Stachelberg said the report is also designed to prevent Republicans from continuing to define the debate.
You’re literally letting them define the debate with this bs.
“Republicans can’t be allowed to have a monopoly on evil.”
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they are not our allies or advocates if they refuse to allow us in all spaces.
Is anyone surprised? Newsom immediately distanced and was fine removing rights after Kamala lost.
Not like Kamala was all about letting states do laws that either did or didn’t strip transgender people of their rights.
I’m really not sure how to feel about this. The coverage seems disconnected from the actual contents of the proposal. The only restriction they’re endorsing are restrictions on sports, but even that seems to be woefully misrepresented in the headlines. They’re not supporting blanket bans.
“This is where these decisions appropriately lie: with sports’ governing bodies or schools themselves rather than with politicians,” the report says. “While local bodies and associations should minimize unnecessary exclusion, restrictions may be appropriate under some circumstances.”
The report says that the decision should be left to individual sports authorities rather than politicians. And that just seems like the default pro-trans position to me. The report was written by a trans person.
I’m trans myself, and my position on sports is that sure, if you can show me scientifically some clear advantage trans women have over cis women? If you can show me scientifically that trans girls have a massive advantage, more than other advantages we ignore all the time? Sure. In that case I would support a handicap system, or if that were not practical, perhaps a restriction, a notation of records in record books, etc. Whatever option achieves fairness while allowing as much equality as possible. That’s how you handle this with intelligence and compassion. Don’t just be an ass and assume. First actually determine if there is an unfair advantage. If you actually manage to find one, address it in the most compassionate way possible.
But Republicans don’t give a shit about science, neither do most people opposed to trans women in sports. Folks don’t know anything about trans people, and they form their dogshit opinions based on their “man in a dress” stereotype. When the truth is, very few sports restrictions can actually be justified based on real measurable evidence. It’s all people just assuming trans women are men and running with it. When in fact, trans women are biologically female.
So yeah, I’m really not sure what to think of this. The report seems to suggest the very policies and approaches that were pushed by Democrats before the recent Republican moral panic. If Democrats had a position of, “if you can show me, scientifically, that restrictions on one particular sport are justified based on clear evidence, then I’ll support handicap systems or restrictions if nothing else is practical. But if you can’t show that, we’re not going to restrict people based on your vibes and gut feelings,” then I would support that.
My problem with trans sports restrictions is not that I think trans women should be able to compete even if trans women were unfairly dominating sports. The problem is that is not happening, has not happened, and will never happen. Trans women are biologically female and do not have an advantage in sports. The only sports trans women have an advantage in are if they’re competing in a men’s event in a sport that women have a natural advantage in.
Some trans women are physically male because they choose not to be on HRT, cannot be on HRT due to medical issues, or simply don’t respond to HRT. We don’t need to be truscum to advocate for trans girls in sports.
A sane rule is “any restriction that lets some otherwise equivalent humans play but not others based only on AGAB is bigotry.” If your girls tennis league wouldnt exclude a young Serena Williams, it shouldnt exclude a trans girl of the same height and build.
We also shouldn’t forget that by and large girl’s sports weren’t created because some girls wanted to play, but because the girls who wanted to play tend to be the most fit girls for any particular sport, and the most fit girls tend to be better than the worst fit boys and said boys bitch really fucking loudly about it.
I don’t think you have a reasonable working definition of truscum, beyond “parts of the trans community I don’t like.”
The rule you propose is insane. I’m sorry, but I don’t reject science. People with male testosterone levels have a large and undeniable average advantage over people with female testosterone levels. Bigots make the mistake of extending that to trans women on HRT. You’re making the opposite mistake, completely denying the sexual dimorphism of your species. It’s much larger than the other types of advantages we usually ignore, like what zip code you grew up in.
Yes, sometimes people can’t go on HRT or don’t want to. And yes, no one should have to go on a treatment they don’t want to. But your choices have consequences. If a trans girl really doesn’t want to go on HRT for whatever reason, she is still completely capable of competing on the boy’s team. She may not like it, but that’s just a tradeoff of not going on HRT. Your choice. I support trans women in women’s sports because the vast majority of trans women do seek out HRT, and that makes us completely incapable of competing on men’s teams. The only way a trans gal on estrogen can compete in sports is on the women’s team.
I don’t think trans people have to go on HRT, but we’re talking physical sex here. HRT meaningfully alters physical sex. Simple gender identity does not.
And what you say about the history of sports is correct, but we’re not talking about founding new leagues here.
I don’t think you have a reasonable working definition of truscum, beyond “parts of the trans community I don’t like.”
My usage of the term is exclusively “trans folk who presume to draw a line on who counts as trans based on the degree of hormonal or surgical intervention or conformance.” I did not mean to offend if your understanding of the term is different.
The star AMAB player on the boy’s team who watches to wong foo and realizes they are trans is a trans girl. We shouldn’t ignore them when we discuss trans kids in sports, especially since they’re what transphobic bigots point to when arguing that trans femms who never went through male puberty should be excluded from playing.
Most people do think that the aforementioned trans girl should not be allowed to immediately play on the girls rugby team. But we see the same sexist bullshit applied to chess, darts, pistols, archery, figure skating, acting, and for all I know curling and automobile racing. (All of which have no justifiable bar to exclude cissexual males on the basis of some hormonal advantage.)
The rule you propose is insane. I’m sorry, but I don’t reject science. People with male testosterone levels have a large and undeniable average advantage over people with female testosterone levels.
For a bunch of sports, sure. But why should the trans girl with “male testosterone levels” be excluded when a cis girl with the same or higher level isn’t?
As near as I can tell for most leagues in most sports the answer is simply “because”, possibly with some homophobic undertone about the (gay) trans girl being a dangerous “boy in a dress” whose purile reaction to feminine bodies is somehow worse than the reaction of a cis lesbian.
My general principle for proposing rules is that if they dont make sense in the extreme they dont make sense at all. reductio ad absurdum makes for good math and good law.
I think we’re in complete agreement that for many sports a ban on cissexual transgender girls makes sense. Especially when guided by actual science as to the existence of said advantage and the inclusion transsexual transgender girls once said advantage fades.
But I dont trust the same world that produced the CASS report to not show “scientific proof” that ignores the distinction. Especially not with the recent bullshit about autism and vaccines from the CDC, and the history of bullshit “science” once used to segregate sports by race
I would agree with that definition of truscum, but that’s not the definition you are using. You are correct that a truscum person is someone who defines who does or does not count as trans based on what medical treatments they receive. But that isn’t the definition you’re using.
The definition you provided:
Truscum: trans folk who presume to draw a line on who counts as trans based on the degree of hormonal or surgical intervention or conformance
Your actual applied definition:
Truscum: trans folk who presume to acknowledge any differences in circumstances or needs based on the degree of hormonal or surgical intervention or conformance
You aren’t actually using the definition you provided.
I agree that that star basketball player is trans. But I never said they weren’t. You did that all on your own. You just saw someone acknowledging physical and medical realities, felt a knee-jerk, “TRUSCUM!!!” in your mind, and started throwing around slurs.
But while I acknowledge that player is trans, taking their needs into account does not mean we can be unfair to all the other players. Sometimes you simply cannot meet everyone’s needs. You don’t have to be on HRT while being trans, but your identity does not erase the advantages male-level testosterone gives you. And I know the phrase “male level” disturbs some people, but frankly I’m a bit tired of euphemisms. We tried replacing this language with AMAB/AFAB and those words just ended up being used as replacements for male/female. The same will happen with any alternative labels you use, unless you use some hopelessly clunky label like, “cisgender male typical average testosterone levels.”
Look, any approach to trans sports has to come to terms with one undeniable reality. Your approach does not come to terms with this. This reality is that the records in most men’s sports vastly exceed the records in women’s sports. It is fundamentally unfair for the average cisgender man to compete against the average cisgender women in most sports. This difference is complex, but ultimately there are only three explanations:
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Genetics.
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Hormones.
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Socialization.
Option 2 is the only conclusion that doesn’t completely fuck over trans people. If you want to attribute the differences to genetics or socialization, no trans woman can ever fairly compete on a woman’s sports team. Unless she was raised from birth as a girl, “male socialization” will be used to exclude her. And of course genetics cannot be changed.
This is why I focus on hormones. For most sports, a real difference in performance exists. And the only explanation that actually allows 90% of trans people to compete is the hormonal one. And cis women with male testosterone levels absolutely are excluded from sports. I don’t support doing so unless a clear advantage can be demonstrated, but hormones represent a massive advantage, greater than almost any other advantage a person can have in sports. Yes, some people will fall through the cracks, and I’m sorry. But most of the population is never going to accept a trans woman with male-typical hormones competing in women’s sports. The only hope we have at all of getting cis people to accept trans people in sports is if we focus on the science that is actually on our side: that most differences in performance are due to hormones, and those hormones can be changed.
Obviously I don’t support any restrictions on silly things like chess or darts you mentioned. But none of those sports would apply to the criteria I discussed. Those are odd examples you came up with that are irrelevant here. My approach is on a per-sport basis and works like this flow chart/list:
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Is the sport one where hormones are likely to have a large effect? If no, any trans woman can compete on the women’s team, regardless of hormones.
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Is the sport one where hormones have a profound effect on performance, one that disappears after some time on HRT? Then trans women can compete if they have female hormone levels for a sufficient period of time.
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Is the sport one where cis men have a profound advantage over cis women, and that advantage does not go away, even after a prolonged period on HRT? Can the difference be corrected for via a handicap system? If so, trans women can compete on women’s teams, with an appropriate handicap applied.
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Is it a sport where trans women have a clear advantage, one that cannot be removed by HRT, and one that cannot be corrected for with a handicap? In this one extremely rare case, where all of this is proven, bans on trans women competing are acceptable.
My general principle for proposing rules is that if they dont make sense in the extreme they dont make sense at all. reductio ad absurdum makes for good math and good law.
AKA, the perfect must always be the enemy of the good. The trans community is a broad umbrella. Someone isn’t trans simply because they’re not on one treatment or another. At the same time, one should not confuse being under the same umbrella as being entirely the same. People on HRT and medically transitioning have fundamentally different needs and circumstances than trans folks whose trans identity is mostly about stated identity and chosen pronouns. And one of those differences in circumstances is sports. Cissexual transgender people will always have the same sports advantages as their AGAB. Transsexual transgender people will not. It is not unreasonable to draw lines within the trans community when those lines are based on actual material reality and are not created out of animus. Acknowledging differences is not the same thing as declaring people valid or invalid.
I would agree with that definition of truscum, but that’s not the definition you are using
How the fucking hell isn’t it? Here’s the only place I used “truscum”, at all, aside from explaining what I meant by the word. (along with the line from your post that inspired the comment.)
When in fact, trans women are biologically female. Some trans women are physically male because they choose not to be on HRT, cannot be on HRT due to medical issues, or simply don’t respond to HRT. We don’t need to be truscum to advocate for trans girls in sports.
From the rest of your comment I would think that we at least rhetorically agree that not all trans women are “biologically female” by any definition of the phrase, unless one would assert that the latter is a prerequisite for the former. Which I presumed you didn’t fucking mean to do, which is why the subject in my usage of the bioessentialist smear was the first person plural.
I would offer some politeness here, but I already gave a fucking cursory apology when I offered a definition of the word I used once and then didn’t fucking use again. Which is why I’m aggravated that you wrote six fucking paragraphs about it, while ignoring that we agree on all the fucking principles here!
WoodScientist, DomeGuy,
i’m sorry to see your mutual irritation and just want to say you both know so much more than the average stupid person like me.
You are both going into subtle details in this matter.
… if it helps settle your differences, please find in me an absolute jerk who would say the following :
Sport isn’t important at all and most people giving it any thought other than keeping in shape and being happy are going the wrong way. Sports in television or for money + professional sport in my view is useless and counterproductive.Please enjoy your similarities.
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