Does he have a military background or something? Why is he more of an expert on this topic?

No, that's not the question. And I think all of you are missing that point.

The question is what are the rules? And the rules are you need to be born a female and have had gone through puberty as a female to be eligible to compete in a females division of sports, because that's what the rules are. For everyone.

At a competitive, high level. Yes. Recreational sports? Children's sports? Just for fun sports? Of course not.

Professional? Yes. You should not be allowed to compete in the women's division, due to the fact that you went through puberty as a male. In my opinion.

And the big inconveniences to reddit hasn't even occurred yet. Wait till the apps that everyone uses disappear. You'll see even more people moving to the fediverse. We gotta get some apps up though.

You can't even tell. I figured I was talking to people from Kbin, cause that's where I am. Turns out most of you are on lemmy. It's seamless a lot of the time.

If lemmy is an issue for some, send them to kbin instead. It doesn't matter where in the fediverse they come in at, as long as they are in the fediverse.

100% this. There are tens of thousands, if not 100's of thousands of people in the fediverse now. That is PLENTY to get these communities going. They will only continue to grow. And as people have choice, and they see this as a better platform than reddit (which it is, and will become even more so in the future), people will slowly stop going to reddit, and starting going here. Reddit won't die, not overnight. But it's peaked. And it's only downhill for reddit from here on out.

LOL - what a tool. Like an alias is going to really avoid problems if people actually decide to take what they did seriously.

Wait a second....

This hasn't been a productive conversation? Have I been rude in any way?

Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I don't have an openness to hear other opinions.

I'd say the person who doesn't have an openness to hear other opinions is the person who framed it as 'any openness or willingness to learn or listen'.

You've set the stage that you are right, and that is above reproach or debate. You ARE the authority figure on this, and anyone who disagrees with you is just wrong. That's why I need to 'learn or listen' versus simply hear and discuss.

If the conversation isn't productive, it's not because of me. My VERY FIRST comment was deleted. I was silenced for simply disagreeing. That is not the basis for a productive conversation. Nor is calling me transphobic simply because I have a different opinion on what should be allowed in sports.

You think it's a bogus reason. I disagree, simple as that.

It doesn't mean I'm being transphobic though. And everyone on here claiming I am is hurting our ability to have reasonable discourse. How do you expect to change the minds of anyone, if the very first thing you all do is to tell someone who disagrees with you that they are transphobic, and then seek to silence them.

Trans women are women because they say they are a woman. And I respect that. I'm not going to sit here and gatekeep what is a woman and what isn't. It's beyond my grasp. If some scientists want to have rigorous debates about these terms, have it it. But if a woman says she's a woman, I believe her.

BUT - that doesn't mean that I don't understand that someone who goes through puberty as a man, is going to have a different body type than someone who doesn't go through puberty as a man.

Am I wrong about that?

How do I not see trans women as women? Because I acknowledge that a trans woman who went through puberty as a male is different than a woman who didn't go through puberty as a male?

If that's me not seeing trans women as women, then you are all in for a world of hurt, because that's just stating what has happened. If you can't handle someone stating facts, you really can't handle any sort of conversation about this topic at all.

Can I point to data that men are taller than women? Stronger than women? Yes... yes I can. Or you can just google it. It's a pretty easily verifiable fact.

We are banning them specifically because they gained that advantage by going through puberty as a gender they aren't competing as. And none of those other women competitors had the ability to do that.

That is the difference. And I think that's a fine reason to ban someone from competing (AT A HIGH LEVEL, NOT CHILDREN'S SPORTS).

I'm not going to try to defend Republicans, because I disagree with them on basically everything.

But I'm not disagreeing about reality, I'm disagreeing about opinion.

Here is my opinion. If you have an advantage in a sport due to something genetically natural about you, and you went through puberty as the same gender as the sport your competing in. I'm fine with that.

If you have an advantage in a sport and went through puberty as a different gender than the class your competing in, I'm not ok with that.

There is no fact or no fact there. It's an opinion. One that I'm entitled to have. And one that you need to be able to hear, without the need to silence me or delete my comments. Because people should be allowed to have a different opinion then you.

We can argue about the merits of our opinion, but you can't say I'm not congruent with reality, or however else you want to try to downplay my opinion.

I think it's really simple.

If you have an advantage because of something that occurs naturally in you, and you've gone through puberty as a woman, then it's fine.

If you have an advantage because you went through puberty as a gender other than what you're competing as, then it falls outside of the advantages we are willing to accept.

That's all there is to it, really.

Right. And we've decided the advantages we are ok with accepting are those that women who have gone through puberty as a woman have. And advantages that fall outside of that are things we are not ok with.

Just because people have 'noted' something, doesn't mean that it is indeed a fact, that is not up for discussion. I am allowed to disagree with your 'notes' am I not?

The problem with my comment is that I disagree with you. Nothing else. I'm not being disrespectful. I'm not being hateful. I love transgender people, same as everyone else. I believe the laws targeting transgender people are fucking awful.

But I do disagree with you in terms of how we should setup our sports leagues at the highest levels. And because I disagree with you, I should be silenced?

I'm not IGNORING what you and others have noted. I'm DISAGREEING.

I'm going to say this, and you're probably going to get pissed. I'm sure my post will get deleted, but if ya'll can't handle having conversations with people who don't 100% align with your views, than we will never make progress.

You said 'you do realize trans women are women, right'.

Yes. They are. I will treat them like a woman. I will acknowledge them to be a woman. I will use the pronouns they prefer, and think in 99% of scenarios, none of this should be problematic.

But they are not the SAME as all women. Yes, they are a woman. But they have a slightly different experience/body type than all of the other women, and that difference gives them an advantage over other women, that none of the other women get.

You're completely correct that sports is about being the best. It's about seeing what the human body can achieve at it's maximum. And we've broadly separated those sports endeavors into two categories. Male and female (with the exception of some sports that we put additional restraints in, weight classes etc).

We realize that not everybody can be the best athlete in the world. That doesn't mean we have a need to create 10,000 parameters and classes of sport for people to compete in so that everyone has an equal shot at being the best in the world. There are thousands of reasons why a man or a woman won't ever have a chance at being the best in the world. And we are fine with all of them.

The difference is that we are fine with people not being the best woman they can be. We are not fine with people going through a fundamentally different body growth during puberty, that enables them to have an advantage that no other woman could possibly have, as they were not able to go through puberty as a male, as that's not something that women can do.

It sucks for transgender women. I get it. I feel bad for them. I wish there was a better solution. You know what else sucks for transgender women? Being born a gender that they aren't. Having to deal with society's hatred toward them. There are a lot of things that suck for transgender women. But sticking to the parameters we've had in women's sports at a competitive level is not hatred. It's simply desiring to keep the playing field the same as it's always been. Women, who grew up and went through puberty as women, competing in their sport.

The vast majority of debate from Republicans who want to ban transgender people from anything, yes. I agree.

But there are plenty of liberal minded, LGBTQ supporting individuals who recognize that at the highest level of sports, being more a male and going through puberty as a male, is likely to give you advantages over female competitors. And at the highest level of sports, it seems fair to control for that.

If we are talking about children playing sports with no real consequence. Everyone should play. I'd say only at the collegiate, olympic and professional levels should we be concerned about fairness.