2d ago

GOP lawmaker left speechless when asked if he's trans during a hearing

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He huffed about how the question wasn't "appropriate" even though his bill would result in kids being asked that same question.

A Republican state rep from Michigan testifying about his anti-trans sports bill on Monday was left speechless after an out Democratic colleague began his questioning by asking, “Representative, can you tell me: are you trans?”

A long beat staring down out gay Democratic state Rep. Mike McFall followed, before state Rep. Jason Woolford (R) managed to reply, “Are you?”

“I’m actually going somewhere with this,” he said to lawmakers in the small chamber.

“Because I want to know, how does a 14-year-old girl prove whether or not she’s trans to a 50-year-old coach?”

GOP @lemm.ee

Jolly Platypus @lemm.ee

2d ago

GOP lawmaker left speechless when asked if he’s trans during a hearing

www.lgbtqnation.com /2025/05/gop-lawmaker-left-speechless-when-asked-if-hes-trans-during-a-hearing/

119 comments

“Because I want to know, how does a 14-year-old girl prove whether or not she’s trans to a 50-year-old coach?”
Puts on rubber glove we have teasts
- Generally these tests are conducted by pedophiles and kept secret, so I can see why the GOP has no problem with them.

This was EXTREMELY INAPPROPRIATE! Doesn't he KNOW that you're ONLY supposed to ask CHILDREN about Their Genitals? What a PERVERT!
- God damned leftist groomers at it again. Won’t anyone think of the children’s genitals?!

It's a complex issue for sure, but I'm really proud of this thread for consistently using the term "trans women" when talking about the differences between trans women compared to cis women and cis men in sports.
On Reddit, most people on this debate just say "biological males," "males," or "men" in situations where they're clearly talking about trans women, which is a clear tell that it was never about fairness in sports for them.
- I stay out of that fight because I don't know enough about the real statistics to comment on it. Which I feel like would drastically improve the situation if all these armchair "bIoLoGiCaL aDvAnTaGe" people would do the same.
  
  I still don't understand why the government needs to be involved in sports at all. They're games, it's not that serious. Leave it to the experts within those organizations to come up with whatever rules are needed.
- I'm not convinced it's as complex as people pretend it is, largely because the number of clearly dominant trans athletes are so low. Maybe we haven't seen a problem already because there simply isn't a problem, even if you could theoretically tell a story that sounds somehow "unfair" depending on your storytelling skills.
  
  even if you could theoretically tell a story that sounds somehow “unfair” depending on your storytelling skills.
  Yeah, they sure do love pulling the Riley Gaines card even though she came in fifth, making it a total nonsequitur.
  And I totally agree that this debate is too big considering it only targets a tiny handful of athletes. I say it's complicated because some arguments used feel, circumstantial? As in, "Trans women should play with women because there's only a couple of them anyway?" Would acceptance of that argument lead to tokenism? BWhat if, for whatever reason, a sports team happened to take on a lot of trans woman? I think that would be okay, but I worry it would dredge the debate up all over again.
  Or, people often say, "Trans women should be allowed to play with women because they rarely win anyway." But what if a trans woman ends up on a winning streak and then another controversy erupts? I feel uncomfortable that our condition for entry is framed as our failure to win, and that if we win, then by implication we get othered as opposed to just being a woman who won a sports game one time. This recently happened, actually. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ca-school-sports-authority-panders
  This is to say, I'm just thinking aboug how we come to a supporting argument that ages with grace? And what argument should that be? Not that I think any pro-trans argument would satisfy some people, with it being the wedge issue that makes TERFS out of people originally left of center. I guess I don't know the answer at this point.
- Its not complicated at all.
  Trans folks are just folks. Takes all kinds. Mind your own business.
  People who can't mind their own business are assholes. And should be treated like the assholes they are.
  Not to mention just how blatantly disrespectful it is to not treat people how they want to be treated. Republicans love to pull a bible out of their gaping holes when it suits them right? Luke 6:31-36.
  And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
  
  Fundies largely ignore the New Testament, especially anything Jesus is quoted as saying (they're more in line with St Paul, especially the Epistles that he probably didn't write) and they aggressively cherry-pick the Old. For example, they're always wearing clothing made of mixed fiber types, so they're going to burn in hell: it's an abomination according to Leviticus. And all the requirements to welcome foreigners among you, and requiring extreme hospitality to strangers: they just pretend that part isn't there.
  And as for the Old Testament (the Tanakh) itself, the Jews, over millennia, developed a whole apparatus of analysis and exegesis (the Talmud) to take the various fairy tales, genealogies, records of the actions of kings and prophets, poems and nationalistic history and try to draw conclusions as to what they're telling us. The fundies, in their arrogance, instead believed that anyone could interpret a translation of those texts with no context, no critical thought, and no use of reason, as long as they pretended they believed hard enough. They're like the Sovereign Citizen morons interpreting case law as though it's based on magic phrases.
- Oh. Fucking Reddit is so fucked. That place has fully embraced the scum. All meaningful conversation there is absolutely dead, conservatives have absolutely poisoned the well and nobody is open for business even if they want to be. Even good mods are 100% scorched earth, which can be nice, but sometimes the questions are genuine and the person they're having a convo with can easily destroy them. But because there's so much sockpuppeting and astroturfing and just shitty behavior, most people are now deaf and lazy, and even in the same comment threads, it becomes an echo chamber of two idiots trying to appeal to the audience with mic drops.
  Even if it weren't totally cooked from admins to culture, reddit is unreliable, untrustworthy, and functionally useless.
- "I found the right echo chamber!"
  
  If you care about accuracy, things like details might matter to you.

I swear to god republicans found out Penis Inspection Day wasn't real and are now making it a thing to save face.
- Penis inspection day was real though. Up until ≈1974 in the USA you had to show your dick to go swimming in public pools.
  
  For real-real? Saurce?
- Hahaha.... hol' up... what do you mean not real?
  /s
  
  I just hate that it takes my pastor the whole day to do the inspection

I love this. This is a really good, simple, impactful strategy.
- The GOP is just a bad debater.
  My immediate thought was to say something like "That question proves my point! We have no way of knowing who is or isn't trans without careful testing!"
  
  "Under this bill, coaches will ask their students this very question. High school coaches are the ones who will be performing this so-called 'qualified testing', and it starts with this question. Are you trans?"
  "What if I ask you to prove it? Will you be comfortable doing that for me? Would you prefer we bring in a high school coach?"
  "When do you think it's okay for someone to ask you to prove your gender? What if my colleagues and I are uncomfortable sharing the Congressional bathrooms and athletic facilities with you, until we know for sure what you are hiding in your pants? Do we have a right to ask you to prove it?"
  
  "Okay, I'll inspect your genitals, drop 'em and we'll prove it to everyone"

It's a real shame he deflected, I would have loved to see this argument continue.

trans guys have bigger dicks than republican legislators, so this is a fair question
- Last time I was at the gynecologist’s- “that’s unusually big - are you sure you aren’t intersex”?
  Nurse told me my dong was big, hehe.
  
  nice

I'm pretty sure he's MS13. We should deport him just in case.
- No, he’s tren de aragua. He’s part of the invasion and should be transported to CECOT post haste
- I'm pretty sure he has an invisible tattoo.

From the State House to the White House, we are saying that we will no longer allow our daughters and women to be taken advantage of by insecure men...
Yeah, we should protect them from these insecure, conservative men who constantly think about other people's genitals.
- Trans men don’t exist of course.
  Or we are autistic teenagers that need to be ~~tortured~~ receiving “therapy.”
- Was this quote from a republican?? How can you be so self unaware?

"Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear." Riiiight MAGAs?

What, you guys didn't have penis inspection day in gym class?
- That's only in the girls class.
- No for real. Penis inspection happened like.. every year?
  
  This was definitely a thing in middle school PE class back in the 90s.
  
  ...
  I'm sorry
  
  My middle school held an assembly over a fad of "dick tapping" that had taken over the boys in the school. Apparently it had become "a thing" for them to just reach over and slap their friends' penises, and it got so bad that we needed a damn assembly.
  All us girls were extremely confused. We legit thought most of the boys in our school must have secretly been gay if they wanted to touch each other's dicks so badly. Even if the boys weren't gay, we figured they must be pretty frickin' stupid to play such a dumb "game." A lot of us had crushes evaporate in an instant, and I for one never looked at the boys in my class the same again.
  Nowadays, I know better than to assume one's sexuality from such things. However, I never stopped being extremely confused about that game.

“out Democratic”
What does that mean?
- I assume they mean “out gay”, someone who is openly gay.
  Out Democratic I guess is being openly Democratic.

I guess I'm out of the loop on this subject and honestly I don't know if the information I have is factual or not.
Do trans women generally have a physical advantage over women? Are there any rules for this kind of thing? Do they need to be transitioning or taking suppression drugs? This is a serious question.
- I don't know about performance, or advantage (and I don't think it matters since noone seems to care about the performance or fairness of non-proffesional sports unless it can be used as a bludgeon against trans people), but I happened to be arguing with my neighbor about this a few days and found that, according to the president of the NCAA there are "less than 10" transgender athletes in college sports out of about a half million. I feel like the whole discussion is a red herring. 1
  
  Most likely.
- trans people on hormone replacement therapy stop receiving the effects of whatever hormone their body produces naturally. so trans women lose muscle mass, bone density, whatever, and have no benefit from having previously lived as a man.
  additionally, im of the opinion that less than 1 percent of child athletes go on to play professional sports, so who gives a shit who is playing who
  
  One could argue that having gone through puberty as a male people might have a bigger frame which could be advantageous in some cases (basketball, track) but in my mind, this is more an argument for puberty blockers than against athletics
  
  It seems to me that they should try to pair up these sports teams based on the talent of the individual player rather than their genitalia
- "Do trans women generally have a physical advantage over women?"
  No. Trans women were able to complete in the Olympics beginning in 2004. No trans woman has won an Olympic medal in the woman's category.
  There are many studies that compare cis men to cis women and based on that claim trans women have an advantage. Among the studies that actually compare trans women to cis women it is generally found that trans women have no overall advantage.
  "Are there any rules for this kind of thing? Do they need to be transitioning or taking suppression drugs?"
  The rules and requirements vary by league. At higher levels of competition its generally required to have hormone levels at cis female levels for a prolonged period. Often 6 months or longer. To clarify, getting to those levels roughly takes 2+ years of hormone replacement therapy(hrt). Hrt for trans women generally consist of an anti-androgen, estradiol, and progesterone.
  
  There are many studies that compare cis men to cis women and based on that claim trans women have an advantage.
  They also selectively exclude all of the sports where women have distinct advantages, like cross-country. Cis men are statistically better at quick bursts of energy, like weightlifting or sprinting… But cis women are statistically better at endurance sports like cross country. Basically, cis men have an higher concentration of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which use a lot of energy but are more powerful. While women have more slow-twitch muscle, which allows them to last longer while exerting less energy or using less oxygen.
  Sports were originally segregated by sex because men couldn’t stand the thought of losing endurance sports to women. It would be wholly undignified for a dainty woman to beat a bunch of big strong men, after all. They broke women off into a separate category, so they didn’t have to worry about it. And all of those endurance sports conveniently get left out of the conversation whenever discussing the advantages that conservatives claim trans women have.
- The answer is more complicated than other comments would lead you to believe. Before I get into all that, please know it doesn’t matter. Especially, when it comes to 14 year old kids who are playing JV sports at school.
  First, the problem with studies is that there are very few trans athletes to study. Some studies have only one or two subjects.
  Studies show that there is both an advantage and a disadvantage depending on what sport we are talking about and how long the athlete has been on hormones. Weightlifting and other strength based sports do tend to give an edge to trans women. However, cardio sports such as swimming and running put trans women at a disadvantage because they now have smaller muscle mass for their larger frames.
  To me, it doesn’t matter. The camaraderie and other things that kids get out of sports is more important than who wins and who loses.
- Human beings are sexually dimorphic, but most of the advantages or disadvantages are negligible or can be overcome with training, so it makes little difference. It makes even less difference in middle and high school aged children, since everyone is at (somewhat) different points developmentally anyway.
  
  Also sports were never fair to begin with, they are literally competitions of ableism
  
  So in college sports the performance gap is larger and should be considered or no? I also find this hard to believe even at a highschool level. While I was in highschool the advantages of testosterone were very obvious. If it were really the case that it makes little to no difference then shouldn't the argument be to remove gender from sports all together?
  
  negligible or can be overcome with training
  I agree on a highscool/grade school level, but not at any extreme competitive level. There's a reason most of the world records for athletics are held by men.
  Testosterone doesn't make all men better than all women, but if you take two equally trained+talented people for most athletic events, the men outperform the women.
- There is a recent last week tonight with Jon Oliver that explores this topic in a way that entertaining and powerful. Definitely worth a watch.
  https://youtu.be/flSS1tjoxf0
  Hopefully you have a genuine interest and aren't "just asking questions"
  
  I'm genuinely asking. On its face it seems unfair but I also don't understand public schools'obsession with sports that seems to be made worse by the cost of college and sports also being tied to that. At the same time I also know that anything the GOP is throwing a bitch fit about is guaranteed to be a bunch of bullshit. I usually watch John Oliver regularly but I've fallen behind this season. I appreciate the link and I'll give it a watch.
- Considering most trans athletes can't best records set by cis women, it seems pretty clearly no

What is Jason Woodford hiding?!?!?

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