Trans women have no advantage in elite sport, new report finds
Trans women have no advantage in elite sport, new report finds
A new report has found that trans athletes do not have a biological advantage from things such as lung capacity and bone density.
To be clear, the report doesn't claim it's proven that trans women have no advantage in elite sports, but rather that the biomedical evidence is inconclusive and that the methodology of existing studies has been highly flawed.
It does go into some sociological factors which is good, and it draws attention to the fact that these studies are seemingly often conducted from a place of transphobia to begin with.
I suppose it's hard to do science on it as it's such a loaded topic, and the number of trans athletes is relatively small.
Right. I think that's a very important distinction.
To take it a step further, I think it's probably quite intuitive and obvious that if you're born a male, go through puberty as a male, you will have a different body composition than a female. Even with hormone suppressors. They are claiming there is no evidence that this is an advantage.
Well it is, absolutely, depending on the sport. I don't know that it could be proven that bone density, for instance, helps people perform better. But I know that some sports there is an advantage to being taller. And hormone suppressors aren't going to reduce that advantage. So that alone is definitive proof that being born a male and going through puberty as a male is advantageous in certain sports (as male's are taller on average, than females). I don't know how you could argue that isn't true.
Even if there were a "biological advantage" the only reason people started to pretend to care about women's sports is because it's a way to alienate trans people. If there were a good faith discussion being had, it wouldnt be so infuriating.
I hope that something good comes from all this in the end.
Even if there is a "biological advantage", sports have had "biological advantages" all the time. Some people are taller than others, or have longer legs than others. All of the reactionary people don't care about fairness in sports because sports have never been fair.
I agree. But, for the sake of just exploring the thought process... IF the idea of trans women absolutely dominating cis women in sports were accurate (which does not seem to be the case), it would be something to discuss from a good faith perspective. Should we pivot to weight classes? Should there be a trans lady league? How do nonbinary folks fit in to this whole thing? Sports are inherently unfair, but that doesn't mean there's no room to talk about how we want sports to be.
It's really exhausting when every aspect of your life as a trans person has become politicized, because there are differences between cis and trans people generally, and they are worth talking about. Maybe one day discussions can be had that aren't simply thinly veiled transphobic talking points.