The Socialists, led by Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, included plans to limit participation in female sports to “people with a female biological sex” in a policy document decided on at the party’s congress over the weekend.
The decision to also remove Q+ from a plan to protect sexual and gender minorities from the impact of social inequality sparked fury from LGBTQ+ activists and politicians from Left-wing partners of Mr Sánchez’s minority government.
The passing of a transgender rights reform in 2023, allowing anyone to change their official sex simply by stating their wish to switch, caused a bitter rift within Spain’s ruling Left-wing forces.
Carmen Calvo, the former Socialist deputy prime minister, said at the time the reform would “destroy the powerful battery of equality legislation in our country”.
Pathetic display from so-called socialists
Trans rights are Humans Rights
Disgusting,
Who will betray us? Social Democrats.
Wer hat uns verraten? Die sozialdemokraten. Wer war mit dabei? Die grüne Partei
Not really socialist of them…
No one is free until everyone is free
Disgusting. There is no liberation without trans liberation.
Social democracy is the left wing of fascism
lmao what
Social democracy and social democrats are more focused on maintenance of the current society than on fundamentally changing it, and the most critical part of the current society is the domination of one economic class (the ruling class, bourgeois class, whatever you want to call it). This party, as a social democratic party and not a revolutionary socialist party, is more interested in the maintenance of the gains they’ve made while not challenging the fundamentals of bourgeois class rule. Necessarily though, that means they’ll abandon trans people like us, so this makes sense in a sad way. Much like how liberals and social democrats will talk about their lofty goals, but ultimately cooperate and work with fascists and fascism; when revolutionary changes are taken off the table, backsliding is inevitable.
Hasn’t their socialist party been more neoliberal for a while?
It’s a European socdem party, it’s been liberal for a hundred years, give or take.
It’s uncanny how you can never expect anything good to come from social democrats.
It’s surprising because last year, they actually did pass a good law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Trans
They actually cut it down quite a bit from what it was a grassroots law with support of politicians. And it was possible amidst the inner confusion of PSOE itself, with its transphobe “feminism” wings taking positions inside the party. There was a gap of possibility between the two discourses:
transphobe discourse representation
“we are trans-friendly as long as it’s a secondary issue and you don’t threaten the binary status quo” and this “trans women with penis are trying to erase us women and must not enter women toiltets”
And some sources: actually PSOE tried to cut it down a lot, but faced too much opposition mostly in the streets, and defended by the equality minister of the more leftist then-coalition party Unidas Podemos. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/ley-trans/psoe-asume-no-puede-recortar-ley-trans-aprobación-dictamen-sin-enmiendas
Also, one of the “successful” cuts was against non-binary people.
Lesser of two evils moment
Social Democracy != Socialist in the same way National Socialist != Socialist
Social democrats are 100% capitalists, they share almost no common values with socialism. As others have mentioned in this thread, social democrats are concerned with how the capitalist machinery and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie can be maintained.
This article repeatedly calling them socialists is nothing short of journalistic malpractice. They’re smearing the wrong ideology which was their intent.
Ignorant passerby here, and genuinely want to change my mind, but how exactly is it fair for a trans person to compete against a biologically female person?
If we go back to the original reason for this sexist devide, it stems from a fundamental biological difference between two genders. How we identify ourselves has little impact on these biological differences no?
Furthermore I was listening to a podcast recently and they were talking about how the greatest female tennisplayer to have ever lived is would be ranked 2 or 3 thousand in a unisex world ranking. Seeing a worldrecord being set by someone working within the confines of the female body is impressive, seeing that same record broken by someone without the same constraints just devalues the other persons achievement.
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I can, I just did, bone density, body build and muscle strength cannot be fully reversed. I’m not saying every trans athlete will better or ‘unbeatable’ as you put it. I’m saying they’ll have an unfair advantage.
Bone density is actually one of the things that absolutely goes down with HRT, they even mention that in the study you cited.
Studies in nonathletic trans women after GAHT demonstrates no change in height, but have shown decreases in hemoglobin, bone density compromise, and decrease in muscle mass and strength, which continue to decline beyond 2 years.
While absolute muscle mass is higher, their relative muscle and fat mass percentages and muscle strength corrected for lean mass are no different to cisgender women.
no significant difference with cisgender women for running times by 2 years and sit-ups by 4 years after GAHT. An advantage in push-ups or upper body strength over cisgender women may remain at 4 years
This is all from the study you just linked, if you really are interested in learning maybe you could try reading the sources you’re bringing to the table.
Just to close out, again citing the study you provided:
with so few trans athletes and extremely low participation of trans people in sport, recruitment into such research will be challenging.
It’s almost like this is a non-issue that is being brought up by assholes to discriminate against an out-group.
A reminder that this comm is not for debating trans rights, (rule 4) I’ve let it slide thus far, but I’m really starting to question my judgement.
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Note I said not fully reversed.
Are you interested in defending your statements or learning?
Bone density in trans women actually can end up being lower than in cis women, citation
I did, it’s clear that there could an adventage, not that there definitely will be.
It’s a tiny fraction of the population, even less of whom are going to be athletes. Cis women are perfectly capable of having higher testosterone levels and muscle mass than trans women.
Frankly a far bigger advantage when it comes to competing in sports is being wealthy enough to even have time/money to train for and attend these types of events on a regular basis rather than working to survive.
Don’t put me in the opposition just because I’m trying to understand and educate myself
Don’t get defensive then.
Reality lies somewhere in the middle, but seems like you’re not willing to talk about the gray zone.
The reality is that the ‘sanctity’ of sports competition is and has been a farce, excluding trans people entirely is a shit way to address whatever supposed problem there is, and the people who are interested in excluding trans people don’t give a shit about evidence anyways.
Wait, so, your solution to “gatekeeping being trans” is to gatekeep trans people?
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I have to ask, are you trans yourself?
Wow for a so-called ignorant passerby you sure have a lot of talking points ready. That’s amazing.
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I looked up a study on google so now I will explain to all of you what your lives are like. I came here to be the professor not the student.
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You used an example to do what? To argue your point, right? So fuck you. Be honest. Reddit brained troll.
So a few things;
A) on the professional level sports ain’t about fair. It’s about who has the biggest natural advantage and enough money and time to develop the skills to make use of that advantage. Take the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps who has genetic mutations, plural, that mean we’re likely to never see anyone ever break his records.
Now that’s just the professional level, and a less than professional level sports are about fun, not fairness; and in a team game it’s about teaching social skills over fun.
B) post bottom-surgery on hrt trans people, either main direction, have no biological advantages. In mixed leagues there are trans women that are far below cis women, and there are trans men far below cis men. This scare mongering that trans women specifically would have this massive advantage simply isn’t represented in the real world where trans people have competed with cis people directly.
C) You want the secret to athleticism? It’s not sex, it’s t level. Testosterone is literally the magic key for sports. Trans women that no longer produce as large amounts of t (see. Above) consistently under perform cis women with high natural t levels. To preempt this as well, bone density isn’t fixed. The Joe Rogan scare mongering on women’s boxing is that trans women supposedly have higher bone density than cis women. This can be true, sometimes, but most often it’s not. Estrogen attacks bone density, and does so ridiculously quickly when you have elevated levels from any source. It takes just 3 years on average for your bone density to drastically change when your hormones balance changes.
D) this type of discrimination leads to false accusations, harassment and death threats more than preserves any integrity in sports. The Olympic boxer Imane khelif is a cis woman. XX. This trans hysteria has tainted her win, because she doesn’t look woman enough, whatever that means. Many cis women that don’t fit the local stereotype of “woman” are harassed because of people freaking themselves out about the trans Boogeyman. This type of harm outweighs any and all harm to sports, period.
B) post bottom-surgery on hrt trans people, either main direction, have no biological advantages.
I’ve never before heard of this need for bottom surgery to even out any biological advantages. Can you explain more, or provide a link to some more info?
Equating transgender women with cisgender men is biologically inaccurate.
The tests assessed body composition, lung function, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, strength and lower body power.
Among the results was a determination that the trans women athletes had decreased lung function compared to the cis women athletes.
In addition, the bone density of the trans women athletes was found to be equivalent to that of the cis women. Bone density is linked to muscle strength.
The researchers say their findings “reveal notable disparities in fat mass, fat-free mass, laboratory sports performance measures and hand-grip strength measures between cisgender male and transgender female athletes.
“These differences underscore the inadequacy of using cisgender male athletes as proxies for transgender women athletes.”
The broader issue is discrimination, and if one class of people should be allowed to be singled out and discriminated against.
Isn’t that the whole point of women’s sports though? To exclude a class of people (men) so that others (women) have a chance to compete on their own?
But maybe that idea itself is flawed. Most high performing long distance runners come from Ethiopia and Kenya, do we create a whites only league?
There are physiological differences contributing to these things too. Why does gender have to be special?
Conversely: why do we segregate men and women for things like chess? There’s no difference in ability there.
Maybe those ideas are what’s outdated and wrong, and we don’t need to erase a certain kind of person. Ignoring that trans people exist isn’t as helpful as finding ways to include them
As an egalitarian, I also inherently dislike divisions in competition based on demographic. Here’s my understanding of why they exist (though my stating the justification here doesn’t mean I tacitly agree):
Chess: currently, only about 40 of the 1600 grandmasters are women. To attain a balance, we ought to be encouraging women to play chess. Women-only competitions are a great way to do this. (There are almost no transgender chess grand/masters, so the same logic ought to apply here – I don’t understand any reason other than bigotry to exclude transgender women from such tournaments)
Sports: I think it comes down to a Schelling division. Now sure, there are other genetic advantages, perhaps race or leg length or height or other aspects influence one’s athletic ability too – top basketball players are generally many standard deviations above average height. However, those are spectra – ranges – so there’s no obvious place to split into two categories. There are basically only two obvious, bright-line, ostensibly binary dichotomies that people tend to believe categorize humans: (a) sex, and (b) disabled status (see: paralympics).
Now, imagine there was a genetic allele that causes humans to be 9 feet tall. About half of humans get this allele. Then obviously we’d add a new category for these super-tall humans, just so that less-tall humans would have the option to compete in sports.
Some sports make divisions on a spectrum, like heavy-weight, medium-weight, light-weight boxing and so on. But these are pretty arbitrary, certainly not Schelling points, so it’s less common for sports to use these divisions.
Now, I often find myself thinking, shouldn’t those certain cis men who happen by nature to be less able than a typical woman be permitted in the women’s category? My gut answer is yes – but the problem here is that there’s just no way to measure someone’s natural capacity for ability. There’s no bright-line, Schelling-point way to sort out these less-capable cis men. It sucks.
Valid points and I fully acknowledge my oversimplification. I just wanted to express that some of these alternate paths might be more fruitful and easier to solve than just having an apartheid society.
I like the idea of gender essentialism ≈ apartheid
Just, this. Haven’t anyone risen the point that in boxing there is segregation by weight? And in some sports by age? Also, clearly, black people in general have genetic superiority in (i think) explosive force and inferiority in swimming because of muscle fiber density.
However, wouldn’t segregate athletes by “race” be called racist? Why doing so by “sex” isn’t “sexist”?
Why aren’t athletes segregate by testosterone levels, however way this should be measured? Or height? Or weight? Or foot length? Or age? Like, poor post-35 athletes, they can’t have a fair race against 20-somethings, they have a natural disadvantage. Or, I don’t know, just “marks”, and let compete people with similar marks together, and let’s see what people in different marks or categories have to offer. Anyone know whether if in boxing lighter fights are like faster or more agile than heavier?
All this biologicist criteria of “poor women” is bullshit. Yes, where there is a clear T gap and this gives cis women a fair competition and representation, and it has value, but it is taken to the absurd like with chess, as it’s been already said.
Outside of sports, the definition of a “biological women” is also racist and eurocentrist. Like, european cis-women tend to have more hair than east-asian men. And african/black women tend to muscle up way easier than white men. Also, height difference betwen “sexes” isn’t a thing in the Andes, it’s just not real. And taking andinian people, they may be shorter in height and may not run as fast as a whitie, but take that race to 4000 m above sea level and let’s see who can endure half a marathon and is “naturally superior”.
I am really fed up by racist and patriarchal arguments trying to hide behind a science with overfunded biases.
For sure, I am very aware of the overlying issue here. And let it be known that I have always been supportive of the movement.
Biological and genetic differences are always contributing to why some athletes are better than others. Also: the science on trans athlete performance is mixed and unclear.
It’s a complicated issue, but I’d sooner reevaluate our attitudes and culture around competitive sports before resorting to creating a lower class of person. Maybe we take these things too seriously.
To expand on this, maybe we just have tiers of competition regardless of gender (like leagues) and people play where the competition is kept even. It might stratify so that there is more mixing of genders in the mid range and trans athletes may also fall into that range (but again: science isn’t clear).
Maybe mine is a weird way to explain it, but here it is. It’s up to the rules to decide what is an unfair advantage and what is not. You can make sports categories based on gender, or body weight. You could theoretically make them according to muscle mass, or maybe even blood androgen concentration. But here the rules only say “men and women”; if you think some people might still have an unfair advantage under that scheme, that’s okay, but going down the lazy path of leaving basically everything unchanged exept you restrict some women from participating in “women’s” sports is the worst possible way to handle it. It alienates people by refusing to grow beyond an outdated model.
Two points:
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Top-level sports isn’t fair. Most famous athletes are outliers in terms of height, weight, muscle mass, etc. Some, like Phelps, have genetic or developmental differences that give them a pretty significant advantage.
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I must admit that the legal definition of ‘transwoman’ varies from country to country. In India, where I live, a person can legally change their gender without any medical intervention, and such people might have a physical advantage over cis-women. But in the vast majority of countries, they have to take hormones and / or do surgical procedures that reshape their body to be more ‘feminine’. Once they do that, they have no significant advantage over cis-women.
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Social Democrats and highly reactionary tendencies, who ever could have guessed? Objectively the moderate wing of fascism. Who knew that adopting leftist aesthetics to maintain Imperialism and Capitalism via concessions is a tendency of transphobes?
