Democrats 'recalibrating' on trans and gender issues.

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/some-democrats-recalibrating-approach-to-transgender-issues

'Sports participation has become one of the main fronts in a political battle over transgender rights, although most Republican-controlled states have also implemented policies that affect a bigger slice of the population. There are bans on some gender-affirming health care for transgender young people and rules barring transgender people from using the bathrooms that match their gender identity in schools and occasionally other public places.

At least 25 states are now enforcing laws or policies banning transgender women and girls from competing in at least some women's and girls' sports and three others have adopted laws but have enforcement blocked by the courts.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws barring transgender girls from school teams.'

A brief look at the state of play in the US.

“This means that one trans woman will have displaced seven women, despite only being one person. This is not a facially plausible conclusion and is more rhetorical than factual.”

It is factual. Not sure how you are twisting this to be not factual.

”Even worse it can be misrepresented as "seven medals/trophies"”

You seem to be missing ‘places’ off this list of negative impacts. The poster you were quoting included it. Hecheated mentions ‘awards’. It would be reasonable to consider any place in an access limited competition to be classed as an award, or a place.

‘places’ are very important to note. As are ‘awards’. Because across a sporting career, many representational events require placing in other events to gain entry. Like regional event qualifiers will be chosen to progress to the wider competition and it feeds up.

It is a valid and vital point to make. Because ‘places’ refer not just to event rankings, it also refers to inclusion on a team. Ie. securing a ‘place’ on a team. Including a male on any female event with limited access will displace a female athlete. Of course, even at grass roots level this can cause harm because a female athlete might simply stop participation because of that male inclusion and never then go on to achieve a sporting career.

“It also has to be pointed out that several of the events in the HeCheated findings were not sports and/or had medals (eg a Jeopardy competition)”

If this is the standard of the rebuttal of the collation of information under hecheated, then it shows there is a paucity of strong arguement against the information aggregated there. It then becomes rather hypocritical too. Any organisation or person arguing about ‘just a few’ negatively impacted females being non-sport related, while defending the inclusion of ‘just a few’ male people is the epitome of hypocrisy.

Either way, those numbers are easy to find in the NON ATHLETIC section.

hecheated.org/Non-athletic_awards.html

It is important to collect any representational opportunity that has been designated as being for a female person that has been taken by a male person. Any opportunity labelled as being for female people, even on a sex balanced panel, should be acknowledged as being given to a male
person when it happens.

Tracking the harm being caused to female people becomes important because it is so often dismissed as being ‘just a few’ or acknowledged while then being dismissed at the same time with the phrase ‘but the organisation prioritises ‘inclusion over fairness’.

Budgett from the IOC did this and the founder of Parkrun have used this sentiment to inform the world that female people should accept negative sex discrimination for the overall good, and they won’t be the only ones or the last.

It's not even just about medals or placing. Having to share changing facilities with males is enough to put off a lot of women and girls and they don't necessarily speak up about it, they just quietly exclude. I have seen this happen myself.

Yes and it is a point that many of those who use the sound bites such as ‘trans people are banned’ ignore.

Female people with transgender identities who don’t supplement with testosterone are welcome to compete in the female sports category. Some sports have an open category for those athletes to compete in or for female athletes who take exogenous testosterone that is therapeutic and at quantities greater than the levels naturally found in healthy female people.

Of course, male athletes with transgender identities are free to enter the male category that they belong in.

What other male athletes who suppress testosterone for whatever reason, or have to take performance limiting drugs as part of their condition get the special privilege of entering the female sports category because they are want to still compete in sports? Why should one group of male athletes get this privilege no other male athletes get?

I am sure this girls and other young women, like this young woman, are going to be very reassured that not making the teams that give them scholarship opportunities shouldn’t be considered in negative impact statements because they are not ‘medals’ or ‘trophies’ so shouldn’t be documented and recognised.

https://x.com/irenebritusa/status/2100953655122039089?s=46

The sexism and unfairness towards women are important parts of what makes the Sports issue key. There is a bigger factor though.

Men really care about sports. A bunch of guys have sports as their key interest. Sports are made to look absurd and ridiculous in general if people are going round saying look men are not stronger than women if they wear dresses it turns the whole thing into kind of a joke.

If the TAs stuck to raping women in prisons, and taking women's positions on boards or going in changing rooms or doing medical experiments on kids a bunch of men wouldn't care. When questions of sporting pride come in though they do care. It does matter to them that they are stronger than women, it does matter if women throwing balls around win games fairly etc. They don't think men and women should fight in sports.

Look at the huge amount of interest there was in the men going into the Olympics and fighting women. The massive drama about the WBNA recently.

Compare that to the lack of interest in something of more everyday importance like creepy guys in changing rooms.

Again the sports issue is something male TAs really care about deeply, while you notice many TIFs do not care that don't get to do sporting stuff with guys though in fact men are not that bothered if they do. Unless it comes to a point where your team is going to lose over it.

So if the Democrats go to the wire over this it is great. Sooner or later they will lose on the sports issue. Making a massive fuss over it brings everything else down.

I just wanted to address the "innately better at sport" as (sorry if I missed it) I'm not sure anyone else has. It's revealing in so many ways.

What do you think sport is, M? All strength and no skill?! Assuming you agree skill plays a part, are you then saying that women are inherently less skillful - less capable of mastering the intricacies of their sport, the techniques and tactics - than men and transwomen? Do you really mean this?!

No one else here is arguing that - that TW are "innately better". It's a centuries-old prejudice resurfacing now as a strawman created to support the argument that no Olympian winners = no significance. It really just supports our argument that this movement relies on stereotypes and is detrimental to women's rights and progress.

All people here are saying is that TW have a disproportionate physical advantage which unfairly distorts women's competition.

Of course a skilled female athlete could win against a less skillful TW relying on a physical advantage which isn't enough to outweigh the winner's skill. And that, too, would be wrong, because it would still be a distortion of the competition - of who's bringing what to it, and why they're winning or losing.

As others point out, your question really is totally irrelevant in this sense. Even if there hadn't been any TW winner at all, anywhere, ever, it would still be wrong, because the competition would still have been distorted.

If you come back with, where's the proof of physical advantage though - just explain to me how taking female hormones shrinks and reshapes the male skeleton. As long as it doesn't? Advantage. That's it.

In any case, though, the number of winners other posters have shared speaks for itself.

Sure, there is also a funding issue.

Why the fuck should that issue mean we shouldn’t be also preventing what funding is available to female athletes going to athletes who are not female?

Also, how much potential funding is now going into campaigning to reverse the policies that allowed male athletes to compete in the female category in the first place?

The correct answer should always be zero. No girl or woman should ever lose out because of male entitlement.

How many mid 40s women carrying a serious injury would you expect to see competing in an Olympic weightlifting event?

Always a belief that there's an acceptable collateral damage to women and girls in the name of patting the egos of men.

How does posting like this on a women's rights forum meet your needs?

Tokyo Olympic competitors who are male people with transgender identities competing as female athletes

Laurel Hubbard (weightlifting)
Stephanie Barrett (archery)
Chelsea Wolfe (cyclist) was a reserve.

in the end Tiffany Abreu was not selected and Cece Tefler missed out too.

These were the competitors we knew about. There were potentially more that we will not know about.

I always find the 'it's only one or two' argument really weak. What if one year it was fifty? Would TRAs say 'gosh, sorry, that's way too many men in women's sports' or would they shout 'yay, go transwomen'. I know what I think.