Seeking Perspectives: Trans Athletes in Women's Sports

Much ado about nothing. The biggest freak-outs about this tend to be by people who weren't even particularly good to begin with. Like Taylor Silverman, the skater who lost to a trans woman... And multiple children as young as ten.

If you want to talk about hormone levels and time spent transitioning, there's a conversation to be had, but the right isn't having it. For example, the movie Lady Ballers was supposed to be a documentary that proved men could dominate women's sports by pretending to be transgender, but everybody involved eventually backed out after discovering the effort it would take to actually transition, even for the purpose of showing up the so-called woke left.

During a recent episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, cast member and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro — whose previous credits include spending nearly 45 minutes throwing a tantrum over the Barbie movie’s existence — said that they originally intended to make as a documentary. But then they found out that (gasp!) a group of bigoted cis men in bad wigs can’t simply participate in women’s sports.

“As it turns out, most ladies’ leagues don’t allow any actual men, and [the actors] weren’t willing to go the full distance in terms of what it would require, the actual hormone treatments, to actually play in ladies’ leagues,” Shapiro admitted during an interview with Boering about the film

Of course, those conversations about testosterone levels will also unfairly target black women, who have been targeted in the past by the same shrill white women using almost the exact same tactics as we see today.

This question is loaded. Trans women are not really biologically male, depending on the time transition happened there will be varying degrees of masculinised secondary sex characteristics but things such as fat distribution, muscle mass, organ size changes etc are going to look much more "standard" female than male.

AFAB women aren't excluded from sport if they're unusually tall, or have PCOS, or some other hormone variation that leads to an advantage. Women with PCOS will have an advantage in sport involving strength because they have much higher levels of testosterone (some grow patchy beards ffs) but nobody makes a fuss over that.

All sport is inherently unfair, we try and set limits of degree of unfairness. There is no evidence that trans women have more advantages than all the usual variations in women we allow competition among without issue. The Olympics has allowed trans competitors since 2004, where are all the trans gold medalists? where are all the trans women winning everything? Have you seen the differences in male and female records for most sports? If trans women are meaningfully similar to men then the average trans women would just demolish many sports. This doesn't happen, only a few people have attracted attention for success and that's in an environment of media controversy with actively trying to seek them out.

If we ban trans women who've been on estrogen for two+ years bared on genetics, then we should also ban athletes with genetic advantages like Michael Phelps. I'm not in favor of banning people

biologically male trans individuals

The preferred term is either "assigned male at birth", or simply "trans woman".

• Not one single solitary person who cares so desperately about trans people in women's sport has ever given one single solitary shit about women's sports themselves. It's just an excuse to practice their hatred while pretending to be righteous and Only Wanting What's Fair. But it's all about ethics in video game journalism, uhuh, sure.

• Trans women are women. Even if they had some statistical advantage, they aren't taking away opportunities from women in sport, because they are women in sport. That's like wanting to ban naturalised citizens from the workplace because they're wrecking the economy by taking jobs away from [nationality] people.

• Spend a couple of years on oestrogen, see how much upper body strength advantage you retain. It'll be somewhere between fuck and all.

• Jesus fucking christ do trans teenagers not have it hard enough without people wanting to make their lives more shit out of spite? Fuck I hate humans.

Trans women who are using gender-affirming hormones are not "biologically male". It takes about two years on hormones for their performance to equalise with cis women. The only advantage that remains is greater speed, due to the greater height gained from undergoing a male puberty. There are plenty of tall cis women, especially in sport, so this doesn't really count as an unfair advantage. And, of course, trans kids who were lucky enough to get puberty blockers in time will fall in the same height range as their chosen gender.

I'm not going to pretend that it's an easy question. It isn't, and it's not unreasonable for cis women athletes to be concerned. But the proportion of athletes who are trans is tiny and the proportion who are champions in their sport is even tinier. I do think that hormonal transition is a pre-requisite (because otherwise they would be "biologically male" with respect to the physical characteristics which matter in sport) but I don't think anyone should be getting their knickers in a twist beyond that, and they should definitely not be using it as an opportunity to be cruel.

Most of the 'discourse' is pure transmisogyny, based on lies and fantasy demons. Most top professional athletes are biologically extraordinary, that's why they are at the top.

I don't have much time to hunt out sources but this is a decent thread from my bookmarks.

Women's sports were explicitly created for women. Most men's leagues allow women, but at the pro level there really aren't women that can compete at the same level.

I think the focus on winning or trans athletes dominating is overblown and ultimately irrelevant. A Trans women winning an Olympic gold probably never happens, not because of biology, but because it's mathematically unlikely.

For competitive leagues I think the fairness question is who gets the last spot rather than who wins. Is dropping a cis women for a trans women fair? Is allowing a cis women who took PEDs for a prolonged period, but has been clean for a few years fair? I think it's reasonable that the answer should be the same to both.

For non-competitive leagues I don't think it really matters at all.

I haven’t really seen any sport that has been clearly dominated by trans women. Feels like a non-issue to me.

If it ever becomes an issue where trans women has such unfair advantage biological women has no longer chance of winning, then maybe a separate category is needed.

A lot of comments here on adult competitive sports.

Any restrictions for school children would be highly invasive and detrimental to a child's wellbeing. Many school contact sports will have weight grades, which suffice to manage risks.

Also bare in mind that in the current culture wars, you may have a fixed idea of what "trans" means that does not meet the myriad of actual circumstances.

Just make all sports unisex and it won't matter. Except it does matter in some cases. Easy pick from the top of the pile is men's and women's gymnastics. There are plenty of comparative videos on YT showing one gender being able to do an event and the other being barely able or not able to do it. There are enough physiological divisions, that some movements and performances will be limited or enhanced by ones innate physiology. Skeletal structure, muscle structure, etc. It follows reason then, that a trans person can still maintain these advantages or disadvantages and therefore have an unfair advantage if they choose the related sport.

Honestly though, would really just rather them combine all sports as unisex and see what happens. Women will dominate some, and men others. I don't see many women as dominating linemen in the NFL, but I likewise see very few men winning medals in women's style gymnastics. Trans won't even be a question anymore. Just give everyone the leveled field.

The reason we have women's sports is because women are extremely rarely able to compete against men in most sports.

When MTF trans person reaches adulthood they have already generally attained a physical advantage over cis women that no amount of hormones and surgery will diminish. Their current levels of testosterone will have no impact on bone structure and muscle development gained through puberty. This can be shown by the lack of female to male trans athletes.

I am all for Trans rights, but becoming a professional or elite athlete is not a right, as much as I would love to become a racing driver.

Perhaps a mixed gender/sex competition could work, but allowing people that have transitioned after puberty took hold is blatantly unfair. Obviously there are some sports, such as shooting, darts, snooker etc where this advantage isn't really applicable.

Unfortunately in life compromises sometimes have to be made, and I believe that for males transitioning to female, not allowing them to compete as elite female athletes is a compromise that needs to be made for the greater good.

Hi,

@Zeon@lemmy.world please follow the 2nd Rule.

There are a bunch of studies that show that there is minor map advantage on most (not all) measures for trans athletes a few years after transitioning with hormone therapy. Some trans people never go through puberty of their assigned sex at birth.

I used to be of the view that it wasn't fair for someone who was amab to have an innate advantage over someone else who wasn't. However, we should also consider where they would compete. Is it fair to have trans women compete against cis males who now have a similar, but more profound, advantage over them? Or are they now just excluded?

I've come to believe that all sports at the elite level are dominated by those with genetic and physical advantage, usually by luck. Trans people also for in that category, but it's easier to pinpoint the why for them. All the rules of sport are arbitrary, anyway.

So, after consideration, I think we should have sports open to all that are (identify) as a particular gender. For sports that already categorise by physicality (boxing, weightlifting etc), I don't think it would be problematic to consider their physicality too. For many sports there is no advantage anyway, after transition. And even if there was, isn't the point of sports to have fun, to enjoy oneself and have pleasure. Only a rare few people compete at elite levels. Excluding trans people hurts far more.people than it helps.

I think the people that spend their time focusing on this are really creepy. They freak out about something that genuinely isn't an issue and demonize people who are just trying to live their lives. There are better things to focus on

I’m against it. Men and women are built differently. That’s the point.

You can’t take a pill, chop off some parts and be the other gender.

A men’s track and field Olympic gold medalist should not be able to then have his hormones suppressed then be able to compete in the women’s events. That does not undo all the development that occurred previously.

Teenagers are still developing, both mentally and physically. They should not be able to change either. A lot of things are happening and they don’t understand. The maturity needed to make such a decision is too big.

Could a white person identify as black? And vice versa? I see gender in a similar light.

The solution to this dilemma is actually quite simple. Make a new division for trans athletes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIcfnuNMyJk check this out, it's pretty good