It’s almost time to delete my account so I am sticking my neck out to potentially getting blasted.
I will preface by stating that gender identity is not an issue for me. Be who you want, use whatever bathroom you want. Just wash your hands/paws/tentacles.
My ignorant question is: for transgender athletes in competitive sports, should records be categorized differently or asterisked? Isn’t it kind of like using performance-enhancing drugs?
I don’t mind about actually competing, however if someone had 5-10 years of hormonal growth advantage during puberty, even if they no longer have that advantage, it seems like a big gray area. Yes, someone could naturally have that chemical makeup. Similarly, some exceptionally elite athletes have genetic variations that give them natural physical advantage.
When I was in school I was decent at swimming, in the top 5% of men. If I competed against women I would be like top 0.01% and making a career out of it. Though, if I started setting records I don’t know how I’d feel about it, given my advantage.
Honestly, writing these thoughts down is giving me some existential dread. What does it mean to be human, and why? Does anything even really matter?
I hope everyone has a nice day and is kind to each other.
The “issue” seems moot to me, personally. Between the facts that no one is transitioning in order get an upper hand in the sports world and that there are plenty of documented incidents of cis women athletes being falsely flagged as trans women due to their high testosterone levels… I just don’t think it really matters. It isn’t like there are record breaking trans women dominating the sports world. This “issue” mostly feels like an overt attack on trans people in general than genuine concern over the alleged purity of sport.
The people spearheading these attacks on trans people aren’t interested in some nebulous notion of sports integrity, they simply want to further denigrate and attack an already maligned minority. They are concern trolling on a national scale and that I find deplorable and transparent.
I might be biased here, as I really couldn’t care less about some Olympic notion of athletic purity, the idea itself feels somewhat eugenic adjacent, but I also think the impact of accepting trans women in sports is ultimately very minimal on the sport world, but huge for the progress of trans rights, something that I think is very important, especially in this day and age.
Furthermore, I think people outside of the propagandists trying to make this into an issue who care about this idea of purity in sports are being taken advantage of by malicious actors (aforementioned propagandists) who do not care about sports purity, but do care about repressing a maligned minority.
The question is fair, but so very few people are affected, who cares? Yes, I can care about more than one thing at a time, but using trans athletes as a political football (heh) is ludicrous. And yes, I know it counts for the people involved, I’m not a total ass.
I’ll never find it again, but recently someone tallied how many times this came up on Fox News over the course of a single week. I think it was 100+ if not 150?
The vast majority of people are never murdered, either. But I’m sure it matters to them and their loved ones.
It’s an extreme example for the analogy, but the point stands: it doesn’t follow that a bad thing being rare makes it less bad. This is not a valid argument against.
Thanks for admitting that was a crazy analogy, made to prove a point! So many people on here take that kinda thing at face value and argue.
And my point was meant to convey; We cannot win every fight out there, not for so few people. I am sympathetic, but we gotta choose our battles. At this point the right has Americans running around in circles on trans sports, brainwashing their own and enraging the rest. We have to aim high, the most good for the most people, work our way down.
Kinda like gay marriage. I never thought we’d see it in my life! Starting to look like our energy needs spent on defending even that. And fuck me, I had thought that a settled issue. Against that particular backdrop, trans sports is a small-scale affair.