Contrary to the impression several gender-insecure legislators give, the South Dakota High School Activities Association says there isn’t much fuss about its inclusive policy for transgender athletes. A big majority of schools approve of letting kids play sports with the kids of their gender (as defined by them, not by britches inspectors Jim Bolin and Al Novstrup):
While the state’s activities association expects that there will again be legislation aimed at overturning or changing its transgender policy, a recent survey of member schools found that more than 80% approve of the policy.
…”We haven’t had much of an issue yet,” [SDHSAA exec Dan] Swartos said, noting that fewer than five students have submitted their paperwork. He said that amounts to .002% of the state’s high school student population. “The schools have been very good at policing this.”
According to Swartos, most of the legislative concerns expressed about the South Dakota rule are based on news out of Connecticut where some transgender runners are dominating in track and field [Dana Hess, “SDHSAA: Majority of Member Schools Support Transgender Policy,” Mitchell Daily Republic, 2019.08.15].
Once again, the Legislature appears to be spending more time worrying about fusses made in other states instead of listening to the concerns of a majority of South Dakotans. Maybe someday we’ll elect legislators who view our glorious Capitol as a place solve real South Dakota problems and not a mere karaoke hall for Fox News watchers.
Best wishes to those 4 very brave students and their schools.
Worst wishes to Al Nostrap, Jim Bolin and others who are focused on the private lives of South Dakotans of all ages, rather than legislating for the betterment of their constituents.
This is an area that just baffles me for those of you on the Left. If a male student supposedly identifies as “female” and then competes you all know they have a clear physical advantage right? It should NEVER be allowed for competition. Not a social thing but a simple fairness of competition. Otherwise we just open up all sports for any gender regardless. No more girls or boys basketball. We make it like a Varsity I and II team. Then JV one and JV two and so on.
Steve Pearson.
I’ve been talking about your idea for a few months, I can’t seem to get any traction.
No more “boys” and “girls” sports, just make one team for the school, this would take care of the gender thing. All students who would like to play would have to try out, everyone would be treated equally based on their ability.
It would be an equality utopia.
There might be some not so unexpected negative outcomes.
I also wonder about competitive athletic competition under an “I’m a woman/man if I say I am” policy. Obviously, in most athletic endeavors, that puts women at a disadvantage.
But then, as I understand the argument (which is poorly), there is to be…, what?
I don’t much care whether somebody can run faster than someone else, but great amounts of money are traded on the contest. That’s a lot different argument than the one over who goes home with someone after the bar closes.
Fairness of competition means snowflakes like Pearson should never be forced to compete against Blacks in physical sports or Asians in mental gymnastics.
That’s cute, Mike, but you don’t address the question.
That seems to be such a rare issue. I follow sports fairly closely and I follow LBTG issues fairly closely. I can only think of 3 or 4 instances of this being a problem.
Transgenderism is a rare thing and I don’t think many boys are falsely identifying as girls just so they can win the 100 meters. USA misogyny and male privilege are far too prevalent for boys to be eager to fake transgenderism.
I’m saying it’s a lot of talk about a very small, very small problem. Yes, it would be unfair, but usually the first thing that happens is the boy wants to take meds that prevent puberty, if he’s that young, to avoid physical male characteristics. If he’s older, he’s going to want meds that suppress testosterone and take estrogen.
Respecting those transgendered students by allowing them to live as their correct gender is sometimes life saving, much more important than playing a sport. I say that because the suicide rate for transgendered youth is high due to the cruel harassment they often face.
So I don’t have a foolproof answer to the “what if” question that’s perfectly fair to everyone. In that case I use my fall back. Go with the one most in need. That would be the transgendered student.
BTW, in international professional competition there is a woman, Caster Semenya, who competes for South Africa in the 400 meters. She’s a woman with abnormally high natural levels of testosterone. It happens.
IAAF, the international track and field governing organization, had allowed Semenya to compete. She won gold in Rio. I believe the latest is that they are ordering that she reduce her testosterone levels or take more estrogen, something like that.
Semenya argues that they are diminishing her natural advantage. They are not trying to regulate the hormone levels of other competitors. I don’t know the latest.
BTW, Caster Semenya is a woman. She has the right parts and didn’t acquire them surgically.
I agree with Debbo, this is much ado about nothing. The likelihood of some male pretending to be transgender to win a sporting event is virtually nil. And any male posing as a transgender in a sport with large money prizes would be hard pressed to have a better chance than the strongest and most capable of women contestants unless that man was already at the top of the male competitors. Indeed, Bobby Riggs, a repeat male champion competitor, could not even beat Billie Jean King in their match.
Boys and girls come in a wide variety of skills, strength and capabilities. Even if boys might be statistically stronger, statistics fall to the wayside in one to one matches and many girls will prevail over boys their own age. The chances of a single transgender boy having an advantage over a girl is realistically no greater than one girl having an advantage over another girl.
Of course, Mr. Riggs was a young 55 during his misogynistic battles of the sex and Ms. King was a very young 29. I bet that had more to do with it than sex. That would be like grudznick playing Mr. Riggs, and as svelte and catlike as my reflexes are, I don’t think I could even beat a dead Mr. Riggs.
Martina Navratilova, nine-time Wimbledon singles champion and longtime LGBT advocate, caused controversy when she wrote for the Sunday Times of London that it’s “insane” and “cheating” to permit biological males who declare themselves to be trans women to compete against women in women’s sports. She wrote:
A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies.
Martina, herself, had a transsexual coach and friend — Renee Richards — and Richards now shares Navratilova’s concerns about transgenderism as it relates to women’s sports.
https://ctmirror.org/2019/07/22/transgender-issues-polarizes-womens-advocates-a-conundrum/
Mike, I know it’s hard for you because you are basically a sloth that sits at home eating all day, looking at porn and being a troll online but sports and trans is a real issue and needs to be addressed regardless of what you lefties “want” for social advancement (your opinion).
So get your left leaning politics out of it and evaluate it based on competition, fairness and BIOLOGY for crying out loud. I do forget from time to time that biology (of all sciences) are fluid to each of you where other science is strict fact right?
Yep, Martina, one of the all time great tennis players and champion of LBG rights is still a hero of mine. She was wrong on this one. It happens.
Good Ole Steve. He found someone who agrees with him on one issue, and a liberal at that! See, we Democrats really do have a big tent.
I can provide so much more. And you should wake up because Martina and others are right.
While it is understandable that Pearson looks for other people, especially famous female athletes, that share his opinion about transgenders participating in a sport based on gender identity, quoting these folks doesn’t address the underlying weakness of his argument, namely, that this is much ado about nothing.
First, as a matter of fact the percentage of transgenders in general is exceptionally small – something like 2% of teenagers and 0.58% of adults nationally and in SD about half as many adults at 0.34% (I didn’t find percentages of Teens in SD). Approximately 1/2 of these groups are biological males that identify as females. One study indicates that about 47% of girl decide to participate in youth sports and that about 80% quit by the time they reach age 15.
https://www.activekids.com/football/articles/youth-sports-participation-by-the-numbers
Rough numerical calculations indicate that would leave about .02% of transgender girls remaining in sports. The claimed fear that some of this extremely small number of participants might have an advantage over other girls seems relatively absurd compared to the liklihood that substantially more non-transgender girls would have even greater advantages over there competition.
My figures and calculations are certainly open to question, but as a general matter I don’t think the final point can be reasonably challenged – this is much ado about a miniscule concern, regardless of the number of celebrities that say they are worried about disadvantages to biological females.
Lauren Jeska, a transgender woman, won four English and British fell running championships. After officials asked to test her hormone levels, she attacked three with a knife and is serving 18 years for attempted murder.
Laurel Hubbard, a New Zealand weightlifter, set junior male records before transitioning at 35. She won 2017’s Australian Open and was expected to take Commonwealth Games gold last year, until injury made her withdraw.
Hannah Mouncey played 22 times for Australia’s male handball team before transitioning in 2015–16 and joining the women’s side. She also plays Australian rules football but was banned from the women’s league.
Jen Wagner-Assali, who lost to Rachel McKinnon — a male who identified as such until the age of 29. Wagner-Assali wrote on Twitter that McKinnon winning first place was “not fair.” But after sustained pressure from McKinnon, she apologized.
Martina: “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.”
https://sportsscientists.com/2019/03/on-transgender-athletes-and-performance-advantages/
Pretty good read. Debbo and everyone should read, non-biased. And take your social politics out of this please.
Perhaps a more accurate understanding of Pearson’s position is that this is simply an issue created out of whole cloth aimed at exciting those people upset about the fact that transgenders are gradually being permitted to exist without condemnation and derision by the anti-LGBTQ crowd and convincing them to vote for anti-LGBTQ politicians (typically republicans).
Oh bear…..read above link. You’re wrong.
Pearson the conservative…..https://the-immoral-minority.com/conservatism-in-a-nutshell/
Truth to power.
So get your left leaning politics out of it and evaluate it based on competition, fairness and BIOLOGY for crying out loud.
Why? Let’s get to the heart of the matter. Conservatards like you want special rights for your chosen ones. When special rights lose to equal rights you drop to the floor kicking and screaming your religious freedumb to hate and discriminate is being violated.
Been there. seen that.
GOP/wingnut fear mongering. It’s what they do because their policies, when they actually have any, are such utter failures.
I reviewed the information in your link but was unable to find where it addressed the issue I raised – namely, the miniscule number of transgender girls in althetics, especially in SD. But even if it had indicated I was wrong in my calculations and conclusions about how few transgender girls there are that can actually benefit from being born with biolological advantages over some other girls, it also fails to address another perhaps more serious issue of who to discriminate against and why to discriminate against that group.
Adopting policies aimed at discriminating against transgender girls by prohibiting their participation in various sports due to biological characterics that they were born with carries important and telling implications.
For example, the average height of a woman in the US is reported to be just under 5’4.” This would suggest that women taller than 5’4″ have an inherent and unfair biological advantage over the average woman in competitive games such as basketball, volleyball, tennis, as well as a variety of other activities and games. If we exclude transgender girls from particular sports due to inherent biological characteristics then should girls taller than 5’4″ also be prohibited from competing with their shorter sisters due to their particular biological height advantage?
If not, then the basis for excluding transgender girls based on other biological advantages they might have becomes a bit clearer. Rather than protecting girls without this particular genetic advantage, the reason for excluding trangender girls seems more likely to be a desire to appeal to voters who deny the validity of these girls gender identities.
BCB knocks it out of the park!
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
It’s good to see the GOP evolving in their views of transgender people. They used to only see them as simple peeking perverts, pretending to be transgender so they can enter the girl’s bathroom.
They now seem to have a more mature, nuanced and worldly view, recognizing that they also might be trying to cheat at sports.
Maybe we should limit the screening of old episodes of “Bosom Buddies”,”Police Academy” or “Mrs. Doubtfire”, in efforts to further this evolution.
TAG, 😆😆😆😆😆
I can’t understand why anyone makes as big a deal out of kids’ games as Jim Bolin or Steve Pearson does. Let ’em play. Leave ’em alone.
So someone runs faster than someone else. That doesn’t make running any less healthy for the second-place kid, or the last-place kid.
Perhaps some people are transferring their own unhealthy obsession with sports onto transgender kids, thinking someone would actually think scoring a winning basket so important that he would lie about his identity, at risk of great public outcry and harassment, just to sneak onto the girls team and play more ball. Thank goodness the kids don’t appear to be playing that game. The world appears to be very different from the way Jim Bolin conceives it.
Mr. H, perhaps this is a good comparison.
You like to tout the debatery of kids or even adults who did the debating thing, and speechified where people would rank how good their oratories were. And that’s a dandy deal. We all like a good factual argument (not Ms. Hubbel style) or a good oratory about neato stuff. And that’s OK. You were a good speechifiery as a kid and you cheerled and graded many an oratorial.
Mr. Bolin likes to tout the shooters of the basketball, and those fellows who run really fast and jump over really high obstacles. And that’s a dandy deal too. We all like a good race, or basketball contest between teams, and know how it builds character and teamwork. And that’s a dandy deal. And that’s OK. Mr. Bolin was a heck of an athlete in his day, and he coached and yelled at many kids to “run faster!” and that’s OK too.
Mr. Bolin, an orator himself, could challenge you to an athletic competition of your choosing, with grudznick having veto on what’s an “athletic competition”, and you could challenge him to a cerebral competition, with Mr. Pay or Mr. C getting veto on that. It has to be a big brain, not one of your small brained minions.
Game on.
And Cory, as we’ve been saying, it’s such a tiny number of people we’re talking about. It’s just a handy dandy tool for the Irreligious Wrong pseudo preachers to stir up their ignorant followers about.
This comic is stuffed with info about trans people and women in athletics and the role patriarchy plays in the various worldwide athletic federations. It’s really spot on for this discussion. It responds to most of the issues we’ve raised and provides info we need.
http://bit.ly/2Mtrw9Z
It seems to me that two parts of this conversation are easy: 1) people should be free to live life as whichever gender they would like; 2) all people should be treated equally under the law regardless of gender.
The harder part is trying to wrap my head around in what context it is OK to have double standards based on gender. Is it OK or is it not OK that many scholarships are available to just one gender? Is it OK or not OK that one gender is given preference in custody decisions over another? Is it OK or not OK to have camps for one gender and not the other (boy- and girl-scouts, STEM camps, etc.)? Is there any time it is appropriate for a “girls only” or “boys only” rule?
Those can be tough questions. They lead to one option for a solution, which is not having any divisions of anything based on gender. Should high school, college, and pro sports be open to everyone and only the best players from the whole pool get to play? Should all bathrooms and locker rooms be “genderless?” That is equality, but is that really what anybody wants? If you are the parent of a natural athlete, you probably get to see your kid play no matter what, but if you are the parent of a mediocre high school athlete, would you rather see an all-gender sports team exist, but your kid isn’t good enough to play…or would you rather have gender-based teams so your kid has a better shot at making the cut in his or her gender group?
Easy stuff and tough stuff lumped together, in my opinion.
Another reason speech activities are superior to athletics: we got rid of boys and girls divisions decades ago. Boys, girls, undecided, transitioning—doesn’t matter. We all go in the same classroom or on the same stage and speak and compete on an equal footing.
And speech activities don’t need locker rooms.
Maybe it’s time for some radical Title 9: if boys and girls can’t play together on the same teams, schools don’t offer those sports.
Ryan, you will see genderless bathrooms. Watch for single-holers everywhere, just like good old outhouse days.
If parents are spending time worrying about their kids making the cut on a sports team, they need to change their priorities… and have their kids go out for an activity more inclusive, more productive, and more likely to help them get through college and get jobs.
Most moments spent thinking about sports are wasted.
Cory, did you read the comic I linked to? Some sports were gender free, but when the women beat the men the patriarchal Olympic Board changed it to separate the genders.
NBA pros like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and others admit the women of the WNBA play better basketball and regularly attend WNBA games. As long as we have patriarchal overlords in sports they’ll continue to work hard to maintain the myth that women’s sports are inferior.