Fed Judge Blocks West Virginia School Sports Ban

[Carolyn Marie]

https://www.cooley.com/news/coverage/2021/2021-08-04-federal-court-blocks-west-virginia-law-discriminating-against-transgender-girls-and-women

 

I wonder if those R office holders are tired of all of this "winning," yet?

 

Carolyn Marie

[Jackie C.]

You'd think, but doubling down on the hate keeps their base energized and voting for them. It's never about the actual ban, it's about being seen TRYING to hurt the "right people." Can't have "people with pronouns" mixing with good American folk now. Their base just laps it up because it feeds the narrative of fighting against the "evil libs" that are keeping the "good American folks" from getting everything they want. We're just the new "welfare queens." Strawman argument to keep the base ignorant and voting to keep their butts in their seats.

 

Hugs!

[April-Showers]

i hope i don't get flamed for this but, as always, i say what i feel. and i won't apologize either. if anyone knows how it is to grow up as the gender you weren't born as, it's me. so i think i see things differently than most of you. first i want to say that hate is hate in any form just because you disagree with someone. you may see yourself and your beliefs as right, but others may see it as wrong. you don't want hate from them. so don't hate them. just disagree with them and try to influence them or educate them. nuff said about that. I'm not criticizing any of you.....just pointing out that hate is hate. stop hate.

 

many schools now allow a student to declare a gender and they then are treated as that gender immediately. is that ok in every situation? such as sports? maybe...maybe not. i would have loved to go to school as a girl but it wasn't allowed in the private schools i attended. and not even in the public ones at that time. did i rebel or demand that i be treated as a girl? nope. i knew what i was and was comfortable with myself. and i didn't do sports because i wasn't interested.

 

now to the sports thing. at what point should a 'gender-declared girl' participate in sports as a girl?

 

1) immediately upon the declaration?

2) after a period of time?

3) at a certain age?

4) after transitioning medical treatment has begun?

5) when e and t levels are at normal female levels?

 

it is not as simple as it may seem. there are differences in male vs. female metabolism that affect performance.

 

what if you have a genetic girl daughter. and she runs track or whatever. are you comfortable with her having to compete with a 'gender-declared girl' on her team? or does that make you think differently. is it ok if the 'girl' is on hormones? maybe not if 'she' isn't on hormones? not so simple, huh?

 

anyhoo that's my take on a very controversial subject. i don't have the answer. but i do have many questions. thank you.

 

[Jackie C.]

7 hours ago, April-Showers said:

now to the sports thing. at what point should a 'gender-declared girl' participate in sports as a girl?

 

1) immediately upon the declaration?

2) after a period of time?

3) at a certain age?

4) after transitioning medical treatment has begun?

5) when e and t levels are at normal female levels?

 

it is not as simple as it may seem. there are differences in male vs. female metabolism that affect performance.

 

Studies show that after one to two years of HRT (depending on which study you favor) there's no difference between a trans woman and a cis woman that isn't also present in athletically built cis women. Kids that are young enough where that doesn't matter? Who cares? So long as everybody is comfortable and having fun it's all good. People get really hung up on what's in our pants.

 

As for the rest of it, I utterly agree. There's no room for hate in my heart. I don't hate the people who keep trying to take my rights away. What's the point? They're being misled for political points. One on one, most of those people are perfectly reasonable. The ones that aren't... well, I haven't been stoned to death yet. Yet.

I'm unhappy with the system and keep voting to keep the people who ARE trying to hurt me to rile up their base out of power, but hate is a strong word. I haven't hated anyone for a long time.

 

7 hours ago, April-Showers said:

i hope i don't get flamed for this but, as always, i say what i feel.

 

Also, see rule #6. We do not allow flame wars on this site.

 

Hugs!

[April-Showers]

20 hours ago, Jackie C. said:

Kids that are young enough where that doesn't matter? Who cares? So long as everybody is comfortable and having fun it's all good. People get really hung up on what's in our pants.

school sports are all about competition. maybe fun goes along with it but, still, sports are competitive. who cares? the genetic girls care. parents care. spectators care. i am all for kids who are genuinely transgender and who have been professionally evaluated to be able to attend school as their chosen 'gender'. and it has nothing to do with 'what is in their pants'. but with sports it may very well have to do with that. female 'sex' is vastly different than male 'sex'. and that is what my point is regarding sports. sex and gender are mutually exclusive. we need to draw the line someplace. schools are bending to progressive thinking which wants everything equal from the start....when not everything is equal. thank you.   ?

[Jackie C.]

Oh, no my point is that physical differences don't start to show until puberty. At least not so much as you'd notice. My thought was that pre-puberty separating the boys and girls into different teams doesn't really make sense. It doesn't matter. The girls might be a little smaller, they might not. I've got girls in my classroom that are easily twice the size of some of the boys in the same age group (estimated weight class. Probably slightly exaggerated. It might not be more than 1.5x).

 

So what I was saying is that pre-puberty? It doesn't matter. So who cares? Post onset of puberty, yeah, it depends on what sort of medical treatment the kid in question is receiving. The kid that's been on hormone blockers since they were twelve probably isn't going to have an advantage over any of the other students period. However the AFAB girl on the wrestling team that's been on T for the last two years really shouldn't be competing with the girls.

 

Performance-wise, those of us who transitioned later are basically a big car with a small engine. I'm on the large side for a woman, but I am regularly outperformed by my gym partners of either gender. My mentor is a 69 year old cis-woman. She's 5'3" and STRUGGLES to break 110 pounds. She can easily move at least twenty more pounds than I can with most muscle groups. I'm JUST edging her out with my legs, but that's probably because I take sculpting my rear-end (I have SERIOUS white-girl butt. Thanks Dad) very seriously and work that muscle group hard and often.

She's got more endurance than I do as well, but that's more my fault for not keeping up with my cardio routine.

 

Hugs!

[April-Showers]

2 hours ago, Jackie C. said:

My thought was that pre-puberty separating the boys and girls into different teams doesn't really make sense.

oh, ok i see your point but you didn't mention the 'pre-puberty' in your last post. i tend to agree with you on this. but competitive sports like in junior high or high school are much different. i am as pro transgender as anyone and am proof that at even a very young age one knows what gender they are. 

 

there may be some standards that could be set...such as e and t levels....that could be established for competitive sports. not sure but maybe. the big problem i see is where a school district attempts to allow a transgender student 'full privileges' including participation in sports. some are now allowing a gender change without there being any medical treatment. again, that may be ok for most things..but not all. it is very complicated i realize. but i have always tried to put myself in others shoes when it is a controversial subject. and when i wear a genetic girls shoes i try to see it from her perspective. and if i am a very competitive athlete i sure would want my competition on an equal footing. does that make sense? thank you for responding to my post. this is a very interesting and important subject with no easy answers .

[Jackie C.]

They tend to vary by sport too. For example, I can't compete in body-building or weight-lifting in the US no matter WHAT my E and T levels are. Most sports have their own rules regarding trans athletes. Even bowling (though I can't imagine why) requires you to be on HRT for at least a year and be within a specific range for your T-levels to compete.

 

At the school level, it's sticky. You don't want to exclude anybody but in high-school... well, that could mean a scholarship. A scholarship could mean the only way you're getting to go to college.

 

Though I suppose one solution would be to nationalize our colleges so EVERYBODY gets a scholarship and the stakes aren't so high.

 

Then again, I could have a skewed perspective because I don't think any of our teams EVER won anything in the four years I attended high school.

 

Hugs!

[April-Showers]

20 hours ago, Jackie C. said:

Then again, I could have a skewed perspective because I don't think any of our teams EVER won anything in the four years I attended high school.

lol. that's both funny and sad. ?

 

i asked my twin sister how she feels about this sports thing. she was an athlete in several sports while we attended high school. and she is as enlightened as anyone when it comes to transgenders since i am her sister and we have grown up together. so i really value and trust her opinions. she agrees that it's a very difficult situation with no necessarily right or wrong answers. just a big 'gray' area. but her perspective is interesting. she said if it were someone like me who basically experienced a female-type puberty then MAYBE she would feel ok with it. but if it were a male student who suddenly declared that he was actually a female and then wanted to be on a girl's team, absolutely not.

 

another interesting thing. my sister and i are twins and are probably as close to being 'equal' as you can get even though i was born male. we are very competitive with each other in almost everything because it's fun. so here i am as close to being female as possible for a birth male. and like i said my sister is very athletic. and she ran track and won many competitions in high school. but when we run together, i always outrun her. so maybe it would have been wrong if i had been able to join the girl's track team? or maybe i'm just a girl who excels at running? or is some of the male metabolism still a part of me? who knows? i certainly don't. but it's why she said MAYBE.  thank you. ?

[Jackie C.]

Like I said, the only advantages we get are the same ones that athletic cis-women get. You will note the same narrower hips and wider shoulders in a lot of the female athletes. The extra size actually works against us. Female metabolisms aren't meant to run hulking male bodies. You're good at running.

 

Hugs!

[Nora]

I have been thinking about this subject a lot lately. I am a mixed martial artist and a few years back I tried to get into the local cage fighting thing they have here, but they told me I was not eligible because of my size. I was 150 pounds and 5'9" tall. They said I needed to be at least 175 pounds, and it kind of ticked me off. I almost picked out the biggest guy in the room and challenged him to a fight to prove to the jerks in charge that size, weight, and strength do not mean SQUAT when it comes to hand to hand combat. I was bullied a lot as a little kid, so my dad took me to some of his old military buddies to teach me how to fight when I was ten years old. In the years following I learned krav maga, shaolin kempo, aikido, jujitsu, taekwondo, judo, keysi, and hapkido. By the time I was a scrawny short kid in high school, I could best most grown soldiers in hand to hand combat regardless of my size and weight. I think two of the school bullies tried to rush me, and after that, it was smooth sailing from there on out. No more bullies heh heh. ?

In the years since, I have gained a little bit of weight. ...Now I am whopping 160 pounds haha. Still not heavy enough to fight in my local MMA ring. Phooey. I may have a chance in the women's division in like five years. Their heavyweight category for women is like 285+ pounds or something. I personally would not care too awful much if they forced me to fight against biological cisgender men twice my size. I would still whoop their ass haha. I may be small but I have a lot more training and instinctual ferocity. Super fast compared to bigger guys too. ...Then there would probably be a huge media uproar if I lost one of my fights against a man. The people making these discriminatory laws do not like to seem to talk about the fact that they are proposing doing the exact same thing they are against. They are STILL going to see a WOMAN get beaten by a MAN.

...How would that make me feel? ....Probably objectified and insulted that they would be telling everyone the only reason I lost the fight was because of my gender and not a simple matter of my male opponent having training that was superior to my own. ?

[Nora]

...Women have been slaughtering men on battlefields for thousands of years...just saying haha.