GungnirSniper writes:
"CNN reports a 'transgender woman prohibited from competing in a strength competition as a female is suing' CrossFit for sponsoring the competition. The plaintiff, Chloie Jonnson, 'had sexual reassignment surgery in 2006 and has been on female hormone therapy, according to her lawsuit.' She is also 'legally recognized by California as a woman.'
CrossFit maintains that Jonnson was born as a male, so she should compete in the men's division, according to a letter from the company's lawyer to Jonnson's attorney. It also stated that the company had an 'obligation to protect the 'rights' of all competitors and the competition itself.'
'The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women,' according to the letter from CrossFit's lawyer sent in October.
This comes shortly after the Virginia High School League changed its rules to allow transgender students to play sports. Slate has its take on 'arguable concerns of unfair advantage.'
Should the rules take into account the age the person transitioned, hormone levels, or surgical status?"
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday March 07 2014, @07:26PM
That's something I thought carefully about before posting this story. The net doesn't need another Tumblr, and that kind of discussion, even for those who enjoy it, is not what we're looking for from this site.
I put this in Science in hopes of setting an appropriate tone to the discussion, and also to learn what the response would be like. If it were to turn into a Tumbler-esque flame-war, well that would tell us something. If we got a quality discussion, that would tell us something else.
We're aiming, submissions permitting, to have about 70% solidly-nerd fare, with the remainder being a variety of other topics that our community might nonetheless enjoy discussing once in a while. We've had some hits and some misses on the 30% bracket, but that's how we're learning the community's tastes as we go.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday March 07 2014, @07:48PM
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday March 07 2014, @08:11PM
Another possibility is that we could easily have an annoying mess going on when viewing everything, yet an excellent and worthwhile read at score 3 or so. We've had a few threads like that, and I'm not sure how to gauge them yet in terms of success or failure as an editor. Are those instances of the moderators bailing us out of a bad choice, or is that the system functioning as designed? I'm not sure yet.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Saturday March 08 2014, @06:34AM
I may be a biased source, but I'd say the resulting thread came out pretty well, reading at 2 or 3. Considering the story got a lot of comments (122 in less than a day), it seems our fellow users like having these sorts of stories occasionally.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]