OT "I'm Dealing With A Few Transgender Issues"

San Jose State women's volleyball team is ranked 119th in the country. Although no doubt hardworking, they are a mediocre team of unremarkable players.
One of these unremarkable players is in her third year. She played volleyball in high school and two years of college without incident and without being especially fearsome. She is now at the center of a nationwide culture war witch hunt because she is trans.
It was known but a non issue until an election year. School after school forfeited matches rather than play against her as they had done for two years. One of her teammates filed a lawsuit against her with assistance from gay hating organization to have her thrown off the team. She has been demonized across right wing media. Trump, never one to let facts hold him back, said she endangered others by spiking the ball too hard although female players at elite volleyball teams spoke harder.
None of these sudden fans of women's sports, who no doubt never attended a women's volleyball game, are talking about better facilities for female athletes or equal pay or addressing abuse of athletes. Because none give a fucking damn about women's sports, they just want to spread hate.
There are an estimated 560,000 college athletes, 40 of whom are trans.

 

The sad fact is trans women aren’t as cool as bigots think we are. They paint us as mediocre male athletes who transition to dominate female athletes but really we’re just mediocre all around. Most all of us are nervous wrecks and completely without self esteem because of the trauma of living wrongly all our lives even if that’s only the first decade of our existence. Testosterone isn’t a miracle drug, and most sports professionals agree that motivation and drive are much stronger indicators of success than build or size. They’re just recycling “blacks in sports” horseshit so they can scapegoat a marginalized community.

 

Simple fact. Most people are not elite athletes. Including most cis people and most trans people.

 

In this case I just don't think "blacks in sports" is an apt comparison.

While I will grant you that most bigots are probably opposed to allowing trans in women's sports. I don't think the majority of people who are opposed to trans in women's sports are bigots.

A mediocre athlete who was born male (with training) becomes competitive as a world-class female athlete.

That's a JV basketball player being able to hang at the Olympic women's level.

This was not a valid concern with "blacks in sports". The peak capabilities between people of the same sex but different races are almost identical given similar levels of training.

Of course I don't think anybody is changing their gender with an eye on being more competitive in sports. Of course not. But their intention doesn't matter to the athletes they would be completing against.

And of course I understand that in the process of transitioning there is a degradation of athletic ability. But it's very hard to determine how much, or when these things happened, or how much of an advantage just having the bone structure of a natural born male is an advantage when it comes to running or jumping.

Regulating this kind of thing in sports becomes more messy the more it seems you try to allow it.

I don't think the intention among most people who are opposed to transgender athletes in women's sports is to hold trans people down. I think people just see it as unfair to women's sports. Including most women in sports.

And I really don't think this is something that will ever be broadly accepted.

From the people that I've spoken with who typically vote left but who ended up voting right... This was a big concern. This was one of the big reasons they decided not to support the Democrats. It seems clear to them why this shouldn't be allowed and they are perplexed by what appears to be support of this by Democrats.

To be clear I don't believe anybody should be banned from sports. I do believe the top division should be open and anybody who can compete in that division should be allowed to compete there. And any sports that wants to should have lower levels of open divisions.

IMO, women's sports (probably high school and above) should be people assigned female at birth only. It sucks that that leaves some people out of women's sports, but from what I can tell it is unfair to the smallest number of people possible.

 

You don’t want it to be applicable because you don’t want to look bad. Name these Olympic level trans athletes who were JV before. I want evidence if you’re going to act like you’re an authority.

Being unfair to trans women and only trans women is the compromise. Fucking lol yeah a lot of democrats are going to sweep us under the rug. Inconvenient to the cause and all that horseshit.

 

I didn't say that there are or were Olympic level trans athletes.

I'm also not acting like an authority. I'm sharing an observation.

I do understand why this is near and dear to you. And I definitely sympathize. I just don't know of a more fair solution than I have proposed.

I would be interested in knowing about any other solutions which would be more fair.

 

Forty trans athletes among more than half a million. The volleyball player in San Jose played two previous years and in high school and had no special advantage.

If people voted Republican because they feared trans athletes it's the same as those who voted to ban marriage equality. Who feared gays in the military saying straight soldiers would get assaulted in showers which never happened. Who opposed integration because different germs. Who are convinced there is "migrant crime wave" no matter how many times fact that immigrants commit fewer crimes is repeated.
In other words, sucked into hate campaign against someone seen as other. For them to say it wasn't prejudice is just self justification.

 

The attorney for the people trying to get volleyball player kicked off team is William Bock, who led effort by Trump to overturn 2020 election.

 

Those other things are easily disproven. The fact is that we do need rules dividing women's divisions from mens. The vast majority of female competitors do not want to compete against people who have the advantages that men do. And there is a MOUNTAIN of evidence that men have significant advantages athletically. Far more so than the typical variance among either gender.

The evidence I've seen shows that we'd need incredibly invasive testing that would almost certainly exclude far more athletes to make the line anywhere else. And even there doesn't appear to be an agreement among medical professionals.

There needs to be some dividing line and no line will be equally fair to everyone.

I'm absolutely open to suggestions other than I've made. I'm just not sure what might be more fair.

 

I'm opposed to the elimination of women's sports.

100% opposed.

In fact, this argument you're making gives the people opposed to trans athletes in women's sports a lot of ammunition and motivation.

*Edit* It seems like this can only come from a deep misunderstanding of the incredible differences in athletic ability between male and female athletes.

 

My solution is simple: let them play. It’s not a big deal, seriously.

if you want to see a sport with trans rep handled well, look at Roller Derby. Watching trans feminine players play with cis women and trans masc folks showed me a lot of things. One is that trans women are no better than cis women at the sport.

Trans women make up 0.5% of the female population. Most of us suck at sports just like every human. We couldn’t take over women’s sports if we wanted to AND WE DON’T WANT TO. We just wanted to be treated as something less than dangerous.

 

I am opposed to the elimination of all sports as well.

There are teams and leagues for those short fat girls. They aren't being left out if they want to play.

There would still be teams and leagues for every trans person as well, under my proposal. And not a "trans only" team or league (unless of course there were enough demand and they chose to have one).

 

Life isn't fair, it noitt fair that you and I can spend hours in here, and there are those in the world that don't even have a way to online, to gibber jabber. In this great State there are leagues/divisions for all those you say are, treated unfairly. If a trans women can pass all the quailing test and make a team, great, same with a trans guy.

 

And I fully support any league that wants to be coed or have coed divisions. I think that's incredibly awesome.

 

I never thought not having a dick was a lack. I thought having a vagina, labia and clitoris was an advantage. Not having them would be a lack.