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- Jun 18, 2018
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"Transgender sports participation has emerged as a flash point mostly for the sake of being a flash point. We are not a tomorrow away from some kind of trans takeover. But rather than delving into the complexity and wrestling with how to create fair competition as gender norms shift, we are succumbing to a panic that forces us to choose between the extremes of firm exclusion and full inclusion.
The level of indignation is disproportionate to the minuscule number of known trans athletes at all levels of sport. Yet a preemptive war rages, threatening to complicate the lives of even nonelite athletes, who simply seek access to the social, emotional and health benefits of organized activities. ... Gill-Peterson, a Johns Hopkins professor and author who specializes in transgender history, sees how the message is framed with succinct urgency: Save women’s sports. It does not present the rare dominant trans athlete as a complicated anomaly that warrants deep thought but rather as an existential threat that must be eliminated to protect the sanctity of our sex-segregated sports structure.
Megan Rapinoe grew tired of people speaking for her. She did not appreciate the notion that women’s sports needed protection, especially if politicians and others who hadn’t shown interest in them before were suddenly the protectors. In the transgender discussion, she sensed female athletes were being used — by the same people who so often had been contemptuous about women’s sports. “We as a country are trying to legislate away people’s full humanity,” she told Time magazine before she retired last year.
...“It’s such a farce,” said Clarendon, who is married to Layshia Clarendon, the first openly nonbinary WNBA player. ...“We are telling you that we are not under attack from trans women. If you want to know the things we are protecting ourselves from, there is a really long list, and trans women are not on it....I think it’s by design, creating a wedge issue to disrupt a really unified group of people,” Clarendon said of conservatives campaigning against trans participation in sports. “They were losing the narrative on gay people and gay marriage, and the backlash has found a new target. It’s absolutely designed to divide people like Megan and Martina on ideological lines.”
...The decision to segregate sexes in sports was made long before significant contemplation of gender fluidity. It remains the most logical way to create meaningful competitions and acknowledge the inherent biological advantage that men possess. But the binary system is starting to fray as society changes. While transgender participation is still too small to create another sports category, the hysteria has elevated the importance of more creative and inclusive counter-policies. If we believe sport has a greater purpose, then we tarnish its value if we cannot find a better solution than to banish those we don’t quite understand."
Link to gifted article
Seems like few women atheletes object to it.
The level of indignation is disproportionate to the minuscule number of known trans athletes at all levels of sport. Yet a preemptive war rages, threatening to complicate the lives of even nonelite athletes, who simply seek access to the social, emotional and health benefits of organized activities. ... Gill-Peterson, a Johns Hopkins professor and author who specializes in transgender history, sees how the message is framed with succinct urgency: Save women’s sports. It does not present the rare dominant trans athlete as a complicated anomaly that warrants deep thought but rather as an existential threat that must be eliminated to protect the sanctity of our sex-segregated sports structure.
Megan Rapinoe grew tired of people speaking for her. She did not appreciate the notion that women’s sports needed protection, especially if politicians and others who hadn’t shown interest in them before were suddenly the protectors. In the transgender discussion, she sensed female athletes were being used — by the same people who so often had been contemptuous about women’s sports. “We as a country are trying to legislate away people’s full humanity,” she told Time magazine before she retired last year.
...“It’s such a farce,” said Clarendon, who is married to Layshia Clarendon, the first openly nonbinary WNBA player. ...“We are telling you that we are not under attack from trans women. If you want to know the things we are protecting ourselves from, there is a really long list, and trans women are not on it....I think it’s by design, creating a wedge issue to disrupt a really unified group of people,” Clarendon said of conservatives campaigning against trans participation in sports. “They were losing the narrative on gay people and gay marriage, and the backlash has found a new target. It’s absolutely designed to divide people like Megan and Martina on ideological lines.”
...The decision to segregate sexes in sports was made long before significant contemplation of gender fluidity. It remains the most logical way to create meaningful competitions and acknowledge the inherent biological advantage that men possess. But the binary system is starting to fray as society changes. While transgender participation is still too small to create another sports category, the hysteria has elevated the importance of more creative and inclusive counter-policies. If we believe sport has a greater purpose, then we tarnish its value if we cannot find a better solution than to banish those we don’t quite understand."
Link to gifted article
Seems like few women atheletes object to it.