What to do about transgender athletes?

Neptune's article is great. It talks about the difficulty of the issue, and it looks at the two different perspectives respectfully. (without calling anyone a bigot).

I think what this article is saying is pretty close to what Linkat has been saying all along (although maybe I should let Linkat say this for herself).

If they are biological females they should compete with females. If they are biological males then they should compete with males.

So... Rabel sides with the bigots on this one.

Stepping out of the ideological bubble a little... well done!

You mean, he disagreed with you.

Quite the contrary Roger. You missed what happened. On this thread... Rabel is agreeing with me. I am pretty sure that makes him a misogynist.

I welcome him to the dark side.

There are already sports rules out the yang yang. Simplifying things makes sense to me.

Ohio House bill would prohibit medical procedures for transgender youth
Updated Feb 11, 2020; Posted Feb 11, 2020

By Laura Hancock, cleveland.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Transgender people under age 18 wouldn’t be able to take puberty blockers or undergo surgical procedures if a draft bill in the Ohio House passed.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican Reps. Bill Dean of the Dayton area and Ron Hood of Pickaway County, was announced Tuesday by the lawmakers, along with Christian policy group Citizens for Community Values.

The legislation is still being drafted. The plan is to criminally penalize physicians who perform the procedures, said Aaron Baer, president of Citizens for Community Values.

“What we’re trying to accomplish in this bill is that these procedures cannot be done. It would cause sterilization, irreparable damage to children that can’t be reversed,” Hood said. “That’s what makes this such a problem. Decisions made in childhood that are very, very permanent and cause sterilization cannot be reversed.”

Ohio LGBTQ nondiscrimination bill has widespread public, business support. Why hasn’t it passed?

The Ohio Fairness Act -- known as Senate Bill 11 and House Bill 369 -- are moving slowly -- if at all -- in the Ohio General Assembly, despite widespread support.

Ohio’s LGBTQ advocates and members of the medical community criticized the draft legislation.

Dr. Scott Leibowitz, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and medical director of the THRIVE Gender Development Program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, said in a statement that the legislative effort pits the Hippocratic oath against the law.

“Evidence-based policy statements and clinical guidelines––published by every mainstream pediatric medical professional association––speak for themselves and are paving the path for minors to receive care that promotes the healthy outcomes the youth deserve,” he said.

In South Dakota, similar legislation was intended to stop procedures for youth under age 16. But it died in a Republican-controlled Senate Committee on Monday after the House had passed it, according to the Associated Press.

Similar measures are before legislatures in South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky and New Hampshire.

Wells Logan, a board-certified pediatrician in the Columbus area, said he’s concerned about harm to children.

“It’s an identity crisis in children. They need counseling. They need help and for a boy to suggest that he wants to be a girl, every cell in his body is XY," he said, describing the chromosomes that determine biological sex. “For a girl, every cell in her body is XX.”

But is it the government’s job to tell doctors how to treat patients?

Baer said that the government gets involved in public health issues, such as prohibiting smoking cigarettes until age 21.

“There are plenty of areas where the government says this is so egregious, this is so dangerous to children that we have to intervene and protect,” he said.

Most of the time, medical procedures for youth must be cleared with parents. But there have been some exceptions.

In 2016, a Hamilton County teen who identified as transgender was hospitalized in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center psychiatric ward for mental health issues. The hospital would not release the child to the parents since the teen had reported that the parents opposed hormone therapy and once made the child sit in a room and listen to Bible scriptures for more than six hours.

Hypothetically speaking, what would have been the consequences of allowing and sanctioning a real boxing match that featured a woman boxer vs. Mike Tyson?

That is funny.

For people who support freedom of gender-choice in competitive sports or other competitions:

should anything be done to prevent people who naturally identify with a certain gender from artificially claiming a different identity in order to give them a competitive advantage?

Why don't people just compete in their performance category regardless of gender? If a feminine woman can compete better with some masculine men that with transgender women or transgender men, why shouldn't she compete in the category that best fits her performance level instead of worrying about whose gender identity fits with whose?

I never said that - not once. I did say that they would have a physical advantage - I never said that they do this intentionally or otherwise or certainly at all costs - please point out specifically where I said this.



I agree that was what I was pointing out - how can we make this fair for both groups at the high school level. It was a question thrown out there so that both groups can have a level of fairness. Not one having an advantage over another.



Again I have never said otherwise.

And this article is saying EXACTLY what I am stating - I particular think this gets to the heart of the matter:



It is called talking about it and working things out so it is fair to all.

If you thoroughly read what I wrote this is exactly what I am talking about.

Thank you - yes - this article pretty much - not sums it up because it is so long - but basically is explaining what I am getting at; I do like how it sounds groups in CT are open to discussing different alternatives.

If some individuals can get past thinking this is bigots or discrimination - they can read through and see I am asking for solutions/thoughts how you can be fair to both. I do like the one reference again that says if females and males where physically like each it would be a non-issue - it would co-ed sports.

Sports, even team sports, could just be organized by performance level and not gender segregated at all. If that were done, though, men could join women's teams as long as they performed at the level of the team, and that could bump lower-performing women down below the highest category. And of course the same could happen with men when higher-performing women entered their teams and bumped them down to lower performance level teams.

The question is whether you want to continue having separate championship categories for men and women, or whether to just have separate performance level categories. E.g. instead of their being a women's world cup and a men's world cup; you would just have world cup division A and world cup division B and both divisions would be open to all genders and sexes.

You could also replace national teams with language teams. I.e. players don't really need to all share the same nationality/citizenship but they do need to communicate in the same one or more languages. So then instead of having separate teams for different countries that speak the same language, you could just have different teams according to the number of population they represent, the way the house of representatives is proportioned seats according to how many voters are represented by each seat.