Kamala Harris Says She Has “Concerns” About Trans Student Athletes

I’m also concerned for their safety and wellbeing. That’s why you’re concerned, right Mrs. Harris?

…That’s why you’re concerned, right?

Concerned about, not for.

Fucking spineless weathervane. No wonder she lost. Focus group driven decision making.

Oh look it’s not just Newsom and that rep from Georgia anymore. The spineless democrats are testing the waters now to see how throwing trans people under the bus will go.

Ooo yeah let's be concerned over the, what .002% of our population doing things they wanna do and being who they wanna be. Yeah that's a big talking point when 80% of the rest of the country can't afford rent.

Fuck. Just leave trans people alone already Jesus Christ...

Jesus fucking Christ, sports shouldn't be a political issue at all. It's literally a fucking game, the government and politicians shouldn't be involved in this shit at all in the first place. We should care about as much about Kamala's opinion on the WNBA as we do about her opinion on Minecraft. The leagues are privately-owned companies, let them run their fucking company how they want (which up to this point, has been trans-inclusive).

Agreed, but people are sooooo into sports and their teams. Sometimes I think we've turned politics into sports teams, making bipartisan politics harder to achieve.
- only sometimes?
- Why do you think GW Bush's daddy bought him a baseball team, and why do you think Trump was involved in WWE? The same rube-manipulation techniques that are used in sports are used in fascist politics.
Generally yes. But the government also enforces civil rights, including against sex and gender discrimination, especially at public (i.e. government-funded) universities.

Did no one actually read the article past the vaguely misleading headline?

“I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports,” Harris reportedly wrote. “With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways to do this, without vilifying and demonizing children.”

Oh, so they are going to mandate weight and height classes across the board for all sports and stop separating sport by gender?
- Prior to Republicans passing laws to outright ban transgender athletes from participating altogether, they actually had standards in place for how long athletes had to be on HRT, before they were allowed to compete. By all physical accounts, this meant that those athletes had comparable muscle mass and bone densities to the gender they identified as.
  What else would you expect? Even between biological girls of the same age, there are significant differences between individual athletes. Once you include training, diet and other normal genetic factors...the differences between a trans athlete on HRT and a cis athlete is actually well within those standard margins. Any advantage they might have, comes from skill and training alone.
My problem with the article is how much air Americans give to the topic of trans athletes in sports when Americans have more pressing problems. Healthcare, affordability of life, violence are real issues affecting Americans much more than sports games. I don't think giving air to this conversation is helping Americans.
- That's the entire point of all these "culture war" issues. They're used as distractions for more pressing matters, that the ruling class really doesn't want to address, because they know conservatives will be outraged by them, and progressives won't be able to just let people be victimized, for no reason. If the public tires itself out, fighting over topics like these, there's a better chance we won't have the energy to demand real action on more expensive things.
"with goodwill and common sense, I believe we can..."
When the folks across the aisle you're champing at the bit to reach demonstrate goodwill and common sense, maybe you might have a ghost of a chance. Until such time, you're validating the position that trans women have no place in established sports.
- So...until then, goodwill and common sense shouldn't apply to your approach? What policy should you adopt, until the other side decides to get their shit together?
  Should we advocate for exactly the kind of hyperbolic position that Republicans use as a strawman, to argue against inclusion?
There's no peer-reviewed, statistically sound evidence that trans people have unfair advantages in sports.
Not that sports should matter that much.

And behold the thing that I said was going to happen, has happened. More democrats engaging in transphobia to try to pry votes away from the fascist party by being fascist-lite.

Can we stop pretending the democrats can be reformed now? Their leadership has time and time again proven they do not give one fuck about progressive politics.

Neoliberal garbage. This is why she lost to literal fascists.

My first reaction especially given other things I've heard about this book was Wtf is wrong with this lady?

The full quote is not quite as bad as I assumed:

“I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports,” Harris reportedly wrote. “With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways to do this, without vilifying and demonizing children.”

Every time somebody brings up concerns over trans athletes I always think about these images of Katherine Switzer running the Boston Marathon:

I question why we have gender divisions in the first place, bc it's definitely not that society was ever concerned about fairness. The reason gender divisions were created in the first place, is the same reason we originally had racial based divisions until one day we didn't.

That guy wasn't physically assaulting Switzer and trying to stop her from becoming the first woman to run the Boston Marathon bc he was concerned she may be at an unfair disadvantage. He was trying to stop her bc back when the marathon first started somebody made "No girls allowed!" one of the rules, and this guy was uncomfortable with change. It seems pretty obvious now, that was just a dumb and unnecessary rule to begin with.

If this is all really about fairness like people claim, then maybe we should consider just nixing gender divisions entirely and moving to something like weight class or skill level divisions for competitive sports.

There are plenty of sports where gender divisions basically dont exist until you hit the college level. Hockey is a prime example. There are all-girls select youth teams, but all teams that arent exclusively for girls are open to anyone that can hang. There are plenty of girls that play competitively with boys through highschool hockey. There are plenty of women who play with men at the adult level in beer leagues and the like. But at the juniors, college, pro, and olympic levels they are gender divided.
Realistically at the highest levels of play some division does make sense, as that is where the highest level of physicality is allowed, and generally that is the reason why it can be less safe for women to be playing alongside men. As well as the fact that few women would be playing college or pro hockey if there were not gender divisions.
That said however, I see no reason why the odd woman that can hang in upper levels hockey shouldnt be allowed to play, nor would they be barred from doing so if they could. Likewise I can see how forcing womens upper leagues of the sport to accept cis men who cant hang in the upper levels of mens hockey would push women out of the sport. So it makes sense that they have exclusivity there.
Its one of those issues where I have no issue with gender divisions at the highest levels, in the interest of allowing a professional level of womens sport to exist, but at the same time trying to apply that same logic to youth sports completely falls apart. All youth sports should be just be open gendered competitions. If you see open-gendered hockey at the 12-14 year old level the girls are often 1-2ft taller than any of the boys and physically the more dominant group, and yet no one says the boys’ safety is at risk over it.
Not to mention that lost in all of the trans fear-mongering is the fact that when people take hormones their bodies significantly change. If someone born male starts hormone therapy to transition, their feet will shrink, they will lose muscle mass, so on and so forth. So at the end of the day they truly have zero physical advantages over cis women they would compete with in sport. Women’s leagues in the upper levels of a sport make sense, but it also makes perfect sense to allow transwomen to play with them. People dont seem to understand that male physicality is the result of a continual supply of hormones making you look as you are, not solely the result of past hormonally influenced growth. If you cut off the hormones making you a big strong man, you will no longer be big nor strong
- I think divisions at the highest level are understandable, but does it absolutely have to be gender based division?
  For contact sports like hockey, it would be interesting to see if you really went with a strict division by something like weight class how much would gender really change competitiveness?
  Even in gender based divisions for noncontact sports like basketball, individual skill level can be more important than mass. Mugsy Bogues was a pretty rare case, but he was 5'3" and holding his own with guys that were well over 6' tall.
  Maybe divisions with some combination of weight and skill level? Or some other factor? Idk I feel like we'll never really know until somebody is willing to try.
- There was even a woman goaltender for the Tampa Bay Lightning organization in the 1990s! She tried out for the team and was in minor league hockey for five years.
  She did play in two preseason NHL games, in 1991 (allowing two goals on nine shots) and 1993.

This ends up being very effective as a wedge issue for Republicans, because they can make shit up about the other side, and run against the lies they tell themselves, because the truthful situation is complicated and the lie is simpler to understand.

Some sports are strictly separated by gender, and some are not. Generally speaking, it's people who administer the leagues that make that decision. Everything from pro leagues down to rec leagues will have rules based on gender, and they are created by whoever administers the leagues to foster competition.

I don't feel qualified to know which sports confer a distinct advantage to people who go through male puberty. It certainly isn't all of them, but there must be some where it makes sense to exclude humans who have gone through male puberty from women's leagues. But, I don't feel most politicians are qualified to know that, either. People who know each sport best should make that decision, based on science and the knowledge of their sport, and politicians should just butt out. But you get better soundbites by lying about it and airing grievances about it than by being rational.

It's only a wedge issue because of people like Harris. If she had a spine and decent values, she could have explained that actually trans athletes in sports are not a serious concern, because look at the data FFS.

Why should I give a shit what a politician says about fucking sports, period?

And we all know, sports is the most important thing right now. Or ever.

Especially when no trans athletes are at the top of any sport they're involved in.
It's all about harassment of a small, vulnerable minority. It has nothing to do with fairness.

There is no goddamn problem! Fuck sake I should not have to choose fascist asshole or shifty semi fascist.

This comment section could be a case study about how China and Russia have used wedge issues to divide America. This kneejerk bullshit is why we have an orange goomba in the white house.

It's not China and Russia, it's both Republicans and Democrats being fascist Nazis, only one is slightly nicer and more convincing that they give a shit about human rights.
This is a tactic used by far right parties for much longer than China and Russia have had the chance to interfere with US and Europe politics.
Republicans picked these wedge issues all by themselves, following the manual of fascism to the T.

Out of all the trans issues you care about trans sports? It's almost like you want people to hate us. Who am I kidding that's exactly why. Fucking right wing shills in the DNC. Out of every issue with trans people, Americas by majority are supportive except for mf trans sports, because of course it's extremely stupid, especially if you aren't going to let kids have some hrt when they want to transition. No coincidence there. Of course that's what they will pick to run on because the DNC is controlled by the same fucking hateful dipshits that control the rest of the state. The DNC will do everything in its power to make sure the Republicans win because they know their voters are stupid enough to help them implement a police state and mass surveillance and turn America into an autocracy. Fuck the DNC.

Don't forget in the last election you didn't hear a peep out of the fucking DNC only for their candidate to pull out right at the end to guarantee trump a win. That should tell you how Americans really feel. The only people who vote Republicans at this point are a few mentally retarded people and some boomers with dementia. They lie about everything.

Out of all the trans issues you care about trans sports?
Yeah, well, expressing concern about trans people being killed by Nazis might be a bit risky. Far easier to parrot inane policies developed by right-wing fanatics whose only goal in life is to hurt people.
This is why those from the soggy center should never be let into office. We need someone who's going to clean house, and put an end to fascism and the religious right in the US and, if possible, globally, before they round us up and kill us.
- Trans sports isn't a good issue. It's the least popular of all trans issues and also is the only actual position where the Republicans have the moral high ground. Trans issues aren't good to run on anyways because only a bit over half of the country is in favor of trans rights outside of medical access and stuff. The bathroom stuff is more reasonable. You can have some fair laws around this, like people have to be on hormones for over a year or something before they can use the other bathroom. The trans sport things is unfortunate. There just isn't really a good trans friendly solution that isn't really unfair for cis students. The only way a trans person can compete fairly in women's sports is if they are on hormones for years.

This shit again? I can't believe we're still talking about this like it's an issue that matters AT ALL.

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. There is no such thing as values on the liberal wing of politics, just as there are no values on the MAGA wing. As soon as capital is involved, they will drop anything they stood for.

Ah yes. BoTh sIdEs
- I'm queer. I'm not falling for your bullshit. Libs will drop trans people as soon as they can if it means appeasing their corporate overlords. We've seen it all over the "civilized" world. They did it in the UK, they're doing it right now in the US.

There it is. Democrats could easily walk back stances on guns and it would hurt them less than this pollster brained idiocy.

All democrats have to say is "government has more important things to do than regulate sports, there are sports commissions that have asked and answered these questions. This is politicians seeking another way to intrude upon our lives."

America has real problems! Healthcare, food, jobs, affordability. Talking about trans athlete's possible competitive advantages is such a misalignment of our priorities.

Yeah, but shitlibs won't talk about those things because they want to keep the corporate bribe money flowing.

I'd be more concerned about the group responsible for more than 50% of violent crimes, but I guess we're allowed to be scared of people playing sports too.

This shouldn’t be an issue. Both sides should stop trying to mandate this. There should be men’s sports, women’s sports and co-ed sports, even at the pro level. Give athletes the freedom of choice and let them sort themselves.

Having 3 buckets, one third of which any one person is banned from participating in over arbitrary generic markers, doesn't really sound like "freedom of choice".

ITT: "I haven't read the article but I'm going to sit on a high horse and claim I'm the enlightened one anyway!!!!1"

Sure she supports genocide, but she'll protect those trans people you progressives care about for some stupid reason. Fuck, most of them aren't even billionaires.

Later: on this subject she also agrees with charlie kirk, a good christian and family man who never said anything unpleasant don't fire me.

Just get rid of all sports in educational institutions and make them all private clubs. Problem solved

You know, they used to not separate sports by gender, until the ladies started beating the men. Then all of a sudden, nah we gotta split em up. So, even if their argument had any kind of validity, it still doesn't.

According to whom? The Heraean Games were held in conjunction with the ancient Greek Olympics. Are you saying that they were designed to spare men's feelings, or are you saying that the tradition of sparing men's feelings was already in place in the ancient world?

I have concerns too. The most pressing concerns are about how they're being threatened and bullied, and centrists like Harris and Newsom are facilitating it.