Some good news
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There is some good news in the news... Needless to say, I welcome both bits of news though I'm sure LGBTQ+ issues will continue to be used by the republicans as a sinister wedge issue and a group to scapegoat.
US Senate Democrats block bill to ban trans athletes from women’s sports
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/04/democrats-block-trans-athletes-billMT GOP Fails To Advance Anti-Obergefell Resolution
https://www.kulr8.com/news/state/montana-senate-judiciary-tables-joint-resolution-to-oppose-gay-marriage/article_4dfecbe7-7ae6-5ce0-9b4b-e0e9080ce738.html
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From the trans article:
“Why don’t Democrats agree that only biological women should compete in women’s sports?” Joni Ernst, a Republican senator, wrote on X. “It’s common sense.”
I wonder what she means by "biological women." And I wonder what she means by "common sense." There's a lot of biology we don't see, a whole lot.
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@CHAS said in Some good news:
I don't know the answer, but it is not hate. More categories?
That makes sense to me, although negotiating the definition of those categories will be holy heck and I don't expect it to happen.
We already have weight categories for sports like boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, horse jockeying, etc., etc. It is certainly possible to come up with something similar that isn't defined by gender, being either based just on weight or perhaps also on height or muscle mass.
Yes, the result will be imperfect, as compromises are, but not necessarily any more imperfect that putting a 250-pound wrestler in a tougher competitive category than a 249-pound wrestler.
We all have different athletic abilities across a plethora of subcategories like speed, strength, and aerobic capacity. Athletes who excel are the ones who won the genetic lottery, but also who have been able to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Isn't that maximization part of the point of sportsball?
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The problem is there aren't enough trans numbers to have a category for them. The republicans (and some Democrats) make it seem as if trans gendered people are taking over the country but that's not true. As always, the gop is using a minority to score political points; that's how rotten they are.
The IOC released their latest guidelines last year. I think they are pretty good: https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Beyond-the-Games/Human-Rights/IOC-Framework-Fairness-Inclusion-Non-discrimination-2021.pdf
I don't know if they translate to high school sports, but maybe they do.
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@Bernard said in Some good news:
The republicans (and some Democrats) make it seem as if trans gendered people are taking over the country but that's not true
It sure isn't.
The Illinois High School Association says of the 320,000 student-athletes competing in all IHSA sports at all levels, only three people born male asked for and received waivers to compete in girls’ sports last year. The organization granted just two waivers the year before.
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The low number of trans competitors is the reason I thought some objective measure like weight might be a good proxy for gender, which isn't a perfect metric for separating athletes into groups designed for fair competition. Trans women and men would be sorted into competitive groups that were arranged roughly by size.
After all, no such metric is completely even-handed. The most muscular women have more muscle mass than the least muscular men. There is even more overlap in height, I would guess; men are simply taller on average.
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Trans people have already been through so much hell. Many of them have lost their families, friends, jobs over the years of coming to terms with their identity. They must be experiencing a lot of anguish right now. My heart goes out to them. (I am thinking of some individuals in particular I got to know well.)
