Personally I think not having karma limits is nice currently! I understand why they were used but grinding karma as a lurker on reddit was frustrating.
Personally I think not having karma limits is nice currently! I understand why they were used but grinding karma as a lurker on reddit was frustrating.
I disagree, that isn’t a “polite disagreement” and is, absolutely, “just transphobes attacking people trying to live their own life” as you put it. Every time that “Argument” happens it’s openly done in biologically unfounded ways by people who simply don’t understand how our bodies actually work- yet those arguments get mass upvoted by people who also don’t understand how biology actually works and who believe that trans athletes get some insane, unfair advantage.
If you want to pass laws to restrict trans people from sports, then you want to pass laws to discriminate against trans people. That’s not really up for debate IMO, it’s a straight up fact; it’s what you’re doing when you advocate for laws that are not founded in science, that are specifically targeting a tiny minority for the chance that one of that tiny minority might beat cis athletes in an “unfair” way, you’re advocating for bigoted laws.
Such arguments are also inevietably filled with people misgendering trans people, deliberately calling trans women “men” and hiding behind the “I’m talking about biology” argument to do so.
Replace the word “trans” with “black” and you’ll find that people are making literally identical arguments to those against desegregating professional sports leagues 80 years ago. Literally word for word.
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know how our bodies work, but I think explaining it will be more helpful in the long run than just making the subject taboo and banning everyone who asks it.
At the beginning of the pandemic a common argument against masks was “the virus is too small to be caught in a mask” - which made sense from a layman’s point of view. When people started explaining that masks did stop the water droplets the virus needs to be airborne - that argument become a lot less common.
Not everybody who has questions is “just asking questions”, if you catch my drift.
I agree with that statement, context is everything.
I think that in the context of someone starting out going “it’s unfair for men to compete in women’s sports,” the person is “just asking questions.” That context poisons the well for questions.
But if someone comes in and makes a thread like “I don’t understand how hormone therapy works, can someone please explain it?” that, to me, is a good faith question and 100% should not be bannable.
All good :)
Now that I have your attention though, what would be a good counter argument on why trans women should be allowed to compete in the same league as non-trans women (please excuse my lacking vocabulary)?
Like I mentioned, at first sight as a layman, the argument that trans women would have an competitive advantage makes sense to me. So I’d be grateful if you could take away my ignorance.
First for the vocabulary:
non-trans = cisgender. cis meaning “same,” as in “same gender as assigned at birth.”
Second, I’m not the best at doing that, but I know of a really good report which has good citations of studies and really thoroughly discusses the issue. PDF WARNING: It can be found here.
Thanks for the former, guess I should have known that, but I’ll be sure to remember now. As for the second… I’m interested in the answer, but not 86 pages scientific report interested. Guess I’ll just have to wait around for the “water droplet”-size answer, but thanks for your patience nonetheless :)
The hardest part with this conversation is that there isn’t really a satisfying short answer, but I can try to give one.
The biological differences between men and women that most people think of as giving men an advantage over women in sports are counteracted by hormone replacement therapy, and do not give trans women athletes an advantage over cis women athletes. Some of the arguments, such as bone density being higher in men, are literally taken word-for-word out of segregationist rhetoric- and ignores the fact that black women have higher bone density than most men. There is not a clear scientific reason to exclude trans women who are undergoing HRT from sports.
That’s it, that’s the answer. But I feel like that’s just asking you to take my word for it- all of that and more is backed up by science in the report I linked.
For what it’s worth, I never checked the size of the corona virus particle either, so I’m fine with having to take your word for it :)
It also sounds like this could be confirmed by the drug testing, which is already in place anyway, and would ensure that participants have the proper hormone level that wouldn’t give them an advantage. (I also just now remember that this was literally the plot point of a Futurama episode.)
Thanks for taking the time to answer me. I don’t need the complete fine details, but it is a satisfying answer.