Gimme a break. How often do you think this happens? Has this happened to you or anyone in your family? Do you even know someone this has happened to? A friend of a friend even? This shit is exceedingly rare and the amount of attention being devoted to it suggests it’s happening in every school district in America when that is not the case. Your kid has a better chance of being shot at school than being beaten by a trans athlete in a sport they play. PS - I have 2 daughters.
Thing is though, the "things that might happen" are indeed happening. A few years ago, men playing womens sports was a " thing that might happen". I mean, I know conservative is a word that means exactly what it says, but some of theses concerns are indeed occuring.
Some contributors to this thread think the transgender sports issue has been 'beaten to death.' Others disagree as the subject continues to appear on the forum, though the OP on this thread could have been, should have been added to the 'Women's Sports' thread posted in April. Still there is no doubt it is a contentious issue laden with various concerns and has become somewhat of a wedge issue Like others, I too have concerns, though mine may be different from those of others. In a previous thread on this topic I posted I think it is a spiritual handicap and was labeled a bigot by one poster in particular who has through the years tossed that ugly label around like candy from a Mardi Gras float. However, to add this is for me not a religious issue and I am not going to delve into that aspect as it is not a concern of mine and would most certainly sidetrack this thread and my intention in making this post. Being called a bigot confused and distressed me as I know my thoughts on gender issues are not bigoted, but it troubled me when I was unable to convey my innermost concerns establishing why these convictions are not bigotry. And in truth, my spiritual convictions are no one's business but my own and I have no need or compulsion to discuss them or convince others. ---That label 'bigot' is subjective btw, has been labeled an 'insult' and forum moderators will deal with it as such--- Objections I may have stem indirectly from the practice of people endowed with testosterone being permitted to compete against people who lack that singular male hormonal advantage. Diminishing or dismissing the hard work and perhaps years athletically inclined cis gendered females competing against other females have dedicated to training and conditioning is ludicrous to me and apparently a majority of others who are equally concerned at the unfairness of it all. In previous threads one person in particular has insisted it is is not fair to the relatively few transgendered females to be restricted from competing with cisgendered females. Apparently believing their dignity, self worth and identity need to be affirmed and they deserve to be recognized and accepted as the gender they self identify. As before I ask again, why are the feelings and affirmation of self identity of a relatively small group of transgendered women more important than those of the many times larger number of women who have worked countless hours, perhaps years - to condition their feminine bodies, perfecting their athletic skills, and increasing the strength of the estrogen fueled musculature endowed in the bodies they were born? What of their feelings? What of their disappointments, their dignity, their self worth? What of the potential loss of a financial scholarship due to being defeated by stronger transgendered females who were born male and for a time endowed with the advantages of testosterone in their developing bodies? I leave it to people qualified to assess the contingencies and make decisions fair for the majority. I am not particularly athletically inclined or overly interested in sports so that is certainly not within my limited scope. I can only speak to what is fair. Let agencies like the NCAA make those sticky decisions. KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF IT! and don't discount or trivialize the needs or minimize the accomplishments of cis born females are my only interjections on rectifying the unfairness. My greater concern in this issue however, is how it is being framed through the language and how manipulative that language appears. This person I mentioned earlier (he is welcome to interject his thoughts into this thread) objected in a previous thread using the phrase transgendered females "competing against" as opposed to "competing with." He said transgendered females want to compete with other females rather than against them. I view this as an attempt to reframe the issue into something more benign and acceptable. Women’s Sports Any attempt to determine who is a bigot according to a definition of 'categorical exclusion' or other unagreed upon terms, is not much more than an attempt to control the parameters of the debate and limit discussion. The same applies in substituting the preposition with for the more precise and situationally accurate term against. This effort to control the language - the terms - brings to mind one of Alinsky's well known but often forgotten Rules about controlling the masses through controlling the language. There are numerous instances of this used by both the left and the right as the Rules are strategic, not ideological. One applicable to this subject / thread is the increase in usage and expansion in the definition of gender. Not all that long ago there were but 2 sexes with the occasional androgynous anomalies, and gender was but a synonym for sex. Now there are multiple genders and gender is fluid, blurring male with female and female with male. Gay no longer means jovial or happy as it once did. Falsehoods are now known as alternative facts. The term woke evolved from its original descriptive definition of a person awakened from sleep into a word used by Black people to describe those aware of racist threats, and is now a term used by right wingers to mock or deride people who are aware or sensitive to racial or gender abuses and injustice. The singular personal pronouns he and she, hers and his are now approvingly substituted with the confusing plural pronouns they and theirs, the explanation being the change in language is less exclusionary, more inclusionary. This latest grammatical shift in pronoun usage was approved by The National Council of Teachers of English publishing manual, The Chicago Manual for Style, and the writers of the publishing manuals for the American Psychological Association, and the Associated Press. These gatekeeping agencies set the grammatical and usage rules approved for writing styles and format conventions. The NCTE sets the standards in teaching children to read, write and speak. It has been suggested these agencies or their members were bribed or coerced into approving the changes in their manuals. I cannot speak to that speculation. Pronoun changes and changes in the definitions of words reeks of the manipulation of the language Orwell warned of in his novel 1984 and his work, and the tactics advocated by Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals. Changes in definitions, substitutions of words, and other strategies limit language, consequently limiting thought, making people easier to control, thereby making it easier to manipulate the culture. This trend has continued along with the blurring of pronouns. It carries hints of language manipulation, and has been long and widely noted - he who controls the language controls the masses. Until recent times it was considered gramatically correct to use the pronoun 'he' when the gender of an individual was unknown. Such as everyone should bring 'his' book to class. There are, of course, alternative ways to give such an instruction. "All students shall bring their books to class." It is true however, the use of a gender neutral singular pronoun has long been an acceptable exception to gender specific English grammar when the identity of an individual was unknown or undetermined. The substitution of they, theirs, was not unknown. Examples of this exist as far back as the 1300's in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and from the pens of Shakespeare and Jane Austen. But with the disappearance of binary distinctions has come the confusing, blurring, and insidious increase in generic, plural, and nonbinary pronoun usage. It sets the stage for further deconstruction in our culture and gives me concerns. Resist current trends promoting the use of a plural pronoun in place of a personal singular pronoun. Don't confuse people and leave them wondering what is meant by sentences structured similar to these: "Jane rode a bicycle to school. They need to leave for home now before the rain starts and they are soaked on their ride home." Limiting thoughts and changing what words mean or are acceptable leads to changes in culture. Orwell knew this and wrote of it in 1984 and an essay entitled "Politics and the English Language." Politics and the English Language | The Orwell Foundation "Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. "Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written." _____________ This link is to a website more concerned with corporate change but recognizes a common language accelerates cultural change. Culture Change: A Common Language Accelerates Culture Change - Axialent "One of the biggest questions we are asked when working in culture transformation is how do we spread the word across the organization? How do we align all the cells of the organization towards this common goal and embrace change? Creating a common language throughout the organization accelerates culture change... "...Language shapes reality. The way we talk, the distinction and words we choose, reflects what it is important to us, what we believe, and what we value and the possibilities we seek to create. However very often, we see organizations that invest a lot of effort to talk about their desired culture, but generate very little impact on people." Be aware; remain wary
Your daughter was not beating boys regularly in HS track unless she went to some small private school or a charter school. You are making up crap. You don't need to lie to try to make a point. It's embarrassing.
As I said, it doesn’t happen in a statistically significant quantity to merit the most limited societal concern, much less being one of the 2-3 most important issues to evil demagogues, meriting legislation etc. All covered already
It was definitely happening before it became an "issue" - as I've pointed out previously on the many, many threads we have had on this same topic, the NCAA had rules in place going back a decade. The reason it became a thing is because the anti-gay people found a wedge issue to exploit, that's it. Now its all some people want to talk about, because it divides people who are normally supportive of gay rights.
Or it is just parents concerned their daughters have to play sports against a biological male. Crazy to have to point out but some people are so obtuse or ignorant. There is a reason women have separate sports from men. Only someone extremely partisan would argue otherwise, hence why you are LOL.
As was explained to me yesterday, the people making these decisions are either stupid or insane. Ergo, there are people with power who are stupid and/or insane. That is terrifying and must be made right. I believe the person explaining this to me thinks "big brother's" propaganda has infected the people in power. Their IQs are fine but their ability to filter out bull spit is sadly lacking. Also, screaming "It's not fair!" in outrage is about as universal phenomenon as I have seen. No one teaches children to say it. They just KNOW.
LOL. Yeah, that's it. You and the far lefties are the only people who think this isn't an issue. It's ok, just own it.
As always, you raise a lot of interesting issues. In Spanish (I assume other Latin-based languages), gender is more critical. if one refers to a group of men, the group is masculine. If one refers to a group of women, it's feminine. If one refers to a group of 100 women and only one man, the group is described as masculine. Naturally, in English, the plurals of "they" and "them" are already gender neutral. Our nouns are also typically gender neutral except for the rare occasions when someone may refer to a sailing vessel as "she," for example - a quirk that I have always found really interesting. I recall in school when more sentences and passages, particularly in standardized tests, began to include feminine nouns and pronouns in the absence of a girl or woman's name. That was especially noticeable when the subject was in a profession that was traditionally male, such as the medical doctor being referred to as a woman. The masculine default also seemed to be eroding a bit. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, as I always thought the dominant/default masculine is a bit patriarchal, maybe not dissimilar to the way God is deemed masculine in many religions. I recall the old gender bias riddle below. Not sure when it first came out, but I would guess people are more likely to get the answer correct as time passes. A father and son have a car accident and are both badly hurt. They are both taken to separate hospitals. When the boy is taken in for an operation, the surgeon (doctor) says 'I can not do the surgery because this is my son'. How is this possible?
No, just a sarcastic dig at a sport that should not have gender designation and my view that all sports should have a single table of competitors and not differentiate at all. Team sports should be all humans. I acknowledged this would cause 100 divisions and no real place for biological woman to get sports scholarships.
And yet you guys are whining about a swimmer which is no different than track. Don’t you get tired of punching yourself in the face?
