• twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago

    I have said it before and I’ll say it again: this issue exists to stir up controversy. Very few people can ever be professional athletes, but lots of people suffer as a result of the hostility generated by this debate.

    Also, very few people talk about trans men in sport. There’s no real justification for excluding trans men from sport other than fragile egos of male athletes being scared of being outperformed by an afab athlete.

    Also also, if we’re making the argument that people with higher exposure to testosterone for a short duration in their life have increased athletic performance (which to be clear is kind of true but not actually relevant for all trans women), then I have to remind you that anabolic steroids can benefit athletes for up to a decade, which is exactly much fucking longer than these drugs remain detectable in an athlete’s system.

    Also also also, professional sport is stupid and doesn’t deserve this much attention. It certainly shouldn’t be allowed to stir up this much hate toward regular ass trans folks just wanting to live their damn lives, but it does have that effect.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOPM
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      8 months ago

      The narrative around trans people, whether it’s bathrooms or sports, is always around cis men pretending to be trans women to invade women’s spaces.

      I agree with you except for your last point. Even if you don’t have a personal interest, it’s a massive industry with hugely influential celebrities.

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      Also, very few people talk about trans men in sport.

      Very few people talk about trans men in general. Virtually all the defense for anti-trans policies and laws is built around rhetoric about protecting women from “men in dresses” or the like. One thing trans men succeed at is gaining the social invisibility cis men tend to have.

      Which is weird, because if you believed the usual progressive rhetoric about gender you’d think trans men would be viewed as women trying to steal men’s patriarchal privilege for themselves and would be treated as even more of a problem than trans women. Rather than anti-trans rhetoric being mostly concerned with maintaining protected spaces for women.