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I'm someone who was slightly sympathetic to the argument that there need to be rules and regulations regarding where and how trans-women can compete in sports, because it seemed so obvious that people who go through male-puberty will, on a large enough scale, end up with some physical differences that could prove advantageous in sport compared to people who go through female-puberty. (please pardon me if my terminology is wrong, I acknowledge my ignorance). But that was my thought years ago, and I have since changed it to: who the gently caress cares? Here are a few things that influenced my change of mind: 1. What are the stakes? This varies hugely by individual and social group and cultural group. For me, personally, I'm not a sports guy by any means and so I really never gave any of a poo poo about the sanctity of sports rules and records and history. I can see how other people see the world much differently, though. I think it's probably widely agreed that the stakes in sports vary according to the type of event (so, say from like pee-wee middle school baseball to division 1 high school state championships to professional national leagues to the Olympics to the World Cup). But there's no objective measurement of stakes, because individuals' will hold each and every level of sport to wildly different personal standards, stakes-wise. I personally couldn't give less of a flying gently caress about who wins and loses in high school sports, it should all be in good fun as far as I care, but clearly there are people out there who take it super seriously and care about those sports more than anything else in the world. Hard to square that circle. Anyway, realizing that the stakes are low and none of it actually matters outside of people having fun really took the wind out of any sympathy I had, personally. But, that solved the issue for me and clearly it's not a solved issue societally. I've found the following argument the most persuasive the few times I've had to make it: 2. Where's the problem? Where are all the trans-women pushing women out of cis-women's sports? I certainly haven't seen this become an issue anywhere as far as I'm aware. I've found that I've made headway with some folks using this line of reasoning: Let the trans folks compete as who they are, and we can evaluate five or ten years down the line to see if it has become an issue or not. Heck, if 10 years from now we actually *did* see all the womens teams and leagues full of majority trans-women to the exclusion of cis-women then I'd honestly be sympathetic to some sort of regulation. But that's not something that's happening now, hasn't happened yet, and until and unless it does happen then it's not really a 'problem' that needs to be solved. Just some thoughts from somebody who was raised in the blood-drinking heart of Evangelicism and is trying to be a better person. e: corrected some terminology How are u fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Apr 6, 2022 |
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Apr 5, 2022 22:22
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 04:54 |
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some plague rats posted:loving excuse me? ...sorry?
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Apr 6, 2022 16:16
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Jaxyon posted:Transgender women are women. Yes, I agree.
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Apr 6, 2022 17:44
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Verus posted:If 10 years from now the majority of women's sports teams were filled by transwomen, would you be sympathetic to some sort of anti-transwomen regulation? I'd be sympathetic to taking a look at why that is, yeah. I can't imagine its something that would happen, it certainly doesn't seem to be happening, but if, say for example, sometime in the future 90% of the players in the NWSL were trans then it would be something worth looking at. Probably looking at re-categorizing the way we separate sports divisions rather than denying people who they are.
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Apr 6, 2022 18:02
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some plague rats posted:It doesn't seem like you do, considering you just specified "trans women" and "women" as two separate categories that can be in conflict with each other? I apologize for the confusion. I should probably be saying "cis-women", right? My mistake.
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Apr 6, 2022 18:45
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some plague rats posted:What would this "reevaluation" look like to you? Would it look like anything to you? If, some period of time down the line, assuming we continue with our static Men's and Women's sports, the vasty majority of athletes in women's sports were trans, would that be something worth taking a look at in your opinion?
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Apr 7, 2022 06:12
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virtualboyCOLOR posted:I strongly disagree. Wage theft is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. You have to dismantle the system to remove it. Calling it out is good but adding rules to capitalism doesn’t actually resolve the root cause. It seems I mainly agree with you in practice, but not in the theory. If some time down the line in the future we end up in a situation where, say, the entire USWNT is trans or every single woman we send to the Olympics is trans, you would say "that's fine, there's absolutely nothing worth looking at here" ? And, to be clear, this is not something I think is likely to happen at all, it's not something I'm worried about in the slightest, it's not a problem that exists to be solved. Its theorizing.
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Apr 7, 2022 17:34
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Harold Fjord posted:This doesn't follow at all. I don't have any reason to believe that trans women would dominate sports by their very nature, but just to play devils advocate to your question here: I suspect that cis high school boys would not be interested in transitioning gender away from what they are and want to be just to win sprint competitions.
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Apr 7, 2022 21:06
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It occurred to me that, regarding sports in particular, we expend an enormous amount of effort to try to make the competition as fair as possible. All the rules and regulations and time and effort put into the quest to ensure that the only variable in the game is the natural talent brought by the athletes themselves. So I guess it's kind of a fundamental question about whether trans-women are competing in their category with only their 'natural' talent. So far, it sure doesn't seem at all like there's any issue at all. I do understand how this becomes a point of contention for people, though. Interesting framing.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:28
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