Wise Old Man wrote:
ConfusedAsWell..... wrote:
To Wise Old Man,
Thank you for an actual conversation. I’m not in favor of forcing girls to show their birth certificates every time they want to play sports and definitely not testosterone testing. But, our society already functions in a way that separates by biological characteristics. In Little League, you can only be 12 years old. In high school (in my State) if you start the year 19+ years old, you can’t compete. We have age groups for just about everything. I’m sure there’s some people that have been falsely accused of age cheating, but in all my times of Little League, AAU meets, high school, I only heard of one accusation (and it was true, the high schooler guy was 21). So I’d imagine we’d use the same process for ‘sex’ as we do ‘age’. I understand the concern about false accusations and it being damaging, but I just don’t think that will happen. Most of the country believes that sports have been separated by sex all this time anyways, and there hasn’t been rampant false accusations and demanding that girls show their birth certificates or have their testosterone tested.
Also, where is the ample data regarding transgendered athletes competing with their gender or not? Are there actually multiple studies with large sample sizes comparing transgendered athletes who are competing with their gender against those forced to compete against their biological sex instead? I try to read as much research as I can, and I haven’t come across these studies yet. I’m not saying they don’t exist, I just haven’t found them. I have read research on ‘transitioning early’, and how the relates to depression and suicide, but that’s not the same thing.
When it comes down to it, I don’t think ‘this will be the end of female sports’ as some other people do. In most circumstances, I honestly don’t think much will change. But, in some circumstances, females will be subject to unfair biological differences. Do these rare instances outweigh the negative effects on transgendered athletes and potentially all female athletes in my solution?? At this point, I think it’s impossible to prove either way. Again, I’m not really that upset with the current rules, I’m mostly upset with the notion that anyone who disagrees is anti-trans.
*If we had a poll, and the vast majority of female athletes were in favor of competition by gender, then I wouldn’t argue it.
Dear Confused
+1. Your points are valid and you are not anti anything. If we could have more conversation and less name calling, that would be great. I hope we as a society can strike a good balance between inclusion and fairness based on biological advantage, and I do think the balance might differ depending on the level of competition. I don't think these new laws in AK or AL are an attempt to do that, just a sad political stunt.
Proceeds to name call and label everything as a political stunt