blue WA didn't vote for this. the chuds out in the hinterlands did. King County was overwhelmingly against this garbage.
lol @ chud downvote
Obviously trans people should have full rights and opportunities to participate in society in any way the rest of us can.
But beyond and aside from that, I will never understand why we have to act like sports are some sacred thing whose purity must be protected. It's people playing with a ball. I genuinely can't imagine why this issue has ever been anything other than "yes let whoever wants to play with the ball play with the ball."
It is truly weird to me how we not only accept the sports cult, but literally never even scrutinize the field. It's grown-ups playing children games; it's definitely not that serious
sports are some sacred thing whose purity must be protected
With that framing, I agree. But that's a strawman. Most people don't care for the romantic vision of a "pure" sport but rather, the general idea of keeping sports fair for kids. 1/2 the rules in all sports are about keeping things fair. Age buckets, weight ranges, gender, a system of leagues (ex varisty vs JV) to sort players on skill level, and so on.
So if you assume that there are biological differences between men and women that affect fairness within a competitive sport and if you feel those differences largely do not go away until after some form of medical transition and if you think sports are important in kids lives & keeping them fair is important - then you vote the way blue WA did.
But beyond and aside from that, I will never understand why we have to act like sports are some sacred thing whose purity must be protected. It’s people playing with a ball.
Because you're not thinking big enough. The "trans sports" debate is literally just bigotry. Seriously, go watch the John Oliver piece on it. Every study that has ever been done has found that any advantage trans women and girls have disappears after a few years of hormone therapy. The athletic performance of trans women is well within the range of that of cis women. Believing trans women should be banned from women's sports because they have an unfair advantage has no more scientific validity to it than the old racist beliefs that black athletes couldn't compete fairly in white leagues. The science has been. The studies have been performed. Cis people just refuse to believe them. Their gut feelings outweigh science and our humanity.
People just vote based on bigotry. Even most liberal "allies" are awful at this. Most liberal allies just see trans women as drag queens, literal men in dresses, as if we don't take medications that completely reshape our bodies on a biochemical level. Morons, even many moronic Democrats, just think "trans woman == man in dress," and conclude that our sports performance must be closer to cis men than cis women. It's just stereotypes and bigotry. That's all this is.
And that's the problem. Because once you've given into one form of irrational, unscientific bigotry, you have no reason to ever stop. If you won't listen to the science when bigots say trans women have an unfair advantage in sports, you won't listen to science when bigots say that trans women are a threat in women's restrooms and locker rooms. If you don't give a shit about science, you'll have no problem caving to bigots who hand wring about trans kids receiving trans healthcare. It's completely unscientific and bigoted to let a tiny minuscule regret rate influence your conclusion, but if you've abandoned science once, you'll do it again.
As a trans person, I honestly do not give two shits about sports. But what I DO care about is the precedent it sets. There has never been a state that passed a trans sports ban through its legislature that then didn't also go on to persecute trans people in numerous areas of life.
Think more than two seconds into the future.
Remember, Jim Crow was passed because white women didn't "feel comfortable" sharing spaces with black women.
We have weight classes for certain sports. Why not do that with everything?
There's differences between lots of people. I have two coworkers who are both cis men but one is 6.5ft and the other is 5.7ft with probably 200lbs difference between them...
Why single out trans people? Why not just, you know, be more fair period if that's the actual goal.
And then we don't have to deal with creepy ass "prove your sex to me" bullshit.
So tired of how dumb and incompetent everyone is anymore...
Bring back intramural sports. You know, for fun, not so you can maybe get a scholarship.
If private equity hadn’t weaseled its way into all levels of kid’s sports and turned it into a way to become a millionaire people would have less of a problem about it.
I doubt you’d have enough kids to play in many categories. To super tall kid or the hefty kid are just SOL because you’d need a full team for them, and none exist.
The reason it works in wrestling is because that’s two people, total. You just need to find two people, one from either side, and you’re good to go. And either side can agree to fight outside their weight class.
But you’re never going to manage to do that with a full basketball league for instance, it just isn’t going to happen.
If you put weight classes on everything and remove women's sports, at the same weight men are generally far more capable due to sex based differences. Women won't be winning much anymore
Patently untrue, look up why women were excluded from playing in sports and then made to only play in child sized ‘womens sports’ leagues.
Men cannot handle losing to a woman in a sport, they throw giant goddamn tantrums when it threatens this kind of worldview. ( I lost, to a girl??)
Women are segregated into women’s leagues for the same reason black men were put in their own leagues, to prevent identity risk. (I lost, to a epithet??)
Are there even any trans kids playing high school sports in Washington?? Cuz if not then all this did was inconvenience cis high school girls lol
"Sorry but Susie can't play since she didn't turn in her gender verification form on time"
I believe the estimate was 5-10 in the entire state. It's simply more American culture war shite.
Trans rights are human rights and fuck anyone who disagrees.
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.
This thread sure turned into a dumpster fire.
Forum users are famously bad at discussing nuanced topics. Anything that requires more thought than brainlessly taking the polarized stance leads to infighting.
I hope this gets thrown out on the basis of sex discrimination
Sex != Gender
But gender is also a protected class.
So gender discrimination
Oh ok my mad I forgot there's a massive distinction there.
I want to make clear that I support trans people participating in any recreational activity, I support their rights as much as anyone, and that this initiative throws a burden on all female children for the sake of a punishing a few, the competitiveness argument is totally based on assumptions and prejudice not backed by fact-based evidence, the issue is pushed by conservative culture war propagandists, and all that.
That all said, I don't think most WA voters who voted for I-638 did so because they hate trans people, or think they shouldn't exist as people. Hateful and spiteful people do exist but they are a minority. Rather, on this specific wedge issue, again based on flawed prejudice pushed by conservatives, opinions seem more to be framed around something similar to why 40 year olds can't compete in an Over-50 bracket of a tournament.
I can at least understand the opposition argument on this one (unlike most other anti-trans initiatives). To them, a trans girl in highschool is just a boy who decided to call themself a girl. They don't understand what would make someone want to do that - they just see the surface level, and that logically resolves to 'A boy can say they're trans to compete against girls'. I can see where they'd object to that. And purely from a competitiveness standpoint, one could argue that a trans girl who hasn't started any hormone therapy or anything of the sort is, in effect, as physically capable as her male classmates.
And, yes - a boy who just wanted to appear to perform better at sports could in theory do that. It's just that reasonable people tend not to want to pass legislation against an entire class of people because of the potential for a few bad actors. It's like banning N95 masks because someone could wear one to hide their face during a robbery.
As a WA resident I would like to add:
"The largest donor to support Initiative 638, Brian Heywood, hedge fund manager and founder of Let's Go Washington, the Political Action Committee (PAC) leading the campaign in support of Initiative 638, contributed about $2.23 million. ... Supporters have received $7.74 million, while opponents have received about $2.16 million." source
This fuck has a history of trying to control children: "The unprecedented initiative slate would ... guarantee parents access to information on K-12 school curricula and school medical records." source
He's like our own state version of Elon Musk.
If we lived in a world where people really cared about girl's and women's sports, and fairness, this would be dealt with using science and logic.
The sex divisions in sports are really "dominant hormone" divisions. So anyone who has started puberty must be divided into the league with which their hormones align.
The studies say that a trans woman who has been at cis female levels of estrogen and testosterone for two years, has no advantage over a cis woman. That's the criteria. Two years, then good luck.
It's not hard.
It's not all that surprising. It's something like an 80/20 issue. Rights are rights and I think most people are to that point, but things get a bit more wobbly about this specific issue. At least at this point in time. And that's probably even before all the bad faith arguments coming from conservatives.
It's probably why cons worked to put these kinds of things on ballots - a re-play of the Karl Rove tactic from years ago in order to drive more cons to the polls.
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