Trans athletes make great gains, yet resentment still flares (2 Viewers)

At the heart of this issue is is their an advantage for trans athletes, some say yes, some say no

This article says that not only is there an advantage it lasts longer than previously thought
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A groundbreaking new study on transgender athletes has found trans women retain a 12% advantage in running tests even after taking hormones for two years to suppress their testosterone. The results, researchers suggest, indicate the current International Olympic Committee guidelines may give trans women an “unfair competitive advantage” over biological women.
World Rugby recently became the first sports federation to ban trans women from women’s rugby, citing “significant” safety risks and fairness concerns. But most sports still follow IOC guidelines from 2015, which permit trans women to play against biological women providing their testosterone remains below 10 nanomoles per litre – a figure higher than average biological female levels, which range from 0.12 to 1.79nmol/L.

However the new study, based on the fitness test results and medical records of 29 trans men and 46 trans women who started gender affirming hormones while in the United States Air Force, appears to challenge the IOC’s scientific position.

The research, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that before starting their hormone treatment trans women performed 31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute on average than a biological women younger than 30 in the air force – and ran 1.5 miles 21% faster.

Yet after suppressing their testosterone for two years – a year longer than IOC guidelines – they were still 12% faster on average than biological females.

The trans women also retained a 10% advantage in push-ups and a 6% advantage in sit-ups for the first two years after taking hormones, before their advantage disappeared. But the researchers say they “may underestimate the advantage in strength that trans women have over cis women … because trans women will have a higher power output than cis women when performing an equivalent number of push-ups”...............

Trans women retain 12% edge in tests two years after transitioning, study finds | Sport | The Guardian

12% doesn't sound like a lot, but when the difference between winning and losing is razor thin, that difference is magnified.
 
Not sure why this is even a discussion... anyone with any sense can understand that a biological male (in nearly all cases of physical competition) will have an unfair physical advantage over a biological female... It's no different than having an exclusive all biological male or female sport - where one group is allowed to take steroids or HGH and the other is not...

This is not that hard... biological males are physically different because they went though a testosterone driven puberty and developed differently... This is science fact... regardless of how you mentally identify... there will nearly always be an unfair advantage in favor of a biological male... ignoring this fact is insane, and unfair to biological females wanting to compete in sports.
 
But again, as per his example, if ‘they’ didn’t allow trans athletes; his daughters don’t get taller- the competitive disadvantage remains
Excluding trans doesn’t fix anything
Right. I think that's why comparing transgender people to the average can be misleading. Comparing the very tallest people to the average would also show a comparative advantage, it wouldn't then follow that the tallest people should be banned from competition so that the average and shorter people are more able to compete.

That's not to say those are exactly the same thing and that all differences should be ignored, but to emphasise that it's a question of degree and balancing and we can and do make choices about what inherent advantages we accept despite their impact on fairness and effective exclusion of others without those advantages.

And that approach - consideration of both inclusiveness and fairness - is how it's approached in practice for the most part. There seems to be this misrepresentation that taking an inclusive approach to transgender participation in competitive sports doesn't involve consideration of fairness and is somehow a free for all, but that's simply not the case. For example, the study @Optimus Prime linked to an article about above concludes that, "This study suggests that more than 12 months of testosterone suppression may be needed to ensure that transgender women do not have an unfair competitive advantage when participating in elite level athletic competition." It doesn't conclude that they shouldn't be able to compete at all, but suggests it might take longer than 12 months transitioning. They're trying to take inclusiveness and fairness into account. "Man can just say he's a woman and go straight out and win the Olympics" isn't a thing. (I'd also add that 'transgender person even makes it to the Olympics' isn't really a thing yet).

I'd also add that in general, "Men can just choose to be women and women can just choose to be men" also isn't a thing. That's not what being transgender is, any more than it's what sexuality is. As a straight man, I can't just choose otherwise and declare, "I'm a woman," any more than I could just choose otherwise and say, "I'm attracted to men." I'm not. It's not a choice.

If you see it that way, then you might be more inclined to see any competitive advantage offered through being transgender as a natural one, in line with being tall, or big, and be more inclined to accept it within reason.

If you don't, then sure, you might be inclined to see it otherwise. But perhaps there's a flaw in the perception of the nature of transgender people there.
 
Not sure why this is even a discussion... anyone with any sense can understand that a biological male (in nearly all cases of physical competition) will have an unfair physical advantage over a biological female... It's no different than having an exclusive all biological male or female sport - where one group is allowed to take steroids or HGH and the other is not...

This is not that hard... biological males are physically different because they went though a testosterone driven puberty and developed differently... This is science fact... regardless of how you mentally identify... there will nearly always be an unfair advantage in favor of a biological male... ignoring this fact is insane, and unfair to biological females wanting to compete in sports.
so you're saying there is not a woman on this planet who is not faster and/or stronger than you
you could beat any woman in tennis, basketball, soccer, skiing, track & field, etc?
 
At the heart of this issue is is their an advantage for trans athletes, some say yes, some say no

This article says that not only is there an advantage it lasts longer than previously thought
=========================================
A groundbreaking new study on transgender athletes has found trans women retain a 12% advantage in running tests even after taking hormones for two years to suppress their testosterone. The results, researchers suggest, indicate the current International Olympic Committee guidelines may give trans women an “unfair competitive advantage” over biological women.
World Rugby recently became the first sports federation to ban trans women from women’s rugby, citing “significant” safety risks and fairness concerns. But most sports still follow IOC guidelines from 2015, which permit trans women to play against biological women providing their testosterone remains below 10 nanomoles per litre – a figure higher than average biological female levels, which range from 0.12 to 1.79nmol/L.

However the new study, based on the fitness test results and medical records of 29 trans men and 46 trans women who started gender affirming hormones while in the United States Air Force, appears to challenge the IOC’s scientific position.

The research, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that before starting their hormone treatment trans women performed 31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute on average than a biological women younger than 30 in the air force – and ran 1.5 miles 21% faster.

Yet after suppressing their testosterone for two years – a year longer than IOC guidelines – they were still 12% faster on average than biological females.

The trans women also retained a 10% advantage in push-ups and a 6% advantage in sit-ups for the first two years after taking hormones, before their advantage disappeared. But the researchers say they “may underestimate the advantage in strength that trans women have over cis women … because trans women will have a higher power output than cis women when performing an equivalent number of push-ups”...............

Trans women retain 12% edge in tests two years after transitioning, study finds | Sport | The Guardian

Interesting information. And it makes me think that maybe the answer to all of this are certain guidelines that define when a trans athlete can compete. I'm not sure it's huge issue for men's/boy's sports since there likely would not be a physical advantage (although there could be one in mental capacity since women are better at multi-tasking). But, for trans girls/women, maybe the answer is that we don't allow a trans woman to play a woman's sport until a certain number of years after they have transitioned and taken female hormones and that they have a testosterone level no higher than 1.79nmol/L. Could there still be some level of advantage? Possibly, but probably not more than another woman who just happened to be born with greater physical talent.

I mean, under normal circumstances we don't care if a girl born with lesser physical talents gets knocked off the team by another girl with greater physical talents, but for some reason we care if that "girl" was born as a boy. And, lets face it, there are many female athletes that could likely wipe the floor with pretty much so every dude on this board in their chosen sport. Women like Mia Ham, Alex Morgan, Abby Waumbaugh, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, etc.
 
Some certainly are, and one flaw in rules requiring competition by birth gender is that it potentially forces them to compete with girls while transitioning. One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_Beggs
You mean it allowed him to compete with girls while transitioning using testosterone treatments. You could equally say it forced girls and boys who aren't allowed the physically enhancing benefit of testosterone treatments simply because they were not transitioning. The only flaw I see is allowing anyone to compete in any class that is on a regimen of drugs that are well-known to create physical enhancement, even if it is out of necessity.
 
Interesting information. And it makes me think that maybe the answer to all of this are certain guidelines that define when a trans athlete can compete. I'm not sure it's huge issue for men's/boy's sports since there likely would not be a physical advantage (although there could be one in mental capacity since women are better at multi-tasking). But, for trans girls/women, maybe the answer is that we don't allow a trans woman to play a woman's sport until a certain number of years after they have transitioned and taken female hormones and that they have a testosterone level no higher than 1.79nmol/L. Could there still be some level of advantage? Possibly, but probably not more than another woman who just happened to be born with greater physical talent.

I mean, under normal circumstances we don't care if a girl born with lesser physical talents gets knocked off the team by another girl with greater physical talents, but for some reason we care if that "girl" was born as a boy. And, lets face it, there are many female athletes that could likely wipe the floor with pretty much so every dude on this board in their chosen sport. Women like Mia Ham, Alex Morgan, Abby Waumbaugh, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, etc.

But those comparing professional women with the men on this board is just silly. That's not an apt comparison. Compare those same women with professional male athletes and get back to me. Compare male to female trans with other athletes their own age and level of skill and see what kind of difference that makes. I'm seeing several people here making false equivalencies and comparisons that really don't make much sense to me.
 
so you're saying there is not a woman on this planet who is not faster and/or stronger than you
you could beat any woman in tennis, basketball, soccer, skiing, track & field, etc?
That's not how it should be determined. It must be looked at incrementally, the best against the best on down. If you try to make proof by pitting the best woman against any schlub off the street then your reasoning is extremely flawed. If you took the top 100 athletes in any given physical sport at any given class, the vast majority of the outcomes would be in favor of biological males and that's probably being generous.
 
But those comparing professional women with the men on this board is just silly. That's not an apt comparison. Compare those same women with professional male athletes and get back to me. Compare male to female trans with other athletes their own age and level of skill and see what kind of difference that makes. I'm seeing several people here making false equivalencies and comparisons that really don't make much sense to me.
his take/mini rant was predicated on men being physically superior to women
there was no caveat (bc the caveats would upend his argument)
 
That's not how it should be determined. It must be looked at incrementally, the best against the best on down. If you try to make proof by pitting the best woman against any schlub off the street then your reasoning is extremely flawed. If you took the top 100 athletes in any given physical sport at any given class, the vast majority of the outcomes would be in favor of biological males and that's probably being generous.
i agree, i was just calling out his faulty logic
 
That's not how it should be determined. It must be looked at incrementally, the best against the best on down. If you try to make proof by pitting the best woman against any schlub off the street then your reasoning is extremely flawed. If you took the top 100 athletes in any given physical sport at any given class, the vast majority of the outcomes would be in favor of biological males and that's probably being generous.

I'm pretty sure you could take 20 random 10th grade boys and 20 girls from any high school and find the same. Some girls would excel over some boys in terms of athletic performance but the overall effect would be the same.

I mean, that's exactly why there's an issue here to begin with.
 
I mean, under normal circumstances we don't care if a girl born with lesser physical talents gets knocked off the team by another girl with greater physical talents, but for some reason we care if that "girl" was born as a boy.

We also don't care if the reason one girl has greater talent is her well off parents hire the best trainers, sends her to camps etc. vs. the girl whose parents work two jobs and she's the oldest who takes care of her younger siblings so she barely has time to practice
 
But those comparing professional women with the men on this board is just silly. That's not an apt comparison. Compare those same women with professional male athletes and get back to me. Compare male to female trans with other athletes their own age and level of skill and see what kind of difference that makes. I'm seeing several people here making false equivalencies and comparisons that really don't make much sense to me.

I don't see how it's false equivalence. The point is that it's not about your gender, it's about what physical advantages you were born with and how hard you work at your craft. At the upper levels of any sport there are people who just have greater physical talents and men will always have the advantage in any sport based on pure physical force. But, in the middle and lower levels, there likely isn't much difference in physical talent between men and women besides men just having a brute force advantage.

I mean, I recall watching a 12 year-old girl throw a softball 70 MPH. Imagine had she been allowed and trained to throw a baseball instead? I would bet she would have been just as good as any other 12 year-old boy pitching baseball.

On the other hand, my daughter who did not have those physical talents or drive to be great, had to try to hit that 70 MPH pitch and she had no chance at it. What's the difference if that 70 MPH pitch comes from a girl or a girl that was born a boy? I mean, maybe there is a difference, but I'm struggling to see it.
 

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