Treatments for trans children and politics, world-wide

[BigFatCoward]

15 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

More important to the "fairness" of sport is the steroid use, trans people are such a non factor ( very low percentage of trans people in soports), so this focus on trans people in sports sounds like a dogwhistle to me. as mormont said, this isnt about sports or fairnes its about transphobia and misoginy. There are other things that have a much bigger impact in the fairness of sports than trans people

And there are rules against them also, its not one or the other. Its not like people are giving juice heads a pass. 

To be fair if we got rid of all steroid cheats, there would be almost no professional sports. 

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[Zorral]

There is so much more involved in the lives of trans people like all of us, than sports, yanno?  For many, perhaps even most, sports isn't even on the radar.  Sports is not the point or the reason or anything at all.

A Breakout Spanish Novel About Class and Trans Identity Comes to the U.S.
Alana S. Portero’s debut, “Bad Habit,” follows one woman’s coming-of-age in a blue-collar Madrid neighborhood.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/books/review/bad-habit-alana-s-portero.html

Quote

 

.... portraits that make up much of the novel. “All trans girls grow up alone,” the narrator reflects.

Eventually she begins taking covert steps toward living as her true self. As she enters her teenage years, she manages to venture out into the gay neighborhood of Chueca. She has a liberating first romance, though it is cut painfully short when her lover’s father learns of the relationship. Later she throws herself into the druggy nightclub scene, where she finally dresses as a woman. Yet this double life still leaves her alienated, since her daytime identity remains male. It’s only when she makes friends with older trans women, coming to feel “so powerfully part of a tribe that it seemed it was my birthright,” that she realizes she, in fact, isn’t alone, that “gender euphoria did exist.”

“Bad Habit” has been a critical and commercial success in Spain; now it’s being translated into many languages and published across the world. In a marketplace of often narrowly defined literary categories, Portero’s book — like the best books that feature trans characters — shows us that a “trans novel” can actually be anything it wants to be. “Bad Habit” is about identity, yes, but in its keenly observed realism, it’s also a family story of parents and children, and at the same time, it offers a fresh angle on narratives of the working class. And undoubtedly, it is a tale of a city, taking its place in a rich lineage of Madrid novels by other Spanish authors, from Rosa Montero to Almudena Grandes, Camilo José Cela to Javier Marías.

“Bad Habit” reminds us that our ideas of cities are inseparable from the people who tell stories about them, and we all benefit from new tales about old places. As Portero’s narrator puts it, “I couldn’t escape being from Madrid just like I couldn’t escape being trans.”

 

 

[Conflicting Thought]

6 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

And there are rules against them also, its not one or the other. Its not like people are giving juice heads a pass. 

To be fair if we got rid of all steroid cheats, there would be almost no professional sports. 

I mean in practice they are, given that almost all competitors in almost all sports take them 

If you think that getting rid of steroids means we would not have professional sports, the i really dont understand what the problem is with trans people competing with cis people. 

[BigFatCoward]

2 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

I mean in practice they are, given that almost all competitors in almost all sports take them 

If you think that getting rid of steroids means we would not have professional sports, the i really dont understand what the problem is with trans people competing with cis people. 

Because I want sports to be fair. Steroids make it unfair. And I believe trans athletes competing against cis women is also (though not in the same stratosphere of) unfair. 

[Kalbear]

I do appreciate the incredible shittery of both criticising trans people for wanting to do sports because they have an advantage based on going through puberty as the other sex, and then ALSO criticizing using puberty blockers which would make this a nonissue. 

[Maltaran]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

. 

It is worth noting however, that the worlds second most famous (or at least 2nd greatest) trans athlete - Phillipa York, has a transition story much more in line with what Karaddin describes with regards to the physical effects, than that of some of the other more successful athletes that have transitioned. 

 

I’m not sure if she’s really relevant to the discussion when she competed as a man and didn’t transition until well after she’d retired.

[kissdbyfire]

Question about the issue w/ sports and fairness and all that that some have raised: does the problem lie w/ trans folks in general, or is the issue only irt trans women and not trans men?

[BigFatCoward]

14 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Question about the issue w/ sports and fairness and all that that some have raised: does the problem lie w/ trans folks in general, or is the issue only irt trans women and not trans men?

There's no advantage so nobody is saying they shouldn't compete against men. There's a decided disadvantage so not sure how competitive they could ever be. 

The US womans football team got absolutely annihilated by a bunch of schoolboys (under 15s) and that was American schoolboys. 

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[BigFatCoward]

4 hours ago, Maltaran said:

I’m not sure if she’s really relevant to the discussion when she competed as a man and didn’t transition until well after she’d retired.

As an elite athletes I'd say she is eminently qualified to characterise the negative impact on her physical abilities post transition. Even if it happened well after she retired. 

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Question about the issue w/ sports and fairness and all that that some have raised: does the problem lie w/ trans folks in general, or is the issue only irt trans women and not trans men?

What BFC says. Transmen compete at substantial disadvantage in most competitive sports I can think of. Giving them trans-only events would be fairer to them, too.

One place where women defeat high school state champions is the 5,000 meter... but fully adult men are substantially faster than junior/senior boys, at least glancing at the WRs, so even there I'm not sure they would have a real advantage.

[BigFatCoward]

I think we can all agree that the ban on trans women competing in women's World chess champs is utter horseshit though. 

Edited April 24 by BigFatCoward

[Conflicting Thought]

what is the percentage of trans women wining over cis women? i have seen trans women lose and win in competitions, dont see how thats particularly  unfair. as other people said, sports is inherently unfair, you can have genetic advantage, or money advantage,etc. like if all people want is making sport fairer then focusing in trans people is ridiculous, makes no sense to me, given that they are a super small percentage. and there are currently in sports much more unfair things (and i dont think trans women in sports is unfair) that focusing in trans people has to have another explanation other than the suposed unfairness that they bring

nobody is saying that michael phelps or usain bolt or serena williams wining is unfair, all of them have advantages (genetic or otherwise) over their competition.

[Week]

3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

There's no advantage so nobody is saying they shouldn't compete against men. There's a decided disadvantage so not sure how competitive they could ever be. 

The US womans football team got absolutely annihilated by a bunch of schoolboys (under 15s) and that was American schoolboys. 

Annihilated in a scrimmage? Deep breaths, please.

[BigFatCoward]

4 minutes ago, Week said:

Annihilated in a scrimmage? Deep breaths, please.

A bunch of children beat the best female adult team in the world, comprehensively. And they weren't even remotely the best under 15 male team in the world. I doubt they were in the top 500, maybe not even in the top 5000. 

It highlights the insane difference between men and women in certain sports. 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Week said:

Annihilated in a scrimmage? Deep breaths, please.

I guess the problem I am having is where the actual, ya know, literal problem is here that is supposedly being legislated. Are there a lot of trans women angling to join women's national soccer teams? 

And are they so much better than the normal women that we need to preemptively legislate or fret about it? 

[Zorral]

https://www.si.com/soccer/2023/11/10/carli-lloyd-confirms-uswnt-once-lost-team-15-year-old-boys

BTW the loss was 5-2.

 

Edited April 24 by Zorral

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

i have seen trans women lose and win in competitions, dont see how thats particularly  unfair.

There have been known doping athletes who won some, but also lost some despite their doping. The fact that they lose despite having an unfair advantage doesn't make the unfair advantage non-existent. It's still an advantage they have. 

I'm reminded of Oscar Pistorious and the debates over his blades, and particularly the enusing performance of other double-amputees who saw his performance, saw the rules adjusted to allow his blades ... and then went a step above and switched to longer blades because the rules allowed them to do so, which turned out to make a clear and obvious improvement on their performance by giving them greater stride length than they had had before (which Pistorious and his team complained about, rightly).

And yet, how many athletes did this "really" affect?  Very few! And yet ... people cared, as they should have, because these were all questions of fairness. Just as people care about doping, as with Lance Armstrong.

Re: US Women's team being destroyed in a scrimmage, the FC Dallas Academy U-15 team won 5-2 (as Zorral says). Looking up the goal scorers reported in the article, only Kameron Lacey made any real headway professionally, apparently playing some games for the Jamaican national team and is now on a Division II team in the US after a year in Division III.

Edited April 24 by Ran

[BigFatCoward]

20 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And are they so much better than the normal women that we need to preemptively legislate or fret about it? 

That's 2 separate issues. Yes, they are. On a whole other planet of better.  Ask the most dominant female athlete of all time (Serena). 

Whether we need to legislate is a whole other issue. 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

That's 2 separate issues. Yes, they are. On a whole other planet of better.  Ask the most dominant female athlete of all time (Serena). 

Okay, you should be able to then tell me what trans woman is out there currently that is absolutely dominating her sport.

Or were you insinuating that Serena Williams is trans?

Because to my knowledge the number of professional or even amateur athletes that are trans and are crushing their sport is...zero.

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Whether we need to legislate is a whole other issue. 

If you don't, why are you talking about it then?

[TrackerNeil]

I think the argument "very few people are affected" is a dangerous one, because it cuts both ways. If one argues that any unfairness in athletics is of little concern because there aren't very many trans women competing, someone else could argue that employment discrimination against trans women in, say, the sciences, also wouldn't matter. After all, just how many trans women scientists are there? 

Seems to me that if something is unfair, it's unfair no matter how many people are affected.