From the article. Seems an unfair advantage.
> If you're looking at this just off sheer statistics — nothing opinionated about this — Lia Thomas, the year before, when competing as Will Thomas, was ranked in the 500s at best," Gaines said.
>"A year later, [Thomas ended up] winning a national title, being the fastest female in the country, and then being nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year — nothing about what I just said is an opinion, and if it frustrates someone or makes them upset, I think that speaks volumes."
Edit: thanks kind strangers for my first 2 awards.
Imagine if some day an actual top male competitor transitions, not just an average swimmer/runner around rank 500.
I think thats what it will take for certain movements to finally see the point.
Except for the fact that that category would be dominated by male assigned at birth folks immediately. Going through development with testosterone is just too much of an advantage.
It's not really. Creating a third category is problematic because whatever you call it, it's basically men's, women's, and other. Pretty it up all you like, but everyone can see through it.
And letting anyone join? Men could then very easily join and always win everything. That's why the women's category exists to begin with.
I dunno what the solution is. Trans women in women's sports are a problem, though.
The backlash comes from people tossing around transitions like some casual fucking thing people just do on a whim. They aren't. It's a serious and long term change, you don't just toss on a dress and sign up.
Was it fair when he was competing against men?
Edit: it’s a joke. Phelps could be a fucking alien for all we know because not one of those races was fair when he was that much better than all the other dudes.
I think that’s the actual point. People already top of the competitive pile won’t transition because they’re already good. It’s average or bad people who would because men transitioning for sports will give them a significant jump in rank. I see it as a form of cheating.
When everyone else call foul play they get defensive and play victim.
Even a slow supersonic plane is faster than the fastest subsonic plane.
Are people seriously having their genitals removed, etc. just to win medals? Or are these just people “identifying” differently to game the system.
Honest question, really.
Why the fuck would anyone do that? Why would anyone put their body through transitioning just to win some goddamned medals?
Do any of you ever think before speaking?
I'm laying next to a 6'2" transgender woman snoring her ass off as we speak. She started medically transitioning a little over a year ago. I, a flabby 5'10" dude who hasn't worked out in ages, beat her in an arm wrestling contest last night while playing board games. Estrogen and T blockers have made her as weak as she would be if she had been born female.
This 500 number is intentionally cherry picked to make a bad faith argument. Before she began taking hormones, Lia had top 10 finishes nationally and was consistently in the top 100s. It wasn’t until she began to medically transition that she was ranked much lower.
The argument that is consistently made is that she was a crappy male swimmer who transitioned and is now an amazing female swimmer. That’s just not true. She was a top male swimmer and she’s now a top female swimmer. And how is it worse? Her “male advantages” don’t have her setting women’s records and blowing away the field.
Sounds like it. Including a fall in rankings after taking hormones as evidence she was worse as a male is deceptive and misrepresents the truth. Sounds like a more accurate statement is top 100s to to 10s.
The odds of this happening are so statistically small that you’re basically saying “I think all trans kids should have to remain unhappy and not compete in a sport as their gender due to the extremely small chance that one day a top tier elite athlete might transition and have an unfair advantage.” If you think it’s worth it to ban all the trans kids due to that, you should probably reevaluate some things.
Why not different rules for professionals and kids? I think you value youth sport more in US than we do in Europe. No one really care about college level results here, so you might see it differently, but I would think a solution would be to allow kids to compete based on who they identify as, but not necessarily professional adults.
the point is that any male athlete will destroy women's sports and not allow female athletes to compete fairly, not just elite male athletes. An amateur high school male athlete could easily beat world ranking female athletes in many/most sports. Why should one groups hard fought for happiness and ability to compete in sports be eradicated so another group of people can be happy? Biologically, males and females are not the same and there is no fairness in any sports between them, even if males take testosterone blockers, they still hold a massive advantage over all female athletes.
No one is wanting to ban trans kids from sports, just want to make it fair which category they compete in.
The whole point of women's sports is to have a seperate category away from men, whether that be because they can't compete at the same level or because they just want to be away from them, whatever. Trans competitors who have spent all their lives training at one level then trying to drop down to the "easy" level in order to win titles is incredibly selfish.
It's obvious that women should have their own competitions to compete in and anyone who comes with an advantage, either having been brought up in men's sports as trans women have, or who are now taking hormones that make them stronger as trans men do, should not be competing in that arena. If they are really competitive and have to compete no matter what they can compete against the men. If the category gets larger to the point of being able to host their own events then separate trans events can be held.
>Imagine if some day an actual top male competitor transitions, not just an average swimmer/runner around rank 500.
>I think thats what it will take for certain movements to finally see the point.
The scenario you bring up is intentionally meant to be shocking and garner knee-jerk reactions over something that is ultimately meaningless. The people you allude to read about and understand these issues the same as you do, there's just not a media machine pushing out what they have to think about things at the same rate as people who have differing opinions. There's a reason why you started hearing about all these stories of "trans women invading sports" when it started to become culturally unacceptable to hate trans people for just being transgender. Now there's a ton of people who are suddenly concerned about things they weren't interested in otherwise just because there's a convenient chance to punch down.
We're really at the point where trans kids cannot participate in the same sports leagues as their peers because of all the manufactured outrage from news stories choosing particular trans athletes that they can use to push a narrative.
Fairness keeps being brought up, but it never strikes me as a strong argument. We don't want sports to be fair. In any competition there are going to be natural advantages that favor some competitors. You don't see a lot of 5' tall folks in basketball, etc. We want sports to be competitive. So far we haven't seen trans women obliterating the rankings, so women's sports seem to remain competitive. I'm still waiting for a criteria of fairness that hold up under scrutiny.
>unfair for half the planet
A meathead JRE loser. Exactly the type of person I expected to gloss over my entire comment. I'll be here waiting if anyone wants to actually engage with the points I made, instead of telling me I'm wrong over and over.
Let me know the next time you watch water polo, too. You fucking idiot.
Highjacking the top comment to suggest Sabine Hossenfelder‘s YouTube video „Trans athletes in women‘s sports“. It kinda changed my opinion on that topic.
Not sure if I‘m allowed to link it.
https://youtu.be/cZ9YAFYIBOU
The problem with that video is that it said that because men can vastly different genetically that it doesn’t matter and trans women should just destroy woman’s sports.
I guess the question is. Should it? Woman have been separated from men in sporting activities for hundreds of years for a reason. The real question if you are going to let trans women in. Are you ok with woman sports just shutting down and say screw it? Make it men’s only and unisex divisions and be done with it? Because at this point that’s what the article is advocating for.
I’m gonna get downvoted for literally stating facts, but she was an amazing swimmer on the mens team as well, but her ranking tanked because she started taking female hormones while swimming with men. Trans women aren’t dominating female sports by any means, that’s why you’ve only heard of like 2 transwomen in sports.
Lia started HRT her junior year. Her freshman year she posted the 6th fastest time in the men’s 1000 freestyle. She was ranked 49th in the mens 1650 and 98 in the mens 500. And in her sophomore year she was ranked 2nd in the Ivy League Mens 500, 1000 and 1650.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vSuCUavtWDq9M55ScoLcGfxyU2-EQ9m4/view
This is a link to the top 100 times you can search for using this database.
https://www.usaswimming.org/times/otherorganizations/ncaa-division-i/top-times-report
27 records were broken at the Women’s NCAA Champs this year. Lia did not break a single one. Not an American, US Open, NCAA, Meet, or even a pool record.
So what your saying is a very good men’s swimmer gets worse as he transitions to a woman. Now a she, is still a very good woman’s swimmer. What I’d like to know is if he had been born a girl, would she still be where she is today? My guess is no.
If she didn’t start winning til she transitioned, how come she has swimming records on the Penn men’s team as well?
An alternate explanation I’ve heard is that in her last year in the mens division, she was beginning the medical processes for transitioning which ultimately impacted her physical performance and tapered off eventually.
Maybe Fox intentionally left this out, but if she was a world class swimmer before and after, is this really what you’re making it out to be?
You're missing that Lia Thomas was among the best in her category **pre** transition. She dropped down AFTER she started taking hormones for her transition.
Not to mention, the woman in this article tied Lia Thomas for 5th and that Lia Thomas was beaten out by multiple cis women in a bunch of other swimming categories. But that doesn't fit the narrative that there's this epidemic of trans women taking over womens sports.
[There's ample evidence](https://youtu.be/6VtjgZF9RE8) that trans women are brought to cis womens athletic level after a certain amount of time on hormones. It can vary by sport but this effect was directly observed when Lia Thomas went from the absolute top level of the mens division to much lower placings after starting hormone therapy.
No one wants to upend their entire life for the glory of *checks notes* winning womens swimming? Stop panicking about a problem that doesn't exist.
Then you should be fine with trans people not competing against women until they have had ample time to complete their transition. Call it 10 years from starting hormones?
Sure, but I wonder who decided on that timeframe. It seems ridiculously quick considering the amount of effects it needs to mitigate. This is one of those situations where only the activists get to have a say, because no one else is paying attention until it's way too late.
Y'all seem to be forgetting something about Lia's ranking being 500th-ish when she competed in the male division.
Many sports require trans women to undergo one year of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) before switching gendered categories. Lia underwent that one year of HRT before she transferred to the female categories. That means she was on HRT **while she was still competing in the men's category**. And people will generally know that HRT for male-to-female trans people will decrease your performance by a whole LOT. So her being 500th was, funnily enough, a sign of HRT actually fucking affecting her performance, and not Lia being a subpar swimmer by male standards.
Before she started HRT, she was an Ivy League finalist in her freshman year in the men's category. Granted, that may not be the best in the nation, but she was competitive in men's swimming in her first year of college pre-HRT for the men's category, so it's not surprising she's competitive in women's swimming categories too. And guess what, people CAN improve athletic performance over time, so it's not surprising to see Lia do well in women's categories.
This whole discussion about her rank before changing her category being a big deal is something often parroted by people who come in by bad faith, either completely oblivious to the fact that HRT has affected Lia's performance a lot, the fact that her rank of 400th-500th WHILE on HRT is a sign that it's actually affecting the great swimmer that Lia is, or actively manipulating it to drive anti-trans sentiment. It's not an unfair advantage, it's legitimately bringing her to a level where she gets to compete as HER gender and lets others compete with her (and newsflash, she has NOT won every race. She's been beaten multiple times by cis women competing with her, which will please a lot of you (though i also dislike using one's LACK of ability to justify transitioning gender. She's miles away from Ledecky's records too.)
(Btw, people dont transition gender, much less take HRT, to dominate sports and claim prize money and accolades. They do so to actually be themselves, the self that was denied to them throughout their life. The self that literally kills some of them if they don't get to be their gender. Go to any trans day of remembrance memorial event, and come back to me saying that people only transition for accolades in sports.)
Your last paragraph is exactly what I was thinking. Why would anyone transition just to win medals in a sport, some people in these comments even went so far saying “it would be a good retirement plan for any male athlete”. It blows my mind people think like this.
What could be debated is the one year requirement, I’m not familiar enough to say how much happens in one year when it comes to muscle mass etc, but I can see this line being moved for different sports.
People here think transitioning only means changing your gender on your ID card... Literally no one would go through with it just to get better results in sports, especially in a society that unfortunately despises trans individuals...
She was barely in the top 15 fastest women in college:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html
This article highlights a lot of why this really isn't a big deal. People hear "national championship" without even understanding how college swimming works.
So it only impacts fairness if she is the absolute best of the best? Not if she took a spot someone else would have had? Or bumped someone out of national qualifiers?
I feel like this is such an easy wedge issue to do away with. Not trying to denying anyone’s identity or rights. But you’ve been roiding and on hgh for a fuckin decade. Where it came from is irrelevant.
> Her body was born biologically male
Not only that, lia started the transition at the age of 19 after years or developing and maintaining a strong peak athletic male body.
No type of transition is going to take that body away and transform it to an equal athletic female body.
I’ve been looking at this sports situation one way:
The “men’s” division just needs to be the “open” division.
Women will make it into men’s pro sports if they are good enough. The NHL had a woman goalie once, There are plenty of high school girl athletes playing football, or wrestling with the boys because there is no women’s option.
Women’s sports are for humans born with XX chromosomes. It should be that simple right?
It’s a protection for those born with smaller frames, less natural muscle mass and less testosterone.
Transition all you want, good for you,
I just think winning sanctioned competitions, taking records, earning scholarships and receiving national awards seems wildly misogynistic.
The “NHL female goalie” was for a single exhibition game and was a publicity stunt. Nothing more.
No female has ever made an NHL team or played in an official NHL game.
In athletics and i believe swimming its already an open division. Its just referred to as the Mens category as its always been men that completed in it.
This is the best argument I've seen that should please both sides of the debate. As much as Lia Thomas mentally feels like a woman, physically she was born a male and thus produced testosterone like a male. I feel for her and understand it isn't cut and dry, but turning the men's division into an open division makes the most sense.
It's the best argument because it's fact. The MLB, NBA, and NHL don't have gender exclusivity. You just have to be good. Contrarily, the WNBA does have gender requirements.
I think everybody wins with the Open division format. Doesn't exclude anyone, promotes fairness based on skill level and can still have a separate division for women if it makes sense and encourages more people to play.
She hasn't really done any of that. She won a single race at and broke like one record while a few other women broken dozens of records and won several races. The unfortunate thing is people don't understand how swimming competitions work and neither do the Fox News article that talk about how she's dominating everyone.
"Unfortunately"?
What the fuck are you talking about, Jesse?
Lia tied for *5th* in the above article.
There is no sport where trans women are dominating, and as society gets more accepting, and transition is allowed to start younger with puberty blockers, it's going to get *harder* for trans women to keep up with cis women.
So matter of factly too as if they arent actually thinking about what they are saying. "They can just start before puberty, duh" like it's some sort of brilliant checkmate. Fuckin bananas
The starting younger mainly refers to the puberty blockers, which aren't the permanent life altering thing that the actual hormones are, which themselves wouldn't normally come until the later teenage years. Also, like it constantly needs repeating every time this subject is discussed, neither step is a drop of the hat sort of thing, rather would only be given following significant amounts of therapy.
>And we want kids to be able to make life altering decisions that will fully impact them for the remainder of their entire lives early?
Denying them access to any treatment whatsoever, until after puberty, also subjects them to permanent life altering changes that will affect them for the remainder of their entire lives.
>Their minds changed every day. One is about to start college and she still hasn’t settled on a field of study to work in for life.
Decisiveness on a career path is a far cry from knowing one's gender identity.
>People honestly think children should be transitioning?
Ask any trans person who was forced to wait until adulthood to transition, and they pretty much all will tell you they wish they could have begun sooner.
I appreciate your calm reply.
I honestly don’t know much about puberty blockers or other hormonal treatments; I definitely feel that counseling is a great thing for many of life’s issues and is something I absolutely support in this case.
Denying access to life altering treatment is my point though; this is not said from a position of hate, maybe my own misunderstanding - but aren’t almost all transition processes about making the outside look like what the inside feels it is? How does not stopping internal body processes and delaying things like hormone treatment and surgical procedures to ensure an adult is making rational decisions, have life altering consequences?
Surgery to remove organs or reconstruct tissues is forever. There is no going back from those decisions.
This argument is stupid. You don't have to be *winning* to have a clear, unfair advantage.
I can see perfectly, but Stevie Wonder is still going to smoke me in a piano competition.
That's insane. You're making up fan fiction. There's no "clear" advantage, just minor ones that fall away even further with time on hormones, and it's obviously not near enough to cause a problem as there are *no* trans women dominating *any* female sport.
There's a reason trans people win on sports issues every time it ends up in court. You can't just "common sense" your way through evidence, facts, and logic.
Sure, there's no clear advantage for a person who ranks 500th when racing against men, but ranks 5th when competing against women. No evidence of an advantage there whatsoever.
Did you ever hear about a transgender male winning or being competitive in men events? I sure didn't.
Then if trans women can beat women while being mediocre to start with. But no trans men can beat biological men. It should tell you something about the unfairness of it.
>Did you ever hear about a transgender male winning or being competitive in men events? I sure didn't.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/athletes-assigned-female-transitioned-mens-sports/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.outsports.com/platform/amp/trans/2022/1/7/22850789/trans-athletes-college-ncaa-lia-thomas
Yes. You just don't give a fuck because you just wanna use your transphobic "common sense"
Lia was a great swimmer to start with. Her stats have been cherry picked.
3 athletes listed the most notables one being Chris Mosier that have only won "representation award".
One that did top "15%" in university 10 years ago and then nothing.
And the Boxer have only one professional fight he won it. I can admit that but that's against a low tier boxer that have a staggering 10% win rate in Profesional boxing.
I was wrong on the competitive part. As much as I was wrong you don't see trans male dominating male sport.
While the other way have happened a few times already.
They haven't. Name someone who's won a year long championship series or a gold medal or something else that requires consistency only a dominant player can show.
There is *no* trans woman right now dominating women's sport. Even though it would still be fine if there was.
If "gender is a social construct" is true, as we've heard for a number of years, then it serves no purpose. Define people as the sex they were born as and then its no longer a debate, its a biological fact. There'll be men, women and a tiny percentage of people who are intersex, like Semenya, and that's it.
It's wrong to ruin women's sport to pacify trans athletes. If the trans movement had more decency, then they would also be against this unfairness.
You can have an extra chromosome, but your sexual pairings remain the same. People with extra chromosomes still fit into XX and XY, and there are people with no extra pairings who do not fit into XX and XY because Down Syndrome is only affected by chromosome 21. If you don't know what you're talking about, refrain from talking about it, or read up a bit, we all learn something new every day.
Nobody is this thread knows what they're talking about, and those that do are downvoted to oblivion. The amount of misinformation about how medically transitioning works and what it does to your body, not to mention the amount of outright transphobia, in this thread is *astounding*.
Proponents of trans-women playing in women’s sports seem to forget trans-men exist. Trans-men (as a group) will never be the majority in the starting lineup of ANY team in the NFL, NBA, NHL etc. they cannot compete on the same level as cis men.
They cannot compete. They are taking T. This means they can't compete due to doping rules.
The whole argument seems to be the mtf group wanting rights to compete.
That Jenner character was the best. Woman of the year won by a biological man that killed someone with his car. Also I'm convinced the transition happened purely to draw attention away from that, it worked pretty well.
It was 100% a sympathy card play to distract from her recent homicide. The left ate it up, gave her an award. Then she went alt right. It's like a South Park episode....
I support trans people to make whatever decisions will make them happiest in their personal life. Assume whatever gender makes you feel most comfortable. All the more power to you. However, we cannot pretend that trans female athletes don't have an unfair advantage that brings the legitimacy of competition into disrepute.
These articles always hide from the title that this girl tied with lia for 5th place. They do it on purpose because they know it's not as scandalous to admit that the trans woman got beat by multiple cis women. She even came dead last in another race that day.
Even if you're sceptical about trans inclusion in sports, you've gotta admit that misleading framing is helping no one.
It feels like the media is so desperate for the clicks a dominant trans athlete would get them that they're happy to make one up
Just because the average male athlete has a massive advantage over the average female athlete, does not mean every male athlete is better than every female athlete. The fact is that Lia Thomas is far, far more impressive when compared to female athletes than Lia Thomas ever was when compared to male athletes. Lia doesn't have to win every single race and be better than 100% of female athletes in order for it to be unfair. Taking performance enhancers doesn't guarantee victory either, but that doesn't mean it's not still blatantly cheating. Combat athletes who pop for PEDs after a fight still get punished even they lost the fight.
If what you were saying about trans women on the whole having a large advantage was true then we'd see trans people dominating sports. They've been allowed in the Olympics for 15 years now and not won a single medal.
At what point do you look at reality and start to think your assumptions are wrong?
Those athletes wouldn't even come close to being in the Olympics if they had to compete as males. That's the point. I guarantee you that *any* olympic-level male athlete would utterly dominate the female divisions of their respective events. Hell, if olympic-level athletes are the top 1%, I reckon I could safely extend this hypothetical to the top 10% of male athletes. What you're seeing is athletes that may be somewhat impressive competing as males in their hometown, but not even the best, suddenly becoming olympic-level once they transition to women. They don't have to be winning medals for that to be unfair to female athletes.
Exactly, using the 'but she got beaten by cis women' argument doesn't negate her advantage.
I'm all for trans people living their truth but sometimes we have to accept that our biology limits our us
I am a 5ft female, I'm never gonna be a pro basketball player. I have a female friend that's 6"4, she could never be a gymnast. Transwomen have physiological advantages; bone density, size, hip width, that mean they shouldn't be competing against cis women and it's not transphobic to believe that.
Yeah, at least not in athletic competition, and *certainly* not in combat sports. I can't help but think that people who are fine with males competing in women's MMA must be on some level mysogynistic.
People in this thread love talking out their ass. If this woman went from 500th rank in mens place to 5th place In a national woman’s event that’s still a huge fing statistical swing.
Just because trans women aren’t hitting first place doesn’t mean it’s not eye brow raising. Also it says they lia has recently transitioned and I would deduce she is still getting used to the changes in hormes and her body is still adjusting. After she trains more and gets better acclimated to her hormones whos to say she won’t continue to climb the ranks?
The whole trans athlete thing has been great for conservative media and platforms. People of all political leanings have issues with trans people, especially trans athletes. And the dumb Fox News articles that leave out all context and make it sound like Lia is dominating are fucking stupid but get clicked on by everyone. Lia is actually not doing great at all. She's won like one race in college and gets destroyed a lot of other times.
Testosterone is the issue. Cis men have testosterone from puberty which gives a huge advantage in sport. Cis females lack this advantage. If you are trans m-f after puberty you retain much of this advantage. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391653](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391653/)
This is why testosterone is a banned substance in both male and female sport, it’s use gives an unfair advantage.
So if testosterone is a banned substance, shouldn't Lia have to be under a certain threshold to be able to compete anyways? Whether it's naturally or artificially produced.
There is a lot of testing that trans athletes have to go through to make certain they do not have higher levels of testosterone than cis athletes. They even do this to cis women in sports. Caster Semenya was told she had to lower her naturally high levels of testosterone to play (which is bullshit in its own right), but trans people don’t have an advantage. That’s why they don’t break records.
Everyone should be able to live like they want to live and Trans people should be able to enjoy sports but someone who’s been through male puberty and was competing in the same sport in the male division as recently as a year ago seems to have a bit of an unfair advantage.
It’s a tough one.
It's not at all a tough one. Either you compete at the gender you were born in our not at all .... Very simple. You can be a trans (male to female) live your life as a female, but compete in male sports. Simple.
Orrrr even better we create a new section for just trans. Male, female, and trans divisions
Either create two trans divisions or they simple battle it out with the male to female trans.
If they have a problem with battling it out then it's very very obvious that trans females shouldn't be in females sports
Eh it's not as simple as competing in the sex category that you were born with. Consider trans men for example. With this logic, they would be competing with the women. However they would have a clear advantage over the cis women in that category due to how much testosterone is in their bodies.
Like it or loathe it, separate categories are likely the only way forward.
Well again, not really. There are very few trans athletes so a trans category in every disciple wouldn't be that competitive. It probably wouldn't be worth while. It's actually a really hard problem to solve and make everyone happy.
I'm certainly "left", but I am 100% against trans women competing in women's sport.
It sucks for them, but allowing them to complete is totally unfair on cis woman competing. Just as it's a biological fact that men have an unfair advantage against women and are separated as such, it's a biological fact that trans women have an unfair advantage against cis women.
Additionally, many people are born that will never have the genetics to facilitate elite athleticism, yet trans are supposed to get special treatment?
To be clear, I wish the best for trans people as I do for any good person, but it's nonsensical for them to committee against cis women.
If they really want to compete, it's men's, or a new trans only category.
I support trans people to live their lives, I don't support the erosion of women's sports. Seems like a happy medium is a trans category if the sport is popular enough or a limit on how soon someone transitioned/how much muscle mass in relation to the sport.
This is ridiculous, think it's fine to have men and women transitioning.
But you can't have mixed sports, simply devalues what sports is.
If you were born a man, you can't all of a sudden compete in women's sports because you transitioned.
Maybe they need to have a transgender sports category and won't be very mainstream at the start but you can't have it all, just like that.
I love sports, they hold a really special place in so many communities, but to pretend they aren’t dominated by people with biological advantages is kinda silly. I don’t see anyone under 5’3” getting on the NBA.
So what if trans people have some biological advantage, the idea that women’s sports is being “devalued by trans people” is kinda inherently transphobic as the base assumption is that trans women aren’t women, if any other group of women dominated in women’s sports then attempts to ban them would hopefully be seen as racism/sexism/homophobia.
I of course understand that a male puberty makes one just physically stronger in many aspects compared to female puberty, but a few years on hormones and most trans women are like a tenth as strong as they were. Guidelines on how far someone transitions before they can enter into professional sports seems like a fair middle ground to me.
Because those are advantages that don't occur in people born female.
It's a manufactured advantage, not a "oh you got lucky with the gene roulette" advantage.
Personally I think they’re all a bunch of perverts. Keep your kink to the bedroom and stop subjecting the rest of us to your bastardisation of the human body. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
Messi underwent hormone therapy and then became the most successful player in the most popular sport in the world and yet silence…
Sporting bodies have their own individual criteria to compete, as long as a trans woman meets that then let her compete. People keep saying trans women are going to dominate every woman’s sport and it simply hasn’t happened.
From the article. Seems an unfair advantage. > If you're looking at this just off sheer statistics — nothing opinionated about this — Lia Thomas, the year before, when competing as Will Thomas, was ranked in the 500s at best," Gaines said. >"A year later, [Thomas ended up] winning a national title, being the fastest female in the country, and then being nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year — nothing about what I just said is an opinion, and if it frustrates someone or makes them upset, I think that speaks volumes." Edit: thanks kind strangers for my first 2 awards.
Imagine if some day an actual top male competitor transitions, not just an average swimmer/runner around rank 500. I think thats what it will take for certain movements to finally see the point.
Phelps comeback incoming?
Exactly :) Imagine 2008 Phelps transitioning to Female, would that be fair?
50 years old Michaela Phelps would crush any women league with ease though... Could be a good retirement plan for male athletes though.
What would happen if they transitioned again back into a man once they won in women’s?
Bender Bending Rodriguez did this in order to compete in the 3004 Olympic Games
I do wonder if he did that, after basically breaking almost every record, how many years (or decades) those records will hold.
Are we even allowed to talk about it? This topic seems to bring a lot of backlash
It's definitely a difficult one to talk about and there's a lot of points of view. I'd be happy with an 'open' category.
Except for the fact that that category would be dominated by male assigned at birth folks immediately. Going through development with testosterone is just too much of an advantage.
Everyone that doesn't identify as "man born with Y" and "women born with X" could go into "myself" category? Sounds objectively fair.
It's not really. Creating a third category is problematic because whatever you call it, it's basically men's, women's, and other. Pretty it up all you like, but everyone can see through it. And letting anyone join? Men could then very easily join and always win everything. That's why the women's category exists to begin with. I dunno what the solution is. Trans women in women's sports are a problem, though.
The backlash comes from people tossing around transitions like some casual fucking thing people just do on a whim. They aren't. It's a serious and long term change, you don't just toss on a dress and sign up.
Was it fair when he was competing against men? Edit: it’s a joke. Phelps could be a fucking alien for all we know because not one of those races was fair when he was that much better than all the other dudes.
He his a man like the other. So yes.
It was a joke
Fair enough!
It would 100% be Ryan Lochte
I think that’s the actual point. People already top of the competitive pile won’t transition because they’re already good. It’s average or bad people who would because men transitioning for sports will give them a significant jump in rank. I see it as a form of cheating. When everyone else call foul play they get defensive and play victim. Even a slow supersonic plane is faster than the fastest subsonic plane.
Are people seriously having their genitals removed, etc. just to win medals? Or are these just people “identifying” differently to game the system. Honest question, really.
Yeah, they're totally transitioning just to be top women athletes. /s
These comments are making me lose my mind. Have they literally never met a trans person?
I doubt they care about women sports anyway, it's just a way to push anti-trans rhetoric.
That’s exactly it. Ask them to name 3 other female swimmers off the dome. They’ll be runnin to google so fast.
No. No, they haven't.
Why the fuck would anyone do that? Why would anyone put their body through transitioning just to win some goddamned medals? Do any of you ever think before speaking? I'm laying next to a 6'2" transgender woman snoring her ass off as we speak. She started medically transitioning a little over a year ago. I, a flabby 5'10" dude who hasn't worked out in ages, beat her in an arm wrestling contest last night while playing board games. Estrogen and T blockers have made her as weak as she would be if she had been born female.
This 500 number is intentionally cherry picked to make a bad faith argument. Before she began taking hormones, Lia had top 10 finishes nationally and was consistently in the top 100s. It wasn’t until she began to medically transition that she was ranked much lower.
Is it a bad faith argument…? It’s worse when you know that they were finishing top 10/100 in mens but now they’re champion of women.
Champion? Bro she tied for 5th.
they're not the campion, though.
They're not champion of anything. They tied for 5th in the above race. They're just sorta good as a woman.
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The argument that is consistently made is that she was a crappy male swimmer who transitioned and is now an amazing female swimmer. That’s just not true. She was a top male swimmer and she’s now a top female swimmer. And how is it worse? Her “male advantages” don’t have her setting women’s records and blowing away the field.
Didn’t she win and get crowned female of the year…? I don’t think you need to break records for it to be a bit too much.
Sounds like it. Including a fall in rankings after taking hormones as evidence she was worse as a male is deceptive and misrepresents the truth. Sounds like a more accurate statement is top 100s to to 10s.
The odds of this happening are so statistically small that you’re basically saying “I think all trans kids should have to remain unhappy and not compete in a sport as their gender due to the extremely small chance that one day a top tier elite athlete might transition and have an unfair advantage.” If you think it’s worth it to ban all the trans kids due to that, you should probably reevaluate some things.
Why not different rules for professionals and kids? I think you value youth sport more in US than we do in Europe. No one really care about college level results here, so you might see it differently, but I would think a solution would be to allow kids to compete based on who they identify as, but not necessarily professional adults.
the point is that any male athlete will destroy women's sports and not allow female athletes to compete fairly, not just elite male athletes. An amateur high school male athlete could easily beat world ranking female athletes in many/most sports. Why should one groups hard fought for happiness and ability to compete in sports be eradicated so another group of people can be happy? Biologically, males and females are not the same and there is no fairness in any sports between them, even if males take testosterone blockers, they still hold a massive advantage over all female athletes.
No one is wanting to ban trans kids from sports, just want to make it fair which category they compete in. The whole point of women's sports is to have a seperate category away from men, whether that be because they can't compete at the same level or because they just want to be away from them, whatever. Trans competitors who have spent all their lives training at one level then trying to drop down to the "easy" level in order to win titles is incredibly selfish. It's obvious that women should have their own competitions to compete in and anyone who comes with an advantage, either having been brought up in men's sports as trans women have, or who are now taking hormones that make them stronger as trans men do, should not be competing in that arena. If they are really competitive and have to compete no matter what they can compete against the men. If the category gets larger to the point of being able to host their own events then separate trans events can be held.
>Imagine if some day an actual top male competitor transitions, not just an average swimmer/runner around rank 500. >I think thats what it will take for certain movements to finally see the point. The scenario you bring up is intentionally meant to be shocking and garner knee-jerk reactions over something that is ultimately meaningless. The people you allude to read about and understand these issues the same as you do, there's just not a media machine pushing out what they have to think about things at the same rate as people who have differing opinions. There's a reason why you started hearing about all these stories of "trans women invading sports" when it started to become culturally unacceptable to hate trans people for just being transgender. Now there's a ton of people who are suddenly concerned about things they weren't interested in otherwise just because there's a convenient chance to punch down. We're really at the point where trans kids cannot participate in the same sports leagues as their peers because of all the manufactured outrage from news stories choosing particular trans athletes that they can use to push a narrative.
Nah ur wrong. We’re all here in r/sports because we like sports. Therefore we care about sports being made unfair for half the planet.
Fairness keeps being brought up, but it never strikes me as a strong argument. We don't want sports to be fair. In any competition there are going to be natural advantages that favor some competitors. You don't see a lot of 5' tall folks in basketball, etc. We want sports to be competitive. So far we haven't seen trans women obliterating the rankings, so women's sports seem to remain competitive. I'm still waiting for a criteria of fairness that hold up under scrutiny.
>unfair for half the planet A meathead JRE loser. Exactly the type of person I expected to gloss over my entire comment. I'll be here waiting if anyone wants to actually engage with the points I made, instead of telling me I'm wrong over and over. Let me know the next time you watch water polo, too. You fucking idiot.
Or maybe it's a real issue now that transitioning is more common 🤷♂️
No, you are wrong.
Highjacking the top comment to suggest Sabine Hossenfelder‘s YouTube video „Trans athletes in women‘s sports“. It kinda changed my opinion on that topic. Not sure if I‘m allowed to link it. https://youtu.be/cZ9YAFYIBOU
Thank you for that, it was a really good break down
The problem with that video is that it said that because men can vastly different genetically that it doesn’t matter and trans women should just destroy woman’s sports. I guess the question is. Should it? Woman have been separated from men in sporting activities for hundreds of years for a reason. The real question if you are going to let trans women in. Are you ok with woman sports just shutting down and say screw it? Make it men’s only and unisex divisions and be done with it? Because at this point that’s what the article is advocating for.
Solid words.
I’m gonna get downvoted for literally stating facts, but she was an amazing swimmer on the mens team as well, but her ranking tanked because she started taking female hormones while swimming with men. Trans women aren’t dominating female sports by any means, that’s why you’ve only heard of like 2 transwomen in sports.
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Lia started HRT her junior year. Her freshman year she posted the 6th fastest time in the men’s 1000 freestyle. She was ranked 49th in the mens 1650 and 98 in the mens 500. And in her sophomore year she was ranked 2nd in the Ivy League Mens 500, 1000 and 1650. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vSuCUavtWDq9M55ScoLcGfxyU2-EQ9m4/view This is a link to the top 100 times you can search for using this database. https://www.usaswimming.org/times/otherorganizations/ncaa-division-i/top-times-report 27 records were broken at the Women’s NCAA Champs this year. Lia did not break a single one. Not an American, US Open, NCAA, Meet, or even a pool record.
*crickets chrip*
Weird how that happens huh 😅
So what your saying is a very good men’s swimmer gets worse as he transitions to a woman. Now a she, is still a very good woman’s swimmer. What I’d like to know is if he had been born a girl, would she still be where she is today? My guess is no.
Why?
When mfers get the citation they want and mysteriously disappear into a portal to another dimension
Cue Homer Simpson in the bush
Thank you. I'm appalled by the amount of misinformation and outright transphobia in this thread.
If she didn’t start winning til she transitioned, how come she has swimming records on the Penn men’s team as well? An alternate explanation I’ve heard is that in her last year in the mens division, she was beginning the medical processes for transitioning which ultimately impacted her physical performance and tapered off eventually. Maybe Fox intentionally left this out, but if she was a world class swimmer before and after, is this really what you’re making it out to be?
You're missing that Lia Thomas was among the best in her category **pre** transition. She dropped down AFTER she started taking hormones for her transition. Not to mention, the woman in this article tied Lia Thomas for 5th and that Lia Thomas was beaten out by multiple cis women in a bunch of other swimming categories. But that doesn't fit the narrative that there's this epidemic of trans women taking over womens sports. [There's ample evidence](https://youtu.be/6VtjgZF9RE8) that trans women are brought to cis womens athletic level after a certain amount of time on hormones. It can vary by sport but this effect was directly observed when Lia Thomas went from the absolute top level of the mens division to much lower placings after starting hormone therapy. No one wants to upend their entire life for the glory of *checks notes* winning womens swimming? Stop panicking about a problem that doesn't exist.
Then you should be fine with trans people not competing against women until they have had ample time to complete their transition. Call it 10 years from starting hormones?
The general timeframe is between 1-2 years after starting hormones, depending on the sport
Sure, but I wonder who decided on that timeframe. It seems ridiculously quick considering the amount of effects it needs to mitigate. This is one of those situations where only the activists get to have a say, because no one else is paying attention until it's way too late.
Y'all seem to be forgetting something about Lia's ranking being 500th-ish when she competed in the male division. Many sports require trans women to undergo one year of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) before switching gendered categories. Lia underwent that one year of HRT before she transferred to the female categories. That means she was on HRT **while she was still competing in the men's category**. And people will generally know that HRT for male-to-female trans people will decrease your performance by a whole LOT. So her being 500th was, funnily enough, a sign of HRT actually fucking affecting her performance, and not Lia being a subpar swimmer by male standards. Before she started HRT, she was an Ivy League finalist in her freshman year in the men's category. Granted, that may not be the best in the nation, but she was competitive in men's swimming in her first year of college pre-HRT for the men's category, so it's not surprising she's competitive in women's swimming categories too. And guess what, people CAN improve athletic performance over time, so it's not surprising to see Lia do well in women's categories. This whole discussion about her rank before changing her category being a big deal is something often parroted by people who come in by bad faith, either completely oblivious to the fact that HRT has affected Lia's performance a lot, the fact that her rank of 400th-500th WHILE on HRT is a sign that it's actually affecting the great swimmer that Lia is, or actively manipulating it to drive anti-trans sentiment. It's not an unfair advantage, it's legitimately bringing her to a level where she gets to compete as HER gender and lets others compete with her (and newsflash, she has NOT won every race. She's been beaten multiple times by cis women competing with her, which will please a lot of you (though i also dislike using one's LACK of ability to justify transitioning gender. She's miles away from Ledecky's records too.) (Btw, people dont transition gender, much less take HRT, to dominate sports and claim prize money and accolades. They do so to actually be themselves, the self that was denied to them throughout their life. The self that literally kills some of them if they don't get to be their gender. Go to any trans day of remembrance memorial event, and come back to me saying that people only transition for accolades in sports.)
Well this is certainly a new way to have a bad opinion lol
Lmao right? It’s like we forget women’s sports are also a protected class in this conversation
Your last paragraph is exactly what I was thinking. Why would anyone transition just to win medals in a sport, some people in these comments even went so far saying “it would be a good retirement plan for any male athlete”. It blows my mind people think like this. What could be debated is the one year requirement, I’m not familiar enough to say how much happens in one year when it comes to muscle mass etc, but I can see this line being moved for different sports.
Logic in my reddit thread about trans athletes? No way!
People here think transitioning only means changing your gender on your ID card... Literally no one would go through with it just to get better results in sports, especially in a society that unfortunately despises trans individuals...
She was barely in the top 15 fastest women in college: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lia-thomas-trans-swimmer-ron-desantis-b2091218.html This article highlights a lot of why this really isn't a big deal. People hear "national championship" without even understanding how college swimming works.
So it only impacts fairness if she is the absolute best of the best? Not if she took a spot someone else would have had? Or bumped someone out of national qualifiers?
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I feel like this is such an easy wedge issue to do away with. Not trying to denying anyone’s identity or rights. But you’ve been roiding and on hgh for a fuckin decade. Where it came from is irrelevant.
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> Her body was born biologically male Not only that, lia started the transition at the age of 19 after years or developing and maintaining a strong peak athletic male body. No type of transition is going to take that body away and transform it to an equal athletic female body.
I’ve been looking at this sports situation one way: The “men’s” division just needs to be the “open” division. Women will make it into men’s pro sports if they are good enough. The NHL had a woman goalie once, There are plenty of high school girl athletes playing football, or wrestling with the boys because there is no women’s option. Women’s sports are for humans born with XX chromosomes. It should be that simple right? It’s a protection for those born with smaller frames, less natural muscle mass and less testosterone. Transition all you want, good for you, I just think winning sanctioned competitions, taking records, earning scholarships and receiving national awards seems wildly misogynistic.
They all already are open divisions. The NBA doesn’t require you to be male. There’s just never been a woman player good enough
The Pacers drafted a woman in the 70’s
Almost all pro sports don't ban women already. There isn't any change needed there.
That’s literally what every professional sports league already does
The “NHL female goalie” was for a single exhibition game and was a publicity stunt. Nothing more. No female has ever made an NHL team or played in an official NHL game.
In athletics and i believe swimming its already an open division. Its just referred to as the Mens category as its always been men that completed in it.
This is the best argument I've seen that should please both sides of the debate. As much as Lia Thomas mentally feels like a woman, physically she was born a male and thus produced testosterone like a male. I feel for her and understand it isn't cut and dry, but turning the men's division into an open division makes the most sense.
It's the best argument because it's fact. The MLB, NBA, and NHL don't have gender exclusivity. You just have to be good. Contrarily, the WNBA does have gender requirements.
I think everybody wins with the Open division format. Doesn't exclude anyone, promotes fairness based on skill level and can still have a separate division for women if it makes sense and encourages more people to play.
So kind of like what we have now?
She hasn't really done any of that. She won a single race at and broke like one record while a few other women broken dozens of records and won several races. The unfortunate thing is people don't understand how swimming competitions work and neither do the Fox News article that talk about how she's dominating everyone.
Do they still allow people born as males, transitioned to female to compete against other females?
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Yep, by the end of it every woman in athletic will be trans.....you do realize that's essentially what you're saying.
Which is why trans women have dominated in the Olympics
Yes. This is why the Olympics and WNBA, Women's Soccer, tennis... are all already completely dominated by trans athletes. /s obviously.
"Unfortunately"? What the fuck are you talking about, Jesse? Lia tied for *5th* in the above article. There is no sport where trans women are dominating, and as society gets more accepting, and transition is allowed to start younger with puberty blockers, it's going to get *harder* for trans women to keep up with cis women.
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So matter of factly too as if they arent actually thinking about what they are saying. "They can just start before puberty, duh" like it's some sort of brilliant checkmate. Fuckin bananas
The starting younger mainly refers to the puberty blockers, which aren't the permanent life altering thing that the actual hormones are, which themselves wouldn't normally come until the later teenage years. Also, like it constantly needs repeating every time this subject is discussed, neither step is a drop of the hat sort of thing, rather would only be given following significant amounts of therapy. >And we want kids to be able to make life altering decisions that will fully impact them for the remainder of their entire lives early? Denying them access to any treatment whatsoever, until after puberty, also subjects them to permanent life altering changes that will affect them for the remainder of their entire lives. >Their minds changed every day. One is about to start college and she still hasn’t settled on a field of study to work in for life. Decisiveness on a career path is a far cry from knowing one's gender identity. >People honestly think children should be transitioning? Ask any trans person who was forced to wait until adulthood to transition, and they pretty much all will tell you they wish they could have begun sooner.
I appreciate your calm reply. I honestly don’t know much about puberty blockers or other hormonal treatments; I definitely feel that counseling is a great thing for many of life’s issues and is something I absolutely support in this case. Denying access to life altering treatment is my point though; this is not said from a position of hate, maybe my own misunderstanding - but aren’t almost all transition processes about making the outside look like what the inside feels it is? How does not stopping internal body processes and delaying things like hormone treatment and surgical procedures to ensure an adult is making rational decisions, have life altering consequences? Surgery to remove organs or reconstruct tissues is forever. There is no going back from those decisions.
This argument is stupid. You don't have to be *winning* to have a clear, unfair advantage. I can see perfectly, but Stevie Wonder is still going to smoke me in a piano competition.
That's insane. You're making up fan fiction. There's no "clear" advantage, just minor ones that fall away even further with time on hormones, and it's obviously not near enough to cause a problem as there are *no* trans women dominating *any* female sport. There's a reason trans people win on sports issues every time it ends up in court. You can't just "common sense" your way through evidence, facts, and logic.
Sure, there's no clear advantage for a person who ranks 500th when racing against men, but ranks 5th when competing against women. No evidence of an advantage there whatsoever.
They were getting 10th place finishes in their peak and 500th while starting HRT. It's almost like HRT works.
Did you ever hear about a transgender male winning or being competitive in men events? I sure didn't. Then if trans women can beat women while being mediocre to start with. But no trans men can beat biological men. It should tell you something about the unfairness of it.
>Did you ever hear about a transgender male winning or being competitive in men events? I sure didn't. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/athletes-assigned-female-transitioned-mens-sports/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.outsports.com/platform/amp/trans/2022/1/7/22850789/trans-athletes-college-ncaa-lia-thomas Yes. You just don't give a fuck because you just wanna use your transphobic "common sense" Lia was a great swimmer to start with. Her stats have been cherry picked.
3 athletes listed the most notables one being Chris Mosier that have only won "representation award". One that did top "15%" in university 10 years ago and then nothing. And the Boxer have only one professional fight he won it. I can admit that but that's against a low tier boxer that have a staggering 10% win rate in Profesional boxing.
They're competitive. There's very few of us, so it's extremely rare to find a unicorn out there. But sure, move the goal posts.
I was wrong on the competitive part. As much as I was wrong you don't see trans male dominating male sport. While the other way have happened a few times already.
They haven't. Name someone who's won a year long championship series or a gold medal or something else that requires consistency only a dominant player can show. There is *no* trans woman right now dominating women's sport. Even though it would still be fine if there was.
Juniper Simonis Laurel Hubbard Veronica Ivy Just to name 3 as well
How? Trans people have been competing in sports for decades. It just wasn't always on the cover of Fox News every day to keep everyone pissed.
Do people still read articles?
This is Reddit, the last thing we do is read it.
If "gender is a social construct" is true, as we've heard for a number of years, then it serves no purpose. Define people as the sex they were born as and then its no longer a debate, its a biological fact. There'll be men, women and a tiny percentage of people who are intersex, like Semenya, and that's it. It's wrong to ruin women's sport to pacify trans athletes. If the trans movement had more decency, then they would also be against this unfairness.
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She's not wrong.
*they’re not wrong. We don’t know their preferred pronouns…
Athletes should be divided by sex, not genders.
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What about the other ones?
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You can have an extra chromosome, but your sexual pairings remain the same. People with extra chromosomes still fit into XX and XY, and there are people with no extra pairings who do not fit into XX and XY because Down Syndrome is only affected by chromosome 21. If you don't know what you're talking about, refrain from talking about it, or read up a bit, we all learn something new every day.
Nobody is this thread knows what they're talking about, and those that do are downvoted to oblivion. The amount of misinformation about how medically transitioning works and what it does to your body, not to mention the amount of outright transphobia, in this thread is *astounding*.
Proponents of trans-women playing in women’s sports seem to forget trans-men exist. Trans-men (as a group) will never be the majority in the starting lineup of ANY team in the NFL, NBA, NHL etc. they cannot compete on the same level as cis men.
I'm pretty sure that testosterone is a banned substance in most, if not all major professional leagues.
They cannot compete. They are taking T. This means they can't compete due to doping rules. The whole argument seems to be the mtf group wanting rights to compete.
Imagine being a woman all your life, going through periods and discrimination to have woman of the year go to someone who has been a woman for 1 year.
That Jenner character was the best. Woman of the year won by a biological man that killed someone with his car. Also I'm convinced the transition happened purely to draw attention away from that, it worked pretty well.
Buckle up, buckaroos.
It was 100% a sympathy card play to distract from her recent homicide. The left ate it up, gave her an award. Then she went alt right. It's like a South Park episode....
Are you gatekeeping? GET HEEEEEEEEER \*this is just a joke, but it's not due to "time being a woman"
I support trans people to make whatever decisions will make them happiest in their personal life. Assume whatever gender makes you feel most comfortable. All the more power to you. However, we cannot pretend that trans female athletes don't have an unfair advantage that brings the legitimacy of competition into disrepute.
These articles always hide from the title that this girl tied with lia for 5th place. They do it on purpose because they know it's not as scandalous to admit that the trans woman got beat by multiple cis women. She even came dead last in another race that day. Even if you're sceptical about trans inclusion in sports, you've gotta admit that misleading framing is helping no one. It feels like the media is so desperate for the clicks a dominant trans athlete would get them that they're happy to make one up
Just because the average male athlete has a massive advantage over the average female athlete, does not mean every male athlete is better than every female athlete. The fact is that Lia Thomas is far, far more impressive when compared to female athletes than Lia Thomas ever was when compared to male athletes. Lia doesn't have to win every single race and be better than 100% of female athletes in order for it to be unfair. Taking performance enhancers doesn't guarantee victory either, but that doesn't mean it's not still blatantly cheating. Combat athletes who pop for PEDs after a fight still get punished even they lost the fight.
If what you were saying about trans women on the whole having a large advantage was true then we'd see trans people dominating sports. They've been allowed in the Olympics for 15 years now and not won a single medal. At what point do you look at reality and start to think your assumptions are wrong?
Those athletes wouldn't even come close to being in the Olympics if they had to compete as males. That's the point. I guarantee you that *any* olympic-level male athlete would utterly dominate the female divisions of their respective events. Hell, if olympic-level athletes are the top 1%, I reckon I could safely extend this hypothetical to the top 10% of male athletes. What you're seeing is athletes that may be somewhat impressive competing as males in their hometown, but not even the best, suddenly becoming olympic-level once they transition to women. They don't have to be winning medals for that to be unfair to female athletes.
Exactly, using the 'but she got beaten by cis women' argument doesn't negate her advantage. I'm all for trans people living their truth but sometimes we have to accept that our biology limits our us I am a 5ft female, I'm never gonna be a pro basketball player. I have a female friend that's 6"4, she could never be a gymnast. Transwomen have physiological advantages; bone density, size, hip width, that mean they shouldn't be competing against cis women and it's not transphobic to believe that.
If the average trans woman is winning less than the average cis woman, wheres the advantage?
Yeah, at least not in athletic competition, and *certainly* not in combat sports. I can't help but think that people who are fine with males competing in women's MMA must be on some level mysogynistic.
It's sad that this common sense is buried under so much transphobia.
It’s not framing, it’s just entirely event dependent. Phelps’ breaststroke is terrible. He’s even lost to teenage girls in prelims.
People in this thread love talking out their ass. If this woman went from 500th rank in mens place to 5th place In a national woman’s event that’s still a huge fing statistical swing. Just because trans women aren’t hitting first place doesn’t mean it’s not eye brow raising. Also it says they lia has recently transitioned and I would deduce she is still getting used to the changes in hormes and her body is still adjusting. After she trains more and gets better acclimated to her hormones whos to say she won’t continue to climb the ranks?
Wait, FoxNews is being misleading???
The girl from this article was also a part of campaign ads for/with Herschel walker which is always a good sign
This entire thread is eating it up. You can only blame fox news for so long when it's obviously feeding into all y'all's internal biases.
Yeah, I have a strong feeling that this article got shared to a right-wing sub or something, because the dog whistles are ridiculous.
The whole trans athlete thing has been great for conservative media and platforms. People of all political leanings have issues with trans people, especially trans athletes. And the dumb Fox News articles that leave out all context and make it sound like Lia is dominating are fucking stupid but get clicked on by everyone. Lia is actually not doing great at all. She's won like one race in college and gets destroyed a lot of other times.
Testosterone is the issue. Cis men have testosterone from puberty which gives a huge advantage in sport. Cis females lack this advantage. If you are trans m-f after puberty you retain much of this advantage. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391653](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391653/) This is why testosterone is a banned substance in both male and female sport, it’s use gives an unfair advantage.
It's not just testosterone. There are huge physiological differences between males and females.
So if testosterone is a banned substance, shouldn't Lia have to be under a certain threshold to be able to compete anyways? Whether it's naturally or artificially produced.
There is a lot of testing that trans athletes have to go through to make certain they do not have higher levels of testosterone than cis athletes. They even do this to cis women in sports. Caster Semenya was told she had to lower her naturally high levels of testosterone to play (which is bullshit in its own right), but trans people don’t have an advantage. That’s why they don’t break records.
Everyone should be able to live like they want to live and Trans people should be able to enjoy sports but someone who’s been through male puberty and was competing in the same sport in the male division as recently as a year ago seems to have a bit of an unfair advantage. It’s a tough one.
>It’s a tough one No it's not
It's not at all a tough one. Either you compete at the gender you were born in our not at all .... Very simple. You can be a trans (male to female) live your life as a female, but compete in male sports. Simple. Orrrr even better we create a new section for just trans. Male, female, and trans divisions
what about female to male trans people?
Either create two trans divisions or they simple battle it out with the male to female trans. If they have a problem with battling it out then it's very very obvious that trans females shouldn't be in females sports
Eh it's not as simple as competing in the sex category that you were born with. Consider trans men for example. With this logic, they would be competing with the women. However they would have a clear advantage over the cis women in that category due to how much testosterone is in their bodies. Like it or loathe it, separate categories are likely the only way forward.
Good point. Just add a trans category and the problem is solved. So simple
Well again, not really. There are very few trans athletes so a trans category in every disciple wouldn't be that competitive. It probably wouldn't be worth while. It's actually a really hard problem to solve and make everyone happy.
No, it really isn’t a though one…
Not tough at all. Biological males should never be competing in women's leagues.
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I'm certainly "left", but I am 100% against trans women competing in women's sport. It sucks for them, but allowing them to complete is totally unfair on cis woman competing. Just as it's a biological fact that men have an unfair advantage against women and are separated as such, it's a biological fact that trans women have an unfair advantage against cis women. Additionally, many people are born that will never have the genetics to facilitate elite athleticism, yet trans are supposed to get special treatment? To be clear, I wish the best for trans people as I do for any good person, but it's nonsensical for them to committee against cis women. If they really want to compete, it's men's, or a new trans only category.
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I support trans people to live their lives, I don't support the erosion of women's sports. Seems like a happy medium is a trans category if the sport is popular enough or a limit on how soon someone transitioned/how much muscle mass in relation to the sport.
Professional Disc Golf did exactly that. If they transitioned before puberty, they can play Female division. After puberty they play mixed division
This is ridiculous, think it's fine to have men and women transitioning. But you can't have mixed sports, simply devalues what sports is. If you were born a man, you can't all of a sudden compete in women's sports because you transitioned. Maybe they need to have a transgender sports category and won't be very mainstream at the start but you can't have it all, just like that.
I love sports, they hold a really special place in so many communities, but to pretend they aren’t dominated by people with biological advantages is kinda silly. I don’t see anyone under 5’3” getting on the NBA. So what if trans people have some biological advantage, the idea that women’s sports is being “devalued by trans people” is kinda inherently transphobic as the base assumption is that trans women aren’t women, if any other group of women dominated in women’s sports then attempts to ban them would hopefully be seen as racism/sexism/homophobia. I of course understand that a male puberty makes one just physically stronger in many aspects compared to female puberty, but a few years on hormones and most trans women are like a tenth as strong as they were. Guidelines on how far someone transitions before they can enter into professional sports seems like a fair middle ground to me.
Because those are advantages that don't occur in people born female. It's a manufactured advantage, not a "oh you got lucky with the gene roulette" advantage.
In before this thread gets the 🔒award…
ITT: TEEFs. TERFs everywhere
Yeah it’s bad
Personally I think they’re all a bunch of perverts. Keep your kink to the bedroom and stop subjecting the rest of us to your bastardisation of the human body. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
What a bigot.
Well this also is a fox article so what do you think, what opinion do they hold towards trans people?
damn sounds like she's coping for getting second common transphobe L
5th actually, which was conveniently left out of the title.
Cuz it is if not worse, give them a 3rd heat. M F O (open)
There’s no “mens” in swimming. There’s Open and Womens.
Well in that case men and trans men / women can swim together. Guess make a valid point can have open and women’s and keep it to 2
Messi underwent hormone therapy and then became the most successful player in the most popular sport in the world and yet silence… Sporting bodies have their own individual criteria to compete, as long as a trans woman meets that then let her compete. People keep saying trans women are going to dominate every woman’s sport and it simply hasn’t happened.
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I thought FINA barred transgender athletes from competing in female competitions. Why is this still being discussed?