FWIW, I am an advocate of an expansive concept of "standing" and have no trouble with Smith seeking declaratory relief as a remedy before actually going out into the world and doing something that might constitute an act of discrimination. I dislike the idea of courts punting on resolving critical issues because of narrow understandings of the "standing" requirement. This is a real issue that needs resolution, and Smith's proposition is as reasonable a way at getting at it as any.
So I side with Ms. Smith on this facet of the case.
Let's look at it this way. McClung and Bessinger invoked religion, speech, and association as reasons why they shouldn't have to comply with the anti-discrimination laws. They lost.
Phillips invoked those same rights as reasons why he shouldn't have to comply with the anti-discrimination laws. Technically he won on a different issue (one that wasn't really even briefed all that much to SCOTUS) but the Court evidenced considerable sympathy to those claims. There's every reason to think that Smith is going to prevail on them before this Court.
What, other than the makeup of the Court, has really changed? And given that, what does that tell us about our rights to express ourselves freely and our rights to be free from discrimination? It tells me that those rights are fluid and malleable, not eternal and unchanging.
Well, this case is about not just speech, isn't it? It's not that Ms. Smith wants to put on her own website a statement about her religious beliefs concerning marriage. It's that she wants the right to act upon that statement of belief, which means she wants the right to turn away same-sex business (should any ever actually come her way, see above with Saul's lengthy quote from Slate). Accepting or declining business offered from the general public is not something that seems like it would ordinarily be protected by freedom of speech or religion, at least not as most of us have been educated. But that's ground that we're breaking now with this case (Masterpiece Cakeshop having punted.)
The OP cites Newman v. Piggie Park, and is correct that this is a supreme court case, but links to a lower court decision in the plaintiff's favor, no doubt because that court addressed the issues of interest to us here. Before the Supreme Court, the issue was narrowed to entitlement to attorney's fees in Title II claims (spoiler: the plaintiff won, again). An interesting fact from the background to that case: the owner of the four-restaurant chain of "Piggie Park" restaurants was a fellow named Maurice Bessinger, who in the 1960's when that case was brought against him, serving as the leader of a group charmingly called "the National Association for the Preservation of White People." He sold Bibles in his restaurants along with tracts offering Biblical justifications for slavery, and justifying his conduct by saying that African-Americans got the best food because they got to eat directly in the kitchen. He does not appear to have ever learned the lesson the litigation should have taught him.
I think one day we're going to look back on people like Lorie Smith and Jack Phillips the way we do people like Ollie McClung (of Ollie's Barbeque fame) and Maurice Bessinger. But that day hasn't come yet; the new generation of people resisting change is wrapping itself tighter in its flags, gripping their crosses tighter, and more importantly, leaning heavily upon a sympathetic faction of the judiciary. That last factor is the real difference between the previous generation of people resisting enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and the current one: the judicial deck has been stacked in their favor.
The basic premise of this case is substantially similar to Masterpiece Cakeshop and SCOTUS has only become friendlier to these arguments since four years ago. There's every reason to expect Ms. Smith to prevail.
Indeed, Masterpiece Cakeshop was decided on grounds of procedural bias during the intermediate of three administrative hearing steps that took place before there was ever any judicial litigation. It turned out to be a big ol' punt by SCOTUS and all the talk about whether making or not making the gay wedding cake (I thought cakes were all asexual but that shows you what I know) constituted speech, forced speech, free exercise, or state-enforced servitude.
I await a re-iteration of the usual rehash of whether statutes like anti-discrimination-in-public-accommodations laws constitute forced servitude to follow, but I'll point out that "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article [the Fourteenth Amendment]."
I guess that counts as "concerning," but it may just be the algorithm going all wonky. I used to get suggestions about who to follow based on what persons or statements got emotional rises out of me, meaning it was often someone who said things I found outrageous.
Just got booster #2 (all Moderna) and have had a confirmed case of the actual virus. Booster #2 took a long time for side effects, like 14 hours. They were unpleasant, but mainly a runny nose and shivering in a bed that I consciously knew to be toasty warm. Next day, no problems at all.
Not sure why we care that Mal wasn't an officer. We're rating his leadership style. I *do* care that he's haunted by the ghosts of his past and is a bit too easy to draw into a confrontation.
I gave Sheridan top honors along with Picard and Adama. And of those three, Adama. I will now accept abuse for choosing anyone above Picard.
Musk announced a broad amnesty for most previously banned accounts and has personally interacted with fringe activists and white nationalists on the site in the weeks since he assumed ownership. Other actors have experimented with racist and antisemitic posts to test Musk’s limits as a self-declared “free speech absolutist.”
This seems like the sort of thing that would be susceptible of quantification and probably with data that can be mined from the site itself. How many "fringe activists and white nationalists" has Musk interacted with? Is his level of engagement with such types similar to his engagement with more innocuous users'? Or is it similar to the engagement that a typical Twitter user has? How many reinstated accounts have made problematic posts? How many of those have gone viral? Just because I might despair of figuring out how to come up with numbers for these or similar questions (I'm no techie), doesn't mean it can't be done. I suspect it can.
N.b. -- I didn't RTFA. Cancelled my subscription to the Post, for utilitarian rather than ideological reasons: I was only ever reading it in response to Twitter teasers of the articles, and I'm not on Twitter anymore, so don't much need it. Maybe there is quantification in TFA.
While I wouldn't go quite as far as "makes me trust Musk completely," I will say that Musk's actions are described as innocuous, such that at worst, he got suckered into something about which he was seemingly oblivious. Which doesn't mean Musk doesn't have problems, it means this probably isn't one of them.
The OP pulls a quote describing a rise of problematic (to use a light word) posting, some of which comes from formerly-suspended accounts. Lifting those suspensions was probably not a great idea and it's not clear how much thought went into the purportedly case-by-case examinations leading up to them. This could signal a directional change for Twitter, in which case there's cause to fret about the long-term culture; it could signal that Musk simply needs to learn the lessons that previous management had already learned, in which case, there's cause to fret that he either won't do this or will do it slowly enough that damage gets done to the product.
I hear you about the shingles shot and the low-grade anxiety of "welp that's my age bracket now."
I think I mentioned when we were hanging in D.C. about my vanity concerning my head hair. Well, I got some pretty bad hat hair the other day and after I took the hat off and looked in the mirror there was a whole lot more bright, shiny scalp visible than the maximum amount that could coexist with my ego. I almost said out loud "Dad, what are you doing here? Go home!"
So now it's time to reconsider my previous decision of "Who needs Rogaine? I'll just power through it with grace and acceptance" because ugh is my scalp bright and shiny and awfully, terribly, horrifyingly, visible.
Well. THIS is interesting to see:
Ye says 'I see good things about Hitler' on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140218872/ye-antisemitism-alex-jones-podcast?sc=18&f=1001
Hours later, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced that Ye's Twitter account was suspended. The move came after the rapper reportedly posted on Twitter an image of a swastika depicted inside a Star of David.
But I thought Elon was going to bring in a new era of free speech on Twitter! (Spoiler: there is no freedom of speech implicated here because speech on Twitter is not "free" because neither Twitter not Musk are the government but we've been over this endlessly already.)
Sarcasm aside, what I really see here is Musk starting to work through the same kinds of issues Twitter's previous owners and executives did, which were the same kinds of issues Facebook did and America Online before them and in fact every administrator of every open electronic forum (including here, as I have previously written to much wailing and gnashing of teeth in response) has since the late 80's: it might not be you saying it, but it is you giving it your forum and your name gets attached to it, so at some point you need to become a censor.
Here's an indication that Musk has begun to realize this, and I am glad of it for him and his company and its users.
The "no" votes on the sick leave measure included 42 Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. Most Democrats voted "yes," joined by six Republicans: Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana, Ted Cruz of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Marco Rubio of Florida.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-reaches-deal-vote-avert-rail-strike-rcna59600
It feels a little weird, but good for Braun, Cruz, Graham, Hawley, Kennedy, and Rubio, the latter five of whom usually rank fairly low on my esteem list. Were the remaining holdouts (Manchin + 42 Republicans) really willing to filibuster over that? Apparently so or we wouldn't be looking at Sanders needing 60 votes!
After nearly 200 years, the railroads still own the Federal government.
Weird how out of six cities, #4 and #5 (Houston and Phoenix) were excluded and #18 and #26 (Seattle and Portland) were included. Almost as if cherry picking were going on in that tweet.
1. Rumours was and remains one of the "perfect albums," one you can listen to all the way through without even being tempted to hit fast forward, one with tremendous musicianship, narrative thread, sexiness, and constant engagement. If you don't know the story of how they made it, that's a great journey to go research.
2. Christine McVie, when she was still known as Christine Perfect, was of course in several other bands before she married John McVie and thus fell into Mick Fleetwood's orbit. The one that got the most play was Chicken Shack, and the song that she sang for them that became one of the biggest hits (that's a relative term for this band, quite unfortunately) was a cover of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind." It appears that for a significant number of British Commonwealth music fans, they heard Christine's voice singing this before they ever heard Etta's. Which isn't bad, just a little different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohx9Ve7-GS0
3. You oughtn't ignore Peter Green-era (pre-McVie/Buckingham/Nicks) Fleetwood Mac, or post-Fleetwood Mac Peter Green, but there's no use pretending that it was even the same kind of band. And while she wasn't the most prominent member of the group, it's probably the case that Christine McVie was most responsible for pushing the hypnotic, silky sound that made the group globally famous. It's a sound, a feel, a reliance on melody and emotion, that carries through to her solo work. Some criticize it as "soft" but I'd say instead it's "feminine" and there is every reason to love it.
Methinks Rodgers was just effing with Kizer, but who can even say with that guy anymore?
Jordan Love looked sharp in his series against the Eagles, so maybe this season will be a good time for the Packers to start seasoning Rodgers' eventual-but-likely-also-imminent successor.
Popehat's Rule of Goats applies here. "He who performatively or ironically fucks a goat, is nevertheless an actual goatfucker." Whatever our other disagreements on these pages, hopefully we can all agree that Fuentes is a goatfucker.
Seems plausible. Something that put a high premium on endurance and agility as opposed to strength and speed. Athleticism comes in a lot of forms. Not mine, sadly.
If they do [feel like victims], does the relevance change at all?
No, of course not. Indeed, if a large majority of these athletes feel like they are being treated unfairly, that ought to give people pushing for inclusion of trans athletes pause to reconsider what they're asking for and why they're asking for it.
There's a lot of speechmaking and not a lot of listening going on with this issue. (And yes, I realize, it's not just with this issue. Just seems particularly poignant here.)
I'm looking for a survey of student athletes, particularly of women student athletes.
I agree with you that questions about rights ought not be driven strictly by the number of people involved. The fourth paragraph of my comment above is me elaborately agreeing with that proposition.
We do, however, measure political activity based on the number of people that it affects. There seem to be a lot more people politicking about this issue than there are people who are personally affected by it.
[I]t does stand out that when we were going over this, we couldn’t find any female to male athletes that got serious bumps to their relative positions.
I agree, that is pretty relevant. We can surely stipulate that biologically male bodies have the potential to be stronger and faster than biologically female bodies, at least with the caveat that as to the general population, we're talking about overlapping bell curves. Hopefully we can also agree that's a potential. Part of athletics is how a given athlete develops that physical potential. As you point out, reaching the highest levels requires extraordinary effort, time, money, and focus (and even then it doesn't always yield the degree of success that was hoped for).
If more data were to accumulate about what happens during and after hormone therapy given during puberty, it's plausible that we'd find that in a few cases it might help a trans male become a young adult with a high degree of athletic prowess, competitive with cis males in his age cohort. But the universe of people who are both trans males and whose focus, effort, and resources for athletics would enable a reach for that elite level of achievement, particularly when combined with other stresses and foci, like dealing with being trans in the first place, may function to create another barrier to that level of success. Hard to say, particularly when we haven't yet resolved the issue of whether administering such drugs constitutes misguided-at-best child abuse or controversial-but-beneficial therapy.
No, Jaybird, I don't have the numbers on that. And that's really the point I wanted to make here. This is data that's woefully -- and shamefully -- absent from this discussion.
Respectfully to Pinky, I do not think this is like a spousal abuse situation where there has been grooming and gaslighting and other psychological conditioning to blind the victim to an unfair situation -- I think a lot of these student-athletes are powerfully driven by a battery of competitive pressures and their coaches and parents and teammates will be quick to point out things that they dislike, things that break the rules, things that seem to give them a disadvantage.
As I suggested above, were we to gather quantitative data about the competitors' spectrum of opinions, that would not end the discussion. Pinky may have a point, albeit one that I think is a bit forced, that perhaps student-athletes would be under various kinds of pressures to give answers they thought would please people rather than expressing their opinions honestly, if there were a difference. Also perhaps we should expect that students, who are drawn from larger society, will have a spectrum of opinions representative of their age group and educational levels of that larger society, a society which I've noticed is still not particularly comfortable with the questions raised by the emergence of openly trans people. And no, students aren't the only people with stakes here because the model of athletics will be looked to for other kinds of issues in other forae later. No, the as-yet-unmeasured opinions of college athletes on this issue isn't dispositive.
But their opinions do hold special significance because they are the ones being identified as "victims" by those seeking to exclude trans athletes from competing in the ranks where they feel like they belong. If they don't feel like victims (at least for the most part), that seems highly relevant.
So far as I can tell, no one who's been active in expressing opinions and advocating policies or laws on this issue, on either side, seems to have bothered to ask the people who allegedly are getting the short end of the stick here. Anecdotes and testimonials are not data. There doesn't seem to be any data. That bothers me.
On “303 Creative Case is About Free Speech, Not Discrimination”
FWIW, I am an advocate of an expansive concept of "standing" and have no trouble with Smith seeking declaratory relief as a remedy before actually going out into the world and doing something that might constitute an act of discrimination. I dislike the idea of courts punting on resolving critical issues because of narrow understandings of the "standing" requirement. This is a real issue that needs resolution, and Smith's proposition is as reasonable a way at getting at it as any.
So I side with Ms. Smith on this facet of the case.
"
Let's look at it this way. McClung and Bessinger invoked religion, speech, and association as reasons why they shouldn't have to comply with the anti-discrimination laws. They lost.
Phillips invoked those same rights as reasons why he shouldn't have to comply with the anti-discrimination laws. Technically he won on a different issue (one that wasn't really even briefed all that much to SCOTUS) but the Court evidenced considerable sympathy to those claims. There's every reason to think that Smith is going to prevail on them before this Court.
What, other than the makeup of the Court, has really changed? And given that, what does that tell us about our rights to express ourselves freely and our rights to be free from discrimination? It tells me that those rights are fluid and malleable, not eternal and unchanging.
"
Well, this case is about not just speech, isn't it? It's not that Ms. Smith wants to put on her own website a statement about her religious beliefs concerning marriage. It's that she wants the right to act upon that statement of belief, which means she wants the right to turn away same-sex business (should any ever actually come her way, see above with Saul's lengthy quote from Slate). Accepting or declining business offered from the general public is not something that seems like it would ordinarily be protected by freedom of speech or religion, at least not as most of us have been educated. But that's ground that we're breaking now with this case (Masterpiece Cakeshop having punted.)
The OP cites Newman v. Piggie Park, and is correct that this is a supreme court case, but links to a lower court decision in the plaintiff's favor, no doubt because that court addressed the issues of interest to us here. Before the Supreme Court, the issue was narrowed to entitlement to attorney's fees in Title II claims (spoiler: the plaintiff won, again). An interesting fact from the background to that case: the owner of the four-restaurant chain of "Piggie Park" restaurants was a fellow named Maurice Bessinger, who in the 1960's when that case was brought against him, serving as the leader of a group charmingly called "the National Association for the Preservation of White People." He sold Bibles in his restaurants along with tracts offering Biblical justifications for slavery, and justifying his conduct by saying that African-Americans got the best food because they got to eat directly in the kitchen. He does not appear to have ever learned the lesson the litigation should have taught him.
I think one day we're going to look back on people like Lorie Smith and Jack Phillips the way we do people like Ollie McClung (of Ollie's Barbeque fame) and Maurice Bessinger. But that day hasn't come yet; the new generation of people resisting change is wrapping itself tighter in its flags, gripping their crosses tighter, and more importantly, leaning heavily upon a sympathetic faction of the judiciary. That last factor is the real difference between the previous generation of people resisting enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and the current one: the judicial deck has been stacked in their favor.
The basic premise of this case is substantially similar to Masterpiece Cakeshop and SCOTUS has only become friendlier to these arguments since four years ago. There's every reason to expect Ms. Smith to prevail.
"
Indeed, Masterpiece Cakeshop was decided on grounds of procedural bias during the intermediate of three administrative hearing steps that took place before there was ever any judicial litigation. It turned out to be a big ol' punt by SCOTUS and all the talk about whether making or not making the gay wedding cake (I thought cakes were all asexual but that shows you what I know) constituted speech, forced speech, free exercise, or state-enforced servitude.
I await a re-iteration of the usual rehash of whether statutes like anti-discrimination-in-public-accommodations laws constitute forced servitude to follow, but I'll point out that "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article [the Fourteenth Amendment]."
On “Elon Musk Is Doing One Heckuva Job”
I guess that counts as "concerning," but it may just be the algorithm going all wonky. I used to get suggestions about who to follow based on what persons or statements got emotional rises out of me, meaning it was often someone who said things I found outrageous.
Being free of that is a good thing.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Weekend Before The Oil Change”
Just got booster #2 (all Moderna) and have had a confirmed case of the actual virus. Booster #2 took a long time for side effects, like 14 hours. They were unpleasant, but mainly a runny nose and shivering in a bed that I consciously knew to be toasty warm. Next day, no problems at all.
On “Throughput Video: Andrew and Mike Talk SciFi Captains”
Not sure why we care that Mal wasn't an officer. We're rating his leadership style. I *do* care that he's haunted by the ghosts of his past and is a bit too easy to draw into a confrontation.
I gave Sheridan top honors along with Picard and Adama. And of those three, Adama. I will now accept abuse for choosing anyone above Picard.
On “Elon Musk Is Doing One Heckuva Job”
This seems like the sort of thing that would be susceptible of quantification and probably with data that can be mined from the site itself. How many "fringe activists and white nationalists" has Musk interacted with? Is his level of engagement with such types similar to his engagement with more innocuous users'? Or is it similar to the engagement that a typical Twitter user has? How many reinstated accounts have made problematic posts? How many of those have gone viral? Just because I might despair of figuring out how to come up with numbers for these or similar questions (I'm no techie), doesn't mean it can't be done. I suspect it can.
N.b. -- I didn't RTFA. Cancelled my subscription to the Post, for utilitarian rather than ideological reasons: I was only ever reading it in response to Twitter teasers of the articles, and I'm not on Twitter anymore, so don't much need it. Maybe there is quantification in TFA.
"
While I wouldn't go quite as far as "makes me trust Musk completely," I will say that Musk's actions are described as innocuous, such that at worst, he got suckered into something about which he was seemingly oblivious. Which doesn't mean Musk doesn't have problems, it means this probably isn't one of them.
The OP pulls a quote describing a rise of problematic (to use a light word) posting, some of which comes from formerly-suspended accounts. Lifting those suspensions was probably not a great idea and it's not clear how much thought went into the purportedly case-by-case examinations leading up to them. This could signal a directional change for Twitter, in which case there's cause to fret about the long-term culture; it could signal that Musk simply needs to learn the lessons that previous management had already learned, in which case, there's cause to fret that he either won't do this or will do it slowly enough that damage gets done to the product.
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 12/05/2022”
Well, there's one less piece of SIHTAF.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The Weekend Before The Oil Change”
I hear you about the shingles shot and the low-grade anxiety of "welp that's my age bracket now."
I think I mentioned when we were hanging in D.C. about my vanity concerning my head hair. Well, I got some pretty bad hat hair the other day and after I took the hat off and looked in the mirror there was a whole lot more bright, shiny scalp visible than the maximum amount that could coexist with my ego. I almost said out loud "Dad, what are you doing here? Go home!"
So now it's time to reconsider my previous decision of "Who needs Rogaine? I'll just power through it with grace and acceptance" because ugh is my scalp bright and shiny and awfully, terribly, horrifyingly, visible.
"
Sounds like a great plan for a date! Good luck my man!
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 11/28/2022”
LOL
"
Well. THIS is interesting to see:
Ye says 'I see good things about Hitler' on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140218872/ye-antisemitism-alex-jones-podcast?sc=18&f=1001
But I thought Elon was going to bring in a new era of free speech on Twitter! (Spoiler: there is no freedom of speech implicated here because speech on Twitter is not "free" because neither Twitter not Musk are the government but we've been over this endlessly already.)
Sarcasm aside, what I really see here is Musk starting to work through the same kinds of issues Twitter's previous owners and executives did, which were the same kinds of issues Facebook did and America Online before them and in fact every administrator of every open electronic forum (including here, as I have previously written to much wailing and gnashing of teeth in response) has since the late 80's: it might not be you saying it, but it is you giving it your forum and your name gets attached to it, so at some point you need to become a censor.
Here's an indication that Musk has begun to realize this, and I am glad of it for him and his company and its users.
On “From NBC News: Rail union rejects labor deal brokered by Biden administration, raising possibility of strike”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-reaches-deal-vote-avert-rail-strike-rcna59600
It feels a little weird, but good for Braun, Cruz, Graham, Hawley, Kennedy, and Rubio, the latter five of whom usually rank fairly low on my esteem list. Were the remaining holdouts (Manchin + 42 Republicans) really willing to filibuster over that? Apparently so or we wouldn't be looking at Sanders needing 60 votes!
After nearly 200 years, the railroads still own the Federal government.
On “From Fox KTVU: San Francisco supervisors approve SFPD plan to give robots ‘deadly-force option’”
Weird how out of six cities, #4 and #5 (Houston and Phoenix) were excluded and #18 and #26 (Seattle and Portland) were included. Almost as if cherry picking were going on in that tweet.
Almost.
On “Christine McVie and Fleetwood Mac’s Legacy”
1. Rumours was and remains one of the "perfect albums," one you can listen to all the way through without even being tempted to hit fast forward, one with tremendous musicianship, narrative thread, sexiness, and constant engagement. If you don't know the story of how they made it, that's a great journey to go research.
2. Christine McVie, when she was still known as Christine Perfect, was of course in several other bands before she married John McVie and thus fell into Mick Fleetwood's orbit. The one that got the most play was Chicken Shack, and the song that she sang for them that became one of the biggest hits (that's a relative term for this band, quite unfortunately) was a cover of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind." It appears that for a significant number of British Commonwealth music fans, they heard Christine's voice singing this before they ever heard Etta's. Which isn't bad, just a little different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohx9Ve7-GS0
3. You oughtn't ignore Peter Green-era (pre-McVie/Buckingham/Nicks) Fleetwood Mac, or post-Fleetwood Mac Peter Green, but there's no use pretending that it was even the same kind of band. And while she wasn't the most prominent member of the group, it's probably the case that Christine McVie was most responsible for pushing the hypnotic, silky sound that made the group globally famous. It's a sound, a feel, a reliance on melody and emotion, that carries through to her solo work. Some criticize it as "soft" but I'd say instead it's "feminine" and there is every reason to love it.
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 11/28/2022”
Methinks Rodgers was just effing with Kizer, but who can even say with that guy anymore?
Jordan Love looked sharp in his series against the Eagles, so maybe this season will be a good time for the Packers to start seasoning Rodgers' eventual-but-likely-also-imminent successor.
"
RIP, Songbird. You are missed already.
On “Who is Nick Fuentes and Why is He Having Dinner with Trump?”
Popehat's Rule of Goats applies here. "He who performatively or ironically fucks a goat, is nevertheless an actual goatfucker." Whatever our other disagreements on these pages, hopefully we can all agree that Fuentes is a goatfucker.
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 11/28/2022”
Seems plausible. Something that put a high premium on endurance and agility as opposed to strength and speed. Athleticism comes in a lot of forms. Not mine, sadly.
"
No, of course not. Indeed, if a large majority of these athletes feel like they are being treated unfairly, that ought to give people pushing for inclusion of trans athletes pause to reconsider what they're asking for and why they're asking for it.
There's a lot of speechmaking and not a lot of listening going on with this issue. (And yes, I realize, it's not just with this issue. Just seems particularly poignant here.)
"
I'm looking for a survey of student athletes, particularly of women student athletes.
I agree with you that questions about rights ought not be driven strictly by the number of people involved. The fourth paragraph of my comment above is me elaborately agreeing with that proposition.
We do, however, measure political activity based on the number of people that it affects. There seem to be a lot more people politicking about this issue than there are people who are personally affected by it.
"
I agree, that is pretty relevant. We can surely stipulate that biologically male bodies have the potential to be stronger and faster than biologically female bodies, at least with the caveat that as to the general population, we're talking about overlapping bell curves. Hopefully we can also agree that's a potential. Part of athletics is how a given athlete develops that physical potential. As you point out, reaching the highest levels requires extraordinary effort, time, money, and focus (and even then it doesn't always yield the degree of success that was hoped for).
If more data were to accumulate about what happens during and after hormone therapy given during puberty, it's plausible that we'd find that in a few cases it might help a trans male become a young adult with a high degree of athletic prowess, competitive with cis males in his age cohort. But the universe of people who are both trans males and whose focus, effort, and resources for athletics would enable a reach for that elite level of achievement, particularly when combined with other stresses and foci, like dealing with being trans in the first place, may function to create another barrier to that level of success. Hard to say, particularly when we haven't yet resolved the issue of whether administering such drugs constitutes misguided-at-best child abuse or controversial-but-beneficial therapy.
"
No, Jaybird, I don't have the numbers on that. And that's really the point I wanted to make here. This is data that's woefully -- and shamefully -- absent from this discussion.
Respectfully to Pinky, I do not think this is like a spousal abuse situation where there has been grooming and gaslighting and other psychological conditioning to blind the victim to an unfair situation -- I think a lot of these student-athletes are powerfully driven by a battery of competitive pressures and their coaches and parents and teammates will be quick to point out things that they dislike, things that break the rules, things that seem to give them a disadvantage.
I do have another number, though: thirty-two. That appears to be the total number of trans athletes playing in all intermural sports in the NCAA. Of those thirty-two (32) athletes, exactly one (1) has achieved a consistently high degree of success, namely Penn's Lia Thomas, a swimmer. Such is the scale of this issue.
As I suggested above, were we to gather quantitative data about the competitors' spectrum of opinions, that would not end the discussion. Pinky may have a point, albeit one that I think is a bit forced, that perhaps student-athletes would be under various kinds of pressures to give answers they thought would please people rather than expressing their opinions honestly, if there were a difference. Also perhaps we should expect that students, who are drawn from larger society, will have a spectrum of opinions representative of their age group and educational levels of that larger society, a society which I've noticed is still not particularly comfortable with the questions raised by the emergence of openly trans people. And no, students aren't the only people with stakes here because the model of athletics will be looked to for other kinds of issues in other forae later. No, the as-yet-unmeasured opinions of college athletes on this issue isn't dispositive.
But their opinions do hold special significance because they are the ones being identified as "victims" by those seeking to exclude trans athletes from competing in the ranks where they feel like they belong. If they don't feel like victims (at least for the most part), that seems highly relevant.
So far as I can tell, no one who's been active in expressing opinions and advocating policies or laws on this issue, on either side, seems to have bothered to ask the people who allegedly are getting the short end of the stick here. Anecdotes and testimonials are not data. There doesn't seem to be any data. That bothers me.