Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic Governor, Says Trans Women Playing Sports Is “Deeply Unfair”
Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic Governor, Says Trans Women Playing Sports Is “Deeply Unfair”
Do not engage with such bullshit. This is such a fucking non-issue, that is ultimately more about demonizing one of the most marginalized minorities in history, rather than "protecting" anyone.
Yes, but the problem is that the right engages with these issues. It allows them to score points. The left should have never been in a position where it was arguing in favor of trans women in women's sports. It allows the ghouls on the right to dodge the economic and social issues that really matter.
The left should focus on real problems that matter to people in material ways. The right wants to make major cultural battles over some tiny fraction of people. They don't "engage with these issues", they create them. If you feel the need yo constantly defend yourself from every manufactured right wing outrage, you have already lost. By engaging, you legitimize their narrative. Focus on improving peoples' lives in measurable ways.
Sports are games.
Games are supposed to be inclusive and fun.
Society taking games deathly serious (and equivocating it with academic merit, aka serious pursuits) is the problem.
People rioting and murdering if the game didn't work out for their team is the problem. Putting billion dollar stakes on games is the problem.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society's existence. Something something... planting trees something something knowing they'll never sit under...
Nope? let's bring on the climate change induced extinction then. If our values are hyper competitive, dog eat dog bullshit from labor to fucking games, we should go extinct.
Trans people or any people wanting to play games with their friends should be what society fosters and nurtures as the entire fucking point of society's existence. Something something... planting trees something something knowing they'll never sit under...
Coed teams exist. They're finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn't go through puberty as a male. That's clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
Maybe the solution is non-gendered weight classes for sports, or just more coed teams. Idk
Edit: yall will convince yourselves of anything lol. Really wild the dumb shit some people will say
They’re finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn’t go through puberty as a male.
Good news! Puberty blockers exist and have been studied and used for literal decades for other reasons.
That’s clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
The science says 2-3 years of hormone therapy levels the playing field and there's no more advantage.
In fact, women who haven't transitioned often have an advantage because their testosterone levels can be higher than women who have transitioned.
And that's the crux of the issue: human variation.
What about trans women who transitioned before puberty? What about cis or intersex women with elevated levels of testosterone? What about sports where it has been shown that after a long enough period of medical transition trans people have no significant advantage over their cis counterparts?
You appeal to science yet fail to cite a single source, so let me do it for you:
Ah, yes, let’s make laws specifically banning 2-5 children from ever having fun.
Like… what the fuck is wrong with you that you think a law targeting under 10 people in the entirety of the US is justified and not literally just bullying those kids on a national level to hope they fucking commit suicide? A law to tell 5 kids, specifically, that fuck them and they’re not allowed to have fun is god damn crazy.
https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-transgender-athletes-play-womens-sports-1796006
They're finding issue with mtf athletes playing against a league of individuals who didn't go through puberty as a male. That's clearly an advantage, and to say otherwise is to ignore science altogether.
That would be an argument worth discussing if the Nazis weren't also trying to ban puberty blockers and frothing at the mouth claiming the trans agenda is coming for their kids. But no, right now, that's a garbage bad faith argument, because it already has an obvious answer. That's how they poison the discussion.
Please tell me what these "issues" are, with peer reviewed scientific sources. There are no significant advantages to a "male puberty" that are not countered by HRT. Furthermore, the same people touting trans kids for their supposed "advantages" are the same people forcing them to develop those "advantages" by restricting their access to healthcare before puberty begins.
The cruelty is the point.
Athletes have always leveraged unfair advantages in sports. There’s a reason there’s super tall players in basketball and short ones in gymnastics. May be they should enforce that average height of teams must match global averages. Countries with fewer resources just can’t support athletes in many sports so why not make that more fair?
There’s research showing that some women athletes (i.e., born with female reproductive organs) have higher testosterone levels than many men, and even some male athletes. So why are they allowed to compete in women sports instead of men?
There’s a lot of ways to make sports more fair. Banning transgender people without fair science based facts is not one of them and is plain bigotry. It’s like saying an athlete on anti-depressants should be banned because they are happier and more motivated so have an unfair advantage.
Games are supposed to be fair. Unless you're going to completely desegregate men and women's sports, there's a real biological argument to be made here. To pretend otherwise is delusional.
There is zero biological argument because you cannot make two categories based on sex which encompass everyone.
Example 1:
A cis woman with a genetic mutation which incrases her testosterone levels into the range of cis men. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 2:
A cis woman with XY gonadal dysgenesis. She has XY chromosomes but the Y chromosome is mutated and doesn't function as it should which causes a "female" phenotype. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 3:
A trans woman in the 95th percentile of men with regards to physical strength. She is in the 10th percentile of women after transitioning. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 4:
A trans woman with Klinefelter syndrome and XXY genes. She has naturally very low levels of testosterone and she doesn't require testosterone blockers after transitioning and taking estrogen. Even before transitioning she had less muscle mass, weaker bones and wider hips than the average man as a result of her low testosterone. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
Example 5:
An African woman who would be in the 1st percentile of man if she were one, both in terms of physical attributes (size, muscle mass, heart size) and competitive results. Some "scientists" argue her race makes her less of a woman and more of a man. Should she be banned from female competitive sports?
There is zero risk of these people "replacing" cis women by the way. Yes, their performance may be greater than that of comparable cis women without any genetical mutations beyond a certajn point.
Yet risk is calculated as [severity] * [likelihood]. And due to the low likelihood stemming from their very low prevalence in the general population, there is no reason to ban them.
Women's sports is about representation of women. Trans women are part of that group, cis women with genetic mutations are part of that group, racial minorities are part of that group. You cannot exclude some women and claim this group is "fair" and representative.
Have you ever watched women’s sport vs. men’s..? Like cmon lmao.
Have you seen how big some NFL guys can get?? Imagine putting one of those guys in a women’s league? Put an NBA all-star in the women’s league? Imagine Mike Tyson in his prime fighting a woman. People would be hospitalized every minute
This crazy shit is what turned everyone off of Democrats this time around. All for like the maybe 10 trans athletes this would even apply to
Not placing a value judgement on this, but you can probably expect a lot of Dems to distance themselves on trans issues. It's a group of issues that takes up a lot of air, and divides the party, while uniting republicans.
It's so fucking dumb to capitulate to Republicans on any of these issues, because they'll just find some other bullshit to fabricate into a huge deal amongst their base of morons. Stand behind your beliefs you fucking cowards.
It really doesn't seem that hard to just constantly disprove the lies they're telling, over and over, until eventually the people who are still sane in this country understand what a non-issue the conservatives are freaking out over. I feel the same way about their "migrant crime" myth, which Democrats also immediately capitulated to and started campaigning on fixing despite crime statistics clearly demonstrating migrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than the general populace.
It's almost like standing up for their beliefs was never the goal, and they'll just say whatever makes their corporate donors happy.
I mean, the counter-argument is, why spend time on issues that not even your own voters agree on? I think the majority of voters, on either side of the aisle, probably do not actually know any trans people personally, which is why it's so easy for Rs to paint them as what they want. That lack of personal stakes makes it hard issue for people to get behind. And, frankly, I think there's a lot of assuming in online discussions that every democratic voter is on board with the idea that sex and gender are different things, but I think in actuality rather a lot of them are probably either uncomfortable with the idea or just unsure. And then when you get into questions like whether prepubescent children should be able to medically transition...there's just going to be a lot of people not on board with that, which is precisely why it's a point Republicans hammer on.
Here's what I think really gets to the root of why Newsom is doing this: a lot of those Democratic voters probably feel like they can't express their true feelings on the matter for fear of being labeled a transphobe. So Newsom is, in essence, giving cover to those people (who are probably a significant portion of the liberal wing of the party) to say "maybe I'm not really fully on board with all this trans stuff yet," specifically picking out women's sports to rally around because polling shows that people are overwhelmingly against trans women participating in women's sports. And it also serves as him separating himself from those Democrats, i.e. the ones who completely fucked up what may have been the most important election in the history of the country. This is a very calculated maneuver, and it probably has nothing to do with his personal beliefs - because he's a politician and I don't think successful politicians believe in much of anything. And I think you will see lots of other Dems do similar.
Sadly. You're correct. The existence of people like me is a wedge issue. >_<
It's stupid because their donors do not want them moving left, so they continue to pander to these nonexistent folks that they think will move away from the republican party to vote for them, leaving behind their actual base, who will simply not vote.
Would be sick to get to vote for someone who actually had opinions and goals and stood for something. If we want to vote for just the general prevailing opinion we should just run an LLM and train it on superbowl commercials and cable news.
And they have an opportunity to show cowardice.
It's a case of "follow the leader". Whenever a candidate wins in a democratic or semi-democratic system, all other candidates become more likely to lean more towards the winning candidate's positions on issues, either in the hope of peeling off votes or preventing defections from their own moderates.
If only there was some way we could have went the other direction on the issue. Maybe a candidate who wasn't a openly raging transphobe.
Yeah, we should totally focus on something so vanishingly rare and trivial it almost doesn't exist instead of the myriad of real world, life and death problems.
We don’t need solutions for wealth inequality nor housing crisis nor cost of living issues nor the rise of fascism.
It is trivial, but at the same time, this issue is a cultural flashpoint, extremely politicized, and also potentially a vote winner/loser. It's very unfortunate.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but the US just voted for a neo-fascist regime, and some of these cultural/identity issues may have played a role in that.
It's a tightrope, for sure.
All I can say for sure is that whatever the Dems were doing didn't and won't work moving forward. Whether it's true or not, the perception of the democratic party seems to be that they care more about identity than everyday issues. For everyone's sake, it might be time that they attempted to change that perception.
That's how you lose elections. You just say "x issue is not that important" and wonder why voters who think it's important don't vote for you
Yeah I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole. This is so low priority.
The way I view it is they claim to believe in a free market. I don't know of any leagues off the top of my head that aren't companies. If one company chooses to do it one way and it is actually bad for business, another company would replace them if it was actually an issue. But being that it isn't that big of a deal, no rival companies have surfaced to replace them.
Well I assume when talking from a government perspective, the conversation is going to inevitably become about highschool sports and whatnot. Where I still definitely don't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole!
The government runs schools that have teams, so it can control this
Iz-rah-el who's iz-rah-el?
You know what's more unfair? Targeting transgender kids.
Sounds like someone is preparing for Presidential run for office.
Speaking as a Californian, unfortunately, he probably is.
The guy who ruined San Francisco got the credentials to ruin California. Now he's gearing up to ruin what's left of the country
Member when the neoliberals tried to pretend this douche would be the next presidential pick?
The worst part about neoli erals is places solid blue like Cali get conservative leaders because they'll take dirty money in primaries, then the only option is a Republican.
It depresses turnout till a Republican wins, and that usually comes with the state flipping in an election year because that's when campaigning is highest.
It's not just that they're shitty people who won't fix anything, they're actively hurting dem turnout all over the country when it hits the news
We need higher standards across the board, not just in the oval.
Literally his only good feature was that he was combative with Republicans. We all knew he didn't believe in any of it, but he had a shtick. Without that he's just another useless moderate.
And to abandon it now, when we need to unify as Democrats and not feed into any of their bullshit is particularly dumb. No one's going to give him brownie points for folding now, moderates just can't help themselves but reach for that golden ring of triangulation.
Member when the neoliberals tried to pretend this douche would be the next presidential pick?
Yeah, that's why he's doing this. Throwing vulnerable minorities under the bus for no gain whatsoever is how you show democratic leadership that you're on their side.
When you culture is so much about cOMpEtItiOn that you forget that sports are just a made up thing for witch we get to make whatever rules we like. Gender segregation in sports isn't that eternal either.
If you're that worried about different abilities competing, install a tiered system like the Special Olympics.
EDIT: Interesting read: https://daily.jstor.org/gender-incommensurability-in-sports/
What if the separation of competitions, “said to be a natural consequence of the differences between men and women,” is actually is “just a tool to create those differences”?
Maybe different brackets based on measured testosterone level? The highest tier can be super buff dudes on steroids. Sounds interesting.
It's not that simple, you need to understand the effects that Hormone Replace Therapy has on the body. Men and trans women physically do not have the same type of body and the studies even shows trans women perform worse than cis women in most areas.
You're allowed to feel however you like, but I need you to understand that it is only a feeling, not something backed by scientific observation of reality. Saying you don't hate anyone is at odds with letting your gut feeling take the side of bias.
Yeah, I'm sure that it was the only reason and that you framed it as being "uncomfortable".
It is unfair. I dominate at women's sports, great ego boost when I feel down. Mixed duo in tennis is a good balance though.
Newsom has consistently and repeatedly fought for trans rights. I dunno why trans advocates are getting hung up on sports. I swear you guys were manipulated into digging your heels in with the dumbest position possible solely to divide and discredit the movement for equality for trans people.
It's like how the news media will ignore dozens and dozens of innocent Black men getting shot by police until there's a story of a gang member with a rap sheet a mile long who was actively trying to rape someone when police shot him, and then they'll run the story hoping that the anti-racists will rush to defend him.
Insisting on having untransitioned or partially transitioned trans women in women's sports is such an obviously stupid hill to die on. You're all playing right into their hands.
I don't know if you're falling for it or this is just how you feel, but Newsom was talking to Charlie Kirk who popularized the "groomers" line, calls June "groomer month" all the time and constantly talks about executing "groomers". Newsom softballed it to make it seem like Kirk just cares about sports, and repeatedly dog whistled a lot about how much he agrees with Kirk keeping it ambiguous about what exactly he agrees with.
Maybe you believe Newsom is deep down a good guy and he's just doing this to shill for right wing votes, and once you give him power he'll be normal. But right now all he's doing is telling his audience of out of touch liberals that the "I don't want to see a black pilot on my plane" guy is the kind of sensible conservative Democrats should be bipartisan with.
IMO based on how he talks and the trans bills he's vetoed as governor, Newsom is the type of liberal that likes the idea of being the big guy protecting "these poor people" from dirty rednecks, but is also extremely suspicious that all this gender shit is some kind of Tiktok trend that might get out of hand if he lets trans people have it too easy.
I think it's completely nuts that after the last 20 years and especially the last 12 years, Democrats still seem to think that compromising with the right will flip republicans voters. Gavin, my guy, they think you're literally the reincarnation of Stalin. You could gargle Trump's nuts and they'd still hate you
Correct. Ask any of these people “defending” women’s sports to name a dozen non-male athletes. Ridicule them upon failure to do so.
Because once you lose one right, the rest fall like domino's.
Ok then in that case you are SO fucking late to the party
I agree with you
As someone with trans family, and that works around parents (but has no kids myself), and is very liberal personally --
From what I can tell, Gavin is speaking to how the average parent feels. They are accepting of trans people, but have some hesitations and those are coming out through this example, for one. And I mean the more liberal parents
You either need to get out there and speak to these people and work to help them get over these feelings, or you need to accept how they feel and the... yes I'm spinning this phrase... boundary they are requesting and then work within that to change their minds
Raging at them and damning candidates over it without working to actually change it is just like the Palestine voters and Kamala all over again (at least at a superficial level)
The Left in the US would so much rather die on the hill of perceived moral superiority than achieve any of their goals. And, thus, here we are.
And centrists will accept any policy as long as it's to their right.
That’s part of why trump got elected lol. Rather than trying to fix the issues while retaining some level of government, some people were like “let’s have a brutal authoritarian dictatorship and change things for the worse. That will show democrats!” Meanwhile nobody votes in the primaries or their local elections