Transgender athletes face growing hostility: four tell their stories in their own words
Transgender athletes face growing hostility: four tell their stories in their own words
Many sports have two divisions: Open and Womens. This even includes ones like Chess and various e-sports. The NFL, NBA, and MLB all allow women, or at least have no rule banning them (In the former two cases, ever, in the latter, any more, the 1952 ban was rescinded in the 90's.)
So to answer your question: Everyone can already compete in one division.
The NFL, NBA, and MLB all allow women
They may technically allow them, but do you think most women, even very skilled ones, would want to face the abuse they would get from players, coaches and fans if they decided to do it?
Just because it is allowed doesn't mean it wouldn't be a major hardship. And I think the vast majority of women in sports are smart enough to understand that is what they would face.
And having competitors with insane testosterone counts won’t end “female” sports?
We if we have people who are men in all but name competing in womens sports that wont kill female athletes? There are undenyable differences when it comes to sport and i doubt trans athletes are getting surgery to change their bone structure are they? Either eliminate all female athletes and let trans athletes compete as women or dont u cant have both its called doublethink.
Trans women have been competing in female sports for years and years, before 2016 and 2018 rule changes with regards to T levels (that no trans woman will have trouble meeting since their actual T level requirement is super high anyway) How come it wasn't the end then?
Then you'd have people cry because most men would dominate most of those sports, leaving most women in the dust and with no chance of winning them.
Ding ding ding
Really wow i never though of this is suprising nobody has complained about this in womens leagues yet?
I have said it before and I'll say it again: this issue exists to stir up controversy. Very few people can ever be professional athletes, but lots of people suffer as a result of the hostility generated by this debate.
Also, very few people talk about trans men in sport. There's no real justification for excluding trans men from sport other than fragile egos of male athletes being scared of being outperformed by an afab athlete.
Also also, if we're making the argument that people with higher exposure to testosterone for a short duration in their life have increased athletic performance (which to be clear is kind of true but not actually relevant for all trans women), then I have to remind you that anabolic steroids can benefit athletes for up to a decade, which is exactly much fucking longer than these drugs remain detectable in an athlete's system.
Also also also, professional sport is stupid and doesn't deserve this much attention. It certainly shouldn't be allowed to stir up this much hate toward regular ass trans folks just wanting to live their damn lives, but it does have that effect.
Also, very few people talk about trans men in sport.
Very few people talk about trans men in general. Virtually all the defense for anti-trans policies and laws is built around rhetoric about protecting women from "men in dresses" or the like. One thing trans men succeed at is gaining the social invisibility cis men tend to have.
Which is weird, because if you believed the usual progressive rhetoric about gender you'd think trans men would be viewed as women trying to steal men's patriarchal privilege for themselves and would be treated as even more of a problem than trans women. Rather than anti-trans rhetoric being mostly concerned with maintaining protected spaces for women.
The narrative around trans people, whether it’s bathrooms or sports, is always around cis men pretending to be trans women to invade women’s spaces.
I agree with you except for your last point. Even if you don’t have a personal interest, it’s a massive industry with hugely influential celebrities.
In general, and I'm sure some people here will be incensed at the suggestion, people do not give a shit about women's sports and the only time many of them do is when they find out a "man" is competing in them.
Women care about women's sports.
A lot of them don't. Just like a lot of women are against subsidized pre and post-natal care. Just because you're a woman doesn't mean you care about women's issues.
And, based on what I've seen, the vast majority of complaints about this come from men anyway.
Most of the women in women’s sports who are asked support trans inclusion (somewhat sport dependent, some sports are historically more queer friendly than others) and find equal pay to be a much bigger issue for women’s sports. For some reason nobody who is “concerned” about women’s sports wants to hear that, though. 🤷♂️
If you're position is excluding trans women from sport because of vibes you're just a transphobe.
There is no rabid hoard of transwomen waiting to overrun sport and sweep the awards. Until recently this wasn't even an issue, the Olympics has allowed trans women to compete from like 2000. Where are the medals?
We're a tiny population who generally perform worse than natal women because our T is lower. Despite all the contrived "just asking questions" about skeleton size or whatever nonsense there is no clear picture of advantage. At any rate tall women aren't banned from sport. Even women with PCOS aren't banned from sport.
We don't have seperate leagues for people raised in stable households on good diets and yet that's got performance benefits that swamp anything from having a slightly higher forearm to middle finger ratio or whatever insane thing people bring up.
This whole thing is completely drummed up and is just an acceptable way for the general unease cis people feel about trans people to be voiced.
We don't have seperate leagues for people raised in stable households on good diets and yet that's got performance benefits that swamp anything from having a slightly higher forearm to middle finger ratio or whatever insane thing people bring up.
This is actually a really good point. There’s no much natural variation in body types and hormone levels.
If this is all drummed up, then why do transgender athletes have such a problem with competing in the all-comers category instead of the women's category, which is reserved for XX born females who have all of the disadvantages you describe above since birth?
This article isn't a moral panic. Did anyone even look at it? It's talking about four athletes and their experiences, some of them positive.
Agreed 100%. Sports are entertainment. This is a distraction. Get people upset about trans women in sports and they might get less upset about things like healthcare costs. Or at least not upset enough to stop voting for bigots.
I don't disagree with you, necessarily. It's an incredibly grey issue and one of the few issues that the left shouldn't be as absolutist about and have a conversation. And beyond that, it's so low on the list of priorities. Even for trans people themselves I can't imagine this is high on the list.
But your Protip makes you look like a tool. Why preemptively try to act like you're some kind of martyr?
Yeah it's a fairly standard grift now, they point at again random trans women winning (or make them up) and say it's not fair because obviously trans women are just dudes in wigs, and because that's what a lot of cis people think (or at most - they know that breast implants are a thing despite the fact trans women avoid them like the plague) and they screech about muh biomechanical males and females and whatnot.
You can explain and show a million times how most trans women have lower Testosterone levels than cis women do (weak biological loose regulation vs the cold perfection of medicine) and it will do fuck all because it's all pretense, if trans women were wizards who changed completely including genetically they'd still just wanna brand us for it.
So tiring and exhausting. All just screaming into the void. So much bloodlust. Can't wait for the civil war at this point.
EDIT: ah the bloodthirsty have come here
EDIT2: for all the people below saying I'm being too extreme just a reminder that I did not even say anything mean in this comment. Still downvoted to oblivion and disagreed with like some extreme take. You take from that what you will.
Trans women are biologically female btw in all ways that aren't literally just the presence of the Y chromosome, from gonads, to their blood, to gene expression :3
Sports are inherently unfair, and trans women's strength advantage is lost with transition.
Puberty blockers for minors are the compromise. (this would also eliminate the stupid sport shit hence why they wanna ban it)
Odd that you would focus on testosterone levels instead of muscle mass. It’s certainly true that trans women have testosterone levels comparable with cis women, and also true that they would lose some amount of muscle mass due to that. However, they still retain more muscle than a cis woman would have, in general.
I think it’s legitimate to ask if that’s fair.
Ah, because testosterone levels hugely influence muscle mass and resultant strength and performance. The longest study on the matter actually ended up with trans women having on average LESS muscle strength than cis women.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8090355/
I don't actually give a single shit about sports btw.
But this is a good example, this issue brings out the inherent bloodthirst many cis have towards trans people.
I really don't know enough about who has when an advantage, but when that whole drama broke out about that swimmer who won by a landslide that used to be a man, i was browsing some trans/lgbtq boards. Most of them said that it's more than fair, because men have denser bones and a lot of convincing arguments for her. But then it had me thinking, why are men so dominant in swinning then? (I assume they are, i think professional sports are pretty pointless and shit)
With all that being said, i feel like if you go through a sex change, which should he the most important and dearest thing one could ever do, maybe it's time to just drop a silly sport for it. Because one of these things is surely more important than the other.
I was with you until that last part lol. I’m not ready for a war.
But yeah, no evidence will persuade people. They have super intense beliefs about trans people because they saw something on Fox News or their social media feed. Confirmation bias and whatnot
It’s not hard to find evidence to support the skepticism about trans women in sports:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33648944/
I’m curious what evidence you’re talking about?
Yeah. I went from being a fairly progressive trans liberationist to a bit more conservative transmedicalist arguing that sports and healthcare are issues best settled by science and attempt to focus on dysphoria and the physical literal aspects of everything but even that does not work.
No matter how much evidence cis people simply do not believe you, no matter what you say: trans women = bio men or maybe have even more testosterone and thus muscle mass, no matter what they think everyone transitioned because trauma or some psychological social bullshit they made up in their stupid fucking battle of the sexes.
They mostly are either too evil, or too stupid to understand us and I don't really give a shit which is which anymore. It's not always true, but it's a safe assumption.
And yeah I don't want a war either ofc, but I see no other end to society in general as it is now.
We need a fucking trans-ethnostate.
Can't wait for the civil war at this point.
EDIT: ah the bloodthirsty have come here
I guess the hypocrisy is lost on you. Frankly I’m inclined to believe you’re a right wing troll trying to make trans people look bad at this point.
Believe me when I say that I support my LGBTQ+ peeps.
And I concede that I don't know much about the subject of trans people in sports and physical capabilities.
But in my view, trans women have higher probability to be stronger than most cis female athletes. I'm not saying it happens all the time. But it happens. There is a reason there are competition categories. Even in the same gender, for example, in boxing, there are weight divisions.
So, I don't know what the solution is. Measure the amount of strength and categorize accordingly? Having an extra "transgender" category? I tell you - I would watch this! Not in a morbid way, but a genuine one, no different from watching women's soccer or men's tennis, for example.
Believe me when I say that I support my LGBTQ+ peeps.
No, I don't believe you.
Because you literally admitted that you don't know much about this topic, but still came out to argue for the exclusion of one of the most marginalised parts of the LGBTQ community.
Your understanding is one that comes from the talking points of people trying to use sports as a wedge tactic to further ostracise trans folk, and you completely disregard or simply fail to look for the experiences of trans people and the impact these exclusions have on them.
So if you genuinely do support LGBTQ folk, and that sentence wasn't just a salve for your own conscience, it might be time to stop stepping on the people you claim to support. If you don't know enough to form a supportive opinion, that's fine, but stop adding to the voices trying to pull us down...
On the other hand, if you put a transman with the women, he will have a clear advantage and it wouldn't be fair.
But in my view, trans women have higher probability to be stronger than most cis female athletes. I'm not saying it happens all the time.
If they are on hormone blockers and HRT, they honestly do not have a higher probability. That said, it would be pretty fucking invasive to make sure they are taking those consistently.
Anything you say followed by "but" is completely meaningless, know that all the "LGBTQ+ peeps" here you claim to support now know to avoid you like the plague
But in my view, trans women have higher probability to be stronger than most cis female athletes. I
Given this belief, is there a reason trans women have never taken Olympic medals despite having nearly 20 years to do so? That would seem to be evidence against that perspective. If any trans women are more capable at sport than cis women shouldn't at least one have been world class?
Sport is such an unfair world, trying to find equality and justice in it is futile. We don't want kids taking growth hormones to boost their chances of making it into the NBA. But that also means we crush the dream of plenty of people. Athletes with asthma can't use their inhaler under certain circumstances. A few years ago an UFC fighter with Asthma got his win overturned because he used an inhaler inbetween rounds.
There was a huge discussion about allowing prosthetics in "regular" competition. Turned out at the time that proshetics weren't advanced enough to give an advantage. But I think we all know that this is only a matter of time. And eventually a hard ruling needs to be made that dictates in which direction sport goes.
Banning athletes who take as many hormones, hormone blockers, and other mediaction as transwomen usually take is 100% something that needs to happen. Especially considering that in certain leagues the usage of these substances is the only reason that transwomen are allowed to compete. That feels against the spirit of sport and TUEs. But untill more data exist, I doubt a useful ruling can be made.
What I don't like about the whole discussion is going for the "They aren't real women" argument. That feels degrading and hurtful for everyone involved. I don't want cis or transwomen to have to undergo inspections to determine their gender.
Those hormone blockers block testosterone and the hormones they take are estrogen. Those are not exactly performance enhancing actions. In fact, they do the opposite. If anything, we should be making sure that trans women competing in sports should be taking hormone blockers and estrogen.
You need to re-examine your take because it is truly baffling.
Why do transgender athletes have such a problem with competing in the all-comers category instead of the women’s category, which is reserved for XX born females who have been producing all of the hormones you describe above since birth?
Lolololol he won't listen because of course he knows better: he's cis after all, he's heard the word hormones on television before! It's all the same! He knows better! /s
But the "hormones" you generically refer to, aka fucking estrogen lol, and hormone blockers Trans women take aren't an advantage. Ask any trans women, they make you weaker....
Like why point out trans women when trans MEN are taking a hormone that actually promotes strength and athleticism? TERF vibes
They make you weaker, perhaps, but are you at the same level as a cis woman who was never exposed to that level of testosterone?
And trans men are just competing against men that naturally produce those same hormones.
It is simply a complex issue that defies a simple answer.