I'd have to say I agree with the logic of the article. I do think that male born athletes should only compete against other males and/or other trans women. I do not want to see cigender women pushed out of their current places in sports, both as leaders in excellence, athletic scholarships, and opportunities to compete fairly against other cigender women and girls.

Re: Tokyo weightlifting competition.

[rt.com]

I read a proposal that transgender women should compete with the men. Not sure if it was recommended for transgender men to compete in the women's category or not.

[womensliberationfront.org]

"After a millennium of denial, sexual self-identity is becoming a more complex – more honest – category of personal being and social life. The traditional, conventional, distinctions between male/female and straight/gay are proving inadequate for the increasingly complex reality of 21st century sexual culture, at least in the more advanced capitalist countries. For as long as humans have been human, there has been a separate category of “other” that infused both dimensions of sexual identity – gender and sex – with disruptive dissonance. Now the “other” is becoming more familiar, acceptable.

This dissonance has considerable resonance. It included the unacceptable, the illicit, the immoral, the weird, the nonconforming. Postmodern capitalism has fostered a sexual culture in which the other has been mainstreamed, with gender differences acknowledged – accepted! — as a defining feature of human experience and identity, no longer a deviance.

The controversy of sexual identity is most acute involving young people, especially pre-teen children facing what had been dubbed “trans care” — puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries. These efforts seek to suppress puberty. Republican sponsored bills blocking trans care have been introduced in Alabama, Texas and Missouri; a 2020 bill in South Dakota was defeated. Gay-rights groups and others have come out in opposition to such efforts, dubbing them postmodern eugenics.

Personal sexual and/or gender identity is very much a personal issue, perhaps the most intimate. Like most “personal issues,” it is mediated through a complex social – and political – matrix that defines the culture wars. As Republicans seek to strengthen and mobilize their base for the 2024 election, one can well expect the issue of gender-nonconforming young people to be a critical wedge issue."

[counterpunch.org]

This link is informative.

[eggenland.com]

Prompted by elements of this discussion taking place elsewhere... is this a men's right issue, a women's right issue, neither/both, a human rights issue?

Some unique accounts.

"One of the ways trans people challenge the popular image of human sexuality is by insisting, in the words of the writer and activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, that ‘it is not about who you want to go to bed with, it’s who you want to go to bed as.’ This, it can be argued, is the province of gender: how, in terms of the categories of male and female, you see yourself and wish to be seen. In fact the modern distinction between sex and gender was created with reference to transsexuality a matter of months before the Corbett-Ashley case by the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Robert Stoller, who proposed the distinction in his 1968 study, Sex and Gender – the second volume was called The Transsexual Experiment. For Stoller, gender was identity, sex was genital pleasure, and humans would always give priority to the first (many transsexual people today say the same). Talk of a gender dysphoria syndrome was therefore as inappropriate as talk of a ‘suicide syndrome, or an incest syndrome, or a wanderlust syndrome’. Stoller’s most famous transsexual case was Agnes, who had secured genital reassignment surgery having duped Stoller and his associate Harold Garfinkel into believing that her female development at puberty was natural (they diagnosed her as a rare instance of intersex in which an apparently male body spontaneously feminises at puberty). Five years later, she returned to tell them that since puberty she had regularly been taking oestrogens prescribed for her mother: ‘My chagrin at learning this,’ Stoller wrote, ‘was matched by my amusement that she could have pulled off this coup with such skill.’"

[lrb.co.uk]

Kids and sports.

[theguardian.com]

In support of trans sports in school.

[vox.com]

A collection of pieces.

[grahamlinehan.substack.com]

Curiouser and curiouser.

[grahamlinehan.substack.com]

New article.

[the11thhourblog.com]

The law and minors.

[theguardian.com]

Senate confirms Rachel Levine.

[amp.cnn.com]

"This was originally going to be a piece about how gay saunas – bathhouses if you are in the US – are becoming pressured to admit transmen despite the fact that a ‘transman’ is female, but I became increasingly frustrated by how I felt compelled to clarify what I meant when I was using words like ‘gay’ and ‘men’.

Ordinarily I don’t agree with writer Douglas Murray on many things but he does have at least one aspect right; we really are living in a demented time where reason and rationality have left the room. It should be simple enough in 2021 to talk about gay men and know people will understand what is meant by the words, particularly after 60+ years of LGB activism."

[lesbianandgaynews.com]

Part of why the TERF debate interests me. I feel in many instances, they're being attacked unfairly.

I think of lot of the concerns here are legit.

[uncommongroundmedia.com]

A list of links with various perspectives as per the recommendation of a commenter here. There are a couple of lengthy pdf links that I'll flag so as to not have them load for those who would otherwise click on them if they don't want to.

Will link the first one here and subsequent links in the replies.

The first one I'm posting is a comparatively older article, but highlights the contentious nature of the debate.

It also deals with the issue of reassignment surgery. Howard Stern regularly interviewed a transsexuals named Siobhan on his show, both pre and post-op. If found it sad and a little scary when she admitted later that the physical sensations and sexual pleasure she got from sex were greatly reduced and she wished she hadn't done it.

[standpointmag.co.uk]

This is an interesting take.

[the11thhourblog.com]

This was quite beautiful and is food for thought for some of my views regarding transgender athletics. School sports vs professional competitions might be viewed differently from my perspective, or maybe sports where the physical differences might put cis female athletes at risk, but regardless the father's testimony was very moving.

For those in the progressive community, Christo Aivalis is very much worth following.

Another question I posed elsewhere was with regard to gender pronouns. It had to do with whistle blower Bradley/Chelsea Manning. I wondered what the protocol for writing about him/her as she leaked the information while she was a he and what was the proper way to write about her when discussing those leaks. I also wondered how it would affect the pronoun usage if at some point she transitioned back to being a man. If it was proper to say "she" leaked the info, what revisions would be needed if a restoration transition took place?

I feel these are legitimate questions. I felt that there were many reasoned responses that often involved something as simple as deferring to the wishes of the person in question, though that in itself can be problematic with regards to establishing agreed upon standards.

I do hope that this topic might include trans members on this site offering their view on any and all of these issues/questions.

A lot of times in discussion and debate, "I'm only asking questions" is meant to provide cover for some other agenda. But in actuality, I feel the desire to pose questions in the service of fact finding is an essential part.

Where this topic was being discussed at Crooks and Liars blog (from a tangent on another issue), I posed this question.

"If a trans woman is indeed a woman in every respect, why is the "trans" designation even needed? If declining to date a trans woman is bigotry, does that only apply post transition, or would that also be for a pre-op trans?"

The response from the poster who said JK Rowling was indeed a bigot said that this would be bigotry too.

Here is my original comment that came up regarding Republicans relying exclusively on emotional arguments. I waded into "both sides" territory with this comment.

"Sadly, I think issues are often shortchanged on both sides by just how effective emotional arguments are, particularly when homing in on your target's biases.

Hitler's propaganda model is still in play across the board. I've always found it quite chilling his observation, 'don't worry about convincing the smart people, there aren't enough of them to matter.'

One of the areas where I think the extreme polarization is currently quite problematic is the trans sports debate. TERF women are supposedly bigots, and JK Rowling is a detestable monster, and if you feel otherwise, or worse, express a position outside of whatever is considered a valid "enlightened" view, then you're every bit as bad as they are.

It seems to be getting harder and harder to make a case for something on their individual merits rather than being compelled to adopt a collective side based on how those controlling the prevailing narrative choose to draw the boundaries and battle lines.

Discussions relying on a shorthand almost exclusively (including misrepresentations) defeats the whole purpose of discourse in my opinion."

My concern regarding the level of discourse often involves the tendency to be selective with "guilt by association" accusations.

I remember Bernie Sanders being smeared because of Joe Rogan's endorsement (claimed to be a misogynistic right wing bigot) but Joe Biden being endorsed by the governor responsible for poisoning Flint Michigan's water was OK, as was Hillary's being endorsed by war criminal Madeline Albright or Clinton's fondness for war criminal Henry Kissenger.

I take issue with certain aspects of the transgender debate because I feel oft times they're lumped in with gay rights in a way that is not comparable. I seek expanding my understanding, but have found that certain views are presented as having already been decided and not open to discussion, whether issues of transitioning children, the claims of bigotry with regards to asserting that pregnancy and menstruation is exclusively the realm of cis women, or whatever.

Many hypothetical questions aren't so hypothetical these days.

The other thing that seems to be taken as a given by some within the movement is the transitioning of children, both chemically and surgically. I'm all for adults having the freedom to make choices for themselves, but it seems like something that isn't appropriate with regard to children. I see many photos that I don't quite understand of celebrities dressing their children in non-conforming gender roles but other than that no details about the particulars. This is the type of stuff that the churchies say is part of some Satanic conspiracy. I merely wonder if it is abusive or acceptable.

A follow up question is does anyone feel certain contentious issues involve too much walking on eggshells to engage in meaningful discussions?