For me it ultimately leads to discrimination. We should not ignore the cascade effect that decisions made at the top of of sport flow through to the bottom and age groups (as it is in the US).
If you hired someone transgendered and you told them they needed to wear a male uniform or use the male toilets. You would be breaking the law in most countries. Their sex is legally redefined and is on their passport/driving license. Ethically the rights of the individual are recognised. The detriment of treating them as a male (isolation, mental health etc) recognised. Sport is treated differently but the same issue occur. I would imagine for many trans athletes it would be humiliating to live their life as a woman, but then be seen effectively as a man when it comes to their workplace (as a professional athlete).
Thereâs lots of talk about sporting integrity but you could argue, trans athletes are are a disadvantage due to the physiological stressors and because of their hormone treatment are disadvantaged to a greater degree against male rivals.
However sport is inherently unfair. Some athletes are freaks of nature. Genetic variants that lead to higher testosterone, others higher heamoglobin, others have mutations that lead to higher types of different muscles. To me itâs far more telling that 70% of professional swimmers are âasthmaticâ
Transgender rights are something that i truly believe that should happen. Those include rights to healthcare etc etc and all other basic rights everyone else takes from granted.
However when it comes to competitive sports , It just removes the semblance of fairness to normal biologically born women.
Someone born male has definitive physical advantages to someone born as a woman. You wouldnât be expecting someone born as a woman but who transitioned to a male to be playing competitive sports as a man right ?
Also you canât overcompensate for what has been a historical evil perpetuated against transgenders by bending over backwards and accommodating them now, It doesnât work that way
Itâs murky because hormone tests have been used and biological female women have failed. You get the crazy situation where woman born female are having to suppress their natural testosterone levels.
The main issue with a third category is simply lack of athletes. If your the only one it kind of loses the point.
This whole debate is just a re-opening of why there are separate womenâs categories at all. Not all sports have them - typically equestrianism is mixed gender. In some sports (e.g. boxing) the competitors are subdivided into weight categories as well as gender ones so the male/female divide isnât the only one present.
Iâm always reminded of the case of Caster Semenya who is intersex rather than trans. She was treated horrendously by the athletics authorities. She was assigned female at birth and is quite clearly a women (admittedly a rather muscular one) but the authorities put a rule in place banning her unless she took drugs to suppress testosterone due to her unique genetics.
What they are saying is that people who were born with an advantage due to their natural genetics should not be allowed to compete in elite sport - even though that is, in essence, what elite sport is actually about. Where does one draw the line? Should the Williams sisters (clearly both women) be barred from tennis because they are taller and stronger than most of their competitors? Obviously not but the line has to be drawn somewhere?
For trans women, they are never going to be able to compete with cis men due to hormone blockers and the like. If they have reached puberty by time they transition they will have âsomeâ physical attributes that may offer them an advantage over cis women but possibly not all of them.
The only real solution I could think of is that people who donât obviously fit into an obvious male/female binary could compete in their own category but that ânon-binaryâ isnât just one thing.
My thoughts as well.
My family member argues against me on the rights of trans competitors. My view is that my opinion doesnât dilute from my overall belief concerning equity.
Not really. It is an anecdote of women competing with an as yet unfounded presumption they are doing so with an advantage. These anecdotes are not particularly useful for anything other than riling up people who think the situation is unfair to cis women.
It is a way to ensure fairness for cis women, but does not come without cost. If that is where you fall on the right balance that needs to be struck then fair enough. That is a reasonable position, but it is critical for that to be a fully reasoned and fair decision to acknowledge that it is there are other parties for whom fairness is important, and the decision is based on a presumption of competitive advantage not a demonstration of it. A big problem with this debate is way too few people who land on your reasonable position do so without that acknowledgement.
Social transitioning is not the same thing as medical transitioning. Conflating the two is a really confusion unhelpful confusion of an already difficult conversationâŚ
Wherever the line is drawn on the hormone levels, there will be some that miss out by a whisker and feel they are being discriminated against. At the same time, if trans athleteâs are smashing the field at every event, is that not discrimination against women that are born women?
I think this is what makes some of the recent legislation in the US so awful. Despite the scare stories, medical transitioning is not something that is done on kids. Is rare its even done in teenage minors. However, for those who are socially transitioning, which is done a first step, those who reach the right age will get puberty blockers as standard medical treatment. This is a treatment developed decades ago for the development of precocious puberty in cis kids, is incredibly well studied and the effects of which are reversible once the treatment stops. This is now characterized by the right as a rushed medical treatment committing kids to a decision they reached on a whim, but its the exact opposite. Its done as a way to stop the biological clock and them more time with their social experiment so they can reach their final decision in a more considered fashion with fewer negative consequences of waiting until they are older to it.
It is now the right wing position to ban this treatment (due to mischaracterizing what it is), which also withholds it from cis kids who need it. Of all the effects this has this is among the least important, but what it does is force trans girls into a situation where they are banned from sports due to having gone through puberty as a male despite pleading for the standard medical treatment that would have prevented that from happening.
William was ranked 462nd in the NCAA, middle tier in what is not a particularly powerful athletic conference. Lia just crushed the competition with a time that is in range of the womenâs world record.
This entire forum could be split in two for those with right leaning ideologies and the other for left leaning and I swear the two groups could have discussions on absolutely anything and they would all agree on 95% of it.
Iâm not saying these discussions are pointless but its all pretty predictable. Plus as much as its discussed I donât see lefties being convinced by the right argument or vice-versa.
