Cisgender Boy Forced to Play on Girls' Sports Team Because of Birth Certificate Error
https://www.them.us/story/laker-jackson-gender-trans-sports-arizona-eastmark-highOpen linkView original on lemmy.world984
Comments223https://www.them.us/story/laker-jackson-gender-trans-sports-arizona-eastmark-highOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
I cannot imagine being the dumbass who said that with a straight face.
I don't understand why it's the school asking for this and not whoever updated the birth certificate? How did school administrators become the judges of who is a boy or girl?
republican laws often give the final say to the loudest karen and the cost onto the schools.
Because their the ones who will be prosecuted under the law if they allow a kid to play on the wrong team.
My (cis female) birth certificate erroneously was filled out with "male". Same error happened on the birth certificate of my mother (who is also cis female). It's never caused either of us any problems. Schools enrolled us as female, driver's licenses say female, etc.
When I was in college in the early 2000s, my dad's mother helped me get a copy of my birth certificate, and was horrified her beautiful granddaughter was listed as male. She called up the county clerk and raised Cain, and then informed me it had been corrected. I've never needed to get a fresh copy since then, so I don't know for sure, but it sounded like the word of an angry old lady was enough to get an update filed.
Angry old ladies are the single scariest force on the planet.
Because if you make one angry, then you have to answer to all of their friends, family, caretakers, religious leaders, and bingo dealers.
They are also the reason why we are in this situation in the first play. Angry old lady energy serves both justice and tyranny.
Do they use drunkards to fill out important registration forms in the US?
There's something like thirty boxes of information on the thing, and all the others are correct. I suspect whoever was typing it (on a typewriter - this was pre-computers) had several in a row that really were male babies and just got that stuck in their head.
How difficult is it to correct an obviously wrong record in the US?
Depends on how braindead the clerk is.
When you're doing it matters a lot too. It was much easier before, but now that gender is a huge political football the process has been mucked up
Used to not be a problem. But people transitioning use the same process to amend their records, so now there's roadblocks.
They actually sent the school an amended certificate, and a doctor's note explaining everything. The school just isn't satisfied.
From reading the articles about this: The birth certificate was already updated, no problem. The school, however, has its internal policy regarding "amended birth certificates". The school policy says this boy is to be treated as a girl, because his sex is F. It doesn't go any deeper than that. This is the hell of bureaucracy.
Political absurdity aside, I feel really bad for this boy. Middle school is already a peak time of insecurity and tension, and the USA gets worse for everyone every year. Imagine being 14 years old, feeling like your entire town and nation is out to get you, and being right. This is going to be identity-defining trauma that gets regularly brought up by people who think they're just joking around with the "girls' basketball team" guy.
It's so they don't "lose" in this case and acknowledge it's stupid because then people might realize it's stupid in general. They think tormenting this one cis kid is worth it to keep even a single real trans person out of sports because they think it will open the floodgates. That and there's a decent chance the school administrators legitimately think this kid is trans and part of a massive conspiracy against their school because that's where we're at
It's probably the latter. 98% of Republicans know they're making shit up when they say "Democrats are baby-eating Satanists" and talk about "Cultural Marxism" and the "Liberal Agenda" -- but their supporters genuinely believe it. See: PizzaGate. Someone actually broke into Comet Ping Pong to save the victims of the supposed "sex trafficking" ring.
That's why the majority of Republicans say such over-the-top absurd meaningless nonsense, when most of them are well-educated by USA standards. (the rest of Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, seem genuine in their stupidity.)
The school administration is likely a mix of paper-pushers doing bureaucratic cover-your-ass paper-pushing, led by a few zealots who think they're on the front against the liberal agenda.
Did anyone inform the administration that documentation such as chromosome analysis could be considered to help support or verify eligibility in participating with the human race? Because it seems like they might be a slime mold, based on their integrity and decision-making ability.
Feels like malicious compliance to me. But who knows.
Edit: For those downvoting, someone else in the comments pasted a quote about a law that was passed in that state. So I was just speculating that maybe they were maliciously complying to show how ridiculous it is.
Unfortunately, the one experiencing the greatest maliciousness here is the kid.
That's always the way.
It's never actually about what's good for the kids. It's about control and tribalism
That's an interesting take. I didn't think of it until you mentioned it, and now I need this to be true.
What a shithole country.
That’s beginning to feel like an understatement. We need a new type of hole to describe just how shit things are. A shit-Mariana Trench country, perhaps.
How 'bout... Trumphole? Truole?
When they did a scan of my colon, they found I had pollips. Thats how we discovered I have cancer.
Then they cut the pollips off. I imagine that left a hole in the pollip area.
How about colon pollip hole?
That’s excellent! Is everyone here too young to laugh?
Uranus's moon Miranda has features called coronae, at least one of which has a depth probably exceeding the Challenger Deep low point of the Mariana Trench - estimated at 10 to 20 kilometers, vs. Challenger Deep's 10.4 kilometers.
Alternatively, the Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3 has a depth of over 12.2 kilometers, also deeper than Challenger Deep.
That's... Pretty deep.
But I think we also need total volume.
Wikipedia, re: Valles Marineris on Mars:
Shitpact crater.
It’s not the size of the whole that makes it bad, it’s the contents of the whole. So maybe a bloody diarrhea whole?
A diarrhea hole.
I have one, "the USA".
I think we can just call it dumpf's diaper.
Arizona, too. Not even one of the true asshole-of-the-country states.
You can't possibly think the US is anything but terrible
It's terrible, but when it comes to trans issues, there's an awful lot of people in glass houses. The center of transphobia is arguably the UK.
Yea, hard tellin not thinking.
Mainer that chose to join our more sensible brothers to the North. Nothing but glad they would have me. America fucking sucks and living here is starting to suck even as a working class white guy, which is frankly most of my state. Why anyone would think a patriotic thought besides burn it all down at this point is beyond me.
Glad you made it! Happy you're here, and I hope you're settled and can help rescue others.
I'm still South of the border, I only meant in a digital sense that .ca allowed me to join, partly because they are the closest server to me physically afaik, but mostly that they seem the most level headed of the bunch. Just my opinion. But I would go to quite some lengths to emigrate if I thought it was actually feasible. I'm just a blue collar guy, hardly any savings, and crazy lucky to have convinced the bank and my landlord to sell me the house. I'm pretty stuck here as I see it, but there's a lot of opportunities to help here too. Off the Internet I really try to moderate the acidity of my opinions, more flies to honey type of shit. /ramble
Some Canucks are angry at the aggression showed toward us by your national spokesman.
I'm sorry they're representing us so poorly, as they should be better reflecting the lasting hurt from perceived treachery by a friendly nation in a way that's more informative and less pithy. But this is where we are.
Remember, too, that our global representative isn't perfect, but we narrowly missed getting our own absolutely incapable and inappropriate provincialist caricature of leadership, ourselves. I think there's something in there, too.
Thanks for understanding. I think this is gonna get more stressful before it gets better, so I'm doubly worried if you're near a border in a town normally enriched by tourism proceeds.
So after all the hysteria about “biological males” in women’s sports/changing rooms/bathrooms, they have succeeded in forcing a biological male into women’s sports/changing rooms/bathrooms.
They'll be grooming him into a femboy soon enough, y'know, because masculine men should dominate inferior males. Not because they're gay, or anything.
State sponsored thigh highs, mandatory white monster, and full ride scholarships into nuclear engineering and programming!
I mean... I'd take that offer for sure.
Just to go full circle on their dumbfuckery, I'd bet that they'll start advocating for the school to pay to have him transition against his will so his outward appearance will match his birth cert.
It’s basically eugenics the long way round so yeah, it’ll be an instant success with the base
"thems the rules" mother fuckers when it's convenient.
The principal really needs to read the law. This school is so fucked.
https://codes.findlaw.com/az/title-15-education/az-rev-st-sect-15-120-02/
The law in question only prohibits biological males from participating in female sports. It does not prohibit females from joining boys teams. Compare and contrast sections "B" and "C":
I also thought this was pretty interesting:
This is literally one of these first things they teach in a (at least NY public high schools) coaching course.
AFAIK, when a law says something like "This section does not [do something]" It's usually because some other law explicitly prohibits [something]. Without such language, the two laws could be seen as conflicting.
I think excluding girls from boys teams violates Title IX.
Title IX requires gender equity in access and spending. It doesn't strictly require women to access men's sports, but it does require the school fully fund/admit women to equivalent in the abstract.
So, for instance, if you spend $100k/year on the boys-only football program, you need $100k dedicated to a girl accessible sport (typically volleyball or softball or soccer).
This is not at all accurate. If a girl wants to play a sport for which there is a boys team but not girls team, she must be allowed to try out and participate on the same basis as the boys (a boys team is really an "everyone" team - this actually applies beyond schools and Title IX as no professional sports league in the US actually bars women from competing). Only girls/women's teams get to set restrictions with respect to sex/gender. For Title IX, this is a wildly discriminatory interpretation of a low that bans discrimination, but it's the one that has been in use for years.
And Title IX doesn't require equal funding, but something much more nebulous about impact and opportunity that makes the whole thing kind of intentionally wishy washy so anyone they need to be can not be in compliance. To make it even more impossible to actually comply, questions of funding and opportunity are not limited to what the school itself supplies, so for example anything donated by parents or volunteers (such as the work of a booster club) also counts. So for example, if you cut funding to a boys team and parents more than make up the shortfall in donations and fundraising, it's entirely possible based on that you might have to cut it further. Related, this kind of thing is why less popular boys sports are prone to being cut at the drop of a hat - football and sometimes boys basketball make money, most other sports teams lose money so the school is incentivized not to make cuts from King Football or Prince Basketball, but they have to target equal opportunity and impact between boys and girls athletic spending which means they spend what they're willing to have as a cost on girls teams and cut whatever boys teams they need to cut to avoid cutting into the football budget, because the football budget has an ROI.
Per NFHS website (https://nfhs.org/stories/title-ix-compliance-part-iv-frequently-asked-questions):
Sure. And occasionally you get a girl to qualify. Sarah Fuller as the place kicker for Vanderbilt Commodores, for instance.
But the disparity in builds - particularly in a high contact sport like football - makes women qualifying virtually impossible.
This was in response to early efforts to effectively privatize student athletics and freeze women's sports out.
I'm sure it's a matter of time before our current patriarchy fetish SCOTUS to reverse this out. But for the time being, you can't just find a few mega-donors to create a "Private Men's Club" on a public campus. What is ultimately being measured is access, which does get nebulous, but is necessarily the case when so many misogynists are intent on digging out loopholes to render Title XI toothless.
There's a simple reason for that - the second sentence is required under current interpretations of Title IX, while the first is not. The argument for that is about girl's sports being a sort of protected space for girls, so it's OK to bar non-girls (however your jurisdiction chooses to define that) from girls sports, but "boys" sports are actually for everyone who can compete.
The problem is the Trump administration is pushing for this. They're saying schools can only allow students to play on teams based on their assigned gender at birth. The federal government is using coercion to force states to comply
There is no specific law to follow, since it's just based on the whims of the federal government. The punishment is withholding funding. There is to judge, jury, or courts of any kind involved. Simply the federal government refusing to release funding if they dislike what states are doing. The AZ law is comparatively toothless
The effect of this is the same as it always is with these types of capricious authoritarian governments: A chilling effect. Actors are overly cautious to avoid drawing the wrath of the powerful central government -- Trump in this case
So glad kids can experience political influence in their personal lives. They will learn what needs to burn down.
A town that shuns a child risk that child burning it down just to feel the warmth.
Any chance this is some malicious compliance?
It's really a no win situation though if the boy complies. Newsmax will show footage of a game he plays in as evidence that boys are playing in girls sports, and the idiots who watch will believe it and support even worse politicians and laws.
Could be! I was just commenting that the kid could engage in malicious compliance. Let's see what happens when he exits the girls locker room with wet hair and a towel around his neck.
I don't see what part of that even requires them to use the birth certificate
It's the stupid conservative part. If they make an exception for him, then they need to make exceptions for trans girls
Unfortunately, no they don't. You think these people believe their constituents have brains?
The law in question doesn't actually mandate that school sports teams must be designated “based on the biological sex of the students who participate” in the sport. If you read the law, it only prohibits biological males from participating in female sports. It does not prohibit biological females from participating in male sports. Quite the contrary, it specifically acknowledges that all students, regardless of sex or gender, are allowed to participate in "boys" sports.
https://codes.findlaw.com/az/title-15-education/az-rev-st-sect-15-120-02/
It could be fear. No one wants a bunch of Karen’s screaming in their face. No one wants to be sued or fired. Maybe this is just someone who thinks they need to protect themselves over the kids they’re responsible for
I think I smell a sequel:
Yeah sometimes dogs get forced to play on the boys' team. Where is the outrage about the golden retrievers?
I’m a single issue voter in regards to golden retrievers playing basketball, I assure you I’m outraged enough for everyone.
Thank you FartMaster69, I know I can count on you to support us
I was thinking more
If that were me, I’d start wearing skirts and mascara. Let my nails grow out, tweeze my asshole, shave my treasure trail into a facsimile of a set of ovaries. Pitch my voice up, incorporate the words “bitch” and “tea” into my daily vernacular. Cry after sad movies and even harder after happy ones. Entirely unrelated to the article, btw
Take your pills, Alice.
At that point, don't you just start using the girls facilities to try and force the issue? The girls would get their parents to complain a "boy" is in their bathrooms and delaying gym by waiting for him to use the locker room. How incredibly asinine that a doctor is not enough to assert the kid's gender to their administration
Demand the school install a urinal in the ladies room.
Power move
The locker room is about to be very uncomfortable.
Given his wrestling I wonder what his weight class is. If he's on the bigger side he will be destroying the legacy of women who likely would have won against other women.
Ultimate Frisbee did this by forcing a certain number of boys/girl per team. If you don't impose that you end up with a boys team anyway at high level.
Girls' teams exist entirely to guarantee girls a number of slots, on the presumption that on average in most sports once you hit puberty generally the boys will start to dramatically outperform the girls due to things like size, upper body strength and other traits that are broadly connected to testosterone levels. Then you have things like chess, where you still have a women's league, but that basically exists because "not enough" women play chess and the notion is that a smaller talent pool broadly means easier competition that will in turn be more approachable.
Mixed teams in school sports as a general practice won't happen unless specific minimums are mandated, because it would impact competitiveness.
At the same time, under Title IX, if there is no girl's team and a girl wants to play a sport she must be allowed to try out and must be allowed to play if she can pass try outs. The reverse is not required under current interpretations, leading to a weirdly discriminatory interpretation of a law banning discrimination.
This is basketball, a sport that rewards tallness. By eighth grade boys are on average taller than girls. Even before you look at other gender differences, girls would be at significant disadvantage.
Many/most people are competitive, and competitiveness doesn’t have to be toxic. It’s fine for you not to be competitive, but people are, and it’s unreasonable to ask them to repress that part of their personality
It’s going to depend on the school and level
Given this example of eighth grade basketball, my kid technically had tryouts but everyone made the team. It was a small school though, and bigger schools may be different. He came in cold, not knowing the game but is a natural athlete. He had fun and learned the game and that one year was enough. I pushed him to play this year because he had been interested, he had a bunch of friends in the team, and he is an athlete. Importantly he’s not really tall enough for basketball, so eighth grade was likely his last chance to play. (It was funny to watch his crew of three soccer players and a hockey player take over the team and try to adjust their skills to a new sport)
Sports tends to get competitive in high school, especially for varsity teams, but there are usually options. For example my kid made the varsity soccer team after competitive tryouts. Part of the competitive nature was encouraging the kids to play competitive club soccer in the off season. To secure his starting spot, my kids spent the off season lifting weights, gaining about 30 lbs of muscle while cutting any remaining fat. Yes it was competitive. But he also joined a town league and a rec league for fun off season because he just loved playing: non-competitive, no tryouts
At the middle school age range, girls are typically bigger and stronger than their male peers. Boys don't catch up until 14-16, at which point they rapidly put on height and mass to exceed their girl peers.
Depends heavily on the sport and the quality of coaching. Direct contact sports - football in particular - present real risks to the players when there's a big disparity in size and strength.
But then there's an argument that middle/high school contact sports shouldn't be allowed to begin with, precisely because of the risk of injury.
That would be the logical thing to do.
Although, even then no public school should be sponsoring full contact sports, full stop.
Yeah, that will work out well. I cannot think of a sport that is played in school that would fair to the girls if all sports were mixed teams. By the time kids are 13-14 years old, the boys are starting to get to be bigger, taller, faster, and stronger. And the disparity only gets worse as they age.
And one of the driving tenants of sports IS to teach competitiveness.
Why should we be teaching competitiveness? That’s how you turn society into individuals who only look out for their own needs and are apathetic when you do things like a fascist coup. Oh wait…
Nah, I’d much rather be teaching kids cooperation.
(Sports are still great, but not for the reason of teaching competitiveness).
Competition is literally the basis of almost every sport. How would hockey, for example, be played without competition?
I’m saying we shouldn’t teach competitiveness as a value in and of itself. Competition in sports is fine.
In my school we had boys the same age who had a foot of height and 80 pounds of weight difference between them. There are better ways to divide competition other than gender.
Yep. I was 6'4" by the time I was a junior in school and I had a large physical advantage is sports. But size isn't the only advantage either. Skills and co-ordination with team members matter more.
I feel like that could be fixed by just doing a weight class so gender does not become the factor but overall strength and that also gives the opportunity for weaker boys to play sports and not get boxed out in boys only sports and stronger girls "like girls with PCOS" to not dominate girl Sports.
Or maybe it’s already fixed by larger schools having multiple teams, such as varsity, Jv, freshmen. Or different leagues, like rec leagues, town leagues. Or gym class sports which are never competitive.
But it’s ridiculous to think it fair if the high level teams are essentially all boys, and the girls are stuck on the crappy team with boys who can’t play. No one will be happy with that
The kids WILL turn everything into a competition no matter what you think you are doing to prevent that. Humans are naturally competitive. Like it or not.
In my experience, it's the parents that need to make every Little League Rec scrimmage into the final game of the world series.
I used to be. And it's been a longass time since I was. But I have raised 4 kids AND I have taught math in a school. Kids, and all humans for that matter are competitive. From skipping rope, to running, to racing lawnmowers, to bake offs, and gardening. Humans have an incredibly wide streak of competition.
No but he has been a kid, we all have. We are literally all experts in this field assuming you weren't home schooled or avoided all extra curriculars.
What a USA thing to do. Holy shit.
Because trans issues are completely solved in other parts of the world.
This isn't a trans issue. It's an absurd bureaucracy failing to function because of political incontinence
It's a trans issue. It only became a bureaucratic issue because of a rule rooted in transphobia.
Even a rule rooted in transphobia could be well written. This one is not.
Transphobia can never be well written. That's the point.
I would say it's trans adjacent.
The kid is, was, and always has been a boy, in every sense of the word. Both as their "biological" gender and their actual gender.
Some doctor fucked up and put "female" on the birth certificate. It was noted, corrected and now the birth certificate has been amended.
The USA part of all of this is that bureaucratic bullshit is prohibiting the school from recognising the fact that a mistake happened and allow the poor kid to participate like everyone else. He's stuck in limbo because some dickhead on a power trip who has a hard on for making life difficult for people who are different from them, made a short sighted decision to put such a policy in place, without comprehending that doctors are people who can make mistakes, exactly like the one in the OP. It's the bullshit bureaucracy that's very USA. It's the inflexible rules that are very USA.
The rules were made to punish trans people for daring to try to like who they are, instead of being miserable in the cast they were born into, and it bit them in the ass, inadvertently punishing one of "their own".
So yeah, trans rights, or lack thereof is the reason behind the problem, but the problem is affecting someone who is distinctly not trans.
Your gender is what you declareYour gender is what's in your pantsYour gender is what I declare
Say the 5 middle-aged men on the school board that are probably thrilled at being able to do genital inspections of children. "Sorry, those are the rules that I wrote!"
Finally something all of us can get behind, am I right fellow "DROP TABLE"s?
i have changed your gender, pray i do not alter it further
🥹
👉👈
Pwease can you alter it a bit further good sir?
This is the kind of stupid bullshit republicans create because they don't solve problems they create contraversies in a lab and then when they actually get voted into office to "solve" them they literally do stupid shit like this.
That’s not a bad thing. He’s going to have a lot of girlfriends
Two things can be true
Sounds like a fair exchange for a lot of girlfriends
Can we just separate kids by skill level rather than gender? My middle school cis son loves playing sports, but he's not very good. He gets discouraged when the better kids bully him because of it.
Skill based matchmaking. Most competitive video games use it. Why not IRL?
Now I'm imagining a kid scoring multiple points and the other parents calling him a smurf
A little blue animated creature? Is that MMO lingo for pretending to be worse than you are like a "pool shark" or what not?
Not necessarily MMOs but yes, you create an alternative account with the purpose of being matched with lesser skilled players.
Smurfs happen more in shooters, or competitive games like Rocket League, Smash Bros etc. much less in MMO. It's easier to be a smurf when the game is skill based, and less or no dependency on what gear you own as it takes much longer to earn top tier gear that helps keep you at top.
I don't see why bottom tier teams shouldn't be co-ed. PE we did co ed sports days all the time and its more about getting exercise than winning.
Maybe, for "rec league" or whatever, but school teams are usually meant to be competitive, and non-gendered sports would mean girls wouldn't have equitable access to athletics.
But even for non-competitive teams, girls are unlikely to be able to access shared sports to the same level as boys. At a
partyhigh school I worked at, there was a major challenge with girls being willing to access open gym time, feeling uncomfortable advocating for access to basketball nets for practice—even girls who were on the competitive team felt they couldn't use open gym time.TL;DR: Sexism runs deep. We need policies that recognize that and build equity, not just offer "equality" that perpetuates, or even magnifies, the problem.
What's a party school?
lol, high school.
Maybe we just need new sports.
$1500 for that?!
All those ancestry dna places are only like $100-150 and they tell you a helluva lot more than just your biological sex.
The medical labs probably don’t walk away from it with a perpetual license to monetize your DNA however they see fit
Yeah but those are privacy invasive and only for entertainment use. Those tests shouldn't be used for anything medical
Yeah that seemed pretty steep.
I'm glad the people that had emotional meltdowns over the chance of boys being on girls teams... have made a boy, by their own actions and stupidity, be forced on the girls team
On one hand, poor guy. On the other, if he's any good the girls' team is going to sweep whatever competitions they enter.
He should play on all the girls teams, crush it like a total badass, then when conservative parents complain that "a boy is playing on the girls team" everyone can tell them to shut the fuck up because this is the future they always wanted. One with no exceptions or grey areas to speak of.
You say this like conssrvatives would even grasp the facts that they did this. You're talking about the same group who claims to live their life based on the teachings of Jesus, who cared for all, even the misfortunate. Then they turn around and cheer the dismantling of snap and medicaid with zero irony that it's what Jesus would want.
He would be killed for doing this.
If we were talking about an adult, I'd agree. To an 8th grader, the idea of playing on the girl's team as a boy probably sounds like the world is ending
It would be pure awesome if he got out there and kicked ass. Teenage me would have fucking run with this whole mess.
"Oh no! PLEASE don't make me hang out with the cute athletic girls! PLEASE don't make me share their locker room!"
Kid should waltz into the locker room, casually strip down and shower. Can you imagine the howls of outrage?! Preface the act by telling the girls his plan so none feel harassed. They can all be turned around on the other end of the room, waiting outside, whatever, the perception and headlines are all that counts.
If you get down to it, he only need walk out with wet hair and have the girls scream and point. God I would have had a blast fucking the administration over.
And just what would the school system do about it? "You told me I'm a girl so I'm acting accordingly. Suck it."
Exactly 🤣 I'd love to watch the look on fascist transphobes' faces when I strip in the girls locker rooms. I mean, they themselves said I'm a girl and forbidden to play male sports so, why not? 🤷♀️
I wouldn't blame him if he doesn't compete feeling that it's unfair for everyone else.
Sex segregation in childrens sports is legitimately a powerful indoctrinating force for binary sexism and the enforcement of gender roles.
Now do same sex schools
Makes sense. Although when you word it that way my first thought was to expect teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers the Philly Sandwiches
What absolute moron is running that school district?
Is it possible they are hoping it gets attention to show how stupid the law is?
perhaps, but that's also cruel...
Yeah but it's a hope that perhaps it's a little less cruel overall than the thought that this one kid is being tortured for no reason at all.
I would guess they're just trying really hard to avoid triggering Trump's wrath. A discrimination lawsuit is comparatively small to the devastation you can get from running afoul of the most powerful dictator in history
Not only could the school and state potentially lose all federal education funding, but Trump may go after the school administrators personally. He's been rather successful lately at going after anyone he disagrees with. Political opponents like Comey and Bolton. Judges like the Oregon one that blocked the National Guard deployments, or the immigration judges that refused to simply dismiss asylum cases without hearing them. Even just random individuals that happen to be negatively mentioned on Fox News have been increasingly under extra-judicial attack by the president
America is now a nation by, and for, Trump
This is the moment that the district admins were waiting for their whole life. It's their chance to stand against AOC's liberal woke agenda trying to infiltrate their district with this student. Not on their watch. They'll hold these troublemaker Demon-rats in line. Anyone who stands in their way is obviously a part of the global Anti-Israeli Gay Marxist Communist Muslim Antifa Jewish Space Laser Council that wants everyone eating crickets. It's allll a conspiracy. Every part of it!! They hate us for our freedom!!! (/s)
I don't know how American birth certificates work. Is he officially female for life, unless he wants it changed?
I imagine trans people would be quite happy in such a situation. Like winning the lottery.
There is a process to amend birth certificates, presumably initially intended for errors like this. But then people who successfully transitioned used the process to amend their birth certificates to reflect their new gender, because there was no other way to do it. The transphobes seized on this, and started processes that refuse to honor any late changes to birth certificates.
It should have been a simple matter to resolve - his doctor wites a note saying "This kid has boy parts, and always has. The birth certificate was always an administrative error". But then, that would force the transphobes to acknowledge a role for facts and science to contradict their feelings. So, we can't have that either.
So, they go on claiming that they are just out for the best interests of kids, and that justifies why they are treating this kid so poorly. When in reality, they are just protecting their narrative, at his expense.
In current US, he's probably going to have to transition.
Normally people use common sense, it’s obviously a clerical error and you can get the paperwork fixed.
This is an example of right wing scare tactics against trans people in sports creating stupid laws that also don’t allow for the messiness of real life. I didn’t pay attention but it’ll be local to either the state or city
From the article it sounds like the birth certificate was corrected but the school isn’t accepting the change without a chromosome test, which costs $1,500. There’s another test that they could do that’s free, slightly embarrassing, and takes just a moment, but would require an adult to look when the kid drops his pants. It’s such a stupid non-issue. I can’t believe this happened, that we know about it, and that it hasn’t been resolved yet.
That wouldn't work. Conservatives needed to write iron-clad laws that no trans person could find a way around. If you base it on genitals, what happens when someone goes and gets sex reassignment surgery? That's not done on minors, but conservatives don't know that. How's a school coach to know that he isn't a trans guy that snuck off to Thailand one summer and got a dick installed? This is why these laws reference the original birth certificate. The entire point is to make it so sex is immutable and unchangeable.
Geez, I think you’re right. I guess homie better get used to using the women’s restroom from now on or else he could find himself getting beat up or prosecuted.
This is what doctor's notes are for. And they had one.
These laws were written to hurt trans people. They were written to make it very difficult for trans people to find loopholes to get around. That is the problem here.
Let's say the errors on sex could be corrected with a doctor's note. But what you're really asking for is for a sex marker to be changed, simply citing an error in original sex assignment. You are going to plead that your real sex is unmatched to your documented marker. But what is sex? "Sex" is a very fuzzy thing. Is it genetics? Genitals? Chromosomes? Secondary sex characteristics? Conservatives like chromosomes because their inalterability serves the conservative worldview. But historically we used primary and secondary sex characteristics to define sex. We talked about "male" and "female" since the dawn of time, but we've known about chromosomes for less than a century. Historically, your sex was simply your observable physical form. If you alter that, in a very real sense you do change your biological sex. There are many interpretations of the word "sex" and the phrase "biological sex." Some allow them to be changed, some not. And, wherever you fall on that question personally, you can find doctors who follow any of the possible definitions of the terms.
In fact, in states that allow you to change your sex on your birth certificate, traditionally this is how it was done. The state would require a letter from a physician saying your biological sex has been changed. Some states specifically required surgery. Some just left it up to the doctor's interpretation. If you could convince a doctor that you had changed your sex, then your sex could be legally changed.
And this is the problem. You would think you could correct this error with a doctor's note. But the Republicans already thought of that. This cis kid could use a doctor's note to prove that he's biologically male. A trans kid could use that exact same mechanism to get a doctor to say that their sex is now male. Just find a doctor that believes that sex is largely hormonal. A trans boy gets on T, and, in that doctor's eyes, their sex has now literally been changed. And they could write a letter to that effect. And the doctor wouldn't have to lie at all. It all comes down to your interpretation of "sex."
These laws were written to hurt trans people. To do this, they needed sex to be legally defined in a very strict and unalterable way. They wanted to make the process so ironclad that no trans person could ever weasel their way past them. Thus, they only allow corrections of birth certificates in some very specific ways that no trans person could use. They don't just leave it up to a licensed doctor. Licensed doctors are the ones providing medical care to trans people. The laws instead require things like chromosomal testing. Chromosomes are one thing that can't be changed. If you require chromosomal testing to correct an error on an original birth certificate, then you can make it virtually impossible for a trans person to change theirs. But it does have the slight downside of making it very expensive to correct actual clerical errors.
And this will be true regardless of how you want to screen for original biological sex. The tall and strong gate will make it hard for your enemy to pass. But it will also make it difficult to let in a friend that gets accidentally trapped outside in the night.
So they believe a person’s gender is up for negotiation with their doctor, who is a member of the elite and therefore is likely corruptible. This makes sense. I’ve heard of doctors doing favors for their rich clients and writing notes declaring the client’s son to be suffering from painful bone spurs, preventing military service. I guess every accusation truly is an admission of guilt.
Girl changing room as well?
Critical question right here.
He seems to be in limbo regarding that... From the article:
Sounds to me like he gets to use neither.
It's worth reading the entire article by the way. The fuckery in the details makes it worse.
Dumbest administration ever
Blind obedience to the papers. No thought required.
Not even that since it says the parents got it corrected, he now has a birth certificate saying he's a male, but they are still clinging to the first one.
i'm becoming increasingly convinced that a lot of admin workers are just a bit evil, every decision seems to be guided by "what is the most egregious way i can misinterpret and mangle this paperwork?"
just recently there was a guy here in sweden who was fucking pronounced dead for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and courts ruled that it was an honest mistake???? like what the fuck, why are random admin workers seemingly a separate untouchable ruling class?? We're not even talking about rich people, it's just Mary in accounting who is arbitrarily allowed to redirect your wage to her bank account and go unpunished.
They could make an airbud type movie like this
Nowhere in the rules says a woman with a penis can't play basketball, in fact the rule book is very light on the mention of genitals at all!
The NBA and NFL both allow women, it's just at that level it is extremely hard to find anyone who can compete.
Kinda makes me think of some of the early feminist movements thinking that women would become as large and as strong as men if they where rased the same. Its on paper a fair and equal system but reality just happens to be anything but. Then again just about the same percentage of men as woman make it to that level (near enough to zero to be a rounding error).
To be fair: Being "raised" differently does change a fair bit. I know a woman who's a body builder. She's way, way stronger than me. Male bodybuilders are still stronger than her, but she's quite a bit stronger than the average man.
But at professional sports level it all comes down to minute differences, and genetics clearly play a large factor in there.
Most man are also not genetically fitting for most professional-level sports. I'd even go as far as to say that most professional athletes just fit their sport and are also not fitting for most other sports. A football player and a swimmer are just built very differently.
American Football uses damn near every body type you can think of. A lineman, wide receiver, quarterback, and kicker are all going to have wildly different body types. I've always found that pretty interesting.
Not talking about american things her.
Oh yeah, this is just about that tippy top bit of pro sports.
He should slam dunk on those fools. Check and rebound. Can't take the heat... get out of the way girls.
It really sounds like somebody in the Queen Creek School District wanted to make a political issue out of him. Presumably, as cited in the article, the state law they pointed to enacted in 2022, which mandates that school sports teams must be designated “based on the biological sex of the students who participate” in the sport. It doesn't matter where you are in the political aisle, it's pretty shameless to exploit this politically, even if it's just so they can go "look at how senseless this law is!" by making an issue out of its strictest interpretation.
His biological sex is female. At least, according to the laws that transphobes have written. The problem with the term "biological sex" is that it's far more complicated than conservatives pretend.
For example, I'm a trans woman myself. If I had been born with an (age appropriate) of the body I have now, I would have been assigned female at birth. And according to all these new Jim Crow laws, I would be required to use the female facilities and accommodations, literally having the exact same body I do now.
You can try to claim that sex is chromosomes, but a biologist would laugh in your face. There is so much variance to human biological development that chromosomes don't begin to fully describe natal biological sex. And even if you ignored all that and went with chromosomes anyway? You could just genetically test everyone. But then conservative voters would hate that. The purpose of these laws is to destroy trans people, not to inconvenience cis people. And legislators don't want to force white suburban parents to pay $2000 for chromosome testing whenever their kid wants to join a sports team.
What else could they use? They could use hormones. A very good argument can be made that hormones simply are a person's biological sex. Hormones are what after all causes someone to actually develop a penis or vagina in the first place. So why not use a cheap blood test and assign sports based on hormones? Well, again, the purpose of the law is to destroy trans people. And it's pretty easy to alter your hormones. Conservatives need rigid, unalterable, lifelong sex categories. Without those, they wouldn't be able to justify forcing women to be second class citizens.
What else? You could use physical features. You could have a coach visually inspect the genitals of every student who signs up for a team, but that has obvious problems. The coaching profession already is a magnet for pedophiles. Plus, again, the purpose of the law is to destroy trans people, not inconvenience cis people. And no parents wants the coach looking at their kid's junk.
That's the problem with laws like this. That's what trans people have been shouting from the rooftops for years, but we've been ignored. The concept of "biological sex" is hopelessly vague. The use of the term is just a way of putting up a "no tr*nnies allowed" sign while attempting to be legally defensible. It's completely unworkable as a tool of assigning sports teams or public accomodations. So instead, the laws were written to use the only tool available: birth certificates. Legally speaking, in Republican states, the sex on your birth certificate IS your biological sex. Your actual genetics, gonads, hormones, etc are completely irrelevant. If your original birth certificate says F, you are female, forever. Your actual biology is irrelevant, you are biologically female, legally speaking.
So no, this isn't just some cruel political statement. This is the law being implemented exactly the way it was written. Trans people warned folks that any attempt to legislate trans people out of existence would have numerous knock-on effects for cis people. But in these states, they were too excited about the possibility of getting to destroy a few trans folks to worry about whatever those trans folks were screeching about.
You cannot just use "biological sex" in a law. You have to define precisely what that phrase means. And as conservatives don't like the definition of "biological sex" that actual biologists come up with, they have to try to craft a legal definition that destroys trans people without inconveniencing cis people. And that simply isn't possible. There's no way to write legislation that destroys trans people without also harming a few cis people as collateral damage.
This isn't inconveniencing anyone but the 1% of the 1% of cases. If you are going make a political tirade out of this, you should choose your punching bag better, this isn't even vague at all but just a bureaucratic mistake. There are cases where the term biological sex can be "hopelessly vague" but this isn't it as much as you might like it otherwise, and this just makes the people behind the decision look bad.
The kid identifies as cis, everyone of his classmates see him for his gender, hormone and chromosomal expression are likely standard cis. People better hope that it can't be traced back to any sort of political baggage, or that if it is, that it is due to conservative influence, because this is going to backfire spectacularly. It isn't going to make or break any of the laws behind it, but it is illustrating a certain lack of humanity on the people enforcing the law, and that gives mouthpieces with an axe to grind something to barrage behind.
Kudos on being trans and defending "the law is the law" in regards to transphobic laws. Wanna know a secret? They don't care about the law, look at Trump. Another secret, the law itself is only defined by when its chosen to be enforced, cue hundreds of outdated laws still on the books. Sarcasm aside, the sadism of sharing the pain is never constructive, but isn't even really applicable in this case, this is just an article blowing up because a newspaper needed to sell stories and fight against the bureaucracy is always an enticing one.
Mental gymnastics cannot make up for a lack of humanity, which is precisely the problem of transphobes. I'd recommend emulating them less in this regard just because you think you can argue a hallmark out of the case.
I think the point was that "biological sex" is a legal term, not a biological one. Hence the application of the law here, irregardless of what this kid's actual situation is. It's a demonstration of why this law is stupid, and what stupid things a school board has to do to remain compliant.
They're almost certainly not grouping the kid with the girls out of spite, but to avoid being liable for not doing so if someone were to find out this kid is, according to the law, "biologically female". The school has to protect itself from this liability, and thus we get this extreme example of the law being stupid.
If that was it, they could just have obtained a signed affidavit from the parents and perhaps their doctors that what is on the birth certificate was a mistake and that they are in the process of resolving it.
And liability from whom, the state government? Other parents? Law doesn't exist in a vacuum, it has to be enforced and in cases like this is enforced in a court, the lawsuit would have to come from some place it is not realistically going to come form. The law might be stupid, but there are no shortage of stupid laws no one gives shit about "liability" because they are not enforced: https://go2tutors.com/14-forgotten-u-s-laws-that-still-technically-exist/
The law does not provide room for the birth certificate being mistaken I'm afraid.
And yes, there's a chance the state could come after them, or some other parent or activist group could citing this law. Hence them attempting to shut down this potential liability. They can't risk enforcement, so they won't.
Gonna have to disagree on those chances (can't help but notice the complete silence on the rest of the absurd laws on record with equally insignificant chances of getting prosecuted for that I linked for - too inconvenient to acknowledge?), and the law literally does, which is why the parents can get it corrected. It just takes time. The article literally states they are doing this.
Those other absurd laws aren't remotely relevant, hence the lack of acknowledgement. Many are irrelevant or very old. There is a large movement in the US that seeks to demonize trans people in sports, and this law isn't that old, so in the current political climate there's definitely a non-zero chance it gets acted upon.
And that the law allows you to correct your birth certificate does not mean that the law assumes your future to-be-corrected certificate is currently legally valid. I'm sure they'll get it resolved eventually, but at that moment the school felt they had to apply the law.
A trans person could take advantage of the same mechanism, which is why it's not allowed. They care more about hurting trans people than they worry about the few cis kids that fall through the cracks. This kid was just acceptable collateral damage in their culture war.
It is allowed. Doesn't matter if the trans person takes advantage of the same mechanism, the difference would be they would be the ones liable for lying. That's what an affidavit does, transfers and diminishes liability.
Sounds like malicious compliance imo
I'm genuinely curious what happens for example if this cis gender boy wants to get married with a cis gender girl. Would that be a gay marriage (I dunno what is the correct term). And if they are in a state where it's not allowed, how does it go?
(I am not from US. I assume union of same sex is not fully accepted and every state and/or community have different laws and practices)
Gay marriage is legal in every state since 2015. Supreme Court ordered it with Obergefell v Hodges
For now. That's next to get the ax on the conservative agenda.
I like how US laws are cited. "Can Asians own SUV?". Yes they can since Mathews vs Jonathan in 1994.
Sounds like they threw two people in the pit and the victor of the bout decided the law on that.
So does he have to use the girls' bathroom, also??
The worst part is he doesn't even like sports!
It's not my fault that Buttle's
heart conditionpenis didn't appear on Tuttle's file!logicHey God why do you allow parents to name their children shit like Laker?
My take: school asking for the certificate? Wrong. Now that they have it, they are reacting legally correct, because that birth certificate is a legal document. Sucks for the boy, but the fault is 100% the parents.
What are you basing your assertion on? The article links to the state law and says the law doesn’t prevent girls from playing on boys teams, so it doesn’t matter if it’s a clerical mistake or not.
That’s something an American brain cannot comprehend. If the school has boy only teams, the law does not matter. But go ahead and sue the shit out of the school, because that always solves all the problems.
That answer didn’t really clear anything up for me.
Don’t all schools ask for birth certificates? At that age it’s your only id, most kids only legal connection to their parents, your only legal indication of age.
I suppose it could also be weaponized to deprive immigrants of an education.
That being said, I looked it up and my state schools are mandated to equally educate all residents regardless of immigration status and are not allowed to ask about immigration status, nor to cooperate with ICE barring court order
In my case, the municipality is responsible for registering kids at public schools and they know the true identity already. The school only gets to see the name, address and maybe the gender.
While I do agree (much to the dismay of many of you all here) that it is absolutely unfair to biological women to allow non biological women in competitive sports, due to the advantages that can't go away by chemical means such as larger lungs, longer arms, and bigger hands with more stable hip bones; if I were this kid, who is apparently quite strong and athletic, I would try and have loads of fun screwing with the system they're forcing upon him. He could really screw with them on policies. I'd imagine he could get loads of classmates to go along with helping him out, too.
Hey. Touch grass.
The idea that women need “protection” from competing with men was always more about control than it ever was about fairness. The argument of women somehow being physically worse at sports is just not accurate in many cases. Actually there are a lot of sports in which women have an inherent advantage over men.
Yes, men on average have higher bone density, greater muscle mass and larger lung capacity. However women tend to on average have a more efficient fat metabolism, better cold tolerance, a lower center of gravity, higher flexibility and more stable fine motor control. Also some people tend to beat the odds and win despite supposedly being at a disadvantage.
Is this argumentative or trolling? It has no bearing on real life.
Ok, fine. If you need a list here’s a list. Women excel in any type of endurance swimming, anything involving riding a horse, rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating, long distance running, shooting, archery, and sailing-sports.
Women and women’s teams also regularly beat men at: tennis, racing, soccer, basketball and wrestling (also highscool, college and Olympic-style amateur wrestling, not just the scripted WWE theatre thing). Want sources for all of those? Because I’ve got all of them.
I’m not wanting to “require mixed gender teams”, but I do feel like there are many better options out there than strict gender or “sex at birth” based segregation. Especially since we know nowadays that sex at birth has so many more than 2 categories and gender is a spectrum. I’m sick and tired of people of many different genders (and especially women) being victimized for the sake of “protecting women”. And I have sources for that too.
Certainly kids should be treated as human beings and the rules need to make allowance for the messiness of real life and do “the right thing”.
But you’re really fighting an uphill battle against essentially all of society if you think all sports should be desegregated. And you’re really misreading your stats if you don’t see that on average a specific gender has a distinct advantage in most sports
You are still fighting a straw man here. Please point me to where I said all sports should be desegregated? It’s a very complicated issue and trying to segregate into 2 strict groups by sex at birth is a very messy, very imperfect solution. What some doctor thought was going on when they looked between a newborn’s legs is just not nearly as important as some other factors.
To give an example of a split I would be in favor of: Segregation based on factors relevant to the sport (like height and how far people can throw a ball for basketball). You can split into as many groups as needed and hey, if you’re right it’ll work out to an even gender split anyway, right? This just happens to be a way more inclusive way of doing things also avoids the weird situation of minors being harassed about their gender expression. Unless of course you want to specifically make people uncomfortable and want to exclude certain people. But that’s not the point you’re arguing, right?
Yeah. That's absolutely just not true at all for almost every sport. Especially team sports. There are some competitive sports where men don't just have an advantage, or that women have the advantage, but those are a vast minority. Some shooting events and some distance events is about it.
It's fine to disagree with us here, but you also "disagree" with everyone who knows anything about the subject, and that is why your head is stuck so far up your own asshole.
Seems like I know plenty about the subject. To the point where all you can do is try and sling insults instead of forming any sort of argument.
This information is readily available. You decided that instead of listening to the IOC or physiologists you'd stick your head WAY up inside your own rectum. It's not my job to pull it out.
But it is fun to point and laugh. 😉
The physiologists agree with me, buddy.
😂
Could always just not play.
Could have just not commented
Could always just get fucked
Well, playing sports is stupid.
You don’t have to play if that’s your preference (but please try to be physically active for your health). But what gives you the right to tell other people not to?
Professional sport is purely profit incentivised, while there are actually useful jobs with decent pay. Plus, there is no health benefit of steroids (unless you're trans).