UPenn swimmer comes out as trans / switches to women's team after competing on men's team for 3 years and is dominating NCAA

the world turned upside down wrote:

SDSU Aztec wrote:

OK, but it would be impossible to convince even one swimmer to forfeit his scholarship, much less four. You're calling for extreme sacrifices in protest over a transgender athlete, but are you willing to contribute your life savings to a fund to cover tuition and living expenses for these athletes or quit your job to show solidarity to the cause?

I am pretty sure that there are no athletic scholarships allowed in the Ivy League. If so, then there is no risk of losing one. A lot of the students get academic scholarships from what I understand. Maybe one of the Brojos can confirm/dispute this since they are familiar with Ivy athletics.

I'm curious how much money would be raised from a GoFundMe campaign if a school decided to drop an athlete's scholarship for taking a stand and refusing to race against Thomas.

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

Tatar... wrote:

I mean what would you call it? If you're saying trans people don't exist or can't exist then it's transphobia. Hearing that LGBT is a lifestyle choice is as old as time and this is not different. If you said gays and lesbians are choosing to live a gay life and what they're choosing is immoral, you'd rightly be called a homophobe.

If you say trans women should not be allowed to compete in women's sports because they have unfair advantage, you are NOT transphobic.

If you say trans women should not be allowed to compete in women's sports because they are men pretending to be women, then you are transphobic.

If you think there is no difference between the two, you are obtuse, either intentionally or otherwise.

RunRagged wrote:

If you openly say that Lia Thomas is not a woman, and that men can't become women, you'll be smeared as a transphobe and evil bigot,

greyzones wrote:

dhe8282uehdh wrote:

This is another topic that has lost all nuance and has become black and white. It is not. I'm conflicted myself.

I'm 100% for trans rights. They should be recognized as the gender they request, shouldn't be discriminated against in school, employment, or legally.

At the same time I recognize that there are biological advantages they have that makes it unfair, in the realm of physical competition, to allow them to compete against biological females

Believing that trans females don't belong in the woman's division of sport isn't the same as saying they aren't legitimate females.

Agree, and think many who are silent have this take.

Trans people are discriminated against, and their lives are highly politicized. Unfortunately this means that a nuanced take is hard to come by, and even if one is offered it is quickly slotted into the black/white binary. This is why many people with more nuanced beliefs do not speak about it - they know their beliefs will be misrepresented. I know this is the case for myself.

I think it is important to be clear on why we have categories (age, sex, disability) in sport, and that the rationale for this is very context dependent. In some contexts (eg. community sport), the purpose is more participatory. The goal is to be inclusive, socialize, get fit, improve oneself. Thus, categories such as age, sex, disability are less important. This is self-evident; competitions are often mixed. There is some notion of fairness sometimes (eg. min number of women during active play in mixed team sports, individual awards based on sex as in a road race), but overall the result is not the most important thing. In these situations, it is clear that trans athletes should compete as they wish and not be excluded or subjected to conditions about how their body is. I don't agree that it's trivial for a trans person to compete in their sex category if they are opposed to this (degrading, possibly unsafe depending on country), and I don't think that the drug/surgery requirements are trivial either (access issues, may want to be able to have kids, sexual pleasure, adverse medical issues from hormone therapy). Sports are socially and culturally important and no one should be made to feel unwelcome or unable to participate safely. Where possible (eg. individual sports) having non-binary categories is a good idea; have seen some road races do this and think it is positive.

In more elite contexts (Olympics, pro leagues), the result is more important; we are attempting to reward excellence and it is understood that certain characteristics such as sex, disability, age have a tremendous, systemic (any sport) impact on results Nobody has a particular right to be an elite athlete nor to a particular classification in elite sport. For example, from a legal perspective I am classified as disabled in most countries as I have an autoimmune disease. However, I am not eligible to compete in the Paralympics because it has been decided that my medical condition does not have so considerable an impact on my ability to do sports that I should need a different category. Though my condition is no doubt a disadvantage in sport on average, I would agree that it is not so extensive that I should need separate classification. It is already established that one's legal or social classification does not necessarily need to match one's elite sport classification. Thus I think for elite sports it is fair to impose rules on sex classification in a similar way.

Where the murky part lies is what is in the in-between areas. I'd lean towards post-secondary leagues like the NCAA being more on the elite side since there is money involved even if it is indirect (scholarships). High school, even though it could be elite in some cases, should probably be left out - trans kids may not be able to access gender affirming treatment and so shouldn't be excluded on that basis, and the purpose of HS sports on the elite side is mostly for recruiting to higher leagues (ie. trans kids wouldn't be displacing anyone). In elementary school/younger kids sex doesn't matter very much since most haven't hit puberty and at this level it should be about participation and skill development.

At any rate, the athlete in question is following the NCAA rules and does not deserve any hate. You can disagree with the rules, but she had done nothing wrong and is not a bad person for doing what she is allowed to do.

Tatar... wrote:

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

If you say trans women should not be allowed to compete in women's sports because they have unfair advantage, you are NOT transphobic.

If you say trans women should not be allowed to compete in women's sports because they are men pretending to be women, then you are transphobic.

If you think there is no difference between the two, you are obtuse, either intentionally or otherwise.

I can see there's a difference obviously but that isn't the fully story. The quote I was responding to was this:

RunRagged wrote:

If you openly say that Lia Thomas is not a woman, and that men can't become women, you'll be smeared as a transphobe and evil bigot,

You'd agree with me saying the above is transphobic and bigoted. It's no different to saying homosexuality isn't real and they're all actually heterosexuals opting for a gay lifestyle.

RunRagged wrote:

dhe8282uehdh wrote:

Those are a lot of words to say you are ok with people it making a stand because you are weak.

Wonder how Rosa Parks would feel a out being afraid to take a stand when you feel you are being wronged even if it may cost you everything.

Your first sentence is incoherent. I can't make heads nor tails of what you are trying to say.

It doesn't sound like you are very familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycotts and the US civil rights movement. Parks wasn't a single teenager or young woman still wet behind the ears and a political neophyte when she became a nationally-known name in 1955. She was a 42-year-old married woman who at the time of her first arrest was already a veteran civil rights activist, as was her husband, who had been involved in the struggle for black civil rights since before the time he and Rosa married in 1932. Parks herself joined the NAACP in 1943, and was secretary of the Montgomery chapter. Since 1949, she was also advisor to the local NAACP Youth Council, and led youths to challenge Jim Crow. The summer before her first arrest, Parks traveled to Tennessee to attend workshops in a program entitled “Racial Desegregation: Implementing the Supreme Court Decision.”

The US civil rights movement organized through black churches in the south, and Parks had enormous support from a large community and her church congregation. She also wasn't solely reliant on her own self financially and emotionally; she had the full support of her husband and her mother.

Even so, Parks and her husband paid dearly for their activism. Weeks after her first arrest, Parks was fired from her job. After her husband was told that no mention of Rosa Parks or the bus boycott were allowed at his workplace, he felt compelled to quit his job. Throughout the boycott and beyond, Parks received threatening phone calls and death threats. In 1957, Parks, her husband and mother moved to Detroit in search of less notoriety and better employment prospects. She eventually became an administrative aide for Congressman John Conyers, Jr.

The way you slag off young women for being "weak" and "afraid," and say that if the women forced to compete against Lia Thomas "are too chicken$h!+ to take a stand then they deserve this," makes me suspect you've never taken a politically risky stand IRL yourself. And that you have no idea whatsoever what it's like to be a female person intimidated by strapping full-grown males who have bodies that are much larger, stronger and faster than your own - and who are puffed up with "male privilege," arrogance and entitlement like Lia Thomas appears to be.

I suspect Rosa Parks would have much more compassion than you do for the position that female college swimmers at Penn, and young women generally, face dealing with today's trans ideology and the way it's being used to punch down on, menace and bully "the second sex." I don't think she'd agree with you that girls and women "deserve this" - or as many misogynists say, that women "asked for it" and "brought it on ourselves" by seeking equal rights and sex-specific sports, provisions and protections for those of us who are female.

My hunch is that Rosa Parks would also sympathize with the young women's worries about their job prospects, and would offer them wise counsel and words of caution, not rebuke and ridicule them as weak, afraid and chicken$h!