That Trans Thread

[Belacqua]

It's worth noting that for multiple states' worth of people, opposing slavery was not only massively unpopular but considered morally repugnant.

It required strong moral leadership, plus a war, to overcome the opposition.

Do the Dems have anyone of the caliber of Abraham Lincoln, ready to do what's necessary?

[Rev. Rye]

Famed former comedy legend and current gobshite Graham Linehan has apparently been arrested for transphobic tweets.





Worth noting, the most damning tweet says:

The other two tweets cited are just garden-variety crude prejudice, but with this, it’s hard to treat this as anything but an explicit incitement to violence.

That was eight solid minutes of people missing the point.

Boru

It was really hard to find anything covering this specific story that actually acknowledges “Dude literally called for violence against a group just for using a public restroom. I don’t care what you think about trans folk, but openly calling for violence is a pretty reasonable line in the sand to draw for free speech.”

[Rev. Rye]

Malcolm Gladwell, a best-selling author of pop psychology books, has reversed himself on the issue of trans women competing in women's sports. In the past he said he supports the right of trans women to play in women's leagues. Now he says that he only said that out of peer pressure, and didn't really mean it.

https://www.newsweek.com/malcolm-gladwel...ts-2123798

At this point I'd say we have no reason to believe anything he says at all.

But it points to an issue that faces Americans who wish to be popular. According to NBC News, "75% of American adults said they do not believe trans women should be permitted to participate in female sports." So spineless opportunists like Gladwell have to choose between supporting what's right or supporting what's popular.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politic...rcna203658

The frustrating thing is that I can’t find much info about the context behind his previous support or his current rejection. Why did he try to support it (and from reading his books, he tends to go into detail about why he supports a counter-intuitive position)? What info does he have to counter his old claims? Do the people who sell estrogen and T-blockers have a new formation that doesn’t hobble trans women and render any advantages of going through male puberty moot?

[Fake Messiah]

Not to mention that Malcolm Gladwell is not a psychologist or a medical professional, but a journalist.

[Belacqua]

The frustrating thing is that I can’t find much info about the context behind his previous support or his current rejection. Why did he try to support it (and from reading his books, he tends to go into detail about why he supports a counter-intuitive position)? What info does he have to counter his old claims? 

You're right, there's not a lot on the Internet about this. I guess Gladwell isn't so famous that this would make waves.

The only place I know of where he's reported his change of mind is in this podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHqJP-Rr...RtYfr2hj9L

Sorry, I don't have time stamps. From looking over its YouTube page, the podcast doesn't seem to advocate one way or the other for trans issues. 

Do the people who sell estrogen and T-blockers have a new formation that doesn’t hobble trans women and render any advantages of going through male puberty moot?

This is something I hadn't thought about before. When a trans woman joins a woman's sporting league, is it expected that she is taking this type of medicine? Surely they don't test for it, do they?

I mean, when a trans woman says she's trans, that means she should be allowed to participate in women's sports. I hadn't heard before that a trans woman would have to prove certain chemical or hormonal levels in order to qualify. 

An individual who still had exactly the same physiology as she did the day before she came out as trans is, assuredly, trans, is she not? Or is there a sliding scale on some kind of hormonal measurement?

[Fake Messiah]

I mean, when a trans woman says she's trans, that means she should be allowed to participate in women's sports. I hadn't heard before that a trans woman would have to prove certain chemical or hormonal levels in order to qualify. 

An individual who still had exactly the same physiology as she did the day before she came out as trans is, assuredly, trans, is she not? Or is there a sliding scale on some kind of hormonal measurement?

It depends on the rules of the given sport.

But it also does not mean that the measures required to participate in some sport are applicable in everyday life. For example, just because someone is a heavy category in boxing does not mean they should be referred to as a fat person outside of the ring.

[The Grand Nudger]

This is something I hadn't thought about before. When a trans woman joins a woman's sporting league, is it expected that she is taking this type of medicine? Surely they don't test for it, do they?

They do, they're fine with it...and it's been going on since the 70's.

To the larger and earlier point, though. There's no "waiting around" for people to have correct moral beliefs. Firstly, as above, the thing is happening and has been happening for longer than anyone noticed - and, secondly, people don't just come around to Correct Moral Beliefs™ anymore than a 5th grader organically comes around to algebra.

[Rev. Rye]

Do the people who sell estrogen and T-blockers have a new formation that doesn’t hobble trans women and render any advantages of going through male puberty moot?

This is something I hadn't thought about before. When a trans woman joins a woman's sporting league, is it expected that she is taking this type of medicine? Surely they don't test for it, do they?

I mean, when a trans woman says she's trans, that means she should be allowed to participate in women's sports. I hadn't heard before that a trans woman would have to prove certain chemical or hormonal levels in order to qualify. 

An individual who still had exactly the same physiology as she did the day before she came out as trans is, assuredly, trans, is she not? Or is there a sliding scale on some kind of hormonal measurement?

If they can test for steroids, there’s no reason they wouldn’t test trans athletes for estrogen and T-blockers. The fact that those drugs do a number on your physical performance is, frankly, a big part of why they’re allowed in women’s sports in the first place. It’s one of relatively few domains where being assigned male at birth can potentially give a woman a material advantage. And if it turns out that something important for transitioning like hormones can actually negate that advantage, that’s great.

Fun fact: do you remember that shitty Daily Wire movie Lady Ballers, where some jackasses decide to claim to be women, wear crappy wigs, and dominate women’s basketball? It was originally going to be a documentary where they try the same thing IRL. That fell apart because it turned out that trans women needed to go on hormones in order to be allowed on any team. And, because the Daily Wire is/was what it is/was, they decided that, instead of giving up A narrative they knew first-hand was bullshit, they retooled it as this Weed Trip: Boner Edition-style comedy.

[Belacqua]

If they can test for steroids, there’s no reason they wouldn’t test trans athletes for estrogen and T-blockers. The fact that those drugs do a number on your physical performance is, frankly, a big part of why they’re allowed in women’s sports in the first place. It’s one of relatively few domains where being assigned male at birth can potentially give a woman a material advantage. And if it turns out that something important for transitioning like hormones can actually negate that advantage, that’s great.

If trans women were required to be taking estrogen and or T-blockers, it might alleviate some of the objections people have to trans women competing in women's leagues. The playing field would be considered more level, probably.

Still, I don't think that a person MUST be on those treatments to be considered a trans woman. Some trans women want those treatments, no doubt. Others would like the treatments but haven't started them yet, for whatever reason. Still others might be perfectly happy to be a trans woman without planning to do the treatment -- it's not for us to say that a trans woman MUST be trans in a way which you and I determine. 

So if sports leagues compromised by requiring certain hormonal levels or other tests, that might satisfy some people. But I suspect that trans women who haven't had the treatments would still argue that they are really women, regardless of what the hormone testing says. And since they are really women they have the right to compete against other women. 

Have you heard anything about who is proposing this kind of standard for determining who can be considered eligible for women's leagues? Are the anti-trans people satisfied by this? Are there trans women who find the ruling too strict?

That fell apart because it turned out that trans women needed to go on hormones in order to be allowed on any team.

I don't know anything about the movie, or the Daily Wire. Did the sports league start the rule about hormones simply because the men in wigs were obviously fakers? Is it applied more generally?

[Rev. Rye]

I don’t think that you need to be on hormones or T-blockers in order to be considered trans. Trans women are women, but for sports, that alone doesn’t matter. If they don’t take their hormones, they tend to have a material advantage that cis women don’t. They’d sooner put Lance Armstrong back in the Tour de France.

These guidelines have been around for decades, and, to use one major example, the Olympics has allowed trans women to participate since 2003, and one of the conditions would be that they needed to be on hormones. Their rules were originally stricter, requiring full genital surgery and legal recognition by their country of origin, but both would be scrapped in 2015. The hormonal requirement, while relaxed a bit (originally, they needed to be on hormones for two years, now they only needed to be on them for one year prior to competition.)

If you understand the controversy around steroids in sports, it shouldn’t be too hard to understand this rule, especially since estrogen and t-blockers are anti-steroids in every sense of the word.

For the record, as Lady Ballers has showed, this requirement hasn’t satiated many transphobes because for a lot of them, the conversation they really want to have isn’t “should they be allowed in sports?” It’s really “should they be allowed to exist?”