Trans athletes make great gains, yet resentment still flares (16 Viewers)

[mjcouvi]

It's really a strawman because no one here is disputing that. That's not the end all and be all of the discussion though.

No Dave, people call this into question. Are you not aware of the convo?

 

[mjcouvi]

No Dave, people call this into question. Are you not aware of the convo?

I find this shocking, because there is NO question. Males and Females ARE different!

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Really, when I listen to you, nothing better, thank you. My perspective isn't fully changed but I am changed, thank you.

So, if I can redefine my purpose here, it's to ask people to be cognizant of the effect certain proposals have on kids. If you're going to take something away from disadvantaged kids, then it would be nice if you are simultaneously providing something else to help them cope.

 

[mjcouvi]

So, if I can redefine my purpose here, it's to ask people to be cognizant of the effect certain proposals have on kids. If you're going to take something away from disadvantaged kids, then it would be nice if you are simultaneously providing something else to help them cope.

Thanks Jim.

 

[DaveXA]

Should we first acknowledge this basic FACT?

It's been acknowledged several times. I'm not sure what exactly is your point here.

 

[kizzy821]

It is weird, isn't it? Folks declaring they're women who were never women before? This is odd, no?

I found this video to be interesting. It doesn't touch on sports, but he's lived his life as both a woman and a man.

'Living life as a woman' sounds more accurate than declaring you're actually a woman.

Some trans women say they know they'll never be a woman. Some declare that trans women absolutely are women. These are the kinds of things that make people side-eye the entire conversation. It's convoluted. There has never been a more muddied and muddled movement IMO.

The goals are fractured. All the different letters have their own "sub" objectives. The lesbians and the trans members have beef. It's fascinating like a soap opera and less like a civil rights movement.

 

[DaveXA]

I find this shocking, because there is NO question. Males and Females ARE different!

Quote one person who's disputing that. No one is disputing they're different.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Was it you who told me about TERF? That Google search took me all over the internet, reading stories and watching videos and it goes so far beyond sports. It's scary. Frightening. Petrifying.

Adele was labeled a TERF because she said she loved being a woman. JK Rowling spoke out against Scotland's proposed law that rapists can self-identify as women to police, and people showed up to her house.

(I need to read and reread that Scotland thing because I'm certain I'm missing something there)

The TINIEST inkling of support for women (without bringing along trans women) - and all hell breaks loose.

I question whether or not the goal is to achieve support OR to silence opposition.

'Cause no way in hell do you garner additional support like this. No way in frickin' hell.

So, I think the JK Rowling issue is both interesting and sad for me. JK Rowling was a saint in our household. I hold her almost single handily responsible for turning my children into lifelong voracious readers, and I will forever be grateful to her for that. We had huge Harry Potter themed birthday parties. My kids were active on Pottermore, and it was a huge part of their identity and childhood.

So, that brings us to the above issue which happened at the exact same time my child was coming out. Her initial tweets were fine, my kid said he kind of understood where she was coming from. But then Rowling was attacked, and she doubled down. And so on. She then started making sarcastic posts on twitter and so on. As it went on and on my kid became more and more sad. Rowling made some comment in regards to someone referring to "people who menstruate" and she replied "you mean WOMEN?" At that point my kid was like, well "I'm going to be nothing more than body parts to her." He doesn't hate Rowling, but has lost all joy in Harry Potter which to me is super sad. His younger sister has also joined him in his boycott.

It's kind of like what I imagine could have happened in our conversation, the more I push the deeper you get entrenched and so on.

 

[kizzy821]

So, I think the JK Rowling issue is both interesting and sad for me. JK Rowling was a saint in our household. I hold her almost single handily responsible for turning my children into lifelong voracious readers, and I will forever be grateful to her for that. We had huge Harry Potter themed birthday parties. My kids were active on Pottermore, and it was a huge part of their identity and childhood.

So, that brings us to the above issue which happened at the exact same time my child was coming out. Her initial tweets were fine, my kid said he kind of understood where she was coming from. But then Rowling was attacked, and she doubled down. And so on. She then started making sarcastic posts on twitter and so on. As it went on and on my kid became more and more sad. Rowling made some comment in regards to someone referring to "people who menstruate" and she replied "you mean WOMEN?" At that point my kid was like, well "I'm going to be nothing more than body parts to her." He doesn't hate Rowling, but has lost all joy in Harry Potter which to me is super sad. His younger sister has also joined him in his boycott.

It's kind of like what I imagine could have happened in our conversation, the more I push the deeper you get entrenched and so on.

OMG, all the different qualifiers and descriptors I'm expected to use to describe myself now: CIS, biologically born, AFAB, people who menstruate, birthing people, chest feeders...

Bruh... They can take alllll of that sheet and stuff it up their [fancy new name for butts].

 

[SaintInBucLand]

So, I think the JK Rowling issue is both interesting and sad for me. JK Rowling was a saint in our household. I hold her almost single handily responsible for turning my children into lifelong voracious readers, and I will forever be grateful to her for that. We had huge Harry Potter themed birthday parties. My kids were active on Pottermore, and it was a huge part of their identity and childhood.

So, that brings us to the above issue which happened at the exact same time my child was coming out. Her initial tweets were fine, my kid said he kind of understood where she was coming from. But then Rowling was attacked, and she doubled down. And so on. She then started making sarcastic posts on twitter and so on. As it went on and on my kid became more and more sad. Rowling made some comment in regards to someone referring to "people who menstruate" and she replied "you mean WOMEN?" At that point my kid was like, well "I'm going to be nothing more than body parts to her." He doesn't hate Rowling, but has lost all joy in Harry Potter which to me is super sad. His younger sister has also joined him in his boycott.

It's kind of like what I imagine could have happened in our conversation, the more I push the deeper you get entrenched and so on.

Regardless of how your child felt, calling women 'people who menstruate' is highly offensive and labels them by their bodily functions. When did calling a female a woman become controversial. She had every right as a woman to be sarcastic and make that retort the way she did.

Also I had no idea Adelle was attacked for stating she loved being a woman, had to look that one up, and sure enough she was.

 

[sammymvpknight]

so, i think somewhere along the line my kid's identity got reversed -- he is mostly biologically female and identifies as a male. But this issue and things like it scare him to death because he views it as a way to trap him into a world and existence that he can't live with. Through his various hospitalizations we've made a lot of contact with transgender people both male and female - a good number of them are homeless (well kicked out of their parents house and living with older siblings or tolerant neighbors or whatever). At least one of them plays soccer. She's terrible, but it gives her an outlet. That's who I have in mind.

And as i've said earlier - I've talked generally about the girls teams I've coached and I know some of them want their trans girl friends to play with them. I should talk to all of them though. It would be an interesting discussion.

If you don’t mind me asking, has your child always thought they were male? Or is it something that has developed?

I honestly think that there is a distinction. I have met 5 year old kids who didn’t think that they were the opposite sex, they were the opposite sex. They had straight parents, some of them conservative. I do think that there is a percentage of the population that are born with a complete disconnect between the physical and cognitive aspect of gender identity.

But I also see kids who evolve into believing they are the opposite gender. They may have perceived masculine traits, they may have questions about sexuality, and frankly many just hate who they are and are looking to change themselves as a way to escape their current reality. I absolutely do think that there is a social aspect of this. I think that the relative rate of transgender individuals will continue to increase and I think that there will be a greater percentage of homosexuals that may decide to transition. There is no great explanation why the rate of transgender youths is growing exponentially compared to transgender adults/elderly. From an evolutionary stand point, I also don’t understand the growth…unless this was simply a social phenomenon.

I don’t find many trans individuals that necessarily regret their decision. But I do find (again, bias population, and limited sample size), that after transition many of these individuals continue to hate their existence. But since they hated their existence before, there is not necessarily regret.

I do think it’s important to define as a society, because should transgender individuals be celebrated if it’s a decision that is linked to profound mental illness, reduced quality of life, and reduced life expectancy. I think that we can empathize for individuals and care for those individuals while acknowledging that it simply might be incredibly detrimental to the individual, and overall harmful to society. We have to be careful normalizing everything. Not a direct correlation, but I can empathize with someone with obesity, but we shouldn’t be normalizing or celebrating it as it has profound impact on individuals and society on the whole.

This is getting too long. Sorry about that. I have significant concerns about restricting access to sports for ANY group of individual. It is one of best methods of reducing obesity and improving physical and mental health. So we should be studying ways to get as many kids playing sports as humanly possible. I do have some concerns that the current participation studies are very limited. My personal perspective is that through middle school, kids should be able to participate on whatever team they’d prefer. But a large emphasis of high school sports and beyond is competition. I think competition is healthy…it shapes us into better individuals. I do have concerns that transgender participation will hurt cis-women participation. It may not have been shown up yet…but i do think that the concerns are legitimate. Right now many female college sports is “are your lesbians or our lesbians” better? It is DEFINITELY cultural to some degree, and many straight, cos-girls do feel out of place and pressured to dabble. With the exponential rate of growth of transgender individuals I think that the question could eventually become “are your transgender girls better than put transgender girls” in women college athletics.

 

[Icon]

I question whether or not the goal is to achieve support OR to silence opposition.

Thanks for summing up the chief flaw in cancel culture.

 

[DaveXA]

I found this video to be interesting. It doesn't touch on sports, but he's lived his life as both a woman and a man.

'Living life as a woman' sounds more accurate than declaring you're actually a woman.

Some trans women say they know they'll never be a woman. Some declare that trans women absolutely are women. These are the kinds of things that make people side-eye the entire conversation. It's convoluted. There has never been a more muddied and muddled movement IMO.

The goals are fractured. All the different letters have their own "sub" objectives. The lesbians and the trans members have beef. It's fascinating like a soap opera and less like a civil rights movement.

This I agree with. My daughter is really into LGBQT issues and has numerous trans friends and actually went with one of them to their doctor for a checkup. She and I talk a bit about some of the hot topics of the trans community, and they're definitely not a homogeneous group. They argue about a lot of the things we've touched on in this thread and each sub group has different challenges and needs. It's a complicated mess tbh, and I don't understand a lot of it, but I still want the best possible outcomes for them and somehow find a productive place in society where we don't have to think twice about their choices.

It's not all that different from the challenges gay and lesbians faced 20-30 years ago. And if we're not aware and supportive of them, states might start rolling the clock back on them too.

It's sort of why I prefer to let them hash out their arguments and try to be supportive of the broader community. There may be points they conclude that I won't agree with, but then, I don't expect we'll all agree on everything. We can still support one another in spite of the differences, hopefully.

 

[DaveXA]

OMG, all the different qualifiers and descriptors I'm expected to use to describe myself now: CIS, biologically born, AFAB, people who menstruate, birthing people, chest feeders...

Bruh... They can take alllll of that sheet and stuff it up their [fancy new name for butts].

Lol, the acronyms and verbiage was all new to me 12 months ago. It's a whole new language in a sense. But that's sort of true for all my kids, heh.

 

[Arathrael]

So, I think the JK Rowling issue is both interesting and sad for me. JK Rowling was a saint in our household. I hold her almost single handily responsible for turning my children into lifelong voracious readers, and I will forever be grateful to her for that. We had huge Harry Potter themed birthday parties. My kids were active on Pottermore, and it was a huge part of their identity and childhood.

So, that brings us to the above issue which happened at the exact same time my child was coming out. Her initial tweets were fine, my kid said he kind of understood where she was coming from. But then Rowling was attacked, and she doubled down. And so on. She then started making sarcastic posts on twitter and so on. As it went on and on my kid became more and more sad. Rowling made some comment in regards to someone referring to "people who menstruate" and she replied "you mean WOMEN?" At that point my kid was like, well "I'm going to be nothing more than body parts to her." He doesn't hate Rowling, but has lost all joy in Harry Potter which to me is super sad. His younger sister has also joined him in his boycott.

It's kind of like what I imagine could have happened in our conversation, the more I push the deeper you get entrenched and so on.

I don't know if people in the US know just how toxic the 'debate' has been for some years over here.

Part of that is reflected in the routine misrepresentation of things that are happening, and one example of that is people misrepresenting the use of inclusive language as the exclusion of standard language. JK Rowling's initial stuff was a case in point; the article she linked to, complaining that it didn't use the word 'women', did use the word 'women'. A lot. It also used the phrase 'people who menstruate' twice, but clearly not to the exclusion of the word 'women'. The accusation that it did was nonsensical.

Similarly, there's regular articles claiming the National Health Service is 'banning the use of words', and every single time, if you look, they're not. E.g. a viral story claimed Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust had banned the use of the word 'breastfeeding'. They hadn't. They'd published a leaflet on gender inclusive language that was specifically intended for non-binary and trans male patients. It wasn't replacing or excluding any existing language. E.g. on the first page, of their leaflet, it states, "The vast majority of midwifery service users are women and we already have language in place they are comfortable with. This is not changing and we will continue to call them pregnant women and talk about breast feeding. Adding to the language we use, and that people are comfortable with, ensures we are providing individual care for every person."

Statements like that don't seem to help though. They just get ignored, for the sake of manufactured outrage.