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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

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 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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 11d ago
      Btw, feel free to reach out to me I love connecting with fellow trans women in tech :)
      - ToucanLoucan 11d ago
        Emailed!
    - intrikate 11d 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 10d 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.
    - deleted 9d ago
      [deleted]
  - TheCoelacanth 11d ago
    Yeah, you have to conjure a really weird scenario for there to be any advantage. Something like waiting until male puberty is already pretty far along and doing extensive strength training and then transitioning and competing immediately in a sport that puts a heavy premium on strength. I think most sports already have rules that would prevent this. For someone following a more normal transitioning trajectory, there would be zero advantage; probably a significant disadvantage. A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition). Individual sports can have rules to prevent the (primarily hypothetical) abusive cases without preventing children from participating in normal social activities. No one is saying that someone who's 200 lb of solid muscle and started HRT a month ago should be able to compete against girls in football or powerlifting, but pickleball, sure go for it.
    - mschuster91 11d ago
      > A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition). That I think is the core issue. Way too many people try to live way too hard through their children. Wherever you look, either in the US or (where I'm from) Germany... you'll find absolutely absurd behavior from completely unhinged parents. Just yesterday, that was a topic discussed here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134
      - fragmede 11d ago
        Except for in Norway, apparently. https://www.ft.com/content/0fe0455d-8633-4e1a-ab8f-f8cd94d60035 https://www.ft.com/content/0fe0455d-8633-4e1a-ab8f-f8cd94d60...
  - RajT88 11d ago
    "After HRT" is the key word. The new regulations I am referring to had to do with how soon after was sufficient to remove advantages due to residual testosterone. There were other regulations which were total horse shit to your point. I would agree that the number of people we are talking about is very small. It was to begin with a very niche issue.
  - maerF0x0 11d ago
    > trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT As someone who's been into weightlifting and only casual observer-like in regards to testosterone therapy, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. After taking TRT/Steroids a person retains a good deal of the muscle/strength they gained even after cessation ... It surprises me to hear that this wouldnt carry over to sports where muscle/strength/power matter. Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences.
    - mschuster91 11d ago
      > Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. Quite the contrary. If you want to publish something going against "the narrative" (if something like that exists in the first place) has never been easier than now. Proper keywords and the far-right and their pseudomedia are going to give even the worst quackery a time in the spotlight - just look at RFK Jr.
    - ToucanLoucan 11d ago
      > Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences. Oh complete and utter twaddle. Academia trends toward progressive views because the more educated you get, assuming you have principles and employ critical thinking consistently, the more ridiculous the positions of the right tend to look. You cannot look at the totality of climate change data and go "well clearly it's not man made" unless you either don't understand it, or cherry pick it to oblivion. You can't look at the history of Austerity politics, deployed both here and in the UK by our respective free market goblins (Reagan and Thatcher) and hold that it's good for anyone at all apart from those who are already wealthy. This boogeyman of BIG SCIENCE holding down all the conservatives is complete and utter dreck. Show me literally one example of it. Show me one individual who's life was ruined and their career decimated to uphold ideological ends.
  - vasco 11d ago
    So the broken records are just coincidence? There's no need to study this a priori, just let them compete and see all records get broken. I don't see why people even discuss it. Just let women not win anything for a few years and this discussion would be over.
  - agilang 11d ago
    [dead]

RajT88 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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 11d 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 11d ago
    Btw, feel free to reach out to me I love connecting with fellow trans women in tech :)
    - ToucanLoucan 11d ago
      Emailed!
  - intrikate 11d 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 10d 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.
  - deleted 9d ago
    [deleted]
- TheCoelacanth 11d ago
  Yeah, you have to conjure a really weird scenario for there to be any advantage. Something like waiting until male puberty is already pretty far along and doing extensive strength training and then transitioning and competing immediately in a sport that puts a heavy premium on strength. I think most sports already have rules that would prevent this. For someone following a more normal transitioning trajectory, there would be zero advantage; probably a significant disadvantage. A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition). Individual sports can have rules to prevent the (primarily hypothetical) abusive cases without preventing children from participating in normal social activities. No one is saying that someone who's 200 lb of solid muscle and started HRT a month ago should be able to compete against girls in football or powerlifting, but pickleball, sure go for it.
  - mschuster91 11d ago
    > A blanket ban is just pure bullying, especially for childrens' sports (which are primarily a social activity, not a consequential competition). That I think is the core issue. Way too many people try to live way too hard through their children. Wherever you look, either in the US or (where I'm from) Germany... you'll find absolutely absurd behavior from completely unhinged parents. Just yesterday, that was a topic discussed here [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686134
    - fragmede 11d ago
      Except for in Norway, apparently. https://www.ft.com/content/0fe0455d-8633-4e1a-ab8f-f8cd94d60035 https://www.ft.com/content/0fe0455d-8633-4e1a-ab8f-f8cd94d60...
- RajT88 11d ago
  "After HRT" is the key word. The new regulations I am referring to had to do with how soon after was sufficient to remove advantages due to residual testosterone. There were other regulations which were total horse shit to your point. I would agree that the number of people we are talking about is very small. It was to begin with a very niche issue.
- maerF0x0 11d ago
  > trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT As someone who's been into weightlifting and only casual observer-like in regards to testosterone therapy, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. After taking TRT/Steroids a person retains a good deal of the muscle/strength they gained even after cessation ... It surprises me to hear that this wouldnt carry over to sports where muscle/strength/power matter. Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences.
  - mschuster91 11d ago
    > Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. Quite the contrary. If you want to publish something going against "the narrative" (if something like that exists in the first place) has never been easier than now. Proper keywords and the far-right and their pseudomedia are going to give even the worst quackery a time in the spotlight - just look at RFK Jr.
  - ToucanLoucan 11d ago
    > Additionally, you have to realize that a major concern on the right is that academia itself has become ideological to the point where only politically acceptable studies can be 1) studied and more importantly 2) published. There's a lot of people out there afraid to speak what appears to them (and their work) to be truth for fear of the backlash and career consequences. Oh complete and utter twaddle. Academia trends toward progressive views because the more educated you get, assuming you have principles and employ critical thinking consistently, the more ridiculous the positions of the right tend to look. You cannot look at the totality of climate change data and go "well clearly it's not man made" unless you either don't understand it, or cherry pick it to oblivion. You can't look at the history of Austerity politics, deployed both here and in the UK by our respective free market goblins (Reagan and Thatcher) and hold that it's good for anyone at all apart from those who are already wealthy. This boogeyman of BIG SCIENCE holding down all the conservatives is complete and utter dreck. Show me literally one example of it. Show me one individual who's life was ruined and their career decimated to uphold ideological ends.
- vasco 11d ago
  So the broken records are just coincidence? There's no need to study this a priori, just let them compete and see all records get broken. I don't see why people even discuss it. Just let women not win anything for a few years and this discussion would be over.
- agilang 11d ago
  [dead]