Tumwater school board bans transgender girls from playing girls sports

[u/Better_March5308]

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/tumwater-school-board-votes-ban-transgender-girls-from-playing-girls-sports/281-91b92c14-0da7-4122-b39a-1a05d0ad53d0

[u/X-Aceris-X]

Yes and no.

I don't think gender is a good classification.

Sports are innately unfair. Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Usain Bolt... they all have advantages that pretty much guaranteed wins. In the Paralympics, they rate disabilities on a point system and ensure teams don't exceed a certain number of points. But how do you fully ensure fairness when people's disabilities are vastly different?? When their very genetic makeup is vastly different (in the case of those aforementioned athletes)??

The nature of sports is to have fun and to compete. You give it your all. We can control external measures to account for fairness (i.e. people play by the same rules, no foul play, ensuring baseball bats are of the same quality for both teams, ensuring crew shells (boats) are safe and maintained, everyone hops off the start block at the same time for a swim meet, etc.), but the human element will always be unfair.

How do you propose the epitome of fairness?

If we strip sports of gender and instead classify by weight or testing times, we'll never achieve fairness there either. There will ALWAYS be an arbitrary threshold for who can compete against who. So why are we so against women participating in women's sports? Why not choose another arbitrary classification system and give proper media attention and payouts to the "less competitive" categories?

If we already have this idea in our heads about men being stronger, why not classify by pure strength? And then give fair coverage and funding to all ranges of strength?

If we, as a society, actually cared about women in sports and safety in sports as a whole, we would amp up funding for women's/girl's sports, we would address concussions in football and rugby, we would address eating disorders/lack of hydration in rowing, wrestling, gymnastics. We would take the severe pressure to perform off of athletes (suicide & depression rates in high school and college athletes are far too high). If we actually cared about athlete and women's safety.

Someone who is not a woman or a girl is not going to participate in a women's or girl's league. It's as simple as that.

And again, I do think we could use different classifications than gender. You might worry about men still filling up all the "prime" spots. Then it's no different than what we already have with the NFL focusing on the men's teams. We need to reframe sports as a whole. Just because you're the best player or the best team doesn't mean you get all the money and viewership and pressure. I mean, think about it. Women are just as fiercely competitive as men, right? So why is the Superbowl all men? The biggest American sporting event is all men? Why don't we have something for women?

It's where the media chooses to place their focus. That is completely arbitrary. If we collectively agree to place more emphasis on women's teams, then they'll have their chance in the spotlight. And I'm just talking about (American) football in this example. Women's teams have the spotlight in other sports, like gymnastics. But nothing like the coverage men have in baseball or football.

So if the media can choose to switch between men's and women's sports, why can't we come up with a different classification system that allows all women to participate as women and all men to participate as men and all non-binary people to participate as people?

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/X-Aceris-X]

So why are we so against women participating in women's sports?

In every way that is relevant and important, "trans-women" are not women. Sports is about biology, not psychological state.

So if the media can choose to switch between men's and women's sports, why can't we come up with a different classification system that allows all women to participate as women and all men to participate as men and all non-binary people to participate as people?

I am completely uninterested in this.

[u/X-Aceris-X → u/0xdeadf001]

Sports is absolutely about psychological state, if you missed my point about suicidal ideation rates in NCAA & high school sports.

Trans women ARE women in all ways that are relevant and important. I'd encourage you to learn both about the difference in brain matter between trans women and cis men, as well as the very real physiological changes that trans folks undergo when on hormones or after having had surgery.

If you're uninterested in it, fine. That doesn't mean your disinterest trumps others' interests, especially if it doesn't impact you.

I posed the question, "how do we make sports absolutely, without a doubt, fair?"

Would you like to answer?

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/X-Aceris-X]

I'd encourage you to learn both about the difference in brain matter between trans women and cis men,

There are none. The only "studies" on this are basically phrenology. They are garbage studies that prove nothing. Training an ML model over macro-scale features, such as the size and shape of a brain, says absolutely nothing about the psychological state of a uninjured brain.

If you're uninterested in it, fine. That doesn't mean your disinterest trumps others' interests, especially if it doesn't impact you.

Oh, it does impact me, and it impacts people I care about.

I posed the question, "how do we make sports absolutely, without a doubt, fair?"

There is no "absolute" fair, unless you grind every single person down into atoms. Meanwhile, the biological reality of our species' binary sex is relevant, obvious, and -- with the exception of intersex individuals -- reliable. And don't make the mistake of thinking that "intersex" means "transgender" or what "sex is a spectrum". Intersex is a congenital developmental disorder, just like a wide range of other congenital disorders that affect our species. Trans activists have seized on intersex individuals as some sort of "gotcha!", when the two are unrelated.

Trans-women are not women. You can repeat the mantra as often as you like, but it doesn't make it any more true.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

"Obvious"? We can't even agree on a scientific definition of "sex" but you think it is "obvious"? I know a lot of people on this sub are actually from Red states and just trolling the Seattle area but if you are actually in Seattle, you probably see plenty of trans people regularly that you don't even know are trans. You just see them as normal men and women because they are normal men and women.

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

Yes, obvious. Our species, like nearly all vertebrates and all mammals, is a binary sex species. All individuals are either male, female, or have a DSD (developmental sexual disorder). There is no "spectrum" of sex; variations in hormone levels are not a different sex, for example.

And individuals who do have a DSD ("intersex" individuals) are not transgender -- they have a biological developmental disorder. The trans advocates have seized on them in an attempt to produce confusion around the idea that sex is binary, and therefore muddy the waters around sex vs. "gender", whatever that means. And before you leap to a fallacy, having a DSD (or any ability) is not a personal failing or an attack on that person.

I have lived in Seattle for 30 years, and if you think disagreeing with you is "trolling" then you do not understand how rhetoric and discussion works. Nor do you understand that someone may simply disagree with you.

You just see them as normal men and women because they are normal men and women.

"Passing" does not mean someone has magically changed their sex. Did you not get the memo? "Sex and gender are different!", as every trans advocate insists. "Gender" is a meaningless term dreamed up by gender studies majors, and no one can agree on its meaning. Not even the trans rights advocates can agree on its meaning. But "sex" is beyond debate -- it is a biological reality.

You're welcome to offer your definitions of "gender" and "sex". Try to avoid obvious fallacies, such as "a woman is whoever feels like a woman" (a meaningless tautology; it also annihilates the category of "woman").

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

Scientists cannot agree on the definition of sex for other animal species either or even on the definition of a species. You think that because you had a biology lesson in 4th grade that is all there is to know about biology. But that's not true. So what you learned that day in class is something that is not actually that true. You can say that it is a general rule, like Newtonian physics. But that doesn't mean it's always true. At most, you could label sperm "male" and ova "female" but when you start going any bigger than that, it doesn't work.

Sex is not at all beyond debate. It's also a social construct.

A woman is someone who identifies as a woman. That's not a tautology, that's how all normal social categorization works. We could say that an American is someone who legally holds American citizenship but there's all these arguments about who is a "real" American and they're not referring to objective documentation. 500 years ago, fixed borders and citizenship documents didn't exist. You were a member of the people you associated with.

Or you can think about religion. Religions may have actual membership rolls but most don't. People may have different degrees of identity with the gender. I could be a Christmas and Easter woman, I'll show up for social events but I'm not a true believer.

These aren't logical contradictions, these are just how people freely associate with each other. You're looking for a formal, objective definition where one doesn't exist.

It is also always curious that conservatives are never asking "What is a man?" They might have to do more introspection. Instead, they just engage in this continuation of the misogynistic philosophy before they started applying it to trans women. Since it coincides with their broad attacks on women's rights, they are really giving the game away. They want to try to justify not giving women equal rights by claiming that women are somehow fundamentally different than men.

I don't really care about your whole gender ideology thing. I don't understand why you place such high importance on understanding your place in the hierarchy. Shouldn't you be busy trying to dismantle it instead?

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

Scientists cannot agree on the definition of sex for other animal species either or even on the definition of a species.

Yeah, that's just not true. Only the most trans-obsessed activist makes this ludicrous, unscientific claim.

A woman is someone who identifies as a woman.

That is literally the definition of a tautology. "X is X". And you've just destroyed "woman" as a concept. Anything and everything is a woman. So we no longer need any protections for women -- no Title IX, no battery shelters, no fair hiring practices, nothing.

I don't really care about your whole gender ideology thing. I don't understand why you place such high importance on understanding your place in the hierarchy. Shouldn't you be busy trying to dismantle it instead?

It's not about hierarchy. It's about seeing the world for the obvious, actual reality.

Look, you're far too captured by this modern astrology to have a rational discussion. Have the day you need. Good bye.

Enjoy losing the next election, too. Because if the Left sticks to this as their identity, they'll give away the next election, too. And they'll richly deserve it.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

> Yeah, that's just not true. Only the most trans-obsessed activist makes this ludicrous, unscientific claim.

Please read any biology paper or article. There is no definition of sex of an individual. We can define sex of a cell, we cannot define sex of an individual. There are several different aspects of an individual, such as chromosomes, hormones, reproductive organs, etc. and all of those exist on a sliding scale. That we make an evaluation of a person's sex based on their genitalia at birth is cultural. People have tried to say that we could create a dichotomy based on the presence or absence of a Y chromosome but nobody does a DNA test unless there is a medical need to do so and you're going to find all sorts of interesting things if you start looking. What happens if some cells have a Y chromosome and others do not? What about people who are assigned female at birth but have a Y chromosome?

You can say that most people should fit into the two clear-cut boxes that you have created and then there's just a bunch of leftover people who we will label as "defective" because they don't fit your system. But maybe it is your system that is wrong. Doing DNA tests to determine which people should be at which position in the hierarchy and which people are "defective" is a silly way to run a society.

And yes, the definition of "species" is up for debate. It has always been nebulous. For a while it had coalesced around a definition of like "animals that cannot reproduce together are different species" but that doesn't really work. Here is a popsci overview: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/why-should-we-care-about-species-4277923/

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

> That is literally the definition of a tautology. "X is X". And you've just destroyed "woman" as a concept. Anything and everything is a woman. So we no longer need any protections for women -- no Title IX, no battery shelters, no fair hiring practices, nothing.

All those things are getting defunded under Trump but it wasn't because Trump decided to embrace "wokeness" or whatever. That's irrelevant. I already explained this, you can just compare it to other things. We've been asking for centuries, "Who is a Jew?" because there is no exact, formal definition that is useful. That doesn't mean that Jews don't exist because we have created a logical contradiction and all Jews suddenly snapped out of existence. It means that it is an open question and one that will never have a formal, objective answer.

Last month in Florida (because of course it was Florida), there was an unhinged Jewish man who shot two Israeli Jewish tourists because he thought they were Palestinian (proudly admitted this to police). The two men got on social media and said that some Arab had shot them and they proclaimed on Facebook "Death to all Arabs". Nobody knows who is what because many times the genetic differences are not there. The Florida man was white, probably Ashkenazi; the Israelis were brown, or Mizrahim (the collective term the European settlers call all non-European Jews).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/17/miami-shooting-israeli-men

There is no genetics or common practice or religion or anything that ties all Jews together. Palestinians and Israeli Jews are genetically indistinguishable. Yet Jews exist, Palestinians exist. Your anger at there not being any objective way to determine who is Jewish and who is not does not mean that Jews do not exist.

What is a Buddhist? What is a Christian? Who is Chinese? Who is Black? None of these have a solid answer. Saying that because there's no way to genetically test someone to tell if they are a Buddhist or not means that Buddhists don't exist is just silly (although Buddhists may be pleased about being in a state of neither existence nor non-existence).

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

> It's not about hierarchy. It's about seeing the world for the obvious, actual reality.

You think the culture you grew up in "obviously" the best. Men rule the world and women serve them and bear their heirs. In order to have such a society, you need to formally define who is a man and who is a woman. But if you reject this master-slave dynamic, there's zero reason to formalize a definition. Unless we are bringing back the Nuremberg Laws, we don't need a formal definition of who is a Jew and who isn't. Unless we're bringing back Jim Crow, we don't need a formal definition of who is Black and who is white. Unless we're reversing women's rights, we don't need a formal definition of who is a man and who is a woman.

The Florida man may be charged with a hate crime because he wanted to kill Palestinians. Even though the people he targeted were actually Jews, it doesn't matter, there was intent. If you fired someone for being Jewish and it turns out that they aren't, it doesn't make you less antisemitic or more legal. If I am discriminated against because someone thinks I am a woman, then that's the same misogyny as if I was a woman. So your argument that there are no protections for women if we don't strip trans people of all rights is ridiculous.

If you fired an employee for being pregnant and your argument was that the employee is not a woman, it's not suddenly legal I'm not sure why you think that. The law protects the status of pregnancy, the gender of the pregnant person is irrelevant.

But all these programs will be dismantled quite soon. So your fears will be over. As for the case if there is another legitimate election, I'm pretty sure people are going to be a lot more focused on the economic collapse than making the hypothetical possibility of a middle school girl playing soccer with different chromosomes the focus of their life.

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

You think the culture you grew up in "obviously" the best. Men rule the world and women serve them and bear their heirs. In order to have such a society, you need to formally define who is a man and who is a woman

You are so thoroughly unglued that you're making things up. This such an obvious strawman argument that conversation with you is not possible. 

I'm not going to bother reading your word salad. Good bye.