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Transgender Athletes

Louis Gossett Jr said:
I mean technically God is non-binary gender fluid. Wants to be a woman, wants to be a man, wants to be a man and slap some tits on himself, a woman with a dick bigger than Wakebored, just a thought and it’s done!
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I have it on strong evidence that God is a woman who looks just like Alanis Morissette.
 
birdman said:
There is actual research on these questions. You could read about the transition and see that according to places like Cleveland Clinic or Mayo Clinic, it takes 18-24 on average to transition fully from man to woman. The hormone therapy actually includes anti androgen as the first step, which blocks testosterone and it’s effects on the body. One of the first effects seen is loss of muscle mass. Unlike estrogen, testosterone is a fast acting short half life hormone and the effects of blocking it will be seen relatively quickly, within a month. Estrogen on the other hand is slower acting and longer lasting so much of the 18-24 month period is about developing woman characteristics, not losing male characteristics. Anyway the short answer to your fist set of questions is, two years after you start the transition from man to woman the process is complete.

As to your second set of questions, how about considering the reverse. What if you were the parent of a trans kid that wanted to compete in swimming? Your child had gone through a physically and emotionally exhausting 2-years long medical procedure and then they started training daily to, getting up at 4am, etc., to peruse their love of swimming only to find that people want to exclude your kid from the team and competition. How would you feel? You can appeal to emotional heart strings on both sides of this issue.
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I get what you are saying in your first paragraph about hormone replacement, two year process, etc. etc. But we have solid, real-world evidence that the physical advantages of being born a male and going through puberty as a male and training as a male for years, building on the muscle-mass that nature already provided as a male, etc. etc. lasts through this process and beyond. This case shows it, for one - as a male swimmer this guy was pretty good - did I read he made 2nd team all conference or something? - but certainly not best-in-the-country good or world class. After a year or more of the hormone treatments she is world class, record-setting, total domination good as a female swimmer. We have similar evidence from other cases of transitioning track stars and weightlifters.

And I understand the view from the perspective of the trans athlete as well - they just want to compete. The question is where do they fit, from a competitive standpoint? The issues faced by a trans athlete are heartbreaking, for sure. But for every one trans athlete that wants to compete, there are many, many other athletes that will be impacted.
 
BarcaDeac said:
have there been instances of cis competitors saying it's not fair or is this just some made up thing by conservatives, "won't someone please think of the girls !"
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At least two girls on the swim team with the athlete we are talking about have come out anonymously saying they are very upset, it is not fair, it is demoralizing, etc. - but they are too afraid to speak on the record for fear of backlash. And there are several other stories of parents of athletes and athletes themselves being very upset and, I think, even taking legal action - my recollection is that was in relation to HS track athletes? It certainly is not something conservatives made up because they hate trans people - it is a real issue.
 
scooter84 said:
At least two girls on the swim team with the athlete we are talking about have come out anonymously saying they are very upset, it is not fair, it is demoralizing, etc. - but they are too afraid to speak on the record for fear of backlash. And there are several other stories of parents of athletes and athletes themselves being very upset and, I think, even taking legal action - my recollection is that was in relation to HS track athletes? It certainly is not something conservatives made up because they hate trans people - it is a real issue.
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It is an issue affecting a handful of trans athletes and a tiny tiny percentage of cisgender athletes (compared to the number engaged in any athletic competition) that conservatives are blowing way out of proportion in order to fire up their base.
 
birdman said:
Just do away with gender based competition divisions and go to body metric based divisions, like weight classes in wrestling and boxing. I mean, tall people have an advantage in swimming too. The arm length and extra lung capacity of a 6'0" woman might give her few seconds advantage over a 5'3" woman. Longer reach when heading for the wall, stronger spring action on the initial dive and when turning off the wall because the lever length of her leg bones give more mechanical force, longer intervals between breath breaks... Is that fair?
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You must realize the comparisons you are making do not make sense, right? The difference between a tall woman and a shorter woman are nothing compared to the difference between men and women. In competitions where strength and/or speed play a role, female athletes are not competitive with male athletes - that is biology and is well understood. Men and women are different, despite recent efforts to deny that basic scientific fact.
 
how do we know until we've tried pitting like a split group of 500 5'5", 110lb 15 yr old male swimmers against 5'5", 110bl 15 yo female swimmers?
 
BeachBumDeac said:
It is an issue affecting a handful of trans athletes and a tiny tiny percentage of cisgender athletes (compared to the number engaged in any athletic competition) that conservatives are blowing way out of proportion in order to fire up their base.
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I already acknowledged that the numbers are very small - so, in the big picture it is not a huge issue. But, if it is your daughter that is fighting for a spot on the team, or for recognition as all-conference or whatever, or the attention of college scouts, etc. - then this would become a big issue to you. For this reason I think there needs to be some sort of resolution - different from just letting them compete against biological females.

Also, it only takes one transitioning athlete to potentially wipe out a bunch of records forever - does that seem right? It could be even worse that the old soviet women's olympic teams setting records that wouldn't be broken for decades, if ever, because they were all juiced up like crazy.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
how do we know until we've tried pitting like a split group of 500 5'5", 110lb 15 yr old male swimmers against 5'5", 110bl 15 yo female swimmers?
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I don't understand. They're all swimming against the same clock.

Or is it a joke of some kind?
 
scooter84 said:
I already acknowledged that the numbers are very small - so, in the big picture it is not a huge issue. But, if it is your daughter that is fighting for a spot on the team, or for recognition as all-conference or whatever, or the attention of college scouts, etc. - then this would become a big issue to you. For this reason I think there needs to be some sort of resolution - different from just letting them compete against biological females.
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Your daughter and my daughter is not more important or more deserving than the trans daughter of another parent.
 
scooter84 said:
You must realize the comparisons you are making do not make sense, right? The difference between a tall woman and a shorter woman are nothing compared to the difference between men and women. In competitions where strength and/or speed play a role, female athletes are not competitive with male athletes - that is biology and is well understood. Men and women are different, despite recent efforts to deny that basic scientific fact.
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It is science that the major muscular development differences between men and women, can be undone with hormone modifications. Somethings are fixed after puberty, you're right, like height and bone size and genitals are obviously only modified through surgical intervention, but, the functioning of the genitals can be shut down with hormone treatments and the muscular differences can mostly be reversed in about a year. I am not going to keep repeating this, because you will just keep coming back with, "but it feels like this shouldn't be true." The comparisons I made are valid because once you take away testosterone we are talking about lung capacity and height differences between women, which would be the same for birth gendered woman that grew tall as for a birth gendered man / trans woman that grew tall, but we single out the trans woman because the reason she grew tall was elevated testosterone at age 16.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
how do we know until we've tried pitting like a split group of 500 5'5", 110lb 15 yr old male swimmers against 5'5", 110bl 15 yo female swimmers?
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wakephan09 said:
I don't understand. They're all swimming against the same clock.
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ImTheCaptain said:
uh, not really. the clock is the same but there can still only be 1 winner
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Yes, but your point was about comparing the performances of boys and girls. Not about there being only one winner.

You've just done a proper strawman, ITC
 
wakephan09 said:
Yes, but your point was about comparing the performances of boys and girls. Not about there being only one winner.

You've just done a proper strawman, ITC
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hm, no my point was in support of birdman re: resetting the categories to size/weight(and age) vs sex/age. we don't have any specific information about how boys and girls of similar stature match up in active competition except some outliers like the handful of girls who wrestle or kickers in football or whatever
 
Yeah but in track & field and swimming, for example, you can measure performance by time because the events are for the most part standardized across genders.

So while you could never "pit 500 15 year olds" against each other in a pool it's not difficult to estimate how they'd stack up if they were to compete head to head.
 
wakephan09 said:
Yeah but in track & field and swimming, for example, you can measure performance by time because the events are for the most part standardized across genders.

So while you could never "pit 500 children" against each other in a pool it's not difficult to measure how they'd stack up if they were to compete head to head.
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again, we're using wrestling/boxing type categorization metrics here. so pulling a bunch of data from track and field is helpful but not entirely so, unless every HS athlete's biometric data is included from the particular events
 
ImTheCaptain said:
again, we're using wrestling/boxing type categorization metrics here. so pulling a bunch of data from track and field is helpful but not entirely so, unless every HS athlete's biometric data is included from the particular events
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I thought we were talking about swimming.

And the post of yours I responded to was about swimming
 
wakephan09 said:
I thought we were talking about swimming.

And the post of yours I responded to was about swimming
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ok, so respond to the concept of changing the categorization for individual athletes from sex/age to some combination of size/age
 
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