147
Why blue WA voted to ban trans athletes from girls sports
(www.seattletimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2026
147 points (96.8% liked)
politics
31873 readers
2629 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
There needs to be some distinction and nuance to this conversation.
Adult sports is and entirely different kettle of fish from youth sports. Studies have shown that after ~2 years on HRT, trans women have performance in line with cis women, rather than cis men. For adult leagues, this is about as clear of an evidence-driven requirement as there can be, and it helpfully eliminates the 'I'm going to identify as a women for the WNBA draft so I can make a political statement' stuff. Adult sports careers, even in the most demanding sports are at least ~10yrs long, giving enough time to meet the HRT requirement.
For youth sports, particularly highschool just post-puberty, there is not a clear distinction. If we stick the same 2-year HRT cutoff, that would effectively eliminate trans participation in sports already, as full medical transitioning is rare at that young of an age, and anyone who decided to transition after the start of the sophomore year season would be ineligible for their remaining time in high school. This would mean the child would need to commit to full medical transition by the age of 15-16 at the latest - in which case they could play one season in their senior year. I don't think this kind of time pressure would be healthy for young people making that kind of choice.
If we can't use that evidence-driven criterion, we are just out in the messy jungle of feelings and politics.
Frankly, I don't see a solution that satisfies every consideration for this case. All kids should get to play sports, but it should also be as fair as possible to every participant. Kids shouldn't feel hopeless because someone on their team or the other team is literally built differently, nor should a trans athlete be denied real competition and opportunities to learn through failure and effort.
There are basically 4 options:
Each of them will make some people very unhappy, and ultimately be unfair to some subset of the trans population.