3 ms·

but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.

ToucanLoucan 21d ago
Because Republicans get fucking dog-walked on any issue of any importance. The only things they can ever even come close to claiming "victory" on are irrelevant nonsense that no serious person gives a fuck about. There are now more bills attempting to "solve" the problem of trans girl's in sports (and it is girls, to be clear, trans boys are never an issue) than there are trans girls in sports. It's fucking pathetic.
- RajT88 21d ago
  The funny thing about that is - it's a solved problem. The reason you heard about it for a while is that they hadn't tightened up the rules yet. As with anything, problems are highlighted, they are studied, and new rules are put into place to account for what was learned. Right wing media of course discovered a boogeyman that was so useful they will be using it for years still, even if it doesn't exist.
  - asaddhamani 21d ago
    It wasn’t a problem to begin with. Meta studies recently showed trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT, certainly nothing than cis women don’t have biological variation within anyway. All the rule updates did was exclude and further marginalise an already marginalised extreme minority. There are very few trans women to begin with, fewer of us still are competing in sports. Nothing was studied here, the people who made the rules aren’t scholars, they’re bigots. They’re using us as a distraction from their poor governance.
    - ToucanLoucan 21d ago
      And as a fellow enjoyer of HRT, I assure you it didn't enhance shit for me, beyond what I was hoping to get: longer, more full hair, boobies, and smoother skin. My muscles are gone y'all. Like I've had to buy more breaker bars and larger tools so I can keep working on my cars, otherwise I simply could not break bolts anymore.
      - asaddhamani 21d ago
        I used to be able to do 12 pull-ups, and I did get de-trained but now I can barely manage a single one. I lived and did cardio in the mountains for years and now I get winded up way easier. Maybe the politicians making these rules should go on HRT before making unsubstantiated claims.
      - asaddhamani 21d ago
        Btw, feel free to reach out to me I love connecting with fellow trans women in tech :)
        ToucanLoucan 21d ago
        Emailed!
      - intrikate 21d ago
        I've had to explain to people that lifting something as simple as a case of bottled water can be genuinely difficult after eight-ish years of feminizing HRT. It's gradual, it's not all at once and I am still slightly taller and heavier-set than the average American woman, so I do have an advantage through having more mass, but anyone that's larger than the average American woman will also have that so it's not really an advantage, just a fact of having a larger body.
        asaddhamani 20d ago
        Same. You’re further in than me, but it was so alarming at the start when my body looked the same and my remembered priors in strength and cardio capacity, were at my testosterone-dominant baseline. If I didn’t know to expect the steep drop in strength or hadn’t been on HRT knowingly I’d have been incredibly alarmed and probably visited a dozen doctors. I’d look at objects, say to myself, pfft, easy, and be humbled immediately. TBH it’s incredibly affirming and men have been pretty sweet helping me with lifting objects and opening jars.
matchbok3 21d ago
They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.
- ToValueFunfetti 21d ago
  Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.
  - deleted 21d ago
    [deleted]
  - mschuster91 21d ago
    > Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2]. Democrats aren't willing to throw literally millions of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them aside - they are knowingly driving trans people to extinction. [1] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/ https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad... [2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/intersex-people https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-ident...
    - ToValueFunfetti 21d ago
      But this is not throwing millions of people under the bus. At least according to this thread, there are fewer trans women in sports than bills stopping them. If this issue does represent throwing literally millions of people under the bus- driving them to extinction-, why are you saying upthread that it's niche and irrelevant?
    - matchbok3 21d ago
      Bostock affirmed core civil rights to transgender people in housing, employment, etc. The fights now are about other things (not "rights") and as such, are much more unpopular. In fact, a majority of people, even on the right, support the core rights affirmed by Bostock.
kneel25 21d ago
I don’t have a strong view, but I don’t think that should baffle you, you think the reaction comes from nothing at all? One side is pushing to “wedge” (sort of) into a very low level space so that it cements itself at a foundational level and there’s no repeal or return from it - all or nothing view. The other side picks up on that and doesn’t want to let big changes go unchallenged. It’s a pretty understandable process. The niche cases allow the challenging party to present evidence for a consequence or concern that’s difficult to convey. HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing.
- mschuster91 21d ago
  > HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing. Because in this case, we're talking about maybe a few dozen (if that) relevant cases in trans youth [1]. With police/secret services abusing surveillance... it's huge enough that LOVEINT [2] is a term, and at least 50 cases were serious enough to be brought under official investigation [3]. [1] https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-participation-in-sports/ https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-parti... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-police-officers-used-vast-network-cameras-spy-their-exes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...
  - kneel25 21d ago
    I’m just saying the process is exactly the same and shouldn’t be surprising. I don’t think we need to go into why one is less harming compared to another and that makes it okay to dismiss concerns.
    - mschuster91 21d ago
      > I don’t think we need to go into why one is less harming compared to another and that makes it okay to dismiss concerns. Well... one is a niche problem barely impacting anyone. The news reports surrounding the topic of trans youth in sports are all focusing on less than a handful of students. The other is a problem that can be found across the planet with an insane amount of cases never making it to light because no one ever does audits - or if there are audits done, they get circumvented by shared accounts like in this infamous case in Germany [1]. [1] https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-05/12/nsu-2-0-beamter-berichtet-ueber-ermittlungen-bei-polizei https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-05/12/nsu-2-0-beamter-berichte...
hax0ron3 21d ago
One of the trans acceptance movement's main problems comes, as is often the case in politics, from some of its most militant and passionate activists. To put it simply, those extreme activists overreached and annoyed people. That's not the fault of trans people in general, but it explains some of the backlash and the focus on niche cases. Basically, the activists I'm talking about overreached by: - Pushing for speech control around preferred pronouns - Being overrepresented among Reddit mods, thus becoming to some extent the "face of censorship" for many highly online people - Equating the mere act of disbelieving trans people's chosen gender identities with out-and-out bigotry of the KKK kind - Talking about a mythical "trans genocide" and getting angry when people questioned its existence - Pushing for equal bathroom access long before the American public had actually been made ready for something like that Etc. So what we have now in the highly online discourse is essentially a battle between niche militant trans activists who seem to illogically believe that they are on the brink of being put into extermination camps, on the one hand, and niche militant anti-trans fanatics who exaggerate the relatively rare cases of trans people doing bad things for the sake of pushing an overall anti-left agenda. The militant trans activists I speak of seemingly just can't stop themselves from continuously providing people who actually hate trans people and people who just hate the left with more and more ammunition by having a prominent online presence while saying a mix of untrue and highly questionable things. Before anyone jumps in with an angry reaction... yes, if it's not already clear from what I wrote, I also think that the right has a problem with insane deluded militant people.
- asaddhamani 21d ago
  “Militant” trans activists? How is just using someone’s pronouns “speech control”? It’s no different than using a name. If trans people tell you who they are, just believe them, it’s not that hard. There’s nothing mythical about the ongoing trans genocide. Genocides don’t just happen in gas chambers. https://translegislation.com/ https://translegislation.com/ I am not going to say much more here because I’m fairly certain none of this will get through to you given the tone of your comment. Trans people are far more likely to be victims in washrooms than to be perpetrators.
  - 21d ago

ToucanLoucan 21d ago

Because Republicans get fucking dog-walked on any issue of any importance. The only things they can ever even come close to claiming "victory" on are irrelevant nonsense that no serious person gives a fuck about. There are now more bills attempting to "solve" the problem of trans girl's in sports (and it is girls, to be clear, trans boys are never an issue) than there are trans girls in sports. It's fucking pathetic.

RajT88 21d ago
The funny thing about that is - it's a solved problem. The reason you heard about it for a while is that they hadn't tightened up the rules yet. As with anything, problems are highlighted, they are studied, and new rules are put into place to account for what was learned. Right wing media of course discovered a boogeyman that was so useful they will be using it for years still, even if it doesn't exist.
- asaddhamani 21d ago
  It wasn’t a problem to begin with. Meta studies recently showed trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT, certainly nothing than cis women don’t have biological variation within anyway. All the rule updates did was exclude and further marginalise an already marginalised extreme minority. There are very few trans women to begin with, fewer of us still are competing in sports. Nothing was studied here, the people who made the rules aren’t scholars, they’re bigots. They’re using us as a distraction from their poor governance.
  - ToucanLoucan 21d ago
    And as a fellow enjoyer of HRT, I assure you it didn't enhance shit for me, beyond what I was hoping to get: longer, more full hair, boobies, and smoother skin. My muscles are gone y'all. Like I've had to buy more breaker bars and larger tools so I can keep working on my cars, otherwise I simply could not break bolts anymore.
    - asaddhamani 21d ago
      I used to be able to do 12 pull-ups, and I did get de-trained but now I can barely manage a single one. I lived and did cardio in the mountains for years and now I get winded up way easier. Maybe the politicians making these rules should go on HRT before making unsubstantiated claims.
    - asaddhamani 21d ago
      Btw, feel free to reach out to me I love connecting with fellow trans women in tech :)
      - ToucanLoucan 21d ago
        Emailed!
    - intrikate 21d ago
      I've had to explain to people that lifting something as simple as a case of bottled water can be genuinely difficult after eight-ish years of feminizing HRT. It's gradual, it's not all at once and I am still slightly taller and heavier-set than the average American woman, so I do have an advantage through having more mass, but anyone that's larger than the average American woman will also have that so it's not really an advantage, just a fact of having a larger body.
      - asaddhamani 20d ago
        Same. You’re further in than me, but it was so alarming at the start when my body looked the same and my remembered priors in strength and cardio capacity, were at my testosterone-dominant baseline. If I didn’t know to expect the steep drop in strength or hadn’t been on HRT knowingly I’d have been incredibly alarmed and probably visited a dozen doctors. I’d look at objects, say to myself, pfft, easy, and be humbled immediately. TBH it’s incredibly affirming and men have been pretty sweet helping me with lifting objects and opening jars.

matchbok3 21d ago

They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.

ToValueFunfetti 21d ago
Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.
- deleted 21d ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 21d ago
  > Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2]. Democrats aren't willing to throw literally millions of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them aside - they are knowingly driving trans people to extinction. [1] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/ https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad... [2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/intersex-people https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-ident...
  - ToValueFunfetti 21d ago
    But this is not throwing millions of people under the bus. At least according to this thread, there are fewer trans women in sports than bills stopping them. If this issue does represent throwing literally millions of people under the bus- driving them to extinction-, why are you saying upthread that it's niche and irrelevant?
  - matchbok3 21d ago
    Bostock affirmed core civil rights to transgender people in housing, employment, etc. The fights now are about other things (not "rights") and as such, are much more unpopular. In fact, a majority of people, even on the right, support the core rights affirmed by Bostock.

kneel25 21d ago

I don’t have a strong view, but I don’t think that should baffle you, you think the reaction comes from nothing at all? One side is pushing to “wedge” (sort of) into a very low level space so that it cements itself at a foundational level and there’s no repeal or return from it - all or nothing view. The other side picks up on that and doesn’t want to let big changes go unchallenged. It’s a pretty understandable process. The niche cases allow the challenging party to present evidence for a consequence or concern that’s difficult to convey. HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing.

mschuster91 21d ago
> HN does this constantly with the surveillance, bring up one case of police abusing it, it’s exactly the same thing. Because in this case, we're talking about maybe a few dozen (if that) relevant cases in trans youth [1]. With police/secret services abusing surveillance... it's huge enough that LOVEINT [2] is a term, and at least 50 cases were serious enough to be brought under official investigation [3]. [1] https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-participation-in-sports/ https://glaad.org/fact-sheet-for-reporters-transgender-parti... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-police-officers-used-vast-network-cameras-spy-their-exes/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/02/how-pol...
- kneel25 21d ago
  I’m just saying the process is exactly the same and shouldn’t be surprising. I don’t think we need to go into why one is less harming compared to another and that makes it okay to dismiss concerns.
  - mschuster91 21d ago
    > I don’t think we need to go into why one is less harming compared to another and that makes it okay to dismiss concerns. Well... one is a niche problem barely impacting anyone. The news reports surrounding the topic of trans youth in sports are all focusing on less than a handful of students. The other is a problem that can be found across the planet with an insane amount of cases never making it to light because no one ever does audits - or if there are audits done, they get circumvented by shared accounts like in this infamous case in Germany [1]. [1] https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-05/12/nsu-2-0-beamter-berichtet-ueber-ermittlungen-bei-polizei https://www.zeit.de/news/2022-05/12/nsu-2-0-beamter-berichte...

hax0ron3 21d ago

One of the trans acceptance movement's main problems comes, as is often the case in politics, from some of its most militant and passionate activists. To put it simply, those extreme activists overreached and annoyed people. That's not the fault of trans people in general, but it explains some of the backlash and the focus on niche cases. Basically, the activists I'm talking about overreached by: - Pushing for speech control around preferred pronouns - Being overrepresented among Reddit mods, thus becoming to some extent the "face of censorship" for many highly online people - Equating the mere act of disbelieving trans people's chosen gender identities with out-and-out bigotry of the KKK kind - Talking about a mythical "trans genocide" and getting angry when people questioned its existence - Pushing for equal bathroom access long before the American public had actually been made ready for something like that Etc. So what we have now in the highly online discourse is essentially a battle between niche militant trans activists who seem to illogically believe that they are on the brink of being put into extermination camps, on the one hand, and niche militant anti-trans fanatics who exaggerate the relatively rare cases of trans people doing bad things for the sake of pushing an overall anti-left agenda. The militant trans activists I speak of seemingly just can't stop themselves from continuously providing people who actually hate trans people and people who just hate the left with more and more ammunition by having a prominent online presence while saying a mix of untrue and highly questionable things. Before anyone jumps in with an angry reaction... yes, if it's not already clear from what I wrote, I also think that the right has a problem with insane deluded militant people.

asaddhamani 21d ago
“Militant” trans activists? How is just using someone’s pronouns “speech control”? It’s no different than using a name. If trans people tell you who they are, just believe them, it’s not that hard. There’s nothing mythical about the ongoing trans genocide. Genocides don’t just happen in gas chambers. https://translegislation.com/ https://translegislation.com/ I am not going to say much more here because I’m fairly certain none of this will get through to you given the tone of your comment. Trans people are far more likely to be victims in washrooms than to be perpetrators.
- 21d ago