Lindsay Crouse calls effort to keep biological men out of women's sports an "excuse for transphobia"

I like rojo's idea of an open class and a women's class. Anybody can compete in the open class (no more patriarchy) and only biological females can compete in the women's class. If you can't provide a birth certificate or other proof that you're a female, just go to the open class and stop complaining about how it's not fair. Life isn't fair for anyone.

rojo wrote:

We just published a guest column on this debate by Amby Burfoot. In it, he wrote, "There is no known case of any individual declaring a gender change to chase athletic glory."

My response to this is, "Not yet."

Let's think about this practically for a minute.

Let's say the woke mob gets the Equality Act passed. Then if you are a conservative-leaning 4:20 high school dude, why in the hell wouldn't you "transition.>"

Declare yourself female. No one can question it. You get a full ride to college and get to shower with the girls team. After college, you can tell everyone you changed your mind and become a star in conservative politics.

I'm sorry to be so cavalier about it but to me that may be the only way to get people to realize how stupid this all is.

And how fast do you think your 420 miler is going to be after a year of hormone therapy so she is eligible to compete? She will be lucky to break 450. I doubt you are going to find many boys signing up for that.

But sure why don't you find a school that will let you coach, recruit a half dozen boy 420 milers and let is know how many races you win. When you check back in a couple years maybe people will realize how stupid this argument is.

Crazy people believe this stuff is normal, what else can one say?

I'm not saying I'm for it or against it. But I heard someone else suggest this possible solution.

5 separate divisions, 5 separate races:

Male since birth

Female since birth

Male>Female trans

Female>Male trans

Indeterminate sex

Declare in advance. Line up separately. Go.

America's fury wrote:

I like rojo's idea of an open class and a women's class. Anybody can compete in the open class (no more patriarchy) and only biological females can compete in the women's class. If you can't provide a birth certificate or other proof that you're a female, just go to the open class and stop complaining about how it's not fair. Life isn't fair for anyone.

☝️This person has a female birth certificate.

rojo wrote:

We just published a guest column on this debate by Amby Burfoot. In it, he wrote, "There is no known case of any individual declaring a gender change to chase athletic glory."

My response to this is, "Not yet."

Let's think about this practically for a minute.

Let's say the woke mob gets the Equality Act passed. Then if you are a conservative-leaning 4:20 high school dude, why in the hell wouldn't you "transition.>"

Declare yourself female. No one can question it. You get a full ride to college and get to shower with the girls team. After college, you can tell everyone you changed your mind and become a star in conservative politics.

I'm sorry to be so cavalier about it but to me that may be the only way to get people to realize how stupid this all is.

Yeah, Rojo, this is definitely “thinking about it practically” ?

GettingFasterDude wrote:

I'm not saying I'm for it or against it. But I heard someone else suggest this possible solution.

5 separate divisions, 5 separate races:

Male since birth

Female since birth

Male>Female trans

Female>Male trans

Indeterminate sex

Declare in advance. Line up separately. Go.

Sounds good. Of course now instead of a marathon offering 100k to the winner they will offer 50k to from birth and 50k for the trans. And the track team will have 6 scholarships right? Olympics will only allow 1 person from each country to keep the number of athlete's about the same. Who could possibly complain about this solution?

Man, the conservatives live their boogie men.

“We gotta have our guns in case the King of England comes to take our flags!”

“We gotta stop transgender girls from

competing with girls to protect our granddaughters’ rights to get a college scholarship for running a 5:30 1600!”

Just read the Burfoot article and it’s like these old people just don’t get it:

“ Members of the committee, if your daughter or granddaughter was the top high school tennis player in her state, and then five biological boys suddenly decided at the age of 17 to identify as female, should she drop overnight to number six?”

Did she flunk elementary math? Yes. 1+5 = 6. Why are conservatives so perplexed by basic arithmetic? You were number one. Now five girls are better than you. You are now number six. We shouldn’t give airtime to asinine takes such as these.

These are women who are living every other aspect of their lives as women. Their participation in sports should be consistent with where they use the restroom, the box they check on filling out a legal document, and every other area of their existence.

I understand and support your point that these are women living as women. I get it. Where I don't agree with you is that "Their participation in sports should be consistent with where they use the restroom, the box they check on filling out a legal document, and every other area of their existence". This seems to me that you're creating your own rules to fit your personal agenda. You can say and be whatever you want, unfortunately, that's not gonna fly in an athletic competition where there's a physiological advantage (testosterone) to being trans-woman in a "Female" category. Why is this so hard to comprehend? We are discussing athletics, aren't we? This is a running forum, right?

Again, create an Open division for these athletes so they can experience the benefits of athletic competition in a way that is fair and equitable for ALL athletes.

NERunner00053 wrote:

How many women have posted on this thread?

______________

Who knows? We can't know how many people on this thread are women. You're also assuming that people posting here don't care about women's sports because they focus on the trans issue and ignore dispartities in resources for women's and men's sports.

This is possibly true, but it's also possible that people here don't post as much about disparities because they're less common in running than in other sports. Women and men get the same prize money, compete in the same venues, etc. Track & field is ahead of other sports when it comes to sex disparities in pay and facilities.

Again, I'm not saying there isn't sexism here. Everybody knows that the boards here can be a cesspool. I just don't buy the arugment that people posting about the trans issue are merely sexist bigots. Some might be, but even this does not make their argument wrong. What's so shocking about many of the arguments for trans inclusion is their blatant misogyny.

Nice try Leonard!

Sorry, the world doesn't work that way, and it never will. The sad thing about being "Woke" is that you always have to be the "Victim". What happens when you're no longer the "Victim"? Hmmm... Think about it.

Do you know any "Women"?, or should I say "Females"? aka Sisters? Daughters? Mothers?

NERunner00053 wrote:

Also is my evidence not the women I run with who avoid this place & pro female runner after pro female runner saying they avoid this place?

Yeah, I am mad at LRC when they crusade on issues like this & create toxic environments for groups that are already targeted with plenty of hate. & no, I don't speak for women at all. I'm glad you're here. But we can both spot a pattern.

This website has a lot to do if it were serious about branching out to a more diverse crowd.

Wouldn't it be nice if we all talked in respectful tones, hushed voices, and were genuinely interested in others' opinions even if they do not seem to be well thought out or are just a desire for attention (I know, I know, a stereotypically non male/trans male trait.)? Sometimes you have to check your definition of toxicity and discomfort to get to the root of a problem as others may see them. Or in other words, their loss.

This thread is full of knee jerk reactions to posits made from all angles, i.e., ability to give birth - A WOMAN IS MORE THAN A BIRTHING VESSEL!, brain function is also a scientific indicator of gender - NOW WE HAVE 64 CATEGORIES!, etc.

We know that males are better at most sports and will watch more of it than females. We even know that males who have transitioned have a distinct advantage over cis women due to previously developed bone structure, height, muscle, etc.

I think we can all agree that we want trans women and men to enjoy sport as much as we did. It really comes down to; should they compete in an open division or with their sisters. The question that needs to be asked is "Do they just want to participate (open division) or do they want to be competitive or part of a team (women's division)?

We can, likely, also agree that, when it comes to sport, we want to compete, it's not just some participation thing for us and it likely wouldn't be for some trans athletes. That's understandable.

If we could get away from attempting to read between the lines in order to refute an argument maybe we could focus on how do we include trans folks rather than exclude.

From my perspective, I am a huge fan of women's sports, I have an athlete daughter (who, along with her mom, refuses to watch any kind of sport), but I do not want trans women competing against her in the women's category. Not because I am anti trans, Republican bigot, who, despite my privileges, refuses to educate myself, but because I believe it to be patently unfair. Nothing more, nothing less.

I wouldn’t consider myself “woke” or a “victim.” I’m ridiculously privileged. I am married to a woman. I have a daughter.

If my daughter runs track (she’s 5), which would

make me quite proud, and she were to lose to a transwoman at some point in her athletic career, it would not bother me. Why not? Because....she’d be losing to another girl!

By the time she’s in high school, hopefully a lot of these old dinosaurs who can’t follow basic logic will be gone and this will be a non-issue.

This. The argument always comes down to believing the women’s category exists for gender reasons. It doesn’t. The women’s category exist solely because biological women are at a significant disadvantage to men. That is the only reason. If biological women performed at the same level there wouldn’t be a separate category. It just wouldn’t exist. In fact it would be pretty really awesome to see, unfortunately that is not reality.

Instead we have high school boys running faster than the women’s 800m world record every year. If you don’t understand this you don’t really understand running at a competitive level.

So are you saying that, as long as T levels are checked and the athlete meets whatever testosterone metric is decided “fair” for females, she can compete as a woman?

That is what the NCAA has decided. I don’t personally agree with that because it isn’t that simple. Some large advantages are permanent. Eastern block women took unlimited amounts of steroids and never reached the level of top men. Testosterone isn’t this magic dial that fixes everything. Things like bone structure, heart size, etc

This is a good read.

rojo wrote:

A transgender woman can never breastfeed. A transgender woman can never give birth. Those two facts are why women are not nearly as good at sports as men at the elite level post puberty. If at birth, a doctor takes a look at you and determines there is zero chance you'll ever give birth, then you almost most certainly will belong in the open category of sports. We have a special category for people who are capable of breast-feeding, giving birth, etc and it's called the women's category.

ROJO, just so you can be abundantly clear here, you are aware that there are "biological women" who are born infertile and have a "zero chance (they'll) ever give birth," right? The are many, many reasons for this, such as Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome where a women is born without a uterus.

This is such a stupid, tedious, trivial vanity issue. Biological men should not be allowed in women's sports. The end. Spin to the cows come home with idiocy.

Nice emotive argument but you miss that there is no necessary connection between a concern for fairness in women's sport, by allowing biological males to compete, and wanting to promote women's sport generally. They are quite distinct issues. But it appears the fairness issue posed by transgender participation doesn't bother you. Nor is it "trans bashing" to recognize that the participation of biological males raises significant issues for women's sport. Indeed, the IAAF has already recognized this. Would you accuse them of trans bashing?