this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Really doesn't surprise me. Separation of sports by "men and women" is extremely binary. You can even see cis women with naturally high T levels compete in high level sports. Trans women aren't even allowed to win without feeling like they lost. Bigots make them feel like they lost regardless.
I dont know enough about hormones and biochemistry to have a valid opinion on trans sports, but i'm 100% sure that the vast majority of criticism and debate is in bad faith by transphobes who never gave a damn about women's sport before
The vast majority of debate from Republicans who want to ban transgender people from anything, yes. I agree.
But there are plenty of liberal minded, LGBTQ supporting individuals who recognize that at the highest level of sports, being more a male and going through puberty as a male, is likely to give you advantages over female competitors. And at the highest level of sports, it seems fair to control for that.
If we are talking about children playing sports with no real consequence. Everyone should play. I'd say only at the collegiate, olympic and professional levels should we be concerned about fairness.
I had a comment response to you that was deleted by the mods. I can't remember what I said, but I know it wasn't offensive in any way. How do I know this? I'm all for LGBTQ rights, including trans people. I think it's absolutely awful what Florida and other states are doing to these people. I think it's awful that children who are transgender are being ostracized from children's sports leagues (which should be fun, not competitive). I'm a huge supporter of trans rights.
BUT - I disagreed with your comment. Because I believe there is a difference at competitive levels of sports. And that hormone suppressors and their effectiveness is not the only consideration here.
But apparently nobody is allowed to have an opinion on this topic that isn't 100% on board with the global messaging of the trans community right now?
This is how you lose supporters, not gain them. I'm an ally. But allies can have disagreements, and should be able to voice them respectively.
In short, it's fucking absurd that my comment was deleted solely because I don't 100% agree with someone on something.
the problem with your comments here is people have repeatedly noted--and you have repeatedly ignored--how there is really no good faith interpretation of what is being done because the outrage is completely selective. the entirety of modern sports is "unfair" because to be even a replacement-level player at the upper echelons of sports you have to be genetically and athletically gifted in a way that your contemporaries are not. but it's really only when trans people[^1] allegedly have some sort of advantage that this "unfairness" is raised
[^1]: or minorities with naturally high testosterone--are we seeing we seeing a pattern of targeting here?
Just because people have 'noted' something, doesn't mean that it is indeed a fact, that is not up for discussion. I am allowed to disagree with your 'notes' am I not?
The problem with my comment is that I disagree with you. Nothing else. I'm not being disrespectful. I'm not being hateful. I love transgender people, same as everyone else. I believe the laws targeting transgender people are fucking awful.
But I do disagree with you in terms of how we should setup our sports leagues at the highest levels. And because I disagree with you, I should be silenced?
I'm not IGNORING what you and others have noted. I'm DISAGREEING.
but like... it is. you can "disagree" but you're essentially disagreeing with reality here, not with me and others for noting the reality of the situation. we simply do not live in the world where there's a principled defense or application of this position by the people you're sticking up for--the ire here is with trans people (and minorities) and the interest in fairness is not real. even in your understanding of reality you admit this is overwhelmingly done in bad faith and without consistency!
I'm not going to try to defend Republicans, because I disagree with them on basically everything.
But I'm not disagreeing about reality, I'm disagreeing about opinion.
Here is my opinion. If you have an advantage in a sport due to something genetically natural about you, and you went through puberty as the same gender as the sport your competing in. I'm fine with that.
If you have an advantage in a sport and went through puberty as a different gender than the class your competing in, I'm not ok with that.
There is no fact or no fact there. It's an opinion. One that I'm entitled to have. And one that you need to be able to hear, without the need to silence me or delete my comments. Because people should be allowed to have a different opinion then you.
We can argue about the merits of our opinion, but you can't say I'm not congruent with reality, or however else you want to try to downplay my opinion.
What about men who are taller than average cis women? Do they not have a biological advantage in, say, sprinting?
Is there some reason that that biological advantage isn't important, but any biological advantage a trans woman has is? Is there some reason that categorically banning trans women makes any sense it all, with no consideration to actually measure any advantages an individual trans athlete has?
Some consistency would be nice. How are we going to define what a cisgender woman is in specific biological terms? Are you no longer a cisgender woman if your lung capacity is too large? What about if your wingspan is too wide? Are you still a cis woman, if you have a mutation that gives you significantly wider wingspan than an average cis woman? Why are those advantages a-ok on cis women but immediately a problem on trans women?
If we're going to control for "biological advantages" then it'd be nice if we actually did that at all. Instead we're just talking about categorically banning trans women. Gee, I wonder why that could be? Couldn't have anything to do with the global conservative movement pushing transphobic narratives and attempting to have trans women ejected from all women's spaces and legally forced to live around and as men, could it?
Firstly, certain groups have over politicized this topic in order to punch down on a minority group they dislike. Those people are ass holes, and I'm not defending that behavior. However, unfortunately, their base argument does actually have some marret, even if they are complete ass holes about it.
There is consistency, to use your terminology cis gender women can compete with cis gender women & cis gender men compete against cis gender men. Transgender folk are somewhere around 1% (or less) of the over all population, they are the extreme outliers that don't fit this consistent & highly effective (in terms of athletics) categorization of men's & women's sports. Another group, roughly the same size with an unknown advantage/disadvantage that are excluded from this classification are amputees/augmented humans.
We currently have separate competition for amputees from non amputees, the Paralympics exist & is lauded as a good thing. Outside of the political oppression issues, this model makes far more sense for trans athletes then simply allowing them to compete with the gender they identify with.
Splitting competition into male/female makes sense, because sexual dimorphism is a reality for our species. In nearly every sport, women are highly disadvantaged against men. Statistically the physical divergence between the sexes is vastly larger then the divergence within the sexes. This is consistent, despite your argument to the contrary.
I'm all for trans people being treated with respect, but respect goes both ways & part of that respect is the admission that a trans woman is not the same as a woman, and a trans man is not the same as a man. These are 4 different & distinct categories of people (hence the desire to relabel two of those groups with the 'cis' moniker), and ignoring that reality causes more problems then it will ever fix. It is not transphobic to prefer dating cis gender people, nor is it transphobic to believe that men & women's sports should be for men & women respectively. Both of these CAN be transphobic if your being a hateful dick about it, but it's not inherently so in holding those opinions.
Even in this comment there's a distinct lack of recognition of the extent that hormones, and testosterone specifically, are responsible for dimorphism. People commonly think that the list of secondary sex traits is much shorter than it is and underestimate the effects of hormone therapy.
The Olympics have allowed trans athletes to compete as their gender identity since 2004 and yet trans women have not done well. One trans person has ever medaled. It was in a team sport by somebody who didn't have male puberty. There has been one trans woman competing in weight lifting, she didn't complete her lifts.
As far as I'm aware, the only sport where we have specifically studied athletic performance is distance running (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307766116_Race_Times_for_Transgender_Athletes), where no advantage was found.
I'm also not sure I agree on what you personally define as transphobic. If you consistently other trans people and refer to them as separate from the rest of their gender, that's transphobic. For dating, there are a number of reasons why you may not want to date somebody. Genital preferences are a real thing and are absolutely a good reason not to date somebody. There are plenty of artifacts of being trans that are reasons to exclude somebody from who you date, but if the only reason you won't date somebody is that they're trans, that would still be transphobic.
It's not transphobic. You're overusing that word, and you're hurting OUR cause.
It is not transphobic to recognize an actual difference. It is not transphobic to want to find solutions that work well for everybody. And it is not transphobic to recognize that people born a male, who go through puberty a male, develop a body different than that of a female. And those differences absolutely can make a difference in sports. This is 100% a fact. Hormone suppression aside, men are taller, on average. Men weigh more, on average. Men are stronger, on average. These are facts, indisputable. Stating as much is not transphobic.
The reason you've probably only had 1 transgender person when an olympic medal is because there aren't a lot of transgender people, and winning an olympic medal is fucking hard.
Can you point to data that supports your point or is this just a gut feeling you have that you assume to be factual? I know for myself that my strength and endurance are nothing like what they were before estrogen. Science overall seems to agree. You are just dead set on your opinion and refuse to change your mind.
Can I point to data that men are taller than women? Stronger than women? Yes... yes I can. Or you can just google it. It's a pretty easily verifiable fact.
And there it is. You don't actually see trans women as women and that's why you're being shouted down for being transphobic.
I just don't understand why bigots feel the need to butt into our communities to spread their hate
We're open to productive conversation and discussion here on beehaw (as long as it's in line with our rule - be(e) nice), but this has not been that. People in this community have been incredibly generous in sharing here, and you haven't shown any openness or willingness to learn or listen, so it's time to disengage.
So in this you've explicitly acknowledged that the accepted terminology is that trans men and cis men are both men, but have ignored that and created a dichotomy between "men" and trans men anyway by ignoring the word cisgender. Why is that?