I don’t understand what is happening in this world.
How is this action defensible? Never in my life have I seen a cause as unpopular as the inclusion of males in female contact sports be so unmovable. No one can convince me the movement behind this cares at all about women.
The individual authorities were given discretion over how/when to apply to advice. One would imagine there will be a lawsuit at some point in the near future. Rugby has so many injury opportunities that the option will arise and it’ll be interesting to hear a test of the evidence in open court.
Although I think that could happen with a single team, in real life I doubt it it would be that much of an influence on any single team. But since the lower level teams compete to go to the higher level events–district, regionals, state, and nationals–those onsies and twosies transgirls end up getting funneled to the higher level since they dominate their sports. It’s at those higher levels that I could see trans athletes taking over completely. Like within a district, maybe there’s only one transgirl athelete among all the schools, but at the district meet there are several districts together and each district may have one or two transgirl athletes. Those transgirls move on to regionals, and now there are even more transgirls at regionals since the transgirls from the other regions have moved up. Going along that path, eventually there would be just transgirls competing at the highest levels. So 1st, 2nd, and 3rd at the state level would likely just be transgirl athletes.
I’ve heard that the percent of trans people is somewhere between 1/100 and 1/300. So for every 1000 boy athletes in a sport, then there might be 3-10 transgirl athletes in that group. That small percentage probably doesn’t really make a huge difference at a single school, but the transgirls would very likely be the athletes which funneled up through the championship meets and cisgirls would not really have a chance to advance.
Agreed. I’m very glad that I’m able to nurse my baby, but it’s not something a teenager is likely to consider at all. It’s great that these procedures are available for those who really need them, but I think we’ve got much too blase about using them.
Me neither. That’s way too young to properly understand and weigh up the consequences.
I’ve been watching a documentary from Sweden on the subject, apparently the government was planning to allow adolescents as young as 15 to get surgery without needing parental permission, but (maybe as a result of this?) they changed their minds:
Representation. Because mixing all the kids WOULD freeze out almost all of the girls, and girls wouldn’t be able to compete, or even daydream about competing, and a lot of sports. And there are (as previously mentioned) all sorts of benefits to girls being able to play sports and succeed at it.
No, you can’t. But I find it farfetched that boys are going to all suddenly realize they are really girls. And I don’t think a lot of boys will fake it, either. There are so many advantages to being male. Throw them all away? Find yourself not-fitting-in with the people who are supposed to be your peers?
Yeah, I could be wrong. But now that anyone (almost) can come out as gay, the vast majority of kids are (shockers!) still straight. Why do you think this will be different for the apparently smaller minority of trans people?
I don’t see what insurance company would cover any rugby league that permits transwomen on the field with women. That alone should at least merit a more cautious posture. Waiting for a lawsuit before changing course is like waiting for your car to crash before buckling up.
I don’t think you’ve fully considered your objections to the inherent lack of fairness in this world and what a “fair” world might look like. Seems like there ought to be a Twilight Zone episode devoted to this idea, if there isn’t one already.
So what? Sports aren’t fair so who cares if a weaker group of people are frozen out? People with asthma are freezed out of lots of sports.
I’m not arguing that we should make the world completely fair. I’m saying that unfairness is immutable. And while we should generally strive for more, rather than less, fairness; perfect fairness is never possible and and any incremental gain in fairness has to be weighed against its costs.
So if you get this for boys, the same logic applies to transwomen. It’s just a question of how much “freezing out” you think is tolerable for girls.
But I find it farfetched that boys are going to all suddenly realize they are really girls. And I don’t think a lot of boys will fake it, either. There are so many advantages to being male. Throw them all away? Find yourself not-fitting in with the people who are supposed to be your peers?
You’ve probably never listened to Incel chatter (and I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to). Misogynists totally believe that women have it easier than men. And what’s horrible is that their logic contains grains of truth.
“Women don’t have to work hard to get sex.”
“Life is easier for pretty girls than ugly boys.”
“If you’re girl who is quirky, you’re quirky. You’re cute. If you’re a boy with quirks, you’re creepy. People hate you.”
“Girls are protected. People help them without them even asking for it. They can cry and people will feel sorry for them. They can be sad and no one will tell them to ‘suck it up’. They can sit on their lazy ass and everyone will do their bidding. If they’re pretty, they can find a rich husband and sit on their lazy ass for the rest of their life. But if you’re an ugly man, you’ll have to shovel shit all day. No one will care about you.”
If you’re a teenaged boy listening to shit like this, you will start to see it validated in the world around you. But you won’t see how girls are expected to do more house work or emotional labor than boys or how they are held to higher standards of decorum by their parents. They don’t see how girls are socialized to care more about their physical appearance than their intelligence or personality or how they are protected too much and thus taught to be afraid of everything. They aren’t able to process that being viewed as a sex object is not a good thing. Teenaged boys will only see the good things about girldom, not the bad stuff. Even the blatant sexism they’re exposed to isn’t likely to strike a boy as that big of a deal, because people have a weird way of rationalizing -isms. Racists think that black people have it easier than white people. “As long as they are conservative, a black person can do anything they want in the great state of South Carolina!” A misogynist might think, “If I were a girl, I’d be a cool girl who knows how to throw a ball…and I wouldn’t cry every five minutes either!”
is the only proper response for this statement. “But if we let the gayz marry, what’s next? Someone marrying a toaster?”
I get what you’re saying, but your view seems to be posited on an assumption that transwomen will always be a fixed population–the super tiny one that it currently is. But realize that even just a modest increase in transwomen athletes would result in lots of women athletes being displaced. Since men’s sports are open to transwomen and thus transwomen aren’t suffering from lack of opportunity like women are, doesn’t this strike you as more than just a little unfair? Cuz it strikes me as a lotta unfair.
You seem unable to formulate an argument that doesn’t rely on false equivalencies to blacks and gays.
Just pointing this out in case you decide to really participate in this discussion.
As someone who used to be a teenage boy - no, just… no. If that’s how lowly you think of the male mind, then I don’t blame you for being so disgusted by them that you don’t want anyone who ever used to be a male anywhere near you.
I can assure you that the vast, vast majority of men don’t think the way the incels claim. That is disgusting to the vast majority of us. I can assure you of that, but I doubt its gonna help, so I’m out of this thread.
If everyone comes out as gay and decides to get married, that doesn’t affect anyone.
But if every male comes out as a woman, the half of humanity who didn’t have to “come out” as a woman–since their biology is what makes them a woman–would be affected. Because half of humanity would no longer have a way to talk about their natural disadvantages without males telling them they don’t exist or aren’t important.
You suffer from a poor imagination and if you can’t entertain what would happen to women’s sports if just 5% males were to start experimenting with a “I’m a girl!” stage between the ages of 14 through 18.
As someone who used to be a teenage boy - no, just… no. If that’s how lowly you think of the male mind, then I don’t blame you for being so disgusted by them that you don’t want anyone who ever used to be a male anywhere near you.
Did you read what I fucking posted?
monstro:
If you’re a teenaged boy listening to shit like this, you will start to see it validated in the world around you.
I was a teenage boy not that many years ago, and of course, this sort of shit was around, in one way or another. You don’t see it validated around you unless you’re already a misogynistic sicko.
Not much. But even the incel-est high school boy knows he can’t snap his fingers and become a pretty girl. And even they probably realize that ugly girls with masculine features don’t get all those perks. And they probably don’t want sex with boys, anyway.
I mean, if your argument is that a large number of teenage boys are stupid, self-hating incels who would really like to identify as girls, I’m out. That’s a ridiculous position to argue against.
(i did just kick an incel off a discord server i run. It’s not as if I’ve never run into them.)