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this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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Democrats have given up on the working class in favor of identity politics. They can't see through any other lens except the one that sees white people as oppressors and every other group as deserving of everything we can give them to make up for this "injustice". A good example is trans rights in sports. It seems fairly obvious to me that a trans woman should not be able to compete in women's sports simply because of the biological advantage of having a male body. Yet democrats blindly insist that trans women have a right to do anything an actual female can do. And liberals are also condescending towards anyone who disagrees with their views. Rather than thinking 'that's actually a valid point I should consider' it's always 'you'll eventually come around to seeing things the right way, like I do'.
Don't breed
"I believe Democrats believe exactly what Fox News says they believe" would have been a more succinct, more honest post.
Wow, you just have absolutely no idea what you're talking about do you? Is vomiting fox news talking points all that Republicans can do nowadays? Do better.
While your larger point is worthwhile, this part is indistinguishable from the positions where it "seemed obvious" that africans not as smart as europeans, or that women were not as mature as men, or that the poor were less deserving of the rich.
Trans women who go through HRT are essentially indisinqyusihable in ability from Cis women. There may be a reasonable bar in some sports for trans girls who are old enough to have undergone male puberty and aren't on HRT or puberty blockers, but blanket bans aren't at all supported by science.
Personally, my response is "these are children." Yes, our daughters should be free from being assaulted by fully mature men. But so should our sons.
I agreed with the post until there might be a reasonable bar part. When a person switches hormones the body follows. The whole concern about trans folks is also truly rooted in bigotry, not sportsmanship. Let’s not forget that part.
What I mean when I say 'it seems obvious to me' is that based on the results of reputable scientific investigation it seems clear that trans women retain some degree of biological advantage over people born female.
Which studies? Done with what methodology? And what are the rebuttals against their claims? Did the study differentiate trans women who are not on HRT, newly on HRT, and on HRT past the several year adjustment period? Same question, for age at which HRT or puberty blockers began. And does the reported difference fall outside the expected range for feminine athletes? Did the study include a group of cis boys or cis men as contrast? Were trans boys and trans men also included to show the presumable equivalent disadvantage?
There have been some infamous studies recently done by transphobes and cited as evidence of their bigoted viewpoint. Science thankfully doesn't itself care about politics and these studies will either be refuted or confirmed as more science is done.
And as I alluded to before, even if merely having been assigned male at birth gave some advantage in competitive sport, that advantage is entirely irrelevant to scholastic activities and only relevant to professional conpetitions if it puts trans women substantially outside the range of expected competitors.
"That advantage is entirely irrelevant to scholastic activities". Did anything I say have anything at all to do with academics?
The studies I reference are Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (2024), Body composition, exercise-related performance parameters and associated health factors of transgender women, cisgender women and cisgender men volleyball players by the NHI (2024), and Transsexuals and competitive sports in the European Journal of Endocrinology (2004). You can look up what you want to about each. Though the results generally say that strength metrics equalize over time, some skeletal metrics and residual lean mass differences remain even after several years of hormone therapy.
And since you decided to focus only on the trans issue in my comment I should remind you the thrust of my argument was in regards to Democrats putting identity politics before good governance.
Yes. In America -- the country which the Democrats are a political faction of -- the only places where government has standing to regulate the specifics of sport as such are in those leagues attached to schools. Professional and recreational leagues are only governed by employment and public-access law.
~(You're free to, say, create a private club that allows only white men and play whatever games you want. You just won't get any tax breaks or liability protection, and would have a hard time renting stadiums or selling coverage of your matches)~
I'm sorry, I thought my position on the matter was clearly While you may have a valid point regarding the democratic party's over-reliance on identity based anti-bigotry and their messaging to non-aligned voters, the sole supporting example you provided of either was phrased in a way that I found so odious and wrong-headed as to render whatever else you said irrelevant.
Throwing minorities under the bus is neither good governance nor good politics. Especially when said minority is facing prohibitions so ornerous that they could be fairly described as genocidal.
~(Although genocide is not strictly possible for any LGBTQ+ letter since trans and queer humans have existed for as long as humans have and would reappar naturally even if you killed every last living example.)~
Science doesn’t support your belief that trans women have physical advantages. Do you understand the role that hormones have and the effects on the body?
Have you heard the phrase "irreconcilable differences"? It's argued this way because support for trans rights, abortion, human rights in general, or fascism versus democracy are not negotiable positions. There's no middle ground or compromise that can be made on issues like these. I agree with you though that the Democrat party does not actually represent the working class.
AGREED! YOU are Right and EVERYONE else is WRONG! Which is EXACTLY why Democrats with YOUR Viewpoint keep ~~WINNING!~~
I believe the condescension you mentioned is real, but it’s magnified tenfold because we're all trapped in media echo chambers. Most normal people aren't obsessing over these niche topics, but the media and political machines weaponize them to keep us divided.
It perfectly exposes the hypocrisy on free speech on both sides. The left’s online gatekeepers treat disagreement as a moral failing, effectively chilling free speech through social conformity. On the flip side, the right screams about censorship while using state power to ban books, police classroom speech and insist that Christianity is the only acceptable religion. Both parties rely on these culture wars to control what we can say and think, all while abandoning any real, material help for the working class.
Republicans have just done a better job of identifying the issues facing everyday people and campaigning on them, but they rarely have a plan to actually fix them. Spencer Pratt's website for LA mayor is a great example of this. While he highlights the exact issues hurting regular people, there is zero substance or realistic plan on how any of it actually gets done.
You're absolutely right that most people wouldn't give a second thought to these topics if right wing media, in particular, makes it seem like these issues are the most important things in the world and society will collapse if we don't do something.
It's sad you got so downvoted and only had one reasonable reply. Trans people should be free to do what they want of course but I find it hard to disagree with you in that they would have a biological advantage in certain sports. But I'm sure it can work both ways, a trans man could have a biological advantage in other areas. But like the other person said, no one really cares about those things except the media.
In Alabama, when they were considering bans on youth transgender therapy, one of the GOP senators made them do a study. It turned out that over the past decade there were, on average, something like 5 minors undergoing any kind of gender-affirming treatment. 5. In the whole state of Alabama. They decided it wasn't worth implementing a whole government oversight system to oppress that few people.
Now think about how many of the people, under 18, are both self-aware enough to realize they're trans-fem (because no one raises a fuss about trans-masc athletes) and super excited about competing in women's sports. We are talking about a handful of people across the whole country.
And that's what makes them such a great wedge issue for the right. Essentially no one has personally encountered a transgender youth athlete, so they can make up whatever stories they like, based on "sounds reasonable."
Meanwhile, competitive sport is essentially all about rewarding genetic freaks. People with some gene mutation that lets their muscles work faster, lets their blood carry more oxygen, lets the build mass faster. If you worry about the biological advantage that a chemically suppressed hormone might have, you're starting down a path where you have to police what other biological traits might give someone advantage. It'll be "too tall to compete in basketball."
just want to note that trans masc athletes are de facto banned from all competitive sports because they take testosterone, a performance enhancing substance that disqualifies them from competing. thats why no one talks about them. as soon as you think about including trans mascs in mens sports you open up a whole messy can of worms about policing hormone levels, which spills over into womens sports and leads to a fundamental reexamination of sport as a whole, leading back to your point about sports rewarding inherent genetic advantages.
honestly i think sports and structured competition in general is fundamentally flawed. taken to its logical conclusion it becomes a technological competition, which people introduce more and more convoluted rules to prevent, ultimately undermining and corrupting the original purpose of the competition. you can see it in every single sport; swimming banning fancy suits and swimming underwater too far, cycling banning aerodynamic optimization, running banning fancy shoes, vehicle racing banning all kinds of technology, etc. every sport runs into it eventually, and our bodies are just the next untapped frontier for technological improvement. taken to its logical conclusion one questions why we bother with sports at all, if we aren't going to seek ever greater improvements.
Reality is non consistent with your claims of biological advantage.
Thank you.