this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Holy loaded language Batman? "Attacking" the "way of life?" It's women's high school sports, not some ancient and sacred tradition. Just kids trying to have fun.
Get some goddamn perspective please. Transphobes didn't care about women's highschool basketball until it gave them a wedge issue to attack transwomen. The fact that it became a topic and a talking point has nothing at all to do with how much an issue it actually is.
Were left-handed people attacking the rest of the population's way of life? Before left-handed scissors, only a fraction of a percent of people identified as left handed, after, it skyrocketed to 10%. Why? Because left-handers were stigmatized and attacked (sometimes literally) so hid their true selves. It was only when society accepted left-handedness, that they felt comfortable being left handed in the open. So I ask again, were left-handed people attacking right-handers by wanting to be accepted in society? No. Fuck no. Society learned and adjusted to accommodate and accept and it became normal. This whole trans in sports argument is utterly assanine. You adjust the rules so things are fair and you're not discriminating against a minority. Schools used to have separate entrances for girls and boys. Seems ridiculous now, but I'm sure made perfect sense to the people of those times. One day, after society adjusts, we'll look back at these anti-trans mentalities in the same way we do about gender segregated school entrances. Utter silliness. "Attacking the main populations way of life", how is this any different than the civil rights movement of the 60's? One might consider that the black community was attacking the white populations way of life, but I think most of us can see the absurdity in that way of thinking.
I invite you to explore your own consideration. You say there's separation for a reason, but what's the reason? Is it practical or ideological? For instance, clothing regulations and criticisms are heavily ideological and adhere to traditions more than they do to the needs of the practice or individual choice. So, is the separation issues being brought a result of experience and reality? Do we really need a new category to put individuals in because a few from a very small group excel? Michal Phelps is an outlier, but the sport didn't change because of his advantages, because it doesn't make sense to.
What I'm trying to say here is that there's no real problem being discussed when we talk about trans people in sports, just a hypothetical one.
The reason I was eluding to was that biologically male and female are different. Male has much more muscle so if you put a male-to-female transgender into a female sport then they have the possibility of having a disproportionate amount more strength now. This would be unfair and potentially demoralize the contestants.
We could potentially have a new category of athletes being transgender vs transgender so the playing field is fair.
Edit: Thank you for being the one person open to conversation. Also it's incredibly short sighted for my original comment to have been removed. I was respectful with my comment
I by no means agree with the person you're responding to, and feel that especially in the scenario of kids they should just be allowed to do whatever they want and have fun.
I do wonder however, aren't there a lot of sports that become almost completely male dominated if you move away from the separation? For example the historical top 1000 men in 100m sprint are all faster than the fastest recorded woman in history.
I feel that taking away the separate competition would reduce these moments of empowerment for non-men.
I use "man" and "woman" with a grain of salt here, as it is what these people were assigned when they were performing the sport, I by no means want to reduce gender to a binary thing.
I also want to say that while it is a subject that I find interesting to discuss, I really dislike how bigots frame it as some sort of violent attack on their way of life. I see it more as an interesting conundrum that we can try and find a solution for together as a group.
As I said, we can’t discuss it from a theoretical point of view. The way I would go about it is:
Those conditions would indicate that trans athletes are in practice having their own competition that excludes cis athletes. And this would be the starting point for discussions, not a reason for segregation. Top athletes are more likely to have a constitution that is out of the curve, but that is not enough to guarantee top spots. They have to work for it as well and most cis athletes advantages are just celebrated, instead of the criminalization we see when trans athletes excel.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
I agree with most of what you're saying. Especially about top sports being a combination of both hard work and a unique constitution.
I just wouldn't call it segregation, as for me this term has quite a negative connotation (might be a language thing). I think it's empowering to have separate brackets to compete in so that every "group" of base constitution has a chance to compete. Though this does open the question of where to draw lines and such, to which I don't have an answer (as it probably goes to theoretical again as you were saying).
Thanks again for your input 🙏.