The part of that first statement that I question is the "unfair" part. Almost all world class athletes are born with a natural gift that most of us don't have. Most of those athletes need to train and hone that gift over decades to be truly elite, but that natural gift is still present. No matter how many hours I train playing basketball and no matter how long Lebron James goes without touching a basketball, I am never going to beat him in a game of one-on-one. Is that "unfair" or is that just how sports work? I don't see birth gender as any different than that.
That said, I think it is reasonable to put certain restrictions on transgender athletes such as rules regarding hormone treatments. I am just not an expert enough in the field to say exactly what those restrictions should be.
Also we generally do have gender-agnostic brackets in sports. What we call men's sports are generally gender-agnostic. People of any gender are free to compete in them. The question for transgender athletes is almost always whether than can compete in women's sports.
It is just as "fair" as it is for me to compete against LeBron James for a spot in the NBA. Sports are inherently unfair. They take a tremendous amount of work, but it is almost never about work alone. The best athletes are almost always born with physical gifts that are huge outliers.
The truth is that trans women have been allowed to compete on the collegiate and international stages for almost two decades at this point. Where are all the transgender athletes dominating competition. Why doesn't Janae Kroc have a Olympic gold medal? This fear is mostly unfounded.
EDIT: I did a little more research after posting and I will refer you to the words of Kroc herself[1]:
> And yes as hard as it is to believe for some people one year is a sufficient amount of time for HRT to completely eliminate any advantage that person had and there is significant evidence to back this up. This is also why even though trans women have been able to compete in the Olympics since Athens in 2004 we have not had one single trans woman medal at the Olympics...
>As far as going forward is concerned it's all about education. This is so much misinformation out there and so many people talking about how transwomen will dominate all women's sports and yet that has never happened. It's very similar to the threat of transwomen in bathrooms concerning child safety. No recorded incidents ever but it was used as a scare tactic to enact laws.
The more inclusive understanding of sex diversity outlined in the IOC’s new framework also challenges the argument that trans women should not compete in women’s sport because they supposedly possess an innate and universal athletic advantage due to being assigned male at birth, regardless of their transition status.
I wondered if the author would argue against the notion that the athlete mentioned in the article had an athletic advantage due to being assigned male at birth.
Pro athletics have never been fair. Born women pro athletes are the top of the top and have higher testosterone and muscle development.
For a MTF athlete to compete they have to actually be tested for hormone levels over years of time. Yes, they will still have physical superiority over the average women. However, this is pro sports.
There are very few trans athletes, and the stories of MTF competitors being unfair are either 1. Fabricated, 2. The sports org did not implement proper rules. Or 3. People are looking to hate on something.
What they're trying to get at is that a MtF trans person is still biologically male, no matter what, therefore has an unfair advantage and should not be considered to be on the same level as biological women.
The simple solution I think is that sports should be sex based, not gender based.
> So, are you SURE that an individual that "lived in the prime of their life as a man" is just as strong as they once were once they have spent years on hormone therapy?
Yes. Male puberty confers lifelong physical advantages on the body in terms of muscle mass, heart size, lung capacity and bone density. That's why men dominate women physically in every sport, which is why women have their own special sporting categories so that they stand a chance. Hormone therapy reduces these advantage but it doesn't eliminate them.
> Is it fair to trans athletes?
Probably not, but then is it fair to wheelchair-bound athletes that they're physically incapable of competing with Olympians and so need their own separate event? Maybe the cruel reality of life is that we can't always accommodate everybody?
I disagree, because I do not consider being trans a factor that is usually malleable and the relative increase in performance would not displace anyone with a shot at winning.
You wouldn't make this point about most other unchanging factors (i.e. genetics) that affect performance either. "Fairness" in high end sports is extremely subjective, and hard work is only a small part of how successful you can be, with time (which usually equals to wealth; poor people can't afford to not work) and genetics being the most important. It's simply not a meritocracy in the first place.
Can you help me understand how it's fair for transitioned women to compete against men? I would expect this to be unfair in many sports because of natural biological differences. Not a troll, just looking for relevant facts to inform my world view.
> Assumed that we were talking about biological men, who identify as female in gender, competing in women's sport. If we're talking about biologically non-binary individuals, it is indeed a difficult conversation about how to be equitable with them and still respect everyone's sense of fair play.
Re-read my above edit about hyperandrogenous women. These are biological women who simply have a medical condition that makes their body produce more hormones than normal, and major sports organizations like the IOC have banned them.
My point is that insisting we draw the lines across biological sex results in special cases like that, because the actual group of people we are trying to exclude is those with a certain biological advantage, and that group does not match up exactly with "biological men".
> And if a person who isn't clearly biologically-female does dominate in a woman's division, the natural response will be to say that they have an unfair advantage and don't really belong; it's not obvious how to avoid that catch-22.
Here's my answer: stop pretending they are "(biological) women's sports" and actually define the rules in relation to what you are trying to prevent (ex: set a max testosterone level). This instantly closes all loopholes because it directly addresses the problem rather than attempts to indirectly address it via the imprecise measurement of bio sex.
At least at the top level, this entirely solves the problem in my opinion. A bigger problem I don't have an immediate solution for is lower level of competition - it is obviously unrealistic to expect someone to get a testosterone test to play intermural basketball at their local high school.
It feels like you are deliberately trying to conflate issues that don't need to be conflated.
Not even taking transgenderism into account, I think it is a very difficult problem of how to handle people have been born with intersex characteristics in sports. On the one hand, the argument can be made "how is this different than other natural variation that makes someone good at sports", but on the other hand, since testosterone has such a powerful effect, it means that women sports can only be won by those with a genetic abnormality that causes high testosterone (a couple of years ago all three of the top finishers at an international track and field competition were intersex - I'm blanking on the competition but Caster Semenya was one of them).
No one needs to deny their identity as woman to also question whether, in one example, internal testes gives someone an unfair advantage in women's sports.
I don't disagree with their plight but it does raise the question of where transgender athletes should compete.
Male-to-female athletes likely have an advantage over female athletes but a disadvantage over similarly aged males that aren't undergoing hormone treatments.
Female-to-male athletes are probably different again, probably less severe than the former case though but still creating an advantage over natural females and still at a disadvantage to male athletes.
No one likes to advocate for a special category but I think it might be the best option from a fairness perspective even if it's at odds with modern thinking on gender identity.
We are talking about body, not mind. Transgender women are women with a biological man body (otherwise we wouldn’t have this conversation.) So it is unfair for women with biological women body. The whole point of separating biological women of biological men in sports is to prevent that.
It is clear that you support trans rights and are at some point also conflicted about how that impacts the rights of biological women. I appreciate your post.
As a coach of two nationally ranked club teams (one boys the other girls) and father of three nationally ranked biological girls in their sport I am also conflicted. We have a family friend who is transitioning/transitioned to a woman and I want to be supportive of her.
For me it comes down to this.
There are no biological women competing as men at the world level and dominating a strength/speed (field) sport. At least none that I am aware of. However, I am aware of a handful of counter examples where biological men dominate (sometimes to the point of catastrophic injury) biological women.
As you observe, almost all field sports have different brackets for men and women and as you also observe, sometimes different rules and equipment. My sport is one such sport. Women wear much less safety equipment as a result of the observation that that women are not generating projectiles with speeds in the 160km/h range. In my sport, men are required to wear specific heart protection to guard against fatal projectile injury. Women cannot wear this protection.
This is no joke or exaggeration. it would be reckless to allow biological men to compete with and against biological women with the women's rules and equipment. I will not support allowing biological men to compete against the women's teams I coach nor would I add a biological man to my women's roster.
I know you feel that trans-only or cis-only leagues would be clunky and I do believe at the moment it would be hard for trans-athletes to find places to play as there are comparatively few of them. However, this also casts a spotlight on the problem. There are relatively few biological men competing as women but we already see that there are situations where they dominate to the point of setting international records and causing catastrophic injuries.
Keeping sports fair and competitive for biological women unfortunately needs to come at the expense of supporting biological men who want to participate as women. Hopefully trans-athletes can carve out a niche that supports fair, competitive, and safe play in a widely supported and accessible way but playing at the expense of biological women is not the answer.
I hope that does not make me a transphobe, I don't feel like I am or that I am not supportive but my feelings on women's sports are settled.
Trans people are required to be on hormones (and even maintain certain levels) to compete in elite sports. See WA and the Olympic committee's rules[0][1]
So yeah, not a transmedicalist, just we have existing frameworks for how to balance inclusion and fairness; there's no open question that needs debate around how trans people can compete in sports (unless you get all your cues from South Park i suppose). The only real debate is around what the levels should be and how to avoid retroactively excluding cis women with hyperandrogenism or related conditions.
Also just as an aside, like a lot of hypotheticals that get forced onto trans people, there isn't any evidence of this being an issue. Trans people just want to live their lives, medicinally transition if necessary, and exist as regular people. The number of people who both chose not to hormonally transition, and are competing in some kind of sporting event where that matters is small enough to be humanly addressed case by case (if there are any at all).
I brought up examples of women who were born with an undeniable advantage. They are faster and stronger than most other women because of their genetics. Should they be not considered women? Should they have to compete in their own bracket? Saying that it's 'different' isn't much of an argument.
I bring this up because part of the problem was transgender fears is what fuels the discrimination those individuals face despite being cisgender women.
If your answer is 'it's complicated' then you're admitting that defining what is and isn't a woman is more complicated than how it seems. The majority of transgender women competing in these sports do not break records or anything of the sort.
It's not as simple as "bio-born males". Sports federations set rules that trans women need to be taking androgen blockers, and have levels of testosterone below those of some cis women.
And by the time they've done that, their advantages are somewhere between slim and none. They usually fall within the ranges of other women -- and the top cis female athletes will always be at the extreme ends of the range anyway.
So it's a lot more complicated than just "men showing up at women's events", and surveys like this are heavily influenced by it being presented that way. That presentation has a lot less to do with people worrying about fairness to women in sport, and is mostly about harassing and marginalizing trans people. All trans people.
We could have a serious discussion about why women's sports exist at all, rather than just the open class. And that would bring up questions of just what makes women women -- it goes far beyond what's between their legs and even in their endocrine systems.
But I don't believe that the laws being passed to "protect female athletics" are anything of the sort. They don't even try to fairly present the current state of knowledge about genetics, hormones, and the results of legitimate scientific tests of the results of medical transition.
Sports fairness is basically a transphobe dogwhistle at this point. Major athletic organizations already have policies in place that say that trans women can’t compete unless x,y,z criteria are met which is typically a minimum number of years on HRT and T levels not more than something.
The issue is that there is a trade-off being made here. A trans woman athlete likely has a better bone structure than the average cis woman but not better than the most naturally gifted cis female athletes. Athletic orgs have largely decided that this is fine and it’s not a significant enough advantage to care about because the question for them was “how can trans women compete” not “if trans women can compete.”
But then it’s such an easy issue to drive a wedge on because you can get people riled up about whether trans women should be able to compete with a sprinkling of misinformation about what HRT does and dash of “so a man can just say he’s a woman and compete.”
Even though I largely agree with your conclusion, I strongly disagree that this problem is made artificially difficult.
The fallout of a decision like this for professional athletes who are trans is huge. That fallout and the effects from that decision should not at all be taken lightly.
Having an MTF proffesional athlete to compete in the male category is going to probably cause a lot of disphoria. It will also make it much harder from them to be accepted as female. Many people will question "If she is a woman, why is she competing in the male category". Hence it would probably cause many MTF professional athletes to simply decide to drop their profession.
Transitioning is already hard. Adding "drop your profession" to that makes it that much harder. Especially to professional athletes to whom "being an athlete" is probably rather important. Just dismissing these concerns as "easy" is wrong. The impact this will have is huge and deserves significant consideration.
I believe that, on balance, even when considering the above, there are still cases where MTF athletes should be barred from "women's leagues". At least in sports where their biology gives MTF athletes a significant advantage. But that is a close and difficult call to me. Not at all an easy one.
You are moving the goalposts by switching from a highly skilled game like basketball to one that is mostly dictated by physiology. There are certainly athletic competitions in which the gap between men and women differs.
I also notice you chose a race in which Caster Semenya won. I don't know it that was intentional, but that specific race highlights the ridiculousness and arbitrary nature of a ban on transgender athletes. By seemingly all credible accounts she was born, raised, and identifies as a women however she has a genetic condition that gives her some characteristics of a man. Should she be banned from competing against women? If so, what precedent does that set? Do we need to test the chromosomes of all athletes to see if they have rare genetic conditions? Are XX males allowed to compete against women even if they identify as men? What if they are on testosterone therapy?
That said, I think it is reasonable to put certain restrictions on transgender athletes such as rules regarding hormone treatments. I am just not an expert enough in the field to say exactly what those restrictions should be.
Also we generally do have gender-agnostic brackets in sports. What we call men's sports are generally gender-agnostic. People of any gender are free to compete in them. The question for transgender athletes is almost always whether than can compete in women's sports.
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