The International Cricket Council has become the latest sports body to ban transgender players from the elite women’s game if they have gone through male puberty.
The ICC said it had taken the decision, following an extensive scientific review and nine-month consultation, to “protect the integrity of the international women’s game and the safety of players”.
It joins rugby union, swimming, cycling, athletics and rugby league, who have all gone down a similar path in recent years after citing concerns over fairness or safety.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that not many users on Lemmy follow Cricket or understand it fully. My comment isn’t going to cover if the decision by the ICC is correct (or otherwise) but to provide a little insight into the men and women’s games
Speed / pace is a noticeable difference between the sexes. I don’t believe there are any current female players that consistently bowl pace over 120km/h. In contrast, male pace bowlers generally try to meet a consistent speed of 135km/h for the same role. The upper bounds for men is roughly 160km/h and maybe only one or two pro players globally can do this.
There are enough men’s bowlers who can bowl at 150km/h. At this speed an average batter would find it difficult to see the ball. Arguably batters in baseball receive faster pitches but at 150km/h+ including the ball bouncing makes it incredibly difficult to face.
The batting is also different but it might be harder to explain to a non-cricketing audience why this is.
To add extra weight to this comment. It is a common tactic to attempt to “bounce” a batter out, which basically means bowling with enough speed at such a short length that it comes towards the body, and especially, the head. If a batter is unprepared, it usually requires getting out of the way because trying to play a shot is likely to end up with you getting out or struck by the ball.
The ball is much harder and denser than a baseball and even a famous up and coming professional, international, batter died when he failed to get out of the way and was struck in the head.
Basically, there is a very real safety concern for players when it comes to something like this.
Cricket is like Blurnsball, right?
it’s slowly becoming that, yeah.
This isn’t about male bowlers though. The physiology of transgender people changes very quickly after starting Hormone Replacement Therapy. Do you have data on transgender women and bowling in cricket? Because data relating to male bowlers is not applicable.
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As someone who is not an athlete and not really interested in sports as a spectator either, I’ve used arguments like that before in good faith. Why is it a problem? Most people never get the chance to compete at a high level in any kind of athletics, full stop. Participants at the highest level are all, necessarily, exceptional individuals.
Can you help me understand what makes that particular exception to be so important? Why would women who have undergone one puberty or the other cast aspersions? Like you said, there are methods like testing hormone levels to ensure a level playing field. Given that, it seems like the only aspersions to be cast would be that their history somehow makes them less of a woman, which I can’t agree with.
Participants at the highest level are all, necessarily, exceptional individuals.
Bullshit. High level athletes, artists, chefs, etc. aren’t exceptional by god-given talent, but by relentless pursuit of that skill. Some of the best football (soccer) players of all time had unwanted physical builds or even small “defects”. Some of the best volleyball players were way shorter than their peers. The problem with having trans women competing on the same field as cis women in most sports is that the biological advantage they might get far surpasses the most rigorous training they could do, i.e. it becomes about genetic makeup.
The problem with having trans women competing on the same field as cis women in most sports is that the biological advantage they might get far surpasses the most rigorous training they could do, i.e. it becomes about genetic makeup.
The implication of this is that a trans woman who hasn’t devoted her life to the sport will be able to compete at the highest levels. I think that is patently wrong. Most trans women, like most women, would never have a chance at that without having devoted their lives.
On top of that, many women (and likely trans women though I can’t say for sure) do devote their lives to a sport but still never make it to the highest levels of competition. It’s obviously not just about “god-given talent” as you said, but exceptional circumstances are a necessary condition. Not necessarily in the same way and the same set of conditions for every athlete, but every top-level performer is, necessarily, exceptional.
The implication of this is that a trans woman who hasn’t devoted her life to the sport will be able to compete at the highest levels
There’s no such implication. They’d still have to train, but there’d be an inherent advantage. A common example used to justify the division of sports between male and female categories is grip strength – the female world record is ~65kg, whereas the male average is ~50kg. A trans woman who underwent male puberty would have an unfair advantage, on average.
A common example used to justify the division of sports between male and female categories is grip strength – the female world record is ~65kg, whereas the male average is ~50kg.
I’ve seen this statistic before in this context. What I hadn’t seen (despite trying to find it) is any data on trans women’s grip strength, or how well grip strength correlates to athletic ability. I don’t disagree that trans women have had different life circumstances than cis women, and that those circumstances likely give them an advantage in many different sports. What I don’t think follows from that is this advantage being an unfair advantage, especially since every top level athlete has advantages (inherent and otherwise) that have led them to their position.
As I understand it, “male puberty” does confer some definite athletic advantages, but hormone therapy and other processes undergone by trans women largely mitigate those advantages. What I can’t say (and haven’t seen discussed scientifically or otherwise) is whether or to what degree those advantages remain “unfair” or even significant.
It’s not that their history makes them less of a woman, just that going through puberty with testosterone leads to advantages that those that went through non-testosterone puberty didn’t have.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as taking testosterone blockers or whatever, they still don’t reverse some of the advantages that going through testosterone puberty provides.
Someone smarter than me may come along but if not just googling or ducking some knowledge about testosterone puberty will shine some light on why they’ve made this change in the sport…
In theory trans women are superwomen and then in reality they’re weaker and derpier than the top female athletes and all of this is just a scare tactic because these theories havent played out in the real world at all.
On the sports angle, esports looked like it would finally be the place for me to be a fan because the athletes are relatable to me. But no, they got bought up by the Saudis, so all I get for relatable media is drag queens and furries or whatever.
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TBH I could live with it if the world accepted and honored trans people, and trans people recognized that the biological legacy of their birth sex makes it unfair for them to compete in gender segmented sports. Maybe someday we’ll find a better way to segment sports. Maybe not.
We already found a way in weight classes, but nobody will use it for some reason
Seems like weight class would mostly break down into men’s and women’s anyway, but I guess it would allow for exceptions. Weight class doesn’t seem ideal for all sports though. And even if used, you’d have to have class divisions for each position. Because basketball centers are just bigger and heavier than forwards generally. Perhaps height classes would be just as relevant for basketball. It could all work, but it would be really complicated. And I think smaller men would be afraid to compete in a mostly-women league because, by old world values, winning over women would have no glory, but losing to them would have tons of shame. I wonder if any women would actually want to be the only woman in their league, too. Perhaps it’s about more than just physical ability? Anyway interesting topic.
whatever we should change to would be better than the blind seperation of sexes we have now, whatever we come up with has to pass the prerequisite of overcoming transphobia first. thats unfortunately gonna be a larger hurdle than the sports
i try not to think about it, it makes me mad lol
It’s generally not a blind separation of sexes, it’s an everyone league and a women’s league. Two leagues explicitly exist to protect women/give them a chance.
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But biologically, there is a lot of difference between a cisgender man and a transgender women on HRT.
You can argue that residual advantages remain, that’s reasonable. But to just talk about trans women as if they are basically just cis men is both inaccurate, and offensive.
I think you raise valid points. My counter argument to you would be this: how does the average strength/dexterity/whatever measurement of sports of cisgender woman compare to the average transsexual woman? While one transsexual woman can still be beat by many women, it could arguably be unfair that their transition put them in the top ranking of the women’s league, even if they aren’t number 1.
I’m not here to argue on these points, I’ve done that enough in my life. Just stopping by to let you know that the term “transsexual” is outdated and shouldnt be used. Transgender is the proper term
Thxs from Nikki
I appreciate the correction. Though I do ask that if you say it’s outdated, you provide at least a brief explanation as to why. My understanding was that transgender was for those who identified as a different gender than their own, and transsexual were those who had medical procedures to change their physical sex.
The term transsexual came first, long time ago (I dont care to look it up rn, early 1900s i believe), as we learn more about it we came to realize that gender and sex are completely seperate mentally, hence why its frowned upon to use the term. Lots of hateful people use it knowing this.
Medical transition or not, a transgender person is who they describe, the lengths at which you go to in order to affirm this vaires (Personally I am on the fence on bottom surgery, but basically need HRT). Medical transition is only a part of being transgender, so theres no need to seperate by using the old term, as it stopped being used by us and has been largely picked up by people who think we belong in the looney bin, or just people who (understandably) dont spend all day thinking about their gender.
To be clear, that wasn’t the argument that I was making. In my comment I was only pushing back on the common tendency in these discussions to talk about transgender women as if they were simply cisgender men. People say, uncritically, things like “oh it’s common sense to ban [transgender women] because we know that men on average are faster and stronger”. But transgender women on HRT are significantly different, biologically, to cisgender men.
It’s perfectly fine to talk about advantages remaining after HRT is started, and for how long they remain. But that isn’t what is happening when people talk about transgender women as if they were cisgender men. That is completely ignoring the effects of HRT, making a proper discussion of the relevant facts impossible.
It’s also worth pointing out that, transgender women make up 0.5-1% of all women. So it shouldn’t surprise us if transgender women make up 0.5-1% of top female athletes. That’s proportional.
In reality transgender women are under-represented at the highest levels. While even singular examples of transgender athletes performing well are treated as obvious proof of advantage. That’s very lop-sided rhetoric.
The discussion around this topic is terrible, with a lot of people being quite confidently incorrect about basic empirical facts, while arguing theory.
The discussion around this topic is terrible, with a lot of people being quite confidently incorrect about basic empirical facts, while arguing theory.
Oh boy, here we go. He’s just upset we’re not treating his agenda as tried-and-true fact. Mad we’re having a discussion at all that doesn’t revolve around telling him he’s right and we know nothing.
It’s like you ignored everything else I wrote, to hyperfocus on one sentence, in order to take offense at something I didn’t say.
Mad we’re having a discussion at all that doesn’t revolve around telling him he’s right and we know nothing.
From my comment: “It’s perfectly fine to talk about advantages remaining after HRT is started, and for how long they remain. But that isn’t what is happening when people talk about transgender women as if they were cisgender men. That is completely ignoring the effects of HRT, making a proper discussion of the relevant facts impossible.”
Please at least try reading.
Boo! Stop being a douche and attack their arguments. Attacking them personally just makes you look petty.
Transgender women are women not men. Get out of here with that hate.
It’s not hate, biologically they’re still men. Sex changes and HRT doesn’t change your chromosomes.
Are these trans women dominating women sports leagues in the same room with us?
Serious response: look for statistics for trans women consistently kicking cis women out of cis sports to the point your position predicts they would. They don’t exist. Sports leagues that allow trans women require them to undergo hormone therapy for specific amounts of time, which levels the playing field. Ironically, this requirement is preventing cis women from competing.
Personally, I don’t give a shit about sports, but anyone with a minimum of intellectual honesty understands that if the claim
Trans women out-compete cis women in nearly all sports they are allowed in. Its nonsense to say otherwise.
were to be true, it would be easy to find outrageous situations where all athletes with any possibility of winning in certain leagues would be trans women, but these cases don’t exist. The closest thing this kind of arguments are accompanied by are specific cases of trans athletes who are successful, which must necessarily exist due to statistics, unless what you want are ludicrous rules that forbid them from participating no matter the reality of their physiology.
jcs?
Except this just doesn’t happen
Source?
Except they just don’t. The idea that trans women are going to dominate women’s sports simply has not played out in reality, despite the fact that trans women have been allowed to compete in women’s divisions for many years before these bans.
I don’t know how else to put that. The feared outcome just has not happened, despite regulations being more lax than they are now.
Further proof of this is found, ironically, in the examples brought up by people pushing this fear. It’s the same small handful of trans competitors, most of which did not make any significant impact. If trans women were dominating women’s sports, they would have more, and better, examples.
TERFs have been raging for months over a trans women finishing 6171st in a marathon. People still bring up a specific trans MMA fighter as if she was destroying the competition, when in reality she had a mediocre record, lost to a cis women with a mediocre record, and retired back in 2014. Trans women have been allowed to compete with women in the Olympics since 2004, with looser hormone regulations than those currently in place, yet we saw the first one compete only in 2020 where she didn’t even medal.
The strongest example is one swimmer who was also very strong when she previously competed against men. And people ignore that she still lost to cis women in multiple events. They ignore that her times dropped dramatically after starting HRT.
The fears have not played out in reality.
The feared outcome has occured in every sport trans people are allowed in.
If its so prevalent, please show some examples.
Source
You live in a fantasy land then, because here in reality, it simply has not.
Sport is the most boring show on TV by far, and yet the actors are paid insane amounts. The fandom is the most toxic bullshit out there and the show runners encourage it.
Cancel sport already, it’s really dumb.
As one of the characters in (the book) Jurassic Park says, “the two most boring things in the world are sports and fashion.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I do have a lot of family members who are athletic, and some have gone as far as olympic competitions. So, I can’t really say they have no valid right to enjoy their sport. And those family members are the most kind and welcoming people, they are absolutely appalled by all this bigoted negativity toward trans athletes, and are smart enough to see if for the fascist malarky it truly is.
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Hej, I‘ve seen quite a few comments using weird expressions to refer to trans women here, so to clarify, a trans woman is not:
- a scientific male (trans women are scientifically women)
- a biologically born male (Biologically born? Yes. Male? No.)
- a biological male (as, usually, biological markers such as anatomy, hormone levels, chromosomes and behavior in trans women are ambiguous)
A trans woman is:
- a woman (female) who was assigned male at birth
- often, but not always, a person who has gone through testosterone puberty, but identifies as female
Just use the words trans woman and cis woman, it‘s concise, correct and respectful. I‘m not saying that there are no differences between trans women and cis women, but simply that trans women are women. If you disagree with that, go watch ContraPoints or PhilosophyTube.
Consequently, the international cricket council should call it the elite cis women‘s game from now on, that would just be consistent.
I am still confused. My understanding was that trans people change their gender. This is something I am able to wrap my head around because gender (man/woman) is a human construct anyway and people should have the freedom to choose where they are on that spectrum.
But isn’t sex a genetic thing that can’t be changed? If it’s the case that a person can choose whether they are male or female then science is going to need new terminology to replace male/female for XY and XX because the words science used to use have been commandeered to mean something more like gender?
In particular when referring to humans, the definition of sex is ambiguous, as is the term “biological male”. And I think this problem is intrinsic: Gender and sex are complicated (with many different markers which may be congruent for many people, but are not for trans and intersex people), and the usefulness of categories depends on context. For example, in a dating context, gender might be a useful category. In a medical context, sex is not a useful category for trans and intersex people: It’s not sufficient information, and sometimes ambiguous.
I agree that it would be nice to have other words than for XY/XX chromosomes (or small vs large gametes), this would make the language more exact and inclusive. However, I (and others) dislike the term “biological male”, because I think it exists only to create a category that equates cis men with trans women. Even if we agree on defining “biological male” as a person having XY chromosomes, in a sports context this is an unhelpful category because there are large differences between XY cis men and XY trans women. When there is apparently so much concern for fairness and safety, why not ask the big questions: How can we make sports inclusive, safe and fun for everyone (including trans people!), regardless of genetics? Are sex or gender useful categories to separate competition — or are there other, more useful markers? (And maybe even: Are international competitions as we have them now a desirable system?)
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However, I (and others) dislike the term “biological male”
I dislike the lack of an enclosing comma. Would you, pretty please, fix that?
Seriously?
I agree with much of what you said but have to nit-pick a part that I found confusing.
trans women are women
And cis women are cis women?
Comes off as if an afab person, who has always referred to herself as simply “woman” now has to refer to herself as “cis woman” to be exact, whereas trans women have now adopted “woman”
I’m a guy, and I’d be pretty irritated if people suddenly started insisting that I not refer to myself as “guy” anymore, because trans guys are now “guys” so they get my old title but now I have to specifically state that I’m a “cis guy” everywhere…
Like why would I have to give up my title? It’s one thing for them to adopt it as well, not like I mind, more the merrier! But why am I having to change my title when I’ve been the same all along?
It’s like if people began changing cats into dogs, and claiming the name “cat” for the former dogs. Cool, do what you will, but then they tell me that my “cats” aren’t “cats” anymore, they’re cis-cats and I must refer to them as such. Why? They’ve always been cats to everyone? How you gonna tell me that you get the name “cats” but my lifelong “cats” are now something else?
Trans women are women, and cis women are women. Simple. No one is “taking” someone else’s name.
Last comment stated international women’s cricket should be renamed international cis women’s cricket 🤔 because women who experienced testosterone puberty are excluded
Whereas a group of TW playing football can 100% use “Women’s football league” Even if the league is 100 trans women and cis women are excluded
That’s all I’m saying, how’s that not taking a title? Not saying this with any malice, hope that’s clear I’ve no dog in this race other than supporting everyone but that’s weird to me
… But where is that women’s football league that excludes cis women while still calling itself “[just] women’s football”?
Whereas we already have many women’s leagues in sports that exclude trans women.
So if it’s actually happening, then sure I’ll agree to calling it “taking a title” and honestly be against it; imo it sets the fight for trans rights back if we use “woman” exclusively for trans women and cis women only ever get called “cis women”. But again, where is that happening? Who is calling for that?
I only ever see people claiming that cis women should have exclusive use of the word “women”, not the other way around. Which is just another way of arguing that trans women “aren’t really women”…
Uh oh, someone is conflating gender and sex again, despite claiming to be a trans ally.
Don’t use cis. Woman is a woman.
My fist thought was “why does the International Criminal Court care”
Just make it third category.
- female sports won’t get affected
- fairness will increase
- fans can watch their own "cup of coffee "
- possible pretenders will no longer be motivated by easy winning
It’s own category with like 5 people in each sport. Great idea.
What is the alternative though that won’t ruin female’s sports that was built as part or followup of female’s emancipation ?
Some sports do it based on what kind of puberty you went through.
As a significant number of the physical advantages come through going through male puberty.
That could be a good start.
Which sports do that?
The one where trans women play in the women’s league and trans men in the men’s. If it causes any sort on unfairness we would have seen it by now.
We have. That’s why it’s a dumb idea.
Where? All the hyped up news stories have been titles like “trans woman destroys women in insert sport here” but if you look into it they took 600th or something and beat maybe 10 women.
That is what tons of folks fights against. But i agree it makes sense. However, is taking testosteron considered doping for females or is it OK? if it’s OK, why other “chems” are not allowed?
The testosterone for trans men is just to get to the levels that average cis men have, I’m pretty sure they test for excess testosterone. Some medication is allowed for sick athletes that is considered doping for anyone who isn’t sick, like the therapy for increasing blood oxygen levels which is a common form of doping but is a valid treatment for some illnesses.
Medication for sick people seems kinda different thing to me than being healthy and chumming chems to gain muscles.
So testosterone for female( born) athletes should be allowed until they reach avg male(born) level? Is that really a thing we want to introduce into sports ? Will steroids also count as getting to avg male upper muscle mass ? Where is the line? Won’t that make female athletes either obsolete or force them to chems chumming which then can cause them health issues given that most of them propably don’t plan to transition and might want start families etc?
For trans men they get like an injection of testosterone, they aren’t getting it to play sports, it’s medication for dysphoria. I haven’t said anyone else other than trans men should be taking it and definitely nothing about steroids.
Imo we should get rid of the distinction by gender and just use weight classes, or whatever attributes are appropriate for a given sport.
Avg Joe can weight about or even less than avg Jane but he still outperforms her in physical activities. It’s gonna be quite hard. But i can see it working as one of the many params in complex evaluation formula which never will be finished in sense every year someone will come up with exceptions and new paralela.
That’s true for grouping by gender as well, probably even more so. Genetic lottery means some will always be better at a given sport than others of the same gender putting in the same effort. But it’s so engrained in our thinking that we don’t even perceive it as a problem, instead we tell those with physical disadvantage that they were just not made for a certain sport.
So we are far from competing with perfect here, and being able to pick other attributes to group by should enable us create much more evenly matched groups. I mean, right now we just use one deciding factor for everything and call it a day. And that’s before we get into the whole gender discussion.
Regarding the actual formulas, I think we just need to find good tradeoffs between fairness and practicality. Of course even a perfectly fair system will fail if it doesn’t work in practice, but I think we can do much better than just using gender in pretty much all cases.
You’ve just killed all of women’s sports by relegating them to the bottom tiers, congratulations.
This is just a complete non solution to the problem and effectively just ends up with trans people being banned from sports altogether.
“Trans” sports teams/leagues (whatever that means) can’t really exist at the amateur local level anywhere but the biggest citiess due to there being not a lot of trans people, and even less trans people who want to play sports.
The struggle to even get enough trans guys or trans girls to form a team for football or whatever would be a challenge in and of itself, and then this team would pretty much have to fly across the country (or possibly to a different country altogether) to even play a match.
This is not a reasonable solution for anyone but the people who want to ban trans people from sports.
The second issue is that this is just fear mongering and not an actual issue to be solved but that’s being argued all over this thread already.
What is your suggestion than?
Does he have to have a better suggestion in order to point out how yours isn’t viable?
It’s preferable, as that’s what constructive productive discussion is about as opposite to just negating and pointing out all is wrong all the time while never accepting any ideas.
It can be very constructive to point out why something is a bad idea without having an alternative in mind.
Doing something just to do something is how a lot of mistakes and accidents happen.
all the time while never accepting any ideas.
That hyperbole. What about good ideas?
I disagree because it doesn’t lead anywhere , thus it doesn’t consruct anything.
It can stop you from making things worse, but I’m tired of arguing this with you.
Believe what you want.
Trans people should be allowed in the sports of their gender provided they’ve been on HRT consistently for some time
The length can be argued but 2-3 years seem to be enough.
However those sport associations claim they had researches done and conclusions were that it is not fair due to difference in physical abilities and it brings health risk for female athletes.
Two categories:
- Women
- Open
Perfectly fair and simple.
It’s already the case, most sports allow for women to play in men’s leagues… But they don’t. And trans women would suffer the same way cis women would in men dominated categories (or would they? Depends on the sport I guess, nobody would complain about trans women in F1 Academy I bet)
nobody would complain about trans women in F1 Academy I bet)
Fox news was complaining about a trans woman getting a participation medal in the London Marathon, which is a mixed event anyway. Never underestimate how much these people hate trans people.
Right, I’m sure they’ll find a dumb excuse to hate on us.
You say that, but trans women are banned from playing in women’s chess. https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/38210181/fide-bans-transgender-women-women-chess-events
chess has a history of being very black and white.
Yeah I forgot about that… They’re just so hateful haha there’s no reason remaining
Exactly.
women as females or identifier ? Open is males + trans females + trans males ?
Identity is irrelevant. The separation exists so that women get fair competition.
Women as in someone who was born as, and always has been, biologically female.
Open means everyone, unrestricted.
So, do transgender leagues get the same amount of resources as male and female? There’s no way they’re going to bring in as much money as male or even female leagues.
Female leaves done bring as much as male leagues either. So male leagues sponsors female leagues. So i guess nope, as male and female leagues do not either.
I think it’s simpler. Have two categories: one for the weaker gender, one that is open for anybody. First category is needed only for sports and hobbies where there are differences between the groups, and the decision whether it matters can be derived statistically. If there’s only one category and a significant majority of the top players are from a single gender group, they need a second category.
Then again, I’m not sure what this means if we applied this logic to other things. For instance, 73% of NBA players were black, 0.4% asian in 2021, but that doesn’t seem like something that needs fixing.
I’m not sure i follow. So you basically suggest to keep male and female categories but rename them? Or do you suggest to devide female category to stronger and weaker ?
Default to one category, separate if statistics show that one gender group is significantly stronger. Some sports have already established that knowledge, so they can have 2 categories as is. Male and female are fine names.
So status quo more or less, but underlining that gender groups have differences in some things. That seems to be unclear to some people.
Well that;s how we got male and female categories. But now we got in between who are apparently weaker than males but can often easily top females. Obvious decision would be to go for certain win.
There are obviously people who misuse it unjustly to get to the top. Where is the line to become weaker? Would you lower rewards for weaker category to motivate folks to move to stronger one, wouldn’t that make females left at the tail all the time ?But now we got in between who are apparently weaker than males but can often easily top females.
They have the burden of proof to irrefutably show that they are on the same level as the women. I don’t know and don’t have to know how they can do that. If they cannot do that, they go to the default category or come up with something else to do with their life.
In priciple i agree but … i can imagine that it’s pretty simple to just give weak performance on the test day then win every competition ever after but just sightly ahead of females.
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God I thought it said the international criminal court
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Studies have shown that after around 2 years of HRT the strength of trans women level out to the average of cis women. The only things that really stay the same are things like bone length /bone density, and it’s not like there are no cis women with dense bones that are tall.
Edit: taken from another comment of mine:
found a more recent study that states endurance things like running and swimming level out by around 2 years, with most things level out after about 4 with the exception of upper body strength. Which is still declining in trans women past that point
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439
So the 1 year that is recommended is too soon for trans women athletes to start competing, but for endurance sports like racing and swimming it should be fine by 2 years. Other sports may need more time, but also we shouldn’t be delaying the lives of trans people for so long. We need to find a good middle ground because it’s not like exceptional cis women don’t exist in those same sports.
This is all also completely ignoring that if a trans women starts hrt before puberty then there is no real difference. So the real solution is to let trans teenagers transition.
Aren’t their trans women who don’t take HRT?
Trans women aren’t biologically men.
How are they not?
Because hrt changes our biological characteristics. I have breasts and a hip curve of a cis woman. The trans man I know is growing hair like a cis man and is getting voice cracks like a pubescent boy.
We’re much closer to being intersex than our biological sex
I don’t think all trans women take HRT, though, right? I imagine most trans women normally go that route, but not all. Maybe the rules can be changed to specify that trans women can compete in women’s sports if they have been on an HRT regiment for long enough, or something.
This makes me wonder, is there anything in place in these sports keeping a man from just claiming to be a trans woman to have an unfair advantage? I do hope they find a way to integrate trans women into women’s sports, but I think there is some stuff that needs to be ironed out.
There already are requirements for trans women to be taking HRT before competing against women. I believe the current one is 1 year. No cis man would want to take HRT that would cause them to grow boobs so that argument is moot.
Edit: imo 1 year is too soon. From a study I read 2 should be good for endurance sports, and 3-5 should be good for others. It’s not right to delay the lives of trans people any further then they’re already being delayed and it’s not like exceptional cis women don’t exist
Plus this all gets solved if we let trans teens transition since these differences happen during puberty
Thanks for clearing that up. I always wondered about the requirements/qualification for that as I don’t really follow sports too much, myself.
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Those are not the trans people being spoken about I’m sports discussions though. Pretty much every sport that allows, or has previously allowed, trans people to compete in the division fitting their gender has had regulations around HRT and maintaining target hormone levels for a period of time before being allowed to compete.
yes they are.
Sorry if my English is a bit weird. If they have the chromosomes (XY), then yes.
Trans women and trans men are significantly closer to being intersex.
The word you’re looking for is biologically.
Thanks
Why did my comment get removed?
Probably a biased mod who gets mad whenever a discussion doesn’t go their way.
Brand new user totally understands how things work here. Alternatively, recently banmed user totally understands why they got banned. BIASED MODS!!!
Simply because there is a huge difference, biologically, between a cisgender man and a transgender women who is on HRT.
You can argue that there is still residual advantages remaining after transition, that’s fine. But to call them men is both plainly incorrect, and also offensive.
Why did my comment get removed?
Hmm I wonder
Fuck this. Sports are games, they shouldn’t be taken this seriously. Like, for example, Micheal Phelps has webbed feet and freaky monster lungs but nobody’s banned him from swimming events for that. Every human is different, people need to fucking accept that sports can never be totally fair and realize that’s not what this is about.
By this logic, we should all go back to open division sports, which is what historically led to a de facto exclusion of women from all sports because, unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them were unable to be competitive in divisions that had men in them.
Most sports actually have an open division. People tend to just call it the men’s division since, as you point out, women get completely zoned out by men in sports.
While I won’t deny there is a biological difference that impacts performance there’s also a systemic societal difference that doesn’t help.
In general women are not given the same support, whether from family, schools, coaches, research or funding, to become top athletes.
It’s certainly much better that it has been in the past now days and it’s getting better, but even just people saying “women aren’t as good as men” is something that sinks into the psyche of women who want to compete.
It’s akin to men from poorer nations who can’t afford resources, time and training, having a hard time competing against “richer” nations who invest more into it
How about adding a third category instead: a free for all category where all genders are welcome to compete and can use as much steroid as they want.
While I think people should be allowed to do anything they want with their bodies, I understand that sports leagues don’t want the athletes to push boundaries and destroy their bodies with stupid amounts of steroids.
I’ve always said baseball needs to just say fuck it and let guys go nuts. I want to see someone throw a 108mph fastball that gets clobbered 600ft.
I think that gender specific leagues need to go the way of the dodo but while they’re here they’re essentially weight/strength classes and most transwomen are more fairly matched against AMAB men than AFAB women.
Ideally, we could just realize that having multiple league levels based on body type would be much more equitable.
most transwomen are more fairly matched against AMAB men than AFAB women.
Source?
Not only do I think this study is complete non-sense, but 3 other professors at the same journal published their comments and concerns with this study and how it’s being spread around as though it’s fact when in truth, the “science” in it is rubbish.
Here’s a link to the article in PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37726582/
PubMed unfortunately doesn’t have a transcript, but you can read the transcript here (or click on the link next to DOI in PubMed that I linked above): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-023-01928-8Here’s TL;DR from the conclusion of the comment on the study is that the original study’s scientific basis is dubious at best, it hasn’t been properly peer reviewed, despite not being properly peer reviewed this article is being shared and used as a basis for shaping policies.
And besides, even if the original study were true, wouldn’t transgender athletes would be winning at a rate higher than their prevalence in sports? Considering about 1% of people are transgender, they should win 1% of the time, but that doesn’t happen, because any advantage is entirely fictitious.
And even if there was an advantage, there are lots of people who have a biological advantage. That’s just a part of sports that’s impossible to eliminate because we’re not all robots running on the exact same hardware and software.
You aren’t factoring in how many people win as a %. Only like .01% of people compete at the top level of sports, if 1% of people are Trans it’s going to take a while to actually hit someone that is both talented enough to be relevant and trans.
And backing up your claim, thank you!
I just want you to know that the study that was posted is trash. Here’s link to a comment on that same study by 3 professors from the same journal https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-023-01928-8
And here’s a quick TL;DR from the conclusion of the comment on the study is that the original study’s scientific basis is dubious at best, it hasn’t been properly peer reviewed, despite not being properly peer reviewed this article is being shared and used as a basis for shaping policies.
That doesn’t surprise me, but I wasn’t aware of that. Thanks!
No worries at all. I know this is a really sensitive subject and it’ll basically require a change in how we view sports leagues and gender to resolve.
It really depends on the sport imo. Trans women may retain some more muscle and some parts of the skeleton are largely unaffected, but muscle elasticity, hip rotation, flexibility, and endurance all end up being more dependent on hormones than birth sex in the long term. How much these things matter varies a lot from sport to sport, and the current system is not sufficient to balance these traits even among people of the same sex. Multiple leagues based on broad body types sounds reasonable, but I have no idea how complicated the rules would have to be to make it completely fair, given we already accept a great deal of unfairness currently.
I’d look to wrestling as an example - it manages to have several leagues of weight classes that participate… but yea, it’d be a pretty big change.
Petite women compete against tall women all the time though
That’s why I think weight/strength classes are the way to go - we arbitrarily divide sports in half by gender and it makes most body types uncompetitive.
As a trans woman who works out but doesn’t really do sports because people make them suck, I have to say that I don’t think that study is correct based of my experiences. Trans women often have lower testosterone than cis women after being on hrt for a while (2 years max typically, but it can be sooner). When I started hrt, literally only about 2 weeks later I noticed massive muscle atrophy and I literally couldn’t even help my father move heavy furniture that I doubt I would have had a problem with before. After that I decided to start lifting and it’s been a few months since then I am still not as strong as I used to be.
The problem is that there’s too much money on the line. If certain performance enhancing drugs (like testosterone) are allowed, every athlete will be required to take them if they want to compete at the highest level. Athletes are known to favor short-term gains over long-term health consequences, and they’re pressured by their environment to do so as well.
Capitalism ruining good things, as always. In the case of trans men on testosterone, though, who cares? I feel like that just levels the playing field for them generally. And as a trans woman? Estrogen has fucked up my body’s ability to build muscle if anything. These arguments all boil down to excuses.
Even on estrogen, the power level is nowhere near equal to born women. I personally think that the only fair solution is to have separate trans divisions, but there’s the question whether there are enough contenders for that. Even women often have problems, I know a kickboxing slender woman who constantly complains about not being able to find competitors and always having to compete at a severe disadvantage.
Says who? Why segregate sports in the first place? Why can’t they just exist for the sole purpose of fun? Does it really matter if trans people have a advantage? Are you that afraid of trans people succeeding? Is any of this really enough to justify dehumanizing trans+intersex people and shunting them out of another public space?
Why is it dehumanizing to have a separate division? Is it dehumanizing for women to have a separate division?
You can do sports for fun, but not the one with the money behind it. The one without the money behind it is not the one you can see in broadcasts, it happens elsewhere. Because broadcasts cost money, and so those are interlinked.
So, the whole topic is only about the one with the money behind it, aka the one not done for fun.
Because trans people are their gender, and because intersex and nonbinary people exist too and we all deserve to have access to the same opportunities as others. That means the big, televised sports too. Gendered divisions don’t give cis women a fair chance at a national platform either, comparatively and oftentimes unduly sexualize the players. If you want any given game to be fair every single team should have a certain distribution among height/weight classes if not among genders as well. There is no reason I see most sports can’t be coed either if this is practiced. It’s almost like it was never about fairness in the first place… 🤔
That means the big, televised sports too.
I never said otherwise.
If you want any given game to be fair every single team should have a certain distribution among height/weight classes if not among genders as well.
That works for a team sport, but what about sport for a single person, like kickboxing/grappling/tennis/etc?
I couldn’t agree more. The one thing “SPORTS” means is, everybody gets to particpate. EVERYBODY. That’s what the word “sports” means. It does not mean only the people are are “straight” get to play. Or only the people who are the physically strongest. It is about interest in participating and having opportunities for everyone to be able to play regardless of their sexual or gender identity.
Damn straight the reason why people play sports is to have fun.
It’s makes me sick these commentators are their hiding transphobia in their “competitive arguments”.
We don’t need to have these invasive requirements to test someone’s hormones just let people play their gender identity. No human deserves to be excluded from having fun when they only got one life.
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It’s worth noting that “scientifically a male” is genuinely a more complicated phrase than it might initially seem at first, because trans people generally do more than just socially transition, changing their name and clothes. Sex differences are primarily mediated through sex hormones, and radically changing one’s hormonal profile, as happens with hormone therapies, causes very real biological effects. A trans woman, while being stronger than your average cis woman, will lose a meaningful amount of muscle due to the lack of testosterone (and will also generally develop better cardiovascular health, again due to the lack of testosterone). Depending on the sport and the individuals in question, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that there are cases where some amount of residual muscle doesn’t necessarily confer a particularly large benefit such that a blanket ban is warranted.
Depending on the sport and the individuals in question, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that there are cases where some amount of residual muscle doesn’t necessarily confer a particularly large benefit such that a blanket ban is warranted.
Agreed. That said, I’ve yet to see a major sport league that bans transgenders in women’s divisions without at least some empirical research existing that demonstrates an unfair advantage.
I mean both chess and pool have recently banned transgender women from competition.
So the push is not purely an evidence-driven one. In fact there is a very loud political faction trying to remove transgender women from all events, from the highest levels all the way down to park fun-runs.
My bad, I actually wasn’t aware of that. That’s fucking ridiculous.
Isn’t that ridiculous, given that women have empirically proven to be better swimmers in most cases that most men. And I’m certain the reason for banning transgender women from chess is because they realize these people are smarter than the average bear. And more likely to outclass their opponents every time. And you know what? They’re right about that.
Can’t pretend I’m particularly familiar with the specifics, but to be clear, I do think it is absolutely possible, and indeed likely, that there are situations where a genuine advantage is present, and I think the line really needs to be drawn by each individual sports body.
I understand the idealism of wanting there to be no real restrictions, but you need some regulations, if only to prevent the bad-faith asshole who decides to identify as a woman for the day of a competition. As time passes and more studies are done, we’ll be able to draw more evidence-based lines that more accurately balance accessibility and fairness.
My only real point here is just to say that this phrase “biological/scientific male” is way way messier than a simple binary category like that might suggest. A huge amount of tissues in the body of some level of sex differentiation, and that differentiation also varies a lot based on the stage of development that their exposed to hormones. A trans person isn’t going to change their skeleton with hormones, but there are other things that do meaningfully change to get closer to the other sex. A trans woman’s breasts, for instance, are genuinely just as “biologically female” as any cis woman’s.
Appropriate then, that the issue is dicks
Not all trans women have
The ultimate reason it’s wrong to ban transgender people from competing in athletics competitions is that the implication is that testosterone can be considered a performance enhancing drug – even if the athlete in question is well within hormonal levels of any other cisgender athlete in the same sport.
If that’s the case, then it opens the door to banning other athletes for exceeding the testosterone limit, and guess what? Cisgender women with African heritage naturally produce more testosterone than the average woman world-wide. So banning transgender athletes leads to potentially banning African women which is obviously racist and wrong to do.
Also, poly cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects about 1 in 10 women and a very common side effect of PCOS is elevated testosterone levels. So 1 in 10 women would be banned for medical reasons outside of their control. And banning people for a medical condition is ableist and obviously wrong to do.
And, ultimately, sports aren’t fair. We try to make them equitable by making the rules universal, but biological advantages are just part of sports. If we start banning athletes for hormones, why not ban athletes for being taller than average? Why not ban athletes for having better vision than average? Or better peripheral vision? Or faster reflexes? If only the absolute average, or below average people were allowed to compete then nearly half of all people would be unable to compete.
Plus, the vast majority of athletes say that they don’t want transgender people to be banned from their respective sports.
And not to mention that it’s just rude to exclude transgender athletes, and if it were truly such an advantage to be transgender then why aren’t transgender people winning tournaments left and right? About 1% of people are transgender, so if transgender people are winning 1% of all tournaments then that would mean that they’re exactly on exactly equal footing with their competitors. But I suspect that less than 1% of tournament winners are transgender which means that transgender people are actually at a disadvantage, which again, is fine because sports are inherently unfair as I outlined above.
At the end of the day, transgender athlete bans hurt everyone, and anti-transgender jerks are just making a big stink about it because it sounds reasonable on it’s face to uninformed people and so it’s a good wedge issue to bring up. Anti-transgender people don’t care about the sports they’re “trying to save”, they just hate transgender people and want to see them suffer, and anyone who entertains their non-sense is complicit (probably unknowingly) in that suffering.
So please, those of you who are reasonable, shut down any discussion of transgender sports bans.
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From your link
Harper analyzed self-selected and self-reported race times for eight transgender women runners of various age categories who had, over an average 7 year period (range 1–29 years), competed in sub-elite middle and long distance races within both the male and female categories. The age-graded scores for these eight runners were the same in both categories, suggesting that cross-hormone treatment reduced running performance by approximately the size of the typical male advantage.
That reminds me of the swimmer Lia Thomas who placed 6th and 2nd before starting HRT. Raced against men after starting, which dropped her down drastically. Then when she raced against women she resumed being a top 10 athlete, winning her race (didn’t even brake female records mind you, just won her race).
The study has some bias imo. For starters most studies I’ve looked at say 2 years is when the strength levels start to even out, while most measurements from this one are from a year. The major exception being a study from 2004 that only looked at mass not strength.
When this study does look at strength it very specifically looked at grip strength and leg strength (this is where I got suspicious of bias). Trans women have larger hands due to our skeletons being forged during male puberty, which could account for the differences in grip strength (easier to grip/more muscles being used when there is more hand to use). And as for the part looking at thigh and quadriceps strength: every cis woman I know has significantly stronger legs than they do their upper body and that is for both the ones that go to the gym and the ones that don’t. It is completely possible (and not even mentioned which is where the feeling of bias comes from) that HRT has less of an effect on leg strength than it does upper body/core. If cis women who go through an estrogenized puberty have stronger legs than arms then it stands to reason that trans women would loose less muscle mass in their legs than their arms.
Edit: bias might be the wrong word here, maybe closer to an oversight than outright bias
Edit 2: found a more recent study that states endurance things like running and swimming level out by around 2 years, with most things level out after about 4 with the exception of upper body strength. Which is still declining in trans women past that point
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439
So the 1 year that is recommended is too soon for trans women athletes to start competing, but for endurance sports like racing and swimming it should be fine by 2 years. Other sports may need more time, but also we shouldn’t be delaying the lives of trans people for so long. We need to find a good middle ground because it’s not like exceptional cis women don’t exist in those same sports.
This is all also completely ignoring that if a trans women starts hrt before puberty then there is no real difference. So the real solution is to let trans teenagers transition.
Thanks for the detailed response! Interesting
That study is irrelevant and their findings don’t change anything about my answer. That study could say “African women have more lean muscle mass and are taller than the average athlete” and you wouldn’t be sharing that study around saying that African women shouldn’t be allowed to compete with other athletes because that’s racist and stupid.
And besides, taking an extreme example and comparing it to the average is dishonest. The best way to determine if transgender athletes are actually dominating in sports is their top level tournament wins. As I said, about 1% of people are transgender, so about 1% of tournament winners should be transgender if everything is even. Anything above, means an advantage and anything below means a disadvantage.
So where are all the transgender people absolutely dominating tournaments above the average of transgender prevalence?
You can’t show me that because it doesn’t happen, and even if it did happen, that’s just sports! You simply can’t ban people for a biological advantage in a hobby where biological advantages are literally everywhere. Height, vision, reflexes, agility, intelligence, etc.
Take a note on how the other user responded to my question. You instead responded with hostility, good luck convincing anyone if that’s how you engage with a genuine attempt to discuss the topic
I apologize if you’re not a transphobe, but you reposted a singular study whose findings are trash at best and outright bigotry at worst. I think it’s natural for me to assume you’re a transphobe trying to troll considering I specifically said:
…anti-transgender jerks are just making a big stink about it because it sounds reasonable on it’s face to uninformed people and so it’s a good wedge issue to bring up. Anti-transgender people don’t care about the sports they’re “trying to save”, they just hate transgender people and want to see them suffer, and anyone who entertains their non-sense is complicit (probably unknowingly) in that suffering.
So please, those of you who are reasonable, shut down any discussion of transgender sports bans.
Of course trying to continue the discourse would make me assume that you’re transphobic. You should have been more clear if that’s not the case. Regardless, it shouldn’t take away from my point. Again though, I apologize if you posted it from a perspective of honest discussion, but I hope you understand that this topic is often a target of trolls who seek to muddy the water by “just asking questions” in bad faith.
You don’t get to decide what people can and cannot discuss. And if someone replying was transphobic then maybe responding calmly and rationally would help change their mind. Just calling people transphobes does more to turn people away from your cause than just not replying
You’re just some person on the Internet arguing for the sake of arguing. For trans people these arguments are used to slowly erase our rights. Don’t demand civility from people you help oppres because you were board.
3 statements, all 3 incorrect. Again, you can’t tell people what they can and cannot discuss just because of your feelings. That’s not how society works. If you’re too sensitive to hold a conversation about an important topic then maybe you should leave the discussing it to other people?
IMHO, if fairness is the goal, then categories should be based on performance history alone. People should be competing with others of their class in the sport being played.
If I’m the best at tennis, I want to compete against the other best players, not the other best players with (or without) a peen or some other stupid grouping.
Yeah, something like weight classes in boxing/wrestling/MMA. Brock Lesnar vs Uriah Faber (yes, I haven’t watched MMA in a while) isn’t a good match for multiple reasons: Brock has way more muscle so he can hit a lot harder, but his muscles also make him a lot slower than Uriah who can use quick moves and grapples to his favor.
Women are naturally weaker than men, it’s a fact. A man can change on the surface (physically appearance) after becoming a woman, but his bone structure and ability to build more muscle is still there.
Your language betrays you, I don’t argue with transphobes.
Trans women out perform cis women in nearly all sports and need to be banned. Quit trying to blame this on transphobia and stop helping people cheat at sports.
African women out perform lots of athletes in nearly all sports, should they be banned from competing? No, of course not, that’s bigotry. Trans women don’t out perform cis women or there would be overwhelming evidence that they’re winning tournaments constantly over cisgender women. Where’s the evidence? Good luck finding it, because it doesn’t exist, because it’s not true.
And as I pointed out, sports are inherently unfair. It’s not cheating to have a biological advantage. It’s only cheating if you break the established rules of the actual game. Being more intelligent than your opponent in chess is not cheating, but moving a piece during your opponents turn is. See the difference? One is a biological advantage which is fine, the other is breaking a rule within the sport itself which is not fine.
I think that for us to move forward as a society we either need to drop leagues altogether (and just accept that female athletes in some categories will be vanishingly rare) or adopt body-type based leagues that are more fair in grouping up competitors according to their inherent bodily advantages.
Cricket is as a fun as baseball.
Downvote this foo!
Or don’t, I’m not your mama.
I thought I told you to get rid of those sideburns! …“But Mr Burns I don’t think know you what sideburns…”
I’ve had it with your attitude! You’re outa here!!
