTQ issues in the future if people aren't able to participate respectfully. I understand that people feel passionately about this, but please keep things civil.
Here's the thing: there totally >is< a conceptual reason for segregating sports leagues on the basis of sex. Men are ridiculously stronger than women, to say nothing of other physical attributes. We will never reach a consensus that there should be gender mixed leagues, because it's plainly daft. Normal people find all this stuff totally cuckoo. Democrats have handed the Republicans an easy victory. Republicans don't just have better politics here - they're correct on the merits.
This is so obvious to a normal person that it's kind of stunning there's any debate about it in progressive spaces. Like it's one of those issues that really does make Democrats look insane. I would very much like to focus on the issues that make republicans look insane please
I'm not saying no one thinks that, but I have a very difficult time believing that a "large number of supporters" of the USWNT believe that they would beat the USMNT.
That “men kicked women out because they felt threatened” Twitter thread from the other week was *wild.*
And came from an ostensible “expert”.
Yet, I’m supposed to believe that having all the well-educated experts believe in one set of political values (or shut up about it) is not producing any slanted analysis or screwy policy?
I agree with this, and have two additional thoughts: first, I think that one of the reasons this conversation is so divorced from reality is that many of the loudest voices don’t actually like or care about sports. I was talking to a friend in academia recently, who went on a long rant about how sex segregation in sports is discriminatory before concluding, “plus, sports are all fake anyway.”
Second, I think decisions about whether or not sex segregation is necessary (as opposed to weight classes or something else) will probably vary depending on the sport. Running, for example, should absolutely be sex-segregated because of the ways testosterone affects muscle development and speed. On the other end of the spectrum, something like curling seems to work fine with mixed-gender teams. Basically, the question needs to be approached with nuance, which seems to be in short supply on both sides.
But for most sports winning isn’t the point. Like the idea that we would humiliate a student by misgendering them over who wins a middle school cross country event is so repugnant to the ideas of sports in schools it’s insane. The whole point is for them to feel better about themselves so they can do better in the classroom. A sound mind in a sound body.
It would be better to lose because who cares that we got a stupid trophy no one is going to care about in a month?
That many people simply *cannot* seem to wrap their heads around how important it is to most parents and children that kids be treated fairly is the whole problem here.
It’s not “misgendering” a child to say “sorry, participation in sports is based on birth gender, period.”
It’s not really fair either, but it’s more fair by far than the alternative.
Remember - you are only asking girls to not take their sports seriously, while boys still can.
Basically you are asking girls and women have to not be competitive and care about others' feelings above their own competitiveness, but boys and men don't have to (because trans athletes are not going to be competing with boys and men).
I would prefer we get rid of competition for boys too. School sports should be about self improvement not winning. If you want something dedicated to competition above inclusion you shouldn’t be doing it in an institution that’s supposed to be for everyone.
When I talk to my athletes I talk about their personal bests a lot and other teams times not at all.
Perhaps, but if you did that, do you really think the current set of activists would not *immediately* switch gears to attempting to mandate their conception of tolerance for travel teams and other private sports organizations?
if you are talking about intramural sports, fine. if you are talking about who makes the all county team, give me a break. many people care about that for a lot longer than a weak. if you are talking about who is national or olympic champion, you are crazy. the ncaa championship in any event is a huge achievement
"The whole point is for them to feel better about themselves so they can do better in the classroom."
I don't agree. The point of athletic competition goes far beyond "sound mind, sound body." Participation in sports teaches teamwork, sacrifice, delayed gratification and is a natural and healthy outlet for the human need to compete. Sports aren't just about doing calisthenics -- humans (especially men, due to thousands of years trying to procreate) need competition. Sports is how we channel the 'need to win'.
I feel like this isn’t an educational activity and would be better performed by private sports leagues which don’t have mission statements organized around supporting every child.
Have you had any exposure to youth sports in the USA?! It is insane starting well before high school for a lot of kids, and winning / being the best is definitely the point for the majority of people (mostly parents, but then the kids too). I was really happy when my kids didn't want to play past 12 yo, and didn't want to be on any travel teams, etc. We know so many parents that do nothing but shuttle their kids around to practices and tournaments. Hockey is the worst; they'll be playing double headers that end at 11 PM when they're like 9 years old.
What you describe is ideal. Everyone should participate, it should be fun and keep people in shape, etc. But is not the reality in my experience.
I didn't say that. My point is that youth sports culture is very much about winning and being the best, often to an unhealthy degree. The reason you don't hear concerns very often about trans boys in male sports is because they don't challenge the highest-level male competition.
I coach an elementary and middle school cross country and track and elementary basketball in a league of Florida charters.
And yes travel teams are the answer because they’re not school based they can do whatever. Elite sports should be handled by private entities but school sports should be inclusive first.
Agreed that these more intramural leagues at lower levels can still be fun (my kids do after-school intramurals). But public high school sports that might lead to college scholarships (or at least being on the college team) are taken to an extreme level also. Florida is a prime example for football, basketball, baseball, track, etc! Major feeder state for college and the pro's
subscribe to Parker Molloy substack, sports is a pretense to keep trans people out of public life
from Parker:
"Okay, so, in her 500-yard win, did she set the world record? No. Did she set the NCAA record for that race? Also no (that would be Katie Ledecky, whose 2017 time of 4:24.06 is more than 9 seconds faster than Thomas’ 4:33.24 finish). Did she even set the pool record for that event? Yet again, no (Leah Smith’s 2016 time of 4:30.81 remains safe)."
"sports is a pretense to keep trans people out of public life"
I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but I poured out many summers of blood, sweat, and tears in the gym, on the trail, and on the field before I had even heard of the concept of a transsexual person.
The notion that most people give 5% as much thought to trans issues as they do to sports is flagrantly bizarre.
not "you," but "us." The culture at large has not grasped the existence of people whose gender identity does not match their anatomy until very recently.
And that's exactly the reason why Sharty is on point. The culture can't conspire against an identity it does not know exists.
So because Thomas isn't faster than the most elite women, all is fair? That is a stupid standard. Parker Molloy is one of those activist voices that Matt is urging politicians (and all of us, really) to ignore.
consider: you think Parker, a trans person trying to live, is activism, .... and people worried about sports is simply people worried about sports- vs blatant anti-trans fear-mongering activism
No, I think Parker is an activist because she is an activist. Which is fine. But don't gaslight us by referring to her as just "a trans person trying to live".
There *are* clearly people worrying about sports who are ALSO anti-trans (every time I see someone write that you should use "he" when referring to Lia Thomas, for instance. (paraphrasing: "Great article on Lia Thomas but you keep calling her 'female'. How dare you lie!". )
It's a complicated issue and plenty of people who want to provide dignity and respect for _everyone_ are unsure of where to come down on this. Calling them transphobes is not likely to convert them to your cause.
You'd think the obvious answer would be that if you're worried about trans women outperforming cis women because they had the athletic benefit of going through male puberty, then we should give support to trans kids so that they get identified early and get the care they need to go through the proper puberty and thus don't develop any advantage over their cis competition.
And yet, the Venn Diagram of people who are worried about trans women in sports and people who oppose trans kids getting any form of gender validating treatment overlaps almost entirely.
There is enormous uncertainty about how to assess children in terms of who will actually benefit from childhood transition and who will not. Putting even more pressure on families to transition their kids is not the answer.
What a deranged take. "Men have an athletic advantage over women, so we need to radically interfere with boys' puberty more often in order to keep that advantage from manifesting." Thank God people like you will be permanently away from the reins of power soon.
I don't have a problem with women's sports, but the "plain" value you have appealed to is that women have an inherent disadvantage in many sports. But as Matt points out, an undersized male has the same disadvantages. So, philosophically, why not base it on size or weight?
It depends on the sport. But it's not just size or weight, it's really strength. The reality (which understandably may be hard for someone not involved with sports to see) is that we already separate by the best characteristic possible. The difference between the sexes is kind of staggering. I have witnessed mediocre high school basketball males beat championship level adult women with ease.
what you are asking for is for the women's team to simply not exist. the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams will all be men. You will have as many teams of men as want to participate. I think this really highlights the tension between the feminist movement and the trans right movement. If you don't think women should be allowed to play sports, you should just come out and say that.
alright well the typical twitter response to serious engagement is "lol nothing matters", so I'm used to that. but if there's a coherent position here that you hold I would love to hear it.
yeah. let's have 10 basketball teams per school and we'll separate them by testosterone tiers is certainly a take. but it kind of highlights how untenable the extreme progressive view on this is. do we want to live in the real world or the fantasy progressive utopia?
That’s one of the reasons we have varsity and junior varsity teams. But in every sport I know about the JV men’s team will beat the varsity women’s team.
My point was that in addition to segregating by gender, we also have weight classes so that we can really give competitors an opportunity for a fair playing field.
That said... If a woman wants to train with men in a martial art, more power to her. She's gonna get hit, though, and she'll very likely be outclassed even within a weight class.
To turn that around and say that all women should be forced to compete with folks who were born male and went through male musculoskeletal development... nope.
I wrestled against women in high school before there were enough female participants for them to have their own division. Even for those at the same weight (140-145 lbs.) at that time, the strength differential is still too big.
Why should females get to compete in sports with people in their strength range while men who are genetically less strong then most men are excluded? We have carved out a space for women and then discovered that that particular category wasn't as clear cut as we thought. But that raises questions about the whole approach.
Right. If you don't think women should be allowed to play sports because they're genetically inferior, that is a viewpoint you are allowed to have. It's a free country. I think a lot of people are going to disagree with you though.
I tend to think trans women are such a small group of people that we can just let them compete at least at the high school level. The world just isn't fair, and thats ok. But everyone is talking about fairness as tho the transgender issue is the only unfairness in the existing system.
The one good counterargument here is that this is something for youth athletics administrators to figure out. If they want to keep records and organize events this way, since when do lawmakers get involved in it? Plus, it seems like for most people, trans participation isnt as controversial as trans dominance. So the most targeted law (trans athletes in non-team sports can't set records or podium) would also be the most inane.
Law makers are the youth athletics administrators. Virtually every high school athletic event is governed by a legislator created state governing body, and in the college ranks publicly, ie government owned, schools are, if not the largest component of the system a significantly large enough component that this can't help but be a government controlled issue.
Disagree that the differences in distance running aren’t significant. They may be small compared to other sports, but they are extremely consistent. If distance running weren’t sex segregated, cis women would never win any races ever again.
“Much more damaging than anything the Republicans do” except that we now know the GOP leader and ex president genuinely attempted a coup last January, and lots of republicans in congress appeared to be fine with it. Had he succeeded, or should he or someone like him succeed in future, I suspect it will far more profoundly affect you, personally, than anything the Dems did for the past century or more. Thus, and until the Republicans thoroughly rid themselves of Trumpism, I think voting GOP for congress or above is insane (the select few of the Romney and Chaney type perhaps excepted), and likewise for state legislatures where they could conceivably rig the electoral college election process
"Dismantling merit-based education and decriminalizing petty crime has done more personal harm to me than any broad based R initiatives that I can think of."
Only holds up because climate change hasn't started to bite seriously yet.
If not for that, I'd say "fuck it, a pox on both your houses". But the GOP has lost the plot on something that stands to severely degrade our standard of living and wreak utter havoc on poorer nations.
I'm really waiting for the backlash to urban mis-governance to get Democrats to throw this stupid, 60's hippy conception that "chaos = liberty" overboard.
I'm completely fine with a nice, happy urban panopticon in which 90% of murderers are caught and jailed for life, and there's a 75% chance that a major property crime will lead to a conviction.
I also want police forces with at-will employment policies, a national blacklist for of police misconduct, and more money spent on training and psychological support, but I'd settle for cameras dense enough for a monkey to swing its way across the city to start.
Not least because it would inevitably lead to accountability. We need to improve the security situation until folks feel they have the leverage to call urban police departments onto the carpet for a thorough dressing down over all the "occupying army" shit.
If you have a "women's league" and an "open league" as you often do then anyone can play in the "open league" and so nobody is excluded from the sport.
If you have a "women's league" and a "men's league" then where is an XY trans girl supposed to play? She's excluded from the women's league for understandable reasons of competition/fairness, and from the "men's league" by her gender?
Also, following your logic - what about trans males taking testosterone? That's not the same thing as having gone through male puberty - but should they be playing in women's leagues (due to being XX) - but now they've got a testosterone advantage? If you're enforcing strict chromosomal segregation you've got issues there too.
Does a trans male taking steroids actually have an advantage over cis males? If you exclude them from playing any sports then you _are_ excluding them from playing any sports.
So far the two options (for school leagues) that have sounded the most balanced to me are:
1) Have a "XX cis female" division and an "open" division.
2) Allow you to play with your gender but cannot win trophies in individual sports (team sports are probably diffuse enough that the small percentage of trans people aren't vastly distorting the distribution.
The two options that sound the most balanced to me are:
1. Have a men's division
2. Have a women's division
How someone claims they "identify" is irrelevant. Boys to the left, even if you think you're a girl. Girls to the right, even if you think you're a guy.
Only relevant in terms of what someone thinks or behaves or how they adorn their body is irrelevant. The male bodies compete with males; female bodies compete with females.
The solution here would be an open division and a woman's division. Open is for anyone, while only cis-women would be able to compete in the women's division (if they didn't want to call it a women's division to be more PC, fine).
One thing the school controversies over CRT and transgender issues have in common is they show the problems Democrats run into when they align themselves with identity essentializers on the left, whether it's racial identity or gender identity. It is a form of gender essentializing to hold that a person can be born with such a strong innate gender identity (a culturally defined construct!) that they require medical intervention to conform their body to the essence of the gender identity they were "born with", rather than working to break down rigid, culturally constructed and enforced gender identities, so that all people can be comfortable just being who they are, in the body they were born with. However well intentioned, identity essentializing fundamentally buys into existing culturally constructed categories, whether it's racial categories or gender roles, and tries to enforce them by law or educational instruction, which feels wrong to a lot of people and opens the door to reactionary attacks that play on the vague sense that something is off-track about the way Democrats are dealing with the issue.
Thank you for encapsulating what has been bothering me about this debate. I spent my life pushing back on the idea that being born a girl I had to like pink and shopping and that I couldn’t be good at science, because my parents raised me to believe that gender constructs were just constructs and shouldn’t be allowed to cripple or twist individuals. When an individual’s sense of self conflicts with a social construct, it seems to me that the construct is what should give way.
This is my reaction too. It seems progressive to me that we all just love/accept ourselves and each other as we are. There is no right or wrong way to be a man or a woman. I feel like until recently, this was the prevailing view, although maybe I wasn’t paying attention. The American Medical Association is now promoting what they call “gender affirming” treatment for children. I assume that means altering your body somehow. I just can’t believe that this is considered more progressive than loving yourself the way you are.
Perhaps a trans person could explain this to me. I am open minded, I just really don’t understand.
there are individuals who strongly identify with a different cultural gender than their chromosomes and that should be respected. What I don’t like is the gender essentialists who are reviving reactionary ideas about pink and blue brains. Even if you find small average differences in large populations, using that to predict binary characteristics will be wrong for lots of people. Also, seriously, why? Let people alone.
And I would really love for progressives to address where the sizable minority without a gender identity (i.e., not non-binary, just non-applicable) fits in if we're going to wholesale switch from sex-based to gender-based. Having a gender identity at all is far from universal.
You didn't say sexes, you said gender. Sex is a biological concept, gender is a cultural one. You said "all cultures [defined gender] exactly the same way".
It is strange that transsexuals are so desperate to be labeled as women when it lets them win athletic competitions. Non-binary should mean non-binary.
I don't think a lot of transgender people call themselves non-binary though - those aren't the same.
I know someone who briefly preferred a non-gender specific pronoun (they) before taking the plunge and transitioning. She didn't want to be non-binary, she wanted to be she. And she's not participating in any athletic competitions as far as I know.
My three year old son, who is (age-appropriately) very interested in all things potty and body, told me the other day “not all boys have penises.” I said, “oh is that so? Where did you hear that?” “My teacher.” “Which teacher?” (Name.) Now, I am chill as fuck, very liberal, and love his teachers and his school, which is a pricey private Montessori that’s not particularly progressive and wouldn’t be impacted by these laws anyway. And my son is an extremely unreliable narrator at this time; if I ask “which teacher” he will come up with a name. So it’s possible his teacher told him this and I wouldn’t freak out if she did because there are people in this world without penises that are, as far as my son is concerned, boys. BUT. If I were a conservative I’d probably freak the fuck out over this, and I (liberal me) can understand why. When conservatives complain about “gender ideology,” they are worried that progressives are trying to teach kids that your body doesn’t dictate your gender, that only you know your true gender and you might be a girl even if you have a penis and your parents tell you you’re a boy. When applied to well-informed adults, this stuff is all fine- live life how you wish and I will treat you with respect and use whatever pronouns you wish! But let’s be honest, this whole thing is a dramatically different way of viewing the world that is not based on science and does have the potential to really screw with kids heads. So, yeah, I understand where conservatives are coming from and I think progressives are way overplaying their hand here. I can imagine that if my son attended public schools in a district that was run by super conservative Christians who wanted to teach my son that being gay is a sin and that God created the Earth in 6 days, I’d be PISSED. They can teach their kids that at home, I’ll teach my kid moral philosophy at home, and we’ll share public school for the stuff we can mostly agree on. It cuts both ways.
Books like this are marketed at kids 5 and up. https://akidsco.com/products/a-kids-book-about-being-transgender I’m pretty conflicted about them. I get where they’re coming from but it feels like you’re really playing with fire. It’s one thing to tell an adult trans woman she’s really a man-that is just cruel and unnecessary, even if you believe it to be true. It’s another to decide that the best way to “help trans kids” is to reach as many kids as early as possible to let them know if they feel different, if they feel like they don’t fit society’s idea of what a boy or girl is, they might be trans. This sense of urgency is based on a mental model of what it means to be trans, that it’s something “you’ve always known,” that *even trans people disagree with each other about.* And there is little to know scientific research on this stuff because anyone who touches it with a remotely skeptical eye is immediately shunned. So, yeah.
We've had this discussion before, but the last time it came up, I think both of us pointed out to a third party that "I would have been happier if I had transitioned sooner" is not the basis for good policy and good outcomes more broadly.
Trans issues hold genuine nuance and complexity. Our political discourse is almost completely black and white. A bad result, at least initially, was all but inevitable.
So you say not based on science, but boy and girl aren't scientific concepts. Gender identity is distinct from biological sex. For the majority of people, their preferred identity will correlate with cultural expectations for their biological sex, but for some people it doesn't. That seems reasonable and evidence based to me
I don’t disagree (I think), but biological sex is based in science and overwhelmingly binary. Personal identity (interests, personality, preferred way of interacting with society and being seen) is an infinite spectrum. There are undoubtedly people who have one sex but strongly identify with the gender associated with the other sex, and would prefer to live life as that other gender. Fine!! But what lacks scientific evidence is the idea that this gender identity is innate and immutable and all that matters in nearly all circumstances (medical, social, athletic, etc). And what people object to is their children being taught that this is the case when they personally don’t believe it.
Yes- It feels like the obvious go-forward is acknowledge biological sex exist but challenge the (admittedly deep-seated) societal notion that that ought to dictate how you should act, what you should wear, or who you should love (yes that would mean it’s ok to be gay!). I even think it makes space for “preferred pronouns” which to me is not all that different than a preferred nickname or title. Yet it feels like so much of the progressive dialogue in this space goes so much further than necessary, makes some strong metaphysical claims about the nature of identity, and ends up reinforcing some pretty retrograde gender norms.
You say "aren't neutral anymore" but was the historical position neutral? If the operating assumption of the school system is that a family means a heterosexual couple that isn't a neutral proposition.
On the topic of religious exemption, should county clerks be able to deny interracial couples marriage licenses on religious grounds?
Democrats should use more terms like, “Centering non-binary lived experience instead of cisnormative privilege” or we need to lecture more working class people on the need to introduce themselves with their pronouns.
I volunteer as an elections official. To me, the core tenets of the job are to administer the election fairly and impartially (obviously), but as a not-too-distant-second, to be seen as impartial by the voters. If they can even *hint* at my personal political affiliation, I am doing a bad job.
The county clerk has started to "encourage" us to list preferred pronouns on our nametags in the name of inclusivity for a few percent (?) of the population, at the cost of signaling to essentially all Republicans (and more than a fair few Democrats) that we are not like them and we do not think like them.
I would say that for working class people (and a large proportion of college educated people) "centering" and "non-binary" are not any better than cisnormative. Certainly language changes over time - how people talked 50+ years ago is different than it is today - but it does so in a gradual, natural manner. Creating new terms and trying to inject them into the lexicon reeks of elitism and is going to be a major turnoff for the vast majority of people even when they agree with the underlying proposition that you are trying to support.
Matt writes as if excluding trans men from womens’ sports is a distasteful concession to the plebs. However, defending womens’ sports is a positive good.
Womens’ sports are about female excellence. Womens’ world record times in swimming and track would be pedestrian achievements for a man— solid displays of athleticism that would rarely rank in the top 100. A world where trans men can compete as women is a world in which any female champion could be dethroned if a male also ran decided to transition. It is a world in which exemplars female excellence could hold the spotlight only at the sufferance of men. It is a world in which gender equality is subordinated to the needs of a pathetic fringe group. No thank you.
“The needs of a *pathetic fringe group*”? Definitely no malice there. But deeper than that if David isn’t familiar with the basics, maybe his opinion about sports isn’t a deeply considered and researched position but just some reflexive transphobia.
where i come from, pathetic means evoking sympathy. that is my attitude towards transsexuals. i’m very glad i don’t suffer from gender dysphoria, and i am sympathetic to those who do. however, i care about protecting women’s sports because 1) archetypes of female excellence are deeply important to me and 2) the number of competitive athletes who suffer from gender dysphoria is much smaller than the number of competitive athletes who are female
I prefer the term trans man as it centers biological sex. This is especially apt in athletics, where hard facts of endocrinology and biology are more important than self-identification
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it’s not average male-to-female transgender people who want to compete. It’s athletes already competitive to some degree in their own sex class transitioning and then wanting to continue competition in the female category. So we’re not talking about an average male body—we’re talking about an already-competitive male body, subjected to some alterations of dubious relevance (I.e. testosterone reduction) competing against females.
Because of drug testing, many athletes used testosterone during training but not in the weeks before competition. Even when testosterone levels appeared normal at the time of competition, strength athletes could get a big advantage just by training with elevated testosterone levels for a few months
Many of these transgender in sports and bathroom issues could be solved and instead of using the outdated concept of gender, we just have homogametic bathrooms and sports teams and heterogametic bathrooms and sports teams.
In all seriousness… One of the biggest issues is the children transitioning issues. This is one that is difficult. As someone who has raised nine kids, I have seen the effects of peer and social pressure on a kids identity. There are many kids who don’t really figure out what and who they are until later high school and college. And I certainly think it is possible that there are some doctors and or parents who might be a little too quick with some interventions.
However, there are definitely kids who medical intervention is appropriate. If I was dictator, I guess I would make the law that nothing permanent could be done under the age of 16 to 18. The use of puberty blockers should require some sort of consensus between health experts. I.e. several Doctors have to sign off.
But I also suspect that some of you will think of exceptions or cases that I haven’t taken into account, and I fully acknowledge that. I am open to be convinced store learn wise one of my suggestions is wrong or should be modified.
I was reading about Sweden's recent changes to their rules (less permissive about teens transitioning now). Apparently the original "Dutch Protocol" has been very successful (few detransitioners) when applied to people who meet the criteria, which includes long-standing Gender Dysphoria(GD). (I think that includes teenagers who have had GD since they were 5 or 6)
However, they have backed away from providing medical treatments for (I think) ROGD (Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria) because of a much higher error rate (by error I mean that there were non-medical treatments that could have resolved the dysphoria)
So, parsing this, my understanding is that bills that ban kids from _ever_ getting the treatment are wrong because there appear to be some kids who really _do_ benefit from it, but there's _also_ been an over-prescription of medical intervention and natural pushback to that.
If it takes kids so long to figure out who they are (it took me until 19 to figure out I’m trans though it probably should have been obvious beforehand) shouldn’t we try to prevent all kids from going through anything permanent? I.e. shouldn’t all kids be on blockers if trans kids aren’t ready to go through a “permanent” puberty? That my voice deepening and Adam’s apple hardening were “natural” doesn’t make them any less distressing to me.
I don’t mean to sound dismissive, but all forms of physically growing up are permanent and often stressful. I have no doubt that for a small subset of kids experiencing gender dysphoria, it’s an exponentially higher level of distress. But that doesn’t mean it’s a wise idea to stop puberty for everyone. Part of gaining the mental and experiential capacity to “know who you are” is due to the physical and hormonal changes of puberty and its effect on your brain. We need to get better at finding ways to help kids who are experiencing extreme dysphoria without suggesting to all teens that feeling uncomfortable through puberty is a sign that something is wrong.
Thank you for raising this. People forget that going through puberty is itself a clarifying growth experience, and delaying it risks delaying mental maturation that itself would clarify for many individuals some aspects of who they are.
My understanding is that blockers have some permanent effects too - so they're not "free" if you're unsure. That is, they have uses but it is possible they are currently over-prescribed.
It’s clear that there’s a lot of nuance yet to be hashed out with respect to this issue, but bad-faith comments like this get us no closer to resolution. Let’s be try to be more charitable, shall we?
TB Nichols above literally just suggested in a manner that was speculative, but seemingly unironic, putting all minors on puberty blockers. I'm not sure Graham's response is that close to "bad faith."
Do I think the likely endpoint is a “Children of Men”-esque dystopia? No, no I don’t. Does that surprise you?
And while I broadly understand the handwringing about Jackson’s comment, I think it’s silly to not put it in its proper context — that she is the nominee of a Democratic president answering questions from a hostile, culture-warring subset of Republicans. If you didn’t ridicule Kavanuagh’s “calculated political hit” rant with as much vitriol, then it feels unfair to act like this is the end of the Court as we know it.
No, I think you’re right. Sure, there are edge cases, but policy should be made for the majority of cases and err on the side of caution when it comes to permanent bodily modification.
The trans issue seems unique amongst progressive issues in the demands that it puts on other people to change the way they speak. If Mark wants to present like a woman and change his name to Mary, I’m happy to call him Mary. If I’m talking to Mark/Mary, I will use the name, I won’t be using pronouns anyway.
But when I talk about Mark/Mary to somebody else, now I must call him “her” or else I am a bad person. But this is no longer about showing respect to Mark/Mary (who likely isn’t present), this is about conforming to a new world view in which sex or gender is not grounded in objective facts about biology but rather grounded in our subjective “identities”. Well, what if I don’t believe that? Am I hateful for not believing that? Must I pretend to believe it to be a good person?
I believe in showing respect to all people, but the thing with the pronouns, “pregnant people” “they”, this is too much for me. I am old. Maybe the younger generations will agree with this.
I personally wouldn't say that makes you hateful(I feel like hate requires intent and the word gets thrown around too much), but have you considered that if you use "he" to refer to Mary to someone else, you may later cause hurt to Mary when that person (who doesn't know Mary!) uses "he" in her presence.
The biggest hurdle in regards to trans rights, particularly in comparison to gay* rights, is that trans people are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. One of the most effective tactics of the 90s and 00s push for gay rights was the push for gay people to come out of the closet, so that more straight people could realize that they actually know a gay person. That they have a gay cousin or coworker or friend or child. Gay people are a very small percentage of the population, but there are enough of us that we made an impact through all the people we knew.
Trans folks are an even smaller percentage of the population, so a similar campaign of being visibly out is not nearly as effective. Even worse, it means there is a dearth of trans leaders and figures who can make the argument for their rights. This means that progressives are often in the position of speaking “on behalf of” trans folks, and when we are speaking on behalf of a group (instead of letting that group speak for itself) the biggest flubs are made.
*Using “gay” here for shorthand all the LGB folks, as that was often the shorthand we used at the time.
I think that's backwards. A key path to gay equality was that lgb people are a very small proportion of the population (even today its still far sigh of the common 10% estimate), and so you could go to straight people and say "don't worry about gay equality, we're just trying to live in a world you dominate through overwhelming numbers". That's why gay marriage ended up being a brilliant wedge issue for gay rights - it finally disowned the idea that LGB people were going to be a vanguard of a new, sexually radical future. Gay and Bi people were just as boring and square as everybody else.
Trans people are basically where LGB people were in the 1970s/80s, where the alliance with the radical left means that the line between genuine advocacy for them as a group and general advocacy for far left hangups is fuzzy and unclear. That leads to greater demands being made (all toilets should be gender neutral, you should feel bad about dressing your child in stereotypical clothing, etc) and suspicion that even minor changes are the dreaded "thin end of the wedge". We'll hopefully end up in a similar situation with trans people as LGB people, which indeed will be helped along as more people get to know them, although trans rights does require more active participation from the whole of society (use the right pronouns, don't deadname, improve facilities, work out what to do about sports) than was the case with Gay or Bi people.
I wonder how much pushing non-binary at the same time has affected things. I "get" transgender. I still don't feel like I "get" non-binary.
I will do my best to use "they" in those cases and respect people but I don't "get" it.
I think part of the marriage equality movement's success was that it was eventually easy for people to "get" and realize it was... normal. Everyone understands my husband is my husband.
Also, like marriage equality, someone else transitioning male->female or vice versa fits within the society I already understand. Non-binary feels like it's trying to break all the rules.
Maybe those rules need to be broken - but that's a tougher sell.
If it helps, think of non-binary kind of like how people would have thought of biracial back in the day. Our society used to consider everyone either "White" or "Black" (the one-drop rule). Then we stopped doing that, and allowed the people who were part of each to be a third category*
*this excludes other racial groups that exist in the US, for simplicity
The biracial argument lends itself more to people with differences of sexual development (rare but existent “intersex” conditions.) Non-binary does not refer to some middle ground between sexes, but a refusal to adopt the social category of man or woman. In other words, a personality pretending to reject gender while inherently adopting it.
Yes...I think there's a lot of truth to the idea that people find it easier to accept that some people will transition to the other end of the binary, than reject it altogether. And it's certainly the case that the liberal/feminist backlash to trans rights began as non-binary gender identities became more commonly discussed.
I know it was late breaking, but you should check out and maybe addend this to include the Utah governor’s veto statement on the bill banning trans athletes. I’m not sure how much that messaging has been tested, but I’d be shocked if it or something like it doesn’t get some purchase with centrists and non-“the cruelty is the point” Republicans. Just make every elected Democrat memorize some variations on that statement about putting kids first and “even the Republican governor of Utah can see…” because trans kids don’t necessarily need to be left out to dry here.
I just saw that and am still processing it myself. It seems like a startling act of conscience from an elected official and it will be fascinating to see the fallout. I'm not familiar at all with Utah state level politics, but what does Cox have to gain politically from bucking party on this issue?
But, while I also don't know much about internal Utah politics, I'm not sure that he has nothing to gain. He refers himself to the ill-considered way the bill lays schools open to lawsuits, which could well cause him problems down the line. Also he may have wanted to defuse the issue in a way that would not put Utah in the firing line for boycotts and the like while still satisfying social conservatives.
Note that in his letter he refers to his preferred option, namely an expert commission that would allow or ban trans athletes on a case-by-case basis - and he also explicitly refers to Lia Thomas as the kind of case which he would expect such a commission to ban. And for that reason, I don't think that we are likely to see the Utah governor held up as a model that Democrats could follow, since Lia Thomas is precisely the kind of case which creates the wedge for Democrats and unites Republicans.
I skimmed the letter and prohibiting the players and their teams from winning makes me wonder how much winning/domination would be allowed. But is that really a solution that progressives would accept? It does take away the most obvious ‘wtf’ reactions to this.
"Suppose a student with two moms mentions that fact about himself in a first-grade classroom, some other kid says that’s not possible, and then a teacher explains that some families have two moms or two dads. I think it is pretty unlikely, in practice, that this teacher will get in trouble with anyone."
I am not at all confident that this will be the case. I think teachers will be on edge if a question such as this is raised in a K-3 classroom. In addition, I think laws such as this one don't address the real problem than that is bullying which is highly prevalent in schools (more so in middle school than elementary school). Preventing open discussion in classrooms will lead to more of this bad behavior.
Yeah I thought Matt was being naive about this, especially given how the law intersects with the teachers own views or desire for a quiet life. I was coming to terms with my sexuality when the UK had Section 28 on the books, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in Schools. And that led to a teacher refusing to help me when I came out to him, because he didn't want to get into trouble
And the drawing by the student who has two dads or whatever? Is that supposed to inevitably lead to a discursion about same-sex marriage? Or would it be possible for the teacher to steer the discussion back to the topic of the lesson?
Got it, Ken. I’d like my kids to be able to talk about their families openly, like all other kids, rather than force them to time travel back to 1985 and live in shame and fear like I did.
The reality is that families come in many different family structures, including families with two moms and two dads, no matter how bad conservatives want to deny it. And no kids are harmed by acknowledging that. This is an obvious attempt to punish my kids for having the -in this case- bad luck to have gay parents. And I don’t care what Matt Yglesias or anyone else says I will absolutely fight you and the State of Florida and anyone else on it. Just as gay marriage was radically unpopular once. I believe that humanity’s basic compassion will win out here as it has before.
Trans women in womens sports is a more complicated issue because everyone believes they are arguing for basic fairness. I’m not sure how different this really is from any other number of clear physical advantages in sports. And I don’t think it’s as neatly separable from gay rights as many LGB people would like to believe right now, as the long history of lesbians dominating womens sports makes clear. Time will tell, on this issue. I’m willing to accept that the timing isn’t right to change the law. The conversation needs to happen first.
You appear to be ignorant of what goes on in elementary schools these days. I know several elementary school teachers including one who is a special education teacher at a Title I school. Questions such as this come up all the time and they present difficulties for the teacher.
The "don't say gay" bill seems awful in the same way the "anti-CRT" bills do. They're incredibly broad, and incredibly vague and intended to chill clearly 1st amendment protected speech. However, it polls ok because people don't think legalistically, and there is in fact a phenomena occurring that many people aggressively object to.
I personally have a 4 year old cousin who is asked at the start of her day at preschool "what are your words are today"? That seems kind of horrifying, and not at all something that should be acceptable for public employees to be doing to school children (this may well be a private preschool which is obviously, legally, a different case). In some places elementary school teachers have basically embraced a psychological experiment of encouraging and promoting the formation of gender identity in young children that seems unsupported and has the potential to be outright harmful. This is different from simply creating an environment in which all students can thrive.
The basic problem with trans "rights" in the law is the Gender Identity concept. It's not at all clear scientifically that is a thing that exists at all, or who has one, who doesn't or how stable it is. It's an aggressively unpopular idea in the voting public. And much of trans activism has become about supplanting the concept of sex in the law with this concept.
My kids have two dads. If we lived in Florida, and that came up in class, and the teacher said "some kids have two dads and some have two moms" that sounds like it's covered under the law (super broad!)
If you don't think it's covered under the law then we disagree about what they mean and it's too vague.
What if there's some teasing about it and the teacher needs to say something?
Also, plenty of books show a mom and dad(they're exposing kids to heterosexuality! OMG!) - why not have representation with at least one book in the classroom that shows my child's family?
Why is exposing kids to this reality a problem or age-inappropriate?
My explanation to my kids is that you marry someone that you want to make part of your family. That's it. I don't _think_ they even know the word 'gay' even though their dads are. They do know that boys marrying boys wasn't always allowed(I don't expect teachers to cover that last part in kindergarten - but given that they've learned about Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges I don't think it's 'wrong' to either)
It talks about state "standards" that don't actually exist for "age appropriate" as defined by nothing. It also all hinges on what is or isn't "instruction".
It's entirely possible that the law is written so poorly as to end up interpreted by the courts as being utterly toothless. That is in no way a defense of the law or it's passage.
There will always be activists who start with the moral high ground (“trans people are human beings who deserve respect and protection”) and push so hard that they end up in absurdist territory (“gender identity trumps biological sex in every possible context”). It’s the behavior of people who don’t expect to ever have any real power - except that right now, the activists are winning the culture war in progressive areas and there doesn’t seem to be any movement leadership willing or interested in tamping down such excesses.
I have a question. Based on the wording of the statute why would a woman teacher talking about her wife be any more of a problem than talking about her husband? I believe heterosexual is an orientation as well. It seems the way to counter this bill is to argue that the language prevents pictures or mentions of nuclear families in the classroom. No more family trees! Too much sex in those! Just need some liberal activist to sue over teacher Cindy talking about Jeff her husband.
One thing I think hurts Matt's point, is that gay marriage was itself attacked as a failure to play to win. Lots and lots of people (myself included) argued that gay rights movements should just accept civil unions, which really were marriage by another name, and so avoid offending religious people's sensibilities. But gay marriage proponents really were right that only by opening up marriage to same-sex couples would defeat the stigma that had been attached to those relationships. I think trans rights campaigners rightly see the situation in the same lens - it might sign like no big deal to stop trans women competing in sports or accessing women's refuges, but that is a clear statement that society still does not consider them women.
Matt, you do these "politicians shouldn't pick fights that are too unpopular" posts every once in a while, but I never quite know what you're prescribing. I mean, should they vote against bad bills? They should vote against them, right? Should they talk a lot about their unpopular votes against bad bills? Probably not, but politicians often don't get a lot of choice what they talk about. People ask them questions and they have to take positions, and they have to explain their positions.
I feel this could benefit from more of a case study analysis where you break down, "Here is where X politician specifically made a mistake that was possible to avoid." Otherwise I don't know what you think a "tactical retreat" looks like.
So we've locked the comments after getting some emailed complaints — Ken in MIA and David Abbott specifically, take it down a notch. Not going to do any bans today but we won't be able to have comment threads on LGBTQ issues in the future if people aren't able to participate respectfully. I understand that people feel passionately about this, but please keep things civil.
Here's the thing: there totally >is< a conceptual reason for segregating sports leagues on the basis of sex. Men are ridiculously stronger than women, to say nothing of other physical attributes. We will never reach a consensus that there should be gender mixed leagues, because it's plainly daft. Normal people find all this stuff totally cuckoo. Democrats have handed the Republicans an easy victory. Republicans don't just have better politics here - they're correct on the merits.
This is so obvious to a normal person that it's kind of stunning there's any debate about it in progressive spaces. Like it's one of those issues that really does make Democrats look insane. I would very much like to focus on the issues that make republicans look insane please
I'm not saying no one thinks that, but I have a very difficult time believing that a "large number of supporters" of the USWNT believe that they would beat the USMNT.
That “men kicked women out because they felt threatened” Twitter thread from the other week was *wild.*
And came from an ostensible “expert”.
Yet, I’m supposed to believe that having all the well-educated experts believe in one set of political values (or shut up about it) is not producing any slanted analysis or screwy policy?
I agree with this, and have two additional thoughts: first, I think that one of the reasons this conversation is so divorced from reality is that many of the loudest voices don’t actually like or care about sports. I was talking to a friend in academia recently, who went on a long rant about how sex segregation in sports is discriminatory before concluding, “plus, sports are all fake anyway.”
Second, I think decisions about whether or not sex segregation is necessary (as opposed to weight classes or something else) will probably vary depending on the sport. Running, for example, should absolutely be sex-segregated because of the ways testosterone affects muscle development and speed. On the other end of the spectrum, something like curling seems to work fine with mixed-gender teams. Basically, the question needs to be approached with nuance, which seems to be in short supply on both sides.
But for most sports winning isn’t the point. Like the idea that we would humiliate a student by misgendering them over who wins a middle school cross country event is so repugnant to the ideas of sports in schools it’s insane. The whole point is for them to feel better about themselves so they can do better in the classroom. A sound mind in a sound body.
It would be better to lose because who cares that we got a stupid trophy no one is going to care about in a month?
No. Just no.
That many people simply *cannot* seem to wrap their heads around how important it is to most parents and children that kids be treated fairly is the whole problem here.
It’s not “misgendering” a child to say “sorry, participation in sports is based on birth gender, period.”
It’s not really fair either, but it’s more fair by far than the alternative.
Remember - you are only asking girls to not take their sports seriously, while boys still can.
Basically you are asking girls and women have to not be competitive and care about others' feelings above their own competitiveness, but boys and men don't have to (because trans athletes are not going to be competing with boys and men).
That's sexism.
Its doesn't work.
I would prefer we get rid of competition for boys too. School sports should be about self improvement not winning. If you want something dedicated to competition above inclusion you shouldn’t be doing it in an institution that’s supposed to be for everyone.
When I talk to my athletes I talk about their personal bests a lot and other teams times not at all.
Perhaps, but if you did that, do you really think the current set of activists would not *immediately* switch gears to attempting to mandate their conception of tolerance for travel teams and other private sports organizations?
I think they wouldn’t have a whole lot of leverage there.
With schools it’s really lousy and really are at cross purposes here.
Private leagues can pay for themelves, and really are about winning and losing.
if you are talking about intramural sports, fine. if you are talking about who makes the all county team, give me a break. many people care about that for a lot longer than a weak. if you are talking about who is national or olympic champion, you are crazy. the ncaa championship in any event is a huge achievement
"The whole point is for them to feel better about themselves so they can do better in the classroom."
I don't agree. The point of athletic competition goes far beyond "sound mind, sound body." Participation in sports teaches teamwork, sacrifice, delayed gratification and is a natural and healthy outlet for the human need to compete. Sports aren't just about doing calisthenics -- humans (especially men, due to thousands of years trying to procreate) need competition. Sports is how we channel the 'need to win'.
I feel like this isn’t an educational activity and would be better performed by private sports leagues which don’t have mission statements organized around supporting every child.
I think your definition of an "educational activity" is far too narrow.
We don’t need fair sports for that.
We could always give dueling a try again, no?
Wars are usually lots of fun too.
Come on. The point is athletics are a healthier outlet for competition than war. Better pickleball than infantry charges should be non-controversial.
Seriously, do I really need to write a damned "/s" after something this obvious?
“Wars are usually lots of fun too”
They’re a blast!
Ba dum tss!
Have you had any exposure to youth sports in the USA?! It is insane starting well before high school for a lot of kids, and winning / being the best is definitely the point for the majority of people (mostly parents, but then the kids too). I was really happy when my kids didn't want to play past 12 yo, and didn't want to be on any travel teams, etc. We know so many parents that do nothing but shuttle their kids around to practices and tournaments. Hockey is the worst; they'll be playing double headers that end at 11 PM when they're like 9 years old.
What you describe is ideal. Everyone should participate, it should be fun and keep people in shape, etc. But is not the reality in my experience.
One doesn’t have to be an unreasonable nutjob parent to be mad that their kid is being denied any chance at fair participation.
I didn't say that. My point is that youth sports culture is very much about winning and being the best, often to an unhealthy degree. The reason you don't hear concerns very often about trans boys in male sports is because they don't challenge the highest-level male competition.
I mean… kinda?
Just like no one would complain about a male athlete taking testosterone blockers or handicapping themselves.
Fairness, in athletics, is innately tied up in the concept of a level playing field and fair shot at winning.
To say “people only care because they have an advantage” or “people only care because it’s unfair” are the same thing!
I coach an elementary and middle school cross country and track and elementary basketball in a league of Florida charters.
And yes travel teams are the answer because they’re not school based they can do whatever. Elite sports should be handled by private entities but school sports should be inclusive first.
Agreed that these more intramural leagues at lower levels can still be fun (my kids do after-school intramurals). But public high school sports that might lead to college scholarships (or at least being on the college team) are taken to an extreme level also. Florida is a prime example for football, basketball, baseball, track, etc! Major feeder state for college and the pro's
If score is kept, winning is the point. This is true for all sports at all ages from around junior high school onwards.
Matty should stay in his lane and avoid sports conversations
For that matter, under 400m, if he doesn't stay in his lane then he will be disqualified from the event.
subscribe to Parker Molloy substack, sports is a pretense to keep trans people out of public life
from Parker:
"Okay, so, in her 500-yard win, did she set the world record? No. Did she set the NCAA record for that race? Also no (that would be Katie Ledecky, whose 2017 time of 4:24.06 is more than 9 seconds faster than Thomas’ 4:33.24 finish). Did she even set the pool record for that event? Yet again, no (Leah Smith’s 2016 time of 4:30.81 remains safe)."
https://twitter.com/parkermolloy/status/1506373060118683667?s=21
"sports is a pretense to keep trans people out of public life"
I don't want to put too fine a point on this, but I poured out many summers of blood, sweat, and tears in the gym, on the trail, and on the field before I had even heard of the concept of a transsexual person.
The notion that most people give 5% as much thought to trans issues as they do to sports is flagrantly bizarre.
trans people have always existed, you not knowing that is on you
not "you," but "us." The culture at large has not grasped the existence of people whose gender identity does not match their anatomy until very recently.
And that's exactly the reason why Sharty is on point. The culture can't conspire against an identity it does not know exists.
So because Thomas isn't faster than the most elite women, all is fair? That is a stupid standard. Parker Molloy is one of those activist voices that Matt is urging politicians (and all of us, really) to ignore.
consider: you think Parker, a trans person trying to live, is activism, .... and people worried about sports is simply people worried about sports- vs blatant anti-trans fear-mongering activism
No, I think Parker is an activist because she is an activist. Which is fine. But don't gaslight us by referring to her as just "a trans person trying to live".
There *are* clearly people worrying about sports who are ALSO anti-trans (every time I see someone write that you should use "he" when referring to Lia Thomas, for instance. (paraphrasing: "Great article on Lia Thomas but you keep calling her 'female'. How dare you lie!". )
It's a complicated issue and plenty of people who want to provide dignity and respect for _everyone_ are unsure of where to come down on this. Calling them transphobes is not likely to convert them to your cause.
Purity is the goal, not persuasion.
You'd think the obvious answer would be that if you're worried about trans women outperforming cis women because they had the athletic benefit of going through male puberty, then we should give support to trans kids so that they get identified early and get the care they need to go through the proper puberty and thus don't develop any advantage over their cis competition.
And yet, the Venn Diagram of people who are worried about trans women in sports and people who oppose trans kids getting any form of gender validating treatment overlaps almost entirely.
There is enormous uncertainty about how to assess children in terms of who will actually benefit from childhood transition and who will not. Putting even more pressure on families to transition their kids is not the answer.
What a deranged take. "Men have an athletic advantage over women, so we need to radically interfere with boys' puberty more often in order to keep that advantage from manifesting." Thank God people like you will be permanently away from the reins of power soon.
I don't have a problem with women's sports, but the "plain" value you have appealed to is that women have an inherent disadvantage in many sports. But as Matt points out, an undersized male has the same disadvantages. So, philosophically, why not base it on size or weight?
It depends on the sport. But it's not just size or weight, it's really strength. The reality (which understandably may be hard for someone not involved with sports to see) is that we already separate by the best characteristic possible. The difference between the sexes is kind of staggering. I have witnessed mediocre high school basketball males beat championship level adult women with ease.
Look at boysvswomen.com for some numbers
what you are asking for is for the women's team to simply not exist. the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams will all be men. You will have as many teams of men as want to participate. I think this really highlights the tension between the feminist movement and the trans right movement. If you don't think women should be allowed to play sports, you should just come out and say that.
alright well the typical twitter response to serious engagement is "lol nothing matters", so I'm used to that. but if there's a coherent position here that you hold I would love to hear it.
yeah. let's have 10 basketball teams per school and we'll separate them by testosterone tiers is certainly a take. but it kind of highlights how untenable the extreme progressive view on this is. do we want to live in the real world or the fantasy progressive utopia?
“…why not base it on size or weight?”
That’s one of the reasons we have varsity and junior varsity teams. But in every sport I know about the JV men’s team will beat the varsity women’s team.
And weight classes in all the martial arts.
Don’t hit girls.
My point was that in addition to segregating by gender, we also have weight classes so that we can really give competitors an opportunity for a fair playing field.
That said... If a woman wants to train with men in a martial art, more power to her. She's gonna get hit, though, and she'll very likely be outclassed even within a weight class.
To turn that around and say that all women should be forced to compete with folks who were born male and went through male musculoskeletal development... nope.
I wrestled against women in high school before there were enough female participants for them to have their own division. Even for those at the same weight (140-145 lbs.) at that time, the strength differential is still too big.
Even at the same weight, a man will be significantly stronger than a woman.
so we gonna have basketball leagues by height only?
Why should females get to compete in sports with people in their strength range while men who are genetically less strong then most men are excluded? We have carved out a space for women and then discovered that that particular category wasn't as clear cut as we thought. But that raises questions about the whole approach.
Right. If you don't think women should be allowed to play sports because they're genetically inferior, that is a viewpoint you are allowed to have. It's a free country. I think a lot of people are going to disagree with you though.
I tend to think trans women are such a small group of people that we can just let them compete at least at the high school level. The world just isn't fair, and thats ok. But everyone is talking about fairness as tho the transgender issue is the only unfairness in the existing system.
Also, historical obstruction of women from sports.
The one good counterargument here is that this is something for youth athletics administrators to figure out. If they want to keep records and organize events this way, since when do lawmakers get involved in it? Plus, it seems like for most people, trans participation isnt as controversial as trans dominance. So the most targeted law (trans athletes in non-team sports can't set records or podium) would also be the most inane.
Law makers are the youth athletics administrators. Virtually every high school athletic event is governed by a legislator created state governing body, and in the college ranks publicly, ie government owned, schools are, if not the largest component of the system a significantly large enough component that this can't help but be a government controlled issue.
Disagree that the differences in distance running aren’t significant. They may be small compared to other sports, but they are extremely consistent. If distance running weren’t sex segregated, cis women would never win any races ever again.
Agree in general with your overall point, though!
Mixed doubles has existed in tennis for a long time.
maybe stop thinking about it so much and let trans girls and trans women enjoy all that cis girls/women enjoy
“Much more damaging than anything the Republicans do” except that we now know the GOP leader and ex president genuinely attempted a coup last January, and lots of republicans in congress appeared to be fine with it. Had he succeeded, or should he or someone like him succeed in future, I suspect it will far more profoundly affect you, personally, than anything the Dems did for the past century or more. Thus, and until the Republicans thoroughly rid themselves of Trumpism, I think voting GOP for congress or above is insane (the select few of the Romney and Chaney type perhaps excepted), and likewise for state legislatures where they could conceivably rig the electoral college election process
I agree with you to an extent, but...
"Dismantling merit-based education and decriminalizing petty crime has done more personal harm to me than any broad based R initiatives that I can think of."
Only holds up because climate change hasn't started to bite seriously yet.
If not for that, I'd say "fuck it, a pox on both your houses". But the GOP has lost the plot on something that stands to severely degrade our standard of living and wreak utter havoc on poorer nations.
No disagreement here.
I'm really waiting for the backlash to urban mis-governance to get Democrats to throw this stupid, 60's hippy conception that "chaos = liberty" overboard.
I'm completely fine with a nice, happy urban panopticon in which 90% of murderers are caught and jailed for life, and there's a 75% chance that a major property crime will lead to a conviction.
I also want police forces with at-will employment policies, a national blacklist for of police misconduct, and more money spent on training and psychological support, but I'd settle for cameras dense enough for a monkey to swing its way across the city to start.
Not least because it would inevitably lead to accountability. We need to improve the security situation until folks feel they have the leverage to call urban police departments onto the carpet for a thorough dressing down over all the "occupying army" shit.
“Frankly from the point of view of a trans girl it is unfair to be excluded from sports”
They’re not excluded, they just have to follow the same rules about segregation by sex that everyone else follows.
It... depends?
If you have a "women's league" and an "open league" as you often do then anyone can play in the "open league" and so nobody is excluded from the sport.
If you have a "women's league" and a "men's league" then where is an XY trans girl supposed to play? She's excluded from the women's league for understandable reasons of competition/fairness, and from the "men's league" by her gender?
Also, following your logic - what about trans males taking testosterone? That's not the same thing as having gone through male puberty - but should they be playing in women's leagues (due to being XX) - but now they've got a testosterone advantage? If you're enforcing strict chromosomal segregation you've got issues there too.
“If you have a ‘women's league’ and a ‘men's league’ then where is an XY trans girl supposed to play?”
With the other men, obviously.
This isn't that hard:
XY trans girl (and also the dude who likes to cross-dress): play with the men.
Trans male taking testosterone - disqualified due to taking PEDs. Same as with steroids.
Does a trans male taking steroids actually have an advantage over cis males? If you exclude them from playing any sports then you _are_ excluding them from playing any sports.
So far the two options (for school leagues) that have sounded the most balanced to me are:
1) Have a "XX cis female" division and an "open" division.
2) Allow you to play with your gender but cannot win trophies in individual sports (team sports are probably diffuse enough that the small percentage of trans people aren't vastly distorting the distribution.
The two options that sound the most balanced to me are:
1. Have a men's division
2. Have a women's division
How someone claims they "identify" is irrelevant. Boys to the left, even if you think you're a girl. Girls to the right, even if you think you're a guy.
"Dudes who like to cross dress" mind explaining this angle to me? How is that relevant?
Only relevant in terms of what someone thinks or behaves or how they adorn their body is irrelevant. The male bodies compete with males; female bodies compete with females.
The solution here would be an open division and a woman's division. Open is for anyone, while only cis-women would be able to compete in the women's division (if they didn't want to call it a women's division to be more PC, fine).
That’s a solution in search of a problem.
One thing the school controversies over CRT and transgender issues have in common is they show the problems Democrats run into when they align themselves with identity essentializers on the left, whether it's racial identity or gender identity. It is a form of gender essentializing to hold that a person can be born with such a strong innate gender identity (a culturally defined construct!) that they require medical intervention to conform their body to the essence of the gender identity they were "born with", rather than working to break down rigid, culturally constructed and enforced gender identities, so that all people can be comfortable just being who they are, in the body they were born with. However well intentioned, identity essentializing fundamentally buys into existing culturally constructed categories, whether it's racial categories or gender roles, and tries to enforce them by law or educational instruction, which feels wrong to a lot of people and opens the door to reactionary attacks that play on the vague sense that something is off-track about the way Democrats are dealing with the issue.
Thank you for encapsulating what has been bothering me about this debate. I spent my life pushing back on the idea that being born a girl I had to like pink and shopping and that I couldn’t be good at science, because my parents raised me to believe that gender constructs were just constructs and shouldn’t be allowed to cripple or twist individuals. When an individual’s sense of self conflicts with a social construct, it seems to me that the construct is what should give way.
This is my reaction too. It seems progressive to me that we all just love/accept ourselves and each other as we are. There is no right or wrong way to be a man or a woman. I feel like until recently, this was the prevailing view, although maybe I wasn’t paying attention. The American Medical Association is now promoting what they call “gender affirming” treatment for children. I assume that means altering your body somehow. I just can’t believe that this is considered more progressive than loving yourself the way you are.
Perhaps a trans person could explain this to me. I am open minded, I just really don’t understand.
there are individuals who strongly identify with a different cultural gender than their chromosomes and that should be respected. What I don’t like is the gender essentialists who are reviving reactionary ideas about pink and blue brains. Even if you find small average differences in large populations, using that to predict binary characteristics will be wrong for lots of people. Also, seriously, why? Let people alone.
Right. "Not my problem, none of my business, be as you are and I'll respect that" used to be a progressive position!
Yes, this.
And I would really love for progressives to address where the sizable minority without a gender identity (i.e., not non-binary, just non-applicable) fits in if we're going to wholesale switch from sex-based to gender-based. Having a gender identity at all is far from universal.
“…gender identity (a culturally defined construct!)”
One wonders how, exactly, culture did that. And why all cultures did it exactly the same way?
Hmm, you haven’t traveled much, have you?
Where did you go where there was culture with more than two sexes?
India, Cambodia, Thailand. But I was thinking more about differences in which characteristics are assigned to the common male/female categories
How many sexes does Indian culture recognize?
You didn't say sexes, you said gender. Sex is a biological concept, gender is a cultural one. You said "all cultures [defined gender] exactly the same way".
Look up third genders in South Asia, mezoamerica, two-spirit first peoples, albanian sworn virgins.
Ok. I googled “Albanian sworn virgins” and came up with this NYT article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/world/europe/sworn-virgins-albania.html
They’re women. At least according to the Times.
It is strange that transsexuals are so desperate to be labeled as women when it lets them win athletic competitions. Non-binary should mean non-binary.
I don't think a lot of transgender people call themselves non-binary though - those aren't the same.
I know someone who briefly preferred a non-gender specific pronoun (they) before taking the plunge and transitioning. She didn't want to be non-binary, she wanted to be she. And she's not participating in any athletic competitions as far as I know.
Being trans is hard, do you think people are transitioning for competitive advantage?
not generally, but i think they are blocking paths of female excellence
Curious if you think this should apply to cis men with gynecomastia or cis women with PCOS?
My three year old son, who is (age-appropriately) very interested in all things potty and body, told me the other day “not all boys have penises.” I said, “oh is that so? Where did you hear that?” “My teacher.” “Which teacher?” (Name.) Now, I am chill as fuck, very liberal, and love his teachers and his school, which is a pricey private Montessori that’s not particularly progressive and wouldn’t be impacted by these laws anyway. And my son is an extremely unreliable narrator at this time; if I ask “which teacher” he will come up with a name. So it’s possible his teacher told him this and I wouldn’t freak out if she did because there are people in this world without penises that are, as far as my son is concerned, boys. BUT. If I were a conservative I’d probably freak the fuck out over this, and I (liberal me) can understand why. When conservatives complain about “gender ideology,” they are worried that progressives are trying to teach kids that your body doesn’t dictate your gender, that only you know your true gender and you might be a girl even if you have a penis and your parents tell you you’re a boy. When applied to well-informed adults, this stuff is all fine- live life how you wish and I will treat you with respect and use whatever pronouns you wish! But let’s be honest, this whole thing is a dramatically different way of viewing the world that is not based on science and does have the potential to really screw with kids heads. So, yeah, I understand where conservatives are coming from and I think progressives are way overplaying their hand here. I can imagine that if my son attended public schools in a district that was run by super conservative Christians who wanted to teach my son that being gay is a sin and that God created the Earth in 6 days, I’d be PISSED. They can teach their kids that at home, I’ll teach my kid moral philosophy at home, and we’ll share public school for the stuff we can mostly agree on. It cuts both ways.
Books like this are marketed at kids 5 and up. https://akidsco.com/products/a-kids-book-about-being-transgender I’m pretty conflicted about them. I get where they’re coming from but it feels like you’re really playing with fire. It’s one thing to tell an adult trans woman she’s really a man-that is just cruel and unnecessary, even if you believe it to be true. It’s another to decide that the best way to “help trans kids” is to reach as many kids as early as possible to let them know if they feel different, if they feel like they don’t fit society’s idea of what a boy or girl is, they might be trans. This sense of urgency is based on a mental model of what it means to be trans, that it’s something “you’ve always known,” that *even trans people disagree with each other about.* And there is little to know scientific research on this stuff because anyone who touches it with a remotely skeptical eye is immediately shunned. So, yeah.
We've had this discussion before, but the last time it came up, I think both of us pointed out to a third party that "I would have been happier if I had transitioned sooner" is not the basis for good policy and good outcomes more broadly.
And that remains the case.
Trans issues hold genuine nuance and complexity. Our political discourse is almost completely black and white. A bad result, at least initially, was all but inevitable.
So you say not based on science, but boy and girl aren't scientific concepts. Gender identity is distinct from biological sex. For the majority of people, their preferred identity will correlate with cultural expectations for their biological sex, but for some people it doesn't. That seems reasonable and evidence based to me
I don’t disagree (I think), but biological sex is based in science and overwhelmingly binary. Personal identity (interests, personality, preferred way of interacting with society and being seen) is an infinite spectrum. There are undoubtedly people who have one sex but strongly identify with the gender associated with the other sex, and would prefer to live life as that other gender. Fine!! But what lacks scientific evidence is the idea that this gender identity is innate and immutable and all that matters in nearly all circumstances (medical, social, athletic, etc). And what people object to is their children being taught that this is the case when they personally don’t believe it.
Yes- It feels like the obvious go-forward is acknowledge biological sex exist but challenge the (admittedly deep-seated) societal notion that that ought to dictate how you should act, what you should wear, or who you should love (yes that would mean it’s ok to be gay!). I even think it makes space for “preferred pronouns” which to me is not all that different than a preferred nickname or title. Yet it feels like so much of the progressive dialogue in this space goes so much further than necessary, makes some strong metaphysical claims about the nature of identity, and ends up reinforcing some pretty retrograde gender norms.
You say "aren't neutral anymore" but was the historical position neutral? If the operating assumption of the school system is that a family means a heterosexual couple that isn't a neutral proposition.
On the topic of religious exemption, should county clerks be able to deny interracial couples marriage licenses on religious grounds?
Democrats should use more terms like, “Centering non-binary lived experience instead of cisnormative privilege” or we need to lecture more working class people on the need to introduce themselves with their pronouns.
That is what we will probably do.
I volunteer as an elections official. To me, the core tenets of the job are to administer the election fairly and impartially (obviously), but as a not-too-distant-second, to be seen as impartial by the voters. If they can even *hint* at my personal political affiliation, I am doing a bad job.
The county clerk has started to "encourage" us to list preferred pronouns on our nametags in the name of inclusivity for a few percent (?) of the population, at the cost of signaling to essentially all Republicans (and more than a fair few Democrats) that we are not like them and we do not think like them.
I was big mad, and I politely declined.
I would say that for working class people (and a large proportion of college educated people) "centering" and "non-binary" are not any better than cisnormative. Certainly language changes over time - how people talked 50+ years ago is different than it is today - but it does so in a gradual, natural manner. Creating new terms and trying to inject them into the lexicon reeks of elitism and is going to be a major turnoff for the vast majority of people even when they agree with the underlying proposition that you are trying to support.
There should have been an “/s”.
He definitely meant the “/s”.
I always think putting /s in a post takes the punch out.
Agreed. Just had a number of these moments recently that reminded me that the internet sucks.
I think you missed my joke. I put in quotes the whole thing. This type of talk is coin of the realm in twitterworld.
Ha! Yes, my mistake. Totally missed it. Need to get my coffee going.
btw . . . on the same page with you re: not using the "/s". Done properly (which you did do in this case) it is unnecessary.
Matt writes as if excluding trans men from womens’ sports is a distasteful concession to the plebs. However, defending womens’ sports is a positive good.
Womens’ sports are about female excellence. Womens’ world record times in swimming and track would be pedestrian achievements for a man— solid displays of athleticism that would rarely rank in the top 100. A world where trans men can compete as women is a world in which any female champion could be dethroned if a male also ran decided to transition. It is a world in which exemplars female excellence could hold the spotlight only at the sufferance of men. It is a world in which gender equality is subordinated to the needs of a pathetic fringe group. No thank you.
Imagine writing a comment with this much confidence and not even getting the basics of what trans man means right.
This seems like needless gatekeeping? The intended meaning was clear and it seems the terminological error had no malice in it?
“The needs of a *pathetic fringe group*”? Definitely no malice there. But deeper than that if David isn’t familiar with the basics, maybe his opinion about sports isn’t a deeply considered and researched position but just some reflexive transphobia.
where i come from, pathetic means evoking sympathy. that is my attitude towards transsexuals. i’m very glad i don’t suffer from gender dysphoria, and i am sympathetic to those who do. however, i care about protecting women’s sports because 1) archetypes of female excellence are deeply important to me and 2) the number of competitive athletes who suffer from gender dysphoria is much smaller than the number of competitive athletes who are female
Missed that, sorry. That is bad
I prefer the term trans man as it centers biological sex. This is especially apt in athletics, where hard facts of endocrinology and biology are more important than self-identification
What does it mean?
Trans men refers to men who are trans (I.e. were not designated male at birth).
“Trans men refers to men who are trans”
That’s not helpful.
Fortunately, if you find that unhelpful, I included a helpful parenthetical to provide alternate routes to enlightenment.
That was even more unhelpful.
People who were born "female" and transitioned to male later.
That’s not possible.
What is unclear about this Ken?
Pretty much everything.
Hey, I'm no biologist. How could I possibly know the answer to that question?
“I’m not a vet but I know what a dog is.”
To be clear, a world where women's sports are confined to people with two X chromosomes is a world where transmen are participating in women's sports.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it’s not average male-to-female transgender people who want to compete. It’s athletes already competitive to some degree in their own sex class transitioning and then wanting to continue competition in the female category. So we’re not talking about an average male body—we’re talking about an already-competitive male body, subjected to some alterations of dubious relevance (I.e. testosterone reduction) competing against females.
Because of drug testing, many athletes used testosterone during training but not in the weeks before competition. Even when testosterone levels appeared normal at the time of competition, strength athletes could get a big advantage just by training with elevated testosterone levels for a few months
The issue is that journeyman male athletes (eg top 500 but not top 20) can win female competitions.
Many of these transgender in sports and bathroom issues could be solved and instead of using the outdated concept of gender, we just have homogametic bathrooms and sports teams and heterogametic bathrooms and sports teams.
In all seriousness… One of the biggest issues is the children transitioning issues. This is one that is difficult. As someone who has raised nine kids, I have seen the effects of peer and social pressure on a kids identity. There are many kids who don’t really figure out what and who they are until later high school and college. And I certainly think it is possible that there are some doctors and or parents who might be a little too quick with some interventions.
However, there are definitely kids who medical intervention is appropriate. If I was dictator, I guess I would make the law that nothing permanent could be done under the age of 16 to 18. The use of puberty blockers should require some sort of consensus between health experts. I.e. several Doctors have to sign off.
But I also suspect that some of you will think of exceptions or cases that I haven’t taken into account, and I fully acknowledge that. I am open to be convinced store learn wise one of my suggestions is wrong or should be modified.
I was reading about Sweden's recent changes to their rules (less permissive about teens transitioning now). Apparently the original "Dutch Protocol" has been very successful (few detransitioners) when applied to people who meet the criteria, which includes long-standing Gender Dysphoria(GD). (I think that includes teenagers who have had GD since they were 5 or 6)
However, they have backed away from providing medical treatments for (I think) ROGD (Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria) because of a much higher error rate (by error I mean that there were non-medical treatments that could have resolved the dysphoria)
So, parsing this, my understanding is that bills that ban kids from _ever_ getting the treatment are wrong because there appear to be some kids who really _do_ benefit from it, but there's _also_ been an over-prescription of medical intervention and natural pushback to that.
If it takes kids so long to figure out who they are (it took me until 19 to figure out I’m trans though it probably should have been obvious beforehand) shouldn’t we try to prevent all kids from going through anything permanent? I.e. shouldn’t all kids be on blockers if trans kids aren’t ready to go through a “permanent” puberty? That my voice deepening and Adam’s apple hardening were “natural” doesn’t make them any less distressing to me.
I don’t mean to sound dismissive, but all forms of physically growing up are permanent and often stressful. I have no doubt that for a small subset of kids experiencing gender dysphoria, it’s an exponentially higher level of distress. But that doesn’t mean it’s a wise idea to stop puberty for everyone. Part of gaining the mental and experiential capacity to “know who you are” is due to the physical and hormonal changes of puberty and its effect on your brain. We need to get better at finding ways to help kids who are experiencing extreme dysphoria without suggesting to all teens that feeling uncomfortable through puberty is a sign that something is wrong.
Thank you for raising this. People forget that going through puberty is itself a clarifying growth experience, and delaying it risks delaying mental maturation that itself would clarify for many individuals some aspects of who they are.
Yeah I think that’s largely correct and underscores why I think “nothing ‘permanent’ before majority” is a terrible policy suggestion.
Well, I assume they mean no permanent medical interventions.
My understanding is that blockers have some permanent effects too - so they're not "free" if you're unsure. That is, they have uses but it is possible they are currently over-prescribed.
It’s clear that there’s a lot of nuance yet to be hashed out with respect to this issue, but bad-faith comments like this get us no closer to resolution. Let’s be try to be more charitable, shall we?
TB Nichols above literally just suggested in a manner that was speculative, but seemingly unironic, putting all minors on puberty blockers. I'm not sure Graham's response is that close to "bad faith."
Do I think the likely endpoint is a “Children of Men”-esque dystopia? No, no I don’t. Does that surprise you?
And while I broadly understand the handwringing about Jackson’s comment, I think it’s silly to not put it in its proper context — that she is the nominee of a Democratic president answering questions from a hostile, culture-warring subset of Republicans. If you didn’t ridicule Kavanuagh’s “calculated political hit” rant with as much vitriol, then it feels unfair to act like this is the end of the Court as we know it.
No, I think you’re right. Sure, there are edge cases, but policy should be made for the majority of cases and err on the side of caution when it comes to permanent bodily modification.
The trans issue seems unique amongst progressive issues in the demands that it puts on other people to change the way they speak. If Mark wants to present like a woman and change his name to Mary, I’m happy to call him Mary. If I’m talking to Mark/Mary, I will use the name, I won’t be using pronouns anyway.
But when I talk about Mark/Mary to somebody else, now I must call him “her” or else I am a bad person. But this is no longer about showing respect to Mark/Mary (who likely isn’t present), this is about conforming to a new world view in which sex or gender is not grounded in objective facts about biology but rather grounded in our subjective “identities”. Well, what if I don’t believe that? Am I hateful for not believing that? Must I pretend to believe it to be a good person?
I believe in showing respect to all people, but the thing with the pronouns, “pregnant people” “they”, this is too much for me. I am old. Maybe the younger generations will agree with this.
The younger generations won't agree with it, either. But they will comply because the cost of noncompliance is too high.
When the king banishes anyone who says he has no clothes, all of his subjects will insist he is wearing a suit.
I personally wouldn't say that makes you hateful(I feel like hate requires intent and the word gets thrown around too much), but have you considered that if you use "he" to refer to Mary to someone else, you may later cause hurt to Mary when that person (who doesn't know Mary!) uses "he" in her presence.
The biggest hurdle in regards to trans rights, particularly in comparison to gay* rights, is that trans people are a vanishingly small percentage of the population. One of the most effective tactics of the 90s and 00s push for gay rights was the push for gay people to come out of the closet, so that more straight people could realize that they actually know a gay person. That they have a gay cousin or coworker or friend or child. Gay people are a very small percentage of the population, but there are enough of us that we made an impact through all the people we knew.
Trans folks are an even smaller percentage of the population, so a similar campaign of being visibly out is not nearly as effective. Even worse, it means there is a dearth of trans leaders and figures who can make the argument for their rights. This means that progressives are often in the position of speaking “on behalf of” trans folks, and when we are speaking on behalf of a group (instead of letting that group speak for itself) the biggest flubs are made.
*Using “gay” here for shorthand all the LGB folks, as that was often the shorthand we used at the time.
I think that's backwards. A key path to gay equality was that lgb people are a very small proportion of the population (even today its still far sigh of the common 10% estimate), and so you could go to straight people and say "don't worry about gay equality, we're just trying to live in a world you dominate through overwhelming numbers". That's why gay marriage ended up being a brilliant wedge issue for gay rights - it finally disowned the idea that LGB people were going to be a vanguard of a new, sexually radical future. Gay and Bi people were just as boring and square as everybody else.
Trans people are basically where LGB people were in the 1970s/80s, where the alliance with the radical left means that the line between genuine advocacy for them as a group and general advocacy for far left hangups is fuzzy and unclear. That leads to greater demands being made (all toilets should be gender neutral, you should feel bad about dressing your child in stereotypical clothing, etc) and suspicion that even minor changes are the dreaded "thin end of the wedge". We'll hopefully end up in a similar situation with trans people as LGB people, which indeed will be helped along as more people get to know them, although trans rights does require more active participation from the whole of society (use the right pronouns, don't deadname, improve facilities, work out what to do about sports) than was the case with Gay or Bi people.
I wonder how much pushing non-binary at the same time has affected things. I "get" transgender. I still don't feel like I "get" non-binary.
I will do my best to use "they" in those cases and respect people but I don't "get" it.
I think part of the marriage equality movement's success was that it was eventually easy for people to "get" and realize it was... normal. Everyone understands my husband is my husband.
Also, like marriage equality, someone else transitioning male->female or vice versa fits within the society I already understand. Non-binary feels like it's trying to break all the rules.
Maybe those rules need to be broken - but that's a tougher sell.
If it helps, think of non-binary kind of like how people would have thought of biracial back in the day. Our society used to consider everyone either "White" or "Black" (the one-drop rule). Then we stopped doing that, and allowed the people who were part of each to be a third category*
*this excludes other racial groups that exist in the US, for simplicity
The biracial argument lends itself more to people with differences of sexual development (rare but existent “intersex” conditions.) Non-binary does not refer to some middle ground between sexes, but a refusal to adopt the social category of man or woman. In other words, a personality pretending to reject gender while inherently adopting it.
Yes...I think there's a lot of truth to the idea that people find it easier to accept that some people will transition to the other end of the binary, than reject it altogether. And it's certainly the case that the liberal/feminist backlash to trans rights began as non-binary gender identities became more commonly discussed.
I know it was late breaking, but you should check out and maybe addend this to include the Utah governor’s veto statement on the bill banning trans athletes. I’m not sure how much that messaging has been tested, but I’d be shocked if it or something like it doesn’t get some purchase with centrists and non-“the cruelty is the point” Republicans. Just make every elected Democrat memorize some variations on that statement about putting kids first and “even the Republican governor of Utah can see…” because trans kids don’t necessarily need to be left out to dry here.
I just saw that and am still processing it myself. It seems like a startling act of conscience from an elected official and it will be fascinating to see the fallout. I'm not familiar at all with Utah state level politics, but what does Cox have to gain politically from bucking party on this issue?
I don't think that we should rule out simple conscience: the letter (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1emUTfFEbmNmSdW9UhhsRAseVNr4cPIv9/view) is written passionately and seems heartfelt (especially the final page).
But, while I also don't know much about internal Utah politics, I'm not sure that he has nothing to gain. He refers himself to the ill-considered way the bill lays schools open to lawsuits, which could well cause him problems down the line. Also he may have wanted to defuse the issue in a way that would not put Utah in the firing line for boycotts and the like while still satisfying social conservatives.
Note that in his letter he refers to his preferred option, namely an expert commission that would allow or ban trans athletes on a case-by-case basis - and he also explicitly refers to Lia Thomas as the kind of case which he would expect such a commission to ban. And for that reason, I don't think that we are likely to see the Utah governor held up as a model that Democrats could follow, since Lia Thomas is precisely the kind of case which creates the wedge for Democrats and unites Republicans.
Utah is weird. Good weird, in my experience, but weird.
Maybe we all need to convert to Mormonism.
Characterized by remarkably low hypocrisy, I think.
Relatively low, at least. Mike Lee is still a senator there.
I skimmed the letter and prohibiting the players and their teams from winning makes me wonder how much winning/domination would be allowed. But is that really a solution that progressives would accept? It does take away the most obvious ‘wtf’ reactions to this.
"Suppose a student with two moms mentions that fact about himself in a first-grade classroom, some other kid says that’s not possible, and then a teacher explains that some families have two moms or two dads. I think it is pretty unlikely, in practice, that this teacher will get in trouble with anyone."
I am not at all confident that this will be the case. I think teachers will be on edge if a question such as this is raised in a K-3 classroom. In addition, I think laws such as this one don't address the real problem than that is bullying which is highly prevalent in schools (more so in middle school than elementary school). Preventing open discussion in classrooms will lead to more of this bad behavior.
Yeah I thought Matt was being naive about this, especially given how the law intersects with the teachers own views or desire for a quiet life. I was coming to terms with my sexuality when the UK had Section 28 on the books, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in Schools. And that led to a teacher refusing to help me when I came out to him, because he didn't want to get into trouble
Kind of hard to deny when a kid in the class has 2 dads. Schools have events where parents are invited.
Why would a first grade teacher allow a student to drive classroom instruction?
This is pretty troll-y, even for you Ken.
Kids never draw pictures of their families for kindergarten? They're told to draw and label all sorts of pictures as practice writing.
And the drawing by the student who has two dads or whatever? Is that supposed to inevitably lead to a discursion about same-sex marriage? Or would it be possible for the teacher to steer the discussion back to the topic of the lesson?
So, in other words, this IS don’t ask don’t tell for my first grader, who should never be allowed to mention his family.
Not on board.
I don’t believe your claim that your first grader works for a school.
So, tell me, in this very obvious and extremely likely example from my actual family, how should the teacher respond?
And what assurances can you give me that this Florida law won’t give that teacher pause to do the right thing?
The teacher should respond by moving the topic back to the curriculum. And the intent of the law is to ensure that the teacher does the right thing.
Got it, Ken. I’d like my kids to be able to talk about their families openly, like all other kids, rather than force them to time travel back to 1985 and live in shame and fear like I did.
The reality is that families come in many different family structures, including families with two moms and two dads, no matter how bad conservatives want to deny it. And no kids are harmed by acknowledging that. This is an obvious attempt to punish my kids for having the -in this case- bad luck to have gay parents. And I don’t care what Matt Yglesias or anyone else says I will absolutely fight you and the State of Florida and anyone else on it. Just as gay marriage was radically unpopular once. I believe that humanity’s basic compassion will win out here as it has before.
Trans women in womens sports is a more complicated issue because everyone believes they are arguing for basic fairness. I’m not sure how different this really is from any other number of clear physical advantages in sports. And I don’t think it’s as neatly separable from gay rights as many LGB people would like to believe right now, as the long history of lesbians dominating womens sports makes clear. Time will tell, on this issue. I’m willing to accept that the timing isn’t right to change the law. The conversation needs to happen first.
You appear to be ignorant of what goes on in elementary schools these days. I know several elementary school teachers including one who is a special education teacher at a Title I school. Questions such as this come up all the time and they present difficulties for the teacher.
The "don't say gay" bill seems awful in the same way the "anti-CRT" bills do. They're incredibly broad, and incredibly vague and intended to chill clearly 1st amendment protected speech. However, it polls ok because people don't think legalistically, and there is in fact a phenomena occurring that many people aggressively object to.
I personally have a 4 year old cousin who is asked at the start of her day at preschool "what are your words are today"? That seems kind of horrifying, and not at all something that should be acceptable for public employees to be doing to school children (this may well be a private preschool which is obviously, legally, a different case). In some places elementary school teachers have basically embraced a psychological experiment of encouraging and promoting the formation of gender identity in young children that seems unsupported and has the potential to be outright harmful. This is different from simply creating an environment in which all students can thrive.
The basic problem with trans "rights" in the law is the Gender Identity concept. It's not at all clear scientifically that is a thing that exists at all, or who has one, who doesn't or how stable it is. It's an aggressively unpopular idea in the voting public. And much of trans activism has become about supplanting the concept of sex in the law with this concept.
In what way is the Florida bill broad or vague? It simply says:
1. No teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity at all before 4th grade.
2. From 4th grade on schools that want to teach about sexual orientation or gender identity have to follow state standards.
What do you find so confusing about that?
My kids have two dads. If we lived in Florida, and that came up in class, and the teacher said "some kids have two dads and some have two moms" that sounds like it's covered under the law (super broad!)
If you don't think it's covered under the law then we disagree about what they mean and it's too vague.
“and the teacher said ‘some kids have two dads and some have two moms’”
Why would a teacher feel compelled to say that? Why not change the subject by going back to teaching the curriculum?
What if another kid asks about it?
What if there's some teasing about it and the teacher needs to say something?
Also, plenty of books show a mom and dad(they're exposing kids to heterosexuality! OMG!) - why not have representation with at least one book in the classroom that shows my child's family?
Why is exposing kids to this reality a problem or age-inappropriate?
My explanation to my kids is that you marry someone that you want to make part of your family. That's it. I don't _think_ they even know the word 'gay' even though their dads are. They do know that boys marrying boys wasn't always allowed(I don't expect teachers to cover that last part in kindergarten - but given that they've learned about Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges I don't think it's 'wrong' to either)
It talks about state "standards" that don't actually exist for "age appropriate" as defined by nothing. It also all hinges on what is or isn't "instruction".
If it’s true that no state standard exist, what’s the problem?
It's entirely possible that the law is written so poorly as to end up interpreted by the courts as being utterly toothless. That is in no way a defense of the law or it's passage.
If a school is teaching these topics in a way that they can demonstrate are age appropriate then why should they fear lawsuits?
There will always be activists who start with the moral high ground (“trans people are human beings who deserve respect and protection”) and push so hard that they end up in absurdist territory (“gender identity trumps biological sex in every possible context”). It’s the behavior of people who don’t expect to ever have any real power - except that right now, the activists are winning the culture war in progressive areas and there doesn’t seem to be any movement leadership willing or interested in tamping down such excesses.
I have a question. Based on the wording of the statute why would a woman teacher talking about her wife be any more of a problem than talking about her husband? I believe heterosexual is an orientation as well. It seems the way to counter this bill is to argue that the language prevents pictures or mentions of nuclear families in the classroom. No more family trees! Too much sex in those! Just need some liberal activist to sue over teacher Cindy talking about Jeff her husband.
One thing I think hurts Matt's point, is that gay marriage was itself attacked as a failure to play to win. Lots and lots of people (myself included) argued that gay rights movements should just accept civil unions, which really were marriage by another name, and so avoid offending religious people's sensibilities. But gay marriage proponents really were right that only by opening up marriage to same-sex couples would defeat the stigma that had been attached to those relationships. I think trans rights campaigners rightly see the situation in the same lens - it might sign like no big deal to stop trans women competing in sports or accessing women's refuges, but that is a clear statement that society still does not consider them women.
And tbf quite a few comments in this thread underline why trans rights activists can't/won't compromise on these issues.
Matt, you do these "politicians shouldn't pick fights that are too unpopular" posts every once in a while, but I never quite know what you're prescribing. I mean, should they vote against bad bills? They should vote against them, right? Should they talk a lot about their unpopular votes against bad bills? Probably not, but politicians often don't get a lot of choice what they talk about. People ask them questions and they have to take positions, and they have to explain their positions.
I feel this could benefit from more of a case study analysis where you break down, "Here is where X politician specifically made a mistake that was possible to avoid." Otherwise I don't know what you think a "tactical retreat" looks like.