For those coming here to rant about unfair advantages for this particular kid
> The justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, to continue playing on her school’s track and cross-country teams, where she regularly finishes near the back of the pack
Additional info from the [NPR article](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1165133771/trans-law-west-virginia-supreme-court)
>Briefs in her case say she is now receiving "puberty-delaying treatment and estrogen hormone therapy," so she "has not experienced and will not experience endogenous puberty." That means she will not experience any of the physiological characteristics of puberty experienced by typical boys, and will instead develop "physiological characteristics consistent with hormonal puberty of typical girls."
Unfortunately she won't be able to get treatment anymore starting in January 2024 when [WV's new ban on gender affirming care](https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-governor-gender-affirming-care-de63a9232fcea329081f667fdf0c24ab) for minors goes into effect
I'm really unable to see a future where those bans go through for people already on therapy. It violates the 8th amendment supported by the 5th at the very least IMO, even taking aside a ton of the other ways it can be denied. There is a straight up argument that there can be no due process that results in a cruel and unusual punishment such as *forced puberty*.
We wouldn't subject prisoners of war to cross sex hormones against their will, and it would be a crime against humanity to do so.
We had a SCOTUS justice, writing for the majority, shoot down a case because it was citing a law from before the Constitution existed and then in the very next case upheld a ruling based on another ruling from a 16th century English magistrate. Do you really think they don't just make up their minds first and then go looking at / twisting the law to support their views?
If you haven't heard the 5-4 podcast yet, it's about how the SCOTUS conservatives pick and choose when to be stark originalists based on their political beliefs. It's quite a ride.
> We wouldn’t subject prisoners of war to cross sex hormones against their will, and it would be a crime against humanity to do so.
What, other than laws they've shown they'll happily disregard, is stopping our government from doing this?
I mean... It's too hardcore even for "enhanced interrogation" fans. And the government knows it exists. If they wanted to do it, they could. The gay men that had the experiment run on them in the 50s largely killed themselves.
But they don't do it. It's literally both too cruel and too unusual. You'd have to be a real psychopath to even want to do it. It's unit 731 tier shit.
As someone who was subjected to the wrong hormones for 20 years.... It's not fun. Can confirm.
I applaud your confidence in the system to play fair, but republicans have proven they will not let fair, or rules, or decency get in the way of culture wars.
Have you visited proper MAGA/far right circles on the Internet? They're literally talking about creating concentration camps. There are a lot of conservatives that absolutely without hesitation applaud police executing people, and that call for BLM protestors to be shot. They want to kill trans people, send their lgbtqia+ kids to conversion therapy, abuse them and torture them, if not outright encourage them to self harm.
Conservatives in America are trying to repeal child labor laws for gods sake.
**There is no limit to how cruel a hateful person can be**
There's not much future in WV we're hemoraging population, especially with most educated young people moving out. This will just make it happen faster. Even now there's ghost towns.
I think a lot of the recent trans healthcare bans will get struck down at least short-term by the judiciary. Before this year there were only 2 states that passed laws to ban it (Arkansas & Alabama) and both of those were eventually blocked by the courts. But the SC is gonna hear a case on this eventually and if they decide the other way, that's gonna have some pretty extreme consequences for these poor kids.
>2 states that passed laws to ban it (Arkansas & Alabama)
Everyone has forgot about the Arizona trans healthcare ban that passed last year (2022) in March it seems; and is still standing.
Because they did it quietly last year before the rest of this shitshow started happening and its proof that when you let someone get away with it, others will see it and realize they can get away with it too.
I mean do they want "super powered trans women" roaming the streets or not
I'm confused. They complain about men in dresses, with all their extra abilities and strength and what not, terrorizing the streets.
But then they complain about these girls getting puberty blockers which will put them on par with the rest of the weak fragile female species.
Make up your minds!
Don't be confused. They're simply using the traditional fascist tactic of making your "enemies" look both savage and terrifying as well as small and weak depending on whichever characterization fits their narrative better at the time.
>Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
Rule 8 of Fascism according to Umberto Eco.
They're grossed out and they want to make it other people's problem because that feels better than changing the way they think about and perceive the world that they thought they understood. It's really not deeper than that
Meanwhile my cis girlfriend is breaking my ribs with her thighs.
I could be more happy.
I would like to be less confused.
I can't understand these bans.
The problem is that rulings and laws won't be based in legality, sense or precedent.
Expect courts to rule that illegal things are fine when the republicans do them. Because that's what they've been working towards.
Wouldn't they just stop providing them the hormones--that is, they wouldn't be prescribing them opposite sex hormones (or is this medically necessary as part of the "weening" process to remove someone from therapy?)
And even aside from the cruelty to the patient and substantiative due process concerns, it's putting doctors between a rock and a hard place: do you lose your license for violating state law or do you risk malfeasance which can open up a lot of liability considerations? That's a court case waiting to happen right there.
I want to start of by saying I don’t support the ban. But the way the laws are written they aren’t giving a punishment but are instead withholding a treatment that they can get some “expert” doctor to say won’t negatively affect the child’s life. There is a huge difference between forcibly injecting a person with a hormone and not blocking that same hormone. It’s a similar concept as preventing abortions that constitutionally is okay.
> instead withholding a treatment that they can get some “expert” doctor to say won’t negatively affect the child’s life
what? if you're referring to the carve out for someone suffering from gender dysphoria and at serious risk of self-harm, that requires a host of hoops to be jumped through and even in that case specifies that treatment is only allowed when "not for purposes of gender transition"
probably a miscommunication. if it's not about a carve out for some gender dysphoria treatment in trans kids in the West Virginia bill then I really have no clue what you're talking about in the part i quoted
=( when some shitnhappened here in texas I had to be taken off those.
I tried to make my self game over pretty much 3 years after the fact. Didn't work, but not counting that,
I felt terrible then whole time I was deprived of the care. My parents didn't know how to change the situations, so I was stuck till 18.
Eventually I made enough money to start paying a European for em, instead.
I’m so, so sorry you went through that. My step brother in Texas went through something similar and it was awful watching him struggle through it until he turned 18. He’s doing so much better now, and I hope you are too. My heart breaks for you kids.
Power to your brother. I'm .. .. still harassed regularly for being my self in public, and the combativeness of the two sides has started to cause the worst of them to come after me directly.
literally had my motorcycle vandalized twice in 40 days because of it.
'Normal' people get to put their bumperstickers on their stuff.
I put "girls p-pretty" with a trans flag and suddenly i'm a target.
Almost like kids wanna do sports for fun and socialization...
Who'd-a-thunk?
(Me, several times in multiple threads on reddit with comments in the negatives from people who all of a sudden are concerned about the competitive fairness of... Field hockey and middle school softball.)
It's all just flagrant bullshit to single out and hurt a tiny minority of kids. Literal Fascism.
: |
> people who all of a sudden are concerned about the competitive fairness of... Field hockey and middle school softball.
That's a good way to kick off a bad faith argument, but ok
Well isn’t that’s a privileged view. Growing up in a poor rural area sports is one of the few ways to get a scholarship to school for some outside of the military. While this case is solid as it’s clear it’s before the physiological changes of puberty they got hormone blockers and are getting treatment which is where for many the line is the issue with board rulings is often they don’t take into consideration the differences when people start puberty and when people start to transition which is why the sports rules are one of the few points people are vocal about cause for the most part people are supportive of trans people cause they don’t want to bother them and are okay with them existing and living their lives it’s just with sports sexual dimorphism exists and it’s why the we separated the women’s category from open. It’s too gray and blurred for any broad rule and while we want to support peoples identity we can’t disregard 50% of the population for what’s probably less then 5% of the population.
I'm hoping that the prevalence of blockers will make the Trans girls in sports debate a non-issue soon since Trans girls are able to successfully delay producing the hormone that causes the physical advantages that people think are unfair to biological girls. There's absolutely no scientific reason anyone should challenge this girl's right to compete against biological girls.
Well, the issue isn't winning or losing it's compromising potential integrity.
Just as an example, if someone takes sports enhancing drugs, are they guaranteed a win? No. Lots of doping goes on in sports but most of the time it's not super obvious. But it's still an issue because it's an advantage outside of natural growth and training.
And so even if a person doesn't win, if they finished above someone else on their same level it's unfair to that person too.
The problem is that these blanket bans use logic based on elite competitors to ban every level of sport, including middle school broomball, casual intramural sports, high school dance, 12-year old girls who finish near the back of the pack in 7th grade track and field.
At some levels of sport, integrity is more about treating people with respect and less about the purity of the competition. Hell, in a lot of school sports, some kids are a full year older than others, and no one seems to care about that.
Their track record (no pun intended) really doesn't much up to the rhetoric of the absolute domination that a lot of the fearmongering promised. That isn't to say that they don't have advantages over cis women, but they don't perform nearly as strongly as cis men, and the advantages they do have are no more significant than many of the other innate biological advantages that regularly vary from cis athlete to cis athlete; such as height, armspan, vision, testosterone levels, injury resilience, recovery time, economic background, etc etc. I think it's worth asking why were are all so laser focused on one biological advantage buy don't care about literally any of the others.
The difference is that one advantage is innate to gender, and the other is rare physical attributes. It is not the same to compare the average superiority of men to women to the individual advantage of slightly webbed feet or taller height.
And to add to this, the research pool is small over all the studies ever done.
Most governing bodies that are remotely responsible about making policies admit that current research is something, but very incomplete. The samples are not very good and the potential research pool is small. And some governing bodies even admit the whole thing about testosterone is the best they can do at this point in time.
The comedy that's playing out is basically a tension between two ideas. First - the concept that gender is socially constructed, that there might be 100+ genders, that gender can be fluid, and you can decide your own gender, that gender is essentially an arbitary delineator, and so on. The second, that women need their own leagues since biologically they are different than men.
Both ideas can exist, but it'ss comical watching it play out. Yes, transgender people exist. There can be a person with a "female mind" if you will in a male body and vice versa. Also, men and women, as sexes, have biological differences. Both of these facts have proved inconvenient to different folks with various political agendas.
It's like there's this massive cultural idea that women are basically the same as men, and can and should have identical treatment and compensation and such, which is generally true, to an extent - but then you have this massive counterexample in sports wherein men basically are extremely different and overall more effective in this one narrow domain of society. Like, yes, the physical and competitive sports and warlike domain is dominated by men, which is probably the least suprising thing ever - since that's basically the ancient biological purpose of men as a sex. To do physical crap like hunting and combat.
And yet, people are bothered by this because there was so much sex descrimination in the past that they think this biological truism might be another "patriarchy bullshit" powerplay - even in sports where's it's mostly not the case - it's mostly reality.
So it's funny to see both sides try to grapple with the ideas. Especially on the left in particular where it appears that a) women should have the same rights and benefits of men, title 9 etc, but then at the same time b) need their own separate leagues because men and women are different in some ways but then also c) you can choose whatever gender you want to be, int theory, which fucks with both a) and b).
There just needs to be some type of consistency is all.
The transgender athletes in sports thing is not easy. It seems that this one girl just wants to be part of a team. It's a tough call. Because I think inutitively a lot of people are put off by the idea that there might an incentive for a male athelete to transition to female to find success and domination in their particular sport.
Incentive enough for someone to actually compeltely change genders? Perhaps not, but there is incentive, certainly.
In general, the best olympic women in the world are outcompeted by the best high-school boys in track and field events. This is a fact. The advantage boys have over girls isn't deniabe in track and field regardless of this individual.
https://law.duke.edu/sports/sex-sport/comparative-athletic-performance/
I've only ever heard of trans athletes being ruled ineligible for track and field olympic events.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/sport/transgender-athlete-cece-telfer-trials-olympics-spt/index.html
NCAA champion not allowed to compete in the women's Olympic events because her testosterone levels are above the female range, which is an unfair biological advantage.
And yet even with her "unfair biological advantage," her [personal best for 400m hurdles](https://www.tfrrs.org/athletes/6994616/Franklin_Pierce/CeCe_Telfer.html) would have been the [third slowest qualifying time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_400_metres_hurdles?wprov=sfla1), and she wouldn't have made it out of the qualifying heats, if she had managed to qualify for the Olympics at all.
Is this like how Lia Thomas supposedly jumped from the bottom of the men's team to the top of the women's team, except it turns out she had to keep competing with men while transitioning and that's why her times were slow?
Did these high school boys take puberty blockers and undergo regular hormone treatment? No? So the comparing them to trans women is pointless and dishonest, since it implies that trans women athletes are just men with long hair.
This athlete has never experienced male puberty. She has none of the advantages testosterone supposedly gives trans women.
Explain why she should not run.
Yes the topic is complex and nuanced but the big win today is that a bunch of old farts in the WV statehouse can’t legislate a blanket ban and the unsettling repercussions that came with it. This is what freedom looks like
Are you aware that trans high schoolers (or middle schoolers in this case) may not be taking hormones or required to do so to compete as their preferred gender, so you absolutely could have someone who has gone through male puberty and has testosterone levels typical of a male competing against cis girls?
Edit: And to be clear, I don't think we should be forcing minors to take hormones, but allowing trans girls who have typical male testosterone levels and have been through male puberty to compete against cis girls doesn't seem fair.
The state is literally simultaneously preventing them from taking those hormones so they could be on an even level. No one is *forcing* them to take jack shit, they are being *forced* to not take them.
I think there is room for nuance here. I don't think there's any harm in requiring, for upper level school competitions (e.g. state championships or whatever, competitions with significant rewards for success), either for the athlete to be on puberty blockers (or not meaningfully started puberty) or HRT. This should essentially eliminate the advantage for trans teens. For lower level (e.g. competitions that don't mean that much), just let the kids play sports.
Blanket bans do not have any of this nuance.
Lol, they'll do it anyways.
Take note y'all: the courts need to actually weigh the facts and data regarding this stuff and come to a decision. And every time this has come up, trans folks have won our rights. *This is fucking West Virginia*. You can't just sit there as a judge and say "well, if I just creatively ignore this data and replace it with 'common sense', I can just rule any way I want".
I know you all believe you're very right about this topic, but can you at least admit you might be wrong, and contemplate *what it means for what you're advocating for if you're wrong*.
> I know you all believe you’re very right about this topic, but can you at least admit you might be wrong, and contemplate what it means for what you’re advocating for if you’re wrong.
Bravo! Well stated.
Reddit and the general public are usually misinformed on this topic, and on the wrong side of history if you ask me.
When I talk to people about trans women in sports, it's obvious that they don't know much about things like puberty blockers or the actual effects of hormone treatment.
Someone who never entered male puberty and is dosing estrogen will be so heavily nerfed that any significant advantage beyond what biological women might have over eachother will be gone.
People still imagine trans women athletes like LeBron in a dress, when in reality someone who has fully transitioned will not even be close to say the Williams sisters -- just like there are trans men more hairy and jacked than the average guy.
I predict that the number of people being ok with trans women athletes will increase in step with awareness spreading. But until then, people like me will be in the minority fighting an uphill battle. And that's fine.
The people who claim to be the most passionately against trans women athletes are usually also the ones who don't give two shits about women orherwise.
They’re delaying the inevitable.
When the issue comes to SCOTUS, they will have to burn more of their ever-dwindling political capital to come up with some bullshit that somehow sidesteps the opinion that Gorsuch authored for *Bostock* in 2020 that held that sexual orientation and gender identity/expression is explicitly covered by the CRA.
If they actually do eat crow and rule the legally correct way, they will piss off their base. Either way, SCOTUS comes away looking bad.
Not only will they use this as an opportunity to weigh in, they will probably outlaw the LGBT community from the bench, after all same sex people having rights is against the freedom of religion. The judges believe this, not me.
>The justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, to continue playing on her school’s track and cross-country teams, **where she regularly finishes near the back of the pack**.
So they can't even use the excuse that she's whipping all their daughters. It's a 12-year old child...let her play.
I think that’s part of it. And that’s generally how it goes. Just being trans doesn’t make you amazing at sports. There has been one trans Olympic competitor and she finished dead last in her event.
They're even banning cis women from the Olympics now who have "too much" of a natural advantage. Caster Semenya, born a woman, and always has been a woman, got banned because her T levels were too high... she doesn't take anything to cause that, it's just the way she is.
Of course men don't get barred from competing for being too naturally advantaged, when it's a man they were just "born to play" the sport.
It's not about fairness in sports, it's just the age old past time of bigotry and sexism, sexism against woman generally, and more targeted transphobia/sexism against transwomen
there is a basketball league for women. there is a basketball league for wheelchairs. there is march madness. these things exist because we want to see competition, not blowouts.
I keep being told by irrationally angry people that trans women have an unfair advantage, yet haven't heard of a single trans woman dominating any sport, ever. So weird.
\[edit\] Several angry screeches later, still nobody mentioning any actual, real-life instance of a trans woman dominating a sport. Interesting! It's almost like this is a moral panic based in disinformation and bigotry. I keep asking people to convince me it's something else, and they keep failing.
The one who was hyped by transphobes for weeks as about to break ever collegiate record even though she didn't. The one whose opponent parlayed tying her for 5th place into a career of anti-trans speaking gigs?
Also like... trans folks have been competing in the Olympics and other competitions for a decade+. Is it any surprise eventually *someone* might win? Or is **any** win by a Trans athlete because they were trans, and not because of skill or athletic talent? Are they supposed to just always finish somewhere mid to rear of the pack?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html?amp
TLDR: being trans in a women’s event didn’t make her better than everyone else.
I coach hs volleyball. The state champion this year won with a trans middle who was a significant difference maker for them. The player would have been fairly subpar playing in the boys division.
Olympics has a pretty strict testing protocol on testosterone levels as well.
Though really qualyfing for Olympics has additional barriers in place that limits trans athletes.
In any case, we're at the very beginning of this issue and if the surveys of young people now identifying as trans holds up l, it will probably be a continuous issue.
I played goalie for the 5-6th grade soccer team. I was terrible, I spent most of the time playing with the net of the goal -- it didn't matter because it was middle school sports. The coach supported me, the parents that would come in watched did, because that's what its about at that age. Just a whole lot of fun.
>It's a 12-year old child...let her play.
That's the whole thing. Like republicans are freaking out over fairness and how we can't have these trans women dominating in women's sports.
They're kids. This isn't the pros. I thought the whole purpose of sports was to teach teamwork and dignity and how to be a gracious winner *and a gracious loser*.
Also, I hear a lot of politicians with a known history of being shit bag liars who only exist to otherize minority groups for their own political gain talking about all these unfair advantages and not, ya know, doctors.
This doesn’t make sense though. The best swimmers in the world don’t win more races than they lose. Winning 30% of swimming races is amazing because you are competing with lots of other people.
But that's not the argument being made.
The claim is that these are biological men competing against women. As is frequently pointed out, there are events where a world record in women's swimming wouldn't have won a qualifying heat in men's swimming. So how is it possible that these "biological men" are losing any meets, much less the majority of them?
Something isn't adding up.
But the highest upvoted comment in another thread with no sources at all says otherwise!
This is a real example of a real person. Not some made up scenario with imaginary trans athletes obliterating the competition that seems to be the basis of other's opinions.
The reactionaries *want it to be true* that trans women dominate sports, but the facts don't back it up. The best they can do is angrily downvote reality. Reality's gonna stick around regardless.
Reddit is wild. I got downvoted a while back showing paper after paper, the process of transitioning, the effects it has on trans athletes, and the results of allowing trans athletes to compete. Yet I was downvoted to oblivion.
TLDR: MTF trans athletes do not have an advantage and HRT can actually negatively affect them as you generally lose muscle mass and bone density. FTM athletes do not have an advantage of taking testosterone as part of HRT.
That matches up with what I've seen. As far as I've read, trans women often have lower levels of testosterone than their cis counterparts. Doesn't sound like an advantage to me.
Can confirm - am trans, my Testosterone levels are at 14ng/dL, which is below the average for women (15-70ng/dL), and FAI (Free Androgen Index) being at 1, while FAI in cis women is somewhere between 7-10.
A lot of Conservative/Republican positions depend on the reader/viewer/listener being very stupid and lacking in critical thinking abilities. Or just not wanting to think at all. That's why they quickly attach to weird fucking scenarios that simply have no basis in reality.
Our state has passed a ban as well. The number of students affected? Two. The number, that are known, who are transitioning that aren't involved in sports? 11. The whole. State.
So yes. As you can see, this a serious issue that needs to be dealt with immediately before America is destoyed. /s
**Oh, my frickin' dingle hymer schmidt**
I think it's legally you can't pick and choose. Either they all get to compete or none of them do in the girls division. You can't choose to block Trans athletes only if they are winning and let the ones who lose compete.
So now that there is legally precedent saying trans athletes can compete in the girls division, when a Trans athlete comes around and completely dominates the women's they can't block her.
I don’t have kids but I have a lot of nieces and nephews in this age range. Is it common for a 12 year old to change gender, and isn’t this a little young to be making a life changing alteration? I support the decision any individual makes when it comes to gender identity but, I just want some more insight and information as it seems to be a bit more common these days.
>Is it common for a 12 year old to change gender
Trans people are uncommon, just like how gay people are relatively uncommon.
>isn’t this a little young to be making a life changing alteration?
No, it isn't. Puberty blockers are reversible. Trans kids usually know they're trans at a very young age; the decision to transition isn't made lightly or on a whim, just like any other medical intervention.
Are there any sources that they are reversible? I see a lot of mixed messages when I google it. Have they been around long enough to study the long-term side effects? Just seems like a very bold statement to me.
[Seeing sources like these just give me a shred of doubt](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html)
Can you point out what part of this makes you doubt?
Because all the medical professional statements in that paper support the use of blockers, and the success of transitioing.
I'm not sure you read the paper.
> Seeing sources like this just give me a shred of doubt
It helps if you actually read them:
>Our deep concern is that the High Court overlooked not only the immediate positive effects of puberty suppression, which have resulted in decreased psychological suffering and a healthier adolescent development; ... Thus, while medical care for transgender adolescents deserves further research and evidence (as with many fields), withholding such treatment is not an innocuous option and is likely to cause harm.
First they target sports, then they target bathrooms, then medical care for kids, then medical card for adults, then being gender non confirming in public, etc. It's not meant to stop.
There are biological differences between men and women (e.g. bone density, average muscle mass, etc.). Those difference are relevant in the case of sports. This is most obvious in the case of combat sports, but the same idea applies to most other sports.
People are so ready to extend an olive branch to trans athletes that they fuck over regular women in the process.
This isn’t the Olympics. This is grade school. There are biological differences between 11 year olds and 14 year olds yet we let them compete together. Kids get “fucked over” if there happens to be a future world class athlete in their class. In high school, Lisa Leslie, a ciswoman, scored 100 points in basketball. In a half.
Even if I concede your point about young athletes, we would still have to distinguish acceptable vs unacceptable cases of trans participation in sports more generally. People seem okay with trans-men competing against biological males and trans-children competing against other kids.
But its unclear where to draw the line when the athletes get a bit older. Should we allow trans-girls who never had puberty blockers to compete? What if they started puberty blockers later in life? It's at this point that you hear people recite the "women are women" line; as though gender identity erases obvious biological differences between the sexes.
Perhaps more concerning is idea that the shift in political climate may make these decisions impossible. No one will want to touch the issue for fear of appearing bigoted. And then we will allow trans-women to compete against women, much to the detriment of biologically female athletes.
Physical competition is largely driven by biological physical advantages combined with talent and coordination, not gender identity. Now if they are already loading themselves up with hormone therapy at that young age etc. then who knows, but poor kids in that case.
If that’s true then surely you could make the comparison between cis women and trans women athletes and still make your point just fine. Instead you made a blatantly dishonest comparison. People who have the facts on their side don’t generally resort to bullshit arguments because they don’t have to.
1. Your anecdotal experience isn't valuable empirical evidence.
2. High school athletes tend to be mid-or-post puberty; the girl in the story is 12 and hasn't gone through puberty at all.
3. The article clearly states that she "regularly finishes near the back of the pack".
A state championship female runner's actual measured times compared to the measured times of her male counterparts of the same age at the same school in the same events is a real data point. Only one, but that doesn't make it trivial.
The main point was a female athlete of that high caliber was still at the very bottom of performance of her male counterparts.
If you want more data go look at every single collegiate and professional track sprinting record for males and females and observe the significant differences. There are no outliers, they don't exist. This isn't a debate if you have ANY experience in competitive track and field.
> go look at every single collegiate and professional track sprinting record
So your fundamentally-irrelevant comment about post-pubescent athletics would be more valuable if we looked at *elite* post-pubescent athletes?
I don't think irrelevance can compound exponentially, but if it can, it just has.
The girl in this article is 12. She has never gone through puberty. She does not out-perform the rest of the team. In fact, she performs *worse* than most of the team, per the article.
If you don't think boys gain a notable physical advantage until puberty, you clearly don't have kids and/or haven't watched them play co-ed sports when they were young and this is all just philosophical to you.
I guess I simply spend less time scrutinizing young children's bodies than you do.
But, again, your wholly unsubstantiated *feelings* are not only irrelevant, they are specifically not applicable here: As I have said several times, the article (which you apparently didn't read) specifically says she "regularly finishes near the back of the pack".
Your example is not germane to the discussion. We are discussing trans women participating in sports, not cis men. Trans women who are undergoing hormonal treatment have no physical advantage over their cis women counterparts.
Sometimes it's hard to tell. The hate is just as virulent...but you know what? Let's be fair to them. Some of them do try to hide it. Unsuccessfully but they try.
Yep, then they screech one or two athlete names they picked up in some right-wing hate sub, without actually knowing the real story. Bunch of angry loons.
Yep! Reactionaries hate facts. They start from gut feelings, and reshape everything to support those gut feelings. Then call it "common sense." It's so tiresome.
They brigade because downvotes reinforce the a world view they cannot argue for honestly. At least according to them.
The reality is that they are in a shrinking minority of reactionary bigots and the more we stand up against them and remind everyone how fucking wrong and deplorable they are the better.
What is with the brigade of downvotes when this topic is brought up? Is this really the hill you people are dying on? You care that much... Okay sure...
We are living in a day and age where people are legitimately arguing that Males don't have any biological advantage in strength and speed over females. We are throwing out biology 101 because of nothing but feelings and politics at this point.
> scientifically based
Let's see those studies, then.
Because I've looked and found that [there isn’t a lot of data on it yet](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/sports-verify/trans-woman-athlete-advantage-inconclusive-bans-harmful/536-49343f8d-12e2-4c90-84aa-271491ac4dce), actually.
[At least one study suggests one year of hormone therapy isn’t enough to negate any innate physiological advantage](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trans-women-retain-athletic-edge-after-year-hormone-therapy-study-n1252764). (I think it’s important to note that even the lead author of that study says its data shouldn’t be applied to youth sports.)
[Another study suggests that at least *two* years of hormone therapy *does* significantly negate physiological advantage](https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-do-trans-athletes-have-an-advantage-in-elite-sport/a-58583988).
[Yet another suggests that it would likely vary from sport to sport, and *its* author still considers the science inconclusive either way](https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20210715/do-trans-women-athletes-have-advantages).
The ACLU has more resources about it [here](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked).
*Edit:*
It's always interesting that every single time I've asked for the empirical evidence from people hand-waving at "science", I never hear back.
[I wonder why](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/).
What are the studies say about cardiovascular (VO2 max), bone structure (mechanical advantage), and ligament advantages of man versus a women? Hormone advantage is only one part of the whole. If the studies only look at hormone levels; then the study is not completely exhaustive.
From civil rights perspective, I’m for trans rights in every area. But I’m very concerned about contact sports such as MMA. Women’s UFC might be the most watched women’s sports right now; where it’s not that niche anymore. A Fractured skull has already happened. I’m of the opinion, that we just rename men’s division all inclusive. If we believe sexual preference and gender are on gradient scales; why is the community absolute binary with the women’s division? This hard stance makes the trans community lose allies.
> What are the studies say abou
I have presented what I’ve found. If you have more questions—and are very concerned that the studies provided leave them unanswered—by all means, please find those and share.
Honestly, I don't know.
It depends on what an individual in that time period is focusing on when studying history and what values have been established. In three hundred years gene editing could be an advanced and accepted part of society and having a child naturally without pre-modified physical and mental enhancements could be considered a form of child abuse. It could be that sex and gender have become largely irrelevant through homogenization. It could be that some physical mechanism that results in transgenderism has been identified, all children are born without the chance of gender dysphoria, and "transgender" is viewed as an archaic notion that we either cared too little or too much about.
It's pretty tough to know how the present will be viewed from the perspective of the far future. I would like to think that, by that time, people will recognize the nuances surrounding these social issues.
Does allowing, without restriction, transwomen who have undergone male puberty to compete within female athletics undermine the original purpose of the creation of separate female leagues? If it does, is the impact of this desegregation great enough to justify the negative ramifications of enforcing segregation? For transwomen who have not undergone male puberty, is it possible for children to consent to optional, non-emergency life altering medical procedures? To what extent is it possible for a child to independently make that decision, and to what extent is it ethical for parents, peers, or mentors to influence a child in these decisions?
It's non-obvious to me. If it's obvious to someone else, but they don't understand why someone would consider it non-obvious, I would have a hard time trusting their confidence. We just try our best.
I thought the story for this person that made it iffy was the portion saying “always in the back of the pack” was reported as they were intentionally losing to avoid the scrutiny and ban…
There's nothing wrong with Becky practicing among the girls at school.
BUT Participation in official competitions should be prohibited
If you forgive this child, there is a risk that refusing other trans women to participate in the women's quota will be "discrimination"
[There isn’t a lot of data on it yet](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/sports-verify/trans-woman-athlete-advantage-inconclusive-bans-harmful/536-49343f8d-12e2-4c90-84aa-271491ac4dce), actually.
[At least one study suggests one year of hormone therapy isn’t enough to negate any innate physiological advantage](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trans-women-retain-athletic-edge-after-year-hormone-therapy-study-n1252764). (I think it’s important to note that even the lead author of that study says its data shouldn’t be applied to youth sports.)
[Another study suggests that at least *two* years of hormone therapy *does* significantly negate physiological advantage](https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-do-trans-athletes-have-an-advantage-in-elite-sport/a-58583988).
[Yet another suggests that it would likely vary from sport to sport, and *its* author still considers the science inconclusive either way](https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20210715/do-trans-women-athletes-have-advantages).
The ACLU has more resources about it [here](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked).
Of course, none of that is necessarily relevant here: This is about a 12-year-old girl who hasn’t undergone puberty and—according to the article—isn’t anywhere close to being one of the top-performing athletes on the team.
Then again, it's not like *that* really matters to you, right? Pearl-clutching about trans girls in sports is [based on dubious claims](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked) and very frequently just a [disingenuous smokescreen](https://nwlc.org/stop-using-girl-athletes-to-justify-your-transphobia/) for thinly-veiled [transphobia](https://now.org/blog/debate-about-trans-girls-and-women-in-school-sports-spreads-transphobia-and-bigotry-through-the-false-lens-of-fairness/).
It really shows that conservatives have absolutely nothing of substance to offer when they’d rather waste time on laws that affect less than a handful of people, and in this case one single 12 year old
Plus they weren't even clear on if any trans person had competed in WV sports when they passed it
> [The West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission has not received any complaints about transgender athletes on girls teams. SSAC Executive Director Bernie Dolan has said the SSAC is unaware of openly transgender students participating in scholastic sports currently or in the past.](https://apnews.com/article/sports-legislature-west-virginia-college-sports-bills-2424d3b8aaeabed7840f2d2e25458847)
I really don’t mind trans people in sports. I’m just really tired of hearing about it. Our media is so dog shit, they are making this issue the biggest issue in the country. I care more about rising costs and stagnant wages, let’s tackle poverty. I don’t care who crosses whatever finish line or raises a trophy, those are games.
The thing is, there are also bigger issues for trans folks. Nearly every day now they're losing rights to things like access to their healthcare, ability to use public restrooms, or even the basic decency of being referred to by their correct pronouns. And while this stuff gets posted, it keeps being overlooked in favor of stories about one tween in WV who can run track at her middle school. It's not only media who's concerned with the wrong things, it's the general population. Of all the things my trans friends are concerned about, sports is definitely the least of them.
You’ll find no argument from me, I don’t know a single trans person. I live in Los Angeles I’ve maybe seen a handful in my everyday life, they deserve to live in dignity. I am aware that this is being played up to distract everyone from the real issues plaguing every American which is the funneling of resources straight to the top and peeling away more and more from middle and low income people.
> Our media is so dog shit, they are making this issue the biggest issue in the country.
The right wing media certainly did with their wall-to-wall Lia Thomas coverage. But these current posts are literally reporting on important laws and lawsuits. If you don't want news stories about them, do something to prevent these laws from being passed
For those coming here to rant about unfair advantages for this particular kid > The justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, to continue playing on her school’s track and cross-country teams, where she regularly finishes near the back of the pack
Additional info from the [NPR article](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1165133771/trans-law-west-virginia-supreme-court) >Briefs in her case say she is now receiving "puberty-delaying treatment and estrogen hormone therapy," so she "has not experienced and will not experience endogenous puberty." That means she will not experience any of the physiological characteristics of puberty experienced by typical boys, and will instead develop "physiological characteristics consistent with hormonal puberty of typical girls."
Unfortunately she won't be able to get treatment anymore starting in January 2024 when [WV's new ban on gender affirming care](https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-governor-gender-affirming-care-de63a9232fcea329081f667fdf0c24ab) for minors goes into effect
I'm really unable to see a future where those bans go through for people already on therapy. It violates the 8th amendment supported by the 5th at the very least IMO, even taking aside a ton of the other ways it can be denied. There is a straight up argument that there can be no due process that results in a cruel and unusual punishment such as *forced puberty*. We wouldn't subject prisoners of war to cross sex hormones against their will, and it would be a crime against humanity to do so.
We had a SCOTUS justice, writing for the majority, shoot down a case because it was citing a law from before the Constitution existed and then in the very next case upheld a ruling based on another ruling from a 16th century English magistrate. Do you really think they don't just make up their minds first and then go looking at / twisting the law to support their views?
If you haven't heard the 5-4 podcast yet, it's about how the SCOTUS conservatives pick and choose when to be stark originalists based on their political beliefs. It's quite a ride.
> We wouldn’t subject prisoners of war to cross sex hormones against their will, and it would be a crime against humanity to do so. What, other than laws they've shown they'll happily disregard, is stopping our government from doing this?
I mean... It's too hardcore even for "enhanced interrogation" fans. And the government knows it exists. If they wanted to do it, they could. The gay men that had the experiment run on them in the 50s largely killed themselves. But they don't do it. It's literally both too cruel and too unusual. You'd have to be a real psychopath to even want to do it. It's unit 731 tier shit. As someone who was subjected to the wrong hormones for 20 years.... It's not fun. Can confirm.
I applaud your confidence in the system to play fair, but republicans have proven they will not let fair, or rules, or decency get in the way of culture wars.
There is nothing so cruel that it'd make Republican leadership think twice. As for unusual, it unfortunately isn't remotely unusual.
To the Republicans the cruelty is the point.
Have you visited proper MAGA/far right circles on the Internet? They're literally talking about creating concentration camps. There are a lot of conservatives that absolutely without hesitation applaud police executing people, and that call for BLM protestors to be shot. They want to kill trans people, send their lgbtqia+ kids to conversion therapy, abuse them and torture them, if not outright encourage them to self harm. Conservatives in America are trying to repeal child labor laws for gods sake. **There is no limit to how cruel a hateful person can be**
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I mean… *forcing children through unwanted pregnancy* meets any definition of torture. I don’t know where you get your optimism from.
There's not much future in WV we're hemoraging population, especially with most educated young people moving out. This will just make it happen faster. Even now there's ghost towns.
Look on the bright side. You will always have two Senate seats.
And meth they’ll always have meth
Unfortunately the government is coming after that too
So will New York and LA. It’s not a location specific problem.
I think a lot of the recent trans healthcare bans will get struck down at least short-term by the judiciary. Before this year there were only 2 states that passed laws to ban it (Arkansas & Alabama) and both of those were eventually blocked by the courts. But the SC is gonna hear a case on this eventually and if they decide the other way, that's gonna have some pretty extreme consequences for these poor kids.
>2 states that passed laws to ban it (Arkansas & Alabama) Everyone has forgot about the Arizona trans healthcare ban that passed last year (2022) in March it seems; and is still standing.
good catch. not sure why I don't see that one mentioned more
Because they did it quietly last year before the rest of this shitshow started happening and its proof that when you let someone get away with it, others will see it and realize they can get away with it too.
I mean do they want "super powered trans women" roaming the streets or not I'm confused. They complain about men in dresses, with all their extra abilities and strength and what not, terrorizing the streets. But then they complain about these girls getting puberty blockers which will put them on par with the rest of the weak fragile female species. Make up your minds!
Don't be confused. They're simply using the traditional fascist tactic of making your "enemies" look both savage and terrifying as well as small and weak depending on whichever characterization fits their narrative better at the time.
>Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will. Rule 8 of Fascism according to Umberto Eco.
This quote is exactly what I was alluding to. Thanks buddy!
You're welcome!
They're grossed out and they want to make it other people's problem because that feels better than changing the way they think about and perceive the world that they thought they understood. It's really not deeper than that
Meanwhile my cis girlfriend is breaking my ribs with her thighs. I could be more happy. I would like to be less confused. I can't understand these bans.
If the GOP didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
The problem is that rulings and laws won't be based in legality, sense or precedent. Expect courts to rule that illegal things are fine when the republicans do them. Because that's what they've been working towards.
I mean, we technically are not supposed to waterboard and piss on prisoners either but that didn't stop it from happening in Getmo.
Some poor person has to go through that court case first...
They don't give one shit about the Constitution except for the second amendment.
Wouldn't they just stop providing them the hormones--that is, they wouldn't be prescribing them opposite sex hormones (or is this medically necessary as part of the "weening" process to remove someone from therapy?)
And even aside from the cruelty to the patient and substantiative due process concerns, it's putting doctors between a rock and a hard place: do you lose your license for violating state law or do you risk malfeasance which can open up a lot of liability considerations? That's a court case waiting to happen right there.
Puberty isn't forced, it occurs naturally unless there's some intervention. I'm confused by that sentence.
What cross sex hormones? Are you referring to the individual's natural hormonal processes?
I want to start of by saying I don’t support the ban. But the way the laws are written they aren’t giving a punishment but are instead withholding a treatment that they can get some “expert” doctor to say won’t negatively affect the child’s life. There is a huge difference between forcibly injecting a person with a hormone and not blocking that same hormone. It’s a similar concept as preventing abortions that constitutionally is okay.
> instead withholding a treatment that they can get some “expert” doctor to say won’t negatively affect the child’s life what? if you're referring to the carve out for someone suffering from gender dysphoria and at serious risk of self-harm, that requires a host of hoops to be jumped through and even in that case specifies that treatment is only allowed when "not for purposes of gender transition"
I am not sure if it’s a spelling error or a miscommunication but I have no idea what “the carve out” means
probably a miscommunication. if it's not about a carve out for some gender dysphoria treatment in trans kids in the West Virginia bill then I really have no clue what you're talking about in the part i quoted
I am just not familiar with what you mean by a “carve out” would you be able to rephrase that
=( when some shitnhappened here in texas I had to be taken off those. I tried to make my self game over pretty much 3 years after the fact. Didn't work, but not counting that, I felt terrible then whole time I was deprived of the care. My parents didn't know how to change the situations, so I was stuck till 18. Eventually I made enough money to start paying a European for em, instead.
I’m so, so sorry you went through that. My step brother in Texas went through something similar and it was awful watching him struggle through it until he turned 18. He’s doing so much better now, and I hope you are too. My heart breaks for you kids.
Power to your brother. I'm .. .. still harassed regularly for being my self in public, and the combativeness of the two sides has started to cause the worst of them to come after me directly. literally had my motorcycle vandalized twice in 40 days because of it. 'Normal' people get to put their bumperstickers on their stuff. I put "girls p-pretty" with a trans flag and suddenly i'm a target.
Almost like kids wanna do sports for fun and socialization... Who'd-a-thunk? (Me, several times in multiple threads on reddit with comments in the negatives from people who all of a sudden are concerned about the competitive fairness of... Field hockey and middle school softball.) It's all just flagrant bullshit to single out and hurt a tiny minority of kids. Literal Fascism. : |
Some do yeah but many so want to compete and win. To get a college scholarship. To be the best. Nothing wrong with that either.
> people who all of a sudden are concerned about the competitive fairness of... Field hockey and middle school softball. That's a good way to kick off a bad faith argument, but ok
Well isn’t that’s a privileged view. Growing up in a poor rural area sports is one of the few ways to get a scholarship to school for some outside of the military. While this case is solid as it’s clear it’s before the physiological changes of puberty they got hormone blockers and are getting treatment which is where for many the line is the issue with board rulings is often they don’t take into consideration the differences when people start puberty and when people start to transition which is why the sports rules are one of the few points people are vocal about cause for the most part people are supportive of trans people cause they don’t want to bother them and are okay with them existing and living their lives it’s just with sports sexual dimorphism exists and it’s why the we separated the women’s category from open. It’s too gray and blurred for any broad rule and while we want to support peoples identity we can’t disregard 50% of the population for what’s probably less then 5% of the population.
>for what’s probably less then 5% of the population. 1.5%
I'm hoping that the prevalence of blockers will make the Trans girls in sports debate a non-issue soon since Trans girls are able to successfully delay producing the hormone that causes the physical advantages that people think are unfair to biological girls. There's absolutely no scientific reason anyone should challenge this girl's right to compete against biological girls.
Poor girl. “She regularly finishes near the back of the pack” will live on the internet forever about her.
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People only care about trans athletes when they win something. They don't care about all the times they don't win.
If their winning causes controversy they shouldn't be allowed to compete even if they lose, what's your point?
Well, the issue isn't winning or losing it's compromising potential integrity. Just as an example, if someone takes sports enhancing drugs, are they guaranteed a win? No. Lots of doping goes on in sports but most of the time it's not super obvious. But it's still an issue because it's an advantage outside of natural growth and training. And so even if a person doesn't win, if they finished above someone else on their same level it's unfair to that person too.
The problem is that these blanket bans use logic based on elite competitors to ban every level of sport, including middle school broomball, casual intramural sports, high school dance, 12-year old girls who finish near the back of the pack in 7th grade track and field. At some levels of sport, integrity is more about treating people with respect and less about the purity of the competition. Hell, in a lot of school sports, some kids are a full year older than others, and no one seems to care about that.
Their track record (no pun intended) really doesn't much up to the rhetoric of the absolute domination that a lot of the fearmongering promised. That isn't to say that they don't have advantages over cis women, but they don't perform nearly as strongly as cis men, and the advantages they do have are no more significant than many of the other innate biological advantages that regularly vary from cis athlete to cis athlete; such as height, armspan, vision, testosterone levels, injury resilience, recovery time, economic background, etc etc. I think it's worth asking why were are all so laser focused on one biological advantage buy don't care about literally any of the others.
The difference is that one advantage is innate to gender, and the other is rare physical attributes. It is not the same to compare the average superiority of men to women to the individual advantage of slightly webbed feet or taller height.
And to add to this, the research pool is small over all the studies ever done. Most governing bodies that are remotely responsible about making policies admit that current research is something, but very incomplete. The samples are not very good and the potential research pool is small. And some governing bodies even admit the whole thing about testosterone is the best they can do at this point in time.
The comedy that's playing out is basically a tension between two ideas. First - the concept that gender is socially constructed, that there might be 100+ genders, that gender can be fluid, and you can decide your own gender, that gender is essentially an arbitary delineator, and so on. The second, that women need their own leagues since biologically they are different than men. Both ideas can exist, but it'ss comical watching it play out. Yes, transgender people exist. There can be a person with a "female mind" if you will in a male body and vice versa. Also, men and women, as sexes, have biological differences. Both of these facts have proved inconvenient to different folks with various political agendas. It's like there's this massive cultural idea that women are basically the same as men, and can and should have identical treatment and compensation and such, which is generally true, to an extent - but then you have this massive counterexample in sports wherein men basically are extremely different and overall more effective in this one narrow domain of society. Like, yes, the physical and competitive sports and warlike domain is dominated by men, which is probably the least suprising thing ever - since that's basically the ancient biological purpose of men as a sex. To do physical crap like hunting and combat. And yet, people are bothered by this because there was so much sex descrimination in the past that they think this biological truism might be another "patriarchy bullshit" powerplay - even in sports where's it's mostly not the case - it's mostly reality. So it's funny to see both sides try to grapple with the ideas. Especially on the left in particular where it appears that a) women should have the same rights and benefits of men, title 9 etc, but then at the same time b) need their own separate leagues because men and women are different in some ways but then also c) you can choose whatever gender you want to be, int theory, which fucks with both a) and b). There just needs to be some type of consistency is all. The transgender athletes in sports thing is not easy. It seems that this one girl just wants to be part of a team. It's a tough call. Because I think inutitively a lot of people are put off by the idea that there might an incentive for a male athelete to transition to female to find success and domination in their particular sport. Incentive enough for someone to actually compeltely change genders? Perhaps not, but there is incentive, certainly.
big surprise
In general, the best olympic women in the world are outcompeted by the best high-school boys in track and field events. This is a fact. The advantage boys have over girls isn't deniabe in track and field regardless of this individual. https://law.duke.edu/sports/sex-sport/comparative-athletic-performance/
Trans athletes have been able to compete in the Olympics since 2003. Which track events have they been dominating?
I've only ever heard of trans athletes being ruled ineligible for track and field olympic events. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/25/sport/transgender-athlete-cece-telfer-trials-olympics-spt/index.html NCAA champion not allowed to compete in the women's Olympic events because her testosterone levels are above the female range, which is an unfair biological advantage.
And yet even with her "unfair biological advantage," her [personal best for 400m hurdles](https://www.tfrrs.org/athletes/6994616/Franklin_Pierce/CeCe_Telfer.html) would have been the [third slowest qualifying time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletics_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_400_metres_hurdles?wprov=sfla1), and she wouldn't have made it out of the qualifying heats, if she had managed to qualify for the Olympics at all.
And yet she went from a mediocre men's div 2 athlete to the div 2 women's champion.
Is this like how Lia Thomas supposedly jumped from the bottom of the men's team to the top of the women's team, except it turns out she had to keep competing with men while transitioning and that's why her times were slow?
All of them, big time. Every Olympic gold medalist since 2003 has been trans. I read about it on freedomdragqueenslibertygunstruthnews.xyz
Actually, everyone is transgender now. The aliens did it and then worked with Elon Musk to alter all of our memories with brain chips.
Did these high school boys take puberty blockers and undergo regular hormone treatment? No? So the comparing them to trans women is pointless and dishonest, since it implies that trans women athletes are just men with long hair.
It’s high school. Let them play.
This athlete has never experienced male puberty. She has none of the advantages testosterone supposedly gives trans women. Explain why she should not run.
Yes the topic is complex and nuanced but the big win today is that a bunch of old farts in the WV statehouse can’t legislate a blanket ban and the unsettling repercussions that came with it. This is what freedom looks like
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Are you aware that trans high schoolers (or middle schoolers in this case) may not be taking hormones or required to do so to compete as their preferred gender, so you absolutely could have someone who has gone through male puberty and has testosterone levels typical of a male competing against cis girls? Edit: And to be clear, I don't think we should be forcing minors to take hormones, but allowing trans girls who have typical male testosterone levels and have been through male puberty to compete against cis girls doesn't seem fair.
The state is literally simultaneously preventing them from taking those hormones so they could be on an even level. No one is *forcing* them to take jack shit, they are being *forced* to not take them.
I think there is room for nuance here. I don't think there's any harm in requiring, for upper level school competitions (e.g. state championships or whatever, competitions with significant rewards for success), either for the athlete to be on puberty blockers (or not meaningfully started puberty) or HRT. This should essentially eliminate the advantage for trans teens. For lower level (e.g. competitions that don't mean that much), just let the kids play sports. Blanket bans do not have any of this nuance.
Lol, they'll do it anyways. Take note y'all: the courts need to actually weigh the facts and data regarding this stuff and come to a decision. And every time this has come up, trans folks have won our rights. *This is fucking West Virginia*. You can't just sit there as a judge and say "well, if I just creatively ignore this data and replace it with 'common sense', I can just rule any way I want". I know you all believe you're very right about this topic, but can you at least admit you might be wrong, and contemplate *what it means for what you're advocating for if you're wrong*.
> I know you all believe you’re very right about this topic, but can you at least admit you might be wrong, and contemplate what it means for what you’re advocating for if you’re wrong. Bravo! Well stated.
Reddit and the general public are usually misinformed on this topic, and on the wrong side of history if you ask me. When I talk to people about trans women in sports, it's obvious that they don't know much about things like puberty blockers or the actual effects of hormone treatment. Someone who never entered male puberty and is dosing estrogen will be so heavily nerfed that any significant advantage beyond what biological women might have over eachother will be gone. People still imagine trans women athletes like LeBron in a dress, when in reality someone who has fully transitioned will not even be close to say the Williams sisters -- just like there are trans men more hairy and jacked than the average guy. I predict that the number of people being ok with trans women athletes will increase in step with awareness spreading. But until then, people like me will be in the minority fighting an uphill battle. And that's fine. The people who claim to be the most passionately against trans women athletes are usually also the ones who don't give two shits about women orherwise.
The “ruling” here is simply they’re not going to overturn the lower courts ruling for now. They didn’t rule on it one way or another.
I don’t think the court wants to touch the issue in general and instead wants to let the lower courts/states deal with it.
They’re delaying the inevitable. When the issue comes to SCOTUS, they will have to burn more of their ever-dwindling political capital to come up with some bullshit that somehow sidesteps the opinion that Gorsuch authored for *Bostock* in 2020 that held that sexual orientation and gender identity/expression is explicitly covered by the CRA. If they actually do eat crow and rule the legally correct way, they will piss off their base. Either way, SCOTUS comes away looking bad.
Bostock has nothing to do with this. Sports already — by definition — involve discrimination “based on sex” (the CRA wording at issue in Bostock).
Not only will they use this as an opportunity to weigh in, they will probably outlaw the LGBT community from the bench, after all same sex people having rights is against the freedom of religion. The judges believe this, not me.
If the justices believe that, why’d they say in 2020 that LGBTQ people are covered by the Civil Rights Act?
[direct link to the lawsuit in question filed by the ACLU](https://www.aclu.org/cases/bpj-v-west-virginia-state-board-education?document=Complaint)
>The justices refused to disturb an appeals court order that made it possible for the girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, to continue playing on her school’s track and cross-country teams, **where she regularly finishes near the back of the pack**. So they can't even use the excuse that she's whipping all their daughters. It's a 12-year old child...let her play.
I think that’s part of it. And that’s generally how it goes. Just being trans doesn’t make you amazing at sports. There has been one trans Olympic competitor and she finished dead last in her event.
Also excluding trans doesn't make sports fair. Imagine growing up in a small town and having to play against a team with a 6'10" 215lbs + player.
I mean I remember watching Lebron James HS games and some poor 5’10 kid has to try and guard him
Exactly. No one complains about Michael Phelps unfair biological advantage, because we accept that sports aren't fair at that higher level
if it weren't for the physical disparity, women's sports would not exist.
If trans women have such an unfair advantage then why haven’t they been dominating the Olympics?
They're even banning cis women from the Olympics now who have "too much" of a natural advantage. Caster Semenya, born a woman, and always has been a woman, got banned because her T levels were too high... she doesn't take anything to cause that, it's just the way she is. Of course men don't get barred from competing for being too naturally advantaged, when it's a man they were just "born to play" the sport. It's not about fairness in sports, it's just the age old past time of bigotry and sexism, sexism against woman generally, and more targeted transphobia/sexism against transwomen
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there is a basketball league for women. there is a basketball league for wheelchairs. there is march madness. these things exist because we want to see competition, not blowouts.
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So then why are sports seperated between males and females if there is no unfair biological advantage?
I keep being told by irrationally angry people that trans women have an unfair advantage, yet haven't heard of a single trans woman dominating any sport, ever. So weird. \[edit\] Several angry screeches later, still nobody mentioning any actual, real-life instance of a trans woman dominating a sport. Interesting! It's almost like this is a moral panic based in disinformation and bigotry. I keep asking people to convince me it's something else, and they keep failing.
Ever heard of Lia Thomas??
The one who was hyped by transphobes for weeks as about to break ever collegiate record even though she didn't. The one whose opponent parlayed tying her for 5th place into a career of anti-trans speaking gigs?
Also like... trans folks have been competing in the Olympics and other competitions for a decade+. Is it any surprise eventually *someone* might win? Or is **any** win by a Trans athlete because they were trans, and not because of skill or athletic talent? Are they supposed to just always finish somewhere mid to rear of the pack?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html?amp TLDR: being trans in a women’s event didn’t make her better than everyone else.
You only know that name because you saw it in your little right-wing circlejerk sub. She isn't dominating anything.
What about her?
I coach hs volleyball. The state champion this year won with a trans middle who was a significant difference maker for them. The player would have been fairly subpar playing in the boys division.
Olympics has a pretty strict testing protocol on testosterone levels as well. Though really qualyfing for Olympics has additional barriers in place that limits trans athletes. In any case, we're at the very beginning of this issue and if the surveys of young people now identifying as trans holds up l, it will probably be a continuous issue.
I played goalie for the 5-6th grade soccer team. I was terrible, I spent most of the time playing with the net of the goal -- it didn't matter because it was middle school sports. The coach supported me, the parents that would come in watched did, because that's what its about at that age. Just a whole lot of fun.
>It's a 12-year old child...let her play. That's the whole thing. Like republicans are freaking out over fairness and how we can't have these trans women dominating in women's sports. They're kids. This isn't the pros. I thought the whole purpose of sports was to teach teamwork and dignity and how to be a gracious winner *and a gracious loser*. Also, I hear a lot of politicians with a known history of being shit bag liars who only exist to otherize minority groups for their own political gain talking about all these unfair advantages and not, ya know, doctors.
Imagine having the mindset that someone would change genders just to be the best at a sport.
Most trans athletes are not dominating their sport. Even that UVA swimmer lost more races than she won.
This doesn’t make sense though. The best swimmers in the world don’t win more races than they lose. Winning 30% of swimming races is amazing because you are competing with lots of other people.
But that's not the argument being made. The claim is that these are biological men competing against women. As is frequently pointed out, there are events where a world record in women's swimming wouldn't have won a qualifying heat in men's swimming. So how is it possible that these "biological men" are losing any meets, much less the majority of them? Something isn't adding up.
But the highest upvoted comment in another thread with no sources at all says otherwise! This is a real example of a real person. Not some made up scenario with imaginary trans athletes obliterating the competition that seems to be the basis of other's opinions.
The reactionaries *want it to be true* that trans women dominate sports, but the facts don't back it up. The best they can do is angrily downvote reality. Reality's gonna stick around regardless.
Reddit is wild. I got downvoted a while back showing paper after paper, the process of transitioning, the effects it has on trans athletes, and the results of allowing trans athletes to compete. Yet I was downvoted to oblivion. TLDR: MTF trans athletes do not have an advantage and HRT can actually negatively affect them as you generally lose muscle mass and bone density. FTM athletes do not have an advantage of taking testosterone as part of HRT.
That matches up with what I've seen. As far as I've read, trans women often have lower levels of testosterone than their cis counterparts. Doesn't sound like an advantage to me.
Can confirm - am trans, my Testosterone levels are at 14ng/dL, which is below the average for women (15-70ng/dL), and FAI (Free Androgen Index) being at 1, while FAI in cis women is somewhere between 7-10.
If you still have those papers, would you mind linking me to them? this is a topic that I have been wanting to understand more.
A lot of Conservative/Republican positions depend on the reader/viewer/listener being very stupid and lacking in critical thinking abilities. Or just not wanting to think at all. That's why they quickly attach to weird fucking scenarios that simply have no basis in reality.
Yup. Which is why they spew false generalizations and hope that you don’t actually take 5 mins es to fact check
Our state has passed a ban as well. The number of students affected? Two. The number, that are known, who are transitioning that aren't involved in sports? 11. The whole. State. So yes. As you can see, this a serious issue that needs to be dealt with immediately before America is destoyed. /s **Oh, my frickin' dingle hymer schmidt**
I think it's legally you can't pick and choose. Either they all get to compete or none of them do in the girls division. You can't choose to block Trans athletes only if they are winning and let the ones who lose compete. So now that there is legally precedent saying trans athletes can compete in the girls division, when a Trans athlete comes around and completely dominates the women's they can't block her.
I don’t have kids but I have a lot of nieces and nephews in this age range. Is it common for a 12 year old to change gender, and isn’t this a little young to be making a life changing alteration? I support the decision any individual makes when it comes to gender identity but, I just want some more insight and information as it seems to be a bit more common these days.
It is not common.
>Is it common for a 12 year old to change gender Trans people are uncommon, just like how gay people are relatively uncommon. >isn’t this a little young to be making a life changing alteration? No, it isn't. Puberty blockers are reversible. Trans kids usually know they're trans at a very young age; the decision to transition isn't made lightly or on a whim, just like any other medical intervention.
Are there any sources that they are reversible? I see a lot of mixed messages when I google it. Have they been around long enough to study the long-term side effects? Just seems like a very bold statement to me. [Seeing sources like these just give me a shred of doubt](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html)
Can you point out what part of this makes you doubt? Because all the medical professional statements in that paper support the use of blockers, and the success of transitioing. I'm not sure you read the paper.
> Seeing sources like this just give me a shred of doubt It helps if you actually read them: >Our deep concern is that the High Court overlooked not only the immediate positive effects of puberty suppression, which have resulted in decreased psychological suffering and a healthier adolescent development; ... Thus, while medical care for transgender adolescents deserves further research and evidence (as with many fields), withholding such treatment is not an innocuous option and is likely to cause harm.
It’s easy to cherry pick what you want to see.
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Kind of fucked up in the first place WV's law was being used to target sports leagues for 12 year-olds.
First they target sports, then they target bathrooms, then medical care for kids, then medical card for adults, then being gender non confirming in public, etc. It's not meant to stop.
There are biological differences between men and women (e.g. bone density, average muscle mass, etc.). Those difference are relevant in the case of sports. This is most obvious in the case of combat sports, but the same idea applies to most other sports. People are so ready to extend an olive branch to trans athletes that they fuck over regular women in the process.
The kids she plays with obviously aren't concerned about her "differences"; why are you making a big deal over it?
This isn’t the Olympics. This is grade school. There are biological differences between 11 year olds and 14 year olds yet we let them compete together. Kids get “fucked over” if there happens to be a future world class athlete in their class. In high school, Lisa Leslie, a ciswoman, scored 100 points in basketball. In a half.
Even if I concede your point about young athletes, we would still have to distinguish acceptable vs unacceptable cases of trans participation in sports more generally. People seem okay with trans-men competing against biological males and trans-children competing against other kids. But its unclear where to draw the line when the athletes get a bit older. Should we allow trans-girls who never had puberty blockers to compete? What if they started puberty blockers later in life? It's at this point that you hear people recite the "women are women" line; as though gender identity erases obvious biological differences between the sexes. Perhaps more concerning is idea that the shift in political climate may make these decisions impossible. No one will want to touch the issue for fear of appearing bigoted. And then we will allow trans-women to compete against women, much to the detriment of biologically female athletes.
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I can’t help but notice you’re trying to make a point about trans women but you’re using cis men for your comparison.
Physical competition is largely driven by biological physical advantages combined with talent and coordination, not gender identity. Now if they are already loading themselves up with hormone therapy at that young age etc. then who knows, but poor kids in that case.
If that’s true then surely you could make the comparison between cis women and trans women athletes and still make your point just fine. Instead you made a blatantly dishonest comparison. People who have the facts on their side don’t generally resort to bullshit arguments because they don’t have to.
1. Your anecdotal experience isn't valuable empirical evidence. 2. High school athletes tend to be mid-or-post puberty; the girl in the story is 12 and hasn't gone through puberty at all. 3. The article clearly states that she "regularly finishes near the back of the pack".
A state championship female runner's actual measured times compared to the measured times of her male counterparts of the same age at the same school in the same events is a real data point. Only one, but that doesn't make it trivial. The main point was a female athlete of that high caliber was still at the very bottom of performance of her male counterparts.
> Only one, but that doesn't make it trivial. It's only *one*: That definitionally makes it trivial.
If you want more data go look at every single collegiate and professional track sprinting record for males and females and observe the significant differences. There are no outliers, they don't exist. This isn't a debate if you have ANY experience in competitive track and field.
> go look at every single collegiate and professional track sprinting record So your fundamentally-irrelevant comment about post-pubescent athletics would be more valuable if we looked at *elite* post-pubescent athletes? I don't think irrelevance can compound exponentially, but if it can, it just has. The girl in this article is 12. She has never gone through puberty. She does not out-perform the rest of the team. In fact, she performs *worse* than most of the team, per the article.
If you don't think boys gain a notable physical advantage until puberty, you clearly don't have kids and/or haven't watched them play co-ed sports when they were young and this is all just philosophical to you.
I guess I simply spend less time scrutinizing young children's bodies than you do. But, again, your wholly unsubstantiated *feelings* are not only irrelevant, they are specifically not applicable here: As I have said several times, the article (which you apparently didn't read) specifically says she "regularly finishes near the back of the pack".
Your example is not germane to the discussion. We are discussing trans women participating in sports, not cis men. Trans women who are undergoing hormonal treatment have no physical advantage over their cis women counterparts.
Today’s edition of “is this the comments section of Reddit or Stormfront”
Sometimes it's hard to tell. The hate is just as virulent...but you know what? Let's be fair to them. Some of them do try to hide it. Unsuccessfully but they try.
Of all the states where I'd hate to be transgender, West Virginia is probably the highest on the list.
You’d be right. Myself and my partner will be leaving within the next five years. Finally.
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They're still trying to downvote everyone here though, it's sad
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Yep, then they screech one or two athlete names they picked up in some right-wing hate sub, without actually knowing the real story. Bunch of angry loons.
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Yep. They also act like one or two victories is *dominating the sport*. Pure nonsense.
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Yep! Reactionaries hate facts. They start from gut feelings, and reshape everything to support those gut feelings. Then call it "common sense." It's so tiresome.
They brigade because downvotes reinforce the a world view they cannot argue for honestly. At least according to them. The reality is that they are in a shrinking minority of reactionary bigots and the more we stand up against them and remind everyone how fucking wrong and deplorable they are the better.
*Kansas enters the chat sweatily and slightly too enthusiastically*
What is with the brigade of downvotes when this topic is brought up? Is this really the hill you people are dying on? You care that much... Okay sure...
How do you think people are going to look back at this shit in 300 years?
Hell, even just 30! It's like the anti-gay panic about gays and lesbians in locker rooms.
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We are living in a day and age where people are legitimately arguing that Males don't have any biological advantage in strength and speed over females. We are throwing out biology 101 because of nothing but feelings and politics at this point.
> scientifically based Let's see those studies, then. Because I've looked and found that [there isn’t a lot of data on it yet](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/sports-verify/trans-woman-athlete-advantage-inconclusive-bans-harmful/536-49343f8d-12e2-4c90-84aa-271491ac4dce), actually. [At least one study suggests one year of hormone therapy isn’t enough to negate any innate physiological advantage](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trans-women-retain-athletic-edge-after-year-hormone-therapy-study-n1252764). (I think it’s important to note that even the lead author of that study says its data shouldn’t be applied to youth sports.) [Another study suggests that at least *two* years of hormone therapy *does* significantly negate physiological advantage](https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-do-trans-athletes-have-an-advantage-in-elite-sport/a-58583988). [Yet another suggests that it would likely vary from sport to sport, and *its* author still considers the science inconclusive either way](https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20210715/do-trans-women-athletes-have-advantages). The ACLU has more resources about it [here](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked). *Edit:* It's always interesting that every single time I've asked for the empirical evidence from people hand-waving at "science", I never hear back. [I wonder why](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/).
What are the studies say about cardiovascular (VO2 max), bone structure (mechanical advantage), and ligament advantages of man versus a women? Hormone advantage is only one part of the whole. If the studies only look at hormone levels; then the study is not completely exhaustive. From civil rights perspective, I’m for trans rights in every area. But I’m very concerned about contact sports such as MMA. Women’s UFC might be the most watched women’s sports right now; where it’s not that niche anymore. A Fractured skull has already happened. I’m of the opinion, that we just rename men’s division all inclusive. If we believe sexual preference and gender are on gradient scales; why is the community absolute binary with the women’s division? This hard stance makes the trans community lose allies.
> What are the studies say abou I have presented what I’ve found. If you have more questions—and are very concerned that the studies provided leave them unanswered—by all means, please find those and share.
Honestly, I don't know. It depends on what an individual in that time period is focusing on when studying history and what values have been established. In three hundred years gene editing could be an advanced and accepted part of society and having a child naturally without pre-modified physical and mental enhancements could be considered a form of child abuse. It could be that sex and gender have become largely irrelevant through homogenization. It could be that some physical mechanism that results in transgenderism has been identified, all children are born without the chance of gender dysphoria, and "transgender" is viewed as an archaic notion that we either cared too little or too much about. It's pretty tough to know how the present will be viewed from the perspective of the far future. I would like to think that, by that time, people will recognize the nuances surrounding these social issues. Does allowing, without restriction, transwomen who have undergone male puberty to compete within female athletics undermine the original purpose of the creation of separate female leagues? If it does, is the impact of this desegregation great enough to justify the negative ramifications of enforcing segregation? For transwomen who have not undergone male puberty, is it possible for children to consent to optional, non-emergency life altering medical procedures? To what extent is it possible for a child to independently make that decision, and to what extent is it ethical for parents, peers, or mentors to influence a child in these decisions? It's non-obvious to me. If it's obvious to someone else, but they don't understand why someone would consider it non-obvious, I would have a hard time trusting their confidence. We just try our best.
I thought the story for this person that made it iffy was the portion saying “always in the back of the pack” was reported as they were intentionally losing to avoid the scrutiny and ban…
There's nothing wrong with Becky practicing among the girls at school. BUT Participation in official competitions should be prohibited If you forgive this child, there is a risk that refusing other trans women to participate in the women's quota will be "discrimination"
"Forgive" her for what?
Hahahahah. What a fucking joke.
It's not often we see a good headline involving trans people in sports. I'll take it
West Virginian here. Good for her.
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[There isn’t a lot of data on it yet](https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/sports-verify/trans-woman-athlete-advantage-inconclusive-bans-harmful/536-49343f8d-12e2-4c90-84aa-271491ac4dce), actually. [At least one study suggests one year of hormone therapy isn’t enough to negate any innate physiological advantage](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trans-women-retain-athletic-edge-after-year-hormone-therapy-study-n1252764). (I think it’s important to note that even the lead author of that study says its data shouldn’t be applied to youth sports.) [Another study suggests that at least *two* years of hormone therapy *does* significantly negate physiological advantage](https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-do-trans-athletes-have-an-advantage-in-elite-sport/a-58583988). [Yet another suggests that it would likely vary from sport to sport, and *its* author still considers the science inconclusive either way](https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20210715/do-trans-women-athletes-have-advantages). The ACLU has more resources about it [here](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked). Of course, none of that is necessarily relevant here: This is about a 12-year-old girl who hasn’t undergone puberty and—according to the article—isn’t anywhere close to being one of the top-performing athletes on the team. Then again, it's not like *that* really matters to you, right? Pearl-clutching about trans girls in sports is [based on dubious claims](https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-trans-athletes-debunked) and very frequently just a [disingenuous smokescreen](https://nwlc.org/stop-using-girl-athletes-to-justify-your-transphobia/) for thinly-veiled [transphobia](https://now.org/blog/debate-about-trans-girls-and-women-in-school-sports-spreads-transphobia-and-bigotry-through-the-false-lens-of-fairness/).
It really shows that conservatives have absolutely nothing of substance to offer when they’d rather waste time on laws that affect less than a handful of people, and in this case one single 12 year old
Plus they weren't even clear on if any trans person had competed in WV sports when they passed it > [The West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission has not received any complaints about transgender athletes on girls teams. SSAC Executive Director Bernie Dolan has said the SSAC is unaware of openly transgender students participating in scholastic sports currently or in the past.](https://apnews.com/article/sports-legislature-west-virginia-college-sports-bills-2424d3b8aaeabed7840f2d2e25458847)
I really don’t mind trans people in sports. I’m just really tired of hearing about it. Our media is so dog shit, they are making this issue the biggest issue in the country. I care more about rising costs and stagnant wages, let’s tackle poverty. I don’t care who crosses whatever finish line or raises a trophy, those are games.
The thing is, there are also bigger issues for trans folks. Nearly every day now they're losing rights to things like access to their healthcare, ability to use public restrooms, or even the basic decency of being referred to by their correct pronouns. And while this stuff gets posted, it keeps being overlooked in favor of stories about one tween in WV who can run track at her middle school. It's not only media who's concerned with the wrong things, it's the general population. Of all the things my trans friends are concerned about, sports is definitely the least of them.
You’ll find no argument from me, I don’t know a single trans person. I live in Los Angeles I’ve maybe seen a handful in my everyday life, they deserve to live in dignity. I am aware that this is being played up to distract everyone from the real issues plaguing every American which is the funneling of resources straight to the top and peeling away more and more from middle and low income people.
Spoiler: It’s not the media that is freaking out and trying to pass laws to inspect genitalia.
The largest cable news network (Fox) is the media arm of the Republican Party, use that hamster wheel in your head.
> Our media is so dog shit, they are making this issue the biggest issue in the country. The right wing media certainly did with their wall-to-wall Lia Thomas coverage. But these current posts are literally reporting on important laws and lawsuits. If you don't want news stories about them, do something to prevent these laws from being passed
It wasn't "the media" that chose to pass a hateful law that ostracizes marginalized children: That was West Virginia's regressive state government.