2d ago

Trans athletes rule

Trans women athletes rule

You're viewing a single thread.

54 comments

This community is not a place to debate the participation of trans women in sports.
Here's a digestible video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flSS1tjoxf0
Long story short the entire subject is being pushed by right wing lobby organizations to get people riled up about trans people and secure votes for the right. That's it. Do not fall for their bullshit.
- I haven't watched John Oliver's video on the subject yet but if I recall correctly, trans athletes don't even tend to place first in their own divisions. So the whole idea of them being "roided up naturally" is just plain silly. It's all just a right wing fantasy built to divide the left and supercharge conservatives on election days.
  
  They've been allowed to participate in the Olympics for over 20 years, and no Trans athlete has ever won a medal.
  
  Yeah, its called 'hiding your power level' and obviously a conspiracy to keep our precious sweet girls out of sports and stop creepy dudes from raping them! Its all a pedophile conspiracy!
  Im not projecting! No projection! No projection! You're projection!
  So anyway I'm the new genital inspector for this school district, to keep your kids safe from playing with any trans people. No I can't always be sure with just a visual check, 'unfortunately'. Yes we have to check before and after every game, in case of gay changelings.
  Don't worry, you can trust me; im church certified.
  
  Ayup. Pretty famously there's a swimmer that became a conservative activist named Riley Gaines. She was radicalised because she tied for fifth place with a trans woman named Lia Thomas in the NCAA. I think she was mainly just salty because she had to hold the sixth place trophy while Lia held the fifth place one during the photoshoot afterwards. Lia did go on to come first in a different event at the same meet (Edit: that Riley didn't even compete in), but that just goes to show that she had a favoured event that she was best at, like almost all swimmers.
  For what it's worth, Riley said that the reason she was radicalised was, and I quote from wikipedia:
  In 2023, Gaines said that Thomas shared locker room space with her while still intact with "male genitalia".
  Which is just inane. It's not like someone with a vagina can't sexually assault someone else with a vagina, having a penis doesn't make that easier.
  
  Yeah, it's pretty fucked up rhetoric that feels like it's making people less safe in two ways: it builds the impression that people with vaginas don't assault people, and it treats penises (and the people who have them) as inherently dangerous. Bioessentialism is gross on so many levels
  
  Not to mention if these fuckers weren't making it so goddamn difficult to get GA surgery, then maybe she wouldn't have had to have been hanging dong in the locker room. I am quite confident that's not something she does because she wants to.
  
  Eh, some of us do choose not to get surgeries. Dilation is hard work!
  
  Yeah the motive is revealed in the methods. Conservatives never propose legislation that specifically addresses any advantage trans women have, instead opting for blanket bans. The science shows that trans women have very little if any advantage in sports, and in my sports we're actually at a competitive disadvantage. Hell, even the chuddiest of chuds could realize that trans women certainly can't have an advantage in all sports. Do trans women have an advantage in women's gymnastics? Have you seen the type of bodies that excel in that sport?
  I would be open to conversations of sports fairness if they came from a place of honest good faith, but they don't. The default stance should be equality first, with restrictions only introduced when absolutely necessary. Is it possible there's some sport that trans women have some massive advantage in? Well trans women should quickly dominate that sport's upper echelons. If you find such a sport, then maybe we can have the conversation about fairness. But even then, it should be limited to just what is absolutely necessary to ensure fairness, nothing more. For example, maybe some handicap system would be appropriate for an individual sport. But even then, such intervention should only be done if there is some enormous unfair advantage that trans women are systematically demonstrating.
  Instead, we just get bigots that talk about a trans girl "stealing" their spot in a sports competition, as if she doesn't have the exact same right to compete as any other girl. It's fundamentally about devaluing the humanity of trans people all together. Trans identities aren't to be respected, they're to be tolerated and humored at best, persecuted at worst. It's no different than the same instincts that kept sports racially segregated for generations.
  
  Considering roller derby has been fully inclusive for years and hasn't seen any sort of advantage play out, I find it unlikely it'll show up anywhere
  
  Do trans athletes even exist in a statistically significant number to even warrant the conversation in the first place? I think I've only ever even heard of a trans athlete in SNL skits and shit like that. Granted, I don't pay attention to sports in general.
  
  Hit the nail on the head right there. Tempest in a teacup. That's their bread and butter. Hyper focus on something.. then, piss and moan about it non stop. I honestly don't understand how anyone listens to these professional whiners. What a waste of oxygen.
  
  And they are under represented. I don't recall the numbers but the percentage of trans people in the overall population is much higher than among athletes
  
  I think you mean over represented.
  
  No, I mean that among trans people, there are proportionally less athletes than among cis people. The few that do go into sports are over represented in (right wing) media if that's what you mean
- Good to know. If I choose to change instances I’ll go to this one.

54 comments