From context I’m pretty sure they were being sarcastic. And of course the point is that the Right does want to undo all those things, and roll society back to somewhere in the 1800s (or worse).
I was not being prescriptive. I was predicting the order in which the “moderates” will watch the social progress of the last 75 years get rolled back, and tell us at each stage “Don’t worry, THIS is something people can have a reasonable difference of opinion on. No need to get all up in arms about it. It’s not like this is because of bigotry and intolerance.”
I think you meant “recriminalize”, not “decriminalize”.
Agree…a very small percentage indeed.
But it would clear the confusion if all sport bodies across the world agree to not allow women who transitioned from being a male earlier to compete in sports like swimming where a male body/hormones did confer advanatages that cis women do not have.
Ex: the case of Lia Thomas
I know it is probably a one-off case and a miniscule percent of trans population but all the same this needs to be addressed.
It is absolutely fine for trans women to participate in women’s events where such advantages are not available… for example hypothetically chess comes to mind.
First, it’s highly debatable if that’s even a real thing. And second, “sport bodies across the world” have repeatedly demonstrated that they can’t be trusted to act in good faith and are more interested in persecution than good sportsmanship.
You say it is a very small percentage, and yet you want all the sports bodies across the whole wide world to agree to a mass bannination of trans athletes. You should really make up your mind as to how much of a problem this really is…since you yourself keep bringing “small” and “miniscule” into the conversation.
I don’t play such a sport myself but I guess it is a “problem” for the cis women swimmers in NCAA…may cost someone a place in the American Olympics team (If trans female swimmers were allowed in Olympics).
How many women participate in competitive swimming ?
…a “miniscule” percentage of the population sure…but imo it matters for those involved in it.
Case Studies in Physiology: Male to female transgender swimmer in college athletics - PMC.
Conclusions
In summary, these data suggest there may be a prolonged “legacy effect” (greater than 2 yr) associated with endogenous male testosterone concentrations or male puberty on freestyle swimming performances after feminizing GAHT, particularly for shorter event distances (100, 200, and 500 yards), which are closely associated with anthropometrics and maximal skeletal muscle strength and power, and less dependent on hemoglobin concentrations. Accommodations should be made in sports to safeguard fairness for all athletes—whatever their gender identity—and will likely vary between sports and events at different levels of competition. While striving for fair and inclusive policies for all athletes, both the magnitude and duration of the profound influence of testosterone and male puberty on sports performance should be recognized with appropriate consideration.
I never said that. Please see the full quote where I mentioned “in sports like swimmming” and then I specifically gave the example of chess…there could be others. Archery comes to mind. I’m sure there are other sports too where its perfectly fine for trans women to compete alongside cis women.
The first two, unless you see something specifically suspicious/inappropriate. I’m just not happy with telling people to ignore their instincts because the person making them uncomfortable is from an ‘oppressed group’. It might be bias on their part, or it might be the same sort of subconscious detection of danger signals that usually leads to such feelings, and I don’t think you own it to anyone else to put yourself in danger if you can just leave a situation.
And I see I was correct to fear that answering @puzzlegal’s question would turn the thread into a discussion of trans issues.
It’s impossible to talk about wokeness in general, because people always want examples, and then only want to argue about the examples and not the larger subject. And for some reason everyone is just desperate to discuss this one in particular.
The position that you seem to be stumbling towards, is that it should be up to the sporting bodies and doctors to decide, and I would agree with that. I mean, I don’t know either whether having a high testosterone built skeleton confers an advantage in archery, so why would I try to make a decision on it?
And “leave it up to the sporting bodies” was pretty much the democrat position, in as much as this ever even entered the discussion on the left.
It worked well as a campaign issue for the right though, playing on people’s fears, lying about what the democrats would do and even lying about whether particular athletes were trans.
That’s good and as it should be. Imo decisions in such matters should be left to the sporting bodies. I’m sure they decide based on scientific evidence wrt the specific sport.
I think if articulated well by the democrats as you mentioned above (leaving the decision to the sporting bodies based on scientific evidence wrt the sport) would remove one talking point of the right.
I don’t understand what you are saying here. Could you clarify?
Yes, I have to agree. The old title of Social Justice Warrior comes to mind. I first heard it used pejoratively, which felt odd. I mean, who is opposed to social justice? Fair treatment for everyone? Righting wrongs, fixing problems, making society a fair place for all?
,
Yes. Educating them about reality is very difficult when they are fixated on a twisted interpretation. When the misinformation is woven into a bigger picture that is tied to the person’s identity. Saying it doesn’t work that way isn’t believed because it’s not one single idea, it’s a worldview with that idea as one small element of the whole.
You have way too much faith in sporting bodies. Most are far more interested in PR than fairness or inclusion.
For the Democrats I think this mostly came up in the context of school and college sports (and locker rooms). First they said schools must let trans kids, teens and adults compete on the team they identified with, then after Lia Thomas they realised how unpopular this position was and walked it back to some extent. I think they are still mandating schools and colleges let anyone who comes out as trans switch straight to the other locker room. Republicans will describe this as Dems wanting to force your daughter to be naked in front of a boy, and let boys unfairly beat her in sporting competitions and take away her chances for scholarships etc. But it’s based on real policies, not made up from nothing as people seem to.be claiming in this thread.
Hardly, they pick whichever standard lets them persecute people better, and not always trans people. Anyone they can claim to be slightly “abnormal” who belongs to a group they don’t like (usually women), which includes a lot of people. They don’t care about the science at all.
Nope. MAGA has a strangehold on social media, podcasts and local TV.
And cable TV is still just a mix of RW propaganda channels, and milquetoast “both-sidism”. The net effect is the vast majority of people believe whatever the RW talking point is.
As I’ve said in several other threads, changing the message is not sufficient right now; that’s the old approach to normal elections.
The problem in 2024 was that people either didn’t hear the message, or heard it via the lens of a conservative channel or MAGA meme. That problem needs to be worked on first.
No, though admittedly this is an area where Democrats could have done with clarifying.
The Biden administration’s federal policy is that children / adolescents should be able to use the facilities of their gender identity. But it’s completely up to the states and then the school boards how to interpret that, and of course in practice that means most places require the kid to have had a history of trans and present as the gender they want to mix with, or other policies like having a separate facility for them.
I think California has the broadest interpretation on this, where kids can almost flip on a dime, so it would be interesting to find if there is any examples of kids trying to do the kind of stunt / prank that I was concerned about upthread (or maybe it was in the sister thread?)
But no, Democrats aren’t mandating that schools must permit any person to say they are trans and immediately go into the girl’s locker room.
I feel the democrats/left still have advantage wrt MSM (tv channels like MSNBC, CNN, ABC news etc and major newspapers like NY Times and WaPo vs Fox on the right).
But of utmost importance electorally looking forward (targetting 18-29 year olds and especially young men where there is a significant red shift) is to have a great leftwing podcaster (someone like a leftwing Joe Rogan).
This is all the more important considering the growing viewership of podcasts and declining influence of MSM(cable tv and newspapers) in shaping opinions. Leaving the merits/opinions aside the democrats need to embrace the podcast landscape more effectively. Please see how the republicans kept aside their views on early voting and embraced it to their advantage this election.
I fervently hope it happens sooner than later as taking your message wrt policies to the targetted audience is equally if not more important than the policies itself.
I am not sure but I feel there is more democratic presence on FB and more republican presence on Tiktok… this is my feel from a distance…I am in India