10mo ago

2 transgender New Hampshire girls can play on girls sports teams during lawsuit, a judge rules

Two transgender girls can try out for and play on girls school sports teams while the teens challenge a New Hampshire ban, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The families of Parker Tirrell, 15, and Iris Turmelle, 14, sued in August seeking to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law in July. While Turmelle doesn’t plan to play sports until December, Tirrell successfully sought an emergency order allowing her to start soccer practice last month. That order was expiring Tuesday.

In issuing a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty found Tirrell and Turmelle were likely to succeed in their lawsuit. She found that the students “demonstrated a likelihood of irreparable harm” in the absence of a preliminary order.

43 comments

Instead of having an opinion on a subject I know zero about I'll leave it to the ppl who know about the pros and cons of Trans athletes. If you don't know anything about it you should shut the fuck up and listen to those that do. The negative of the internet is giving merit to ppl who know fuck all about what they're taking about
- What do you need to know? It's a high school team, not the Olympics. Why wouldn't the default always be inclusion? High school is a tough time for a lot of kids, and I'd imagine it's more difficult for most trans kids. If participating in sports makes it 5% easier, then so be it.
  
  In theory, I agree, but the reality is not that simple. There aren't enough resources for everyone to play on every team, so there is selection, and tons of kids in high school pin their future hopes on doing well in sports. It's ridiculous, and I hate the fact that school sports are so competitive as a result, but that's the world we live in. Nobody is allowed to just play for fun. So as long as someone thinks their kid might be excluded or overshadowed because some other kid is "cheating", there will continue to be conflict. It's another aspect of the zero sum mentality.
  
  Yeah but think of all the bigots that will have aneurysm because of this. Literally killing people by allowing the girls to play.
- the pros and cons of Trans athletes
  Pro: Kids have fun playing together.
  Con: Literally every single professional athlete will become trans so they can win at sports.
  If you don’t know anything about it you should shut the fuck up and listen to those that do.
  I remember folks from Phillip Morse saying this about smoking, then bringing out a congo-line of quacks to prove it. Then we repeated this with the Exxon shills denying climate change for thirty years.
  Maybe I'm getting tired of being lied to by professionals.
  
  Con: Literally every single professional athlete will become trans so they can win at sports.
  Please tell me I'm missing the sarcasm here 🙄🤦‍♀️
  What experts do you think are lying about trans people?
That calzone looks amazing. Is that a spot in Concord? Although a few hints in the pic towards Europe.
So what is a transgender girl? Born with dude fuck tools but born with dudette feel tools? Was the slim Jim wrestler competing in women sports south park episodes an actual possibility? I don't have kids and any nieces, nephews, 2nd cousins or friends kids I'm close enough to care about this shit for isn't old enough to be on the conversational radar of the parents yet.
Edit: To add further context to avoid pissing anyone off for being dumb, I live in the rural US so limited exposure to all the varieties of peeps. No social media. Don't watch any TV that isn't a child's cartoon with niece or family guy type cartoon so for me its cartoon or die. I'm all for learning about new shit. The problem is there is so much new shit to learn I don't always have time to learn about all shit until it has some relevance to something I encountered.
- So before I explain, it's important to keep in mind that for these discussions I'm adhering to the separation of "gender" and "sex" as different terms. Your sex is your physical attributes, and your gender is a mental thing-- do you see yourself as a boy or a girl (or, as some people do, something different from both of those options-- I'll stick to the two main genders here).
  This means that transgender girls are people who were "assigned male at birth" (they have a male sex / their appearance caused people to treat them as a boy) and later realized that they see themselves as girls. They may or may not have physically transitioned (ie. changed sex), or may be in a state of partial transition (since genitalia, hormones, and some other things all make up sex, and those can disagree).
  TL;DR: A transgender girl was born physically male, now considers themselves to be female, and may or may not have physically transitioned to match that new identity.
  I appreciate you taking the time to look into this! It can definitely get complicated, especially if you start looking into edge cases, and in some regions it's pretty rare to meet someone like this IRL, so natural exposure can be low.
  Edit: As a useful guide I'll also give a short list of transgender-related acronyms:
  AMAB = Assigned male at birth
  AFAB = Assigned female at birth
  FTM = Female-to-Male (transitioned to male, aka "trans man")
  MTF = Male-to-Female (transitioned to female, aka "trans woman")
  HRT = Hormone Replacement Therapy (taking hormones to promote physical changes to align your sex with your preferred gender)
- I haven't seen that episode of south park but I wouldn't trust the south park take on gender issues. Contrapoints on Youtube is a great explainer for uninitiated straight folks who want to learn about trans perspectives.
I can understand debating whether an intersex or transgender athlete should be allowed to compete in the women’s division at the Olympic / world championship level.
But ffs do we really need to make a federal case about it in high school sports?
This isn’t about athletic performance.
I'd say that calzone looks sad, but any Italian-adjacent food is it going to be sad if it's in New Hampshire.
- :(
Why the fuck does the “land of the free” have a law for school teams. Let kids play on the team they want. It’s not like they are playing in the champions league.
- As a person who has coached inside the public school system, I wish it was that simple. I really really do.
- There is usually, the “men’s” competition is actually usually an “open” competition.
  Then there is a separate women’s only “league” or whatever the actual word is, I don’t sportsball that much.
  I did find out there is a game called goalball, and that feels like cheating
- How many trans kids in an age bracket in a single sport across the whole country do you think there are? For any team sport, it would be difficult to field a single team, let alone another team, for them to play against.
- Like transhuman sports category? For cyborgs and such? Could be cool, but also could incentivize people give their body away to companies to make money. Guess first we just need to do away with companies.
- The media blows this out of proportion for you to even consider this an option. If you think that's an idea that makes sense then re-evaluate where you got that talking point.
  There are laws banning trans people in states that affect like 5 people (I want to say there was a state law that literally affected one trans girl in the entire state.)
  
  The state was Utah, the governor quoted the following in his veto statement:
  Here are the numbers that have most impacted my decision: 75,000, 4, 1, 86 and 56.
  75,000 high school kids participating in high school sports in Utah.
  4 transgender kids playing high school sports in Utah.
  1 transgender student playing girls sports.
  86% of trans youth reporting suicidality.
  56% of trans youth having attempted suicide.
  The veto was overridden.
- There should be an anti-trans post category.
- Found the Republican
- There shouldn't be gendered sports. Just let them all have fun.
  
  But then a woman might beat a man! Think of the horror! The shame!!

43 comments