Lauren Boebert rages over USA Boxing’s trans policy even though she clearly doesn’t understand it
Lauren Boebert rages over USA Boxing’s trans policy even though she clearly doesn’t understand it
"A high school dropout that needed several tries to obtain their GED should sit down when it comes to complex issues...
I don't think she cares what the actual policy is. The point is, she gets to make noise about the right's well-trodden favorite topic. What's actually going on is of no concern.
89100% agree, the hate is the point not the policy. It is a virtue signal to her deplorable people to say see I hate them just right now give me money.
This rhetoric has and will continue to get people hurt and killed.
6That's pretty much been her whole MO since it became apparent she was in real danger of losing her seat. Spout some antisemitic conspiracy theory buzzwords, clutch her pearls over trans people existing, and hope she can leverage the resulting public sentiment into an easier win elsewhere or a job as some political bobble head on a media network.
3I mean, it's working for her so far. What else is she qualified to make six figures at, let alone while not having to behave professionally or do any work?
If she believed in hell, I think she'd have some reservations, but as it is I think she's probably pleased as punch about the result.
3
Of all the gigantic fish that urgently need to be fried, why the actual fuck do we put so much energy into legislating who can or can't play a fucking game??
It's boxing. Boxing.
Our planet is on fire. The Nazis are back. Most of us are wage slaves. Women are going to prison over their physiology. Multiple nations are currently at risk of being wiped off the map... and the folks with the power to contribute a shred of progress toward fixing any of those are wasting their time worrying about whether or not some fucker can participate in a game based on the dangly bits in their pants.
...not that Boebert would actually make the right decision on any of the actually important issues. Maybe I shouldn't complain about that dipshit fixating on sports. But still, fuck!
66That's the point. All this culture war bullshit is there to distract from climate change, nazis and all the wage slavery (and regular slavery) going on in the world today.
17Our planet is on fire. The Nazis are back. Most of us are wage slaves. Women are going to prison over their physiology. Multiple nations are currently at risk of being wiped off the map...
Conservatives care about all of those actually relevant things, but they're trying to make them even worse.
Of course that wouldn't be very popular, so instead they just scream about what's in people's pants and their voters eat it up
14Republicans feel the need to do culture war nonsense because they can't govern. Telling people to their faces they don't know how to help them and that they're actually doing the opposite isn't going to pan out well. Easier to create a straw man and burn it.
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Raging over things she doesn't understand is literally all she is able to do.
60There are just so many things Lauren doesn't understand.
A high school dropout that needed several tries to obtain their GED
She finally got it only a couple of years before she went to congress.
And people elected this woman.
28This is an honest question and not intended to be inflammatory.
If a man goes through puberty, then undergoes gender reassignment surgery and is able to prove that their hormone levels are within the allowed ranges for four years, will their physique be comparable to that of a person who was assigned female at birth? Do they still have physical advantages gained through male puberty?
26they're gonna have physical strength similar to someone with their physique. hrt noticeably reduces muscle mass and many cis women (especially pro athletes) have higher testosterone levels than hrt levels aim for
60They're also going to have a better lung capacity, more stable trunk, and in relation to height men have longer arms and legs. Men also have larger bone areas at muscle attachment sites.
There's currently no way of removing all the variables that exist in order to equalize everything. In the case of boxing, you'll always hear about "reach" or arm length/wingspan. Boxers with a longer reach usually have an advantage since they can land blows out of range of their opponents. Since a born male will have a longer wingspan than a born female, that is one boxing specific thing that any Trans boxer will have over their opponent. That and lung capacity.
0
The medical science on it says that two years of hormone therapy are enough to lose any sort of competitive advantage in trans athletes.
Four years is overkill, and is part of why this policy is considered one of the strictest in professional sports.
50The argument that being trans gives you a competitive advantage always uses Lea Thomas as an example and always omits the fact that ciswomen swam faster than her.
The whole thing is bullshit.
5Not a doctor or a trans woman, but from what I understand, you lose the physical advantages of self-produced testosterone over time.
Additionally, it's not as simple as "hormone levels." Some AFAB women have higher than normal levels of testosterone, and some AMAB men have higher than normal levels of estrogen (and/or just lower testosterone levels). There will always be athletes who have biological advantages, whether that's a bigger heart, better lungs, longer/shorter legs, better eyes, stronger bones, etc.
We draw these boxes around perceived genders as if that's a guarantee of fairness, but it's not some panacea that effectively separates the able from the unable, just like gender is more than your genes.
3Nobody gives an actual shit because its just fucking sportball. There are real problems in the real world that real adults need to deal with. Meanwhile the children pontificate about how how people should dress and how that may affect their precious sportball.
-6It’s women’s boxing. No balls involved
2
Who cares though? It's time to stop segregating sports by gender. Sports are skill based, right? So let's break them down that way. Break out divisions by skill, not by gender or physical location. If a woman can work her way to top-tier heavyweight boxing, let her do it.
E: Damn, y'all are really afraid of getting beat by a girl!
-9Barbell Medicine has an excellent article about gender in sports: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/shades-of-gray-sex-gender-and-fairness-in-sport/
9I like that this policy includes requirements for hormones over time. I don’t know the science but they clearly considered potential unfairness and attempted to account for it
1
Well, nobody has ever accused her of being smart…so this makes a lot of sense.
20Yeah, man, If there was some issue that Boebert clearly understood, that would be the huge news story.
Actually, that sounds like a good story for The Onion. "Lauren Boebert criticizes bill for legitimate reasons that she completely understands."
10
She doesn’t need to understand it. As long as she makes enough noise- she’ll get the coward’s vote she needs.
19Be charitable and try to look at this from conservatives view point:
- Massive gun violence
- Runaway inflation, basics becoming unaffordable
- Housing crisis
- Healthcare in shambles, even if you can afford it
- Regular environmental disasters
- COVID resurgence
So obviously they need to have details on every persons genitals. It's clearly the most important next step.
16What makes it even better is they hate women's sports. They have always made fun of it. None of them watch it. They don't give a shit. They only care about the trans aspect of it. Not whether or not it's fair for cis women
5
She's likely totally OK with Buck Angel competing, right? Oh, but Buck wouldn't be allowed since he hasn't completed re-assignment surgery.
13Why does she look like she's giving a terribly toothy blowjob in every pic I see of her?
10Gotta stop looking at theater security footage...
12
Lauren Borbert rages…..
GOOD.
-1They have weight categories in wrestling so people are matched up properly. You’ll have people who are on the low side of their weight class diet and dehydrate to get into a lower class, so they’ll be at the top of that class and have an advantage.
There are some obvious physical advantages the average birth male will have over the average birth female. How could they put trans women and trans men into a match where they are properly categorized based on their abilities, not just weight or height?
And please, if you’re anti-trans I don’t want your answer. Respect that.
-5I mean the sport already has a mechanism to determine ability.
-2
I am not a specialist in this question, whether trans-women has inherit advantages, so I asked ChatGPT4. This is what I got:
The question of whether a transgender woman (male-to-female, transitioning after puberty) who has been on hormone therapy for four years has physical advantages is complex and can be addressed from multiple perspectives: biological, physiological, and in the context of sports performance.
Biological and Physiological Perspective:
- Skeletal Structure: Post-puberty, individuals assigned male at birth typically have larger bone structure, greater bone density, and different muscle-to-fat ratios compared to those assigned female at birth. Hormone therapy, even after several years, does not significantly alter bone structure. The potential advantage here could be in terms of leverage, strength, or mechanical efficiency. However, quantifying this advantage is challenging and varies significantly among individuals.
- Muscle Mass and Strength: Testosterone is a key factor in muscle development. Hormone therapy reduces testosterone levels, leading to a decrease in muscle mass and strength. Studies suggest a significant reduction in muscle mass and strength within the first year of hormone therapy, with continued but slower reductions over subsequent years. The extent of reduction can vary, but it's reasonable to estimate that after four years of hormone therapy, a trans woman might retain some muscular advantages associated with male puberty, although significantly reduced.
- Cardiovascular and Respiratory System: Male puberty enhances the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood and lung capacity. Hormone therapy may not completely reverse these changes. This could impart some advantage in endurance-based activities.
... (the rest is not relevant)
While I clearly would not support the language Boebert using, it looks to me that trans women do have advantages, which in sports, where fairness is one of the most important principles, may be considered unfair to the rest of women competitors. While I am strong supporter of transgender rights in general, I think that fairness in sports is something we need to consider too, and do not immediately call people transphobic if they are against participation of trans-women in women sports.
-52Imagine using predictive text as a source.
45First of all, precisely because it is LLM, it is good to point out that it is a source.
Second, the LLM and chat GPT4 in particular can often summarize information quite well. Yes, there are cases when it hallucinate, but at this point it is very rare for GPT4. So, when I do not have hours and hours to spend on some topic like this, asking ChatGPT4 is a valid strategy to get reasonable probability correct answer, with much higher probability than random claims here in fediverse.
So, I will defend the method as reasonable, and will ask you, do you claim that what is stated is false?
-39
You're not a specialist, so you asked a computer algorithm to spit words at you. Fucking galaxy brain move.
30Oh, FFS. Here we go. "I did my research" == "I plunked letters into a box until the computer used words I don't know. Science, bitch!"
We're so fucked.
29If your claim that what is posted is incorrect, then state so, and provide reasons. Otherwise, I do not understand why using tools such as ChatGPT4 you consider as something bad? Do you use search engines? They are tools too. Do you use wiki? That is a tool too. Or do you spit sarcasm on anyone who does not produce original research?
-28
This pre-supposes that the trans person in question has actually gone through a male puberty which is one things trans advocates are trying to make medically optional and anti trans protesters are trying to take off the table. A lot of trans girls don't want to be forced to go through the puberty that will cause them to be looked down on BECAUSE it will be used as a basis for villification and exclusion from multiple facets of society for the rest of their lives...
But the majority at large would rather have these two conversations separately because transphobes don't want to have young trans women going through a female puberty with the consent and blessings of their parents and a panel of specialists. Heaven forbid! No, they want to make sure that they have justification to make trans girls these monstrously powerful beings who are always supposed to be some kind of threat because they should be forced, like men, to be transformed into animalistic beasts with raw unbridled physical prowess and unfettered lusts that we cannot allow into the careful guarded cloisters alongside the delicate tissue paper likes of womankind.
There is never allowed to be a win condition because there's never even a tiny concession on any front in favor of trans people. If trans advocacy got what they wanted in the realm of trans healthcare for young trans people we could be having a very different discussion about both endocrinology and trans women in sport. Instead we must always assume in these examples that there's zero healthcare options that delays puberty and averts the puberty of one's birth sex and THEN face regular preaching about how policing the fairness of essentially silly games is cause to label us all completely unreasonable while painting trans women as cheats and monsters. It is an embittering Catch 22.
7I have no opinion whether trans women should be allowed or not to go through transition before. I would trust medical doctors about this (and not trans community and neither transphobic “community”, which are non-specialists).
But the fact is that the boxing organization does not even allow for trans people to participate in sport in category other than birth sex before age 18, so it assumes that the rules are applicable for those who transition after puberty, and I do see valid concern here from fairness to sic-women point of view. I personally do not have strong opinion here on how to balance fairness for cis-women with freeness to trans-women, but obviously it is not a clear cut question and any solution here would be a compromise with positive and negative sides.
But what amazes me is how quickly some people here get to calling me transphobe just for pointing this. Such extreme binary thinking does not serve community at all.
0
Have you read that? The last time I saw that many hedges I was through the looking glass.
2