30 Misconceptions About Pretty Safe Things, Despite Most Saying They’re Dangerous

I have no problem with the trans issue. I believe in live and let live. However, I agree with you, I don't think it's fair.

Please spend real time reading the real science behind this. Lots of disinformation and knee jerk reactions that are not backed up by science. Keeping it civil, I disagree after doing quite a bit of research.

Actually that is an idea, the third category, worth discussing.

I agree, if it weren't for sports, Trans people would have more supporters as well. There's no issues if we have a unisex or trans sport category

I think weight classes will be a better idea.

Ok, heres what I think: No gendered sports at all, easy peasy. This has been tested and worked in quadball, and i just think that there is no reason to have gendered sports when it leaves out nonbinary and intersex athletes, and makes it harder for trans athletes. Also, the gendered sports are very unfair to intersex athletes, there have been a lot pf cases where intersex women athletes have been barred because they have some level of testosterone in their body.

How about the recent uproar about a trans man playing women's chess? Why the F do we need women's chess as a separate chess?

Here's the thing though. Where do you draw the line? There've been cis women who have been told they aren't allowed to compete because their bodies naturally produce more testosterone than the judges consider normal. They're told they do not meet the qualifications for being women. And in a qwhite mysterious coincidence, the athletes this has happened to people of color. I have PCOS. Some people consider PCOS to fall under the intersex label. And for people with PCOS who identify as intersex, that's fine. But I don't. Yet, if I were an athlete, there judges would look at me and say, "You are not a woman because you have too high testosterone. I may not know everthing about biology. But when people argue against trans women (almost always trans women, rarely trans men, which is telling) in sports, they reduce being a woman to testosterone levels. In doing so, they also discriminate against cis women. Transphobes only care about women who fit their mold of what being a woman means.

I do disagree. The assumption that trans women have more testosterone than cis women is not necessarily correct, and the assumption that more testosterone means a competitive advantage in sports is also not necessarily correct. https://www.science.org/content/article/world-athletics-banned-transgender-women-competing-does-science-support-rule Caster Semenya is cis, but there was such an uproar over her body's (unaltered) testosterone levels that she was forced to take drugs to suppress those. Which is nonsense based in fear, of course. No one aims to stunt the growth of 7'2" basketball stars. No one aims to decrease the size of Michael Phelps's unusually large feet. I also disagree that this is merely "a nice discussion". The very high amount of hostility in the world towards trans people (including cis people's public "concerns", which tend to be off-base but drive most of the media narrative and the moral panic) is such that too many of my trans friends are already dead.

Here's the only fair way to handle this: 1. Establish scientifically whether there is any advantage in strength, speed, agility, flexibility etc. that correlates directly to testosterone levels. 2. Do the same for every other possible factor that can vary with genetics, nutrition and circumstances of upbringing. For instance, height. You wouldn't want tall basketball players to have an unfair advantage over shorter ones, right? 3. ...and instead of possibly stigmatizing people by dividing them into classes according to biological traits, just recognize that this is the Olympics, where every single body is exceptional and everyone has incredible dedication and training and maybe don't worry about artificially trying to enforce "fairness" in a fundamentally unfair manner. The Olympics were, theoretically, supposed to be a way for nations to get together in peace and blah blah spirit of cooperation and pursuit of excellence and so on and so forth...

Sports are totally unimportant

You're presenting this as a hypothetical problem, but are there many trans women who are even trying to go into sports? Have you met any trans women? The ones I know are not at all interested in sports ball.

I think the most honest solution would be to let people compete based on testosterone level. There have been cases of female-born athletes that had an advantage due to their higher testosterone levels.

no i agree. if you’re a trans woman, youre a woman. but, you still get the physical use of a man. again, you’re still a man/woman. trans woman, woman. trans man, man. but i think the unisex/trans idea is good.

So anyone who once was assigned male at birth is forever better than any woman and women will always lose to them? As a woman I find that super misogynistic, transphobic and if we look at science, it's just plain wrong. Trans women were allowed to compete with women since decades, before that hateful transphobic moral panic started - so where are all the trans gold medal winners, if they are oh so "naturally superior" that women have to be "protected" from them? Can you name even one? What about women with PCOS? Why are trans women excluded from playing CHESS against women? Why did Pat Manuel a trans man win his boxing matches against cis men? A trans ban is just about hurting trans people and "proofing" that women are inferior to men.

From what I’ve read, this opinion often comes from non-athletes. The athletes that actually compete, don’t mind competing against trans-people. I think it’s a solution looking for a problem. But that’s only my opinion based on some things I’ve seen and read.

I'd say that if a biologic male transitions before puberty, they could compete with women. But that's a can of worms to then have to prove when and how you transitioned. So I kind of have to agree with you.

But if a trans woman is on hormone therapy then her levels are going to be that of a cis woman (ideally). That means her testosterone is lower, etc and she has no advantages over a cis woman. My daughter transitioned at 16. She is in her 20s. Her hormone make up is that of a cis woman. She is skinny, bordering on scrawny. Even if she worked out and trained, she'd have no real advantage over any other woman.

I fully agree with you, and by the looks of it, so do allot of others.

i dont give a c**p about sports. they want to race or play football or tennis, i dont care who goes up against who bc im not watching it anyways. so let them. you want equality, then there shouldnt be boy and girl sports anyways.

I'm loving the diplomacy with which you worded your comment SofieTheMJFan. Lots of upvotes for you (well just one actually, gotta follow the rules). 😀

I could be very wrong but I swear they have to wait until their muscle mass is the same as a cis woman (2 years I think) so I think that's fair but if I'm wrong maybe instead of gender categories they should put sports into things like muscle mass or other measurable things so it's more equal anyway. Nowhere near an expert on sports though so take this with a grain of salt

Do find wisdom in your words. Just a sticky situation, given all the body types.

Let's be realistic here. No one is going through all the work and stress of gender reassignment in order to win a trophy in a girls or womens sport. That's as likely as going trans just to get guys to open doors for you.

there is no "advantage" of trans Women over cis women. It's been proven

The fact that there isn't a whole bunch of trans women winning sport events showed this isn't really a big problem.

The IAAF instituted sex testing at the actual games, starting at the 1966 European Athletics Championships in response to suspicion that several of the best women athletes from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were actually men. At the Olympics, testing was introduced in 1968.

I can see the concern, but if we're basing sports categories off testosterone levels/body mass, why not do just that and remove the gender variable completely? There are plenty of cis men with testosterone levels lower than that of the higher cis women, but they don't get any sympathy, and there are plenty of cis women with testosterone levels similar to or higher than trans women (who often won't have much if any more than you average cis woman anyway).

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Right right, you're "not transphobic, but..." Never heard that before

And no transwomen in women's change rooms, that is just wrong!

The absolute fairest thing would be to abolish the gendered competitions and go by weight class instead, in sports where weight actually has an effect on results, and otherwise simply make all events all-gender. Because there's no such thing as a "biological advantage" in sports based solely on birth sex.

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That's why there're the Special Olympics! For them!

can you show ANY examples of ANY teacher talking to 2nd graders about their sexual preference? or did you just here about that of facebook? that is just a right wing nut job talking point to scare people

They're not"dressing up". No one is talking about sexual preferences, they're talking about GENDER IDENTITY. If you think someone is going to go through being bullied, have laws mads against them, surgeries and taking hormones just to feel at home in their own body, to get maybe-but-probably not even a leg up in sports, you're as stupid as you are ignorant. You are absolutely against trans people, masquerading as "zero problem" while spewing Republican rhetoric.