“No one, whether you’re trans or not, wants the federal government digging through your identifiable patient information and figuring out what they like and don’t like,” Hack said. “It’s an absolute overreach, and people are really scared.”
Asked whether Hack’s priorities were measures he could support, Platner agreed. “Yes, indeed. They most certainly do,” he said.
Oh, so now it’s a safety issue? Alright, well then how far do we take this? Should children be segregated by gender in case the boys accidentally hurt the girls during recess? Should including girls in a pickup game of basketball be considered reckless endangerment? I mean, if professional and academic sports organizations can’t be trusted to make these decisions,.why should we trust educators or parents?
As for breaking records, well, if trans girls/women have such a huge advantage (and what little evidence we do have on the subject indicates they don’t), again, why is that the government’s job to regulate that instead of the athletic institutions? Why do you want the government dictating the rules surrounding this? You know, some schools let upperclassmen playi on the junior varsity team. Should the government be regulating that as well?
It comes down to this; if you trust these athletic institutions to make all of these other determinations about fairness and safety, but feel the government needs to mandate their decisions on trans athletes, it doesn’t seem like your issue is fairness and safety. It seems like it’s trans people.
No, it’s fairness. Women competing against men who are transgender is like women competing against women who use steroids.
Which is why black women are famously segregated to the black-only events.
You know, since they have naturally higher testosterone levels than white women.
And why the Danes are segregated to the Nordic-only events. What with the average height of women in Finland being 6 feet and all.
It’s only fair.
Racial differences are not as great as gender differences.
Not really, the differences just aren’t that large in general. The average black woman has a lower testosterone count than the average man, but a fairly large portion of the spread of black women is still higher than the average to lower end of the spread for men. And even the spread between white men and women has plenty of overlap where there are women with higher testosterone levels than men, and that’s just within one specific race.
Black women have testosterone counts high enough to get them frequently banned from the Olympics. Two time gold medal winner Caster Semenya has been banned since 2019 because her natural testosterone levels are considered too high and “give her an unfair advantage.”
Besides, trans women tend to have lower testosterone counts than cis women, because they take medication that reduces your body’s ability to intake testosterone as it takes up the same receptors as estrogen. This means that cis women build muscle more easily than trans women.
Caster Semenya has 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency (5αR2D) a condition which results in high testosterone. Consequently, she is not a normal woman.
And Michael Phelps has a condition that causes him to build up lactic acid at half the normal rate, effectively doubling his endurance compared to his competitors. And yet he’s allowed to hold the world record for the most gold medals won. Sports have never been about “normal” people.
And Caster is far from the only black woman to face these kinds of punishments. In fact, not only does the Olympics have a history of racism and sexism against black women, but all three medalists were affected by the ban on Caster that year. Christine Mboma and Beatrice Basilingi were banned in 2021 for their “naturally high testosterone.” It’s a frequently occurring reason for banning black women from sports. All of them were told they could either take drugs to lower their testosterone, you know, the kind that trans women take, or undergo surgery to reduce their “naturally high testosterone” to “acceptable levels”. Understandably, none of them did. Especially not when men and white women don’t face the same kind of scrutiny. In fact, historically gender tests have often targeted female athletes of color who don’t conform to typically Western, white ideals of femininity. Serena Williams. Brittney Griner. Indian sprinter Dutee Chand. Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-Ting. Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. The list never ends, and we haven’t even gotten to when the Olympics used to do chromosome testing in the 60s and gave up due to the extremely high number of woman athletes who came up as XY women.
Also, the European Court of Human Rights later ruled that Caster’s ban was discrimination.
-Simone Biles, Olympic Gymnast
Sounds a lot like the criticism levied against trans athletes.
For the 2028 Olympics, the presence of the SRY will be used to determine gender. This refutes your claim of discrimination against
Still side-stepping the question. I couldn’t possibly care less about what you think is or isn’t fair. Why is it so important to you that the Democrats adopt this position? Why should the federal government be regulating this at all? Why not trust athletic associations, who’s entire purpose is to facilitate fair competitions for their teams and players, to make this determination on their own?
Democrats want to adopt positions that they can win on. It’s better to have uniform laws since teams from different schools compete against each other.
What evidence do you have, beyond your personal biases, that, “we are going supersede the judgement of independent organizations in order to dictate policies on trans athletes to them,” is a winning position?
Athletic leagues don’t operate on a school-by-school basis. There are county, state, and national leagues that are already setting the rules by which schools compete. The NFHS and NCAA, for example, already made the, “uniform laws,” you want. Both organizations have already been forced to change their rules on trans athletes in certain states to accommodate anti-trans legislation, and the NCAA changed their national rules to comply with a (probably unlawful) executive order.
This is what’s so infuriating about your position. You act as though you’re just asking for the government to make rules for everyone to follow, but you’re actually asking for the government to overrule the rules you don’t like.
Democrats can be favor of the government not making rules regarding transgender men participating in women’s sports, but they can be certain that Republicans will attack them on this.
From https://nypost.com/2025/01/19/us-news/nyt-poll-finds-majority-of-democrats-oppose-transgender-athletes-in-womens-sports/
A recent New York Times/Ipsos survey found the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women’s sports.
“Thinking about transgender female athletes — meaning athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female — do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports?” the survey asked.
Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.
Yeah, and a plurality of the people in that study said they don’t want the federal government making the rules for trans athletes:
Next time, find an actual analysis of the study instead of letting a right-wing rag like the post tell you the parts you want to hear.
But in a debate, the Republican candidate will certainly ask, “Do you believe men who are transgender should participate in women’s sports?”
Then they can say, “If there is data that proves trans athletes have a competitive advantage, then having them play in the same league as cis athletes would be unfair, but I trust athletic leagues and school districts to make that determination, and not politicians with ideological agendas.”
Like, seriously, this is your argument? The Democrats need to support trans athlete bans, even though a plurality of Americans don’t want them to do that, because a Republican might ask a difficult question? Are tou serious?