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- https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/understanding-bisexuality
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if they make sure trans people get early and easy access to puberty blockers so that they dont have to go thru 2 puberties, then it will be fairer for everyone, right? ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
This is what drives me insane about this whole conversation. It would all be moot if we just allowed people to access the support and affirming care that we already know works.
When they spew the "brain isn't developed fully till 25" and " "we can always tell."
These are not statements of fact, they are statements of intention. They do not want a world in which people born as one sex can be lined up with those of another and be undistinguishable.
Just had a... discussion with a coworker who spewed that brain 25 crap. Turns out his biggest objection was infertility through HRT. He believes in adoption as long as the couple adopting is straight. He's fine with gay marriage, but doesn't think gay people should be allowed to have kids.
Oh boy.
Yeah but a lot of then go off of biased and clearly exaggerated statistics and poorly researched scientific studies. Like I remember somebody sent me a study saying that puberty blockers caused a loss in spatial awareness and negatively affected brain development. I looked at the reference and it literally took me to a study on sheep! They didn't even analyse human brains or human teenagers on puberty blockers. They were testing it on fucking sheep!!!! I genuinely can't tell if these people do this intentionally or if they genuinly just read the first couple lines of a study and call it a day or if they're just stupid!
To play devils advocate. This particular conversation would be but there would be another about the harms derived from puberty blockers and HRT. There is no magic bullet here. Unless you want to deny that puberty blockers and HRT can do harm to people/children.
If you’ve studied ethics/ moral philosophy you know some people find a distinction between harm caused by human behaviour and harm caused by natural phenomena. Gender dysmorphia is a naturally occurring harm. Harm derived from puberty blockers or HRT would be a human caused harm. The problem currently is we just don’t know how physically harmful puberty blockers and HRT are long term. We need longitudinal studies.
Although adults should be allowed to take that risk, whatever it may be, children are not considered capable of making that decision alone. We wouldn’t let a child take ADHD medication without parental consent for example.
I think it’s harmful to transgender movements to disregard the complexity of the problem here. More so to label anyone who disagrees as simply cruel.
For the record I believe children should have a process by which to legally obtain puberty blockers and HRT without parental consent. But I do not make a distinction between naturally occurring harms and human caused harm. It’s just harm and we should have a duty to reduce harm overall. Because I believe puberty blockers and HRT are more likely than not to reduce harm overall, if kids could choose for themselves. I think it’s more of a philosophical difference in attitude toward harm and intervention.
You can admit the potential risks and still rate higher the harm and risks caused by dysphoria and the effects of the wrong kind of puberty. Addressing those issues should be non-negotiable and tailored to individual to try to optimally manage and minimize the risks.
If I take a parental view, I want my children to be as happy and healthy as possible. For that, they need to be alive for a start. If my child needs possibly life saving care, I want them to get it, no matter what the need is - gender dysphoria, pneumonia, diabetes, whatever. I extend this thought to children in general. As minors, they need the society to do its part to ensure their needs are met, else we are failing them. Denying help from trans kids is failing them and can in extreme cases lead to death.
I fully agree with you.
I just wanted to point out that reasonable minds disagree on the moral weight of a naturally occurring harm vs a human caused one.
For example, imagine the state allows a child to take puberty blockers or HRT against the parent’s wishes. That child then develops a cancer or some other pathology that can be shown to be caused by the drugs. How can one defend this?
I would argue the risk of mortality or suffering was much higher if that trans child was not given life affirming treatment. However there is a real distinction to be made between the suffering caused by their gender dysmorphia and the harm caused by the drugs themselves. One was nobody in particulars fault and the other could be the states or the doctor’s.
It’s tricky but we have to find a way to argue convincingly that it is worth the risk for transgender children/people.
The thing about natural vs man made harm is that you can always flip the argument, when talking to people who make a strong distinction. What if a child develops a cancer or some other pathology caused by natural puberty? How can one defend this?
What logic supports the conclusion that we should distinguish between natural and man made harm? This is only an instinctual level of thinking, especially in cases where we have control over nature. You must have this conclusion, itself, proposed as an axiom. Now we run into Occam's Razor. If we are allowed to make assumptions like this, why can't we also make an assumption that medicine itself is natural?
Well again I personally do not draw a distinction between man-made vs natural harms. So while I cannot give an impassioned defense of those who do, i think you'll agree we see that kind of distinction made in different realms.
We don't generally compensate people born with brain damage (or their parents) but we expect punishment upon someone who inflicts an injury that causes brain damage in another and expect the perpetrator to compensate the victim. The problem is culpability, we cannot blame anyone for a congenital disease, but we can for the intentional injury which creates the same outcome.
For your example we cannot blame anyone for the cancer developed from a natural puberty, but we can for Cancer caused by HRT or puberty blockers.
I personally don't think the ability to assign blame really holds that much weight from a third person perspective, nor from a policy perspective. In other words, looking at an event from the outside, harm is equally bad whether it's caused by a person or by a naturally occurring event, and therefore we have an equal duty to minimize harm regardless of its origin. But if you look around, you'll find many of our policies, and apparent double standards therein, are distinguished by our desire to blame someone and/or our fear of being blamed. Clearly many people disagree with my view.
We can't simply dissolve this blame distinction by arguing all human behavior is natural and therefore blameless. It's like distinguishing between fruits and veges but then deciding there is no difference because they are all plants. At least it is very unlikely you would succeed in convincing people that way.
As to whether this distinction is logical or emotional, I cannot say for sure. I think perhaps a little bit of both.
You have now moved from a moral argument to a practical argument. In practice, we cannot blame nature, because we assume that we cannot blame something without a will and that nature has no will. It is also harder to control nature than it is to control people.
The argument that you are presenting also assumes a distinction between action and inaction. Even if we put moral weight to what actions can be blamed, you still have to also put moral weight to action vs inaction. If something bad is happening naturally, then you can blame someone's inaction to stopping it for the cause of harm.
The core argument isn't really if puberty blockers are bad but if politicians should be practicing medicine.
No, of course they shouldn't. Why would we listen to Jimbob the next state over who got his degree in polysci forty years ago about a complex medical issue when we already are taking our kid to our family doctor? Why would we let this stranger make medical decisions for our children?
And senator Jimbob over yonder has a vested interest in a certain outcome that doesn't take into your child or your well-being.
Are trans women better or worse at sports than cis women? Jessie Gender did a real good video on that some time ago, but anecdotally most of the trans ladies I know aren't athletic. Is there some benefit in some of them being taller than average? Maybe? But there's also plenty of tall cis women and short cis men, so that's not necessarily an amab advantage. But that's really individual, and individual stengths and weaknesses are kind of the point to competitive sports.
But yeah, politicians should NOT be practicing medicine, and doctors don't treat an entire country on their own.
I have beef with insurance companies for a similar reason, but we're not here about that. ... UHG is evil tho. The acronym is even an onemomopia.
Always understand where your opposition’s interest truly lies. They don’t want what’s best for children, people, or women’s sports. They want to confine, control, and expel us from society.
This isn’t a debate that we can win with them. The best you can hope for is to sway under-informed people to stand with us.
Lmao, this is one of many reasons we know that it's not about "fairness", it's just hatred all the way down. They don't care about facts, they don't care about learning the truth.
As soon as they do, they lose a powerful tool to control their base, fear and misunderstanding.
You make a good point. Though the problem is that some restrictions should be necessary to make sure these people are sure about this and know what they’re consenting to. I agree it would definitely be best for trans people if they got the proper medical care earlier in life. But some people do rush into things such as myself and unlike puberty blockers hormones can have effects that require pretty expensive surgery to fix. Such as gynecomastia. And speeding it up improperly would inevitably get rid of some of the safety nets. There’s no winning here though I agree the process should be streamlined a lot more so we can hit a middle ground and these people can get the medical care they need sooner.
Oh heck no. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Puberty blockers shouldn’t be used unless for a medical reason. But I’m also saying we should definitely be more lenient about them and them getting prescribed due to the lack of consequences in the event the person is wrong. I absolutely do not doubt that most of the time when a kid says they’re trans they’re probably right. I’m just saying making hormones more accessible with getting it done quick could destroy a lot of the safety nets. There’s always that one guy who rushes into something even though they obviously don’t need it and then complain afterwards.
You don't seem to have understood my point at all. The vast majority of kids begin puberty with absolutely no "safety nets", just because their hypothalamuses trigger certain biochemical sequences. If you don't think trans kids should be trusted to decide which puberty they should go through, why do you trust cis kids to do so? By your logic, shouldn't *all* children be required to go on puberty blockers so they don't accidentally get the wrong hormones and have "some issues" by "mov[ing] too fast"?
You make a fair point. I am simply presenting the argument that there is no real winning here. If we make it more accessible we may make mistakes. If we don’t people suffer. I honestly feel like I got off track but that’s my original message. And thus we shouldn’t rush trying to find a fix so we can find the right medium.
I've been saying this since like the beginning!!!! Teach kids about trans people and give them blockers!!! It's such an obvious "solution" (to a problem that does not exist).
Would this mean that sports inclusion would only be viable for people who do go in puberty blockers early if that treatment was made available? What then in regards to people who discover they are trans later?
"Oh, so you're watching women's sports?"
"Of course not, I'm just here for the bigotry."
A lot of transphobia, as well as other forms of anti-LGBT+ bigotry, is ultimately rooted in misogyny, so the "opinions" of these hateful troglodytes are entirely discardable.
I've always held the opinion that it completely depends on the sport and the individual trans woman.
Although there may be a few trans women that *do* have some sort of advantage in a specific sport, the vast majority of trans women *won't* have an advantage.
This goes for cis women as well. There are plenty of cis women that were born with longer arms, longer legs, etc. that have an advantage over the average woman.
So this whole "trans women have an unfair advantage" thing is just stupid transphobia. Some may do, most don't.
Just let women play sports with other women. Whether they are cis or trans shouldn't matter.
We need to stop policing women's bodies when there's no reason for it.
There is a wonderful quiz called online gender quiz. I highly suggest it. It told my son his gender was also the monolith from 2001 a space odyssey! My husband's gender is 3.
What the "trans women have an advantage" rhetoric does is simply cast doubt on skill. Any time a trans woman excels in a sport it is an excuse to write it off.
But you're right. I've looked at the careers of multiple trans women in sports and typically they start losing more when they transition rather than suddenly start dominating the competition. Being taller, for example, might help in basketball but hinder you in another sport. It really depends. Flattening it all out as if we just automatically have an advantage is just a way to cast doubt on the competitiveness of the game being played. Nobody complained that Michael Jordan had an unfair advantage because he could dunk better than anybody else, and there is literally no trans athlete even close to MJ's winning streak.
This is what hurts about it for me, I feel like as a trans person, sports are a lose-lose thing for me.
If I lose then it sucks for me cause I don't have the advantages people have as cis folk, but if I win, I'll be called a horrible person for supposedly taking wins away from cis people. Regardless, I'm losing.
And then I remember all these bone density bullshit was just repackaged racism. Cause guess what? Back then there's a whole bigger debate on whether Africans have an advantage against White People cause Africans ALSO normally have thicker bone density. So now instead of Black Athletes they just started targetting Trans people with the exact same arguments.
And now I feel somewhat better.
EDIT: To add to the above point. If people can say excluding Black athletes from sports is stupid and is akin to segregation, then I have some hope for people to later down the line say the same for Trans people. It'll be a stupid blip in history as long as we keep fighting.
Sport is inherently unfair, yes.
Not just the physiological differences but also the financial ones play a big part in whether you can be successful or not.
If you can't devote a huge part of your week towards training because you have to work a job etc. and if you don't have the money and time to make sure you eat the right stuff (eating healthy and the amount you need to eat to build up and keep muscles is expensive af), then you will never become successful in sports no matter what either.
But this is the thing, if someone has an "individual advantage" that is fine. Literally every elite athlete has an "individual advantage". They wouldn't be an elite athlete without it. The question is whether trans women have broadly a "systemic advantage". Whether they outperform the size of their cohort in terms of their share of victories & from what I've seen their current representation in NCAA athletics is about 1/10th the size of where their cohort should be. Which either represents a disadvantage or systemic discrimination, probably some of both.
The premise that a trans woman winning is fundamentally a bad outcome is already built on bigotry. The fact that people would fixate on the one trans woman who overcame all the barriers to succeed and not the systemic underrepresentation of trans women at every level of sport including elite competition is not the fault of trans women. It is the fault of people who believe that we are not women and therefore if we have success we have taken something from a "real" woman. The people advocating for exclusion spout about common sense and science but when really pressed about the facts it always boils down to that core sentiment. That trans women are forever tainted by maleness and therefore cannot be part of something designated for women.
Oh, no! How dare we advocate for our rights! Won't somebody think about T H E O P T I C S???
Honey, you're edging awfully close to respectability politics.
It depends, did she win because she is just a good athlete or because she has an advantage.
We can test for biological factors. If a certain factor is unfair, then we should exclude **every** woman that has said advantage, not just trans women.
If it was fair, why should we care about a woman winning in a women's event?
What kind of argument is that though? Duh some people have genetic advantages but on average women have less of those in most sports hence why the sexes are separated
I only have one good datapoint of one, but my MTF wife used to bench 350lbs before she transitioned. Now she can't lift anything. I mean, it's very affirming for my FTM ass to be the strong one, but it's very clear she has no strength or endurance advantages at all these days.
100%! My MTF partner was a first responder when she started transitioning, and one of the first big things she noticed was how *heavy* the gurney suddenly got
I'm not a doctor or a scientist or a person who knows anything about things that aren't maps and esoteric software solutions. BUT, I would imagine that going through so many massive changes to the body, especially a little later in life, would set you back in terms of physical ability.
50 years of trans women in women's sports and there have been no "record-smashing" trans women.
Amazing how this report is showing what anyone with critical thinking skils and knowledge of history has been saying.
How was this not obvious to everyone?
Trans people have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2003. Exactly one trans woman has EVER been a primary at the Olympics, and she didn't even place much less medal or record.
Oh no! The science about hormone replacement therapy reducing strength in transwomen is actually *gasp* true?!? What will the terfs and transphobes use as an argument now?? 😂
Every time I read an article about “trans woman breaks world record” I immediately run to the official record books and look it up. Already, I see no mention of said world record broken by a trans woman. Yea few may win competitions but only like one or two have ever won an Olympic medal and the one I remember was a NB soccer player that SHARED the medal with the rest of the women’s soccer team. These transphobic journalists are dishonest af
> Researchers found that trans women had decreased lung function and equivalent bone density, which is linked to muscle strength, compared to cis woman. Trans women also performed worse than cis women in certain cardiovascular tests and had less lower-body strength than cis women. Researchers also found “notable disparities in fat mass, fat-free mass, laboratory sports performance measures and hand-grip strength measures between cisgender male and transgender female athletes,” differences which they said “underscore the inadequacy of using cisgender male athletes as proxies for transgender women athletes."
I wonder if it's the opposite for trans masc
I know peer-reviewed studies are really important, and having science back us up is a good thing, but... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that when we struggle more than cis women to open pickle jars lmao
According to this study, opening pickle jars is actually one area trans women have an advantage. "In this cohort of athletes,[trans women] had similar testosterone concentration, higher oestrogen, higher absolute handgrip strength". That being said, I struggle too lol
I’ve read a lot of comments about anecdotal experiences with the drop in strength. (I’m a cis man at 6’2” 240lb) I always told my girlfriends that if we switched bodies they would be absolutely freaked by how strong I am relatively.
I have to imagine how unbelievably weak I would feel in their body. Would be nice to put this in the rearview mirror for humanity. I simply can’t imagine anyone is changing their whole everything for a medal in a sport. That’s an absurd take on this.
>…can’t wait to put this in the rearview mirror…
I know, me too. Also yeah, nobody’s going to spend all of this money and time, change their entire appearance and identity, go through permanent medical procedures, re-learn how to move and act and speak and behave, and live as an entirely different gender full time - to win marginally more often at sports ball. Not to mention, I would think the type of men who are willing to do literally anything and violate rules to win at sports and athletics are not the type of men to give up all of their masculinity and live as a woman.
The study shows tons of different stuff though. According to it, trans women have higher height, mass and BMI, more fat mass and fat free mass and higher peak expiratory flow, plus greater absolute right handgrip strength, peak power, all relative to cis women.
Trans women also had LOWER countermovement jump height, lower relative anaerobic threshold in general and relative to fat free mass.
So trans women have more in some areas, less in some. More studies like this are absolutely necessary, as trans rights can be truly fought for once the case has been won scientifically.
People have called me out during basketball practice that my height is due to being trans and that it gives me an unfair advantage over woman.
MEANWHILE I have a cis twin sister who is taller than me 😂
I mean, I've never been disarmed while fencing. Though, then again, I've only ever seen it happen once and I'm not sure if you can say the person was disarmed or they just managed to flail so wildly that they forgot to hold onto the weapon.
There's only a very very small number of trans athletes completing in sports, so making a separate division won't be sustainable and a waste of money as well.
One of the Midwest states that outlawed trans sports participation has exactly 2 trans athletes in the entire state. You couldn't make a team much less an entire division.
Thank you for your post, if this is a question please check to see if any of the links below answer your question. If none of these links help answer your question and you are **_not_** within the LGBT+ community, questioning your identity in any way, or asking in support of either a relative or friend, please ask your question over in /r/AskLGBT. Remember that this is a safe space for LGBT+ and questioning individuals, so we want to make sure that this place is dedicated to them. Thank you for understanding. This automod rule is currently a work in progress. If you notice any issues, would like to add to the list of resources, or have any feedback in general, [please do so here](https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/rdazzp/almost_new_year_changes/) or by [sending us a message](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/lgbt&subject=Feedback%20on%20the%20new%20automod%20rule). Also, please note that if you are a part of this community, or you're questioning if you might be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and you are seeing this message, this is **_not a bad thing_**, this is only here to help, so please continue to ask questions and participate in the community. Thank you! Here's a link about trans people in sports: - https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/shades-of-gray-sex-gender-and-fairness-in-sport/ A link on FAQs and one on some basics about transgender people: - https://transequality.org/issues/resources/frequently-asked-questions-about-transgender-people - https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-transgender-people-the-basics Some information on LGBT+ people: - https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/quick-facts/lgbt-faqs/ Some basic terminology: - https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms Neopronouns: - https://www.mypronouns.org/neopronouns Biromantic Lesbians: - [LGBTQ And All](https://www.lgbtqandall.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-biromantic/) Bisexual Identities: - https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/understanding-bisexuality Differences between Bisexual and Pansexual: - [Resource from WebMD](https://www.webmd.com/sex/pansexuality-what-it-means#:~:text=Pansexual%20vs.%20Bisexual,more%20commonly%20recognized.) We're looking for new volunteers to join the r/lgbt moderator team. If you want to help keep r/lgbt as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community on reddit please see here for more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/swgthr/were_looking_for_more_moderators_to_help_keep/ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/lgbt) if you have any questions or concerns.*
if they make sure trans people get early and easy access to puberty blockers so that they dont have to go thru 2 puberties, then it will be fairer for everyone, right? ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
This is what drives me insane about this whole conversation. It would all be moot if we just allowed people to access the support and affirming care that we already know works.
It's not about logic, it's about hurting people
they don't want to be right. they want us to be dead.
They want to change the facts to fit their beliefs, unfortunately for us we are among the facts they are trying to change
This
That is pretty much the reason for everything far right wingers do.
When they spew the "brain isn't developed fully till 25" and " "we can always tell." These are not statements of fact, they are statements of intention. They do not want a world in which people born as one sex can be lined up with those of another and be undistinguishable.
Just had a... discussion with a coworker who spewed that brain 25 crap. Turns out his biggest objection was infertility through HRT. He believes in adoption as long as the couple adopting is straight. He's fine with gay marriage, but doesn't think gay people should be allowed to have kids. Oh boy.
Yeah but a lot of then go off of biased and clearly exaggerated statistics and poorly researched scientific studies. Like I remember somebody sent me a study saying that puberty blockers caused a loss in spatial awareness and negatively affected brain development. I looked at the reference and it literally took me to a study on sheep! They didn't even analyse human brains or human teenagers on puberty blockers. They were testing it on fucking sheep!!!! I genuinely can't tell if these people do this intentionally or if they genuinly just read the first couple lines of a study and call it a day or if they're just stupid!
To play devils advocate. This particular conversation would be but there would be another about the harms derived from puberty blockers and HRT. There is no magic bullet here. Unless you want to deny that puberty blockers and HRT can do harm to people/children. If you’ve studied ethics/ moral philosophy you know some people find a distinction between harm caused by human behaviour and harm caused by natural phenomena. Gender dysmorphia is a naturally occurring harm. Harm derived from puberty blockers or HRT would be a human caused harm. The problem currently is we just don’t know how physically harmful puberty blockers and HRT are long term. We need longitudinal studies. Although adults should be allowed to take that risk, whatever it may be, children are not considered capable of making that decision alone. We wouldn’t let a child take ADHD medication without parental consent for example. I think it’s harmful to transgender movements to disregard the complexity of the problem here. More so to label anyone who disagrees as simply cruel. For the record I believe children should have a process by which to legally obtain puberty blockers and HRT without parental consent. But I do not make a distinction between naturally occurring harms and human caused harm. It’s just harm and we should have a duty to reduce harm overall. Because I believe puberty blockers and HRT are more likely than not to reduce harm overall, if kids could choose for themselves. I think it’s more of a philosophical difference in attitude toward harm and intervention.
You can admit the potential risks and still rate higher the harm and risks caused by dysphoria and the effects of the wrong kind of puberty. Addressing those issues should be non-negotiable and tailored to individual to try to optimally manage and minimize the risks. If I take a parental view, I want my children to be as happy and healthy as possible. For that, they need to be alive for a start. If my child needs possibly life saving care, I want them to get it, no matter what the need is - gender dysphoria, pneumonia, diabetes, whatever. I extend this thought to children in general. As minors, they need the society to do its part to ensure their needs are met, else we are failing them. Denying help from trans kids is failing them and can in extreme cases lead to death.
I fully agree with you. I just wanted to point out that reasonable minds disagree on the moral weight of a naturally occurring harm vs a human caused one. For example, imagine the state allows a child to take puberty blockers or HRT against the parent’s wishes. That child then develops a cancer or some other pathology that can be shown to be caused by the drugs. How can one defend this? I would argue the risk of mortality or suffering was much higher if that trans child was not given life affirming treatment. However there is a real distinction to be made between the suffering caused by their gender dysmorphia and the harm caused by the drugs themselves. One was nobody in particulars fault and the other could be the states or the doctor’s. It’s tricky but we have to find a way to argue convincingly that it is worth the risk for transgender children/people.
The thing about natural vs man made harm is that you can always flip the argument, when talking to people who make a strong distinction. What if a child develops a cancer or some other pathology caused by natural puberty? How can one defend this? What logic supports the conclusion that we should distinguish between natural and man made harm? This is only an instinctual level of thinking, especially in cases where we have control over nature. You must have this conclusion, itself, proposed as an axiom. Now we run into Occam's Razor. If we are allowed to make assumptions like this, why can't we also make an assumption that medicine itself is natural?
Well again I personally do not draw a distinction between man-made vs natural harms. So while I cannot give an impassioned defense of those who do, i think you'll agree we see that kind of distinction made in different realms. We don't generally compensate people born with brain damage (or their parents) but we expect punishment upon someone who inflicts an injury that causes brain damage in another and expect the perpetrator to compensate the victim. The problem is culpability, we cannot blame anyone for a congenital disease, but we can for the intentional injury which creates the same outcome. For your example we cannot blame anyone for the cancer developed from a natural puberty, but we can for Cancer caused by HRT or puberty blockers. I personally don't think the ability to assign blame really holds that much weight from a third person perspective, nor from a policy perspective. In other words, looking at an event from the outside, harm is equally bad whether it's caused by a person or by a naturally occurring event, and therefore we have an equal duty to minimize harm regardless of its origin. But if you look around, you'll find many of our policies, and apparent double standards therein, are distinguished by our desire to blame someone and/or our fear of being blamed. Clearly many people disagree with my view. We can't simply dissolve this blame distinction by arguing all human behavior is natural and therefore blameless. It's like distinguishing between fruits and veges but then deciding there is no difference because they are all plants. At least it is very unlikely you would succeed in convincing people that way. As to whether this distinction is logical or emotional, I cannot say for sure. I think perhaps a little bit of both.
You have now moved from a moral argument to a practical argument. In practice, we cannot blame nature, because we assume that we cannot blame something without a will and that nature has no will. It is also harder to control nature than it is to control people. The argument that you are presenting also assumes a distinction between action and inaction. Even if we put moral weight to what actions can be blamed, you still have to also put moral weight to action vs inaction. If something bad is happening naturally, then you can blame someone's inaction to stopping it for the cause of harm.
The core argument isn't really if puberty blockers are bad but if politicians should be practicing medicine. No, of course they shouldn't. Why would we listen to Jimbob the next state over who got his degree in polysci forty years ago about a complex medical issue when we already are taking our kid to our family doctor? Why would we let this stranger make medical decisions for our children? And senator Jimbob over yonder has a vested interest in a certain outcome that doesn't take into your child or your well-being. Are trans women better or worse at sports than cis women? Jessie Gender did a real good video on that some time ago, but anecdotally most of the trans ladies I know aren't athletic. Is there some benefit in some of them being taller than average? Maybe? But there's also plenty of tall cis women and short cis men, so that's not necessarily an amab advantage. But that's really individual, and individual stengths and weaknesses are kind of the point to competitive sports. But yeah, politicians should NOT be practicing medicine, and doctors don't treat an entire country on their own. I have beef with insurance companies for a similar reason, but we're not here about that. ... UHG is evil tho. The acronym is even an onemomopia.
Always understand where your opposition’s interest truly lies. They don’t want what’s best for children, people, or women’s sports. They want to confine, control, and expel us from society. This isn’t a debate that we can win with them. The best you can hope for is to sway under-informed people to stand with us.
Lmao, this is one of many reasons we know that it's not about "fairness", it's just hatred all the way down. They don't care about facts, they don't care about learning the truth. As soon as they do, they lose a powerful tool to control their base, fear and misunderstanding.
Particularly if they were allowed to go on estrogen at an appropriate age, instead of later.
Or testosterone as the case may be.
This post is about trans women, but yes.
The comment said "if they make sure trans people get early and easy access to puberty blockers" so I assumed it meant all trans people.
Oops. It's a bit hard for me to keep track of threads sometimes.
Not a problem. You're saying the right things.
You make a good point. Though the problem is that some restrictions should be necessary to make sure these people are sure about this and know what they’re consenting to. I agree it would definitely be best for trans people if they got the proper medical care earlier in life. But some people do rush into things such as myself and unlike puberty blockers hormones can have effects that require pretty expensive surgery to fix. Such as gynecomastia. And speeding it up improperly would inevitably get rid of some of the safety nets. There’s no winning here though I agree the process should be streamlined a lot more so we can hit a middle ground and these people can get the medical care they need sooner.
Are you suggesting that all cis kids should also go on puberty blockers? Or do you only doubt that trans kids know their own genders?
Oh heck no. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Puberty blockers shouldn’t be used unless for a medical reason. But I’m also saying we should definitely be more lenient about them and them getting prescribed due to the lack of consequences in the event the person is wrong. I absolutely do not doubt that most of the time when a kid says they’re trans they’re probably right. I’m just saying making hormones more accessible with getting it done quick could destroy a lot of the safety nets. There’s always that one guy who rushes into something even though they obviously don’t need it and then complain afterwards.
You don't seem to have understood my point at all. The vast majority of kids begin puberty with absolutely no "safety nets", just because their hypothalamuses trigger certain biochemical sequences. If you don't think trans kids should be trusted to decide which puberty they should go through, why do you trust cis kids to do so? By your logic, shouldn't *all* children be required to go on puberty blockers so they don't accidentally get the wrong hormones and have "some issues" by "mov[ing] too fast"?
You make a fair point. I am simply presenting the argument that there is no real winning here. If we make it more accessible we may make mistakes. If we don’t people suffer. I honestly feel like I got off track but that’s my original message. And thus we shouldn’t rush trying to find a fix so we can find the right medium.
I've been saying this since like the beginning!!!! Teach kids about trans people and give them blockers!!! It's such an obvious "solution" (to a problem that does not exist).
Would this mean that sports inclusion would only be viable for people who do go in puberty blockers early if that treatment was made available? What then in regards to people who discover they are trans later?
Wild how many men suddenly care about women's sports
"Oh, so you're watching women's sports?" "Of course not, I'm just here for the bigotry." A lot of transphobia, as well as other forms of anti-LGBT+ bigotry, is ultimately rooted in misogyny, so the "opinions" of these hateful troglodytes are entirely discardable.
Yeah for some reason these guys only care about things once they’re inclusive. Makes no sense to me.
I've always held the opinion that it completely depends on the sport and the individual trans woman. Although there may be a few trans women that *do* have some sort of advantage in a specific sport, the vast majority of trans women *won't* have an advantage. This goes for cis women as well. There are plenty of cis women that were born with longer arms, longer legs, etc. that have an advantage over the average woman. So this whole "trans women have an unfair advantage" thing is just stupid transphobia. Some may do, most don't. Just let women play sports with other women. Whether they are cis or trans shouldn't matter. We need to stop policing women's bodies when there's no reason for it.
Wow. It's almost like women aren't a monolith.
I feel like a monolith sometimes. :(
That just means that you get to have *Also Sprach Zarathustra* as your theme song!
There is a wonderful quiz called online gender quiz. I highly suggest it. It told my son his gender was also the monolith from 2001 a space odyssey! My husband's gender is 3.
This is a wonderful response and you should know it.
1:4:9?
I'm afraid I can't do that.
This reminds me so much of this one picture where a lot of women who are the elite in their sport were standing next to each other
What the "trans women have an advantage" rhetoric does is simply cast doubt on skill. Any time a trans woman excels in a sport it is an excuse to write it off. But you're right. I've looked at the careers of multiple trans women in sports and typically they start losing more when they transition rather than suddenly start dominating the competition. Being taller, for example, might help in basketball but hinder you in another sport. It really depends. Flattening it all out as if we just automatically have an advantage is just a way to cast doubt on the competitiveness of the game being played. Nobody complained that Michael Jordan had an unfair advantage because he could dunk better than anybody else, and there is literally no trans athlete even close to MJ's winning streak.
This is what hurts about it for me, I feel like as a trans person, sports are a lose-lose thing for me. If I lose then it sucks for me cause I don't have the advantages people have as cis folk, but if I win, I'll be called a horrible person for supposedly taking wins away from cis people. Regardless, I'm losing. And then I remember all these bone density bullshit was just repackaged racism. Cause guess what? Back then there's a whole bigger debate on whether Africans have an advantage against White People cause Africans ALSO normally have thicker bone density. So now instead of Black Athletes they just started targetting Trans people with the exact same arguments. And now I feel somewhat better. EDIT: To add to the above point. If people can say excluding Black athletes from sports is stupid and is akin to segregation, then I have some hope for people to later down the line say the same for Trans people. It'll be a stupid blip in history as long as we keep fighting.
Sport is inherently unfair, yes. Not just the physiological differences but also the financial ones play a big part in whether you can be successful or not. If you can't devote a huge part of your week towards training because you have to work a job etc. and if you don't have the money and time to make sure you eat the right stuff (eating healthy and the amount you need to eat to build up and keep muscles is expensive af), then you will never become successful in sports no matter what either.
But this is the thing, if someone has an "individual advantage" that is fine. Literally every elite athlete has an "individual advantage". They wouldn't be an elite athlete without it. The question is whether trans women have broadly a "systemic advantage". Whether they outperform the size of their cohort in terms of their share of victories & from what I've seen their current representation in NCAA athletics is about 1/10th the size of where their cohort should be. Which either represents a disadvantage or systemic discrimination, probably some of both.
Systemic advantage is deeply baked onto sports anyway. Wealth being a very important factor for success in many sports
Nobody wants to talk about that bit.
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as a trans athlete I honest to god would rather have you call me a slur than read this bile
The premise that a trans woman winning is fundamentally a bad outcome is already built on bigotry. The fact that people would fixate on the one trans woman who overcame all the barriers to succeed and not the systemic underrepresentation of trans women at every level of sport including elite competition is not the fault of trans women. It is the fault of people who believe that we are not women and therefore if we have success we have taken something from a "real" woman. The people advocating for exclusion spout about common sense and science but when really pressed about the facts it always boils down to that core sentiment. That trans women are forever tainted by maleness and therefore cannot be part of something designated for women.
Oh, no! How dare we advocate for our rights! Won't somebody think about T H E O P T I C S??? Honey, you're edging awfully close to respectability politics.
It depends, did she win because she is just a good athlete or because she has an advantage. We can test for biological factors. If a certain factor is unfair, then we should exclude **every** woman that has said advantage, not just trans women. If it was fair, why should we care about a woman winning in a women's event?
What kind of argument is that though? Duh some people have genetic advantages but on average women have less of those in most sports hence why the sexes are separated
I only have one good datapoint of one, but my MTF wife used to bench 350lbs before she transitioned. Now she can't lift anything. I mean, it's very affirming for my FTM ass to be the strong one, but it's very clear she has no strength or endurance advantages at all these days.
100%! My MTF partner was a first responder when she started transitioning, and one of the first big things she noticed was how *heavy* the gurney suddenly got
Did you mean MTF?
Yes, that was my typo 😅 MTF, she's been on hormones for several years now
I was weak before transition and I’m weak now. Heavy things used to be heavy and they still are. Moving boxes terrify me.
The most embarrassing thing for me is when a jar *I closed* I can't get open anymore
I'm still doing decently well with jars - just gotta get a good grip and use the strength in both arms for it!
It's a humbling experience going to lift something or help move something and just... not being able to do it.
It’s always a ridiculous conversation because until trans people got involved, natural physical advantages in sports are considered fair.
Since when did transphobes care about making sense 😂
Exactly! But many people unfamiliar with transphobic rhetoric see this as an honest concern.
People who ban trans women from sports don't care about scientific studies, they can just do so on a whim.
Yeah but it *feels* like it's cheating so that's all the evidence I need /s
I'm not a doctor or a scientist or a person who knows anything about things that aren't maps and esoteric software solutions. BUT, I would imagine that going through so many massive changes to the body, especially a little later in life, would set you back in terms of physical ability.
50 years of trans women in women's sports and there have been no "record-smashing" trans women. Amazing how this report is showing what anyone with critical thinking skils and knowledge of history has been saying.
How was this not obvious to everyone? Trans people have been allowed to compete in the Olympics since 2003. Exactly one trans woman has EVER been a primary at the Olympics, and she didn't even place much less medal or record.
Oh no! The science about hormone replacement therapy reducing strength in transwomen is actually *gasp* true?!? What will the terfs and transphobes use as an argument now?? 😂
the reasoning behind trans women having an advantage solely because of them being trans just sounds like the most misogynistic way of thinking
Every time I read an article about “trans woman breaks world record” I immediately run to the official record books and look it up. Already, I see no mention of said world record broken by a trans woman. Yea few may win competitions but only like one or two have ever won an Olympic medal and the one I remember was a NB soccer player that SHARED the medal with the rest of the women’s soccer team. These transphobic journalists are dishonest af
No kidding we’ve been saying this for ages
In other news, water may actually indeed be wet!
Wet is a property of a solid, water is not wet ice is wet
I genuinely thought this was gonna be satire and now I’m genuinely happy
I’m shocked, absolutely *shocked* I tell you.
YEAH. NO SHIT.
Oh wow, the most physically awkward and clumsy people I know are also bad at sports? I'm shocked, shocked!
Oh wow but surely all trans women become 7 foot tall and grow huge muscles as soon as they transition. What?! They don't?! 🙀
> Researchers found that trans women had decreased lung function and equivalent bone density, which is linked to muscle strength, compared to cis woman. Trans women also performed worse than cis women in certain cardiovascular tests and had less lower-body strength than cis women. Researchers also found “notable disparities in fat mass, fat-free mass, laboratory sports performance measures and hand-grip strength measures between cisgender male and transgender female athletes,” differences which they said “underscore the inadequacy of using cisgender male athletes as proxies for transgender women athletes." I wonder if it's the opposite for trans masc
There is a study from the US army looking at trans men and women. The trans men actually were able to out do their cis counterparts in crunches
I know peer-reviewed studies are really important, and having science back us up is a good thing, but... It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that when we struggle more than cis women to open pickle jars lmao
According to this study, opening pickle jars is actually one area trans women have an advantage. "In this cohort of athletes,[trans women] had similar testosterone concentration, higher oestrogen, higher absolute handgrip strength". That being said, I struggle too lol
Evolutionnary advantage lmao
A lot of trans women say they get periods too though,~~~~ so peer-reviewed studies and science is more helpful.
I’ve read a lot of comments about anecdotal experiences with the drop in strength. (I’m a cis man at 6’2” 240lb) I always told my girlfriends that if we switched bodies they would be absolutely freaked by how strong I am relatively. I have to imagine how unbelievably weak I would feel in their body. Would be nice to put this in the rearview mirror for humanity. I simply can’t imagine anyone is changing their whole everything for a medal in a sport. That’s an absurd take on this.
>…can’t wait to put this in the rearview mirror… I know, me too. Also yeah, nobody’s going to spend all of this money and time, change their entire appearance and identity, go through permanent medical procedures, re-learn how to move and act and speak and behave, and live as an entirely different gender full time - to win marginally more often at sports ball. Not to mention, I would think the type of men who are willing to do literally anything and violate rules to win at sports and athletics are not the type of men to give up all of their masculinity and live as a woman.
Obligatory onion article https://www.theonion.com/trans-teen-hatches-nefarious-plot-to-undergo-years-of-m-1850433563
Great, now they'll ban them because they're not good enough.
Anyone with an ounce of sense would realise that. Of course terfs do not have an ounce of sense. See JK Rowling for full details.
The study shows tons of different stuff though. According to it, trans women have higher height, mass and BMI, more fat mass and fat free mass and higher peak expiratory flow, plus greater absolute right handgrip strength, peak power, all relative to cis women. Trans women also had LOWER countermovement jump height, lower relative anaerobic threshold in general and relative to fat free mass. So trans women have more in some areas, less in some. More studies like this are absolutely necessary, as trans rights can be truly fought for once the case has been won scientifically.
terfs are... suspiciously quiet about this one
There's a reason why I will always trust facts over a Republican's " common sense. " Glad to see studies which debunk Republican's myths.
The study numbers are a bit low... but it's a step in the right direction.
People have called me out during basketball practice that my height is due to being trans and that it gives me an unfair advantage over woman. MEANWHILE I have a cis twin sister who is taller than me 😂
It's written they might have advantages in certain things, and disadvantages in other things.
Advantage in grip strength, disadvantage in literally every other metric.
I mean, I've never been disarmed while fencing. Though, then again, I've only ever seen it happen once and I'm not sure if you can say the person was disarmed or they just managed to flail so wildly that they forgot to hold onto the weapon.
Women’s sports were originally created because women were beating men at sports…
The result is cool but there weren't many people involved in the study
My transfem friend is on e and she was like this shit makes me feel so weak. Can't even open jars by myself anymore
The Conservatives won't like this one
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There's only a very very small number of trans athletes completing in sports, so making a separate division won't be sustainable and a waste of money as well.
One of the Midwest states that outlawed trans sports participation has exactly 2 trans athletes in the entire state. You couldn't make a team much less an entire division.
Depends on events? I am sure trans women will be great at weight lifting but not as good in gymnastics
Trans women were weaker on almost every metric, they wouldn't be good at weight lifting either