Transgender runner wins regionals by over a minute

My point is that a sub 2:00 boy can say he's a girl. I taught high school for 25 years. I've had students who identified as the "opposite" sex than they were born as and ones who are non-binary.

The boys identifying as girls only became girls on the outside- dress, make up, hair. None ever went through the sex change process- they're too young.

I think that's the case for these high school boys competing as girls- no hormones, no therapy.

None of the kids I taught even played sports at all so we didn't have to deal with it.

The amazing part is that all of this nonsense is going to swing the election back to red. Parents in normal households are sick of this and dont want their children indoctrinated in this garbage. Then take into account families with daughters who are now stuck competing against boys who decided one day to wake up and identify as a girl. We have lost our collective minds even entertaining this stuff.

But they don’t do it. It’s far more than “saying he’s a girl”. The reaction of family, friends, classmates, race spectators and social media would be very unpleasant. There is no upside. There have been thousands of HS boys good enough to set a national HS record in a girls T&F event and it hasn’t even been close to happening.

People should be pleased with the progress made against transgender athletes. Lia Thomas was derailed and the two transgender athletes in California were effectively booed of the track.

Wise Old Parent: Let's go back to the attitudes about gender that we had in the 1950s, when women were viewed as being mentally weaker than men. In fact, just thinking you are a woman means that you can't compete with the real men. Female means not being tough, not working hard (on things other than looking pretty and shopping), and not caring about winning at sports. Thus all the girls and sissies who think they are girls should go compete in their own category with cute uniforms and let the real men show you how it is done. Try not to get dirty as they pass while you are cheering for them on the sidelines.

Smart Modern Parent: Females are just as tough, just as mentally strong, work just as hard, and care just as much about winning as males. But the biological differences between the two groups are enormous, and on average they afford biological males with a large physical advantage in athletic competitions over biological females. Thus biological females should have their own category in athletic competitions in order to allow them to compete.

And if you are a biological male who identifies as a woman, then you should go out there and proudly compete, as a woman, against the biological males, and beat as many as you can. Identifying as a woman does not make you weak; women are strong. Be strong.

The people who consider transgender athletes be more he only election issue were are never going to vote blue anyway. There are plenty of more important issues so it would be quite the moron who would vote based on that one issue.

Oh yeah, I am going to vote to be sure my child might not lose to a trans athlete in high school xc, but vote away her access to abortion or even to birth control. That makes sense and a worthy trade off.

We already saw one election (last governor race in VA) swing to the GOP at the very last second because the Dem running made a dumb comment about how parents don't have any say in what their kids learn at school, or something to that general effect, in the last few days before the vote. The Dems are similarly dismissive of any concerns over trans athletes, and of concerns about queer theory / sexuality / trans stuff being openly taught in elementary schools. No sense of, "let's have a dialogue" or "maybe we can come together and figure out what the answer is" but just "you're a bigot if you don't want a first grade teacher to help your 6 year old change genders behind your back." The Dems will get slaughtered in 2024 if they don't lighten up on school-related and school-adjacent issues. Pissing off parents is a losing proposition and one the Dems can't help but proposing over and over and over again.

You don't "see" female to male trans athletes in boys' sports because they don't make the headlines. They don't make the headlines because they don't win anything important.

No more than 15 trans athletes have been approved to play high school sports this year in North Carolina, and only two are trans girls.

apnews.com

North Carolina House approves ban on transgender athletes

@H_Schoenbaum

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Transgender girls in North Carolina would be prohibited from joining female sports teams in middle school, high school and college under legislation passed Wednesday by the Republican-controlled House in...

Open link

Here is one of the trans boys quoted in the article.

Sean Radek, a transgender 17-year-old from Charlotte, said he gave up his greatest passion — swimming — due to the discrimination and discomfort he faced after coming out as a preteen. The isolation he felt after leaving the sport still affects him today...

Here is one of the two trans girls who were banned by the state.

theguardian.com

How families are fighting back against laws targeting transgender athletes

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/loretta-hunt

North Carolina is among 37 states that have introduced some form of ‘Save Women’s Sports’ legislation aimed at trans youth

Open link

The other student graduated from HS this year. Both this person and Maddie have been on hormone therapy from early ages.

If I recall correctly, in the 2022 midterms the Rs greatly under performed in great part because of a social issue, abortion. Women are not so dumb as to think the real threat to them comes from the trans community. No the real threat is men trying to take away their reproductive freedom and deprive them of child care, equal pay for equal work, etc. As political strategy, the whole banning of trans athletes from women/girls competition is not working as a major plank in a political platform. Even Desantis has had to abandon many of his anti-woke talking points.

It's not so easy for a girl now is it. In addition to managing things like musculoskeletal injuries, a girl also has to manage total energy and nutrition balance. As many girls have experienced, simply "working your butt off" can lead to missed periods, even if you are eating healthy. Avoiding the negative near-term and long-term health consequences of this often requires a more careful management of nutrition and workload than any biological male will ever have to face, especially in high school.

2003? You mean, 26 years after Renee Richards was allowed to play in the US Open?

Another proof men are better than women. I enjoy any such case.

I think the problem is that this issue just proves that people can't see past their ideologies. The fair, correct answer is obvious and clear but people still "fight over it" like it is up for debate. Boys and girls have very different bodies and thus different athletic divisions. Everyone actually knows that. But to make a political point, they still fight over it.

It is just like climate change. We can have three feet of water sloshing in the streets of NYC and people will still claim that the ocean levels aren't really rising. We can see they are (just like we can see that trans-girls are not "just girls") yet people want to fight about it to make a political point.

What outrages people is that nobody will admit the obvious any more because they are scared to admit their "enemies" could ever be right about anything. It is sad.

The normal people and moderates know the answers/solutions but the ideological extremists hold us all hostage.

trans rights

The issue we disagree over isn't "trans rights," though. I actually believe in full civil and political rights for people who identify as trans ( and as nonbinary, genderfluid, nullgender, transmasc, transfemme, vapogender and all the other gender identities currently in vogue).

I don't think anyone should be discriminated against in education, housing, employment, voting, healthcare, sports participation or any other areas of public or private life - or subjected to ridicule, abuse, ostracism or any other kind of mistreatment - for having a trans, non-binary or other kind of "gender identity" or for appearing, "presenting," behaving or having love interests, intimate relationships and household arrangements that are different from mainstream norms.

As someone who has personally always rejected, defied and fought against the sexist stereotypes, expectations and restrictions imposed on me because of my female sex - and who's actively marched and campaigned for lesbian and gay rights - I believe very strongly that male people as well as female people should be free not to conform to the sexist stereotypes, expectations, appearance and behavior standards associated with their sex.

What I am not on board with is the particular measures you are promoting in the name of "trans rights" that favor, advantage and privilege male people who've adoped a trans identity over female people - and which require girls and women to forfeit our hard-won rights.

I categorically reject your worldview that bestowing rights on one group means depriving another group of their rights.

Human rights are not a zero sum game.

Everyone deserves human rights. But as landmark international human rights agreements such as the Geneva Accords, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and the Nelson Mandela Principles all make clear, sex and age make a difference to some human rights.

Since you find my views "absurd," why not counter them with reason? All the high-horse harrumphing, finger-wagging, woke scolding, tossing off accusations of bigotry and racism, mansplaining and putting down girls and women who stand up for oursleves that you do is tiresome - and unpersuasive.

Your time and efforts would be much better put to use by simply explaining in clear terms exactly how female sports, spaces and services can be opened up to male people without at least some female people losing out, being endangered, feeling distressed, forfeiting our rights and ending up getting elbowed out, intimidated, punched down on, perved on, preyed on, sexually assaulted, excluded and forced out.

Why wouldn't a trans athlete just compete in their own division like adaptive athletes? No one would consider a male or female adaptive athlete competing against able bodied athletes "fair" or "right". Seems like an easy fix for a situation where there is clearly an advantage gained.

Thank you for saying this. It's not said enough, especially in the context of elite female running.

The fact is, girls and women face physical challenges specific to being female that may make them 'less talented' runners as they grow up. Especially during the 'adjustment period' of the teen years. Being a girl isn't easy. Many, many girls feel they have to fight their natural bodies to try to run faster as they grow. I've seen girls become so frustrated with how they get slower as they mature rather than faster as boys do. Some men here seem to struggle to empathize with what the girl running a 20 minute 5k may be experiencing or going through and what an accomplishment that time may be for her.