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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Segregated sports based on a demographic like that isn't as trans affirming as you would think... My gut reaction as a trans person is about the same aversion I imagine a person of color would experience if a white person tried to put forward a "People of Color sport league".
Ditching us all into a new category like we're quarantined in sport away from other athletes because we're implicitly not cis... Isn't something I would appreciate.
The unfortunate reality is that men are much better at women at sports. This is why we have women leagues. There are pronounced biological differences that would essentially prevent women from competing if everything was one league.
MTF trans, because they were born male, have all of these advantages. They can take hormone blockers / estrogen pills and that reduces some of the advantage. But not all.
So it results in a MTF trans being a) weaker than males and b) stronger than females
What other solution except a trans league would be just to all parties involved?
Hormones aren't binary though, some men are born with higher T levels than others. And some women have bigger bones than some men. If leveling the "hormone" advantage is desired, then drug test all participants and rank them that way.
Virtually all men with functioning testicles have higher T than all women. This is because testicles produce T at 10-50x the rate of ovaries.
Men going through puberty see permanent changes to the body. You cannot undo this. It gives MTF permanent advantages compared to women.
They are stronger than women on average even after years of being on estrogen.
As for the variance naturally seen, you're right. But consider this
Who ends up becoming a top athlete? The very best, right? So they are already near the top of the bell curve. So when you compare athletes, you're not pulling random samples from the entire population.
You're pulling a random sample from the people with highest T, densest bones, highest rate of fast twitch muscles, etc.
The male maximum and the female maximum is vastly different. This is why we see such a massive difference in performance.
Presence of hormones currently in the blood does not entirely measure this.
Yeah, isn't that the point? I mean you are talking averages but OP is talking about how to handle the outliers (trans folk).
All athletes tend to be outliers, regardless of gender. A small % difference in ability is the difference between 1st place and 300th
Which is why Serena Williams, the #1 female tennis player, loses dramatically to the 203rd male tennis player.
If the 203rd male tennis player became trans, he would instantly become the world's #1 female player overnight.
I have pointed out to people before that trans women athletes in practice tend to not outperform all women in the sport. The data we have puts them as no more competitive as women with naturally high testosterone and depending on sport can actually be at a disadvantage...
But there's another underlying assumption. You assume your athlete went through masculinizing puberty first and then a female puberty second. If you skip that first step then you don't see major differences of frame, weight distribution or muscle mass.
Where this stings is that laws are forcing people to go through that first puberty regardless of the wishes of the paitent, the patients families, the paitents doctors and the concensus of the medical associations of those doctors... And then the government sits back and demonizes those people based on their physicality as a logistical social problem for the rest of their lives and ostracizes them based on this logic.
Athletes squew young. If you allowed through trans athletes who went through the transition process young enough or looked at sport with trans populations and statistically assessed whether any excessive advantage was afforded and allow in those instances where none was found you could solve for any statistical stand out issues within a decade...
But no, we are having this inane conversation because it suits some government parties to make people feel that trans people are a threat or a problem that must be stopped and that there is zero reasonable inclusion policies.
This is why my personal opinion is we should allow trans athletes if they didn't go through male puberty. If they did, sorry you're out. If they didn't, it's OK.
And you're right not all mtf athletes are going to end up at the top echelon but given enough time statistically speaking they will be drastically overrepresented.
Edit: also the data is quite clear trans women are stronger, have more lung capacity, etc even 5+ years into hormone therapy. Iirc I even saw 10+ years on a paper once
But the ones that went through male puberty. I think this is why we should try and find gender dysphoria earlier and treat b4 puberty. It's much more effective the younger you start
Of course issue is you don't want to be too broad with diagnosis because of false positives and the conservatives going nuts. So it's a difficult thing to do. Maybe we will identify what causes gender dysphoria some day and that will help
I think it's a lot more black and white being trans than people realize and I have my own pet theories about what gender euphoria /dysphoria is that I observe as being two independent factors.
Half of the problem I think in reaching people is that the vast majority of cis people don't have an observed internal gender preference. We are trying to build empathy with something we as trans people assume they have too - but maybe only a small minority of cis people experience it. I don't think we actually understand cis people, we just assume a bunch of things about them using trans people as a false opposite.
Thing is... If I am correct, the assumed massive earth shaking regret of what would happen if a cis person went through gender reassignment... Is they might just adapt and be fine.