No, not when the sport is supposed to be divided between biological men and biological women.
Transgender Athletes
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But sport isn't divided as so because trans people are allowed to compete in various sports so it's a case by case basis.
It's overblown in terms of current numbers of transgender athletes competing - though it won't be for those involved in the competition or girls looking for inspiration/reassurance from the competition. The issue is that sport is attempting to become more inclusive - opening competitions to women who would previously have been excluded. We are seeing the start of the test cases, as rules are moved/eased, but with how the rules currently stand (or don't) there will be more high profile examples and more test cases.
Simultaneously, physical transitions are happening earlier and definitions of what constitutes physical transition (surgery? pharmaceutical?) are changing. Throw in more complex issues like self-declaration without any physical transition and gender fluidity - the lines aren't clear. The lines have been wobbly in the past, we're now looking at what happens when all the old lines are being deleted or questioned.
At the elite level, I believe women's sport needs boundaries to survive. Drawing fair (in a sporting sense) boundaries on a sport by sport, event by event, competitor by competitor basis is just about impossible. I think rules (and exclusions) are going to be needed in most sports at least at the elite/pro level - and I suspect they have to be simpler to apply, which will also mean fairly arbitrary and driven by birth sex or even chromosomes rather than individual capability.
This here sums up my thoughts alot more eloquently than I ever could. Good post
Yep, not going to blame trans athletes for wanting to compete or those who lose to them for feeling it is an unfair situation.
The worry is they will dominate women in every sport, men such as myself as always have nothing to be concerned about. Women have had a few thousand years of that already and having had the temerity to secure some rights for themselves over the last 100 years this is one of the ways those rights are already being eroded and the worst aspect of it all is that any attempt to open a dialogue about it typically ends with the social media mob screaming TERF and trying to cancel the women raising the issue. It is a sensitive subject I understand and I am fully in favour of people living their lives as they wish but I do feel that the current environment makes this a one way street with women as ever on the receiving end of all of the hate and abuse.
And this case should have resulted in this individual not being allowed to compete.
Well said
Great post @jojojo. Sums it up well.
I don't know why sport doesn't just switch to an xx and xy division at this stage honestly. Its not trampling on anyones rights and it keeps both trans men and trans women in with a shot. While trans women benefit heavily from the current rules, for trans men in some sports its just downright dangerous.
I'm a big mma/boxing dude and recently the Alanna McLouglin fight drummed up a bit of controversy. Clearly outskilled and outmatched but she won purely on genetics and an uneven playfield. While sport is always an uneven playfield to an extent genetically there is a clear difference in xy vs xx as we've seen everytime they've met in competitive sport. You only have to look at the Williams sisters vs the world no.200 man, the USWNT vs a team of kids etc...
I really don't see why sport isn't moving towards xy vs xx for division.
I'm a big mma/boxing dude and recently the Alanna McLouglin fight drummed up a bit of controversy. Clearly outskilled and outmatched but she won purely on genetics and an uneven playfield. While sport is always an uneven playfield to an extent genetically there is a clear difference in xy vs xx as we've seen everytime they've met in competitive sport. You only have to look at the Williams sisters vs the world no.200 man, the USWNT vs a team of kids etc...
I really don't see why sport isn't moving towards xy vs xx for division.
It will happen eventually, the climate of political correctness has still to even itself out. This will be a non issue in the future.
Its a supremely tough one because you don't want to make people feel different or outcast or whatever and it feels harsh to tell one woman "You go here" while another is "You go here" but its very much the only solution that feels safe to me.
It’s completely fair. If you want to be a professional sports person you compete in the category you were born into.
You want to complain about it go ahead but it won’t do any good and it’s not infringing any rights at all.
There are plenty of professions that you can’t join due to some quirk of genetics. Like if you are colour blind you can’t be an airline pilot. Until recently you had to be over a certain height to be a copper etc.
The whole thing is completely idiotic with a very straightforward solution and yet everyone skirts around it trying not to tread on any eggshells.
I'm not sure there is a solution that works for all. The primary concern is that women's sport is potentially compromised if someone who has transitioned competes and has a big advantage due to them originally physically developing as a male. However, making transgender people compete in a special category is really saying that being transgender is a disability whereas para competitions is about showcasing ability, so this would be very different. I'm really not sure how you accommodate everyone in this circumstance. If you can't it will result in trans people losing out (again) which also not a great outcome.
It's not. But is it worse than biological women (who are 50% of the population) losing out. Arguably not.
I don't have the answers but the least shit option is never very satisfying. And it is such a hard thing to conceptualise as it invariably involves whataboutisms. Which in some cases are from genuinely wanting to examine the issues and in some cases are disingenuous and/or bigoted "its a bloke in a dress innit" attempts to insult and diminish.
I don't know what your scientific background is, if any, but I wouldn't trust a sweeping statement like that even if it came from an expert in the area.
Differences between sexes go far beyond a couple of hormones, which is essentialy the "means to alter how a body develops" you refer to in your last sentence. Plus, the administration of exogenous hormones (or hormone blocking) doesn't exactly replicate the "natural" rhythm of things anyway, as any insulin-dependent diabetic will tell you.
Men have a chromosome that codifies come 50 or 60 odd proteins which are absent in women. Women have different X chromosomes in different cells of their body (genetic mosaicism) by virtue of havint to inactivate - at random - half of their X chromosome material, which would otherwised be doubled. For somene that understands a bit of genetics, embryology, physiology and other medical sciences, it seems ver unlikely that the differences in physical capability don't stem from a multitude of genetic mechanisms (and others, though for this debate it's the genetics we care about).
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Definitely not an expert by any means, so I'll happily retract that statement. I tried to find the articles I read (I'm pretty sure I had them bookmarked) but nothing so far. What I did find, though, was that we lack data, so those articles were likely speculative or drawing premature conclusions.
From what I've been reading, cross-hormone therapy in a MTF teenager generally results in the muscle and skeletal growth you'd expect to see in a cis girl (but they have lower bone density than the average girl, it seems) but we don't have the data to tell us how that translates to athletic performance.
The bold part is almost certainly true, It's just that the fine margins in top level competition might mean that the differences that stem from other mechanisms and other phases of development (and not amenable to medical manipulation) may still mean this has the potential to distort some competititons. Unfortunately, I don't think conclusive evidence in this sort of complex biological issues can come from anywhere else but pure raw data from actual competition and these things can take years/decades. There are probably not enough transgender people competing yet to allow for well-designed research, but I expect this number to rise.
People who have to decide how to approach this in the meanwhile have a nearly impossible task in their hands. The disadvantages of other solutions (special categories, outright ban, etc) will have to be weighed against the risk that you "ruin" some top-level sports for a while until we have more data.
Like many posted above, sports is inherently "genetically unfair" and I don't think strongly either way in this particular issue, I just commented because quite a few lay people seem to oversimplify this.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22561975/
This is just a single study - clearly little - but nevertheless it seems to suggest that differences between prepubescent girls and boys are statistically significant, and confirms some empirical idea that girls are more flexible and have better balance whilst boys are stronger and more explosive.
So you feck over the 99% in order to accommodate the 1%?
Right
Some things you just have to accept you cannot do as A result of your genetics and your life decisions.
Transgender people are LITERALLY a different category
How hard is that for people to understand???
It beggars belief
But it's the reason they have the advantage. That is they were a man. Show me a woman who's become a man and competed against men and won.
Did I say that? I'm thinking not.
So is skin colour and religion. Just because you can categorise something doesn't mean you should divide people in that way. Usually when you do it you do it to advantage and showcase people and not exclude them. However, I'm not advocating for or against inclusion of transgender people in elite sport as there is an obvious issue with transgender women having a physical advantage in many/most cases.
Only to you but life is more nuanced than that. The fact that the world is struggling with the issue suggests that it isn't that simple. Nobody seems to have an issue with transgender men competing in elite male competition for example. So we are really talking about only creating a separate competition for transgender women to compete against each other. Given that this is in effect a ban it has to considered and deliberated upon as you are formalising discrimination in a couple of ways and if you have to do this you want to be very certain it is the best, or least shit, option. Or if you go down the regulating testosterone level route it strikes me that mandating such an intervention for non-medical reasons has significant ethical issues attached.
I can see both perspectives as I have a son playing elite sport and a transgender nephew, and it is a hard life especially as you transition and given that being recognised as the gender you are (not the sex) is a major step in healing the damage your gender dysphoria the world treating all transgender women as other in the way you suggest is harmful to all, and not just the odd person prevented from competing. It could be argued that the wellbeing of transgender women is more important than mere sport. I wouldn't argue this as I don't think sport is "mere" anything and at the elite level the time, effort and dedication is not only admirable but something we need to retain the integrity of. My son plays his sport at a fairly elite level. If he transitioned he would be easily the best female player in the world, by a significant margin. Such whataboutisms are however dangerous if that is all you consider.
As I have said repeatedly I don't know (or see) an easy solution and it may well be that the least shit option is not allowing transgender women to compete at the elite level. But I think the issue deserves more discussions and debate than "Its obviously a bloke".
And there is also far more to sport than the elite level. This is an interesting read.
https://www.insidehook.com/article/sports/trans-athletes-win-boys-sports
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Which is absolutely no surprise to anyone who has coached young kids in sports. Obviously there’s a social conditioning element at play here. Boys are more likely to be encouraged to do sports that are require you to be strong/explosive (football, rugby) while girls are enrolled in sports that require balance/flexibility (gymnastics) but there are very clear differences between the sexes in terms of aptitude for various sports that begin long before the hormonal changes of puberty kick in.
And why shouldn’t there be? There are fundamental biological differences between the sexes. The idea that monitoring and manipulating testosterone levels alone can remove all the many and complex physiological/anatomical differences between those born with XX vs XY chromosomes was always a gross oversimplification.
I know, I never argued it was satisfying. But when confronted with shit options, you invariably take the least shitty one. Until science finds a better way to resolve this.
I don't know, at certain level it also bothers me that athletes like Lia Thomas even want to compete at elite sport. It seems... a little selfish to me. She begun transitioning in adulthood, well past puberty, and has a demonstrable advantage over biologically female athletes as evidenced by the disparity in her rankings when competing vs males and females. There's 12,000+ thousand different careers to choose from and in 11,999 of those her gender or biology would have no significant bearing. But when you pick the one career where you compete against a protected segment of society that you have an unfair advantage over... then I don't know. I don't think it says good things about you. Like I said, it smacks of selfishness and opportunism.
Just curious, when people suggest transgender women competing in their own category, are there enough of them to actually compete? I remember in an interview a transgender woman saying she was literally the only one in her sport. I'm sure that with so many different sports and categories inside each sport, and so few transgender women professional athletes, this suggestion of having them compete each other is just not viable.
Being male sex is not something you can compare to religion and you already are aware how that has a direct impact in athletic performance.
Is because they, on the other hand, have a handicap. Is like when there are football teams with a certain age limit but they can incorporate younger players without a problem and it's not seen as an unfair advantage. So yeah, the problem is more specific to transgender men.
For example I'm not sure if it has already been brought upon but Lia Thomas wasn't the only transgender competing as there was also a transgender man, Iszac Henig, swimming with the girls. I'm not sure if they participated in the same events or heats at least once but no matter how you see it there was a man and a woman competing in the girls category.
All in all I think the issue with transgender women in sports is that legally they can acquire the woman status and thus should have the rights to participate as women, as they have that status. Then the problem is that biologically you're not really turning into a woman and the sports divisions should be strictly about you biological sex but this enters in conflict with granting the same rights of a biological woman.
Because of course that was the point
Which was (again) that merely being able to categorise something doesn't mean you automatically should categorise on this basis in various places, ways and contexts.
I assume you mean "physical disadvantage on average" and not handicapped? And age groups are usually Under 12 or Under 16 (or whatever) so younger players can play up if they have the ability and physicality. What has that got to do with elite level sport? I also think viewing this as transgender men are ok because we allow kids to play in older age groups but transgender men aren't because they may have a physical advantage is a rather simplistic way of thinking about it.
Iszac Henig identifies as a man but has had no hormone replacement treatment so is perfectly entitled to compete in the female categories. So I'm not sure what your problem with this is?
So what do you do about intersex people? Merely banning transgender people from participating in sport seems like a very blunt instrument just so that we don't have to look for a more complex or nuanced approach. Certainly at non-elite levels I think the harm far outweighs the benefit. The issue that needs to be resolved is really at elite levels of sport IMO.
In most cases it precludes transgender athletes from participating at all.
Really not the point and I don’t want to rest on it too long but fecking hell, good for your son that he’s doing whatever at the level he’s at.
Well, for me is a very simple situation. A woman, or a transgender man, doesn't have an athletic advantage so there isn't so much of a problem or at least people won't consider something unfair.
I brought the case just to illustrate the perception on how different the reactions have been in comparison with Lia Thomas. In his case I see no problem with him competing against women, although I think he does plan to compete with men eventually.
I don't see it as a ban, they still could compete but not in the women division of the sport.
As for intersex I don't know much about it, but if it's something you're born with, like a genetic condition, then I think it depends; like if they wanted to participate in the women division and is determined they don't have an athletic advantage because of their condition then there shouldn't be a problem with them participating in the category they want.
Thanks. He plays water polo, is almost 2m tall, 215kgs, quick in the water and a left handed centre forward, so a bit unique. Paris 2024 is his aim. In terms of male vs female performance in a very physical sport, the U16 junior male Australian team easily beat the national women's tean when they trained together and the AU women are usually close to medaling at most Olympics. And to show how hard this subject is he both loves and wants to support his cousin (not thst he is an athlete) but also recognises how dominant transgender men could be.
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for those who would argue trans women should compete with men, would you be OK with trans men competing with women then?
They do, but where sports are using testosterone limits it can mean they have to come off their testosterone supplements to compete. Not a good situation for the athlete, but practical in sporting terms.
I was just wondering this - to what extent are the drugs prescribed to those fully transitioning in violation with athletics drugs/doping regulations? If there's X amount of testosterone you aren't allowed to be taking whilst competing, is there a female equivalent?
As far as I know in elite level competition for sports where strength or speed are crucial, there's a 0 tolerance policy towards exogenous testosterone. That means testosterone that isn't naturally produced by your body. It's considered an anabolic drug and modern tests can detect presence of exogenous testosterone. Because once you allow for that you open a whole can of worms about how much testosterone everyone is allowed and policing that would be even harder.
That means you won't find transmale athletes at Olympic weight-lifting events (as an example) because they need exogenous testosterone to even get to the male testosterone spectrum. Never mind the high end of that, which is where you will find most elite athletes of strength-based events.
And that is also the flipside of this. While we are allowing transwomen who use t-blockers to take part in elite competition for women, transmen are de facto excluded from elite level sport due to the drug regulations by WADA. So it's a one way street and also unfair to half the trans population. It's just a mess really.
Its really not in this instance it is extremely straightforward.
If you are born a male and transition to become a female you cannot compete in professional/elite level sports against other females.
Its a completely unfair advantage and it should not be permitted. Would you allow performance enhancing drug users to compete? Same answer and for the same reason, "No, because its an unfair advantage".
In this case the opposite occurs. Performance limiting medication is often required. As I've said before the issues are nowhere near as simple as you say even if the end result is a least shit decision that does exclude transgender men. To dismiss such a significant decision so easily further diminishes transgender people imo.
Which most people don't seem to care about at all.
So difficult to navigate without giving cause to justifiable discontent one way or another.
I guess one solution would be to ban the us of t-blockers in athletics, but then you open up the possibility of having women participants with their original - or close to - testosterone levels competing.
From a sporting perspective it would seem the fairest solution to only permit trans competitors who transitioned pre-puberty to compete, but that opens a whole new can of worms in itself as there would be potentially more and more people pushing for the procedures at an early stage/puts those who transition later on in life on the periphery.
215kg?!? Do you mean pounds? Or does he block out the sun?
left handed is interesting. I am both left handed and footed which was interesting in a number of sports.