Seeking Perspectives: Trans Athletes in Women's Sports

JoBo, 1 year ago

Trans women who are using gender-affirming hormones are not “biologically male”. It takes about two years on hormones for their performance to equalise with cis women. The only advantage that remains is greater speed, due to the greater height gained from undergoing a male puberty. There are plenty of tall cis women, especially in sport, so this doesn’t really count as an unfair advantage. And, of course, trans kids who were lucky enough to get puberty blockers in time will fall in the same height range as their chosen gender.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s an easy question. It isn’t, and it’s not unreasonable for cis women athletes to be concerned. But the proportion of athletes who are trans is tiny and the proportion who are champions in their sport is even tinier. I do think that hormonal transition is a pre-requisite (because otherwise they would be “biologically male” with respect to the physical characteristics which matter in sport) but I don’t think anyone should be getting their knickers in a twist beyond that, and they should definitely not be using it as an opportunity to be cruel.

Most of the ‘discourse’ is pure transmisogyny, based on lies and fantasy demons. Most top professional athletes are biologically extraordinary, that’s why they are at the top.

I don’t have much time to hunt out sources but this is a decent thread from my bookmarks.

anarchost, 1 year ago

The only advantage that remains is greater speed, due to the greater height gained from undergoing a male puberty.

Solution: puberty blockers

JoBo, 1 year ago

For those fortunate enough to have had access to them young enough. I don’t think we should ban trans people from sport unless they did.

anarchost, 1 year ago (edited 3 months ago)

Much ado about nothing. The biggest freak-outs about this tend to be by people who weren’t even particularly good to begin with. Like Taylor Silverman, the skater who lost to a trans woman… And multiple children as young as ten.

If you want to talk about hormone levels and time spent transitioning, there’s a conversation to be had, but the right isn’t having it. For example, the movie Lady Ballers was supposed to be a documentary that proved men could dominate women’s sports by pretending to be transgender, but everybody involved eventually backed out after discovering the effort it would take to actually transition, even for the purpose of showing up the so-called woke left.

During a recent episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, cast member and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro — whose previous credits include spending nearly 45 minutes throwing a tantrum over the Barbie movie’s existence — said that they originally intended to make as a documentary. But then they found out that (gasp!) a group of bigoted cis men in bad wigs can’t simply participate in women’s sports.

“As it turns out, most ladies’ leagues don’t allow any actual men, and [the actors] weren’t willing to go the full distance in terms of what it would require, the actual hormone treatments, to actually play in ladies’ leagues,” Shapiro admitted during an interview with Boering about the film

Of course, those conversations about testosterone levels will also unfairly target black women, who have been targeted in the past by the same shrill white women using almost the exact same tactics as we see today.