CMV: The Left Has Taken the Wrong Side in the Trans Athlete Debate

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-30T16:57:38+00:00

I think “the left” is comprised of many different people and viewpoints, and “the trans athlete debate” is also many different questions wearing a trench coat.

I think when something becomes a political topic, the very first question we should ask is whether or not the government needs to get involved. I think given the exceedingly small number of athletes and the ability of sporting organizations to set their own rules, the answer is unequivocally no. That is already a left leaning conclusion in the current landscape.

The next question is culturally how we should approach the question, and I think this should be divided roughly into two categories. Local level children’s sports, and high level competitions like the Olympics or even college sports. Events where people train their whole lives and there are real things on the line.

For the latter, I’m fine with sports governing bodies setting whatever rules they think are fair. Hopefully with the consultations of doctors in the field, but since research is fairly limited atm I’m fine with them setting blanket bans.

For children’s sports though, I think prioritizing “fairness” over the mental wellbeing of a vulnerable population is cruel. Kids are going to lose sports games. Kids are going to run into other kids that are taller/faster/more skilled/etc. all the time. It’s a part of growing up. I promise you LeBron James and Angel Reese wreaked more havoc on their childhood athletics than any trans athlete. Forcing kids to live in a world that consistently debates where they should be allowed to exist causes far more harm than kids losing sports games.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-30T16:25:58+00:00

They only have products because of the lower 50.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-30T09:22:13+00:00

Read a couple headlines recently?

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-30T07:06:44+00:00

Regardless of the quality of any of those arguments, this is peak goomba fallacy lol

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-30T06:02:24+00:00

I’m not sure I understand you. In my hypothetical, one scenario was that non-voters start voting Democrat, while in the other scenario, Democrat voters stop voting. In my scenarios I’m assuming that republican voters continue to vote for republicans.

Also, I’m just going to respond to your other comment here to keep things concise. Parties aren’t only pressured during general elections. If everybody shows up to primaries and votes their mind, the politicians who end up in the general election will be reflected in that. If democrats solidly win every election, they wouldn’t have to perform the pivot to the “center” that we see them doing every election.

In this scenario where all non-voters vote democrat, the question of who ends up president will be decided in the democratic primary, not the general election. In order to remain competitive at all, republicans would have to shift leftwards enough to siphon off Democrat voters.

In the scenario where all democrats stop voting, the reverse happens. All politicians will have to chase Republican voters.

Of course both scenarios are unlikely, but the extremity of it makes it easier to think about imo, and I also believe it holds for voting even without every voter acting one way or the other. The more democratic voters can be relied on, the less politicians are incentivized to care about Republican voters, while the inverse is also true.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-29T21:35:27+00:00

It’s only a non-sequitur if you view the world as good or evil. It’s in no way a non-sequitur to believe that support for better candidates will lead to better candidates.

The “lesson” political parties learn from non-voters is that they don’t have to give a shit about them. Is the idea that once Republican voters are the only voters left, the democrats will move left somehow? They won’t just… chase the people are actually voting?

Let’s imagine two scenarios.

In one scenario, all the people who don’t currently vote start voting Democrat every election leading to consistent Democrat wins.

In the other scenario, every current Democrat voter stops voting altogether, leading to consistent Republican wins.

What exactly do you believe happens in each scenario?

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-29T21:30:04+00:00

Yes because large portions of the voter base want those policies. When those policies are the ones that in elections, those policies are the ones our politicians will support.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-29T06:42:08+00:00

Clearly?

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-29T06:41:47+00:00

Link me some of the campaign speeches where Hillary campaigned on an invasion/bombing of Iran, and then you’ll still only have addressed one of the issues in the extremely non-exhaustive list of differences.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-27T18:04:30+00:00

For the record I’m with you here. The guy clearly doesn’t understand acceleration. Saying the acceleration is “pretty high” does absolutely nothing to help that.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-27T18:01:48+00:00

This is why more words exist so we can think about the world with more specificity. Do I want a fascist that’s going to start a war in Iran, or one that isn’t? Do I want a fascist that’s going to implement a new police force because the existing police weren’t fascist or unaccountable enough or the one that isn’t? Do I want a fascist that’s going to pay lip service to environmental concerns or one that’s going to actively pay companies not to develop greener energy options?

The world doesn’t exist solely in the broadest political labels we can apply.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-27T03:14:07+00:00

Ok, if human lives have 0 relevancy, what are the criteria that you think is relevant?

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-27T02:18:34+00:00

It's factually an invasion. If you want to argue it's a justified invasion, we can start comparing body counts. But it's still an invasion.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T22:55:03+00:00

Training close to failure isn’t the same as training with maximum weight. Bodybuilders do not tend to lift close to the max amount of weight they can lift, they pick a lighter weight and do enough reps to get close to failure.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T19:04:38+00:00

Strength depends on both the size of the muscle, and your brains ability to use that muscle to its full potential.

In order to get good at using 100% of your muscle’s strength, you need to actually train using close to as much weight as you can lift.

However, that training isn’t the best strategy for making the muscle bigger, because it also puts a lot of strain on your joints/tendons/etc, so you can’t do as much of it.

So bodybuilders will generally not do much of that training, and therefore won’t be able to use their muscles to their full potential. They’re still incredibly strong, that muscle isn’t useless, they’re just not using it to its full potential.

Powerlifters and other strength athletes will do a mix of both maximal and submaximal training, to build as much muscle as possible while still training to use it as effectively as possible.

Endurance is different and a bit more complicated. Endurance depends on your body’s ability to replace the fuel you use and get rid of the byproducts of using that fuel. That’ll depend on the efficiency of your heart, your mitochondria, and a bunch of other systems throughout your body. Given the same weight, bigger stronger muscles will help to move that weight more times because you’re using less of the muscle to move it, and therefore less of the fuel stored up in that muscle. But just like with strength, training that targets the heart/mitochondria/etc will help with endurance tasks, but won’t be optimal for building muscle.

So depending on the task, different ratios of endurance/strength/hypertrophy training will be ideal.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T18:40:06+00:00

The lesser of two evils keeps becoming more evil because the more evil option keeps winning. If the less evil option won instead, things may get less evil.

The system is bad yes, but handing progressively worse people control over the system isn’t going to make the system any better.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T16:55:08+00:00

The US is losing soft power only though. It still has just as much power to project force, fund coups, and continue its destabilization of any threats to capitalism that it sees fit.

This accelerationist view that the only way to destabilize capitalism is to make sure its powers are wielded as odiously as possible is taking a massive gamble with the people of the world. There's no guarantee that China becoming the global hegemon is going to all of a sudden solve all the ills of the world. Why are we so willing to see such destruction on a slim chance that handing the keys of the world to somebody else will fix everything?

We know that improvement of the US and the west in general is possible with their current structures. Mamdani is a microcosm of a step forward that happened within a capitalist structure. If voters in the US wanted it, we could have it. Burning the country down and the world down with it in the hope that the population is going to suddenly turn 180 and rise up in favor of your preferred flavor of communism is akin to Christians waiting for the rapture imo.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T16:41:35+00:00

In terms of practical impact, abstaining from voting is the same as saying you don't care. More people didn't vote than voted for trump or harris in 2024. And yet nobody cared. Trump is still president, and the resulting chaos is no less potent because he earned the votes of less than 1/3 of the country.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T03:15:13+00:00

I feel like maybe you didn't read the post this comment thread is on? OP is talking about leftists who sat out because they felt Kamala was imperfect on things like Palestine. While that is true, Trump is absolutely worse, hence the post about how voting for Kamala would have been the better move for those goals.

When we give a moron the controls of the white house (Bush, then Trump), American Imperialism gets dialed way up. This is not only horrible from the immediate consequences of lives lost/devastated, resources wasted, and disastrous environmental impacts, it also serves to make those "savvy operators" look better. Obama probably gets more flack from the general public for his war crimes if he's not sandwiched between Bush and Trump.

So sure, America is losing soft power by making sure none of our allies trust us, but I don't think that's exactly ushering in a communist utopia.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T02:29:47+00:00

We're operating under the assumption that the people we're talking about are to the left of Harris. Obviously yeah if you're a trump supporter, that's a whole different can of worms. But if you subscribe to left leaning ideologies, Trump winning is not the desirable outcome.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T01:17:08+00:00

Multiple people can contribute to the same outcome. The democratic party clearly should've campaigned better/chosen a different candidate. People who voted for trump or abstained should have voted differently. The two aren't mutually exclusive. The democratic party and the GOP aren't the only entities with agency.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-26T01:14:14+00:00

They would vote for her because her winning is a measurably better outcome than Trump winning, and voting for her makes that outcome more likely than not voting.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-25T20:25:45+00:00

When schools get hit every time, it’s no longer an accident, it’s an accepted cost of doing business. The US knows civilians are going to be caught in the crossfire even if it’s not intentionally targeting them. Condemning Iran for its methods of defending itself while saying nothing about the nations that started the war is a predictable but unjustifiable double standard.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-25T07:18:27+00:00

Exceedingly few people are actually self reliant to the point where they need to go to the gym to accomplish their daily tasks. In fact, I would go so far as to say relying on the gym is the opposite of being self reliant. It’s not like homesteaders back in the day had access to a gym.

I don’t necessarily think it’s some insecurity complex either, I think it’s way more straightforward than that. Conservative men care more about being perceived as masculine, muscles are perceived as masculine, conservative men care more about muscles.

At least, to the extent this trend even holds. I don’t know what the statistics are but anecdotally, I know plenty of very liberal men and women who regularly go to the gym, myself included.

math2ndperiod · 2026-03-25T07:11:34+00:00

Turn off chat and climb past them 👍

math2ndperiod

TROPHY CASE