What I mean by arbitrary is that someone would have to set a rule cut off the trans athletes at a particular age or grade, when really the difference in abilities and the level of competition goes up gradually from year to year.

I agree that all the state legislators acting like this is a crisis is pretty silly.

Sure. This won't be simple. Grade 11/12 strikes me as the time when it begins potentially affecting future scholarship/career opportunities, and the time when kids who aren't super serious about sports have moved on. I could see arguments for making it a little earlier. But this isn't an area of expertise for me, so I'm good with letting the actual experts sort it out.

Every cut off ever is an arbitrary. Drinking age, driving age, etc. When it isn’t about trans issues, these types of thresholds don’t seem to faze people.

Actually I don't like the arbitrary age cutoffs for those things either; I think having any drinking age is silly and unnecessary, and driving should be allowed once someone is tall enough to reach the pedals, smart enough to pass the written test, and can control the car well enough to pass the driving test. If there absolutely must be an age cutoff, it should be the same age for everything: driving, drinking, signing legal contracts, voting, getting married, getting drafted, etc.

But what would be the arbitrary age cutoff you would pick for this issue? And would you be ok with that same age being the arbitrary cutoff for being old enough to make the decision to take puberty blockers or have anything else done as far as changing one's body?

In many sports, college scouting starts was before 11/12.


I'm interested in finding out more about these people that aren't super serious about sports yet just need to participate but when they are a junior in high school in need goes away.


Serious question for you Bobo - Did you participate in school sports when you were 12? Because I get the feeling you think it's just a bunch of kids running around with no real concern about actual competition. That was no my experience.

This is all pretty silly, but it doesn't actually help you. You just replaced age based cutoffs with cutoff in other factors, and ya our society has endless amounts of arbitrary lines in sands it draws, and some (say abortion) get super contentious but most are just like ya ok you gotta draw the line somewhere how about around here?

The point for trans inclusion in sport is that the mere fact that one might need to draw a line somewhere between allowing trans youth to play sports and at some point deciding that the competition is too significant to allow, that fact alone isn't a problem at all unique to trans issues, it is how we as a society deal with all sorts of things.

I actually don't think the time when scouting starts or when scholarship starts is the right place to draw the line. If the college acceptance and scholarships are themselves not accepting trans people - i.e. the line was drawn at college for top level competitive sports that actually get scouting and scholarships - then the trans youth competing in grades 10,11,12 etc aren't displacing anyone as they aren't eligible. For example, if the scout sees the baseball team and one of the members happens to be trans but some other girl is super impressive they are still going to get scouted even if the trans person is there. Presuming the types of people who are going to be getting scholarships are going to rise to somewhere near the top and not be entirely displaced from the team, I don't think this is argument adds up to much.

I didn't mean to suggest that college recruitment was a place to draw the line (if that's what you thought I said). I was responding to Bobo's post.


There's also a lot wrong with your thinking on how college recruitment works that I don't have time to get into right now. I'll try to get back to it later.

Yes, I'm sure it does, but I expect that the kids who are going to get scouted that young aren't going to be affected by a couple of trans kids being on the team.

I'm not suggesting this is some kind of weird binary situation. Kids aren't either super serious about sports, or don't care at all about competition. And inclusion isn't something that is important one day, and doesn't matter the next. And as I've said, I'm not committed to any particular age or solution. The only thing I'm committed to is the belief that we don't need to be banishing all K-12 transgender kids from playing with the team of their choosing.

This question makes me wonder if if your arguments are based on the current situation, because I can't see how our experiences from decades ago are particularly relevant, unless you're much younger than I would have thought. Yes, when I was 12, over 40 years ago, I participated in some school sports. Things were a lot different then, which I know because my own kids went through that age in the last 10 years, and also played some school sports. I've also been involved in the K-12 system in different roles for the last 20 years, and my wife has been a teacher for almost 30. None of this makes me anything close to an expert, but it does give me some knowledge of the current school climate. It wasn't "a bunch of kids running around with no real concern about actual competition" when I was a kid, nor was it when our kids went to school, nor is it now. But we care a lot more about inclusion now than we did 40 years ago. 40 years ago, special needs kids (diverse learners is the more contemporary term, but that might cause confusion here) didn't even go to a "regular" school, let alone participate in school sports. Homophobic slurs were still a common thing on the playground. Times have changed. Of course most 12 year old kids still care who wins. Lots of 5 year old kids care who wins, although for many the importance isn't nearly as high. But they also care at those ages that their friends are included, which is something we didn't think a whole lot about 40 years ago - if you were chosen, you got to play, and if you weren't good enough, you didn't, or you were relegated to a B team. As they get older, that changes of course, and that's something I think the schools are able to handle just fine without legislators telling them how it must be, just like we don't need them lesson planning.

From my own experience the line should be drawn around 15 years old for any level around city competition -> including inter school competition.

Fwiw I don’t see why we don’t compare race with trans about inclusion ?

For economic reason , some school i guess are impose quota right for economic reasons ,etc. ?
That fine but we arent imposing them in sports competition outside school level +.

Sure, the best girls will still be playing on the team, but what about those who aren't the best? There will always be someone displaced by the trans girl being added to the team. What would you say to that girl who is of mediocre talent but really likes to play, who would have been the weakest player to make the team, but now doesn't get to be on the team at all?

I’d say “gee, it’s really sad when kids aren’t able to participate in school sports.”

Is this one of your posts where you think you are making a killer point by being (in your mind) more clever than everyone else?

I like to think that all my posts have a point of some kind, and are extremely clever.

The same thing I'd say to any girl who doesn't make the team, i.e. a thing that happens every day and nobody bats an eye? The numbers of trans kids doing this are pretty tiny, so this is always going to be a small effect on the team dynamics and most people who don't make the team are not making it because they just aren't as good as all the other cis girls on the team.

Also, you can still play school sports if you aren’t good enough for varsity. You don’t get banned from the basketball court or whatever. This is how most mediocre kids participate in sports!

I think the bolded is the key point here.

Is this where you'd draw the line on trans athletes being allow to compete in girls sports, or is it where you think the difference in between sexes starts to show?

Sometimes its easier to explain in a video

Kramer is the Trans Gender Girl and the kids are Cis Girls

Were you thinking there's a lot of confusion around the idea that having transgender girls competing in girls' sports can lead to some competitive imbalances? I'm pretty sure that's already very well understood.

Good question .
like I show in the study it really start around 12 For physiology evidences .
But I think 14-15 is where it dramatically increases between male and female to being self evident .
And it’s around that age that real Competition start to kick in majority of sports for a big chunk of the population .
What scares me is for olympics , many sports start even sooner .
Gymnastics, diving are some examples .

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymn...ampions_by_age

« While it was not unheard of for teenagers to compete in the 1960s — Ludmilla Tourischeva was sixteen at her first Olympics in 1968 — they slowly became the norm, as difficulty in gymnastics increased.[4] »

https://olympics.com/en/news/quan-ho...latform-diving

« QUAN Hongchan, 14, scores perfect tens to win women's 10m platform diving gold »

It’s all fine to try to be more inclusive for trans but there is self evidence that u have to face reality too at some point in some social space .
We all wish mind wins over matter but human aren’t there yet .

Not true at any schools I attended.

It seems unclear when you say stuff like this

“While I wouldn't say that every transgender girl will have an incredible advantage, because people are different, yes, I expect that would be the case sometimes.


You expect it would be the case sometimes.

Not that you know it is the case the vast majority of the time.

I know you begrudgingly walked that back saying maybe you should have said most of the time.

But even then the word maybe was completely unnecessary. It is like you guys are either walking on egg shells afraid to say the wrong the thing, or are trying to talk to the world into being the way you want it to be.

If the people that trolly calls transphobes didn’t rightfully call you out for your very poor word choice, this stuff would go completely unchecked and this thread would completely lose touch with reality.

Among my many weaknesses, excessive hedging can be one of them, and not just on this subject. I believe it's best to avoid absolutes, but I take it too far a lot of the time.

In this case, I think you're reading too much into it. If we're talking about, for example, grade 5 girls, I'm not convinced that a transgender girl is always, or even often, going to have an incredible advantage. That's going to be a lot different for someone at the collegiate level who is physically mature and has spent years training. So I certainly don't "know it is the case the vast majority of the time." It depends.

That said, I'll try to do less hedging.

"try to do less" - I can't help myself.

I read this to mean you do not support exclusion of trans athletes from any high school sports. Is this correct?

Are there any high school sports that you believe should exclude a trans athlete because of an unfair competitive advantage and/or the safety of the cis athlete?