Right. I’m not aware of any democrats suggesting that all trans should be eligible to play sports as their gender of choice. I remember some dems defending the boxer who the right was erroneously claiming had transitioned.
And I’ll repeat the request I made about 50 posts upthread but extend it to everyone here: What is the crazy progressive policy that enough voters knew about for it to influence the election, and that is true?
Because no democrat strategy is going to prevent the right making up stuff.
…but if Seth Moulton has his way, trans women would be forced not to play against his daughters.
Is that a position you think the Democrats should support? And what about trans men? If we are consistent, they should be playing against women, right?
Because I’m not sure what qualifies you to decide what is and isn’t an important issue to fight for. This is clearly an important issue for trans people. They want the Democrats to have their back on this battle. Because they know that it’s a death by a thousand cuts. It won’t stop at sports.
It’s not physical. Its social.
But this isn’t what the debate is about.
Its about what the Democrats should and shouldn’t be saying. What they should and shouldn’t support. And the Democrats shouldn’t be buying into the transphobic talking points that people like Seth Moulton decided to indulge in. That hurts trans people. That hurts their struggle. As I said: I agree to a degree that it should be left up to individual sports. But it should be based on the science, and not the sort of nonsense that Democrats like Seth Moulton are saying. That will lead to bans that are not based on the science but on bigotry and hate, and that isn’t something the Democrats should be supporting.
What this debate is about is how people should respond to Seth Moulton, or people who say things like he does.
The fact is, most people didn’t take a gender studies course or even a philosophy class. They don’t even get in endless debates over crazy hypotheticals in Great Debates. Esoteric ideas like gender being a social construct are going to go right over their heads.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t reachable on the Trans issue, it just means that they need it put into terms that they can understand. What they DO understand is being kind to people, treating them as they want to be treated. They may not get that gender is a social construct, but they can certainly understand that their friends’ daughter wants to go by Tracy now and that the right thing to do is to respect that and treat her like they would any other woman. Or that she has gender dysphoria and needs gender affirming care to live a healthy, satisfying life.
So when someone who supports trans people in this way expresses concern about the idea of trans women in women’s sports, the solution isn’t to admonish them for being transphobic and evil. It is to explain that you understand their concerns about keeping women’s sports competitive for women who were AFAB, that you support the right of the governing body of each sporting competition to put limits on what circumstances trans women can compete as women.
I think if that was our message, that would go over much better than “You’re a transphobe!!!”.
…I ABSOLUTELY will admonish someone who calls trans women either “men” or “formerly male.”
And I will admonish them for suggesting that his daughters are somehow in danger if they were to encounter a trans woman/girl on the playing field.
But…Seth Moulton is a transphobe. He’s taking a transphobic position. He’s dehumanizing trans people. He knows exactly what he is saying, he knows exactly what he was doing, and he knows exactly what crowd he is dog-whistling. I’m not going to pretend to “understand his concerns” when I don’t. Because I’ll say it again: it isn’t going to stop with sports.
Thats the danger in playing “civility politics.” This was the game that the Harris campaign played. They basically did what you wanted them to do. And it wasn’t a winner for them. The Republicans spent over 200 million dollars on anti-trans advertisments and propaganda. And in response the Harris campaign decided to effectively ignore the issue, ceding ground to the Republicans, pushing the public perception of trans issues in the wrong direction. And now they want to push that perception even further.
The Democrats should stand up and fight for the things they believe in. That shouldn’t be a controversial position to take.
Here’s the thing; that’s already the status quo. If you want the Democratic position on trans people in sports, it’s that.
What Republicans are pushing is a blanket ban on trans people competing in sport regardless of what the sporting body says, and a ban on puberty blockers so that trans kids are forced to grow up with the physical differences you bemoan, and bathroom laws to prevent social transitioning and further ostracize them until they no longer feel safe presenting in public.
Democrats should not be willing to tolerate that. LBJ didn’t have to choose between civil rights and supporting the working class, and neither do we.
There isn’t a agreed to set of things that Democrats believe in though. That’s exactly where the wedge is being driven.
I think you would be very surprised to see how many Democrats would gladly expel groups like Blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ, etc from the party in order to secure economic security for white people in their enclave. It’s not exactly a secret and these minority groups know it.
And are there young people here who say that’s why they didn’t vote for Harris? Maybe one or two voted for Stein, but that was far from the margin of Trump’s victory.
And I’m sure there are young people who do not want to be pandered to because of their age, just as I do not want to be pandered to because I am old. What’s best for groups I am in is not necessarily what’s best for the nation and world.
Why did Trump almost win the Hispanic vote? It sure was not by saying he fights for Latinos.
Harris did a good job to keep it close (Trump may not have a majority when all votes are counted) when the administration was being blamed for the inflation spurt, and the anti-incumbent thing was international. She shouldn’t do a Trump and run again, but her campaign style does not need to be reversed.
Harris didnt lose because she did something wro g, she lost because Trump is who america wants.
Its sad, but for all that America claims to be special, its small and barrow minded, racist and nasty. Its time to accept that.
People on this board were constantly talking about what a great candidate she was and how well her campaign was being run; then she lost and everyone turned 180 and started talking about how obviously bad a candidate she was and how badly her campaign was run. I’m pretty sure this means people on this board aren’t actually good judges of those things.
But yeah; she lost because people wanted Trump, not because of anything she did or said. Judging from what many of his voters have said they weren’t even paying attention to her in the first place. And you can’t convince people who aren’t listening, no matter how persuasive you are.