Member when the neoliberals tried to pretend this douche would be the next presidential pick?
The worst part about neoli erals is places solid blue like Cali get conservative leaders because they’ll take dirty money in primaries, then the only option is a Republican.
It depresses turnout till a Republican wins, and that usually comes with the state flipping in an election year because that’s when campaigning is highest.
It’s not just that they’re shitty people who won’t fix anything, they’re actively hurting dem turnout all over the country when it hits the news
We need higher standards across the board, not just in the oval.
Member when the neoliberals tried to pretend this douche would be the next presidential pick?
Yeah, that’s why he’s doing this. Throwing vulnerable minorities under the bus for no gain whatsoever is how you show democratic leadership that you’re on their side.
Not placing a value judgement on this, but you can probably expect a lot of Dems to distance themselves on trans issues. It’s a group of issues that takes up a lot of air, and divides the party, while uniting republicans.
It’s so fucking dumb to capitulate to Republicans on any of these issues, because they’ll just find some other bullshit to fabricate into a huge deal amongst their base of morons. Stand behind your beliefs you fucking cowards.
It really doesn’t seem that hard to just constantly disprove the lies they’re telling, over and over, until eventually the people who are still sane in this country understand what a non-issue the conservatives are freaking out over. I feel the same way about their “migrant crime” myth, which Democrats also immediately capitulated to and started campaigning on fixing despite crime statistics clearly demonstrating migrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than the general populace.
It’s almost like standing up for their beliefs was never the goal, and they’ll just say whatever makes their corporate donors happy.
Sadly. You’re correct. The existence of people like me is a wedge issue. >_<
It’s a case of “follow the leader”. Whenever a candidate wins in a democratic or semi-democratic system, all other candidates become more likely to lean more towards the winning candidate’s positions on issues, either in the hope of peeling off votes or preventing defections from their own moderates.
If only there was some way we could have went the other direction on the issue. Maybe a candidate who wasn’t a openly raging transphobe.
And they have an opportunity to show cowardice.
Yeah, we should totally focus on something so vanishingly rare and trivial it almost doesn’t exist instead of the myriad of real world, life and death problems.
Yeah I’m not touching this with a ten foot pole. This is so low priority.
Iz-rah-el who’s iz-rah-el?
The way I view it is they claim to believe in a free market. I don’t know of any leagues off the top of my head that aren’t companies. If one company chooses to do it one way and it is actually bad for business, another company would replace them if it was actually an issue. But being that it isn’t that big of a deal, no rival companies have surfaced to replace them.
You know what’s more unfair? Targeting transgender kids.
Do not engage with such bullshit. This is such a fucking non-issue, that is ultimately more about demonizing one of the most marginalized minorities in history, rather than “protecting” anyone.
Sports are games.
Games are supposed to be inclusive and fun.
Society taking games deathly serious (and equivocating it with academic merit, aka serious pursuits) is the problem.
People rioting and murdering if the game didn’t work out for their team is the problem. Putting billion dollar stakes on games is the problem.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society’s existence. Something something… planting trees something something knowing they’ll never sit under…
Nope? let’s bring on the climate change induced extinction then. If our values are hyper competitive, dog eat dog bullshit from labor to fucking games, we should go extinct.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society’s existence. Something something… planting trees something something knowing they’ll never sit under…
Coed teams exist. They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male. That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
Maybe the solution is non-gendered weight classes for sports, or just more coed teams. Idk
What about trans women who transitioned before puberty? What about cis or intersex women with elevated levels of testosterone? What about sports where it has been shown that after a long enough period of medical transition trans people have no significant advantage over their cis counterparts?
You appeal to science yet fail to cite a single source, so let me do it for you:
They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male.
Good news! Puberty blockers exist and have been studied and used for literal decades for other reasons.
That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there’s no more advantage.
In fact, women who haven’t transitioned often have an advantage because their testosterone levels can be higher than women who have transitioned.
And that’s the crux of the issue: human variation.
Puberty blockers exist and have been studied and used for literal decades for other reasons.
In the case of a trans woman having not went through puberty as a male then yeah true enough as far as I know.
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there’s no more advantage.
Are you sure about that? Because I looked it up and (after a few instances of “we have no idea but maybe not”) I found this. I’ll also admit that I only read the conclusion so I can’t make any guarantees for the quality of the paper.
In fact, women who haven’t transitioned often have an advantage because their testosterone levels can be higher than women who have transitioned.
Yeah that’s the thing: Testosterone is only one part of athletic ability. The paper lists some parameters that are either not affected or affected but not reduced to within the average range of cis women, but the obvious example would be height.
The paper does what all transphobes, and coincidentally most sexists, do when this subject comes up:
Pretends that the average woman has a shot at high level athletics even at just the college level.
If there’s scholarships on the line, the people getting them are going to have certain natural advantages on top of busting their asses for years at the sport.
To quote an old Utah Jazz coach:
You can’t coach height
So when you compare the average 22 year old woman to an elite college athlete, you’re gonna a very large gap. Just like comparing an average 22 year old guy to whoever just won the Heisman trophy.
The difference is larger in women. Because the average guy is more likely to have played sports growing up, and those gains in coordination when you g last for life.
And that’s not even it.
There are just soooooooooo many reasons why this who thing is overblown fearmongering designed to get idiots mad at a very small very vulnerable group.
Of all the things to be mad about right now, your mad at tops, absolutely tops, double digit young non-paid athletes.
Just fucking why?
If it’s not transphobia, what other reason do you care to still be going thru this thread desperately trying to have the same argument?
If it’s not transphobia, what other reason do you care to still be going thru this thread desperately trying to have the same argument?
Well I care about the truth for its own sake, but you can also call it pedantry. I recognize that this is culture war bullshit by conservatives meant to demonize trans people for what’s mostly a non-issue, but setting aside conservatives being conservatives it is a debate worth having. And I have nothing better to do, that helps too.
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there’s no more advantage.
Would you be opposed to a requirement that trans women wanting to compete in women’s leagues undergo 3 years of hormone therapy before being allowed to play?
I think most trans people would agree that’s reasonable, but at that point, you also have to talk about the bans on transition for minors, which would affect a minors ability to have that time frame met, and then their ability to play.
True, and that’s a thorny problem but one that has to be addressed eventually.
They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male. That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
That would be an argument worth discussing if the Nazis weren’t also trying to ban puberty blockers. But no, right now, that’s a garbage bad faith argument.
Gavin Newsom is not a Nazi.
If he’s capitulating to Nazis, that makes him complicit. Sorry if he had other good qualities, but he’s bending the knee.
Athletes have always leveraged unfair advantages in sports. There’s a reason there’s super tall players in basketball and short ones in gymnastics. May be they should enforce that average height of teams must match global averages. Countries with fewer resources just can’t support athletes in many sports so why not make that more fair?
There’s research showing that some women athletes (i.e., born with female reproductive organs) have higher testosterone levels than many men, and even some male athletes. So why are they allowed to compete in women sports instead of men?
There’s a lot of ways to make sports more fair. Banning transgender people without fair science based facts is not one of them and is plain bigotry. It’s like saying an athlete on anti-depressants should be banned because they are happier and more motivated so have an unfair advantage.
Ah, yes, let’s make laws specifically banning 2-5 children from ever having fun.
Like… what the fuck is wrong with you that you think a law targeting under 10 people in the entirety of the US is justified and not literally just bullying those kids on a national level to hope they fucking commit suicide? A law to tell 5 kids, specifically, that fuck them and they’re not allowed to have fun is god damn crazy.
https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-1796006
Having fun is one thing and winning competitions against people you have a biological advantage against is another. It only takes one person to win a championship.
So you’re saying that people like Michael Phelps should be excluded from competing in sports due to the famous athelete’s “biological advantages”?
The women’s section is separate from the open section specifically so that women can get their place to compete without being dominated by men’s biological advantages over them. Micheal Phelps is competing in the open section, which is… Well… Open. Also please leave strawmanning to the conservatives.
You missed my point.
If the argument is that unfair competition due to “biological advantages” should be reduced then I agree. Sports should be segregated by performance classes and open to all genders.
But if the point of segregating sports is to make space for women in sports, then excluding trans women is nothing more than discrimination on par with excluding black or disabled women. Trans women deserve not to have to play with the boys too.
If the argument is that unfair competition due to “biological advantages” should be reduced then I agree. Sports should be segregated by performance classes and open to all genders.
That’s probably the ideal solution, but the problem is that nobody’s gonna watch anything except the top leagues. I mean watching the kinda good but not really amazing people’s football league just isn’t an appealing prospect, unless I misunderstood what you meant by performance classes. The whole point of this debate (other than conservatives shitting on trans women anyway) is that you need a framework where:
1-trans people can compete, 2-cis women aren’t unfairly disadvantaged and 3-that people would actually watch.
I’m frankly not sure such a thing exists.
Should Michael Phelps be allowed to compete against 13 year olds?
If they’re allowed to team up on him, sure. XD
So segregating competitors to some extent based on physical ability makes sense?
This is a really stupid argument. The thing that makes athletes special is their biology.
There’s a reason that DK Metcalf towers over all of the cornerbacks in the NFL. He’s a biological specimen that has incredible agility, height, muscle mass, and speed.
https://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/d-k-metcalf-proves-he-s-an-athletic-freak-at-combine
Michael Phelps also has a biological advantage that very few humans have.
None of this excludes them over their competition.
I’ll just copy my reply to the other guy.
The women’s section is separate from the open section specifically so that women can get their place to compete without being dominated by men’s biological advantages over them. Micheal Phelps is competing in the open section, which is… Well… Open.
Thanks for the gibberish. So many words to say absolutely nothing.
Please tell me what these “issues” are, with peer reviewed scientific sources. There are no significant advantages to a “male puberty” that are not countered by HRT. Furthermore, the same people touting trans kids for their supposed “advantages” are the same people forcing them to develop those “advantages” by restricting their access to healthcare before puberty begins.
The cruelty is the point.
There are no significant advantages to a “male puberty” that are not countered by HRT.
Uh… Palm size? Heart and lung size? Height? Don’t get me wrong I recognize this for the culture war bullshit it is, but there is some truth to this that needs to be addressed.
Edit: I only read the conclusion (and wouldn’t be able to tell if the methodology is flawed anyway) but I found this.
So shouldn’t we eliminate all players who may have physical advantages? What about a woman from birth who grows to 6’5"? Seems like that’d be an unfair advantage when playing against other women who may be only 5’10".
I mean by your logic we should just eliminate women’s leagues entirely and make everything coed.
That’s not my logic, that’s your logic. Some people are born with genetic traits that make them good at certain sports, and that’s always been the case. Your argument is that it’s unfair if people have advantages and should be banned, so why not take it all the way instead of nitpicking here and there?
Because that’s stupid? Why SHOULD we “take it all the way”?
Games are supposed to be fair. Unless you’re going to completely desegregate men and women’s sports, there’s a real biological argument to be made here. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
There is zero biological argument because you cannot make two categories based on sex which encompass everyone.
Example 1:
A cis woman with a genetic mutation which incrases her testosterone levels into the range of cis men. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 2:
A cis woman with XY gonadal dysgenesis. She has XY chromosomes but the Y chromosome is mutated and doesn’t function as it should which causes a “female” phenotype. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 3:
A trans woman in the 95th percentile of men with regards to physical strength. She is in the 10th percentile of women after transitioning. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 4:
A trans woman with Klinefelter syndrome and XXY genes. She has naturally very low levels of testosterone and she doesn’t require testosterone blockers after transitioning and taking estrogen. Even before transitioning she had less muscle mass, weaker bones and wider hips than the average man as a result of her low testosterone. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 5:
An African woman who would be in the 1st percentile of man if she were one, both in terms of physical attributes (size, muscle mass, heart size) and competitive results. Some “scientists” argue her race makes her less of a woman and more of a man. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
There is zero risk of these people “replacing” cis women by the way. Yes, their performance may be greater than that of comparable cis women without any genetical mutations beyond a certajn point.
Yet risk is calculated as [severity] * [likelihood]. And due to the low likelihood stemming from their very low prevalence in the general population, there is no reason to ban them.
Women’s sports is about representation of women. Trans women are part of that group, cis women with genetic mutations are part of that group, racial minorities are part of that group. You cannot exclude some women and claim this group is “fair” and representative.
In some sports there are weight classes, because being a certain weight gives you an inherent biological advantage on average over people of a different weight. The weight classes allow anyone to find well-matched competition regardless of their biology.
Women’s sports vs Men’s sports is a similar idea. Separate people by some biological classification that’s often tied on average to an advantage at the sport, so that everybody has the chance to play against someone of a similar baseline.
That division doesn’t have to exclude trans people, but it does mean that a line gets drawn somewhere. And yes, that line might include some cis people with a genetic abnormality getting excluded as well, and some cis men with a genetic abnormality might be included.
If you want to draw the divisions by something like muscle mass or testosterone levels instead of trying to define sex and gender clearly enough for this purpose, that would probably be easier, although “low testosterone sports” doesn’t have the same marketability as “women’s sports” lol.
Women’s sports is about representation of women.
Maybe that’s the crux of the issue. You guys keep seeing women’s sports as some sort of symbolism or representation or statement. The majority of people see women’s sports as being about sports. No agenda needed. No messaging. Just physical competition purely for the sake of it.
Yes, it is about sports - but only in addition to being about representation. This is the key distinguishing factor between women’s sports and male/open category sports.
If it were purely and solely about sports then women’s sports as a category wouldn’t exist. Female athletes would get similar funding and opportunities as male athletes, both in competitive and casual events.
Just take a look at chess: Why is there a women’s league? Answer: Because there are significant systemic barriers against women in chess. Without their own leagues, there would be no representation in the top level at all due to men dominating the rankings. Having women’s chess tournaments is about representing women in chess.
But trans women are banned from ranked women’s chess events. And to put the cherry on top, trans men are stripped of all their titles after transitioning.
Cruelty is the point of these decisions. Not “supporting women”.
Oh, and one more thing:
No agenda needed
Totally. Zero agenda, zero ideology, zero DEI and zero wokeness. Traditional conservative women’s sports events just like we always had and how God intended. Not even a strand of feminism to be found here, nope.
Calling chess a “sport” in the context of this discussion is such a reach I’m suspecting you might actually be Reed Richards in disguise.
Contemporary chess is an organized sport with structured international and national leagues, tournaments, and congresses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
The only difference between chess and other sports is that one requires more physical prowess, the other more mental prowess.
Chess is an example of trans people being banned in sports for no reason other than them being trans.
Another example:
Trans women are now banned from US college gymnastics where they have zero competitive advantage as focus lies on artistic performance over strength.
Or another one:
UK Athletics bans trans women that have gone through male puberty at all levels of competition - be it local, regional or national. The NHS doesn’t allow doctors to prescribe puberty blockers to children though.
Newsom has consistently and repeatedly fought for trans rights. I dunno why trans advocates are getting hung up on sports. I swear you guys were manipulated into digging your heels in with the dumbest position possible solely to divide and discredit the movement for equality for trans people.
It’s like how the news media will ignore dozens and dozens of innocent Black men getting shot by police until there’s a story of a gang member with a rap sheet a mile long who was actively trying to rape someone when police shot him, and then they’ll run the story hoping that the anti-racists will rush to defend him.
Insisting on having untransitioned or partially transitioned trans women in women’s sports is such an obviously stupid hill to die on. You’re all playing right into their hands.
Because once you lose one right, the rest fall like domino’s.
Ok then in that case you are SO fucking late to the party
I don’t know if you’re falling for it or this is just how you feel, but Newsom was talking to Charlie Kirk who popularized the “groomers” line, calls June “groomer month” all the time and constantly talks about executing “groomers”. Newsom softballed it to make it seem like Kirk just cares about sports, and repeatedly dog whistled a lot about how much he agrees with Kirk keeping it ambiguous about what exactly he agrees with.
Maybe you believe Newsom is deep down a good guy and he’s just doing this to shill for right wing votes, and once you give him power he’ll be normal. But right now all he’s doing is telling his audience of out of touch liberals that the “I don’t want to see a black pilot on my plane” guy is the kind of sensible conservative Democrats should be bipartisan with.
IMO based on how he talks and the trans bills he’s vetoed as governor, Newsom is the type of liberal that likes the idea of being the big guy protecting “these poor people” from dirty rednecks, but is also extremely suspicious that all this gender shit is some kind of Tiktok trend that might get out of hand if he lets trans people have it too easy.
Maybe you believe Newsom is deep down a good guy and he’s just doing this to shill for right wing votes
No, I believe that he agrees with the 70% of Americans who think allowing biologically male people into women’s sports is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t think he’s shilling for anything. It’s not partisan. It’s just what most people believe.
I’ve never seen people care this much about Micheal Phelps biological atheletic advantage. That alone tells me that this argument is disingenuous and a way to be transphobic in a public way.
There are actual verified cases of olympic tier athletes winning because of their biological make-up. And yet the only time biological advantage is brought up is to shill tranphobic talking points. You don’t even have to be trans to be accused of being trans. These same people claiming to be advocates of women’s sport are the same people who will falsely accuse biological women of being biological men
I’ve never seen people care this much about Micheal Phelps biological atheletic advantage.
Have you ever seen Michael Phelps compete against a league of teenagers?
Or a regional swim meet in Idaho?
All trans women/trans athletes should be banned from sports competition because 2 happened to out-perform their cis peers? What a pathetically reactionary argument. This comment right here perfectly exemplifies the transphobic mindset.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you post actual peer-reviewed studies and evidence of trans athletes outperforming their peers on average due to being trans? Oh wait, you can’t. Because there’s literally zero empirical evidence of that being the case.
And the fact that you pivoted so quickly away from Phelps for some reactionary anecdote says it all.
All trans women/trans athletes should be banned from sports competition
The fuck bullshit is this?
you pivoted so quickly away from Phelps
The fuck bullshit is this?
Did you respond to the wrong comment? Literally my previous comment, the one you responded to, is about Phelps.
Edit: also
don’t you post actual peer-reviewed studies
Sealion.
You are sealioning all over this thread, I agree. You also have literally zero evidence, which was my whole point. Good luck being an utter dipshit, transphobe.
Many sports are divided in a women’s and an open competition. In the open competition any genetic advantage goes (hence the name open), whereas the women’s competition is restricted to people with a specific trait. In such a context I think it’s totally valid to restrict the women’s competition to “born with vagina”. Transgender (both M->F and F->M) can continue to compete in the open section.
Sports that are instead divided in a men’s and women’s section are more problematic, because they may completely block transgender people from competing at all levels, which is very exclusionary. I don’t see a particularly good solution for these sports, apart from changing sections to “open” vs “women’s “.
Finally, I do not see a role for genetic testing (born with vagina, but XY for instance). People make life decisions based on the gender they believe they are. Takebacks based on genetic tests that could occur in far advanced stage of an athlete’s career is completely unfair.
But what advantage do women without a vagina have versus one that does? What if they didn’t go through cis puberty? How do we knows trans woman have an innate advantage instead of being effectively handicapped by their hormone treatment? This is my entire point. People want to ban Trans women specifically because of a reactionary feeling of “its not fair” while having zero evidence. There are like 2 cases where a trans athlete outperformed their cis peers. Yet the way some people (not you specifically) act you’d think trans women are sweeping every sports competition.
In my opinion, it comes down more to being exclusionary towards trans woman. More-so then it ever was about “protecting women’s sports”. I don’t think that everyone that wants to bar trans women thinks this way. But people like Charlie Kirk 100% do and will abuse that at every turn. This is the same man that calls June “Groomer month”.
That’s a fair point. To my understanding the science is not clear if transition started pre-puberty, though I think it is pretty clear if transition happened after puberty. You are also absolutely right that in practice the problem (if you consider it as such) concerns very few cases. I think my only point was that having an open (instead of a men’s) section would circumvent both the possible exclusion of transgender people, and the controversy of those born as men, participating in women’s competition.
such an obviously stupid hill to die on
The Left in the US would so much rather die on the hill of perceived moral superiority than achieve any of their goals. And, thus, here we are.
That’s part of why trump got elected lol. Rather than trying to fix the issues while retaining some level of government, some people were like “let’s have a brutal authoritarian dictatorship and change things for the worse. That will show democrats!” Meanwhile nobody votes in the primaries or their local elections
It’s asinine, and that’s why we need a new Left in the US: a Left of people who actually want to build a society in which the highest possible health and well being is achieved for the largest possible number of people, and who are willing and able to learn and adapt, to find the most effective methods for achieving said society, even if it means compromising and being pragmatic. A Left that is measured by results, rather than performative social justice advocacy.
I find it so hard to have good messaging on this topic because we first have to convince half this country that helping others is a virtue not a weakness. How do we convince a deeply selfish population that helping neighbors and keeping our nation healthy and educated are not “communist plots to make everyone poor” but just basics of a successful society. I can argue politics all day but once someone thinks empathy is a weakness or a sin, I just don’t know what to say anymore. We need a fundamental societal shift and that has to start locally I think.
We should worry about the Right after we get the Left into some semblance of coherence and rationality. Liberals and Leftists should be natural allies against the fascists. Instead we got the Leftists knifing the Liberals in the back this election.
That might be fixable. Compromise between Left and Liberals is plausible. The Right, on the other hand, is not at all tethered to reality. There is no reasoning or compromise with them. They are in full-on batshit wackadoodle land. Addressing them will require something a lot more radical than “convincing”.
We should worry about the Right after we get the Left into some semblance of coherence and rationality.
So you’re going to punch left until they agree with your bigotry and never get around to punching right.
I mean currently I’m punching left solely because you dumb shits need a good punching. No greater political motive. I have doubts that we’ll ever have free elections again (insert hurr durr US elections were never free edgelord bullshit here). But in the event we do, I’d be open to compromise, not that you have any idea what that word means.
And centrists will accept any policy as long as it’s to their right.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
You say that to anyone to your left who doesn’t jump with joy at the latest betrayal of marginalized groups.
I say that to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
You arrogantly say it to anyone to your left.
That’s not true. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop. Just stop.
I agree with you
As someone with trans family, and that works around parents (but has no kids myself), and is very liberal personally –
From what I can tell, Gavin is speaking to how the average parent feels. They are accepting of trans people, but have some hesitations and those are coming out through this example, for one. And I mean the more liberal parents
You either need to get out there and speak to these people and work to help them get over these feelings, or you need to accept how they feel and the… yes I’m spinning this phrase… boundary they are requesting and then work within that to change their minds
Raging at them and damning candidates over it without working to actually change it is just like the Palestine voters and Kamala all over again (at least at a superficial level)
