Florida’s state athletic board fined a high school and put it on probation Tuesday after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team, a violation of a controversial law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.
The Florida High School Athletic Association fined Monarch High $16,500, ordered the principal and athletic director to attend rules seminars and placed the suburban Fort Lauderdale school on probation for 11 months, meaning further violations could lead to increased punishments. The association also barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months.
The 2021 law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as girls at birth.
The student, a 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the last two seasons, was removed from the team last month after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation. Her removal led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class two weeks ago in protest.
What are we protecting women’s sports from? It’s weird, I hear more about how transgender women are a threat to women’s sports than I do about actual women’s sports. It seems like drama over a trans women being on a sports team is more important than the actual sports. I very rarely see headlines about women’s sports. I’m not into sports at all, but I can name Kyrie Irving, Draemond Green and a fuckton of other men’s basketball players. I can’t think of any women.
It’s just very difficult to take these arguments about “protecting” women’s sports seriously when they only seem to matter when it’s time to use them as a cudgel. I wish the energy would be redirected - advocating for equal pay, more coverage, showing up to local games. Title 9 be damned, the girls volleyball team doesn’t have half the budget of the boys football. A handful of trans kids playing is such a non-issue compared with all of the other shit going on in the failing education system. The Olympics have allowed trans women to play for ages, and no one really gave a crap until trans people became the new target.
Why do children play sports in school? My understanding was that it was for character building - developing discipline, communication skills, etc etc. The competitive aspect is important yes, but at the end of the day the purpose is to help develop the child. There is harm done in denying a child the opportunity to participate in sports - there are lots of kids who only come to school because of sports. Trans kids need a coach they can talk with and a team they can feel a part of too.
From being pushed out of their own sport by athletes with biological advantages of being born male. I wish that wasn’t the case, but there’s already been documented cases of male to female trans athletes taking already scarce opportunities away from cis female athletes. Lia Thomas went from being ranked #462 competing in men’s swimming to #1 in women’s when she switched. Now it’s obviously been bastardized by shit stain human beings, anti-trans rights voices, and homophobes but if you look at it in a vacuum there’s legitimate concerns to be addressed. College scholarships being awarded to the best athletes. Endorsement deals. Records. Championships. I think Michael Phelps addresses it the best.
And also Nancy Hogshead-Makar supporting trans participation
However, I’m not sure that there is an easy way to define what their sex-linked advantage is nor a way to measure it’s recession throughout the transitioning process and it would be unwise to encourage emotionally and mentally immature children that have not yet entered puberty to make a permanent decision on transitioning. Not to mention the gradient of transgender processes and the extent to which a person even wants to go. Not every trans female takes hormones.
Not being able to name female athletes is a you and (to a lesser degree) media problem. They don’t get as much press, but there’s plenty of household female athlete names. Venus and Serena Williams, Brittany Grinder, Katie Ledecky, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Yani Tseng, Mia Hamm, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Simone Biles, Lindsey Vonn, Marta, Nancy Kerrigan…probably some other huge names I’m totally missing.
Since you’re not really a sports person maybe you don’t see it how other highschool and beyond athletes see it. School sports is just as much about competition and championships as it is character building. It isn’t only about winning and losing. I want to make that clear. Sports are used to build character sure, but it’s usually being taught on the back of the competitive aspect. Being a good teammate, working together as a team, etc in order to beat the opponents or improve yourself. And I’m not saying that this girl should be denied her right to play, just that she should unfortunately be required to participate in the men’s bracket of competition. She may not perform well, but that’s the reality of competition. It’s no different than the chubby boy sitting on the bench until the last 3 minutes of a blowout game.
Until we can come up with a more scientific and proven methodology for these individuals to compete in a fair and inclusive environment, I think that’s the reality of the situation. Not all societal problems can or should be dealt with by flipping a switch and adjusting after the culture shock. I wish that were the case, but it’s going to do a lot more harm than good. The first step in my opinion is to develop a coed class of sports in some fashion that allows anyone to participate while still keeping competitive sex-based sports.
I bet you can’t name 3 more examples beyond the one in your comment.
It’s such a non-issue. Trans people make up, what, 0.01% of the population? And what % of those are in competitive sports? People need to get a grip.
Here’s a few that was able to find in this article.
Some became National champions as individuals and as part of a team. I’m sure there’s some that cause more controversy than others, but the point is that this is a relatively new scenario that’s only going to be more common as time passes. Already there’s a statistically significant amount of competitions that have been won by transgender athletes.
Gonna start my response with this as I know most people will see a long comment and won’t read it, and this might be the most important takeaway: a website about LGBTQ+ issues in sports seemed interesting, but the fact that the entire article seemed to be about counting and naming every single trans athlete they can find, I decided to do a quick search to find out what this site is about.
Sure enough:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsports?wprov=sfla1
So either you’re aware that you’re purposely misleading people by using disingenuous, bad faith sources, or you didn’t do 30 seconds of research before posting what is clearly anti-trans agitprop.
Do better.
Now that’s out of the way:
You have (perhaps purposely) misconstrued my request. I wasn’t asking for trans athletes, I was asking for trans athletes that have “dominated” in their respective sport.
And what do you know, even the article in the bigoted rag you linked to says,
I can tell you with 100% certainty that, if they knew about more than 3, they would have been listed in that article. I have zero doubt in my mind.
You said:
You were asking for 3 more examples and I provided them. So now you’re trying to move the goalposts.
It may be a rag, but I only used it as a source for fact checking. I’m not going to source check something that’s easily verified. I went to the first source that presented a list and a brief summary of their athletic activity. The whole “do better” rhetoric is such a bore. Do better at what? I’ve already mentioned in other comments that I’m pro LGBT rights and actively help athletes that are openly gay and/or gender dysphoric. Instead of attacking fact with empty rebuttals, maybe you should “do better”.
Making excuses for basing your beliefs on obvious propaganda. Pretty sad, dude. Especially since you know you’re doing it. You should be embarrassed.
College sports are tainted enough. We don’t need to lean into it by letting them turn high school sports into a high stakes game too.
Obviously in college with billions of dollars on the line it’s a different situation. But this isn’t that. This a level that’s about learning to work in teams, communicate, and stay healthy. Nothing about that requires a specific gender.