That Trans Thread

[Belacqua]

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?”

I didn't know about the rules the Olympics use. They seem like a reasonable set of standards to me (though of course I know nothing about hormones). 

Often when people speak of trans women in women's sports, they seem to view it as a free-for-all, with no such standards at all. The Olympic Committee, anyway, can't be criticized for that. 

Thank you for the information!

[Angrboda]

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.

You don't know that. This is just your opinion, and even then, it's not generalizable, so it's a non sequitur. Regardless, that's not the point. The point is truth and popularity are unrelated, contrary to your prior implying otherwise.

[Belacqua]

The point is truth and popularity are unrelated, contrary to your prior linking them.

I have never linked truth and popularity. 

I pointed out that the values you and I believe, about trans people, are not shared by most Americans. I noted that this may make it difficult for politicians who share our values to win elections. 

But you are accusing me of something I've never done. 

As for the non sequitur, you're the one who brought up slavery. I believe that for ending slavery, as in the case of working toward equal rights for other minorities, strong moral leadership is necessary. Precisely because what is good is frequently not linked with what is popular.

[Angrboda]

The point is truth and popularity are unrelated, contrary to your prior linking them.

I have never linked truth and popularity. 

"So spineless opportunists like Gladwell have to choose between supporting what's right or supporting what's popular." This clearly implies that right and popular will be at odds. That isn't necessarily true, unless you're speaking solely about trans issues, and even then it's not a given because your perception of what's right may itself be wrong, and what's popular may change. Prior to the decade of Obergefell, homosexual marriage rights were unpopular; that changed. More importantly, a politician can champion certain trans rights but not others without "waffling" as you put it, as trans rights aren't one large undifferentiated bag for which trans participation in sports is the bellwether.

I pointed out that the values you and I believe, about trans people, are not shared by most Americans. I noted that this may make it difficult for politicians who share our values to win elections. 

Since you were addressing someone else, it's a hard stretch to imply that you had anything in mind about what I believe when you made the original statement. So you're making an unwarranted assumption, likely based on stereotyping and prejudice. As to whether it's shared by Americans would make it difficult for a politician to win, I'd point out that it's not set in stone that the politician must change to adapt to the public opinion as public opinions can and do change. Indeed, it's the function of leaders to change public opinion. So it's not a given that the choice you claim is necessary is in fact necessary.

As for the non sequitur, you're the one who brought up slavery. I believe that in the case of slavery, as in the case of working toward equal rights for other minorities, strong moral leadership is necessary. Precisely because what is good is frequently not linked with what is popular.

As noted earlier, that's an opinion, and so your argument here is ipse dixit and need not be accepted. The point I was making with the example still holds.

[Angrboda]

@Bel:

Let me see if I understand your argument correctly. This is what I see you saying:

1. Trans women's participation in women's sports is unpopular;
2. Allowing trans women to participate in women's sports is morally correct;
3. It takes a strong leader to win by championing an unpopular issue;
4. There are no politicians who would champion it who have the required strength;
C. Therefore a politician aligned in favor would be required to waffle to succeed in an election.

Is that about right?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The point is truth and popularity are unrelated, contrary to your prior linking them.

I have never linked truth and popularity. 

I pointed out that the values you and I believe, about trans people, are not shared by most Americans. I noted that this may make it difficult for politicians who share our values to win elections. 

But you are accusing me of something I've never done. 

As for the non sequitur, you're the one who brought up slavery. I believe that for ending slavery, as in the case of working toward equal rights for other minorities, strong moral leadership is necessary. Precisely because what is good is frequently not linked with what is popular.

(Bold mine)

I'm pretty sure your restaurant analogy did exactly that.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

It's pointless trying to hold a propagandist (accidental or intentional) to anything they say...and mostly because they don't start or end with the truth in any case, as that's not the purpose of the endeavor. That would be, more accurately, creating a new truth. A world building lie for pretext

It's not true, for example, that most americans do not share "our views" on trans issues. The truth is that something like 66% of older americans who answer to cold calling polls and are as a demographic republican leaners say whatever faux tells them, even when they disagree with what faux tells them....which is often. That is emphatically not "most americans" and the subject of disagreement is itself a matter of reich wing political art...with those respondents seemingly in favor of being douches not in favor of that if you change the framing of the question...and not just on this issue, but literally every issue supposedly being litigated. The majority of americans are in favor of protecting trans people from discrimination, according to them, even if you can also get some elderly and low information cohorts to say that sexual predators shouldn't be in bathrooms and big burly men shouldn't be beating up on poor little girls, too.

This is the entire point of reich wing propagandizing and disenfranchisement. They know that people, and their own people, hate their policies. That they have to lie...and disenfranchise their own supporters, in order to build perpetual minority control over the majority. FWIW, I see this particular bit of nonsense as more or less the advice of the for profit political consultant class. "Can't say that, because it will make people hate you, and you won't get elected". They said the same thing about the mad kings racist tourettes. Doesn't work the way they think it does, at least not anymore, if it ever did.