Transgender and sports

[Gameface]

This is a difficult one for me. Not really so much in Junior High and High School, as I think as taxpayers for public education we shouldn't view sports at that level as a means of determining who the most superior specimen is at a given sporting activity, but at that level we should be teaching sportsmanship, hard work, working towards a goal, dealing with defeat, being a good winner, etc..

But I'm going to try to stay out of the weeds on this, so I'm not going to get super detailed on what kind of criteria might be appropriate. As someone who never participated in high school level team sports and who has never been a parent of a person who has, I am not very qualified to address specifics on the issue.

What I will talk about is the continuing effort to delegitimize the sincerity of transgender people. This idea that they are playing a trick on us and we have to be smart enough not to fall for it.

I have made lengthy posts about this in the past and those threads ultimately got closed. But this is the essence of the transgender issue in the U.S., it is that people think that transgender people are lying about who they are. It is automatically denied by anti-trans people when put in that context, but they continue to betray the truth. They will always fall back into the idea that transgender identity is a lie, it is illegitimate and that it is important to not be fooled by it. It is the root of almost every anti-trans argument I have ever seen. It is why anti-trans people smugly mis-gender the trans people they are talking about, because they are proving to their fellow anti-trans friends that they will not be fooled and that they are not afraid to say so.

If public school sports are about teaching, in any capacity at all, then within *reason, transgender people should be allowed to play in the sport as the gender they identify as. At that level it should not matter at all if one athletic student is faster, scores higher, or whatever else. Safety should be considered, which is true regardless of transgender athletes.

I don't think college level sports should be considered amature sports or that the athletes should be considered "student athletes." At that level it is a business, money is being made and athletes are maneuvering for lucrative opportunities, not to mention scholarships. I think at that level there should be some kind of standards that account for testosterone levels of transgender athletes and other relevant factors that I'm not really qualified to get into specifics of. I think people using transgender identity specifically for sporting opportunities is EXTREMELY unlikely (anyone who wants me to go on about that aspect, just ask and I'll likely post 500 words about how I feel about that) but I care enough about transgender rights that I'm more than willing to take this issue away from the anti-trans community by placing restrictions on some transgender athletes so that the bigots can STFU unless they want to fully admit their hate and malice towards the trans community in general.

 

[Darkwing Duck]

I actually audibly laughed at the being afraid to post in this thread quip.

I don't post in here because I don't currently have an active interest to.

I do have an anthropology degree so I'd like to think I'm more qualified to speak on this subject than most here, at least academically, but people don't really care about education tells them different than what they want to believe, so it's kind of pointless to argue at all. That, and I'm old. Probably be all over this topic 15 years ago.

 

[Gameface]

I actually audibly laughed at the being afraid to post in this thread quip.

I don't post in here because I don't currently have an active interest to.

I do have an anthropology degree so I'd like to think I'm more qualified to speak on this subject than most here, at least academically, but people don't really care about education tells them different than what they want to believe, so it's kind of pointless to argue at all. That, and I'm old. Probably be all over this topic 15 years ago.

Well I'd be very interested in your input for what that's worth.

 

[fishonjazz]

Any particular reasons that haven't been expressed?

Nah I dont think its any new reason. Just believe that being a male physically is advantageous in sports.

 

[Gameface]

Nah I dont think its any new reason. Just believe that being a male physically is advantageous in sports.

And yet there are no restrictions within either the female or male teams to prevent people with massive physical advantages over the other athletes from playing against them. This has never been a criteria in school sports, that you can't play if you're physically superior to the rest of the students. Like this has never even sort of been a consideration... until transgender students wanted to compete as their gender of identity.

 

[Darkwing Duck]

Well I'd be very interested in your input for what that's worth.

To be fair, any thoughts I have bring in new questions that have to be researched (e.g. What does Western/US society as a whole expect from non-professional, organized athletics) which bring new questions and thoughts, which would leave me with something like a college term paper, and I don't have any interest at all in the time involved in that. My interests tend to comparative cross-culturally, rather than any one culture.

So I do have two thought questions that end up popping up in head that I AM interested in.

First, the hypothetical. If we lived in the world from the Pixar movie, "The Incredibles," should Dash be banned from competing in athletic competitions? What would be the language of said ban? Could other people with "superpowers" compete? Would Violet be banned from competing athletically as well?

Second, a defining question. This thread has touched on college and high school sports. One is considered women's sports, the latter girls' sports. "Women" and "girls" are gender terms. Boys'/Men's sports are also gender terms that some want to differentiate from girl's/women's sports purely biologically. As such, what is the biological difference between girls and women? If your answer is age, what is the biological difference between being ~6574 days old and ~6575 days old and why is that the differentiation?

 

[fishonjazz]

And yet there are no restrictions within either the female or male teams to prevent people with massive physical advantages over the other athletes from playing against them. This has never been a criteria in school sports, that you can't play if you're physically superior to the rest of the students. Like this has never even sort of been a consideration... until transgender students wanted to compete as their gender of identity.

Exactly. because the average male is similar to the average male in physical nature. The average female is similar to the average female in physical nature. But the average female isn't similar to the average male in physical nature. That is the reason for the seperation imo. I was a decent basketball player but not good enough to play at the college level (maybe a salt lake community or something). I played basketball against the female basketball team members in high school and jr high. The very best females I played against were WAY worse than I was. I could beat them with ease. And I wasn't even that good.

 

[Al-O-Meter]

And yet there are no restrictions within either the female or male teams to prevent people with massive physical advantages over the other athletes from playing against them. This has never been a criteria in school sports, that you can't play if you're physically superior to the rest of the students. Like this has never even sort of been a consideration.

What are you talking about? Of course there are restrictions! Performance enhancing drugs are banned because they give a massive physical advantage. Wrestling has weight classes so that smaller wrestler have a weight to compete when larger athletes would overpower them. Before matches, they don't ask the wrestlers how heavy they feel that day. They put them on a scale. There are all sorts of restrictions used to balance competition, all the way up to putting large schools with a history of athletic success in higher divisions. 1A teams don't have to beat 6A teams to win state titles. A Division I school doesn't usually get any credit toward bowl eligibility for beating a Division III school. Making restrictions to balance competition is the rule in sport, not the exception.

 

[Gameface]

Exactly. because the average male is similar to the average male in physical nature. The average female is similar to the average female in physical nature. But the average female isn't similar to the average male in physical nature. That is the reason for the seperation imo. I was a decent basketball player but not good enough to play at the college level (maybe a salt lake community or something). I played basketball against the female basketball team members in high school and jr high. The very best females I played against were WAY worse than I was. I could beat them with ease. And I wasn't even that good.

This is not remotely true.

 

[Gameface]

What are you talking about? Of course there are restrictions! Performance enhancing drugs are banned because they give a massive physical advantage. Wrestling has weight classes so that smaller wrestler have a weight to compete when larger athletes would overpower them. Before matches, they don't ask the wrestlers how heavy they feel that day. They put them on a scale. There are all sorts of restrictions used to balance competition, all the way up to putting large schools with a history of athletic success in higher divisions. 1A teams don't have to beat 6A teams to win state titles. A Division I school doesn't usually get any credit toward bowl eligibility for beating a Division III school. Making restrictions to balance competition is the rule in sport, not the exception.

EAD. talk about the **** I said if you want to have a discussion

 

[fishonjazz]

This is not remotely true.

Me (an average male basketball player) playing against the best female basketball players in high school and jr high and dominating them is absolutely true. They had no chance against me.
As for the average male not being similar to the average female in physical nature google agrees with me. Average male is 5 feet 9 inches and 197 lbs. Average female is 5 feet 4 inches and 170 lbs. Those height and weight disparties would never be allowed to box or wrestle or compete in mma against each other for a reason. That doesn't take into account the other differences such as coordination, leaping ability, strength, speed, etc that the average male is also superior in comparison to the average female.

 

[fishonjazz]

What are you talking about? Of course there are restrictions! Performance enhancing drugs are banned because they give a massive physical advantage. Wrestling has weight classes so that smaller wrestler have a weight to compete when larger athletes would overpower them. Before matches, they don't ask the wrestlers how heavy they feel that day. They put them on a scale. There are all sorts of restrictions used to balance competition, all the way up to putting large schools with a history of athletic success in higher divisions. 1A teams don't have to beat 6A teams to win state titles. A Division I school doesn't usually get any credit toward bowl eligibility for beating a Division III school. Making restrictions to balance competition is the rule in sport, not the exception.

Also I know that in youth football if you are too big then you have to play on the line because if you were a running back or something the other players would have no chance to tackle you. They call them (players that can ONLY play on the line) X-men or something like that.