it's only straightforward to you because you don't care about discrimination against trans people, who are already one of the most marginalised groups in society. whether you agree with transgender women in sports or not, to categorise it as 'straightforward' is just inaccurate.
Transgender Athletes
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it's only straightforward to you because you don't care about discrimination against trans people, who are already one of the most marginalised groups in society. whether you agree with transgender women in sports or not, to categorise it as 'straightforward' is just inaccurate.
“the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.”
One could just as easily argue that what’s happening to biological female athletes is unjust and prejudicial.
How do you know he/she doesn't care about discrimination against trans people. I don't think trans women should compete in events where on average males will have an advantage. But that doesn't mean I am ok with discrimination against them. In this case aren't they marginalizing themselves somewhat? They made the decision to transition and in the case of Lia Thomas could have continued to compete with the other males. Instead she's decided she wants to compete with the females where she has an advantage and we expect the biological women to be ok with it or be called bigots.
Trans people deserve the opportunity to compete just like they did before their decision to transition. But it seems unfair to me that they should be allowed to compete with the opposite sex because they choose to identify as such.
Are there any female stone throwing competitions?
Asking for a fiend.
Asking for a fiend.
hence it's not straightforward.
but there is no evidence to suggest trans women are systematically taking over women's sports - and most of the outcry here and elsewhere is what 'might' happen in the future. As someone else rightly stated, Lia's time has been bettered by other cis women. there is never an equal playing field when it comes to sports, trans or cis. it's alarm bells to me when people only have an issue when a trans woman wins, and ignores it when they lose. it's just confirmation bias. you will argue well no trans woman should ever win a race because that meant they had an advantage, ignoring the fact that every man or woman who competes has natural advantages over others.
what you are proposing is that no trans woman should ever be allowed to compete in sports, which is clearly a line that many think is too far, and is obviously massively discriminatory.
i'm not even saying we have it correct right now. but the answer shouldn't just be - ban trans women from competing.
why would a trans woman - a woman - want to compete with men? have you heard of gender dysphoria? you make it sounds like she's made a calculated decision to compete with women because she's got a better chance of winning that way. no, she's choosing to compete against women because she's a woman.
I don’t care that an Olympic gold medalist has bested Lia Thomas’ time. I care that two Olympic silver medalists didn’t, I care that multiple women are not an All-Americans in their events now, and I care that other women aren’t national qualifiers. Lia Thomas doesn’t have to break world records to still break the sport and have huge knock on effects for other swimmers competing against her.
I’ve been posting against this sort of thing for a long time now. The reason folks bring up when the trans athlete wins is because initially the defense was “well they’re not winning anything” and the response was “yet”… well, “yet” has come, and it is going to be pointed out. Your alarm bells notwithstanding.
What I have proposed is that no transwomen should compete against biological women. It would be nice if you avoided putting words in my mouth in the future.
I said to myself I wasnt going to reply to this thread again because people don't listen. But what % of performance decrease would be acceptable over a period of time to make the competition fair (for those who think that trans woman shouldn't compete?) Surely it should be on average the difference between men's and women average category performance? So lets say if I performed in a sport at a 12/16 scale as a male (10 being the highest anyone could score regardless), and the average for the same ranking female was 8/16, then if I took 3 years of HRT and my performance decreased to 8/16. Surely that should be seen as fair? Regardless of anything else. This also leaves out the fact less females than males compete in the first place, so rank 50 for female would probably not be as strong in comparison to male because of less competition.
i've done nothing of the sort. asking trans women to compete against men is a non-starter, because they're not men, so yes, you are therefore saying to ban trans women from sports.
I think we'll disagree on this one. It is a very easy decision to make in my opinion.
You cannot reverse the natural advantages you get from being a male whilst going through puberty. It doesn't "diminish" anyone to recognise that fact, its just a fact.
I don't know her motivations and I don't claim
Because in the interest of fairness, whether she wants to compete with females rather than other males should not come into it. Some sports are separated by sex for a reason. Lia is male as you are well aware. We rightly refer to her as she/her/woman out of respect for how she identifies but it doesn't mean we have to pretend biology doesn't exist.
Taking hormone therapy does not change the fact that Lia Thomas was born a biological male and spent the better part of 2 decades physically developing as a male. I’m sorry, but that’s a simple biological fact.
Socially and psychologically, is Lia Thomas a woman? Sure.
Biologically? No… and that affects the issue of fairness in athletic competition.
I have no issue at all with transgender people. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through that process and have people look at you weirdly and suffer discrimination as a result of it and I have every sympathy. However, I do have an issue with transwomen competing against biological women, because they have an clear unfair advantage. It is an entirely straightforward decision and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.
The way I see it it's already a problem, it doesn't need to be hundreds or thousands of transgender women winning stuff. Having just one competing at the elite level already goes against the integrity of the sport. When competing as a man she wasn't getting the same results and she doesn't need to win first place to disrupt the whole event. She's already displacing girls for the finals who already feel they were done dirty.
Then you have the fact that even if allowed to compete like Lia Thomas people would just refuse to accept the results of the competition. Everyone was cheering for the second place, Emma Weyant, and calling her the true winner. There's just going to be an asterisk next to every mark and time she registers and her achievements won't be recognized as the ones of a woman but of a transgender woman.
Also there is nothing 'natural' about consuming hormones, blocking them, or whatever. The 'natural' thing instead would be to have people compete according to their biological sex.
I've no idea how you would run that experiment. On the face of it, sporting "fair" would be finishing tenth in the men's event and following transition coming tenth in the women's - though how that allows for better/worse, technique/training and commitment as an athlete matures, I don't know. Over time you might be able to build a dataset for that in some timed/measured athletics and swimming events - we're years away from having that kind of data though. I've no idea how you'd get that data at all for an elite tennis player or footballer.
Elite is important in this context. Broadly, if you were in intense training prior to taking testosterone suppressants and continue training through transition you can carry a lot of that testosterone-fed muscle forward.
If you aren't in hard training during transition, you will lose significantly more muscle mass and will find it much harder to rebuild it. Inclusivity below the elite level, and looking for ways to support trans-women who want to participate is a much simpler matter or should be. In most sports and most categories, it should be possible to allow equal participation in those levels. That said, I know some like rugby are drawing up policies to say that it only applies to non-contact forms of the game.
There are also questions around why some sports are divided at all. Horse riding events in general are mixed, but they're the rarity. It's not obvious why most shooting disciplines are divided by sex for example. Some sports are divided primarily for marketing reasons or to encourage more female participation (like darts!). I don't see any reason why the default policy in those sports can't be inclusion.
I don't think that's going to fly, or a good approach to handle this. The performance difference isn't something you can measure, or calculate, accurately. It's not the same for every sport and the differences in performances don't come solely out of the different levels in testosterone.
No matter how you put it they would still been seen as biological males, so regardless of what you do people won't see it as fair, specially the women competing against them.
T-blockers are not an issue because they are not a performance enhancer. They are a performance inhibitor. A transwoman not taking T-blockers is unfortunately biologically and hormonally still a man, thus competing in female only competitions would be a gross injustice to biologically female competitors.
Yes it would create even more of a minefield.
But honestly I don't really understand this at a fundamental level. Sport that requires strength, speed & endurance has always been something that only a very small percent of the population could practice at elite level due to genetics. I couldn't be an elite swimmer however much I tried. Because I'm 5' 9" and the wrong body-shape, when and the average height for male swimmers is 6' 2" with wide a chest and slim legs. It's not a limitation that ultimately bothers me, because y'know there's thousands of other things I can do professionally and I can still swim recreationally whenever I feel like.
It seems to me that choosing to not be a professional sportsperson post-transition (just for the specific sports where your pre-transition biology will grant you an advantage) out of both fairness to the other athletes and to avoid courting controversy, is a tiny teeny sacrifice to make in the grand scheme of things. You're literally no worse than someone who was not genetically gifted to compete at that sport, at elite level.
I think there's also a psychological element to it. For example I think in gaming, or esports, there aren't gender categories, in theory both men and women have the same opportunity to compete and be part of the best teams but still the scene is complete dominated by men, although there have been some girls here and there is something extremely rare for them to compete at the highest level.
So like I was saying there might something else other than physical abilities, like shooters and other genres of gaming are more about you're coordination and reflexes; which also explains why the scene is also dominated by men in their early 20s. Something similar could be interpreted for diverse categories of car racing but even in chess the men perform better than women. There have been some studies about it and like I said there was a psychological element about male competing in sports against women. Like in chess the girls would perform worse against men of their same ELO, while the men would become more stubborn if they know their playing against a woman.
So take that the elite level where the differences are the smallest margins. If the girls are aware they're competing against a biological men that in itself could be defeated even before the competition begins just by the lingering notion that it is an unfair matchup.
It's really a very complicated issue to try to determine and measure exactly the performance differences sadly.
Typo. 115kg
Being a lefty in water polo is valued. It makes you better able to shoot from the right side of the pool (less acute angle on the shot) and in his position, centre forward, it tends to make you harder to defend as defenses train to mark and block right-handers.
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Am I misunderstanding or is someone saying that because one of thee best women swimmers of all time has a faster time than Thomas, thats an argument for Thomas not dominating other women?
Plenty of cis women have faster times than Thomas. She finished 8th in the 100 yard freestyle like 3 days ago. Funnily enough no one cares about that, the end of women’s sport as we know it only happens when a trans woman wins something.
You realize that’s 8th out of the entirety of the NCAA Division I?
Do you even know what that means?
8th Out of how many?
Even at that, what do you say to comfort those women that have trained all their lives and are now 9th and below?
Just asked this, can you explain the numbers please
No place would be good enough for you, though. Even if she finished 100th that would mean a cis woman somewhere down the line missed out.
You basically just want to ban trans women from women’s sports. It’s not even about them being successful or dominant. If you don’t see how problematic that sounds I don’t know what will.
Trans people should not compete in elite women sports, end of.
Division I of the NCAA are the biggest collegiate athletic programs in the country. They get the best recruits, have the best facilities, the most funding, etc. There are 200 NCAA D1 women’s swim teams, all with a scholarship allotment of 14. Those 14 scholarships are frequently divided up and given as partials to increase roster size.
The NCAA tournament is the end of the season and you have to qualify for it. 281 women qualified for the tournament out of those 200 D1 programs. There were a total of 60 women in the 100 freestyle event.
So the answer is no. You have no clue what the NCAA tournament is. (See above)
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I dont think this is fair on women. Maybe have a transgender category as others have said.
If you’re going to respond to my post, then please address the main point of it.
Bold of you considering you didn’t answer the question in mine.
I know you were making the point that finishing 8th is still an incredibly difficult achievement. I ignored it to make the wider point: that where she finishes is irrelevant. If she finished 100th that’s no good. If she was the 281st qualifier that’s no good either, right? No matter where she finishes a cis woman would miss out somewhere.
Hence we’re back where we started. You just don’t want trans women competing at all. Whether they are dominant or not is irrelevant. I’m just pointing out why this issue is far from straightforward. Because outright banning trans women, whether they are any good or not, is discriminatory and problematic.
With NCAA you aren't only talking about placings in a sporting event but you are also talking about other things like scholarships, so a trans athlete is almost certainly taking a scholarship, and probably the chance to attend an elite University, that a CIS woman would otherwise have got. That is a very big deal imo. And it also then has knock on effects to a sporting career after Uni and if not a loss of important networking that is an inherent part of attending an elite US Uni.
And in the US a scholarship isn't just a few quid to help you out. Fees alone can be as much as US$70,000 per year and that is before accommodation and food.
I see the problem but I also am far from convinced that there is a solution. Not one that is fair to everyone at least.
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Life is a constant evaluation of trade-offs. Often there is no single solution that benefits everyone. I would personally prefer for biological women (who outnumber trans) to be the winner in this tradeoff, as in avoiding them competing with trans.
But I suppose you don't mind seeing more Lia Thomas-esque cases and that's worth more to you. I don't mean that in a demeaning way, but obviously your outlook is different.
@Wibble put it nicely in his reply above.
Likewise, banning trans women from women’s sports also denies them the chance at attending an elite University too. It works both ways.
When you have people complaining about a trans woman finishing 200th, it feels less about unfairness for women. If the 281st qualifier drops out, then perhaps she should be looking at why she lost out to 280 cis women rather than the 1 trans woman ahead of her.
Why cant the solution be to compete against your birth sex?
It does unless they are good enough to win a scholarship in the men's teams. Not allowing trans women from competing in women's divisions could also be seen as being denied a place that would have only been given due to unfair advantage. Which, if that is what is decided as a rule, isn't as unfair as the other way round. As I say I'm not sure of the best solution but I fear the best solution will be a least shit option that can't be fair to everyone.
Not sure that would qualify as elite sport but either way that doesn't solve the issue or give us a way forward IMO. I don't see how you get around both having male and female divisions of competition for a good reason and then allow trans men to compete in female competitions. I don't like excluding trans men but I also don't see testosterone regulation as levelling the playing field sufficiently (or being ethical for that matter).
I think eventually the world of sports will have to decide if transgender women are women or women*.
In the case of male to female transition and competitive sport, the advantage provided by years of testosterone fuelled physical development feels a lot like doping.
The process of transitioning reduces bone density and strength levels substantially. Plus nobody cares about the natural large differences in hormonal levels between men. Nobody is testing male athletes with 1000 ng/dl testosterone levels and banning them from competing with men sitting at 200 ng/dl despite the decades of physical development advantages that that afforded them. The only time this is on anybody's radar is if it's a trans person involved, outside of that they don't care about differences in hormone levels.