Daddy Pete shut the fuck up. The talk about fairness is a right-wing strategy for slow-walking progress using its centrist division (the Lisa Murkowskis and Lex Friedmans).
There’s an army of boomer men who’ve been disconnected from the cult by a family member coming out as gay, trans, etc. Big Conservative still has a grip on these people using their generalized fear of the unknowns that inevitably come with progress and it’s maddening that Pete is getting this one so wrong.
Yeah, so where are all the trans gold medalists before the ban was put in place?
They’re gonna run him for Pres if he’s already centrist-ing out
The boomers aren’t dead yet. Someone has to chase their votes. I’m not in favor of this strategy at all but I also know that lots of boomers are conservatives and that all conservative jobs are dirty jobs (starring Mike Rowe, a conservative). We either figure out how to steal their amygdalas back from Fox or they’ll keep blindly voting us toward civil war.
Hey, Pete! Get fucked!
Glad Pete is telling us he’s willing to throw trans kids under the bus before he makes a run for president in 2028. Fuck him. Liberals aren’t your friends.
That is not throwing anybody under the bus. The issue is so overblown, for political noise issues, mainly to influence voters, I guess.
It is an issue, like bathroom use, and I think they are not easy, but they are blips in the challenges trans people face, like Healthcare, etc.
Usual distractions.
You’re correct that it’s actually a non-issue: trans people are a ridiculously small minority, most Americans who don’t live in a city have probably never met a trans person, yet the entire nation has been whipped into frenzied “debate” about fairness in sports, bathroom needs, and other very unserious issues.
The answers are also very obvious. No trans person has ever dominated a sport, otherwise you’d have heard about this. The actual problem with hormones in sports is rampant steroid abuse, trans issues distract from that. Likewise, just have unisex private bathrooms. Treating humans like indistinguishable cattle is already a problem.
None of this, however, relates to the issue of Mayor Pete. Politicians don’t really “raise issues” from their constituents, not primarily anyway. They raise issues from their donors, and they shape public discourse with what they draw attention to. Buttigieg could support trans people with a word and move on to real issues. He could ignore trans people and call out Republicans for distracting people. He could do so many things, but he chooses to focus on this. It can’t be ignored that he’s a gay man also. The intent here is to further wedge between LGB and T.
The ruler class has been working overtime on this for years, because breaking the solidarity of LGBTQ+ people destroys an important progressive bloc held together by shared oppression. If you convince male gays that lesbians and trans people are making too much noise and drawing bad attention, you can split them up and push the whole lot of us back into the closets.
These issues aren’t isolated concerns that operate as pure distractions. They’re various fronts in the class war; you can’t ignore a flanking maneuver as a “distraction” while the cavalry runs rampant over you.
It is an issue, like bathroom use, and I think they are not easy
How is the bathroom thing not easy?
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Oh God, another one
So, as opposed to what? Trump?
“Peter Principle” Buttigieg
The rest of the quote in the article: When Inskeep pressed Buttigieg on whether he believes a parent who has complained about a trans athlete competing in girls’ school sports “has a case,” he agreed. “Sure,” he said. “And that’s why I think these decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians… in Washington, trying to use this as a political pawn.”
Not a great answer. I wonder how he would have answered if the question was rephrased from a trans kids point of view, i.e. if a trans kid was barred from playing high school sports and the parent complains, do they “have a case”?
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If sporting bodies/scientists etc can find ways of managing the situation so it is proven to be fair then great (the paralympics have various categories for instance, off the top of my head why can’t other sports?), but until then this insistence upon something that in many instances isn’t fair in a sporting sense creates a wedge issue right wing types can and do exploit because the average sports fan
The vicious irony here is that the limited science there was, did show that trans folk competing with cis folk of the same gender either had no advantage, or the advantage was too small to identify without further study. Study that was impossible due to the very small number of trans folk actively in involved in sports to begin with.
Yet despite that, the right wing types created a wedge, and folk like you jumped on board
How they think rather than what they think. I recognised it in myself and have really tried to get passed it.
Then I’m genuinely asking you to do so here as well. For me, I’m trans, I used to be a semi elite runner, and a roller derby player. I’ve ran with men and women, and I’ve played roller derby with men and women. I also know the science around trans folk in sports. So I’ve lived this, experiencing it first hand, as well as having a very strong personal interest in following the science.
You are wrong on this.
Yes I expect to get downvoted
You should. Not because you’re some bold warrior for free speech valiantly defying the woke mob like you seem to think, but because you’re just flat out wrong. You’re spreading disinformation and acting like you’re standing up for facts.
Trans women who are engaged in medical transition are either taking high dose androgen blockers, or have had their source of androgens removed entirely. In fact, the average medically transitioning trans woman has less testosterone than the average cis woman. I know trans women who work out, who engage in physical sports and even combat sports. They struggle immensely with the fact that their bodies just flat out refuse to build muscle. I know people who do the kind of exercise and eat the kind of diet that would put the average guy at 200-220lbs within a year, and their bodies resolutely refuse to go past 140-160.
Trans women are at an astonishing disadvantage in sports. The few who excel do so either because they’re in sports where those disadvantages don’t matter (in which case, there’s no advantage to be concerned about either) or do so in spite of those disadvantages. This can be seen in the numbers; until recent panics started leading to bannings, many international sports including pretty much all of the olympics allowed trans women to compete as their stated gender, and yet trans women are actually under-represented among trophy and medal holders. Statistically, by sheer population ratio, they should be winning more than they are.
Transphobes love to latch on to any individual example of a trans woman performing well as if it justifies their argument, but when looked at in aggregate the statistics show that there is no danger of unfairness being posed by trans women in sports. No amount of bullshit about “bone density” and other meaningless shit that has never been suggested to matter in these competitions until hateful bigots needed an excuse can change the reality that sports are doing just fine. The only reason more trans women are winning in sports now is because more trans women are competing in sports, because more people feel comfortable openly expressing this part of their identity.
I honestly struggle to understand how trans women are disadvantaged if they’ve been through puberty as boys. Every real world example I’ve seen of women competing against early pubescent boys goes very one way such as https://www.goal.com/en-gb/lists/alisha-lehmann-switzerland-euro-2025-hosts-thrashed-under-15-team/blt569915d6561b9a2a#csbd8503c0a0d0c04d
Does the changes to bone structure and density and muscle composition fade away? Look it may all come under the negligible banner and that’s totally fine but the thing is that hand waving concerns and attacking anyone that has questions as transphobic doesn’t help when there legitimate concerns at high level sports.
The fact that you consider bone density as “meaningless shit” doesn’t do your argument any benefits as its widely considered beneficial for sports performance.
Does the changes to bone structure and density and muscle composition fade away?
Literally, yes…
Except I don’t think it’s that clear https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/61346517 https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577 It might just be that a time window needs to be established in which case it’s all good.
Before I respond in detail, let me ask, are you open to the possibility of changing your position? Because most folk aren’t, because facts don’t change minds when positions are held emotionally.
I honestly struggle to understand how trans women are disadvantaged if they’ve been through puberty as boys
If hormone levels are irrelevant to performance, why do cis male athletes dope?
Your premise that trans women who have been on HRT for years are physically and functionally identical to teenage boys isn’t based in reality. If HRT did nothing to your body nobody would take it.
Except i didn’t say that hormones were irrelevant to performance. Unfortunately its never such a binary situation.
I was talking about the physical effects of hormones while going through puberty.
If this persists then there will be advantages. If it degrades over time then how long does it take? Lots of professional sport is undertaken by late teen or early twenties athletes, will they still have ‘advantages’? It really doesn’t matter in the vast majority of cases and possibly even all cases.
It is something that needs to be understood though given that it’s competitions that often feed into the professional scene and the data needs to support it
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your refusal to deal with simple reality
The irony here is that “simple reality” shows that in most sports, trans women don’t have advantage, and sometimes, have disadvantage in comparison to cis women. But that reality doesn’t align with peoples intuitive expectations of how it works, and thus, it’s incredibly easy to mislead people in to anti trans positions by using sports as a wedge tactic, which is exactly why it’s happening, and exactly why it’s working.
I could show you the studies backing up my claim, but experience tells me that you won’t be open to them. Facts alone don’t generally work convincing people to change their positions, because rarely have they arrived at those positions through facts alone. And given that you are vehemently arguing with people about a topic that doesn’t directly impact you and that you didn’t care about until politicians and talking heads started to use it to stir up fear and hate, chances are, facts have little to do with how you arrived at your position. Hell, you’re even waiving the need to look at the facts, by declaring that your position is reality, completely closing down the possibility you might be wrong.
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Isn’t that why there are laws about hormone levels in athletes’ blood?
God damn it Pete, dementia Trump in office raises serious issues in the world and you have no other topic to talk about than sport?
I imagine he was asked a question, and didn’t just randomly bring it up…
and you have no other topic to talk about than sport?
I always see someone with this exact same take every time any politician says anything and it’s so dumb, lol
The guy was asked a question about a political topic and he answered it. That doesn’t mean that particular issue is all he thinks about, or that he thinks about it to the exclusion of other topics. If I asked you your stance on trans athletes I’m sure you’d have an opinion too, but I would never assume that’s the only issue you ever talk about.
Look, I think Pete is the same kind of neoliberal Uncle Tom as the rest of the Democratic establishment, but this was just one question he answered in an interview with many questions, and he’s been pretty vocal about Trump and other pressing political issues for like 3 straight election cycles.
What questions you choose to entertain as legitimate is a statement in itself.
Dems are thinking “if we throw trans under the bus, surely they’ll like us this time.”
They are, and it’s so fucking disheartening to see.
I’ve seen so many liberals say shit like, “just because the left went too far with wokeness, doesn’t mean we need to go too far the other way”… Too far? Fuck off.
Another standard issue centrist caring more about games than human rights.
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Pete another neo-liberal nightmare, who serves up a word salad of Whataboutisms so he never has to answer the questions. His past as a two term mayor speaks for itself, heed the warnings.
“If he’s the next president, I fear for our country. He couldn’t run our city. How can he run the United States?” said Michelle Burger, 42, a stay-at-home mom who lives in South Bend’s impoverished and predominantly black West Side. “Look at all the crime — he didn’t do anything about it. Look at our quality of life. If he becomes president, the United States will become one big South Bend — a giant sinkhole. We’ll be in a new depression.”
Why South Bend residents are warning America about Pete Buttigieg
It’s not a huge surprise but extra sad when transphobia comes from within the LGBTQ+ community.
This ain’t transphobia.
It is transphobia. I am curious though. What do you think the real issue is?
There was a good comment about describing the issue without sensationalist platitudes, alas a moderator inexplicably decided to remove it: https://lemmy.world/comment/18512841.
To summarize: a trans woman who went through puberty as a man will likely have a drastically different physiology than a non-trans woman, which may lead to unfair advantages in some sports. I understand Buttigieg was just acknowledging this.
With that said, the variation between body types of non-trans women may be large enough to encompass these types of differences for many, if not all, of these situations and the whole argument could be moot.
Again, acknowledging that these issues could arise does not make someone transphobic. Transphobic would be more along the lines of making outright bans instead of being considerate of all situations.
From the people who brought you “biden is the most progressive president since FDR.”
Yeah, I’m also not saying that.
Just have all athletes measured in an index of height, weight, muscle mass and bone density, and redistribute them in even categories disregarding sex entirely as a categorization. For the first time we would have fair sports. Sports were never really fair, and anyone who understands just the simple notions of physics has always pointed this out. They just don’t like it when nerds prove jocks don’t understand the very games they play. And that’s all sports trully are in the end. Games.
The part that boggles me is how this takes so much space in the broad conversation when competitive sports are truly an inconsequential part of existence. None of that affects life outside of it. None whatsoever. And I’m sure even athletes want this situation actually solved, instead of just dumbing it even more.
And by the way I’m speaking of sports, not exercise. For some reason, people conflate the two.
Exercise is essential.
Sports are not. They can be fun. But people surely know how to ruin the fun out of it.
I’m looking forward to moving on to the next important issue. Which to them is probably going to be if there should be male vs female acting categories in award shows. No, there’s no reason for it. But caring about award shows is even dumber than that dumb distinction in them. The Arts would be better off without them. Competitions in Arts is as silly as it sounds.
The part that boggles me is how this takes so much space in the broad conversation when competitive sports are truly an inconsequential part of existence.
It takes so much space because the amount of energy required to ask the question “should trans women compete in women’s sports” requires exponentially less energy than the amount of energy required to defend a particular answer to that same question.
Conservatives know this, so they’ve made a point of incessantly asking it and others questions like it because that steals focus from more important issues, riles up their own base, and causes liberals to fight with each other.
liberals to fight with each other.
Liberals don’t fight each other. They fight the left. Liberals are in perfect lockstep: they want republican votes so badly that they will throw any minority under the bus and back up over them as many times as they think it will take.
The use of energy in disinformation rhetoric is fundamentally misunderstood by most people. If more people understood this type of asymmetric rhetoric, then we could actually move the important conversations forward.
10% of fascism is just more efficient talking points.
