Florida’s state athletic board fined a high school and put it on probation Tuesday after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team, a violation of a controversial law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.

The Florida High School Athletic Association fined Monarch High $16,500, ordered the principal and athletic director to attend rules seminars and placed the suburban Fort Lauderdale school on probation for 11 months, meaning further violations could lead to increased punishments. The association also barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months.

The 2021 law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as girls at birth.

The student, a 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the last two seasons, was removed from the team last month after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation. Her removal led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class two weeks ago in protest.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    Interesting how conservatives act like they really care about women’s sports if a trans girl is playing on the team, but they were over the moon when the USWNT got knocked out of the World Cup. And don’t even suggest they go to a WNBA game.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    Her removal led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class two weeks ago in protest.

    The kids are alright.

    • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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      Zoomers are vastly more progressive than any previous generation. It’s why republicans have such a laser focus on schools and children media. If they don’t actively do indoctrination the voter base is just going to naturally shift left.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      There could not be a more stark divide in attitudes, in my workplace, than between the boomers who are on the brink retiring, and the new kids fresh out of college. It gives me some hope for the future.

      It’s not black and white, there are outliers, but by and large the boomers are fucking toxic. Good riddance.

  • Taco2112@lemmy.world
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    When I was in school, there was only girls volleyball and no boy’s volleyball team so I have a question, say the person in this article wasn’t transgender but it was a boy (born with male genitalia and identifying as a male) who wanted to play volleyball. If there were no boy’s volleyball team at the school, would he be allowed to play on the girl’s team? I only ask because isn’t that how Title 9 has been interpreted?

    This is anecdotal but I played hockey in high school and wrestled one year, we had a girl on our hockey team because we had no girl’s hockey team, she was a lot better than me too, I also remember one of our wrestlers wrestling a girl from another school because there was no girl’s wrestling team. There were no issues in either of those cases.

    Regardless of all that, if there’s only one volleyball team at the school and it’s an all women sport, if a boy or transgender girl wants to play, it seems to me they should be allowed on that team if there’s no other opportunities for them to play.

    I’ll finish this by saying: I am one person and these are my thoughts not a strong opinion that I’m going to live or die by so I don’t want to start an argument , just a discussion.

    • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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      Yeah, I worked at a school where a cis girl played on a football team where all the other players were boys. It was never a problem.

      • VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world
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        Way before women’s football or soccer if anyone prefers girls would have had to play on boys teams because there were very few girls teams/clubs and honestly ten year olds aren’t going to give a shit if a girl wants to kick a ball around with them.

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      I’ve heard some roller derby teams doing this when their attendance numbers are low. They just ask the team and have a vote to see if people are comfortable or not. According to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX

      It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.

      You would be allowed.

    • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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      If people are interested, it’s easy to find a case by case solution, which fits best the given situation - but some people are just asholes or populist so others have to suffer.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
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      I think this has always been the case when there is no other team. Its hard to say though as I cannot imaging a boy trying to play on the girls team when the boys is an option. high school is hard enough as it is.

    • Aecosthedark@lemmy.world
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      Im in Australia, but we had three girls join our under 16 rugby league team years ago because there was no girls teams. Noone had a problem with it as far as i remember.

    • Billiam@lemmy.world
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      1. Conservatives think that every girl athlete is inferior to every boy athlete.

      2. They think that trans girls aren’t girls; they’re just boys who have been convinced by some evil liberal plot to pretend to be girls.

      So they think a trans girl gives some sort of advantage that the other girl athletes can’t possibly overcome.

      Of course, more than five years ago or so they didn’t give a flying fuck about girl’s or women’s sports (and they still don’t insofar as they can use them for vice-signalling political wedges.)

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      Nope you’re right. We had a girl on our high school hockey team too. High school sports have been put on some kind of pedestal in parts of our country. Like it’s the Olympics or something. It’s literally just supposed to be another avenue of teaching and socialization. Building confidence and the ability to work in teams effectively

      Honestly we should go to the other extreme. Stop even keeping score in high school sports.

      Edit - At risk of dating myself I do want to point out, this was 20 years ago. Just to show how made up this issue is now.

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      we had a girl on our hockey team

      Why would you think girls being on boys’ team is the problem here? This is about the weaker gender being protected from the stronger one.

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        Having a girl on our team wasn’t a problem, she was a great player and was as good or better than many of the guys on our team including me. So how was she the weaker sex?

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          So how was she the weaker sex?

          Because women as a group are the weaker sex in many physical ways. This seriously cannot be this difficult a concept.

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        I don’t think Title IX ever specifically mentions “women”, it’s just about sex-based discrimination of any sort.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        Because Volleyball is famously a contact sport?

        Also it’s High school. Nobody cares except a few parents who take it way too seriously.

  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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    So glad we fixed climate change, wealth inequality, bigotry, rising fascism, homelessness, etc so we can work on the real issues.

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    Glad to see the school has some common sense. The principal and athletic director pushed to keep her on the team. Great classmates as well, learning to make their voice heard.

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    According to armchair analysts, isn’t she supposed to be dominating all high school volleyball in it’s entirety like some ‘hopped up on E’ ubermensch? /s

      • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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        Bimodal distribution, the fact these overlap seems to defeat people. But at the extremes of performance, the overlap is greatly reduced or entirely eliminated. Sexual dimorphism is very pronounced in humans, and we definitely need to separate the sexes in the vast majority of competitive sports. Anyone claiming otherwise is denying reality, which they’re free to do, but I am free to disagree with their conclusion. I expect to be called a fascist for my position, which is very silly.

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          What is the distribution of athletic performance in volleyball between 14 year olds and an 18 year olds? In high school volleyball, it’s perfectly possible for a team made of all 18 year olds who are 6 feet tall to play a team that is all 14 year olds that are 5 feet tall. The idea that without the participation of trans girls, high school volleyball is completely equitable is ridiculous. High school sports are for fun, learning teamwork and discipline, and fitness. Who wins a high school volleyball game is not important. Certainly it’s not more important than the health and safety of trans girls - and non-gender-conforming cis girls who have been and will continued to be tortured by laws like this.

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            Is it common for a varsity team to be playing a freshman team? That wasn’t the case with football.

              • skweetis@kbin.social
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                In competitive youth swimming, which I did as a child, the age groups are like 11-12, 13-14, 15-16. So, it was possible for someone who was 12 a week ago to swim against someone who turns 15 next week - a HUGE difference in terms of physical development. And if your birthday happens to fall in the weeks before the big championship meet every year, you are always at the bottom or middle of your age bracket for your entire childhood, never at the top. But the specifics don’t even matter. Age groups and grade classifications are to try to make things a little more fair so that little kids aren’t swimming against basically adults. But it’s not in any way perfectly fair. And also, it doesn’t matter! Let kids play sports and get the benefits of that activity. Your kid’s team winning - or losing - some sports game in 10th grade doesn’t matter. Keeping this girl from playing volleyball isn’t fixing any problem. In Utah they made a ban and there were literally 4 trans athletes in the entire state. It’s culture war bullshit. And people who start quoting bone density studies or whatever are either falling for it or willingly participating in it.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  Competitive Hockey was the same way. But we were also allowed to “play up” if we were good enough to get on an older team. So it did have some balancing in that regard. For private competitive sports in the high school age brackets we should be using the same rules as the professional leagues. Because that’s where people go to get noticed by the scouts and train intensively to play at high levels.

                  But in high school teams? Those should be the same rules as the friendly leagues where nobody cares. It’s about having fun and not much else. Winning definitely isn’t the point at a school.

          • Zink
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            In my experience youth sports at all levels are also there in order to put band-aids on the fragile egoes of adults.

        • snor10@lemm.ee
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          Yes, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills reading these comments.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          Could this be handled with greater jv and varsity leagues?

          Like instead of men’s and women’s, it’s just jv and varsity. If you aren’t that great, you’re in jv. If your stronger/faster/whatever you can try out for varsity.

          Changing the name or the perception of the “jv” team maybe?

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          Sure. In professional sports where they’re training intensively. In High School it’s a bit ridiculous. Getting a winning record isn’t the point of sports at that level. It’s just another mode of teaching.

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            I suppose, although you’d still expect the skill distribution to follow the same pattern in this smaller population, i.e., school or college. So on average you’d be forcing girls out of sports teams.

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          Sure, but I’m asking about when there isn’t. some sports those things make a difference, but others they do not.

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        Something else came to mind while reading this article:
        https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/09/sports-gender-sex-segregation-coed/671460/

        “There are players on teams that we play that are faster than me, that are stronger than me, that can hit the ball harder than me. So I knew that [the league’s] arguments didn’t really have any basis in that regard.”

        This is what I’ve experienced in roller derby. The only thing carrying me is that I was taught how to ice skate and play hockey since I was 4. Again, pointing to a socializing aspect rather than a “gendered” thing.

      • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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        It’s an antiquated tradition, but the field of athletics isn’t exactly known for embracing progress and change

              • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.one
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                I used to actually try to reason with people like you, with citations and ethical appeals – the whole nine yards.

                But you know what I learned? You can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

                No matter what anyone says, you lot really want to use those skull calipers, and ain’t no data, logic, or ethics going to stop you.

                And yes, it’s absolutely bigoted and sexist to imply that activities should be segregated by gender. That’s objectively a bigoted opinion. You just don’t want to admit it, because it would mean you choose to be a bad person.

                Again, you won’t let something like an objective fact stop you, so far be it from me to waste my time with people like you.

                • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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                  It’s really not a bigoted position; it’s about protecting women.

                  I should say, for some people I’m sure it’s about bigotry. But personally I think it’s an important feminist issue, since biological women could be playing alongside people that have gone through male puberty. That has the potential to be unreasonably dangerous as well as unfair to those who’ve been through female puberty, on average.

                  Remember this is about demographic averages, and it remains true that some/many biological women could annihilate some/many biological men in many physical endeavours. It’s that bimodal distribution again. Not anymore bigoted than, unfortunately, reality is.

      • darganon@lemmy.world
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        The funny part is volleyball is a perfect example of how to separate men’s and women’s sports. The women’s net is 8 inches lower than the men’s. The men are still faster/stronger and hit harder, and the women’s games are still fun to watch. Why not alter the playing field since the sexes aren’t physically equal? Make the NBA hoop lower, make the women’s soccer field smaller. There is a lot that can be done.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        Tradition. Because some people can’t handle that little Billy is never going to play at a higher level than the high school team?

        All sorts of reasons. None of them are good though.

  • MagicShel
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    Wait if you can’t discuss sexuality or gender issues in school how do they know. Codewords? Charades?

  • Pratai@lemmy.ca
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    From the party that brought you such hits like: “Don’t Tread on Me,” and “Small Govermment!” comes a new this new banger:

    • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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      “Some of you assholes are begging to be tread on by the government” and " Small government to HELP you, not make your life miserable!" In all good book stores…errr. sorry no, we closed those…on fox News and your favorite right wing talking head near you!

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    The highly competitive and world famous Monarch girls volleyball team from Coconut Creek, Florida. Nothing should be allowed to besmirch their timeless reputation through the hallowed halls of heteronormative athletic excellence.

    Who called it in? It was a horny dad who got the ick after ogling the trans kid at volleyball practice wasn’t it?

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    I’m glad the reporting on this is easy to understand and digest.

    Usually any transgender reporting makes it very confusing who is doing what because the reporter is stepping on eggshells when referring to gender.

    The association also barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months.

    Short, sweet, and to the point. Not that I support them doing this, but at least it’s clear to me what they’re doing.