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  1. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    When our most talented accomplished “female” athletes are denied the opportunity of competing in future Olympics, will we pull out?

    • #1
  2. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Personally I am all for this.  Let’s give the feminist what they demand. 

    • #2
  3. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    Personally I am all for this. Let’s give the feminist what they demand.

    Pardon me, but I’m not a big follower of sports any more:  Are there feminists competing at the HS level?  Or whose daughters are competing?

    • #3
  4. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    The comments father of the male competing as a female (as reported in TownHall) are completely nonsensical. He makes totally illogical assertions that if his son can compete only as a boy, he is being “excluded.” Huh? Apparently according to the father, no one should be excluded from anywhere or anything for any reason whatsoever. 

    • #4
  5. Kay of MT Inactive
    Kay of MT
    @KayofMT

    There should be three teams, his, hers, and all others as “its.” Fairness gives the female and men a chance to compete. However, the men who identify as female, and the women who identify as males, can compete against each other.

    • #5
  6. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    Why even have male/female distinctions? Just have sport competitions open to any and all. And if it turns out that the girls can’t beat the boys then we will finally know that we’ve been mislead by all those TV shows and movies that purport to prove 90 pound women can really beat up 200 pound men.

    • #6
  7. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    Percival (View Comment):

    When our most talented accomplished “female” athletes are denied the opportunity of competing in future Olympics, will we pull out?

    Let’s keep early withdrawal out of this.    Not polite party conversation.

    • #7
  8. Jim McConnell Member
    Jim McConnell
    @JimMcConnell

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    There should be three teams, his, hers, and all others as “its.” Fairness gives the female and men a chance to compete. However, the men who identify as female, and the women who identify as males, can compete against each other.

    That will never work; it makes too much sense.

    • #8
  9. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    There should be three teams, his, hers, and all others as “its.” Fairness gives the female and men a chance to compete. However, the men who identify as female, and the women who identify as males, can compete against each other.

    The problem with the “it’s” is that it involves a huge spectrum.

    It includes:

    1. males who identify as women but have had no surgery, etc.
    2. males who identify as women but have had surgery, etc. (really a continuum);
    3. females who identify as males who have had surgery, etc. Some of these may be taking so much in the way of hormones that they can outcompete males in certain sports (consider lightweight boys’ wrestling).
    4. only hypothetically females who identify as male but have not had surgery, etc. I assume all of these will be content to compete in women’ s sports.

    And I have not even gotten into the various forms of actual biological intersex situations. 

    • #9
  10. Doctor Robert Member
    Doctor Robert
    @DoctorRobert

    ctlaw (View Comment):

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    There should be three teams, his, hers, and all others as “its.” Fairness gives the female and men a chance to compete. However, the men who identify as female, and the women who identify as males, can compete against each other.

    The problem with the “it’s” is that it involves a huge spectrum.

    It includes:

    1. males who identify as women but have had no surgery, etc.
    2. males who identify as women but have had surgery, etc. (really a continuum);
    3. females who identify as males who have had surgery, etc. Some of these may be taking so much in the way of hormones that they can outcompete males in certain sports (consider lightweight boys’ wrestling).
    4. only hypothetically females who identify as male but have not had surgery, etc. I assume all of these will be content to compete in women’ s sports.

    And I have not even gotten into the various forms of actual biological intersex situations.

    Very true.  You would not believe the niches in the spectrum that I see at work.

    Have a boys’ teams for biological males, girls’ team for biological females. That’s the only fair way.  The Connecticut rules have permitted a handful of opportunistic egoists and their sons to dominate high school track and field and to thus exclude actual girls from the victories they earned.  Why the feminist left is not all over this is beyond me.

    • #10
  11. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    ctlaw (View Comment):

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    There should be three teams, his, hers, and all others as “its.” Fairness gives the female and men a chance to compete. However, the men who identify as female, and the women who identify as males, can compete against each other.

    The problem with the “it’s” is that it involves a huge spectrum.

    It includes:

    1. males who identify as women but have had no surgery, etc.
    2. males who identify as women but have had surgery, etc. (really a continuum);
    3. females who identify as males who have had surgery, etc. Some of these may be taking so much in the way of hormones that they can outcompete males in certain sports (consider lightweight boys’ wrestling).
    4. only hypothetically females who identify as male but have not had surgery, etc. I assume all of these will be content to compete in women’ s sports.

    And I have not even gotten into the various forms of actual biological intersex situations.

    Well then let all those different perverts organize their own sports events.  

    • #11
  12. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Just a wild thought:  What would happen if there were no tax dollars involved?  Maybe then we could just tell these spoilers to go pound sand.

    • #12
  13. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    There is an incontrovertible and ineluctable difference between people born male and people born female: only people born female can birth children; only people born male can impregnate people born female.

    I know that’s obvious to people who aren’t seriously confused about human sexuality, but there are apparently a lot of such people out there. It’s nice to be able to confront them with simple, unambiguous truth about the difference between men and women.


    Defenders of boys-competing-as-girls make the argument — a specious one, in my opinion — that there is no advantage derived from being male because the hormones the males take are supposed to negate such advantages. That seems pretty ludicrous, given the profound physiological impact of a lifetime of testosterone exposure. But ignore it for a moment, and ask yourself why it’s fair for a boy to be prohibited from competing as a boy against girls, if he’s willing to take the same hormone injections as the boy who wants to pretend he’s a girl.

    Sounds sexist to me.

    • #13
  14. Old Bathos Member
    Old Bathos
    @OldBathos

    From the progressive perspective, the real problem is the archaic, societally constructed distinction between the sexes (as if there were only two–hah!)  with its sole  basis in patriarchal cognitive constraints masquerading as scientific modes of thought.  The ultimate goal is to eliminate separate sports teams segregated by sex for true equality of opportunity.  Those who developed under the influence of “female” hormones rather than testosterone will no longer be able to compete in the great majority of sports but will have the satisfaction of knowing their hope for sexual equality has been realized at last.

    • #14
  15. Roderic Fabian Coolidge
    Roderic Fabian
    @rhfabian

    If we value sports we should work to keep them fair.

    In no kind of sports do we mismatch participants.  Regardless of sex we seek to match up contestants who are fairly even in ability so that all players have a chance to win part of the time.  If people have no chance of winning they will quit.  So if women can’t ever beat trans women it’s bad for the sport because they won’t participate.  

    We don’t have 6th graders competing with high school seniors.  We don’t have Jr. High football teams playing pro teams.  We have football stratified for age and for school size, among other things, so that teams all have a chance to win.

    Pro sports work hard to keep teams more or less even because they found that the teams could not last if they lost all of the time.

    Even greyhound racing dogs are stratified by ability into 6 or more classes in some states.  Dogs who always outperform their peers in one class are moved up to the next higher class. 

    So if trans women constantly outperform in women’s sports maybe they should be moved up to the next higher performing class — the biological men, or the biological men’s junior varsity, or whatever.

    By the same token the trans men should probably not always be required to compete with the biological men.  

    • #15
  16. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    Why even have male/female distinctions? Just have sport competitions open to any and all.

    That is where we will inevitably go, thus undoing the entire point of Title IX as applied to athletics.  

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    And if it turns out that the girls can’t beat the boys then we will finally know that we’ve been mislead by all those TV shows and movies that purport to prove 90 pound women can really beat up 200 pound men.

    In one of the articles I read on the subject one of the girls or her parent noted that a single boy who competes as a girl has claimed in a single season ten records that had previously been accumulated over something like 20 years by 10 different girls. 

    • #16
  17. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Full Size Tabby (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    Why even have male/female distinctions? Just have sport competitions open to any and all.

    That is where we will inevitably go, thus undoing the entire point of Title IX as applied to athletics.

    I am more optimistic. What I think distinguishes the so-called “trans” movement from other recent examples of cultural radicalism (most notably, same-sex marriage) is that the trans movement is inherently unsustainable in at least two respects.

    First, there’s the matter of women’s sports. I don’t think the large number of participants in women’s sports will stand by while the entire endeavor is gutted, and all its records destroyed, by men competing as women. It’s too great a cost to impose, an example of progressive overreach.

    Secondly, there’s the matter of males in females’ locker rooms and bathrooms. For all the talk about it, I think the reality is that a large number fathers, husbands, and brothers will refuse to tolerate men following their daughters, wives, and sisters into places where common sense says men don’t belong. Again, this is an example of a noisy fringe minority demanding too much.

    Rapid cultural transformation depends on a relatively disinterested majority being less passionate about the change than is the highly motivated radical fringe. In this case, the people who are invested in the status quo are greater in number than the radical fringe and, at least in these two examples, equally passionate.

    I expect the progressives to lose the trans battle, and have to walk it back.

    • #17
  18. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    A cis-gendered female athlete woman would be disqualified from competition with other women for taking performance-enhancing hormones. But a transgendered woman who comes by his/her/zer performance-enhancing hormones naturally may compete with cis-gendered, un-enhanced women.  Sounds totally fair.

    • #18
  19. Richard Finlay Inactive
    Richard Finlay
    @RichardFinlay

    Old Bathos (View Comment):

    From the progressive perspective, the real problem is the archaic, societally constructed distinction between the sexes (as if there were only two–hah!) with its sole basis in patriarchal cognitive constraints masquerading as scientific modes of thought. The ultimate goal is to eliminate separate sports teams segregated by sex for true equality of opportunity. Those who developed under the influence of “female” hormones rather than testosterone will no longer be able to compete in the great majority of sports but will have the satisfaction of knowing their hope for sexual equality has been realized at last.

    Under an affirmative action approach, all sports teams will have to include x% various genders (updated at least annually) to eliminate all unfairness.  Individual sports will either be forbidden as inherently non-inclusive, or restricted to trans-genders only, they being obviously self-contained inclusive.

    We will know we have achieved true fairness when all league/conference sports seasons end in a tie among all participating teams.

    • #19
  20. Jim McConnell Member
    Jim McConnell
    @JimMcConnell

    ctlaw (View Comment):

    Kay of MT (View Comment):

    There should be three teams, his, hers, and all others as “its.” Fairness gives the female and men a chance to compete. However, the men who identify as female, and the women who identify as males, can compete against each other.

    The problem with the “it’s” is that it involves a huge spectrum.

    It includes:

    1. males who identify as women but have had no surgery, etc.
    2. males who identify as women but have had surgery, etc. (really a continuum);
    3. females who identify as males who have had surgery, etc. Some of these may be taking so much in the way of hormones that they can outcompete males in certain sports (consider lightweight boys’ wrestling).
    4. only hypothetically females who identify as male but have not had surgery, etc. I assume all of these will be content to compete in women’ s sports.

    And I have not even gotten into the various forms of actual biological intersex situations.

    It sounds like you are promoting specie-ism(sp? I’m not up-to-date on all the “isms”) here. Why can’t apes, canines, ungulates, etc., compete also?

    Seriously, though, some of the comments seem to reflect a belief that there can be a reality-based debate on what constitutes a sex.

    • #20
  21. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Jim McConnell (View Comment):
    Seriously, though, some of the comments seem to reflect a belief that there can be a reality-based debate on what constitutes a sex.

    Y chromosomes — do you have them?

    • #21
  22. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Doctor Robert (View Comment):

    Have a boys’ teams for biological males, girls’ team for biological females. That’s the only fair way. The Connecticut rules have permitted a handful of opportunistic egoists and their sons to dominate high school track and field and to thus exclude actual girls from the victories they earned. Why the feminist left is not all over this is beyond me.

    The feminist left is stuck.  To oppose this transgenderism nonsense, they would have to acknowledge that there are significant biological differences between males and females.  This would undermine their entire ideology and world view.

    • #22
  23. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    Civil suit filed:

    https://www.adflegal.org/detailspages/blog-details/allianceedge/2020/02/12/big-news-3-high-school-girls-file-lawsuit-to-preserve-fairness-in-women-s-sports

    Complaint:

    https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ctd.137997/gov.uscourts.ctd.137997.1.0_1_1.pdf

    Docket:

    https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16835048/soule-v-connecticut-association-of-schools-inc/

    • #23
  24. Slow on the uptake Coolidge
    Slow on the uptake
    @Chuckles

    Interesting that since this was posted a granddaughter in Florida has dropped out of track, she had been doing very well.  I don’t think it was the only reason, but not wanting to compete against pervs was an identified part of it.

    Wonder how many other instances there have been of girls just quietly dropping out partly because of this.

    • #24
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