What Canadians can do
We don’t control U.S. policy, but we do control our response.
Speak up: When Pride visibility is under attack—even elsewhere—we need to be louder in our solidarity. Local businesses, schools, and governments should reaffirm their support explicitly.
Support queer media and organizations: From Rainbow Railroad to The 519, Canadian orgs are doing frontline work that often fills in the gaps left by political inaction.
Challenge imported rhetoric: Whether it’s book bans or “parental rights” bills, we must recognize when American talking points show up in Canadian debates—and push back accordingly.
Sports is the only ring where it kinda makes sense to have separate leagues, but how much of an issue is this actually?
There’s no way it’s worth the rhetoric and actions people have been taking.
John Oliver has a episode on this and it changed my mind. Sure at the top level there has to be conversations about this but for kids and non pros which lets be honest is the vast majority of people playing sports, just let people play.
Agreed; it’s not worth the rhetoric and actions. And while there’s definitely merit in assessing trans athletes to try and keep things as fair as possible (though they never stopped Phelps from competing, so “fair” is kind of a joke), it’s far more complex than a simple “there was testosterone so they have an advantage!”
For the “nonathletic” groups - think community-level sport - based on what data is available, there is effectively no statistical difference between cis and trans women’s physical performance after 2+ years on hormone therapy.
When it comes to elite athletes, trans women outperformed cis women in Fat-free mass index, Absolute hand grip strength, and Absolute Vo2Max, but under-performed in Relative VO2Max to mass, Ratio of expiratory volume to vital lung capacity, and Absolute countermovement jump (lower body power). The lower Relative VO2Max, and Expiratory volume can lead to disadvantages in terms of speed, recovery and endurance.
While hand grip strength is considered an indicator of overall muscle strength, to quote the first article linked:
It will require a lot more information before any athletics group would be able to make a truly informed decision, and it’s going to have to be sport by sport. Elite athletes are all outliers in their genetic makeup (Phelps, The average height of a WNBA player, etc). We know athletes have different hormone levels depending on the sport they play, but it’s chicken vs. egg on whether the hormones or elite performance came first. So trying to decide what is an acceptable advantage re: “pro athlete genetics”, vs. an unacceptable advantage re: “transgender genetics” is little more than opinions and politics at this point.
/info dump
Some people assume nefarious individuals would go into ladies change rooms, washrooms, or prisons.
Nefarious people would do that regardless, if they chose.
These idiots really think that a fucking sign will stop nefarious people from doing what they wanna do
It does happen, like we had a trans woman in BC (40s maybe) going into women’s washrooms and talking to teen girls, and asking them about their periods, but I seriosly doubt this is the normal behaviour of 99% of trans persons; it is the behaviour of a creep, wanting to talk inappropriately with teens.