Women’s Sports

You ever play team sports? You ever play in a recreational league for fun? Playing sports is as much about who you are competing WITH than AGAINST, often more. That gets lost in this conversation.
Supreme Court: Trans Girl Can Run Girls Track in West Virginia – NBC Connecticut
In an emailed statement issued by the ACLU’s West Virginia chapter to The Associated Press on Thursday night, Pepper-Jackson said: “I am so happy that the Supreme Court saw that this stay was not an emergency. I still get to play with my friends and teammates on the track team. That’s all I want to do, be with my friends and be the girl that I am.”

 

strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.

In team sports you are typically competing against another team.

If it really isn’t a competition and an exercise in just participation, then there is less of a fairness issue. However for most people who are athletes the competition is a necessary component.

 

You can keep quoting dictionary definitions at me, but that doesn't change why most kids participate in sports. It's about having fun and making friends. Do you think transgender kids are any different?

 

Then why not have unisex sports, and just stop keeping score?

 

We keep score when I play pickup basketball with friends. None of us are going pro in basketball. None of us are doing it for some sort of championship. We're doing it because we like each other's company and it's fun. Are you really doing mental gymnastics to deny that most kids play sports to be with/make friends and have fun?

 

Again, why keep score ?

 

Because it gives the game meaning. You know who is ahead, you know what score is needed to win/end the game, and you compete to get there. Again, are you arguing that most kids aren't playing sports to have fun and be with their friends?

 

Part of the fun is the competition and trying to win. It’s why you have men and women’s sports, age groups, even weight groups for things like wrestling. If winning, or the pursuit of winning wasn’t important we wouldn’t keep score.

 

Oh you had your exceptions…

 

And yet, I don't go play with the best ballers in my city. I play with my friends. Because the fun of the game is competing WITH them, not AGAINST the best. There's a reason the anti-trans folks glom on to the very few examples of elite transgender women in sports. Because they want to make this issue about some "impostor" stealing what rightfully belongs to a "real woman."

That's not what this is about. The vast majority of transgender kids aren't elite athletes. They're not going to compete in college or at the Olympics. They're kids who want to play with their friends and be able to be who they are. It's about wanting to belong and be a "normal" kid. That is my point. Those are the real stakes here for the vast majority of people affected by these laws.

 

This isn’t about you and your friends and your pick up game. This is about organized sports. Once you are to a level of adolescence or higher, competitiveness and winning are a big part of it. You can make a value judgment as to whether that is good or bad, but the competition is a very big part of it, and given it is, then fairness plays a more pivotal role.

 

It's sad that we're even having this conversation, but it should indeed be codified by federal law, because it has the potential to do a lot of damage to women's sports. (already has in some cases) American sports is about a level playing field. It is within Congress's purview.

 

I've been very clear that we should take fairness into account. But you're not going to bulldoze your way into misrepresenting the stakes. Sport is about more than just competing and winning/losing. And that's the point these transgender kids who have spoken out against these laws continue to make. Their voices matter. Their feelings matter.

 

...or care...

 

Both my wife and I played sports as well as our sons. We played to win the game, friends were a plus but not the "aim". This comment reminds me of "everyone gets a trophy" crowd regardless of how they played. One of our sons had a motto, "there are no friends on the field".

 

Keep letting the tail wag the dog.

 

What a terrible mindset to have.

 

Dude, I'm a lawyer. You don't need to tell me what it's like to play in an adversarial environment. I can compete with people, do my best to beat them, and still regard them as friends. Moreover, basketball is a team sport. Even if I considered the guys on the other team "foes," the guys on my team would still be friends.

I can't imagine looking at my teammates and considering them to be "competition." When I played football, baseball, and soccer during my youth, I certainly didn't go out on the field thinking that I had no friends. My teammates were my brothers, and we were in it together.

 

I have wrestled with this tension.

I support inclusion and support for trans folks (although I think sports is unique due to fairness considerations). On the topic generally, it does seem to me that we might be unintentionally promoting or reinforcing gender stereotypes and expectations.

Those who do need hormones or surgeries, I will support them. But if gender dysphoria is about someone's biological sex not conforming to their gender identity, that seems to be saying that gender is immutable and that the genders have objectively different characteristics in the first place. Is that even true with respect to gender?

I have seen videos of trans women who were practicing how to speak in higher pitched voices. I knew why they feel they have to do it. I'm not blaming them, but it made me sad for them, and I wish they didn't have to worry about things like that. Some women have lower voices than others, and some men have relatively higher voices. Some women like to wear makeup and wear fancy dresses and some don't. Some girls like hunting and fishing and some boys like playing with dolls. That's all perfectly fine. If we can embrace those sorts of differences, perhaps fewer people would feel the need to take hormones or get surgeries.

Of course, there are some (mostly religious IMO) who think gender norms and stereotypes are a positive thing and should be promoted or even required. I completely disagree with that. The other day, Ben Shapiro said he believes local government can probably ban men from wearing clothing traditionally associated with women but doubted whether government could ban women from wearing pants. I don't know that Shapiro would actually support such laws, as it sounded like he was giving a legal response. But I think he's wrong. At the very least, the fact that they were even having a discussion about gender-policing dress codes underscores to me that the desire to enforce traditional gender norms is a huge factor in this entire discussion.