Pervert alert: Kansas GOP overrides Governor's veto, allowing child genital inspections for sports

[Ferguson97]

https://lawrencekstimes.com/2023/04/05/ksleg-overrides-veto-trans-sports-ban/

TOPEKA — Transgender girls are now blocked from playing women’s sports from kindergarten through college, following the Legislature’s successful override of Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a transgender student athlete ban.

The veto was overridden Wednesday, with a 84-40 vote in the House and a 28-12 vote in the Senate. Both chambers barely met the two-thirds threshold to override the governor’s March veto, the third year in a row Kelly rejected the legislation. Kansas is now the 20th state to pass a transgender student athlete ban into law.

The legislation requires children to participate in school activities based on the gender they were assigned at birth, from elementary school to college. Challenges could require them to undergo genital inspections, or require a birth certificate for proof of the child’s gender.

Why is the Republican Party so obsessed with children's genitals?

[Ferguson97]

maybe I'm missing something but I've looked over this bill repeatedly and can't find anything like what you describe.
http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2023_24/measures/documents/hb2238_enrolled.pdf

Section 2 explicitly states that genitalia can be used as a means for determining sex. What do you think is going to happen if a student's biological sex is called into question?

[Ferguson97]

Genital inspections for non-sexual reasons, such as at the doctors office, happen all the time. It’s weird but let’s not act like this is pedophilia.

How many times is it done outside of a doctor's office? Please don't act like this is just some normal work a day activity.

Do schools not have nurses all of a sudden?

I can't speak for any other state, but they don't in Mississippi and never did in my public school years from 1992 through 2005. I was an adult before I even realized that was a real thing in other areas, and not just one of those movie/TV tropes.

And even in states that have them, I don't think teenage boys are going to the school nurse with dick rash or whatever. Unless Gen Z is just that different than Millennials.

I went to public school from 2003 to 2016. Never had "Penis Inspection Day" from the school nurse.

[Ferguson97]

There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim that trans women have an advantage over cis women in sports, so the entire premise that conservatives are pretending to believe in is faulty.

If you disagree with that, take it up with the Scientific American.

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

[Ferguson97]

There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim that trans women have an advantage over cis women in sports, so the entire premise that conservatives are pretending to believe in is faulty.

I'm not going to disrespect you by pretending you're dumb enough to actually believe this.

Is your argument that the Scientific American is lying?

There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim that trans women have an advantage over cis women in sports, so the entire premise that conservatives are pretending to believe in is faulty.

If you disagree with that, take it up with the Scientific American.

The notion of transgender girls having an unfair advantage comes from the idea that testosterone causes physical changes such as an increase in muscle mass. But transgender girls are not the only girls with high testosterone levels. An estimated 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which results in elevated testosterone levels. They are not banned from female sports. Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys. Plus, the athletic advantage conferred by testosterone is equivocal. As Katrina Karkazis, a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University explains, “Studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear, consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. Sometimes testosterone is associated with better performance, but other studies show weak links or no links. And yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance.” The bills’ premises lack scientific validity.

I will gladly take it up with Scientific American. If they're too stupid to know that males are stronger than females then that'll be a pretty easy argument for me to win. I may not be as articulate or educated as them, but this is basic enough that even an idiot from Nebraska like me can figure it. They can fall back to the technicality that a male castrated in early childhood won't have a strength advantage, but that's a totally separate argument. If you don't believe that men (including adolescent boys) have an unfair strength advantage over women then you are every bit as ridiculous as the creationist who believes that dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark.

I would never argue that men don't possess an advantage over women. Of course they do.

But we're not talking about men vs women, we're talking about trans women vs cis women.

[Ferguson97]

I already stated why the Scientific American article seems to be out of sync with "common sense." It's comparing transwomen athletes who didn't go through male puberty at all to ciswomen. It's believable at least that that subset of transwomen wouldn't have advantages.

Yes, and this is why I said they are misrepresenting the science. I don’t know what percentage of transgenders begin puberty blockers from age 10 (or whatever it would take to be effective), but Fergie is acting like it’s 100%. More quackery from the anti-science left!

Well I wouldn't go so far as to say they're "misrepresenting" the science. I wouldn't be surprised if a transwomen who had 0% of male puberty had no advantage over ciswomen athletes (I don't know though). I just don't think those transwomen are the ones driving the controversy. (And they're about to be way less common as the red states illegalize teenage transitions and detransition the ones who've already started.)

Well, the title of the article is Trans Girls Belong on Girls’ Sports Teams: There is no scientific case for excluding them. So it sounds like we agree that, at the very least, this headline is deliberately misleading.

Stuff like this is why I don't trust any of the mainstream "science" that is put forward about other issues like puberty blockers or detransitioners. If they're brazen enough to lie about something as obvious as this, how you possibly trust them on more important issues?

If you're at the point where your argument relies on a literal conspiracy theory (as in you are literally alleging that there is a secret plot by the scientific community to lie to the public), you've lost the plot.