If its indeed about participation, then why the problem? That's why trans athletes are allowed to compete, in the name of participation and fairness. Seems like exclusion would be the antithesis of participation. The opponents of inclusion seem to change the story when its convenient. When someone is winning its about competitive integrity, when someone gets hurt as can happen in sports, then its about something else. Anyone can sus out what the real motivation is.
I get the discussion about fairness in competition but putting that aside here since this is a story about safety. I have thought about safety concerns in contact sports but never really focused on that for sports like volleyball, softball, or baseball. Tennis has co-ed doubles, and volleyball can be co-ed as well. I don't doubt that, on average, biological males hit a bit harder, but there's also nothing magical about biological males' faces that prevents injury when getting hit in the face by an object traveling at a high speed. As a kid, I accidentally hit a baseball into my grandfather's face in the back yard and he had to get dental work and it was a pretty bad injury. I felt horrible, but it's not like it took the hardest swing of all time to hurt him.
The difference is assumption of risk. The female kicker is knowingly playing a male sport. The woman who plays mixed doubles tennis is knowingly playing a sport with men. The female volleyball player who was injured by a genetically male competitor Likely didn’t necessarily sign up for a sport that had competitors who were genetically male and potentially spiked a ball significantly harder over an already lower net. It’s really that simple. And I’m someone who gives wide latitude to gender fluidity (and whose daughter played varsity volleyball for 4 years and travel volleyball for 6 years) but some of you are so wed to your own teams political narratives that common sense doesn’t register on your keyboards.
This thread reminds me of when people post about immigrants committing crimes. There is this idea if only the world was the way they thought it should be, misfortune and injuries wouldn't happen. "It didnt have to happen." As if you cant get mugged or hit in the face by a volleyball by non-immigrants/trans people.
Sorry, no one has really articulated the elevated level of risk here, just some armchair and pseudo-sciencey stuff about being "male" or being able to do things more powerfully. I'm sorry but a woman/HS girl can definitely hit me in the face with a volleyball hard enough to give me a concussion or send me, a grown man, to the hospital with a broken nose in the right circumstances.
I did not realize, but it makes sense that concussions in volleyball are pretty common. Volleyball star Hayley Hodson had it all, until blows to her head changed everything According to a 2015 study published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, women’s volleyball has the ninth-highest concussion rate among 25 NCAA sports. Most athletes who suffer a single concussion — with rest and a gradual return to activity — experience no lasting ill effects. However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a number of medical studies, athletes who suffer a second concussion while recovering from a previous one face a greater risk of prolonged or permanent symptoms, including chronic headaches, mood and behavioral changes, and cognitive impairment.
Somehow we didn’t require any laws until recently. We all sort of took for granted that biological males playing against women was completely unfair and even dangerous. But the extreme left has lost any common sense.
Homophobia threads. Gotta love ‘em. The most dangerous sport in all of high school is women's soccer. Concussion rates are as bad as HS football. If you’re concerned about girls safety and not homophobia start a thread on that. Like most people I’m for segregating sex/gender sports for fairness but the homophobia on here is ridiculous.
That girl got up and walked away on her own power after 1 minute. If she had severe neck and head trauma, why weren't EMTs called in and proper protocols followed?
