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Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas out of Olympics after losing legal battle
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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I know I'm gonna catch heat for this, but sex-segregated physical competitions is one of the very few places where trans women shouldn't be treated the same. Women's sports competitions aren't segregated by gender, they're segregated by sex. Trans women are women in gender, but their body isn't a biologically female body. That's the exact definition of transgender - when your body's biological sex doesn't match your sense of gender. So by definition, trans women don't have a biologically female body.
The whole point of sex-segregated sports is for people with female bodies to be able to have a fair competition, instead of them not even getting a chance to compete at all because if they had to compete against biological males then almost 100% of females wouldn't even make the team. This is the whole reason why sports competitions are segregated by sex.
TLDR trans women should always be treated as women - except for sex-segregated physical competitions
The thing that really sucks is that tran women are gonna get absolutely dominated by cis men. HRT for long enough really does so so much to the body (hence why most sports allow trans people who have transitioned to compete). Tho trans men also would have insane advantage overs cis women if they competed together
Maybe there isn't any good solution. But what you are saying leads to a conclusion that there is no place in sports for trans people. Then again, these conversations always fall apart when we talk about cis people with abnormal hormone profiles.
End of the day, a lot of competitive sports come down to genetics. There isn't much room for someone with disadvantagious genetics to become the best in the world. For me, I don't see much difference in a trans woman who's transitioned being world class in swimming and a tall ass cis woman dominating in basketball. Especially when we don't see trans people sweeping in competitions as a wider trend
There is a place for trans people in sport. Male, female, trans. Done.
I really don't think there are enough trans people competing at the highest levels to sustain that though.
Honestly, I think it's not that big of a deal. I'm sure something can be worked out sure, but it's not the most important issue that trans people have to deal with.
That sounds like a more ideal compromise, though I am not sure if even that is without its own set of issues.
Basically, athletic performance falls on the same gradient as masculinity. The more masculine your body is, the more capable you are as an athlete on average. If you are a trans woman taking T blockers/estrogen supplements, your body becomes more feminine, but in turn you lose much of that athletic capability.
So hypothetically, if I am a trans woman and an athlete, where I am paid based on how well I do, am I incentivised to not take T blockers/estrogen supplements, or take them in more limited doses, in order to be a more capable athlete? Basically, am I forced to compromise my gender identity for a better paycheck?
We could force every trans athlete to undergo lab work before every match to make sure their T levels are within a certain threshold, but then is that someone's fault if their body is not being as responsive to the medication they're taking, and now they're out a job? Not to mention how that would basically force their medical history to be public knowledge.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable inviting these sorts of scenarios to occur, to be honest.
Trans people get the lab work you're talking about done regularly anyway, because it's part of ensuring their levels are safe and correct.
You're voting for exclusion (trans competitions will never happen) because you're uncomfortable with trans people having to do something that is already part of their daily lives
I think you may have misread what I was suggesting.
Trans people should never have to disclose part of their medical history to stay employed. Even if you get regular testing and it's no big deal, what goes into your medical record should be between you, your doctor, and no one else. There should never be a scenario of "Star kicker of [team] barred from competition because her labs showed she is too masc."
My point was not to suggest that as an option, but more that it would be a bad proposition to try to avoid the scenario where trans people would be incentivised to partially detransition (MtF) or take too many supplements (FtM) when athletic performance is directly correlated to how many androgens your body has.
I don't know how to avoid that scenario in a capitalist system, to be honest with you.
Trans women have been allowed in the Olympics for 20 years now. There have been zero trans medalists. If this advantage actually exists, why aren't they winning?
If i had to guess I'd say it's simply numbers. Compared to the rest of the population, trans people are extremely rare, and so there likely just haven't been enough trans people to have been there yet.
Of it was simply numbers, there would have been a trans gold medalist by now. Trans people make up 1-3% of the population. Over the span of 20 years and hundreds of competitions each year, surely a group that supposedly physically dominates the gender group they are in would at least have gotten one gold medal.
There have only been 4 known transgender Olympic athletes so far.
And of those 4 it seems like none of them are born-male people who are now competing in a women's event, which is the only situation where the trans person would have an advantage.
https://thesportsgrail.com/list-of-the-transgender-athletes-competing-at-tokyo-olympics-2020/
You knew you were going to catch heat for something that's extremely popular and common opinion?
Bruh, I got cooked for voicing this opinion so many fucking times.
Banned from many subreddits for voicing this opinion
The real answer here is to do away with gender/sex separation and instead have classifications based of total mass, bone density, muscle fiber density, and maybe hormonal levels. Stop trying to deal with the generalistics and target the issues that actually matter.
If it could be done in a reasonable way then I'd be totally fine with that