Pete Buttigieg Says Trans Athletes in Women’s Sports Raise “Serious Fairness Issues”
https://www.them.us/story/pete-buttigieg-trans-sports-participation-comments-fairnessOpen linkView original on lemmy.worldhttps://www.them.us/story/pete-buttigieg-trans-sports-participation-comments-fairnessOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
His dad would be so ashamed of him. SMH
As a gay leftist, i never trusted Pete
Edit: Why I mentioned his dad...
https://jacobin.com/2020/03/pete-buttigieg-joseph-father-legacy-antonio-gramsci-bernie-sanders
How about that
This is canon actually
Have you guys ever considered that there are people on the left and even trans people on the left that are uncertain as to what the fair thing to do is with gender segregated sports? You guys seem a little cut your nose off to spite your face.
If you allow more Republican victories because people aren't actually sure about something, you think trans people are going to appreciate losing Medicaid because we stood on trans sports?
This is why the left loses easy wins. No strategy.
Honestly it just confuses me that its really a problem because quite honestly, how many trans athletes are there at the collegiate level? Probably not a very high number
Out of the millions of college athletes, maybe 10? Max? And are any of them winning titles or absolutely blowing out records? No. Theyre not. So who the fuck cares
They arent trying to win over conservatives. They are trying to win over moderate democrats who feel they are out of touch with reality.
Conservatives keep hammering on this issue because it is such a good place to hammer. The average voter doesnt care all that much about trans rights, because this issue doesnt affect them. However, lots of voters like sports, or have kids who play sports, and care about fairness. Thus, the issue drives a wedge through the Democratic coalition of the urban, upwardly mobile, college educated, and the working class. Sure, the 27 year old bi woman working at a Silicon Valley nonprofit startup is well educated about trans inclusion in sports. But the 57 year old black man with a union in Chicago - he doesnt really care. His perspective is that obviously this is an unfair advantage. But still, he never cared about womens sports in the past, and he doesn't care now. What he does care about is how the Democratic politician who he is supposed to be voting for seemingly can't acknowledge what he sees as a plain-as-day truth.
Conservatives aren't stomping Democrats because they have better policies (well, unless you count gerrymandering and voter suppression). It's because average democratic voters are peeling off to either not vote or are voting conservative, because Democrats, in their view, are wildly out of touch with reality. Democrats need to stop the bleeding, and conceding on the trans sports issue is a big step towards this. And it is especially enticing because it is one of those issues that truly does not matter that much. Sure, if some trans kids dont get to play baseball with their preferred gender, that sucks. But do you really want to stand firm here, then lose then have another election cycle of tarriffs, ICE deportations, corrupt tax money giveaways to corporations, and laws that enshrine Trump as king? Yeah, it's the lesser of two evils. That's politics and that's life. Defecting because you dont get everything you want isn't brave and noble - it's childish.
Click Thus, the ratchet shifts further to the right.
Oh no! Meeting people where they are and enticing them to your worldview by appealling to their indentity and values - what a terrible idea. No, no - shaming people for being anything less than your personal definition of perfect - now that's a winning strategy!
Every fucken time these stupid bitches think they need to go right. Every fucken time all that does is alienate their own base. This shit isnt fucking hard. It literally couldn't be easier.
Nah, they don’t think. They cash donor checks, and then do what they’re told.
Good job, Pete. You've disqualified yourself completely.
Only up to the moment they get voted into office, and even then, Pete proves that's not a given.
I was expecting a more nuanced case and was disappointed when I didn't get one.
If you're going to hand out medals, I think you should borrow from how they do it in boxing: by weight class. Or limb length or whatever matters to the sport, so that you're competing on skill, not whoever was born with the better [insert sport here] body.
That seems pretty nuanced to me.
He's saying "I don't know what constitutes fairness in any given sport, and I think it should be left up to the governing bodies of these sports to decide that, because they know better."
And this is why any queer person who knows half a lick of history is, at minimum, suspicious of assimilationist sentiments if not outright hostile to them.
🖕 Fuck you too, Pete. You don’t give a shit about fairness, pandering asswipe.
God what a pathetic shit head, no wonder he bombed in the primary. He's no different than Gavin Newsome
This signals that he could actually be moving into position to be inevitable nominee Newsom's 2028 losing mate. I had been thinking the DNC's failure strategy team was going to go with Gillibrand.
Pete, you may think you’re speaking to both sides of the Democratic base, but you’re actually just making the moderates shrug and the left want to throttle you.
lol that’s ok, Dems. i still remember how long it took for yall to champion same-sex marriage. i still remember HRC’s opposition as she ran for president in 2008. now i won’t forget how your party turned on trans people in the 2020s.
keep it up!
Do the "Fewer than 10" transgender athletes out of half a million that Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA, is aware of represent a "serious fairness issue", Pete? Fucking pussy.
That seems like a reasonable take to me. The leagues and organizations would probably know best how to handle these few outliers better than some old suits in a capital building somewhere far removed.
if politicians can't make decisions as good as subject experts, they should discuss it with subject experts. else why do politicians even have a job?
Politicians don't need to be involved in everything. You'd want politicians involved in your sports too?
What makes it unreasonable is that he is saying “Let the transphobes discriminate. It’s fine if trans people are mistreated and excluded from society. They don’t deserve protection.”
This is why Democrats have a popularity problem.
“We could make things better, but we aren’t going to, and it’s not our fault if we stand here and watch things getting worse” is not a policy that resonates with people. It’s sociopathic.
That's a wild stretch of meaning you made up versus the actual words said.
Another white cis gay man dusting his hands off and says "Well I got mine" then pulls up the ladder behind him.
This is a stupid made up wedge issue. The real question should be - what is sports and what exactly are athletes competing for?
Why is it the default in sports male and female categories? Is it because they are physically different? Is it because one has a uterus? is it because of hormones so males and females develop differently? We have managed, through scientific breakthroughs, hormone replacement therapy to be able to transform our own bodies into what we want and that in itself is an achievement - albeit it isn't perfect yet - but that's another topic.
If the goal is to compete and display human physical prowess and strategy in a regulated environment then male/female/other/etc. categories shouldn't exist. It should only be rated as 'where do I stand as a human being among my peers in X sport?'
Trying to fit a gender into a flawed categorical system of sports is bound to cause friction.
I just don't understand why the fuck sports are held in such high regard that we have to have politicians commenting on them anyway. Like imagine if a bunch of politicians suddenly took a stance on Magic: The Gathering tournament eligibility, or who is or isn't allowed to be in a book club.
For the life of me I will just never understand why we treat sports like they're some sacred pillar of society. It's grownups playing a game. None of this shit matters.
Just in case you thought Buttigieg was useful for anything other than Transportation Secretary, here you go.
New party is the only way for progress.
Dems are completely and utterly cooked, mayo Pete can take his identity politics and go fuck himself with it. Behold the anointed dem for presidential candidate in ‘28 in action. Pathetic.
If LeBron James got on HRT, then he wouldn't play like pre-transition LeBron James because that's like the opposite of taking steroids. Also, isn't Dave Chappelle the guy who had a whole anti-woke special and had Musk on his show?
Yes. Only a small fraction of people is trans and only a small fraction of that compete in sports. What's even there to argue about?
What if he didn't start HRT but found out he was trans now, like a lot of trans people I've had the chance to talk with. Would it be fair for him (her in that case) to compete in the WBNA, in your opinion?
Leftist or not, transphobia is transphobia.
This is such a dumb take. LeBron James makes about $50 million a year. The highest WNBA salary is about $250,000. Rookie NBA players make about a million a year. Absolutely none of them would give up that just to score "800 points a game".
Yup, hardliners hate when someone brings up nuance. I'm very strongly for trans people being treated as the gender they express in every aspect of life, except for physical competitions. There are physical differences between male and female bodies that you can't know have been completely remediated through treatment, so they shouldn't be in physical competitions that are segregated by sex. Literally in 100% of other situations trans people should be included in the gender that they express.
But this is exactly the type of situation where people on the left shoot themselves in the foot by railing against this type of position with a purity test.
Personally my position is that trans athletes are such a tiny number of people that it doesn't warrant any political discussion in either direction, because there are SO many other MUCH more serious problems that need to be fixed immediately. It literally doesn't warrant the time it takes to speak a sentence about it. This is an issue that conservatives use to drive a wedge between us on the left to reduce our power - don't let them do it!
Yeah, women have unfair advantages over men. It wouldn’t be fair to them, they went through a lot just to join us after all.
But people can figure out what is fair on their own and politicians can learn to let reasonable people live decent lives without their stupid uninformed perspectives.
he said this the same day evangelicals begged the supreme court to take up the case overturning obergefell
Controlled opposition party you say?