Eh. I think a lot of American don’t vote for a myriad of reasons. The biggest one being inconvenience. Not everyone can afford to take time out of their day to stand in a potentially long line…only to later find out that their vote didn’t matter because all the electoral votes for their state when to the other guy. And there are also a lot of folks who are apathetic, almost fatalistically so. You could show them video of the president announcing plans to drop bombs on their home and they will just shrug their shoulders until it actually happens.
They may not know about it now, but it would take precious little to make it a voting issue. Biden and Trump are polling way too close to each other to shrug off a divide like this one.
It’s well past time America switched to voting directly for the president. Is it all going to be postal voting this year? That should dispense with the queues, but I guess people will have to be organised enough to register and get their ballot paper in advance.
As for bombs, I don’t think I’d believe the current president until they actually started falling either.
That research you found seemed to be checking for issues the Rs could use. I don’t think it would change anyone’s vote on it’s own, but maybe in combination with other things? The Covid and BLM demonstrations probably make a much bigger difference, though.
Yes, it’s in combo with other things. That’s how it always works. It’s never just Russia or just sexism or just economIc anxiety or whatever. It’s the sum total of all of these things that helped Trump in 2016.
I won’t pretend to know the impact that the trans issue will have. But I do think it’s a potential factor that could either lower Dem turnout and/or repel moderate/independent voters. Other factors include pandemic-associated anxiety/depression/apathy, high unemployment, polarization surrounding the BLM movement, mail-in ballot snafus, and yes, Russia disinformation campaigns.
With respect to the latter, Russia wouldn’t even need to fabricate disinformation about gender ideology to create a game-changing wedge issue. All Russia would need to do is shine light on what TRAs are actually lobbying for.
It’s too bad that men/women and boys/girls sports weren’t called male/female, since that’s really the reason for the differentiation. Differentiation by sex is done for the same reason as differentiation by age range and weight class. We even have differentiation based on school size. They are all artificial differentiations done to create fair competition. But regardless, I think that trans athletes can compete as their gender identity as long as policies are created with the the goal of fair competition rather than validation of gender identity.
In the picture of the runners in the NY Times article, it is immediately evident which athlete is genetically XY just based on their leg muscles:
That discrepancy needs to be addressed in order to ensure fair competition. Transwomen with genetically XY muscles need to be handicapped appropriately so that they are at a similar level as athletes with genetically XX muscles. I think that can be accomplished with things like:
- Setting testosterone and estrogen levels based on average values rather than max. I think estrogen levels also need to be included since it affects emotions, which can affect how competitive and aggressive the athlete is.
- The farther transwomen athletes differ from the average hormone level, the more they are handicapped
- Transwomen athletes are handicapped more depending on how recently they began hormone treatments. A transwoman who just started treatments would be handicapped a lot, while one who had been on treatments for 5 years might not have a handicap.
These are the kinds of things which would allow a transwoman athlete to compete at a level consistent with the cis-women athletes and minimize any advantage from their XY genetics. I don’t think it really makes sense to create separate leagues for trans athletes, since the pool of competitors would be so small. But with some reasonable requirements based around creating fair competition, it should be possible to allow trans athletes to complete fairly as their gender identity.
This idea has come up on the SDMB before. It simply is not workable. You’re getting into an area of almost limitless complexity, where any handicapping system you come up with is going to be of dubious accuracy. You cannot draw an obvious line between a given testosterone level and a person’s performance in javelin throw, and that’s a simple, one-person-at-a-time sport. How do you handicap athletes in basketball?
There is a really obvious solution, which is to allow athletes to compete according to whether they’re male or female. That has worked for a really long time. If it means we say “male” and “female” instead of “men” and “women,” okay.
Just came across this article:
That messaging is expected to be put to the test soon, as Terry Schilling, a conservative activist who runs the American Principles Project — which primarily champions cultural issues — is planning to run two ads in battleground Michigan that attack Biden for his support of transgender rights, accusing him of endorsing “gender change treatment for minors,” including surgery and hormone therapies.
…
His arguments for this strategy are twofold: first, that voters are much more likely to vote when and become engaged over social issues, not economics; and second, that Republicans’ reticence to engage on social issues has hampered them and allowed the Left, and by extension, the Democratic Party, to enjoy electoral success without being seriously challenged.As evidence, Schilling points to ads he ran in Kentucky’s 2019 gubernatorial race attacking Democrat Steve Beshear on his support for LGBTQ rights by running ads showing biological males dominating athletic competitions against cisgender females.
He claims the focus-group work he did revealed a good deal of unease among swing voters and suburbanites, who might support transgender equality in theory but balk at transgender athletes or allowing transgender people into restrooms matching their gender identity.
This is the GOP’s game plan right here.
more from the article.
The first group of advisors fears a backlash should Trump begin opining on transgender issues, pointing to the various examples of how championing social issues has cost Republicans votes in elections.
The chief example they point to as evidence is the 2016 North Carolina gubernatorial election, where Republican Pat McCrory — who doubled-down on his support for the state’s anti-transgender “bathroom bill” — went down to defeat even as Trump was handily winning the state at the presidential level.
That group also warns that transgender issues don’t yet resonate or have salience with most voters, as most Americans don’t personally know a person who is transgender or nonbinary, and risks opening up Republicans and the president, once again, to charges of bigotry.
“Not only is it very risky, it’s really only an issue if it’s an issue for you,” an anonymous advisor is quoted as saying. “Until these issues saturate the mainstream, there is no reason the president should be mentioning them on the campaign trail.”
It would be more sensible for them to forget bathrooms and focus on 16 year olds being allowed to get double mastectomies. Fortunately the Republicans aren’t very sensible.
You know what “had worked” for international athletics for even longer? Since millennia ago, even? Just don’t allow women to compete at all.
Sometimes the old ways are not the best ways.
I’m a cynical sort who thinks this article was pushed by the Trump campaign. The “two sides” angle is a device used to create the impression that they haven’t yet decided what their strategy will be. Portraying the Ivanka/Kushner camp as the bleeding heart socially conscious type who are worried about alienating the trans community seems like a facile attempt to humanize the White House.
I don’t believe this storyline at all, mainly because I’ve seen these people at work for 4 years but also because the rationale is nonsensical. They have absolutely nothing to lose playing the trans card. The only people that will be turned off by that will be people who are strongly left; these are people who would never vote for Trump anyway. It’s the middle of the road folks they are trying to entice, and this could work if they target the swing states like MI.
True, but there are valid concerns that any move towards allowing biological males to compete in what have been female categories, without the need for any medical intervention, is a move that could diminish the opportunities for biological females. That would seem to be a retrograde step.
Such a move seems to be on the fringe at the moment and the majority seem to be of the opinion that some degree of gatekeeping needs to be in place for professional sports but…that seems at odds with a wider push for recognition that even biological sex is mutable and that it should not be required to make any bodily modifications in order to change the sex on one’s birth certificate.
If that latter view does become enshrined in law then I don’t see how any of the sports gatekeeping requirements can withstand legal challenge in the future.
So why would anyone argue for women to lose opportunities in sports by letting male athletes take their place?
But now everyone can compete. We fixed the “women aren’t allowed to compete” problem. No one has ever come up with a concrete, logical reason why the system needs changing. It works well, and it’s open to everyone, with the exception of one hole (in some leagues) - rules against the use of testosterone and related agents mean a trans man is often prohibited from competing either as the actual sex,female, or indeed as a male, even though their testosterone levels still aren’t any higher than many male athletes. The solution there would be to just make an exception in that case, if a trans man wants to take testosterone and compete against men. That isn’t an advantageous position; a trans man has immense DISADVANTAGES if competing against males. And yet some have been banned from doing so.
So your counterargument to @RickJay’s point that female-restricted sports have been effective in ensuring female sport opportunity is to…point to the days when female sports didn’t exist all?
His point wasn’t that “old ways are the best ways”. Come on.
I’m just pointing out that his stated reasoning “That has worked for a really long time.” is not a useful argument against change, since we all agree that the inclusion of women is a good thing. So “what worked” can change.
I’ve already stated in this thread that I have no problem with cis-women-only sports groups, as long as the labeling or presentation isn’t exclusionary. I didn’t feel it needed restating, but there you are.
I’ve pointed out that athletes are not allowed to take stimulants (except for caffeine). I actually think this is messed up, since it forces athletes with ADHD to make a tough decision–be a super jock with poor grades or sit in the bleachers and be on honor roll. So it’s not like trans athletes are the only ones who have to make sacrifices. At least a transwoman athlete can play a sport, provided she has the ability to play with other males. It’s just a psychological hurdle that she must overcome. Not a “denial of humanity” hurdle.
I think for high school sports, gatekeeping should not that be complicated given the ages involved. If a student can show they’ve been on HRT since puberty, then there really shouldn’t be much controversial having them play against girls, provided they undergo routine testing. But then that opens up another can of worms–the ethics of blocking puberty in kids and putting them on HRT. Prior to this thread, I had always assumed that these things weren’t so risky and that all the changes were reversible. But this isn’t true for everyone.
And I am cynical enough to think that sport opportunities will be a deciding factor for some parents considering whether to sign off on on puberty blockers in their dysphoric kids. You gotta worry about the kids who feel like they can’t change their mind about anything “gender” related because they’ve got all these sports accolades and trophies hanging up on the wall and potential scholarships in their future, all predicated on them passing as female. That’s a lot of fucking pressure for a 16-year-old.
But your response was an absurd counter to this. Yes, “what worked in the past” can change. But change isn’t necessarily good. What happened in the past isn’t necessarily good either.
I used to be okay with this too, but females aren’t just estrogenized versions of males. Female puberty is a beast. It’s not just periods every month either. Widening pelvises, large breast development, and other bodily changes are stuff that female athletes have to live with that males don’t. Doesn’t matter if they are on HRT; trans girls don’t experience the trials and tribulations of female puberty.
You say it’s “absurd”, and then you repeat the actual point I was making. If “what happened in the past isn’t necessarily good either”, it is appeal to common practice that is absurd.
I’m not saying change is necessarily good. I’ve repeated I have no objection to the status quo continuing (with truth in labeling).