How best to stop excluding trans kids from sports?

[iNow]

5 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Of course, if you're living a desert, you just have to move to where grass can grow.

I likely would have by now had I been autonomous myself as the sole decider for the family. 

[Peterkin]

Just now, iNow said:

oo often overruled by statewide legislation. 

So, that door may be closed. How about sporting or youth clubs? How about an existing privately owned adult team establishing a junior affiliate? I really don't know what's possible where you live. Maybe the state legislature needs wholesale replacement?

Well, obviously it does! Easy to say; difficult to do.

[MigL]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

How long were you confused about your own gender identity? At what age did you finally decide?

I have never been confused.
How about you ?
( you post as if genetics, hormonal changes in the womb, and environment and nurturing have nothing to do with gender identity )

Edited June 1, 2022 by MigL

[iNow]

25 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Maybe the state legislature needs wholesale replacement?

Well, obviously it does! Easy to say; difficult to do.

Correct on both fronts. Sadly, by focusing on tribal signaling, identity politics, and sociocultural issues like trans kids in sports, their voters turn out to support them in far greater number and with far higher intensity. 

18 minutes ago, MigL said:

I have never been confused

Then, to follow Peters actual point, why do you believe trans kids are confused? 

[Peterkin]

15 minutes ago, MigL said:

I have never been confused.
How about you ?

Nope. Then why do you think they are?

Quote

Kids are not mature mentally, and are bound to be confused about their sexuality or gender identity, and they certainly need acceptance until they can figure things out.

They need acceptance, even if they have figured it out and it's not what the parents prefer.

 

19 minutes ago, MigL said:

( you post as if genetics, hormonal changes in the womb, and environment and nurturing have nothing to do with gender identity )

How do you mean, I post as if? I'm going by the Canadian Pediatric Society article I cited. They don't seem to think environment (by which I assume you mean how the child is treated) is a factor, except in that if they meet resistance to their gender expression, children try harder to assert it, by insisting on stereotypical dress and demeanour.

[MigL]

I said I wasn't confused about my gender/sexuality, but I was certainly confused about other things as I was growing up. 
Is it wrong to assume other kids may be confused about other things also ?

Must be nice that you came out of the womb totally aware of everything, and your environment/nurturing had no effect on you,
( being sarcastic )

[Peterkin]

15 minutes ago, MigL said:

Is it wrong to assume other kids may be confused about other things also ?

Why start by assuming that they are confused? Which children are confused about what subjects? What is confusing those particular children about those particular subjects? Why are we not asking: Are we confusing children with garbled and contradictory information - or outright lies? How about by our insistence on a version of reality that conflicts with the evidence of their senses and personal experience?

I mean, of course, about other things, like God and Democracy, fair play and truth-telling.

15 minutes ago, MigL said:

Must be nice that you came out of the womb totally aware of everything, and your environment/nurturing had no effect on you,
( being sarcastic )

I don't see the relevance of the question or the provocation to sarcasm.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Peterkin

[iNow]

42 minutes ago, MigL said:

I said I wasn't confused about my gender/sexuality, but I was certainly confused about other things as I was growing up. 

I'm sure trans kids are the same. Confused about some other things whilst growing up, but not about their gender/sexuality.

Why would your experience and my experience lack such confusion, but theirs have confusion? You are making an unfounded assumption here. If you weren't confused, why assume they're confused? 

[CharonY]

6 hours ago, MigL said:

I have never been confused.
How about you ?
( you post as if genetics, hormonal changes in the womb, and environment and nurturing have nothing to do with gender identity )

That is exactly the point though. We mostly unconsciously get into our gender roles. I don't think anyone needed to be explained how to be a boy/girl nor did one need to examine one's own genitals in much detail to figure out how to feel about it. However if it is mostly a passive process, it does follow that there must be a biological mechanism associated to how we feel about it. We do know that many factors are involve in sex differentiation including parts of the brain. While the work is very preliminary, some studies suggest an association between gender incongruence with certain differences in estrogen receptors.

So it is less about the person being (mentally) confused, but in a way the biological programs (which, typically work in various continua and not in neat categories) just did not align (or potentially ended up in a less defined zone between the extremes).

I.e. in the same way that you and I were clear about how our gender is, so are transgender kids. The issue really is that parts of their body disagree.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

The issue really is that parts of their body disagree.

Parents and much of society, too. They’re fine with who they are. The people with whom they interact each day too often are not. 

[StringJunky]

Some comments by the swimmer Lia Thomas on the BBC website today:

Quote

Lia Thomas: Transgender athletes 'not a threat' to women's sport

In March, Thomas became the first known transgender swimmer to win the highest US national college title with victory in the women's 500-yard freestyle.

She said athletes did not transition to gain a competitive advantage.

The conversation around the inclusion of transgender women in women's sport has divided opinion both inside and outside the sporting sphere.

Many argue transgender women should not compete in women's sport because of any advantages they may retain - but others argue sport should be more inclusive.

World Athletics president Lord Coe has said the "integrity" and "future" of women's sport would be "very fragile" if sporting organisations gets regulations for transgender athletes wrong.

"The biggest misconception, I think, is the reason I transitioned," Thomas told ABC and ESPN. "People will say, 'Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage, so she could win.' I transitioned to be happy, to be true to myself."

She added: "Trans women competing in women's sports does not threaten women's sports as a whole.

"Trans women are a very small minority of all athletes. The NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] rules regarding trans women competing in women's sports have been around for 10-plus years. And we haven't seen any massive wave of trans women dominating."

US swimmer Erica Sullivan, who competed against Thomas at the college event, said Thomas deserved "to be celebrated for her hard-won success".

Sullivan said she was "proud" to be one of more than 300 college, Team USA and Olympic swimmers who signed an open letter in support of Thomas and all transgender and non-binary swimmers.

More: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/swimming/61658794

An issue I noticed today seems to be that medically-supported transitioning occurs after puberty, when the adult potential is already developed.  If the transitioning occured pre-puberty that criticism is removed. Whole other set of ethical issues to deal with here though as well.

5 hours ago, MigL said:

I said I wasn't confused about my gender/sexuality, but I was certainly confused about other things as I was growing up. 
Is it wrong to assume other kids may be confused about other things also ?

Must be nice that you came out of the womb totally aware of everything, and your environment/nurturing had no effect on you,
( being sarcastic )

Could it not be that the 'confused' child is not confused and is merely, without as-yet sufficient contrary social conditioning,  expressing their natural potential? Perhaps it is you that is confused because they aren't conforming to your decades-old, culturally-ingrained, stereotypical expectations?

Edited June 2, 2022 by StringJunky

[MigL]

My opinion differs.
Society has expectations of children and young adults, And so do their parents and friends.
I fully agree with that.
But they themselves have expectations of who they wish to be and what to expect out of life.
And I'm going to say other's expectations are not nearly as confusing as their own.

When you realize you're not who others wish you to be, that is not too big a deal.
Happens all the time.
When you realize you're not who you wish to be, that can be very damaging.

[iNow]

5 hours ago, MigL said:

Society has expectations of children and young adults, And so do their parents and friends.
I fully agree with that.
But they themselves have expectations of who they wish to be and what to expect out of life.

This is completely fair and valid. The distinction, however, seems to suggest your position is that those expectations of themselves are innate and not themselves also being learned/transferred/enforced by the culture into which they happen to be born.

The same idea applies with religion. If you're born into a Muslim family, you'll have X expectations about yourself. If you're born into a Hindu family, you'll have Y expectations about yourself. If you're born into a Buddhist family, you'll have Z expectations about yourself. None of those expectations were with you upon exiting the womb. All of them were learned and taught. 

Same applies to acceptance and cultural understanding of ones own non-binary sexual identity. 

 

5 hours ago, MigL said:

When you realize you're not who others wish you to be, that is not too big a deal.
Happens all the time.
When you realize you're not who you wish to be, that can be very damaging.

This seems profound on it's own, but unsure how one would EVER separate the two. Feels more like a distinction without a difference. 

If we as a society stopped trying to force kids into one or the other binary buckets for sex, I bet a lot of these damaging "not who you wish to be" perspectives pretty well vanish as a direct result. At that point, they're just being who they are without a constant and daily onslaught of people they love, trust, and respect telling them they're unnatural or wrong just for authentically being who they are. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by iNow

[MigL]

All very valid INow, BUT, everyone wants to 'fit in', and be what is loosely defined as 'normal'.
Different is nice when it's your own choice, like pink or green hair; not so much when you can't help the quality that makes you 'different'.
And while no one is born feeling 'different', your thoughts and feelings are apparent to you long before they are apparent to an accepting ( or not ) family/friends/society.

 

Maybe we've been going about it all wrong.
Maybe we should not be trying to change society to accept this as the new 'normal', and accomodate/accept different individuals into that 'normal'.
Maybe we should be hilighting and celebrating those differences, and realizing that the differences, like multiculturalism and a varied gene pool, make our society richer for them.

[Peterkin]

11 hours ago, MigL said:

When you realize you're not who others wish you to be, that is not too big a deal.

That depends on how others - and which others - express their wishes.

11 hours ago, MigL said:

When you realize you're not who you wish to be, that can be very damaging.

Most early childhood wishing does no damage at all. Wishing you had super powers or were really a princess or a sports hero or a movie star is routine and harmless. But they wish these attributes and successes as something extra - not instead of their identity and personality, but to achieve those goals as their actual self. 

What makes anyone wish to be other than themselves? This was an insurmountable problem for a lot of boys who realized they were gay at a time when society punished that identity with every resource in its possession from shaming to imprisonment, with frequent beatings in between. Of course they would wish to be accepted - but if that could not happen, they would wish to change. So much so, that they would undergo horrid courses of re-education.

That wasn't so long ago, either, and it isn't so far away still.

Quote

Though the concept of gay conversion still exists today, a growing tide has turned against the practice. Today, 13 states and the District of Columbia have laws that ban gay conversion therapy practices.

Only 13 states, as of 2019. https://www.history.com/news/gay-conversion-therapy-origins-19th-century

29 minutes ago, MigL said:

And while no one is born feeling 'different', your thoughts and feelings are apparent to you long before they are apparent to an accepting ( or not ) family/friends/society.

Nobody feels 'different' without being told they are. And the family and society who tell a child he or she is different must first be aware that the child does not identify with the assigned label. IOW, it can only be deliberate and unaccepting. Friends do not do this. Parents, coaches, clergy and lawmakers and other bigots do this.

If most of us could get over t that prejudice, we don't really need to the door very much wider to get over this one.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Peterkin

[MigL]

26 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Nobody feels 'different' without being told they are.

Really ?
Let's use your example of a 'gay' pre-pubescent child.
Does he/she not realize he/she has feelings of attraction towards the same sex, long before outwardly expressing such feelings, and being told they are 'not normal' ?
He/she has eyes to look around, and see what the majority ( those we choose to call the loosely defined 'normal' ) of others are like; they just want to be part of that 'normal', and fit in.
They blame themselves for not being able to, and that can lead to dire consequences.

Maybe we shouldn't tell them  they are 'normal'.
Maybe we should tell them they ARE different, but that difference is a benefit to society ?

 

If you feel that telling people they are different, and their differences should be celebrated, makes you a bigot, you must be a hoot at the Canadian Multicultural celebrations in May ...

Edited June 2, 2022 by MigL

[Peterkin]

16 minutes ago, MigL said:

Let's use your example of a 'gay' pre-pubescent child.

That's not my example. I didn't say prepubescent. Apparently, sexual orientation has a wider range of of ages at which people recognize it in themselves than gender identity; it may not happen until after puberty. . https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/sexual-orientation.html

I was using this as an analogy for how society can make people hate what they are.

23 minutes ago, MigL said:

Does he/she not realize he/she has feelings of attraction towards the same sex, long before outwardly expressing such feelings, and being told they are 'not normal' ?

I don't know. I suppose it would vary from person to person, the same way it does with heterosexuals. Some confident, outgoing individuals act on their feelings; shy, introverted ones usually don't. But nobody else - who isn't an expert or a very observant parent - would know until they have expressed it, by word or deed. In communities where authoritarian rule is out in the open and non-conformity is closeted, the child would expect to be slapped down, and not express his feelings. In communities where bigotry is hidden behind a tolerant facade, a child might not know how people really felt about 'her kind' until too late to hide it. All depends...

32 minutes ago, MigL said:

They blame themselves for not being able to, and that can lead to dire consequences.

Why would they blame themselves for something that's accepted? They are normal, if other people don't convince them otherwise. That cart keeps getting ahead of that horse. The 'dire consequences', like suicide or running away or self-mutilation only happen as a result of persecution, not self-hate.

Anyway, trans kids don't. They identify with a gender at too early an age to understand the concept of normal and abnormal. They simply identify themselves as the expression of the gender they feel they are - and then either hit that wall of prejudice or experience that acceptance. 

38 minutes ago, MigL said:

Maybe we should tell them they ARE different, but that difference is a benefit to society ?

Maybe 'we' should not take it upon ourselves to tell anybody anything about themselves.

[iNow]

7 hours ago, MigL said:

Maybe we've been going about it all wrong.
Maybe we should not be trying to change society to accept this as the new 'normal', and accomodate/accept different individuals into that 'normal'.
Maybe we should be hilighting and celebrating those differences, and realizing that the differences, like multiculturalism and a varied gene pool, make our society richer for them.

I’m supportive of this in parallel, but not in place of, improving our concept of normal. 

In terms of this thread, one way we might celebrate trans kids is by letting them compete in sports and not making it against the law (I know you’re already onboard with that, am just reinforcing it more generally). 

[Peterkin]

36 minutes ago, iNow said:

In terms of this thread, one way we might celebrate trans kids is by letting them compete in sports and not making it against the law

The only way I have seen laws change is through challenge. Make exceptions, find loopholes, allow exemptions, bend it, clip it, break it where necessary and go to court and appeal and appeal and appeal. It's a hard, ugly slog almost every time. We went through it with women's suffrage, divorce law, reproductive rights, gay rights, end-of-life rights... every damn time we want Abraham's sons to loosen their stranglehold on other people's personal autonomy.    

[MigL]

This is the kind of insanity perpetrated by your Government 

GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes with genital inspection - Ohio Capital Journal

"House Republican lawmakers in Ohio passed a bill at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday night that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in high school and college athletics. It also comes with a “verification process” of checking the genitals of those “accused” of being trans."

Genital inspections ????
Your daughter ran a little too fast at the high school track meet ?
Well, drop your pants young lady, so we can see what you have between your legs !

Why do you guys keep electing such morons ?

[StringJunky]

38 minutes ago, MigL said:

This is the kind of insanity perpetrated by your Government 

GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes with genital inspection - Ohio Capital Journal

"House Republican lawmakers in Ohio passed a bill at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday night that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in high school and college athletics. It also comes with a “verification process” of checking the genitals of those “accused” of being trans."

Genital inspections ????
Your daughter ran a little too fast at the high school track meet ?
Well, drop your pants young lady, so we can see what you have between your legs !

Why do you guys keep electing such morons ?

Given that the Larry Nasser case is still pretty fresh in the memory and the subsequent effects on the US Olympic team, I don't think it will stand up to public or judicial scrutiny in the end. It's potentially  a perverts charter and particularly egregious at the amateur level. Cretins.

[CharonY]

25 minutes ago, MigL said:

This is the kind of insanity perpetrated by your Government 

GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes with genital inspection - Ohio Capital Journal

"House Republican lawmakers in Ohio passed a bill at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday night that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in high school and college athletics. It also comes with a “verification process” of checking the genitals of those “accused” of being trans."

Genital inspections ????
Your daughter ran a little too fast at the high school track meet ?
Well, drop your pants young lady, so we can see what you have between your legs !

Why do you guys keep electing such morons ?

Not an American, but it seems to me that it is in part the success of long-developed identity-based campaigning. And by that I do not mean policies that would benefit certain folks (perhaps other than tax exemptions for the rich), but rather in terms of a belief system. It was always a bit that being WASPY was considered the norm. But over time, several aspects that were part of the GOP sometimes on the fringe, sometime more centered have become almost a religious belief system (e.g. from anti-evolution to full on anti-science, from being pro-gun as choice to being a core identity of sort, and now increasingly making fringe beliefs such as white nationalism and conspiracy theories accepted parts). A lot of what are considered now by them as extremist progressive attacks were at least under discussion by the reasonable wing of the party, which apparently has lost their voice (and backbone) entirely. 

So why are they elected? In part because some areas will vote for the GOP no matter what. Then there are folks who feel threatened by made-up bogeyman (white displacement, homosexual mafia, female potato heads, transgender-I-dunno-kids-?) so they will be energized by such bills and depending where you are there is also a nice chunk of voter suppression and gerrymandering going on. The thing though is that the US has a huge cultural influence over the Western world so that is certainly something to look forward to.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Why do you guys keep electing such morons ?

Because those we do elect keep cutting funding for public education and the self-perpetuating cycle continues. 

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

Why do you guys keep electing such morons ?

I don't think Ontario has anything to brag about in that department. We only look like we're ahead, because we're lagging behind in the race backward.

[TheVat]

The Ohio law will fail for reasons mentioned above and also because it will be weaponized by anyone who has a grudge against someone (or anxiety that player might be better than them, or is some form of a sore loser).   This could cause some girls to quit a team because they don't want to face the degrading physical exam or further accusations.  It seems almost like a catalyst for poor sportsmanship, the very thing that school sports programs are supposed to remedy.

Not surprising this comes from Ohio, the state that gave us Trumpian hatchet man Jim Jordan in Congress.  Of course, Jordan might not want to weigh in on this, given his unsavory history with the sexually abusive wrestling team physician Richard Strauss.  Not that he actually has sufficient brain to keep his trap shut in such situations.