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A modest proposal to solve the trans sports issue (and maybe also all other gender issues in human society)
(Warning: controversial and lizard brain pilled. I’m not sure how much I actually believe this, I just want to have some fun speculating)
Recently, despite the massive blue wave in the midterm election, there was one conservative victory: the state of Washington (a very blue state!) passed a ballot measure that banned trans girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. This has triggered a quick lawsuit, and I have to think it’ll get struck down, but we’ll see. At any rate, it shows what a controversial issue this still is.
My proposal: stop segregating girls and boys sports teams all together. “Separate but equal is inherently unequal.” We already make them take classes together, and in fact mix genders in almost every activity now, even the Boy Scouts! Separate male and female bathrooms are also quickly becoming a thing of the past. And women are now proudly welcomed into every branch of the military, even front-line infantry. Also, kids are fully expected to play together during elementary school sports, as well as most adult rec leagues. So why are middle and high school sports this one, weird exception where everyone wants segregation?
I think that if we’re being honest, there’s one clear reason: it’s because the boys are too much better than the girls. We make the separate girls league so that the girls can win and feel good about themselves. It’s to give them self-confidence.
But isn’t that anathema to sports? Or at least, to competitive sports where there’s tryouts and tournaments and stuff? It feels wrong that the same league which says “you must do everything to be the very best and win” also says “but we’ll make a special, easier division to give out more trophies to the weaker players.”
At a stroke, this instantly solves the transgender issue. Everyone plays on the same team. No need for “vagina inspection day” or however the hell Washington was planning to do it. (And if you ban trans girls from the girls team, then where are they supposed to play? I guess they just don’t get to play sports at all?)
You might ask, but wouldn’t this stop girls from playing sports? No, I don’t think so. They’ll still be on the team, they’ll still practice and compete. It just might stop them from being starters, because they’re probably not good enough for that. But that’s the same problem that most boys have, too. It’s not some fundamental human right to have a starting spot on the varsity basketball team.
But what about the girls’ self-confidence? Wasn’t that the whole point? Well… here’s where things get extra spicy. (Translation: deranged, half-baked, hot takes.)
I believe that a lot of problems in our current society are caused because women have too much self-confidence, and men have too little. The girl who was the star of her girls’ field hockey team gets a full-ride scholarship to Harvard, then gets recruited into a hedge fund, where she is quickly promoted to make diversity quotas. So she becomes an extremely confident, ego-tripping, “girl-boss,” with immense power to make bad decisions that damage the world, or at least her company. She makes life hell for her subordinates, and loses all attraction to any normal men. She advocates strongly for feminist programs that benefit women like herself: more money for girls sports, no trans girls allowed in girls’ sports, and more female executives.
Meanwhile, her male equivalent? Well, he diligently played sports throughout his teen years, and was objectively better than her, but not good enough to make the Varsity team. Certainly not good enough for any college to offer him a scholarship, or even really care. So he goes to his local state university where tuition was cheap. He struggles to date anyone there because he looks bad compared to the football players and celebrities. He graduates, gets a perfectly normal job, but struggles to get promoted because “they have too many men in management already.” He tries and fails on all the dating apps. He stops giving his opinion on politics, because he’s scared of getting cancelled or shouted at by angry feminists.
Mixing up the girls with the boys would change all of this dynamic. The boys would get a big shot of confidence as they realize just how big and strong they are. The girls would stop getting fake confidence at winning a separate league, and really appreciate the boys for what they are. The colleges would open up far more spots to boys, so the gender ratio there would balance out. The boys would get laid a lot more, boosting the birth rate. And then they’d go on to get better jobs and be more active in politics, thus restoring reason and logic in our society.
Am I right? Tell me how any of this could possibly be wrong.
edit: see my response to people saying that the male league is technically "open" here: https://www.themotte.org/post/4074/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/497696?context=8#context
Women's sports is something that was foisted upon me. Its not that I disagree with it, I do mostly agree with it and think its a good thing, but I don't really care. Its not my issue. And it became an issue and law because of an intellectual movement (60s/70s feminism) that I wouldn't say is fundamentally flawed, they had a lot of valid points, but I think it overall has a lot of issues.
Everything trans has also been foisted upon me. I think its silly and not true. It came out of the intellectual movement that also gave us women's sports, (60s/70s feminism) and it came out of the parts of that movement that I find the most wrong and disagreeable.
So now to take stock of the sports issue - women's sports is a thing because of the other tribe, and they care about it way more than me. Same with trans. But trans is only a thing because of all of the pathologies of the movement that gave us women's sports. Like you can't have the trans we have today without the intellectual foundation of 60s feminism, the concepts of gender and ideas of social construction etc. that I think are wrong.
What I don't get is if you are like me and agree with the above, why would we not vote for trans in women's sports? Its not something I really care much about in the first place, and its totally enabled by the wrong and harmful views of the other tribe. They either need to repudiate their wrong and harmful views or they need to own it and have their pet project destroyed. You can't just nuke all shared institutions with your stupid gender views except for the exclusively women ones where it only affects stuff you care about, no make them get down in the muck with everyone else and deal with the consequences.
Even if you don't care for women's sports at the top level, you'd also have to swallow that your daughter can't do amateur competitive sports in a fair environment. From what I can see conservatives who think their daughters don't need competitive sports are fewer than conservatives in general.
It really won’t affect that much trans people are extremely rare and athletic ones even rarer.
"Trans people are extremely rare" is something I agree with, but then that would apply to many other cases such as trans-identifying men in women's changing rooms, which many conservatives seem to think is a big issue.
how rare is "extremely rare?" Being in california, I feel like meet trans people all the time.
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