349 Comments

I guess I'm here again to scream into the void about how segregating sports by gender is dumb as fuck.

Maybe you can make cases for full-contact team sprots like hockey. most codes of football, and combat sports(but they already have weight classes) but for distance running that's bullshit. The whole (alleged) point of individual sports is the pure meritocracy where the most capable can rise to the top(now anybody with two braincells to rub together can tell this is not true, but it's a pleasant fantasy).

For my money, the only reason we segregate sports this way is 1) fear of cooties or 2) the men are afraid of being bested by a woman.

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Oh, also. we all said that the bathroom panic was going to hit cis-women the worst. Not to say "I told"... Well, I am in fact saying "We told you so"

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I have a student who I suppose is transgender. She does not make any particular effort to appear female, and on several occasions we have stood side-by-side at the urinals in the boys' bathroom. She is listed as "female" on the SIS.

I don't give a crap about that (it makes me wonder, but that is on me), and have not spoken with her about it, mainly because it is irrelevant to my role as her teacher. And my lack of understanding does not give me license to do anything except work through it and continue to be her teacher.

Does not seem THAT hard to do.

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Ta, Crip Dyke. Trans rights are human rights, and anyone who thinks or says otherwise can fuck right off and DIAF.

Ages ago (the Twin Towers were still standing) I used to learn any new word processing program -- and yes, I got plenty of work as a Wang expert -- and let it be known that I knew Xywrite III+. Among my myriad temp jobs, most of them for attorneys, I got a gig downtown. The secretary sitting next to me had a boss who was an absolute nightmare, including sexually harassing this lovely young woman. It upset her to listen to his filthy "jokes" and it infuriated feminist me. He had alopecia. With her permission, I called the Hair Club for Men and had him put on their mailing list. I wasn't around to see the fallout, but I sure did put a smile on her face.

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Bald chicks are hot. I was suddenly face to face with Sigourney Weaver as she was coming into a club, back when she was doing Alien 3, and OMG! I didn't know who she was at first, and neither did anyone else, so we had a moment in the doorway, just me and this amazing bald chick... She blushed, and I swooned. Priceless!

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I have a dear friend who has alopecia. I wouldn’t want to be the person who pulls something like this around me. Two can play the “Let’s throw screaming fits” game and I bet I have a better vocabulary of creative profanity than they do. I’m not the guy you want to get into a rude-off with, because I’m pretty sure I’ll win.

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The only thing I can ever recall saying to someone I thought might be a trans woman in a bathroom was, "oh, cute shoes!"

It's a BATHROOM. There are individual stalls. I don't want to think about what goes on behind the stall door because it's none of my business.

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I'm a guy. I don't say shit to ANYone in a public restroom.

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And, just like that, you just flunked out of Republican School.

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Yeah, it's not like they have a TAG program.

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They did something like that with that boxer at the Olympics, too, didn't they?

The cohort of the population who can't shut up about the CHROMOSOMES and it's BINARY moved the goalposts to include THE CHROMOSOMES, AND ALSO THIS WOMAN WHO I DON'T FIND ATTRACTIVE.

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(secret...it was always 'ALSO THIS WOMAN WHO I DON'T FIND ATTRACTIVE.' )

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"ALSO THIS WOMAN WHO DOES NOT FIND ME ATTRACTIVE WHAT ARE YOU A LESBIAN?"

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There was a phrase I used to hear a lot when I was kid and I don’t hear it much any more:

“Live and let live.”

Imagine how much happier we’d all be if we all stopped getting our panties in a twist over how other people are living their lives.

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I was standing in line at the grocery store, having picked up a few items for Mom while my brother, who drove me, waited in the car. I was fourteen, weighed about 75 lbs, had on a winter coat, and I had a Dorothy Hammel haircut, which was mandatory. An old woman politely said to the cashier, "Let this little boy go first, he doesn't have many items."

So embarrassing. Of course she didn't mean anything by it. I probably did look like a boy. I'm just glad we weren't in a restroom together.

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I'd have had to punch that lady right in her ugly face. Sorry.

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A scathing reply for being subjected to that fuckwit's attempt at public shaming would also be acceptable. I believe it's called "being dragged." Like "She TOLD you she has allopecia, you ignorant fool. She may still be bald tomorrow, but YOU'LL DEFINITELY still be an asshole who doesn't know when to mind her own business."

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𝘚𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳 𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘶𝘱 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘕𝘉𝘈 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘴....

This is tangential, but I can't help wondering if that came from some jerkoff who was furious that she somehow ruined his sucker bet on the O/U or some damn thing. A lot of athletes report getting tantrums and even threats from pissed-off app saps whose bets they messed up.

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Does it happen as much to the male athletes? This has a tinge of "I'm a man, so I get to harass females who displease me."

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Fucking with 6'6"/300 lb linebackers is a sure path to social capital and multiple broken bones.

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Also, too, "I'm a man, and I'm pissed at that athlete, but I'm afraid of him b/c he's a physically fit man so I guess I won't harass him. But this woman over here who can bench press my body is someone I don't have to be afraid of b/c VAGINA, so nothing stops me from giving full rein to my worst impulses towards HER...."

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And here comes the plot twist!

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I hate gambling.

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It holds absolutely no appeal to me. The fact that I could lose money takes all the fun out of it.

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And they're going to increase now that there are 4,765 different betting sites/apps.

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And it's all aided and abetted by the leagues. People are addicted and suffering because of this shit, and states are letting it happen because they're addicted too -- to easy, no-tax revenue.

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Sooner or later some athlete will be the victim of physical violence because of something like that.

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Slightly OT: That is one majestic big cat. It's also beautiful.

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I don't always try to find the good in people, I find it too exhausting. Any clear sign that someone is a selfish "A" hole I right them off. Just today I did this to an apparently able bodied person who didn't return their shopping cart. After all it's not like Hitler started with mass murder.

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In my younger days, I made an effort to be more open and accepting, because my gut instincts were so often negative when meeting people.

Turns out I've got a good gut.

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The truth about situations like this (and there are too many) is that they say a lot more about the attacker than about the person being attacked. And what they say is nasty.

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When the bigots realized that they had pretty much lost the struggle when it came to bashing gay and lesbian people, they shifted the target to trans people. Fascists and bigots always need an enemy. If they don't have one, they'll make one up and proceed to consider themselves threatened and aggrieved. It's standard operating procedure for them. They'll lose their vile war against trans people too, I believe, and sure enough they'll move on to another group. It never ends. Freud wrote that as human beings widen their circle of the accepted, they will behave all the more viciously against those who have still not been accepted. The aggression inherent in the species, he thought, had to go somewhere; it wouldn't simply dissipate. I suppose that's partly why older narratives (Victorian ones, mainly) about "inevitable progress" are so untenable.

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SF series set in the future have started incorporating LGBTQ characters into their casts and present them as just people.

That helps get the ball rolling. When the ignorant idiots spoon fed the hate start seeing "those people" being presented as normal and everyday without big neon signs over their heads flashing "gay" and "trans", it makes it harder to just accept the negative caricatures.

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Yes. People seldom just instantly give up their prejudices -- change is possible, but it can take a long while, as undercurrents ripple through everyday life and change sensibilities over time. What you're describing could be one such significant current. The appearance of social change is sometimes sudden, but I think it's almost always the end result of a long process.

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Gender policing is wrong not because it hurts non-trans people, or even because it disproportionally hurts women in general, but because it hurts everyone it touches.

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Cruelty is again the point.

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