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this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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This is the weakest of the arguments for trans rights. There's a reason they want everyone to focus on it.
We shouldn't be allowing them to frame the conversation around the one area where identifying as whatever you want actually affects other people.
It actually doesn't. Studies show that trans women perform on par with cis women in athletics. This wishy-washy attitude essentially amounts to "you can only participate if you lose"
Here's an NPR article interviewing a known geneticist and talking about Trans Athletes. Their general consensus is that there is a lack of data to make an assertion one way or the other for if trans athletes have an edge. And that's without taking into account the vast differences between each individual trans person and where they're at genetically/hormonally. Trans athletes aren't a monolith that are all the same, they can have fundamentally different circumstances and genetics between each person.
Honestly any automatic ban of trans-athletes is stupid. Michael Phelps has a natural genetic advantage when it comes to swimming, but no one of note is coming for his gold medals or saying he can't compete.
https://www.cces.ca/transgender-women-athletes-and-elite-sport-scientific-review
There's not a huge amount of data about this yet, and the true patterns will become more apparent as we have more data, but the data we do have suggests no inherit advantage over cisgender female athletes.
Please try not to use your own understanding of a subject as a measure of its possibility...its an unreliable metric.
You are using a source that literally says "we don't have enough information to come to a conclusion, but here's what we do have" and presenting it as fact because you agree with it. I would call your understanding quite unreliable.
What we do have enough information on is the differences between the male and female body. Studied for centuries. There are significant differences between the two that lend themselves to physical advantages. Pretending biological males are not at a physical advantage over females is absurd and not based in any kind of science or reality.
Except science and reality as it exists today. I literally stated up front that there was little evidence. That doesn't change what the existing evidence shows.
Available evidence indicates trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantages over cis women in elite sport. • The higher levels of red blood cell count experienced by cis men is removed within the first four months of testosterone suppression; • There is no basis for athletic advantage conferred by bone size or density, other than advantages achieved through height. Elite athletes tend to have higher than average height across genders, and above-average height is not currently classified as an athletic advantage requiring regulation; • On average, trans women who are pre-testosterone suppression still have lower Lean Body Mass (LBM), Cross Section Area (CSA), and strength than cis males. This indicates that the performance benefit experienced by these individuals cannot be generalized by examining cis male athletes; • Non-athletic trans women experience significant reduction in LBM, CSA, and strength loss within 12 months of hormonal suppression. It is important to note that this 12-month threshold is arbitrarily defined, and no significant studies examine the rate of LBM, CSA or strength reduction over time; • When adjusting for height and fat mass, LBM, CSA, and strength after 12 months of testosterone suppression, trans women still retained statistically higher levels than sedentary cis women. However, this difference is well within the normal distribution of LBM, CSA, and strength for cis women (Jassen et al., 2000); • LBM, CSA, and strength loss continues for trans women after the 12month initial testosterone suppression; • The limited available evidence examining the effect of testosterone suppression as it directly affects trans women’s athletic performance showed no athletic advantage exists after one year of testosterone suppression (Harper, 2015; Roberts et al., 2020; Harper, 2020); • Post gonad removal, many trans women experience testosterone levels far below that of pre-menopausal cis women. 5
The issue that I think is highlighted by the article is that it presupposes that the transathlete is undergoing hormone suppression. That isn't a prerequisite to participate in most sports, and to require it would require disclosing more detailed medical information than might be prudent.
So, while the study is small, it is also not representative of many instances of trans athleticism. A transwoman not on HRT is just as much a woman as one who's been on it for years, according to advocates, and should be equally eligible to participate in women's sports. If that belief isn't held, you'll be labeled a transphobe and bigot as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You're a bigot because of your reactionary response to a situation that doesn't exist. I can make up a scenario in my head and get upset about it, but that doesn't mean that it's happening. And you've been doing it all over this thread and projecting that anger onto trans people.
You're also transphobic for implying that trans women not taking HRT are less women than those that do. They're just women, all of them.
I just said exactly the opposite. Fuck dude, get it together.
No one is falling for your dog whistles.
Your agenda is clear. Call anyone who doesn't 100% agree with you a bigot. You tarnish your cause with your ego.
They literally prefaced their post with that exact statement. There was no misrepresentation.
You asked for a link to available research and rexeives one. I'm sorry it didn't match your pre-conceived notions. Welcome to science, where we make the best decisions we can based on available evidence. The evidence that currently exists says there's little to indicate a difference exists. Do you have a better suggestion aside from just making up some data and seeing what that says?
You didn't actually read the study, did you? You just read the first few lines of the page without opening the actual study or reading the executive summary.
It's become apparent that you don't actually care what the data says. You've made up your mind because of how the situation feels intuitively...just like how we know the earth is the center of the universe and everything revolves around it...if we were spinning and flying at 100s of milea a minute throught the cosmos, we'd be able to feel it...I know because when i close my eyes in the car, i can still feel the movement...so I don't have to think about very deeply about it.
Also, the appropriate term isn't "chicks with dicks", its trans women/girls. The term you use is not only inaccurate, it's offensive. Like if I were to call you stupid instead of uninformed.
Except, it doesn't, so you're literally taking the bigots' side here.
Then let’s stop dividing all sports by sex or gender and see how it all shakes out.
No dramatic change is needed. Athletic boards need to provide guidance on who will be accepted to compete and athletes will have to decide if they can abide by those rules. Many of us chose not to compete, it's no sin.
Most trans women have no such thing and in the rare case they do people treat them as if they are cheaters. Cheating implies malicious intent.
Most trans women aren't in competitive sports. The conversation isn't about MOST trans women. It's a trans strawman people use to call others bigots when they want to look like they have statistics on their side.