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naraburns  nihil supernum  9d ago (text post)   26700 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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Well personally, I don't think MtF trans people should compete against women either, but it's not a political issue. It should be decided by individual sports leagues.

A minor criticism, even though I sympathize with your views: what stops individual sports leagues from just all agreeing to lump transwomen in with ciswomen anyways, and leading to a sort of "market failure"? These kinds of organizations are probably prone to follow-the-leader, which is something that happens in the corporate world across many specific kinds of markets, and many sports leagues are basically just corporations anyways. I happen to agree with the take that market failures may often need government correction to cut through market actors' inability and lack of motive to solve market failures.

Womens' sports leagues are an explicitly political creation, so their policies are a political issue.

There's things like college sports where a women's divisions were established by a supposedly-liberal state decree in the first place (Title IX, I think). What's illiberal about enforcing that they remain women's divisions?

I wouldn't consider sex-segregation to be liberal, I would consider it a form of identity politics. The liberal approach to sports would be to give everyone equal access to the facilities, and let everyone compete in the same division. Of course, that would only mean everyone has equal opportunities, not equal outcomes. A 5 foot male probably wouldn't be winning at basketball, and no women would probably win at any sport involving any kind of athletic ability. Sports are unfair like that. Things like sex-segregation and weight classes are a nice form of affirmative action that let more people have a chance, but they still don't make sports 'fair'. You can have a womens' division for sprinting, but the winners in that division will be the most male-like women who can qualify (Caster Semenya, for example). Deciding where to draw that cutoff is messy and there's no clear solution.

Luckily, I don't consider any of this to be an important political issue, so I don't have to form a strong opinion, except that I don't want the government spending its time on it.

What I don't get is that you brought it up as an issue that prevents you from cutting a deal with the right. By your admission it's identity politics either way, and you don't seem to be as averse to cutting deals with the left, so why does the other shade of idpol prevent you from cutting a deal?

Well I guess it's just a shift in which side I feel is closer to me, and more possible to convince. It used to be that if I tried to talk about free speech or the issues with identity politics with leftists, I would get shouted down and called a bigot. Now they seem more open to listening. Whereas the LibsOfTiktok style right-wingers seem completely unapproachable nowadays. I don't get the impression that they want to return to the good old days of pre-woke liberalism like I do.

I don't get the impression that they want to return to the good old days of pre-woke liberalism like I do.

Well, that certainly describes me accurately, but as a counterpoint I'd say I'm probably a lot more open to "I'll leave you alone, if you leave me alone"* type deals, more than the typical leftist.

*) Which, to be clear, means "go do your thing in California, or somewhere, and don't impose your rules on other jurisdictions".

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