I just want to point out that Janelle Avilez, who would have been originally pushed out as the 7th place finisher at masters (seems she was given a spot in the meet anyway), qualified for state finals today with a 4:49.
Big congrats to all the girls! OP I hope your daughter ran well. Thankful they weren't impeded by the unfair policies California put in place against them and ran a clean race--a race that all us women before took for granted.
California has so many talented female athletes. Excited for this final.
I wish they had scratched before. that way two other girls could have had their places. What a bummer.
How do you feel about Johnson and Pacheco?
Those girls are cis girls. They earned their spot and had the right to fairly compete. The trans identifying individuals should not be competing against cis girls in the first place due to unfair advantages. Would have at least been considerate of them to scratch early and allow a cis girl to reclaim her rightful spot.
Doxxing? YOU mentioned your daughter so like everyone else calling for the OP to name their daughter why don’t you have to do them same? unless you condemned that and I missed it.
Thank you for another laundry list of mansplaining. I am a WOC and I don’t need an old white dude to lecture me about the spaces my brown daughters occupy. Being the wise old man you are your refusal to occupy space for other minorities is clear. You are what we are fighting! WHITE OLD MEN lecturing women on what is best for them. Sorry I’m not going to let you tell my brown daughters what is best for them.
Have a blessed day.
Wow, now you throwing race into it?
Why’s that??
Guess what, my daughters are BIPOC too….and in my house, they lecture me, not the other way around.
I found this piece that has helped inform my sentiments on the topic. It’s written by women, so they can “womensplain” it to you….
“My feminism is trans inclusive. It is welcoming of trans people and the increasing number of non-binary young people who are making us interrogate the gender binary and all the inequalities that it has caused. I do not expect to change the minds of gender critical feminists with this essay. Yet, we can unite on the battles that need to be fought and not fixate on trans people and trans women when a structure of patriarchy is what we should be uniting against. Let’s move beyond single-issue feminism and not allow anti-feminist conservative and far right forces to exploit trans and non-binary people to divide our movement when there is so much work to do. Below are a series of pledges that I believe all feminists can and should unite on.
We pledge to fight for: The right to birth control and abortion Equal pay and a reduction in the gender pay gap Affordable childcare The rights of women all over the world The right to material security (employment, housing, food, healthcare, energy, clean water, clothes) Children’s right to be free from discrimination, bullying and harassment The right to education for all We pledge to fight against: Femicide and rape culture Violence against all women Violence against LGBTQ people Toxic masculinity Sexual harassment in the workplace Everyday sexism Enforced gender stereotypes Racism Environmental destruction Bullying and harassment”
I'm just gonna counter with something I read on another forum:
You have no claim whatsoever to being a feminist if you support a male usurping your gender in order to steal opportunity that belongs to you.
You also have no love for the future of your daughter or granddaughter if you stay silent/complicit on this.
Liberal here. I’m from a family of liberals. 60% of my friends are liberals. I know zero people, personally, who think it’s ok that biological males should be allowed to compete in female athletics. Like my friends and family, I’m not anti-trans or anti anybody. If you’re transgender, fine by me (and every liberal I know personally), but it’s simply unfair and unrealistic for transgender humans, born male, to compete against females.
Putting the trans kids and the girls in this situation is a terrible failure if the adults. Being against biological makes in female athletics is not a hate crime or thinly-veiled intolerance. It’s human biology.
Is this discrimination against trans people? I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s the only current, realistic alternative.
For a reason that you may not understand, scratching beforehand would have compromised the safety of at least one of the trans athletes (I’m assuming that the reasoning for the scratch is the same for the other). By not scratching they did the right thing for themselves, for their families, and many others.
Deep south Louisiana Conservative here. 90% of my family, relatives, and friends are Conservative. NONE of them are racist. Now. We are getting somewhere!
Given that even a mediocre boy runner (e.g. 5-flat miler) is significantly faster than the best girl on most teams, it is only a short matter of time before the entire podium at the CA state meet will be filled entirely with trans-identifying females.
It’s time to think about a boycott, girls. Pun intended.
Those girls are cis girls. They earned their spot and had the right to fairly compete. The trans identifying individuals should not be competing against cis girls in the first place due to unfair advantages. Would have at least been considerate of them to scratch early and allow a cis girl to reclaim her rightful spot.
This isn't hard.
Them scratching too late to get replaced by the next up had nothing to do with their birth sex.
I think HS athletics is primarily an educational undertaking rather than a competitive one, and erring on the side of inclusion often trumps fairness, especially when there’s no safety issue involved and the adverse impact of having a trans athlete in the competition is modest if not zero on the other athletes.
I've not seen anyone suggest that the biologically born boys and/or trans boys not be allowed to compete in the biologically born boy's / open division.
Likewise, the real naturally born girls and women have the right to compete in the real naturally born girls and/or women's division with other real naturally born girls and women.
This way everyone gets to compete, no one is excluded, AND it is fair because no one who's not a real naturally born female is allowed in the girls and women's events.
Yeah, no one is suggesting that male trans-identified athletes should be excluded from sports, sports competition or other areas of life. We simply think they should be competing in/with their own sex or in an open division - and using the locker rooms, showers, toilets, etc of their own sex too.
If that doesn't suit them, then they should be campaigning for a new sports category and additional locker rooms, toilets and other facilities that are mixed sex and "gender neutral" for "all gender identities and presentations" - or, if they want, that are for the exclusive use of people with trans, non-binary and other special gender identities.
In the meantime, why can''t boys' and men's sports and spaces be made to be inclusive of, and welcoming to, all males? Why is all the onus on girls and women - and only on us?
Men like Wise Old Man and Hobby Jogger are having a field day imperiously deciding and discusssing amongst themselves just how much ground and fairness they think girls and women should be be forced to give up - and how much of our hard-won rights we should be compelled to sacrifice - in order to fulfill their wish to see males like Athena Ryan shoehorned into the female category - fair play, sportsmanship and women's rights be damned.
But it seems to me that men like them are the ones being bigoted and exclusionary here because of their stubborn refusal simply to accept, deal with and get over the fact that some guys wish they were the opposite sex and want to wear their hair, dress and alter their appearance so they can "present" in ways that are more in keeping with stereotypes of "femininity" than "masculinity."
Why can't men like Wise Old Man, Hobby Jogger and Aztec put their energy into making sure that males like Athena Ryan and Lia Thomas feel at home in male sports and male locker rooms?
Why can't they be the bigger men, so to speak, by showing the world that male people have the capacity to "be kind" and decent to those of their sex with gender identity issues by making them feel welcome and at home on their side of the fence instead of putting all the onus on girls and women by telling us that we're the ones who have to show kindness to males with gender issues by making room for them in our sports and spaces?
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
Momentarily leaving aside these very important issues, does anyone actually know the circumstances of both these athletes DNSing? I wonder if there was some coordinated behind-the-scenes effort this past week to avoid having them race.
Momentarily leaving aside these very important issues, does anyone actually know the circumstances of both these athletes DNSing? I wonder if there was some coordinated behind-the-scenes effort this past week to avoid having them race.
A coordinated behind-the-scenes effort? Their qualifying for the CA state meet made some national news stories. And you know a massive amount of people were upset and hating on them.
Transgender people already have an extremely high risk of suicide. Not taking into account the girls that will be racing at the state meet, I'm happy for their own well-being they scratched. Can you imagine the heat they would have gotten making it to the finals and possibly getting on the podium?
Even a kid with incredible resolve is likely to get broken down when feeling like millions of people they've never met hate on them publicly.
100% made the right call by scratching and likely made the decision after the deadline to scratch passed (was it on Monday?) as social media and news coverage hit a critical mass mid-week.
I’d like to post something supportive of trans people but I don’t want be punished by the right wing psychos that moderate this board. I’ve learned my lesson letsrun. So I’ll go back to trolling the Covid and Joe Biden threads.