I wasn't making any assumptions at all tbh.
If there was a point it was the one about talking about something and seeing it happen and coming away with different feelings/perspective.
Transgender Athletes
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I wasn't making any assumptions at all tbh.
If there was a point it was the one about talking about something and seeing it happen and coming away with different feelings/perspective.
The assumption is likely unconscious and not malicious, but still implicit and prevalent with a lot of this conversation. If you don't believe them to be equitable you wouldn't draw the parallel. If you didn't think it would be a similar scenario then you wouldn't have different feelings/perspective because what you witnessed is in no way equitable to the subject and you would consider it to be not related in any way. Nobody is talking about men vs women here, so there's no different feeling or perspective required after seeing that play out in action. That would only be relevant if the assumption was that men transitioning to women means they'd perform similarly to what you witnessed.
Well, the whole reason why this thread has been reopened is because the world governing body for swimming has released scientific evidence that MTF athletes maintain an unfair competitive advantage, and that was brought about by a MTF swimmer winning a national championship, beating multiple Olympic team members / silver medalists in the process.
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And it doesn't matter that not all trans women beat CIS women. There is no doubt that many trans women in many sports do have an advantage through going through male puberty.
A case in point is Hannah Mouncey who plays handball for Australia. I'm guessing she wasn't good enough to play for the men's team before transition (Please can we keep this respectful. I didn't post the picture to elicit dodgy comments).
That said I know that trans women want to compete as women and not in a special category because they want to be treated as women. But I keep coming back to feeling that CIS women at the elite level also have rights to compete on a level playing field. It sucks but I'm not sure if there is an answer that will make everyone happy
A case in point is Hannah Mouncey who plays handball for Australia. I'm guessing she wasn't good enough to play for the men's team before transition (Please can we keep this respectful. I didn't post the picture to elicit dodgy comments).
That said I know that trans women want to compete as women and not in a special category because they want to be treated as women. But I keep coming back to feeling that CIS women at the elite level also have rights to compete on a level playing field. It sucks but I'm not sure if there is an answer that will make everyone happy
Rugby League follow swimming's lead
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...g-in-barring-transgender-women-from-competing
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...g-in-barring-transgender-women-from-competing
I'm guessing now that a couple have done it, it will be a bit of a domino effect where most sports will follow.
"the US women’s footballer Megan Rapinoe believes the starting point should be inclusion. “Show me the evidence that trans women are taking everyone’s scholarships, are dominating in every sport, are winning every title,”
This is where the difference in a lot of opinions lie. I think if a single trans women is taking one scholarship, that's one to many...... if it can be scientifically they gained any sort of advance of previously being male, which has now been proven and acted upon.
Other people don't see that as an issue and either side will never agree.
That's a tricky one because there is scepticism about whether children should make permanent lifetime changes at such a young age (eg before 12)
sports has always been discriminating. It discriminates based on sex, age, weight etc.
I fail to see how anyone still need proof that MTF athletes having an extreme advantages over natural women at similar classification
I agree but the problem is that MTF athletes have a advantage over cis-females. This has been seen in most sports where MTF athletes have taken part as there are numerous cases of where they've gone from being a reasonable competitor in male sports to elite in female sport. On the reverse FTM we've not seen it.
Therefore, the argument comes down to what do you want female sports to be? A platform where you have equal competition or a platform where cis-females compete but will be serious disadvantaged if a MTF takes part?
Unfortunately, sport is a category when biological fact cannot be hidden/glossed over and is vitally important in determining the biological advantages a person will have. MTF athletes, even after hormone treatment, clearly still have residual advantages from going through male puberty that give them significant advantages against cis-females and this cannot really be discounted if you believe sport should have a equal playing field.
Just because the differences in performances between males and females diverge from puberty onward, does not mean the process by which that happened starts at puberty.
In fact, administering testosterone to women does not significantly affect their standing vertical jump, which would indicate the effects of testosterone on neuromuscular efficiency take place predominantly in the womb. Just to illustrate how gross the disparity is, the average SVJ for young women is 14 inches and 22 for young men.
The effects of testosterone in utero are always omitted in these debates and it amazes me people on committees can make decisions on this without mentioning or having learnt this simple fact.
In fact, administering testosterone to women does not significantly affect their standing vertical jump, which would indicate the effects of testosterone on neuromuscular efficiency take place predominantly in the womb. Just to illustrate how gross the disparity is, the average SVJ for young women is 14 inches and 22 for young men.
The effects of testosterone in utero are always omitted in these debates and it amazes me people on committees can make decisions on this without mentioning or having learnt this simple fact.
My understanding is that puberty blockers aren't permanent, they're a delaying tactic to keep kids' options open whilst they work out what they want. Those who decide on reflection that they don't want to change their gender simply come off the hormones and experience a normal, albeit belated, puberty.
But studies show when you take testosterone blockers as a woman it lowers your performance and some are arguing it reverts performance closer to that of a biological female. Lia Thomas was beaten by other females (despite previously been on the men's team) so there is evidence to support. On the other hand there are irreversible physical gains made that cannot be reduced by testosterone blockers so it depends how much of an advantage is assumed.
It’s not big or clever, but I view the abortion debate the same as the Trans sports debate.
I believe that abortion should be legal to the most sensible scientific limit that society gets comfortable with. That might be a stage where it could justifiably be called murder. It sucks. But I can get across it. No man should ever vote on it. Women do your thing. Pick your line and I’ll probably be ok with it. It’s fair for the many to the detriment of a singular.
Trans sports debates… Everything is fine and dandy until you enter a professional standard. From then on… I’m sorry, you can’t play professionally if you’re Transgender. It’s sucks. I’m with you. Its discrimination. It’s unfair. But its fair on the many to the detriment of the singular. That’s society.
I’d not give a damn about playing with/against a Trans person. There’s not a single thing that they could want to do that I wouldn’t help with. But there’s no workable solution that doesn’t Fcuk up the sport in question. It also holds the entire community back.
I think we should be honest/bold enough to say we’re being willingly discriminatory for a valid reason.
I believe that abortion should be legal to the most sensible scientific limit that society gets comfortable with. That might be a stage where it could justifiably be called murder. It sucks. But I can get across it. No man should ever vote on it. Women do your thing. Pick your line and I’ll probably be ok with it. It’s fair for the many to the detriment of a singular.
Trans sports debates… Everything is fine and dandy until you enter a professional standard. From then on… I’m sorry, you can’t play professionally if you’re Transgender. It’s sucks. I’m with you. Its discrimination. It’s unfair. But its fair on the many to the detriment of the singular. That’s society.
I’d not give a damn about playing with/against a Trans person. There’s not a single thing that they could want to do that I wouldn’t help with. But there’s no workable solution that doesn’t Fcuk up the sport in question. It also holds the entire community back.
I think we should be honest/bold enough to say we’re being willingly discriminatory for a valid reason.
I'm assuming the first instance of female should be male here?
Well, like you said, the caveat is "closer", which IMO isn't good enough. Neuromuscular efficiency will stay remain higher, because it's pre determined by genetics and the effects of testosterone in utero.
No amount of blocking a male's testosterone will have his standing vertical jump lower from a 22 inch to a 14 inch. He'd be sick or dead at that point.
Something I forgot to mention in my initial post is that the record for a male's standing vertical jump is 46 inches (wtf) and 29,5 for a female and these numbers are probably more applicable to elite athletes.
The ability to apply force quickly just isn't determined solely (or largely) by current testosterone levels and this is why pound for pound men are superior athletes.
The NCAA lists that there are over 5000 female Division 1 swimmer/divers in the United States. Lia Thomas won a Division 1 national championship in one event and finished in the top 8 in D1 NCAA in two other events, and beat multiple Olympic silver medalists in the process. Lia Thomas was nowhere near that level competing in the male division in previous years.
Unless these stats are for pre-pubescent kids (which I'm pretty sure they're not), they don't seem particularly relevant to your argument. If your theory was correct, we'd expect to see disparities between the innate physical abilities of boys and girls to become apparent long before puberty, and we don't.
A quick search led me to a journal article about an experiment where they measured the vertical jumps of 800 boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 12. They found no significant difference between the jump heights of the male group and the female group.
It shows that females can be competitive with trans women.
Yes it should be male and i haven't seen the notes about vertical jump but maybe they can test this theory soon and see how trans female basketball players are effected for their vertical jumps after undergoing treatment. Michael Jordan actually has a 46 inch vert and 2 rookies this year have matched it.
That makes sense. That's like being a D1 basketball player as a male (still elite compared to gen pop) then transitioning and you are now a top prospect 1st round pick in the NBA draft.
Yup, a lot of people have come with that type of reasoning which I don't understand as I think it misses the point on why men and women are separated in different categories to begin with.
A trained athlete is going to beat an untrained person most of the time if we're talking about fully developed adults, so a college swimmer is going to be better than most men that haven't trained swimming or compete at that level but that doesn't mean that men have a physical advantage and it makes ok for them to compete with women.
They don't need to win every single competition so we can realize it was something unfair, in the case of Lia Thomas she was already getting better results than as a man and there were a lot of allegations about her very own teammates and other swimmers accusing her of even holding back in the finals; that in itself was something insane which made the discontent grow up.
To be more specific, that’s like doing this…
Thomas’ 2018-2019 rankings
554th in mens 200 freestyle
65th in mens 500 freestyle
32nd in mens 1650 freestyle
Thomas’ 2021-2022 rankings
5th in women’s 200 freestyle
1st in women’s 500 freestyle
8th in women’s 1650 freestyle
damn. That's a CRAZY jump. Just for comparison how many people do each event? as in she came 554th out of how many contestants
Wrong premise. My post was a refutation of this exact commonly held, incorrect belief.
The 2D:4D digit ratio is a well known bio marker of prenatal T effects and there's a myriad of studies demonstrating it's relationship with athletic performance. Here's one most relevant to the topic at hand, but there are obviously many other such proven relationship both within and outside of athletic performance.
The relationship between the digit ratio (2D:4D) and vertical jump performance in young athletes - PubMed (nih.gov)
Testosterone has in utero effects on neuro muscular efficiency, starting 8 weeks after conception. The fact that this process finishes and becomes more pronounced at puberty doesn't mean they are more important than the in utero effects. It just means suits on committees and the general public are obsessed with the stage of the process that coincides with the development of the familiar secondary sexual characteristics.
Actually, there might be gender differences within children as well, not that it changes my previous point: (PDF) Strength and vertical jumping performance characteristics in school-aged boys and girls (researchgate.net)
There's already a study in which in which women who were administered testosterone did not see significant improvements in their SVJ, which is easily explained by the in utero effects of testosterone on neuro muscular efficiency (in addition to many other effects of T in the womb)
Effects of moderately increased testosterone concentration on physical performance in young women: a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled study | British Journal of Sports Medicine (bmj.com)
I've seen others as well in the past. Don't care too much to dig them up again, as I think I've made my point abundantly clear.
It would be very convenient for trans people if only the puberty stage affected athletic performance and the testosterone pumped into the womb was just for the fun of it. Unfortunately the science says this isn't the case and this should be far more obvious to the morons on these committees that seem to be more concerned with not hurting anyone's feelings than the actual science.
This perfectly sums up my thoughts better than I could
A bit of reading suggests that studies purporting to show causal links between digit ratios and various physiological traits are generally of low quality and findings are impossible to replicate. Digging a bit deeper it appears that the purported link between digit ratio and testosterone exposure in the womb is itself dubious. The largest study run to date found no significant correlation between the two, and the most notable study which claimed a correlation has never been successfully replicated. By all accounts the consensus in the scientific community seems to be that 2D:4D is a bit of a joke.
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Cancel swimming.
Serious Q though: Are there examples of FTM athletes who are performing well and competing against men? Even winning?
Serious Q though: Are there examples of FTM athletes who are performing well and competing against men? Even winning?
Are you disputing the fact that testosterone exposure in utero has profound effects on the resulting phenotype or are you only disputing whether the exposure to testosterone influences the neuromuscular system? 'Cause differences in the development of the brain and genitalia (the latter of which is muscular to some extent, obviously) are well established as it relates to high/low levels of testosterone. They're responsible for a lot of the differences in pre pubescent boys and girls. So somehow these differences are muscular and neurological, but not neuromuscular? how does that work?
Like I mentioned, administering testosterone to females does not increase their standing vertical jump, which is a measurement of their power (not strength) output, meaning explosiveness force production, the fast recruitment of muscle fibers is not influenced by current testosterone levels. Power production is highly genetic. Taking T doesn't increase them significantly.
So how do men gain these 40% advantages in SVJs compared to women? if they cannot be replicated through the admission of testosterone?
We know this from the DDR athletes that were giving large amounts of T (some of these girls were pubescent), while they beat the competition, they were nowhere near their male counterparts, the same is true for female bodybuilders that can juice endlessly and not get close to their male counterparts. How do you account for these differences?
Perhaps in utero exposure to testosterone?
And even if we disregarded the in utero exposure to testosterone angle, there's a lot of literature on the genetic difference between male and female skeletal muscles that are not the result of puberty, such as fiber composition.
So while it's easy to disregard these differences of not having an impact on performances because they don't produce direct results in pre pubescent children (which is the only argument I've seen you make), it does not mean these tangible differences are not latent or don't otherwise interact with hormones/puberty later on.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...al_Muscle_Kinetics_and_Fiber-Type_Composition
Difference in skeletal muscle function in males vs. females: role of estrogen receptor-β | American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism
No, but thanks for arguing my case better than I have
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They maintain an advantage that many CIS men have over other CIS men - which means the problem is not the advantage itself existing because it's selectively applied as problematic.
A swimmer barely ranked before transitioning now demolishes the best of the best in the womens sport but you think it is being "selectively" applied. Ok chief.
how many olympic medals have trans women won?
Right…
They’d won 0 women’s national titles until this year. Solid argument.
We’ll for what it’s worth a former Olympian and now human rights lawyer is offering their services should (when) this is challenged legally, as the belief is that the “evidence” released is entirely selective and not representative.
Cool. I look forward to seeing how that case goes.
She did not demolish the best of the best. It was a very good performance, granting her a narrow win in one of the weakest fields in a long time. No need to make things up.
Great way to not attempt to address what I actually wrote, ok chief. You also completely misunderstood what I meant by selectively applied. Not to mention you're wrong about the swimming example.
As somebody who has been on testosterone replacement therapy for the last 5 years with the natural levels of an 80 year old man I can confidently say that before I was prescribed therapy if you and I were put into a competition the advantage you would have over me would be far higher than the advantage present when a MTF trans athlete finishes their transition and competes against CIS females - yet nobody would care, nobody would say this was a problem, nobody would say 'omg Gandalf has such a massive advantage this is clearly unfair' - let's face it, the only time this is applied as problematic is when it comes to trans people which by definition makes it selective. Outside of trans people, nobody considers the presence of this kind of competitive advantage to be a problem and they've likely never even given a second thought to this within the context of sport before the trans issue brought it to the forefront. Nobody tests the testosterone levels (outside of exogenous steroid abuse via absurdly elevated levels) of CIS male boxers/swimmers/MMA athletes to make sure one doesn't have a competitive advantage via hormone levels with a view to prohibiting the match up if such advantage exists. The existence of this competitive advantage is quite simply not viewed by anybody as a problem unless a trans person is involved.
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The innate advantage men have over women is not something arbitrary and its why you have men competing against men and women against women.
No, I wasn't disputing things you hadn't said yet, I was disputing what you said in the post I was quoting, which was:
"The 2D:4D digit ratio is a well known bio marker of prenatal T effects and there's a myriad of studies demonstrating it's relationship with athletic performance."
As I said, a short internet search reveals both of those claims to be dubious at best, pseudoscientific nonsense at worst.
In practical terms, it's a novel situation. The old Olympic rules - surgical transformation + legal recognition + testosterone reduction monitoring over several years - combined with the typical transition pattern (most people starting transition at 20+) made it more or less impossible for someone in their athletic prime to qualify.
It's the attempt to reform those rules and allow greater participation that has started creating the test cases and discussion we're seeing now.
There's some indirect evidence from the experience of DSD athletes, who are proportionately overrepresented in elite women's competition - with the effect much larger in some events than others.
Got it, and I'll take your word for it. I don't care enough about fingers nor was it the basis of my argument, which was critiqueing the notion that the differences between the sexes from a performance perspective can (near) exclusively be attributed to puberty and the associated hormonal changes.
One you phrased like this:
"Unless these stats are for pre-pubescent kids (which I'm pretty sure they're not), they don't seem particularly relevant to your argument. If your theory was correct, we'd expect to see disparities between the innate physical abilities of boys and girls to become apparent long before puberty, and we don't."
I've responded to this and gave evidence of studies or real life examples for which such a theory cannot account. One glaring omission of mine was provided by a poster who asked if there are FTM athletes. Something which is hard to answer if you consider performances differences between sexes the sole result of men being testosterone pumps during puberty.
So why are there are no FTM competing at a high level?
The problem with this whole debate is that the sample is far too small to make accurate scientific studies. Especially when you know the very very narrow margin that differenciates a decent athlete from a great one. Even a 1% increase in performances would be huge and we just don't have enough trans athletes to build a solid study.