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Yeah beautiful big girls play sports for every big trans athlete there are 25 big cisgender female athletes. https://twitter.com/Card_inal/status/1359976545419460608
Many who oppose the inclusion of trans athletes erroneously claim that allowing trans athletes to compete will harm cisgender women. This divide and conquer tactic gets it exactly wrong. Excluding women who are trans hurts all women.
It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” woman.
Further, this myth reinforces stereotypes that women are weak and in need of protection. https://www.aclu.org/blog/lgbt-rights/transgender-rights/banning-trans-girls-school-sports-neither-feminist-nor-legal
Politicians have used the “protection” trope time and time again, including in 2016 when they tried banning trans people from public restrooms by creating the debunked “bathroom predator” myth. https://abcnews.go.com/US/sexual-assault-domestic-violence-organizations-debunk-bathroom-predator/story?id=38604019
The real motive is never about protection — it’s about excluding trans people from yet another public space. The arena of sports is no different.
On the other hand, including trans athletes will promote values of none discrimination & inclusion among all student athletes. As longtime coach & sports policy expert Helen Carroll explains, efforts to exclude subsets of girls from sports, “can undermine team unity and...
also encourage divisiveness by policing who is ‘really’ a girl.” https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/hecox-v-little-carroll-declaration
Dr. Mary Fry adds that youth derive the most benefits from athletics when they are exposed to caring environments where teammates are supported by each other and by coaches. https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/hecox-v-little-fry-declaration
Banning some girls from athletics because they are transgender undermines this cohesion and compromises the wide-ranging benefits that youth get from sports.
“A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance,”according to Dr. Joshua D. Safer. https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/hecox-v-little-safer-declaration
Dr. Joshua D. Safer. “For a trans woman athlete who meets NCAA standards, “there is no inherent reason why her physiological characteristics related to athletic performance should be treated differently from the physiological characteristics of a non-transgender woman.”
The policies of elite athletic regulatory bodies across the world, and athletic policies of most every other state in the Usa, also undermine the Terfs claim that transgender women have an “absolute advantage” over other female athletes
Olympic Committee and the NCAA require transgender women to suppress their testosterone levels in order to compete in women’s athletics.
The NCAA policy was implemented in 2011 after consultation with medical, legal, and sports experts, and has been in effect since that time. Millions of student-athletes have competed in the NCAA since 2011, with no reported examples of any disturbance to women’s...
sports as a result of transgender inclusion.
The Terfs’ failure to identify any evidence of transgender women causing purported sexual inequality other than a handful of trans athletes globally that have comepted at the elite level of any spor..
The Terfs’ failure to identify any evidence of transgender women causing purported sexual inequality other than a handful of trans athletes globally that have comepted at the elite level of any spor..
sport (all of them least of whom who have notably lost to cisgender women) is striking in light of the international and national policy of transgender inclusion.
Given the evidence highlighted above, it appears the “absolute advantage” between transgender and cisgender women athletes is based on overbroad generalizations without factual justification.
The incredibly small percentage of transgender women athletes in general, coupled with the significant dispute regarding whether such athletes actually have physiological advantages over cisgender women when they have undergone hormone suppression in particular, ....
suggest the categorical exclusion of transgender women athletes has no relationship to ensuring equality and opportunities for female athletes at any level of sport.
@threadreaderapp please unroll
