Lia Thomas: National Champion

Takes balls to be the best .

"Only 10% of respondents thought that transgender people should be banned from sports" means 90% of respondents thought that they should NOT be banned.

The fact that polls show 90% of the US population support persons who identify as trans being able to participate in sports along with everyone else should be taken as a huge win by those who campaign for trans acceptance. Because it's an incontrovertible sign that there is already widespread acceptance and that hardly anyone believes in unfairly excluding or discriminating against people in sports based on their claimed gender identities or their gender expression. It shows that 9 out of 10 people in the US believe people who "identify as" other than their sex should be treated like everyone else.

In the world of polling and public opinion, it's virtually unheard of to find that 90% of Americans agree on an issue - particularly one as relatively new to the general public as the present-day trans phenomenon. The fact that 90% of Americans polled believe people who identify as trans should participate in sports along with everyone else means that significantly more people in the USA support trans inclusion in sports than gay marriage, free speech, universal health insurance as in "Medicare for all," abortion rights for women (female people) and paid maternity leave for women (female people). It means a lot more Americans support trans inclusion in sports than they support the rights of mothers to be able to breastfeed in most places outside the home.

As for saying that I "don't belong to the most extreme faction" - what is so "extreme" about believing and openly arguing that for the sake of fairness and safety for female people, there should be a female-only category of sports that ALL males are excluded from?

I am pretty much sure more than 90% of people believe gay people should be allowed to get married. Some of them believe they should be allowed to get married to only someone of the opposite sex.

Does it feel "inclusionary" for a gay man when he is told he can marry a woman?

Got no problems with gays getting married, but.......big problem with them wanting children, you do not allow a child to be raised in that world it's not fair to them.

Oops, my bad. I meant and should have said same-sex marriage. Or I could have used the term many gay and lesbian rights advocates prefer, which is just equal marriage.

Thanks for pointing out the error of my word choice. You got any response to the substance of my post?

I think for some (but not all) trans women being told "you can participate in men's sports" is a lot like a gay man being told he can marry a woman. Obviously, this does not apply to someone like Lia Thomas who had competed on the men's team. But not every trans girl / woman is like Thomas. For some, being on a men's team is a horrifying thought just like it was horrifying for some of the UPenn swimmers to share the locker room with Thomas. That does not mean they should be allowed to compete against girls. But being on a boys' team is simply not a real option for some of them.

I also think it's a bit extreme when you think trans girls /women should be excluded from women's / girls' sports at all levels, including youth sports and recreational sports. There are safety concerns in some sports, and those should be taken seriously. But if a trans woman in college wants to participate in club sports, intramural sports, or local recreational sports, I think she should be allowed to do so as a woman. I would not want to make her think that the whole world is trying to push her back into the closet.

The debate is should there be a category of woman's sport that some woman are banned from... Nobody really cares about the few men competing in woman's sports. Notice how few complaints there are about the transman who beat the trans woman..

You're projecting a lot of things in here, I think you should reread what I wrote. I didn't claim most of these things.

The main difference above is that I don't think people who disagree on this issue have felt like they need to censure themselves because they haven't. The problem is that a lot of people can't carry a respectful conversation in this arena. That's not me arguing one way or the other.

& I think it's incredibly important to think about who wants you to be so outraged at 1 trans swimmer. That absolutely matters.

Do you think DeSantis & his staff met with Weyant? This is what I'm getting at. There was one trans swimmer in the NCAA. Now Lia is out of eligibility. DeSantis will do this for the next successful trans athlete. He's not saving women's sports. He is performing for his base.

I assume you’re referring to the Yale swimmer. He has not yet begun testosterone therapy and therefore has no advantage over female swimmers.

Even Bruce Kaitlyn Jenner says that this is wrong.

Jenner thinks this is wrong because Jenner did not get to compete against women. Why should any one have an opportunity that Jenner didn't have? With Jenner, it's always all about Jenner and nothing else.

Nobody should be denied the opportunity to compete in sports. It is not hard to figure out a way to make competition fair and at the same time allow people to compete where they belong. The leagues need to be more flexible and creative to solve this, there is no "one rule fits every situation."

Yes, you're right no one objects to athletes like Iszac Henig competing in women's sports. Because Henig is female.

I don't believe there have been ANY complaints about Henig's participation in women's swimming,

I think the debate is over issues more fundamental than you say. To my mind, the crux of debate is whether girls' and women's sports are for female people, born with female bodies, or for anyone of either sex who has or claims to have a female "gender identity."

People who believe in gender identity ideology or genderism - let's call them the GBs, for genderism believers - say that there is no material reality to being a girl or a woman. They say that "a woman/girl is anyone who identifies as a woman/girl" or claims to "feel like" a girl/woman. Therefore, they believe that anyone male can be a girl or woman just as easily as someone female can.

Whereas people like me - who reject gender identity ideology and could be called genderism nonbelievers or GNs - contend that a girl is a female child, a woman is an adult human female; and a boy is a male child, a man is an adult human male.

Genderism Nonbelievers claim that woman, man, boy, girl are words that refer to sex. But Genderism Believers say woman, man, boy, girl are words that refer to gender. And recently, GBs have started saying that male and female describe gender rather than biological sex as well.

Genderism Believers say sports are and should be divided according to participants' gender identity and gender expression - the extent to which a person appears masculine or feminine based on hairstyle, grooming customs, mode of dress, interests, vocal pitch and mannerisms, affect, behavior and personality traits - not on their biological sex.

But Genderism Nonbelievers like me are of the view that sports have always been divided by sex, not gender identity or gender expression.

We say the category traditionally known girls' and women's sports was created for female people. Meaning people of the female sex class born with ovaries, the sex class that menstruates and can become pregnant and bear children. Which is the sex class denied the right to vote in countries like the UK and USA until 100 years ago, and which was largely excluded from scholastic sports in the US until the 1970s when Title IX was passed and first began to be implemented.

But Genderism Believers seem to think girls and women's sports were created for - and should be - for people of either sex who have long hair, wear nail polish, wear a lot of pink and like to be or think of themselves as "girly" and "feminine."

Genderism Believers contend that everyone has a gender identity. Genderism Nonbelievers disagree. We say most people on earth do not have a gender identity. We also say that the whole concept of gender identity is new, something first invented in the USA in the 1950s/60s that's gained traction gradually in the decades since then and has exploded and achieved mass popularity only in the current century, especially the past few years.

Genderism Nonbelievers like me are worried about the implications of redefining sports so that the girls and women's division is for those with female gender identities and feminine gender expression rather than for those with female bodies. Because most of the world's women do not "identify as" women or "feel like" women - we just are women because we were born with female bodies and our whole lives have been shaped by the fact that we have female bodies that do, or can do, things that only female bodies can do, such as menstruate and get pregnant. Moreover, many women and girls who are Gender Nonbelievers are not particularly feminine in our gender presentation - particularly by today's standards.

So we worry that if eligibility for girls and women's sports becomes based on making a declaration of gender identity and on having hairstyles, fashion tastes, grooming regimens, interests and personality traits deemed "feminine" or "girly" or "womanly" by the standards and sexist sex stereotypes so in vogue nowadays, then a lot of female people will end up being excluded from girls and women's sports - the category we believe was established for female people with female bodies in the first place.

As usual, Ross Tucker was great on this.

Theres just no way to be inclusive to trans women and fair to biological women here. The retained advantage from having gone through puberty is too great, even after hormone therapy.

I haven’t seen any of the pro-Thomas arguments grapple with that in good faith. They just deny that gender differences matter or that they’re significant. Which is laughable.

on the other side, and all over this thread, you have hateful anti-trans rhetoric. This is the only case where the biological reality of being genetically male really matters, and there’s no reason to misgender Thomas or make cracks about mental illness just because she wants to swim.

We should generally accept trans people for who we are. We should recognize that gender divisions in sport exist for good reason and because of that be careful about how we draw lines. I don’t think almost anyones being honest about the irreconcilable nature of these two goals.

To clarify: no one objects to athletes like Iszac Henig competing in women's sports because Henig is female - and because Henig is not taking exogenous testosterone.

Moreover, no one is concerned about what would happen if Henig were to start taking testosterone because the rules the NCAA and other sports governing bodies currently have in place say that female athletes who takes testosterone for reasons of gender identity are no longer allowed to compete in the women's division. If Henig were on T, Henig would have to compete in men's NCAA swimming - or in the men's/open category in another arena where what is referred to as the men's division is actually open to both sexes.

A final reason no one is fussed about athletes like Henig is that when such athletes do take testosterone and compete against males, they don't perform on par with males. They do not win races, set records, or take spots from males on team rosters. Because when females take exogenous T in order to alter their outward appearance to look more like men than like women, they still do not develop the host of physical characteristics that make males superior to females in most sports activities. They can pack on muscle, but not as much muscle as males - and not in the same exact way as males. Testosterone will deepen their voices and enable them to grow beards, but it won't change their skeletal structure, pelvis shape, bone density and tendons; and it won't make their lungs and hearts grow 10-12% and 25-38% larger and more powerful respectively.

Why don’t women competing against transgender women get up on the starting blocks and not jump in? That would be an easy way to protest.

can someone explain it to me?

Being suspended and losing scholarships are a deterrent.

Price to pay to save woman’s sports.