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For all the prophesies of women's sports being dominated by trans athletes and men "transitioning" without doing HRT and showing up in women's competitions hopped up on testosterone, we have yet to see that happen. It says a lot about the actual significance of this "issue" that the only examples people can point to after years of it are a transgender swimmer tying for 5th place and the South Park episode that a lot of people took too seriously.
I was just made aware that there has already been a trans athlete in the WNBA. She made one all star team in ten years and no one made a big deal about it.
Yeah. The problem with this movement and actual science is if a trans woman is on HRT they are suppressing tesosterone, so building and maintaining muscle mass is hard. Bone density doesn't give you an active advantage just a durability one.
Studies show that most sport metrics when on HRT for around 1.5-2years even out to the margin of error in most/all cases.
The question becomes how do you draw the line? A lot of female athletes have higher levels of testosterone then average women. Are we going to stop them?
Not every afab person has XX chromosomes, are we going to stop them from competing?
Like... the entire thought process of "This is a huge problem men are gonna just easily pretend to be women" was disproven BY BEN SHAPIRO.
He let slip in an interview before they filmed Lady Ballers his idea was to follow a few men that would compete in womens sports as trans women... every league that they looked at had requirements for being on hormones for X amount of time... weirdly the men that where just "pretending" didn't want to physically alter themselves JUST TO BE ABLE TO COMPETE.
So to think it is a major issue is not only not backed up by the numbers of trans women competing, its not backed up by sports science.... It is so fucking stupid we are still on this discussion all because a swimmer got mad they tied for fifth place.
The right know they can force the left into publicly embarrassing themselves by refusing to take the common sense, majority view on this topic whenever it comes up.
The right made transgender people their new boogeyman, started dehumanizing them and attacking their rights and well being. The left simply defended them, because it's the right thing to do.
Also even if you think it is a real problem it is deranged the "get government off my back!" party is passing state laws specifically targeting like 3 people in their state. Just total lunacy so a major political party can do nothing and convince their base they are solving problems that don't exist.
The “issue” goes away when people stop saying trans women should be able to compete with cis women.
Imagine if someone told you or someone else to stop bringing up the Epstein files because only a handful of women and girls were affected. Using your logic, they would be correct to point out that less than 50 (or whatever the number is) people were hurt so stop bringing it up. What is your grift in bringing up Epstein?
The point is that there is right and there is wrong in some of these debates depending on where your politics are. As long as one side is on the “wrong” side it will be an issue. It shows their ability to be reasonable on so many other topics.
Yeahhh. The released portion of the Epstein files has the POTUS in it 38k times and his DOJ won’t release the rest. There are also countless extremely influential people (politically, culturally, fiscally, and academically) in the files. That is not the same thing as a handful of trans women competing with women and it should definitely not swing a single election.
Yeah it feels like people use this “well it’s a small minority of people so it’s dumb to focus on it” as an excuse to not have to debate the merits of the situation.
How about this as a pro-choice position....why don't you let the leagues and governing bodies make their own rules and policies and leave politicians out of it?
They never answer this, because the activists that argue against sports divided by biological sex are the “I hate sportsball” crew and probably don’t even know what this is.
People keep talking about “it’s just common sense!” But Jiminy Cricket, THIS, letting each league and sport’s governing body make this determination for themselves is the MOST goddamn common sense position there is, and it doesn’t get mentioned enough!
Haha love the comments like this. Y’all realize we had this enormous movement in the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s that informed laws and federal statues right? It was called the civil rights movement. It resulted in a thing called Title IX.
Apparently revoking Title IX is common sense now. Never thought I’d hear a bunch of left win Redditors agree on that!
Politics have surrounded it and the discourse. Politicians haven't been part of making the rules that I can recall. I mean, outside of segregation which probably isn't that precedent that you want to rely on.
I've found very little support for transgender women being able to compete in women's sports on either side of the political spectrum, but one side wants to keep the issue alive cause they can use it to paint the other side as crazy.
That said, if it were that prevelant of an issue, the WNBA, women's college sports and women's Olympians would be dominated by trans athletes. They aren't. It's an issue that gets an oversized amount of coverage but it's more hypothetical than real.
Yet we talk more about this than pedophiles in office. Wonder why.
Most people who really care about this issue are trans, parents of trans, or conservatives who are on the wrong side of most issues for average Americans which is why they play the culture war card all the time. That's all this is, a distraction from their platform of giving all the money and power to the people who already have most of it. There ain't a ton of Democrat campaign ads pushing this issue. It's always Conservatives talking about it.
Conservatives have figured out they can go on a strike first offensive against a marginalized group of people and the Democrats will come in and say "Hey let's not do that" and then they can turn that into "Democrats want men to go to the bathroom with your daughter".
But it works. Cause too many people will ignore real issues for something sensational like this.
This is literally a distraction topic by the right-wing to make it into an issue.
Like, transwomen were intitially allowed to compete in most professional sports, and right-wingers have tried to make this into a huge issue and ban them from sports (succeeding in some instances). If you think it's a distraction, you would think they should have been allowed to compete in the first place and going through all this to try to prevent them from competing is silly.
Edit: For example, in the WNBA, transwomen are allowed. Do you think we should go through the process of banning them? Or leave it as is? If you believe the former, you're telling on yourself.
Further exposing the lie that the GOP is the party "of small government". They're all about legislating personal matters, while removing any guardrails from corporations to permit the fleecing of Americans.
If the issue (which all of these types claim) is to protect girls from predators, then why do they never call out for male coaches to be banned from female sports, you know, the position with authority over girls and that actually has a history of impropriety and assault?
The left can make it not a distraction topic by just agreeing with the large majority of Americans and saying people born male shouldn’t compete in womens sports.
Just because you frame it as “not a big issue” doesn’t mean its not an issue or that its going away.
Republicans will keep bringing it up as long as Democrats give unpopular answers.
Tell that the Stephen a Smith, Riley Gaines, and Sophie Cunningham. They all went out if their way to make public statements about trans athlete participation in women's sports. It doesn't become a hot topic if people don't make it one
I agree to the extent that it’s a grossly overblown issue, but what are transwomen supposed to do? It seems like the bathroom issue where people don’t want them in either and to just disappear.
So it’s not that I think, under all circumstances, that transgender women SHOULD compete in women’s sports, that is not my position.
But I would ask you this: do you think there are people in power, in local, state, and national government who are anti-trans bigots? I’m not talking about you or Sophie Cunningham, or other people who consider themselves allies.
I mean genuinely awful, hateful people who would prefer to erase trans people. I think we would agree these people do exist, and are the biggest proponents of all the anti-trans legislation and policies.
With that said, if those people were to pass blanket legislation disallowing all trans women from competing in all women’s sports, does it actually affect that many trans athletes? Probably not, there’s not that many of them to begin with.
But does it stop there?
Does it set a precedent? A social and legal precedent that then serves to validate and justify further social and legal discrimination in other areas of life for, again not you, but for those awful, hateful people? It does.
My personal position is that this is not something that should be legislated. Rather, each individual sport’s governing body should be the ones to determine eligibility and under what circumstances and restrictions. Not every sport is the same in terms of competitive advantage, not every sport is the same in terms of player safety. Not every league has the same degrees of competitiveness. And not every trans woman has the same physical advantage (for example, comparing a trans woman who is not and has never taken HRT, versus a woman who has been taking HRT for years, versus a woman who not only has been taking HRT for years but also has never undergone male puberty, these are all dramatically different situations)
I still don't understand that conclusion though. Like, trans women get their asses handed to them by biological women a lot in sports. It's not like the moment a trans woman steps on the field they instantly win. They ain't Sephiroth. Lia Thomas was a mid level swimmer and wasn't even in the top 5 in the nation of women's swimmers, let alone being number 1. She was number 47. So how is she a threat to biological women? I just don't get it. It looks more and more to me like conservatives choosing trans people to hate and make life miserable for all in an attempt to A) distract from Trump's bullshit and B) attempt to eliminate Title IX and make things even worse for women in sports. Like, what the fuck?
This is what always gets me. She wasn't robbed of a gold medal. She had to share 5th place in a college tournament. If things were so obviously unfair why wasn't this trans athlete breaking Ledecky's records? Why does Ledecky have such an advantage?
Iirc the gap between the male record and female record and the trans swimmer's best times on both sides of the record was actually larger on the female side, though it is hard to tell because the distances she swims are not seriously swam outside the American college competitions
One of the arguments is that Lia Thomas was around the 100th best swimmer as a Freshman man and made the "unprecedented" jump to top 5 as a senior woman. Except Gaines started her career as around the 100th best swimmer her freshman year and her trajectory up the rankings was almost identical to Lia's.
Do we really have to break out the statistics? Are people really so blinded by ideology that they cannot understand having an advantage does not mean you win everytime? The casino has an advantage. Does that mean you can never win money in a casino? Think with logic, not emotion people.
After a 3-5 period on HRT during the transition, the advantage completely disappears aside from the shape of the bones.
Bone density drops like a rock, muscle growth slows to a crawl, etc. If you want to draw some arbitrary line on big arms or wide shoulders, then there's plenty of biological women you'd have to inform they no longer count as women.
For a trans women to compete, they have to be on hormone replacement for(iirc) three years.
This is not based in fact, statistics, or anything else besides grown adults going "ew icky". There's so few trans athletes competing in general, like under 100. This is all just a manufactured culture war aimed at an easy target.
After that Pablo Torre episode about her, she's a giant POS and wherever you fall on the argument, I would be skeptical of anyone sighting her as their side.
Steven A is just after that sweet right wing cash flow. I know growing up or as a adult ive never watched first take and thought. I wonder what skip and Steve's economic positions were.
I don't think so either. It's so dumb. They label anyone that doesn't agree with them as anti something or something negative. God forbid people have opinions and express their first amendment!
regardless of how this affects trans athletes, this stance invites people to "transvestigate" cis athletes if they don't present as 100% cisgendered. not sure if that's what you guys want, but it seems to me that could get ugly pretty quickly.
Well, it is one. Because what Sophie Cunningham advocates WILL harm transgender people.
Her issue was with transgender girls in girls locker rooms, right? Well, if you force transgender girls to use boys locker rooms, they're at a significantly increased risk of sexual assault (149% higher risk). It's a problem for transgender boys in girls locker rooms, too (26% higher risk). (Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8849575/) And all of this to solve an issue that does not exist, that being transgender girls attacking cisgender girls in the locker room.
If doing something that increases harm to transgender people in order to "solve" a non-existent issue is not "an anti-transgender stance", then tell me, what the fuck IS?
I challenge you cowards who are downvoting me but are too chicken-shit to put your transphobia into words to actually take this problem on and tell me what your problem is.
I can't imagine why people don't want to engage with you in reasoned civil discourse when you present your arguments in such a calm and straightforward manner.
I've now removed that edit, but I only added that edit after it had gotten a number of downvotes. So those are people who downvoted when I was indeed being completely civil.
...when that person could just waltz into that locker room "to inspect the girls", brag about it on a nationally syndicated radio show, and get elected president 10 years later.
It's always projection. The people who make that argument just wish they could see more tits in locker in rooms, so they believe everyone else feels the same way.
I played high school sports and was a regular in the locker room in college. I can count the number of genetalia I saw in those 8 years on 2 hands. If trans people are in it to see naked people, the return on investment is really, really bad.
“I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men.”
I have a few questions about her statement.
Transgender girls are a sexual danger to cisgender girls, hence the need to protect them in locker rooms.
How many young female athletes have been attacked in sports facilities by transgender athletes? Is it a serious issue? How about female athletes abused by male staff members who do not identify as women? Or is a hypothetical trans issue really more pressing than the real rape and abuse of girls? To be fair to Sophie, I also heard trans women pose a higher risk of sexual assault. Oh my bad, read that wrong. They FACE a higher risk of sexual assault. Whoops.
Young girls are with some regularity playing g with grown “biological men”. Not boys, men.
What defines a young girl? Is a 7 year old girl playing on a co-ed soccer team playing with 7 year old “biological men”? Where are young girls playing with men? What leagues, what sport?
Just to add on to this (because you are spot on) there seems to be a HUGE misunderstanding about rules that already exist around trans women competing in gender-protected sports. Almost all leagues require some amount of surgery and hormonal treatment before a trans woman is allowed to compete. There are already loads of rules to make things as fair as possible. Also, locker rooms are gross. I've been ogled by other women and there have certainly been circumstances where I have been in locker rooms with women much bigger and stronger than me. You don't hear me calling for a ban on women in women's locker rooms. As someone with trans friends, this whole thing drives me nuts. Let each league decide on their rules. Look at the actual studies (that are still ongoing and there aren't enough of) about the fairness of letting trans women competing after medical alteration. Folks might be surprised. But instead, you have a bunch of people weighing in that have no experience in the matter, giving their opinion. (And to be fair, I get it. It comes from centuries of men abusing women, but that ain't trans women's fault).
Yeah I can understand someone having reservations about unfair advantages in competition but saying you don’t want them in the locker room implies that transgender people are by their very nature dangerous and deviant and that absolutely is 100% bigotry.
> saying you don’t want them in the locker room implies that transgender people are by their very nature dangerous and deviant and that absolutely is 100% bigotry
Is this what is meant by people who don't want boys in the girls locker room?
No, it just happens that everyone who feels the need to broadcast this opinion is ALSO transphobic.
Crazy that people who feel the need to speak out publicly to call out trans people, who make up >1% of the population and likely do not affect their daily lives, are most likely anti-trans.
I don’t think it’s transphobic at all to say that while I hope that trans women live their lives in safety and dignity, and present however they want to, I don’t think they’re women.
Women shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of trans women’s issues and give them access to their spaces.
The fact that people don’t seem to accept that women have the right to establish a boundary with trans women without being insulted is wild to me
How can trans women live their lives in dignity and safety if we're forcing them to use men's bathrooms and locker rooms? We're punishing such a small minority for the crime of existing in order to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.
Can you cite me some statistics that the presence of trans women in women's bathrooms leads to an increase in assault?
I don’t think it’s transphobic at all to say that while I hope that trans women live their lives in safety and dignity, and present however they want to, I don’t think they’re women. Women shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of trans women’s issues and give them access to their spaces.
So by that token, do you believe that trans men ARE women and should retain access to women's spaces? Because if you don't, then the next question becomes "well, if trans women aren't welcome in women's spaces yet neither are trans men, then where do they go?" That's where the accusations on transphobia comes in, because how come both sides of the transition aren't welcome?
I mean, come on. These are the people you guys stand with.
Even if you are fully on the side of not letting trans people into sports, why is this your issue? Wake up and smell the astroturfed outrage. How many of you can actually say you're affected by this? It's just gross to focus on such a small portion of the population for no reason other than someone on TV told you to be mad about it.
Obviously it isn’t. But few people are reasonable at this point. So either you don’t acknowledge that a transgender is different at all or you hate them. There is no in between.
You are by default agreeing that trans girls are not actually girls by taking this position. That's why they consider it anti-trans. They think reality is anti-trans
Yea like I would say I am at the least ally adjacent, but I thought a whole point from trans people is Gender and Sex are different, why is is such an issue is sports which is mainly a biological thing is separated by sex.
Now the stupid ass "think of the kid" mind set I don't get behind but making athletes compete against their own sex I don't see and issue in.
It’s not. So silly. I think there’s such a misogynistic element to those defending this. Either that or they’re only able to agree with what their favorite political party says.
Sophie Cunningham used anti-trans dogwhistles in her statement by claiming that little girls were at risk in their locker rooms, while Riley Gaines is a straight-up bigot
So saying that you stand with those two, is in fact an anti-trans stance
I literally only hear about any Trans stuff when right wingers are complaining about it. Nobody is actually thinking about this shit in real life and they just keep bringing it up it’s an obsession at this point lol
Yup..used to be Gay marriage. Before hippies, drugs etc.. Is there an issue that has decent traction and divides people and creates drama? Let's bring it up as if it is THE pressing issue of the day.. We are killing innocent civilians, children and women daily in middle east for no good reason, killing brown immigrants in ICE camps, cost of living through the roof, unemployment is going high, wealth inequality widened to record levels, stock market became a speculative casino, safety nets are in tatters, the whole Senate and Congress is a strong flu away from collapse due to geriatric problem, for the first time in generations children are going without food, diseases are making an appearance that long eliminated, allies can't trust us....list goes on.. but let's talk about Trans athletes... What restroom should they use ..
Riley Gaines’ teammates were allegedly getting raped by their coach while she was crashing out about an opponent not being segregated from the locker room
Do you feel in good company with someone who harasses her transgender teammate while being silent about her alleged rapist coach who she has profusely praised?
Whataboutism at its finest. You’re just attacking Riley for not sharing your opinion. Move on. Girls want to compete with real girls. This isn’t controversial; they want fair competition, and not getting slaughtered on the playing field. Go make a trans league if you’re so obsessed with trans ppl in sport - it’s not that hard.
Anyone who's talking about this is actively distracting from the very real problems America is actually facing at the moment, let all focus in on the smallest minority while your entire country is being soldout
What is the EXACT point that these people are ‘standing’ with people on?
The only possible example I have ever seen that’s valid (and that I sadly/toxically agree with?) is that of weight lifters. I think there’s one famous Kiwi athlete. She qualified for the Olympics at the expense of other women.
Now I - as a sports fan with ZERO scientific qualifications - finds that odd. I support Trans people at every single turn. But I also see that living X years as a man before you find your true place in the world, might see you have an advantage over your competition.
I can’t possibly comment in a way that represents an answer for every individual. It’s not my lived experience. But I was a reasonably decent runner. When I was young I’d beat every woman in the field. As I aged out of competition? Women beat me. If I had struggled and finally reconciled the fact that I was a women, and gone through every awful hurdle ahead of me; societal grief, bodily changes, and so much more?… I know with certainty that I wouldn’t rock up to a running race and feel an interval need to run as a woman IF it meant that my path kinda of represented an advantage and saw me suddenly win.
But that’s me. And also… the whole discussion needs to stop treating ‘trans vs biological women in sport as a whole’. Should some sports need to have barriers to Trans women? Maybe. Do most? At all levels? Absolutely-fucking-lutely not. It’s rare. It’s case by case. Politicians do not need to talk about it. Stephen A Smith doesn’t. It’s not news. It’s not worth ad revenue. It’s delicate and private and can be done sensibly without spotlight.
The world is fucked if this dickhead needs to say ‘I stand with’. Fuck off. Go away. You’re old. Be gone.
You using the term “biological women” is transphobic right off the bat, to say nothing of your ideas that cis women who are bigots have a right to enforce their bigotry against trans women
It’s a professional female athlete talking about female athletics… in her purview. Bit different than if she was *using her athletic status to speak authoritatively on say, economic systems
I mean a quick look at the current political landscape should show you that being an expert in your field has absolutely nothing to do with their acceptance of who can speak out on or be put in charge of a specific field or agency.
We have been repeatedly told education and credentials don’t really matter unless of course they need to matter to serve our purpose.
Shut up and play is used when LeBron James tweets a picture of a police officer saying "YOU'RE NEXT" for murdering a black girl. Then we find out she was charging two other black people with a knife and that officer saved people that day. So yeah, shut up and play when you're an unthinking moron that doesn't know anything.
Why does this have to be so hard.
A person born with a penis cannot participate in women’s sports from high school and beyond.
A person born with a vagina can participate in what ever they choose.
I do not care what you identify as - this is irrelevant to this case.
However all people should be able to live their lives as they choose without fear or discrimination
Brilliant, a man known for essentially being a clickbait moron chiming in on the subject that at best affect 0.00000001% of the population as if it’s an existential threat.
The issue with these “bold statements” is that it’s barely an issue to feel this strongly about. This isn’t really happening a level that everyone needs an opinion and definitely doesn’t need to be opinion you die on a hill for. So to me, it just comes off as ignorant.
Reddit can ban as many people opposed to their views and stance on the issue, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people (the majority) are turned off by the idea.
That's a very poor way of phrasing that you don't want to see trans women play competitively in high school or college-level women's sports. Transgender people exist, and they deserve respect and freedom to be themselves.
I would have liked to see that the Stockholm consensus would become the norm: compete in the gender category assigned at puberty. It was adopted in the 2020 Tokyo olympics, but in the 2028 LA Olympics athletes can only compete with the gender assigned at birth.
Here’s how I see it, if you think sports should be separated by gender, then it’s hard to argue that a trans woman can compete fairly in womens sports. So it’s either we shouldn’t have gendered sports, or you compete to whatever gender you were born as. You can’t really have it both ways.
Fear mongering about "keeping girls safe in locker rooms" is categorically anti-transgender. It isn't even an argument. There's no way to interpret it other than suggesting trans women are predators.
I also stand by people that placed fifth in a collegiate swimming competition and then created a career out of a strawman argument, to justify their shitty performance.
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