Newsom has consistently and repeatedly fought for trans rights. I dunno why trans advocates are getting hung up on sports. I swear you guys were manipulated into digging your heels in with the dumbest position possible solely to divide and discredit the movement for equality for trans people.
It’s like how the news media will ignore dozens and dozens of innocent Black men getting shot by police until there’s a story of a gang member with a rap sheet a mile long who was actively trying to rape someone when police shot him, and then they’ll run the story hoping that the anti-racists will rush to defend him.
Insisting on having untransitioned or partially transitioned trans women in women’s sports is such an obviously stupid hill to die on. You’re all playing right into their hands.
I don’t know if you’re falling for it or this is just how you feel, but Newsom was talking to Charlie Kirk who popularized the “groomers” line, calls June “groomer month” all the time and constantly talks about executing “groomers”. Newsom softballed it to make it seem like Kirk just cares about sports, and repeatedly dog whistled a lot about how much he agrees with Kirk keeping it ambiguous about what exactly he agrees with.
Maybe you believe Newsom is deep down a good guy and he’s just doing this to shill for right wing votes, and once you give him power he’ll be normal. But right now all he’s doing is telling his audience of out of touch liberals that the “I don’t want to see a black pilot on my plane” guy is the kind of sensible conservative Democrats should be bipartisan with.
IMO based on how he talks and the trans bills he’s vetoed as governor, Newsom is the type of liberal that likes the idea of being the big guy protecting “these poor people” from dirty rednecks, but is also extremely suspicious that all this gender shit is some kind of Tiktok trend that might get out of hand if he lets trans people have it too easy.
removed by mod
I’ve never seen people care this much about Micheal Phelps biological atheletic advantage. That alone tells me that this argument is disingenuous and a way to be transphobic in a public way.
There are actual verified cases of olympic tier athletes winning because of their biological make-up. And yet the only time biological advantage is brought up is to shill tranphobic talking points. You don’t even have to be trans to be accused of being trans. These same people claiming to be advocates of women’s sport are the same people who will falsely accuse biological women of being biological men
I’ve never seen people care this much about Micheal Phelps biological atheletic advantage.
Have you ever seen Michael Phelps compete against a league of teenagers?
Or a regional swim meet in Idaho?
All trans women/trans athletes should be banned from sports competition because 2 happened to out-perform their cis peers? What a pathetically reactionary argument. This comment right here perfectly exemplifies the transphobic mindset.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you post actual peer-reviewed studies and evidence of trans athletes outperforming their peers on average due to being trans? Oh wait, you can’t. Because there’s literally zero empirical evidence of that being the case.
And the fact that you pivoted so quickly away from Phelps for some reactionary anecdote says it all.
All trans women/trans athletes should be banned from sports competition
The fuck bullshit is this?
you pivoted so quickly away from Phelps
The fuck bullshit is this?
Did you respond to the wrong comment? Literally my previous comment, the one you responded to, is about Phelps.
Edit: also
don’t you post actual peer-reviewed studies
Sealion.
removed by mod
deleted by creator
Many sports are divided in a women’s and an open competition. In the open competition any genetic advantage goes (hence the name open), whereas the women’s competition is restricted to people with a specific trait. In such a context I think it’s totally valid to restrict the women’s competition to “born with vagina”. Transgender (both M->F and F->M) can continue to compete in the open section.
Sports that are instead divided in a men’s and women’s section are more problematic, because they may completely block transgender people from competing at all levels, which is very exclusionary. I don’t see a particularly good solution for these sports, apart from changing sections to “open” vs “women’s “.
Finally, I do not see a role for genetic testing (born with vagina, but XY for instance). People make life decisions based on the gender they believe they are. Takebacks based on genetic tests that could occur in far advanced stage of an athlete’s career is completely unfair.
But what advantage do women without a vagina have versus one that does? What if they didn’t go through cis puberty? How do we knows trans woman have an innate advantage instead of being effectively handicapped by their hormone treatment? This is my entire point. People want to ban Trans women specifically because of a reactionary feeling of “its not fair” while having zero evidence. There are like 2 cases where a trans athlete outperformed their cis peers. Yet the way some people (not you specifically) act you’d think trans women are sweeping every sports competition.
In my opinion, it comes down more to being exclusionary towards trans woman. More-so then it ever was about “protecting women’s sports”. I don’t think that everyone that wants to bar trans women thinks this way. But people like Charlie Kirk 100% do and will abuse that at every turn. This is the same man that calls June “Groomer month”.
That’s a fair point. To my understanding the science is not clear if transition started pre-puberty, though I think it is pretty clear if transition happened after puberty. You are also absolutely right that in practice the problem (if you consider it as such) concerns very few cases. I think my only point was that having an open (instead of a men’s) section would circumvent both the possible exclusion of transgender people, and the controversy of those born as men, participating in women’s competition.
I think it’s completely nuts that after the last 20 years and especially the last 12 years, Democrats still seem to think that compromising with the right will flip republicans voters. Gavin, my guy, they think you’re literally the reincarnation of Stalin. You could gargle Trump’s nuts and they’d still hate you
We’re not trying to flip Republican voters. We’re trying to get low-information voters to vote for us. The undecided, unaffiliated, etc. They just come out and vote based on feels.
And how’s that working out?
Need to pick a candidate who’s already quite conservative. Nobody believed that Harris was that because she ran on a liberal platform in 2020
I think it’s completely nuts that after the last 20 years and especially the last 12 years, Democrats still seem to think that compromising with the right will flip republicans voters.
No they don’t. They know it won’t and don’t care. They just love moving to the right for its own sake.
Because once you lose one right, the rest fall like domino’s.
Ok then in that case you are SO fucking late to the party
You’re all playing right into their hands.
Correct. Ask any of these people “defending” women’s sports to name a dozen non-male athletes. Ridicule them upon failure to do so.
such an obviously stupid hill to die on
The Left in the US would so much rather die on the hill of perceived moral superiority than achieve any of their goals. And, thus, here we are.
That’s part of why trump got elected lol. Rather than trying to fix the issues while retaining some level of government, some people were like “let’s have a brutal authoritarian dictatorship and change things for the worse. That will show democrats!” Meanwhile nobody votes in the primaries or their local elections
It’s asinine, and that’s why we need a new Left in the US: a Left of people who actually want to build a society in which the highest possible health and well being is achieved for the largest possible number of people, and who are willing and able to learn and adapt, to find the most effective methods for achieving said society, even if it means compromising and being pragmatic. A Left that is measured by results, rather than performative social justice advocacy.
I find it so hard to have good messaging on this topic because we first have to convince half this country that helping others is a virtue not a weakness. How do we convince a deeply selfish population that helping neighbors and keeping our nation healthy and educated are not “communist plots to make everyone poor” but just basics of a successful society. I can argue politics all day but once someone thinks empathy is a weakness or a sin, I just don’t know what to say anymore. We need a fundamental societal shift and that has to start locally I think.
We should worry about the Right after we get the Left into some semblance of coherence and rationality. Liberals and Leftists should be natural allies against the fascists. Instead we got the Leftists knifing the Liberals in the back this election.
That might be fixable. Compromise between Left and Liberals is plausible. The Right, on the other hand, is not at all tethered to reality. There is no reasoning or compromise with them. They are in full-on batshit wackadoodle land. Addressing them will require something a lot more radical than “convincing”.
We should worry about the Right after we get the Left into some semblance of coherence and rationality.
So you’re going to punch left until they agree with your bigotry and never get around to punching right.
removed by mod
It is a significant challenge. We absolutely do need to change the culture, and I think that is best achieved at the local level. I think it’s a dead end trying to change the culture from the top down, I think we will have much more success building from the bottom up. But, that will require being heavily involved in our communities. That is a tricky proposition for many of us, because some of us live in pretty conservative, even reactionary communities. There’s no easy answers here.
One possibility is for leftists to all move to the same state or states, to concentrate our power, to make us less diffuse and spread out. That’s a pretty drastic plan, and probably not feasible for a lot of people, but it’s one possibility, I suppose.
And centrists will accept any policy as long as it’s to their right.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
You say that to anyone to your left who doesn’t jump with joy at the latest betrayal of marginalized groups.
I say that to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
You arrogantly say it to anyone to your left.
That’s not true. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop. Just stop.
I agree with you
As someone with trans family, and that works around parents (but has no kids myself), and is very liberal personally –
From what I can tell, Gavin is speaking to how the average parent feels. They are accepting of trans people, but have some hesitations and those are coming out through this example, for one. And I mean the more liberal parents
You either need to get out there and speak to these people and work to help them get over these feelings, or you need to accept how they feel and the… yes I’m spinning this phrase… boundary they are requesting and then work within that to change their minds
Raging at them and damning candidates over it without working to actually change it is just like the Palestine voters and Kamala all over again (at least at a superficial level)
Do not engage with such bullshit. This is such a fucking non-issue, that is ultimately more about demonizing one of the most marginalized minorities in history, rather than “protecting” anyone.
Yes, but the problem is that the right engages with these issues. It allows them to score points. The left should have never been in a position where it was arguing in favor of trans women in women’s sports. It allows the ghouls on the right to dodge the economic and social issues that really matter.
The left should focus on real problems that matter to people in material ways. The right wants to make major cultural battles over some tiny fraction of people. They don’t “engage with these issues”, they create them. If you feel the need yo constantly defend yourself from every manufactured right wing outrage, you have already lost. By engaging, you legitimize their narrative. Focus on improving peoples’ lives in measurable ways.
You cannot let the right’s reactions control what you do. You’ll never win if you let that happen.
That’s the mistake that centrist triangulators like Newsom keep making.
Oh, because it worked so great last election. Tell me, how man seats for the Democrats pick up?
When America shifts to the left on economic issues, that benefits all Americans, especially vulnerable groups like the trans community. The issue of trans athletes in women’s sports helps no one. It doesn’t help trans people. How does trans atletes in women’s sports benefit trans people at large? It only causes hostility against the trans cause and against progressive politics.
You know what’s more unfair? Targeting transgender kids.
Yeah, we should totally focus on something so vanishingly rare and trivial it almost doesn’t exist instead of the myriad of real world, life and death problems.
That’s how you lose elections. You just say “x issue is not that important” and wonder why voters who think it’s important don’t vote for you
It is trivial, but at the same time, this issue is a cultural flashpoint, extremely politicized, and also potentially a vote winner/loser. It’s very unfortunate.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but the US just voted for a neo-fascist regime, and some of these cultural/identity issues may have played a role in that.
It’s a tightrope, for sure.
All I can say for sure is that whatever the Dems were doing didn’t and won’t work moving forward. Whether it’s true or not, the perception of the democratic party seems to be that they care more about identity than everyday issues. For everyone’s sake, it might be time that they attempted to change that perception.
We don’t need solutions for wealth inequality nor housing crisis nor cost of living issues nor the rise of fascism.
Not placing a value judgement on this, but you can probably expect a lot of Dems to distance themselves on trans issues. It’s a group of issues that takes up a lot of air, and divides the party, while uniting republicans.
It’s so fucking dumb to capitulate to Republicans on any of these issues, because they’ll just find some other bullshit to fabricate into a huge deal amongst their base of morons. Stand behind your beliefs you fucking cowards.
It really doesn’t seem that hard to just constantly disprove the lies they’re telling, over and over, until eventually the people who are still sane in this country understand what a non-issue the conservatives are freaking out over. I feel the same way about their “migrant crime” myth, which Democrats also immediately capitulated to and started campaigning on fixing despite crime statistics clearly demonstrating migrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than the general populace.
It’s almost like standing up for their beliefs was never the goal, and they’ll just say whatever makes their corporate donors happy.
I mean, the counter-argument is, why spend time on issues that not even your own voters agree on? I think the majority of voters, on either side of the aisle, probably do not actually know any trans people personally, which is why it’s so easy for Rs to paint them as what they want. That lack of personal stakes makes it hard issue for people to get behind. And, frankly, I think there’s a lot of assuming in online discussions that every democratic voter is on board with the idea that sex and gender are different things, but I think in actuality rather a lot of them are probably either uncomfortable with the idea or just unsure. And then when you get into questions like whether prepubescent children should be able to medically transition…there’s just going to be a lot of people not on board with that, which is precisely why it’s a point Republicans hammer on.
Here’s what I think really gets to the root of why Newsom is doing this: a lot of those Democratic voters probably feel like they can’t express their true feelings on the matter for fear of being labeled a transphobe. So Newsom is, in essence, giving cover to those people (who are probably a significant portion of the liberal wing of the party) to say “maybe I’m not really fully on board with all this trans stuff yet,” specifically picking out women’s sports to rally around because polling shows that people are overwhelmingly against trans women participating in women’s sports. And it also serves as him separating himself from those Democrats, i.e. the ones who completely fucked up what may have been the most important election in the history of the country. This is a very calculated maneuver, and it probably has nothing to do with his personal beliefs - because he’s a politician and I don’t think successful politicians believe in much of anything. And I think you will see lots of other Dems do similar.
It’s stupid because their donors do not want them moving left, so they continue to pander to these nonexistent folks that they think will move away from the republican party to vote for them, leaving behind their actual base, who will simply not vote.
And they have an opportunity to show cowardice.
It’s a case of “follow the leader”. Whenever a candidate wins in a democratic or semi-democratic system, all other candidates become more likely to lean more towards the winning candidate’s positions on issues, either in the hope of peeling off votes or preventing defections from their own moderates.
If only there was some way we could have went the other direction on the issue. Maybe a candidate who wasn’t a openly raging transphobe.
Would be sick to get to vote for someone who actually had opinions and goals and stood for something. If we want to vote for just the general prevailing opinion we should just run an LLM and train it on superbowl commercials and cable news.
Yeah I’m not touching this with a ten foot pole. This is so low priority.
The way I view it is they claim to believe in a free market. I don’t know of any leagues off the top of my head that aren’t companies. If one company chooses to do it one way and it is actually bad for business, another company would replace them if it was actually an issue. But being that it isn’t that big of a deal, no rival companies have surfaced to replace them.
The government runs schools that have teams, so it can control this
Well I assume when talking from a government perspective, the conversation is going to inevitably become about highschool sports and whatnot. Where I still definitely don’t want to touch this with a 10 foot pole!
Iz-rah-el who’s iz-rah-el?
Sounds like someone is preparing for Presidential run for office.
Speaking as a Californian, unfortunately, he probably is.
The guy who ruined San Francisco got the credentials to ruin California. Now he’s gearing up to ruin what’s left of the country
When you culture is so much about cOMpEtItiOn that you forget that sports are just a made up thing for witch we get to make whatever rules we like. Gender segregation in sports isn’t that eternal either.
If you’re that worried about different abilities competing, install a tiered system like the Special Olympics.
EDIT: Interesting read: https://daily.jstor.org/gender-incommensurability-in-sports/
What if the separation of competitions, “said to be a natural consequence of the differences between men and women,” is actually is “just a tool to create those differences”?
removed by mod
I have 4 sisters. I just couldn’t see myself allowing them
Why do they need you to allow them?
He doesn’t. that was a figure of speech.
Idk, man, kind of a sus one
It’s not that simple, you need to understand the effects that Hormone Replace Therapy has on the body. Men and trans women physically do not have the same type of body and the studies even shows trans women perform worse than cis women in most areas.
-
Transgender women performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring lower-body strength.
-
Transgender women performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring lung function.
-
Transgender women had a higher percentage of fat mass, lower fat-free mass, and weaker handgrip strength compared to cisgender men.
-
Transgender women’s bone density was found to be equivalent to that of cisgender women, which is linked to muscle strength.
-
There were no meaningful differences found between the two groups’ hemoglobin profiles. Hemoglobin (Hb) plays a crucial role in athletic performance by facilitating improved oxygen delivery to muscles. Elite endurance athletes may exhibit up to a 40% higher level of Hb compared to untrained individuals. Moreover, heightened levels of Hb typically correlate with enhanced aerobic performance.
You’re allowed to feel however you like, but I need you to understand that it is only a feeling, not something backed by scientific observation of reality. Saying you don’t hate anyone is at odds with letting your gut feeling take the side of bias.
This is why it’s so crucial to never submit to a right wing framing on any issue. I have a goddamn trans brother, and I didn’t know about these specific facts at all. I hate the misinformation zeitgeist.
this!
it’s the most insane thing that I’ve been on the flip side of this rhetoric coming from that part of the political spectrum as well. when I told my brother I was transitioning (MtF), he freaked out and said I was going to lose muscle mass and all my strength. of course that’s part of what estrogen does, and is kinda the point, but I find it silly that they admit it and simultaneously refuse to admit it.
I hope I wasn’t coming off as someone who is upset with the existence of trans individuals. I have had trans friends. Who I housed at my home when they were kicked out of their homes. I have helped and been an ally before I knew what an ally was. I saw the mod deleted my comment. But I wasn’t trying to be mean or anything.
Well, no. Not exactly. I do think you are using “I have black friends so I can’t be racist” sort of logic to not be critical of your original comment. But I never thought you were coming from a place of malice or outright bigotry, just one of ignorance. There is a lot of propaganda around anti-trans legislation, so I truly can’t fault you for not understanding the nuance of endocrinology.
Yet having said that, the fact that you and your ex argued about this intensely enough that you split , that you describe her stance as “devout” and that yesterday you saw this thread as an opportunity to bring the story up. Well… it speaks to bias that apparently you still hold. I believe you were not trying to be mean, but when you talk about “the physical differences between men and women” as a way to argue for trans exclusion than you clearly do not understand the community or the issues we face, much less be an ally.
At a certain point, intent or former trans friends just doesn’t matter.
-
Yeah, I’m sure that it was the only reason and that you framed it as being “uncomfortable”.
Just so you’re aware. I do security for artists. Including trans artists. I would never remove an individuals identity for existing. I respect everyone’s right to exist. I just thought it wouldn’t be fair in a cage match. Because of the biological differences between our two body composition’s. Twitch muscle speed and all that jazz.
It is unfair. I dominate at women’s sports, great ego boost when I feel down. Mixed duo in tennis is a good balance though.
deleted by creator
