You’ll want to take that up with @Chronos, not me.
But that’s not at all what Newsom is talking about, is it?
Trans women are women. They are women who have physical differences from cis women; that’s not transphobic, it’s simply true. And if those differences give them an advantage over cis women in sports, then that is a valid issue; which is literally all that Newsom said on the topic before pivoting to how he is more concerned about trans people taking their own lives because of the way society treats them than he is about their placement in sports.
What is your cite for this repeated assertion that Newsom was “trolling” Kirk? Has Newsom used that phrase himself? It implies to me that he said things during that podcast that he doesn’t actually believe…what things were those?
I’m not supporting Newsom. I think he’d be a perfectly okay president. Not a terrific president, but fine. But I think he’d be a bad candidate. So unless he wins the primary, I’m not backing him.
Partly, i feel i was burned by Clinton. I thought she’d be a pretty good president. And i backed her against Bernie. And in retrospect, i think i misunderstood the political landscape. Maybe Bernie would have lost by even more. But today, i don’t think so.
So yes, I’m looking for reasons to dismiss Newsom.
I’m trying to keep the discussion to Newsom, not re-litigating trans issues.
Suffice it to say that “biological women” encompass several billion people, in whom there is an enormous variety. So no, it ISN’T necessarily true that trans women have a physical advantage over cis women, though it is true that athletic individuals in the set {trans women} generally have a physical advantage over the average cis woman, and probably over the average cis woman athlete. But your framing of the argument, and Newsom’s, is still “trans women have male biology,” and I’m afraid reality isn’t quite to black-and-white as that. There are a number of chromosomal oddities and physical outliers among biological women, too, and our binary sports genders generally don’t worry about that.
It’s also a reasonable question over what this “advantage” means. Do people play sports for fun and fitness and self-improvement? In that case, who cares if someone else on the team is better? Or do they play for kudos and cash, in which case it really does matter? Newsom’s comments aren’t addressing that, or advancing the complicated conversation in a very real way.
Yes, in leagues that are very often mixed gender today. What does that have to do with anything? The conversation is clearly about competitive sports, not middle schoolers in PE or a neighborhood flag football league.
And sometimes this leads to cis women who were assigned female at birth and never identified as anything but female being disqualified from women’s sports.
Yeah, that’s a pretty odd claim. I don’t think he was “trolling” Kirk. He was engaged in a civil but adversarial conversation with him.
I’d argue that it needs to be somewhere between the two. Enough so that people can actually you know, benefit significantly from familial wealth, but not so much that literal generational wealth is being transferred tax-free. Like maybe 1-5 million or so would be reasonable I think. But 15? That’s absurd.
You did- two of those links were about that podcast. One was paywalled. One was about his “budget cuts”, which were not cuts at all, as the Governor sent back the budget bill with a lot of things cut out- then in the end after the Legislature sent him a better leaner budget, with 40 Million for that program, Newsom signed it. No cuts were made. A Nothingburger.
As for the other link
During the interview, Newsom called for his party to be “culturally normal,” and specifically to stop “spending a disproportionate amount of time on pronouns [and] identity politics.”
I already replied to those links, note.
Yes-
California already has legal protections in place to prevent the prosecution of patients or providers for both “reproductive health care services” and “gender-affirming health care services.” Because of those protections, California is a sanctuary state where patients from states with laws against such care can travel to receive treatment.
Read the transcript, and i have already, I think twice here, mentioned that The Governor explained and clarified what his actual views are- which are not even close to Kirks.
This would be a great topic for another thread.
Well, no — school sports are very much in the foreground here. But the point was that Newsom appears to be approaching the issue from the standpoint that biology trumps social gender, which is problematic for trans people.
You and DrDeth are welcome to believe he’s pro-LGBT. I’m trying to explain why he’s not perceived as a secure ally, but you don’t want to hear it. Okay: believe whatever you like.
School sports as in the competitive teams at the school. Not school sports as in PE, which was already coeed when I was a kid.
Biology does not trump social gender in social contexts. In social contexts, biology really doesn’t matter at all.
Sports is not a purely social conversation. The reason that men’s and women’s sports are split at the competitive level to begin with is because of the biological differences between men and women, not the social ones.
If Newsom said “we should be treating trans people based on their sex assigned at birth in social contexts”, I would agree with you that he was being transphobic. But that’s not what he did.
I understand your position; you are not the first person to present it to me. I am trying to explain why it is not based on an accurate account of Newsom’s position.
Unless your stance is that in order to be an ally to trans people Newsom needs to take the position that not only are trans women women who should be treated as such in all social contexts, but also the position that there is no biological difference between trans and cis people?
But as a political stance, there’s no question that he’s not trusted by the trans community. There’s a feeling that “he’s willing to throw us under the bus”. I don’t know whether that will hurt him with liberals more than it helps him with centrists.
In some ways, a politician looking to support the trans community is in an impossible position. There’s what I think, which is irrelevant to the discussion, and what Newsom thinks, which is almost as irrelevant. The community has taken his words and actions and seen unreliable support. He may, in fact, have done more for the community than any other governor; I don’t know. But the perception matters.
From a gay perspective, the whole back-and-forth on marriage was really traumatizing. Perhaps his stunts led to the Supreme Court decision in 2015, but my perception is that he was using us to build name recognition. It’s probably not fair, but I had to emigrate in the middle of all that in order to be married so I’m not going to be dispassionate.
The way to support us isn’t grand gestures, but normalization and de-escalation of tension points. The culture wars make it next to impossible for politicians to do this, but some manage better than others.
The governor of Utah vetoed a bill banning trans athletes in women’s school sports:
He cited the small number of trans athletes and the large number of trans suicides. His veto was overridden in conservative Utah, but that’s the way to be a political ally.
Newsom is, at best, an untrustworthy ally. And perceptions matter. I think it was purely political on his part. I think he’s trying to garner support along centrists who are not trans allies. But that’s one of the reasons i don’t think he’s a very strong candidate. I think he’s slippery. It’s not clear what he stands for.
That’s the underappreciated point. Participating in school sports is not a big issue to these kids; the message of othering is, and with serious impact.
Note that as recently as 2021 there was fairly strong opposition to legislation barring trans girl student athletes in both parties:
Just 29% of Republicans said they “support a bill that prohibits transgender student athletes from joining sports teams that match their gender identity.” Moreover, there was no significant party divide: Similar shares of Republicans, Democrats and independents also said they oppose the bills.
That’s not exactly support from Republicans - they still don’t want transgirls playing on girl teams; they just don’t want laws about it. And Independents are mostly split down the middle.
It is an area where leadership in framing the discussion, as the Utah governor did, can make have impact. There is honest not hateful ignorance that can be addressed.
To my ear, and maybe it is unfair, Newsom comes off as trying to calculate exactly “whether that will hurt him with liberals more than it helps him with centrists” - more than many others do. That sense is what bothers me.
I’m sorry, did I miss something? When did Newsom say anything about legislation banning trans athletes from competing?
All he said was that there are valid concerns regarding fairness. Which is objectively true. Those concerns don’t mean we need a wholesale ban, they mean mean the bodies responsible for regulating these sports leagues should make decisions on a case by case basis.
To my ear, Newsom comes across as strongly supportive of trans rights without denying reality. I think that, in many cases, trans women should play on women’s sports teams, because after we weigh the different concerns that’s the best option. But denying that there is any fairness concerns whatsoever does not come across like a position that the politicians presenting it actually believe.
That topic exists in our political discourse to draw attention to the differences between trans women and cis women. Anyone who brings it up unforced is not an ally of trans people. There are many ways a politician can avoid the topic, unless there’s actually pending legislation they need to opine on. He could have said, “that’s complicated, let’s talk about an issue that matters to more people, like XYZ.” He chose to make a point of it. He’s an experienced politician who knew exactly what he was doing. No trans voter will trust him to be an ally.
The OP asked why he’s not more popular among his natural base. That’s definitely one reason.
But he didn’t bring it up unforced. He was debating Charlie Kirk, who raised that point, as conservatives do. And rather than taking the approach some people seem to advocate, of denying that there’s any fairness concerns whatsoever and insisting that the only reason to have fairness concerns is transphobia - a position that, to me, comes across as dishonest and calculated, not something that politicians actually believe but something they say because it was decided on as the most effective formula to push for a maximalist position - he said, “I agree that there are fairness concerns, but I think that there are bigger issues, like the way that trans people in society are ostracized to the point that their suicide rate is higher”:
“There’s also a humility and grace, you know, that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well.”
He kinda did exactly that? He acknowledged that there is a fairness concern but then said that showing grace and humility to trans people and being supportive of them is more important.
Which brings me back to the point about, to use a nicer term, the way that the media environment treats Newsom and the perception people have of him as a result. I think that the perception that he “threw trans people under the bus” is not really based on the things he actually said in that interview.
For just a single example of this misperception - you just said:
But that is a factually incorrect way to describe Newsom’s actions. He was responding to Kirk, and in a way that I thought was genuine and powerful.
Inviting Charlie Kirk onto his podcast without utterly lambasting him as a transphobic bigot (and a bigot in many other ways) shows he’s not a serious ally of trans people or really anyone targeted by far right extremists like Kirk.
Yes. That the conversation shifted some to the difficult position politicians hoping to run for national office may perceive themselves to be in, and how to actually provide leadership there. The relevance to Newsom is the perception by many in the trans community (that you feel is undeserved or the result of their being fools easily manipulated) that he is very willing to throw them under the bus; and the perception by some of the rest of us that whatever he says his position is his stated position is less something he believes than it is a calculated take with an eye on running for president.
The Utah governor had it exactly right.
Oh make up your mind. I thought the argument was that he went on Kirk’s show specifically to troll over this and other hot button issues.
The correct response to concerns about fairness is to call out that “concern” for what it is in almost all cases: bullshit cover using what is in the real world a true nonissue to justify othering and bullying this population of kids, who just want to be girls playing with other girls. No they are not taking anyone’s place on the fast track club soccer spot. That is not what “fairness” in this context is about.
His response does not read as sincere to me. It does to you. Fine. The people impacted don’t think so and neither do some of the rest of us, which is why we would prefer someone else, almost anyone else, on the potentials list rather than him.
Huh?
No, he didn’t go on Kirk’s show at all. What are you referring to? What do you actually know about the actions you’ve been so critical of Newsom for taking? And I never made the argument that he “trolled” Kirk, in fact I said that this is a weird thing to say.
I don’t think so. To me, that doesn’t sound like a genuine position. It sounds like a carefully calculated statement designed to toe a party* line, not something that a relatable politician actually believes.
*But not the Democratic party line, since fewer than 30% of Democratic voters agree with that position…
And completely refusing to engage on the topic does read as genuine to you? I genuinely don’t understand how you can arrive at that position.
“There are fairness concerns but there are more important things to worry about, like trans suicide rates and what we as a society are doing to contribute to that number than it should be” is an infinitely more genuine response than “There is no unfairness in Ba Sing Se”.