This Wreckage

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I’m trans but only came out as an older person. Like many of us, I see a lot of hatred towards anyone who is favourable about gender affirming care for young trans people, and lots of claims about the supposedly negative effects of puberty blockers on young people’s physical and mental health. I see far less of what that journey is like from young trans people, their supportive families or from trans health professionals, and I would like to learn about this. For example, for someone on puberty blockers during early teens, how does that affect establishing romantic relationships, or feelings towards potential romantic partners? Do they miss out on those? What are the effects (or none) afterwards in terms of relationships, as well as the physical effects?

Maybe someone can point me to online articles, stories, studies or books that show the experiences of living on blockers for a few years, and how that worked out – the positives and the negatives.

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“The NBA is mostly comprised of poor black kids” needs evidence to support your claim. Without it, why would anyone believe you? Once again, you haven’t even bothered trying to answer my arguments. Basketball teams are all taller people, which clearly discriminates against shorter people. This doesn’t bother you or any other trans-hater, even though it is vastly more prevalent than the tiny proportion of trans people in sports, as in wider society. It appears that you have a thing against trans people; gross inequality in society because of capitalism is fine for you.

As for your claim that being trans or non-binary is a mental illness, you will need evidence for this, which is, so far as I know, not the consensus in psychiatry. You merely express your hatred based on bigotry.

Given the complete lack of reasoned arguments and evidence in your comments, we can dismiss them. But, obviously, for you and the rest of the far right, it’s not about reason or evidence, concepts you despise. It’s all about power.

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Rather than use insults, it would be helpful if you could develop an argument with reason and evidence. Then I’ll know what you think about transgender athletes rather than what you think about me.

Regarding basketball, my point is that you accept with questioning the evident unfairness of taller people – of any gender – succeeding in that sport over shorter people. This is far more prevalent than any possible unfairness of trans women competing against cis women. Why, then, does that not bother you? Nor did you reply to my argument about the even greater unfairness created by the capitalist system which pits poor children against those from wealthy families as if they are on a level playing field.

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Perhaps you might think a little deeper on this. Clearly, some trans women have a physical advantage over some cis women. Who would even try to argue otherwise? But that is not the case for all trans and cis women, or even the majority; the solution when safety is at stake is to place cis and trans women in the competitive categories appropriate to their physiques. The fact that all basketball teams are composed of tall people shows how we happily accept inequities that you aren’t protesting.

You haven’t even addressed the core of my argument, that there are other larger inequalities in competitive sports that the trans-hate lobby refuses to consider. If you were committed to rooting out systemic injustice, you would be a socialist. Young athletes, as I have already written, are more likely to succeed when they have the enormous benefits of wealth: private schooling, families with the resources to buy kit and transport them to training and events. That injustice is vastly more widespread, deeply-rooted and effective in elevating children of wealth than the supposed (and largely illusory) inequities caused by the tiny number of transgender athletes.

“There is little, if any, evidence, however, that trans girl and woman athletes are a problem in need of a solution. When it contacted two dozen lawmakers sponsoring school sporting ban legislation to name examples of transgender athletes competing on girls’ teams, the Associated Press found “only a few times it’s been an issue among the hundreds of thousands of American teenagers who play high school sports.” And the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the International Olympic Committee, and other amateur and professional sports leagues have long had policies that allow trans athletes to compete according to their gender identity.”

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22423132/anti-transgender-bills-women-sports-fairness?

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Is that a reply to my arguments or an advertisement? Use your words.

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I don’t think it’s as simple as you – and World Athletics – make it out. There are many factors which influence humans’ physical abilities besides their biological sex (which itself is difficult to define accurately). For example, height. Should taller runners with longer legs be permitted to compete against shorter runners? If that is permissible, why not trans women against cis women? If there is a question of safety such as in boxing (which is inherently risky anyway), then use existing weight categories.

Competitive sports are deeply unfair by their natures, and many of the existing inequities are not challenged, indeed are vigorously promoted, by the bourgeois anti-trans lobby which claims to only want fairness. Children of wealthier parents gain substantial advantages in sport as in pretty much every area of life:

“Senior judges, politicians and diplomats are traditionally roles belonging to privately educated ‘elites’. But the chances of carving out a successful sporting career are more likely in some sports for those who went to an independent school too, a new report says.

Cricket is one of the top 10 professions for independent school attendance, behind the likes of Cabinet members, military top brass and those sitting in the House of Lords – 43% of men and 35% of women playing international cricket for England went to private school. Some 37% of male British rugby union internationals attended fee-paying schools, and about one in three Olympic medallists. Across the wider population some 7% of people are privately educated.

The head teachers’ leader Geoff Barton said: “State schools work tirelessly to make social justice a reality but the dice are loaded against them in a society where both privilege and disadvantage are perpetuated from one generation to the next.””

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48745333

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Thank you for that constructive comment, Jens. I take it that you have never seen a pantomime here in the UK…?

[This Wreckage]

Foundation colour: I’m 57, British and have not yet had any modifications such as hair removal or HRT. I want to choose a colour corrector to hide my light beard shadow, the obvious bluish tone which even close shaving doesn’t eliminate. I’ve been advised to try Mehron CreamBlend sticks (American, but I found them at Stage Door theatrical makeup site). As I have never had anyone advise me on what shade to use, how do I choose? I don’t want to waste money on something that is the wrong shade, and I don’t want to go to my local Boots makeup counter under false pretences to ask their staff to help!

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