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.
> I don't know of any woman has ever been denied entry to woman's sport because she has too much muscular development. Think of the Williams sisters in tennis for example.
Sorry, I shouldn't have used a bad hypothetical about muscles and should have just explicitly said "intersex people". Regardless, here's a page that documents examples of what I mean, including in high-profile events like the Olympics:
I would like to especially draw attention to this case:
> In 1986, Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño was dismissed and publicly shamed after failing a chromosomal test. She fought the ruling against her, arguing that she could not have a competitive advantage because her intersex variation resulted in her having no functional testosterone. Two years later, the IAAF gave Martínez-Patiño the green light to compete again.
Note how although she has traits unambiguously associated with the male biological sex, she was still allowed to compete as a women, and as a matter of fact the argument she made was that those traits did not give her an advantage.
The point I am trying to make is that the lines in sports are not as cleanly drawn between "men" and "women" as commonly assumed. There are people who are almost universally accepted as cis women banned from women's sports for reasons similar to arguments made about trans athletes. Humans just generally do not fit easily into binary categories when looked at as a whole.
EDIT: Actually, I think this page makes my point even cleaner, without the associated baggage of "well intersex people are partially men":
> In 2011 the International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics), and IOC released statements restricting the eligibility of female athletes with high testosterone, whether through hyperandrogenism, or as a result of a disorder of sex development (DSD).
These people are unambiguously women, both by gender and biological sex, and are excluded from women's sports.
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> As for being insensitive to call someone a "man", i think you're conflating gender and biological sex.
That is basically exactly my point. I understand, at this point, that you are referring to biological sex. However, the word "man" can refer to either, and _usually_ refers to gender. Therefore, using the term with no clarification can easily accidentally mislead people into thinking you intend the opposite interpretation that you do. It's not a big deal, but it's worth avoiding in my opinion.
> If trans people have such an obvious advantage why aren't they dominating every single category of every single strength-involving event?
Athletes who dope don't always dominate, but it still gives them an unfair advantage. Same as when males compete in women's events.
That said, in some women's sporting leagues these males are actually dominating - see https://shewon.org for a list of the many hundreds of women who have been denied their place on the podium by trans-identifying male athletes.
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.
I wish that article had been able to change my mind.
I am a big supporter of trans rights. Trans women are women. Gender is between the ears, not between the legs.
Women's athletics is about both sex and gender. It recognizes that women play sports in a somewhat different way from men. Partly because the bodies of cis women are different from those of men, and partly because of the culture that arises around that. Sometimes the whole sport is different because of it -- women's gymnastics is radically different from men's, and figure skating only a bit less so. Women's basketball and soccer are noticeably different, and interesting to watch because of the differences that go beyond strength and speed.
Defining "women" in that athletic context has thus always been tricky. We've always had intersex athletes, and outliers whose bodies were recognizably female. But they were rare enough that it didn't force itself to the front of our minds.
Trans people are more numerous, and will become even more so. I don't think anybody would consider it a good thing if all of the women's records were dominated by athletes assigned male at birth. That is not yet the situation, but it's not hard to imagine that it could be.
I wish the article had been able to make a better case that it wouldn't be a problem. I absolutely support the fact that Lia is a woman. She should be able to participate in women's sports as a woman -- because women play sports differently. It is great that she gets to be on the podium with other women.
I don't, however, know how best to handle that. A separate set of cis-women's events or cis-women's records is crude and awkward. Leaving cis women out of the record books will make nobody happy.
I also don't like borrowing this trouble. Focus on this is, I fear, more about finding ways to marginalize trans people than real concern for women. So I really wish the article had left me with a knock-down way to agree with Lia.
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.
> When comparing athletes who compete directly against one another, such as elite or comparable levels of school-aged athletes, the physiological advantages conferred by biological sex appear, on assessment of performance data, insurmountable.
The paper is missing that these differences are not insurmountable in all sports, and not even in all Olympic sports (they reference the IOC multiple times). It's an important distinction not addressed adequately in the chart or the paper IMO.
> In this review, we aim to assess whether evidence exists to support the assumption that testosterone suppression in transgender women removes these advantages.
If your study is designed to analyze the fairness of different testosterone levels in all Olympic sports (or a cross-section of all sports) in an un-biased way, then you should include data on all Olympic sports (curling, artistic gymnastics, artistic swimming, equestrian, fencing, figure skating, marathon swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, sailing, rock climbing, surfing, table tennis, etc.), or at least include varying types of sports like endurance sports, dexterity sports, artistic sports, equine sports, etc.
Maybe they just don't have data for those other sports, but then at least include a prominent caveat that this data is incomplete and is not a good representation of all sports or even all Olympic sports, or limit the scope of your paper to what your more narrow analysis actually is.
> Of course, different sports select for different physiological characteristics—an advantage in one discipline may be neutral or even a disadvantage in another—but examination of a variety of record and performance metrics in any discipline reveals there are few sporting disciplines where males do not possess performance advantage over females as a result of the physiological characteristics affected by testosterone.
Correct, but why not name those sports and include them in the chart? Apparently the authors know that these sports exist enough to acknowledge that they are "few" in number.
Just a little too much of an agenda wrapped in science for my taste. I don't think it's the best chart to be promoting, because it's incomplete and paints a picture that male sporting dominance over females is "insurmountable", when in fact "dominant in many areas, but comparable in a few areas" is a much more accurate conclusion.
That said, I don't think it's hate speech by any means, just a poor chart from a poor paper with incomplete data.
> However, it presents a huge problem for women's athletics,
Trans women have been able to compete for years in Olympic level sport, and they haven't wiped the floor with cis women. I fail to see evidence of the problem - I see a lot more evidence of it being a culture war and TERF talking point.
It also doesn't really line up with the fact that we fawn over genetic quirks that let Michael Phelps dominate his sport. If we think that certain sorts of genetic quirks are unfair in women's sport, why do we allow them in men's?
> If trans people have such an obvious advantage why aren't they dominating every single category of every single strength-involving event?
Because there aren't that many trans women who compete in women's sports.
Neither of your quotes is close to a good argument. If you want to answer this question empirically, look at statistics (race times, lbs lifted, etc) and women's competitions where trans women competed.
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.
There is no advantage that shows up in the data to show that trans athletes have an advantage in sports.
If there were we would see trans-athletes winning lots of medals. They don't. In fact there just aren't that many athletes. This is a giant nothing-burger.
There is another argument that says trans-athletes can be disadvantaged by having a skeletal structure which their hormone system can not properly power and this is actually hinders their athletic performance. Either way as I said, there aren't any trans athletes winning medals so I don't think we really have anything to be concerned about.
As for your concern about female sports I have my doubts about whether or not you are sincere but I'll pretend you are.
Perhaps it is easier for you to think of Female sports as "a protected category for people who do not have male levels of testosterone". This is what it effectively is anyway because of inter-sex humans. We monitor people's testosterone (whether that is right or wrong is another issue) and we decide if they are allowed compete in female sport. The exact same process can be applied to trans-athletes.
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.
> Or to have trans people pick sports where physical strength is not at play like motor racing, shooting, chess, etc.
Even at those non-physical sports, men still have a big advantage, it shows in all of the sports you listed and e-sport.
Gender split in sports is there to protect women.
The men sport is actually a game for "the best of the best", I don't think there would be any complain if there's a woman (cis or trans) want to challenge that space.
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 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.
This issue is always framed in terms of trans women having an unfair advantage against cis women. But considering trans men even for a second shows how absurd the "compete with your birth gender" position is. Trans men will have a huge advantage against cis women because they're ingesting a performance enhancing drug: testosterone.
So what solution do you propose? Unless you're advocating for just banning trans athletes from competing in general, there's a lot more nuance here than "men want to compete against women".
I've been told to think of trans people as always being their true gender, from birth. Which makes perfect sense to me, but then that contradicts this discussion of athletics. Clearly there will be some points in time when the trans woman athlete had a biological advantage over other women, but that doesn't mean they weren't a woman at that time too.
> genderless athletics would deny a lot of women the opportunity to participate at all. Is this really the goal?
Well, the examples in the article were people who were told they couldn't compete in a sport, because of their gender (i.e. women can't wrestle) not combining seperate gender categories within a sport, so I think they're arguing against women being denied the opportunity to participate at all.
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.
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