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Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

nytimes.com

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Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#211

Post by tdb7893 »

lewdev wrote: post #98
tdb7893 wrote: post #21

Trans women have competed as women in the Olympics once ever and have 0 medals. By the numbers it's a non issue under previous rules (despite the incredible amount of ink spilled over it). People are talking about trans women here but the vast majority of people affected by this change are women who are not trans who have a "disorder of sexual development".

Is it fair to say that they can just compete in the men's division?

From a biological perspective, the women being banned here are not just men and as far as I'm aware cannot realistically compete in the men's division any more than any other woman. Practically these changes bar women athletes with certain medical differences from competing in the Olympics.

I'm not an expert so idk whether that's fair or not but that's what this decision is doing.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#213

Post by Aurornis »

homeonthemtn wrote: post #200

I always thought the more elegant approach to all of this was to add a mixed sex league. Keep the traditions, add a novel new one, and let people consent to who they want to compete against and watch

In the sports I competed in, the men's class was really an open class. (EDIT: Looking at past results, we didn't even have a "men's division". There was just a separate women's division) Anyone could compete in it. The women's classes were the only restricted classes.

There are several sports where female physiology (skeletal structure, etc) has inherent advantages over male physiology where this may not be true, though.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#214

Post by cmiles8 »

breakyerself wrote: post #194

I can't imagine trans women who avoided male puberty are statistically any better athletes than cis women. A total ban seems discriminatory to me.

You’re getting into a separate issue of blocking puberty in children, which may would consider abuse.

Separate from that there are still measurable differences between sexes that you can’t just magically change with a pill or surgery.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#215

Post by barrance »

Headline is inaccurate.

Transgender athletes are not barred from women's events. Female athletes who identify as men, or otherwise do not identify as women, can still compete in this category, as they have been doing already.

What the IOC's new policy actually does is make male athletes ineligible for competition in the female category, with very few exceptions. These exceptions are for athletes who are technically male but have a disorder of sex development that confers no male advantage, e.g. CAIS.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#216

Post by n4r9 »

nradov wrote: post #166
cmiles8 wrote: post #159

[flagged]

Exactly. It's impossible to have both inclusion and fair play. We have to pick one, and as a parent of daughters who compete at fairly high levels it's more important to preserve the integrity of women's sports.

Is there not an option to have inclusion at grassroots level and fair play as the level of competition gets higher?

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#217

Post by fweimer »

LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #35

It's clear how insane this culture war against trans people is when you consider this only applies to trans women and not trans men? Also, so many of these anti-trans efforts end up hurting cis women too, the ones who happen to look too masculine or have too high of testosterone. Gender is not as straightforward as bigots and transphobes would like to think. I wonder how many cis women will be affected by this ruling…

Maybe the trans men issue gets less attention because they have already been excluded from both women's and men's events?

I assume trans men are administered testosterone as part of their medical care, and that's already universally banned from competitive sports.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#218

Post by forgetfreeman »

cmiles8 wrote: post #159

[flagged]

I thought exactly the same thing until I had a politically agnostic fencing judge sit down and explain over the course of an hour and a half all of the steps national and international regulating organizations for that sport had taken to avoid issues with unfair competition. Whether similar field-leveling safeguards could be baked into the rules for other sports is left as an exercise, but this particular instance suggests there's more nuance here than your comment suggests.

Re: Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events

#219

Post by greygoo222 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #159

[flagged]

Transition changes biology. We don't yet have the technology to fully reverse the effects of male puberty, so there can be reasonable debate about trans women who transitioned after puberty, but early transitioners have no meaningful advantage. Their bodies, in an athletic context, are female.

This is also true for many cisgender intersex women with XY chromosomes. Someone with androgen insensitivity can have XY chromosomes, yet be capable of giving birth. Drawing the line at having a Y chromosome makes no sense.

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