I’m surprised the pro women’s team could not handily defeat a bunch of high school aged boys from a junior league.
Still, I don’t see a viable scenario in which these boys want to pretend to be women just to win a competition against other women.
So why does doping persist in sports? If social pressure was a highly effective check on cheating, leagues would’ve long retired drug testing. Cheaters don’t care about pleasing anyone except themselves. How else do you explain the occurrence of these incidents?
Unfortunately we live in a world where people’s desire to win makes them completely indifferent to public perception. Take a look at the pic in this article about Gabrielle Ludwig.Even if you believe transwomen are women, you might feel a bit bothered watching a 6’6 biological male dunking on a bunch of shorter, weaker, and slower female players for 2 hours. You might even marvel at how Ludwig could possibly get any satisfaction out of this, when most male athletes know there isn’t much challenge in playing against females. You probably won’t be able to understand how this could be even remotely gender affirming, when the visible contrast between Ludwig and the other players is so stark. Most people would understand the optics of this aren’t very flattering.
But that’s not even all that should cross your mind. Presumably Ludwig tried out for the team and was competitively selected like all the other players. This means there is a good chance a young woman wasn’t selected simply because Ludwig was chosen. Surely Ludwig, being in her 50’s and old enough to know these things, would understand the societal barriers that females have to overcome to shine in athletics. Surely Ludwig, being sensitive to this issue, would understand that by joining this team, it could prevent a young woman from shining on the court and having her athleticism rewarded (rather than scoffed at or ignored). Surely Ludwig would be looking at this issue from an ethical standpoint, and would understand that there was more at stake than just the personal desire to play the game.
And yet, even with all this, Ludwig insisted on joining the women’s team.
So I don’t share your view that people won’t cheat because of social pressure. Not only is it naive, but it requires ignoring reality. It means denying that cheaters can rationalize their actions in ways that the average person is unable to do.
And so I’m reminded why I was reluctant to wade into this subject.
I just don’t know enough about it and resolve to keep my mouth shut going forward.
Don’t run away! It’s okay to have an opinion about this. If you think I’m saying anything wrong, I welcome discussion about it.
I guess my opinion on this is that I’d like for society to be inclusive of trans people in the ordinary walk of life. I don’t have an answer for the marginal cases like you describe. My thought is that Ludwig is a sociopath as well as a trans person. I have no solution for excluding a non-violent sociopath who would cheat in such an obvious and conscienceless way.
Nor do I really know what to say to women who object to having to share an intimate space with a trans-women.
It seems like some sort of compromise is necessary but I’m not it a position to speculate on the terms from an un-informed point of view.
No, there’s not. Dismissing many or most transgender voices while singling out a specific transman as agreeing with or being right about it makes as much sense to me as saying Kanye’s opinion is worth more than other black voices.
(Sorry for once again bringing race in as analogous, but saying kanye likes Trump so that’s the only black perspective worth entertaining or that he is the one who is"right" seems silly)
I actually appreciate the fact that you are saying you’re torn. Because that means you are actually thinking about this as an egalitarian would rather than a ideologist.
I don’t know if Ludwig is a sociopath. I don’t see her as any different than any other trans person who believes society has an obligation to affirm their gender identity, even when doing so impinges on sex-based rights and protections. The fact is that everything I just said about a 6’6 masculine- looking Ludwig would still be true if Ludwig was 5’8 and less masculine. If people are truly committed to “TWAW”, they can’t back down from that when the transwoman in question looks a certain way.
So think of it like a test. If you see Ludwig standing with the rest of the female players and you immediately feel like something is wrong with this picture, then you probably don’t really believe TWAW. This doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a honest and rational one.
I didn’t dismiss any transgender voices. I told @BigT to take his “shuddering” up with a trans man who sees nothing offensive about saying trans men aren’t men.
And I really would love to see him do that. Trans allies, in their attempts to position themselves as morality experts in this discourse, are knowingly or unknowingly pushing rhetoric that a lot of members of the trans community finds disgraceful. Members of the intersex community also aren’t thrilled with how they are being exploited, but notice how many times their existence has been used as gotcha yas.
Self-appointed defenders of gender ideology should make sure they understand the diversity of opinions within the communities most affected, before wagging any fingers at anyone.
What about the ones who aren’t pretending, who honestly just want to play sport as the gender they identify as? Few kids in high school will be on hormone blockers, but that guide for supporting transgender students I linked to earlier - endorsed by the ACLU, Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and the National Education Association among others - claims that “concerns regarding competitive advantage are unfounded and often grounded in sex stereotypes about the differences and abilities of males versus females.” Perhaps they get their ideas about physical ability from watching Hollywood movies, where tiny actresses are regularly seem beating up hulking bad guys?
Here’s the reality:
If high school boys could enter, the best women in the world would not even qualify in many events, let alone have a chance to win. Yet this guide for schools says male high schoolers who identify as girls should be allowed to compete in girl’s events, whether they are taking hormone blockers or not. The ACLU is fighting in the courts to enforce this. Does that seem fair or reasonable?
I look at the picture and I acknowledge that Ludwig is a trans-woman. Being a former amateur athlete who competed in college, I liken the image of a professional athlete among junior amateurs. Or a heavy weight boxer among fly weight fighters. All are athletes, but there is a serious competitive advantage that can’t be overcome or judged on a level playing field. So Ludwig can share their locker room, but not the court. That may be unfair to her, but various people have to deal with various unfair disadvantages in life. Perhaps Ludwig ought not make her right to play the game more important than the game itself.
Of course that opens up the question of, what if Ludwig was 5’8" and only 10% better than the rest of the team? I don’t know the answer to that either. But at 6’6" and 120lb advantage, I think the answer is clear. More importantly, it should be clear to her.
I think that my position on this is that if being physically male gives a trans-woman an unfair advantage over other women, then they cannot compete at that level, or perhaps at all in professional sports. That may not be fair to her, but the alternative is unfair to a bunch more women against whom she is competing.
I certainly did. The vile hatred and discrimination of us by the TERFs on this board (with one even being a moderator on this board) calling us transwomen men and thinking we are a bunch of predators and rapists with a bunch of fantastical hypotheticals makes it so I would rather not participate. I’m not going to subject myself to insults and get ganged up against here. So they can talk shit about us all they want, I’m not going to validate them by engaging.
I finally found the article on changing rooms that made me rethink my stance a bit, it’s on the same site:
I used to think no skeevy person would bother jumping through the necessary hoops and insist on their ‘right’ to use the girl’s locker room, but the case of Jessica Yaniv has made me a lot less sure.
It’s also a pretty disquieting thought that an average sized school might contain 75 current or future rapists.
I’m sorry, and I understand completely.
But even the statement is bold shouldn’t be treated as a given. That’s what we’ve actually been discussing the most in this thread.
Read this story about another trans athlete, Hannah Mouncey:
Now here’s the thing: I don’t know why Mouncey’s teammates object to her presence in the locker room. Could it be they are hateful TERFs? Certainly. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to make that assumption without further digging, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to say women are morally wrong for saying Mouncey can’t undress and shower with them.
In Ludwig’s case, if you agree it takes a certain amount of tone deafness and insensitivity to insert herself on the team, then there’s a good likelihood that same tone deafness and insensitivity shows up in the locker room. So is it fair to impose this on Ludwig’s teammates, when we know Ludwig could easily undress in the room reserved for members of her birth sex?
I believe the answer to this is that yes it is unfair to make this imposition. Not just in sports but also in the locker room.
I think the lack of a spokesperson is a major problem.
If we were back in the 1950s and 1960s, it wouldn’t have been hard for us to find black folks who are brave enough to allow themselves to be labeled spokespeople for the civil rights movement. There were a number of folks who spoke and wrote on issues in a way that laid out what the issues were and what demands the majority of black folks were fighting for. No more segregation. No more job and housing discrimination. No more police violence. Enforcement of voting rights. Only folks who could keep to these talking points were allowed to be the face of the movement, because the movement had way too much riding on it to allow just ole rando to carry the flag.
Civil rights activists wanted black people to be treated equal to white people. But they were fine with black people having their own identity and white people having theirs. If instead of “WE ARE JUST AS GOOD AS WHITE PEOPLE!” they had shouted “WE ARE WHITE PEOPLE!”, I doubt their movement would have gotten very far. I also doubt the movement would have gotten very far if white allies had done the majority of the talking.
As I said in the early days of the thread, there is a part of me that is ready to evolve towards a “gender doesn’t matter!” attitude. But I’m too logical-minded to be able to ignore all the contradictions seeped in gender ideology. I care about too much shit to not worry about what might happen if gender ideology slogans and mantras are accepted too literally. An eloquent, intelligent, reasonable spokesperson could really help address the misconceptions, concerns, and worries from folks like me. If someone could point me to a spokesperson who has a more nuanced view about the trans rights platform than what’s apparent from the “TERF!!” screechers on Reddit, then maybe I would be more comfortable joining the woke crowd.
I think the example of Mouncey is a good example of the “feeling wars” that embed this discussion.
Some or many of the teammates felt uncomfortable with Mouncey being naked in their space.
Mouncey felt uncomfortable using a space reserved for males. She also felt uncomfortable with the request to use a separate accommodation. We have discomfort all around. Who’s discomfort should be elevated over the other? There’s got to be a moral victor in this war, correct?
Are the teammates TERFs? Or are they women who feel uncomfortable being unclothed in the presence of an unclothed male, as most women would feel?
Is Mouncey a self-entitled jerk for refusing to use a third space? Or does she simply believe her penis is no more gendered than her nose and anyone who thinks it is gendered is a hateful old school robot?
I know folks are thinking the teammates should have swallowed the discomfort. But I think if I were a teammate, my concern wouldn’t be with Mouncey. It would be what to do when there are multiple Mouncey’s and suddenly the locker room doesn’t feel like a women’s space anymore. It’s easy to say people should put up with the “rare” outlier and shuddup about it. But there’s no quota on transwomen football players. Maybe it isn’t too much to ask that women put up with the single outlier in their midst. But should they be forced to put up with multiple outliers? At what point does it become acceptable for a woman to call for a time-out so that all the discomfort she has been swallowing can finally be considered by the powers that be?
These are quite different scenarios, though. It seems clear from your article that Ludwig, however unfairly advantaged compared to the athletes she’s playing with, genuinely does identify and live as female. She may not be the right kind of woman to be playing women’s college basketball, but her female self-identification itself is not in question.
That’s a very different situation from the hypotheticals about unambiguously male-identified boys or men deliberately pretending to identify as female “just for the field hockey season” or for some other particular tactical advantage, when they’ve never shown a shred of inclination to identify as female in any other context. Do we really think that coaches and teammates and parents aren’t going to spot the con in that case?
All the articles I’ve read about transgender athletes playing on school sports teams emphasize that coming out and transitioning and finding a place of some kind in sports as a person of their self-identified gender took years of adjustment and adaptation and the support of teammates and coaches, generally with a lot of community scrutiny and comment during that time. It’s not something that they “got away with” merely by ticking an M or F box on a form.
It simply doesn’t make sense to me that a bunch of male-identified high school boys is likely to be able to launch some kind of Animal House-style laddish prank to take over the girls’ team by strategically and insincerely declaring themselves female-identified, while sports and school administrators stand by helpless to detect or stop their shenanigans. That’s not real-life school athletics, that’s the plot of an Adam Sandler movie or an early 1980s sitcom.
So we’ve got a serious case of apples and oranges here. I recognize that the issue of some transgender female athletes having unfair physical advantages over cisgender female ones is a valid concern and deserves consideration. But the notion of large numbers of cisgender troll bois successfully taking over girls’ sports just for the lulz or the medals by transparently faking transgender-identity claims, and being able to get away with it for months despite the obvious frivolity of their intention, is AFAICT not a serious issue.
In short, physical disparities between transgender and cisgender female athletes is a genuinely problematic concern, but the number of actual transgender female athletes is comparatively small. The number of cisgender troll bois who might like to fake their way onto girls’ teams might be quite large, but the prospect of their actually getting away with that is not a genuinely problematic concern.
ISTM that anti-trans advocates are mixing up these two issues in order to create the impression that women’s sports are about to be massively invaded by hordes of biologically-male athletes, whether sincerely transgender-female or dishonest fakers, while cisgender female athletes are helpless against their physical superiority and overwhelming numbers. I don’t think that impression is an accurate depiction of reality.
Really?
Post-pubescent boys will destroy grown women in almost any sport. The Canadian women’s hockey team would be drubbed by a good team of 16-year-olds; against a Junior-A team of top 16-18 year olds they would struggle to complete the game with a full team of uninjured players. A state championship contending high school boys’ basketball team would easily win the WNBA championship and might not lose a game all year. At last year’s California high school track and field championships, seven of eight runners in the final ran faster than any woman in any heat at the 2016 Olympics, and the #8 boy would have won women’s silver.
The difference between men and women in sports is incomprehensibly vast, but it’s hard to notice because they don’t play against each other (at least in the stuff you see on TV.) When Serena Williams is playing so-and-so, you’re comparing Serena in terms of her athletic capabilities to other women, not men; when you watch Roger Federer play some guy, you’re comparing men to other men, so it’s hard to really notice that the guy who Roger Federer kicked the shit out of would, in fact, totally stomp Serena.
This isn’t to say Serena is not a great tennis player. Of COURSE she is a greater tennis player than the world’s #186th ranked man even though the #186 man would beat her easily. Shes an inner circle, diamond-encrusted Hall of Fame athlete while the #186 man isn’t. She’s won everything and the kitchen sink fairly, against other world class athletes, properly playing in the women’s side of the game.
“I’m sorry, (Name), but for reasons of fairness, since you have a male body, you must compete against other males. Sports are separated by biological sex, not gender identity, because they are contests of physical prowess, not identity.”
In the case of females identifying as boys, by all means let them try.
Of course coaches and parents and teammates will spot the con. But since anyone who says they’re a women is a women they can be accused of transphobia if they question it. A boy who’s been paying attention will know this.
In many states even therapists can’t question kids who say they’re trans. It’s illegal.