Trans women should be allowed in sports, but with strict limitations

This seems to be a black and white issue for many, always Yes or always No.

As with most thigns I feel the truth is somewhere in the middle.

It's a spectrum

IMO

A biological man who never underwent puberty and never got the benefits of higher testosterone etc. should be allowed in women's sports.

But, someone like Usain Bolt, who because of undergoing male puberty has bigger bones than he would have had if he didn't, should never be allowed to compete in women's sports.

Where we draw the line, I don't know, but I don't think it's black or white.

46 comments

It. Simply. Isn't. A. Problem.
Professional womens sports aren't dominated by trans women, and they never will be.
And no man would transition in order to dominate womens sports.
The entire debate is a straw-man for splitting women into "real" and "fake" ones, denying trans women the right to exist.
- What about eg. Anne Andres setting multiple national and world power lifting records?
  
  Good for her.
  If it turns out that she has an unfair advantage, and the IPF, CPU and other powerlifting organisations feel like it's damaging the sport, they can make a ruling on a case by case basis (which they always could and in this case have, by suspending her).
  To ensure that the sport of powerlifting stays free from competitors with elevated testosterone levels (/s).
  There is absolutely no reason to try and come up with a "solution" for all transgender people in all sports.

No. Goddamn why do you people seem to think discrimination against entire demographics of people is justified with the weak excuse of "sports need to be FAIR". I'm sorry but even if you limit to only cis people some competitors have genetic advantages others don't. Inclusion of anyone who wants to compete is way more important. If you actually cared about fairness, and not discrimination, you'd want sports to limit who can compete against who by physical ability, not gender.
- Sport has always had devisions and you need to draw lines who is and isn't allowed in a devision.
  Example: Under 21 years old Undee 80kg Handicapped Ober 40 years old Women's Etc.
  You can't just let anyone compete in any devision else you don't have devisions, and you need to draw lines where those devisions begin and end.
  All I'm saying is IMO when it comes to the Women's devision, it's shouldn't be black and white.
  
  "you need to draw lines who is and who isn't allowed in a division" No you don't. You really really don't. "competitive fairness" is not a justification for discrimination of minority demographics. You CAN, in fact, just let anyone compete. It's not that big of a deal, and the inclusion is a lot more important than transphobic fearmongering.
  
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Well, it's certainly a controversial opinion. Largely because everyone spouting it is just showing exactly how little they know about the effects of hrt.
And, when you add in the ever asinine "the truth is in the middle" it underscores that because the truth is in the data. This isn't an opinion about blue being prettier than red. It's an "opinion" about the very understood and easy to research effects of hormones on the human body.
And I'll say this part again because no jackass that brays this malarkey ever ponies up, where are all the records broken by trans women? Because there's places they compete with cis women, and there's no giant wave of new records being set.
Do people really not even think to look and see if there's been any fucking changes in sports where trans women compete? Are people that fucking stupid? Oh, wait, what am I saying, of course they are
You do not know jack shit about this subject and need to shut your fucking piehole, you jackass. Fuck, people are so fucking dumb
- Studies show that biological mens hands are 20%+ bigger than biological women.
  HRT isn't going to make your hands 20% smaller, bigger hands give you an advantage in many sports eg. swimming.
  
  Are you really going to parrot Joe fucking Rogan's mindless bullshit?
  Since you did, even the most successful trans elan woman swimmer not only dropped her times significantly, but lost far more often than she won. And that's the best trans swimmer out there.
  Again, you failed to do anything other than jerk yourself off to your fetish of imagining things about trans women. Because you definitely didn't go and look up a fucking thing you know how I know that? I went and reverified my previous searches on the matter the last time some brain dead fuckstick ran this bullshit trying to pretend they weren't just a worm brained bigot.
  And guess what, I looked up the most successful trans women in mma as well, and even she didn't have some kind of flawless record, despite the man hands. She did have a damn solid record indeed, but not perfect, and it got cut short, so there's that.
  Boxing? No trans champions.
  Running? No world records held by trans women that I could find, and while it's a hard field to look up because there's so many different events, there are records and they are well documented.
  Fuck, there was a weightlifter, the single sport where you could realistically claim that any bone changes made while a man would be most likely to vary carry over. That dude went from top rankings as a man, to a lady in the middle rankings. And that's fucking weightlifting, where muscle attachment points matter more than anything except maybe the hammer throw, or sumo.
  But here's the real fucking kicker to all this. I tell you exactly what the flaw in your little poorly disguised bigotry, and you couldn't be bothered to do anything other than "big hands".
  You are fucking pimple on the asshole of humanity. You're a fucking dingleberry hanging off of an ass pimple.
  You could have at least put in some fucking effort, but noooooo, that would require a functional brain.
  GTFO you half witted, vile little piece of shit. Come at me with your man hands bullshit. Waste of fucking oxygen.

You clearly have no idea what HRT does to a person's body. This is embarassing for you
- IMO having bigger bones is an advance in many sports.
  HRT isn't going to make your bone structure significantly smaller
  
  Michael Phelps is a freak of nature, with an incredible wingspan and a body that produces less lactic acid than nearly every other swimmer. He was allowed to take home 23 gold medals, and was only able to do so with those genetic advantages and fucktons of work and training.
  Bone structure, height, or hand size clearly do not matter to people at the highest levels, and likely matter even less when you're playing in your high school or college soccer league.
  And I mentioned the work and training aspect because without that, Phelps would be very good, but not 23-gold-medals good. You're boiling down women's sports to essentially hand size and genetics. Best get out the calipers to start measuring skull sizes (/s).
  Can you even name 5 women athletes without looking them up? Do you really care about women if you're trying to subject them to this scrutiny to "catch" an incredibly miniscule part of the population? Are women with PCOS or other endocrine disorders not allowed? How would you even test for this shit? You can't even give us clear definitions of what "fair" would be.

What if we don't split sports by gender or sex, but instead by physical ability? Those with birthdays towards the end of the school year also have a biological advantage.
- Because every sport would be 95% men at the top?
  
  Did you understand my suggestion? There would be different teams, split by approximate physical ability.

We found the bigot
- How is that productive? I'm open to having my mind changed and would like to have a conversation about this. Calling someone a bigot does nothing to change their mind and is against the rules of c/controversial
  
  Shut the fuck up you TERF bigot

Just divide categories by testosterone levels
- It's not as simple as specifically t levels, but you've got the idea. Splitting leagues by physical ability rather than gender or sex, as they do in fighting with heavyweights, featherweights, etc
  
  It is, else I can claim to be transfem in detransition and use a shitton of testosterone, no doping
- What testosterone level you were at during puberty has a big impact on the size of your bones. So it's not that simple.
  People who had high testosterone during puberty have much bigger hands than people who didn't, hand size has a impact on sports.
  
  What sports do you get an advantage with bigger hands? Are we going to get rid of cisgender women who have big hands too for those reasons too? I'm not even sure where you're getting this hand size thing anyway

46 comments