I’m all for trans rights. Trans people deserve rights, and support, and respect. BUT, here’s my take on sports:
If I wanted to coach an athlete to make it to the Olympics and win gold, I’d scour my country for a trans woman and train her for literally ANY individual sport.
Pole vault, 100 meter, javelin, swimming, you name it. We’ll kick ass.
That is simply not true. A male puberty does give some benefits in some sports. But any advantages in, e.g. muscle density, vanish once hormone levels are accounted for. And hormone levels have been (over-)* controlled for decades now.
You know what also gives you an advantage? Being taller. Or having higher blood oxygenation. Or certain abnormal body proportions. Once you get to top level sports, you have people that basically won the genetic lottery, mixed with a shitload of training. Just look at Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky in swimming, for example. Both are very exceptional in both body and technique, and dominated their sports.
So why is trans inclusion such a divisive point, but, let’s say, height is not? Tall women dominate basketball, should we ban everyone over 1.80m? Or test for hemoglobin before runs?
Trans athletes dominating a sport has not happened in any relevant capacity. I challenge you to find even a single case where it has. This is purely a political talking point, nothing about this is about sports
* Women have (sometimes illegally, and often without consent) been subjected to hormone and chromosome testing for decades, to the detriment of mostly cis- and intersex women. I’m not aware of any trans women caught up in this, at least on an Olympic level.
Sadie Schreiner set the 200-meter record and qualified for the Atlantic Region Championship with a time of 25.27 seconds at the RIT January Friday Meet. The runner also broke the 300-meter record with a 40.78-second finish.
So someone won at a college competition. About 1% of people are trans, so you’ll see some winners. It’d be weirder if you didn’t. The records stated there, 25s for the women’s 200? The world record has been <22s for decades now. That’s not exactly “dominating a sport”.
But do you notice how everyone quoted in the article is actively transphobic, misgendering her and another athlete? If this was truly about sports, why go to that length? You could have a nuanced, respectful debate about fairness in sport. Yet whenever the topic is trans people, it’s always those that already deny their very existence that are the most ‘concerned about fairness’. This has never been about sport.
This is just a convenient front for the right’s culture war bullshit. Don’t fall for it.
Whether or not records are being broken is not the correct way to determine if a certain population has an advantage over the other. A variation toward the top performers could be interpreted as an unfair advantage. If this particular very small group of athletes is in the top 5% than one could think something is anti-competative about this arrangement.
Once again, the same is true for many other factors. Long legs help to be good at running, I’d presume, but we’re not measuring femurs for college sports. And the variation in top performers does not exist, at least not in the way you’re impling. Trans people are actually statistically underrepresented in competitive sports.
The singular focus on a handful of trans athletes, while actively misgendering those same athletes, is a hate and harassment campaign spread by people who couldn’t care less about fairness in sport.
Equating genetic outcomes (e.g. height) and advantages gained through a male or female puberty is a mathematical malpractice. Any advantages gained through male puberty will be seen across an entire biologically male population. Whereas genetic lottery outcomes are less predictable and more sparse.
There is an argument to be had about how a trans female’s advantages gained through a male puberty can be minimized through hormone blockers. However, I would presume advantages already gained through their frame would be retained. I am not opposed allowing these athletes to participate to determine if this hypothesis would hold. However, I doubt the ample data needed to test this is/would be collected across all levels of competition where applicable.
If the handful of trans athletes are mostly top performers, it could indicate that their participation hinders the competitiveness of the competition.
Equating genetic outcomes (e.g. height) and advantages gained through a male or female puberty is a mathematical malpractice. Any advantages gained through male puberty will be seen across an entire biologically male population. Whereas genetic lottery outcomes are less predictable and more sparse.
What do you define as “biologically male” here? This is a term often used by bigots, so I just want to make sure we’re on the same base. Biology isn’t binary, far from it. Intersex people are the ones most often caught up in any sort of gender testing for sports. Most of them don’t even know they are intersex, and find out through some competition excluding them. And what about trans women that went on puberty blockers early, that never went through a testosterone-driven puberty? While the advantage for someone who did go through puberty is debatable and varies from discipline to discipline, for someone who didn’t it’s non-existent. Would you agree that it’s only fair that they should be allowed to compete? Where do you draw the line then?
If the handful of trans athletes are mostly top performers, it could indicate that their participation hinders the competitiveness of the competition.
And you are getting this claim from where, exactly? This is pure conjecture on your part
For the purpose of this discussion, “biologically male” refers to someone who experiences or would experience a male puberty. Thus, receiving the physical developments associated with that. Any discussion otherwise Is tangential. If you were to measure the physical performance of a given individual, and said performance is consistent with other males, we can indicate this person as biologically male.
Discussion about intersex persons is harder to delineate than what we are talking about here. it also is not the topic at hand.
The only reason I replied to this thread is because you asked for a single example of a trans person dominating a sport. In the article provided there is a link to that athletes page of performances at several meets. I would say by most definitions applied in the athletic world she is dominating. Whether they have an advantage due to their previously male physiology, I cannot say. I am simply outlining conditions for which one could claim that a trans person has an advantage. I am not concerned enough about this topic to scrounge up data to refine any claims we are making here, and I am doubtful the necessary data exists.
Trans people have been able to compete at the Olympics since the mid nineties, so if male puberty really did have such a large effect on performance, we’d have had next to no cis women win medals for three decades. Instead, every women’s Olympic medal in that period went to a cis woman. Taking enough hormones to physically change the shape of your body has a detrimental enough effect on athletic performance to wipe out the advantage from male puberty. In principle, an athlete could gain the advantage back by stopping taking HRT, but the Olympic rules require stable hormone levels for two years, so they’d just disqualify themselves if they tried.
If that was the case, you’d think it would have happened at least once by now. You seem to be unaware that “problem” was solved decades ago, before it had any chance to become one.
I’m all for trans rights. Trans people deserve rights, and support, and respect. BUT, here’s my take on sports:
If I wanted to coach an athlete to make it to the Olympics and win gold, I’d scour my country for a trans woman and train her for literally ANY individual sport.
Pole vault, 100 meter, javelin, swimming, you name it. We’ll kick ass.
That is simply not true. A male puberty does give some benefits in some sports. But any advantages in, e.g. muscle density, vanish once hormone levels are accounted for. And hormone levels have been (over-)* controlled for decades now.
You know what also gives you an advantage? Being taller. Or having higher blood oxygenation. Or certain abnormal body proportions. Once you get to top level sports, you have people that basically won the genetic lottery, mixed with a shitload of training. Just look at Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky in swimming, for example. Both are very exceptional in both body and technique, and dominated their sports.
So why is trans inclusion such a divisive point, but, let’s say, height is not? Tall women dominate basketball, should we ban everyone over 1.80m? Or test for hemoglobin before runs?
Trans athletes dominating a sport has not happened in any relevant capacity. I challenge you to find even a single case where it has. This is purely a political talking point, nothing about this is about sports
* Women have (sometimes illegally, and often without consent) been subjected to hormone and chromosome testing for decades, to the detriment of mostly cis- and intersex women. I’m not aware of any trans women caught up in this, at least on an Olympic level.
Source
So someone won at a college competition. About 1% of people are trans, so you’ll see some winners. It’d be weirder if you didn’t. The records stated there, 25s for the women’s 200? The world record has been <22s for decades now. That’s not exactly “dominating a sport”.
But do you notice how everyone quoted in the article is actively transphobic, misgendering her and another athlete? If this was truly about sports, why go to that length? You could have a nuanced, respectful debate about fairness in sport. Yet whenever the topic is trans people, it’s always those that already deny their very existence that are the most ‘concerned about fairness’. This has never been about sport.
This is just a convenient front for the right’s culture war bullshit. Don’t fall for it.
Whether or not records are being broken is not the correct way to determine if a certain population has an advantage over the other. A variation toward the top performers could be interpreted as an unfair advantage. If this particular very small group of athletes is in the top 5% than one could think something is anti-competative about this arrangement.
Once again, the same is true for many other factors. Long legs help to be good at running, I’d presume, but we’re not measuring femurs for college sports. And the variation in top performers does not exist, at least not in the way you’re impling. Trans people are actually statistically underrepresented in competitive sports.
The singular focus on a handful of trans athletes, while actively misgendering those same athletes, is a hate and harassment campaign spread by people who couldn’t care less about fairness in sport.
Equating genetic outcomes (e.g. height) and advantages gained through a male or female puberty is a mathematical malpractice. Any advantages gained through male puberty will be seen across an entire biologically male population. Whereas genetic lottery outcomes are less predictable and more sparse.
There is an argument to be had about how a trans female’s advantages gained through a male puberty can be minimized through hormone blockers. However, I would presume advantages already gained through their frame would be retained. I am not opposed allowing these athletes to participate to determine if this hypothesis would hold. However, I doubt the ample data needed to test this is/would be collected across all levels of competition where applicable.
If the handful of trans athletes are mostly top performers, it could indicate that their participation hinders the competitiveness of the competition.
What do you define as “biologically male” here? This is a term often used by bigots, so I just want to make sure we’re on the same base. Biology isn’t binary, far from it. Intersex people are the ones most often caught up in any sort of gender testing for sports. Most of them don’t even know they are intersex, and find out through some competition excluding them. And what about trans women that went on puberty blockers early, that never went through a testosterone-driven puberty? While the advantage for someone who did go through puberty is debatable and varies from discipline to discipline, for someone who didn’t it’s non-existent. Would you agree that it’s only fair that they should be allowed to compete? Where do you draw the line then?
And you are getting this claim from where, exactly? This is pure conjecture on your part
For the purpose of this discussion, “biologically male” refers to someone who experiences or would experience a male puberty. Thus, receiving the physical developments associated with that. Any discussion otherwise Is tangential. If you were to measure the physical performance of a given individual, and said performance is consistent with other males, we can indicate this person as biologically male.
Discussion about intersex persons is harder to delineate than what we are talking about here. it also is not the topic at hand.
The only reason I replied to this thread is because you asked for a single example of a trans person dominating a sport. In the article provided there is a link to that athletes page of performances at several meets. I would say by most definitions applied in the athletic world she is dominating. Whether they have an advantage due to their previously male physiology, I cannot say. I am simply outlining conditions for which one could claim that a trans person has an advantage. I am not concerned enough about this topic to scrounge up data to refine any claims we are making here, and I am doubtful the necessary data exists.
So, why doesn’t anyone do that, if it’s so “possible”.
Downvote me all you want. If my trans woman athlete went through male puberty, my Olympian would take the gold metal.
Be real. Have a nuanced discussion about this.
Trans people have been able to compete at the Olympics since the mid nineties, so if male puberty really did have such a large effect on performance, we’d have had next to no cis women win medals for three decades. Instead, every women’s Olympic medal in that period went to a cis woman. Taking enough hormones to physically change the shape of your body has a detrimental enough effect on athletic performance to wipe out the advantage from male puberty. In principle, an athlete could gain the advantage back by stopping taking HRT, but the Olympic rules require stable hormone levels for two years, so they’d just disqualify themselves if they tried.
If that was the case, you’d think it would have happened at least once by now. You seem to be unaware that “problem” was solved decades ago, before it had any chance to become one.
Nuance?
It’s “medal”.