Megan Rapinoe supports biological males in girls' sports because "your kid's volleyball team isn't that impor

I wonder how she would feel if the entire woman’s soccer team was made up of biological males?

If you want to insult MR, at least spell her last name properly.

LRC Note: Her name was originally spelled Rapino on the title but we changed it.

That has never and will never happened. You’re upset about something your mind made up. You’re acting like a toddler.

Excellent athlete, regularly has absurd unintelligible opinions. We see this a lot in men's football and many other sports, nothing new.

You mean like the Iranian team?

To be fair, she's not wrong (entire quote): “We’re talking about people’s lives. I’m sorry, your kid’s high school volleyball team just isn’t that important. It’s not more important than
any one kid’s life.”

You can debate whether her underlying assumptions are true (that inclusivity prevents deaths, which seems a reasonable position), but if you're arguing that the purity of a high school sport is more important than someone's life, I've got to disagree.

Though she goes off the rails with this one, so if it's one of her core assumptions, she has a problem: "Show me the evidence that trans women are taking everyone’s scholarships, are dominating in every sport, are winning every title. I’m sorry, it’s just not happening." She's putting a lot of weight on "everyone's" and "every," and that's some pretty weak sauce.

She is right in a number of ways. We take high school sports way too seriously in the US. It is no wonder that there are so many problems with athlete burnout and suicide in college. Kids are training like pros from the time they are in middle school. It is ruining scholastic sports which are really supposed to be able building character and learning about teamwork. Instead, every kid goes through some variation of a Bela Karolyi system for their sport. It is then no wonder that parents and students completely lose it at the idea of a trans girl competing on a girl's team. Being inclusive of trans girls is way more important than whether Brittany's softball team makes it to state.

So you rebutted "entire women's soccer team" with "a guy"?

There are plenty of recreational and coed sports out there where there is an expectation among the competitors that makes and females will compete together. There is nothing stopping them from competing in those events. But when the expectation among the competitors is that it is a female only event, then it should be preserved.

I see two big problems with the issue as currently framed by trans activists:

(1) "It's only a few people, it doesn't matter." Yes, it does matter. Take it to its absurdest possible conclusion. "Most soccer teams aren't putting an elephant bigger than the entire goal in at goalie, to just sit there and make it impossible to score, so who cares if one team decided to do it?" Things are either fair or they aren't, and the numbers of incidents don't determine whether it's cheating or not, something is either cheating or it isn't. Prove to us that transwomen in women's sports is far/not cheating, don't try to get out of it by citing the numbers.

(2) "It doesn't matter because this is a lower level competition." See above -- it's either cheating or it isn't. We've seen one trans weightlifter in the Olympics who could qualify as a "woman" but not a man. We've had a D1 NCAA swim champ under the same conditions. Clearly, dismissals about the level of the competition are in bad faith anyway, but even if they weren't, who is the arbiter of when the level is too high to allow trans competitors? And why should, say, teenage girls trying to make their varsity squad have to take one for the trans movement, but not, say, pro soccer playing women, or wherever you demand the line be drawn? I'd almost think it made sense the other way: highly trained professional athletes should be expected to compete with trans competitors who have serious advantages, but NOT high schoolers and community hobbyists. Prove to us that transwomen in women's sports is far/not cheating, don't try to get out of it by citing the level of competition.

Ultimately, activists who reach for either of the above arguments are performing a dodge typical of illiberals of all stripes: they are trying to avoid having to answer the tough questions by insisting that they don't have to. It's the same as when a race activist says she doesn't have to answer a white guy's criticism because the white guy can't "center himself" in this conversation: the race activist has granted herself the convenient privilege of not having to answer the criticism. The gender activists do the same thing: they know they cannot prove that transwomen in women's sports don't have a serious advantage, nor can they prove that transwomen are women in the sense that word is used to define a separate, protected category of sport. So they use one of the two dodges illustrated above.

If womens sports don’t matter then why do we have them at all?

Full statement:

“I think people also need to understand that sports is not the most important thing in life, right? Life is the most important thing in life. And so much of this trans inclusion argument has been put through the extremely tiny lens of elite sports. Like that is not the way that we need to be framing this question. We’re talking about kids. We’re talking about people’s lives.

We’re talking about the entire state government coming down on one child in some states, three children in some states. They are committing suicide, because they are being told that they’re gross and different and evil and sinful and they can’t play sports with their friends that they grew up with. Not to mention trying to take away health care. I think it’s monstrous….

So, we need to really kind of take a step
back and get a grip on what we’re really talking about here because people’s lives are at risk. Kids’ lives are at risk with the rates of suicide, the rates of depression and negative mental health and drug abuse. We’re putting everything through God forbid a trans person be successful in sports. Get a grip on reality and take a step back.”

Just want you to know that I take strong offense to your spelling of Womxn. This is 2022, do better.

This is another classic dodge among trans activists: "you're literally killing them if you don't let them on the team!" This is a revision of the general argument that if you don't affirm their gender, they will 100% commit suicide.

I have my doubts, but you're ultimately right in one sense, I'm certainly not in favor of kids committing suicide. But I would argue that you can do a hell of lot in the way of affirming a kid's claimed gender that falls short of letting them enter a sports category in which they have a provable advantage. It doesn't bother me at all if they dress, talk, or generally act like their new gender. As a man it isn't on me to say whether it's a good idea to let them into women's locker rooms or bathrooms, but if the women/girls are okay with it, then I am too. You can probably come up with 1,000 examples of things a trans kid could do in their new gender existence that doesn't take something away from someone else. Letting them play girls sports does not fit that category, though.

I see her point, but how about the girl who was denied a medal or a chance to get to the state champs because she was beaten out by a trans athlete? Perhaps she might lose a chance to get recognition in the hopes of a scholarship. How about her self esteem?

I didn't make the varsity girls softball team and I'm a real girl, what about my self esteem!

Here is Logic 101 for you. It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove the absence of anything. The burden of proof always exists on the other side.