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Transgender Athletes

birdman said:
The underlying "argument" that I am responding to is that trans women, because of their prior elevated testosterone levels, have an unfair advantage in athletic competition and should therefore be prohibited from competing. (That was the original purpose of this thread and I think there are other more general trans rights threads buried in the Tunnels.) I think pointing out that the person who supposedly had an unfair advantage didn't actually win the competition goes a long way towards invalidating the opposition's arguments about sports participation. How can someone possess an unfair advantage if they didn't even win? You're absolutely right that reducing the broader discussion about trans people and their rights to: gonads, appearance, and athletic ability is dehumanizing, but I was responding specifically to a post about a trans person "beating down" competition when they didn't actually win the competition.
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People do things that give them unfair advantages by cheating and still lose all the time.
 
WFcatamount22 said:
People do things that give them unfair advantages by cheating and still lose all the time.
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Yes - discussing this topic through individual competitions doesn’t really address the overall consideration of athletic differences between male and female physiology. You could go to any random track or swimming pool and it’s very possible a female will be the best athlete there, but we know on the whole that adult male physiology has greater potential for most sports.
 
Biff Tannen said:
Never mind that 69% of Americans think transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender. Up a little since 2021, but that's more than just some wacko Trump culture wars voters.

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I wonder what polling in the 1950's said about black people playing sports with white people?
 
birdman said:
I wonder what polling in the 1950's said about black people playing sports with white people?
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Shouldn’t be that big of a mystery considering 18% are still against interracial marriage.
 
Biff Tannen said:
You said it was "mostly partisan consensus". 70% of Americans is not that. Americans currently disagree with you on this issue by a 2.7 :1 margin, despite the piling on you are observing on this thread.
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And about half of all voters will vote for Trump. Majority of Americans are morons and/or bigots, this isn't news.
 
Cycling is another sport where some males pretending to be women have stolen top places on the podium from their female competitors.

In 2019 a Canadian male professor going by the name Rachel McKinnon won a UCI Masters track cycling world championship in the women's 200M race.


fairplayforwomen.com

Rachel Mckinnon cycling, 1st transgender cyclist | Fair Play For Women

Transwoman Cyclist Rachel McKinnon took first at the World Championship, beating females. Thoughts by a man with a lifetime’s sports ex . . .
fairplayforwomen.com fairplayforwomen.com

... No platforming by refusing to appear with a scientist

Naturally, the BBC knows full well that Rachel McKinnon refuses to appear on any interview platform if they know there is a scientist on the same platform: it’s happened to them several times. I think everyone understands that this is because a scientist knowledgeable in this field would provide a little explanatory information for the audience, followed by quite specific questions. They might say, for example, “according to Professor Ross Tucker, a South African sports scientist who was part of Caster Semenya’s team in her recent case against the IAAF, “…the presence of the Y chromosome is the single greatest performance advantage a person can have. That doesn’t mean that all men out-perform all women, but it means that the Y chromosome and specifically the SRY gene on it, which directs the formation of testes and the production of testosterone, is a key criterion on which to separate people into categories.”

This would then allow the scientist or the BBC interviewer to ask McKinnon the following
two questions:

“Do you have the Y chromosome? And if you do, surely you have a massive athletic performance advantage as a consequence?”
The scientist might continue with, “Professor David Handelsman, an endocrinologist, has made the biological observation that, “elite athletic competitions have separate male and female events due to men’s physical advantages in strength, speed, and endurance so that a protected female category with objective entry criteria is required. Prior to puberty, there is no sex difference in circulating testosterone concentrations or athletic performance, but from puberty onward a clear sex difference in athletic performance emerges as circulating testosterone concentrations rise in men because testes produce 30 times more testosterone than before puberty with circulating testosterone exceeding 15-fold that of women at any age.”

The obvious follow-on questions for Rachel McKinnon would then be:

Have you experienced male puberty? If you have, surely it is unfair for you to compete against women?
Next, the scientist might say, “muscle physiologists have shown that with previous training, muscles develop an increased number of specialist cells called myonuclei. This is especially true in the presence of testosterone (or anabolic steroids) following male puberty. When training stops, these myonuclei become dormant, becoming active again when training recommences. You were a recreational athlete prior to transitioning, weren’t you? You have also said that you respond extremely well to strength training: ‘gifted at packing on muscle’
was your claim.”

The question based upon this might then be:

Could your previous athletic training as a man prior to transitioning, along with retained male, cellular muscle memory, explain your enhanced strength training response and give you another unfair advantage?
Then, as McKinnon (probably) unclips their lapel mic and returns to that regularly practised line, “you’re just trying to deny my existence! Transphobe!” I’d like to see the BBC interviewer show some journalistic integrity and say, “That’s really not true, is it? People are simply saying that since you have the Y chromosome, have experienced male puberty, have thigh strength and benefit from cellular male muscle memory, for fairness you should compete in either a transgender category, or a male or open category, and not against females.

A dose of reality for the IOC
Finally, here’s a polite suggestion for the International Olympic Committee, IOC President Thomas Bach and all other sport governing bodies, including cycling’s international federation (the UCI) that approved and sanctioned McKinnon’s participation in this race: hold your next meeting regarding transgender sporting participation guidelines in Manchester; no… Bury market. Get out of your five-star hotels, park your cronyism and misogyny and stop drawing up completely unscientific guidelines on the back of a cigarette packet that ruin women’s sport. Stop messing about with arbitrary testosterone levels (that do not reduce strength in males) and consider the above questions and the science that underpins these questions. Look carefully at the latest studies on transitioning from Sweden, commission further such studies and develop these to look at the effects of concurrent transitioning and sports specific training. Have some black pudding. In the real world you might finally see what blunt northerners and everyone else does.​

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Man it has to be exhausting to read all these email forwards with psychotic formatting.
 
BarcaDeac said:
@CaptRenault do you think trans people have a right to exist in general or just not compete in sports?
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In sports that are divided into competition categories by sex (which includes almost all sports-equestrian sports are a notable exception), trans people have a right to compete as members of their actual sex and not in their self-assigned, "preferred sex."

The same is true for sports that include special competitions in age categories. A 25 year old runner or cyclist is not allowed to compete in masters level or junior level competitions (such as 35+ or 18 and under). It doesn't matter whether the 25 year old "feels like" a junior or senior age competitor or whether some presumed expert on aging certifies that the 25 year old has a body or athletic capabilities that supposedly match a younger or older competitor. Just like sex, age is a variable that has a tremendous effect on athletic performance. Therefore there have always been and there always should be different categories of competition by sex and age.
 
CaptRenault said:
In sports that are divided into competition categories by sex (which includes almost all sports-equestrian sports are a notable exception), trans people have a right to compete as members of their actual sex and not in their self-assigned, "preferred sex."

The same is true for sports that include special competitions in age categories. A 25 year old runner or cyclist is not allowed to compete in masters level or junior level competitions (such as 35+ or 18 and under). It doesn't matter whether the 25 year old "feels like" a junior or senior age competitor or whether some presumed expert on aging certifies that the 25 year old has a body or athletic capabilities that supposedly match a younger or older competitor. Just like sex, age is a variable that has a tremendous effect on athletic performance. Therefore there have always been and there always should be different categories of competition by sex and age.
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You didn’t answer the question.

Also the irony of cycling’s most famous star having surgically altered genitals and pumped full of hormones is a little too rich.
 
Deacfan2009 said:
I think his repeated and insistent misgendering of trans individuals answers that question
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True you just see lots of people on this thread talk about how they believe in it then misgender. I’d for once just like someone to come out and say how they really feel.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
You didn’t answer the question.

Also the irony of cycling’s most famous star having surgically altered genitals and pumped full of hormones is a little too rich.
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Right, Lance Armstrong was producing no gametes when he won all those tours.
 
BarcaDeac said:
True you just see lots of people on this thread talk about how they believe in it then misgender. I’d for once just like someone to come out and say how they really feel.
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These are folks who grew up in sports wildly insecure about their masculinity. Shit talking about that was the currency in sports for years. Hard to break that cycle.
 
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