politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:

- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Your own study that you just linked acknowledges a higher lean mass difference WHICH MEANS THEY HAVE MORE MUSCLE. The study says this doesn't 'necessarily automatically translate to greater athletic ability' which personally I think is horseshit.
Nor does it address differences in musculo-skeletal mass. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/
It is absolute horseshit you think the science is squarely in your corner on this, because it most DEFINITELY isn't.
What part of what I said above disagrees with you that this should be between a trans person and their doctor? That's literally what I said. Unless consensus has changed post-puberty HRT is how they do things, blockers are used until puberty stops. There are advocates out there who are saying give the HRT and blockers OTC not understanding you can't take both, and think that such a thing should be OTC and at the child's decision alone which is INSANE.
Personally don't plan on shutting up especially when you still haven't addressed how you keep someone undergoing hormone treatments from beating doping in sports too. There are definitely issues with cheating already with the cis crowd, and it is actually much much easier for someone who's taking hormones already to dope. Their levels can drop back down quicker during testing making it harder to detect cheating and steroid use.
Also it's patently ridiculous to merge women's and men's leagues as Venus and Serena showed, and what my personal anecdote was about. Women can't compete on the same level as men physically with sports. It's ridiculous that Chess is separated by men and women's leagues sure. But anything physical? You're joking right? Or you've never done sports?
Again your feelings do not matter. The study I linked and the study you linked say the same thing. I've bolded the relevant text for the illiterate.
From my link, "While transgender women exhibited higher lean mass than cisgender women, their physical fitness was comparable. Current evidence is mostly low certainty and has heterogenous quality but does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender."
From your link, "While data are still scarce, the limited information available does not suggest that trans men and trans women have much, if any, athletic advantage post-transition. Indeed, in most cases they perform more similarly to those matching their gender identity, or somewhere between cis men and women."
It doesn't matter what you feel like the truth is. It doesn't matter what you call horseshit because your words are not as reliable as the statements of doctors and researchers. Nobody cares that you've done your own research because you aren't an expert if you obviously can't read.
As for your argument about advocates of OTC, that's a nice strawman to build up, but until I see doctors widely recommending over the counter HRT for trans youth to self medicate, it's meaningless to get all pissy about it. It's the equivalent of claiming, "Someone on Twitter told me they advocate for drunk driving so I think we should just ban cars all together."
And I don't know what should be done about sports, but that's because I'm not a sports medicine expert and clearly, neither are you. It's great that you really like sports and value the integrity of the field or whatever, but your feelings about your hobby should have no bearing on wider social policy.
Again, hotly debated topic and even by their own results there ARE differences. Lean muscle mass IS greater in trans female athletes. Doping is easier to conceal in trans male athletes.
Bold assumption that I didn't go to college and don't have a bachelors in Exercise Science. I mean all I've ever wanted to do in life is train athletes lol.
But hey you can believe what you want and I'll certainly continue believing what I do. I think your problem is largely that most sports at the moment, the sports medicine experts ARE advocating against trans athlete participation. The opinions of the researchers and scientists in those studies concluded that lean muscle mass doesn't result in a competitive advantage. That is totally NOT the consensus of the field at large, and why people educated on the subject like myself are leery of the political impact on studies like this. Lean muscle mass as percentage of body weight remains the best predictor of physical ability. That's not even addressing musculo-skeletal differences which deals with how muscle attaches to the skeleton or how muscle structurally forms, which IS different between the sexes, and unfortunately, presently HRT doesn't affect, those differences persist regardless of puberty blockers present in prepubescence. So... tech has to get better to transition more completely.
So your best possible argument is "the evidence is inconclusive."
THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE WE PERSECUTING A MINORITY GROUP WHEN THE BEST EVIDENCE YOU CAN HAVE IS "MAYBE THERE'S A TINY DIFFERENCE, IDK?"
Seriously. Listen to yourself. We're talking about the civil rights of real human beings. That is NOT the kind of thing you fuck with unless you have an extremely serious reason to do so. Like, if after we let trans women play sports, suddenly we were dominating competitions left and right, obviously outperforming cis women in an unfair way.
The best shit you got is, "well, the evidence is inconclusive."
It's called innocent til proven fucking guilty. You don't persecute people on a whim or a hunch.
My personal opinion on the subject is that the inherent lean mass increase and musculo-skeletal differences which affect how the muscle connects to the bone and is structured. Differences that persist despite puberty blockers. Those specific differences are still being studied but it is my FIRM opinion based on differences between men and women in strength that are very much apparent, this is an unfair advantage period, and I cannot and will not support trans athletes, period.
Trans women aren't men. You just moronically try to map the performance of cis men onto trans women, blindly assuming they're the same.
And "your personal opinion" is just "my bullshit bigotry."
Common sense and gut feelings are what built Jim Crow.
Yeah I'm not going to be bullied or insulted into believing anything different. Nor am I going to be compared to Jim Crow era laws. The percentage of trans athletes is so small I'm very comfortable excluding them because I believe strongly the science supports the FACT that they have an inherent advantage, not to mention the increased ability to cheat among trans males.
Oh wait. You are just a bigot, going off your moderation history. I'm perfectly fine bullying you. You're below contempt.
Guess I should just vote Republican then and embrace it, thanks for convincing me of that!
The studies we both posted are reliable when you read them wrong and thought they agreed with you, but now they are unreliable when I point out you read them wrong and they disagree with you. What incredible judgement you've displayed. Your thoughts and ideas are really good and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter and discussion boards where you and other "people educated on the subject" congregate. /s
You're reading the conclusions of the researchers and ignoring the actual numbers, which again, for the very last time actually do support a physical difference on muscle, and at this point you've descended to ad hominem and we'll agree to disagree.