Why do people keep framing the issue as "excluding" vs. "not excluding" trans people.

Literally nobody is arguing for a general exclusion of trans people. Many people are advocating for excluding trans women from womens' divisions under certain circumstances.

Nope.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-...house-bill/734


https://apnews.com/article/transgend...565f3e1ac3d4ba


https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-map...icipation_bans

This is false. I think I know why you are suggesting this. Early ITT you falsely compared my views as supporting Avi Silverberg's weightlifting student. When I pointed out this was false you switched gears in one of the most ridiculous ways and started asking about age limits for gender surgery. I didn't answer that question, but I didn't answer it because I'm not prepared to (or haven't, many times, in many trans threads), but because of how comically ridiculous your switch was to this totally off topic nonsequitor. If there are natural good faith questions on the topic of discussion of course I will answer them.

Do you think that is a sufficient reason to ban trans youth from sports? Not even Elrazor who originally started with his "psychological safety" bit seems to think that is true.

This seems silly. Firstly, you are just wrong on what some of the bills say, they are indeed very general. However, on the linguistic point, you literally use "excluding trans women" in your own sentence, so how is it not fair to use this. An exclusion under certain circumstances is still an exclusion.

No one thinks trans women should be excluded from competing with men.

As should hopefully be obvious to everybody, the topic of discussion is excluding trans women from competing in women's sports. The word "excluding" doesn't magically stop being appropriate.

I don't think the question is "why should they be excluded?", rather a more appropriate question should be "why should they be included?".

Because kids should be allowed to play sports and have fun? I’m not really sure I understand the question here.

This. I can't imagine many worse questions than "why should they be included?" when it comes to kids. I would have hoped we left that question back in the 70s or 80s.

Didace's question is a good example of the insane special treatment trans issues so often get. It should not be remotely hard to come up with many reasons why you would want to be inclusive. Hard to imagine any other issue where people struggle to come up with reasons to be inclusive. Sure, sometimes there are drawbacks and some level of exclusion is required in various places in our society, but coming up with positive reasons is the easy part.

That's the whole point. No one is saying they shouldn't be allowed to play and have fun. Just that it should be on the boys' team (in at least some cases.)

The question is not whether to be inclusive or exclusive. The question is what category to include trans women in. Nobody is arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to play in the boys' division, and if there is any work that needs to be done in mens' sports to make the culture more inclusive of different gender expressions I'm sure most would support that.

It's weird that the argument even needs to be spelled out. Men and women are physiologically different, so there are obvious reasons to have men's and women's divisions in competitions involving physical prowess. Since trans women retain most of the physiological characteristics of men, and because the basis for separating sports by gender is differences in physiology, rather than gender expression or identity, the logical conclusion would be that someone who is physiologically male should compete in the male division. The onus is on the person claiming otherwise to make that case.

Why can't they play sports and have fun competing against the people who were born with the same bodies they were?

(Though maybe they would have more fun being one of the strongest members on the team rather than one of the weakest).

I'm sure you guys went to elementary and high school. Do you recall that being a real fun place for anyone that didn't fit in? How well do you think that goes for the grade 7 transgender girl when you tell her that she can't play with other girls? Yeah, we know you identify as a girl, Jane, but because a level playing field is super important in grade 7, you need to play on the boys team; we'll make sure we tell them they have to be nice to you.

I get the argument for level playing fields, that there's a reason we have boys and girls teams in the first place, etc. But can we at least have this conversation without pretending we can't understand the other side of the discussion?

Because putting Jane on the girls' team seems to be making it not fun for the other girls. Can you not understand that? Or at least that it sometimes will be true? Also, do you really think Jane is going to "fit in" with the girls' team? Particularly when in the changing room.

Um...

Jane is undoubtedly going to have a shitty time throughout school. That's why I think it's better to give up a bit of that level playing field than put Jane through even more **** in grade 7. Let's worry about that in grade 11 or 12 when the competitive stakes are a lot higher.

I really don't understand the "Um" answer above, or what your quoted part about level playing fields has to do with my question. I was talking about the 7th grade girls not finding it fun to have the person they knew as John for the past 6 years now walking around the girls' changing room with his penis hanging out.

I've always thought there should be private changing rooms, but that seems to not be how things generally are.

Because Republicans are trying to ban them from school sports.

I assumed you were talking about a level playing field issue, especially when you said "Also" and then got into the changing room thing. If your entire post was about changing rooms, then I guess my reply didn't make sense, sorry.

As for the changing room issue, that seems like a pretty rare problem in Grade 7. Our kids didn't have a changing room for sports at that age - gym class was usually in their "street clothes", although I'm sure a few kids went to the bathroom to change in the stalls. Maybe it's different in the US at that age, but I find it hard to imagine a grade 7 girl "walking around the girls' changing room with [their] penis hanging out". The way most of our schools are dealing with this these days is gender neutral bathrooms, and I imagine changing rooms might not be far behind or are already happening. And that's not just for transgender kids.

I haven't read all of the links but I haven't heard of anyone saying that trans girls shouldn't be allowed to play on boys teams.

I know some are saying it's not common, but when I was in US (catholic, parochial) school, we had organized teams with uniforms for grades 5-8. I played football, and we just wore our practice clothes or uniforms to the events, but there were changing / locker rooms b in the gyms for basketball and volleyball teams.

I wasn't on those teams, so I don't know if anyone actually walked around naked, but even if not I imagine the girls would not be too comfortable with Jane there even if they were just partially undressed while changing.

They were also competitive and not everyone made the team. I tried out for basketball one time, but I was terrible and didn't make the cut.

Honestly I was so bad at dribbling, passing and shooting that I might not have even made the girls' team, but if I had I could have been a beast on defense as I would have been the tallest and at least close to the fastest player.

If I had decided I was trans that year, I'm sure all of the girls on opposing teams would have found it unfair, and the girl who didn't make the cut to be on the team because I took her spot would certainly be upset as well.

And to get that out of the way, of course I don't think any 7th graders are pretending to be trans just to play basketball with weaker competition. Just saying what likely would happen if someone who was trans wanted to play basketball.

I was meaning in both ways. But your saying that you understand the level playing field argument doesn't mean it goes away.

I've been trying to look at this issue from the perspective of women who play sports, but as I have stated previously, I really think the idea of separate teams for just that one difference is somewhat arbitrary.

I really think the Title IX overall is pretty unfair in how limited it is. Sure, now women who are above average in strength, size, and coordination have the same opportunities as men with those same characteristics, but what about the women who like to play sports but don't have any of those? And what about the men of the same category? They still don't have the opportunity to play in a competitive league against others of similar (lack of) abilities, and they have no chance of getting an athletic scholarship.

Right, which is why I directly addressed that:

No matter where you draw the line is going to be pretty arbitrary.

It doesn't need to be arbitrary at all, but if you mean it's not something everyone's going to agree on, that's true. But that doesn't mean a decision can't be made. I'm good with allowing educators and sports officials, with the input of those involved, decide on that. Seems far better than state legislators making sweeping decisions.