IseWolf22 said:
Civilized said:
I do not know how to adjudicate trans women playing sports. It's messy.
Fortunately the issue impacts less than 1/10th of 1% of athletes. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction.
We put Americans on the moon over 50 years ago. I'm confident we can figure this out.
There's no way to handle it without a 3rd category - "Other".
1. Males, but anyone can compete here as their is no advantage you get being female or trans
2. Females, strictly biological
3. Other, for trans athletes, non- binary, and maybe even people with hormonal disorders
Unfortunately, even though it's a tiny percentage of person affected, it has massive implications on sports at the highest level. Trans women are setting world records in women's weightlifting that may not be possible by biological females. In sprinting, an "decent" biological male will completely outclass the best women. In professional fighting, there's have been some pretty bad injuries with trans women absolutely destroying their biological female opponents.
Nothing about sports competition is a "right." We can have different solutions for sports compared to things like employment and housing discrimination.
Sure, all reasonable and likely the direction this heads.
I'm also comfortable with this solution being more nuanced than "you're either man or woman, either you can play with women or you can't" crowd.
At the highest levels of sport, records matter. Careers are made or broken. Fortunes are made or lost. Endorsements are signed. In combat sports, people can get badly injured. All of it.
Elite sports requires a different solution than the 20-odd-million kids that play sports recreationally in this country. Elite sports are also a tiny fraction of the people that participate in sports in this country. The funnel is massive on one end and tiny on the other.
Recreational youth and adolescent sports are not harmed by implementing thoughtful, inclusive pro-trans policies. With some effort, we can all experience the benefits of inclusive youth and adolescent sports while mitigating undesirable outcomes on the extreme end. The older the athlete and the more competitive the situation, the more nuanced the solution has to become.
I maintain this is just like mail-in election fraud though where the perceived incidence rate of the problem positively dwarfs the actual incidence rate. Humans are bad at modulating their anxieties to track well with true risks of negative outcomes.
More to the point, it's almost exactly like HB2. Some people can't help but feel that by allowing trans people to use the bathroom of their identity, we're going to have a run on wig-wearing dudes in women's restrooms faking being trans to maliciously take advantage of women and little girls. It ain't happening, and neither will wig-wearing dudes entering women's events on scale.
There will be some nuances to iron out depending on the age, level of competition, and sport.