...after they won

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161727783/a-girls-basketball-team-had-to-play-boys-then-werent-allowed-trophies-after-winn

I'm posting this story after the concerns raised on Anybody's and others' threads about girls not being able to compete with trans-girls (for lack of a better term), though this story isn't about that. Perhaps this sports story is an exception, but it does suggest that women have a ways to go in U.S. society before they can be considered equal to men.

Blurb from the website:

"A fifth grade girls basketball team had to join the boys league to keep their practice facility. They won the championship but were denied the championship
trophy."

There is audio on site and I believe that a full written transcript will be provided later.

No one is talking about "boys" playing girls.

It's about trans kids who want to play HS sports.

The "boy last week on girl's team next week" thing is not what is happening -- although that's the "fear" in the uninformed imagination.

Today's trans youth probably have transitioned at an early age (before first grade), have lived in their asserted gender for years, and after age 10-11, are medicated (Lupron) to prevent puberty -- so trans males AFAB won't grow breasts, trans females AMAB won't grow facial or body hair or develop muscles like boys.

There have been a few post-pubertal trans adults (Lia Thomas) and intersex (Caster Semenya) athletes who've competed, and that's what the controversy is about. That's why I said a compromise could be to only allow trans athletes who never went through puberty to compete -- and given the societal, financial, and now repressive legal barriers, we're only talking about a tiny handful of people.

As I said previously, there are so few of these kids in the first place that mass hysteria is unwarranted and has no basis in fact.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2023 01:24AM by anybody.

Thanks for the link, blindguy!

I personally think the arguments brought up about women's sports are too focused on muscle mass and arrangement. There's more to people than meat configuration.

Of course, I never bought into the "all girls are weaker than guys" claim. I knew too many farm girls growing up and served with too many tough women in the Navy to believe that. And I also think sports are just games people take way too serious.

Even with my opinion on sports, I still think the girls basketball team that won the championship should be awarded the championship trophy. Credit where credit's due.

ookami Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Even with my opinion on sports, I still think the
> girls basketball team that won the championship
> should be awarded the championship trophy. Credit
> where credit's due.

Moi Aussi !

>> and served with too many tough women in the Navy to believe that. And I also think sports are just games people take way too serious.

I could point out that the United States Naval Academy requires 2.5 hours of physical activity for its midshipman every single day, and for many or most of those midshipmen, that means being on a sports team. Navy competes in NCAA and elite level tournaments, and regularly releases its athletes to compete internationally and even go to the Olympics.

And there is the swimming requirement. The mids need to be able to swim a certain distance within a set time limit before they graduate. I'm betting a good number of the midshipmen were on their high school's swim team before they came to the academy.

The Midshipmen also host sports clinics and training camps for local high-school athletes.

So, your own Navy takes sports quite seriously. It's a key component of developing fitness, teamwork, and leadership skills.

Thanks for the info on the Naval Academy's PT requirements, summer.

Of course, I wouldn't know much about the Academy's requirements, I was just an enlisted Deck grunt. Swimming requirements were more focused on rescue swimming (a job of rated Boatswain's Mates) than fitness and teamwork.

And I get that sports are good for that; it's when people take it too serious that I start thinking sports are silly. Of course, that too was partially inspired by my time in the fleet. I think broadcasting sports in ship's berthings (where the crew sleeps) was a bad idea. To recreate the experience of trying to sleep in that, I suggest getting a large steel shipping container and at least a dozen and a half howler monkeys. Give each howler monkey a shot of espresso before you try to sleep in the container. Do this on a rotating sleep schedule for more realism.

I can see why you would have a negative feeling about sports!

I've had the privilege of touring the Naval Academy's athletic facilities, which are quite extensive and (for the most part,) beautiful. I can't remember how far the midshipmen are required to swim, but it's a very long distance. When I considered the time given to them to do that, it was a very fast clip. I wasn't sure if I could do it, and I'm an accomplished swimmer. They also have to jump off of a very tall platform into the water -- it looked about two stories high. The rationale given to me was that they might need to jump off the side of a ship one day (think Pearl Harbor.)

Fun fact: During his time at the Academy, Senator John McCain was constantly getting into trouble, and racked up an impressive number of demerits -- it was around 240. Demerits are not easy to work off. But the Academy is very proud of their distinguished graduate nonetheless, and has his photo prominently displayed on a wall of honor with other distinguished graduates. The academy also has a wall display of their Olympic athletes, of whom they are very proud as well.

We had to jump off a similar two-story platform for basic training for the same reason. Helps that the building used to train recruits for swimming and water survival at Great Lakes is named after the USS Indianapolis; gives incentive to learn how to stay alive in the water.

Officer, enlisted, we're all just as dead in the water if we don't know what we're doing.

Neat that you got to go to Annapolis, though.



Speaking of former Navy personnel, the medical building at Great Lakes is named after Jim Lovell, the Navy pilot who later became an astronaut. Of course, I was a bit of a space nerd as a kid and I think that's interesting.

ETA: I take back what I said about losing all my respect for you. I get touchy when people start talking about excluding trans folks. I get worried because sports is one of the things I hear being used to justify anti-trans laws. I was out of line and went too far on the other thread. I'm sorry, summer.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2023 02:28PM by ookami.

No worries. I have a better understanding now of why you feel as you do.

I still think I could benefit from my own advice of "don't take it too serious" though.

I have a question out of ignorance I've been afraid to ask.

I had a close gay brother in law. I don't have any trans people in my life (that I know about).

Occasionally, when a child is young, my gaydar might go off that the child might be gay. It is mostly based on their mannerisms and preferences. They wouldn't have any inkling of their future sexual desires when young. I had a young cousin who acted very feminine and grew up to be what I guess would be considered a normal gay man.

So, how do people rule out if the child is simply gay so early? How do we know if a child is actually a case where he is mentally in the wrong body when he is too young to identify sexual preferences such as being a gay male? How do we know if he is a male who likes women's clothes or some variation like that?

I trust professionals have tons of criteria for evaluation. It makes me wonder if any gay children would have transitioned prematurely before they investigated a gay lifestyle.

I wish there was a way for maturity and consenting adults only to transition themselves, but by then, physical changes are past the point of no return. I feel bad for kids who didn't get the right decisions at the right time. I presume someone wouldn't change their mind later. I know I didn't have any questions about changing my gender as a child or adult even though I didn't understand anything about sexuality. I did change my favorite color a few times though.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> So, how do people rule out if the child is simply
> gay so early? How do we know if a child is
> actually a case where he is mentally in the wrong
> body when he is too young to identify sexual
> preferences such as being a gay male? How do we
> know if he is a male who likes women's clothes or
> some variation like that?


This should answer your question.

She's six in the first video and ten in the second.

https://youtu.be/cuIkLNsRtas

https://youtu.be/xl3yJyzyp3w

Thanks for that. I don't doubt what they say, but a few things have me wondering that don't set quite right with me.

Remember that kid who became a star repeating his story about going to heaven (some kind of NDE)? There's something about this family that gives me those kind of vibes.

In the first video, the little girl seemed to use the same phrases her mom obviously uses. She knows what gets favorable attention. There was a fleeting scene of her in a black batman mask which is not feminine. Most of the documentary felt a little cherry picked with carefully staged girlish scenes. The mom was not only an advocate but an activist which is wonderful but something feels off. I had a hard time believing that a 6 year old wanted to die and be with Jesus unless she had heard about that kind of stuff.

In the second video the little girl read what sounded like what her mom wrote for her, complete with a Dolly Parton joke. She seemed to "perform" a little too well but who knows.

If I told my son he was acting like a monkey and pointing out all the monkey stuff he did, I am sure he would have focused on acting the part of a monkey if he was getting lots of favorable attention. I can see him telling everyone he is a monkey and taking it as far as he was encouraged to go. Sure, this is not remotely the same, but kids are very impressionable about some things. All it would take is for the mom to say, "You're acting like a girl. Are you a girl?" If the mom said you are a boy who likes girl things, would that have changed anything?

Also, my cousin was extremely effeminate and mostly did girl stuff. He never played with other boys but lived to cook in the kitchen with his mom. He grew up to be a fabulous artist for Disney, and seems like a regular gay man. He always wanted to be the girl in our play time activities. I'm now wondering if he would have been considered a trans child when if his mom had information about it.

Thanks to that brave family for sharing their experiences and standing up to discrimination. I wish them all acceptance. This is too complicated for me. Making decisions for our children is hard. I'm still beating myself up for allowing a circumcision on my child.

I found the kid convincing. I've seen the pattern before and am confident she's genuine.

But I also know kids who didn't figure out their sexuality until puberty and in several cases at college. For example, I have a close relative who runs a theater program at a prestigious university. When she took over, she was approached by a couple of kids who wanted to cross-dress in an upcoming play. The rest of the management team said no, but my relative cited her own experience growing up in regional theater and being told always to choose roles that are challenging for the actor and yet something that s/he can successfully pull off.

That argument prevailed. So now there are generally a couple of kids in every performance who requested, and were given, non-traditional roles (shorthand, but you know what I mean). What is interesting is that almost all of the students who did this ended up using the plays as a chance to come out.

It turns out that they were all wanting to see how the "alternative" roles fit, and for almost all of those actors the answer was very well. So at one stage or another of the preparations and performances, all but one of those actors declared to the group and ultimately their personal groups that they were indeed whatever gender they had tentatively played. There are all sorts of forms that self-discovery led to: homosexual, trans, etc. And now that my relative has changed jobs, the team she left in place continues her approach of letting students cross traditional boundaries in the safety of the stage.

Two points. First, this isn't like sports because there is no squeezing out of others. If an actor is great and will be in the play one way or another, assigning him or her the job s/he wants doesn't disadvantage anyone. In fact, it often enables the directors to bring out new themes that were latent in the script.

Second, the problem I have with all of these discussions of when people recognize their innate sexuality is that all we can do is proffer anecdotes. I would feel better embracing generalizations like the age at which someone achieves personal enlightenment if we were doing so on the basis of empirical research and could describe the relevant norm/s and distribution/s.

Anecdotes are a bit like finding a point and drawing a line.

Interesting, and good points all. Thanks for your take.

An individual journey belongs to the individual. Anecdotes are only anecdotes as you said.

It bothers me that every slightest thing is going to be called grooming. People are simply trying to find themselves. Growing up is not the same for everyone.

The trans issue has been blown way out of proportion compared to the number of actual trans kids, IMO. They all deserve acceptance and fairness though. I think the real reason certain religious and certain political people are harping about this is because their opposition to gay marriage failed.

I agree this is a tangent, not like the sports issue. The bathroom issue is a whole different can of worms (the most important organism in the world).

ADULT alert

As long as I am reaching for tangents everywhere, I have one more that is VERY adult.

Imagine a good old boy hetero guy watching porn and he is aroused by some woman...only to see a couple minutes later that she has male genitalia. Oh no! Maybe he feels mortified he was attracted. Maybe he feels mad he was tricked. Who knows. What exactly is so frightening about trans or drag and what happened to cause such anger against them? Maybe everyone doesn't like the surprise of bringing home Lola?

Honestly, I can't figure all this out. Maybe the LGBTQ community is simply an easy target to stir up culture wars. Somehow there seems to be something like a gut reaction to sexual variation in some people. Maybe they are the ones who got fed that sex is not good unless it leads to procreation.

Thanks for indulging all my meanderings here, everyone. All I know is that more compassion and fairness is needed.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Imagine a good old boy hetero guy watching porn
> and he is aroused by some woman...only to see a
> couple minutes later that she has male genitalia.
> Oh no! Maybe he feels mortified he was attracted.
> Maybe he feels mad he was tricked. Who knows. What
> exactly is so frightening about trans or drag and
> what happened to cause such anger against them?
> Maybe everyone doesn't like the surprise of
> bringing home Lola?

Cisgendered heterosexual males are the prime market for porn featuring shall we say (I'm not going to use the colloquial slang term) "pseudo-hermaphrodites," not gay men who have no interest in women or anything feminine. Once when out dancing with friends in college, I asked a guy to dance (hey, it's the 21st Century now) and he got really prissy and said "Honey, if I wanted something in a skirt, I'd be straight. You aren't a man, sorry..." Ha.

All this stuff is on a spectrum, and that's why psychologists and medical people are involved. The big difference is nowadays parents listen to their children instead of ignoring and/or punishing them when they tell them.


In a few years, all of this hate and exclusion is going to seem totally bizarre. I was reading an article the other day about the classic Hollywood actress Merle Oberon. Turns out she was half Indian, and she went to great lengths to hide her ancestry. So was Boris Karloff. Same goes for Acquanetta and Carol Channing -- both of whom were mixed race. Today, it seems so strange. Nobody cares about that now.


My dad was an OB/GYN. When a baby is born, the doctor has to make a determination and assign a sex to the infant. It's not always clear-cut, and one of these factors is the development of the brain. If someone has the brain of one sex and the body of another, why not allow that person to become whole? As with so many other medical issues, early diagnosis and treatment results in a better quality of life.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2023 09:13PM by anybody.

Hey Dagny, don't beat yourself up about the circumcision thing. It's a complex decision. It used to be a given. Plus, I have seen some complications of not getting it done. Really bad complications. There is no perfect decision here, just a roll of the dice.

Well, it was more than just a girls vs. a boys team. It was a rec skills-based team vs. a city-wide team, and there was also a lack of a written policy. It sounds like a mess all around.

Basically you had high performing girls vs. average, or perhaps even below average boys.

Well, it was more than just a girls vs. a boys team. It was a rec skills-based team vs. a city-wide team, and there was also a lack of a written policy. It sounds like a mess all around.

Basically you had high performing girls vs. average, or perhaps even below average boys.

COMMENT: Yes! Thank you for actually reading the article and providing this important clarification. There was more to it than just a decision to discriminate against girls. But then, why spoil the fun?

Just imagine the havoc that would have been created here on RfM if the decision-maker had been Mormon.

Why even separate sports by sex?
Why not let girls compete with boys and women compete with men?

Testosterone?

So let women take testosterone. Let them get as swollen as Arnold Shwartzenager in his prime, and Jump like that little white Dude who won the dunk contest at the All Star game.
The only thing stopping them is a shot of testosterone every day and a lot of hard work.
We all have testosterone and we all have estrogen. We just produce different amounts.

The interesting thing is, we are feminizing men with endocrine disruptors, which our bodies mistake for estrogen.
It is found in all plastics to make them plastic. The softer your plastic, the more the phthalates, which are a one of many endocrine Disruptors.

It’s also common in scented candles.
It’s used to make oils attach to smells.

That new car smell and new house smell we all love?

Full of phthalates,

carpet mainly,
which is just soft plastic , nylon which is full of endocrine disruptors,
So is lavender and tree tea oil, perfume,
makeup all have phthalates.

NIH link on Endocrine Disruptors
https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm

Scientists at the NIH have issued warnings about it, but we are All Addicted.

Some Scientists are warning it is Causing the Y chromosome to eventually go extinct. Not just in humans, but in all animals.

We are slowly poisoning boys and making them sexually ambivalent , in vitro, feminizing them, chemically, and driving them into extinction,

But humanity will be fine.

The world may be better off when it’s run by women

Hopefully they can get control of the Fembots in the worlds fastest cars that run in underground tubes
And fly to outer space while chemical warfare on men
Continues on Earth.

Who knows?

Maybe the guy who sent a robot into outer space in the world’s most advanced electric roadster, with crystals in the trunk containing all of humanity’s accumulated knowledge. The guy who transports astronauts to the International Space Station along with the world’s largest network of satellites?

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-y-chromosome-is-slowly-vanishing-a-new-sex-gene-could-be-the-future-of-men/amp



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2023 09:13PM by schrodingerscat.

The bodies of men and women are different. There will be outliers.

Difference between male and female skeletons:
https://youtu.be/BH4lUINgVmU

Joe Rogan and Dr. Peterson on gender differences:
https://youtu.be/DDbs0NpYPyE
Some will dismiss Joe Rogan as "bro science" but he has trained for decades, has trained people in Tae Kwon Do, and has commented on hundreds if not thousands of UFC fights. He knows his stuff.

Some will also dismiss Dr. Peterson. He's had a lot of shade thrown at him for speaking about gender differences using peer-reviewed psychology literature.

That's why I included something from a completely neutral source first.

Once you understand the differences in skeletal structure, fast-twitch muscles, and thinking, it's very difficult to make a rational argument that men and women are just the same, assigned gender at birth, or socialized into gender roles.

Physically, we're very different. Like I said before, there will be outliers.