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

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I remember being called a hysterical, crazy liar when I said that Republicans would use these laws to bully and mock "mannish-looking" cisgender female athletes and force them to "prove" their sex just to be mean and cruel. We already know from other states that that's what makes up the vast majority of these "challenges." I wonder if we'll see the same thing in Kansas...

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Women's sports should be for biological females.  Period.

OK, but no one should be able to "challenge" a female athlete because she just looks a little too "manly" or you just want to rattle her. The question of how a cisgender female can "prove" her cis status should be moot.

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How does any high school student know whether they have "nonambiguous internal genitalia" or not, and how would it even be checked upon challenge? X-rays and/or MRIs?

Nearly 2% of the population is some degree of intersex (mostly just barely) or have some kind of sex chromosome abnormality, and the vast majority of them go through their whole life and never realize it.

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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.

Like, if there's a problem with them that needs to be inspected, like a rash or STD or something.

An involuntary "inspection" to check for the presence of a penis or vagina is not an "all the time" thing.

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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.

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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?

You are imagining a situation where someone claims another student was born as a different sex, that student and their parent/guardian says they weren't?  And, there is no birth certificate or medical records for this student that could be put forward by the student to prove their sex ?

Maybe look and see if this has happened before, in the long history of sex-segregated sports, and what did they do about it, before jumping to conclusions about how it would be handled.

Are you f**king serious? There have been so many news stories about people using laws like this one to force a "mannish" looking cisfemale athlete to "prove" that she's cis just to be cruel and call her ugly. That's by far the largest effect of these laws, not preventing the (literally 2 in the case of Kansas) transwomen from playing at all.

The idea that anyone can just challenge another athlete's sex based on no evidence or suspicion beyond "she's so ugly haha!!" is ludicrous, yet every red state either alreadys allows it or soon well, thanks to the trans hysteria going on right now.

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Why can’t sports just be done based on an assessed skill test? That is true meritocracy.
If some trans athlete can kick a soccer ball harder than Little Timmy, well then Little Timmy should go f**k himself and then learn to kick better.

Seriously, why not has skill classes in the same way wrestling has “weight classes”? If it’s a sport where it’s “not that serious”, then clearly it’s not serious enough to care about gender separated teams, right?

The issue to parents concerned about this type of thing is whether little Timmy has transitioned into little Tanya and is now kicking the ball harder then most or all of his cis female opponents, because youth athletics are almost entirely separated by gender with male and female teams for each sport.

Exactly! Ban gender segregated sports. From now on sports teams should be made based on skill level which can include strength tests. It’s just common sense.

Sorry, but this is an awful idea. People who aren't "into sports" don't really realize the difference in the men's and women's versions of what are otherwise the same sport.

There is not a single female basketball player in the entire NCAA who could make a men's team, for example. Even Britney Griner in her Baylor days would not have been worth a men's roster spot. Some sports may not be as far apart, but many are. And then you have examples like baseball/softball where the men's and women's sports are totally different in rules and equipment.

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Why can’t sports just be done based on an assessed skill test? That is true meritocracy.
If some trans athlete can kick a soccer ball harder than Little Timmy, well then Little Timmy should go f**k himself and then learn to kick better.

Seriously, why not has skill classes in the same way wrestling has “weight classes”? If it’s a sport where it’s “not that serious”, then clearly it’s not serious enough to care about gender separated teams, right?

The issue to parents concerned about this type of thing is whether little Timmy has transitioned into little Tanya and is now kicking the ball harder then most or all of his cis female opponents, because youth athletics are almost entirely separated by gender with male and female teams for each sport.

Exactly! Ban gender segregated sports. From now on sports teams should be made based on skill level which can include strength tests. It’s just common sense.

Sorry, but this is an awful idea. People who aren't "into sports" don't really realize the difference in the men's and women's versions of what are otherwise the same sport.

There is not a single female basketball player in the entire NCAA who could make a men's team, for example. Even Britney Griner in her Baylor days would not have been worth a men's roster spot. Some sports may not be as far apart, but many are. And then you have examples like baseball/softball where the men's and women's sports are totally different in rules and equipment.

I'll nitpick and say that Griner and others of her extreme caliber could probably make second or third line on a lesser non-competitive program, maybe. But otherwise dead on.

I don't think so, honestly. Maybe a sharpshooting guard like Elena Delle Donne could be used on a men's team very situationally, but Griner can't really dunk regularly (and she's the best female dunker ever) in an in-game setting and wouldn't be able to play defense at the level required for a forward or center.

I think basketball is probably the most extreme example of this, but the idea of abolishing sex- or gender-based sports altogether would basically mean that 0 or incredibly few cisfemales would ever get to play basketball again.

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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

That's because Ferguson97 lied by misrepresenting a topic.

https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-04-05/kansas-lawmakers-override-democratic-governors-veto-enacting-ban-on-transgender-athletes

There's no indication that this would happen.

Women's sports should be for biological females.  Period.

If we are going by that then what happens when a person born intersex wants to play a sport?

Deal with that when it happens.  Trans women are biological males and should not be competing in women's sports, period. 

What about states with 0 transwomen athletes wanting to compete? Can we "deal with that when it happens" there too?

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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

That's because Ferguson97 lied by misrepresenting a topic.

https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-04-05/kansas-lawmakers-override-democratic-governors-veto-enacting-ban-on-transgender-athletes

There's no indication that this would happen.

Women's sports should be for biological females.  Period.

If we are going by that then what happens when a person born intersex wants to play a sport?

Deal with that when it happens.  Trans women are biological males and should not be competing in women's sports, period. 

What about states with 0 transwomen athletes wanting to compete? Can we "deal with that when it happens" there too?

Wouldn't it be a lot more cruel to force transgender athletes to leave the sport after they attempt to join? This seems like a problem that should be dealt with ahead of time. 

Personally, I would allow trans athletes in high school and only disallow them for Olympics and NCAA Division I championships, but it's a pretty low salience issue when red states are trying (and succeeding) to ban teenagers from being trans altogether.

I don't think trans athletes are a good hill for the Democratic Party to die on, but it would be an honor to die on a hill of trans existence.

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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

That's because Ferguson97 lied by misrepresenting a topic.

https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-04-05/kansas-lawmakers-override-democratic-governors-veto-enacting-ban-on-transgender-athletes

There's no indication that this would happen.

Women's sports should be for biological females.  Period.

If we are going by that then what happens when a person born intersex wants to play a sport?

Deal with that when it happens.  Trans women are biological males and should not be competing in women's sports, period. 

What about states with 0 transwomen athletes wanting to compete? Can we "deal with that when it happens" there too?

Wouldn't it be a lot more cruel to force transgender athletes to leave the sport after they attempt to join? This seems like a problem that should be dealt with ahead of time. 

Personally, I would allow trans athletes in high school and only disallow them for Olympics and NCAA Division I championships, but it's a pretty low salience issue when red states are trying (and succeeding) to ban teenagers from being trans altogether.

I don't think trans athletes are a good hill for the Democratic Party to die on, but it would be an honor to die on a hill of trans existence.

College and pro athletes were all high school athletes at some point in time. I don't see how it's fair to take that away from the younger athletes but not the older ones. The implication is that the pro athletes are more important, which is a bit insulting. The real issue here is that young women and girls are entitled to fair athletic competition.

As for there being zero trans athletes in some states, there will be some eventually. It's pretty obvious that this is where the culture is headed, so why not set the boundary now?

I am very comfortable saying that Olympics and NCAA national championships are more important than random high school matches. Sounds like a bunch of "woke" silliness to say otherwise.

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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.

This study is only on transwomen who went on puberty blockers right away and had no male puberty? That changes the equation from what we usually see. Note that puberty blockers are now or soon to be illegal in the red states.

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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?

You are imagining a situation where someone claims another student was born as a different sex, that student and their parent/guardian says they weren't?  And, there is no birth certificate or medical records for this student that could be put forward by the student to prove their sex ?

Maybe look and see if this has happened before, in the long history of sex-segregated sports, and what did they do about it, before jumping to conclusions about how it would be handled.

Are you f**king serious? There have been so many news stories about people using laws like this one to force a "mannish" looking cisfemale athlete to "prove" that she's cis just to be cruel and call her ugly. That's by far the largest effect of these laws, not preventing the (literally 2 in the case of Kansas) transwomen from playing at all.

The idea that anyone can just challenge another athlete's sex based on no evidence or suspicion beyond "she's so ugly haha!!" is ludicrous, yet every red state either alreadys allows it or soon well, thanks to the trans hysteria going on right now.

"so many news stories about people using laws like this one"  Then post one of these stories that included genital inspections of child athletes in a state where the law's language is the same.

I was responding to "You are imagining a situation where someone claims another student was born as a different sex, that student and their parent/guardian says they weren't?"

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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?

You are imagining a situation where someone claims another student was born as a different sex, that student and their parent/guardian says they weren't?  And, there is no birth certificate or medical records for this student that could be put forward by the student to prove their sex ?

Maybe look and see if this has happened before, in the long history of sex-segregated sports, and what did they do about it, before jumping to conclusions about how it would be handled.

Are you f**king serious? There have been so many news stories about people using laws like this one to force a "mannish" looking cisfemale athlete to "prove" that she's cis just to be cruel and call her ugly. That's by far the largest effect of these laws, not preventing the (literally 2 in the case of Kansas) transwomen from playing at all.

The idea that anyone can just challenge another athlete's sex based on no evidence or suspicion beyond "she's so ugly haha!!" is ludicrous, yet every red state either alreadys allows it or soon well, thanks to the trans hysteria going on right now.

"so many news stories about people using laws like this one"  Then post one of these stories that included genital inspections of child athletes in a state where the law's language is the same.

I was responding to "You are imagining a situation where someone claims another student was born as a different sex, that student and their parent/guardian says they weren't?"

I wasn't expecting anyone to take that sentence out of context as though it constituted a complete argument unconnected from the rest of the post.

I reread your full post multiple times and still don't see how you weren't asking whether the situation I quoted ever happens or not, but ok I guess. "Here's a situation that you are imagining. Maybe look and see if this has actually happened before..."

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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.

The key point though is that that's moot in the red states now since puberty blockers and hormones are illegal.

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Why can’t sports just be done based on an assessed skill test? That is true meritocracy.
If some trans athlete can kick a soccer ball harder than Little Timmy, well then Little Timmy should go f**k himself and then learn to kick better.

Seriously, why not has skill classes in the same way wrestling has “weight classes”? If it’s a sport where it’s “not that serious”, then clearly it’s not serious enough to care about gender separated teams, right?

The issue to parents concerned about this type of thing is whether little Timmy has transitioned into little Tanya and is now kicking the ball harder then most or all of his cis female opponents, because youth athletics are almost entirely separated by gender with male and female teams for each sport.

Exactly! Ban gender segregated sports. From now on sports teams should be made based on skill level which can include strength tests. It’s just common sense.

Much much easier said than done. The problem is that will basically de facto repeal Title IX. While exceptions certainly exist, a pure physical meritocracy would effectively decimate female athletics. That not only robs young women and girls of the bonding and enjoyment Sports brings, but also potential Athletics scholarships as well.

Not true. You can have lower strength level sports still in this system. Females will just usually be in those. As for “bonding and enjoyment” they should be able to bond with their female AND male peers, the way I see it reducing the gender divisions in society is only a good thing given how polarized we are becoming in our generations.

The only point you are correct on is athletic scholarships…and yes girls will be at a disadvantage. Tough luck. Boys who want to get beauty pageant scholarships are also out of luck, and I would argue the entire modern school system is actually giving slight advantages to females for a variety of reasons (mainly boys develop mentally later which is a HUGE disadvantage) Math scholarships are rigged against those who have learning disabilities, that’s life.

Even the unimpressive male athletes will out-perform the best girls. I don't know if you're refusing to bite that bullet or if you're out of touch enough to not understand this. Regardless, what you are saying is that girls are not entitled to fair competition. There is no boy beyond maybe 6th or 7th grade with any athletic potential that would lose to his female peers.

As I said, that’s why we have strength tests and skill classes. They won’t “outperform” because if they are biologically stronger enough for it to be unfair, that would be reflected in a test. This really isn’t a tough concept.

With all due respect, I don't think you understand that women's and men's sports are often fundamentally different strategically.

Baseball and softball are totally different sports. Men's basketball and women's basketball basically are, as any men's player who's about 5-10 or more can regularly dunk in a game, and vanishingly few women can (none do regularly). Soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, etc., have different strategies that line up with the different physical characteristics.

You could gather of a basketball team of men whose height, weight, strength, etc., resembles a women's team, but it wouldn't make sense for them to play in a women's league because of those differences.

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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.)

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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.

Yes, the headline is an oversell. I wonder if an editor added that in without the writer's consent.

However, even without the headline, I think the article is conflating about 3-4 different points that are true on their own but don't really weave into a unified narrative:

• Testosterone amount doesn't correlate perfectly with athletic performance. Sure, it's not 100% explanatory, but nonetheless male puberty makes far better athletes than female puberty.
• Several states have allowed this for a while without it being a problem. Yeah, that's a valid point, but it's not really a "scientific" one, just an observation.
• Transwomen who never went through male puberty at all don't have an advantage over ciswomen athletes. That's plausibly true, but moot in most cases, at least the high-profile ones people fight over.
• It's more important to affirm transwomen psychologically than worry about who wins a random high school sports competition. Yeah, I lean toward agreeing with that, but that's a philosophical opinion not something covered by the statement "There is no scientific case for excluding them." Someone who says that who wins and loses in high school does matter after all is not being unscientific, just prioritizes things differently that I do.

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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?

I don't think the underlying "science" lied in that article, just a journalist (and/or his editor) kinda strung some legitimate pieces of science together to make a conclusion that didn't hold together as tightly as he wanted it to.

If the entire scientific community is lying about anything (whether this topic or another one), if it is capable of pulling off a long-term lie, then we have much bigger problems in society that who is or isn't playing on what high school team.