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Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - C C - Feb 28, 2017
http://breaking911.com/transgender-wrestler-wins-girls-wrestling-title-texas/
EXCERPT: [...] In this time and place, with [Mack] Beggs cruising to a state championship, the hundreds here had no choice but to confront one of the nation’s most divisive and highly charged issues.
“She’s standing there holding her head high like she’s the winner,” said Patti Overstreet, a mother of a wrestler in the boys’ division. “She’s not winning. She’s cheating.”
Overstreet, upset Friday in the moments after Beggs’s opening-round victory, went on. “It’s not equal,” she said. “It’s never going to be equal.”
Other parents tiptoed around the discussion, wondering what to say and how to say it. Kids confronted coaches about topics as complicated as gender identity and as simple as fairness, leading some to squirm and others to attempt explanations.
“Everybody has been talking about it. It’s in the ether everywhere,” said one longtime Texas high school wrestling coach, who requested anonymity because his school district prohibited its employees from publicly discussing Beggs’s situation. “All this week I’m in school and kids are coming up and talking about it. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
[...]
He cut his hair and told his grandmother that he wanted to be a boy. Nancy Beggs said Saturday that her grandson felt relief after identifying as transgender, like a longtime affliction had finally been diagnosed.
Two years ago, Mack Beggs began taking supplements to begin his physical transition. In the video, he predicted a complicated future regarding UIL rules but nonetheless declared that he wanted to go on participating in the sport he had fallen in love with. He began taking testosterone in 2015.
“Everything is great,” Beggs said in the video. “The message I’m trying to send, the overall universal message I would say to y’all is don’t give up and don’t give up on yourself, because you don’t know when you’ll find yourself.”
As time passed, attorney Baudhuin said, Beggs requested to wrestle against boys, though because UIL guidelines determine athletes’ gender based on their birth certificate, that request was declined (citing privacy, the UIL would not discuss that request or Beggs’s specific case); in a brief interview before the championship final, Nancy Beggs would not comment on whether her grandson hoped to eventually participate in the boys’ division.
Last year, coaches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area began hearing about changes in Beggs’s physique. He was strong and lean, and coaches noticed an unmistakable strength advantage that hadn’t been there even a year earlier.
A few coaches and parents became concerned their girls wouldn’t compete on equal terrain. Other coaches disagreed, more impressed by Beggs’s commitment to improvement and his mental preparation. Sides were established. Discussions became increasingly tense. Questions became more difficult to answer.
Why, several girls asked the wrestling coach who had asked to remain anonymous, was it okay for Beggs to receive hormones but not them? Why endure training and risk injury if there was no discernible path to victory?
“It’s a dominant American value: fairness, the equality of the pursuit of something,” the coach said. “. . . There’s no doubt that coaches are troubled by this; kids are troubled by it.”
In December, Baudhuin said, parents began asking him to do something about this. They viewed social media posts documenting the changes to Beggs’s body, and Beggs made quick work of every opponent he faced. During the state regional tournament, Beggs’s two opponents forfeited rather than face him.
On behalf of the father of one opponent, Baudhuin sent a certified letter in January petitioning the UIL to move Beggs to the boys’ division. This month he filed a lawsuit that asked for Beggs to be allowed to wrestle boys or removed from the championship tournament. For now, he said, the court has made no decision. The UIL issued a statement Friday that said the birth-certificate rule could change in the future (its legislative council meets in June), and Beggs’s school district determined his testosterone was “well below the allowed level.”
Beggs has one year of high school eligibility remaining and could face additional scrutiny and potential courtroom battles next season....
“You’ve got a kid who’s either going to quit the sport entirely or she has got to wrestle against girls, which she doesn’t want to do,” said Baudhuin, who said he still refers to Beggs by the female pronoun because he struggles to see his daughter’s old friend as a boy. “She’s in a no-win situation....”
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - Zinjanthropos - Mar 1, 2017
Those female Texan wrestlers, bless their little hearts, have unfortunately chosen poorly. No matter how you look at it, wrestling didn't work out . Unforeseen circumstances and politics have totally screwed things up. Life's short, do something else.
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - RainbowUnicorn - Mar 1, 2017
(Feb 28, 2017 09:45 PM)C C Wrote: http://breaking911.com/transgender-wrestler-wins-girls-wrestling-title-texas/
...and Beggs’s school district determined his testosterone was “well below the allowed level.”
Better wrestler
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - C C - Mar 1, 2017
It reminds one of accounts of those female swimmers back in the '70s to early '80s who had to compete against athletes from communist bloc countries who were artificially enhanced. They would report to officials that, say, girl swimmers from East Germany had deep voices and were bulked-up like guys. But they got cold shoulder responses in return or were outright rebuked for making such nasty, poor-spirited comments about those who were resoundingly defeating them in competition.
This kid, though, isn't to blame. S/he wanted to be in boys wrestling and they wouldn't allow him / her. And to pretend to not be enthusiastic about winning simply to shoulder the errors or lack of pragmatic flexibility in the bureaucracy -- and to alleviate hard-feelings and make the losers feel better -- goes against an honest spirit in the sport and working hard and wanting to pursue wrestling to begin with. There might be a potential athletic scholarship flailing around in the background, too.
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - Syne - Mar 2, 2017
You either allow her to compete with an unfair advantage against girls, which is obviously the case, or you allow her to compete against boys, where she'll be at a disadvantage, because testosterone treatments can only go so far in changing female physiology. Her win was obviously only a result of her testosterone treatment, and there's no reason to think she'd do anywhere near as well against boys.
The major problem with allowing her to wrestle with boys is that boys will then dominate in girl's wrestling, with no real expectation of girls doing well in boy's wrestling. Why wouldn't boys claim they're trans to get some girl's wrestling scholarships?
IMO, you compete according to your biological sex, and testosterone treatments are considered doping.
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - Zinjanthropos - Mar 2, 2017
Wait for it..... coming soon.....The Transgender Olympics. They could have a separate event category for transgenders like they do for men and women.(ie men's/women's/trans' field hockey).
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - Syne - Mar 2, 2017
As ridiculous as that may be, transgender categories may be the only really fair way to handle it. Except that there aren't enough transgenders, and they would scream foul about not being accepted and being a second-class gender.
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - C C - Mar 2, 2017
(Mar 2, 2017 01:04 AM)Syne Wrote: IMO, you compete according to your biological sex, and testosterone treatments are considered doping.
Shutting Beggs out completely probably would have been the way it would have gone before fears of SJW demonstrations and litigation apparently pervaded even the "pistol packing legends" demeanor of the Lone Star state. (Shucks, that could have been a bad pun if Mack's situation was the opposite direction.)
(Mar 2, 2017 01:49 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Wait for it..... coming soon.....The Transgender Olympics. They could have a separate event category for transgenders like they do for men and women.(ie men's/women's/trans' field hockey).
Hopefully there's a very thick boundary between a Special Protection status and a Special Needs status. If it was broken, would it be taken as insulting? Only her hairdresser... Er, the future, knows for sure. (How the devil is it that I even know about a television commercial as old as that? Must have seen it on some retro-tv network back when they played those advertising oldies for fun.)
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - Zinjanthropos - Mar 2, 2017
The solution is to have a Human Olympics where everybody competes against one another regardless of sex, sexual preference, handicaps, gender and anything else you can think of. Not hard to notice TV commercials have changed somewhat to include other segments of society besides the beautiful. So if they can do it then so can sport.
Speaking of TV commercials:
Quote: (How the devil is it that I even know about a television commercial as old as that? Must have seen it on some retro-tv network back when they played those advertising oldies for fun.)
Because all your men wore English Leather or they wore nothing at all. I never did, so have we met before?
RE: Transgender wrestler wins girls' wrestling title in Texas - Syne - Mar 2, 2017
(Mar 2, 2017 05:11 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: The solution is to have a Human Olympics where everybody competes against one another regardless of sex, sexual preference, handicaps, gender and anything else you can think of.
Then no one but biological men ever win anything ever again, except for maybe the women's only sports like synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics...maybe.