The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics.
The 25-year-old also remains barred from swimming in the female category after failing to overturn rules introduced by swimming’s governing body in the summer of 2022, which prohibit anyone who has undergone “any part of male puberty” from the female category.
Thomas had argued that those rules should be declared “invalid and unlawful” as they were contrary to the Olympic charter and the World Aquatics constitution.
However, in a 24-page decision, the court concluded that Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of US swimming.
The news was welcomed by World Aquatics, who hailed it as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport”.
I know I’m gonna catch heat for this, but sex-segregated physical competitions is one of the very few places where trans women shouldn’t be treated the same. Women’s sports competitions aren’t segregated by gender, they’re segregated by sex. Trans women are women in gender, but their body isn’t a biologically female body. That’s the exact definition of transgender - when your body’s biological sex doesn’t match your sense of gender. So by definition, trans women don’t have a biologically female body.
The whole point of sex-segregated sports is for people with female bodies to be able to have a fair competition, instead of them not even getting a chance to compete at all because if they had to compete against biological males then almost 100% of females wouldn’t even make the team. This is the whole reason why sports competitions are segregated by sex.
TLDR trans women should always be treated as women - except for sex-segregated physical competitions
The thing that really sucks is that tran women are gonna get absolutely dominated by cis men. HRT for long enough really does so so much to the body (hence why most sports allow trans people who have transitioned to compete). Tho trans men also would have insane advantage overs cis women if they competed together
Maybe there isn’t any good solution. But what you are saying leads to a conclusion that there is no place in sports for trans people. Then again, these conversations always fall apart when we talk about cis people with abnormal hormone profiles.
End of the day, a lot of competitive sports come down to genetics. There isn’t much room for someone with disadvantagious genetics to become the best in the world. For me, I don’t see much difference in a trans woman who’s transitioned being world class in swimming and a tall ass cis woman dominating in basketball. Especially when we don’t see trans people sweeping in competitions as a wider trend
There is a place for trans people in sport. Male, female, trans. Done.
I really don’t think there are enough trans people competing at the highest levels to sustain that though.
Honestly, I think it’s not that big of a deal. I’m sure something can be worked out sure, but it’s not the most important issue that trans people have to deal with.
That sounds like a more ideal compromise, though I am not sure if even that is without its own set of issues.
Basically, athletic performance falls on the same gradient as masculinity. The more masculine your body is, the more capable you are as an athlete on average. If you are a trans woman taking T blockers/estrogen supplements, your body becomes more feminine, but in turn you lose much of that athletic capability.
So hypothetically, if I am a trans woman and an athlete, where I am paid based on how well I do, am I incentivised to not take T blockers/estrogen supplements, or take them in more limited doses, in order to be a more capable athlete? Basically, am I forced to compromise my gender identity for a better paycheck?
We could force every trans athlete to undergo lab work before every match to make sure their T levels are within a certain threshold, but then is that someone’s fault if their body is not being as responsive to the medication they’re taking, and now they’re out a job? Not to mention how that would basically force their medical history to be public knowledge.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable inviting these sorts of scenarios to occur, to be honest.
Trans people get the lab work you’re talking about done regularly anyway, because it’s part of ensuring their levels are safe and correct.
You’re voting for exclusion (trans competitions will never happen) because you’re uncomfortable with trans people having to do something that is already part of their daily lives
I think you may have misread what I was suggesting.
Trans people should never have to disclose part of their medical history to stay employed. Even if you get regular testing and it’s no big deal, what goes into your medical record should be between you, your doctor, and no one else. There should never be a scenario of “Star kicker of [team] barred from competition because her labs showed she is too masc.”
My point was not to suggest that as an option, but more that it would be a bad proposition to try to avoid the scenario where trans people would be incentivised to partially detransition (MtF) or take too many supplements (FtM) when athletic performance is directly correlated to how many androgens your body has.
I don’t know how to avoid that scenario in a capitalist system, to be honest with you.
I’d rather submit my records to a sports oversight board than be excluded from competing.
You say “trans people shouldn’t have to disclose their medical history to stay employed”, but you’re seemingly happy to speak for trans folk and just accept that they should be unemployed.
The real irony being that anyone in elite sports, trans or not, already has to submit to the lab work you’re uncomfortable with, as a condition of their employment.
The scenario you’re trying to avoid? That’s why the lab work already happens, because many cis athletes take performance enhancing drugs to gain advantage, because they’re incentivised to in a capitalist society.
But somehow, that lab work is only an issue that you feel the need to speak up on when it’s for trans folk?
The problem is that fundamentally there are differences within the genders that favour one competitor over another.
Take Michael Phelps – “Michael Phelps’s height, wingspan, and large hands and feet give him an advantage in swimming. His body also produces less lactic acid than his rivals, which shortens his recovery time.” According to that he should have been disqualified from competing as his body was fundamentally different from his competitors.Yet he was glorified for his achievements even though he had an edge nobody else had.
Herein lies the biggest issue … trans people are disqualified for the simple reason nobody in power wants to deal with them, so the anti-trans movement wins again.
Stop labeling people anti-trans just because they disagree with you about the mechanics of a zero-sum competition situation. The majority of people here are PRO-TRANS, and ALSO pro-women. We all just want the system that provides the most fairness in a situation where there’s no way for it to be completely fair to everyone.
If there are 10 seats on a team, every spot taken by a person means that a different person doesn’t get that spot. So we as a caring society have to decide who CAN get that seat, and also who CAN’T get that seat. It all comes down to whether or not women born with biologically male bodies have a physical advantage over women born with biologically female bodies. At the very minimum, people who went through male puberty have a physical advantage over people who didn’t go through male puberty.
I think you make a valid point that someone could be trying to find fairness in a difficult situation without being anti-trans.
On the other hand, it’s sports. Which is not driven by fairness, but by money. I don’t give a shit either way, as far as I am concerned dope everyone up the gills and modify everyone into super humans, it is just silly sports. But I am not the person paying or advertising.
And that is all that matters. Will the advertisers put in money, and will people pay to watch. Currently, the society of those groups of people say no.
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If it was purely about money, major league sports wouldn’t be spending millions on their players.
Of course they would, there are only so many to go around. They sell seats and products. That is how it works. You spend money to make a winning team, you appease the fans, you make money. OR you are really rich and want to brag about having a winning team. Money, Money, Money.
This person only wants to be the best in their league.
Who doesn’t?
I am not disagreeing that it is difficult to figure out rules if you want to make it fair for everyone competing, but the reality is businesses are making money, and this is a diversion that does not make them money.
Can you define male puberty though? Like qualitatively in specific terms and with specific language?
Being pro trans is being pro women. Excluding some women from women’s sports would be discriminatory to those women. In this case those women are transgender, and they are being excluded because they are transgender. Which would be opposed to their right to participate, a right we recognize for all other women and girls. That would be anti trans, in this specific context. It doesn’t mean you oppose all of trans rights, but you’re actively supporting the exclusion of trans people from professional athletics.
but you’re actively supporting the exclusion of trans people from professional athletics.
Where did the person you are replying to say that they couldn’t compete in male professional athletics?
Preventing trans women from competing in women’s sports is a ban on trans women in sports. Trans women do not have testosterone levels anywhere near cis male levels. And none of us are going to degrade ourselves by being categorized as men.
If you would make trans women compete against men then you’re saying trans women aren’t women. It’s as simple as that.
Where do trans men compete?
You are saying it would be degrading to have a trans woman compete against men, but a trans man is not allowed to compete against anyone because they are taking a banned substance to transition. Which is more degrading?
Your comment history is rife with “biologically male/biologically female” bullshit.
Sit down.
I’m not sure what your complaint is with biologically male/female being bullshit. Do you think that a person who was born with male parts but a female mind/spirit/soul doesn’t have testosterone levels and musculature different from a person who was born with female parts?
If you don’t understand, far be it from to educate you.
Go read a book.
You want me to read a book about what you think? Where can I find such a book? It sounds suspiciously like you don’t want to engage in a real conversation and just want to tell people who don’t agree 100% with you that they are uneducated morons.
I’m serious, too. Do you disagree that people born with male parts have different levels of hormones and musculature and bone differences from people born with female parts? I’m wildly in favor of trans rights and understand that I will never understand what it’s like for them, so I am always trying to learn new ways to look at different situations.
I absolutely won’t sit down. You don’t have any authority to silence people, neither from a power perspective nor a moral perspective. You need to grow up and learn how to have a discussion with people you disagree with.
On a personal level and I’ve been very friendly and engaging in serious discussion with other people. And on the subject matter I’ve been very clear, on-topic, rational, understanding, and providing of citations for my claims. You should learn how to do it.
Trans women have been allowed in the Olympics for 20 years now. There have been zero trans medalists. If this advantage actually exists, why aren’t they winning?
If i had to guess I’d say it’s simply numbers. Compared to the rest of the population, trans people are extremely rare, and so there likely just haven’t been enough trans people to have been there yet.
Of it was simply numbers, there would have been a trans gold medalist by now. Trans people make up 1-3% of the population. Over the span of 20 years and hundreds of competitions each year, surely a group that supposedly physically dominates the gender group they are in would at least have gotten one gold medal.
There have only been 4 known transgender Olympic athletes so far.
And of those 4 it seems like none of them are born-male people who are now competing in a women’s event, which is the only situation where the trans person would have an advantage.
https://thesportsgrail.com/list-of-the-transgender-athletes-competing-at-tokyo-olympics-2020/
You need to be a one in a million talent. I’m a male and despite not taking testosterone blockers I don’t have enough talent to be successful in any sport against women. Even with my testosterone, I just don’t have elite genetics
3% of the population, about 300 events per Olympics, assume 5 in the past 20 years, so that’s a conservative estimate of 1500 medals. You’d expect 45 medals to just be proportional, and significantly more than 45 would prove an advantage. 0 shows an extremely severe disadvantage.
Actually more like 60 medals would be the baseline expectation if you’re counting winter Olympics too.
Even if you estimate as conservatively as possible, 1% of the population and ignore winter Olympics, you have an expected medal count of 15, 0 is a massive anomaly without some sort of significant disadvantage.
Edit: triple all those numbers to include silver and bronze, realistic estimate of 180, extremely conservative estimate of 45.
You are completely ignoring the externalities of competing at the Olympic level. Trans people are going through so many societal, cultural, interpersonal, and internal conflicts that focusing on training at an Olympic level is going to be more difficult. You can be the most physically gifted athlete in the world, but if your head is not in the right space to train 12 hours a day while still going about your normal life then you aren’t going to be able to compete at that level. Hell, look at how far Tiger Woods’s performances fell after his public disgrace. Yes, some of that was drugs and some was from an injury, but a lot of sports is mental.
Also, you are ignoring that while the Olympic committee might allow it, do you think most countries in the world are so open about trans people?
Also also, do you remember the controversy around the East German women’s team from the 70s? How everyone suspected some were men? There might have been trans people winning medals, just maybe not openly.
There have only been 4 known transgender Olympic athletes so far.
And of those 4 it seems like none of them are born-male people who are now competing in a women’s event, which is the only situation where the trans person would have an advantage.
https://thesportsgrail.com/list-of-the-transgender-athletes-competing-at-tokyo-olympics-2020/
You knew you were going to catch heat for something that’s extremely popular and common opinion?
Bruh, I got cooked for voicing this opinion so many fucking times.
Banned from many subreddits for voicing this opinion
The real answer here is to do away with gender/sex separation and instead have classifications based of total mass, bone density, muscle fiber density, and maybe hormonal levels. Stop trying to deal with the generalistics and target the issues that actually matter.
If it could be done in a reasonable way then I’d be totally fine with that
On HRT, trans women have similar muscle mass to cis women. They do not have an advantage.
Is it all about muscle mass? What about bone structure? Lung capacity? Heart size/volume? Stuff like that?
I’m not a doctor.
I mean, it’s testable. On average, how do trans women compare to cis women in some particular sport? From my knowledge, when actually competing, trans women on hrt do not, in fact, do significantly better than cis women.
Doesn’t that depend on when they start?
Yes, and a bunch of other things.
TBH the best solution would be to do away with the Olympics altogether. It has nothing in common with the Greek Olympics and is nothing but evil now.
this is not correct, on average trans women don’t perform any better at competitive sports than cis women
check the results section of this review paper for more info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10641525/
Quote right from the opening paragraph:
it is important to understand the level of physical fitness/performance [trans] individuals possess relative to their cisgender counterparts. Unfortunately, there are few studies investigating this topic, and several complications that confound this research.
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I wonder what you would think of trans men dominating their cis-female competition while having periods
So, monthly periods. Then exclude irregular women, women who have had a hysterectomy and such.
I agree with the point of trans women having an unfair advantage, but your reductionist point of view is moronic, unless you meant it as a joke, which certainly did not land.
So… After they have been on HRT for a while? Periods are triggered by hormones, and there’s a lot more to a period than just bleeding. Many trans women experience cramps, bloating, mood swings, etc. on a monthly cycle. There are also some cis women who have irregular or no periods; would they still be allowed to compete or would you ban them as well?
Dude, hormone blockers exist. They don’t have any advantages if they’re on hormones/ hormone blockers.
Edit: I’ll die on this hill. Enjoy being evil the future.
My understanding is that’s true for muscle mass. However, if they transition after puberty like Lia Thomas did, height and wingspan will remain; both of which confer huge advantages in swimming. Apparently that’s a major reason why Michael Phelps did so well, his arm span is ridiculous.
Phelps has huge palms that support his paddling ability and is 14 feet tall, which essentially act as flippers (the kind of fingerless arms that seals have).
That site could use a little more proof reading.
Probably AI. There’s probably a reddit comment out there joking about how Phelps is 14 feet tall.
Are there no cis women with large wing spans or abnormal height, though? Are they still allowed to compete? Why would trans women specifically be excluded for that?
While outliers exist, this has to do with averages. On average men are taller than women, and this difference usually manifests between the ages of 12-15. This confers an advantage. However, for trans athletes who transition before puberty it’s far less cut and dry and there’s a good case to be made for inclusion.
So again why are cisgender women who are above average allowed to compete but transgender women are CATEGORICALLY not allowed to compete even if we’re within the average for all women?
Because athletic associations decided long ago to segregate athletics by sex to account for this average difference, even though some women are taller and stronger than men.
So it’s just a ban on trans women from sports, just because with no actual logic or ethical rationale behind it. Even though it is literally not fair, and the justification provided for it is “fairness”. Gotcha.
What do you mean by “being evil in the future”?
If Shaq took hormone blockers, would she still have an advantage?
Probably not many, but that is because he is already in his 50s. If you do that with an Olympic level male athlete, on his early 20s and on his prime, then absolutely.
Aside from height? Not really.
Kind of a contradiction in that trans women aren’t female bit lol. Very much depends on how you define that and how you measure it.
The categories are also not called female categories, they’re called women’s categories, which is effectively the same thing in this conversation. Female is a loose category encompassing people with many typed of bodies and many hormonal levels and many degrees of feminization and masculinization. This is effectively excluding one group of women specifically and ignoring all other groups that have advantages.
Trans women are not biologically female - that is not up for debate. Gender and sex were used interchangeably for the majority of the Olympics’ existence so you can’t “well ackshually” about the definition of women’s sports here - they meant biologically female and you know it. There is no contradiction unless you completely ignore the context.
Honestly, at this point I think the person you are responding to is either a troll, or just so violently obsessed with inclusion that they will refuse every single argument that does not align with their view, while defending all avenues that align with their way of thinking, no matter how ridiculous they might be.
Well this comment section is awful.
Lot of good choices for blocking and making your Lemmy experience less hateful. There are def some terfs and terf-adjacent types in here.
Obviously the solution is to have a separate trans Olympics.
/S
Or send them to the mens side, which is ironically is open to everyone.
I’m scared to reply, but is this not a plausible outcome? She is still a she, but could she compete on the men’s team?
I’m not 100% sure about every sports organization on the planet, but generally speaking the men’s divisions are open to women and nonbinary people. I can’t seem to find much in the olympic rulebook, and it also doesn’t seem to have been tested or ruled on.
That works for American football/gridiron, doesn’t it? Since there’s no female alternative? I don’t think I’m seeing any actual NFL players here, but they’ve certainly made it to the collegiate level:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_gridiron_football_players
Yes but when your testosterone goes down, your performance will go down. Unlikely she would be able to perform well enough in high performing men’s leagues.
Actually that should be fine
I hate that idea, but if that’s all trans people can get I guess it’s better than nothing. :/
There aren’t enough trans people to facilitate such an event. Most of us are also impoverished and have extremely poor life outcomes as adults by comparison with cisgender people of the same relative class. So there are very few of us to begin with, fewer who are interested in athletics, and much fewer who have any real ability to compete in athletic competitions.
Not to mention the whole “being publicly LGBTQ+ for a televised event” in many countries is borderline suicidal behavior to begin with.
Post locked. Too many inappropriate comments.
For a while I’ve been thinking that all sports should get rid of gendered male/female competitions and replace them with
weightcategories that take into account physiological characteristics like muscle mass, testosterone levels, weight, height, etc. This would result in, say, three to four categories ranging from lightweight to heavyweight.Why wouldn’t this work?
A 150 lb male will almost always out-perform a 150 lb female. The genetic differences are still vast even in the same weight category.
That’s why they would need to take more into account than simply weight. Surely multiple physical and hormonal factors could also be measured and an aggregate total value be applied to each athlete.
Too many categories and you fragment your athletes too much for viable competition.
True.
But middle aged dad bods are back in our (relative to category) prime, baby!
It’s not a genetic difference, for one, it’s a hormonal one. Children pre-puberty are effectively identical in terms of physiological gender differences aside from environmental factors.
It’s not a genetic difference, for one, it’s a hormonal one.
What influences hormones?
Lots of things? There’s no one single thing that affects hormones. Not every person with a specific anatomy has the same hormones.
Children pre-puberty are effectively identical aside from environmental factors
Except for the fucking ovaries and prostates.
Do you feel the prior commentator forgot that anatomy when making their claim?
Yes.
Seems like a silly thing to think
Fallon Fox. Look her up.
Yes, she eventually got beat by another professional female fighter, but not before she seriously injured multiple opponents, including skull fractures. Those types of injuries are not common in men’s MMA, although they do occur, but they’re extremely uncommon in female MMA.
Testosterone blockers don’t reverse the effects the hormone had on a bodies development prior to medically transitioning. So differences such as bone density are locked in, even if their blood test shows a hormonal balance that aligns with their preferred gender at the time of competition.
Genetics are predominantly on the favor of the male side unfortunately.
I have a lot of trouble accepting claims like this when Lea Thomas is beaten by cis women all the time.
It’s not a claim, it’s genetics, and what’s wrong with accepting that some people are better than others? It just gives her an unfair advantage from genetics(hormones in this case) helping her. It won’t make her a top athlete, who claimed that?
Would be different if the top male athlete did it, like say Phelps, there would not a be a women who could compete with them. That’s just friggen genetics.
Either genetics predominantly favor biological males, in which case a world-class swimmer like Lea Thomas should win virtually every meet, or it’s more complicated than that.
There will always be outliers on both sides yes, but take the top 10% of male and female athletes and put them against each other, and the men would win 80% of the time. Because they are genetically predominately better at the stuff required for athletics. Wider hips aren’t really great for running for example…
Reality of often disappointing.
Lea Thomas is in the top 10% and does not win 80% of the time.
Does Crosby win 80% of the time? Mcdavid? Brady…?
Give your head a shake dude.
Her ranks when swimming against men were 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle, and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle. Those ranks are now, when competing in the women’s team, fifth in the 200 freestyle, first in the 500 freestyle, and eighth in the 1650 freestyle.
Her time for the 500 freestyle, where she is ranked #1 against women, is over 15 seconds slower than her personal bests before medically transitioning, and even THEN she was only 65th in the event against men. The same event where she was 65th is now 15 seconds slower and ranked #1. That’s the gulf between the two events.
That’s not a very thoughtful argument. This is about comparing the top percentages of athletes. Lea Thomas is not 100% the best woman swimmer in the world, since she does lose sometimes to the best women. But when she competed against men she lost every single time. It’s about the top 0.1% of women swimmers not being able to compete with the top 10% of male swimmers. Lea Thomas wasn’t even close to the top 10% of men but instantly became the top 1% for women. No, all men aren’t instantly the best female athletes. But in a lot of sports the absolute best women’s athletes can’t compete with even average teenage boys.
But when she competed against men she lost every single time.
That’s not true.
Thomas began swimming on the men’s team at the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. During her freshman year, Thomas recorded a time of eight minutes and 57.55 seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle that ranked as the sixth-fastest national men’s time, and also recorded 500-yard freestyle and 1,650-yard freestyle times that ranked within the national top 100.[5] On the men’s swim team in 2018–2019, Thomas finished second in the men’s 500, 1,000, and 1,650-yard freestyle at the Ivy League championships as a sophomore in 2019.[5][4][12] During the 2018–2019 season, Thomas recorded the top UPenn men’s team times in the 500 free, 1000 free, and 1650 free, but was the sixth best among UPenn men’s team members in the 200 free.[13]
In general, sure, but not all men are more muscular and stronger than all women.
Furthermore, even if, say 90% (or even 100%) of the heavyweight category were men, it would still be fairer for everyone.
No but taking the top 10% from each male and female athletes and putting them against each other, the men would still be on top 80% of the time.
But like I said, that’s fine. The point is that we would then be categorizing people not according to their gender but by factors that directly affect their athletic performance.
Another benefit would also be that it would allow a wider range of people to participate at the national and international level, seeing as it would not remove all but those women and men who possess the optimal physical traits required for that particular sport.
That’s starting to sound a little like an eugenics competition….
I would say the opposite, in fact.
Eugenics is the belief and practices that aim to “improve” the genetic quality of a human population to meet an idealized optimal standard. Under my proposed system, you could argue it would allow for a greater diversity of individuals that would be able to compete, and therefore would lower the necessity of having the optimal physical traits required in order to take part in each sport.
Back to the discussion. It would basically be this if we took the 10% of each and put it into 4 categories.
Group A 85%men 15% women
Group B 70%men 30% women
Group C 55%men 45%women
Group D 5%men 95%women
It just doesn’t work. You would be hand picking less qualified men to compete with the women just to fill it up.
Citation needed.
There is a thousand, but I find this Pretty interesting myself
The conclusion has absolutely nothing to do with what you previously wrote …
Conclusions
Women and men shooters performed separately but equally in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in “static” rifle shooting modalities. Men were superior in “dynamic” (i.e., moving target) shooting events. In the newly formed “mixed” team events (one male and one female shooters competing alongside) these performance patterns were maintained and the mixed gender competitive environment did not impede women’s performance beyond. Supported by earlier research [29,30] we endorse the proposition that in future Games, “gender unified” events should be held for the “static” rifle shooting modalities.
Did you read it all? Or just skip to the conclusion?
The introduction had great links with their why they are doing this study.
That’s about as straightforward and easy to understand as it can possibly be. Many times Women’s Olympic Finalists wouldn’t qualify for the boys high school varsity team!
And again, although that is interesting it still doesn’t show the numbers that were quoted …
No but taking the top 10% from each male and female athletes and putting them against each other, the men would still be on top 80% of the time.
I’m not impugning anyone in any way with this comment but the very best biologically female athletes in the world, literal World Record setting Olympians, in many cases aren’t fast enough to compete with High School boys.
This is an even worse outcome than “Top 10% female athletes…” because this is the top 1% of female athletes, the crème de la crème, compared to the top *under age male *athletes.
There’s a lot of events, such as 100m to 800m sprints, where the female Olympians not only lose they can’t even qualify for the race!
In other events, swimming in particular, the biologically female Olympic Champions set World Record times…that were beaten by High School Boys.
You can follow the links to the raw data and do the math yourself if you want a precision answer but there’s no real question that the Top 10% of biologically female athletes, the Olympians, would lose to the Top 10% of biologically male athletes 80% of the time or more.
I’m going to quote what you wrote to me on another post: "If you don’t understand, far be it from to educate you.
Go read a book."
The person showed you a citation that shows in track and field the top 0.1% (not 10%) of women would get 6 medals vs the top highschool boys (who are outside the top 10% of men) getting 81 medals. That’s young boys beating the absolute best women 93% of the time. In swimming it was worse: 1 medal vs 47 or 98%. In soccer, the US Women’s National Team, arguably the best of the best women’s team in the world, would regularly lose to highschool boys teams. I’m sure there are some sports where the gulf is smaller, but it’s going to be rare.
teristics like muscle mass, testosterone levels, weight, height, etc. This would result in, say, three to four categories ranging from lightweight to heavyweight.
Same weight, but it’s distributed that men have more muscle mass and less fat. Same muscle mass, but women carry more fat generally (it’d be like adding a 10 pound plate on their back). Same height but men are more muscular generally. Just doesn’t work.
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I
Eliminate all competitive sports? Is this the answer they seek?
So we cant compete if we have ever had testosterone in our blood, even though cis women also have blood testosterone and can undergo testosterone related hormonal puberty if they have certain conditions, and also we are not allowed to transition before the age of 16 which would mean we had undergone some measure of testosterone hormonal puberty. Also, the concept of “male puberty” is awfully ill-defined isnt it. Have cis women with PCOS gone through “male puberty” ? What specifically constitutes “male puberty”? What hormonal levels are necessary to qualify for “male puberty”? Can Cis men with hormonal deficiency disorders compete in womens sports? To what end does this ruling “protect women’s sports”? This does nothing in a sport that has 1 single trans female athlete except specifically ban her from competing under some misguided notion of “fairness”. I’d love to see them describe how excluding anyone is meant to protect anything, let alone fairness. When will height categories be instituted? When will we make wingspan brackets? How exactly is this competition meant to be fair to begin with?
So this is just a de facto ban on trans women participating in any sports under this organization. Nice. Just say that then. No woman is going to accept being forced to compete in a men’s category, so all you have done is single out and exclude one group of women based on their status as transgender. Creating an “open” bracket does nothing either, as there are probably only 1 or 2 trans athletes who would be competing in this organization anyway.
So this is just a de facto ban on trans women participating in any sports under this organization.
In the womens side of things, yes. The mens side is still open, always has been. And they were very clear and open on that.
But she isn’t a man, so whatever is happening on the mens side isn’t fucking relevant, is it?
She isn’t a man, but her body is at least partially male. That’s the definition of trans.
Unfortunately, no amount of medical interventions are able to completely transform a person’s body to be exactly the same as a person who was born with a body of the opposite sex.
That article says there’s no such thing as fully discreet categories of male and female. True!
So we either have to separate athletes into two separate categories of biological male and female that applies to 99% of people in order to give biological females a chance to compete at all, -OR- we have to say that since the biological male/female categorization system doesn’t apply to 100% of people then there is no basis for separate male/female sports and everyone just competes in a single event, in which case the only people who get to be on the team will wind up being close to 100% cis or trans males, with essentially no females ever getting to do professional sports.
Yeah, I think this is something that people continously fail to realize, sports have been split by sex/gender so that sport events aren’t dominated by one sex/gender. If you’re drawing lines to protect one group you’ve opened up the can of worms about where that line is drawn.
You linked to an opinion piece by a transgender person, you should mention that.
There is a definite bias there, which is to be expected, but they have links to back up some of what they say.
Is this not like most competitions where the “men’s” category is actually “open” and there is just a separate women’s category?
Not touching the main debate, just curious about this one part.
Play victim harder, daddy!
World Aquatics insists it is doing all it can be inclusive and has introduced an “open” category for transgender swimmers. However, plans to debut it at the Berlin World Cup last October were cancelled after no entries were received for any of the 50m and 100m races across all strokes, which were due to take place alongside male and female races.
“Separate but equal” where have I heard that before… 🤔
So you’re saying there shouldn’t be separate males and females events, there should only be a single all-entrants event
False dichotomy, no? Moving away from gender segregation doesn’t mean one giant pool. There are non-discriminatory ways to create fairness, possibly even more so. Weight classes and other physical separations might be a good start. I just can’t believe that “men and women” are the two ideal categories for fairness and I think if it wasn’t just for the tradition of doing it forever, we would be doing something smarter.
World Aquatics insists it is doing all it can be inclusive and has introduced an “open” category for black swimmers. However, plans to debut it at the Berlin World Cup last October were cancelled after no entries were received for any of the 50m and 100m races across all strokes, which were due to take place alongside white races.
Phrenologists had a lot to say about all the “physical differences” of the races also. Trans people have just exposed a glaring hole in the way we segregate sports. Maybe instead of appealing to tradition, we can find a better way to introduce fairness into sports?
Why wouldn’t a woman compete in a men’s category?
The categories are gender segregated. It’s not that no woman would ever do so or want to; it’s that banning a woman from women’s sports is saying that she’s not a woman. That’s the very point of the category to begin with. Forcing a woman to compete in men’s category is declaring her to be a man, which is something the overwhelming majority of women would not stand for.
Recall the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya. She was very much declared not to be a woman by an international sporting organization.
You’re not arguing in good faith by having something so absolute as:
it’s that banning a woman from women’s sports is saying that she’s not a woman.
What would you classify banning her from women’s swimming but not from swimming in general if not insinuating that she’s not a woman? I don’t think it’s the one you replied to that’s arguing in bad faith…
The categories are sex segregated, not gender segregated. The names of the competitions are from a time when most people didn’t know there was a difference between man/male and woman/female. So when it’s called like “men’s sprint” the actual meaning is “male’s sprint”. If you wanted to make the official names of the competitions to be called “male’s” and “female’s” instead of “men’s” and “women’s” then I would totally try to help you in that movement
Sex and gender are effectively the same thing for this conversation. We consistently refer to female athletes as women and the terms are entirely interchangeable here. Sex is also a socially constructed category based around certain anatomies and characteristics. Gender is assigned the same way sex is. Sex is not the hardline objective reality it’s being treated as here. Women with CAIS are not forbidden from “female sports”. Similarly, women with PCOS who have high T are not banned from “female sports”.
I’m not male. No part of me is male. My legal sex has been changed. If we’re separating people into male and female, I’m placed into the female group.
You’re directly contradicting the argument that every trans activist has been making for decades by saying that sex and gender are “effectively the same thing”. Is that really what you want to be doing here?
It’s objectively the truth that sex is another class category created by humans to sort people and enforce a hierarchy of sex. That argument (trans women are male women) was adopted to appeal to cisgender people.
I’m female, I am a woman. I’m not male. My legal sex is female.
It’s objectively the truth that sex is another class category created by humans to sort people and enforce a hierarchy of sex.
This is patently false. It was a category to distinguish between two observable variations of human. The category of man/woman existed in the annals of history far beyond what we know today. Before we were humans, we knew instinctively what a man/woman was. You see these systems in herding species already. Don’t give me this “we created this division just so we could dunk on others” bullcrap.
So what do you call a baby that has a penis but isn’t old enough to tell you whether they are a boy or a girl?
What if a women wanted to compete?
How is it ok for one gender, in your view, but not ok for the other?To compete with men? Afaik most organizations do not have rules explicity banning women from men’s sports. Not sure what you’re talking about.
I’m asking because you brought it up.
I’m genuinely not sure what you’re asking. Your comment doesn’t make sense.
I answered the question you asked initially in my second comment.
Lmao ok then. Guess this conversation is over. Good luck out there I guess.
Not sure why this is being down-voted. Most organizations do not have rules saying women can’t compete in men’s sports.
What if…
Maybe cross that made up bridge when you get to it? So far this hasn’t happened and is only being imagined as a strawman to argue in favour of this transphobic discrimination.
There aren’t any women at all that want to compete? Interesting. Guess that’s why OP is so sure of themselves.
So are you OK with forcing a trans man to compete against men in sports?
I mean where else would you want them to compete? Are there trans men out there demanding to compete in women’s sports? If sports is sex or gender segregated than yeah they should compete with men.
Trans people can still enjoy sports and compete on other levels as well as be a part of it in many other ways. Competing in sports for sure isn’t a healthy path to gender selfactualization. Not only because of the public resistance to change in established categories.
Just one of many ways in which conservative politicians and institutions run by them are trying to exclude trans people from society.
Competition rules forbid participation after undergoing “any part of male puberty” while laws forbid any sort of prepubescent transition or even blocking of puberty.
In closing, I would like to relay the following message to World Aquatics and the Court: FUCK you and your oppressive bigotry! 🖕🖕🖕
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Trans women are not fucking testosterone brutes. We’re women. I have literally 0 blood testosterone. I am post op and do not produce literally any testosterone.
I thought all biological women produce testosterone. I remember hearing an NPR segment where they tested the hormone levels of all the people in the office and a woman had the highest levels of testosterone.
Sounds like the sort of compromise where both sides are unhappy, which is usually a sign of fairness.
In what way are both sides unhappy?
Trans women athletes who have had male puberty are unhappy they can’t play in women’s leagues.
TERFs are mad some trans women are allowed.
why can’t sports just be weight class? why do the genders even need to be split up? this is just stupid. I will continue to not watch the olympics.
why can’t sports just be weight class? why do the genders even need to be split up?
In a specific weight class, top males will win the vast majority of the time over top females. Things like wide hips are not optimal for running, for example.
To bring actual data into the conversation, check out Olympian Women vs High School Boys. High school boys still take the vast majority of the records despite the otherwise crazy disadvantage.
