It tells me that there isn’t going to be a problem in the future, either. All feverish imaginings notwithstanding.
Perhaps not, again, is there anything in what I’ve said that suggests there defintely will be? have I not specifically said that potentially there might not be?
Have I not said that in fact that is an outcome to be hoped for?
So why, again, should I waste even one second imagining anything?
Why indeed? You aren’t alone in that mindset. Thinking you are right, knowing you are right and that the current situation is the only possible outcome is comforting.
Trying to see the other side of an argument, or considering what may happen certainly takes effort, I know exactly why people choose to avoid even contemplating it.
I’ve given it all the contemplation it merits in the face of 19 states’ evidence.
Guess my daughter wasn’t in that group. Yeah, she’s 6 foot tall but… no more athletic than she was as a boy. Probably why she stopped playing baseball and did band instead.
This thread has gone on a long time, and forgive me if this has been raised as an issue. Is there any research on how the attitudes towards organized athletics among transgirls compares to the attitudes toward organized athletics among cisgirls?
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the former group has a less positive orientation toward such athletics compared to the latter group, for a variety of reasons. Transgirls might still be afraid–and justifiably so–of social ostracization and public humiliation if they participate in organized sports. Or transgirls might be likelier than girls in general to gravitate toward traditional feminine cultural stereotypes, including an aversion to sweaty sports. Transgirls might feel a need to “prove” their femininity, and athletics might, in multiple ways, undercut that need.
But that’s all speculation. Does anyone know if such research has been done?
That has no relevance to what I’ve said.
Anecdotal, but I know trans women who are worried that exercise, particularly anything involving weight training, will cause their bodies to look more masculine. I’ve known some who have deliberately kept themselves overweight, because they felt it made them look more feminine.
Nothing I could find directly.
There is research that shows a falloff in transgender sports activities after coming out, but that’s not focused on transgirls specifically.
That’s not too surprising given that even some ciswomen worry that certain exercises are likely to lead to bulky, unfeminine muscles too. Lots of pages like this and this are out there.
It’s really appalling to me how many people in this thread solemnly (and seemingly unwittingly) declare as fact things that are really conjecture and/or societal bias.
First and foremost there is the absolute certainty with which many, many posters here have said that athletics are separated by gender out of kind consideration for girls, so that they may enjoy the thrill of competition without being outperformed by boys.
This is utter horseshit. For decades, girls were, by and large, not allowed to participate in sports because it wasn’t considered a proper pursuit. Notions of their physical weakness compared to boys certainly played a role, but it was (and still is) just as much based in devotion to traditional, sexist gender roles as it was in fact. People had to fight to start athletics programs for girls.
I don’t doubt that views about why athletics ought to be segregated by gender have changed and are now seen by many as a way to maintain fairness. But in a certain light, an understanding of the sexist origins of gender segregation in athletics would seem to call for exactly the kind of scrutiny that is now being focused on the notion that trans girls can’t join girls teams because of “scientific fact.”
I see very few people here touching on the very relevant likelihood that decades of the second-class citizen treatment of girls’ athletics might have something to do with the difference in apparent athletic ability between boys and girls.
There are also way too many people here who seem to assume that every trans girl athlete is a linebacker in a dress. One poster in particular continually states that trans girls “will typically” perform this way or that way, as though the simple fact of being AMAB enables any cis boy or trans girl to dominate every cis girl they encounter on the field. And as though they actually have any idea what a “typical” trans girl looks like. These trans girls he posits are all figments of his imagination.
The rugby player scenario that keeps getting trotted out is particularly galling. The notion that trans girls inevitably pose a physical danger to cis girls is sexist to both trans and cis girls.
Here it is: the current hysteria over trans girls in girls’ athletics is entirely manufactured by conservatives to drive their base to the polls. But, as has been pointed out many times in this very thread, trans girls in girls’ athletics is not a real problem. The nightmare scenarios they are pushing are not happening. And I don’t care how progressive you think you are — if you treat this topic as a matter of actual concern, you are helping right-wing politicians make money and get elected.
Everyone who pushes these transphobic arguments trots out the same tired UK study that examined push-up, sit-up, and running performance in a comically small number of trans people. It is nowhere near the slam-dunk these people seem to think it is.
If anything, the current focus on this topic ought to be treated as an opportunity to scrutinize outdated attitudes toward all female athletes and girls’ athletics in general.
Finally, we do not need to argue over what “female” does or doesn’t mean when AMAB is right fucking there. Use it. It won’t hurt you.
I’m sorry to sound so frustrated, but I read this entire thread and there are very few posters here that I would save in a fire.
The word ‘something’ is doing a staggering amount of heavy lifting, and the word ‘apparent’ is just flat out misleading. No statement in the entire field of sports science is less controversial than “Boys are typically stronger and faster than girls”, which is why so many female Olympic world records are routinely broken by high school boys. All the funding in the world won’t change the fact that higher testosterone levels give males an athletic advantage over females.
That’s true. And yes, the best male will trounce the best female in almost any sport. And yet…Men are typically taller than women, and the tallest men are far taller than the tallest women. The tallest person in any room of adults is typically a man. But even so, there’s a substantial overlap.
It’s not as easy to measure athletic ability, but the same is true in most sports.
And school sports aren’t just about the elite players, it’s about all the kids.
I remember the fight to get sports for girls. Heck, i led a march of the girls in my 6th grade class, protesting that boys had an after school sports program that girls weren’t allowed to play in.
At the time, some leagues adapted by allowing girls to compete in the same teams as the boys. That was quickly replaced by setting up “separate but equal” (not) teams for the girls. And i still wonder, was that to allow the top 10% of girls to win, or was that to protect the bottom 25% of boys from the indignity of being beaten by a girl.
Recently a trans male professional boxer beat a male boxer which is interesting
Yeah. It’s a good headliner, because it’s one of the few edge cases where you can make a plausible case to discriminate against trans girls. But i live in one of the states where trans girls have been competing with the other girls for quite a while, now, and the impact on cis girl athletes has been negligible or non-existent. Is there some cis girl who came in 6th in a race instead of 5th? No doubt. Stuff happens. Girls sports are doing fine. Girls are competing and winning and losing and working in teams and all that good stuff.
Talking about the “substantial overlap” is misleading when responding to concerns about sporting competition where the top performers do not come from the portion of the populations that overlap.
If you are suggesting the athletic ability distributions will look something like the chart you provided then it is easy to see the problem.
Males who are nowhere near elite status in male competition would be top tier in female competition.
Sure, and informal mixed competitions happen all over the world all the time. As long as safety is not compromised by mixed competition it shouldn’t matter but joint competition of males and females across the board will see vanishingly small numbers of females winning anything at the top level (i.e. where money and careers are made)
And yet, in my state, where trans girls play sports on the girls teams, (and have for years) the elite girl athletes are almost all cis girls. Maybe they are exclusively cis girls, as i haven’t heard anything in the news about it. Possibly that’s because trans girls aren’t boys, and aren’t distributed in athletic ability like boys. But i don’t know. What i know is that despite trans girls playing with the other girls all through school, there are as many spots for cis girls to excel in highschool sports as ever.
So this policy seems to create opportunities for all girls to play sports. Seems like a win.
Without knowing more about the individuals situations it would be unwise to draw any hard conclusions from your own experiences.
We do know that male puberty confers a massive athletic advantage over females that later medical transition does not appear to eradicate. It may be that in your state any trans athletes competing have not been through male puberty and so are likely to be much closer in performance to a female of similar athletic potential. But that’s speculative and we don’t know.
It’s not “my own experience”. It’s the experience over many years of a whole state. I’m telling you that we’ve already done the experiment, and it was successful.