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Have you heard of the Female Athlete Triad (FAT)?
If you are a female athlete, or closely associate with female athletes, there's a very good chance that you've heard of the FAT, which has possibly the single most fantastically inapposite acronym in the history of acronyms. On the other hand, if you are neither a female athlete nor closely associated with female athletes, there's a good chance you've never heard of the FAT. The short version is, female athletes often show up at physician's offices experiencing menstrual dysfunction, low energy availability, and decreased bone mineral density. Sometimes this is also associated with that most famous of social contagions, the eating disorder--but often not!
The FAT is an important part of understanding female athletic health. Coaches and trainers (if they're worth anything at all) know to watch for certain warning signs, especially amenorrhea, anemia, and low body weight. Athletes exhibiting even one of these symptoms should, to the best of my understanding, be placed on lighter workout regimes or even excluded from practice altogether; athletes exhibiting all three should be excluded from athletic participation until more detailed medical examination can be done.
The FAT may be somewhat controversial in that attention to it arguably holds women back--a woman who cares more about a gold medal than about having children someday is rather unlikely to care much about amenorrhea (and may even see it as a blessing). But there are other consequences, too--like stress fractures, osteoporosis, bradycardia, and so forth. So people in charge of caring for female athletes--parents, yes, but also coaches and trainers--have for decades been generally regarded as under obligation to monitor women and girls for amenorrhea, anemia, and body weight/eating issues.
Why should you care? Well, recently there has been some culture war brouhaha over Florida (surprised?) weighing certain laws or regulations regarding the monitoring of menstrual health in teen athletes (really, just some standard questions on a standard form). Despite the AP's surprisingly helpful writeup, the Florida High School Athletic Association held an emergency meeting to "reconsider" their forms immediately, rather than waiting for their scheduled meeting later this month.
Certain folks in my social feeds have been going nuts about how monitoring menstrual health is a sneaky way of excluding trans athletes, or secretly learning who has gotten an illegal (?) abortion, and of course--it's all on Ron DeSantis, somehow. Time magazine, for example, seems happy to selectively report on the matter, as does Florida Politics. Advocate asks "why!?" Apparently, people have been asking "why!?" for months.
They've also been getting the same answer for months: "this is to make sure athletics is not endangering these girls' health." This is nothing new, and is something many states check. Should states check this sort of thing? I can imagine a certain sort of libertarian declaring that, no, this is unnecessary. But by and large it is the not the libertarians asking these questions--it seems to primarily be the people looking for something, anything to prevent Ron DeSantis from becoming President in 2024.
And they're even, apparently, willing to ignore and/or unwind a thirty-year-old staple of youth sports medicine to get the rhetoric they're after.
These sort of brave 'hold the line' moments of trans exclusionary feminism always lack self awareness. Where the typical scenario of a desperate plea in the name of 'women's health' are paraded about like a holy shield. Not recognizing the 'health' that will be sacrificed in the name of these 'women', notably the health of trans women. But on top of that not recognizing the 'health' that has already been sacrificed in the name of feminism at the cost of men.
The core mode of feminist 'meta' discourse is that of designating who is in and who is out. Who the 'actual women' are. You know feminists are in disagreement when some of them have started talking about what is best for 'actual women'. Women who find themselves on the out realize this very quickly. They are not 'actually women'. They are the outgroup. Being pro-life, for instance, functionally makes you not an 'actual woman' since your values are not going to be carried out by the people who 'actually care about women'. You might think that you are a woman and that being pro-life is good for women but you are wrong. The 'actual women' are pro-choice.
Taking this framework of feminist 'meta' discourse and applying it to the trans thing, the display is obvious. Trans is in. Even if it's just certain institutions, you can see the lightning quick reflexes. The Florida Highschool Athletic Association is not standing on their heels. There are people there who know what's up. They know what's 'in'. And in the name of every single element of society that feminism crushed to get where it is today all I can say is lol.
How on earth can radical feminists or feminists in general pretend that the sort of radical change in society, to the point of floating ideas that are to the direct detriment of someone else's health, are somehow beyond them? I've lost count of the times a radfem will stomp their foot on the ground and proclaim that no matter anything else, 'what is best for the mom is what's best for the baby'. Even if that means killing the baby so mom can continue chasing her dreams in marketing. Hell, where are the old radfem forum threads where women were floating the idea of not breastfeeding their boys so that they would become more physically equal to women? Those notions were, admittedly, radical. But the notions of drastically changing society to make these sort of 'equalities' come about via different means were not. In some aspects they've just become policy.
Feminist discourse has a very simple mode for how to view itself and 'actual women': Everything that is not 'actual women' takes a backseat. No matter what that entails. There is no principle. There is no line in the sand it will not cross. It is always and has always been a very simple mode. The ingroup always comes before the outgroup. There is no debate about anything else on that topic. The only debate is what qualifies as the ingroup. And that debate is, as it stands, over. The feminism of the past would not have batted an eye if they had to discuss this in any other context. At best they would only have acknowledged any resistance with mockery.
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