A measure that would ban transgender athletes from competing in gendered sports, from kindergarten through college, was too close to call Tuesday night.
At midnight, 52.2% of the votes tallied were in favor of Proposition 134 and 47.8% were opposed. That was with 73% of the votes counted in Colorado. The measure needs 50% of the vote to pass and changes state law, not the state constitution, which means the legislature could rewrite or even eliminate it.
Proposition 134 would affect transgender athletes playing sports from kindergarten through college at any school or sports association that receives state funding. It requires that students assigned male at birth play only on boys teams or co-ed teams and vice versa for females.
So much of the arguments around trans women in sports put forward paint sports as an issue of winning. They do not put sports forward as a civil human right to be able to participate in society. There are so many comparative opportunities made for disabled people to participate in sport that use those arguments but here is a group that faces barriers of social ostracization and they are basically told that they aren’t worthy of being tolerated. That they must accept a dramatically smaller access to society.
What is the purpose of sport? Does it have just one purpose and does that override every other good and enriching thing it offers?
personally i would argue that winning is probably not the major importance of sports. it feels good to win and people tend to focus on it, but taken to its logical extreme the pursuit of victory over everything becomes a societal technological exercise that destroys human bodies or takes them out of the equation entirely. see every single sport in existence having rules against the use of technological enhancements that become required in order to compete. those fancy suits in swimming, all manner of performance enhancing drugs, fancy bouncy shoes in running. hell even techniques can become banned like how in competition swimming you cant stay under the water for more than a certain length of the pool.
as for what is the purpose? well mine is socializing with people.
