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Trans women have no advantage in elite sport, new report finds
(www.thepinknews.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Uh... it is. We have considerations taken into account for age, weight, and skill level, at various levels of sports. Yes, obviously there are biological advantages in sports, and that is a big part of the sport. That's precisely why we separate men and women, BECAUSE of those advantages.
So for you to say there is no consideration given to those advantages until trans woman are involved is just flatly wrong. That's the basis of this entire conversation, the fact that we do take that into account already.
So why is the discussion not how we can further categorize people then? You know, to account for the biological advantages?
Its not fair to short women that only tall women can compete in sprinting on an international scale. There's nothing they could ever do to compete on that level. It's not physically possible for them. So why is the Olympics not dividided into height categories? Why not categories based on wingspan in swimming? Why not categories based on muscle to fat ratio in lifting? Why not categories based on leg length in cycling? Why don't we categorize any sport that requires prolonged deep breathing into lung capacity? Why don't we measure any relative advantage causes by these things and measure everyone accordingly?
Look into how the special Olympics is measured such that anyone can compete. Anyone can, and their results take into consideration their relative handicaps and advantages.
Fairness in sports is not the point. Never has been. The point is "perfection of the human body". How strong can can the strongest people possibly get? How fast can the fastest people possibly get? How high can the highest jump ever get?
Why is it currently impossible for 99.99% of cisgender women, no matter how much they train, to compete in a sporting event at an Olympic level? How is the inclusion of trans women fundamentally changing this process in any way?
You do realize trans women are women, right? You're just tlaking about taking women out of women's sports. Castor Semenya, several other black women have been told they are not woman enough to be treated as women. Do you think there's any motivation behind that?
Is sports meant to be exclusionary? If so, who is women's sports for? Upper middle class women from well off families? What about wealth disparity? If we add in wealth disparity the percentage of women who will ever be able to compete is even smaller. So what about poor women?
Why is the category for shooting divided by sex?
Why has there been significant discussion about excluding trans women from beauty competitions? Do you not understand the movement has nothing to do with fairness, and is just a conservative culture war talking point to spread hatred of trans women?
Do you not understand that by perpetuating this culture war talking point, you're just proving conclusively that you do not see trans women as women and that you're hypocritical for focusing solely on any advantage a trans woman has ignoring that every single olympic level athlete at this stage has massive biological advantages that already exclude 99.99% of women from ever competing at that level?
Trans women are women. We take hormones that destroy our muscle mass and cause significant physical impairment to our bodies. I'm not the incredible hulk, I'm not a massive testosterone machine, I have had GRS and I have no blood testosterone at all. I've been this way for nearly a decade. In any competition I would be utterly destroyed by even a teenage girl. Is it necessary to exclude me from participation? Am I not woman enough to compete, like Castor Semenya? Am I not who sports is for? Is sports only for cis boys and girls, is that the message you want to send to trans kids?
I'm going to say this, and you're probably going to get pissed. I'm sure my post will get deleted, but if ya'll can't handle having conversations with people who don't 100% align with your views, than we will never make progress.
You said 'you do realize trans women are women, right'.
Yes. They are. I will treat them like a woman. I will acknowledge them to be a woman. I will use the pronouns they prefer, and think in 99% of scenarios, none of this should be problematic.
But they are not the SAME as all women. Yes, they are a woman. But they have a slightly different experience/body type than all of the other women, and that difference gives them an advantage over other women, that none of the other women get.
You're completely correct that sports is about being the best. It's about seeing what the human body can achieve at it's maximum. And we've broadly separated those sports endeavors into two categories. Male and female (with the exception of some sports that we put additional restraints in, weight classes etc).
We realize that not everybody can be the best athlete in the world. That doesn't mean we have a need to create 10,000 parameters and classes of sport for people to compete in so that everyone has an equal shot at being the best in the world. There are thousands of reasons why a man or a woman won't ever have a chance at being the best in the world. And we are fine with all of them.
The difference is that we are fine with people not being the best woman they can be. We are not fine with people going through a fundamentally different body growth during puberty, that enables them to have an advantage that no other woman could possibly have, as they were not able to go through puberty as a male, as that's not something that women can do.
It sucks for transgender women. I get it. I feel bad for them. I wish there was a better solution. You know what else sucks for transgender women? Being born a gender that they aren't. Having to deal with society's hatred toward them. There are a lot of things that suck for transgender women. But sticking to the parameters we've had in women's sports at a competitive level is not hatred. It's simply desiring to keep the playing field the same as it's always been. Women, who grew up and went through puberty as women, competing in their sport.
Any advantage a trans woman may or may not have is not universal to trans women though.
A 4'4" trans woman is not going to thrive at basketball, regardless of any bone density or whatever.
This is kind of the point, you have trans women who are just as diverse in both their natural physical attributes as well as varied in the degree to which their body has changed from hormone therapy, depending on factors like age when they began transition, their personal biological response to the replacement, and how long they've been undergoing transition.
This is why "trans" in and of itself is not actually a useful category to blanket ban people from athletics. It only is if you operate by stereotype. In which case it opens questions like "Women from the netherlands tend to be taller, should that category be banned from sports based on their natural advantage?"
I think it's really simple.
If you have an advantage because of something that occurs naturally in you, and you've gone through puberty as a woman, then it's fine.
If you have an advantage because you went through puberty as a gender other than what you're competing as, then it falls outside of the advantages we are willing to accept.
That's all there is to it, really.
It is a simple measure, but it's also completely arbitrary. You are then making a judgement solely based on the fact that they are trans, not anything to do with actual advantage or fairness.
I'm not trying to be inflammatory or imply you're a bad person because of this, but that is a position based purely on transphobia. Unconscious transphobia maybe, but if you broke your motivations down for yourself honestly I think you'd see that that was really all there was behind your reasoning ultimately.
Okay, so you admit that sports isn't fair and that fairness isn't the point.
So you just think trans women should be excluded.
Someone who has a genetic mutation that makes their wingspan unnaturally wide has an advantage that no other woman can have. So, no, the only justification possible here is that trans women are not women and so therefore do not deserve to compete as women. And you're okay with saying to young trans boys and girls, that they should give up on sports and athletics, because those things are only for cis boys and girls.
Whats wrong with having many categories of competition to make things fair? Or whats wrong with the methodology of the special Olympics, which uses a combined leader board with calculations for handicap and advantage?
There are actual solutions here, but instead you just want to exclude trans women. Just like Caster Semenya, you don't think trans women are woman enough to be treated as such.
Right. And we've decided the advantages we are ok with accepting are those that women who have gone through puberty as a woman have. And advantages that fall outside of that are things we are not ok with.
Puberty is different for every woman. Every woman has varying levels of testosterone, especially when certain conditions like PCOS and Endometriosis are involved.
Are they allowed to compete? Why would they be allowed to compete if a trans woman isn't? Are you under the impression that all cisgender women have the exact same body in all measures?
I'll ask again, who is sports for then? Cisgender women who never had blood T levels over a certain level? So all other cisgender women who have had blood T levels above that should also be excluded? What about trans women who don't go through testosterone puberty? What about trans women who do, but have very low testosterone?
Youre still left with only one possible view of the situation, that trans women are not women. Trans women are as diverse a group as cisgender women are. Categorically banning trans women makes no sense. You would never even consider that idea if you thought that trans women were women, because its just as ridiculous as telling a cis woman with more T than whatever level you decide that they don't fit the definition of woman you've decided. It's not just ridiculous it is also malicious. You may not be intending to be malicious, but you are perpetuating a talking point that promotes hatred of us. To you this may be just a matter of your opinion, to me its watching as more and more misinformation is spread about me and people like me.
Trans women are women because they say they are a woman. And I respect that. I'm not going to sit here and gatekeep what is a woman and what isn't. It's beyond my grasp. If some scientists want to have rigorous debates about these terms, have it it. But if a woman says she's a woman, I believe her.
BUT - that doesn't mean that I don't understand that someone who goes through puberty as a man, is going to have a different body type than someone who doesn't go through puberty as a man.
Am I wrong about that?
Again, there is a massive amount of variability between the experiences of cisgender women. Some cisgender women develop what we would consider male secondary sex characteristics. Some cisgender women are exposed to enough testosterone in puberty to have significant differences in their physiology. What exactly is the difference between that and trans women?
What about trans women who went through puberty with clinically low testosterone levels? What about trans women who don't, and what about cisgender women who go through puberty with clinically high testosterone levels? Are we limiting for testosterone? If so, then you're also banning cisgender women from competing as women. If not, then you don't see trans women as women, given that you are categorically banning them even though many of them are weaker than cisgender women.
Thats it at the end of the day. You can refer to trans women as women without actually thinking that. You see trans women participating in women's sports as men participating in women's sports. You would never want to categorically ban trans women from competition if you didn't. Because trans women are just as varied a group as cisgender women are. We're all women, we all deserve the right to be treated as such. No matter what our testosterone levels are, none of those things make us not real women. So categorically banning us from women's sports is the same as saying "trans women aren't women". Because otherwise we'd be talking about biological advantages and how we can account for them fairly so that all women can compete together.