There are a number of reasons bills like these are wrongheaded. One is that it tries to implement the same kind of one-size-fits-all solution that opponents of trans inclusion claim to oppose.

But let’s get nuanced for a minute...

Do trans women and girls have an advantage in sports over other women and girls?

I’m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.
What sport are we talking about?

How old are people competing in it?

What sort of hormone treatment has the person in question had and for how long?

Those are all factors that play into the fairness question.
Trying to implement broad policies in the name of ensuring fairness can actually have the opposite of the intended effect.

Take the case of Mack Beggs.

A few years back, Beggs was a high school student in Texas. He was a wrestler, and wanted to do it at the college level.
Beggs is a trans man, meaning his birth certificate said female on it. Like many trans guys, he takes testosterone as part of his medical transition.

He wanted to wrestle. Specifically, he wanted a spot on his school’s boys team.

He wasn’t allowed.
The rules that had been made at the state level said that because his birth certificate said female, he could only compete against girls.

Now, here’s where you might go “wait, wait, isn’t it unfair for someone taking testosterone to wrestle girls?” and the answer is yeah, it is.
So, he was faced with some tough choices, none of them good:

1. Don’t wrestle at all

2. Wrestle against girls, keep taking testosterone, have an advantage

3. Wrestle against girls, stop taking testosterone even though it’s something he, his family, his doctor see as necessary
Again, though, all he wanted to do was to wrestle against boys, which would have been the most level possible playing field and wouldn’t require him to top taking hormones.

But he couldn’t. Because of a blanket rule meant to ensure “fairness.”
High school students shouldn’t have to pick between medically necessary care or the ability to take part in activities at school, whether that’s sports or marching band or AV club.
So, anyway, left with limited options that were all bad, Beggs wrestled in the girls division.

He dominated. Obviously. He won the state championship twice in a division he never wanted to compete in in the first place.
People said “Hey! That’s unfair!”

And yes, it was. But it wasn’t his fault. It was an anti-trans rule meant to ensure “fairness” that caused the unfairness.

Here’s a story about him from this year. He’s in college now:

https://t.co/sAdkUN6SgC
But those bills aren’t aimed at trans guys like Beggs. The thought behind them as they get written and implemented is a concern that trans girls (whose birth certificates say male) will dominate sports/have an unfair advantage.
But as I said earlier, the question of “fairness” and level playing fields and all that is way more nuanced than many are willing to consider. https://t.co/qYnWNgtQDp
If a trans girl never underwent her body’s natural testosterone-fueled puberty, then it’s ridiculous to say she has an advantage over other girls in any sport.
But if you’re talking about someone who did go through puberty, went through a giant growth spurt to be 6’5” or something by junior year in high school and decided she wanted to play basketball her senior year, then yeah, that’s pretty clearly unfair.
“You must play sports based on what it said on your birth certificate” isn’t good policy, nor is a complete and total free for all.

It’s a topic that often gets looked at with zero nuance. Bills like Gabbard’s in the House or Loeffler’s in the Senate look to codify zero nuance.
The NCAA and International Olympic Committee have both tried to find policies that look at this with more nuance, and they seem to be working, generally. It’s not to say they’re perfect, and if suddenly sports was overrun with trans women just racking up goals medals at...
... the Olympics, the IOC would be right to think “Okay, we need to recalibrate things a bit.” But that hasn’t happened. To the best of my knowledge, there haven’t been any trans women who’ve even made their country’s Olympic teams let alone won medals.
The “trans women will bring an end to women’s sports entirely because they will dominate!” thing has been argued for decades.

Look, here’s a 1976 letter to the editor sent to NYT: “women’s sports will be taken over by a giant race of surgically created women.”

44 years ago!
On the topic of “why don’t they create an ‘other’ category?” questions, I’ve found this helpful. https://t.co/8DnMT9QSDD
It’s a complex issue that doesn’t have a clear-cut one-size-fits-all answer, which is why Gabbard’s bill to strip federal funding for schools that accommodate trans student athletes is just messed up.

But, as I’ve said before: this isn’t actually about sports.
Gabbard knows her bill isn’t becoming law. She’s only in Congress for 3 more weeks. This is culturally conservative virtue signaling. Same with her sponsorship of the “born alive” bill and her mangled understanding of Section 230 reform.
Her bill won’t get a vote in the House, and the current session ends next month, making anything that doesn’t get a vote, make it through the senate, and get signed before then pretty much just a way to put on a show.
I’ve written a lot on the topic of trans people, athletes, media coverage, and I’d like to think that I approach the topic with necessary nuance while providing what personal insight I can.

Something I wrote for Vice in 2014: https://t.co/VsFjdDRtwn
And I’ve written about how the arguments that get made about trans athletes get used in media to attack intersex athletes https://t.co/wMPTGPbk1A
Every time... without fail... I get these replies... even after that long-ass thread.

More from Parker Molloy

2017 https://t.co/kiqQoWR57e


https://t.co/W18nqFlLru


The GOP got rid of the SCOTUS filibuster so they could jam through three fringy right-wing Alito clones, including one right before the election, but sure thing, bud.

“Uh, actually, they got rid of the SCOTUS filibuster because Harry Reid did it first for something totally different! I am very smart!”

No. Knock it off.

Here’s the thing about the “But Harry Reid...” excuse:

1. McConnell was holding up Obama nominees, some *for literal years* without a vote.

2. Had he *not* done that, Trump would have inherited *even more* vacant seats.
This is a good piece by @AaronBlake. I've been scratching my head over claims that there was something in this trove of emails that implicated Fauci in something bad because pretty much everything matched up with what was being said publicly at whatever time the emails were from.


One thing that's occurred to me over the past few years is that there's a sense that the mere *existence* of emails is seen as evidence of wrongdoing, which is obviously nonsense.

It played out that way when it came to the DNC and Podesta emails in 2016, the Hunter Biden e-mails in 2020, these e-mails in 2021. It wasn't that there was much that was damning in, say, the DNC emails that helped sink Clinton's candidacy, but just their existence ...

... gave off a sense of corruption/scandal/etc., that weighed more heavily on people's perception of them as the result of them taking the form of a leak/data dump.

And it's kind of similar with the Fauci e-mails (which weren't leaked, but were FOIAed).

Anyway, again, @AaronBlake's post is a good and methodical breakdown of some of the bizarre claims being thrown about. If there's anything we didn't already know contained in those e-mails, I haven't seen it.
This is what happens when the Trump cultists refuse to acknowledge anything outside their extremely insular bubble: they can’t grasp that the majority of the country thinks he sucks and voted him out.


Not once in 4 years of Gallup’s 3-day tracking of Trump’s approval rating was it ever higher than 49%.

He was the least popular incumbent since Carter to run for re-election. It’s not shocking that he got his ass kicked in the election. https://t.co/7BSCQR2vI2


But if you do nothing other than consume conservative media, you’d be under the false impression that he’s popular, that his ideas are popular, and that the people who oppose him are a small group of haters.

In Gallup’s last update before the election, Trump had a -6 net approval rating. The last time it was a net positive was in May when it was +1.


And here’s how you get numbers like that: you do absolutely nothing to try to win over people who aren’t already part of your base. Look at those numbers among independents.
When Biden talked about unity, he was very specific about what he meant, and the insistence of right-wing tools like @Kredo0 to try to frame stuff like this as “betraying his own ‘unity agenda’” (what is that even a quote from?) shows how pointless it is to try to work with Rs.


Guys like @Kredo0 want to a.) put the onus of unifying the country entirely on Biden and Dems, b.) pretend that “unity” is the same as capitulation, while c.) not giving an inch on their end.

No. No, no, no. Nice try.

Really, get all the way the fuck out of here with that take. “Biden didn’t keep Trump’s POLITICAL APPOINTEES in their position, therefore Biden isn’t unifying the country.” Fuuuuuuck off with that bullshit.

When Biden said “unity,” he was talking about trying to help ALL Americans, not just the ones who voted for him. This, sadly, needed to be said after the Trump administration repeatedly tried to screw over people who didn’t support him.

Remember when the Trump administration INTENTIONALLY let the virus rage out of control (really should have been a bigger scandal, but 🤷🏻‍♀️) because it was mostly hitting states that voted for Dems?

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A THREAD ON @SarangSood

Decoded his way of analysis/logics for everyone to easily understand.

Have covered:
1. Analysis of volatility, how to foresee/signs.
2. Workbook
3. When to sell options
4. Diff category of days
5. How movement of option prices tell us what will happen

1. Keeps following volatility super closely.

Makes 7-8 different strategies to give him a sense of what's going on.

Whichever gives highest profit he trades in.


2. Theta falls when market moves.
Falls where market is headed towards not on our original position.


3. If you're an options seller then sell only when volatility is dropping, there is a high probability of you making the right trade and getting profit as a result

He believes in a market operator, if market mover sells volatility Sarang Sir joins him.


4. Theta decay vs Fall in vega

Sell when Vega is falling rather than for theta decay. You won't be trapped and higher probability of making profit.
Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.