Thread: Transgender athletes in sports.

"On President Joe Biden’s first days in office, he signed an executive order which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in school sports." - Unilad

Biden is also working on a bill to ban all discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.

Now Mississippi passed a bill where: "Transgender athletes will not be allowed to compete on girls’ and womens’ sports teams, Mississippi has ruled." - Unilad


Personally, I don't support discrimination against any LGBTQ+ people, but when it comes to sports, would that still make sense?

It doesn't make much sense to me. Am I missing something?

Please enlighten me.

Clearly an unclear issue. "Transgender" designates people who "feel" they are the opposite of their birth sex (1). Those of us "fortunate" enough to be "normal" have no doubt about which sex we are. There are a lot of people who fall under what many would call a "difficult to assess sexual assignment". For one obvious example (quoting from 1) :

"The term transgender may be defined very broadly to include cross-dressers." (Many would certainly not accept such behavior as transgender.)

Clearly unclear. Only now reading up on this based on the current thread posting. It is an enormously complex social issue, and can result in discrimination and horrific physical abuse (or worse).

Yet some of these people have malformation of the genitalia, and resort to "hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery" to correct what is often a congenital defect. Others who choose transsexual treatments simply want to become the opposite of how they were born. These are better defined as transsexuals (2), and represent a sexual orientation based mostly on genitalia. Many of these people do not want to be called transgender for obvious reasons.

It would seem that people who undergo surgery to actually become what they want to be should be allowed into "same sex" activities. Those who do not undergo such surgery present a serious problem for those deciding how to deal with them, from bathrooms to dressing rooms to sports teams.

Defining what happened before the Big Bang must be easier to determine than to sort out this issue in a way that satisfies everyone (never will of course).

This "problem" of sexual identity, particularly "transgender", doubtless ranks near the top of the "difficulty scale". One need only look at the first reference below to understand how difficult it really is.

Now I need to take some aspirin.....Have gotten a headache navigating such murky waters. Am used to cut-and-dried science. That is the last thing we have here.


1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexual

A 300 lb ten year old can declare himself to be an 80 pounder all s/he wants for the sake of playing on the seesaw but it’s just not going to work. Likewise I wouldn’t ask a dwarf to change a light bulb no matter how s/he tries to convince me they’re 7 feet tall. Take me to court if you think I have a hate on. People are different and for every one us there’s just some things we can’t be or do. But if you want me to say you can do impossible things despite obvious physical handicap then sure, knock yourself out. If you want to be champion despite an obvious physical advantage then ok, you’re champion. Not worth fretting over.

Could this be used as a comparative study? Saw it on TV couple nights ago and looked it up. The animal kingdom of which we are a part of has many surprises. Biggest difference between the subject of the article and humans is lionesses can’t talk, to us anyways. Yet if you read then it seems to become apparent that they do communicate their sexuality to their group in some ways.

https://www.newscientist.com/article...ng-like-males/