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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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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.