Fuck I hate libs. This whole thing is a lesson that this fucking conversation is nothing but transphobic garbage. But they still see it as a positive. Fucking disgusting.
Now 4 kids can't fucking play with their teams. 4 fucking children. What a fucking victory to celebrate.
I'm so sorry to my trans comrades. I will continue to do anything and everything I can to make a the world a safer place for you.
The whole thing obviously has nothing to do with sports, it's just an opportunity for people to express their transphobia, with sports as a cover to hide behind. Nobody supporting this could name a female youth champion athlete (tbf, it'd be kinda sus if they could). But if it was about sports, it'd be really dumb because fundamentally, being able to participate is more important than winners and losers. Sports are supposed to be about having fun and staying healthy. Exercise is really important for psychological health, and having a welcoming environment could be lifesaving.
But again, it really has nothing to do with sports. It's all about framing the narrative. If they can imagine any context where a trans women could inconvenience cis women in any way, it will immediately become national news and get a wave of legislation across dozens of states, and that legislation will keep the narrative in the news constantly, until they find another angle of attack. Next they're going to be like, "What if a trans woman has long fingernails and a cis woman gets scratched" and then a dozen states will ban trans women from having long fingernails.
The article in the linked post even has someone explicitly explaining that they're pushing this legislation strategically in states that would be difficult to boycott, in order to establish precedent so other states don't risk backlash. It's completely astroturfed (astroTERFed?), and we have a situation where state legislatures are totally under the beck and call of right-wing media, literally just following lock-step with whatever the TV is telling the boomers this week.
I know there's probably some people who want to be good allies, but have concerns that trans athletes may have an unfair advantage. I don't know much about the science personally, but I also don't really care. It's not being pushed as a good faith concern. If I thought it would shut down the narrative that trans women are a threat to cis women, I would be more than happy to give up on the issue. But it won't. If they got everything they wanted with regards to sports, there would be precisely zero people who would stop coming after us, instead, they will become more emboldened the more they win. And it's kind of terrifying to think of where this will end up. This is just the proof of concept. Fighting the mechanism that they're trying to establish - that they have established - is what matters, and it's not just important for the sake of trans rights. We see the same levers wielded to push shit about CRT, for example. If they can do this media-blitz-to-legislation shit against trans people, then they can do it to anyone, and it could be your head on the chopping block next time. So to anyone who fits what I described at start of this paragraph, like I said I don't know shit about the science, but maybe look at the bigger picture before accepting the framing and lending credence to the narrative.
The US military did a study on it. After two years of hormone therapy, trans men and cis men have no differences in performance (trans men might be able to do more sit ups), while trans women run somewhat faster than cis women, but are otherwise the same.
I suspect that difference in running speed would disappear if you controlled for height. I'm kinda tempted to ask the author of the paper for that data.
Because it doesn't really exist. There's 2 instances I can think of of trans women surpassing cis women in sports. One was an MMA fight, and the other was the swimmer from the other week. The fighter lost hard not long after and her record was not great from that point on. The swimmer came in dead last the next meet.
Now could it be they're losing on purpose to kill the heat? Possibly but a) that's fucking horrible they feel the need to do this, and b) most likely goes against their morals and values as athletes.
There was also the trans man in Texas who was forced to compete with women against his will, because the law said he had to compete based on the sex on his birth certificate :galaxy-brain:
Yeah, the transphobes definitely just care about fair competition lmao
These people don't consider trans men at all, as they damage their narrative. I'm not sure if that's a blessing or not in these cases.
You're absolutely right. This whole trans athletes thing is just the last little bastion of transphobia libs and more moderate conservatives have to hold onto. I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone bring it up unprompted and say something like "I'm all for trans rights... BUT I don't think they should be allowed to compete blah blah blah."
None of them actually give a shit about whatever sport they think they're talking about. It's super weird how glad people are to tell you their only anti-trans opinion.
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Yes I'm talking specifically about conversation in "polite society" and not saying it's the only way transphobia manifests itself in society at large. I thought I put it more clearly than I did.