rahaeli: I'm a lesbian! There's a reason trans people belong under the queer umbrella no matter their sexuality, and it's because transphobia is, at the root, the same normativity policing that endangers cis queer people. Trans rights are queer rights are human rights.

so many people who are otherwise against anti-trans bills will consider the sports bans because of “fairness” and they need to read articles like this one “especially because I get ice cream when I score” she’s just a normal kid who wants to play soccer with her friends let her play

"They're talking about me without knowing what's going on or, like, even knowing any other trans person" www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2024...

For years, soccer has been her lifeline. But she's worried politicians could take it away.www.nhpr.org One New Hampshire 15-year-old is watching anxiously, as lawmakers consider a plan to limit transgender girls from school sports teams that align with their gender identity.

Sports are already unfair! I can rest my elbows on the floor when standing and bending over but I pass out when I stand up too quickly! Not everyone can do every athletic feat they want to do! Just fucking leave trans kids alone and let them play sports if they want!

An interesting thing about all of this is that, as far as I know, any cis man who has some difference by which they produce a shitload of testosterone relative to other men is... just considered good at sports by the general population? But if a cis woman has too much testosterone...

That difference is because women's sports is often the "carve out". At adult pro level, coed sports just means men. I'll change this stance when we have a female NFL player which has no gender restriction. Women's sports is restrictive by nature that reason.

Except trans women are women, so try again.

Okay, but without medical intervention they biologically are different from cis-women. A transwoman has physical traits that give them an advantage in a category that is about leveling the playing field. It's why no one cares about transmen and sports. Men's sports is an open category

It's "trans women" and "trans men", not "transwomen" and "transmen", and there is absolutely no physical advantage that a trans woman on HRT has over a cis woman that is not wildly eclipsed by the wide range of physical variations among cis women.

We are arguing about terminology and not ideas, so this conversation is worthless. Honestly, I'm for letting trans women play, so people can see the reality. Getting to have a childhood where you get denser bones, etc will play out as obvious advantage at top level.

Plenty of sports already allow trans women to play. Weirdly, this alleged "obvious advantage" has not manifested. And so what of it does? They're women! Women play women's sports! No one is going to transition just for a competitive advantage that doesn't exist!

And we'll see. It will take a generation to see this play out because becoming a great athete takes more than just raw talent. Whether they play or not, transgirls will not be allowed the same training access as cisgirl, but when they are, somehow I think we'll see it play out like I think.

Is there a reason you're continuing to write "transgirls" after I've told you that's transphobic language? Nah, nevermind, don't answer that, I know the answer.

I also write cisgirls. Because prefixes are how English works. I will not bend to you because you called me a bigot without explanation and dislike me. You are not the arbiter of all right and wrong and I've literally never seen a distinction anywhere on the internet about this.

Wow, that's really weird, because every trans person I've ever known has repeatedly been very clear about the distinction and the reason for it and explains the issue regularly! I guess you must not know any trans people oh wait I could already tell that

And yet, you do not explain to me. You just say, "you're a bigot!" So it's difficult for me to believe you. I know transpeople and it's literally never come up 🤷‍♀️

If someone talks like a TERF and spells like a TERF and falls out of the TERF tree and hits every TERF argument branch on the way down, it's not that far a leap of logic to assume that person is a TERF. There are multiple examples of how non-TERFs respond to learning new information in this thread!

I see a lot of initial respectful explaining and educating by rahaeli here! 🤷

I'm a lesbian! There's a reason trans people belong under the queer umbrella no matter their sexuality, and it's because transphobia is, at the root, the same normativity policing that endangers cis queer people. Trans rights are queer rights are human rights.

100% ! I almost want to reference cis sports woman Caster Semenya here as how this is equally dangerous for cis women that have some some arbitrarily chosen testosterone limit put on them banning them from competing with other women!

Caster Semenya Won Her Case, But Not the Right to Competewww.hrw.org Caster Semenya, a South African Olympic runner, won her discrimination case in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last week. Yet paradoxically, Semenya and many other women athletes may still b...

And especially how the burden of this kind of gender policing falls disproportionately on Black women, because "woman" is a label people are eager to yank away from anyone who challenges white cis het male hegemony in any way but *especially* Black people!

I got in a scrap with a TERF once about bathroom bills and asked her how she felt about this wave of gender policing impacted cis women, and she assured me it wasn't happening. So I supplied her with links to eight or nine cases of cis women being hounded out of bathrooms.

SUDDENLY she announced that "I don't owe you a debate, MAN" (the use of 'man' as a pejorative has always struck me as extremely funny for some reason) and flounced out of the conversation. They don't care.

was going to bring her up, thanks for doing so

Honestly im angry personally for Caster she’s really been through the wringer over all this. I don’t like to directly reference someone personally that has skin in the game but she is the best example I can think of of ‘where’s the magic hormonal line of male/female?’ It’s like grasping at thin air

she's also quoted as saying "god made me the way I am and I accept myself" and I'm like lady, I'm an atheist but I'm in complete agreement

possibly because it maps to my mom's basic bitch christianity, which gives her over to interpretations such as "god made trans people," "god gave us the ability to do science and medicine," and "therefore it's god's will that we be kind to trans people and support them medically"

Ex forced catholic here lol. The Buddhist position is that life is precious in all its many forms and there are no ‘mistakes’. We should always uphold the dignity of human life as well as all life on the planet so that’s what I do as it fits with my own lifelong egalitarian morals anyway

Amen! (Ex atheist now Buddhist lol) she has a real fighting spirit and I really commend her but equally so sad for the loss of her career on the back of a nonsense culture war. Let’s hope things get better in the future

south africa, to its credit, has embraced her and literally given her a title, which she deserves

same; I went back and checked her wikipedia article to catch up on her career, and not only has she been the guinea pig (her phrasing) for the IAAF's rules, she's lost the rest of her competitive running years fighting this bullshit it's been *fifteen years* of this

Yeah that’s just fucking awful 😞 Would she have been treated differently had she been white? A bit more respect shown probably at the very least. I’m glad I’ve gendered her correctly too as had a worried afterthought that she had come out as non binary some time ago!

What I find utterly wild about the LGB vs TQ bigotry is that a majority of trans people are also LGB, by the standards set by transphobes. Two trans women/trans men in a relationship are STILL in a lesbian/gay relationship by transphobe definitions. How can you exclude them unless... Oh. I see.

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