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
The US Women's Soccer team is currently suing the US Soccer Federation due to the fact they aren't paid as much as the Men's team despite being the best Women's team in the world while the men are using ranked around 30th. A large number of supporters of the Women's team seem to think that the fact that the Women's team is more successful against their competition than the Men are theirs means they would easily beat the Men's team themselves. In reality, the Women's team has lost to the US Under-15 Boys team. This has led some of them to suggest that the solution to pay equity between the two would to eliminate the sex divisions and force the men to compete with women for spots on the team. They truly believe that the resulting team would be mostly women with a handful of the outstanding maybe making the team. In reality not a single cis woman would make this team.
People seem to just be willing to believe the world is as they hope it to be, reality be damned.
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.
Parker describes herself as a "transgender media advocate". Is that different than an activist? She's also regularly described as an activist in LGBT+ media.
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.
Among the Tumblr crowd it seems to be pretty common to mix and match trans and non-binary identities. There's even a specific term for people who identify as both.
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
The US Women's Soccer team is currently suing the US Soccer Federation due to the fact they aren't paid as much as the Men's team despite being the best Women's team in the world while the men are using ranked around 30th. A large number of supporters of the Women's team seem to think that the fact that the Women's team is more successful against their competition than the Men are theirs means they would easily beat the Men's team themselves. In reality, the Women's team has lost to the US Under-15 Boys team. This has led some of them to suggest that the solution to pay equity between the two would to eliminate the sex divisions and force the men to compete with women for spots on the team. They truly believe that the resulting team would be mostly women with a handful of the outstanding maybe making the team. In reality not a single cis woman would make this team.
People seem to just be willing to believe the world is as they hope it to be, reality be damned.
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.
Parker describes herself as a "transgender media advocate". Is that different than an activist? She's also regularly described as an activist in LGBT+ media.
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.
How many basketball teams will a high school need to field to have an equitable amount of opportunities for all students?
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.
Among the Tumblr crowd it seems to be pretty common to mix and match trans and non-binary identities. There's even a specific term for people who identify as both.
http://www.thecenterbak.org/blog/identity-vocabulary-nonbinary-edition#:~:text=4.,and%20only%20Male%20and%20Agender.
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