Two transgender girls can try out for and play on girls school sports teams while the teens challenge a New Hampshire ban, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The families of Parker Tirrell, 15, and Iris Turmelle, 14, sued in August seeking to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act that Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed into law in July. While Turmelle doesn’t plan to play sports until December, Tirrell successfully sought an emergency order allowing her to start soccer practice last month. That order was expiring Tuesday.

In issuing a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty found Tirrell and Turmelle were likely to succeed in their lawsuit. She found that the students “demonstrated a likelihood of irreparable harm” in the absence of a preliminary order.

  • Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Instead of having an opinion on a subject I know zero about I’ll leave it to the ppl who know about the pros and cons of Trans athletes. If you don’t know anything about it you should shut the fuck up and listen to those that do. The negative of the internet is giving merit to ppl who know fuck all about what they’re taking about

    • bostonbananarama@lemmy.world
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      What do you need to know? It’s a high school team, not the Olympics. Why wouldn’t the default always be inclusion? High school is a tough time for a lot of kids, and I’d imagine it’s more difficult for most trans kids. If participating in sports makes it 5% easier, then so be it.

      • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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        In theory, I agree, but the reality is not that simple. There aren’t enough resources for everyone to play on every team, so there is selection, and tons of kids in high school pin their future hopes on doing well in sports. It’s ridiculous, and I hate the fact that school sports are so competitive as a result, but that’s the world we live in. Nobody is allowed to just play for fun. So as long as someone thinks their kid might be excluded or overshadowed because some other kid is “cheating”, there will continue to be conflict. It’s another aspect of the zero sum mentality.

        • bostonbananarama@lemmy.world
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          While I guess areas may be different, the high school I went to, and also the area I now live in, have varsity and JV teams. You had to be good enough to make varsity, but no one got cut from JV. Just belonging on a team is enough for some kids to make it all bearable. Everyone mentions scholarships, but how often is this honestly actually an issue?

          • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            Not just how often is scholarship but how many trans kids are even gonna apply to teams for this to be a problem. Judging by how much some people bitch and moan it almost seems like every single team in the world is getting overrun as we speak by trans athletes. Also why the fuck is the ‘party of small government’ getting involved by passing laws about this, leave it to the fucking commission of each sport once it reaches that level where it matters, they can put it to a vote and handle it or whatever the fuck they wanna do.

            • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              For perspective, one of the states in the southwest (I think New Mexico) tried to pass a similar ban and it got overruled by a judge because it was found that it would affect a total of 4 girls in the entire state, and the judge felt that that violated the federal law that says that you can’t make a law that targets specific people (ie you can’t make it illegal for Mike and Jerry specifically to join the basketball team).

          • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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            Your experience is very different to mine. I went to high school in the 90s. Even back then, both JV and varsity were cut teams for most sports. Some sports were popular enough that they had no-cut teams for underclass kids. But that cost money for extra coaches, equipment, gym time, travel, etc… I was able to play basketball on the freshman and sophomore teams, but I was never good enough to make JV, let alone varsity. Now my kids are in high school and it is even more competitive, because the schools in our area have more students and less money per student for sports. My son tried out for freshman basketball. There were 60 kids trying out for 10 spots. He didn’t make the cut. Only kids who had already been playing on district select teams for years did.

            I want to be clear: I don’t think it’s fair to ban trans kids from playing sports on any team. But I also don’t think we can expect people to just get over it. In their minds, at least, there’s too much at stake.

      • rigatti@lemmy.world
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        Yeah but think of all the bigots that will have aneurysm because of this. Literally killing people by allowing the girls to play.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      the pros and cons of Trans athletes

      Pro: Kids have fun playing together.

      Con: Literally every single professional athlete will become trans so they can win at sports.

      If you don’t know anything about it you should shut the fuck up and listen to those that do.

      I remember folks from Phillip Morse saying this about smoking, then bringing out a congo-line of quacks to prove it. Then we repeated this with the Exxon shills denying climate change for thirty years.

      Maybe I’m getting tired of being lied to by professionals.

      • Juniper (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Con: Literally every single professional athlete will become trans so they can win at sports.

        Please tell me I’m missing the sarcasm here 🙄🤦‍♀️

        What experts do you think are lying about trans people?

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          What experts do you think are lying about trans people?

          British pediatrician Hilary Cass, just for starters

          • Juniper (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            That is true.

            Did I miss the sarcasm or do you really think ANYONE would/could transition just for supposed gains in sports, let alone EVERYONE? They would have to take hormones that make them permanently infertile for over a year and proceed with a social transition all to convince a regulatory body that they are trans (and all of this would be incredibly difficult on their non-trans minds), and they would lose an incredible amount of muscle mass which typically athletes… Wouldn’t want

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              do you really think ANYONE would/could transition just for supposed gains in sports, let alone EVERYONE?

              No, that was pure sarcasm.

              Even at the most practical level, there are easier and more effective ways to cheat at sports. But the hysteria around this thing that has never actually happened happening consistently means we need to pretend its a problem to soothe the nerves of people who are well past the point of competing in anything.

              But the Cass Report shit was sincere. The amount of lying that went into structuring an argument for denying young people any form of bodily autonomy is staggering. Its going to go down in history like phrenology did. But we’re going to be forced to treat it as seriously as the Hutus and the Tutsies were forced to treat a guy with calipers, because this pseudoscience is being enshrined into British national law.

              • If it’s to prove a point then they won’t pass the regulatory body, like when Ben Shapiro tried to get a bunch of mediocre male basketball players to pretend to transition to try to get them into a women’s basketball tourney. It didn’t work, because they were obviously not trans. It isn’t even difficult to tell, because they obviously don’t have the relationship with their gender trans people have. It would be hard to fake. And none of them were on hormones anyways so they wouldn’t have qualified in the first place.

                Estrogen supplementation on a male mind will cause gender dysphoria, so I don’t think they would be able to keep it up for very long. But say one does, why would they knowingly make themselves infertile with no benefit? I know I had to weigh fertility and HRT and only went with HRT because of the mental health benefits that come with it. A cis man pretending gets no benefit, but does get:

                • Infertility
                • Significant muscle mass loss (remember we are talking about male athletes, muscles are kinda their whole thing)
                • Gender dysphoria, as they are now taking the wrong hormones
                • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  I would guess, and I may be wrong, that the percentage of cis people that would get gender dysphoria is closer to 90% than 100%, if someone didn’t plan on having kids ever (and didn’t research other potential negatives like shrinkage) I could definitely see some trolls doing it just to prove “the libs” wrong.

  • dgmib@lemmy.world
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    I can understand debating whether an intersex or transgender athlete should be allowed to compete in the women’s division at the Olympic / world championship level.

    But ffs do we really need to make a federal case about it in high school sports?

    This isn’t about athletic performance.

  • 11111one11111@lemmy.world
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    So what is a transgender girl? Born with dude fuck tools but born with dudette feel tools? Was the slim Jim wrestler competing in women sports south park episodes an actual possibility? I don’t have kids and any nieces, nephews, 2nd cousins or friends kids I’m close enough to care about this shit for isn’t old enough to be on the conversational radar of the parents yet.

    Edit: To add further context to avoid pissing anyone off for being dumb, I live in the rural US so limited exposure to all the varieties of peeps. No social media. Don’t watch any TV that isn’t a child’s cartoon with niece or family guy type cartoon so for me its cartoon or die. I’m all for learning about new shit. The problem is there is so much new shit to learn I don’t always have time to learn about all shit until it has some relevance to something I encountered.

    • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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      So before I explain, it’s important to keep in mind that for these discussions I’m adhering to the separation of “gender” and “sex” as different terms. Your sex is your physical attributes, and your gender is a mental thing-- do you see yourself as a boy or a girl (or, as some people do, something different from both of those options-- I’ll stick to the two main genders here).

      This means that transgender girls are people who were “assigned male at birth” (they have a male sex / their appearance caused people to treat them as a boy) and later realized that they see themselves as girls. They may or may not have physically transitioned (ie. changed sex), or may be in a state of partial transition (since genitalia, hormones, and some other things all make up sex, and those can disagree).

      TL;DR: A transgender girl was born physically male, now considers themselves to be female, and may or may not have physically transitioned to match that new identity.

      I appreciate you taking the time to look into this! It can definitely get complicated, especially if you start looking into edge cases, and in some regions it’s pretty rare to meet someone like this IRL, so natural exposure can be low.

      Edit: As a useful guide I’ll also give a short list of transgender-related acronyms:

      • AMAB = Assigned male at birth
      • AFAB = Assigned female at birth
      • FTM = Female-to-Male (transitioned to male, aka “trans man”)
      • MTF = Male-to-Female (transitioned to female, aka “trans woman”)
      • HRT = Hormone Replacement Therapy (taking hormones to promote physical changes to align your sex with your preferred gender)
    • borf@lemmynsfw.com
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      I haven’t seen that episode of south park but I wouldn’t trust the south park take on gender issues. Contrapoints on Youtube is a great explainer for uninitiated straight folks who want to learn about trans perspectives.

  • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    Why the fuck does the “land of the free” have a law for school teams. Let kids play on the team they want. It’s not like they are playing in the champions league.

    • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works
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      As a person who has coached inside the public school system, I wish it was that simple. I really really do.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I’d say that calzone looks sad, but any Italian-adjacent food is it going to be sad if it’s in New Hampshire.

    • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
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      There is usually, the “men’s” competition is actually usually an “open” competition.

      Then there is a separate women’s only “league” or whatever the actual word is, I don’t sportsball that much.

      I did find out there is a game called goalball, and that feels like cheating

    • cannibalkitteh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      How many trans kids in an age bracket in a single sport across the whole country do you think there are? For any team sport, it would be difficult to field a single team, let alone another team, for them to play against.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
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      Like transhuman sports category? For cyborgs and such? Could be cool, but also could incentivize people give their body away to companies to make money. Guess first we just need to do away with companies.

      • BigDotNet@lemmy.ml
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        Men and women categories are for men and women, anything else should have their own category.

        • Eyelessoozeguy@lemmy.world
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          I always thought it was open and then women. Open for any to join then a women’s team if there were enough women playing the sport. My highschool had a girl play on the football team, I think it was because we didn’t have a girls football team but w/e.

          • BigDotNet@lemmy.ml
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            Nationalities are defined by the place you born or by the origin of you parents, something which it’s beyond your control and define yourself as something/someone, trans people are self-defined so it’s not something outside their control.

            It’s like saying if I feel like someone who born in America and it’s white I should be treated like it beside I’m being black and born in Africa.

            I can feel and define myself as whatever I would want, but there is a big difference between it and enforcing other people to see me as I see myself.

            • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
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              Huh? Having fins isn’t a nationality? Irish was just an example of an adjective. Not sure why you are bringing it up?

              trans people are self-defined so it’s not something outside their control.

              Sorta, but the statement seems to show a pretty relevant and significant misunderstanding. Trans isn’t like an easily externally identifiable trait like skin color (technically an autopsy could potentially provide evidence for being trans even in those who’ve never taken hormones or done any gender-affirming surgeries, but like we are talking about correlates, not defining features). But like neither is autism. You find out basically by asking.

              For sports, some leagues have started dealing with the existence of trans people and hormone-doping cis women by simply making sports divisions include hormone requirements. Its not really about whether the person is trans or cis though, so it means some cis women who aren’t doping get excluded from cis women sports with such rules.

              PS: gender and race are both just made up.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
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      The media blows this out of proportion for you to even consider this an option. If you think that’s an idea that makes sense then re-evaluate where you got that talking point.

      There are laws banning trans people in states that affect like 5 people (I want to say there was a state law that literally affected one trans girl in the entire state.)

      • tootoughtoremember@lemmy.world
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        The state was Utah, the governor quoted the following in his veto statement:

        Here are the numbers that have most impacted my decision: 75,000, 4, 1, 86 and 56.

        • 75,000 high school kids participating in high school sports in Utah.
        • 4 transgender kids playing high school sports in Utah.
        • 1 transgender student playing girls sports.
        • 86% of trans youth reporting suicidality.
        • 56% of trans youth having attempted suicide.

        The veto was overridden.