A semi-serious discussion on transgender issues

famicommander

famicommander

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The real solution would be to let trans athletes compete against other trans athletes, but the problem is that there simply aren't enough of them for that to be viable.

People born male have denser muscle and bone tissue than people born female, on average and controlled for size. It doesn't mean that no women can beat men in sports (last year a girl won a high school state wrestling championship against boys in her weight class) but they're at an inherent disadvantage. At the same height and weight a male will almost always be stronger and faster than a female.

In striking sports (boxing, MMA, kickboxing, bare knuckle, etc) it's just plain dangerous to put biological males in there with biological females. A trans female MMA fighter did lose to a biological female in a pro fight, but that's another rare case. In the long run they may end up getting somebody killed. In boxing it happens with men vs men several times per year; a biological male vs a biological female is just asking for it.
 
Neorebel

Neorebel

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StevenK said:
P.s. neorebel, I appreciate that article but it's far from the unequivocal proof it claims to be. I'm no expert whatsoever on these matters but it took me 30 seconds to find an extremely coherent and persuasive rebuttal of every point the article makes. I'm not saying there isn't bias in here, I'm just saying that opposing views are equally convincing, any thoughts of it being 'clear cut' are short lived.

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting the video - I watched it and agree that its an intelligent and well spoken rebuttal. I posted the article because I wanted to stand up for the couple of trans people I know, but I freely admit I of course am no doctor or scientist and like many on both sides of the issue, I have only things like this to base my opinion on. To me it indeed seems like there is a lot of ambiguity and things we do not definitively know about sexual development, and that notion seems like a convincing case for the existence of a scientific explanation for the trans identity. I am open to learning more of course, another reason I chimed in on this post. I definitely admit everything to do with this idea is hard to understand, at least for me as a person who has no personal stake in it.

The speaker in this video argues very successfully for the binary nature of sex but he does allow for the idea that there are "specific structures [in the brain chemistry] that are atypical - [that are] biological and environmental." He also states that "trans individuals represent variation in biology, identity, and expression WITHIN the gender binary." This to me seems very eloquently put. So now moving on to the full subject at hand - These two statements, do they really mean just that the person is "mentally ill?" That seems like a disparaging way to put it and an oversimplification as well.

So, sports... I also admit I know nothing about sports and don't care about them one bit. I do get that to some people that is their livelihood and its a trillion dollar industry or whatever.
In my opinion I think trans people are a minority and there's not an army of males waiting for the pen to hit paper so they can get a sex change and suddenly start cleaning house in women's sports. There definitely would be issues though, I'm saying I would bet on finding a way to work it out - divisions, weight classes, leagues, maybe having other existing team members consent to trans members. I don't know if this all has been discussed ad nauseum in sports circles or not, probably has. So maybe we pump the brakes on rapidly changing the way we handle existing men and women's sports then... I just think the subject of sports as a reason not to prohibit employers from discriminating against those that identify as trans is a really weird thing to stand up as an objection.

The heart of it for me is - creating laws that prevent employers from firing people for being trans and allowing people who have transitioned to use the bathroom they want seems very reasonable and very basic. It sounds a lot like protecting people that have homosexual lifestyles and various religious affiliations (and preference to wear religious articles of clothing). I don't buy that its a slippery slope if we start there.
 
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fake

fake

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You guys think the Matrix 4 will be any good?
 
NeoSneth

NeoSneth

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Neorebel said:
In my opinion I think trans people are a minority and there's not an army of males waiting for the pen to hit paper so they can get a sex change and suddenly start cleaning house in women's sports. There definitely would be issues though, I'm saying I would bet on finding a way to work it out - divisions, weight classes, leagues, maybe having other existing team members consent to trans members. I don't know if this all has been discussed ad nauseum in sports circles or not, probably has. So maybe we pump the brakes on rapidly changing the way we handle existing men and women's sports then... I just think the subject of sports as a reason not to prohibit employers from discriminating against those that identify as trans is a really weird thing to stand up as an objection.
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The problem is that a mediocre minority of former men IS destroying generations of women's records. You only need a few former males to devastate a sport. I was average at my high school for track and field in small town Illinois. My times are top 10 for D1 women to this day. There's a woman athlete who is really upset about it, Selina Soule.



Lagduf said:
Can you go in to more detail on cycling?

Are you saying they banned people simply because they were too good and that “performance” drugs didn’t even matter?
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In a way yes. Some people have naturally higher testosterone, RBC's, and other hormones.... Cycling has set limits where it doesn't matter if you have naturally high levels, you can't compete. Some trans friendly sports have started to limit participation based on biological numbers regardless of sex. That seems like the most objective way to impose rules. Modern "doping" is not not always drugs. It's often simple things like extra bags of blood. Extra blood didn't trigger any red flags until very recently despite being an old cheat.
 
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