Alberta students to define their own gender

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Wouldn't this just result in the "Senior Basketball Team" being filled with boys, and lead to girls not playing sports at all?

Why is there only allowed to be one team?

[JohnnyB]

I coach a co-ed grade 9/10 soccer team. I made the team co-ed because otherwise lots of kids (girls) would not have had a team to join. After a semester of running it there has been enough interest to split the team into two based upon levels of skill and commitment and the two resulting teams will both be co-ed because skill and commitment aren't based on a person's gender. I'm happy with it and so are nearly all the students.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Why is there only allowed to be one team?

Because the top 2 teams would be almost all dudes in high school anyways. You'd then make "girl only" teams, and we're back to where we started.

Also these new rules make me angry, not because I hate political correct junk like this, but because they didn't exist when I was a horny little teen. There are many opportunities for hyjinx now.

"Why yes, I do need to change in ladies locker room, I identify as a lady today"

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Because the top 2 teams would be almost all dudes in high school anyways. You'd then make "girl only" teams, and we're back to where we started.

Also these new rules make me angry, not because I hate political correct junk like this, but because they didn't exist when I was a horny little teen. There are many opportunities for hyjinx now.

"Why yes, I do need to change in ladies locker room, I identify as a lady today"

Not how it works

You're gross

[pylon]

Ok. Devils advocate here. Lebron James decides tomorrow he is trans, which I'd be perfectly OK with. He then announced he wishes to play in the WNBA. Should he be allowed? Is that fair to the other teams in the WNBA? Is it OK if he obliterates the other women with poster dunks from the free throw line?

Sometimes there are circumstances in life be it within, or outside your control that impedes what you can and cannot do. i would have loved to be a police officer, being colorblind excludes me. Should I force police agencies world wide to change the rules to accommodate me? My colorblindness is just as uncontrollable as someone's gender identity.

Sometimes life deals a crappy hand, and you just have to accept it.

[MRCboicgy]

It really amazes me how far we've come since I was in high school. Even though it's been a decade since I got my college degree, the previous public school years are still really vivid and hasn't felt like it was that long ago - but somehow this story makes it seem like a lifetime ago.

I can't even say that I would have ever joined a GSA, but given how rough high school can be for all of us, knowing such an organization existed would have probably given me a huge boost of confidence. Hell, maybe I wouldn't have skipped my grad.

I never had any issue with gender identity - but boy, I hated gym class. Loved the sports themselves, but hated/feared/stressed over the locker room and the time just with the guys. Having mixed teams would have helped as well.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by pylon

Sometimes life deals a crappy hand, and you just have to accept it.

That actually hurts to read, like my stomach actually sunk a little, no hyborble. Man, we've got so far to go.

[MrMastodonFarm]

That's one crazy fantasy scenario.

Transgendered Female Labron would stay in the NBA making hundreds of million instead of the WNBA getting per diem's for lunch.

[nik-]

LeBronda James would ####ing dominate the WNBA.

[Bootsy]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

No, there might be a larger mix of guys but in most cases the best girls would be able to outplay mid-range guys easily, and likely some of the best guys.

Take your top five guys and top five girls for a high school sport, rank them 1 to 10 and it'd be extremely rare for the top five to be all men and the bottom five to be all women.

In fact, teams would actually likely be a lot better taking the best of both sexes on one team.

You could also tier it, so instead of men's and women's there is tier 1 and 2, and the players would be ranked for placement. You might get more girls in tier 2, but you'd definitely have a good number of girls in tier 1.

You can't seriously believe this ? You realize the best women in the world at hockey are at a level of local triple A midget team, thats a pretty huge gap.

I agree the best girls can compete with mid range guys but they would be well below the top tier guys and the best girl in a random high school would have to be a special kind of athlete to crack the top 10 let alone the top 5.
I say this as a big supporter of female sports and encourage their participation and equal opportunity against other females.

As for if a transgendered male to female person should be able to play on a girls team,if it's just a fun rec league then of course ...if it's a high level competitive league then no they should have to try out for the boys team. It's ridiculous that this even has to be debated, one would think the NDP would have more important things to work on like say pipelines and dealing with the huge amount of layoffs.

[DiracSpike]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

No, there might be a larger mix of guys but in most cases the best girls would be able to outplay mid-range guys easily, and likely some of the best guys.

Take your top five guys and top five girls for a high school sport, rank them 1 to 10 and it'd be extremely rare for the top five to be all men and the bottom five to be all women.

In fact, teams would actually likely be a lot better taking the best of both sexes on one team.

You could also tier it, so instead of men's and women's there is tier 1 and 2, and the players would be ranked for placement. You might get more girls in tier 2, but you'd definitely have a good number of girls in tier 1.

I'm sorry but this is completely wrong. The top team would be guys and the second team would be guys, there is a massive gulf in athletic ability. A good chunk of high school seniors can dunk, there's been one woman in the HISTORY of the WNBA that can dunk. Women can barely shoot a ball that's a good thirty percent lighter than a mans ball. I got cut from the u of c varsity team and I could play in the WNBA tomorrow. I could go on and on, this discussion is crazy. Hayley wickenheiser is one of the greatest female hockey players ever and she scored 2 goals in 25 games in a second tier Finnish league that had barely any contact.

I can't believe people are advocating for the wholesale destruction of women's sports it's mind boggling.

[puckedoff]

^ Obviously the gap at the highest tier of sports is going to be the largest, but the school is looking at making junior high teams co-ed, not proposing to amalgamate the WNBA and NBA.....

I mean yeah Wickenheiser didn't light up the Finnish league but I'll hazard a guess that she was able to keep up with the boys teams when she played as a 12 year old.....

[DiracSpike]

Where did I say people wanted the pro leagues amalgamated??

The gap is huge at all post pubescent levels, I don't know why you'd want to discourage girls from playing sports by instantly having them be at a fundamental disadvantage.

[Makarov]

Haven't read the entire thread but its fascinating to see some people focus on amazingly unlikely hypotheticals like Lebron James suddenly identifying as a woman or teenaged boys fraudulently posing as trans-gendered in high school (which, incidentally, is an experience so traumatic that its caused a suicide epidemic) in order to sneak a peak at a boob (pictures of which I'm told are readily available on the internet) instead of the very real (even if not common) and very serious difficulties faced by transgendered students everyday.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Take your top five guys and top five girls for a high school sport, rank them 1 to 10 and it'd be extremely rare for the top five to be all men and the bottom five to be all women.

Do you seriously believe this?

You could take the top 40, and they'd all be guys... Are you aware that women's olympic hockey teams have difficulty competing against run of the mill boy's high school squads? You could match up the top ten ranked WTA tennis players against ten good male amateurs and the men would win every match in straight sets... and tennis is a sport that has a high female participation rate.

There's no competition. Christ, I ski, and there's no obvious physiological reason why women freeskiers (eg slopestyle or halfpipe) couldn't compete with the men, but they absolutely can't. It's not even comparable.

I don't know why we've decided to base this on a sports discussion because that seems like an unimportant aspect of this, I'm just saying the above statement is obviously and hilariously divorced from reality.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I don't know why we've decided to base this on a sports discussion because that seems like an unimportant aspect of this.

This. It's pretty ridiculous that the opposition to this has come down to some ridiculous hypothetical scenario of high school boys trying to game the system to go play on the girls' team. I'm guessing a few of the dudes posting must have been high school athletes. I know I was, and I don't think the thought would have ever crossed my mind. It's completely absurd.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Has anyone actually said they are against this? Or is it just that the discussion has evolved to talk about sports? It seems like it's not uncommon to come up with a bunch of random far fetched hypotheticals and discuss them ad nauseum.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Has anyone actually said they are against this? Or is it just that the discussion has evolved to talk about sports? It seems like it's not uncommon to come up with a bunch of random far fetched hypotheticals and discuss them ad nauseum.

A couple people have said they're against this applying to sports teams, yes. It may not be uncommon, but that doesn't make it any less silly.

[The Big Chill]

Originally Posted by rubecube

A couple people have said they're against this applying to sports teams, yes. It may not be uncommon, but that doesn't make it any less silly.

I don't think it's silly to look at the situation from all angles before implementation.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by rubecube

This. It's pretty ridiculous that the opposition to this has come down to some ridiculous hypothetical scenario of high school boys trying to game the system to go play on the girls' team. I'm guessing a few of the dudes posting must have been high school athletes. I know I was, and I don't think the thought would have ever crossed my mind. It's completely absurd.

nm