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Recruiting Republicans (quokk.au)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
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[+] -18 points 6 days ago (16 children)

Ok I’m honestly ignorant here and this is not an issue I have a lot of knowledge on and an asking without any mal intent.

What’s wrong with not wanting biological men playing in women’s sports? Does biological men mean something other than what it reads as? What am I missing here?

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  • [–] 28 points 6 days ago (7 children)

    Okay, so then first off, there's no such thing as a "biological man". There are males and females, man/woman are gender markers and not biological. By mixing biological and gender markers, they are essentially invalidating the concept of gender entirely.

    Second, the logic being used to ban trans women from women's sports is the same logic being used to put us in men's prisons.

    Third, being born different shouldn't mean you aren't allowed to play sports, what this effectively means is trans women and girls are just banned from all sports. It gets really stupid when they start banning us from playing on chess teams, which has happened.

    And lastly, if we assume that there's an unfair advantage, so what? Should we ban tall people from playing basketball because they have an unfair, inborn advantage? If someone has naturally higher lung capacity, should they be banned from football? Why use sex specifically as a way to segregate the population, instead of more scientific measures of actual biological ability?

    In short, there's a lot wrong with it.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 days ago (3 children)

    Thank you for replying, seriously I appreciate it.

    I think* I understand what you are talking about regarding gender vs biological sex. I understand gender to be something in someones head, and understand sex to be a complex amalgamation of whatever physiological traits you pull out of a big bucket as you’re born and grow, also not binary.

    I also think* that most people commonly conflate those two spaces, and I am guessing that probably causes a lot of challenges when talking about this issue as I bet there is a lot of talking past each other that happens, probably unintentionally and unknowingly. I’m certain that there is hateful and derogatory coded language and intentional weaponization of language happening too. I’m trying to be extra careful and cautious with my words because I am genuinely curious, and am guessing that curiosity is sometimes used as a foil for trolling or other insincere things, and am assuming you likely have your guard up for these very reasonable reasons.

    I am completely ok with people being trans, and feel pretty strongly that anyone should be allowed to do with their bodies as they see fit. I don’t think anyone should be discriminated against because they are trans just as they shouldn’t for any other kind of “is”ness that they “is”.

    All that said it does feel to me like there is some nuance with the sports thing though that I struggle with. We do separate the leagues we have historically referred to as mens and women’s based upon someones “bucket pull” of sexual traits, and usually (not always, not black and white, but usually) people consistently pull some consistent traits from the buckets we have historically viewed as mens and women’s traits. Those buckets usually produce some pretty significant differences in physical ability, and we even ban people from participating if they use performance enhancing drugs like testosterone even.

    We could collapse all leagues and say that we weren’t going to use observed sexual dimorphism as a constraint and make everyone play in the same league, but that seems like it would be pretty shitty to do to people who are pulling from the bucket of traits we have historically referred to as womens. At the same time, if someone who would otherwise be playing in that league have been discovered to have been taking testosterone they wouldn’t be allowed to play, and prior to starting medication I aren’t (completely assuming, I am ignorant here so correct me if I am wrong) trans women getting higher than “fair for the women league” doses of testosterone? 

    I’m not entirely blind to how this would feel super shitty for trans women either, and I know a little something personally about how much it sucks to just draw some cards that say “you don’t get to play”. I was born with some non trivial physical deformities, and could never play sports… except of course for chess (which you mentioned and I am 100% on board with that’s dumb anyone should be able to compete in the men’s league imho).

    We could break sports leagues into “unrestricted use all the drugs you want”. “people who have had testosterone over a certain level”, and “people who have had testosterone under that level” instead of what we have today maybe, but that seems really impractical and I doubt it could even be as simple as just testosterone.

    It feels like it just isn’t a space where accuracy is possible without grossly invading peoples privacy and overcomplicating the process to the point of harm… And broad brush strokes always leave some people on the edge in a way that is just unfair, but not necessarily the wrong way to do it.

    I don’t know what the answer is for sure, but this is kinda where my headspace is at. Certainly open to hearing other peoples opinions here and not trying to insult or hate on anyone.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 days ago

    The science doesn't support your assumptions about advantage. All advantage goes away by the time a trans woman has been at cis female levels of estrogen and testosterone for two years.

    If the debate around trans women in sports were genuine, it would have ended quickly by looking at the science, implementing the two year rule, and moving on with our lives. But it's not. It's about hurting an "other".

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  • [–] 13 points 6 days ago

    Research has shown that trans women are on par with cis women within a few years of HRT. The idea that we possess some male advantage is a transphobic talking point designed to make people not see us as women. And “biological male” is a dogmegaphone, implying we are never really women.

    And from what we see of most trans athletes who do get to compete, they’re not the top in their field. So that puts another nail in the coffin of the idea that trans women have an advantage.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 days ago*

    Unfortunately, the sports that are popular right now are very unfair. Some people are just born better suited for certain sports than others, and some can't play at all. This is not a great situation to start with, even before we consider sex (as you point out, physical disability basically just means some people don't ever get to play). Unless we're willing to totally change sports (which probably won't happen) I think we just have to let the leagues figure it out themselves, and lawmakers can butt out.

    By introducing legislation, it opens up all sorts of problems that entrench sex segregation into the law. This is a serious problem, when the current legal environment also means trans women are being sent to mens' prisons. That's genocidal.

    So, no politicians. They have more important things to worry about anyway.

    I'm sure some leagues will decide to keep sex segregation, and other leagues will determine other characteristics to determine how to separate teams (perhaps by hormone levels in the blood, perhaps by height and "wing span", perhaps by weight, it all depends on the game). Still other leagues will just have mixed games, like chess obviously should already have.

    But politicians need to stay out of it. It's just a way to salami slice our rights away.

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  • [–] -4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    why are we fucking talking about this when we have a pedo president?

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  • [+] -6 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    Kinda in the same boat, I know this is a lot of people’s issue so I was asking even though I normally don’t really pay much attention to it. Most of what I see in the media is sound bytes or meme which doesn’t really seem like it paints a complete picture.

    Seems like people have a lot of of passion and strong feelings about it so I’m not surprised I’m getting downvoted for asking.

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  • [–] -1 points 6 days ago (4 children)

    Note all the downvotes? Lemmy doesn't take kindly to questions, especially anything to do with trans folks. All we tolerate around here is a full-throated scream of support.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    That's not been my experience. Lemmy has a ton of support to questions, just not ones being asked in bad faith.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    People are great about answering in good faith, meant the downvotes on the question itself. I've noted before that that sort of thing backfires. "Well fuck me I guess these trans people and supporters are hateful as fuck." I know better, but this place has still left me feeling that.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (1 child)

    I think my point still stands. In my experience, if the above question were to be asked in good faith, it wouldn't be downvoted very much at all.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 days ago

    I asked it in good faith, I was genuinely curious and got some really informative responses that were helpful and I upvoted. I still got dogpiled on downvotes, and even you are implying that I was acting in bad faith here which I think is what the person your responding to is talking about.

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