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Comment by BolexNOLA

8 hours ago

>Most of the actual work to stop males from competing in women's sports,

Males who transition to female are not males. They are female/women. It is already not permissible for men to compete in women-only sports.

This became a national issue when many politicians and pundits saw a new vector to attack the trans community. We have heard it on campaign trails constantly for years now as if it’s some existential threat to the country. Your (incorrectly) characterizing it as some grassroots movement by concerned women across the nation who “simply don’t want men competing in women’s sports” is exactly what they hoped would happen over time because it gives them plausible cover.

Yes sports are a spectator event but I guarantee you not one of these people has watched women’s sports outside of exciting Olympic bids. They can’t name a single women’s soccer team in the US or a single star WNBA player. The sport is not the concern at all and we shouldn’t pretend it is.

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BolexNOLA

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JuniperMesos  6 hours ago

> Males who transition to female are not males. They are female/women. It is already not permissible for men to compete in women-only sports.

This is precisely the point of contention. The people who want women's sports leagues to be able to legally or socially-acceptably bar transwomen want this precisely because they do not consider trans women to have the meaningful female characteristics that justify having a female-specific sports league to begin with.

I'm personally ambivalent on this point, and it's because I don't actually care about women's sports one way or the other (I barely care about men's sports). But if you do care about women's sports, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that you might have good reasons to want to restrict trans women from participating for the same reasons you want to restrict cis men from participating.

  • BolexNOLA  5 hours ago

    I understand the point of contention should be that but sadly when we dig into these discussions it often becomes clear that’s not what it is actually about. So frankly, I won’t sit here and stand for this user saying these women aren’t women.

    They can talk about physical advantages/fairness in sports in good faith without erasing their identities and saying “it’s a fact that biology says they’re not women,” which is wrong. That’s just ignorance and/or transphobia, not a healthy discussion about advantages in competition.

    “Men in women’s sports” is often convenient cover for many people to participate in erasure without copping to the fact that they’re just uncomfortable with trans people simply existing (or worse). Most of them, especially men with media reach/political clout constantly talking about it, are not passionate about women’s sports in the slightest and couldn’t care less if the playing field was level. So we can’t sit here and pretend that’s what this discussion is really about.

    It’s very similar to when incels said “it’s about ethics in gaming journalism” during gamergate. Yeah, some people care about that legitimately, and there is a legitimate discussion to be had, but that wasn’t what the movement was actually about in any real sense. It just gave them a palatable reason to project to more reasonable people.

    • fringol_  25 minutes ago

      The existence of women's sport depends on excluding those advantages that are caused by male sex development. For almost all competitive sports, male physiological advantage is the rationale for a separate, restricted female category in which women can enjoy fair competition and in which female athletic excellence can be celebrated.

      Pointing out that some individuals are female and some are male, and that the latter must be excluded from competition in the female category for it to meaningfully exist, shouldn't be something to take offence to. It's just a factual descriptor.

fringol  8 hours ago

They are male, and retain male physiological advantage even if they undergo interventions like testosterone suppression. It's not the only route by which a male athlete with such advantage might compete in women's sport, nor is it an issue limited to the USA. This is a broader issue affecting the fairness of women's sport in competitions across the world.

For instance, all three medallists in the women's 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics were male. They had been issued with female birth certificates by their home countries due to having underdeveloped external male genitalia - and therefore according to the rules at the time could enter as female - but they still benefited from testosterone-driven development.

World Athletics, and other sports governing bodies for other sports, have tightened their eligibility criteria in response to cases like this, and in light of evidence that male advantage is still retained even with pharmaceutical or surgical treatments. This has been an ongoing problem for much longer than US pundits have been bringing it up in relation to trans, and it's adversely affected many female athletes, from amateur leagues to international competition.