Summary
The Trump administration has frozen $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania over its policies allowing trans women to compete in women’s sports.
A senior official said this is “just a taste” of further action, with UPenn at risk of losing all federal funding due to a Title IX investigation.
Trump signed an executive order on February 5 banning trans women from women’s sports, citing fairness and safety concerns.
Advocacy groups are challenging the move, arguing it discriminates against trans athletes.
This is such a pathetic cop-out reply it’s not even funny. As if every single person with the opinion that Universities shouldn’t, to the detriment of the entire student body, unilaterally decide for everyone who attends where their political beliefs should be absolutely must be privileged.
You don’t have to believe that transgenderism is wrong to believe that students should be the ones to decide if they feel that it’s right for genetic men to participate in women’s sports. It needs to be up to the students, and not the institutions to make that a policy. The University itself has no right to make that policy without the consent of the students in the same way they shouldn’t and couldn’t be allowed to segregate students based on race.
I support trans rights, because I support human rights. It’s not privileged to believe that a public institution has no right to decide the social zeitgeist for the student body–they have no right deciding what is or isn’t acceptable.
I’m just going to point out right here, genetic male is a right-wing dog whistle. Folks don’t waste your time on this person, they are not arguing in good faith.
And I should have known better. But I was feeling emotional about stuff going on in my personal life. Oh well.
I’m a constitution loving leftist. I’ve never voted red. My brother is trans, and trans rights is particularly important to me.
But again, whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night because it’s simply unconscionable to you that someone can advocate for someone’s rights that doesn’t show up on your “acceptable groups of people” list. It always blows my mind away that people who pretend to be so enlightened think nothing of denying the rights of others when the marginalized groups they pretend to represent know all too well what that feels like.
Other people don’t stop having rights simply because you do, and vice versa. All rights must be protected, even the ones you find repugnant, or we all lose rights. It’s the foundational cornerstone of our democracy, the constitution, and history.
But I guess we’ll just gloss over that because I said “other people also have rights” and you interpret that to be transphobic…somehow.
So you see your trans brother as ‘genetically’ a woman? I am sure he loves that.
You know, your brother could have been born with XY chromosomes and a genetic mutation. Your family wouldn’t have discovered the Y chromosome until she went through puberty. And I use she here because that’s how she would have been socialized, and that would have been her sex assigned at birth too. If this was your sibling, would she be genetically male or genetically female?
And nothing in any of your arguments has demonstrated to me that you aren’t for segregation. Not just for myself but also for black people really. You’ve argued that bigots have a right to public spaces where they don’t have to be around folks that they don’t find repugnant. Simply through mob rule. Which is allowing the feelings of one group to infringe upon the rights of another. Because hurting your feelings isn’t considered harmful in our culture. While exclusion from public spaces and activities is.
Which shows to me that you don’t understand what a human right is or where they came from when our constitution was written. The founders believed in natural rights, they wrote the bill of rights to ensure that certain rights were never infringed upon. They are enumerated but not exhaustive.
For the state or mob to infringe upon the rights of the individual, there needs to be demonstrated a government interest in keeping the community safe. Little girls aren’t getting ran over by genetic males on the soccer field. So there is no public interest here, only political ambitions and the feels of bigots.
And just so we’re clear, your language is a repetition of those neoliberal and right-wing talking points above.
Trans healthcare and hormones are very nuanced, a child could be put on puberty blockers and in the Presidents opinion be genetically male. Even though it is very easy to demonstrate that that child is not a danger to the well-being of any of the other children on the field.
Yes, bigots have a right to their opinion, we don’t police thoughts obviously or speech, or at least we try not to. But that does not give them the right to tell children that they can’t play sports without demonstrating how doing so is depriving other children of their right to play sports in a safe environment.
So, now that I am calmer, I hope I have explained to you well enough why essentially everyone is disagreeing with you and downvoting you in this comment thread. Please look in the mirror and do some self-crit if you are indeed a leftist.
Wait so it’s not okay for universities to segregate students based on race, but it is okay for universities to segregate women based on their sex assigned at birth?
Like I think you have some anti-trans brainworms that you haven’t really looked at. My identity isn’t a political issue. It shouldn’t be up to the rest of the student body if I can participate fully at a university any more than it should be up to the rest of the student body if a black person can participate at the University fully.
Nor should it be up to a tyrant like fucking Trump. Which is what is actually happening here. Is political oppression and targeting of folks like me by somebody that is just like Hitler. And you are telling the university that they should bend the knee.
So yes, first they came for the socialists. But that’s not actually true, in this case, first they came for the immigrants and trans folks.
Go ahead and point out at any time where that was said by anyone but you.
You’ve somehow gotten it into your head that I’m anti-trans, or supporting anti-trans, which is stupid. I’m a civil rights activist. I advocate for people’s rights–and I understand that you don’t “give” people rights. You have to make people realize who think that group of people don’t have rights that they actually do. And you can’t get to that point by saying “your rights don’t matter here” and letting universities do the same.
For you to have rights, xenophobics and transphobics have to have rights. For you to express your opinion, you have to be willing to let the xenophobics and transphobics have their pullpit, too. That’s the way it works. You are free to say “their opinion doesn’t matter!” but you’re not winning any hearts and minds and least of all not winning any court cases with that attitude.
Every single reply I’ve had in this thread is an emotional response because people seem to be under the very mistaken impression that I’m anti-trans or advocating for anti-trans rhetoric, and that’s simply not true. I’m advocating for all rights, not just trans rights. People are empowered by the constitution to be racist in the same way they’re empowered by the constitution to be trans. You don’t get to pick and choose and that’s always–literally 100% of the time–worth pointing out. Ultimately it needs to be up to the students to be okay with trans or not be okay with trans. Institutions shouldn’t be involved at all.
That’s the reasonable discourse of a democracy.
This was you, a university has no right to segregate students based on race. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what the student body wants.
The paradox of tolerance. Do some reading.
Human rights are not up to discussion or vote. It’s not the university or any institution that decide on that, they just have to ensure they are respected.
That’s actually exactly how a democratic republic works… Why you think that’s not the case is a little concerning.
In a democracy you’re allowed to have dissenting opinions. There are people out there that don’t believe kids deserve school lunches. I personally think that’s fucked up, but for me to have my freedoms, ideals and opinions, I have to concede that private citizens also have the freedom to think kids don’t deserve school lunches.
That’s how it works.
Slavery was perfectly legal according to the votes at that time.
Do you know what “human right” means?
And you do know that countries come together to vote on what a “human right” is, right? Because it doesn’t seem like it. What a human right is, and what you seem to think it is, are two entirely different things.
GOOD point. Only your opinion is the correct one.
Lol you really need these universities, maybe someday you’ll get to attend one of them
Lol no. That’s just majority rule.
Democracy has a list of necessary prerequisites in the form of rights and duties. How is it democratic for the majority to be able to vote to kill the rest?
I’m not discussing anymore with someone who doesn’t have a basic grasp of the concepts.