NEW YORK (AP) — They play on the same team, but they couldn’t be further apart. One member of the women’s volleyball team at San Jose State University has signed on to being part of a federal lawsuit against the NCAA challenging the presence of transgender athletes in women’s college sports. The specific person she cites? One of her own teammates.
The situation swirling around the SJSU team — which has gotten increasingly chaotic in recent weeks , with several teams canceling matches against the school and politicians and advocates weighing in — somehow seems unsurprising in the polarized United States these days as a highly contested election looms. As with other points of dispute in the struggle over gender identity and transgender rights, one thing opposing sides have in common is framing their stance as a matter of what’s fair and right. Where they stand a chasm apart is in one fundamental sticking point, a tough question in any arena: What does ‘fairness’ actually mean? That the idea of what is fair or not can vary from person to person probably shouldn’t be surprising.
After all, a sense of right and wrong is part of the human world view, formed from highly indvidual factors like each person's environment, the cultures they grow up and live in, and their experiences. And while science and research into areas like hormone treatment and transgender athletic performance, which is only in the early stages at present, could at some point provide more medi.
