Why Trans Women in Sports Is An Important Issue

Trans women in sports is an important issue to discuss.

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▶Mail: Jessie Earl
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[sathyalacey]

Them blaming trans advocates for this topic is absolutely insane. Like, it's not us pounding on this issue nonstop.

[tmountain]

They got dangerously close to "If the fascists take over, it's the trans activists' fault." They didn't get there, but they were squinting in that direction. Hopefully they turn around.

[MosesSuppose]

It’s been so sad to see Ana and Cenk take every opportunity they can to dig their heels in deeper. I can’t see any way this ends other than them coming out with a “why I left the left” video

[nemoignorat]

TYT, the main show, is well aware what they do. They are in this game for a long time.
And you are so right about the gender division in sports is ridiculous at times. Let's talk about chess. Women are being told they are too weak and not good enough to compete with men in physical sports. And then we get chess and all of a sudden women are too dumb to compete with men. Let's be honest, the trans women in sports is just a distraction about the whole system of sports and the general exclusion of people who are not (white) cis men.

[Arin-xepm]

Don't forget! This also keeps trans people scared, alone, unseen, and separates them form their community. Sports where my only sense of community growing up, the only way I could content with others. If it had been taken from me I don't think I would have made it.

[spockos]

“we aren’t transphobic but trans ppl are to blame for their own oppression and the oppression of others”

[robsquared]

Given the salary disparity between men and women's sports and the fact that for decades womens sports were underfunded in school it's laughable to believe these people actually care about sports. It's about the bigotry.

[AngieDirk]

Normally, I'm 100% with you on these issues. I watch/listen, and literally say "preach" out loud as I multitask with work. This specific issue, however, is where I believe there is a necessity for nuance. Let me be transparent - I am a 45 year old cis female (lesbian) who played competitive sports her entire life until I've recently aged out. I've played for fun, for scholarship, even for money, and only ever on team sports (which I believe makes a difference in this context). I am the prototypical super-jock, super-geek...which is why I follow your channel. I was also a president of my university's LGBTQ organization, and was very proud to welcome some or our first trans members. Over the years, I've had several dearly close trans friends AND teammates. Never once did someone's "birth gender" matter to me personally, and I was never threatened or alarmed by their presence on the field or court.

THAT BEING SAID... You/we will never win this argument by telling the other side that the solution is to just change the nature of sports overall. That is not realistic. Nor is it wanted. As an aggressive competitor at the highest level of my sport, I would have fought tooth and nail against attempts to change things as you've suggested. Are women athletes (or women in general) treated equally to their male counterparts? No. But that doesn't mean we change the game. We just have to be better. It's as much a matter of personal pride as it is a push for equality.

There are two tricky/troublesome obstacles I struggle with on this issue, and this is where we need nuance and openminded conversation...
Athletes competing in individual sports like track or swimming have to be assessed differently than team sports. Why? Because unless they've been on hormone suppressors since their early teens, there is a natural advantage of height and reach for most trans women, and that advantage is much more pronounced in solitary performance sports. That said, if the bigots were to win, then we'd also have the issue of trans men competing against women where we know there would be marked advantages. The other area where I can't find a "happy" answer is concerning collegiate athletic scholarships and the idea of fairness. As a poor country girl who needed a scholarship for college, I know intimately the atmosphere of desperation felt to earn your spot on a team. Title IX gave us equality under the law, and it's there for a reason. Does that make a transgender women less deserving than me? No, of course not. And yet, it doesn't strike me as entirely fair either. I have no easy "right" answer here.

But maybe that's the point. With this issue — like much in life – there are no easy answers, and we have to find grace and fairness in each situation individually. For me, fundamentally, I think the whole thing is largely a non-issue for the simple fact that we're talking about the tiniest of tiny percentages, and a universal, all-encompassing law for so few situations isn't warranted. I played with and against thousands of athletes in my career. In that time, I only knew of 3 transgender women. Three. Out of several thousands. And you know, the ONLY people I ever heard murmur a single disparaging comment? Cis hetero men who had NOTHING to do with the team or the sport. They weren't husbands or fathers. If anything they were usually there as participants of the men's side of a tournament. And, like most of these sensitive issues, they're the ones who make the most noise...while suffering the least.

Sorry for the super long post. Who knows if you'll even read it? But, as I tell the rednecks back home or my clients in red states, progress on any issue only comes with dialogue. Witty one-liners read well. But they also oversimplify complex issues and, often times, push people apart rather than bring them together.

[busterandloulou]

When I was a freshman in high school I was around 4’7” tall and skinny. You might think this put me at a big disadvantage to most of the bigger and taller girls in my class and all of the boys. I was also quite aggressive. The PE teachers wouldn’t let me play contact sports with the girls so I ended up playing basketball with the boys. The coach called me Pistol Pete. My parents would not let me play football. I would have no problem with trans women in women’s sports.

[christopherpoff]

TYT is going to lose a lot of viewership over this. The left isn't like the right or the center -- we follow causes, not personalities, to paraphrase Dr. Cornel West.

[adrenalynn]

Ty Jessie for covering this! It's been disappointing but maybe not surprising to see Ana & Jenk slide into transphobic talking points & dog whistles 🏳️‍⚧️❤️

[HeyLetsDoAThing]

Whenever the trans sports argument gets brought up I bring up the fact that trans women have been able to compete at the Olympics with their fellow women for 19 years now, almost 2 decades, and not a single trans women has even taken the podium, let alone “dominated” any sport.

[caitlinalb]

Thank you for covering this!

I’m not trans, but live next to a trans woman. I have educated myself a lot over the past few years so if I’m ever needed I could be an ally, not a dufus. Our conversation is mainly about our pets, local council or other British things, but I want to be as supportive and knowledgable as I would be for another person.
I don’t think TYT realise that to a casual viewer like me - I’ve lost another news show. You can’t just say ‘I support xyz’ without doing anything to back that up. On any topic. Them not standing for minorities (& what they say they need) IS against what they say they stand for. It’s empty.

I feel for Bennie having to leave a job I’m sure she was proud to get.


Jessie if you ever wanted to go onto the leftist Mafia I think you’d have a wonderful conversation over there :)


Also Ana’s ‘I’m scared to talk to people of a different race incase I say the wrong thing’ 😮😮😅 That’s says it all.

[jasper]

Jessie, you've raised a point we often forget, that sport isn't inherently a competitive activity. To follow on from that, we don't even have to accept the value systems that have been set up, like, generally. We can create a world where success isn't defined by individual prowess and or willingness to exploit systems, peoples, and the environment; instead, a world where success is defined by things more helpful to the greater good of the world, humankind, etc

[Mallory-Malkovich]

It's so depressing to realize that ALL the resistance to ALL of the progress humanity has EVER made boils down to "I don't _want_ to change the way I think, therefore the new idea must be _evil."_ It always boils down to a _fear of change._

[obkenobi]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

I guarantee that even the lowest-ranked women's boxer could kick the ass of nearly any random man on the street, thus proving that gender does not automatically determine athletic ability. It would be far more fair if sports systems ignored gender and instead focused on weight class, muscle mass, height, or any other applicable metric that will more accurately determine "inherent ability" (for lack of a better term). Sure, the top classes will most likely be taken up by men, but if it can be measurably proven that a girl and a boy are equally matched body-wise then there's no reason they shouldn't get to compete. In fact, this system would make sports MORE accessible for ALL people-dividing by only gender means that only the top performers of that gender will be able to compete at all, while having different "leagues" for the aforementioned metrics will make these sports more accessible for those who don't have the "right body" for it. Under our current system, a 5'6" high school boy might never get to play on the basketball team no matter how much he wants to, but dividing by height classes will allow him to achieve his dream!

[Builderina]

To those questioning trans athletes...

My sister is cis. She's also 14 years younger than I am. When I was 26, and she was 12, she was able to easily overpower me after I had gone through a forced male puberty. She went on to break a lot of state sports records in her school because she was unfairly pitted against the other girls that had a third of the muscle mass as her.

She doesn't even workout anymore and her arms are as thick as my head.
My arms look like adventure time, just as they did during a male puberty.
I didn't start taking hormones until almost 30.

Explain to me, in scientific terms, how I ever had a physical strength advantage from that male puberty?

[yerocb]

I'm old enough to remember how cis, white, male, and heteronormative the "Gay Rights" movement was in the 80s and 90s. The Trans community was essentially told "you scare the normies too much" so they should stay out of the spotlight because it hurt the movement. Basically "progress for Gays is progress for you, we'll pull you up once we have the political power because society accepts us."

40 years later, the societal acceptance is better for the whole LGBTQ community, but Trans acceptance has always lagged behind. Worse, they were largely left out of the actual laws regarding rights, so while you can't evict/fire someone for being gay, you can if someone is trans (as common but not universal examples).

It's the same story all over again. "Sure you deserve rights, but maybe not THOSE rights. It scares the normies to demand them and hurts 'the left' when you get loud about it."

I think that's why we're hearing the same arguments used about trans people now that we heard about gay people then: they're perverts and groomers and what do we do about bathrooms!

Trans people have waited long enough.

(This also happened to a lesser degree to the Bi community. I think that's probably why I noticed at the time.)

[jay]

The point I usualy bring up when it comes to trans women in sports (aside from all current scientific evidence suggesting the advantage if it exsists is not significant enough to justify exclusion) is the fact that the "biological advantage" rehtoric was literaly used to justify racial segregation in sports. That ones ususaly an eye opener for them.

[danhigg]

just a tip, as Cenk is a Turkish name, the C is pronounced as a J, so "Jenk"