Hi All
After reading about the Florida Governor signing an anti trans athlete bill into law, I am quite disgusted.
Not because I am trans but about the utter closed mindedness that these clown exhibit.
Someone that I follow on facebook post something supporting it and I commented that he had just banned them from any sport.
Of course the person commented back something to the effect that they could play as their birth sex.
Fortunately before responding, I realized it would do no good to post a logical response because more than likely they wouldn't understand it or just ignore it while maintaining their stance on the subject.
Sad that this throwback thinking is happening in this country. So true that you can't fix stupid or bullheaded.
Comments
Logical arguments
Logical arguments never hold sway with those who are emotionally attached to their opinion.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
Two Sides...
DEPENDING... on too many factors to count, some T folk go right to their chosen Gender Change. Others will never adapt even if they creamed their coffee with hormones. Many Science Fiction writers ignore the whole controversy, and I'm with them.
Wedge Issue
This is the typical wedge issue. The go to tactic of charlatans and despots everywhere. Identify a small powerless minority. Blame them for a thing they are not responsible for. Next stoke the bon fires of fear and division. Finally, watch your favorability rating climb among your supporters. Use this as cover for more theft, graft and corruption. Better is to avoid working on real issues that might actually help your constituents.
Your friend
Crash
Hit it on head
Exactly, the smoke and mirrors, the distraction to cover up things they want to hide from the general public.
Gwen makes a valid point.
I've met girls who've bust a gut training to a superb level of physical female fitness, only to encounter a competitor who still retains an obvious male skeletal frame with all the locomotional advantages that this endows, especially when running and jumping. The girls simply break down and weep from knowing full well that they will NEVER be able to compete on a level playing field. It is just not fair for girls and it is cruel.
Even worse is seeing a transgender competitor playing in a contact sport on a field of girls (LIKE RUGBY) and knowing that there is a very serious risk of injury or even fatality when a heavily boned (and sometimes heavily muscled) body slams a lighter, female skeleton to earth with all the attendant risk of very serious trauma that this invites.
In truth, the only honest solution I can think of is to create a third and/or plus a fourth realm of athletic competition to include MtoF AND Fto M competitors with their own classes of rules and standards.
Frankly, the only way this lunacy is going to be properly remedied is for female competitors to simply not start a race and sit down in protest on the start line.
Not Fair!!!
Sports are not meant to be "fair."
"Playing fields of Eton" -- and all that nonsense.
Sports are meant to provide recreational opportunities -- and to teach life lessons.
One of life's lessons is that you don't always win. I remember telling the parents of a soccer team I coached that the best summer season would be one where the team went 4-4-4. That would afford equal opportunity for growth, As I recall that team was U-12. The parents looked at me as if I had grown two heads. That group of boys - six years later won 3rd in state for their high school.
I suppose if I hadn't been so namby-pamby they would have won state.
Really - what's more important? The trans athlete's mental state -- or winning a few games?
I once coached a group of girls in basketball. I was given two very small, underaged girls to fill out the roster. When we got to the state tournament I cut back the playing time for the two because I thought it was only fair that my eight other girls get a "fair" chance at winning.
To this day -- almost three decades later -- I wonder what the hell I was thinking about. We won state. We got the big trophies and the celebration. I was lauded as a terrific coach -- for doing exactly the wrong thing.
I've seen coaches refuse to play overweight girls who would have improved their team immensely. I've seen coaches who lined up their girls at the beginning of the season for a forty-yard sprint. Slow girls would get very little playing time. Even though the only way to judge effective speed is to roll out a ball on the pitch during a game. My daughter was overweight and mocked by her coach when she was on the high school C squad. To this day she is still a large woman. She was also captain of her college team at defensive back.
My second oldest son was an all-state soccer player -- 6'5" with a thirty-eight-inch vertical. His college coach ran him off because he preferred small "quick" players. He told my son his only skill was to go to the near post on corners and jump up and down. My son had been quick enough to be the MVP of a very good high school basketball team.
Bias based on birth gender is out and out bigotry.
In my opinion there is only one side to this argument.
What is going on here is like the argument that Jews unfairly use their cunning to succeed in business and make life harder for those of us less intellectually gifted -- so let's gas'em.
Is that plain-speaking enough?
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Non-Contact Sports
Why shouldn't a TG girl be allowed to compete at SAY, lawn bowls....or darts....or golf....or archery? Those are just a few random examples. I'm sure there are many other sports where there would be little or no advantage to be gained because the player was born male. In fact, many, if not most, trans-girls are not six-feet-five and heavily muscled, just as many men are not built that way either.
Womens' cricket is becoming a very popular sport in my country and although I don't know of any TG players, I can't see how they would disadvantage the girls.
I notice that in this whole spurious argument nobody mentions female-to-male athletes being barred from competing in traditionally male sports.
What Is the Point??
My brother was a good high school wrestler. Good enough to be recruited by a college coach. He wrestled heavyweight but was only about ten pounds over the minimum for his class.
The coach also recruited another heavyweight who was one hundred pounds heavier than my brother. That wrestler was talented enough to win nationals so my brother did nothing but serve as practice meat.
Was that fair? Should have my brother sued to have that person's unfair advantage negated?
My brother learned perseverance and later ran in and completed eight Boston Marathons. Running at over two hundred pounds he had to compete against people who were carrying half of his weight. Was that fair? Should he have sued to have all those small people excluded because of their competitive advantage?
Another brother, who died yesterday, didn't play sports. He was clumsy and uninterested. Our school had nothing in the way of competitive events for people like him with 160 IQs. Was that fair?
Yet he somehow found his way in life to be a freedom bus rider with Martin Luther King. He hung out with Dylan and Norman Mailer.
Barring kids from playing sports in their correct gender is an atrocity.
It is political malpractice.
It is bigotry.
I once wrote a column for a paper about putting sports in perspective. I sat down and listed the top twenty-five most important events in my life. Even though I had achieved a good level of success in several sports none of my sports acheivements were in my top fifteen.
Other than for a very rare few I'm quite certain this would be true.
Bigotry used to achieve ephemeral success is nonsense.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Banned
I got banned from recreational league softball for being able to throw a curve. I was told that it's impossible to throw a curve with a softball so somehow I must be cheating. It wasn't fair to the other players because almost no one could hit my curveball fair. So I was banned for pitching sidearm, which I wasn't. I held the ball with my hand on the side of the ball, producing a spin that was mostly perpindicular to the flight of the ball thereby causing the ball to fall away from the plate, but my arm motion was entirely underhand.
I switched over to a fastpitch league and got banned there too. I was supposed to throw fastballs. My fastballs were notable for how far they went when hit, so I never threw them except off the plate to screw with someone's timing.
I had three effective pitches. My impossible curve, plus an eefus pitch that came down through the strike zone and bounced off the plate, and a "screwball" that looked like my curve but fell away from the plate the other direction. The difference from the curveball was in which fingers released the ball first. All were slower than even a mediocre fastball.
I had perfected my pitches by long hours throwing against the barn at the outline of a strikezone. I couldn't throw a good fastball because I wasn't allowed to throw that hard at the barn because the noise would scare the chickens.
I was also told that you can't throw a knuckleball with a sotball. I think someone could, but my hands were too small. Maybe with a collegiate softball. The eefus pitch came out of my trying to throw a knuckler. :) My teammates called it my balloon pitch or flutterball since it didn't seem like it was going to land at all. It got banned, too, for flying too high.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
If My Son Can't Hit it. . ..
Most amateur leagues have boards made up of parents. Those parents have a bias and wield it.
If little Johnny or Jenny couldn't hit your curve, something had to be done about it.
Issue resolved.
I served on several boards and had as a guiding principle "What will keep the most kids coming back year after year by making it fun and exciting."
I love your throwing against the barn story because that's exactly how I practiced pitching softball. I also had movement on the ball.
I also laughed at your reluctance to throw a (slow) fastball. One of the Twins' announcers recently said, "Home runs aren't hit -- they're thrown."
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Norms, Extremes, Leagues, FUD and Shoe size
Venus Williams is a big girl. She has always been a big girl. Her size and strength give her and advantage over the other tennis players. There are more genetic female athletes who happen to be big than there are trans women who want to play sports.
When my kids were young they played soccer. At about middle school they stopped because all the players in their league were bigger than they were and they were tired of getting hurt. In our case at least leagues were first divided by sex and then by school grade. Many of the biggest players were also the oldest ones.
In some sports, such as weight lifting and wrestling, we divide competitors into weight ranges. For some reason we don't do that in team sports.
We say we want youth and school sports for all the altruistic, team building, camaraderie, and esprit de corps reasons. But there is always the element of competition. Nearly all sports have the concept of winners and losers. That seems to be the one element that is the most important. That is the one that is most celebrated. We celebrate it in spite of what we say. In fact we say that the ones who win are the ones that have the best team building, camaraderie and esprit de corps.
If we see a problem and wanted to solve this problem. If we want to allow all youth to participate. If we want to put our ideals into action then we would look for solutions. Solutions like dividing leagues by weight or shoe size. Instead we see our leaders using the problem as a wedge to divide,generate hierarchy and spread discord. We see them using it as a way to exclude, other and foment bigotry. This is not leadership. This is power mongering.
Join me in calling for youth sports leagues to be divided by shoe size. Regardless of age, sex, gender, race, sexual or political orientation or whatever.
Your friend
Crash
Soccer and show size
Soccer balls vary as participants age until they play with the size five which is the standard size.
I played very little soccer but I coached a great deal.
It seemed to me that once a players foot got to be a certain size a larger foot was actually a disadvantage. Harder to strike properly with instep.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
All the more
All the more reason to divide leagues by shoe size rather than school grade or simple calendar age and genetic or presented sex.
The kids with big clumsy feet would be together with players with similar disadvantage.
hugs
Your friend
Crash