Peterkin

This, OTH, is a meaningful question. I would very much like to know the answer. Or at least be shown the way to an investigation of the matter.

I wonder whether using this term 'racism club' (twice) is indicative of a particular sort of pre-judgment of another poster's motivation. And I wonder whether the inclusive but unspecific phrase 'everything one does not like' indicated less than objective or incisive intellectual inquiry. Is the 'racism club' a hyper-inflated version of the old 'racism card'? 'Playing the racism card' was a charge that used to be levelled at anyone who mentioned historical bias in relation to the distribution of anything from baby clinics to public transport to polling stations to secondary schools. Now that the very same inequalities of distribution have remained unchanged or increased through space-age gerymandering, the not-very-effective card has grown into an equally ineffective club.... ....which, I'm guessing, is only ever used by "progressives" who still don't like everything they didn't like 50 years ago.

Guess I'm not voting for that guy!

And would you say that choosing such words might be intended to appeal - possibly even send a signal - to a specific audience?

We're okay with starting change at the bottom and working our way up, one challenge at a time, and we'll eventually get to the top. If you start at the top, you'll eventually arrive at the status quo.

But we can't keep them all in bubble-wrap that long; they'd spoil. Options for activity must be made available while they're still unformed, preferably without making too many of them any more miserable than necessary. So we just have to keep thinking about it, listening to them and experimenting.

I was answering the question: under the assumption that the hypothetical solution will have come to pass at the time the hypothetical problem will have needed to be solved. Indeed, the concept is not unknown to enlightened school districts, even at the present. https://www.independentschoolparent.com/school/mixed-team-sports/ https://www.parents.com/fun/sports/untapped-potential-of-mixed-gender-youth-sports/ It may not be the ultimate solution, but it seems to work for some people.

Have been. That will no longer be the case under the scheme iNow proposed and which seems eminently sensible to me. ....

Damned either way. I tried explaining fully. I tried being brief and direct. Failed at both. Sucks to be me. NOTE: Facetiousness. You said you support equal pay. I said "commendable". You didn't like that. I took it back, even though I approve. You don't believe that. Or you don't believe I meant it. Or something. What, precisely, do you want? Both. Neither. The stupid law that forced them to choose has been struck down. Evidently.

When have I ever given the impression that I disapprove of equal pay for women?

Neither. Merely brief. In an effort to minimize misconstruction. Evidently futile.

I cannot help but wonder: How often do you hear someone use the term Anglo-Saxon when referring to the English language? On now many of those occasions is someone referring to the English they themselves use? How many of the people referring to their own language as Anglo-Saxon rather than English are conservatives running for office in a climate of extreme political division? How many of the occasions on which a conservative candidate running for office in climate of extreme division call the English they use 'Anglo-Saxon' on a televised interview with a high-profile spokesman for the far right, whose audience is guaranteed to be predominantly far right? Just asking.

Certainly not. If you don't consider it commendable, I withdraw my commendation, even though I continue to approve of your moral stance.

Commendable!

Yes. And then, later, in a related sidebar, we were comparing the merits of North American men's and women's soccer teams, with regard to pay equity.

As Zapatos humourously pointed out: there are not so many transgendered athletes at the "top, elite levels" to destroy an entire sport, or shut out all top level elite female athletes, or be trounced by all the top level elite male athletes. Since top level elite professional sport is all that some fans care about, they might, in fact, be better entertained if one of these rare non-birth-defined contenders staged an upset victory or carried off a grand trophy once in a while. (I really can't imagine a long queue of male athletes lining up for sex-change operations just for a advantage in their chosen sport.)

Barr, too, though he's made a feeble attempt to distance himself from the erstwhile Perpetrator-in-Chief.

Diff'rent strokes....

They do look warm and cuddly!

Yes. Histrionic, but effective. Maybe someday the North American teams will develop field skills.... but I hope not the self-dramatizing and halleluyahs. And I'm the only person in my extended family who doesn't find baseball boring. It's not fast, but it's subtle and cerebral. Smart isn't boring!

That will be funny - all the women in one room, watching a game; all the men in another room watching a game; everybody watching for the unfair advantage that one transgendered player might have; nobody watching the turkey.

I guess - in Premier League. Not MSL. Of course not. Equity issues are as old as civilization and the power keeps shifting between factions. I was specifically addressing the matter of a social change becoming "normal" over generations. These didn't.

One of the truly pathetic sights, for me, is some great big tattooed macha-man falling on his knees in the spit-damp turf, gesticulating and miming mortally injured innocence when he's just grabbed another guy by the throat and thrown him to that self-same ground.

Right. We thought we were making equal pay and reproductive rights 'normal' since 1969. Now they're brand new issues again, because the generation that came along behind us grew old enough to have all the power. I didn't say stronger; I said better. As in more accurate, better co-ordinated, more effective plays, less fouling, far, far less histrionics and time-wasting. Matter of taste.

That which is progressive is not necessarily new.