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[McTraveller]

The sports thing is easy.  Just have physical-characteristic-class divisions, like for boxing or whatever.  So don't have mens & women's volleyball; have "volleyball for people less than 140cm tall" and "volleyball for people between 140 and 165cm" and "volleyball for people over 165cm".  Stuff like that.

Especially for characteristics which cannot be changed by training; I can train to improve muscle mass, metabolism, etc. But there's nothing* I can do to change my height.

I mean, as a below-average-height man (only 168cm), I feel at a disadvantage in many sports.

*No I'm not going to do bionics or any kind of really strange augmentation or gene therapy or something. Especially since I'm well beyond "growing" age.

[nenjin]

Separate but equal isn't a standard most want to embrace.

[Jopax]

Stuff like this is setting the acceptance of the whole trans community so far back it's not even funny. Conservative folks see these isolated cases and will assume it was done in bad faith and only to get ahead, using it as an example why the whole thing is bullshit. Doesn't help the media will spin it that way to farm the hate however much they can. And it's bloody obvious from the start why allowing this would be a bad idea that would only lead to grief down the line. Both for the trans folks who will be unfairly judged for this and for the cis folks who are getting screwed over by people coming in with completely unfair advantages in terms of physique and physical readiness and competing in venues they never would be able to compete in otherwise.

[Frumple]

However we have plenty of examples of transgender women dominating the competition and setting new records in women's sports after they transition.

Uh, do we? From what I recall that both hasn't actually happened much, and the times it has the records were shortly beaten by cis folks. If anyone's transitioned, topped the records, and then stayed there, there hasn't been much chatter about it.

[Great Order]

Didn't the IOC do a study that found if anything trans women tend to under-perform too?

Also big ups to the trans woman from New Zealand who competed at the Olympics some years back. Got in and came dead last, possibly out of spite for stereotypes.

[Lord Shonus]

The biological differences between men and women matter a bit when you're grabbing a bunch of people at random and throwing them together, but once you apply any form of selection they become a less important factor. At any skill level above the absolute lowest, it is irrelevant. Same reason why the hulking goliaths you see walking around most high schools aren't automatically sports superstars - their immense relative strength doesn't magically give them talent or dedication.

[nenjin]

But if you've been training for X years and developed the muscle mass, bone density and connective tissue strength (which are tied to gender and hormones) and then transition, you do start in their league with not-discountable competitive advantage.

Sure if you've never trained, transition and then compete, you may well get out-classed by life time athletes in the gender. Because you didn't spend years building that competitive advantage with hormones optimized for it.

[feelotraveller]

Sports are also about participation. Tend to lose sight of that when watching the Olympics.

[Mathel]

I see two options for sports.

1. Remove gendering altogether. Just lump everybody together or divide by something neutral like mass or height.
2. Add at least one category: Misfits (you could name it something else). Anybody could compete in Misfits category, so long as they were physically able.
    I'd also add an Auguments category, which would allow anybody to join but you could use advanced prosthetics and performance drugs.

[nenjin]

There's been some discussion about leagues specifically "enhanced" athletes. But since PED use is still a Federal crime and considered cheating by most sporting bodies, I think we have a long way to go before we have those very specific sub-leagues for things like transgender.

It'll also bring up the issue of "well who is better." When you have 4 standards of competition, people stop having the same collective understanding of sports. Which is supposed to bring us all together, ya know?

[Truean]

[Please do not quote. Not legal advice.]

No. Just no. It's one thing to say there may be some difference concerning transgender athletes. It is another to erase people's identity and that's what's going on with a larger conservative movement to rewrite history and erase people.

The woman's daughter is NOT male. The woman's daughter is a transgender female. She did not allow a male to play on a female only team. Her transgender daughter played when transgender people are not allowed to play because of a law that was newly enacted as part of the governor's "Don't say Gay" laws. In 30 years, history will view this as the second series of gay jim crow laws. After 2003 Lawrence v Texas, and 2015's Obergefell, the more anti gay bigoted part of the conservatives have been scrambling to continue their fight but found no foothold, until recently. "Surprisingly," all those things they said about horses eating horses and doom and the end times didn't happen when gay marriage was legalized. So now, they're going back to the "don't say gay." 

Those same don't say gay laws are now spreading and Louisiana just passed one.... More new laws will raise these old bigoted standards as they erase us, again. Although I've said repeatedly the trans acceptance movement made several tactical errors setting us back by not understanding the lay of the land, these new laws and going after the parents, are something else and something worse by far.

Point remains, this is that "cancel culture" the conservatives rail against. So fire the parent? Make up some excuse and persecute the parents of trans kids..... That's what was behind this wrong law exposing "parents rights," as a sham which doesn't apply to the parents of trans kids. See, those "Don't say gay" laws, are going to make it a literal crime to talk about anything having to do with gays when a kid is around. That will literally lead to people being charged with a crime.... So ... "breaking the law," fired, fined, possibly put in jail.... Criminal record.... Yeah..... That's what is really going on.

"msifits?" but you could name us something else?

There are several possible solutions but none are going to be implemented.
Earlier intervention including puberty blockers which would address any concerns are now increasingly banned.
Several such bans are until 18 or 21, but you're going to have health plans refusing to cover it if this keeps up at any age, again.
Then, they're just going to ban it outright, one way or another.

All of those points concerning possible athletic advantages, could be addressed with puberty blockers which are entirely reversible and through the physician if/when the doctor determines it is medically indicated.

Thank you.

Even though you may think there is a more significant difference and hold a different view (to some degree), you re not being unreasonable.

***************

Speaking of revisionist history

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mcconnell-compares-biden-supreme-court-143337813.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

January 6th was an insurrection attempt. Full stop. Police officers doing their jobs died. The perpetrators have been found guilty in multiple courts (including Judges appointed by Trump). Their methods were force and violence and unlawful to the point that their political rivals were initially blamed for it until it was proven by video who actually did it. But if it was perfectly OK behavior, then why initially blame their rivals as wrong?
If liberals did that, the conservatives would have a field day, because they know ....

Biden proposed possible Supreme Court revisions. He used no force. He is discussing the matter. He has not declared anything or exercised any authority. All he's doing is talking. This is a civilized discussion and little more, especially in light of recent events like large gifts being given, etc. 

These two things are not the same.
[Please do not quote. Not legal advice.]

[Mathel]

Male and female are biological terms. Males produce sperm, females produce eggs.
So if you are saying that person is transgender and female, you are saying they are a man and as such a son.

As for the law you speak of, I do not know it. What I do know is, that some sports are separated into "man" and "woman" leagues. This separation started before the LGBT+ stuff started getting promoted, and is unrelated to it. It is instead related to the biological differences between males and females. Back when it was split, nobody expected there to be a male woman or a female man. An understandable oversight that sparks these conflicts now.

So disallowing transgender women from participating in "women" (actually female) leagues and transgender men from participating in "men" (actually male) leagues is just keeping the status quo. The other option is to end the split entirely, having men and women compete together.

And as I already pointed out, the woman that was suspended was the volleyball coach. She could have been fired for allowing any trans girl to be there. It just so happens that the one trans girl she allowed was her daughter. What does this tell us? That the woman was willing to break a law for her child.

With misfits, I did say you could name it something else. But I was not just putting transgender people in there. I was putting anybody who would be able to participate without assistance, but not allowed in other leagues due to various fair play rules. Such as cis women with too much testosterone.

I am against puberty blockers. We have laws that disallow people that aren't at least mostly through puberty from voting, driving, using drugs, etc. This means an assumption that children and teenagers aren't able to decide clearly. So why should they be allowed to decide something so serious as changing their gender. Also, if their puberty is halted, it could be argued that they remain decision-impaired and are not allowed to vote.

[pisskop]

Misfits is a bad term because it encapsulates too much.  Is a 4'9" man the same as a 250lb woman?  Is a transgender athlete the same as a man who lost his big toe or whole foot?  Do we include people who are wheelchair bound or legally blind?

It's too broad a term and the spectrum of human ability is too broad.  'People who dont fit into any other niche we've standardized thus far' isnt great because there's too much variance.  It also has negative social implications, which we should avoid.

[hector13]

If males produce sperm and females produce eggs, does that mean infertile people are agender?

Menopausal females are no longer female?

Men who have had testicles removed to avoid dying of testicular cancer are no longer male?

[Frumple]

I am against puberty blockers.

Then you're against extremely effective medical intervention, and in favor of inflicting years of torture on folks with dysphoria. Blockers into medical transitioning is about the best option we have for dysphoric minors, and forcing trans youth through puberty is one of the reasons the suicide rates for trans folk are as high as they are. It's an intensely traumatizing process for someone with significant amounts of dysphoria. Opposition to use of puberty blockers for trans youth is pretty literally murderous. There's no virtue to it, a great deal of vice... and it's in direct contradiction to best medical practice.

All that age mess is an incredibly arbitrary thing built almost entirely for administrative ease, in any case. Age makes some difference, but the age itself matters more than how much puberty you've gone through. Not having gone through a traditional puberty is not invalidating for decision making capacity.

Male and female are biological terms. Males produce sperm, females produce eggs.

This is, as basically always when folks try to go that route, just kinda' wrong. Both men and women are born unable to do either, and literally all of them eventually stops doing so without somehow transitioning to some kind of other option.

About your best route for biological essentialism is chromosome, but that "best route" is still intensely messy and practically leaves you with notably more than two categories and incredibly disparate expressions wildly detached from what we assign any particular combination as is (that's another way of saying it's a shitty way of categorizing things, incidentally :V).

The fundamental problem with the dual categories is biology is messy, and it doesn't actually work like our cultures' arbitrary designations do, heh. Trying to reconcile that just perennially doesn't work, in generally but especially for the folks on the margins.