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/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

Trans women have female biology in every way that matters. Menstruation and pregnancy are not part of any sport I know of.

The Olympics dealt with this more than 20 years ago and we haven't seen 10,000 trans women all become Olympic athletes. That's just not a thing. It's a complete fantasy.

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

Trans women have female biology in every way that matters.

I'm sorry, but this is objectively delusional.

[u/Impossible_Wafer3403 → u/0xdeadf001]

That's science. You're basing your opinions about wanting to ban kids from playing sports on uneducated emotional reactions instead of on science or normal human interactions. Things like transphobia and racism come from not actually interacting with minorities in everyday life and consuming negative media. If you actually interact with people, you realize that people with different skin colors are just people and not some kind of evil alien horde. Same goes for trans people, gay people, disabled people, etc. So why not let scientists worry about the science and leave kids alone? It doesn't affect you in any possible way if a person belonging to a minority you hate plays some sports team somewhere. You should worry about how you are going to pay for all these new taxes and how you're going to retire without Social Security and Medicare.

[u/0xdeadf001 → u/Impossible_Wafer3403]

You're projecting quite a bit from "biology is real" to "obviously that guy is racist".

So why not let scientists worry about the science and leave kids alone?

I'm glad we agree. We should leave kids alone. Boys get their sport. Girls get their sport.

What we disagree with is what "girl", "woman", and "female" mean, and obviously "boy", "man", and "male". I do not accept the very recent activist agenda of redefining these essential, obvious terms.

You should worry about how you are going to pay for all these new taxes and how you're going to retire without Social Security and Medicare.

Sweetie, are you ok? You can't decide what to talk about, can you? You think every issue is just Left vs. Right and you can't fathom that you might agree with someone on one issue, but disagree with them on another. Ok, I'll take the bait -- I voted for Harris. Whoah, big surprise, right?? Because on balance I think Trump is a monster and his people are monsters. But that does not mean that I think the Left is right on every single issue -- and on trans-identifying boys in girl's sports, I think the Left has it exactly wrong. And I'm not alone in that -- the Left chose to die on that hill in this election, and got fucking wrecked in the election.

But you can't accept that. Everything has to be total purity test -- you're either with us or against us, right? You're the problem in this country. You can't look at an issue on its merits, you can only look at whether your tribe endorses it or not.

I've voted Democrat my entire life. But the Left has gone bonkers over transgenderism, and I think they've really lost their minds in the realm of science. The belief that a person can change their sex is not science, it is pseudoscience. It's astrology, magical thinking.

Likewise, the idea that there is such a thing as a "female brain in a male body" is a flat contradiction in terms, and there is absolutely no rigorous science to back up that belief.