blackhole

Does he have a military background or something? Why is he more of an expert on this topic?

What’s the purpose behind the theater?

Can I point to data that men are taller than women? Stronger than women? Yes… yes I can. Or you can just google it. It’s a pretty easily verifiable fact.

We are banning them specifically because they gained that advantage by going through puberty as a gender they aren’t competing as. And none of those other women competitors had the ability to do that.

That is the difference. And I think that’s a fine reason to ban someone from competing (AT A HIGH LEVEL, NOT CHILDREN’S SPORTS).

I’m not going to try to defend Republicans, because I disagree with them on basically everything.

But I’m not disagreeing about reality, I’m disagreeing about opinion.

Here is my opinion. If you have an advantage in a sport due to something genetically natural about you, and you went through puberty as the same gender as the sport your competing in. I’m fine with that.

If you have an advantage in a sport and went through puberty as a different gender than the class your competing in, I’m not ok with that.

There is no fact or no fact there. It’s an opinion. One that I’m entitled to have. And one that you need to be able to hear, without the need to silence me or delete my comments. Because people should be allowed to have a different opinion then you.

We can argue about the merits of our opinion, but you can’t say I’m not congruent with reality, or however else you want to try to downplay my opinion.

I think it’s really simple.

If you have an advantage because of something that occurs naturally in you, and you’ve gone through puberty as a woman, then it’s fine.

If you have an advantage because you went through puberty as a gender other than what you’re competing as, then it falls outside of the advantages we are willing to accept.

That’s all there is to it, really.

Right. And we’ve decided the advantages we are ok with accepting are those that women who have gone through puberty as a woman have. And advantages that fall outside of that are things we are not ok with.

Just because people have ‘noted’ something, doesn’t mean that it is indeed a fact, that is not up for discussion. I am allowed to disagree with your ‘notes’ am I not?

The problem with my comment is that I disagree with you. Nothing else. I’m not being disrespectful. I’m not being hateful. I love transgender people, same as everyone else. I believe the laws targeting transgender people are fucking awful.

But I do disagree with you in terms of how we should setup our sports leagues at the highest levels. And because I disagree with you, I should be silenced?

I’m not IGNORING what you and others have noted. I’m DISAGREEING.

I’m going to say this, and you’re probably going to get pissed. I’m sure my post will get deleted, but if ya’ll can’t handle having conversations with people who don’t 100% align with your views, than we will never make progress.

You said ‘you do realize trans women are women, right’.

Yes. They are. I will treat them like a woman. I will acknowledge them to be a woman. I will use the pronouns they prefer, and think in 99% of scenarios, none of this should be problematic.

But they are not the SAME as all women. Yes, they are a woman. But they have a slightly different experience/body type than all of the other women, and that difference gives them an advantage over other women, that none of the other women get.

You’re completely correct that sports is about being the best. It’s about seeing what the human body can achieve at it’s maximum. And we’ve broadly separated those sports endeavors into two categories. Male and female (with the exception of some sports that we put additional restraints in, weight classes etc).

We realize that not everybody can be the best athlete in the world. That doesn’t mean we have a need to create 10,000 parameters and classes of sport for people to compete in so that everyone has an equal shot at being the best in the world. There are thousands of reasons why a man or a woman won’t ever have a chance at being the best in the world. And we are fine with all of them.

The difference is that we are fine with people not being the best woman they can be. We are not fine with people going through a fundamentally different body growth during puberty, that enables them to have an advantage that no other woman could possibly have, as they were not able to go through puberty as a male, as that’s not something that women can do.

It sucks for transgender women. I get it. I feel bad for them. I wish there was a better solution. You know what else sucks for transgender women? Being born a gender that they aren’t. Having to deal with society’s hatred toward them. There are a lot of things that suck for transgender women. But sticking to the parameters we’ve had in women’s sports at a competitive level is not hatred. It’s simply desiring to keep the playing field the same as it’s always been. Women, who grew up and went through puberty as women, competing in their sport.

The vast majority of debate from Republicans who want to ban transgender people from anything, yes. I agree.

But there are plenty of liberal minded, LGBTQ supporting individuals who recognize that at the highest level of sports, being more a male and going through puberty as a male, is likely to give you advantages over female competitors. And at the highest level of sports, it seems fair to control for that.

If we are talking about children playing sports with no real consequence. Everyone should play. I’d say only at the collegiate, olympic and professional levels should we be concerned about fairness.

It’s not transphobic. You’re overusing that word, and you’re hurting OUR cause.

It is not transphobic to recognize an actual difference. It is not transphobic to want to find solutions that work well for everybody. And it is not transphobic to recognize that people born a male, who go through puberty a male, develop a body different than that of a female. And those differences absolutely can make a difference in sports. This is 100% a fact. Hormone suppression aside, men are taller, on average. Men weigh more, on average. Men are stronger, on average. These are facts, indisputable. Stating as much is not transphobic.

The reason you’ve probably only had 1 transgender person when an olympic medal is because there aren’t a lot of transgender people, and winning an olympic medal is fucking hard.

I had a comment response to you that was deleted by the mods. I can’t remember what I said, but I know it wasn’t offensive in any way. How do I know this? I’m all for LGBTQ rights, including trans people. I think it’s absolutely awful what Florida and other states are doing to these people. I think it’s awful that children who are transgender are being ostracized from children’s sports leagues (which should be fun, not competitive). I’m a huge supporter of trans rights.

BUT - I disagreed with your comment. Because I believe there is a difference at competitive levels of sports. And that hormone suppressors and their effectiveness is not the only consideration here.

But apparently nobody is allowed to have an opinion on this topic that isn’t 100% on board with the global messaging of the trans community right now?

This is how you lose supporters, not gain them. I’m an ally. But allies can have disagreements, and should be able to voice them respectively.

In short, it’s fucking absurd that my comment was deleted solely because I don’t 100% agree with someone on something.

Uh… it is. We have considerations taken into account for age, weight, and skill level, at various levels of sports. Yes, obviously there are biological advantages in sports, and that is a big part of the sport. That’s precisely why we separate men and women, BECAUSE of those advantages.

So for you to say there is no consideration given to those advantages until trans woman are involved is just flatly wrong. That’s the basis of this entire conversation, the fact that we do take that into account already.

It’s not binary. There are absolutely physical differences between men and women. To deny this is to deny reality. You can go ahead and make the argument that if T levels are suppressed or kept even, that those advantages go away. But to claim that the separation of men and women, in quotes, is binary (which I don’t really know what you mean when you say that), is foolish. There ARE differences. Just because the most athletic of women are more athletic than middle of the road men, doesn’t mean there aren’t differences. The ranges of the two have much different floors and ceilings. There is simply an overlap between those ranges.

Right. I think that’s a very important distinction.

To take it a step further, I think it’s probably quite intuitive and obvious that if you’re born a male, go through puberty as a male, you will have a different body composition than a female. Even with hormone suppressors. They are claiming there is no evidence that this is an advantage.

Well it is, absolutely, depending on the sport. I don’t know that it could be proven that bone density, for instance, helps people perform better. But I know that some sports there is an advantage to being taller. And hormone suppressors aren’t going to reduce that advantage. So that alone is definitive proof that being born a male and going through puberty as a male is advantageous in certain sports (as male’s are taller on average, than females). I don’t know how you could argue that isn’t true.