Steve Gilbert @ Sweetness @ Light:
From the (gay) sex obsessed New York Times:
Changing Sex, and Changing Teams
By IAN LOVETT | May 6, 2013
LOS ANGELES — … Professional sports have grappled with this question for decades, since Renée Richards, who was born male, underwent sex-change surgery and sued the United States Tennis Association to be allowed to play in the women’s draw at the 1977 U.S. Open: How, if at all, should transgender athletes be allowed to compete?
Surely, it is one of the burning issues of the day.
And now, high schools are beginning to take on the issue as well, as a small but growing number students who identify themselves as transgender have begun demanding access to the same school activities, like interscholastic sports, that other students enjoy.
More than half a dozen states, from Washington to Massachusetts, have adopted rules to allow transgender students to compete on teams that correspond with their gender identities rather than the sex listed on their school records. Half a dozen more states are considering similar regulations. And a bill in the Legislature would make California the first to specifically guarantee by law that transgender students like Tony are allowed to play school sports.
California clearly have their priorities straight. (So to speak.)
“Transgender students deserve equal access to everything in public education, including sports,” said Tom Ammiano, the state assemblyman sponsoring the bill. “You can’t discriminate just because you’re uncomfortable with a young man transitioning to become a young woman.”
Remember when some of us were mocked for predicting these very things?
The push to include transgender students in school sports reflects the rapidly growing visibility of transgender people in all walks of society — like Fallon Fox, the mixed-martial artist who was born a man but fights women —
When I was a teenager a plastic surgeon would not even do a cosmetic-only nose job on a girl while she was still in High School.
She and her parents had to plea her case and by then she was a senior.
Now, it appears, children can decide to take hormones and have life-changing sexual mutilation before their senior year.
Wouldn’t a person want to see how his/her own hormones affect him or her BEFORE cutting them off in exchange for other hormones which will surely do other things to them?
And none of that settling of hormonal balance happens in teenage years.
@Nan G:
The statements you made are correct in every way. The question you posed deserves an answer.
(“Wouldn’t a person want to see how his/her own hormones affect him or her BEFORE cutting them off in exchange for other hormones which will surely do other things to them?”)
I propose that the best answer would be “Not necessarily.”
Intuition tells me that at least 80% of the children you describe are every bit as confused as you suggest, and for them, early hormone treatment and surgery would be… premature. (pun not intended)
It is for the minority of cases where the transgender imperative is profound that I see some justification to proceed. The justification is that the longer the patient waits, the more established the genetic gender becomes (by the “settling” you refer to) and the more difficult a succesful gender reversal becomes. The same “settling” causes many mid-life “transitions” to appear… particularly “unfortunate.” This is because the physical frame has fully developed, and no hormone treatment can subdue a barrel chest. The earlier the change is initiated, the more closely will the body conform to the target gender. If the physician and psychologist determine that the patient is fundamentally and profoundly “in the wrong body” (such that the chances of a change-of-heart would be extremely remote) there is good reason not to delay the procedures.
There will be mistakes. Even with the caution exercised in decades past, some transgender patients do have a change-of-heart and attempt reversal. Reversals are also generally “unfortunate.”
(Please accept my use of “unfortunate” in lieu of graphic detail.)
@George Wells:
Thanks for that thoughtful and polite answer, George.
I know there are some people who say they had an awareness of being in the wrong body very early in life.
Doctors might be able to help with a gentle nudge one way or the other.
(Even back in the 1950’s we had a neighbor whose son failed to grow. The doctor gave him something and he grew. Unfortunately, later, that very treatment was found to cause other bad side effects and he died young.)
@Nan G:
You are very welcome. The treatment you recalled was injection of “Human Growth Hormone.” I’m not sure how they obtained it (extraction or synthesis) but it’s principal use was to make short people grow to normal height. Many terrible side effects occured. Some patients did not stop growing. Others developed bone cancer. There were also efforts to use the treatment to enhance athletic performance, much as steroids are used today. It is preferable to be content with the body God gave you if that is possible, as there are so many complications associated with the alternatives.
@George Wells:
You are correct about what it was.
I had forgotten.
Yes, he got bone cancer and died very quickly, about 3 months after they diagnosed him.
He lived to be 23.
Getting back to the topic, the problem isn’t so much that transgender athletes be allowed to compete in sports. The issue will come about when(not if, but when) one of these athletes, particularly one born as a male who then goes through the process and competes as a female, actually wins a big-time sporting event.
From that point on, that athlete will unfairly/fairly earn an “*” next to their name in the record books. I say “unfairly/fairly” due to the fact that their having been born the opposite sex may or may not actually contribute to their athletic prowess in their chosen sport.
I don’t necessarily care either way on this, particularly in the professional sports, as it seems asinine that an athlete would undertake such a monumental change in their life simply to compete in athletics as their primary reason for the change. I just don’t see something like this happening. I could see, however, certain countries competing in the Olympics forcing such changes upon people(China, I’m looking at you) in order to obtain for the country itself the glory of athletic accomplishment. And before you dismiss this as something that will never happen, remember that many countries already take children away from their parents at an early age and immerse them in a sport nearly 24/7/365 in order to shape their athletes into winners in international competition. It’s not that big of a leap to suggest that when the Olympics more freely allows transgendered athletes to compete that the next inevitable step for some countries would be the forced transgender procedures in order to build athletic teams for international competition that are more dominant than they are now. Just a thought.
I demand that the NBA be required to hire a 5’5″ 100 lb. Asian woman to play center.
I demand that the NFL be required to hire a 5’4″, 90 lb. Hispanic woman to a quarter back position.
All in the name of diversity, of course.
I had not seen China doing anything other than lying about the ages of their female gymnasts.
But the old Soviet Union and some of its satelite countries used to have awful manly women on their track and field teams.
@Nan G:
I wasn’t accusing them of doing that at present, although there was some question about one of their female gymnast’s gender during this last Olympic games. My point was that certain countries in the past valued high results from such athletic endeavours so highly that they engaged in questionable tactics to ensure their athletic teams were at or near the top of international competition. Therefore, if the Olympics chooses to freely allow transgender athletes to compete, I would not be surprised to find out that some countries force athletes to go through the procedure.
Shortly after my time in high school I pulled a random book off the shelf in the library of a U campus I was checking. I did not see the title as I grabbed it. It was on hermaphrodites. It brought me to visually see the plight of such people and any other aberrations out there that are sexual in nature. (I used Dr. Laura’s accurate term there. I do not have a syndicated show I can lose due to 5 crafty, angry feminists and pushover corporate leadership.)
I find myself wondering what young women in a women’s dressing room will feel when a guy that used to be Dick comes in there but now as Regina. Surely there is a poem about such. So one sorta happy . . .what was that song about L O L A Lola? and a locker room full of women that may not want to shower there any more?
I do remember those Russian “women” referred to in a preceding post. I understand many of them died young.
@Notinsome…
That was steroids – excessive doses of testosterone – before it was banned. I thought that I saw where some of those women @ track & field had their ovaries hanging externally in little sacs…
There are thousands of babies born each year who have all of the female and all of the male parts. The usual practice is for the doctor to ask the parents which one they want, and the doctor makes it so. They are still basically half man and half woman. I’m guessing that most of them are not half and half, but MOSTLY one way. What if the doctor makes a baby a boy, but their body keeps telling them they are a woman?
We need to make it mandatory that doctors do not change a person until a certain established age, so the individual can decide if they want the change, or to stay part man and part woman. All of us also need to learn to accept the fact that there are babies who grow up with the feelings of both a man and a woman. This is where the cross dressers come from.
Don’t we have enough problems in the world now, so why create more problems? Accept people the way they are born who don’t have a choice. Were you given any choices before you were born?
@ Smorgasbord:
I concur. The choice of a parent in such cases reflects whatever bias the parent has, not the child’s future inclination. The chances that the choice is the correct one for the child would be no better than 50%, while choices left to the child would likely be considerably higher. For much the same reason, gender-reassignment or “reparative” therapy usually fails, and fortunately is now largely discredited.
The challenge going forward is the integration of “different” individuals into the fabric of society. In childhood, the “different” child suffers, as the other children will often be cruel. Later in life, fearful people would have “different” people marginalized, their employment opportunities restricted, their rights abridged. In response, advocates for the rights of “different” people often over-compensate, asking for too much, too fast. Change is best when gained incrementally and secured over time.
#13
I agree. They should just be fighting for everybody to accept them the way they are. Some of us already have.