I'm glad that Tgirl raised an important point, since it's one that Josh Earnest made in his briefing: the DOJ memo doesn't impose any new laws or mandate any new behaviors. It simply spells out what has always been federal policy. More precisely, it clarifies the implications of what has long been federal policy. It does so, according to Earnest, in response to repeated requests from the states for clarification in these matters--and also, implicitly, in response to the small burst of new state laws.
Tgirl, you're an important voice here and I'm glad you're participating. We need facts, empirical evidence, and a lot more clarification in order to understand the true implications and likely outcomes of the DOJ action. I'll reiterate my own feelings about the issues under discussion here, which is that I'm absolutely fine with the general tenor of what we might call the "bathroom stuff" (the DOJ resassertion that trans girls get to use the girls bathrooms and all girls-only facilities after parents have asserted that the student's gender has in fact been changed) and much less sanguine about the right of trans girls to participate in interschool athletics, especially at the HS level.
I'm sure that the NCAA's reporting requirements in the matter of hormones, etc., place some basic check on the possibility of unfairness and abuse; I'm also sure that there are some trans girls who, having transitioned early in life, are...well, GIRLS in every respect that organized athletics cares about. Here's one of those:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXnTAnsVfN8
But what about the HS level? Seems to me that the DOJ has just thrown open the doors and said, "Here's your guidance: trans girls get to be on your girls' teams, and don't you dare try to keep them off by offering "generalizations" and "stereotypes" about how trans girls have an unfair genetic/hormonal advantage."
I'd love to believe your claim that reasonable people will figure out reasonable solutions. Maybe you're right.
Meanwhile, on the slightly different subject of intersex (hermaphroditic) athletes in women's sports, I'd urge you and every other member of this forum to find 50 minutes and watch this extraordinary documentary: "Too Fast to be a Woman: The Story of Caster Semenya."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-UX0LE_tCg
My wife and I watched it last night. I watched the first 20 minutes, then demanded (nicely!) that she watch the entire thing with me. My wife is a sensible woman. She is African American, used to be a bit of an athlete, and shares my more-or-less centrist politics. We had more or less the same reaction. Semenya comes across as funny, likeable, and thoroughly humanized figure, somebody with a wonderfully supportive family and community. You certainly can't blame CS's mother for raising her as a girl--she was born with a women's external sex organs--and you can't blame CS's family and community and legal team for reiterating the pronoun "she." But from the very first moment CS ambles on screen, anybody in their right mind sees a guy. It's not just a question of short hair and a man's deep voice. It's a question of body type and physical deportment. We humans have a visceral response--as visceral in its own way, I suspect, as the visceral response of a young man who, born in a man's body, says, "I always knew I was a girl."
The film demands that we embrace Semenya and her struggles to compete as a woman. And we do. What the film doesn't do--and my wife and I both noticed this--is give one SECOND of air time to Semenya's female competitors. It silences them. It deprives them of visibility; it deprives them of a voice. My wife and I both felt the larger injustice created by this lack of parity.
It seems to me that contemporary progressives--and I'm talking in part about academic leftists and people like Dave Zirin--want to have it both ways. On the one hand, they want to say "Gender is a social construct, and binaries are a bad thing. Human beings have always occupied a much wider and more fluid array of gender identities than society, with its implicitly conservative bent, was willing to allow. We need to allow people to embrace EVERYTHING they are; we need to demand that society allow them to choose from a dozen different pronouns (xers, xemself, verself, etc.......
https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/
....."
And then such gender progressives turn around and say, "Oh, but since an old-school gender binary holds sway at all levels in organized athletics, we're going to allow a whole bunch of new somewhat-womanish people to scoot into the formerly protected category known as "women's."
I believe in fair play.. That's one reason why I think that trans women deserve to be able to use women's bathrooms: because they'd potentially risk bullying or worse in boys' and mens' bathrooms. But exactly the same desire for fair play leads me to look with great skepticism at both intersex athletes like Semenya and trans girls/women, of whatever appearance and point on the fluid gender spectrum, participating unimpeded in organized interschool HS and collegiate athletics.
I have no problem at all with Semenya competing as a man. There, in fact, his/her accomplishments would inspire ALL of us, rather leading some or many of us to feel that something unfair is going on. Current ideology says, "We must accept everybody for the gender they say they are." I mostly agree--except when it comes to organized athletics and, specifically, the protected category known as women.
But I'm just a guy--and an aging one at that. We live in a brave new world now. I'd like to hear from girls and women who compete at the highest level. Do you believe that intersex competitors like Caster Semenya should be allowed to compete with you? Do you embrace the prospect of competing against trans girls and women? Have you, in fact, ever knowingly competed against a "woman" of indeterminate gender identity--which is to say, somebody that your gut told you was, as we might say, more male than female--and what was that experience like?
Social change is often a matter of some group of people being made to feel uncomfortable. White southerners were made very uncomfortable indeed by the prospect of "race mixing," which is what would happen if segregation was ended. And of course segregation was ended, and of course now blacks and white are now teammates and the Negro leagues are no more. I'm quite willing to look critically at my own discomfort in the present situation.
I'd like to hear from the women. Too many guys weighing in here. Thanks, Tgirl, for provoking these thoughts.