Basketball

[Phoebe]

Review of the morning news brings us to the girls state basketball championship in Vermont. Why on earth? It turns out a Christian school forfeited the championship because they did not want their team playing against another team they suspected of having a trans girl on the team. I don't think concerns about equity in sports are completely off base, but I do find it pretty tragic that the anti-trans crew is circulating a team photo with the story, faces all blurred, that clearly shows one girl in the center, much taller and bigger-framed than the other girls, and everyone is commenting on this obvious travesty, except... the photo is actually of the Christian school team that forfeited. I would go 20 bucks with any of these people that they wouldn't be able to figure out which student on the other team they're actually concerned about. I would note that there's a transgender girl on the basketball team at my daughter's school and most people have no idea and never will. They would have no idea who it was.

But this kind of madness and targeting of kids also prevents any rational approach to the issue, because sometimes there are physical differences that make a big difference in a sport. The point is that sports officials decide those questions on the basis of the specifics of the sport, and school officials need to operate under their own principles which are to maximize participation for everyone.

[Phoebe]

They continue to double down as the story spreads, with fanciful tales of a dominant super tall player. They continue to post pictures of the objecting Christian school team, which has one particularly tall player, to illustrate this point. Those who have looked into it enough to realize which team is which have valiantly tried to identify the player who so offends them, and yet they cannot. They literally cannot tell apart the person they're so afraid of and offended by from the rest of the girls because they all look basically the same.

[Kyle]

The idea that it's fair game to target a minor because they're trans is disgusting to me (and we're seeing it more and more). It shows that the anti-trans crowd don't view these kids as actual people, but some kind of monsters or something that don't deserve basic respect. It's so disgusting.

[poorpete]

Right?

I love to problem solve, but. I have yet to hear (or come up on my own*) a way to make school sports "fair" when one player may have higher testosterone than others (or not even, that might be moot and they're only relying on knowing the player's backstory) without that rule being demeaning and/or abusive to that player. So far best solution is to support the players and play on.

[Phoebe]

The idea that it's fair game to target a minor because they're trans is disgusting to me (and we're seeing it more and more). It shows that the anti-trans crowd don't view these kids as actual people, but some kind of monsters or something that don't deserve basic respect. It's so disgusting.

So true. It's interesting to see how the anti-trans crowd talks about trans boys and trans girls in these contexts. The trans boy is always described as some kind of misguided, confused baby female who has mutilated the body by removing the natural capacity for childbearing and nursing. The monstrousness is of a totally different kind with trans girls, who are characterized as predators who must want to infiltrate the vulnerable ranks of females for weird sexual reasons or to cheat at sports, or worse yet, to entrap "normal" hetero males.

What these reactions truly reveal is how trans hating people think about what's natural and normal for men and women: they think men are all naturally potential predators and they think women are all naturally baby makers, and that's how God intended it and it should stay. Meanwhile, no connection to the lived reality of any of the human beings involved.

[Mike]

Some day when I have more energy and time, I will try to relate my full experience with Scouting's new Citizenship in Society badge. For now, here's the quick version: It is intended to promote understanding and empathy and tolerance and diversity. As written, it's a good idea, and I broadly support it's aims. But we had some guy from a neighboring troop who had gotten certified to teach it, and he was volunteering to come teach for anyone who wanted it. Turns out the man was a horrible homophobe, racist, and transphobe who did this to ensure he could make sure he injected "truth" into the lesson. It was grotesque. Him and his son both just leered constantly throughout his presentation, clearly taking joy in the process. It was ugly. I finally stopped him to make a load of corrections, and then afterwards looked up the actual badge requirements so I could re-explain and fix this with our own kids. It was poison.

[Phoebe]

Right?

I love to problem solve, but. I have yet to hear (or come up on my own*) a way to make school sports "fair" when one player may have higher testosterone than others (or not even, that might be moot and they're only relying on knowing the player's backstory) without that rule being demeaning and/or abusive to that player. So far best solution is to support the players and play on.

I feel like most of this could be resolved without even referring to questions of sex and gender. I would draw a line around "K-12 school sports" to distinguish it from other leagues or levels of sport, because the whole purpose of the sport is different. We bother having K-12 sports because we want physical education and competition, and sports teams at the various levels like varsity, JV, intermural, club, etc. are the logical culmination of that learning process.

Fairness already means something different in this context. You'll have kids at all different places of the growth curve if you let everyone from 9th to 12th grade be on a team (or 5th to 8th). You can set rules about outside competition and practice during a season, but some kids are still going to be on club teams for the rest of the year developing their talents while the others don't have access to that. Some schools don't have the money for decent practice facilities while other schools have everything to support their teams. It's no different for band competitions or debate competitions or anything else. The goal is to maximize opportunities for learning, even if it's competitive to get spots on the team, just like auditioning for parts in the school play or whatever.

The only reason people get bent out of shape about fairness in this context is because they have a confused notion of what school sports are about, and expect a type of fairness that doesn't normally exist there.

Maybe college sports should be about learning as well, but that ship sailed long ago. So at that point, or at the Olympics or in professional leagues or whatever else we're talking about, the goal of the sport is something else. Multiple subtle factors are already assessed to promote fair competition, and physical characteristics would simply be another one among many. It's not one size fits all for different sports, because the physical capacities required will vary. In wrestling we match people by weight class. In soccer or softball or baseball we set an upper age limit and let people with extra talent compete above their age group. In gymnastics the impact of specific physical characteristics will be radically different than in weightlifting, so that's a matter for the experts in the sport to solve. If it's done on the basis of principle and not simply on the basis of sex, then I don't see it as discriminatory. So in some sports the experts might decide that testosterone levels below a certain limit, or a certain length of time that a person has taken hormone treatments, are the proper dividing line to ensure fairness. It's not about sex difference or gender difference then, but measurable properties connected to performance in the sport. Sex-based anatomical differences affect throwing and swinging motions, so sex difference could be used as a proxy except that it's not always clear how those differences play out in a sport. If you want overhand pitching at maximum speed, female biology is a disadvantage, but if you want accuracy in throwing, or different kinds of underhand pitches, there might not be any relevant sex difference.

All this legislation we're seeing now is really frustrating because it tries to draw all the lines with one big crayon of sex difference, and it doesn't work. The only thing they're accomplishing is hurting trans kids by singling them out for abuse. They're not making sports any fairer or protecting anyone.

[poorpete]

Biden administration proposes adding transgender students right to play sports under Title IX

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/us/t ... ation.html

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” Miguel Cardona, the U.S. Secretary of Education, said in a statement.

Easier said than done but happy they are setting a minimum of fairness, aka let them play.

[poorpete]

Seems the rules offer too much leeway to activists. I get it, but I think this is a solid foundation to build up on.

[Phoebe]

I like it for K-12. I'm so horrified by the way people have been speaking and acting in response to the recent wave of anti-trans legislation that I feel like we need a moratorium on any rules affecting sex and gender until we figure out what the heck is going on. Why has a quarter of the population descended into unhinged shrieking about mutilation and groomers? Once we figure that out and resolve it, we can resume investigation of other matters. Until then, these people need to go into the quiet corner and leave others alone for a while. I kind of taste the vomit in my mouth when considering how pervasive the problem of child sexual abuse in the church has been where I live (as well as on sports teams or other activities), and how we heard crickets from the same people who just learned to say the word Groomer. You know where they can go.

[Mando]

here goes...

I am glad my kids are out of high school now. As a soccer coach of co-ed teams both U-11, and U-14 I can attest to the differences in the capabilities fo males and females in sports and how they change. At the younger age bracket(U11) the boys were almost always smaller than the girls and the obvious advantages they had were speed and stamina. The girls were larger and stronger as they were more mature. However the testosterone recovery in boys was double that of the girls on the team. This is why our practices were staggered to every other day and never the day before a match (in order to allow the girls to recover. This was Recreation league and not a school intramural league.

As they mature the players are divided into girls teams and boys teams so that there is not an advantage to the now larger and stronger male team.

(For me) it has nothing to do with thinking less about a person who is trans and everything to do with the fact that you put a F1 car in a race against a bunch of VWs...It's all about the systems that make it go and very little to do with the outward appearance. One body has an unfair advantage against the others.

If you think that changing the genitalia will change the person you are mistaken. Consider olympic wheelchair racing. It is divided into mens and womens for a reason. The physiological differences are real and lasting. To deny this is to be one of the peasants who applauds the Emperors New clothes as you deny the reality before your eyes.

If we as a nation do not sort this out there will not be a womens sport of any kind and our daughters will have to look up to a biological male that took the womens gold who could not even medal among the men.

If your son wanted to compete against your daughter in athletics, would you let him? So he goes out for the girls HS basketball team and takes a slot away from his own sister. That is not OK. The male dominance is a foregone conclusion and it is obvious to all.

Is it all an attack on women? If not, then why are they on the losing end of every competition against a trans woman in athletics?

The emperor has no clothes and the baby is ugly. some things need to be said.

[Tahlvin]

As a parent of a trans child, that's bullshit. Sure, if a trans-girl is not receiving hormone therapy, she'll have higher testosterone levels which could give her a physical advantage in sports. But with all of the bullshit she has to put up with on a day-to-day basis just to exist, do you really think she's going through all that just so she can dominate women's basketball or soccer or swimming or whatever sport it is? And chances are, if a trans-girl is out and openly competing in sports, she's receiving hormone therapy or puberty blockers, depending on age, stage of transition, etc., and therefore has very little competitive testosterone edge. At the collegiate/Olympic/professional level, many sports have blood testing and require participants in women's sports to have below a certain level of testosterone. And below that level, you're saying it's better to discriminate against that trans-girl athlete and either prevent her from playing at all, or force her to play in men's sports?! All I can say is that's the kind of bullshit that has caused my friend's trans-daughter to move to another country. Fuck that shit. And if you're upset because I'm pissed, well fuck you too. This is very, very personal to me.

You want to protect women’s sports? Leave the trans-girls alone and focus on the predatory doctors, coaches, etc., that have been preying on the women far more than the trans-athletes have been.

[Tahlvin]

I'm leaving that post, but I will say to you, Mando, that I am not trying to shame you or shut you up. As I said, this is very personal to me because I have a transgender son and several friends with transgender daughters, so I get to see up close and personal some of the bias they have to face. And your post caught me at a particularly bad time, as I've just been dealing with our local high school postponing pride week celebrations at the last minute, reportedly due to complaints from a small group of parents, and our local library staff being harassed and accused of being groomers because they refuse to stop offering LGBTQ+ books. I would suggest that there's a good episode of the new Quantum Leap series that deals with trans athletes in women's sports that I would recommend folks consider watching.

[Mike]

I had pages and pages and pages typed up to respond to this thread, and then just as I was posting it, Tahlvin got in ahead of me and said it better. So I saved my text, and now I'm going to just post the part I think can still add to the conversation. I want to address the pervasive idea that trans women are dominating every sport they get involved in. The idea being that trans women are really just men in dresses, and that men will always beat women in sports.

I know that it FEELS like there's some inherent unfairness in allowing people who identify as trans to compete in sports as their identified gender. I don't have definitive answers. But I have some numbers I looked up and some questions that I asked myself.

First off, some basics that I DO think I understand: Gender and being trans is about overwhelmingly more than just what's between one's legs. Gender affirming care is not simply about gender-reassignment surgery. 85-90% of trans people don't change their genitals. At least not surgically. However, the majority of adult trans persons DO get hormone therapy which DOES affect body shape, body consistency and performance. Gender-affirming care can include hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or plastic surgery, but also includes being recognized and treated as the gender one identifies with. There's more, but suffice to say it is a varies spectrum of options. Gender reassignment is not performed on children, and HRT is not used for kids under 16, and at 16-17 only with parental consent. Puberty blockers may be used for adolescent patients, but they are not considered dangerous and their effects are completely reversible.

Now on to trans athletes. I start with the case of Lia Thomas, the trans woman and college swimmer who caused so much media attention. Let's note that her gender-affirming care (HRT) actually hurt her performance. She lost muscle mass and strength and was 15 seconds slower in the 500 freestyle. Before her transition, she placed second overall in several swimming events at a national level in men's competition as a sophomore, and she was fully expected to dominate men's competition moving forward. As a result of hormone therapy to affirm her gender, her performance was reduced from her pre-transition levels, but she still dominated, because she's really that good. I know the conservative news narrative is that she was a hack who couldn't cut it as a man so she chose to be a woman in order to gain unfair advantage in competition. But every part of that is false.

Now for the numbers: Lia Thomas is one of a number of openly trans female athletes that compete at the very top levels of women's sports (everything from swimming to disk golf to roller derby and more). I did some homework and the website/magazine OutSports, a site dedicated to the recognition and promotion of LGBTQIA+ participation in sports, had an article listing every trans woman competing in the top levels of every sport. This is their business, and they feel their list is comprehensive, but invited readers to name any they missed and no one has anything to add. So how many total trans women are competing (and excelling) at that level? I'll get to that in a minute.

First, how many do you think there should be on a list of trans women who are among the best of the best for their sport? To know what we should expect, we need to know what portion of women are trans women, and also we need to know how many total "best of the best" female athletes there are.

First part of the equation is pretty easy:experts agree that about one half of 1% of people identify as trans. So 1 out of every 200. The second part is a little harder, but we'll ballpark it. The list from OutSports includes competitors at national and international competitions, people who are nationally (or internationally) ranked at the top of their game, one woman was on the list for being selected for Australia's national women's handball team. So being selected for your country's national team in any sport seems to qualify. I figured I'd start with Olympic athletes. Over 11,000 athletes competed in the 2016 summer games, and 3,000 in the winter games in 2018. That means around 7,000 women. So 7,000 is the minimum pool of "best of the best" female athletes. I'm conservatively putting the actual number at 12,000 women worldwide, but suspect that it's closer to 15 or 20 thousand. So take whatever number you're comfortable with for total elite female athletes, and apply that 1 in 200. So for me, in a perfect world, 1 in every 200 female athletes will be trans, and among the 12,000 in the elite ranks, 60 of them would be trans. 60. But this isn't a perfect world and there's lots of factors to force that number up or down.

So how many names have to be on that OutSports list to convince you that trans women have an unfair advantage? How far from that 1 in 200 number do they have to be for you to ban all trans people from sports? I'm guessing 200 would make you uncomfortable. Maybe even 100 would bother you. But would you be okay if it was 60? What about 30? Would that be excessive and warrant banning some people from competing as their identified gender? Because the real number is 27. And to me, in today's climate, I feel that that's probably about right. Low, but hopefully improving as more people feel able to fully participate.

OutSports would have also made a list of trans men who compete at a similar level in men's sports. But there aren't any, because taking supplemental testosterone is banned in sports.

ADDENDUM: but let's be real... the biggest part of the problem here is that culturally speaking, competitive sports are the single most important thing on earth. Our global priorities around the importance of winning at sports is fucked up.

[Tahlvin]

I had pages and pages and pages typed up to respond to this thread, and then just as I was posting it, Tahlvin got in ahead of me and said it better.

Ha! I definitely didn't say it better! I wish I had the time to put in the research like you did. That's the kind of fact-based discussion I'd love to have, rather than the emotional outburst that spewed from my keyboard.

[Mike]

Well, my full post felt kinda beside the point coming 20 minutes after yours. This is better.

I do like my numbers and statistics point, but I still need to tighten it up. It needs clever visuals or something to keep it from being so dry. Because most people who disagree with my point are going to glaze over and feel like I'm manipulating numbers to fool people somehow. I have an idea to make it more direct. I'll work on it.

[Phoebe]

The same was true in the case of the much bandied about photo of two transgender track athletes in CT a few years ago. A small number of athletes and their parents complained that the competition wasn't fair, but their legal argument was destroyed because the numbers completely contradicted it. Turns out that girls in the state of Connecticut overall were all "slow" that year relative to their peers in nearby states, so nobody was running at an exceptional time for girls. In any regional competition they were all losing to cis girls. In further state competition, only one of the two trans girls continued to be competitive. She went on to run track in college and was remarkably mediocre. The end. Yet people still use this example to show trans girls dominate girl's sport. No dominance was detected; just a photograph that stirred up people's biases and stereotypes.

There's also a racial factor to this because people already masculinize certain bodies more than others. People are also oddly invested in this kind of thing: witness the kerfuffle over ladies NCAA basketball, Caitlin Clark / Angel Reese. According to superficial gender stereotypes, Reese presents as much more feminine and girly than Clark, yet was described by her critics in masculinizing terms while Clark was feminized. People are very weird about gender and race. Among other things.