He huffed about how the question wasn’t “appropriate” even though his bill would result in kids being asked that same question.
A Republican state rep from Michigan testifying about his anti-trans sports bill on Monday was left speechless after an out Democratic colleague began his questioning by asking, “Representative, can you tell me: are you trans?”
A long beat staring down out gay Democratic state Rep. Mike McFall followed, before state Rep. Jason Woolford ® managed to reply, “Are you?”
“I’m actually going somewhere with this,” he said to lawmakers in the small chamber.
“Because I want to know, how does a 14-year-old girl prove whether or not she’s trans to a 50-year-old coach?”
I love this. This is a really good, simple, impactful strategy.
The GOP is just a bad debater.
My immediate thought was to say something like “That question proves my point! We have no way of knowing who is or isn’t trans without careful testing!”
“Okay, I’ll inspect your genitals, drop 'em and we’ll prove it to everyone”
problem is: these bigots would LOVE to show off the little junk they have in exchange for seeing others.
They’d probably have a sickly grin on too, because it brings back fond memories of Uncle Touchy’s Naked Puzzle Basement.
Spoiler: the rep is uncle touchy
“That’s why we’ll have to fire a dozen teachers; so we can have trained inspectors on hand.”
You have to put yourself in their mindset…
I’d like to think that line wouldn’t play too well with the general public but I’m actually not so sure anymore
My phrasing was deliberately over the top, but you are sadly correct…
I’m pretty sure he’s MS13. We should deport him just in case.
No, he’s tren de aragua. He’s part of the invasion and should be transported to CECOT post haste
From the State House to the White House, we are saying that we will no longer allow our daughters and women to be taken advantage of by insecure men…
Yeah, we should protect them from these insecure, conservative men who constantly think about other people’s genitals.
Was this quote from a republican?? How can you be so self unaware?
Trans men don’t exist of course.
Or we are autistic teenagers that need to be
torturedreceiving “therapy.”
This was EXTREMELY INAPPROPRIATE! Doesn’t he KNOW that you’re ONLY supposed to ask CHILDREN about Their Genitals? What a PERVERT!
God damned leftist groomers at it again. Won’t anyone think of the children’s genitals?!
What, you guys didn’t have penis inspection day in gym class?
That’s only in the girls class.
No for real. Penis inspection happened like… every year?
This was definitely a thing in middle school PE class back in the 90s.
The worst part was how they did it in groups. First they made you take your shirt off for the scoliosis exam. Then you put your shirt back on and drop trou for the penis inspection.
As a fat kid it was terrible
What the fuck? Where do you guys live?
America, obviously
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My middle school held an assembly over a fad of “dick tapping” that had taken over the boys in the school. Apparently it had become “a thing” for them to just reach over and slap their friends’ penises, and it got so bad that we needed a damn assembly.
All us girls were extremely confused. We legit thought most of the boys in our school must have secretly been gay if they wanted to touch each other’s dicks so badly. Even if the boys weren’t gay, we figured they must be pretty frickin’ stupid to play such a dumb “game.” A lot of us had crushes evaporate in an instant, and I for one never looked at the boys in my class the same again.
Nowadays, I know better than to assume one’s sexuality from such things. However, I never stopped being extremely confused about that game.
The “game” is just inflicting pain on other boys at random and it has taken many forms over the years. My dad told me they used to play “Dead Arm”, the whole thing was just punching someone in the upper arm as hard as you could when they weren’t looking.
Testosterone is a hell of a drug.
“Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear.” Riiiight MAGAs?
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It’s a real shame he deflected, I would have loved to see this argument continue.
trans guys have bigger dicks than republican legislators, so this is a fair question
Last time I was at the gynecologist’s- “that’s unusually big - are you sure you aren’t intersex”?
Nurse told me my dong was big, hehe.
nice
“Because I want to know, how does a 14-year-old girl prove whether or not she’s trans to a 50-year-old coach?”
Puts on rubber glove we have teasts
I guess I’m out of the loop on this subject and honestly I don’t know if the information I have is factual or not.
Do trans women generally have a physical advantage over women? Are there any rules for this kind of thing? Do they need to be transitioning or taking suppression drugs? This is a serious question.
trans people on hormone replacement therapy stop receiving the effects of whatever hormone their body produces naturally. so trans women lose muscle mass, bone density, whatever, and have no benefit from having previously lived as a man.
additionally, im of the opinion that less than 1 percent of child athletes go on to play professional sports, so who gives a shit who is playing who
It seems to me that they should try to pair up these sports teams based on the talent of the individual player rather than their genitalia
Mmr based high school sports is the only true unbiased solutions
“Do trans women generally have a physical advantage over women?”
No. Trans women were able to complete in the Olympics beginning in 2004. No trans woman has won an Olympic medal in the woman’s category.
There are many studies that compare cis men to cis women and based on that claim trans women have an advantage. Among the studies that actually compare trans women to cis women it is generally found that trans women have no overall advantage.
“Are there any rules for this kind of thing? Do they need to be transitioning or taking suppression drugs?”
The rules and requirements vary by league. At higher levels of competition its generally required to have hormone levels at cis female levels for a prolonged period. Often 6 months or longer. To clarify, getting to those levels roughly takes 2+ years of hormone replacement therapy(hrt). Hrt for trans women generally consist of an anti-androgen, estradiol, and progesterone.
The answer is more complicated than other comments would lead you to believe. Before I get into all that, please know it doesn’t matter. Especially, when it comes to 14 year old kids who are playing JV sports at school.
First, the problem with studies is that there are very few trans athletes to study. Some studies have only one or two subjects.
Studies show that there is both an advantage and a disadvantage depending on what sport we are talking about and how long the athlete has been on hormones. Weightlifting and other strength based sports do tend to give an edge to trans women. However, cardio sports such as swimming and running put trans women at a disadvantage because they now have smaller muscle mass for their larger frames.
To me, it doesn’t matter. The camaraderie and other things that kids get out of sports is more important than who wins and who loses.
Human beings are sexually dimorphic, but most of the advantages or disadvantages are negligible or can be overcome with training, so it makes little difference. It makes even less difference in middle and high school aged children, since everyone is at (somewhat) different points developmentally anyway.
So in college sports the performance gap is larger and should be considered or no? I also find this hard to believe even at a highschool level. While I was in highschool the advantages of testosterone were very obvious. If it were really the case that it makes little to no difference then shouldn’t the argument be to remove gender from sports all together?
Also sports were never fair to begin with, they are literally competitions of ableism
Maybe but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to make them as fair as possible.
I disagree, especially if it means auditing childrens genetalia to vindicate a chud.
Exactly, we’re talking about two different things when comparing children’s sports and Olympic sports and it’s easy to conflate the two.
Olympic competition needs fair rules to ensure the best humanity can produce is rewarded. The rules are already there and they seem to be fair and supported by trans athletes. Politicians need to stay out.
In children’s sports it’s more important kids learn skills, fitness, cooperation, and find a sense of community. So unless there is a massive outlier, the rules should maximise inclusion over “fairness”. Politicians also need to stay out.
I agree. I feel like this is only made more complicated because of college sports and the money involved.
Imma keep it a buck fifty, I don’t give a chicken fried fuck about fairness in any sport. Let them juice, drug, dope whatever, if they can do it then just document the conditions under which they achieved their times,reps, whatever.
This whole thing is just a fools errand to give chuds a foothold to deny transcare and further trans erasure.
I think you’re being a little dramatic. I understand if you personally don’t care about the rules but I have to imagine no one is saying it should just be an absolute free for all. Again I don’t understand why we link school and sports but we do and for that reason it means a lot to some and nothing to others. I’m completely down for a free for all in professional sports.
I agree with what you’re saying but I also don’t think it has to come to that. I guess my point is that if we don’t make some attempt to set a standard then we are allowing literally anything. I don’t honestly care for sports being tied to school in the first place but are we saying that anyone can claim to be trans and join the other team at any time because we’re all too afraid to talk about it or what? If that’s the case then it seems like we should just do a way with gender in sports completely.
I guess my point is that if we don’t make some attempt to set a standard then we are allowing literally anything.
You have a standard. Men play in the men’s category, women in the women’s. In this context, a man is anyone with a testosterone-dominant biology, and a woman anyone with an estrogen-dominated biology. There is your objective standard.
What if a person feels like a girl and then later a boy but the later decides that they really felt most like themselves as a girl and would like to be a woman now?
Why the fuck should anyone else be involved in that discussion? For that sake of fairness in sportsball? Give me a break.
Sure just do coed sports whatever I don’t care.
The whole thing is based on a false premise, that sports were ever fair to begin with.
If sports were as fair as possible, every sport would have handicaps built into it. Ensuring sports are as fair as possible is only ever brought up when new minority groups want to participate in sports they were previously excluded from.
negligible or can be overcome with training
I agree on a highscool/grade school level, but not at any extreme competitive level. There’s a reason most of the world records for athletics are held by men.
Testosterone doesn’t make all men better than all women, but if you take two equally trained+talented people for most athletic events, the men outperform the women.
I don’t know about performance, or advantage (and I don’t think it matters since noone seems to care about the performance or fairness of non-proffesional sports unless it can be used as a bludgeon against trans people), but I happened to be arguing with my neighbor about this a few days and found that, according to the president of the NCAA there are “less than 10” transgender athletes in college sports out of about a half million. I feel like the whole discussion is a red herring. 1
Most likely.
There is a recent last week tonight with Jon Oliver that explores this topic in a way that entertaining and powerful. Definitely worth a watch.
Hopefully you have a genuine interest and aren’t “just asking questions”
I’m genuinely asking. On its face it seems unfair but I also don’t understand public schools’obsession with sports that seems to be made worse by the cost of college and sports also being tied to that. At the same time I also know that anything the GOP is throwing a bitch fit about is guaranteed to be a bunch of bullshit. I usually watch John Oliver regularly but I’ve fallen behind this season. I appreciate the link and I’ll give it a watch.
What is Jason Woodford hiding?!?!?
“out Democratic”
What does that mean?
